New Alcatraz (Book 2): Golden Dawn

by Grant Pies

  Merit shook his head and sighed. “You can’t do that, Ransom.” Merit began to cry. “You are my brother!”

  “Gray is my son!” Ransom yelled. Even inside the large armory, the sounds of the men searching the tunnels for Merit and Ransom echoed.

  “It was this place! It ate away at me. It called to me for decades. Just like you spent your whole life wishing it wasn’t real so you could curse Dad, and tell yourself he left because he was a horrible person, I spent my whole life wishing this place was real. I prayed at night that there was something out there. I dreamed Dad was right, that he found this place. I spent my entire life thinking of what it would be like to get here. I had to find this, so I could explain why Dad left us. So I could reconcile him leaving and him loving us. You were comfortable writing Dad off as a bad person, but I held out hope that there was another reason. Another explanation. I couldn’t bear to think he left us for an endless plot of dirt and desert mountains. I couldn’t live like that. I couldn’t carry that much anger like you did.”

  “You killed Gray! You killed my son! Your nephew. How can that be worth any of this?”

  The now familiar, pounding footsteps of the roving group of maniacs reached them. Ransom stood. His legs were weak. His knee felt like a sharp rock was lodged in it and twisted with each movement. He stumbled toward Merit, who stood in anticipation of whatever Ransom planned to do. Ransom grabbed his brother and pushed him towards the door. Merit wrestled away from Ransom’s grip, but Ransom grabbed his shoulder. He shoved Merit against the wall until Merit’s face was smashed against the cement, only centimeters away from one of the hatchets that hung on the wall.

  “I can’t go back,” Merit managed to get out. “At least not with you.”

  He spun around to face his brother. Ransom felt a pain in his stomach. It was cold inside of him, but then warm liquid ran down his body. He looked down to see Merit gripping a knife that had hung on the wall only moments before. The knife was lodged deep inside of Ransom. The last pulses of energy drained from his body. His vision blurred, and he wavered back and forth on his feet.

  “I’m sorry, Ransom. For everything. But I can’t go back with you.”

  Merit pulled the knife out of Ransom. Dark crimson blood glittered on the blade and seeped off the edge. Merit pushed Ransom away, and he stumbled backwards until he fell to the floor. His eyes were wide, and his face tensed as he pressed his hand against his wound, blood leaking out of him and darkening his clothing. He lay on the cold ground and gasped loudly and then quickly held his breath. It hurt too much to breathe. Ransom had never felt pain like this before, and it paralyzed his mind. In front of him was not his brother, but a person who he didn’t know.

  “Why?” was all he could ask, but he knew the answer. He heard the justification already. As Ransom sat on the floor surrounded by the useless weapons, Merit stepped out of the armory and pulled the heavy door closed; it creaked and then slammed shut. The rush of air kicked dirt around the floor.

  On the other side of the door, Merit wedged his knife into the latch. He only hoped Ransom would bleed to death before the vault dwellers found him.

  CHAPTER 61

  2075

  BUCKLEY AIR FORCE BASE

  Vesa and I walked down the tunnel at a quick pace, our strides long. I held onto the bag, and tried to keep the strap from rubbing too much against the wound on my chest. Vesa tracked the movements of other agents by listening to the radio we took from the dead soldier. We left our rifles with Doc so he could hold off any agents for as long as possible. The only weapon I had was my pistol with fourteen bullets and the knife I had stolen from General Moore.

  “No one is in housing,” a voice came across the radio.

  “Alarms and doors are being tampered with all over the housing wing. They’ve got to be there,” another voice responded. “I’ll check our systems again.”

  “Housing is clear. No one is here,” the first voice came back. Whatever Whitman was doing, it seemed to be working.

  We hadn’t heard any shots fired since we left Doc to protect Whitman’s empty body. Now Whitman worked his way through the wires and data ports of Buckley Air Force Base, integrating himself into every electronic crevice of the base. Red lights blinked on cameras that were evenly spaced down the halls. Like clockwork, just before we came in view of a camera, the red light turned off and the camera tilted away from us. Whitman was clearing a path for us to the charging stations. I reached into the bag and looked at the device. The first of four lights was lit up on the device. The second light was already blinking. We must be close, I thought. By now, all of the colored lines had branched off in separate directions, except for the black and white lines.

  “Is that him?” Vesa said and pointed at the cameras turning off.

  “It must be.” I gripped the metal gun in my hand in preparation of someone lunging out from the darkness. “How many times are you and I going to drag this device through an endless maze of underground tunnels?” I said.

  Finally Vesa actually smiled. Not a nervous smile, just a smile. It seemed like months since she and I had evaded capture from agents under my apartment building. I looked into the bag again and the second light was fully lit.

  “Halfway charged,” I told her.

  “I’m sorry you got pulled into this,” Vesa said as we jogged through the tunnels.

  “It was just a matter of time until something like this happened to me. I’m surprised I lasted as long as I did. If I was going to go back on the run, I’m glad it was you who forced me into it.”

  The black and white lines twisted down the floor. Whitman kept aiding our escape deeper into the base.

  “Freeze!” an agent dressed in black yelled out. He wore a thick black helmet, elbow pads, and kneepads, and stood in front of us, between us and the fusion charging stations. I glanced down at the device. The third light blinked faintly. “Don’t you fucking move,” he ordered. “Drop the gun.”

  I looked at Vesa. She returned my gaze. She pursed her lips and nodded as if to tell me it was okay if we stopped here. It was okay if I dropped my gun. She didn’t expect me to risk my life for this, at least not any more than I already had. I slowly knelt down and placed the gun on the floor.

  “Kick it over to me,” the man ordered, his words muffled by a mask. He was more equipped than the other guards I had seen in the tunnels. They must have dispatched these guards to hunt us down. I wondered if the same caliber of agent came upon Doc and Whitman’s lifeless body in the tunnels. I wondered how many of them Doc had killed before either being killed himself or before he fled down the long tunnel Whitman told him about.

  The armored agent approached me. “Place your hands on your head!” he screamed. I obeyed, and gripped General Moore’s knife in my hand. I spun my fingers around to push the blade out from the casing. I pushed it further into my sleeve, hoping the blade was short enough to be concealed from view. “Two intruders in the east wing,” the man said into his radio. This was the first real and accurate description of our location that had been announced. Even Whitman couldn’t prevent it from getting out. “They may have been heading to the armory,” the man guessed incorrectly. Vesa lowered her head in defeat.

  I saw one of the cameras that had previously been shut down by Whitman blink back to life, turning and pointing at me, and then moving to focus on Vesa. I wondered if I was looking at Whitman or an adversary. It didn’t matter, I supposed. Behind its cage, the red light above our heads blinked and spun. Its pace increased. It spun and spun so quickly that it became a blur. The guard approached me and gripped one of my hands, the one without the knife. The overhead light pulsed and spun, growing brighter until the tunnel glowed red. The guard paused for a brief moment as he pulled my wrist down behind my back. I balled my fist around the knife. The blade stuck out of the bottom of my hand.

  The light flashed in a hypnotic beat faster and faster until the bulb exploded in a red bang. Glass shattered onto the floor and the tunnel was
enveloped in darkness. I plunged the knife deep into the guard’s thigh, twisting the blade ninety degrees before pulling it out of his flesh. He let out a gruff moan. I spun around and used the full weight of my body to drive the bloody blade into the man’s throat. Blood spit out of the wound and sprayed over my face. His moans of pain and surprise were halted as his body grew limp and fell away from the knife. He slumped to the floor, and, even in the new darkness, I saw blood pooling around his neck and masked face.

  The camera that came back to life pointed down the tunnel toward the charging stations and then quickly reverted back to its previous comatose state. Whitman had found one final way to help us. Chatter on the radio indicated more guards were coming. The full force of the base was heading in our direction. “Our systems have been compromised,” one of the voices on the radio said. “Rely only on visual confirmations. Agents are inbound to fusion power stations and armory.”

  At that moment I saw flashlights pierce the darkness surrounding us. I grabbed the gun from the floor and ran with Vesa down the tunnel. The third light on the device was lit. Only one more until a full charge.

  CHAPTER 62

  2075

  BUCKLEY AIR FORCE BASE

  The lights of the guards’ flashlights bounced down the tunnel. Vesa and I ran at full speed to evade the beams of light falling on us. We passed through areas of red as we ran underneath each emergency light that spun on the ceiling. By now the piercing alarm had become commonplace. Our footsteps, and those of the guards behind us, boomed louder than the alarm itself. Up ahead the tunnel forked in two directions. To the left the white line led to the armory, to the right the black line led to the fusion charging stations in another.

  “Right,” I said to Vesa in a short spurt of breath. But just as I spoke the words, my eyes focused down the hall.

  A flood of lights and gun barrels pointed at us blocking our path. The agents shouted a flurry of commands from the tunnel in front of us, and the sounds of the agents behind us grew louder and louder. “Freeze!” they shouted. “Stop or we’ll fire!” But my body was moving forward and I couldn’t stop it. I grabbed Vesa’s hand and shifted slightly to run down the other tunnel that led to the armory. Gunfire erupted in front of us. The agents made good on their promise to shoot. Bullets ricocheted off the walls. Sparks erupted in the darkness. The sound of bullets hitting cement pinged around us, and a sharp pain split down my leg, like a match was ignited inside my flesh.

  The sudden pain caused me to stumble and drop my firearm. The gun spun away into the darkness. Vesa grabbed my shoulders and pulled me to my feet, swinging my arm over her shoulder. We ran down the hall together, and once we were past the fork in the tunnel, and out of their line of sight, the guards stopped shooting. I assumed they didn’t want to harm any of the guards approaching from behind us. Now the two groups of agents merged into one large flood of boots and guns; one group spilled in from the main entrance, and another came from the fusion charging stations. As Vesa propped my body up, I looked into the bag. The fourth light on the device was blinking. “All units to the armory,” I heard an agent order on the radio.

  We reached a dead end. The white line stopped in front of a heavy metal door with the word ‘ARMORY’ stenciled across it. The door had a metal latch. To the right of the door was an electronic pad with biometric readers and a panel with numbers on it. Vesa pulled herself away from me, and I leaned against the wall. I surveyed my wound. The bullet ran across my thigh and opened up the muscle and tissue at the side. It hurt, but by the amount of blood running out of the wound I knew it missed any major arteries. I ripped the outer layer of my uniform and wrapped it around my leg. The pain shot through my body, and I stumbled to the floor.

  “Shit!” Vesa said.

  The guards were only ten meters away. The orders that came across our stolen radio were now duplicates of what I heard from the agents just down the hall. “All agents to the armory,” I heard an agent scream from down the hall, and then the order came across the radio only a split second later. I held myself up and placed all of my weight on my one good leg, blood trickled down my leg and collected in my boot. The pain from the knife wound on my chest was all but gone in exchange for the piercing pain of my gunshot wound.

  The guards’ flashlights rounded a curve in the tunnel, washing Vesa and I with white light. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the sound of gunshots and a barrage of bullets to pierce my body. I gripped Vesa’s hand, and she squeezed mine in return. The air fell still as the guards’ commands blended together into one mess of noise. I thought of what could have been with Vesa had we met under different circumstances. This was where it ended for me. The mystery had been solved. My cycle had ended.

  Now all sound was both muffled and amplified, like the moment in the Golden Dawn’s salt water LSD tank just before I was transported to a different place. All sounds mixed into one, floating around me like the small particles of dust that you see when light shines into an old house. But over the sound of the alarm, over the sound of the horde of screaming guards, over my heart pounding deep inside of me like a kettle drum, I heard a sound I hadn’t heard before, a sound unlike any of the others. It was the sound of the biometric panel next to the armory door beeping. Vesa squeezed my hand even harder, and pulled on my arm. I opened my eyes and turned my head from the lights in front of me to see that the armory door had swung open. Somewhere deep in the security systems of Buckley Air Force Base, Whitman had overcome whatever security measures kept the door locked, and the electronic panel had come to life.

  Vesa pulled me inside the armory just as more bullets sped towards us, spraying against the heavy metal door. The door swung closed behind me with a thud, and the mechanism inside the large door rattled and locked, ensuring that we would be left alone in the armory, at least for now. The panel on the inside of the armory next to the door lit up, and the words ‘security override’ blinked on the screen. I fell onto the floor of the armory. The flap on the messenger bag fell open, and I saw that the fourth and final light of the mind transfer device was lit.

  CHAPTER 63

  5280

  NEW ALCATRAZ

  Ransom pressed hard against his side, pulled one layer of his clothing off, and wrapped it around his body. The pain was like nothing he had felt before; it overshadowed all of his other injuries until they seemed to disappear. His knee, ribs, tongue, jaw, and ear all had no pain. His body prioritized the pain for him. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else was life threatening. He propped himself up with one hand, his other hand holding his shirt against his body. He crawled to the thick metal door and pushed and pulled. It didn’t move. He leaned against it, and drove his shoulder into it. Nothing.

  “Merit!” he yelled and pounded on the door. “Merit! Let me out, you piece of shit!” Even screaming flexed the muscles around his stomach and a sharp pain shot through his entire body. He turned with his back pressed against the cold, heavy door, and surveyed the room.

  It was a shame, he thought to himself, to be here. To die here. It felt strange to die in the same place as his father. It was equally bizarre to retrace his dad’s last steps. To meet the same people that he likely met in his final days. It was as close to his father as Ransom had felt in decades, possibly ever.

  He wondered if there was an eternity. Or even something close to it. He hoped everything created something else. He wished his body, after losing its original form, would somehow contribute to creating a new living thing. That he would live on in the earth. In the plant life. Or as some other smaller life form. That was the only eternity he could imagine. His ancestors had passed on stories of heaven and God, but Ransom’s idea of eternity seemed more tranquil. His idea of eternity at least retained some sense of familiarity. A sense of home. He wondered if his idea of eternity was possible, and if he would be able to keep any of his old memories, of Gray and Aurora. Of his mother and father. He wondered if there was an essence inside of him that could never change no matter what happened to
the rest of his body.

  But that was unlikely in a place as cold and closed off as this. His final resting place would be a locked room inside of an underground vault buried in the middle of a dead wasteland. His remains would not feed into the earth. He would not contribute to the creation of anything. It was then that he knew for sure that this place could never have provided anything good. Not shelter. Not medicine. Not a new beginning. It was only an end. It was only an eternal stillness, a cold trap that lured people to it. The lucky ones died here quickly. The unlucky ones stayed and turned against their brothers.

  Across the room, Ransom spotted a square in the wall. It looked like a metal vent. He crawled to it, wincing with each movement. With one hand still pressed on his wound, he pulled his body along the floor with his other arm. His stomach dragging on the cement floor, he left a trail of blood from the heavy armory door to the vent on the other side of the room. His shirt was soaked through with blood, and his pants started to feel wet and tacky. He gripped the metal square with his hands. It slipped at first because his hands were covered in his own blood. He spun his body around and kicked the metal covering until it dented and broke off the wall.

  Ransom peered inside the opening. He didn’t know where it led, but it was too small to fit into anyways. He brushed his hands into the darkness, and cobwebs tangled around his bloody fingers. He lowered his hands to crawl into the ventilation shaft, and they sunk down into a layer of dust becoming gloved in centuries of cobwebs, dirt, pieces of cement, and blood from his stab wound. The particles puffed up towards his face, and floated around his mouth and nose. Only a short distance inside the shaft, he ran his hands into an object wrapped in cloth.

  He gripped the object and pulled it out of the shaft. He sat with his back flat against the wall and cloth bag on his lap. All his movements were slow. The stab wound made everything hurt. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to move in any direction. It hurt to press on his wound, and it hurt not to press on it.