by Andrew Dorn
Elijah Roy had found his calling.
But it was more than online talk. It was being part of something greater than one’s own limited sphere of influence. He could wield the power of his teachings to those who, like him, believed in a greater threat, believed in being ready for the impending upheaval. He wasn’t much concerned on what form the new order would take, only that he needed to be prepared for it, and be on the front lines.
Preparedness.
That’s all he needed.
To be ready.
The wire fixed, he slung his backpack heavy with rations on his back, grabbed his crossbow, nicknamed Ambusher, and continued his trek around the perimeter fence. One of his fellow SComm Baggers had mentioned an out-of-the-ordinary event going on at the mine. It had piqued his interest and he had decided to investigate. If RuthlessGirl was right, this could be the event that would transform his life for good.
And for those who would follow him.
11 Sign of the Times
SIMON MACOMBER OPENED his eyes and regretted it at once. His head was throbbing with an epic headache, one which he had not experienced since his student days at UBC. Feeling as if he was lying down on an operating table, he registered the fact three faces were staring at him. One, more charming than the others, appeared to be concerned about something. This person’s mouth was moving but no sound was coming out, unless...
“Simon! Are you ok?”
The words, at last, made sense to his frazzled mind and he snapped out of his torpor.
“Yes, I’m good,” he said, his voice gruff.
He raised his head and tried to get up. Both Emmeline and Gerry grabbed his elbows, bracing his attempt at standing upright. His head swam and he had a flash of standing in a forest, under the sun, where the air was crisp and fresh.
“Have you guys passed out also?” He asked, rubbing his temples.
“No, only you mate,” Gerry answered, shaking his head.
Simon stared at the three of them. They were worried about him, he could see it in their eyes, those of Emmeline’s above all. He could not explain what had led to his blackout, perhaps the stifling heat or all the running around, but he knew they needed reassurances. Reassurances they could count on him, that he could be depended upon. They were all trapped in a situation where every member of the team had a responsibility to uphold, himself included.
No free passes.
“I’m okay now,” he said with what he hoped passed as a confident voice. “Must be something I ate at the commissary.”
Arturo laughed out loud at that, the age-old discourse on the quality of the food provided by the Company, a subject of transcendental importance.
“I, for one, would go for a pint of Gat!” Gerry said to no one in particular.
Vazquez agreed with the remark, bobbing his head up and down.
“¡Quiero una cerveza!”
Simon grinned at both men, somewhat relieved to see they seemed to be in good spirits despite their thirstiness.
“How about we get out of here,” Emmeline said. “I too could use a nice drink.”
“Grand idea!”
Simon took a step forward, slipped on the slick metal grating, and crashed to the floor in a whirlwind of trashing limbs.
“Billions of blue blistering barnacles!”
“Impressive string of colorful expletives,” Emmeline said.
She couldn’t resist grinning at Simon’s bombastic curse. He stared at her with astonishment since most people had no idea what the curse meant. Emmeline nodded with amusement, eyes still beaming.
“Capt. Haddock would be honored!”
“Yes, well not many people would now that, you know?” Simon said, wincing as he pushed himself up.
“I worked as a library assistant and managed the kids books section, so I know more than I care to admit on comic books and graphic novels.”
He nodded, flabbergasted and fascinated by her poise and overall persona.
“If you guys have finished your courtship, why don’t we try to get out of here,” Gerry said, brushing past them.
Up in Security, Gwen Rutledge watched with serene contentment as Curtis’ face grew even more worried. The man was besides himself. He could not work out a way to rescue his people stuck at the bottom. It was pitiful, but then again she had seen it coming. It was a known fact that when you mettle with stuff you didn’t understand, bad shit would happen. What she had witnessed on the monitor was a sign of the times. Of the new times waiting to burst across the nation. She had seen it with her own eyes. The strange coalescing blobs of stuff dancing on the display was direct proof of what Elijah33 had spoken about. It was unknown stuff, and while she had no clue what it meant, she realized it was a chance.
A chance for her to grab the attention of Elijah33.
There were two screens on the main console facing her. On the left was the feed from Curtis’ location and on the right, the one from level 16. She scanned both with interest, like a vulture over a battlefield. Curtis was speaking with Farrow, bouncing ideas against the other man while the other screen had the weird kaleidoscope floating about. She found it hard to look away. The pattern of bobbing blobs kept regenerating itself, making the whole affair hypnotic and strange. The console was recording the feed to the primary server but Rutledge had hacked it so she could copy the data to a thumb drive, which she kept hidden in her keyring. She knew Elijah33 would be excited by the discovery, if she had video proof.
Everything was video these days. Everybody knew that.
She shifted her attention to Curtis. The man was sitting in a chair, head buried in hands while Farrow stood alongside wishing he were someplace else.
A burst of static caught her attention. The feed from 16 had vanished, taken over by a thick pattern of static, like those from antique TV sets. She snapped a button on and off, refreshing the monitor’s display screen but still the static reigned, impenetrable and absolute.
“Shit!”
The kaleidoscopic imagery was gone. She would have to tell Curtis about this. She switched the display to the feed from level 10. “Mr. Curtis, I have new information.”
“Yes, Rutledge. We’re listening.”
“We have confirmation that our people are still on level 16.”
“Oh, that’s great news! You spoke to them?”
“No. Just a second.”
Frank waited for the Security officer to go on but the moment dragged on and he knew she was playing it for her own self-importance.
“Well?” he snapped.
“One moment. The feed is dead now but I grabbed something for you.”
Frank’s temper rose a notch. She was milking the moment for all its worth. The desk’s display changed from Rutledge’s hawkish features to a simple word, scrawled on a piece of paper and held up to the camera by Macomber.
HELP
Frank’s heart sank. His gut feeling that something was wrong was confirmed. His people were in trouble and it was just maddening that he couldn’t help them.
“Any ideas we haven’t already discussed popping in your mind, Sterling?”
The maintenance technician shook his head.
“No sir, sorry.”
Frank paced around the bench, sliding his hand on the smooth metallic surface as if it could somehow help him with his intellectual process. He was on his fourth lap when he paused, mopping the sweat off his brow.
“Rutledge, is there a way to get a message out to them?”
He stood by, flexing his jaw, waiting the obligatory seconds before she deigned to answer.
“No, sir,” Rutledge said, with an accented slur on the word ‘sir’. “We are incommunicado.”
“Damn.”
Frank slapped his hand on the metal bench and the sound echoed like a shotgun blast in the cramped room. Sterling flinched at the raw display of rage.
“Let’s go back to the elevator. Perhaps we’ll think of something.”
Frank pushed up his eyeglasses then fl
attened the thin hair over his scalp. He put his helmet on, decorated with security stickers, and trudged out towards the shaft. The cab was still stuck between floors, the top of the doorway about waist high.
“See if you can spot our crew,” Frank said, pointing downwards. Sterling nodded, got down on all fours and crawled part way inside the cab, to better make out what lay beneath the metal grating.
“I can see a light down there!” Sterling said, turning his head back to Curtis.
Frank tapped the other man on the shoulder and Sterling moved aside to allow him space. Frank dropped to his stomach, wincing as his shoulder hit the door’s frame. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adapt to the poor lighting inside the shaft.
Farrow was right, there was a light shining below and he could even make out the silhouette of someone looking up at them.
“Hey, below!” he called out, snatching the lamp off from his helmet and waving it about like a madman. A heartbeat later he got a response: the light underneath flashed on and off in 3 distinct signals.
Frank had the visual confirmation he was hoping for.
The only thing missing was a way to get down there.
All at once came a burst of vivid light, a sudden flare-up exploding up the shaft at the speed of light. Frank threw his arm up, an automatic reflex, but the light burned itself unto his retinas.
“Sterling, are you still with me?”
“Yes, sir, though I can’t see much.”
“Same here.”
Wiping tears away and blinking to dispel the white spots, he squinted into the darkened shaft.
“Are you guys ok down there?”
An heartbeat later, the answer came back. It was a female voice.
“Yes.”
Frank was about to ask what had caused the shaft to go supernova when he heard a motor spring to life. There was a sharp pull to his waist belt and an instant later he found himself inside the elevator’s cab, his back pushed up against the mesh.
He heard a brief scream followed by the sound of a body crashing beside him.
The cab was hurtling down the shaft but before Frank had time to ponder the reason, the emergency brakes engaged with an ear-splitting noise of tortured metal and the cab screeched to a halt. There was a loud noise, like a door being ripped aside, then he felt a trio of hands pull him up.
“Frank?” Simon said. “Are you hurt?”
The operations manager locked eyes with the geologist but spots still danced in his vision. He blinked, banishing the afterimage away. Then, as if a reset button had been pressed, he understood the cab had plunged to the bottom, all the way to 16.
“This man needs medical attention,” Emmeline said.
Frank turned his head and studied the scene. A group of people crowded around a shape sprawled on the ground.
The man on the floor was bleeding from the extremity of his left leg.
With a shock, Frank realized half his boot was missing.
12 Extraño
THE AIRSHIP IS in Bangor by now, Frank Curtis thought.
It was the morning after. He had not slept more than two hours, a habit he wished to cure one day, perhaps in his retirement years. Being chief manager of an installation the size of Wachibou meant long hours peppered with episodes of full-blown crisis. Sterling Farrow’s evac had been one of those crises. Though, this time, he had been lucky.
Thanks to Captain Phil Ballard.
As soon as word spread of a bad injury necessitating medical transport, the good captain had sprung into action. In under 10 minutes, he, Penney and nurse Mahoney had hoisted Farrow onboard the airship. Five minutes later, the Starwind cast its moorings and lifted off, en route to the hospital.
Frank had been impressed with both pilots, and supremely grateful for their selflessness and professionalism. Their intervention had cut the wait time by a significant percentage. The next available medevac transport was at least 4 hours out, the service swamped with an emergency in Baxter State Park.
“How is he?” Anna asked, entering Frank’s office.
“His left foot was mangled pretty bad and he’ll need extensive surgery.”
She nodded, lost in thought. The litany of words her father hadn’t said lingered in her mind. Words like: extensive rehabilitation, prosthesis, psychological support.
Frank gazed with sympathy at the play of emotions on his daughter’s delicate features. He knew this wasn’t the news she wanted to hear. Farrow was a low-key type of guy, but he was much appreciated by everyone who knew him.
“He’s going to be okay, but it will take time,” he said.
Anna acknowledged, eyes staring straight ahead.
“Are you, okay?” Frank said, emphasizing the word ‘you’.
Anna looked up and Frank saw a brief tear on her cheek before she wiped it away.
“Yes dad, I’m good.”
Frank smiled. Now we’re talking. That was the Anna he had raised. The perfect mix of his own tenaciousness and of his wife’s resourcefulness. If Molly were still around, she would be one proud parent, he thought.
“What’s on the agenda?”
Frank ambled up to his trusty coffee machine. It was early in the morning, and he was only at his second cup. Time for a refill.
“I want to go over the events with everyone involved.”
“I’m on it,” Anna declared, walking away.
Frank watched her go through the grimy window of his office before noticing Emmeline Brochu waiting in the passage. He waved her inside.
“Ms. Brochu, I didn’t know you were already here.”
“I’m a bit early I suppose. I always have a hard time getting use to a different bed.” Frank glanced in her direction, one eyebrow way up.
“Oops, I just put my foot in my mouth, didn’t I?” She said, blushing furiously.
“No, no, no,” he said. “It’s the same for me. I hate going to hotels because of that.”
She nodded, appreciating his kindness in shrugging aside her awkward comment.
“Do you want a cup of my world-renowned bad coffee?”
“Hmm, no. I’m afraid you have a tea drinker in front of you.”
“Ah, I’m sorry, Ms. Brochu. I don’t drink tea. Perhaps you’ll find some in the commissary.”
“I checked but they only have the iced variety,” she said with a shudder. “And please call me Emmeline.”
“Emmeline, it is,” Frank said with a smile. “So what can I do for you?”
“It’s about yesterday. I was hoping we could go over what took place.”
“It seems that great minds work the same, Ms... hmm, Emmeline. I have set up a meeting for—
“How about right now?”
Frank shifted his attention to the door. Simon had just popped his head inside while Vazquez and Patterson waited outside.
“But now that everyone’s here, we might as well start.”
Five minutes later, they were all settled around the conference room table. Anna had distributed pens and yellow lined paper pads, her customary efficiency back to full regime. Frank gave each person a few minutes to sum up the events in a nutshell. There was a need to get to the bottom of the event, but without taking unnecessary risks. He watched them as they worked. Things could have turned out much worse than it did. The situation had been beyond normal yet they had reacted well. He was proud of them for keeping cool, for their esprit de corps, the tenuous and subtle bond which formed between people in stressful situations.
He glanced at his notes. There had been a lot done already.
Once Farrow was evacuated, he had ordered level 16 sealed off, just to be on the safe side. Gerry had welded a set of thin, but super strong, panels of plastisteel to the exterior of the elevator shaft, isolating it from the rest of the complex. At the same time, he had asked Simon to collect air quality samples both inside the adit and in the main building; to make sure no weird gases had escaped from the bottom. No traces of detectable gases were found and everyone breathed a
sigh of relief.
What Frank didn’t know, however, was what had gone wrong in the first place.
He took a sip from his mug. Was it already empty? “All right, all right. Let’s go over what took place yesterday.”
“That was one hellish day” Gerry said, with a finger to his bandaged forehead.
“Right you are, amigo,” Arturo replied without looking up from his pad.
“We were just drilling holes, being super careful like you asked us to. Then the wall... reacted. We must have drilled into something behind it, a pocket of pressurized gas or something.”
“Algo de mierda.”
Frank watched both men as they finished each other’s thoughts. He knew them well and it was clear they were shaken up by the event. They were experienced guys, both having had their fair share of close calls in the past, but this was different. It was indescribable, and just plain weird; and no one appreciated weird in the mining business.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he said.
Frank turned to the e-board and singled out a video feed from a row of labels at the bottom of the display.
“What you are about to see was taken on level 16 after you guys,” Frank glanced at Vazquez and Patterson “... had your accident.”
The video started. A date and time was stamped in the lower right section of the screen, the digits changing as the seconds went by. Gerry and Arturo could be seen drilling the exploratory holes but only their shoulders and heads were visible because of the skewed angle. The image began to shudder, rattling about as if it was being jerked back and forth. A thick cloud of dust enveloped the camera, plunging the recording into murky darkness.
“That’s when part of the wall broke apart,” Frank said.
The dust cleared up, exposing the scene once again. There was a tiny pinpoint of brilliant light coming from behind the interstices of the crumbled wall. The harsh light flared on and off a few times before dying out for good. There was a short burst of static then voices were heard. Simon recognized his own as well as Emmeline’s. He was off camera but was able to replay in his mind what was going on.