Clutch

by JA Huss

  He shrugs before answering. "It can mean a lot of things. Fright. Excitement. Anticipation."

  "What does it mean now?"

  He laughs a little. "All of the above."

  "What could you possibly be afraid of now?"

  His eyes search mine. "Another rejection," he says softly.

  I just look at him and then he begins to move away but I grab his arm. "Where are you going?"

  He takes his hand and brushes some hair out of my eyes, a tender gesture that makes my body tingle. "We've got time for this later, lots of time."

  I grab his arm again. "What if we didn't? Have more time for this later, I mean?"

  "What are ya trying to tell me, Junco?"

  My eyes get lost in the green depths and I whisper, "Just kiss me, Tier."

  He's all business now as he takes my face into his hands and his thumbs caress the skin near the corners of my mouth. I stare into his eyes as he moves towards my lips. When he's a breath away I close them, and then his mouth is on mine, our tongues searching. It's slow, and heated, and perfect. He breathes me in and slides his hand down my face and slips it behind my ear to draw me closer. It's the best moment in my current memory and I hold my breath.

  Tier pulls back for a moment and I open my eyes to look at him. "Breathe out, Junco. All the best parts are in the exhale."

  I let it out and he takes me in again.

  I feel Tier's body move as he takes a half-hearted kick in the back. "Get a fucking room, you two," Moju snarls in disgust. "That's my sister, you asshole."

  I begin to pull away but Tier takes his time and finishes our moment. And then he is on his feet and holding out his hand. I take it and he pulls me up without effort. I can't tell if it's because I'm such a small person to begin with, or because I'm floating on air. Either way, it doesn't matter. I can barely breathe and it takes me a minute to recognize the aftereffects of happiness.

  Chapter Sixteen

  "I don't know," I say.

  My resolve to find Dale and get answers is fading fast as I look down into the dirty hole Tier and Moju are asking me to climb into. "It's pretty dark in there."

  Moju is swinging a lightstick by a lanyard in his hand. "Hence the flares, Juncs. It's fine. Plus, we have night-vision."

  "Yeah, but I don't."

  Tier looks down at me. "No, but you have us," he says simply.

  I look up at both of them now. "And you're sure he's down there?" It seems unlikely that he'd be down in a hole in the ground.

  Moju answers, "Juncs, I heard them say he was there. He's working with the MR."

  Tier pipes in then. "Junco, it's not what it looks like on the outside. Underneath it's another world, believe me."

  "How do you know?" I ask, wondering just how much he's holding back now.

  "Yeah, Tier. How the hell do you know that?" Moju clearly knows Tier's part in all this, but wants to put him on the spot.

  I look from one set of glowing eyes to another and give in. "Oh, fuck it. Keep your damn secrets." I motion to one of them to go first, and Tier takes up the lead, with me in the middle, and Moju last.

  Underground the earth smell fills my nose and makes me want to vomit. It reminds me of mushrooms and personally, eating fungus is a sure sign you're either starving or are being force-fed as punishment.

  We create a pattern as we descend. Tier's boots clang on the metal rungs which line the side of the tunnel. Then mine. Then Moju's softer thunk of bare flesh on the rung above my head. It takes forever and I count three hundred and twelve rungs before we stop. I don't even want to think about climbing back up.

  Tier grabs my ankle and I almost scream. "Stay put here, Junco. I'm serious, no funny business."

  He drops down and I can hear his wings as they catch air. I can't see anything, but a tiny splash (a long way from where I'm standing, it seems to me) signals that he's on the ground. I hear his wings again, then the sound fades and is gone. Moju lets out a long sigh but to his credit he doesn't ask me to move, or go down, or even complain that Tier is taking too long.

  We just wait.

  I am just about to whine about my arms being tired of holding on to the rungs when I hear Tier's wings. He grabs the rung below me. "OK, I don't see anything. Junco, I'll hover below you. Let go and drop, I'll catch you in the air. Then Moju can come out."

  I want to say two things in reply. One, obviously, is how sure should I be that he will catch me before I splat in the puddle far below. The other is what does he mean he didn't see anything? Thing? Not anyone. But anything. This worries me. I let that slide too, because to be honest, the truth isn't all it's cracked up to be. Ignorance can be bliss. What you don't know can't hurt you. And the ever popular, if I knew then what I know now, I'd never have done it.

  "Tell me when," I say instead.

  He says "When," and I drop. His arms grab me a split-second later and he holds me tight as we descend to the ground.

  Moju lands beside me and breaks the lightstick and the tunnel glows green as he drops it to the ground. I catch Tier staring down the tunnel before he notices me and smiles. That's when I know this whole thing is not going to end well. He's worried.

  The tunnel is massive. It's at least five stories to the ceiling and a hundred feet from side to side. The ceiling is curved, like a suborbital hangar, and the cracked and deteriorated walls are made of concrete. Various-sized debris piles line the floor for as far as I can see in the dim glow and bits of rebar are sticking out here and there as puddles of liquid ripple when small rodents scurry into the shadows. "What is this place?"

  Moju answers, "US Military nuclear weapons transport tunnel. There's an entire highway underground and this is just one little off-ramp in the middle of nowhere. They were shut down more than a hundred years ago during the Succession Revolutions. Like Tier said, it's another world down here." Moju's jovial disposition is gone now.

  "How do you know this?" I ask.

  He looks at me and throws his hands up. "I know a lot of shit I shouldn't, Juncs. Comes with the job."

  Tier is speaking before I can ask what job. "Get on Moju's back, Junco," he says as he takes my hand. "We'll need to fly from here."

  I swallow and he squeezes my hand in a show of support. "It's no big deal, really. But it's better to fly."

  I decide to trust him and hop on Moju's back. We fly slow and cautious and this is yet one more red flag telling me to stop and go back.

  But I can't.

  Like it or not, Dale is a player in the game of Junco. And I know that Tier wants me to see him. To talk to him. Otherwise he wouldn't have let me come down here. My destiny is tied to this foul-smelling subterranean tunnel and if I go back now I'll be as clueless as I was before.

  I'm not going back.

  Moju slows down and we land so he can light up a stick and look around while Tier remains above us, keeping an eye on the darkness. I don't offer to climb down off his back and thankfully, he doesn't ask me to either. Moju throws another lightstick and I watch it tumble end over end until it splashes down in a puddle slick with sheen. He cracks another one and throws in in the opposite direction and only then do I fully understand the size and scope of the place we are in.

  We are standing in the middle of the nuclear weapon freeway. It is massive, easily a quarter mile across, but I know that distance without reference is deceiving, so it's probably closer to half a mile wide. The height of the ceiling is the same as the off-ramp, but this one seems to be reinforced with layer upon layer of steel beams. At least it doesn't seem likely that it will come crashing down on us.

  "Which way?" Moju asks.

  Tier is still staring off into the blackness as I look over at him. "Moju, I thought you were the one who knew where Dale was?"

  I feel Moju shrug beneath me. "Tier has always been in charge down here. He knows it better than I do."

  Tier gives me a not-now look, so I drop it.

  I hear scuttling off to the right and turn in surprise.

  "
Up now, Moju," Tier commands. We fly up and hover in the center of the tunnel, their wings straining to hold the position. I look down as dozens of small creatures crowd against the barrier which separates the green glow from the pitch black. They seem hesitant to come into the light.

  "When ya live in the darkness long enough even this bit of light is blinding," Tier says, as if reading my mind.

  "What are they?" I ask.

  Moju shrugs, but Tier answers, "Nothing we need to worry about. Yet. Come on, it's this way."

  He picks a direction, whether it is east or west, north or south, I have no idea, and we fly along once again. My stomach grows more and more unsettled with each wingbeat. There are lots of things in the dark, things bigger and meaner than the small creatures that shied away from the green glow. Things that hiss and drag large limbs behind them as we pass.

  Neither of the guys react or fill me in, so I just keep my mouth shut. If there's one thing I remember from cadets it's to do the job you're trained for, and if you're not trained for the job at hand, shut up and stay the fuck out of the way.

  We stop again but Moju doesn't crack a lightstick this time. I can feel his arms moving, and I get the feeling the guys are using hand signals that only they can see in the darkness, but they don't include me. Clearly talking is forbidden, so I stay silent once again.

  I feel Moju reach into a pocket and pull something out and extend his hand. I can only imagine that Tier takes whatever it is and then Moju flies us backward. Tier joins us in a few seconds and then I hear a small crack and we all move forward together and land. I hear a whoosh of air as Tier strains to pull on something and then a crack of light floods the dark highway just long enough for us to slip through a massive vault-like door and quickly shut it behind us.

  Things scrape against the other side of the door once it is closed and every hair on my body stands up on end. Moju shrugs me off and I slide down on the tiled floor of the hallway and look back at the door with some trepidation.

  Tier and Moju are whispering to each other now. "Hey, guys? There's something on the other side." My voice must surprise them because they both look at me like I have two heads. "There are things out there," I say.

  "They can't get in here, Junco." Tier explains by explaining nothing.

  "Yeah, but what are they?"

  He shakes his head at me again.

  Now, I don't know him all that well, I mean – it's only been a few days since our first encounter on the hill, but I've seen him in quite the array of stressful situations, so I feel I can correctly infer what this head-shaking means. And it means those creatures will do terrible things to us given the chance.

  So I drop it. Because ignorance is bliss and what you don't know can't hurt you and all that good shit. If I'm going to be eaten alive by some hissing freak in the dark, I'd rather not dwell on it.

  Really.

  Moju takes my hand and we follow Tier down the hallway. The fluorescent lights above, the ones that work, anyway, flicker and the strobe effect makes me feel like puking. "Where's the power coming from?"

  Moju shrugs but Tier, once again the purveyor of everything giant nuclear tunnels under the RR, answers, "They have solar panels and a small wind farm over by Ramah. Ever seen it?"

  Tier oozes little tiny bits of local knowledge that he shouldn't really have if he's just a visitor here. "I thought all that crap was shut down decades ago?"

  "It was," he continues. "Officially anyway. The wind still blows and the sun still shines."

  "Are we under Ramah right now?"

  "Yup."

  That means we aren't really that far from my farm. Ramah is only about thirty miles from us. This blows me away because in my mind we are on another planet.

  "I thought you guys said this place has a security system?"

  "It does," Tier answers.

  "So where is it?"

  Moju laughs and turns back to me as he continues to walk. "We just passed them, Juncs."

  "And more up ahead," Tier adds.

  "So how do we get back out now that those things are on the other side of the door back there?"

  This time all I get is silence.

  I stew in that silence for a while as we continue to walk the long empty corridor. It's littered with papers and debris, discarded folders, computer bits, and what looks like various charred robotic parts. The left-overs of some long ago shoot-out? I can only hope, but my best guess is that the technology lying around is not antique and neither was the battle.

  The only sound in the passageway, besides the light step of our feet, is the slow drip of water that seeps out from cracks in the ceiling. The hallway branches off every now and then, but we continue on the straight and narrow until we reach the last hallway and then we take a right. A few dozen paces on Tier stops by another door. This one has an active biometric pad and Moju makes no move to grab a charge and blow through it. Instead, Tier presses his hand up to the pad and I hear the lock sequence from within. My brow furrows and I stare at the back of his head, willing him to look back at me. But he doesn't, just turns the long steel handle and pulls the door open with a whoosh.

  Moju pushes me against the wall as a series of beeps confronts Tier's request for entrance, so I can't see what he does, but the beeping stops and Moju pushes me to the other side of him as we walk through, trying to block my view of the source of the beeps. I slip around him and let out a gasp. Granted I haven't seen a lot of high-tech robotry in my life in the RR, but this thing scares the shit out of me.

  It's about as tall as me for one, and the eight legs protruding from its spherical body begin to click on the hard tile floor as it spots my curiosity. There's a biometric pad on the thing's chest and some compound sensors that ring its head. It makes a new noise as Tier steps back between Moju and me, and then goes quiet.

  No one says anything, so I don't either.

  Then Tier pushes Moju forward and we begin to walk away from the sentry. Tier follows and quietly passes us before we get to the next door. We repeat this action twice more and when we pass through the third door and close it behind us, there is no sentry in the hallway.

  Tier looks me straight in the eye as he whispers, "Good job, Junco. Keep quiet and still and follow Moju."

  And then he slips through a door down the hallway and leaves us standing there.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I look up at Moju but he shakes his head at me, so I do as I'm told and keep quiet and still. At first all I can hear is some distant buzzing of electrical equipment, and a wheeled chair rolling across a hard floor. Then some commotion and a few subdued swear words.

  It is definitely Dale's voice.

  Tier clears his throat.

  "What the hell, Tier?"

  The question hangs in the air, but Tier says nothing. I can hear his boots across the floor now, so he must be off stealth mode. They fade into the distance, getting farther and farther away from us. Still Tier says nothing.

  "I told you we're done. This intrusion won't be ignored." His voice starts loud and then fades slightly, like he turned his back on Tier.

  "Mistake number one," Moju whispers. I only have time to nod in agreement before I hear the thump of a body being thrown to the ground and gurgling noises coming out in short bursts.

  Moju makes his move and I follow him into the lab, but there is no time to even look around before I see a robotic sentry blast Tier with some sort of pulse weapon. He flies backwards and hits a wall before slumping down into a pile on the pristine white tile floor.

  Moju runs off to the left while I stand there in a panic as the thing turns its attention to me. Then I see it lock on, ready to fire and I snap back to reality. I throw my body upwards into a flip I've done a thousand times on the back of a galloping horse, but never used trying to escape a crazed piece of machinery.

  The pulse passes beneath me and I grasp a light fixture and fling myself, monkey-style, from one to the next until I am on the other side of the sentry, swinging from
both hands. It's searching the far side of the room for me when I hear Dale's voice command.

  "Stand down! Stand down!"

  The thing stops so I drop to the floor and walk over to Tier. He's back on his feet now and looking really angry. "You OK?" I ask.

  His lips form a snarl as he pushes me out of the way and strides back towards Dale. But Dale doesn't back down, instead he meets Tier head-on. "What the fuck are you doing bringing her here?"

  Tier pushes him, but only as a gesture of dominance, not to hurt him. The sentry perks up but retains its last command. I look around for Moju, but he's MIA. That's when I see what's in the room with me. "Oh my God, what the fuck is going on here?" I look at Tier and Dale and they both stop to follow my accusatory finger.

  Which is pointing at a massive life-support machine that dominates the center of the room. The circular base protrudes out in a bulge that takes it all the way up to the ceiling. There are eight symmetrical arms which spread out like tentacles and each arm is home to half a dozen capsules with a transparent casing that allows a red glow to permeate into the lab.

  But that's not the disturbing part.

  It's the things inside them that make me stoop over and vomit, right there on the shiny sterile floor.

  Tier steps aside and waves a hand at Dale. "Go ahead. Tell her what's going on here."

  Dale looks at me as I upright myself and spit, but says nothing. Really, what can you say to someone who just discovered that you have dozens of copies of her body, in various stages of development, growing in vats filled with red goo.

  "Junco, it's not–"

  "What it looks like?" I finish for him, then swipe a hand across my mouth to remove the spittle from my lips. "Are you fucking kidding me? You're cloning me!" I scream the last part and I can feel rage bubbling up inside of me as I race towards him and deliver a roundhouse kick to his cheek. My field boot connects with a sickening whack, and he goes scrambling down to the floor, blood spurting out of his mouth. The sentry is back in business. It fires at me, but I flip and then run towards it and flip over to the other side once again.