“We’ve located the security system control center,” Jettison says. “The others are holed up in there.”
“Did you find Jonah?”
“Yeah, he’s there. And Harrison.”
Cliff puts his hand on my shoulder. “Wabash took some heavy hits getting that kid through. He’s in a bad state. But try not to scare the kid too much. He’s pretty shaken up as it is.”
“Is Wabash going to be okay?”
“We’re not sure. He got stung by a Soma and those things are toxic as hell. They get some kind of neurotoxin in you before they head for your brain. He managed to kill it, but not till after he was jabbed.”
“Did he make another jump to try to get the poison out?”
“Yeah, eventually he did, but he was in the thick of it and had to get the kid to safety. By the time he made the jump to get it out, it was pretty late. Some likely got absorbed and gravitized by his body. It’s hard to say.”
I fall back with Genesis and Bozzle as Cliff and Jettison lead the way to the control center. We descend another level in silence, only probing the darkness with our lights as necessary, trying to attract as little attention as possible. Jettison raps on the metal sliding door and it rolls open for us. Kara is on the other side, her gun at the ready.
We file into the control center. It’s an octagonal room fitted with windows that look out over a massive abyss. Milo is fiddling with the controls at a bank of computers. The displays are fancier than anything from my time, but they seem antiquated compared to some of the technology I saw in the Academy lab.
Kara gives me a nod and Milo shakes my hand. “It’s good you’re here, Ben. I think we’re going to need all the help we can get. How are you?”
“Tired, but still alive. That’s saying something.”
Milo nods soberly and gestures to one display in particular that is showing a constantly changing stream of numbers. “I’m trying to get us through the mine bay doors. The primary doors to the other sublevels have been sealed and the code-breaking program needs a little time to decrypt it. Rest a minute if you need to.”
“Where’s Wabash?”
Milo points through a second doorway into an attached conference room. “We set him up in there as best we could.”
I step through the doorway into the dimly lit room. The floor is carpeted and Harrison Wabash is propped against one wall in a corner. The others seem to have built him a sort of cushion with their packs. His face is pale, but he smiles when I enter. Jonah is sitting on the floor beside him, also leaning against the wall, and Barley has his head and front paws draped protectively over the boy’s lap. The dog’s golden eyes follow me as I cross the room, but he doesn’t lift his head. All three of them look exhausted.
“Good to see you made it, Ben.” Harrison’s voice is raspy. He gestures toward the space along the wall next to Jonah. “Come join us.” He coughs twice, and the effort seems to drain him. I let my pack slump to the floor and lay the gun and flashlight next to it before sliding down the wall next to Jonah. The boy looks shaken.
“Looks like Barley found his way back to you. That dog was determined, let me tell you. That’s one loyal friend you have there.”
Jonah toys with the dog’s ears and then wraps his arms around Barley’s neck and leaves them there. “I thought I lost him.”
I stretch my hand slowly to the dog’s snout, and he licks my fingers before I scratch his head.
The boy’s face is downcast. “I lost my helmet.”
“That’s okay. Your head probably feels lighter now, right?”
Jonah shakes his head. “I wasn’t supposed to take it off. Jay says I have to keep it on or the brain invaders will get me.”
“Jay is your brother?”
Jonah nods. “He says if you don’t watch out, your self from the future can come back and steal your body. You won’t know it’s coming till it’s too late and then you lose, and then the other you gets to have your brain.”
I put an arm around Jonah. “You know, Jonah, sometimes older brothers like to give their younger siblings a hard time, tell them things that aren’t true just to scare them.”
“Jay’s not lying. He says he learned about it at school. The brain invaders are real. They make you one of them and then you start invading your own brain.”
I look to Wabash to see if he will dismiss the account. To my surprise, he gives me a nod of confirmation.
Jonah leans into my chest. His face is dirty and his hair is a mess and, despite all his knowledge of the future, he still seems like just a little kid. I brush some of the loose hair away from his face. “You know what, Jonah? All that might be true, but you shouldn’t worry about it, you know why?”
He looks up at me. “Why?”
“Because you’re a good kid. And you’ll always be one of the good guys. That means no future version of you is ever going to be anything except awesome. And awesome good guys don’t invade people’s brains.”
“What about the other brain invaders?”
“You are going to beat the brain invaders. Hey, you can just zap ’em with your organism gun. It works on brains, right?”
Jonah frowns. “It didn’t work. It didn’t work on the . . . aliens.” He fidgets with the fur around the dog’s neck. “I couldn’t help.”
I pull Jonah a little closer and pat his shoulder. “Don’t worry about that. We’re getting out of here as fast as we can. And once we’re gone, we’re never coming back to this place.”
Jonah eyes the gun lying next to my pack. “Did you beat the aliens?”
“We all did. And we’re gonna stick together now. You just get some rest.”
Jonah doesn’t speak again. We just stay like that for a while. I listen to the muffled voices of Jettison and the others talking in the next room and Harrison’s labored breathing. After a few minutes, Jonah’s breathing becomes more even and his head droops a little on my shoulder. I notice Harrison is watching me.
“That boy looks up to you.”
“He’s a good kid.” I study the bandages on Harrison’s arms and hands. “You did a great thing getting him here. I know what it cost you.”
He winces and adjusts his position. “It’s all we can do in situations like this. Jonah shouldn’t be here. None of us should.” He turns to me. “Did you dream this? Is this what you saw?”
“Some of it. Bits and pieces.”
“It’s true then. You are dreaming the future. You should pay attention.”
“What is it? What’s happening to cause it?”
“I couldn’t say. Traveling through time does strange things to a mind. We get disjointed. I think sometimes all the disconnecting and reconnecting from normal time does something to break us.”
“Have you had trouble?”
“Not me personally, but there are others out there who have. Some even try to use it to their advantage. The ‘brain invaders’ the kid was talking about? They might sound like the boogey man, but they’re real enough. Call themselves ‘The Eternals.’ They say they can live forever. It’s a scary concept. They try to latch their consciousness onto their own younger bodies, subverting their younger minds.”
“And it works?”
“Sometimes, I guess. Other times they end up with a multiple personality disorder, with all their minds fighting for control. Lots of them go insane. It’s a creepy cult at best, and not one many people are eager to join.”
“Why would his brother be concerned about them?”
“Jay is an older version of Jonah from what I hear, so if he’s had contact with The Eternals, maybe he was scared that he might try to use the power on his younger self someday. Power does crazy things to people.”
“But he’s the one who gave him the helmet, right? So Jay can’t be all bad. He’s at least looking out to protect Jonah. Even if it’s from himself.”
“Let’s hope that’s the trait that wins out.” Harrison rubs a hand across his brow and shifts a little. “What are your dreams about?
Is it yourself you’re talking to, or someone else?”
I think about my latest vision. “It’s me.”
“And what is your other self doing? Do you get the sense he’s trying to take over your mind?”
“No, not really. He’s trying to show me something. It’s just hard to tell what he’s saying. He said I need to come find him. When this is over.”
“Where is he?”
“That’s the scary part. I think he’s dead.”
Harrison studies me for a moment, then starts coughing again. When the fit passes, he raises his eyes back to me. “That sounds like a challenging search.” He opens his hand and notices blood on his palm. “Though maybe I’ll be seeing him before you do.” He lets his head fall back against the wall.
“Do you need anything? Do you want some of my water?” I shift Jonah off my chest and prop him up against the wall in an effort to get to my pack. His mouth has dropped open and his head slumps onto his shoulder.
Harrison waves his hand weakly. “I’m okay. I just need a little rest.”
Jettison pokes his head into the doorway and calls to me. “Ben, you might want to take a look at this.”
I pat Harrison’s hand and give it a brief squeeze before joining the others. Milo and Genesis are staring at a screen in the center of the control panel. Genesis moves aside so I can see. Jettison points to the figure in a space suit navigating a dark hallway. “I don’t know what you want to do about this situation.”
“Where is that?” I ask. The camera footage is dim, but I can make out the crack in the visor.
“One level up. He seems to be headed for the Level One domiciles,” Milo replies. He pans through a few other camera feeds and stops on another image. “That’s this one.”
The camera shows a hallway teeming with Soma Djinn hosts. They are milling around the doorway and in and out of the personnel quarters. One appears to have a pillowcase stuck to its head. The image would be humorous if I didn’t know what the creatures were capable of.
“He hasn’t encountered much resistance, luckily, because he doesn’t seem to be armed.” Milo flips back to the shot of Viznir.
I frown at the screen. “He isn’t. I took his gun.”
“Wabash told us what he did to you,” Jettison says. “It’s your call.”
“Damn it.” I stride back into the conference room and snatch up my things. Wabash has fallen asleep against the wall. I carry my pack to the main room and set it on the desk behind the monitors. I pull Charlie’s leather gun belt out of my pack and check the chambers before securing the holster to my thigh. “He’s a bastard for what he did, but I can’t let him just walk into that mess. Nobody deserves to die like that.”
Cliff gives me a nod and cocks his shotgun. Bozzle slides away from the wall where he’s been leaning and likewise picks up his weapon. “It is the right decision.”
Milo points to a timer on a second screen. “We have a second issue. We’ve broken through the lock on the primary mine doors, but it’s triggered a countdown on the time gate.”
I check the display on my race bracelet, and a new clock has replaced the counting on the indicator screen. This one is ticking down and has just less than two hours remaining.
“We all need to get our objectives and be at that gate before this thing stops or we’re getting stuck here.”
“Do the others know?” I ask. “Where are the other racers?”
Milo flips through a few more images on the security screens and shows me a shot of a massive tunnel. Thick steel doors have parted, leaving a gap about ten feet wide. “Tad and Blaine were at the primary mine doors a few minutes ago. The academy teams were running their own code-breaking algorithm against the lock from there, but my program hacked it first. They’ll be ahead of us.”
“Who was with them?”
“Horacio and Donny, Ariella and Dagmar. Preston and Deanna came through a minute or two later. That’s it for teams. Titus and his guide quit at the Academy, so we’re all that’s left.”
I look around the room. “Wait, where’s Mayra?”
Genesis’s mouth hardens in a line and Cliff shakes his head.
“Oh. I’m sorry, Gen. I didn’t mean to—I should have noticed earlier—”
“Forget it.” Genesis’ voice is firm. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Jettison steps forward. “Okay, here’s the plan. Wabash and the kid are going to need help, and they’ll be moving slow, so somebody has to guard them. Cliff, I’ll be fine on my own. You and Gen can help Milo and Kara get the others to the gate, while Ben, Bozzle, and I round up the objectives for the rest of the team.”
“That’s a good idea. I can feed you info through the metaspace,” Milo adds. “And if I get to the gate, I might be able to run interference on the countdown and buy us more time.”
“So we meet you at the gate?” I ask.
“Yeah. Find your wayward guide and I’ll lead you to the objectives via Jettison.”
I pull the tablet from my pack and show Milo the photo I managed to take of my objective. “I had a hard time with the technology this round, but that’s where my objective is.”
Milo studies the photo briefly, then puts the tablet into one of his cargo pockets. “No problem. I’ll add it to the list.”
Genesis and Cliff step into the conference room, and a few moments later, Jonah and Barley walk out. Wabash follows them, leaning heavily on Cliff, but he has a determined scowl on his pale face when the pair joins the rest of us. Genesis hands back the rest of the team’s belongings.
“Okay. We ready for this?” Milo doesn’t wait for an answer but mashes a button on the console and the metal security room door slides open. Kara is the first one through. An emaciated Soma host has suffered the misfortune of finding its way into the hallway and Kara’s blaster disintegrates the creature’s entire upper body in one shot. The rest of us trail behind her and exit the double doors at the far end of the hall. Kara decimates what little resistance we meet, and I’m not required to even draw my gun until we reach the stairwell.
“We’re up from here,” Jettison says and leads the way up the stairs. Our party splits and I climb after Jettison while Bozzle takes the rear. Jonah waves to me just before I gain the first landing.
“I’ll be back soon, buddy. I’ll see you at the gate.”
The rest of the group takes the stairs headed down and vanishes into the darkness below.
“We need to move quick; your guide is almost at the domiciles,” Jettison says. His eyes have the same hazy look Tucket got when using the metaspace, but Jettison snaps out of it quickly and focuses on the task ahead. We emerge on the next floor in a cafeteria kitchen. The store cupboards have been ransacked long ago and bits of plastic wrappers and empty containers scatter in our wake as we jog through. A few Soma hosts stumble from the corners of the room but we are gone before they have time to get near.
The entrance to the domiciles involves a trek across a catwalk that spans the abyssal hole into the planet. The blackness yawns out in every direction around us, but for once it doesn’t bother me. I focus on the beam of my flashlight and the glow of occasional emergency lights along the ceiling. Jettison suddenly stops walking and I can tell he’s off in the metaspace again.
“Shit. They’ve seen him.” He breaks into a run and we hurry to follow. We burst through a double door into the corridor where we last spotted Viznir. A throng of Soma are pushing and clawing at one another in an attempt to enter one of the narrow domicile doorways off the corridor. The room is overflowing with them already and my heart sinks. How will Viznir survive that?
The fringe of the horde turns its attention toward us and Jettison and I drop the first wave in a hail of gunfire. As we stop to reload, Bozzle steps past us and twists the handle of his pike until the tip sizzles with electricity. He lowers the pike toward the horde and fries the next group of attackers with a bolt of bright-white energy.
The hallway immediately takes on the odor of burnt
flesh. Jettison and I come up firing and level the next row of host bodies. We repeat the process a few more times. I get faster with the reloading, and we’ve cleared a path almost to the crowded doorway when Bozzle’s pike fails to fire. He doesn’t hesitate, however. He steps forward and begins cleaving his way through the mob with the still-glowing blade. His swings leave trails of light in the darkness. He reaches a container on the wall that holds an emergency fire axe and shatters the glass with the butt of his pike. He snatches the axe from its receptacle and tosses it back to me. I follow his lead and proceed to hack my way through the few Soma hosts that make it past his pike.
Jettison tips me off to a new danger by shining his light at one of the host body’s decapitated heads. A yellow Soma Djinn has wriggled its way clear of the teeth and is waving its antennae in our direction. I look down and realize many of the fallen bodies are now leaking alien parasites. I put the blunt end of the axe to good use and start smashing them into the floor.
Jettison reaches into the domicile doorway and yanks a host body out of his way with his bare hands. The snarling man lands face up in front of me and gets only a second to growl about it before my axe finds his skull.
“VIZNIR! YOU IN THERE?” Jettison shouts into the room. One of the Soma hosts is holding an empty, cracked space helmet above his head and shaking it, as if hoping something good will tumble out. I begin to despair about finding Viznir alive, but then a muffled cry comes from somewhere beyond the snarling mob.
Jettison wrangles a woman wearing a scarf out of his way. “HANG ON. WE’RE COMING FOR YOU!”
It takes Jettison and me another five minutes to clear our way to Viznir. The last few Soma hosts are on their bellies, trying to reach under the frame of the metal bunk where he has hidden himself. He’s managed to kill one of the creatures with his knife, and the fallen body has kept the others from crawling under the bed after him. The space is narrow, and I can understand why he had to lose his helmet before having any chance of squeezing under. We have a difficult time extracting him from the constricted space even without the host bodies. Viznir is covered in blood and green slime from the Soma Djinn he has stabbed with his knife, but he seems otherwise unharmed. He doesn’t hold eye contact with me long, but it’s long enough to get out a mumbled thank you.
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 92