by Isaac Stone
When they arrived at the front of the office on the risers, the metal stairwell was back in place.
Ash, Barbara Ann, Jack and Makulah were already on the main floor with the management trio making their way down the metal stairs. The group from Team Omega held their guns tight to their chest armor. They starred at the mob from open visors, as they didn’t want to create more tension with the strikers. The three members of the management team were empty handed, except the older woman, a lady in her 60’s, holding a purse.
“I need my heart pills,” she told Ash when he suggested they go down to the floor in the least threatening way possible.
“So, you said you’re ready to make some negotiations?” Sands growled as he led the mob of angry men to the group from the office. “I’m glad to hear it because we have all kinds of bargaining chips here.”
The people in the office were silent, and the troopers stood at the ready.
“So what we gonna talk about?” Sands asked again. “How some of us will never be able to leave this place from our debts to the corporation? How the management treats us like slaves? How about all those unfilled promises made to us when we were signed to those contracts?” The mob roared in approval.
“Release my people before we talk,” Ash told him. “We have nothing to do with this. We were hired to come here and find a war criminal named Haddo. Anyone see him?”
“Fuck your war criminal!” Sands yelled back at him. “And fuck the corporation too! Okay, untie the bulls and send them back to the herd. We got their guns anyway!” Kris, Costa and Theo were unbound and pushed over to the Team Omega and management side.
“Herbert agrees to talk to you,” Ash explained. “We’ll stay around long enough to make sure no one goes crazy. Then we have to get back to work.” He held his place and looked Sands directly in the eye.
Sands reached over and pulled a barrel into place in the middle of the floor. He grabbed a chair and slid it in front of the barrel. Finally, he propped his boots on the drum.
“Alright,” he said to the group across from him. “What do we talk about?” He smiled at them.
“Pardon,” the older woman with the purse said to him. “I need to take these pills. Give me a second.” She undid the catch on her purse.
“See?” Sands grumbled at them. “Every goddamn time.” He shook his shaved head.
The woman opened the purse and took out an automatic pistol.
Before Ash could say a word, she had opened fire on the men in front of her. The bullets ripped through Sands’ body and he went down in a fountain of blood to the floor. The strikers were caught off guard. They hadn’t expected any of this from the management team. If anything, they were watching Team Omega for signs of violence. Although the strikers couldn’t figure out how to use the impact guns right away, they didn’t feel there would be much trouble once they pulled the trigger.
The second group of men the old HR lady shot was the ones who held the impact guns. The bullets went right into the men and they fell back, the guns scattering across the floor. She walked over to the men on the ground and fired three shots, one into each head. Then she looked up at the mob trying to get away from her.
“Did you fuckers actually think I would stand here and let you take over this place?” she screamed at them while firing more shots into the strikers. Men fell back to the floor with blood streaming out from chest and head wounds. None of them moved once they went down.
By now, the mob had turned into a panic with workers who ran in every direction as they tried to escape the elderly lady with the gun. The men were still too close together to get away fast enough. She took advantage of the tight packed formation of the bodies. She stood in place with both hands on the gun, firing away until she needed to change a clip.
“Drop it!” Ash screamed at her and brought up his impact gun. The gun was the size of a standard rifle but fired a slug built to crack through body armor. It could rip her to pieces in a second and she had to know it.
“Go fuck yourself!” the woman yelled at him. She spun around and fired the automatic at Ash. She managed to get one shot off before the hammer slammed into an empty chamber.
Ash fired a single shot into her torso that tore the unarmored woman apart, the second shot that went through her skull wasn’t nessecary, but Ash couldn’t help himself. The remains of her body were blown across the floor of the factory, blood, brain matter, and entrails sent in flight across the room. Ash watched as part of her arm splattered into the wall behind her.
By now, the strikers were gone, the room in front of the office was filled with the smoke of guns, and the shots still reverberated in their ears. Ash, gun pointed down, swung in the direction of the remaining two managers.
“Did any of you have any hand in that?” he demanded. “You tell me now before I decide to use the rest of my shells!” Ash brought up the barrel of the gun and leveled it at them.
Herbert raised his hands in the air. “Honestly,” he pleaded. “I’ve never seen her act that way before. I know she was pissed at the job, but never would I have believed…” Ash noted Herbert had wet himself.
“Out of my sight!” he yelled at the two. “Get back up in the office and don’t come down until we’ve left. I hope you have a plan ‘B’ because you’re going to need it!” The two scampered up the metal stairs and slammed the door to the office behind them.
4
The team found the next opening to the level beneath without much trouble. At the end of the corridor, where the equipment for the manufacture of the power packs was stored, there was a metal door. All that was written over it was an arrow pointing down.
“You want me to check it for booby traps?” Costa asked Ash. He walked up to the door and felt it with one hand.
“Basic sweep,” Ash informed him. “I don’t think our labor strikers had the capacity for that sort of thing. No, we’re good. Go ahead and open it, see what’s inside.” He stepped closer to the door as Costa put his hand on the handle and turned it.
“Dark,” Costa observed, “Smells like burnt metal down there, probably from more fabrication. I don’t see any reason to stay up here.”
“Neither do I,” Ash commented as he glanced back at the carnage left behind by the woman with the handgun. What kind of place was this? It suddenly haunted him just how desensitiezed to the insanity he’d become since the journey through Inferno.
The stairs were short and took them to another vestibule. Ash waited for everyone to catch up with him before he went further. He adjusted the fire rate on his impact gun to “Full Auto” and looked around the small room. Other than a layer of grime on the walls, he didn’t see it much different from the one they’d left. There was even the same bulb that emitted faint light into the vestibule.
“Did you see this?” Kris asked him as she pointed to some writing on the walls. Once again, they found the mystical Enochian symbols they’d seen all over the Inferno Station. These were fresh; it had to be from Haddo. At least they knew he’d come this way. Finally, some confirmation.
Ash pulled the door open, expecting another room with garbage on the floors and grease splattered on the walls. What was inside proved to be a shock, even after what they’d been through already.
Before them lay a museum set-up of luxurious paintings and furniture. Everything was spotless and there was even a plastic runner in the middle of the floor for people to walk. The floor was not bare, but covered in a rug that ran from one wall to another. The walls were lined with crystal tile and a series of directional lights from the ceiling illuminated every corner. There didn’t appear to be one speck of dirt in the place.
“This is a change,” Theo spoke up. Barbara Ann shut the door behind them and said nothing.
“That door opened without any trouble,” Ash pointed out. “You think they would have locked it somehow, given the filth over us. Maybe they have a way to keep the workers out of this place.”
The team walked down the plastic runner,
careful not to step on the carpet. Even shoeless Barbara Ann stayed in the middle. Ash noted her gown, singed by fire in the orbital, but didn’t show the least bit of damage. He wondered if it repaired itself.
The path led down another corridor that branched off into separate rooms. They walked down it, but didn’t hear anything. No sound let them know anyone was on this level. Ash looked in each room as they passed it. Each one was devoted to a different kind of luxury. One might have furniture from pre-revolutionary France; another might have jewelry on display in a glass case. All of it was carefully lit.
“No documentation,” Theo noted to the rest of them. “Am I the only one who noticed this?”
“What are you talking about?” Ash questioned him. He counted twelve open doors from the corridor to the rooms on the side.
“None of this stuff has a card, title or anything which says where it’s from or what it is,” Theo continued. “I don’t think this is a museum or art gallery. If it were, we would see display cards everywhere. I think this might be a private collection.” He walked into one of the side rooms where a large collection of bound books where shelved.
Ash and the rest of the team followed Theo to find out what attracted his attention. Theo walked up to a large shelf, one of many, which lined the walls. He passed several ancient volumes on display inside a glass case. Theo reached out and pulled a book off the shelf.
“I guess we find out how well the alarm system works,” Jack mentioned as Theo opened up the book, which was a copy of the first collection of Edgar Allen Poe’s stories from many centuries ago.
But no horns or buzzers sounded. They didn’t even see the lights flash. Theo thumbed through the pages for a few minutes and held it up everyone to see.
The pages inside the book were blank. He flipped through it some more to show everyone else every page was blank. Theo returned the book to the shelf and pulled out another one. The pages inside it were also blank. As was every single book, he pulled off the shelf.
“Fake,” Theo announced. “This is all a façade. Every single one of these books is faked.” The rest of the crew began to take more off the shelf and look at them.
“Nothing is authentic here,” Kris pointed out. “Everything is phony. These aren’t even good reproductions. She held one of the books up for everyone to look at.
Jack walked back out into the hall and looked at the other exhibits. “Which makes me wonder if all of this is fake,” he said. “I thought those gemstones appeared a little funny. It wouldn’t surprise me if the furniture is stuffed with sawdust or rock sharpnel.” He walked further out into the corridor and glanced at the other rooms as the team made for the exit door ahead.
“One thing is real about it all,” Costa pointed out as he checked one of the directional lights. “These lights are all hooked up to one of the EAC’s power packs.” Costa held one of them up so everyone could have a good look at it. The small pack was no more than five inches in length and attached to the small light.
He picked up the pack and looked at it the best he could. There on the bottom was a symbol which resembled the strange alphabet they’d found in the wake of Haddo’s trip through the Inferno. It was the same Enochian script Barbara Ann told him that the 16th Century English Mathematica John Dee was given by the angels as the original language of humanity. He looked at it careful and was sure it was the same kind of symbols.
“This power pack has the same writing on it we’ve found before!” Costa announced to the crew. “I bet they all have this symbol!” He began to go down the wall and looked at all the packs mounted into the lighting units.
Each one had the same cryptic symbols on it. Costa didn’t know what it meant, but he intended to find out as fast as he could. With one swift pull, he ripped the power pack loose from the light. The light went out and Costa carried the pack over to Barbara Ann with the wire still dangling out of it.
“What the hell do these symbols mean, synth?” he demanded from her. Costa knew she didn’t like that name and warned them against using it, but he didn’t care. He was determined to find out what it meant.
“I told you all not to call me by that name,” she warned him. Barbara Ann’s eyes shifted from an emerald green to a ruby red. Even Ash was surprised by the color change. He didn’t know she could do it. Did the chromyl shift indicate a mood swing?
“You know what this is all about!” Costa growled at her. “You know why these weird angel writings are all over the Haddo’s trail. And now I see them on this power pack. What is the connection? Didn’t you say the memory block is gone and you have access to all the memories given to you by the corporation?”
“Take it easy,” cautioned Makulah.
“That’s enough of that!” Ash snapped at Costa. “We need to find Haddo before any of this is resolved. For all we know he’s some nutcase who found out that the symbols on the power packs came from that Enochian mumbo jumbo. Now cut it out and let’s get to the next level unless you see Haddo hiding under a bed.” Ash turned and walked to the next door.
Costa watched Barbara Ann’s eyes return to green as she turned to follow the others. He waited a few seconds and tossed the power pack into the corner of the room. Then he followed the rest of the team through the next door and down the stairway.
Once again, Ash waited for everyone to gather at the vestibule in front of the next level. This one was a lot cleaner, probably due to the restricted nature of it. He still couldn’t figure out how the corporation kept the workers from descending further down into the fortress, unless they were being controlled with drugs or other security measures similar to those in place on the nightmare orbital he’d mercifully nuked into oblivion. Soon they would hit the old military part of this place, according to the diagrams he’d studied. Haddo couldn’t be much further away and they would finally have him.
Ash opened the door and walked into a conference room. There were a series of rooms, which led away from the main room, but nothing appeared to be very large. This was a very small level and he speculated there had to be a way around it. Soft light came from the ceiling and a large table dominated the center.
Around the table were a group of men and women dressed for business. The women all wore suits with dresses and the men white shirts and ties. They were involved with a presentation, which included the power packs they’d just left. There were twelve of them and they looked up as the armored group entered the conference room.
“Excuse me,” one man said who wore horn rim glasses, “Are you in the right location?” Everyone else at the table appeared to be in shock.
“Team Omega,” Ash introduced themselves. “We’ve been paid by EAC to find Simon Haddo. He came through here on his way down to the bottom. Have you seen him?” Ash tried to look non-threatening, a little hard to do with a gun in his arms.
“We’re a market research division of EAC,” the man said to Ash with ice in his mouth. “You are not supposed to be here, please leave by the next door before I call security.” He glared at Ash right in his face.
“I take it that means no,” Ash sighed. “Check the offices,” he said to the team who went into each one and looked around as Ash flashed the false codes Royce had given him for just such an occasion, and the man was at least slightly mollified.
“Inspection team? You have no right…,” the man at the table said to him.
“I do what I need to get the job done,” Ash returned.
In a few minutes, the others were out of the small offices. All of them shook their heads.
“Fine, he must be lower,” Ash concluded. “Okay, we go to the next level and try there.” Ash marched with his team to the next stairwell and went down it. He didn’t even bother to look back at the white-collar types who sat in place and snarled at him.
“Sometimes it’s all I can do not to give those starch collar types a stock upside the head,” Costa grumbled as the continued down the stairs. “I’m sure they’re all part of whatever horrorshow this is suppose
d to be, and it wouldn’t accomplish much, but it would make me happy.”
They arrived at the next vestibule to find it covered with more cryptic symbols than they’d encountered before. Ash stopped to look at the symbols for a minute and extended a gloved hand out to them. The fact that no janitorial staffer had cleaned these off was telling, and indicated to Ash that despite all the activity they were seeing, something had gone horribly wrong. Once again it seemed as if the facility was running on auto-pilot, and that the human beings Team Omega encountered were somewho part of that system, perhaps lacking in free will and somehow either programmed or coerced to engage in this theatre bizzare. Still, the symbols meant they were on the right track. If these were the sign of Haddo, it meant he couldn’t be that far away.
The rest of the team gathered around and looked at the graffiti. There was coherence to it all which no one could understand. The letters were written out in basic colors, red, green, blue and yellow. It was framed in white and black. Ash was perplexed by it all since it indicated Haddo had stopped her for a while and was uninterrupted long enough to finish his work. The artistry wasn’t bad, the man, twisted as he was, had some real talent.
“Do you smell anything?” Kris asked them. The others looked around; there was the scent of fragrance in the air they couldn’t identify.
“Something was burned here recently,” Costa said to her. He reached down to the floor and picked up a small stone box that contained ashes.
“Incense,” Theo told the others. “Haddo was burning incense while he did these drawings.”
“He brought it with him and burned it,” Ash pointed out. “Now why go to such trouble? Did he want to breathe better while he worked? I admit that first level smelled like rotted grease, but this makes no sense at all.” He looked inside the incense burner and tried to figure out how long ago it was used.