Terradox Quadrilogy

by Craig A. Falconer

  While Viola steadied her voice to speak, everyone else gathered around Bradley to watch via the live video feed he had just pulled up. Although this was less informative than the previously displayed map in a data-driven sense, the expressions of helplessness and fear on the trapped individuals’ faces added a whole new dimension. None of them had heard from the outside since Robert first informed them of a “temporary and cautionary lockdown”, part of which involved a block on their wristbands’ incoming and outgoing communications ability. That decision hadn’t been taken lightly, and had only been taken at all on the basis that he wanted to avoid any panic on either side of the BMC’s barriers and to manage the way the situation was relayed rather than to let the story come out of its own accord. His idea had largely worked, since as it stood the Arkadian population at large didn’t know that anything was majorly wrong. Questions were being asked as to why no one in the BMC was reachable or trackable, but the fact that an infrastructure stress-test had been scheduled for the day explained this away in the minds of most Arkadians, who readily and automatically assumed it was all part of the test.

  Peter stood at Viola’s side and told her that she could do it and had done countless more difficult things in the past. His words didn’t apply any more pressure and did in fact serve their desired purpose, increasing her confidence.

  “Hi, everyone… this is Viola,” she said, swallowing away any last remaining doubts.

  The children whose faces were visible on the video feed all smiled instinctively at the welcome presence of a voice they knew so well. The adults, many of them those children’s parents, were clearly more cautious and hesitant to assume that any good news was coming.

  “We’ve identified the problem that popped up earlier, and we’re ready to start getting you out of there. For this to work smoothly, all we need is for everyone to pay attention to their wristbands and follow the personalised directions that come your way. There is logic behind where you’ll all be asked to stand, and the logic is to make sure we can get you all to safety as quickly and as efficiently as possible. I’m separated from Katie right now — and darling, we’re coming — and because of the way this is going to work, some of you might be separated from your friends or family for a very short time. It has to be this way, and you’re all going to get out of there before long. How long ‘before long’ actually is will depend partly on how closely you can all follow these instructions, okay? So please, do what your wristbands say. Whoever you can see now, you’ll still be able to see. But we will be placing temporary romotech barriers across areas of each room to divide you into the groups we need you in. There’s no time to explain everything right now but everyone is getting out of there, and I’ll see you all soon. Peter and I are coming to get you, personally, and this is all going to be over soon. Stay strong.”

  “Perfect,” Robert said, apparently glad rather than merely indifferent that Viola had gone off-script to add conversational and repetitive touches at certain stages of the announcement.

  Bradley was already at work sending out messages directly to countless wristbands with instructions on where people should stand. At Romesh’s request he also asked people to stay several feet apart from each other, stressing that this applied to parents and their children as much as it did to everyone else.

  Robert watched Romesh’s wall map like a hawk and began to place microspheric romotech barriers between the newly emergent groups, further protecting those currently represented by green dots and perhaps further damning those represented by red.

  Minutes later, everyone inside the BMC had followed the personalised directions on their wristbands and made their way to the specified area of the room they were already in, further compartmentalising the giant live map. It was an odd thing to see: the dots in the rooms generally got redder as they got further from the BMC’s centre and closer to ground zero, but within each other zone there were concentrations of each colour in varying proportions.

  While Katie Ospanov, Patch Hawthorne, Vijay Kohli and most other children were in the safest sector of the BMC, even their central room contained several orange dots. No one in their room was red, at least, but everyone understood that the data readings weren’t static. With this in mind, Romesh and Robert worked to ensure that anyone who reached a ‘symptomatic’ score worthy of a red dot would be automatically isolated by the creation of new barriers within the existing divisions. This additional last-ditch safeguard to protect others was why everyone in the BMC had been asked to stay at least a few feet apart — just enough for a barrier to be automatically placed between them should the need arise.

  The door of the Shipyard’s communications office swung open fiercely, startling everyone until their surprise turned to relief that Nisha was here and looked like she meant business.

  “Let’s do this,” she said.

  Relief faded from Robert Harrington as it sunk in that Viola really was about to voluntarily enter the BMC. He attempted to look calm for her sake and wished her well, along with the equally brave and arguably foolhardy Nisha and Peter.

  Romesh told Nisha that he would see her soon and didn’t expect the necessary post-rescue quarantine period to be too long, based on what he’d heard from the teams in Botany and Analytics. More information on the mutated plants responsible for the ongoing chaos was coming in all the time, and as it did Robert began calling upon his Habitat Management experience to gradually amend conditions within the worst-hit sectors in an attempt to eliminate the toxin or at least weaken its effects.

  Romesh’s experience with his ill-fated Nancy project assisted in this endeavour, which both men had been discussing intently prior to Nisha’s arrival. The previously mooted option of starving the toxin of oxygen no longer seemed as inherently dangerous to the people in the sectors in question as it had at the time, following assurance from some leading Arkadian botanists that dropping oxygen levels to the borderline of human safety could prove sufficient due to what they could gather about the plants’ unusual mutations. As had been made only too obvious during the rescue mission Peter and Viola carried out along with Holly inside Terradox’s Isolation Kompound, however, the pace of change to the oxygen levels an individual was exposed to played a part almost as important as the raw percentage of atmospheric oxygen, and for this reason Robert wasn’t sure such an approach would work. He hoped that slowly reducing the atmospheric oxygen in ground zero in particular could at least arrest the worsening of the health of those trapped within that sector by weakening the toxin, but he feared that going at a pace safe enough to avoid hypoxia-like symptoms would be too slow to prevent those in question from succumbing to their existing symptoms. Time was ticking, and rescue from above certainly appeared to be everyone’s best option.

  “Keep an eye on things,” Peter said, directly to Robert. “This is a team effort.”

  Robert shook his hand. “You can do it,” he said.

  “We’re all going to do it,” Peter said, holding Robert’s eyes. “I know this isn’t easy for you. I have Katie in there, but you have Katie in there and Bo somewhere out in space with Chase. You’re handling this better than me or Chase could, and I mean that.”

  Robert nodded. He liked Peter, and almost always had. Their arguments were rare and seldom serious, with only the most recent stress-induced bust-up ever having threatened to boil over. That all seemed beyond trivial now, and had been utterly forgotten.

  As the door swung closed behind the trio of departing rescuers and they walked towards one of the Shipyard’s waiting TE-900’s, Nisha had one final question: “Does Holly know we’re doing this?”

  “No,” Viola said, “but if she was here, she’d be coming with us.”

  thirty-one

  There was more to the rescue plan than simply showing up at the BMC and hoping it all worked out, with some of the final details of the extremely time-sensitive mission clarified only during the trio’s flight.

  Katie and Vijay, confined together, would be in the initial b
atch of evacuees. They quite simply had to be, and anyone who disagreed was unlikely to make their views known in Peter’s presence. In any case it was almost certain that the youngest members of the Ospanov and Kohli families, respectively, would have been in the first evacuation group even if they weren’t who they were. Confined in the most central sector of the BMC and both exhibiting relatively few signs of symptoms, they were among the lowest-risk and theoretically healthiest individuals awaiting rescue. Due to a short-term lack of certainty about the severity of the toxin once it took hold, it had been decided that the priority would be removing those who were yet to display evident symptoms.

  As Peter stepped into the TE-900, he kept to himself his harrowing memories of filling a similar TE-500 vehicle with the corpses of slain security guards on Terradox during David Boyce’s bloody coup attempt. There would be no repeat of those scenes today — Peter would see to that.

  Nisha followed a direct route to the BMC, flying at sufficient altitude to avoid any microspheric barriers. Robert and Romesh stayed in touch during the relatively short duration of the flight, breaking the slightly unsettling news that a considerable number of individuals within the BMC had seemingly become more symptomatic. No one was dead — at least there was that — and Robert happily reported that the already seriously affected individuals within ground zero had not gotten any worse.

  “I’m going down first in case there’s a problem,” Peter announced as the TE-900 neared its destination. “And V, I’m not suggesting that; I’m telling you that’s how it is.”

  Viola didn’t argue.

  Right on cue, Robert temporarily weakened the upper part of the romotech barrier which surrounded the BMC’s central sector, allowing the TE-900 to effortlessly descend and touch down on the roof.

  Perhaps for the best, the trio had come in too high to see the dead canaries outside the BMC’s main entrance.

  In physical terms, Peter expected his entry to be the most challenging part of the mission. There was no real access point over this particular sector, necessitating a forced entry through a skylight. His landing wouldn’t be comfortable but Peter didn’t expect it to be truly difficult, and if this proved to be the hardest thing he had to deal with over the next few hours he would be a happy man indeed.

  “Remember to bend your knees,” Viola said, her final words as Peter gazed out of the stationary vehicle’s window towards the skylight.

  “Remember to wait until I raise a ladder and come down on that instead of jumping down after me,” he replied with a chuckle. “But don’t worry about me, I know how to land.”

  With the area directly below the skylight cleared by Robert’s careful intra-sector zoning, Peter took it upon himself to smash his way in. This part wasn’t difficult — the skylight hadn’t had to be reinforced for any security or insulation-related purposes — and the excited cheers that followed the sound of smashing glass filled his heart.

  He was almost there.

  It looked like more of a drop than he’d expected, a good fifteen feet, but there was no going back now. And Peter hadn’t been lying when he said he knew how to land, so he thought little of the drop until he felt his left ankle buckle on impact.

  “Fuck!” he yelled. “Oh, shit!”

  No one was disturbed by the language, but the fall hadn’t been pretty. Peter grimaced and pushed himself to his feet, scanning the room until he saw her. At that point, the pain receded for a beautiful moment as Katie came into his view.

  “The barrier surrounding Sector 1 Group 1 has been lifted,” Romesh Kohli’s voice relayed through the speakers.

  “Daddy!” Katie squealed with excitement, unaware that his ankle was badly sprained given that his expression appeared so suddenly serene. She ran towards him, his smile growing with each of her giddy steps.

  But then, a new pain hit Peter. It wasn’t physical — it was worse.

  This was the pain of helplessness… of sudden and total helplessness.

  For as his daughter reached a distance of barely ten feet from him, she collapsed backwards; crying loud and hard having collided with an invisible barrier.

  Patch Hawthorne and Vijay Kohli, as well as everyone else from Group 1, continued well beyond the point where Katie had stopped. She rose to her feet, holding her sore nose and still crying, but couldn’t get past the barrier. The adults from her group surrounded her, quickly marking the extent of the small chamber-like barrier.

  “Romesh, talk to me!” Peter yelled, knowing everyone in the Shipyard’s communications office would hear him.

  “It’s an automatic barrier,” Romesh said, slowly forcing out the words. “Peter… it’s the symptoms. She just turned red.”

  thirty-two

  “Override it!” Peter yelled. “Robert, Romesh… override it!”

  Before a reply came, he heard Viola’s voice: “Someone get me the ladder!”

  Kayla Hawthorne, who had taken Katie to the BMC along with her own son Patch, hurried to the extendable ladder and passed it up so Viola could lean it against the side of the broken sidelight. With others supporting it from below, Viola rushed down the ladder and towards her now truly trapped daughter.

  “Everyone get back,” she said. “Peter, especially you — you need to help everyone else.”

  Peter knew Viola well enough to know she was sure about whatever she was thinking, and he moved away as quickly as the others.

  “Dad,” Viola went on, “add a manual barrier around me and Katie, and then manually override the automatic one around Katie. Don’t waste a single second saying no, because I’m not leaving her.”

  Five seconds later, the forcefield-like romotech barrier between them — which both were leaning against — disappeared. “I’m here now,” Viola said, holding Katie tighter than she’d ever held anyone or anything. “We’re going to be okay, darling, and we’re going to be together.”

  Peter could only watch on, the initial relief of their daughter no longer being alone quickly replaced by the painful realisation that he was now separated from not only her but also from Viola.

  “You need to do what we came here to do,” Viola told him, speaking over Katie’s shoulder. “You need to get as many people out of here as you can.”

  Pavel Mak, a longtime Ospanov family friend and ever-reliable security officer, walked to Peter’s side and assured him that he could take over from here and assist others into the rescue vehicle parked overhead.

  “What’s the story?” Peter shouted, clearly talking to Robert and Romesh. “Talk to me!”

  His wristband buzzed almost instantly, and he held it to his ear to hear a reply that Robert didn’t want to announce publicly: “A lot of people are getting worse, Peter, but no one is getting gravely worse. We’ve stabilised the toxicity level of ground zero so we’re confident nowhere is going to get worse than it was at the peak. We’re not out of the woods, but the woods don’t look as dark as they did. The Mound is ready to take people into different areas depending on their condition, and we can’t change the plan. Green people first, at least until we have multiple vehicles in the air at once. A team from the Shipyard have delivered four more TE-900’s to just outside the extent of the BMC exclusion zone, and there are people in there who can fly. This way we can evacuate a lot more people at once. Ask for pilots and make sure they’re in the first evacuation, then they can come back for more people. Are you able to move okay on that ankle?”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Peter said, loudly answering a question no one else had heard. “But if all the groups are isolated and I’m exposed anyway, am I right in thinking I can move between sectors now? Because no one else in this room can fly.”

  “For now, you can move into the rooms immediately connected to the one you’re in,” Robert replied. “We’re still working to further stabilise the sectors closer to ground zero. The need for pilots is so great that we’ll manually release any who are showing as yellow, but we can’t stretch to orange.”

  Peter
nodded. “You’ll all be coming soon,” he announced to the whole room, “but right now I need some pilots. Kids and parents only… start going with Pavel. I’ll be back with however many pilots I can find and then we’ll fill however many more seats we have. But listen to me: everyone will be out of here soon.”

  “Daddy…” Katie called just before Peter set off to the first connected room.

  “Yeah, sweetheart?”

  “You can do it.”

  thirty-three

  The physical pain in Peter Ospanov’s ankle was like nothing he had ever felt, and the doctors present in the three rooms currently accessible to him regretfully relayed that no usefully powerful painkillers were stored in any of those rooms. He had no option but to suck it up, and no desire other than to do just that.

  Peter came across only two individuals capable of piloting a TE-900, but this immediately tripled the number of rescue journeys which could be carried out simultaneously once the first evacuees reached the other vehicles at the edge of the exclusion zone.

  “I’ll be back soon,” Peter promised Katie and Viola as he painfully ascended the ladder to escort the first batch of evacuees from the BMC. Viola insisted that she felt perfectly fine and encouraged Peter to make his way to The Mound and rest his foot, insisting that they would be okay.

  Pavel tried to make a similar point, but Peter was having none of it. He left Nisha’s TE-900 when she landed expertly at the other vehicles, at which point he entered one of those with its pilot to make his way back to the BMC in order to continue the mass evacuation while Nisha took the first batch to The Mound.