Day of Reckoning

by Micah B. Edwards

  This plan rapidly downgrades from “acceptable” to “utter idiocy” when I round the corner into the alley and realize it’s littered with trash cans. Which I threw there, in an attempt to impede Peterson. Less than two minutes ago. They’ve been very active and terrifying minutes, but still. I could have remembered that I left the alley in a rather different state than I found it. Come to think of it, sprinting through the kitchen with all of that rice on the floor probably isn’t the best idea, either. Plus the cooks are probably all back in the kitchen helping Emmanuel up, and therefore adding even more obstacles. Basically, this was a terrible idea from start to finish.

  I twist away from the alley and attempt to continue up the street, but my stutter-step has given Peterson the time he needs to finally get within arm’s reach of me. I feel his fingers closing on my left arm, and when I try to pull away, my damaged shoulder explodes in pain.

  Caught, I wheel around, striking out with the pan in a wild swing. It connects solidly, caroming off of Peterson’s shoulder and cracking him in the jaw. He snarls, spits blood and lands a hit in the center of my chest that’s so powerful that I swear it actually lifts me off of the ground before slamming me back into the car parked several feet away.

  Glass crunches and a new alarm wails on impact, and now I’m the one spitting blood from where I bit my tongue. Before I can move away, Peterson’s on me, pummeling me back against the car with hit after punishing hit. I can’t fight back; I’ve dropped my pan somewhere and it’s all I can do to curl up and try to protect my more vulnerable areas. With all the injuries I’ve been accumulating, though, there are a lot of vulnerable areas, and Peterson’s creating more with every hit.

  Abruptly, Peterson lets out a startled yelp, and the hits stop. I slump to the ground, throbbing with pain. I’m not sure what’s stopped him, but whatever it is, I’m glad for it.

  Peterson takes a step away from me, and almost buried under the sound of the rain and the car alarms I hear a whispered whuf!, matched by a curse from Peterson.

  “You...don’t...” he says thickly, his words slurred. Another barely-heard whuf! interrupts his sentence, and he staggers. He takes an uncertain step toward the road, then one back toward me. He teeters, sits down heavily on the sidewalk, and then slumps over uncomfortably on one side. Rain runs down his face and begins to collect in his half-open mouth.

  - Chapter Twelve -

  Painfully, I lever myself off of the ground, leaning heavily on the car as I go. Everything hurts. It hurts even to breathe. I make it to a standing position and turn around to see a car idling in the road, its passenger window open. Strapped into the seat is an oxygen cylinder with a metal tube attached to the top, pointing out the window at me. Leaning over the cylinder and looking skeptically at me from the driver’s seat is Doc Simmons.

  I gape at her open-mouthed. I can’t imagine how she got here, how she knew to be here, or really anything about this. I try to formulate the questions out loud, but it just comes out as, “Guh?”

  “Get in the car, Dan,” says Doc Simmons. I don’t have a better idea, so with a cautious look back to make sure that Peterson is still down for the count, I slowly shamble to the car and open the door.

  “Not in there, Dan!” snaps the doc.

  “You just told me to get in the car!” I protest.

  “Yes, but the front seat has an oxygen tank in it. I assume you can see that? Get in the back. Honestly, Dan. I shouldn’t have to tell you not to attempt to co-locate with other solid objects. Though actually, perhaps that explains why you get hurt so much.”

  I carefully arrange myself in the backseat, wincing with every move. In the front, the doc fiddles with the tube on top of the tank, fixing it from where I’ve jostled it out of place. Satisfied, she fires one more dart into Peterson’s prone form, then turns back to the wheel.

  “Time to leave here, I think,” she says, putting the car into gear. “I’m sure the police have been called by now. Hopefully no one got a good description of this car through all of the rain.”

  “Wait, yeah!” The first of my questions manages to surface. “How did you even get this car?”

  “You’re not the only one who can borrow a car, Dan,” the doc says archly. “And just where is my car, hmmm?”

  “It, ah—a couple of blocks from here.”

  “I see. Out of curiosity, how would you describe its condition?”

  “A...altered.”

  “Yes. Rather.” She raises a hand to forestall any comment I might make. “I am truly not interested in hearing about how it’s not your fault. Blame can and will be assigned later. Right now I’d like to know where we’re going.”

  “I mean, you’re the one driving, so—”

  “I know you were just hit repeatedly in the head, Dan, but I really need you to focus up. I am asking you where you were going before the car accident. You looked like you had a plan in mind. What’s your destination? I’m going to take you there.”

  “Oh.” I give her the address for Mangiafuoco Medical Transcription. “Thank you.”

  We ride in silence for a moment, and then another question coalesces. “Wait, how did you know I looked like I had a plan before you got here?”

  Apparently I’m going to begin all of my questions with “wait.” In fairness, I’d really love it if events would wait for me to catch up to them for once. Doesn’t seem likely to happen, but it can’t hurt to put the request out there.

  The doc reaches in her coat pocket and pulls out the cell phone she’d loaned to me. “I was tracking you from my hospital-issued phone to see where you went. You weren’t driving aimlessly or choosing randomly. When I saw the lightning strike, I was briefly concerned that you’d done something stupid and burned down the nanomachinery lab, but the way you drove after that suggested another specific destination in mind. I thought you’d arrived when the signal stopped moving, so imagine my surprise when I pulled up to find my car totaled.”

  She waves the cell phone at me again. “Thank you for not destroying this, at least. It’s good to see that you don’t break everything you get your hands on.”

  “Hey! I returned that oxygen tank I borrowed, and I had to shelter that through a raging fire to get it back to you. I’m careful with other people’s stuff!”

  “And yet, my car.”

  “Well, fine. But I’m as careful as I can be. I got hit from behind there.”

  “Like I said, blame can and will be assigned later. I don’t want to hear about it right now.”

  “Hang on,” I say after a short pause. At least I’ve moved on from “wait.” “Did you only give me your cell phone so that you could track me?”

  “You asked to borrow my phone, Dan,” says Doc Simmons.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “And yet it is a response.”

  - - -

  A short time later, we pull up outside of Mangiafuoco Medical Transcription. I feel like the building should look ominous in some way, either brooding like a dark castle or gleaming like a cold and uncaring futuristic lab. Instead, it’s just a nondescript door opening onto an alley with dozens of others just like it. It’s depressingly banal.

  “In there is his lab?” asks the doc. Her voice is hushed, as if worried that we might somehow be overheard out here in the car.

  “Yeah, it’s in the side of the building behind the big roll-up garage door. From what I saw this morning, he’s got everything in there. The computers, samples, everything. I should be able to shut it all down once we’re inside. I hope.”

  “I assume you have no idea how to operate it, but are expecting it to be clearly labeled?”

  “Well...yes. I mean, I saw him turn off my powers this morning, and it was just a couple of keystrokes. So it’s not some complicated thing you have to do. I’m just hoping those keystrokes are obvious, or written down somewhere.”

  The doc nods, which either means she thinks this is likely, or it’s too dumb to be worth arguing about. “And you think h
e’s not there right now?”

  “He shouldn’t be, no. I called him out, told him I was going to another of his buildings to destroy it. He took the bait, I think. He’ll figure it out quickly enough once he gets there and I don’t show, but I’m hoping to still have maybe half an hour to figure it out.”

  I pause, realizing that I have no idea how much time the fight with Peterson cost me. “Well, fifteen minutes, anyway. Hopefully enough.”

  “So how are you planning to get inside?”

  “I’m going to nano-melt a hole in the wall. It’s a slow process with the nanos shut down, but I think I’ve still got time, and I don’t really have a better option.” Suddenly, my eye falls on the oxygen tank in the front seat. “Hey, unless—”

  “You can’t go tranquilize everyone in the office, Dan.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t know how to aim this reliably, and calibrating appropriate levels of sedatives is not a game. You could kill someone with this.”

  “You shot Peterson four times!”

  “It was a calculated risk. I needed to stop him, and I assume that the nanobots restructuring his system will help to neutralize the damage I inflicted. In fact, I wouldn’t count on him still being asleep at this point. He may well be back up already.”

  “I think you just don’t want me to fire the trank gun,” I grouse.

  “That’s correct. I think you’ll harm yourself and others. I did just say. Time’s ticking! You’d better get going.”

  I get out of the car, then hesitate when the doc remains inside. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll stay here and watch for unwelcome visitors,” she says, patting the oxygen tank. Sure, fine. It’s fine to use the trank gun when she gets to do it. It’s only unreasonable when I want to.

  Complaining about it doesn’t seem likely to make any headway, though, so I hustle across the alley in the rain and take shelter under the narrow eaves of the building. Placing my fingers to the giant roll-up door, I concentrate on my loathing. It comes easily in the shadow of this place.

  My broken finger screams at even the light pressure I’m applying, but I take that pain and turn it back on the one who caused it. On Ichabot, Dr. A, whatever his real name is. Behind this wall lies the root of all of my physical torment for the last year, the reason for everything bad that’s happened in my life during that time. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. There have been other minor screw-ups, both mine and others’, but nearly everything can be traced back to the machinery inside this building and the man who’s been operating it. So yeah, it’s easy to loathe right now.

  And yet, after a minute of focus, I lift my hands to see only the smallest of circles etched into the metal, ten discs about a half-inch in diameter each. It shouldn’t be a surprise; it took me a significant amount of time even to get through the thin link of the handcuffs in order to escape from Brayden’s car, and now I’m trying to make a hole in a wall big enough to climb through. I’d hoped that the intensity of the emotion would accelerate the process, but it seems like this trickle is all I’m going to get.

  Then it dawns on me that I need to work smarter, not harder. This is, after all, a door and not a wall. Casting my gaze downward, I quickly spot what I was hoping to see: a lock set nearly flush with the ground. I kneel down in the swirling rainwater and press my fingertips against that part of the door, forming an arch around the lock. My fingers gradually sink in like I’m pressing them into thick molasses, and when I can feel them break through into empty space, I slowly tighten them together, connecting the holes.

  After a couple of minutes, there’s a lurch as the entire door is freed from its moorings. It shudders upward about an inch before coming to a stop, so I slide my hands under it and lift. The metal groans in protest but moves up almost a foot before stopping.

  “What is it?” the doc says in my ear, and I just about jump out of my skin. I hadn’t heard her leave the car and come over here.

  “It’s caught on something inside,” I tell her as my heartbeat returns to normal. “I could maybe force this past it, but I don’t want to knock over whatever it is and alert everyone in the main part of the building.”

  The doc eyes the gap. “Looks wide enough to wriggle inside.”

  So saying, she drops to her stomach, heedless of the puddles, and belly-crawls in.

  “Hey! What? Wait!” I am articulate as always, and the doc ignores me, also as always. I give a mental shrug, lie down in the water and follow her under the door.

  Inside, it’s dark, which shouldn’t surprise me but does. Once clear of the door, I roll onto my back, stretch my hands upward to make sure that I’m clear of any overhanging obstacles, and push myself to a sitting position. Then, just as my eyes are starting to adjust to the dark and vague blocky shapes are becoming clear, a light flares on near me.

  I startle away, eliciting stabs of pain from my ribs, arms, back—basically all of my body at this point, really. Peterson worked me over pretty well, but it’s all melded into one constant overall pain. It’s only when I specifically impact one damaged part that I’m forcibly reminded of any particular injury. As I’ve done just now, scooting backward into a metal rack as I shy away from the light.

  “It’s me, Dan,” Doc Simmons says quietly, holding up her cell phone. She sounds distracted, and when she pans the light away from me, it becomes clear that that’s because she is distracted. She’s doing a slow scan of the room, taking everything in. When her eyes light upon the whiteboard, she immediately walks over toward it, leaving me in darkness.

  “Hey Doc? I don’t suppose you’ve still got your other phone on you, do you?” I stage-whisper across the room. I don’t know how thick the walls are in this place, and I’d rather not alert anyone in the main office to our presence.

  “No good,” says the doc, which seems like a weird answer until I realize she’s totally ignoring me and talking about the notes on the board. “This isn’t what I need.”

  I walk over to join her. “What do you mean, what you need?”

  “There’s nothing fundamental here,” she says, gesturing at the board. “Which makes sense, since he figured out the basics years ago. But I’m so close to understanding the principles behind them. The answers are in here.”

  “Yeah, and that’s awesome, don’t get me wrong. I’m excited to find out the science behind this, too. But what I’m really looking for—what we came here to find, remember?—is an off switch. Officer Peterson’s dying, remember? Brian’s gotta be doped up to live? Regina...well, is fine, actually. But plans to kill me?”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Simmons says impatiently. “Let’s find how to turn these off. I thought maybe there would be something in the notes here that explained it, so we could do more than just press a button, and actually understand what we’re doing instead of just treating it like magic.”

  “Speaking of pressing a button and treating it like magic, can I borrow your other phone so I can have a flashlight, too?”

  The doc pulls her phone out of her pocket and hands it to me. “I don’t understand your segue.”

  “Cell phones are basically magic.” The doc’s giving me a disgusted look, but instead of shutting up I try to explain myself. “I don’t know how any of it works. I can say ‘computers’ and ‘radio waves,’ but that’s basically the same as saying ‘voodoo’ and ‘scrying’ in terms of understanding what that means. What I know is I press a button and the far-talky box makes a light.”

  Doc Simmons stares at me for a second, then turns away without saying anything else. I like to think that I’m good for her self-control.

  Now armed with a light, I scan the room. It looks much the same as it did this morning, with the exception of the row of cabinets now missing a countertop, from where I dissolved it. The mess has all been cleaned up and swept away, though. There’s a large sheet of plywood up against one wall, and if I hadn’t known that it was block
ing a doorway—the door to which I also dissolved—I might think that the only entrance into this room was the way we came in.

  Well, through the roll-up door we came in, anyway. I probably wouldn’t think that the only way in was to belly-crawl through puddles. Even secret lairs need a dignified entrance.

  I ignore all of the scientific equipment and make a bee-line for the computer I saw Ichabot standing at this morning. After all, I saw him use it to shut off my powers. If I can figure out what he did, I can turn off everyone else’s powers, too. The screen’s off when I get to it, but a click of the mouse brings the monitor humming to life. I hold my breath in anticipation, then release it in disappointment when I see a login screen.

  It’s a grey screen with a highlighted bar that just says “A” and a text box below it. I press the enter key, and it adds red text beneath the box reading “Wrong Password. 4 Tries Remaining.”

  There’s also some small white text next to the box that says “Password Hint?” I click it, and a box pops up: “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.”

  “Hey Doc?” I call, louder than I mean to. My voice echoes in the cavernous room, and I lower my tone. “How’s your...foreign?”

  “My what?” Simmons closes the refrigerator she was looking in and strides over to me. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to log in to the system, and this is the password hint. Does that mean anything to you?”

  The doc snorts. “Yes, but it’s not helpful.”