He bowed a bit, pausing longer at the bottom than necessary, and she felt his eyes linger on her exposed flesh. “Bit early for a jog, isn’t it, Mrs. Light?”
She nodded, trying to make her face light up at his concern, uncertain if she’d pulled off the look. “It’s going to be a long day at work, so I wanted to get my run in when I could.” Spurred by an overwhelming need to apologize to this man for what was to come, she reached out and squeezed his arm. “Thanks for your concern.” She forced a dazzling smile at him.
He actually blushed. “Um… of course. Ma’am. Mrs. Light.” He pushed the door open, and she walked into the dark night.
She felt no fear. Despite her knowledge of the instability in the city, despite her knowledge that she might be seized or chased or shot at any moment, she moved into the night air with confidence. Or perhaps not confidence, but a belief that if some horror were to befall her, she’d earned it. She stretched a bit as she stood on the sidewalk, fully aware that the doorman watched every move with deep interest, and then moved easily into a jogging pace, vanishing into the darkness.
At the first corner, she turned left and pulled open the dimly lit door to the parking garage. She jogged down the steps, passing floor after floor, until she reached the bottom. She frowned.
Where was everything? There should be a partial flight of stairs still moving down from this spot. Her eyes roamed the garage, noting the downward slope of the pavement, and she realized her mistake. She’d used the incorrect stairwell. With a sigh, she stepped out of the stairwell and walked briskly toward the opposite side of the garage, ignoring the faint aroma of tar on the ground. She wondered, idly, why the hydrogen used to fuel the ground cars bore no aroma, and wondered if those living in the Golden Ages used a different fuel, perhaps something that smelled like lavender or vanilla, in order to cover the smell of driving surfaces.
She saw two things as she approached the far stairwell: a set of stairs going down… and a man lying asleep on the landing, dressed in clothing emitting a foul odor that overwhelmed the other smells. She took one more step and noted a detail correction.
He wasn’t asleep.
His eyes followed her, appraising her as her approach slowed. She saw no malicious intent in that gaze. With no one else around, though, it seemed far more invasive, far more sinister, than the visual ogling the doorman had given her moments ago. Was it the location or the familiarity of the man driving her angst?
She kept her eyes on the stairwell, calculating how she might divert him from this space. She had to complete her mission. Or else.
She didn’t know what the “or else” might mean.
“Pretty lady, can you spare a credit?” His voice was rough, raspy, the victim of too many years of hard drinking. Or was it? If he’d lived here, perhaps the hydrogen fumes had damaged his lungs and vocal cords. She didn’t know. Why did she assume drinking?
She felt her muscles tense and tried to relax. “I didn’t bring any money with me, sir. Sorry.” She tried to hide the fear in her voice.
“A…” He coughed. “A pity.” There was no malice in his tone, and yet she felt a shiver of terror down her spine. She could outrun him. Right?
She looked at him more closely. He looked young when she’d thought him old. Fit when she’d assumed he was unhealthy. Why was he here? What would make a healthy young man sleep in a parking garage stairwell?
She saw his eyes, the deep sadness there, and realized the truth. He’d been hurt. Deeply and powerfully. Probably in the recent past, the wounds still festering in him, the despair turning life into a challenge and lowering his self-worth where he could do nothing but what he did now.
Her compassion overwhelmed her.
She pulled out the water bottle. “I don’t know if you’re thirsty, sir, but I just filled this with cool water. You’re welcome to have it.”
His eyes lit up as he watched the bottle move in his direction. He reached out his hand, his huge, grimy hand, and took the bottle from her. His hand touched hers as he did so, and she used every bit of mental strength to keep from crying out in revulsion as she looked down at that physical contact.
When she looked up at his face, she saw tears sliding down his cheeks, carving a river through the dirt. “Thank you.” To some degree, she’d restored his faith in humanity, his belief that there was goodness out there, and people who wouldn’t destroy your emotional core.
He drank deeply of the cool water as his benefactor moved down the stairs to complete a task that would see him dead in mere hours.
“There’s nothing down there!” he shouted. His voice was stronger already.
She froze, and though she didn’t owe him an explanation, she offered one anyway. “I need to run as many flights of stairs as possible. This helps.”
“The other stairwell has more flights,” he said.
“I’ll do that one next if I’m not too worn out.”
He stayed silent. She let her foot down and moved to the bottom of the stairwell.
The landing here was a storage area for the garage. Sealed buckets of paint for parking lanes, bags of cement mix used to repair damage to the concrete barricades, even bags of blacktop mix to repair potholes. Most of those supplies weren’t used, though she could detect the odor of plastic and some mold in the confined space. The lack of use made it a perfect spot for planting the materials here a week or two earlier. She wasn’t sure why she needed to activate it manually, why they couldn’t put a remote on it, or just program the start time in. She shook her head at the memory of her conversation with her father earlier. He’d been suspicious of her commitment since the start, and doubtless the other major participant shared that distrust. This setup was a test for her, a test of her loyalty, of her ability to see something through all the way to the end. They’d know the second she activated the device, and know if she failed to do so. Punishment—in the form of death—would arrive quickly. But they wouldn’t kill her for it.
They’d kill Roddy.
She swallowed, wishing she had the bottle of water, and looked, frowning at the stack of concrete bags. Upon closer examination, she realized it wasn’t a stack of bags. The clever paint job, combined with the dim lighting, masked the solid rectangular box. She leaned forward, cringing as a spider web grazed her exposed skin, and reached over to touch the box. She didn’t touch wood, but a plastic slip covering. Clever. She slid her hand down the side to lift the cover off the box, hoping nothing lived in the dark crevice but the spider that spun the web.
“You okay down there, miss?”
She jumped, and her hand smacked the box. Ouch. “Stretching.” Why was it so easy to lie?
She leaned over once more, slid her hand down the box, and located the bottom of the cover. She slid it up, revealing the device. The box looked like a smooth metallic coffin—fitting enough—and she saw the touch screen controls before her, with one faint red touch button labeled Activate blinking at her.
Before she could think about it any further, before she could equate what she was doing with the death of the man who’d grown deeply concerned over her well-being because she’d given him water, she pressed the Activate button.
She’d ask for forgiveness for her part in this. But nobody would forgive her. Nobody would be around to forgive her. Her condemnation was sealed.
She wiped away a tear, pulled the cobweb from her hair, took a deep, dusty breath, and began jogging up the steps.
The man sat on the landing, watching her as she came forward. As she went by, he held up the water bottle and tipped it in her direction, a final thanks for a generous gift, a renewed belief in the goodness of humanity.
She made it up two more flights before she fell to her knees, dry heaving upon the cool, rough concrete of the landing, wishing someone would strike her dead in that instant.
—————
MICAH JAMISON
—————
…periodic rumors of Eastern incursions into Western territory hav
e been proved false on every occasion, with studies showing the impossibility of such events prominent in government education programs…
The History of the Western Alliance, page 114
MICAH JAMISON’S EYES FLICKED TO the clock, though he knew that the hour had passed midnight. His mind wouldn’t slow down, not with the images of the previous morning fresh in his mind. Memories from the past that he’d long suppressed flashed before his eyes.
They’d sailed across the ocean to a small subcontinent near Eastern Alliance territory, a tract of land largely uninhabited. The people he traveled with were familiar to him, the true power structure behind the government of the West. But he’d never suspected who they’d actually meet there.
They’d found something in the Time Capsule, something they’d redacted before it reached the masses, and the meeting enabled the power brokers to admit their knowledge of the weapon. They constructed buildings of various materials, and each took turns turning their variations of the weapon loose. The destruction was thorough and precise, leaving piles of dust where buildings, trees, and unsuspecting wildlife once stood. There were two limitations to the weapon. Production was a complex matter. And distribution to targets in enemy territory would prove challenging.
One man there said nothing, but his face showed he’d figured out a means of overcoming one of those obstacles. Given his background, they all knew which issue he’d solved. But he’d not be given the chance to put his ideas into practice, for the shadowy leaders of the two great Alliances made a pact there that day. The weapon was too powerful, too destructive, to unleash upon the world. They agreed they’d destroy their caches of the weapon and halt further research into the matter.
A year earlier, he’d gotten his first clue the East had broken that pact.
Twenty-two hours ago, he’d learned they’d gotten within a few miles of a major Western cityplex with caches of the weapon and set them off in a trial run.
Twenty hours ago, he’d visited the site. The coffin left behind was a message to him. They’d leveled a huge building and had sufficient volume of the weapon to leave some behind just for him. He’d nearly collapsed, so terrified that Sheila and the others were moments from death. He’d recovered moments later and knew they had time. He knew the weakness of the weapon because he knew who controlled its production and distribution. If he could get it back to the secret bunker beneath the Bunker, he could remove that cache from the East’s stockpile.
Sheila’s text question about what else might be out there had reignited his fear. She was right. If they’d dangled that clue in front of him, they had dozens or hundreds of additional weapons caches set and in place. He’d never find them all.
He’d failed to sleep as he’d remembered the images and understood the implications, and he remained awake as he pondered his next step. Escalation within his leadership structure would never work. Few knew of the research project—code-named Ravager—and those who did know of the project died years earlier. Most would find his claims ludicrous, pure fantasy. Direct appeals to the two people from the island he could reach would fail to elicit the type of response he wanted; he’d most likely die for making contact.
He could go public, tell the media what he knew, what his team had found. He doubted that a hole in the ground in the nearby Hinterlands would generate sympathy. And what would happen if people believed him? He had one coffin-shaped cache of the weapon, and no ability to locate any others. They couldn’t find everything before the enemy could activate the weapon. His words would do nothing but spark civil unrest within the Western cityplexes. People would die because of his words, not the enemy’s weaponry.
He could do nothing.
Or could he?
He drove himself back to the office. He’d be back long before his driver arrived at the established time to take him to the office. But this was a private matter, one he needed to do alone, just as he’d needed to visit the site without dragging his driver along. He suspected the driver would balk at traveling to the Hinterlands, even so near the cityplex. He entered his office and opened the drawer, removing the false bottom where the special badge rested. He checked the positioning as he always did, ensuring the badge remained in perfect alignment. He then grabbed the badge and headed back to the secret underground bunker, where he and Sheila had deposited the gifted box of Ravagers only a few hours earlier. The metal stairs leading down sounded like thunder reverberating with each heavy step.
He opened doors of the storage cabinets in the space, finally locating what he wanted: a small box made of Diasteel. He returned to the storage tank holding the Ravagers and put the open box inside. He used robotic “hands” inside the tank to scoop a portion of the material into the open box and then closed the lid before removing the box from the tank. He locked the box, wondering if any of the material coated the outside and even now covered his skin.
Too late to worry about that now.
They’d moved the material, had jostled the holding box, and had even opened the box. And yet the Ravagers material remained dormant, giving no indication that the material could visit the kind of controlled, complete destruction he’d seen at two sites separated by miles and years. They need something to wake them, to activate them. How had they done it years ago?
He nodded at the memory. If he was right, they’d put the material in precisely the correct place. No chance they could be activated from within the tank. And that meant that at least the people working here, like Sheila, would have a chance to escape whatever the East had planned.
He made one final stop that night, to a spot no one else knew about, not even Sheila Clarke, and left the Diasteel box there. He returned to his home not long after, a grim smile on his face.
The East might have them beaten before the war officially started.
But he’d ensured the fight would be anything but a massive victory on their part.
And they’d never see his strike coming.
—————
WESLEY CARDINAL
—————
…collective memories of human wanderings in the Hinterlands and the dangers faced after sundown led to a general cessation of public activity and business after dark in even well-lit city streets, with rare exceptions…
The History of the Western Alliance, page 1313
THE VOICE PROVIDED A DETAILED overview of his mission during the ride to his office space. The mission sounded suicidal, and he’d thought to protest, to ask for more time or resources. He knew the Voice wouldn’t listen, though, and had considered those objections in the timing of the demand that he act immediately. Protests would result in the migraine-inducing internal shrieking noise, pain that would undoubtedly cause a crash while cruising along empty streets at night on his scooter. He’d be unable to continue his mission if comatose on the ground.
He decided he didn’t trust the Voice enough to test him—or her—about the willingness to lose someone completing a vital mission.
The roads were dark and unoccupied, of course. Nobody left their homes after dark. A few people pushed the limits by ten or fifteen minutes, but there was little purpose in moving about at night. Restaurants, shops, and entertainment venues closed their doors at least thirty minutes before nightfall to allow employees time to reach home before the sun set below the horizon.
Still, Wesley couldn’t help but think he was being watched.
He parked his scooter in a restaurant parking lot a quarter mile from the building, pocketed his keys, and rechecked his backpack. He found everything in order, though he’d been tempted to suggest he’d left something behind. He suspected he’d wake up here hours from now in the broad daylight if he tried. Freedom of movement and expression when one possessed a disembodied Voice in one’s head.
He jogged at a slow, steady pace, through the brisk night air. In the emptiness, his gentle footfalls sounded like the beat of a bass drum, thumping away at a steady beat. He tried humming a tune in time with the beat, but soon becam
e distracted by thoughts about the mysterious room the Voice claimed he’d visit that night.
The lights were out at Jamison & Associates. He ignored the building as he always did, moving past the lush landscaping and smooth walls to the parking garage entry beyond. He never parked his scooter here; it gave his employers too much ability to restrict his ability to leave when he desired. But on foot? He slid past the vehicle barrier, wondering if the badge reader would even work for him at this hour. He found the stairwell and moved at a brisk, silent pace down the concrete steps.
He froze before exiting the landing.
Someone was out there, moving in the parking garage.
He swallowed. They’d timed his arrival to ensure that those working the overnight shift—and only a secret military base would possibly have such a thing in this world—were all situated inside the Bunker. No stragglers from the previous shift ought to remain behind. Who could be moving in the garage?
He’d noticed the vibe of the population as he rode through the city from his Hinterlands spur to this one, a vibe suggesting imminent eruption of anger and despair in the form of random violence. Perhaps the first shots in that effort would commence in the parking garage of an accounting firm sitting on a spur outside.
Just his luck.
He squinted as the figure moved toward one of the dim lights illuminating the underground space at this hour, and nearly gasped. The General was here? What would rouse the man from his sleep at this hour? Or did Micah Jamison routinely test the general curfew observed by civilians?
It didn’t matter. His presence here put Wesley’s mission at risk. He couldn’t be seen or heard. Wesley slid slowly back into the shadows, never taking his unblinking eyes from the General.
Wesley, have you entered the facility?
Of all the times for the Voice to initiate a conversation…
The Ravagers Box Set: Episodes 1-3 Page 6