Splintered

by Jon McGoran

  Kiet turned away from me, back to Devon. “I won’t do it, with the truck. Not if it means you’re going back down there.”

  “Yes you will,” Devon said softly.

  Kiet folded his arms, firm and resolute. “Why?”

  “Because I’m asking you to,” Devon replied.

  Kiet practically crumbled. “But you could be killed. I…I only just got you back.”

  Devon smiled sadly. “I’ll be back. But there’s another reason we need to do this now, why we can’t wait.”

  “You’re too sick, apart from anything else,” Kiet continued, having built up a head of steam. “You need to rest up, to get better.”

  “I’m not going to get better.”

  That stopped him. “You what?”

  “I couldn’t tell you before. I couldn’t bear to. It’s…what Henry has. We all get it before long. I’m dying.”

  “Dying?” Kiet staggered back.

  Claudia and Sly both gasped. I hoped no one noticed that I didn’t.

  “No,” Kiet said, shaking his head.

  “I’m sorry,” Devon said. “I wish it wasn’t true. But it is.”

  “How do you know? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wanted us to be happy, Kiet. To enjoy a little bit more of what time we had left.”

  “And what about now? What about the time we have left now?”

  Devon opened his mouth to speak, but at first nothing would come out. Finally he just said, “This is important.”

  Kiet let out an anguished growl and stomped off into the woods, away from Centre Hollow.

  We watched him go, then all turned to look at Devon. “He’s upset,” he said. “I am, too. But he knows deep down that this is the right thing for me to do.” He turned to Rajiv. “Can you get me a breather, a rope, and some paper and a pen?”

  Ten minutes later, Kiet returned, looking distraught but composed, standing at the edge of the clearing. While he was gone, Devon had drawn us a map of the mine. He handed it to me and approached Kiet. He wore the breather around his neck and he held the mask up to his face and took a deep breath before giving Kiet a long kiss.

  “Let’s talk,” he said, then he grabbed Kiet by the hand and led him back into the woods.

  As soon as they had gone, Claudia said, “That’s so messed up. I can’t believe Devon is dying.”

  Sly nodded sadly, then he turned to me and said, “Did you not want me to go with Kiet?”

  “No, it’s not that,” I said. “We’d been thinking I would take the vent, and Claudia would take the entrance. When you said you were coming, I figured you could help Claudia.”

  I hadn’t allowed myself to think about how much I’d been dreading climbing into that vent. I felt a claustrophobic, vertiginous wave of nausea just thinking about it.

  “I could still do that,” he said.

  “No, it’s cool,” I said. “If you can go with Kiet, that would be great. With Devon taking the vent, I can go with Claudia.”

  Claudia snorted. “I didn’t want to say anything, but I figured with you taking the vent and me ringing the doorbell like an idiot, odds were fifty-fifty we were both going to die.”

  “What about now?” Sly said.

  She flashed him a grim smile. “At least sixty-forty.”

  “Stop it,” I snapped, then I let out a sigh. “Sorry, that’s just a little too close to home right now.”

  Claudia nodded, understanding. “I hear you. How’s the map?” she asked.

  I held it up so they could both see it, and we went over the plan.

  The map was simple, but it wasn’t helping my stress level. The main branch of the mine curved slightly. At one end was the entrance we had seen from the road, and not far off it were two squares labeled PROCESSING UNITS. At the other end was the main chamber, with the elevators leading up to the hospital. Just off that were a few lines labeled INACTIVE SHAFTS next to one labeled ACTIVE SHAFT, as well as a third square marked DORM. We would have to get from the entrance all the way to the main chamber, and then get all the chimeras back to the entrance in order to get them out.

  Devon had explained that almost everybody would be in the active shaft and the dorm, although there might be a few in the main processing unit as well. The master switch was in the secondary processing unit, so that’s where he’d be going. The plan was for him to hit the switch to open the doors and kill the cameras, then stay hidden until we got there. Once we had cleared out any exoguards, and gave him the signal—two slow knocks and three fast ones—he’d come out and we’d get him out of there with everybody else, when Kiet and Sly showed up with the truck.

  If we never showed up, he’d refill his breather, go back out the vent, and make his way back to Centre Hollow.

  Talking about that part of the plan left us feeling somber. When Devon and Kiet returned, Kiet looked somber, too, but Devon looked determined.

  “Okay,” he said. “If the timing is going to work with the truck, we should get going soon.”

  I looked at my watch and nodded. It was just before nine.

  Devon asked for one minute. He ran over to Rajiv, and they turned and walked down into the woods on the other side of the clearing. As they disappeared from sight, I heard Rajiv saying, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Are you okay?” I asked Kiet.

  He didn’t look at me, just gave his head a tiny shake.

  We heard the rattle and whoosh of the breather being refilled, and a moment later, Devon emerged from the woods with a coil of rope slung over his shoulder. He crossed the clearing with a strong, purposeful stride. Halfway across, he put on the breather.

  He didn’t slow down when he reached us, he just grabbed Kiet’s hand and pulled him along.

  At the pace Devon set, the vent was five minutes away. As we walked, the small dome of clouds appeared up ahead and the sheen of white on the ground changed, as fake snow mixed with real.

  Now that I knew it wasn’t snow, it seemed sinister, as if it was trying to fool us.

  I saw the mudslide up ahead of us. Then I spotted the vent, the grill still leaning against the concrete rim. Fortunately, for whatever reason, this time there was nothing coming up out of it.

  Devon seemed relieved.

  Kiet lagged back as we got closer, but Devon pulled him along.

  We formed a circle around the vent. The smell of the mines was strong. Devon pulled off his mask and looked at Kiet. He seemed oblivious to everyone except Kiet. “I’ll meet you at the entrance,” he said. “Don’t be late.”

  They kissed once more, then Devon touched Kiet’s cheek and stepped into the vent, climbing down the handholds and disappearing into the black depths.

  We stood there for a long moment—Sly, Claudia, Kiet, and I—staring after him. Then the fake snow started up, one or two flakes at first, then a torrent, an upside-down blizzard.

  I felt terrible for Devon down there in it, but as the flakes started to come down on top of us, Claudia said, “Come on. We need to go.”

  I put my hand on Kiet’s shoulder and spoke softly. “He said don’t be late.”

  He stared back at me with a look that felt like blame, then he took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”

  We turned and started jogging, past the clearing, back toward the car. It felt good to be moving, to be doing something.

  As soon as we were inside the car, Claudia started it up and spun us around, kicking up leaves and ice, barreling down the hill past the wrecked VW and the Centre Hollow sign. As we descended, the hill grew steeper. We slid to a stop at the bottom. Claudia took a deep breath, then turned onto Bogen Road.

  I studied Devon’s map as we drove, trying to reconcile the underground layout with what I knew of the above-ground geography. The elevators were obviously below the hospital. At the other end of the main tunnel was the mine entrance, off Bogen Road. The vent Devon had gone through seemed to be roughly above the processing units.

  The car slowed and Claud
ia said, “There it is.”

  I looked up and saw we were passing the mine entrance. The gate was down and the door was closed. It looked abandoned.

  Claudia looked at Kiet in the mirror, then moved her head so she could see Sly. “This is where you’re bringing the truck, right?” Then she looked at me. “Right?”

  I nodded, and then felt a shudder of panic. We’d be back here in less than half an hour, waiting for the door to open, waiting for the guards to come out. Attacking the place.

  My breath quickened and my heart began to race. I wasn’t a commando, none of us were. What the hell were we thinking? What the hell was I thinking? As we picked up speed and drove away from the mine entrance, Claudia reached over and patted my knee. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I gave her a smile I didn’t feel.

  Five minutes later, OmniCare appeared ahead of us.

  The last time I’d seen it, we were running for our lives. Claudia and I had barely escaped. Rex hadn’t.

  We drove past the hospital and past the construction site, and Claudia pulled over just beyond the next curve. We both turned to look at Sly and Kiet, sitting in the backseat.

  “No long goodbyes,” Sly said. “And best not to be seen together, just in case.”

  I nodded and reached back with my hand. Sly gave it a squeeze. Claudia put her hand on top of his, then Kiet put his on top. It was an awkward tangled knot, and kind of a hokey gesture, but it was the closest thing to a hug we could manage under the circumstances, and it was strangely powerful.

  “Good luck,” I said, my voice husky with emotion.

  “You too,” Kiet said, nodding at us both.

  “It’s a good plan, now,” Sly said, with a wink. “We’ll see you in a bit.”

  Then they got out. Kiet started walking down the road, toward the hospital. Sly sprinted up the incline to the construction site.

  Claudia and I drove a quarter mile up the road and turned around. When we came back the other way, there was no sign of either of them.

  We drove past the entrance to the mine, still quiet and unattended, and pulled into a gap in the trees a hundred yards past it.

  “You ready?” I asked, doubting that I was.

  Claudia grinned. “Let’s do this.”

  We got out of the car and jogged up the hill. The going was steep, but in minutes we were high above the car. We moved quickly but cautiously, parallel to the road, toward the mine entrance. When the black and yellow gate came into view, we angled down toward it and took cover behind a fallen tree that offered a perfect view of the steel door.

  Despite the cold wind, we were both sweaty and warm from the trek. The exercise had helped me to focus on the matters at hand, instead of obsessing about Rex and Doc and Devon and all the miners, and the very real possibility that Claudia and I were about to die. But as we sat there and waited, the cold began to seep back in, and with it, the doubts and fears.

  After ten minutes my hands and lips were going numb, but I still had enough sensation in my body to feel the ground shudder. With a low-pitched clunk, the door to the mine began to open.

  CHAPTER 48

  Claudia and I got into ready crouches, on the balls of our feet, hands on the fallen tree, watching as the door rose. When it was halfway open, we exchanged a nod and sprang over the tree trunk, half sliding down the slope with our dart guns drawn.

  We were halfway to the bottom and the door was almost fully open when I saw movement in the shadows on the other side of the door. I grabbed Claudia and yanked her to the ground. She gave me a quizzical glare as we skidded to a stop on our butts, but to her credit she didn’t make a sound.

  I nodded toward the door and we both looked on as one of the exoguards strode out, with his oddly mechanical gait. We were barely fifty feet away from him, hiding as best we could behind a thin tree. He looked down the access road, then left and right, then he turned and bent to look at the security panel next to the door.

  Claudia and I both aimed our dart guns. We had expected to encounter the guards on the inside, and even though outside was probably in some ways better, it was still a tricky situation. His breathing apparatus covered his face and the suit covered much of his body. There were plenty of gaps, including big ones under each arm, but it was still a tough shot, especially since I had never used one of these things.

  We both fired, our dart guns spitting an almost simultaneous pfft, pfft. A clump of leaves puffed into the air as one of the darts hit the ground. The other dart made a faint ting as it bounced off his exosuit.

  The exoguard snapped upright, and turned his head halfway in our direction.

  Claudia and I both fired again—pfft, pfft.

  This time, there was no ting or rustle of leaves, but he turned and looked straight at us. He raised his arm in our direction, his metal fingers clutching a massive gun scaled to his big metal exo-hand. It didn’t look like a dart gun, it was a gun gun. And it was pointed right at us. He took two steps. Then he froze.

  For a second Claudia and I did, too, crouched behind that little tree, waiting for whatever was about to happen.

  But nothing did.

  He wasn’t taking his time to aim carefully. He was out cold. We’d hit him. Maybe twice.

  Devon had said the exoguards always traveled in pairs. So instead of high-fiving and scrambling down to the entrance, we waited.

  Moments later, a muffled, amplified voice called out, “Hey, Scott! What the hell’s taking so long out there?” Another guard stepped through the entrance and into view, wearing an identical exosuit and yellow coveralls underneath. He walked over to his unconscious partner, saying, “Hey dumbass, what the hell are you doing?”

  As he stepped around in front of the first guy, he exposed a swath of yellow through the gap on his side.

  Pfft, pfft. We put two darts in him, too.

  Claudia flashed me a quick grin, but I wasn’t taking my eyes off the guy. He realized his partner was unconscious, and he whirled around and drew his weapon. Then he went still, too.

  Every second counted, so we hurried over to the guards. It occurred to me that maybe this was the most dangerous part of the plan. They were completely out cold, yes, but they were standing right in front of the entrance, and right under the black bubble housing the camera. Hopefully, Devon had knocked out the cameras, but with the door wide open, anyone looking out would see us, plain as day. Claudia had assured me that getting into the exosuits would only take a second, but I felt exposed and vulnerable as we stepped out in front of the mine entrance.

  It was vaguely creepy seeing the two guards, upright but unconscious, like statues, their metal suits now more like body-shaped cages. It was even creepier to see the oversized shock batons and dart guns clipped to their hips, and the empty slots where their huge pistols had been.

  Claudia ran up to the first one, Scott, and reached under the plate on his chest, where the metal brackets from his hips, ribs, and shoulders intersected.

  “There should be a panel under here, and a button, kind of a manual lock…there.”

  She pulled her hand out and stood back as the exosuit dropped the gun, then moved to a straight, upright position with its arms raised over its head. The suit clicked into position, and after a brief pause the breathing mask swung up, away from the guy’s face. The brackets holding him into the suit swung open with a faint mechanical hum and he tumbled onto the ground.

  Claudia hurried over to the second guy and repeated the procedure.

  A few moments later, the two exosuits were empty, standing over the crumpled forms of their former occupants.

  “Ready?” Claudia said.

  I nodded and she bent over the first guy and began unzipping his coveralls.

  She must have sensed my confusion, because she looked up and said, “If they’re all wearing yellow, we need to be, too.”

  “Right.”

  Luckily, they were both wearing street clothes underneath, and the coveralls were loose enough that they cam
e off easily. They were also way too big, and we had to roll up the sleeves and pant legs. I felt bad that we were going to leave the guards outside, unconscious in the cold, but not too bad.

  “Okay,” Claudia said, once we were in our coveralls, with our human-sized dart guns tucked inside. “Just follow my lead and do as I say. These suits are supposed to all work the same way, and they learn you, so you don’t have to learn them.”

  We climbed up into the suits, placing our feet on the pedals in the exosuits’ legs and raising our arms over our heads. I watched Claudia and followed her instructions, pressing the back of my right hand against a plastic panel in the exosuit’s arm. With a faint whirr, a metal cuff moved down the arm from the exosuit’s outstretched hand and onto my own.

  “There’s a haptic gel inside. Wiggle your fingers while it maps your hand,” she said. As I did, I felt a warm, dry gel close over my hand.

  “Clench your fist and the rest of the suit will close.”

  I clenched my fist and another cuff slid down over my left hand, then the brackets closed over my legs, arms, and torso. I felt a moment of claustrophobic panic as the breathing apparatus came down over my face, but as soon as it clicked into place, it was flooded with cool air.

  “Okay,” Claudia said, her voice muffled and amplified the same way Scott’s partner’s had been. “It takes a few seconds to get used to it, but these things are designed to feel like an extension of your body. They correct for over-compensation and actively keep you balanced, which can be weird at first.” She jogged in place for a moment, did a couple of deep knee bends, and jumped up and down. Each time her huge metal feet landed, I heard a dull thud, but I couldn’t feel it because of my own suit’s shock dampeners. When she was done, she said, “You try it.”

  I ran through the same movements she just had. At first it was incredibly disorienting, as I tried to compensate for the machine’s exaggerated movements, and its active sensors and servos and gears or whatever immediately corrected my overcompensation. But she was right. After a few moments that felt like my body was dancing without me, it suddenly kind of clicked, like my brain learned to speak exosuit and the exosuit learned to speak me. By the time I was jumping up and down, I felt completely at ease.