“What the hell?” Astoria cursed, grabbing on to a rusted street sign.
“It’s an earthquake!” shouted Byron, as the tremors grew more intense. They rolled through the ground, and all around edifices jarred upward.
“Take cover!” Raven yelled. “This whole block could come down!”
H124 struggled to her feet, searching for a sturdy object she could hide under. But the entire area was ancient and crumbling, with only a few doorways still standing. Another violent wave shimmied beneath her. She staggered, then lost her footing. Completely off balance, she careened toward a jagged piece of rusted rebar sticking out of the cement block in front of her. Byron caught her just in time and pulled her to the side. The street bucked upward, sending them sprawling. She landed on top of Byron, who shielded her with his arms as a shower of bricks rained down. One struck her shoulder. Her world continued to shake violently, the ground rough and unforgiving, its glass shards and broken rock digging into her knees and elbows. Byron held onto her as glass shattered and masonry crashed down around them.
She gritted her teeth and covered her head. Byron rolled over, guarding her with his body, one arm across her back, the other over her head.
A huge crack tore open the street, jagging away into the distance. Soil and trash fell into the fissure.
The trembling lessened, then stopped altogether.
“You both okay?” Raven called from the other side of the street. Byron uncoiled himself from her and got up, extending a hand. She took it, and he swung her to her feet. Across the street, Astoria and Dirk were brushing themselves off as they stepped out from a pile of rubble. Raven had fallen some fifty feet away, dangerously close to the crack.
“That was a close one,” he said, brushing dirt off his pants.
Astoria looked angrier than usual. “This whole thing is crazy. If the people don’t kill us, the city itself will.”
“This isn’t too bad,” Raven told her, in an attempt to lighten the mood. “You should have seen what H and I went through to get the first piece. We’ll get through this no problem. It’s just a little bit of shaking.”
Then another earthquake hit.
“Why did you have to say that?” Astoria shouted, falling off balance.
The trembling threw H124 toward the jagged rend in the road. It widened, issuing a foul, rotten odor.
“What is that?” Astoria asked with a wrinkled nose.
H124 fell down hard on her hands and knees. She moved away from the widening crack, and Byron did the same. The concrete bumped painfully against her knees. A building two blocks down gave a final gasp before it collapsed, shooting up a billowing cloud of dust.
H124 felt like the world would never stop shaking. She gripped the road amid the settling dust, and shielded her head. The dry, bitter taste of dust filled her mouth. Finally the shaking stopped.
She was about to stand up when another quake hit.
The living pod structure across the street lost its front wall, which separated and crashed down. Inside, she could see citizens looking vaguely startled, peering out for a moment at the street. One even walked over to the open wall and stared out. But the floating display still shimmered in front of him, and he couldn’t help but look back. A few more stood up, approaching the open wall.
Then the tremblor dissipated. In unison, all the citizens returned to their couches and the entertainment flashing before them.
H124 helped Dirk up. He’d banged his knee and head pretty good, and H124 could already see a small bump forming along his hairline. He rubbed his knee as his sister joined him. “You can’t even fall down right,” she cursed at her brother. “You’d probably hurt yourself eating a bowl of rice.” Still, there was concern in her eyes.
H124 returned to where the facility lay beneath their feet. The earthquake had shifted debris, covering all the progress they’d made. She bent down, pushing aside old stones and bricks, lengths of copper pipe and tangles of wiring.
They all worked in silence, though H124 could feel the hostility radiating off Astoria.
At last they uncovered a dark hole leading to a cavernous space below. H124 pulled out her headlamp and switched it on, aiming the beam into the darkness. She vividly remembered finding the other hole beneath the living pod building in New Atlantic. Here a mound of debris made a rough ramp leading down. Raven pulled two ropes out of his pack and affixed them to a metal pole embedded in the ground. H124 grabbed hold, and swung her legs over the edge. Testing the stability of each section as she stepped down, she made sure the whole pile wasn’t about to collapse beneath her.
Raven followed, also switching on his lamp.
Byron grabbed a rope and lowered himself down after them.
“Where are you going?” she heard Astoria bark, and looked up to see Dirk starting to descend as well. Astoria grabbed his jacket, dragging him back into the light. “No way. Let them kill themselves if they want to. I’m not crawling down there after your ass.”
“They might need our help.”
“You’re going to need my help in a minute when I send you sprawling,” she threatened.
Dirk continued to hold on to the rope. “They’re newbies here. They need our expertise.”
“A reality check is what they need. This whole plan is crazy.”
“But it’s our best chance. This thing hits,” he added, pointing up at the sky, “and we’re all gone.”
She exhaled in disgust, then peered down into the void. “Fine.”
H124 watched as Astoria and Dirk joined them on the ropes.
As she moved, she glanced over at Raven, his hair dusty and dusky. His eyes met her in the darkness.
“Once more unto the breach,” he said quietly, and they descended.
Chapter 12
One by one they lowered themselves into the dark, and the beams from their headlamps created erratic shadows on the walls. The floor immediately below had collapsed, so they went straight through to the level beneath that. Here another hole in the floor allowed them to pass through to the sub-levels. Five floors down, they could still look up and see the sky. H124 worried that the spacecraft piece, having been exposed to the elements, would have long since rotted away, or been picked clean by Murder City denizens.
When they got to the sixth subterranean floor, their feet set down on solid ground. Though the flooring felt weak, there were certainly no holes big enough to allow them to pass to the level below.
They walked along the damp floor and headed down a darkened corridor. It ended in a solid steel door with an ancient keypad next to it.
H124 reached out with her mind, but found no theta wave receiver to open the door.
Though power was still functioning in this quarter, the keypad appeared dark and dead. She took out her multitool, and popped off the keypad cover. Beneath lay a tangle of wires of different colors, its innards furred with mold.
“This is old tech,” she told them.
Dirk came forward. “Let me see.” He pulled the wires out gently, sorting them in his nimble fingers. “Can I have that?” he asked H124, gesturing to her multitool. She handed it to him. He cut a few wires, stripping the cracked, degraded insulation off them, and twisted them together. “Someone hand me the UV charger for a PRD.” Astoria came forward, detaching her UV charger and handing it to him. He connected the newly stripped wires to it, and the lights blinked on for the keypad. He touched two wires, and the door came open with a rusted shriek.
“Wow,” Raven said.
Beyond, the reek of mildew hung in the air. A long hallway with offices on either side led to another steel door.
Dirk hacked that one, too, then another that led to a stair.
They descended to the floor below, where Raven checked the schematics again. “This should be the right level. It’s toward the middle of the floor.”
They w
ound along a series of labs, some with tools still strewn on their worktables. Just like the one near New Atlantic, this place looked like workers had dropped their tasks in the middle of the day and simply walked away, their work unfinished. She saw ancient computers like the ones she’d found in the university beneath New Atlantic.
Dirk hacked one more door, which admitted them to a vast warehouse. Their boots echoed. In the center of the room stood a glassed-in enclosure identical to the one they’d found on the east coast. White, helmeted suits hung on the exterior. Inside, the spacecraft section stood, complete and wondrously pristine. H124 felt like cheering.
“Is that it?” Dirk asked, circling the small glass room.
“That’s it,” Raven told him. He slung off his pack and unfurled the maglev sled, letting it orient itself.
Then he and H124 entered the room, and Raven draped the clean skin over the craft. He maneuvered the maglev over to it, and it used its levers to work its way under the craft and lift it onto the sled. They had one more section to retrieve before Rivet would be able to piece the spacecraft together. The progress eased H124’s mind a little.
They carefully covered the section with a tarp. Then H124 did a circuit of the room, stuffing anything that looked useful into her pack. She found a binder full of the circular disks and grabbed it, along with a handful of what Raven called “drives.”
Moving in silence, they retraced their footsteps back to the ropes.
At the series of ruined floors, they used an ascender to climb back up, one at a time. Dirk and Astoria went first, followed by Byron. When it was just H124 and Raven at the bottom, he said, “You were right to trust them. They’ve really come through for us.”
She smiled. “Thanks.”
They climbed the ropes together, the light around them growing brighter as they neared the surface.
Byron’s voice shouted down. “Climb fast! We have company up here!”
“What?” H124 asked.
“PPC troops. They’re making their way down the street!”
H124 and Raven climbed faster, their boots slipping on the loose rubble, the maglev humming along behind them. When she reached the top, Byron stuck his hand through the hole. H124 took it, blinking in the sudden brightness. She turned to help Raven climb out, the sled following close behind.
Down the street she saw a troop transport hovering slightly above the pavement. She’d seen them before in New Atlantic, shuttling PPC troops around the city. Several troopers marched alongside it. They hadn’t spotted H124 and the others yet. The soldiers stopped at a building, and went inside.
“Guess we’re not going back the way we came,” Dirk said.
“I knew something like this was going to happen,” Astoria growled.
H124 took in their surroundings. To their left stood a largely intact building of living pods. “This way!” she said. They all sprinted down the street, staying low and keeping piles of rubble between them and the troopers’ line of sight.
“We need to get off the street,” Byron said.
“There,” she said. They sprinted to the living pod’s exterior door, finding it locked with a theta wave receiver. H124 stilled her mind, sending the unlock command to it. The lock clicked, and the door slid open. “Hopefully we can escape a block over through here,” she told them, running down the hall. At the far end stood another locked door. She commanded the TWR to open it, and hesitated in the open entryway, checking the street beyond. She didn’t see anyone.
“This way!” She sprinted across the street to another building, a kind she recognized from New Atlantic. It was a laundry and maintenance building, though it had been shut down long ago. No low thrum of machinery reached her ears. Using the TWR, she let them into the ground floor, which was large and empty. Only old dryers and washing machines lined the wall, covered in a thick layer of dust. They ran across the warehouse space, pausing at a large docking door on the far side with a small window mounted in it. H124 peered through. Checking her PRD, she saw that they now stood about six blocks from the edge of the city and the atmospheric shield.
Byron stood next to her, catching his breath. When he saw how close they were, he contacted Chadwick, giving him the coordinates. He didn’t respond.
They waited tensely in the shadows. Byron tried again, but still got no response. He looked at them all, eyes wide in the dark. “This mission might be over sooner than we thought. The troops may have found him.”
Then Chadwick’s voice came over Byron’s PRD. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I had to move and stay silent. An airship was out here, patrolling the perimeter.”
“Do you think they know we’re in here?” Raven asked.
“I don’t think so.” His face shimmered on the display. “I think it was just routine. But I’ve got the coordinates of where you’re coming out. I’ll start a new broadcast now.”
“Thank you,” Byron told him. He signed off. Byron checked the street beyond and said, “Let’s go.”
They moved through the blocks quietly, using the TWRs to move in and out of buildings undetected. As they stepped out to cross a street, H124 stopped. Two blocks down, a transport waited in the middle of the street. A PPC trooper was loading citizens into it.
H124 studied the insignia on the transport. “I recognize that symbol. It’s for the food processing plants.”
Dirk raised a brow. “They’re taking them to be fed? Well, that’s good at least.”
Raven put a hand on his stomach, and took on an ashen hue. “Are you sure that’s what they’re doing? Why wouldn’t they just have food delivered? Why bring the people to the processing plant?”
Dirk’s eyes shot open. “You mean they’re going to use them for . . .”
Raven grimaced.
Byron glanced around, staying low. “I think they’ve been cleaning this place out for a long time. The more they can consolidate, the less energy they’ll have to expend to keep the infrastructure going. They’re abandoning this part of the city.”
“But couldn’t they just move these citizens to the east?” Dirk asked.
“They already have more people than they can handle there,” Byron said.
The PPC trooper loaded in more weakened citizens as they arrived. The faceplate on his helmet was down, his demeanor unfeeling. He watched them file in, shoving an older man who stumbled as he tried to climb the ramp into the transport.
The citizens’ shimmering displays still glowed in front of them. More troopers joined the first, stepping away from their street patrol. They passed the citizens from one soldier to the next, the people in their care barely aware of what was happening. Videos just kept flashing in multiple windows, allowing the citizens to watch more than one show at a time.
“We have to do something,” H124 said.
“No way. Not this again,” Astoria mumbled.
“What could we do?” Byron pointed out. “They outnumber us.”
“But they’re carting them off to be killed!” H124 said.
“Better them than us,” Astoria put in.
H124 spun to Dirk and Raven.
“I’m with you,” Raven told her, “but I don’t see how we can get them away.”
“What about a distraction?” H124 said. “We draw the troopers away, then steal the transport.”
“And then what?” Astoria said. “We fly them off to Never Never Land where they can live happily ever after?”
“We have Chadwick hack a bigger hole, one that can accommodate the transport, and we fly them through it. We take them back to Sanctuary City,” H124 suggested.
Astoria’s face flushed with anger. “I am not risking my neck for a bunch of jacked-in zombies.”
“They won’t be, once they unplug,” H124 pointed out.
“You saw that guy you approached,” Astoria went on. “He panicked when he wasn’t getti
ng his media feed. Those people can’t survive without it.”
H124 felt anger well up inside her. “You don’t know that.” She glanced around at her companions. “So we’re just going to let those people get carted off and die?”
Byron exhaled sharply, and broke his silence. “God damn it, Halo.” He shook his head. “You are the craziest fool I’ve ever met. You can’t save everyone.”
“Maybe not. But we can save these people.”
Exasperated, he pulled out his diginocs. “The transport’s a JLK352 model. I’ve driven one of those before.”
Astoria watched him in disbelief. “You’re actually considering this insanity?”
“I can create a diversion,” Dirk offered. “If we run over to a neighboring alley, I can draw their attention.”
“And then what. Get killed?” his sister snapped. “What a plan.”
Dirk grinned slyly. “I’m better than that, and you know it.”
“I know you’re a whiz at math. And jury rigging things. But this?” She looked at the others. “And what about our glorious mission? Are we going to risk the craft getting damaged just to save a few checked-out citizens?”
H124 stared over at the maglev, hovering a few feet behind him. “You’re right.” She turned to Raven. “Can you get out of the shield ahead of us with the sled?”
Raven hesitated. “And just leave you all? No way.”
H124 gestured at the spacecraft section. “This is more important.”
Raven glanced at them all, then sighed. “Okay. But I don’t feel right about it.”
H124 handed him her pack with the disks and drives in it.
Byron turned to Raven. “Take off now. Let Chadwick know to hack a bigger hole. When they load the last person in, we’ll strike, then catch up with you.”
Reluctantly, Raven turned, hurrying in the opposite direction. H124 watched until he disappeared safely around a corner, the maglev gliding along in tow.
Byron bent low, whispering. “Remember, no guns. This has to be quiet. We don’t want to draw more soldiers.”
Shattered Lands Page 12