Sidor went down with a groan.
“When I was on the street administering justice as a New Force Order Policeman, I didn’t have the luxury of playing with sticks,” Dain said, standing over the downed trainer. “If you’re thinking to send these men out there with ideas that all they have to do is hold up a badge and the bad guys meekly allow themselves to be captured, you’re outright lying to their faces. That’ll get them killed. You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. This world doesn’t have time to play the gentleman. And Mars will eat you up and spit you out if you’re not careful.”
He tossed the shinai sword at Sidor’s feet and turned to leave. He’d had enough training for the day. Only then did he notice everyone staring at him like he was some sort of crazy person. They gave him a wide berth as he stomped out of the gym.
****
That night, when the sleep cycle was half through, Dain made his way out of his room, bypassing the security lock, and heading toward the main processors. The transport wasn’t the ideal ship to try to hack into Sector, but whatever secrets he could find had to be worth something. He couldn’t sleep at night thinking about how he’d been forced to leave Ben.
Entering the cargo storage facility, he accessed the ship’s main computer, bypassing through the first set of firewalls and entering the passcodes he’d discovered earlier in a previous hack to get to the files buried in a different folder. Minutes ticked by as he read through boring report after report, not really caring about the ship’s day to day procedures, trying to dig deeper into Sector’s secrets. Accessing medical records, he came across the name Robinson, linked to reproductive experiments, although the details weren’t readily available through the transport’s database. There were transmissions sent to Robinson, coded messages that he couldn’t understand.
Knowing he would have to wait until he got to Mars left him with impotent anger, because the longer he took to find answers, the longer it kept him from Ben.
Making his way back to his room, the swishing open of a door had him ducking into the shadows of a doorway. He hoped the darkness hid him from view because he wasn’t ready to come up with an excuse of why he was out of his room.
A guard walked by, completely oblivious to his presence. As soon as he turned a corridor, Dain hurried back to his room and opened the door. He stepped inside, secured the lock once more and breathed a little easier.
As he lay down on his uncomfortable cot, he thought of Ben and wished he was back home. He’d joined NFOP because he believed in truth and justice. Although he’d had no trouble sentencing those proved guilty, everything had changed the day he’d discovered how Sector manipulated the data needed to make a proper judgment. He’d been a pawn in their rise of power. Sector had used him, had used the system, to eliminate any threat to their dominion.
So, he had walked away with the demons clawing at his guilty conscience, and it had almost driven him mad. But then he’d met Ben, and it was truly amazing how one man could chase away the darkness.
Ben had brought him into the light.
It was time Sector was dismantled.
Chapter Eight
Dear Ben. These messages are going to be spaced far between because Sector doesn’t trust me, so anytime they come through the official GIN channel they probably won’t be my own words. I love you. I dream of you every night. Never forget that I’m working to bring down Sector so we can be reunited once more.
****
Ben shifted in his seat, trying to get comfortable. The ache in his lower back had grown steadily for a few days, and no amount of twisting this way and that seemed to alleviate the spasm. He sat up straight and stretched, hoping that would help. Sometimes he spent too much time bent over fixing the regulators on the breathing apparatuses. He didn’t remember pulling a muscle, but he couldn’t think of what else he’d done to cause the spasms racing through his intestines.
Perhaps he needed to see Doctor Trask. Maybe there was something wrong with the nanotech. Or maybe he was lonely and had nothing else to focus his attention on but every ache in pain in his body. Dain had been gone almost a month, with Nate and Ranger a little longer than that. As noisy and cluttered their small apartment had been before, now he hated how his footsteps echoed on the tile floor.
Rising, he put away his tools and headed toward his supervisor’s office. Knocking, he waited until he was told to enter.
“Yeah, Ben, what’s up?” the supervisor asked.
“I think I need to go see my doctor,” Ben said, reaching behind him to try to massage his lower back. “I’ve had a pulled muscle or something for too long now.”
“Sure. You have your own doctor, or would you like the name of mine?”
Ben waved him off. “I have one. Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Take care.”
Ben left work, making his way to the train station to take him downtown, where he got off at Sector’s headquarters. As he walked through the front entrance and over to the reception area, the young man behind the desk looked him up and down with a touch of censure.
“Workers are supposed to enter through the service elevator,” he said.
“I don’t work here,” Ben said patiently. “I need to see Doctor Trask. I was here a few weeks ago getting a procedure, and I’m experiencing some discomfort.”
“You had a procedure? Here?”
“Yes.”
“I see,” the man said. “Well, have a seat and I’ll page Doctor Trask for you.”
The man turned away, and Ben clearly had no other recourse except to sit and wait. He knew the receptionist didn’t believe him, but Ben couldn’t really blame him. He was still dressed in his worker’s clothes, and a cheap breathing apparatus hung at his side, not like the fancy ones the rich could afford.
As he waited, a man walked by, and something caught Ben’s attention. He looked again and realized he’d seen the man before. A few weeks ago, he had bumped into him—the guy with the angry eyes—on his way out of the building. This time, the man wasn’t dressed in matching broadcloth like his own, but with the silkier material that the upper class used. Unease trickled down Ben’s back, and without thinking too hard about the consequences, he rose and followed the man.
As the man got onto the train platform, he turned around. Not to look at Ben but to look at the building, but Ben stepped in front of his line of vision. Instantly, recognition swamped the man’s face, since they had gotten a good look at each other all those days ago, but just as Ben stepped closer to him, a loud explosion ripped through the area. The blast blew out nearby windows, and the repercussion threw Ben forward, into the man and they both tumbled to the ground. For an infinitesimal moment, everything seemed to still. The air, the seconds—it all ground to a halt in a warped sense of suspended time. Then all of a sudden, an explosion of chaos erupted as the speed button was hit and the world descended into pandemonium. People fell from shock into horrified witnesses in an instant. The man below Ben began to try to wiggle free, and he almost managed to escape, but Ben grabbed hold of his pants’ leg.
No, Ben thought. You aren’t going to get away!
The man looked frustratingly down at him, but instead of trying to pull free, he reached down, grabbed Ben’s arm, and pulled him along. Ben stumbled to his feet, entangled his fingers in the man’s shirt, and when he couldn’t shake him loose, led them both away from the horrific scene.
He took one last look and saw the entrance had been demolished and windows blown out. The building itself hadn’t been harmed, only the means to get in and out. In a daze, he stumbled along after the stranger, away from the sirens, which raced toward the turmoil. In and out of alleys, down sidewalks, and through questionable neighborhoods, the stranger finally stopped in front of a nondescript looking building. The thing should really be condemned, but much to his surprise, once they passed the threshold, they entered a contained atmosphere, and the man yanked his breather off.
“Let go of me!” he muttered. “I’ve s
een you before. Sticking out like a sore thumb in Sector’s headquarters. Who the hell are you?”
Cautiously, Ben removed his own respirator. “You just killed a lot people. I wasn’t about to let you get away.”
“If anyone happened to die then they deserved it,” the man said bitterly. “They were nothing but Sector drones and sycophants.”
“They were people.”
“They were murderers!” the man roared. He took a step toward Ben. “Are you one of them?”
“Me? I was there to see a doctor.”
“Any Sector doctor is nothing but a tool. They kill people.”
“You just killed people!” Ben pointed at him. “You’re crazy.”
He turned to leave, wanting to get far away from the lunatic bomber and report him to the NFOP, but the man grabbed his arm hard enough to make him wince.
“I can’t let you leave,” the stranger said.
“Or you’ll do what? Kill me like you killed those other people?” Ben pulled his arm from the stranger’s strong hand and glared at him, trying not to wince from the area that throbbed. “I’m an ordinary worker, living with my husband in the northern sector. I have a shitty apartment and an even shittier commute to work, and all I was doing was going to Sector to see a doctor. I could be dead now! Like those other people!”
The man’s head tilted. “Who are you?”
“My name is Ben Stockton. Who’re you?”
“Stockton?” The man blinked. “Are you related to Nate Stockton?”
Hearing his cousin’s name shocked him. “How do you know Nate?”
But the man only became more frenetic. He stepped in front of Ben and held up his hands, halting the escape path. “You have to come with me.”
“You’re fucking stupid if you think I’m going anywhere with you,” Ben said. “You just murdered people, and the last thing I’m going to do is follow you.”
“I hate to tell you this, but you’ve already followed me,” the man said dryly. “My name is Victor. I’m working with a group that means to take down Sector. And I know about your cousin Nate. His file is one we procured when we hacked into their secured files.”
Ben shook his head, clearly confused. “What are you talking about? What secured files? Take them down? Why? They’re the leaders of—”
“Please don’t say the world.” Victor ran his hand through his hair. “Listen, Sector is responsible for the disappearance of many women, not to mention crimes against humanity with their unsanctioned experiments. The resistance started with a man named Tarak Dev when they dragged his wife away to use her as a brood mare. He went to find her on Mars and now is stuck there because he’s a wanted man, so if me blowing up the in and out door managed to halt their nasty little operation, even for a moment, then so be it.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but what I do know is that you just enacted a plot of terrorism. I can’t sit back and let you get away with that.”
Victor took a step closer to Ben, his hands closing to form fists. “Is that right? Well, if you believe that I’ve killed innocent people then I guess one more isn’t going to matter.”
Ben took a step back, realizing the implication of Victor’s threat.
“Stop it, Victor,” a voice called out from the shadows. A woman walked forward, with short, dark hair peppered with grey strands. “Why did you disobey me? The sonic grenade was experimental! I told you if we used it, it would be a costly endeavor. More people will side with Sector instead of us.”
Ben looked back and forth between Victor and the woman, and silently wondered if they would notice if he snuck away. He didn’t want to be surrounded by crazy domestic terrorists now that he was the only witness to their identities.
“It had to be tested,” Vic said calmly. “We had to know if it would work.”
“You risked us all! It was selfish, Vic.”
“It was needed.”
The woman let out a frustrated breath before she turned to him. “I’m sorry we had to meet like this, Mister Stockton. We’ve been monitoring Sector’s dealings for quite a while now, and it had been my intent to contact you,” she said. “I’m Doctor Michelina Robinson. We couldn’t help your cousin Nate, but I’m glad to say we can help you.”
Confused, Ben shook his head. “You must have the wrong people. My cousin is fine. He’s living the highlife with his husband Ranger on Mars, enjoying a work-free life—”
“Your cousin was stolen as part of Sector’s greed and bid for omnipotent power,” Doctor Robinson said softly. “I know because my ex-husband is leading the experimentation on Mars at this very moment. Your cousin Nate was patient zero.”
“But … but I have emails, telling me all about his wonderful life on Mars,” Ben said, shaking his head. But even as he said the words, he remembered the last transmission he got from Dain, and doubt ebbed into his beliefs. He thought about all the descriptions Nate had sent him in his emails. The parties he attended. The friends he had made. No, it had to be real. It couldn’t all be made up. Could it? “Surely you’ve got this all wrong.”
“Your cousin never sent those emails,” Doctor Robinson explained. “It’s a cover up, Ben. All of it is. I wasn’t expecting Victor to find you, but I’m glad he has. If you want the truth, then follow me.”
He didn’t know if he could trust this woman because they clearly were some part of some terrorist organization. Perhaps a cult who had brainwashed all the members into thinking Sector were the bad guys. But a small wiggle of doubt wormed its way into his thoughts. What if they were telling the truth?
Dain had asked him to try find out information on Sector’s dirty Lottery game. Could these people be the link he needed to delve deeper into the organization?
“What proof do you have?” he asked Doctor Robinson.
She crooked her finger to follow before leading him further into the abandoned building.
Chapter Nine
Doctor Robinson led him to a door that opened to a set of basement stairs, and Ben noticed that they were half missing. He grabbed the doctor’s arm, preventing her from hurting herself by falling, but she gave him an amused smile.
“Deactivate area three.”
“Foreign biorhythms detected,” said an even-tempered computer voice.
“Override. Authorization Robinson two-two-alpha.”
All of a sudden not only did the stairs appear, but the entire room transformed. The dilapidated, falling down building changed into a white, sterile room.
“What is this place?” he asked, shocked at what he was looking at now.
“This entire house is glamored,” she explained. “Only three people have the authorization to override the security system.”
“You and him?” Ben asked, pointing at Victor.
“No, me, another scientist named Buffy Josson, and Tarak Dev,” she replied.
“And what would’ve happened if you hadn’t overridden the computer?”
“Let’s just say the security system would’ve made it impossible for you to leave this room,” she said. “You see, every person has their own unique set of biorhythms, from your smell to the way your brain activity fluctuates. It’s one way to home in on a specific target and eliminate them.”
A chill went down Ben’s spine. “I see. That’s … interesting.”
“Come,” she said. “I’ll explain more while we walk to the central computer hub.”
“Doctor Robinson,” Victor said, taking a closer step. “Do you think it’s wise to take him there?”
“His cousin is wrapped up in this as an unwilling experiment,” Doctor Robinson said, matter-of-factly. “Too many people are disappearing, as you well know. The only way we defeat evil is with knowledge.”
Doctor Robinson gave a sad smile at Ben before heading down the newly formed stairs. Victor gestured with an after you hand movement to Ben. Wondering what the hell he was getting into, he trailed after the doctor with a bit of trepidation.
As the d
octor led him downstairs, lights came on at their movement like something out of a horror movie he saw once upon a time.
“Doctor Josson is on the other end of this tunnel, and only she can grant us access into the hub,” Doctor Robinson explained. “It was one way to guarantee the safety of our resistance.”
“Resistance?” Ben asked.
“Yes. There is a growing number of us that have determined that absolute power has corrupted Sector. Or, at least, this branch of Sector. As a whole, the community is still focused on truth and prosperity for the human race, but it’s rotting from the inside. A few scientists have commandeered Sector, and those parts need to be carved out and eliminated.”
Her explanation left him wondering how he ended up entangled in the mess. “So, you kill people to get back at Sector for … what? Killing people? Sounds a little hypocritical.”
“We didn’t kill anyone, Mister Stockton,” she assured him.
“You didn’t see that building.”
“Let me prove it to you.”
A light clicked on at the end of the tunnel, illuminating a door. Doctor Robinson placed her hand on the pad then punched in a passcode. They waited for a minute before the door slid open, revealing a white brightly lit hallway. Another woman stood there with some type of blaster gun in her hand, but as soon as she saw Doctor Robinson she relaxed her tense stance.
“Who’s he?” the new woman asked.
“Ben Stockton, cousin of Nathaniel Stockton,” Doctor Robinson replied. “Ben, this is Doctor Buffy Josson, lead scientist on our weapons development.”
Doctor Josson gave him a once over. “I take you felt he was safe enough to come here.”
“Don’t judge my opinions, Buffy,” Doctor Robinson said, moving past her.
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