by In Churl Yo
The wall next to her disappeared. Now she could hear a hoarse gasping, a desperate-sounding wheeze that filled the thin air. Another room, another panel—was this happening again? This was all some cruel nightmare, and she wanted it to end. She wanted to wake up and feel the dread lift and the images of this terrible dream fade. Instead she felt doomed to repeat this insanity forever.
Tears fell behind her visor, and the woman saw several drops collect at the bottom of her vision, then—darkness.
Then a suffocating pale light.
Treading in rough seas under a canopy of dark rolling clouds, her arms flailed against the surge of giant unrelenting waves. She was being carried away from shore, the power of the current too much for her to fight, exhaustion filling her body. She was small, nothing.
“Let it take me away. Please just let it be over,” her voice murmured, just audible in the throes of the raging storm.
“You can’t hide forever. You’ll have to face it.”
The woman turned toward the sound of the voice. “Dad?” she asked.
“You already agree with me. Say the words.” His smile first, then his face and their kitchen table came into sudden focus. They were drinking coffee. They always shared a cup together in the morning.
“I agree with you,” she said.
“No, the other words.”
She smiled then spoke in rote fashion, “Seek out your own truth.”
“That’s my girl,” he said. “Do you remember your arachnid studies? You were fascinated by them, if I remember. What was that poem you chose to memorize?”
Knowing the exact one her father meant, she cleared her throat and began reciting:
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
Her father clapped his hands and beamed. “And you in your measureless ocean, Neema, will you give up now everything you’ve fought so hard for all these years, or rather as Whitman suggests, launch forth your filament and kite along those rising thermals until that bridge you will need be formed?”
“I can’t,” Neema answered and began to sob. “I can’t do it.”
“Stand up from the table,” he commanded. The young woman stood, unsure of her footing.
“Now step forward… Yes! Now again...”
The final compartment of the containment system diffused into a soft reality. Neema could hardly breathe—the slightest wisp of air passed between her lips.
Again.
Her feet hardly lifted off the floor, their weight like heavy boulders on her legs, while her head felt so insubstantial it might well float off her shoulders at any moment. She lunged at the panel and came up short, willing herself the final meter on the floor until Neema had reached it. The cable was spaghetti in her hands. The keyboard on her virtual display was a collection of leaves floating on a river.
She typed in a command, found a moment of clarity and followed that with several more lines of code, and all the while she could feel herself fading away—her energy completely gone, her mind a thin, fragile thing.
When the last door released its lock, the young woman fell through the opening and rolled out into the adjacent chamber. Neema laid on her back, heard the gate hiss at her as it closed and realized in her haze she was somehow out of the containment system. If this was another hallucination, one last cruel joke by the universe, it was at least one she could live or (as likely) die with. Neema may very well have beaten the odds or was imagining all of this—either way she had earned a little rest. A weak smile surfaced from her lips as she passed out.
That’s my girl.
# # #
Several hours later, the young woman sat up. Her throat was a desert. Her chest ached, the discomfort only matched by the pounding throb in her head. She found her canteen and drank, pausing only for a moment to wonder whether she should be rationing her water before deciding to finish it off instead.
“Ars-al,” she barked, her voice a dry, craggy mess. Several seconds later there came a response.
“What did you call me?” Arsenal said.
“Sorry, everything’s… not quite working yet,” Neema coughed. “What happened?”
“What happened? You made it out, that’s what happened.”
“How?”
Arsenal laughed. “That’s what I was going to ask you. The drone stopped flying when you reached the fourth compartment—not enough air to support any lift. The camera fell at a bad angle, and we could only see your back from a distance. It’s been transmitting images of an empty room for a couple of hours now and is still immobile trapped behind that door.”
Neema reached into her pack and released a second drone. It flew a wide pattern around her and adjusted its optics to the lighting environment before settling overhead.
“I’m receiving the new live stream now,” said Arsenal as telemetry from the small drone downloaded to his system.
“The others. Have they responded?”
“You’re not done yet. Won’t hear anything until then.”
“Right,” she said. “Time to climb.” Her hands found a metal rung on the wall, followed by another above it, and soon she was ascending a ladder toward a locked hatch recessed into the ceiling.
Neema cleared her throat as best she could. “Well, if you’re still watching, and I hope you are, we’ve made it to the moment of truth. You’re no doubt wondering what’s on the other side of this door, and I have to admit it’s got my full attention, too.”
After a few turns on the wheel mechanism, the hydraulic lock released its hold, and she swung the hatch upward until it flipped open, leaving her with an uninterrupted view of blue-fringed pink clouds in an orange sky and the smells of a dew-wicked morning sunrise.
She popped her head above the threshold and was bathed in newborn daylight. The scene overwhelmed her, and she felt exposed and vulnerable by the sheer size and complexity of it all.
Neema stood on the roof of her building, truly free for the first time in her life. A mystery she had pondered for as long as she could remember solved; a world, once absent, now available for her to explore. The young woman fell to her knees feeling more alive than she had ever felt before. Her tears fell unabated.
“Um, it’s a sunrise,” said Arsenal.
“Oh, it’s so much more than that. You’ll never understand until you join me out here. That’s not just an invitation, it’s a call to all of you. If I’m not dead by the Zombie Flu soon, I expect you all to come. We have work to do.”
Neema saw some movement in her periphery—the chat window sprang to life with words of encouragement and agreement. Three heretofore silent hackers, four including Arsenal, all pledged their support to her, each of them impressed by Neema’s acts of bravery, perseverance and the strength of her coding kung fu. It was all she could have hoped for. They were a good group, and she knew there was too much for her to do alone.
“Now assuming you survive the week, what’s next?” asked Arsenal. “Chaos? The knocking down of walls? The blowing of brains? The world is your oyster!”
Neema marveled then at the smell of fresh, un-recirculated air and took the deepest breath she could. A future, genuine and unpredictable, awaited.
“It’s time for a revolution,” she announced. “It’s time for you Kiters to fling your gossamer threads and fly.”
CHAPTER 20
Perhaps in another time under different circumstances, they might have been see
n, but no one ever looked up to the skies anymore. That, and there were far fewer people still left out in the world—people that were more preoccupied by brain-eating viruses, where their next meal was coming from or by not being something else’s next meal. Romantic notions like gazing lazily, longingly at the celestial heavens above for any real extended period of time was considered a complete waste of it. And while their airship may have employed the latest stealth technology, that didn’t make it invisible to the naked eye, especially when it traveled as low and imprudently as Nox was piloting. Still, they flew on without being observed, and nary a person knew nor cared that they did—save one.
“You’re being reckless,” said Caleb.
“No one likes a backseat driver,” Nox replied.
“And no one likes you, so call it a draw and put a little more distance between us and the deck.”
The white-haired man rolled his eyes behind his visor, then drew the yoke back commanding the drone to increase its lift and gain altitude.
“Better. Now above the clouds please,” Caleb said, pointing toward a train of stratocumulus coming up fast on their left.
Zoah chuckled. “And you thought we couldn’t work together.”
“Oh, I can work with anyone as long as they do what I tell them to do.”
“Typical,” grunted Nox.
“How much time before we get there?” asked Zoah.
Nox looked at the display of readouts in front of him. “I’d say 90 minutes, give or take.” He punched the autopilot on, then swiveled his chair around to face the others.
“Good,” said Caleb. “That gives us enough time to go over the plan.”
“A waste of effort,” Nox countered.
Zoah put her hand on Caleb’s arm to head off another heated exchange. “You’re going to say that things never go to plan,” she said, “but you can’t improvise off plan without a solid framework already in place.”
The Ceres head of security offered her a look of dismissal. “Did you learn that in your Military Strategy 101 class?”
She smiled. “Music theory, actually. Ask any good jazz musician—if you intend on riffing, it’s better if you already know the song by heart. Understanding the key and chord progressions, being familiar with the melody enough to play off and ramble around makes for better improvisation.”
“This isn’t a recital,” the man with white hair said. “But you make a surprising bit of sense. I didn’t know you played an instrument.”
“I don’t. I had to take an elective in Arts last semester, and it was the only class out of my core that I didn’t sleep through.”
“I’m sure your parents must be proud.”
“My parents are very proud of me,” Zoah said. “And I’m certain they’d want us to have a proper plan in place.”
“I believe you, girl. Alright then,” Nox relented. “Let’s get it over with, shall we? The plan is this: In an unprecedented and brilliant display of strategy and true heroism, I lead our motley crew of misfits through a series of impossible tasks and against all odds succeed in accomplishing the mission, coming out on top, saving day and damsel, admired and loved by all.”
Zoah answered this with a glance of playful disbelief.
Caleb leaned forward in his chair, a stoic look spread across his face absent of even a hint of sarcasm as he spoke. “When we’re done, Nox, when all of us are safe and we’ve finished what we set out to, I’ll laugh at every joke you make. But let’s face facts: We’re about to be outgunned and outmanned on unfamiliar ground, resulting in a high probability of us either being killed or captured. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t put me in a laughing mood. We have no idea what we’re about to get ourselves into here.”
“Oh, but I do,” he replied. “In fact, I know all the access codes, security holes and personnel assignments in place because I had a hand in creating them.”
“So you’ve said. That doesn’t change the circumstances we’re going to face, nor is it any kind of guarantee we’ll succeed. We have to prepare for the worst, and since I don’t trust you, that means assuming you’re lying to us anyway.”
Realization sparked in Nox’s eyes. “One of your parents was in the military.”
Unsure how to respond, Caleb didn’t.
“Army Ranger? SEAL? Doesn’t matter—what does matter is you’ve had some training, haven’t you? You’re too much of a loner, far too stubborn to have been in the service, but someone took the time to make sure you knew which end of a rifle was dangerous.”
“What’s your point?” asked Caleb.
“I did three tours myself—flu containment and asset security. I’ve been in firefights against well-armed terrorists, dodged Molotov cocktails and potshots from unseen assailants, and been surrounded by a sea of infected. The only reason I survived those, and a hundred other awful scenarios, is because I did my job. Every soldier I’ve ever worked with did their job, and we all did it the same way—it’s how we were trained, how we lived to see another day.
“Now, you don’t know me, and you don’t like me, but for a military man that shouldn’t matter. When it’s time to go to work, trust that I take my responsibilities seriously, and that includes not only meeting our objectives but making sure that if we go in together, we come out together. All of us. You may not think I’m much of a human being, but I promise you I am a professional and a damn good soldier, if that means anything to you.”
“It would,” Caleb said,” if you were still a soldier, but you’re not.” He pulled out a small case from his pack and started zipping it open. “Let’s make this easy, Nox, and remove all the uncertainty out of the equation. Take off your shirt.”
With only a brief hesitation to offer Zoah a sideways glance, Nox pulled his shirt off and watched as Caleb fiddled with a small, flat device he extracted from the case. “I’m sure you recognize this—a standard piece of ordinance set to explode when it’s triggered by wireless signal.”
Nox let out an audible sigh.
“I’m also activating this pressure plate,” Caleb continued. “So, I would advise against trying to remove the bomb or it will blow.” He taped the explosive to Nox’s chest, making sure it remained immobile and fixed.
“If you’re a man of your word, you have nothing to worry about. When the mission is over I’ll deactivate the device, and we’ll go our separate ways. Double-cross us, and I promise I will not hesitate to use it. All it takes is one swipe on my cuff, and you’re dust. You get me, soldier?”
Nox nodded, then put his shirt back on.
“It was the only way he’d agree to let us do this,” Zoah said to him apologetically. “You understand.”
“Of course,” Nox replied, a smile returning to his face. “An inelegant if obvious solution—I’d expect no less from him.”
“Now, let’s go over the plan,” said Caleb. “Shall we?”
# # #
Sixty-seven years ago, Ravendale began as a shallow hole in the ground carved by a golden shovel in a grand ceremony full of pomp, promise and optimism. In the post-apocalyptic world since, the city has weathered storms both literal and figurative—remaining an ever-present beacon the Ceres Corporation never failed to shine given an opportunity.
In fact, for two generations now Ravendale has been the prestigious site of Ceres’ corporate headquarters, the base of operations for the single largest business enterprise in existence, overseeing every consumer transaction made on the planet. Full of bureaucrats, executives, academics and, for a time, the best of what was left of humanity, the city evolved despite overwhelming odds of utter worldwide extinction into a functioning, close-knit community—all led now under the auspices of the company’s benign and brilliant Chief Executive Officer, Theo Ogden, who’s made his home here.
The stealth drone approached Ravendale low from the west, undetected by the radar sweep of the city’s perimeter defense system. As it reached the outer wall, the ship banked 90 degrees, then descended onto a long-neglected l
anding platform once used to deliver building material during the city’s initial construction.
“So far, so good,” said Zoah.
“There’s only minimal security here. I had an alarm added to the roof access door, but there shouldn’t be any problems disabling it,” Nox assured them. “Once we get inside, act casual…like you belong.”
“Right,” Caleb responded, a hefty amount of skepticism in his voice.
“With any luck, we’ll make it to the main building without a hitch.”
“You know I’m the whole reason we’re doing this with you, Nox,” said Zoah. “Please don’t make me look like an idiot.”
Nox grinned, then hit the ship’s hatch release button. A few minutes later, they were inside the top floor walking through rows of computer servers, each around two meters in height and connected in series with one another—a myriad of lights blinking everywhere and the hum of fans in the air.
“Recognize it?” asked Nox.
Zoah looked around the room. “Should I?”
“It’s the Virt—part of it anyway. Doesn’t look the same from the outside, does it? We should get moving though, or the temperature sensors will track our body heat and alert a technician to come investigate. This way.”
Sensors, alarms, surveillance cameras—those were the real dangers. The citizens of Ravendale didn’t move beyond their protected environments without good reason, and while Ceres did have its own private army at its disposal and professional staff working around the clock, they were segregated from the rest of the population. This meant not having to worry about running into random patrols, groups or the like, but placed emphasis on avoiding security detection systems, which were abundant.
The man with white hair led them through an empty hallway. They paused as he worked a virtual keyboard through his visor until a click indicated a nearby door had released its lock. Once open, it revealed a 10-story drop with a metal grated stairwell outside presenting a route down to the alley below.
“No cameras out here, at least until we hit the ground,” Nox explained.