“See as seen.”
“See as seen, why you keep saying that?”
“Touch … see as seen …”
“Of course champ.” he replies sarcastically, unable to understand Smith as he looks at the body of the Viper. “Is he dead?”
“No.”
“I think I should end it, properly this time.” he grunts. “He’s a really bad egg this one.”
“No,” Smith says softly, touching his hand to Trucks.
“Excuse me?”
“No kill.”
“And why is that?”
“No kill.”
“Why goddam it!?”
“Don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t, you don’t know anything, as always.” Truck spits again, frustrated.
“Know something.”
“What is that?”
“Sousa is the key.”
“What?”
Smith moves his wrist, turning it face up to show Truck what’s written on his arm in black ink, this time Truck makes the effort to read what is written there.
Send the device to the kid. Sousa is the key.
“You’re a strange guy Smith,” he shakes his head, looking at the writing. “Bloody strange.”
- -
Catlin
A quiet had settled over the Destiny installation, one that had not been felt since its inception. The normal sounds of people at work had now been silenced, replaced by an eerie, humming echo that was created by the machines that remained inside.
Only three people were inside the facility, all else had fled, abandoning the facility in its time of need. The last three occupants were not giving up easily, they’d sealed themselves inside, committed to finding answers.
Upstairs, Catlin was rummaging through the offices, downstairs Marion and Ursula were working on trying to find out what happened to the thread.
After Marion had dismissed Thomas and locked the doors, the three of them had sat down to work out exactly where to take things. Marion told Catlin that giving up wasn’t an option, they had to continue to figure out what had taken place.
They established firstly there had to be another means of entry other than the main stairwell. Ma’am had escaped from the premises mysteriously during the event and Samuel and his new friend had also disappeared without being seen. There had to be more than one way out.
Catlin volunteered to take on the task of searching for the escape route whilst Ursula would search the internal CCTV footage for anything helpful. Marion tasked herself with reviewing the thread logs to try and find a trace of what might’ve caused the event.
Catlin had already been over Samuels’s office but now found herself seated on the desk again with a defeated look on her face. Where in the hell is this secret passage? She’d already checked over the entire mezzanine twice and found nothing, now she sat frustrated, running out of ideas.
After the mezzanine level was a fail, Catlin decided any escape route must’ve been downstairs, so she spent countless hours searching in every nook and cranny of the facility she could find. Not finding anything, she decided if nobody had seen Samuel and his friend even leave his office then surely the secret passage was in his office, so she returned to the office.
Thwump!
Catlin looked up, startled by the loud noise coming from above the installation. It sounded like it came from the top of the stairwell and was now echoing its way down the passageway.
Shit, what the hell was that?
Thwump!
It sounded again, Catlin started to feel panic rising in her as she realised what may had caused the noise. Dust and dirt fell from the roof in response.
She ran to the mezzanine balcony and called out, “Marion, they’re coming for us!”
“Huh?”
“The noises? Did you hear them?”
“Yes, why?”
“They sounded like explosions.”
“Hmmm, is that right?” she replied, disinterested.
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“Well, I’ve heard explosions before and these sound similar.”
“It’s ok child, it’ll take them a while,” she replied, not taking her eyes off her screen.
Thwump!
Catlin shuddered, she was really getting worried they might be in danger, she had no idea the people upstairs would resort to explosives to get inside.
“What do you mean it will take them a while?”
“They’re reinforced blast doors dear,” Marion called out from below. “So don’t even worry about it. From what Lucinda told me they won’t be able to break through that door unless they destroy the entire frame surrounding it, which means they’ll then have to dig us out after.”
“That would mean destroying the access tunnel!”
If Marion was fazed she didn’t show it. “And that would only seal us in here for longer wouldn’t it? Which gives us plenty of time down here to figure another way out of here, right?”
“Are you sure? What if we get buried alive?”
“Hmmm, not likely.”
“Ok.”
“Did you find a way out?”
“No.”
“Well keep looking then.”
“Ok,” she replied sullenly.
Catlin was annoyed, hours of repetitive searching without results left her thinking less and less like a rational person. So much so, she left the balcony and went straight over to where an axe was housed on the wall, mounted in a glass case marked FIRE EMERGENCY.
She smashed the glass panel with her fist quickly, with no regard for her own wellbeing, and reached in to retrieve the axe. She hefted it up onto her shoulder easily and began whacking the axe systematically along the walls, hoping to find something, thinking perhaps it would work. Her hope was she would either sound out a false wall or force a break in a section of wall that would help her find what she was looking for.
She’d gotten about halfway along the back wall when another blast sounded from above, this time louder and stronger.
Try again, you dingbats! Catlin thought to herself as she continued banging on walls.
Ha, me try again too! She continued banging the walls, slinging the heavy axe as hard as she could.
Bang, Bang.
Oh god, this is getting boring.
Dammit, this is pointless.
She let the axe drop from her fingers and sat down on the floor in a crumpled heap at the back of the mezzanine section. With no luck and no thoughts on what to do next she just sat there on the floor and stared off into space.
Her thoughts wandered quickly, moving back in time to the hotel room where she’d tried to call her parents, albeit unsuccessfully. She wondered what they’d been told, if it was the truth or had they been lied to about Mark’s death.
She wondered what truth lay behind anything? What web of lies am I truly living in?
She shut her eyes and rummaged her hands through her hair and thought of Ma’am, of the woman who was formally interred here. She wondered what had made her want to kill Peter, it seemed such a drastic reaction.
She loved Peter and even though he apparently betrayed her, death wasn’t a fitting punishment for him, she felt he deserved better. Catlin wondered what would prompt such a fatalistic response, why was it so important for Ma’am to kill him.
Tears welled in her eyes as she thought of Peter, the look in his eye right before he dropped dead. Despite all that had happened between them she bore no resentment towards him. He only did what he perceived to be right and she couldn’t begrudge anyone their right to their own perspective.
She suddenly felt alone, everyone she loved was disappearing from her life and feelings of loneliness swept over her like an abandoned orphan.
A
nd as if on cue Marion called out, “Catlin?”
She rolled over onto her tummy and crawled to the edge of the mezzanine, poking her head over the edge she replied. “What?”
“Come down here please.”
“Why?” she cried back glumly, like a child not wanting to do what it’s told.
“Do you want to get out of here or not?”
She huffed as she did it, but got up and dragged herself downstairs, not feeling particularly excited. At least the explosions have stopped.
She reached Marion’s desk and asked, “What is it?”
Her sullen attitude irked Marion enough for her to give Catlin a raised eyebrow.
“Sorry,” Catlin apologised. “Cabin fever.”
“That’s just in your head.”
“Along with everything else right now.”
Marion ignored the sarcasm. “I was checking the logs in the hours prior to the event happening. I figured this was the best place to look for something abnormal and, funnily enough, I did find something.”
“What’s that?”
“The log lists every entry and links it to the user. I created it as a way to backtrack tasks to a specific user. This way if we ever missed a live event or needed to check out what the operators were looking at, we’d have a record. I created it so we could check the things we missed.” Marion was looking at Catlin now funnily.
“What?” she defended herself.
A smirk came across Marion’s face. “You just couldn’t resist could you child?”
Catlin laughed nervously, “is that why you called me down here, to give me shit about looking up Peter’s thread line?”
“Well … ha, ha. No dear, that was just a coincidence, but it’s one of the last few entries in the logs. No, I called you down because I found something unusual in the logs.”
“Ok.”
“Every entry is recorded, including the deleted ones, so no matter who does what here, it is recorded for reference.” She indicated her screen.
She was a whizz, a genius with the technology and it was clear to see now as Marion effortlessly retrieved two entries from a file and opened them up for Catlin to have a look at. Any normal person would have struggled to find it, but her mastery of the system allowed her to retrieve it.
The two entries were showing up under the description tab on Marion’s screen as thread alterations. This is where Catlin’s knowledge of Destiny and its systems failed, so she looked to Marion for an explanation of what it meant.
“We call it a thread alteration essentially when we play god. When the thread is altered from its original course I set the system up to register the change in a log as an alteration. So, this first one is ...”
“What ... wait, I know that already ...” Catlin sighed. “She killed Peter didn’t she? That woman?”
“Lucinda?”
“Yeah, Ma’am.”
The question caught Marion off guard for a moment, then she shook her head. “No … I mean yes, but not that one, look at the other one.”
“What do you mean, she didn’t do it?”
Marion huffed, “Yes, she did … but that’s not what I’m talking about.” She juggled the topic awkwardly, “right before the event causing all those deaths there’s another thread alteration logged in the system. But it’s a little different, this is what I’m trying to show you.”
“Huh?”
“This one, see.”
Catlin leaned in. “What is it?”
“Well here’s the thing, everyone is identifiable in this system. It doesn’t matter if they are a part of this thread or part of another, everyone is identifiable, no exceptions.”
An image of the black man flashed into Catlin’s mind suddenly. She didn’t know why but she recalled he wasn’t in the system, her and Ursula had been unable to find him. She also remembered Ma’am reacting all weird about it.
“Now this last entry, the last thread alteration is odd because the last person here isn’t part of the thread system, even though it shows the connection right here.” Marion said, confused.
“And?”
“And he’s an unknown, but that’s not possible. I’ve never even seen that before. Everyone is a part of the threads.”
“Ursula?” Catlin called out to the nearby Ursula.
“Yes.”
“The black man?”
“Huh, what?”
“The bank robber, the black guy.”
“Yeah, what about him.”
“We couldn’t find him in the system, could we?”
“No,” she yelled back. “Why?”
Catlin turned to Marion, raising an eyebrow at her.
“What?”
“I think it’s him,” Catlin said to Marion, pleased with herself.
“What’s him?” Marion asked, not following.
“Your thread alteration, that had to be him, the black guy.”
“Catlin?” Ursula called out loud.
“Yeah?”
“I know I said he was the only one but he isn’t, he’s not the only one I haven’t been able to find on the thread.”
“What?” Marion called out in response. “Come here child.”
Ursula slid over in her chair. “The black guy, he wasn’t the only person I couldn’t find.”
“Well who else then?”
“The kid, Han Solo or whatever his name is.”
“What about him?”
“I couldn’t find him in the system either.”
“Rubbish, I could track him before I was locked up,” Marion objected. “We even changed his thread so we could catch him.”
“Well he ain’t there now, he disappeared from it.”
“So why can’t you find him now?”
“Did something happen?”
“I dunno.”
“Well who disappears from the thread?”
Ursula’s eyes darted from Marion to Catlin and then back to Marion.
“Hmmm, you two get back to work, I need to look into this more.”
- -
DESTINY
The past few hours had gone by in a mental blur for Catlin. She was still reeling emotionally from having the entire Destiny team march out on her, especially after what she thought was an inspirational speech. She only acted in a way she thought most responsible, to give people a choice.
To her it seemed a simple one, stay and be part of the greater good. But almost everyone had disagreed with her and left, deserting her. Even though she knew she didn’t have the time to afford any emotion on the subject, she knew deep down the walk out had hurt. She had been rejected by her peers and it wounded her emotionally.
Thankfully, two people had remained inside the installation to help her out, Marion and her daughter Ursula.
On top of the walk out, above her, the government were trying to blow their way into the installation to wrest control from her, her ex-boyfriend and brother had been killed and now she was stuck down under the ground with no way to get out.
She didn’t feel especially safe, despite Marion’s attempts to make her feel so. There had been one more blast in the past hour, it must have been a big detonation as dust and dirt had now laid a fine coat over the installation, making the place seem truly abandoned.
Marion was still in the system trying to retrieve the final entry so Catlin had decided to go for a wander back upstairs. She grabbed her trusty axe from where she’d left it and resumed tapping on walls, attempting to see if they were hollow. By now the walls were starting to look more like they were in the midst of a demolition thanks to her repeated blows.
After clearing the outside walls, she moved into Samuel’s office and started the routine again, tapping the walls inside his office. She finished her search quickly and tired from her efforts, s
he moved over to the plush desk chair and plonked herself down in it.
She stared, blankly at the desk in front of her and thought about what it was made of, she hadn’t really paid attention to its details but now noticed the dark black colour. She leant down and ran her hand over the smooth surface, wondering what the metallic material was made of. To confuse her more, the top of the black surface had been covered in deep red mahogany wood, as if to mask what was underneath.
She hung the axe over it warily, tapping the top with the axe head and musing to herself about what it may be, where it may have come from, something about it seemed familiar but she couldn’t quite place it.
“Catlin!” Ursula interrupted her from below. “I think I’ve found a way out!”
She smiled, relieved Ursula had broken her monotonous search and found something, she hurriedly rose from the chair. As she made to leave though, she realised she still had a hold of the axe. Before putting it down though, a devious thought entered her mind.
Looking at the desk, she decided nobody would have need of it anymore, the installation had been cleared, Samuel was nowhere to be seen and it looked like they were about to make their way out of the installation.
So, with a wry smile on her face, Catlin heaved the axe up over her shoulder one more time and with all her strength, swung it back downwards towards the desk. The axe head slammed into the wooden top with a clunk and lodged itself deep inside.
Catlin yanked on the handle, attempting to wretch it free when Ursula called out again. “Catlin! Are you coming?”
She pulled again, attempting to free the lodged axe, but despite her best efforts could not remove it, so instead decided to leave it where it was lodged … We’ve found a way out anyway.
What she failed to notice was whilst she yanked at the axe, the top portion of the desk had begun to slide away from the bottom piece, revealing something underneath the desk. She left the room with the tiniest of cracks open between the two pieces, eluding to something more than it seemed, but she never caught a glimpse of it.
“What did you find?” Catlin asked excitedly as she joined Ursula downstairs.
“Ok, so I’ve been checking the in-house security footage, trying to track Samuel and Ma’am during the moments leading up to the thread disappearing. Now Samuel has come up a dead end, I can’t see him anywhere or anytime leaving his office, except to evacuate.”
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