Terminal White

by James Axler

  The lobby area was empty and the doors were closed. Kane could see two uniformed Magistrates where they waited through the tinted glass, inside the baronial suite itself.

  Kane ducked back, considering his options. There was no way to shoot the Mags from here, not with a tranq gun through the glass, and certainly not without drawing attention to himself with the noise—attention that would most likely involve more Magistrates swarming on the scene.

  But to step out there and reveal himself was suicide—there was nowhere to hide with that great glass wall between himself and the Mags on guard. He considered for a moment longer, wondering if there was some other way into the baronial suite from which the message was being broadcast. The service corridor—that was it!

  Kane rushed back along the corridor, retracing his steps.

  * * *

  THE DESCENDING ELEVATOR HALTED. Brigid and the two nameless citizens of Ioville—literally nameless, their old names long excised from their rewritten minds—waited as the doors drew open on their hidden tracks to reveal Zeta Level.

  Brigid gasped, her heart skipping a beat at what she saw. The other occupants of the elevator filed out without comment, but Brigid simply stood there, gazing at the spectacle before her. The elevator had opened onto a gigantic underground room, covering at least half the area of the ville above it. The room was filled with Sandcats and Deathbirds, hundreds of them, arranged in neat, perfectly straight lines, their profiles facing Brigid, and each one poised for launch through the distant doors at the far end of the room. The ceiling was high—high enough to allow those Deathbird helicopters space to take off, Brigid realized with dread.

  All around, gray-clad citizens were marching in step, making their way toward the waiting vehicles, guided by Magistrates in their dark uniforms and grim helmets. Brigid estimated there must be over four hundred people in the room, with more filing in from arriving elevators even as she watched. The Mags were handing out weapons to all the citizens as they passed, like adding components to a production line. Each took a weapon, checked that it was loaded before holding it pointed at the floor in a loose grip, never once slowing their step.

  The elevator doors began to close and Brigid stepped forward, pushing them back as she entered the garage space with a dwarfing sense of incredulity.

  “Mary had a little lamb,” her Commtact chimed, reminding her to remain sane, remain Brigid Baptiste.

  The two residents who had arrived in the elevator with her were already in one of the orderly queues, waiting to be handed their weapon before joining the disciplined assault force who were waiting to leave the ville.

  Brigid felt it, too, in that moment as hundreds of gray-clad, almost identical citizens prepared for invasion. She felt the pull of Protocol Zero-zero-zero, deeply programmed into her subconscious via the Terminal White system that dictated every human being’s behaviour who had ever lived within Ioville’s walls.

  Brigid’s attention was drawn to a great flash of light, brighter than the overheads that hung from the high ceiling. She turned to look, saw two great, rollback doors drawing apart like a nut being cracked, and beyond them the vista of falling snow.

  Brigid realized something horrific then—something so obvious that she could hardly believe she had not realized it before. Terminal White had been perfected—it no longer required citizens to remain in the ville to be affected by its subliminal commands. The program would continue to dictate to Ioville’s citizens outside of the walls.

  And not just Ioville’s citizens. They in turn would take Terminal White out to the other villes and to the Outlanders who lived beyond them, reprogramming the whole human race into mindless slaves who functioned only for the pleasure of the dead barons, following the protocols of a project that should have died with its instigators years ago.

  Brigid stood there, stunned by the awareness that it was up to her to stop this whole terrible nightmare.

  Chapter 29

  Grant was beginning to remember things. The nursery rhyme had played through his Commtact four times now, each time disrupting the mind-dulling effects of Terminal White.

  He staggered between the waiting vehicles on Zeta Level, ducking under the tail rotors of Deathbirds, out of step with his fellow mechanics who had been tasked with opening the great doors to the outside. When the doors began pulling back, Grant stood away from them, hidden in the shadows between two white-painted Sandcats, eyeing the brightness of the falling snow beyond the garage doors. Zeta Level was set beneath the ville, in the place where the Tartarus Pits were located in Cobaltville and others, serving to provide a ready stream of cheap labor to the ville above. But here, that space had been turned over to storage, service and repair of the mighty vehicles that made up Ioville’s war machine. When the rollback doors drew back, they revealed a snow-covered slope that led upward and out of the ville, beyond the high walls, out into the wilderness of British Columbia.

  Grant realized as he saw that snow falling, that hint of a world beyond the one he had become trapped within over the past three weeks, that something was very, very wrong.

  “Mary had a little lamb,” the voice in his ear cooed, and Grant looked behind him, wondering just where it was coming from.

  “I had a name once,” he muttered as he staggered bewildered between the waiting vehicles. “A name and something else—a mission.”

  He continued walking, making his way toward the open doors to the outside.

  * * *

  BRIGID WAS STRUGGLING with the enormity of the task ahead. She had the pistol, eight shots of tranquilizer fluid that could drop a man without killing him. Facing her were four hundred personnel with Magistrate combat training, armed with handblasters and backed by three hundred Sandcats and one hundred Deathbirds. Her only viable option was to stop this invasion before it started.

  Brigid marched swiftly through the queuing ranks who were waiting to be issued with their blasters, past the two people who had accompanied her in the elevator from Epsilon Level. She pushed the person who was second in the queue aside, taking the docile woman’s place without a word of complaint. The Magistrate handing out the weapons to the waiting citizens took no notice of Brigid’s disruptive actions, and in a moment he was facing Brigid with a handblaster held out for her.

  “Let me get two,” Brigid said with a smile.

  The Magistrate looked at her emotionlessly, the majority of his face hidden behind the hard lines and tinted visor of his uniform helmet. “Move on to your position.”

  “My position requires two blasters,” Brigid insisted.

  Beneath his helmet, the Mag seemed to cock his head in confusion. Beside him, another Magistrate was handing out weapons to his own orderly queue of citizens, and he took no notice of what his partner was doing.

  “Two,” Brigid said, holding up two fingers. “Baron’s orders.”

  The Mag seemed almost to shut down at this, standing before Brigid perfectly still as he tried to process her request. Behind her, the queue of gray overalls waited without complaint, ready to serve, to perform this last designated task, the one that ended in the annexing of the world in the name of the dead barons.

  Finally, Brigid stepped forward and took a second pistol from the Magistrate’s hands, the one he had picked up to hand to the next citizen. He seemed unable to respond, unable to react with this subtle change in routine. So long as it did not threaten him, it seemed he would let it pass.

  * * *

  IN A FEW MOMENTS, Kane had reached a turn in the service corridor on Alpha Level. To his left side there lay a removable wall panel behind which wiring and pipe work would be located, access to which was necessary during the construction and maintenance of the ville. To his right there was a similar panel, this one located low to the floor, an access hatch leading into the guts of the building itself.

  Kane checked beh
ind him before slipping the tranquilizer pistol into his holster. He worked the catch on the right-hand panel, pulling it away from the wall. Then, ducking down onto his knees, he crawled inside.

  Within it was dark, and it took a few seconds for Kane’s eyes to adjust. The space behind the hatch was high, tall enough for Kane to stand without touching the ceiling. Pipes ran along the walls here, but there was still enough room for a man to work his way along the space walking sideways. Kane hurried along the space, making his way around the outside wall of the Administrative Monolith, squaring the circle to reach the baronial suite.

  Kane moved through that darkened space for three minutes, making slow progress because of the tightness of the gap, the only light coming from the distant wall plate that he had removed. Then he hit a snag. A jumble of crisscrossing pipes stood in his way, the gap between them not wide enough for him to move through. Brigid maybe, Domi certainly, but not him.

  He looked around, narrowing his eyes against the darkness, trying to find another route. There was something glinting in the dark, he noticed after a moment, and as Kane focused on it he saw it was one of four matching circles of metal, each one about as large as the pad of his thumb.

  Screws.

  Kane reached forward and felt his way around the area marked out by the screws. It was some kind of wall plate with a grille over it, the surface rough to the touch. The plate was two feet square.

  Kane reached for the screws, pushed his thumbnail into one and began to turn it. It took a moment to get it to move, but once it started moving the unwinding proved easy, if laborious.

  Inside of a minute, Kane had all four screws off the wall. He pulled the wall plate away—held now by nothing but habit and dirt—and placed it gently at his feet without making any more sound than was absolutely necessary.

  Once the plate was on the floor, Kane pressed his hands to the top of the opening and poked his head inside. It was a large space, big enough for a man to crawl through, with a tiny beam of light glowing against the side of the wall closest to Kane just five feet from where his head was. Kane reached inside with both arms and pulled himself up and into the hidden shaft.

  It was tight in there, claustrophobic, and it smelled of dust and grease and oil. Kane was forced to crawl, his head held down so that it did not brush the top of the shaft. He moved artlessly toward the shaft of light, flailing like a beached fish as he dragged himself down the metal-walled shaft.

  In a moment, Kane was at the beam of light. It was three inches wide and seemed to be emanating from a position to his right and a little way above him. Kane struck the wall with his hand, listening to the echoes and wincing as the sound carried down the metal shaft. The dull thud of a solid wall came back.

  Bringing his legs forward, Kane maneuvered himself into a sitting position then reached up for the source of the beam of light, tracking it with his outstretched palm. It was hard to make out in the darkness, but after a moment he detected another shaft, the same proportions as the one he was sitting in, this one stretching vertically upward to a second grille.

  Kane floundered in place for a moment until he could bring himself up into the vertical shaft. Once there, he stood, his feet close together in the cramped space beneath them, his head level with the grille.

  Kane pressed his face to the grille, felt the rush of ice-cold wind against his skin. A brightness of light flickered against his eyes, but all he could see was whiteness, as bland as any corridor in Ioville.

  Efficiently, Kane reached around the grille, locating the same four screws as he had removed from the preceding grille to gain access to this area. They took a little effort, especially with the cramped conditions within which he was called upon to work, but after a few minutes Kane had all four screws off the wall and was holding the grille in place by the pressure of his arm against it.

  Carefully, Kane pulled back the grille with his right hand, holding it in place until he could get his fingers around it. Then he pulled it back with both hands, drawing it down so that he could let it slide very gently to the floor without making too much noise. As he pulled the grille away he saw what the whiteness was that he had peeked at through its open slats—it was snow, falling from above and covering everything in sight. He was looking outside the tower.

  * * *

  NOW BRIGID WAS armed at least. Slipping one of the two blasters into her waistband and retaining the other in her grip, she hurried through the milling ranks of citizens who had massed between the waiting lines of Sandcats and Deathbirds. Many were already inside the Sandcats, Brigid saw, both in the driver’s seats and in the gun turrets that stuck out from the rooftops. Those guns could be automated, Brigid remembered suddenly, recalling the systems she had helped screw into place on the factory production line.

  Brigid kept moving, making her way toward the open doors to the outside that loomed in the distance, snow billowing beyond their threshold. If she could maybe close those doors, prevent this invasion force from leaving the ville—maybe then she might just stop this madness.

  Brigid was twenty feet from the doors when her hopes were dashed. The first Sandcats surged out of the open doors, five vehicles exiting in unison, crossing the snow-blanketed slope in a rumble of roaring engines.

  Brigid cursed, running faster toward the doors, hoping to spot a mechanism with which to close them. Instead she saw something better—a man she recognized from countless adventures together. A man who had become bewildered and almost lost to the curse of Terminal White. A man called—

  “Grant!”

  * * *

  KANE PULLED HIMSELF through the gap in the vent, drawing himself up until he could gain purchase. He was four hundred feet up, almost as high as the tallest structure in the ville. Snow billowed about him, landing on his dark gray uniform and helmet, the air cold against his skin. The wind howled in his ears like a wounded animal.

  He hung there for a moment, dangling half-outside the removed vent panel, taking in the view. He was on the outside of the Administrative Monolith, the central and tallest building in Ioville. Everything was covered in a thick layer of snow, ice crystals glistening in the morning sunlight that filtered reluctantly through the silvery-gray cover of the clouds. Kane took it all in, recognizing the design as identical to Cobaltville, where he had grown up and served as a Mag for so many years.

  Besides the falling snow, Kane could see a line of movement from one of the gates, gray shadows against whiteness as a line of vehicles emerged from the garage area beneath the ville—white-painted Sandcats moving out to the horizon, distributing the new regime to the rest of America. For a moment he wondered if he should be with them, join in their quest to bring order to the chaos...

  “Mary had a little lamb,” his Commtact blurted in his ear, reminding him to stay focused on the mission and to remember who he was.

  Kane watched the line of Sandcats—five in total—their white exteriors almost invisible against the blanket of snow. “Go get ’em, Baptiste,” he whispered. “If anyone can figure a way to stop this it’s you.”

  With those words, Kane hefted himself out of the little vent and pulled himself out onto the wall of the tower. It sloped gently, narrowing as it rose above Kane toward the building’s summit, while the white eyelike circle was located ten feet below.

  He scrambled for a moment, searching for a way to stay outside the building without falling off. There was a ledge there, running close to the top of the “eye,” almost hidden by the settled snow. Kane got his feet on it and, pressing his hands against the wall and clinging there as best as he could, began to work his way around the building’s exterior.

  * * *

  “GRANT!” BRIGID CALLED.

  Grant looked up at Brigid as she called his name. He was standing by the door mechanism wearing gray overalls that strained at his muscular frame. His eyes were wide with confusion, h
is expression sour.

  He saw the pale-faced woman come running toward him, her lithe form moving with the ease and grace of a natural athlete, the cap falling from her head to reveal a cascade of red-gold curls.

  “Grant,” Brigid said again as she reached him, her pace slowing to a trot.

  Grant looked at her cockeyed. “Do I know you?” he asked. “I think I do...”

  Around them, the mounting roar of engines was growing louder as the second wave of Sandcats was despatched through the open doors to the Zeta Level garage.

  Brigid smiled tentatively.

  “I feel like I know you,” Grant said, “but things are so muddled.”

  “Grant, it’s me,” Brigid said. “It’s Brigid. We work together for Cerberus—”

  “Cerberus,” he repeated tentatively.

  “You, me and Kane. We were investigating something and somehow became caught up in it,” Brigid hurriedly explained. “We’ve been tricked. We don’t belong here.”

  Grant looked around him as the second wave of Sandcats trundled away up the slope. “Where are we?” he said. “Ioville?”

  “Yes, but we don’t belong here,” Brigid told him. “They brainwashed us but I broke the programming. I got Cerberus to stream a cue through our Commtacts—”

  “Commtacts...” Grant muttered, his brows furrowed. Gradually a smile began to tug at the corners of his mouth. “Brigid Baptiste, am I glad to see you! I thought I was going—no, had gone—mad. All that damn music in my head.”

  “No, that’s just the cue,” Brigid said. “It disrupts the signal that tells us to obey.”

  Grant nodded uncertainly. “So, just what the hell is going on here?”

  “Kane’s here,” Brigid explained quickly. “He says there’s a guy at the top who has ultimate authority over this ville. He’s the one who’s ordered all this—” she gestured to the garage where gray-clad citizens were climbing into the waiting Sandcats, ready to launch the next wave “—and Kane’s going to find him and stop the instruction being broadcast.”