by H C Edwards
The tunnel to their right would eventually lead to the great machines that processed the power from the underground river and recycled the air through wind tunnels situated throughout the mountain, both necessary to keep them breathing with the lights on. The last tunnel, directly in front of them, led to the food processing plants and the trade hub, which was also the main entrance to the Red Zone.
“Where is everyone?” Chase asked as they stepped out into the cavern.
“I don’t know,” Mia replied. “But that’s not our concern right now.”
“What do we do with the guards?”
Mia turned and faced them. They were surrounded with their own rifles pointed at them.
“We kill them,” one of her men said, raising his rifle to a guard’s head. “No one’s around to hear it.”
“No,” Mia said, almost surprised by the commanding tone of her voice. “We don’t kill anyone unless we have to. Don’t forget why we’re here. This is a rescue.”
The man looked to her for a couple of seconds, then nodded, stepping back and lowering the rifle. The guard was visibly shaken, eyes shut tight and breathing heavily. Mia went to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes at her touch, the fear still stamped upon his face.
“It’s ok,” she assured him.
“I don’t have a revival clause,” he blurted, his lips trembling, the emotion threatening to bubble forth like a boiling pot. “I wanted to but my wife is…I-I mean, she’s religious.”
“We’re not going to kill you,” Mia interrupted him. “Look at my face. Look at me.”
He did, and whatever he saw caused his trembling to ease. The guard nodded, standing up a bit straighter.
“M-my friends,” he began, glancing around.
“Will be just fine,” Mia finished.
She turned to Chase, pointing to the tunnel on their right.
“First door you come to is a maintenance room. You should be able to find something to tie them up with. I’ll meet you there in a minute. No trouble unless you can’t avoid it.”
“Got it,” Chase replied, pointing to two men. “Frank, Spence, you two stay with her. The rest come with me.”
They turned and escorted the guards away. The two men left behind with Mia walked away a bit in opposite directions, holding the two rifles they had confiscated, peering down the other tunnels, perhaps wondering like the rest of them what had happened to all the people.
Mia turned back to the single guard, whom she had singled out for the red stripe on his sleeve.
“You work the lower levels?” she wasted no time in asking.
He nodded profusely.
“And the Red Zone?”
This time he didn’t reply, verbally or physically.
She didn’t have time to break him down, so instead she lifted her pistol and put it below his chin. His eyes went wide instantly.
“Y-you said you wouldn’t kill me,” he stuttered.
“I said you’d be fine, and you will…if you have a revival clause. Now, answer my question or you’ll be floating the Ether in three seconds.”
“M-my wife…my kid,” he began to stutter.
Mia felt calm, but even stranger, she felt cold, and knew that it radiated from her face for all to see.
“They’ll get to meet the new you, hopefully close enough to the old you. One.”
“I can’t get you in there,” the guard spluttered. “It’s not my day for that shift. I don’t even have the codes.”
“Two,” she immediately replied.
“Okay,” he said, not pushing the envelope for that last count. “W-what do you want to know?”
Without moving the pistol away, Mia leaned closer, close enough to smell his breath.
“Everything.”
When they had the last guard tied up and stuffed into the corner of the maintenance room next to the lockers, Chase came over and whispered to Mia.
“What the hell took so long?”
“We needed some information.”
“What did you get?”
Mia motioned the others to her, walking towards the door and away from the bound guards. Though they had stuffed wadded pieces of torn clothing in their ears, she didn’t want to chance them overhearing.
When the rest of their people were gathered around she spoke in a low voice.
“They’re going to be moving them soon. He didn’t know why. I’m not even certain that Claire’s escape has reached all the guards yet. They work in rotating shifts so it’s possible that they’re on a need to know basis.”
“Well, at least we still have surprise on our side,” one of the women in their group said.
“Maybe. They’ve posted guards at the end of the tunnel and at the door to the room where they’re being kept.”
“How many?”
“Two at the end of each tunnel, two at the door.”
“So?” Chase said. “We can handle that.”
“There isn’t anywhere to hide,” Mia said. “They’ll see us coming.”
“Then it’s a fight,” Frank grunted.
Mia shook her head.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Chase raised an eyebrow.
“You got a plan?”
“We do what Claire did. We blend in.”
Mia nodded towards the guards and Chase grinned.
Nine workers dressed in jumpsuits with various colored bands walked along the tunnel. They were accompanied by three guards, two in the front and one in the back. Whenever they came across a detail of other workers, they were given a wide birth passing by. There were no pleasantries exchanged nor were they ever asked their destination. It seemed as if all were content to simply be on their way to the job, or perhaps time was a luxury that most couldn’t afford.
Mia and Chase led the group, garbed in the guard uniforms, slightly oversized but pulled tight in the back and tucked in so as to appear a better fit. Frank brought up the rear, dressed as the third guard. The rest of their group was stone faced, moving along with assurance that they knew where they were going. Their weapons were concealed, and those that carried larger rifles had found clothing bags in the lockers of the maintenance room to hide their guns slung over their shoulders.
The tunnel meandered, sometimes along a man-made hallway, but most often accompanied on both sides by the bowels of the rock mountain. As they passed doors and other tunnels they could hear the great lumbering machines working, a constant bang and grind of metal on metal, the hissing of compressed air, and the steady flow of water.
They were used to this. Many of the group worked in the recycling plants until it was their sector’s cycle to halt production, and then they pulled shifts in the trade hub. They looked more at ease and comfortable in the environment than Mia ever did, even though she had called this place home for many years and had traversed all these tunnels with her father as a girl and young woman.
Walking along, she felt a heavy sense of déjà vu, recalling pockets of conversations she’d had at certain places, non-descript areas but they triggered memories she had thought long forgotten.
She had only become a part of the Cloud when she came to Akropolis. The Mountain had its own Cloud system but it wasn’t until a person turned the age of twenty-five that they were allowed to be implanted and sign up for a revival clause. The council had voted a long time ago that a human brain was not fully developed to handle the system until a certain age, and so the memories Mia had of this place were not a part of her instant recollection as a synthetic. Nonetheless, they were there, having been a part of her subconscious and therefore transferred as such, but they were wisps, mere snippets, and she couldn’t confirm the truth of them. .
What Mia could never forget, however, was her way. She had walked this same tunnel hundreds of times, many with her father, and when she received her work orders at he age of sixteen, by herself. It was a relief to see not much had changed. A part of the natural wall had been expanded here or there, and there were
more than a few new branching tunnels leading she knew not where, but for the most part it was as familiar as it had been all those years ago.
The traffic seemed to thicken the further along they traveled. She knew that they were getting close to the water power plant, which also contained the filtration plant, the sewage system, and the reservoir, all fed by the underground river.
This was an area that was manned constantly by several hundred workers, and she knew the further they went the more congested it would become. Sooner or later they’d run across a foreman or even worse, a handful of guards, and then their disguises would be worthless.
Thankfully, they came to the adjoining tunnel that led to the reservoir without confronting either of these. Mia turned off the main route and stopped once they were all far enough in. She turned to them and motioned for a huddle.
“This will lead to the reserve reservoir. It feeds into the Red Zone in the lower levels. It’s a closed system but always requires maintenance, just like any other place here. Follow my lead and no one say a word unless you absolutely have to. Got it?”
There were nods from everyone. Satisfied, she turned around and continued on, stepping up the pace, knowing that the guards in the maintenance room wouldn’t remain undiscovered for long. She wished that there had been a better place to stash them, but they were lucky just to get this far without raising any sort of alarm. Speed was what they needed now.
The light in the tunnel was dim, laser diode tubes imbedded in the walls offering only a slight glow, the dark making her anxious and claustrophobic. All workers down in the lower levels were required to spend time in the domed atrium, at least five hours a week. It was the only perk afforded them that didn’t cost any tickets. Mia thought that perhaps she had become spoiled in the open air of Akropolis to be so easily affected this quickly.
Eventually a stronger white light began to suffuse the tunnel, brightening steadily until they had to squint as their eyes adjusted. They stepped out into a cavern whose ceiling was covered with thousands of stalactites, dripping water into the reserve reservoir, a body of water that stretched off to their left as far as the eye could see. To their right was a small damn and purification plant with a dozen walkways that crossed over the reservoir. Giant pipes were sunk deep into the water, giving off a low hum that could be felt through their feet like a tickle. On the walkways were monitoring systems and view screens, about a dozen workers moving back and forth, some testing samples while others were checking the purification systems and outputs.
“We have to cross the reservoir on the walkways up there to the opposite side. That’s where the maintenance tunnel is,” Mia whispered to Chase, pointing quickly to the spot with her finger before they were seen. “Let me do the talking.”
She figured the closer they got the more anxious she would be, but it was as if her mind had gone into autopilot. Instead of trepidation she felt a strange sense of assurance.
When they were just a couple of dozen feet away they were spotted by one of the workers monitoring the valve systems. He looked towards them at a glance then double-checked, but there was no alarm on his face. Rather, he appeared slightly annoyed, a frown replacing the lax and bored expression.
They mounted the steps together, Mia at the head of their group. The worker waited until she was at the last step before he turned in her direction.
“What the hell is broken now?” he asked, his tone suggesting something other than mild annoyance.
Mia waited until the rest of their group had finished ascending the stairs and was standing on the landing, just in case things went sideways. She hiked a thumb over her shoulder, adopting a similar tone as the worker, but throwing a bit of a growl into her voice.
“Don’t give me any shit,” she snapped. “We’ve been ferrying maintenance up and down these tunnels all day and I’m two hours past shift change.”
The man held up his hands in a peace gesture, backing his tone down almost immediately.
“Hey, sorry,” he said. “We’re all pulling doubles this week. No need to get all riled up.”
“We got to get these guys down to the main lines,” Mia said, gesturing for her group to continue walking across the reservoir.
“What the hell for?” the worker asked, his face scrunching up. “And why the electricians too?”
Mia ignored him, sweeping her hand at the others, “Come on let’s go.”
“Hey,” the worker said, stepping forward.
What his intentions were she never found out, for at that moment one of the men in her group detached and began speaking.
“ Look, we don’t have time for this. We got a main sewage line that burst. We need to get down there and shut off the power before we divert the water. The longer you keep us jawing the higher the shit piles, you get my drift?”
“Dammit,” the worker swore. “Everything’s going wrong this week.”
He walked away cursing under his breath. Mia turned to the man who had spoken up, and was met with a wink and a grin.
They crossed the rest of the reservoir without incident, reaching the other side and descending onto the main cavern floor. There was a single tunnel that led away for about twenty yards before ending in a door.
Mia made her way to the front of the group and pulled out the key card she had taken off the guard.
“Let’s hope this works,” she mumbled under her breath, and then passed the card in front of the scanner.
There was a click, followed by a monotone buzz, and the door popped open half an inch. She turned around and almost grinned at Chase.
Just as she surmised, this particular tunnel didn’t have the same security measures as the main ones that led to the Red Zone. For one, it was quite some distance away. The other aspect was that it technically fed into the sewer system, and required a lot more regular maintenance. She recalled her father telling her about this slight oversight all those years ago, and she was grateful that while many things had changed in the sanctuary, this had not.
The tunnel they stepped into was filled with parallel pipes, taking up enough space that they had to walk single file. At times they had to turn sideways just to make it around a protruding elbow or offset pipe. It made the going slow and arduous.
The only light came from dim bulbs that were on motion sensors, so that the moment they passed one, it went out, leaving darkness both in front and behind their small group. It almost felt as if they were looping, treading the same stretch of tunnel over and over again. There was nothing to discriminate the view except for the occasional overhang they had to duck or obstruction to squeeze past. If not for the fact that they were walking in a downward slope Mia might not have known they were making any progress at all.
After an hour of this the slope became more progressive, rumble strips built into the floors for grip. Water was dripping from somewhere, either from leaky pipes or from the cave walls itself. The going became slippery, and more than once, a person in their group would fall on their ass and curse. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so damn annoying.
Finally, Chase tapped Mia on the shoulder and whispered, exhaustion clear in her voice. The adrenaline had long since seeped away and the majority of them were probably running on fumes.
“How much further?”
Mia shrugged.
“Not much,” she said back under her breath.
The truth was she wasn’t sure. She had never been in this tunnel. It was her father who had told her about it and where it led. In fact, she was beginning to doubt her own memory when she felt the vibration through her feet.
It was a continuous rumbling, so low that if they hadn’t slowed down she never would have noticed it. She quickened her pace, and as she did, the vibration progressed. After a few minutes she began to shuffle into a jogging pace, and within a hundred yards the vibration was all around them. Along with it came other noises, clunks and grinding, pounding and squeals. They were all muted sounds but it was apparent that it was the sound
s of construction and machinery.
By the time their own breathing was drowned out by the noise, they were nearly running. The tunnel started to widen, and as it did they began to group, their pace picking up, splashing through shin deep water that was murky with waste. Eventually, even the ceiling opened up, and the air, while not sweeter by any means, felt less suppressive, a small draft cooling the sweat on the brows of the men and women running.
The machines were deafening now, and when they finally saw the latter ascending up into the ceiling about fifteen feet up, Mia could have almost kissed it.
She went up first, the others close behind her. There was a large grate, impossible for any man or woman to lift, but she wasn’t exactly human anymore. Putting her shoulder into it, her neck cranked to one side, she grit her teeth and heaved with all her strength. It budged enough for her to wedge her forearm into and place her palm flat, repositioning her body so that she could get another rung under her feet. One more push and Mia was able to tip the grate past the halfway point. It fell open with a loud bang, but the sound was lost in the cacophony from above.
Quickly, not even bothering to do a quick check, she hoisted herself up and out of the tunnel, stumbling forward to the nearest wall and leaning against it, breathing in huge gulps of air. She wasn’t even aware the others had joined her until she looked around and noticed them panting and slumped in various positions, some sitting on the ground with their knees drawn up, heads between their legs, others leaning back with their faces towards the ceiling, looking like beached fish.
They were in an alcove, about fifteen feet deep and seven feet high. From the mouth of it came a bright light, strong enough that those in the group squinted and turned their eyes away, but like a moth, Mia was drawn to it. She crept forward, shielding the upper part of her face with one hand until she stood at the exit, and when her vision adjusted, she realized that they had made it to the Red Zone.