by Eric Warren
“Who?” Jessika asked, her eyes going from one of them to the other.
Arista tried to interject but it didn’t come out quick enough. “Sy,” Jill spat. “Traitor. She made me believe she was helpless. I’ll never make that mistake again.”
“What did she do?” Jessika asked.
“We can talk about all of that later,” Arista interjected. “We’re on the clock here, let’s get moving.”
Jill hopped down from the gurney. Her diminutive stature still somehow large in this place. “What’s the plan?”
“Oh boy,” Arista said. “Let’s talk on the way. Everyone grab a gurney.”
As Jessika directed Jill how to strap the gurneys to the tubes Arista leaned over to Frees. “What are we going to do about Max? We can’t just leave her here.”
“I don’t know. I’ve still got the transmitter that allows us to use their Gates. Maybe once we get back I can put on another disguise—a better disguise—and come back in for her.”
“I hate to leave her,” Arista said. “Especially if they’re screwing with her mind. What if they make irreversible changes?”
“I don’t see another choice. If you want to save them,” Frees indicated her parents, “then we’ll have to come back later. The risk to them is too great. Max will have to take care of herself.”
“She’s gonna hate me even more now.”
“She was going to hate you one way or the other,” Frees said. “At least she’ll be alive.”
He was right. They would just have to come back later.
“We’re done over here,” Jessika said. “Frees, you and Jill should move these. They can be cumbersome and you two are the strongest.” She turned to Arista. “No offense.”
She put her hands up. “None taken.” Though it wasn’t quite true. She’d hoped with her new arm she’d gained a small amount of strength. But then she thought back to how she’d taken out that woman in the bathroom back in Japan. No, she didn’t want that kind of power anymore. She was happy with normal human strength.
“The Gate is in section Onyx twenty-four Delta. It’s a bit of a haul from here so let’s get moving,” Jessika said.
Arista watched Frees and Jill lower the gurneys down, so they hovered just two feet off the ground. She checked the hallway one more time and gave the all-clear. Now, if they could just get to the gate without an incident.
Twenty-Eight
Halfway to Onyx twenty-four Delta the red strips along the walls stopped blinking.
That had caused them to break into a sprint. Arista and Jessika in front, leading the way and checking the corners with Jill and Frees behind, pushing the huge containers down the hallways. They hadn’t heard anything about an all-clear, but if the alarms weren’t sounding anymore then it must mean something. Either a ruse to flush them out or something even more drastic than a lockdown was coming.
“What are the emergency procedures when subjects haven’t been captured?” Arista asked as they ran down the hallway.
“I don’t know. We’ve never had one this long before,” Jessika replied. “Most people are caught quickly.” She glanced up at the section number they passed. “We’re close. It’s right up here.”
A shot rang out behind them.
Arista stopped in her tracks and turned. A soldier stood at the far end of the hallway. “Abrams!” he yelled. “You are out of order!” He marched toward them with his rifle extended.
“Go,” Frees said, “get them to the Gate.” He raised his hand toward the man.
“Put your hand down you idiot!” the man yelled. Arista realized it was the same captain who had been looking for them in the Research wing. “They told me you weren’t stupid enough to come up here. But I said nope. That Abrams, he’s a real fuck-up. But that’s because you’re not the real Abrams, isn’t it?” He cocked his weapon.
“Arista, get your mother and go,” Frees hissed.
She winced and got on the other side of the mag-gurney.
“Abrams, any one of those people behind you moves another inch and I shoot you all. I don’t care what McCulluh tells me. It was self-defense.”
They all stared back at him as he approached closer, his weapon still trained on Frees.
“Drop that hand, soldier,” he warned.
Arista wondered why Frees hadn’t fired yet, he should be able to take this guy down with one shot. What was he waiting for?
“Jus’ shoot the bastard,” Jill said.
“I can’t afford to miss,” Frees hissed. “He needs to be closer.”
Another shot rang out and something cracked. Arista ducked down. What happened?
Frees lay on the ground, staring at his hand. Most of the skin had burned away. “Frees,” she called, but he wouldn’t look away. She turned to the captain. He waved his gun back and forth, shaking it violently.
“Damn…what’s wro—?”
Arista rushed him, using her new fist to deliver an uppercut blow that sent the captain’s boots two inches (as measured by the Device) off the ground. He fell back, unconscious. Arista picked up his weapon. It had been disabled by an EMP. She tossed it to the side. “You did it,” she said to Frees. He looked up at her, holding his palm out.
She gasped and stepped back. The lens in the center had been completely shattered and sparks spat from the hole that remained. “What happened?” she asked.
“I think we fired at the same time,” Frees said. “His bullet is in there. Buried.”
“The felp?”
“Completely destroyed,” he said.
“We still haf’ta go,” Jill said. “Before more of ‘im come lookin’ for us.”
Arista reached out with her left hand and grabbed Frees’ right, pulling him to his feet. “Let’s go home,” she said. She nodded to Jessika, who continued to lead them to the nearby doors. She pressed David’s DNA sample to the pad and the doors slid open.
“Did you know that guy?” Arista asked as they entered.
“Captain Brody,” Frees replied. “Not a fun man.”
The room seemed deserted, but what struck Arista was the size of it. The ceiling had to be twenty floors at its full height and it curved from where they stood up to where it peaked and leveled out. As the ceiling curved up, the room widened considerably, at least two hundred feet in either direction. And there, on the opposite wall a hundred yards in front of them, stood the largest Gate Arista had ever seen in her life. It took up the entire wall. A Gate sixty-five thousand square feet in size.
“It’s massive,” she whispered.
“It has to be,” Jessika said. “To accomplish what it needs to accomplish.”
The rest of the room seemed deserted. They’d made it in time. No one had returned to their workstations yet. “Can you find a way to barricade that door?” Arista asked Frees. “I’ll go set the energy drives.”
“Save one for me,” Frees said. “That last shot of the felp was the limit, I’m almost out of power.”
She tossed him one and he managed to catch it in his mangled hand. Despite the extreme damage to his palm, his fingers seemed to work fine.
“I’ll start setting the coordinates,” Jessika called, running to the control panel that sat in the middle of the floor, thirty feet in front of the Gate. “Get them positioned in front.”
Jill nodded, and pushed Arista’s father so the tube sat directly in front of the Gate. Arista couldn’t help but compare it to a casket. No! She couldn’t think like that. They could get out of this, they were almost home free. With considerable effort she managed to maneuver her mother in front of it as well.
“What’s the exit Gate?” Jessika called. In front of them the giant wall hummed and slowly dissolved from solid to a state between gaseous and liquid.
“C dash zero four!” Arista called as she placed the energy drives along the base of the Gate itself. Home base. The Gate where everything began. The one they were finally going to return to. With her parents. She didn’t care what she had to do to make this h
appen, it was happening. They would figure everything else out later. Maybe they could use some of the husks back at the production facility to hold her parents’ minds. Connect some of the cortexes together. There had to be a solution somewhere.
The energy drives were set. All they needed to do was set something to ignite them a minute after they left. “Do we have anything we can use to blow these?”
“Here,” Jill said, approaching one of the drives. She crushed one end of it in her hand. “Should give us enough time before it blows. I designed ‘em to delay if crushed. Gives the user long enough to eject.”
Arista smirked. “I’m impressed.”
Jill snickered. “Me too.”
“It’s almost ready,” Jessika called. “Frees?”
“I’ve locked the doors and done my best but if anyone wants to get in here it won’t take them long.”
Arista thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye but when she looked again she didn’t see anything. But it reminded her of when she and Frees had been inspecting the hotel room. There had been something…
The Gate rumbled through the facility. It was ready, it had made the connection. “Are we ready?” Frees asked. Everyone nodded.
“You coming?” Arista asked Jessika. The woman looked torn. She glanced back behind her at the doors. “I…don’t know. Can I survive out there? Do you even want me with you?”
Against her better instincts, Arista made a choice. “Yes. Yes, I do. And we have enough supplies for you too. Now, come on.”
Jessika nodded, her eyes shimmering. “Okay. Yes, I’ll come.” She tapped a few controls on the panel and stepped around the Gate.
“Jill, go!” Arista said. The older woman nodded. “See you on the other side.” She smirked and pushed Arista’s mother into the fog and disappeared.
“Frees? Can you—?” Arista started, before a blur of a figure appeared behind the control panel.
Everything happened in slow motion.
Frees’ eyes went wide as his gaze focused on something over her shoulder as she turned he jumped—literally jumped from where he stood to the other mag-gurney, hitting it with his body and knocking it into the fog. As the very end of it disappeared the fog turned back into a solid wall.
“Traitor!” a voice yelled. Arista’s eyes finally found what Frees had been looking at. David, standing over the control panel, his face red and flushed. Arista glanced at Jessika who, in turn, stared daggers back at the man. Everything returned to normal speed.
“David! Turn it back on! Now!”
“You could have ruined my experiment!” He ripped the small refractor from his jacket and tossed it away. The sound of it echoed off the walls in the giant space. David pressed another button and the claxons sounded again.
“How did you even get in here?” Jessika asked. “The colony is on lockdown.”
“I’m in the middle of some important tests, I wasn’t about to leave. They didn’t need to know I was still here.”
“You used the refractor,” she said, dully.
Arista exchanged glances with Frees who was getting back up.
“You’re the one who modified them, so they were undetectable. Was I not supposed to use that advantage?” he spat. “This Gate is delicate and you almost ruined everything! If I hadn’t turned it off the entire system could have blown.”
“Did they make it?” Arista asked, panicked. “Did they reach the exit Gate before you shut it off?”
“Who?” David asked, checking over something on the panel in front of him.
“My parents you ignorant asshole!” Arista yelled. “Are they alive?” The claxons continued to blare but she didn’t care. If he’d just killed her parents because of his precious experiment she wasn’t sure she’d be able to control herself. She clenched her new hand into a fist.
David tapped something on the panel. “I don’t know. Maybe. It doesn’t matter.”
Arista took a breath, doing everything she could not to collapse into a heap of worthlessness.
“We need to go,” Frees said. “We have to try and make it to the other Gates. It’s our only chance.”
He nudged her toward the door at the other end of the room. She glanced back to the energy drives. This entire room was about to blow. “Jessika, come on,” Arista said, holding her hand out to her. “Let’s get out of here.”
“You’re not leaving,” David said, pulling a weapon from his belt. “You’re traitors, all of you. You’ll be tried and punished for your crimes.”
“David,” Jessika said, exasperated. “Really? Now?”
“Yes, really now. You think I can let you leave after what you’ve done?” He tapped something on the panel and the wall dissolved to fog again. “They would punish me. Possibly even kill me for allowing you to escape. You’re not going anywhere.” He strolled over to the Gate and picked up the energy drive Jill had crushed, tossing it through.
“No!” Arista yelled.
“This is your daughter, are you going to do this to her again?” Jessika yelled. “Put her through more unnecessary pain for your own selfish needs?”
David pursed his lips and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe his ears. He walked back over to the panel and the wall turned solid again.
“Where did that go? Where did you just throw that explosive?” Arista screamed.
“Empty gate,” he replied. “Leads nowhere. I’m not a monster. But I can’t let you leave. There’s too much at stake.”
Arista began marching toward him, her eyes stinging with tears, but he held up the weapon, stopping her. She wondered if the new arm could absorb the impact from his weapon. The Device couldn’t identify what he was holding, so it was a risk. For all she knew the weapon was more effective against metal than it was organics.
Frees hand took her shoulder gently. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Not worth it.”
“I’ll do it,” Jessika said. “I’m not afraid. You might shoot your own daughter, but you won’t shoot me.” She took a step toward him.
David’s arm trembled slightly. “Jess, don’t do it. Don’t come any closer.”
“Yeah?” she asked, taking another step. “You gonna kill for this thing? Is it that important to you? That you’d kill what little family you have for it? We’re all here. We’re all waiting.”
There was a commotion at the door as someone on the other side tried to undo Frees’ barricade. Arista consulted her map but could see no other way out of this room. She was sure there was one, but without the complete map they could run into any number of dead ends. But it might be worth the risk anyway.
“I…I don’t want to hurt you,” he replied, still pointing the weapon at her.
“The feeling isn’t mutual,” she growled.
He took a visible gulp, then turned the weapon and pointed it at Arista. “Take one more s-step. I’ll do it. I swear.”
“You wouldn’t.”
His arm continued to tremble, but he didn’t lower it. “Don’t test me, Jess.”
“Even I don’t think you’re capable of that much cruelty. To your own daughter no less.”
“My daughter died sixteen years ago,” he said, more confident now. “I don’t know who this woman is.”
“You bastard,” Jessika whispered.
Finally, the barricade broke and soldiers began piling in, pointing their weapons at everyone. Arista thought about taking one last leap for the console, to at least try and get Frees and Jessika out of here. But the sheer number of people coming in told her any move she made would be met with a hail of bullets. Instead, she raised her arms and followed their commands, her only solace being that her parents were out. They were safe. And Jill would help them; take care of them.
She was the only one who could now.
Twenty-Nine
Arista stared at the blank wall in front of her, trying not to let her emotions get the best of her. S didn’t need to start freaking out and adding to her already-spiking anxiety. As per the Dev
ice’s suggestions she took long, deep breaths, willing the air to come in and go back out again.
“Can you hear me?” Jessika’s voice came through clear enough, but Arista wasn’t about to respond. Responding meant she’d have to concede to Jessika. And conceding to her felt like a small amount of approval, which was the last thing she wanted to give. Despite the fact that Jessika had helped them; she’d also found some way to be married to and have a child with that terrible man. Maybe it wasn’t rational, she didn’t care at the moment, she was just mad.
They’d taken Frees somewhere else, probably to be experimented on, and shoved Arista into this tiny box with no windows and some kind of field that kept her inside. There was nothing beyond the field except another blank wall, but Jessika’s voice was coming from somewhere. Arista just assumed they’d thrown her in another cell she couldn’t see from where she stood. Maybe that was the point. If the prisoners couldn’t see each other, they were less likely to try something. Not like she could try anything in here anyway.
“Please Mir—Arista, talk to me. I just want to know you’re okay,” Jessika said.
She wasn’t. She was trapped yet again, except this time by the humans. Her parents were on the other side of the world and Jill had no idea how to help them, and her best friend was missing. Did she leave anything out? Oh yeah, her biological father was a maniac willing to kill his own child to preserve his experiments.
“Please,” Jessika pleaded. “Just say…something.”
Arista rubbed her temples. When McCulluh and his men burst through that room they’d taken them all and searched them for any equipment, removing the regenerator in Arista’s back pocket. But they hadn’t taken her arm from her. Either because they didn’t know it could come off easily or because they didn’t consider it enough of a threat to bother with. At least she had that. The last time she’d been in a situation like this she’d fallen on her ass and embarrassed herself.
She had to admit, she was surprised the humans didn’t use the Gates to seal the rooms like the machines had. Maybe they just hadn’t thought to do it yet; if she recalled correctly that had been Jonn’s idea.