Citadel: The Concordant Sequence

by Matthew S. Cox

  She gasped.

  The Second Dawn people all snickered.

  Hoping he’d only teased about that, she took a few breaths and explained everything that had happened so far. Her audience listened with rapt attention, most of their mouths gaping open when she mentioned the tank and being frozen. Once her story ended with her arrival here, she looked up at them, on the verge of tears over her parents.

  Min paced around, wagging his finger. “It’s bizarre, but it makes sense in a kind of odd way. Tell me more about this game.”

  “Well… Aliens took over the earth, and there’s tons of open-world content. Going from settlement to settlement where the humans are trying to survive. You get missions to do stuff, and you push the aliens back. The last mission is going after General Xax, a big fat blob in the main alien stronghold. It’s four levels deep and full of aliens and turrets and stuff. I think it was harder getting to the boss than killing him.”

  “Hang on.” Min ran over to the table, rummaged among some e-tablets, and hurried back with one. He tapped at the screen and held up an image of a hallway, straight out of the game. “Do you recognize this?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “That’s an intersection on level one, near the start. It’s got two laser turrets in the ceiling and a pressure-sensitive floor. There’s an alien on each side. Only way through without blowing everything up is to crawl into a vent duct at the corner”―she leaned forward and pointed―“right there.”

  He swiped to another image. “What about this?”

  “Umm. That room’s on level two, bottom right corner. I have no idea what those glowing round towers are, but they hurt if you get too close to them. I used to think it was useless ’cause it’s a dead end with no loot, but there’s a panel in the floor you can climb down to level three with, and skip like half the second floor. I had to do that ’cause the stairs had too much defense to get by without being seen.”

  Min flipped to another image. “This?”

  “Level four. That’s the room right after the stairway.”

  “You’ve memorized that game, haven’t you?” asked Min.

  Nata glanced between them, eyebrow raised. “Where are you going with video games?”

  Min bounced with glee. “It’s… I don’t know why, but this kid has memorized the Concordant Sequence.”

  “Yeah, so? It took me forever to beat that damn game. I―” She stared. “Uhh. I got stuck in virtual reality for ten years playing it over and over until I finally decided to sneak instead of blow everything up. Right before the world melted, my game console told me it was glad I did it because I had almost run out of time.”

  Silence hung heavy over the room.

  Nata appeared lost in thought. Min and Ford stared at each other with awe in their eyes.

  Pash kept petting Kiera’s hair like a cat.

  “Umm,” said Kiera.

  “I don’t really understand why,” said Min, “but you’ve been trained how to run the Concordant Sequence.”

  Kiera blinked. “Yeah… it’s a game.”

  “No, child.” Nata grasped her cheeks like a doting aunt. “The Concordant Sequence is the name of the four floors below the Citadel that hold all the guts of the terraforming machines. If the only way to turn this thing on is to physically go down there, that’s huge. Sokolov has put so much security in the way it would be near suicide to try.”

  “The AI.” Min snapped his fingers. “The AI did that on purpose. Making you play that game over and over until you knew every hallway by heart, every duct, every turret.”

  Kiera fidgeted at the satchel. “Umm, but why me? I’m only a kid.”

  “Small for the vents?” asked Preeti.

  “They shouldn’t be that tight. I could fit. So could Ford or Pash.” Min drummed his fingers on the tablet.

  “Who are your parents?” asked Nata.

  “Teryn and Mala. They’re from Exxo.”

  Nata shook her head. “No… who gave birth to you in 2030-whatever.”

  “I was born in 2022. Theresa is my mom, and my dad’s Michael. Umm, Quinn.”

  “Of course.” Min jabbed his finger at the tablet screen, reading. “Right here. There’s two people named Quinn on the list. Theresa and Michael. Both executives. They would have authorization to turn it on.”

  Kiera shrugged. “Yeah. Great for them, but they’re dead.”

  “There could’ve been an inheritance of permissions,” said Rand. “Maybe in case something went wrong, or maybe that computer’s got a mind of its own.”

  Thread Alpha. Kiera tasted the word on the tip of her tongue, but at Legacy’s warning not to tell anyone, she kept her mouth shut.

  “If it’s gonna change its own rules, why not let anyone turn it on?” Pash continued playing with Kiera’s hair.

  “That would depend on the programming. It might have a series of preset conditions for stepping down the access.” Min shrugged.

  Rand picked up a pistol-sized device from the table and walked over to hold it up to her face. Green laser-flash from a small lens made her squint. A few seconds later, it chirped. “Well, damn. Look at that.”

  “What?” asked Kiera.

  “We’ve been working on a way to bypass the final authentication for the command. Facial recognition of the executive board, likely backed up with an identity chip implant.” Nata glanced sideways at Rand’s device. “That little box just told me you are a key.”

  “Double crap.” Kiera shivered. “Actually… triple crap.”

  “That is why Anton wants you,” said Pet.

  Nata bit her lip, grasping Kiera’s shoulders. “You’re a genetic key to unlock the vault that holds the survival of this planet. That fool Sokolov thinks it’ll set off a rain of nuclear explosions.”

  “I guess I am the Child of the Earth,” muttered Kiera.

  “You cannot let him capture you,” said Pash. “He’d kill you and burn you to ashes so no scrap of your DNA remained.”

  Kiera trembled.

  “Don’t scare the poor kid,” said Rand.

  “Too late.” Kiera shivered. After a few seconds, she stilled, glancing up at him, utterly confused. “Didn’t you want to shoot me an hour ago?”

  “Ehh. I’m paranoid, remember?” He winked.

  “I don’t think he’d kill her.” Min shook his head. “If she died, the system might step down access so anyone could do it. I don’t think the programming would allow a situation where it became impossible to activate. He’d want to keep her alive as long as possible―and far away from ‘the button.’”

  “It wouldn’t go wide open.” Pash shook her head. “Based on what I’ve seen in the code, I think permission would go to the administrator of Citadel Zero. If that happened, it might as well become impossible.”

  “This can’t wait.” Nata stood. “We can’t miss this chance. She can guide us through the Sequence.”

  Kiera clutched her satchel tight. “But… if I do it, he might kill my parents.” She weathered their earnest stares for only seconds before bowing her head. “If I don’t, the entire Earth suffers.”

  Pet rubbed against her cheek, emitting a cooing tone.

  “I… I can’t do that. You can’t ask me to do it. My parents don’t deserve to die.”

  “But the whole planet,” said Preeti. “You must.”

  Kiera looked up at them. “Get my parents out first. I don’t care. I’m not going to get them killed. I don’t have to do anything―other than not die―fast. It’s not like the planet’s getting worse. It’ll take decades even after it’s turned on. A couple more days won’t matter.”

  The Second Dawn people sighed in unison. Except for Pash, who kept fawning over her, the others drifted off to have a muttered conference. Kiera stared at her lap. I’m being selfish. Putting two people’s lives above an entire planet gnawed at her guilt, but she couldn’t bring herself to abandon them. Her need to be back in her room, even if she baked in the oven-like heat, became painful, a hot ember in her
chest.

  “Kiera…” Nata approached and held her chin high, an air of authority surrounding her. “The situation we are in is delicate. Anton is doing everything possible to find and kill us. No matter what happens, neither you nor your parents will be in any way safe until the citadels are activated. It is true he may kill them as revenge, but once he can no longer stop you from initiating the process, he has no real need to threaten them anymore. He may accept defeat and release them.”

  She smirked. “I doubt it.”

  “We will help you, child. Pash and Ford will go with you and protect you as though you represent every life on the planet. While you go to the Sequence, the rest of us will simultaneously conduct an electronic attack on the detention area holding your parents. They may be free before you reach the terminal.”

  “It is foolish to delay,” said Min. “That man who died in the water processing conduit gave his life so that you can do this. Much could go wrong with wasted time.”

  Kiera cried into her hands. Guilt at Legacy’s death crashed into guilt that she might cause her parents to die, and crushed her straight face. Pash rubbed her back while Pet trilled at her left ear. The odds of her lasting much longer in here without being captured didn’t feel too great. Only slightly worse than the odds that she’d have even made it inside in the first place. As much as she wanted to stamp her feet and demand her parents be freed before she did anything else, she had to agree with Nata on one point: none of them had lots of time. For all she knew, Teryn and Mala might already have been killed. If not for the ridiculous thought that the fate of the Earth relied on her running a video game level over again, she would’ve wound up sobbing. Instead, she stared off into space for a few seconds.

  “All right.” She looked Nata in the eye. “I’ll go.”

  40

  Loading Screen

  Kiera crawled through a series of ventilation shafts and maintenance tunnels, following Pash and Ford. Pet glided along behind her, content to let the Second Dawn lead. They avoided any chambers with people, preferring two long detours on their way to a scary climb down a narrow metal ladder from the twelfth story to the third. Ford got stuck in a vent too small for him, causing a backtrack and alternate route that came to an unexpected halt when the passageway expanded to a larger chamber containing a deadly-looking fan with blades as long as Kiera stood tall.

  “Sec.” Pash took a small, round object from a belt pouch and threw it at the fan motor. It stuck against the housing with a sharp click like a magnet. Seconds later, sparks lapped out of it at the metal, and the fan shut down.

  As soon as the huge blades glided to a stop, they slipped past. Pash reclaimed her disk, which sparked again when it came free, allowing the fan to resume spinning. The group continued down the main air duct for a while before Ford pried open a hatch into a maintenance crawlspace with enough room for Kiera to walk with a slight stoop. That led to a room packed with computer equipment but no desks. Pash picked a physical lock on a hatch cover, which exposed another black-walled maintenance conduit. Ford headed in first, hurrying over to another ladder chamber that led down to the first floor. The conduit out of that room required all three of them to crawl on their hands and knees.

  “Now for the hard part,” whispered Ford.

  He advanced a short distance to a T-junction, went left, and hustled along for a few minutes before a right turn.

  “This part is the worst,” whispered Pash. “A little over two miles.”

  Kiera groaned. “Did they get my parents out yet?”

  “I’m sorry, kid. No idea. We don’t have radios. Even if we did… too much metal in the way.”

  Crawling for two-point-two miles in a tunnel ranked up there on the list of ‘ugh’ with taking a hundred-question robotics quiz thirty times. Eventually, the shaft ended at a cube-shaped chamber. Numerous square boxes jutted out from the walls, everything black, suffused with blue light underneath and glowing from the seams between panels. At the chamber’s center, cable bundles as thick as Kiera’s waist flowed over an edge, disappearing down a hole into darkness.

  “Rest.” Ford flopped to sit.

  Kiera didn’t protest. She took a water bottle from her satchel and drank some.

  Pash and Ford stared at her.

  She pulled out another bottle and handed it to them. “The water’s from a collector machine in my village.”

  “Don’t matter.” Ford chugged half of it before sipping.

  “That’s clean. It’s taken from the air and filtered. My brother works making the machines and spare parts, too.” Pash drank as well.

  Kiera tilted her head. “The water collectors are made here? But they look like scrap heaps.”

  “What the villagers decorate them with isn’t made here… but the guts are.” Pash smiled. “Usually takes a whole village worth of work-permits to afford one, but repair parts aren’t as expensive.”

  “So, now what?” asked Kiera.

  “The hard part.” Ford winked.

  She frowned. “I thought that long crawl was the hard part.”

  “Heh.” Pash grinned. “He always says that.”

  Kiera peered into the hole. The wires continued for about ten feet at a forty-five degree angle before diving down into a tube. “In here, right?”

  “Kid’s smart.” Ford smiled.

  After everyone had rested, Ford ducked headfirst into the opening, pulling himself along on top of the cable bundle. Kiera sat on the edge of the hole, frozen with nerves for a little while before dropping down to straddle the giant wire like a horse. She stretched forward, following Ford’s lead, and shimmied after him. The rustle of Pash climbing in behind her seemed like the loudest sound in the world.

  At the point where the wire plunged downward, Ford controlled his fall by releasing his grip of the cable and clamping on in a series of short slides. The first time Kiera tried to let go, she sailed headfirst into his rear end.

  “Oof!” said Ford, groaning. “Why do kids always nail me in the balls?” He wheezed in between complaints about his sister’s two sons.

  “Ow.” Kiera gripped the cable with her legs so she could cradle the top of her head. “Sorry. Accident.”

  “Need a minute.” Ford clung to the cable bundle like a koala, gasping for air.

  Pash’s snickering made him grumble.

  Ford cleared his throat a little while later. “Whoo. Okay. I’m good.” He resumed sliding forward.

  Careful to avoid crashing into him again, Kiera scooted down the steep passage until the conduit leveled out. She crawled for quite some time, arms and legs on either side of the huge cable bundle. Ford stopped short without warning, but Kiera caught herself before running into him again.

  “Here we are,” whispered Ford. He sat on the cable and pushed a section of ceiling up.

  The panel moved with little resistance, rising on a strut that held it open. He grabbed the edges and pulled himself out of the tunnel. Kiera crawled forward, standing in the opening with the floor of a huge chamber at shoulder level. Ford grabbed her hands and lifted her out of the hole.

  Kiera stared in awe at the giant doorway in front of them. Patterns of black and silver on the walls, the angles of the bulkheads, hoses and tubes hanging from the ceiling, even the round part in the middle of the door matched the entrance to the final mission.

  “Whoa…” whispered Kiera. “This place is exactly like the start of the last bunker in TCS. That’s the same door as the alien general’s bunker.”

  Pash climbed out of the floor and closed the hatch. “This is the entrance to the Concordant Sequence.

  Behind her, a normal sized door sat at the center of an otherwise plain wall opposite the massive gate, forty yards away. In her memory, it led to a cave that ascended to the wasteland, the open world portion of the game, but here, it held a metal stairwell.

  “All right, kid. This is your show. What do we do now?”

  Kiera walked up to the big door. “There’s a way to get under
the floor in the first hallway. Or we can fight past four aliens and a commander.”

  “There’s no aliens, kid,” said Ford.

  Pash fidgeted. “Maybe they’re stand-ins for security robots? The AI wouldn’t have put aliens there for nothing.”

  “Could be to make it a game?” asked Kiera.

  “I do not think so.” Pet orbited her head. “The aliens represent security robots, human officers, or other defenses. It needed to show you how to avoid everything and not be detected.”

  She looked back and forth at the door, as wide as her new house. “So, how do I open this? Wave at it?”

  “Run,” said Pet.

  “Don’t think that’ll help.” Ford set his fists against his hips, gazing up at the wall.

  Kiera whirled to face the small entrance, terror in her eyes.

  “Nobody move,” shouted a live man. He wore the same blue shirt and pants as everyone else in the Citadel, but had a heavy utility belt and white stars on his shoulders.

  Two other men and a woman followed the first man out from the stairwell with pistols raised. Kiera let off an “Eep!” and darted to the spot on the floor where they’d come in.

  A buzz of lasers went off. Ford howled in pain and fell. He lost his grip on his stinger pistol, which clattered to the floor. Kiera skidded to a halt on her knees, grabbing at the hatch panel.

  One officer ran toward her, gun pointed. “On the ground, kid! Do it now!”

  A female officer pointed a smaller weapon off to the left. A long, thin lightning bolt snapped, connecting the tiny pistol to Pet for an instant. The cube went dark and fell with a clank.

  “Pet!” shouted Kiera.

  “Get down!” roared the man pointing a gun at her face.

  Pash, emotionless, sank to her knees and stretched out flat on her front. A group of security robots tromped in behind the live cops from the stairwell. Kiera trembled as she lowered herself to the floor, staring at Pet.

  The man ran up on her, pressing a knee into her back as he tugged the satchel away and tossed it aside. He forced her arms behind her back and locked handcuffs around her wrists. The others cuffed Pash and Ford, dragging them to their feet despite the man howling in pain. Blood covered his chest and right arm.