by Ian Williams
Her left arm had the loosest cuff and it was the one she started with, after pushing the sleeve of her beaten-up old red jumper out the way. It only took a few hard yanks away from the bed to work it free. She was then able to try the others. They were each easy enough to undo, thanks to whoever had begun the process earlier.
Something very wrong must have happened for them to leave the cuffs so loose, she thought as each came off with little to no effort at all. Within seconds she was sitting up and sliding her feet through the final restraints.
“Here,” Rhys said, moving his waist to the edge of his bed, “the knife is just inside my pocket.”
She reached in and found a small flip-knife still in its locked position. With this concealed in her left palm, she began undoing Rhys cuffs.
“Just untie my wrists then watch the door,” Rhys said. “If he comes back, you go for him.”
Once he was free, they took stock of their available supplies – or whatever had been left in the room with them. It was nothing much. Phoenix’s submachine gun had been taken away, so too had Rhys’ Taser pistol. There, lying on the floor was the power cable for the drill, but no sign of the tool itself. She was most disappointed by that; some vindictive part of her relished the idea of having at the driller man with it.
Rhys picked up a small lamp, one sat on a desk in the corner, and wielded it like a clumsily shaped sword. They were then ready to attempt their escape. The two Sentients had left them for far too long. It was clear by this alone that something had changed. They had planned on turning her into one of them. So what had stopped it from working?
“Any idea which way they went?” she asked.
Rhys peered out of the room and looked left down the corridor. “They disappeared somewhere up there.”
“Come on.”
With a smooth flicking motion, she produced the shining blade from Rhys’ pocket knife. Knives were not her usual choice of weapon, still she knew how to use one if needed. All of her time working for Anthony had prepared her for such situations better than her parents’ short lessons could have. Their greatest strength though, one passed on to her, was their goodness. Even after so many years by Anthony’s side, it kept her from becoming what he had tried to turn her into. She would not kill these two Sentients – unless they forced her.
“Wait, where are you going?” Rhys said after noticing her creeping in the direction of the two Sentients.
“I came here for answers. I’m going to get them.”
“Are you mad? After what they did to you, we should leave while we can.”
She turned to him. “Then you go. I’m not leaving until they tell me everything they know.”
Rhys said nothing in reply, he kept his disbelief to himself as best he could, with only a slight reaction on his face. He could see her determination and for now had accepted he would not be able to change that. She was living up to her stubborn reputation once again.
They wandered down the corridor with their chosen weapons raised and ready to attack. Phoenix expected no fight from the two, especially if they were struggling to understand what was happening. The injuries to their human brains had left them both less than operational. For some reason they were trying to continue their work, despite all but two of their recent patients being dead as a post. They obviously did not know the place had been shut down, possibly in response to the escape days earlier.
At almost halfway along the silent corridor, Phoenix began to hear talking from a room ahead. They stopped once at the closed door and listened in.
“What’s he saying,” Rhys asked at his lowest audible level.
She replied at a similar volume. “One of them is saying something about a ‘Master’ being angry with them for something. Sounds like they think they upset him.”
“Upset him how?”
She leaned in closer until her ear almost touched the door. “I guess they aren’t sure, but they don’t seem to realise they should be dead. I’m almost certain Isaac tried to have them killed to cover this place up.”
“What do you want to do then?”
With the knife gripped tight and held up to head height, she stood ready to fight. If one of the Sentients went for her, they would soon find her blade. “On three, we go in and take them. You hit the nearest one with the lamp and I’ll take the other. Ready?”
“I’m never ready for stuff like this,” Rhys said while practicing his swing with the lamp.
Rather than count aloud, she did it silently with her fingers. By the time the last had dropped she launched herself through the door and yelled as loud as she could. Their battle plan was a simple one and effectively a total surprise too.
Inside the small room she immediately came upon the driller man standing with his back to their entrance. He tried to spin around in time, but could only manage to turn a little. She reacted and decided to shove him forward. The two Sentients within the room then became entangled as one fell into the other. They landed with a crash against the wooden desk at the end of the small office.
Phoenix kept the knife raised and waving at her enemies, both of which had no interest in her until one had rolled off of the other. The driller man looked petrified as he flipped onto his back. The other stayed still with his head leaking blood down his neck; his head wound had opened up again.
“You cannot…” the driller man said, his hands up to protect himself.
This infuriated Phoenix. Seeing his face branded with fear brought all of her anger rushing forward at once. She took a step toward with the undeniable desire to jab him in the chest.
“No, don’t.” Rhys put his arm across to block her. “Look, he’s no threat.”
The driller man returned quickly to his feet and cowered in place. He shot a look back at his injured companion every couple of seconds. Rhys had stepped in front of her just in time; she was more than ready to stick the knife in deep, in some kind of revenge fuelled frenzy. Now she could hardly breathe for all the sudden excitement, and the knife was the last thing on her mind. One lungful after another only eased it a little.
With one Sentient still flat on its arse on the ground and the other unwilling to move from the spot, she took a moment to catch her breath again. The sedative had not quite returned her to normal just yet. That or she had lost her edge once again. Under Anthony she would have been kicked to the curb if caught hesitating like this. She could not help but feel the time since then had softened her too much.
“You should not be in here. Please go back to your beds,” the driller man said with the nervousness of a nurse trying to deal with a violent patient. He was pleading rather than ordering, his hands open palmed as if offering something to her.
“We’re not going anywhere until you answer our questions,” Rhys said, taking charge while Phoenix found herself again.
“I will try to do so.” Another look down to his friend told of the driller man’s increasing vulnerability. It was becoming clear which had been in charge all along, and it had not been him.
After a deep breath, Phoenix began the questioning. “I want to know exactly what you’ve been doing here. Tell me everything you know.”
“This is the Master’s will,” the driller man said, as if his answer needed nothing more.
“Silence, fool!” the white haired Sentient ordered of his more talkative companion. He had a clear authority over the other, bringing the conversation to a rapid end. The driller man stood staring at the floor after his telling off.
“You mean Isaac?” Phoenix said.
He nodded his grotesquely disfigured head, then waited for another question. This time his superior did not react.
Phoenix then went on, “OK, what is Isaac’s plan?”
It was the white haired man’s turn to answer now. “The Master is the creator. He made us all.”
“His great army is almost complete,” the driller man added.
“Hold your tongue, we do not trust Humans.”
“Hey, let him talk.
” Phoenix swung her knife in the white haired man’s direction to shut him up.
“An army?” Rhys said in shock. “Isaac is building an army?”
“That’s what these black boxes are for, don’t you see?” Phoenix said. “They allow a Sentient to take control of a human body. He needs a large enough supply to make his move against us. Jesus, he’s had over a year to do this. He could already have hundreds ready to fight.”
“The Master has been very busy since he brought us here,” the driller man said, ignoring their discussion entirely. He was more interested in sharing his pride over his leader’s hidden success, than to deny anything. As he spoke, the white haired man fidgeted on the spot, becoming more reactant the more his companion explained. “Soon he will return and claim this land, taking it from the fleshy clutches of the Humans.”
“Tell us where he is.” Phoenix stepped forward. “How can we find him?”
“Oh, you cannot. You are not finissed.” The driller man’s slur had flared up again. “If you allow me to finish my work, then he will see you. Once I have installed one of my kind inside of you, you will finally be complete.”
“No deal, buddy,” Rhys said, stepping between Phoenix and the driller man to cement his point.
The white haired Sentient was brimming with anger now. “Insolence, you will both be punished for this.”
Phoenix ignored the outburst while her mind considered something, an idea most likely filled with danger. Except, she could only see this one option for learning what she needed from the pair. Violence was not going to work, they were both devoted to their leader. They would face torture if they believed their master wanted it. On the other hand, the other way simply required some well-judged manipulation.
Her lack of response brought a sidelong look from Rhys.
“That might not be a bad idea,” she eventually said.
He looked at her in surprise. “What? Are you serious?”
“Don’t move, OK,” Phoenix ordered of the driller man – the white haired man was still on the floor and sending imaginary daggers through the air at them. She then turned her back and spoke quietly to Rhys, who stood to her side. “We should let them continue.”
“Care to share your madness?”
“Luke came from here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then this place has to be connected to Isaac somehow. It might help us find him, and where Graham could be too.” Turning back to the driller man, she said; “lead the way.”
“Excellent. You must remain here,” he said to Rhys.
Before Rhys could protest again she nodded to him, followed by a wink. It was enough to tell him she had something in mind. Her intent was to go along with the process in the hopes of learning how it worked. There was no chance of it succeeding, what with the current state of the building. She suspected neither Sentient understood that.
However the Sentients were pulled out of their world and placed into hers, it had been done there before the place was shut down. She did not believe for one second that Isaac had simply stopped, which meant there had to be other sites just like the one she and Rhys had found. Finding them had become her immediate concern. How Graham fit in to it all was still a mystery.
“Hey, where’s our stuff?” Rhys asked. He raised the lamp ready to strike.
The driller man stepped cautiously to his side, accidentally bumping into a table, then opened a small cupboard. “Here,” he said, totally oblivious to the advantage he was handing his foes.
“If I stay here, make absolutely sure he can’t try anything,” Rhys said, handing over her beloved, and sorely missed, submachine gun. He checked over his own Taser pistol.
The knife slid into her pocket, making way for the much more effective weapon she had arrived with. She held it by her side; there was no point in aiming, the driller man had to know what it was capable of – it had come from another like him after all.
Now there was nothing stopping them from leaving, but the need for answers. Unfortunately that need still overpowered her – and Rhys’ – want to escape. Luke had come from this place, so everything she needed to know should be there too. At least that was her thinking.
She smiled, then squeezed Rhys arm. “Once I find out what I need to know, we can leave.”
“Can’t wait. This place is spooky as hell.”
He was more correct than he knew. Phoenix would have to tell him about the bodies piled up on the ground floor later. For now she had other plans.
“Go,” she said, waving her gun at the door.
The driller man took one last glimpse at his fallen comrade – who refused to acknowledge any of them now – and then proceeded to lead her out. In the corridor he walked slowly with his face half turned to her. He was guiding himself using the bad eye for a second or two until he could not any longer. Keeping his eyes on her and the path ahead was impossible. Thankfully for her, it meant he had no chance of surprising her with a sudden attack. He could barely see her at all from what she could tell.
They walked past the room with the smashed window and went on to the lifts at the far end. There the driller man stood waiting after pressing the call button. He did not seem to realise they were not working any more. His reasoning had faltered again.
“We should take the stairs instead,” Phoenix said, with another wave of her gun, this time toward the exit to the stairwell. “We going up or down?”
“We are required to reach the ground level.”
For fuck’s sake she thought. The idea of revisiting the tomb sent a shiver racing up her spine.
It was a slow journey down the many flights of stairs to the ground level, a quiet one too. The driller man was light on chat, and short on confidence as well. At the end of each level he tried a quick about turn to catch sight of her again. If he was trying to hide his glares every time, then he was failing miserably.
At the door to the tomb – as she had now permanently renamed it – they stopped. For a split second or two Phoenix had thought of leaving through the open door behind them, rather than return to the stench of death radiating around this level. It would be a swift exit too as the door had been left ajar, probably from Rhys’ entrance after her. But she had to go on. If not for the sake of finding Graham, then for the safety of the city. With an army to Isaac’s name, no-one was going to be spared.
The driller man pushed the door open and walked into the darkness. In a slight panic she bundled in behind for fear of losing him to the gloom. In her haste to stick close to him, she accidentally jabbed him in the back with her weapon.
He spun around. “We must be quiet. We should not wake the other patients,” he said.
Another chill ran through her, compounding the last, which had not yet ceased.
The room remained as silent as before. She knew the bodies were there, and yet the peacefulness still surprised her. Any movement at all would have sent her running for the door. It was just not natural for a room to be so quiet.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To a very special place. It is the gateway for my kind, the bridge to the human world. Come, follow me.”
She was relieved to see the driller man had brought a torch with him. This appeared to be the usual way for him to wander around this floor. If he thought the dead were really just asleep, then he did this to keep them that way. So they crept by the light of his torch into the centre of the room, exactly where she had avoided earlier. They stepped over the dead as they walked, never once making contact with them. She walked, almost tip-toed, as carefully as possible as she followed.
Then, once the bodies had stopped appearing, something new came into view. Where Anthony had stood only eighteen months ago and preached to his delusional followers, stood a large structure sticking out of the ground. Whatever it was, it had broken through the floor like a tree growing into the room from beneath. It took the entire glow from the driller man’s torch for her to partially recognise it.
&nbs
p; “Is that linked to your world?”
“Indeed it is,” the driller man said with obvious pleasure. “Do you see how it works?”
With a distant glance – she did not want to approach it just yet – she tried to figure it out. The structure was almost identical to that of the Sentient tower she had seen at Sanctuary, only much, much smaller. It fit inside the room completely, with its tip slightly pushed up against the ceiling panels. The shape went up in a taper, exactly as she had seen before. All that differed between the two was their size, and a curious waist high console coming out the side of this one. Someone once interacted with this miniature tower.
“That’s where you came from?” she said.
“Of course. It is where all of my kind come from. Your body will also be granted a second life, once a suitable Sentient is found for you.”
“Can’t wait.”
He took his position by the side of the tower, just in reach of the console. Rather than begin the process he waited for her to join him. It was too much for her to resist; she had to see it working. To destroy it she first had to see what it could do, and if it could help her in any way.
“You must sstand right here for the process to begin,” the driller man said. He began pressing a combination of buttons on the console. Without his white haired superior watching over him, he had become much easier to deal with. Now the information flowed freely, which had to have the other Sentient upstairs reeling with paranoia. “Do not fear, this will soon rectify your troubles. I will need to bring the Overseer online before a Sentient can be chosen for you.”
Nothing lit up or made a sound in reaction to his commands. She feared this was also something he had not worked out was broken, just like the lifts and his patients. The answers were not going to come that easily after all. His mention of something called an Overseer had piqued her interest though. But seeing him tapping away at the unresponsive panel in front of him had soon replaced that interest with frustration. Whatever it was, she was not about to see it working. She stood where he showed her and waited while he refused to see the obvious about his tech; it was fucked!