“Calculations predict that the current ‘passive’ mode of operation will result in global restoration in approximately 677.38 years. This estimate would change if new pollution is introduced to the atmosphere, but it is unlikely primitive tribal societies could generate enough contamination to affect the timeline.”
“Hmm.”
The front door slid open, admitting a human-sized robot of white and silver plastic, with glowing green hexagon eyes. She stopped. The last one of these she’d seen had been friendly, though it had been pinned under tons of concrete. Its eyes had also glowed blue, but maybe this one had turned on night vision.
“Target acquired. Threat detected.” The robot drew a laser pistol from a holster on its hip.
“Crap!” She raced around the corner seconds before the walls flickered blue from a laser blast. “Double crap! It’s trying to kill me!”
“I believe you are correct.” Pet glided ahead of her.
Raising her pistol, she faced the corner and backed up. “Think I’m fast enough to shoot it before it gets me?”
Pet rotated side to side simulating a headshake. “I suggest not allowing them to find you.”
“Them?” yelled Kiera, glancing sideways at Pet. “What do you mean them?”
“There are five androids entering the facility.”
She let out an ‘eep’ and bolted away from the corner. At the end, she slid to a halt and whirled in place, staring at multiple doors. Her voice quaked in fear. “Where should I go?”
Plastic footsteps tromped up the outer corridor.
“Follow.” Pet zipped off to the stairs.
Ugh. Cold water beat hot laser, so she tore after the little cube. Another barrage of blue light flickered in the corridor a second after she ducked into the stairwell. A spurt of molten metal sprayed from the doorjamb, sizzling when it hit the ground. She raced down the stairs, clinging to the railing, the satchel swinging up with each turn of the switchback.
At the bottom, she jumped into the frozen water and pointed her pistol straight up the channel in the middle, but the stairs blocked the doorway. Pet zipped into the hallway. She hesitated, debating her odds of ambushing, but chickened out and chased the flying cube back to her mother’s office.
“This is a dead end. Now what?” She whined, staring at the window to the hall, shaking at the approaching sound of robot footsteps.
“Over here.” Pet hovered past a tall plastic plant to a ventilation duct in the wall. A tiny prod snapped out of the cube’s side, a motorized screwdriver. It removed eight screws, freeing the vent cover. “Go in here to hide. Pull the cover back in place.”
Kiera dove to all fours and shimmied in, dragging the satchel with her. Four-inch-deep icy water continued into the ventilation duct ahead of her. “Yeah… I played this game.” She pushed the bag forward, turned around, and pulled the vent cover back up.
Pet replaced one screw and tapped itself into the cover. “Pull the slats apart.”
She stuck her hands between and pushed, bending the thin metal enough for the cube to fit. It bobbed over her head and went on down the shaft. Kiera backed away from the vent opening, pushing the satchel along ahead of her.
“Is it stupid for me to try and shoot them?” whispered Kiera.
“It is unlikely you will walk away from five on one. You may disable one or two units before you suffer a fatal injury.”
Kiera shivered and stuck the laser pistol into the satchel to free her hands. “You could’ve just said yes.”
She followed Pet past a series of turns. After a mild incline that allowed her to crawl out of the water, she entered a long duct that went so far into the distance she couldn’t see a wall at the end. Pausing, she whispered, “Wow… are they still after me?”
“There is too much signal interference with all this metal. I cannot tell. But, I think that means they will not be able to find you either.”
Kiera exhaled a sigh of relief. “I hate stealth games.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Shooting stuff in the face is much faster.”
Pet tilted at an angle. “But then you will get ‘shot in the face,’ too.”
“Good point.” She grumbled. “Does this lead outside?”
“Yes, eventually.”
Kiera grinned. “You’re awesome.”
“Aww, thank you.” Pet glided over and rubbed against her cheek while making a kiss noise.
A few minutes of crawling brought her to a vent opening in the floor, from which light shone up into the duct. She slowed and peered down into an enormous chamber full of pods like the one she’d awakened in. All contained human shadows trapped in milky haze. She gawked, unsure if she should scream in horror or gasp in amazement.
“What is this?” Kiera pointed down. “Pet?”
The cube stopped and zipped back over. “This is a Cairn.”
“English please?”
“Citadel Corporation, working in partnership with multinational governments, established a series of Cairns across the globe. Each Cairn holds ten thousand people in cryogenic stasis.”
She looked around at all the pods, whistling with awe. Soon, her need to get home overpowered her curiosity, and she crawled on. Pet flew for hundred or so yards more before swerving left. A short distance past the turn, the cube hovered over a hatch.
“That goes down,” said Kiera.
“Yes. There is another access way which leads to the surface, but to get to it, you must go down.”
She shuffled over to the hatch without comment and twisted the handle to open it. The metal flap fell in like a trapdoor, revealing a steel ladder. Kiera again pulled the satchel onto her shoulder and tightened the strap. She sat on the edge, scooting forward until her feet found the first rung. A few steps down, a blast of icy air shot up under her poncho and made her shriek. Shivering, she hurried to climb as fast as her courage allowed. The ladder descended about five stories’ distance to metal flooring as cold as the water she’d been walking in. Shin-deep fog stretched across a smaller room containing a few desks, ending at a thick wall with a heavy door. Reinforced windows on either side offered a view into the chamber full of pods.
A terminal winked on when she walked by. She stopped, easing herself to sit on an expensive looking chair with a bunch of leather-covered bar-shaped cushions mounted to a thick steel bar in an ergonomic curve.
The screen displayed an email client.
I don’t care if they find out. I’m doing what’s right. So what if I over packed a few chambers? They’re kids. Three or four of them have the same biomass as some fat executive. Who’s going to be alive long enough to care if I put unregistered kids in with other people? I’ve already given up my pod, 7044, and I know what that means for me. I’m at peace with it. I’m fifty-two. I’ve had a good run. Those kids don’t deserve to die. I don’t know how they chose who got in and who had to stay outside. All these strays… Watching their parents stand there as the kids go in, knowing they’ll never see them again. Yeah… I’m totally okay with riding this toxic cloud into whatever’s on the other side. For what it’s worth, if any of you kids ever find this message, I want you to know I have no regrets. You don’t need to feel guilty or even thank me. But if you want to, you can thank me by doing one thing: live. – Dianne Webb, Director of Cryogenics Operations, Citadel Corporation.
Kiera touched the 7044 in the message, which looked like a link. A sub screen opened with four pictures: a teenaged boy, two tween girls, and a five- or six-year-old boy. The pod’s registration still showed it held the Cryogenics Director and not four random children.
She choked up, unable to resist scrolling down.
I’ve tried, Alan, I’ve tried everything I can. The VPs are adamant. Cutoff age of forty. No one even an hour into forty-one is allowed into the pods. Those damn robots. I swear, one more like what just happened and I’m going to start shooting robots myself. Those people are forty-one. That’s not elderly! Who writes this policy? – D
ianne.
Kiera poked the link. A video from a ceiling-level camera played showing a woman with shoulder-length brown hair in a neat skirt suit dabbing at her nose while two people a little younger looking clung to a boy sitting on the edge of a tank. Two androids stood on either side of the woman in the suit, pointing stubby assault rifles at the parents. The robots looked similar but not identical to the ones upstairs, probably older models. The boy, about twelve, sobbed and begged to go with his parents before shouting at the woman, asking why they couldn’t get in the tank with him.
“I’m sorry. It’s just the policy… it’s for the good of all humanity.” The woman in the suit gave the robots a nasty glare. “I can’t change it.”
“It’s all right, Chris. We’ll be right here. Go on and get in,” said the mother.
“No it’s not,” yelled the boy. “Those robots are gonna shoot you if you stay. I don’t wanna get frozen. I don’t care if I die. I wanna be with you guys. Please don’t leave me here!” He leapt from his seat on the edge of the tank and grabbed onto his parents before breaking down sobbing, as did the mother.
The father stared at the robots as if weighing his chances of destroying them before getting mowed down.
A man in a medical smock snuck up behind the boy. The father nodded, holding his son as the worker gave him a needle. Soon, the boy went limp in his father’s arms. The man held him a moment longer before carrying him back to the tank and easing him in feet first. Another man in a white jacket fitted him with a familiar facemask. Kiera cringed watching them stuff the feeding tube down his throat. His parents let go, and he slipped into the clear slime bath. The crying parents spent a few minutes hovering over the tank before forcing themselves to walk away.
Kiera cried along with them. “That’s so cruel….”
The video jumped to the next file. Two androids dragged a shouting man down a hallway. He raged about being fifty and not worthless, shouting, “Two PhDs!” repeatedly as they hauled him out of camera range.
Additional logs detailed about 294 ‘off the books’ children that Director Webb had stuck in other pods, sometimes with random adults, sometimes four kids to a tank.
Kiera wiped her eyes, turned away from the computer, and wandered over to the glass. She leaned against the frigid window, staring at the endless rows of frozen stasis units. There’s ten thousand pods in there… so many people. Did Mom and Dad get in the tanks next to mine, or did they leave me behind, too?
21
Undue Attention
The dark recesses of the pod chamber lit up from an expanding rectangle of light at the far end of the massive room, a door opening. Five robots marched in, their shadows stretching across a glassy black floor. Kiera ducked out of sight under the level of the window. Echoes of rubber and metal feet didn’t break into a running pace, so she held on to hope that they hadn’t seen her.
“This way,” whispered Pet. “It is time to leave.”
Watching the video of those people saying goodbye to their son made her want to run home, grab her parents, and never let go. Pet drifted between two other desks and tapped a solid metal panel about three feet square. Kiera rushed over, skidding to a halt on her knees, and pulled it open. She slipped into the wall, turned around, and pulled the cover back in place so the robots wouldn’t know anyone had gone there.
The passage had loads of wires and small plastic pipes, and more room than the air vent. A man could crawl around in here in relative comfort. She stooped with a deep bow and followed the glowing cube. It took a right turn where the spur met a crossing passage, continued for a several minutes, and veered down a left offshoot. A few yards later, Pet darted into a short right spur that connected to the bottom of a vertical tunnel.
Kiera stood straight inside the shaft, gazing up past wires, pipes, and hoses. Sunlight glimmered in the slats of a vent about four stories above. She sighed. “Oh, this is great.”
“It leads out. I do not think the robots know where you have gone. There is a good chance they didn’t get a good look at you. If you can avoid being seen, you should be safe.”
“Yeah right. How many kids around here have red hair?”
“It would take me some time to examine the personnel roster of the Citadel,” said Pet.
She turned in place examining the walls, and found a ladder on the wall above the tunnel she’d crawled out from. “Well, at least I don’t have to climb the wires, and I mean kids outside. How many tribal people have red hair?” Kiera shifted the satchel onto her back, grabbed the ladder, and pulled herself up enough to get her feet on the first rung.
Pet bobbed up to her head level. “I am unable to find personnel files for them.”
“You’re not serious.”
A soft laugh emanated from the cube. “I am trying to make you feel better. You are probably quite scared.”
“Yeah. Just a bit.” She climbed too fast for comfort. “Shot at by robots, worried I might fall off a ladder and break my neck, crying my eyes out at the saddest thing I’ve ever seen… Yeah. I’m a little messed up right now. Is that boy still alive?”
“I believe he is. Frozen like you were prior to the virtual reality starting. The official Cairns have a much more robust power system than the small substation where you had been placed into stasis.”
A vent on the left about halfway up blasted her with freezing air. She cringed as it buffeted her in the face, and squealed a few rungs later when the airburst from below bloomed her poncho up around her. Oh that’s so cold. I think I just peed. “I… gotta find some real clothes.” The icy gust lessened after she dragged herself up a little higher. Teeth chattering, she held still for a moment, waiting for her legs to stop trembling.
“There is a fabricator not too far from here that could generate more preferable attire, but I don’t think it is wise.”
“Why not?”
“What I understand of the society out there… dressing like you are from a citadel would attract undue attention. Undue attention of the violent type.”
“What do you mean?”
Pet orbited her head. “They may think you are valuable, try to kidnap you to get the people inside the Citadel to trade for you. Or they might assume you have technology and attack you to steal it. Most likely however, the high levels of resentment between the tribes and the people within Citadel Zero would lead to simple violence.”
“Okay… okay…” She grumbled, climbing on. “It’s hot outside anyway. I don’t want to get kidnapped again.”
“Again?” Pet asked, concern clear in her voice. “I hope you were not traumatized.”
“I got away pretty fast. It’s… okay. They didn’t hurt me, but it scared me to death. I’m more upset they killed that nice old man. Even if he was nuts.”
The air got warmer the farther she climbed. At the top, she pushed a button to release the latch holding the cover in place and it flipped up on a hinge. Kiera tossed her satchel out before pulling herself up onto solid ground. She rolled over, sat up, and closed the hatch, which capped a metal platform only a few inches off the ground.
“Made it…” She basked in the warm light of day.
Kiera rested for a few breaths before the urgent need to be with her parents got her to her feet. Forest surrounded her with no sign of a gorge in sight. “Uhh. Where are we? Do you know which way Exxo is?”
“Yes. This way.” Pet zipped off into the woods.
She ran after it, clinging to the satchel to keep stuff from bouncing out. The soft whine of Pet’s thruster and the rapid thumps of her feet felt loud enough that the entire would could hear them. Not once did she look back. Her legs protested after a while, and she stumbled to a halt, leaning against a tree to catch her breath. She bent forward gasping for air and stared at her toes, grass stuck between them. The last she could remember of the real world, she couldn’t go outside without covering every inch of her body in protective clothing. Kiera grinned. Guess the citadels are working, since my skin isn’t melting off.<
br />
Pet floated over. “You have stopped.”
“Can’t… run… more…” She gasped.
“Oh. Sorry.” Pet wobbled side to side. “It has been a long time since I had a human companion. I forget sometimes that your energy cells don’t last as long.”
When her heart stopped slamming in her chest, she pushed off the tree and walked. A couple of minutes later, she reached the footpath and followed it back to Exxo. As soon as the village came into sight, she veered off the road and bee-lined home. Mala paced around the yard in a frantic circle.
“Mom!” yelled Kiera.
The woman turned, stared at her, and sagged with relief.
Kiera ran into a hug.
“Where have you been!?” Mala squeezed her hard for a few seconds before pushing her out to arms’ length. “I’ve been calling you for at least an hour.”
“I wanted to help.” She patted the satchel. “Dad can’t hunt for stuff, so I went to this place Norven told me about. I found something… big.”
“Don’t do that to us again, okay?” Mala embraced her.
The video of those people putting their son in the tank hit her hard, and Kiera wound up clinging and sniffling. “Mom….”
“Are you hurt? What happened? Why are you crying?”
Kiera held on for a little while more before leaning back and smiling. “It was so sad… Dad needs to hear it, too.”
“All right.”
She pulled Mala along by the hand, heading inside. Teryn sat on the bed, poking at his leg, an annoyed frown on his face.
At their approach, he looked up and smiled. “Where did you go?”
Kiera swung the satchel off her shoulder and set it on the bed before crawling up to sit next to him. While unpacking her loot, she told them everything that happened. Her father looked over the flashlights, clocks, gimmicky paperweights, DVDs, smartphones, and e-readers with wide eyes.
Citadel: The Concordant Sequence Page 21