Utility Company (Book 1): Blink

by Swardstrom, Will

  Ultimately, Nik wanted answers, but didn’t have the time to sort it out right now. He heard the din coming from the back of the plane and knew Agent Smith and his colleagues were still trying to find the would-be assassin. He thought about calling the woman‌—‌he could’ve sworn he heard Smith refer to her as a doctor‌—‌but she probably had her hands full with Agent Wesson who had fallen out of the bathroom.

  Meanwhile, Agent Barney was bleeding at his feet.

  Nik tried to calm himself again. At school, each of the teachers had to take First Aid classes, but all those included were CPR and use of the Defibrillator machine. Neither one of those was needed‌—‌yet at least. Barney was unconscious, but was breathing just fine. His heart was still beating as evidenced by the ever-expanding bloodstain covering the shoulder of the agent’s shirt.

  Pressure. That sounded right. Nik needed to apply pressure to the wound. That would keep the blood loss at a minimum until they could get to proper healthcare.

  He opened every drawer and cabinet in the galley. His options were limited, but he found a selection of towels. White towels. Not going to be white much longer, he thought to himself. He pulled a stack out and put them against Barney’s shoulder. Agent Barney stayed unconscious, but a moan escaped his lips.

  “Sorry man, just trying to help you out,” Nik whispered.

  Nik looked back around for something to apply pressure. Nothing to help. He put his hands on his hips in frustration and realized the best thing for the situation was around his pants the whole time. He whipped the belt out of the loops in his jeans and quickly tied it around Barney’s shoulder and the pile of towels now turning a dark shade of red. He put his foot on the belt to tighten the leather strap as much as it would go, and Barney once again grimaced, his eyelids fluttering as he nearly woke. A deeper and longer groan came from Agent Barney.

  Nik tried to shush the agent, but knew there was nothing he more he could do. He was more than a little relieved when the woman appeared in the galley doorway.

  “What happened here?”

  He looked up at her, bewilderment in his eyes. She hadn’t talked to him before now, and he thought at first she was accusing him of something, but her expression said something else. She was looking for answers, not accusations.

  “I don’t know. Once Agent Wesson was wounded, we came up here. My...other me...thought something else was happening and we found Agent Barney like this. Well, not like this. I mean, I put on the towels, and that’s my belt, but…”

  She gave him a slight smile, easing his worries.

  “You did the right thing,” she said. “My name is Dr. Anna, by the way. You are Nik Davidson, correct? The one from this reality?”

  “Yes. That’s me.”

  “Good. Glad to meet you. So if you are here, where is, your other half? Is he…?” she nodded to the cockpit.

  Nik jumped up. “Yeah. I forgot. He said he could handle the controls. I better check on him.”

  He strode towards the cockpit door, and Dr. Anna called out after him. “I’ll get Agent Tinker up here. He’s a trained pilot as well, and he can take over for your friend.”

  Nik wasn’t sure he would call his mirror self his friend just yet. A few hours ago, he might’ve, but now he needed more time. Gripping the handle of the door, Nik realized he didn’t know himself like he thought he did.

  Nik Davidson opened the cockpit door, expecting to see a panicked version of himself behind the controls of the plane. Nicholas was sitting in the captain’s chair, but there was no panic to be seen. He had a laptop open next to him and was typing furiously in an open window‌—‌something that appeared to be an old text-based message board. He remembered them from his days in college, and was confused why his body double from another universe would need to access the Internet when he wasn’t even from this world.

  Nik had barely made a sound, but in a split second, Nicholas had closed the window, sending the laptop back to a cleared desktop view, complete with a giant purple dinosaur as the system’s wallpaper. Nicholas turned in his chair and seemed to notice Nik for the first time.

  “Oh, hey,” Nicholas said. “Did you get Agent Barney taken care of?”

  “I did. Dr. Anna is with him now. How’s the plane doing?”

  He glanced back at the control panels. “Plane is doing just fine. Really wasn’t sure if I could do it, but I was a pro at that Microsoft Flight Simulator back in the day.”

  Nik’s eyes grew a few sizes. “What?”

  Nicholas spun around, a wicked smile spreading on his face. “Just kidding! I took some pilot training classes at the community college a couple years ago. Thought it would be fun. I’m taking it you didn’t.”

  Nik didn’t get a chance to reply. Agent Tinker opened the door behind him and quickly pushed past him.

  “You fellas need to get back to your seats. Strap in. Smith says if you move a muscle, he’s going to shoot both of you before you see land again.”

  Spelunkers

  Jodi was too far ahead and Braden was having a hard time keeping up. The terrain was rocky, not level and Braden couldn’t leap like a rabbit over every obstacle like Jodi did.

  “Jodi, wait up!” Braden yelled. He came up to a spot with a boulder nearly four feet tall in front of him, a wall on the other side and a prickly cactus bush that hid a three-foot drop off on the other. He had to take a moment and scramble up.

  Jodi appeared on the other side of the boulder, her dark locks blowing in the breeze, “The cave is just ahead…around the corner.” Magically, she sprang up to the top of the boulder and pointed at a miniscule crack on the wall next to Braden. “Put your toe in there and launch up.”

  Braden resisted the urge to groan, and went ahead and tried it. The toe part worked, but the launch just got him about halfway up and too far to the right.

  Jodi caught his hand and pulled him up the rest of the way, yanking awkwardly as she did. When Braden was secure on the top of the boulder she looked over the side and back to Braden with an arched eyebrow. “You’ve got to push up, not out, bud. That could have been…interesting. I think you’re good from here on out.”

  Braden was embarrassed. He would never have thought a girl would be so much better at this than him. He couldn’t figure out how he got out here anyway. One minute he’s talking to this girl assigned as a lab partner in Chem class and next thing you know he’s chasing her all over the side of a mountain. He took a breath and looked down the path in front of him. No more awkwardly blocked path for the rest of the way down until the cliff side on their left forced a turn to the right about two hundred or so feet away. Good. Maybe he could do this after all.

  The pair climbed down, one leaping onto the nearby wall and down to the ground, the other sliding down the rock rather gracelessly. At least she went first.

  “Wait ‘til you see this place,” Jodi said, talking over her shoulder about the cave she’d been guiding Braden to all morning long. “I don’t think that many people know about it. My brother showed it to me a couple years ago and we’ve been in and around it a bunch.”

  Braden nodded as he walked, out of breath. He didn’t know why he did this to himself. He certainly wasn’t built like Jodi with her long legs and arms, nor did he have the athletic background‌—‌did she say cross country team? He did like the idea of an adventure, and that’s what Jodi had sold him. All he knew at that moment was that the result had better be worth it.

  The pair approached the corner and were ready to turn when they heard a car engine start up and a door slam. Jodi peeked around the corner and pushed Braden back. “Someone’s already there, but I think they’re leaving. Let’s wait.”

  Braden wanted to look, and he tugged at Jodi’s shoulder so he could take her place. When he could see, he observed a black SUV with one man putting something in the back seat while another man was walking out from behind a large rock‌—‌was that covering the opening of the cave?

  He turned to her and whispered, “Th
e cave is behind the rock?” Jodi nodded.

  Braden turned back to see the driver drop a cigarette butt on the ground and cover it with his toe before getting in the SUV. The other guy was already getting in the passenger side. In moments, they were driving away. Braden followed Jodi as he slipped around the corner to keep going down toward the cave.

  “I guess it’s not as secret as you thought it was,” he said to Jodi.

  Jodi shrugged. “I didn’t know there was a way to get a truck up here,” Jodi said. “Whatever. They’re gone, so it’s our turn.”

  They scrambled down the hill and slipped past the large rock covering the entrance to the cave. Both kids turned on their flashlights and entered. Jodi led Braden around several bends, found a cross-path that led them back to a place they had already been, and even over, down, and around several obstacles. Somehow Braden didn’t mind these too much. The adventure was living up to the anticipation. Then they found something strange.

  There was a door in their way, inside the cave.

  Jodi and Braden shined their flashlights to each other’s faces. “Is that supposed to be there?” Braden asked.

  Jodi looked confused. “I’ve never seen it before.”

  They approached it and found it slightly ajar. Jodi pushed it open and looked around with her flashlight. “Braden!” she exclaimed, “You’ve got to see this!”

  Braden followed her in through the door. Something felt strange there, like walking through old cobwebs, except there was nothing on them afterwards. They chalked it up to the creepiness and kept going. They found what looked like the inside of the house of mirrors from the travelling carnival that came to the local strip mall every year. The corridor was lined with mirrors of all kinds and shapes. The two kids pushed through, examining the different mirrors, wondering who had set all of it up until they stopped and looked at each other, and realized that it was the guys they had seen outside.

  “But what’s it for?” Jodi said to the air. “It doesn’t make any sense way out here, under the earth.”

  That’s when Braden saw it. The next mirror didn’t reflect. It showed a bedroom with a view of a barn through a window. The leaves of a tree in front of the barn were moving, so it obviously was showing something as it was happening or as it did happen. He pointed it out to Jodi, and Jodi’s jaw dropped.

  In the excitement of the moment, they began to look for others. They found a scene of the Mall in the heart of Washington, D.C., a random street in a large bustling city (New York? Chicago?), a beach, three dark mirrors, several more bedrooms or bathrooms, and another mirror that seemed to show a place with several mirrors all at once. Someone was lying on the floor in that room, and he didn’t look so good.

  Jodi turned to Braden, “I don’t like this all of a sudden.”

  Braden stared at the mirror panel with the man on the floor. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  They reversed their course and headed back for the door. Just before they got there, Jodi caught Braden by the shoulder and pointed off to the left. “I see a light. You see it?”

  It was hard not to in this environment. They walked over to see and found another door. This one was locked but had a window in the door. Inside was a series of work consoles filled with computers, screens of all shapes and sizes, and other machines, the nature of which the two kids could only guess at. They could see two doors on the other side of the room. They were still looking through this window in the door when they heard the noise behind them.

  Was it the men they saw outside? No way to tell, but Braden and Jodi hid behind the closest thing they could find‌—‌a group of mirrors lined up off to the side.

  In a few moments, someone came from the direction of the mirrors-that-weren’t-mirrors they had seen earlier. They didn’t get a good look, but they did see that whoever it was opened the door and went in. The door closed behind them.

  Braden gestured to Jodi to stay where she was and he crept forward to see if he could get a look.

  In the room, a door on the opposite side was moving. Whoever it was must have gone through there. The room was empty for the moment. Braden felt Jodi creeping up beside him.

  “I thought you were going to stay back there,” he whispered.

  “You stopped long enough to look here. I figured it was safe,” she responded.

  “Okay. I think it’s safe. Let’s go.”

  Just then the door in the back of the room opened again and a man came through heading straight for a table on the far right of the room. He walked awkwardly, as if he was unsure of his steps. He stopped at a computer console and started typing. Jodi saw it first and gasped.

  “What?” Braden whispered urgently.

  “Look at his hand!” Jodi squeaked.

  Braden looked again. The man’s right hand had only three fingers - thumb, index, and what would usually be middle. The rest of the hand was gone. Whatever happened to it obviously happened long enough ago to heal over and become usable again, but the injury looked odd, like whatever caused it had cut off the fingers with laser precision.

  Whatever Three Fingers was doing required concentration and he didn’t notice the two kids at all.

  Jodi whispered to Braden, “I don’t like this. Can we go?”

  Braden nodded and they both ducked low so the man in the room wouldn’t see them and headed back for the door between the cave and the vast room of mirrors.

  They reached it together. Jodi opened the door and then they stopped, befuddled. Behind the door was a mirrored surface. Braden reached out to touch it and it was as solid as it looked. It didn’t seem like glass. It was probably some kind of metal surface.

  “What’s going on, Braden?” Jodi asked, as quietly as she could.

  “I don’t know,” Braden whispered back.

  The lights overhead started to come on in groups starting in the back of the cave and heading toward them. A red light started flashing on the wall at evenly spaced intervals. Jodi and Braden looked at each other, panic reflected in both sets of eyes.

  Braden grabbed Jodi’s hand and they ran back toward the room with the computers, trying to stay ahead of the lights coming on overhead. They reached the room and peeked inside. Nobody in at the moment. Braden tried the door and it opened. He pulled Jodi in with him and swiveled his head, looking for a way out, a hiding place, anything. A few feet away, a large metal box sat against the wall. One of the edges was propped open. It was labeled “EARTH 2 SUPPLIES & TRANSPORT.” Braden didn’t know what it was for, but he knew there weren’t a lot of options left. He grabbed Jodi’s arm and pushed her through the small opening into the box. He used his cell phone to illuminate the inside.

  “What are we…”

  “Shhh…” Braden said. Jodi quieted down, but he could tell she was anxious to get out. Maybe she had claustrophobia. Braden hoped she didn’t, because he didn’t have a lot of choices. You don’t go surprising three-fingered men in strange rooms under the earth.

  “Braden?”

  “I said to be quiet,” Braden whispered.

  Instead of talking again, Jodi nudged Braden in the ribs. He turned around and gasped. The rest of the crate was filled with weapons, mostly handguns and rifles. The box was tall enough for a person, but long, like a shrunken shipping container. For Braden and Jodi, that meant they were now cargo.

  “I don’t know what all this means, but we need to keep quiet. Maybe we’ll have a shot at getting out of here soon. We just need to wait for a window,” Braden said. “Trust me. I followed you in here. Let me figure this out, okay?”

  Jodi simply nodded, her eyes tracking past Braden’s head and through the crack in the container. Braden turned and looked as well, finding the man standing and checking on instruments around the room.

  A loud hum filled the room for a few seconds, and the man turned towards the mirrors on the far side. Three Fingers scrambled a little, shuffling a few stacks of papers and pulling out a couple binders. As he fumbled for something, Jodi and Braden watched the
mirror transform before their eyes. One moment, the room was reflected, the next, a man slowly came into view. He was sharply dressed, and had a look of professionalism about him. One moment he was in the mirror, the next he was stepping through into this room, as if he was just a few feet away all along.

  “What was that?” Jodi whispered.

  “I don’t know. Just be patient,” Braden said. He reached down and found Jodi’s hand, and gripped it, partly for her sake, partly for his own.

  Three Fingers stopped his shuffling, and addressed the new man in the room. “Agent Smith. You...I...it’s been awhile since you’ve been here.”

  Smith regarded the other coolly, as if he wasn’t sure what to make of the three-fingered man. He took a few more steps into the room.

  “Yes, well...I’ve been busy. You know how it is, Davis. Always gotta stay ahead of the game.” He didn’t say it with a laugh, but Davis laughed anyway. It was clear Smith intimidated him.

  “I guess,” Davis said after a moment. Davis paused for another second, and then found the words he was looking for. “So, um, Agent Smith, what are you doing here, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “I need to get to Sedona. Earth 2. Got it all set up already?”

  “Um...I do, but that was where Jones and Quincy were headed a few days ago. We’re still waiting for them, and policy says we wait for the team to come back before more agents go through.”

  Smith walked towards Davis. As the slick agent approached the three-fingered man, the man dropped the binders he held in his hands and instinctively backed up.

  “Listen, Davis. I don’t want to pull rank on you, but you are just an analyst. You are here to do what we say. I say I want to get over there, and I don’t care that Jones and Quincy are already there. I don’t care they haven’t come back. In fact, maybe I’m going over there to find them. Do you believe me?”

  Davis hesitated a second too long. “Y...yes?”