by Ryan Lohner
Jim went on, “So, I’m actually feeling pretty rested. How about you guys?”
Matt and Jane both agreed. So Matt pushed the button.
* * *
They didn’t talk much in the time it took for Chapman to arrive. What more was there to say? So it came as a relief when the wall expanded a few minutes later. But the man who came in was not Chapman. He had dark hair and gaunt features, and was wearing what looked like the same clothes Chapman’s men had. He blinked in surprise, then said, “Whoever you are, come on! Freedom awaits!”
Chapter Ten
All three were struck silent. Matt thought he’d grown accustomed to how strange their lives had gotten this day, but this still threw him for a loop. “Well, are you coming or not?” the man said.
Jane crossed her arms. “Give us one good reason, because I kind of like our odds staying right here. You can start with who you are.”
The man seemed surprised by that, but quickly recovered, and Matt could swear he rolled his eyes. “Okay, short version, my name’s Bram, and I’m part of a group fighting the people holding you. And if that’s not enough, then I’m sorry, you’ll just have to trust me.”
Matt stepped beside Jane. “As a matter of fact, it isn’t. If we stay here, we can get back home, and everyone’s happy. If we go with you, well, we just heard that that won’t end very well for us. We can’t survive in this place for longer than a week without something called Neserene. Unless, of course, that’s not true?” It had suddenly struck him that there was a possible way out of this.
Bram didn’t miss a beat. “I don’t know how you found that out, but yes, it’s true.” Matt felt his faint hope get crushed, but then the man kept talking. “But don’t worry about that. I know where the stuff is stored here, and we’ll stop there on our way out. So, if you’re coming, no time like the present.” None of them moved, and he groaned. “Look, I don’t know what you’ve been told, but the people who put you in here? They’re not good people. They were probably just going to keep you here until you died. They’ve done it before. So really, we don’t have much time here. Come with me. It’s your only chance.”
There was a pause after this. Then Jim looked at Matt and Jane, and said, “Well, now I’m thinking we go with him. How about you two?”
Jane nodded. “It does seem to be our best chance.”
Matt shook his head. He could understand how tempting the offer was, but it was still more of a chance than he was comfortable with. “Think about this. We don’t know anything about this guy. How do we know he’s telling the truth any more than Chapman?”
Bram turned to stare at him. “Chapman? That’s who brought you in?” He shook his head. “You don’t know how lucky you are. That man has killed several of my friends. He’s completely ruthless.”
That was a surprise, to which Matt could just say, “That’s not how he seemed to me.”
Bram sighed. “Then he was just faking it, trying to get you on his side! A bit cleverer than I would have thought from him, but believe me, the man’s a stone cold murderer.”
Jim looked at Matt again and shrugged. “One’s the person who brought us here in the first place, and is in power. The other’s getting us out of here, and fighting that power. I know who I believe.”
Matt threw up his hands. “Okay, fine. You want to go, you go. Me, I’ll take my chances here.”
Bram shook his head. “I wouldn’t. As much trouble as you’re in right now, it’ll be worse if they find you by yourself. That’ll get you a death from lack of Neserene for sure. However you found out, you must also know there aren’t many worse ways to die.”
Jane raised her hand, like she was in a classroom. “That reminds me of another problem. Chapman told us this room was monitored. And there have to be security cameras or whatever they use in this place around, so how do we not just get caught again after a couple minutes?”
Bram grinned. “That’s the great thing about this place. The transit corridor and surveillance devices don’t play well together, and the effect extends through the whole place. I’m guessing he just told you that as a fib so you’d stay put.”
Matt’s gaze flicked between all three of the others, and he held his shaking hands to his head. Maybe he could have still held firm on his own, but with both Jane and Jim wanting to go, he didn’t see that he had much choice. “All right. If we’re doing this, let’s just do it. But if this goes wrong, I’m definitely going to say I told you so.”
Jim and Jane said, “Deal,” simultaneously. Then Jane looked disgusted at herself for being on the same wavelength as Jim. Matt would have laughed, except he’d been too scared for too long.
Bram nodded. “Good. Glad that’s cleared up. So, let’s get moving!”
* * *
As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Jim had been thrown off his game by the argument. He’d been so sure this was the right thing to do, but now, even as he followed Bram back through the twisting halls, he was questioning it. Why did Matt have to mess with his head so much?
Bram looked around a corner and quickly moved back. “There are two of them out there.” He turned to Jim and said, “You’re the one who looks the toughest. Had any training?”
Jim shrugged. “I’m a football player. I can run and tackle people.”
Bram looked disappointed and turned to Matt and Jane. “How about either of you? Anything?”
They both just looked at him blankly and his disappointed look was upgraded to crestfallen. “So what you’re telling me is, none of you are any help at all. So I might as well not even have come here for all the good it’ll do us to get you out.”
Jim tried to not be offended and failed. “Well, we’ll certainly be a lot better off.”
“Oh, excuse me if that’s not much comfort at the moment. You have any idea how big a risk this is? No, of course you don’t. You’re not even from this universe. Well, let me tell you something. If we get caught, you’ll all get off easy compared to what’ll happen to me. The stories I’ve heard … well, I’ll hold off on those in case you ever want to be able to sleep again.”
Matt couldn’t meet the man’s eyes anymore. “So, that’s it, then? We just go back to our room, and you go back to wherever?”
Bram gave a harsh laugh. “Oh, not even close. You’re out, and we can’t take the chance that they haven’t noticed by now. No, we’re in this together until whatever happens, happens. Thanks a lot for that.”
This got Jane into the conversation, and Jim could tell she was putting a lot of energy toward tempering her volume. “Hey look, we didn’t ask for any of this. We were just trying to find our friend. We didn’t even know this place existed.”
Bram seemed like he was about to say something nasty back, but then stopped himself. “All right, enough. This isn’t getting us anywhere.” He turned back to Jim. “Tackling, huh?” At Jim’s nod, he continued. “So, we work with what we have. I took us through some back passages, not a way many people come, so they’re facing away from us. We could sneak past them. Trouble is, they’re between us and the Neserene. I don’t suppose any of you would like to take the risk and hope we find some later?” They all just stared at him. “Of course. Okay, so you … what’s your name?”
“Jim.”
“You and I will go running at them together. They’re close enough that I’m pretty sure we can get there before they can turn around. I’ll take the one on the right, you’re on the left. Just do whatever it is you do, and maybe it’ll be surprising enough he won’t know how to react, and by then I may have finished with mine and I can help you.” All three of them just stared at him again, and he sighed. “I know, it’s not a great plan. But I don’t hear any of you coming up with anything, so it’s our best shot. Hey, maybe we can just get shot down. It’ll be better than some of our other options.” Still nothing greeted this, so he shrugged and simply gestured for Jim to come with him.
As they turned the corner and the two guards came into view, Jim fel
t himself go completely numb in body and soul. There was a sense of total unreality to what he was doing, probably the shock of the situation catching up with him at last. Whatever is was, he was grateful for it, as he really didn’t want to be thinking about what he was about to do. At another hand signal, he and Bram began running.
Jim tried to keep himself as much in his usual football mindset as possible. And it worked: the man he was headed for quickly heard them coming, but he seemed to move into slow motion as he turned and went for his weapon, just like what typically happened on the field when Jim was in the zone. Before he could pull it out fully, Jim’s shoulder was colliding with his stomach, and they spilled onto the floor together. It was the same move he’d done so many times in a game, and he was a natural at it by now. His opponent was stunned, but not for long, and quickly began groping for his weapon again, another of those odd things with the three tubes. This was where Jim’s confidence came to an end; players who were tackled tended to just lie there, unless they were angry enough to want to court a penalty. He desperately grabbed the man’s arm with both hands, but that left the other arm free, and the result was a punch to the jaw that knocked Jim to the side, rolling onto his back.
The man didn’t even bother to get up as his angry eyes focused on Jim’s face, and that strange gun turned straight toward him. The punch had been expertly aimed, and Jim was in too much pain to do anything about it. But it turned out he didn’t have to; a foot came flying past his vision and kicked the gun away. Jim scuttled backwards and saw that Bram had come to his rescue after finishing with his own man, just as he had promised. The guard shot his leg out at Bram’s knees, but he simply jumped over it and bent his knees as he landed, driving his fist down into the man’s face in a blow that looked even harder than the one Jim had suffered. This proved to be enough, as the man’s head slammed into the floor and he didn’t move again.
Bram offered his hand. “Not quite perfect, but I’ll be honest, it was better than I was expecting.” Jim took it gratefully and stood up. Now that the fight was over, all the emotion that had bled out of him was rushing back and he had to lean against the wall.
Bram called, “It’s okay, come on!”
Matt and Jane emerged, mouths agape. “So you really were able to take care of it, huh, Jim?” said Matt.
Jim tried to say that Bram was entirely the one to thank, but he couldn’t force any words past his quivering lips. He hoped this wouldn’t last long. For his part, Bram didn’t seem to care who got the credit, and bent down to grab the unconscious man’s hand. He pressed two of the fingers to his own belt buckle, and before Jim could ask the point of it, his clothes puffed out slightly. And though it was hard to see much difference in the texture, they looked much more like armor now, and Jim was willing to bet that was exactly what they’d become.
The three all just stared for a second, then Jim said, “Okay, I don’t mind looking stupid right now. What just happened?”
Bram looked surprised, but then remembered and said, “Right, you’re not from around here. Hope you don’t mind, but it’s going to be a bit of a learning experience for me, finding out just what you’ll be familiar with here and what you won’t. Anyway, it’s a biometric polymer. Once someone’s fingerprints are in the system, they can activate any one of these. One of our best days was when we got our hands on a few. It’s kind of a pain having to wait for a situation like this before it can do any good, but it’s better than what we had before. Sometimes we actually get away unscathed now.” He paused in some kind of deep thought, then snapped out of it and said, “Well, let’s keep going.”
As he began leading them further on, Matt asked, “So, they know you have those things, right?”
“Very likely.”
“So why are they still set up so anyone can use them? I mean, I’m no expert, but I think it would make more sense for everyone to have their own set only they could use.”
Bram gave a small smile. “Smart, kid. We’ve wondered that ourselves. Our best guess is it would just be too much trouble. The general would rather have the most men possible able to take some hits at any time, and he’s not the type to be worried about the few soldiers who would pay the price thanks to us being able to take the same hits.”
Jane cut in with, “Chapman said something about ‘the general’ too. Who is he?”
Bram sighed. “You do realize we’re still in a very dangerous situation, right? I don’t really have time to give you a history lesson. Okay, short version again. General Edmund Spencer is a guy you really, really do not want to get on the bad side of. And as far as we can tell, that’s the only side he has.”
Jim had several other questions. However, as often as he might be accused of not being very bright, probably quite accurately, he knew this would be a good time to shut up and do as he was told. So he just kept walking, hoping there would be a better time to ask.
Then it appeared that time might not come after all as they rounded a corner into a four-way junction to come face to face with five soldiers, who wasted no time raising their weapons.
Chapter Eleven
There was no time to think, only to react. So Matt’s decision to head back the way they had just come wasn’t based on anything but the desire to get out of the way of whatever would come out of those weapons (the thought oddly struck him in the moment that he had yet to see what that was) as quickly as possible. Luckily, Bram came with him, and quickly hustled him around the first two intersections they came across, right and then left. Then he paused, waiting just out of sight from the way they had come. No one came after them.
“Good,” Bram said. “Always a gamble, hoping you’ll make them split up enough that there won’t be enough people to cover every route, but when it works, there’s no arguing.” Looking at Matt, he said, “Unfortunately, my guess is your friends didn’t have the same idea. Wherever they went, odds are they’ve got at least one person still after them.”
That was the last thing Matt wanted to hear. “Can’t we do anything to help them?”
Bram shook his head. “I’m sorry. If they haven’t been caught yet, there’s a ton of places they could be. This place is like a maze, to keep the energy from the corridor from building up too much, but it also does quite nicely to keep people like me from finding our way around. I’ve spent time studying it, but those two …” he trailed off, and the hopelessness of finding Jim and Jane, even without running into more soldiers, sank into Matt’s head. He slumped to the floor, suddenly exhausted again.
* * *
Jane and Jim, having gone the opposite way as Matt and Bram, didn’t get far before they heard, “Freeze!” The hallway they were now in stretched ahead for some ways, so their only choice was to obey. They turned around, and Jane was surprised to notice something she hadn’t had time to see in that first brief confrontation before she started running: the freckled face of Reeves.
He was pointing one of those strange guns at them. “You’re keeping bad company lately,” he said as he approached them. “That man has been quite a thorn in our sides, wrecking some promising work and taking down several good men in the process. Enough that everyone else I was just with went after him. I was the low man in the group, so I got stuck going after you two instead.” He gave a slight smile. “But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.”
Jane fought as hard as she could to stand her ground. “What do you mean?”
Reeves chuckled. “I think you have a pretty good idea.”
Jim stepped in front of her. “I think you’re forgetting I’m here, too. So whatever you have in mind—”
He was abruptly cut off by a shot from Reeves’ gun. Jane screamed and looked at Reeves in horror. But even as Jim fell to the floor, he tried to get back up, and made some progress before his arms started wind milling and he sank back down again, his eyes continuing to move.
Reeves pointed to his gun, where the frontmost cylinder had depressed into the gun’s body and was now rising. “These things
are pretty handy. A lot of times, you don’t want to kill people. Or even hurt them too badly, especially with someone like Chapman in charge. Oh, he’s a great leader, but he’s also a bit of a softie for my taste.” To Jim he said, “So, you’ll make a full recovery. You’ll just be slowed down a little for a while. And really, all I want is a kiss, and I’ll leave you alone. That’s a pretty cheap price, isn’t it? Look, I’ll even do this.” He touched his thumb to the right side of his belt, and his armor deflated to normal clothes. “Much less threatening, if that’s what you were worried about. I’ve known some girls to go nuts for the uniform, but if it’s not your thing, I’m easy.”
Jim tried to get up again and fell, but this time managed to keep a sitting position. Jane looked back at Reeves. “Maybe some girls would go for that. But I’ve never been called cheap, and I don’t mean to start now.” Where had that come from? In all her romantic fantasies that started out this way, she had been rescued by some big, strapping man, and she never thought of herself telling the jerk off personally. But given the options, and at the thought she flicked another quick glance at Jim on the floor, she supposed it was the best she could do.
Reeves stepped closer. “Well, then maybe you could do with a shot of this.” He looked again and frowned. “Unfortunately, the low setting is still not quite back up to another shot. Of course, there’s the moderate setting.” He stepped forward again, and was now just inches in front of her. Jane dropped her gaze, unable to look him in the eyes any longer. However, part of her new viewpoint included his left hip, where there was a large knife. Nothing futuristic this time, just a standard hunting knife that could get the job done like one from her own world. None of the other soldiers she’d seen had been wearing one: she was quite sure of that. But whatever the reason he had it, she suddenly had a chance.
As quickly as she could, Jane grabbed the knife and pulled it out. Her success was another surprise, but unfortunately that was all she was able to do before Reeves reacted. He pinned her to the wall, her arms stuck above her head, the knife still in her hand but useless. He then squeezed her wrist, to which she let go before the pain got very strong. She knew where that was going and figured she didn’t have a chance anyway, so she might as well spare herself the discomfort. Reeves pressed his face close and tsked. “A very nice try, I have to admit. But unfortunately, not good enough.”