by T M Edwards
Day 57
It was just past midnight, and the plan was falling into place. I had been too nervous to fall asleep at all, and every nerve felt like it was pulled as tight as a guitar string. Zena, who already distrusted Dalen, had readily agreed to what we had asked from her. She was going to sabotage the hydroponics tanks. We had argued about whether it was worth wasting the water. I thought it was. Sam was more practical. Zena settled the matter by explaining that there was a vacuum that was intended to pick up any water spills. It would take work, but no water would be actually lost. After that, even Sam agreed.
We were in our places. Zena and Kiera’s tent was just to the right of the hydroponics room doorway, the blue electronics tent was to its left. It would be reasonable for her and Kiera to be the ones to raise the alarm, as the water from the tanks would reach them first. Kiera wouldn’t know, which would help sell the disaster, since Zena was a horrible actress. I liked the girl, but she wore her heart firmly on her sleeve.
Sam and I would show up to help, then sneak off. I would hang back, so I didn’t have to walk so far. Sam would join me once Dalen was engrossed in dealing with the malfunction.
I decided to sit at one of the tables in the common area, and I watched as Zena’s slight form left her tent and disappeared into the hydroponics room. The only flaw in our plan was that Dalen might be watching, but we had waited until everyone seemed to be asleep. Hopefully, our esteemed leader was asleep, too.
I heard a quiet splash, and Zena came tiptoeing back out of the room, and silently slipped into the tent she shared with her sister. I laid my head down on my arms and pretended to be asleep.
It seemed like hours later, but it was probably just minutes, when I heard an exclamation from Zena and Kiera’s tent. The exclamation was quickly followed by a scream and frantic scrambling, and Kiera burst from the tent, followed quickly by her sister. In the gloom, I could just barely see the pool of dark water that seeped across the floor. Kiera retreated to the edge, disheveled and with her clothing liberally splashed in the liquid. I’d smelled that water. She probably wasn’t too comfortable right about now.
I pushed myself to my feet as Zena ran to Dalen’s tent and demanded that he come and deal with the leaking water. More people were emerging from tents, bleary-eyed and confused. There were lots of eyes being rubbed, and sleepy squinting. I watched as Zena, followed closely by Dalen in a belted robe, half-ran across the common area. I suppressed a chuckle as Dalen hesitated at the edge of the pool, before following an insistently gesturing Zena into the hydroponics bay.
“Ready?” That was Sam’s low voice in my ear. As quickly as I could move, we made our way toward Dalen’s tent, watching carefully to make sure nobody noticed us. Everyone was fixated on the hydroponics mishap, the evidence of which had now spread to soak the bottom of several of the tents.
I ducked into the doorway of Dalen’s tent, and was soon followed by Sam. He followed me as I walked toward the invisible slit in the back wall, and passed through it into the hidden room.
Sam whistled as he took in the room. “You weren’t kidding.”
Grabbing his hand, I pulled him toward the surveillance wall. “Look.” I pointed at the screens. There, we could see the people gathered near the hydroponics bay. “It’s live. Not recorded.”
“Wow.” He turned from side to side, staring at all of it. “What do you think all of this is?”
I limped over to the table that the girl had hid underneath. “See? He’s got feeds of the object, too? Why does he need to record it? There’s nothing happening.” The screens showed the scene in the green and black of night-vision recording.
Sam scanned the lower part of the monitor with his fingers. “Deidre, this...this doesn’t make sense.”
I bent down to look at the spot where he was pointing. “What is it?”
“It looks like...status readouts.” He indicated different spots. “Power output, battery reserves, temperature, humidity…” He suddenly went still. “No. It can’t be.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “There’s no way.” He straightened up with his hand over the lower half of his face. “No, no. No, Deidre. This can’t be right.”
I wanted to scream at him. But I couldn’t, because people would hear. “What, Sam? Tell me!”
“Deidre...this looks like…” He looked at me with a strange expression in his eyes. Then he stopped himself, and started rummaging through the papers on the desk. “Blueprints. There has to be a map...aha!” He pulled out a poster-sized piece of paper that was blue with white lines on it.
“Sam, would you just tell me what’s going on?”
Sam was rolling up the paper. “Deidre, Dalen is controlling the object. He’s controlling the spores.”
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
***
I must be dreaming. This can’t be real. It’s not possible. The thing fell from the sky. It did, right? I remembered the claims. I remembered the crater. We’d been told it had fallen during the night, in the middle of a thunderstorm, and been found the next morning. I remembered the footage. I could see the articles in my head. In the beginning, I’d ignored it as much as possible, thinking it was something the social media world was passing around. One of those things that would fade into the ether and be forgotten.
“Deidre?” I was startled out of my thoughts.
“What?”
We were sitting outside again, in the only spot that was safe from the cameras. The area just around the door was in view, but we were invisible. Sam held up the paper he’d stolen. “Look.” He spread it on the concrete in front of his crossed legs. It was a map of the bunker and the surrounding area. “He’s got the object on here.”
Sam was right. There we were, in the corner. The bunker was shown in tiny detail, even down to Dalen’s secret room. Running away from the bunker was a line that led to the object. Just before reaching the giant egg, it branched off and ran for what would be a few hundred feet to the right, to a small square labeled “auxiliary controls.”
I couldn’t decide whether to laugh, cry, or vomit. This couldn’t possibly be real. The object was alien. A concept I’d somehow managed to not really think about. Some piece of polished space junk. I dunno. We’d never really had time to figure out the ramifications.
This was infinitely more frightening. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it was.
“Sam, I...how? How can…”
“I don’t know.” Sam tapped the box near the object. “But we need to go here. We need to see if we’re right.”
“It’s still night, we could go now.” The keys were always left in the vehicles. They would see us leaving, but it would be too late to stop it.
“Deidre, I hope we’re wrong. I really do. If we’re right...I can’t comprehend the ramifications.”
What, like how the man that ran this bunker might have been the cause of the deaths of over nine-tenths of the country’s population? My brain couldn’t even grasp the idea of that sort of murder. Cold-blooded didn’t begin to describe it.
I grabbed my cane, and used it and the wall to stand up. Sam picked up the map and followed suit. “Let’s do it now. We need to know.” Sam nodded.
At that moment, I heard a low noise from the interior of the bunker. It sounded like someone was climbing the ramp. I grabbed Sam’s arm. “Someone’s coming.”
“We can’t run, they’ll know something’s wrong. Maybe it’s just Zena.”
As much as I hated to admit it, he was probably right. We waited, my heart in my throat, as the footsteps approached. The door swung open, but it wasn’t Zena. It was two men I recognized, whose names I didn’t know.
“Dalen wants to see both of you,” the taller one said. I hesitated, and looked up at Sam. “Now,” the man added.
“Sam, we can’t…” Dalen knows. We can’t go back in there. It’s not safe.
Sam grabbed my hand. He put his head next to mine and whispered, “Deidre, there’s no way
we’ll beat them to the truck. Let’s just see what he wants. I’ll take care of you.”
Grateful but not reassured, I held tightly to Sam’s hand as the two men ushered us through the door and down the ramp.
As we reached the ramp’s base, one of the men shoved me from behind, making me stumble. Sam stopped, and whipped around. When I’d steadied myself, I found him glaring at the one who’d pushed me. “Don’t you touch her,” he growled.
The other man laughed, and I barely had time to register his moving hand, with something black clutched in it, before it collided with the side of Sam’s face. Right over his already-injured eye. The thud reverberated through the ramp room. Sam hardly flinched, just kept staring.
After a tense moment, the man laughed. “Move,” he ordered. He waved his hand again, and I looked down to see that he was holding a gun. My chest went cold. I pulled on Sam’s hand.
“Sam. Come on, let’s just go.” I won’t let myself be the reason you get yourself shot.
“Yeah, Saaam,” the man with the gun drawled. “Do what the little lady says.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed, but he yielded to my tug, and we resumed walking. His shoulders were tight. He glanced at me, fury burning in his eyes. He was every bit Sam the soldier right now. I prayed he wouldn’t fall into one of his states where he started thinking he was back in a war zone. There was no telling what he might do.
We were propelled through the door into the common area. People gasped when they saw us, and the brandished gun. I thought we would be going to the electronics tent, but instead we were directed toward the one where Dalen slept. As I ducked through the flaps, the murmurs behind us swelled like an ocean wave approaching the shore.
The green tent was empty except for furniture. I looked back. “Where…”
“Keep moving.” The butt of the gun was shoved in my back. I winced and stumbled forward, holding onto Sam’s hand to keep from falling.
We passed through the back wall of the tent, and into Dalen’s secret room. Behind us, a door that had been invisible hissed into place, leaving the room dark but for the glow of the computers. My chest tightened. We were trapped trapped in a room with a crazy man and two goons with guns.
Dalen stood in front of the wall of screens, clad in one of his impeccable suits, his feet shoulder-width apart and his hands clasped behind his back. He was facing away from us, with his head tilted back to look at the upper screens.
“It’s a thing of beauty, isn’t it?” He spun on his heel to face us. A few strands of his hair had come loose from their styling, and fell down over his forehead.
“Beauty?” I sputtered, and Sam squeezed my hand. His glance was a warning.
Sam stepped forward, releasing my hand. Dalen’s expression of amusement widened into a smile. “What have you done, Dalen?”
The thin man swept his arm around the room to encompass the entire spectacle. “This? This is nothing.”
“We know you made the spores!” I couldn’t help it, the words burst from my lips.
Dalen regarded me calmly. “No, I did not.”
“Then what...but you…”
He smiled, and turned back to the wall of screens. “I did not create them, Ms. Scott. I only saw their potential, and harnessed it.”
“Sir, you have destroyed…”
Dalen held up a finger. “Ah, no, Mr. Harrison. I did not destroy anyone. They destroyed themselves.”
“Yes, but you knew…”
On the visible side of Dalen’s face, I could see his smirk. “Is it my fault that the majority of the population is so susceptible to fear that they would kill themselves over something that can’t actually hurt them?”
I was both numb and burning with a rage that set my skin on fire. I lunged forward. “You…” One of the men grabbed my arms from behind and I shrieked. “Let me go! You did this, Dalen! How? How could you…”
Once again, Dalen faced us. “The world was made for the strong, my dear. Men like Hitler--they had a vision for a world of purity, but they failed. They were short-sighted. Or maybe they were men ahead of their times. The world has reached a tipping point, a state where it is no longer the strongest who survive. A state where the weak are enabled to continue living, supported by modern medicines, and to propagate themselves into new and weaker generations.”
“Ironic then, isn’t it?” Sam’s voice was cold. Deadly.
“Hmm? I think not.”
“Ironic that those who are resistant to your weapon are the very ones you thought should be destroyed.”
Dalen’s smile faltered for a moment. “Yes, that was unfortunate. I have gathered those who were strong enough to survive and make their way to me. I have begun to forge a world where the strong survive to spread their seed, and the weak are destroyed. But the two of you...you are anomalies.”
“Did you ever stop to think that maybe we aren’t the ones that are weak?” I hissed.
He threw back his head and laughed. “Resistance to the spores does not make you strong, Ms. Scott.” His smile faded. “I tired of this. Take them away.”
“Where?” This came from the man with the gun.
“Lock them in the large refrigerator until I decide how to dispose of them.”
***
I paced, my mind racing. Sam sat quietly in the corner, his legs crossed and his elbows on his knees.
His silence grated on my nerves. “How can you just sit there?”
He looked up at me through the shelves that held the food. “I’m thinking.”
“But...how can you be so...calm?”
Sam jumped up and strode over to me. He grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me to look at him. “Deidre. We will solve nothing by panicking. We have to think of a way to prove what Dalen has done, and before he has us killed.”
“Panic? Who’s panicking!” I yelled at him, and pushed his hands away. You are. You’re panicking, you turd. Calm down. This isn’t helping. “Shut up!” I sank to the floor, my anxiety bursting out of me in breathtaking sobs. Sam followed me down, grasping my arms so that my descent didn’t jar my ankle. “I can’t...I can’t think...I don’t know…”
“Hey. Hey!” He grabbed my chin and pulled my head up until I was looking into his eyes. “Look at me. We’re going to make it out. We’re not going to die.”
“How do you know?” Tears ran down my cheeks until they met his hand.
“Because I’m not making death an option.” Sam released me and stood up. “Every prison has a weakness.”
I shivered, unsure whether it was from the cold or from stress. “Us. We’re the weakness.”
“No.” Instead of crumbling, this time Sam was every bit the soldier. “There is a way out. We just need to find it.”
He spun to look at the fridge door as a siren wailed outside. It sounded like the one we’d heard before, but it pulsated instead of being steady. The sound was muted by the insulated door of the walk-in.
I grabbed my cane and pushed myself to my feet. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know.” Sam had his face pressed up against the tiny window in the metal door. After a moment, he grinned, then stepped back.
“What? What’s…” There was noise at the door, like someone was trying to unlock it. After a few seconds, it swung open. Zena appeared in the gap.
“Come on!” We followed her out. I wanted to hug her.
I followed Sam out into the kitchen. The room was dark, except for the doorway into the common area. The steel industrial tables and appliances gleamed in the light that spilled in. Zena placed a finger over her lips and motioned for us to follow. Even from here, I could see that chaos boiled in the area near the dining tables.
As I stepped up next to Zena and Sam, who stood next to the doorway, I could see that she was trembling. “What’s going on?”
“Dalen’s frying you on the grill of public opinion, that’s what.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know how they’re buying that crap. He’s trying to convince them
you two sabotaged the water tanks. He wants you both killed.” I opened my mouth to reply, but she shook her head. “I set off the filter failure alarm. I’m sure he’s saying that was you, too. You’ve got to get outside and get proof. They’ve been arguing about whether Dalen’s telling the truth, and it’s going downhill. Fast.” She stepped back and pushed both of us out into the light. “You need to go, now. Hurry, before they see you.”