The Dark Descent

by William Oday

  “Help me get him up on the bed.”

  The unconscious soldier lay in a heap on the floor wearing only underwear.

  I slipped my arms under his while Martinez got between his legs and lifted under his knees.

  I pulled up and his limp body almost wriggled out of my grasp. I locked my hands together around his chest and heaved him up and over the side railing of the bed.

  Martinez did the same with his lower half.

  Something caught on the way over.

  I shoved his upper half all the way onto the bed and something ripped.

  The white underwear tore in half.

  “Oh my God! Why is everyone’s junk showing today?” She tossed his lower half over the rail and the soldier settled on the bed. She grabbed my gown off the floor and covered his body. She was careful to spread it over the parts that were no longer covered by the torn underwear.

  I pulled a wadded up cover over him while Martinez wrapped the ribbons of sheet around his head like bandages. By the time she was finished, only his eyes remained visible.

  “I don’t have that many bandages,” I said.

  “Sue me. I’m not a doctor.” She frowned. “You’re going to have to take off the lower few rows of yours and wear this.” She handed me the soldier’s cap.

  I gritted my teeth as she yanked off the bottom rows of bandages and lowered the cap on my head.

  Martinez looked me up and down and nodded.

  That was a good sign. I looked enough like the other soldier to pass a superficial inspection. Enough to get by without immediately giving away our identities.

  She kept nodding. “Yep, we are for sure going to get caught. Let’s get him to your cell. Hopefully, it’ll be a while before they realize it’s not you.” She straightened her uniform and took a deep breath. “Ready?”

  I nodded.

  She opened the door and we rolled the bed out into the hall. “After we get him secured in the cell, where do we go?”

  I took up a position next to the bed, the rifle in my hands. “Why are you asking me? I thought you had a plan.”

  “Me? You just saw my plan. It worked. Now it’s your turn to get us out of here. You’re the one that knows all the secrets.”

  We were literally seconds into the escape plan and it had already failed because she was missing some key information.

  My condition.

  I glanced over my shoulder as we headed toward the brig. “There’s one problem with that.”

  12

  Martinez wheeled the bed into the cell and closed the door. It clicked shut and she turned, shaking her head. “So, we’re screwed is what you’re saying?”

  “I’m not saying that. I’m just saying I don’t remember much of anything. They did a brain scan while I was out after surgery, but I don’t know what the results are. Doctor Tanaka suspected some kind of damage.”

  “Duh! Of course, there’s damage. You can’t remember squat!”

  “I meant damage of a permanent nature. If it’s temporary, then I should start to remember things at some point.”

  “Well, what are we going to do in the mean time?”

  I had an idea. A bad one. But I didn’t care. “I’d like to check out my hab.”

  “You want to go to your living quarters? Sir, that’s a terrible idea. That’s the first place they’ll look the instant they discover that’s not you in there.”

  “Call me Scout. And you’re right.”

  “Okay, Scout. Do you have a death wish? Because that sounds like a great way to die.”

  Like I said, I knew it was a bad idea.

  “I want to see it. Maybe being in familiar surroundings will spark something in my brain.”

  Martinez stared at the floor, her head nodding and then shaking and then nodding again. She looked up. “Okay, fine. I’ll die with you if that’s what you want.”

  “That’s not what I want. I want to figure out what’s happening to me. What’s happening around here.”

  “Around here is easy. You just came out on the wrong end of a power struggle. General Curtis installed his puppet president. As soon as he erases you, everything will be nice and tidy.”

  “I don’t intend on being erased.”

  She chuckled. “No one does. Especially not the heroes.”

  “I may not remember much about myself, but I can tell you I’m no hero.”

  “We’ll see,” she said as she brushed passed. She glanced over her shoulder. “What are you waiting for? Our glorious deaths await us.”

  I hurried to catch up and fell in beside her. “I’m not big on glorious deaths.”

  “What’s not to like?”

  “The death part, for starters. And the glory part doesn’t much interest me.”

  “You’re not like most politicos. On the glory part, I mean.”

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

  She laughed and slapped my shoulder. “Good one.”

  “Good one?”

  “You made a joke,” she said as she checked to see if I was messing with her. “You know, because you don’t know anything.”

  “I never said I don’t know anything. I said I don’t remember a lot of things.”

  We passed the clerks on the way out and Martinez flashed a middle finger at the portly soldier who’d confronted her earlier. He didn’t so much as acknowledge her existence, which was a big help in us avoiding detection. We arrived at the main elevators and she punched the button. “Did you remember that you’ve got thin skin?”

  “Martinez, why am I starting to wish you’d left me on that gurney and let me rot in jail?”

  The doors slid open.

  “Because you wouldn’t have rotted long before they came for you. Thanks to me, you’ve got a chance now.”

  We stepped inside and she spoke over the now-familiar elevator instructions. “You have to say it.”

  “What? Thank you?”

  “No, what floor you want to go to. My voiceprint doesn’t have access to that floor.”

  The doors slid shut.

  “And you’re right. I do deserve a thank you.”

  “I didn’t say you deserved it.”

  Her expression changed. Got prickly all of a sudden.

  “I mean, thank you. Thanks.”

  She smiled again and pointed at the display.

  “Right. Residence One.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Vice-President,” the pleasant voice replied.

  If the elevator recognized my voice, then somewhere there was a computer log of me accessing the elevator right now. And that meant there was every likelihood that someone got alerted that I wasn’t in the brig where I was supposed to be.

  “The system knows I just did that. My voice. That means they could be alerted and waiting for us.”

  Martinez stared ahead, nodding slowly.

  The car slowed as we approached our destination.

  She lifted her rifle as I did mine. Trigger finger along the side, ready to fire if needed. “We’re about to find out.”

  The elevator stopped and dinged. “Second floor. Residence One.”

  The doors slid open and a thick woman with a helmet of hair perched on her head shrieked. The half-finished eclair in her fingers fell to the polished marble floor. The same as on the admin level.

  It hit with a plop and slumped to the side, like a hot pile of excrement. Presumably tasted better though.

  We lowered our rifles.

  Martinez smiled awkwardly. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  To her credit, the woman overcame her terror in record time. “Well, I never! Sorry, indeed! You should be sorry. Perhaps you didn’t realize you just aimed your gun at the wife of the new President.”

  “You’re Mrs. General Curtis?” Martinez asked with more than a little bite.

  The woman looked scandalized. “No! I’m talking about President Tuckerman! It will be official any minute now.”

  “Congratulations, Mrs. Tuckerman,” Martinez said as she knelt an
d picked up the eclair. She held it out as the yellow filling oozed onto her fingers. “Want this?”

  Mrs. Tuckerman again looked scandalized. It appeared to be one of her go-to looks. “Well, I never.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head and the hair-helmet wobbled.

  Martinez shrugged and popped the whole thing into her mouth. She chewed, swallowed, and then licked her fingers with wet slopping sounds. “Delicious!”

  Mrs. Tuckerman did her thing again and I did my best not to laugh because that would’ve been a dumb move and it would’ve hurt too much anyway. She turned sideways, which didn’t narrow her profile, and squeezed between us. “I won’t forget this,” she said, and added “Martinez” when she spotted the name tag on her shirt. “Administration! Now!”

  The elevator doors shut as the woman glared at Martinez.

  The laugh I’d been holding back spilled out. And it hurt, as expected. “Why did you do that? Are you crazy?”

  “Crazy like a fox. You may have noticed she didn’t take one look at you.”

  I realized she hadn’t. And then realized why that would’ve been a bad thing.

  Until a short time ago, I was the president and presumably had interaction with her husband and probably her on a regular basis. Even in disguise with a face full of bruises, she would’ve had to be utterly clueless not to recognize me standing two feet in front of her.

  Which wasn’t impossible, but did seem unlikely.

  “You’re welcome,” Martinez said with a grin. “Now, where to?” She pointed at a brass sign across from the elevators. A range of room numbers was engraved on each side with an arrow pointing in the direction of each group.

  I stared at the numbers and got no sense which contained my hab. I looked left down a long hall and then right down a mirror image.

  Nothing. It was like I’d never been here before.

  “I don’t know.”

  Martinez sighed. “So the plan is to wander the halls until someone realizes we shouldn’t be here?”

  “This way,” I said, pointing to the right.

  “You remembered?”

  I started walking. “No, but standing around like clueless idiots isn’t helping.”

  13

  It became obvious in the first few minutes that we were in trouble. The initial corridor quickly branched into new paths which again branched into others. It was a never-ending maze. Each intersection was marked by a numbering system of unobtrusive signs that matched the numbered plates on the front of the widely spaced doors.

  Fifteen minutes of wandering had revealed nothing new, nothing that might make one anonymous hab entrance different from the others.

  Martinez snorted as we passed yet another door.

  “Sorry,” I said, figuring she was getting angry for dragging her into this.

  “It’s not you. It’s these people. How far between doors?”

  “Ninety feet.” I’d paced a few off as we passed. Not sure why it would be useful information, but there it was.

  “My family lives in one of the poorer sections of Res Two. Our doors are ten feet apart. How do I know? I measured. Our unit is a one bedroom, one bath for a family of eight. Six now that my brother is dead and I bunk with my unit.”

  A rotund man in a dark suit turned the corner at the end of the hall and walked toward us. Not good. I recognized him. Not from my life before. From the last fifteen minutes. We’d passed him once already.

  “Turn around,” Martinez whispered.

  We both wheeled around and headed back the other way.

  Hopefully it was random chance that our paths crossed again.

  “You two! Stop!” the man yelled.

  “Here we go. Keep your hat and eyes down,” Martinez said. “I’ll handle it.”

  We turned around as the man caught up.

  “I saw you a few minutes ago. What are you doing?”

  “Patrol, sir,” Martinez said. “Top secret mission. I can’t say more.”

  The man puffed out his chest, but his belly still made the bigger impression. “Soldier, I’m Senator Burton.” He waited, apparently expecting that to be all the information we needed.

  “Okay,” Martinez said. “Good to meet you, senator.”

  The man’s face twisted into a scowl. “I wouldn’t expect someone of your lowly stature to know, but I am the chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee. I would know about any covert operations happening inside the bunker. And especially any that were occurring on the level where my family and I reside.”

  “Sorry, Senator Burden—”

  “It’s Burton, with a t.”

  “Yeah, well, this came directly from General Curtis himself. And I have a court-martial waiting the instant I say one word about it.”

  “General Curtis?”

  “One and the same.”

  The man’s face went pale. Paler. It was pretty pale to begin with.

  Martinez shook her head “And he’s going to be spitting mad when he finds out we’ve been cooling our heels having to explain ourselves to you.”

  His eyes went wide, and if possible, his face turned a shade whiter. “Never mind. Continue with your mission.”

  “Nah, it’s fine, senator. We’ll go down to his office together and get this all sorted out.”

  Burton’s mouth hung open before snapping shut. “No, no. That’s not necessary. As you were, I think is what you people say. Continue on your mission.” He tried to step around us, but Martinez grabbed his arm.

  “Senator Burden, one question… to help the mission. We’re supposed to post a guard at the ex-president’s personal quarters. Only I’ve never pulled patrol on this level, and I’m embarrassed to say that I’m completely lost. Could you help us, help the general really, by showing us where it is?”

  The senator beamed, thinking about how pleased the general would be when he found out what a help he’d been. “Yes, of course. Anything I can do for the general. Come. Follow me.”

  A few minutes of suffering through the senator’s obsequious profession of support for the general and we stopped at yet another anonymous door.

  111

  “Here it is,” he said with a smarmy smile.

  “Great,” Martinez said. “Thanks.”

  “Happy to be of service to those, uh, in the service.” He chuckled and it came out like it had been canned a hundred years ago.

  “Goodbye, senator.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said as he got the hint. “Top secret mission and all. I hope you’ll let the general know that I’ve helped.”

  Martinez slapped his shoulder hard enough for the man to wince. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll find out.”

  The senator grinned and walked away, practically prancing he was so pleased with himself.

  That wasn’t going to last long. Not one second after the general found out he’d had assisted two fugitives.

  “Open the door,” Martinez said.

  I glanced down and didn’t see a handle, a scan port, anything really. And the stolen security badge on my chest wasn’t going to work anyway. “How?”

  “Our habs are different. We have actual, ancient technology metal keys. But seeing as there is nothing obvious here, I’m guessing with your voiceprint. ”

  “Open the door.”

  Something thunked inside the wall and the door slid open.

  “Welcome home, Scout,” the elevator woman’s voice said.

  14

  “Are you kidding me?” Martinez said for the fifth time. Fifth because it was the fifth room we’d entered. All of them conspicuously large and tastefully appointed with modern furniture and sparse decor of a meticulously coordinated color palette.

  An abundance of white with splashes of color like the azure throw pillows on the white leather couch. Like the painting hanging above it. A vibrant yellow cornfield with blue sky above and a flock of crows flying into the distance. The stalks swayed and the sky swirled before my eyes.

  I blinked
to confirm they weren’t actually moving.

  They weren’t. Mostly.

  Maybe another symptom of my brain injury.

  A single picture in a silver frame stood on the clear glass coffee table next to the couch.

  I picked it up and studied it.

  A girl with black hair that fell in waves down her shoulders, wearing a black cap and gown. Cheeks that weren’t as round as I remembered. Eyes sparkling as she held a diploma in hand.

  Hannah.

  But older.

  The girl I remembered had been four or five years old. The girl in the picture looked nine or ten years old.

  But the eyes were the same. The dark shade that reflected equal parts sparkling mirth and burning curiosity.

  “She was a genius,” Martinez said. “And not in the ‘Oh, your egg sandwich with cornflakes is so breakfast genius kind of way. She was the real kind. I read she got her doctorate in AI Algorithms at age ten.” She pointed at the picture. “That’s probably it.”

  Ten years old.

  What had happened during the five or six years after the face I remembered?

  My chest ached and the frame slipped between my numb fingers.

  “Scout, are you okay?”

  The room shifted under my feet and I started to fall over.

  Martinez grabbed my shoulders and guided me down to the couch. “Sit down a second. You don’t look well.”

  A wailing alarm pierced the air. The pitch sliding up and down and back again.

  “Get up! We have to go!” Martinez yelled as she yanked me back to my feet.

  The floor swayed like the deck of a ship in a stormy sea. “Come on! We have to go! Now!”

  A voice spoke over the alarm. “Citizens, this is General Curtis speaking. We have a red alert situation under way. Two fugitives are on the loose. One is Corporal Elena Martinez. The other is a mental patient assigned to her care. The patient may be impersonating a soldier. Both should be considered armed and extremely dangerous. The elevators are on lock-down and only available to security personnel for the duration of the emergency. If you believe you have information concerning the whereabouts of these individuals, report it immediately. The faster we capture them, the sooner we’ll all be safe again. Thank you for your cooperation. General Curtis, out.”