“You should listen to the guardian,” Pim said. He didn’t look scared any more.
“The guardian?” Draco asked.
“The voice you just heard talking. He’s the guardian. He makes sure everyone on this ship stays safe. He’s the one who guided us to this place, because there were no monsters here. He didn’t know that one of the monsters was already inside my sister, though.”
“It’s all starting to make a crazy kind of sense,” Raze said, “All Metropolis ships have the same mainframe make up. You have the operating and regulatory systems which make the ship run exactly as it should, and on top of that you have a guardian shell program. The guardian program comes into action if the Captain of the ship is killed, abducted or otherwise unable to fulfil his duties.”
“I don’t buy it,” Draco said. “That fucker taunted us. Played with us. An AI wouldn’t do that. Only another human being is capable of those kinds of games.”
“Where do you think it’s taking us?” Aloysius asked Pim.
“You guys are heroes. That’s what he said, right?” the kid asked. “If you do what the guardian tells you, we’ll be saved for sure!”
“Any guesses where he might be sending us?” Draco asked.
“Nope, but you should trust him,” Pim replied. “He saved me once, and he’ll help you save all of us!”
Draco always hated the unknown. At least when he was in the Alliance military there would be some intelligence available about the situation he was about to walk into.
But here on the Metropolis Seven he was flying blind. He didn’t like trusting in third parties when he couldn’t be sure of their motivations, but sometimes he didn’t have much choice in the matter. There was no way this guardian was just some program trying to keep the Metropolis Seven alive.
Draco sighed. “All right. There’s only one thing to do now. Wait for the MagLev carriage to show up.”
Raze and Aloysius nodded. Pim beamed. The kid trusted the guardian. Together, all four of them walked out of the departures door just as the MagLev carriage pulled into the platform.
The carriage floated between the four opposing magnetic rails that ran along the MagLev tunnel. It was octagonal in shape, so that the magnetic forces of the MagLevs were distributed evenly for a stable ride. There were two doors on their side of the carriage, one at the front and one at the back. Draco walked up to the front doors, which slid open.
The inside of the carriage was made up of rows of three by three seats with a walkway in the middle. The carriage had a maximum capacity of one hundred and twenty people, including those people who were standing. For those unlucky enough to miss out on a seat, there were handholds dangling from the roof. Draco stood near the entrance doors and held onto one of the roof handholds. He wanted to be able to make a quick escape if he needed to.
Raze, Aloysius and Pim all came into the carriage, and as soon as the boy stepped inside the doors slid shut. There was a picture of the MagLev network next to the door. The whole network was elliptical in shape and ran around the outside of the ship. They were currently at the Amenities station, which was close to the water treatment plant, recycling center and power hub. There were also stations near the farmlands, the engine bay, the Metropolitan District, the Residential District, Beachside and the Recreational District.
Draco laughed to himself quietly.
“What’s funny?” Raze asked.
“They have their own beach on this ship,” Draco said.
“There are no ends to human ingenuity if it will result in something that gives them pleasure,” Aloysius added.
The MagLev carriage shifted gently and picked up speed swiftly. Draco’s breath was taken away when they finally left the claustrophobic tunnel and saw the beautiful metropolitan vista in front of them. Skyscrapers reached up to an artificial sun that shone brightly from the city’s dome-shaped roof. The Residential District passed beneath them. Rows and rows of houses stretched out in both directions. These dwellings would not have looked out of place in one of the giant suburban sprawls back on New Earth. Houses and apartment buildings clustered around green parks, swimming pools and narrow roads filled with the detritus of violence long past.
The Metropolitan District loomed in the distance. The high rises rivalled some of those seen on New Earth, but they didn’t have the same architectural grandeur. On New Earth, the skylines were defined by their architects. You could tell who was responsible for making a building just by its silhouette. On board the Metropolis Seven the skyscrapers looked generic and lifeless. They were built to fulfil a function, nothing more.
That was except for the central building which ran from the ground level all the way to the top of the domed roof of the ship. At the bottom of the pillar was a smaller dome which was bigger than some of the apartment buildings near the Residential District. From the top of the dome, a large cylindrical tower rose up. The outside of the tower was made of mirrored glass, and at the top of the tower, there was another dome that descended from the roof. It looked like a tiny glass bubble on the inside surface of a larger bubble.
“That large tower there, do you think that’s where we’re headed?” Draco asked.
“Yes,” Aloysius said. “That’s Metro Tower. The bridge right at the top of that tower will be where the control center for the entire vessel is located, as well as access to the central mainframe.”
“That’s where the guardian is pulling the strings from?”
“Yes,” Aloysius confirmed.
“Then that’s where we’re going.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Vynce was clean. Jaxon checked him from top to bottom and had not found a single mark on him. There was no sign of infection at all.
Ava had been awfully quiet after their time travel discussion. Jaxon figured that she just needed some time to let it all sink in. The feeling of helplessness and uncertainty was one of the hardest things to come to terms with when anyone interacts with a time traveler.
One of the first things Jaxon was taught at the Agency was to never second-guess yourself. If you are tasked with a mission objective, then everything you do should be focused on that one objective. The Agency taught him from very early on that you need to have conviction to carry through with your decisions. Jaxon needed to make sure he made it back to New Earth to deliver the chip. Without it, the fate of New Earth and humanity at large was in jeopardy.
Jaxon began to re-seal Vynce’s suit. The smartsuit came back together easily. The foam-like substance immediately bonded back with itself as soon as Jaxon touched the edges together.
Jaxon started sealing up the side of Vynce’s suit when he suddenly lurched back into consciousness. Vynce jumped up from the bed and tried to grab his assault rifle from his back, but it wasn’t there. It was sitting next to Ava over on the couch.
“Whoa, whoa. Vynce, it’s us. Jaxon and Ava. You’re safe,” Jaxon said.
“Safe?” Vynce asked as he looked around the medical station. He slumped down against the wall and muttered breathlessly. “Safe, safe… I’m safe.”
“How are you feeling?”
“I thought I was dead meat when that thing grabbed me in the water. I was in the muck, then suddenly this veiny tree trunk grabs me. It just pulled and pulled. Then before I knew it, I was out of the water and something else had me. It slammed me against the wall, and then, this.” He motioned at the room around him.
“We just checked you over for signs of infection. There were no tears in your suit, so as far as I can tell, you’re clean,” Jaxon said.
Vynce exhaled then asked, “Where’s everyone else?”
Ava got up from the couch and walked over to Vynce. She offered him a hand up. “We don’t know right now. We were separated from them when we followed you, but we’ll find them again. We’ve just got to work out where they are. Jaxon tells me that we can talk to other medstations across the ship from in here, so I guess we’ll give that a shot and hope for the best.”
“
I’ll log in and get started on that right now,” Jaxon said and headed over to the wall display. He turned back to look at Ava and Vynce. Was there something going on there?
Ava smacked Vynce upside the head. “Well now you owe me one life-saving rescue.”
Vynce smiled. “Thanks for coming for me. I would have died if you didn’t.”
“Thank Jaxon too. If it wasn’t for him, I would have lost you in the flooded tunnels and I’d probably be dead too.”
“Remind me to thank him for keeping you alive too. I thought I was never going to see you again.”
Jaxon shouldn’t have been listening. Shouldn’t have been watching. But he was. There was something more than just the camaraderie shared between marines.
Vynce moved in closer to Ava.
Jaxon held his breath.
Ava pulled away.
“I’m sorry Vynce, but I can’t. Not… not right now. All right?”
A wave of anger passed over his face, but it was gone as quickly as it arrived.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” he said and put his hand on her shoulder. She put her hand on his shoulder too and shook him gently.
“Thanks,” she said.
Jaxon exhaled and browsed the system for other medstations. Jaxon tried several medstation connections, but no one was answering. He had almost given up hope of finding anyone alive when he managed to connect to someone in the Residential District.
The face that he saw in the display made his heart skip a beat.
“Hello?” it asked. “Is there someone alive there?”
The face was familiar, yet completely alien at the same time. Jaxon was a man out of his own time, and he was looking into a vision of his own face twenty years younger. He had worn his hair short back then, but his eyebrows and chin were just as severe as they would continue to be throughout his life.
“Hello?” past-Jaxon asked again.
Future-Jaxon engaged his voice modulator and began to speak. It was one of the strangest sensations he had ever experienced. He had heard the words that came out of his mouth before, but many years ago, and on the receiving end. Now that he was speaking the words himself in an unfamiliar voice, an extreme feeling of déjà vu washed over him. This happened before.
“Yes, we are alive here. We’re at the recycling sector medstation,” past-Jaxon said. “What’s the situation there in residential?”
“It’s bad. There are a group of us here still alive, but there are creatures everywhere crawling all over the place. Have you seen them?”
“Yes, we’ve seen them. We’ve even managed to kill a few.”
“Do you have guns?”
“Yes, we do.”
“Can you come and get us? We’ve got only got a few weapons, and no way of surviving. We’re running low on food and water. I’ve started the quarantine protocols here, but sooner or later they’ll get in. We need help.”
“Sit tight. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“My name’s Jaxon. Ask for me when you get here.”
“My name’s Reinhardt. We’ll be there soon.”
The display went blank. Future-Jaxon turned back to Ava and Vynce and said, “That was fucking weird. I’ve lived through a lot of things, but that right there takes the cake. It feels like I just turned reality inside out.”
He had remembered the masked man he has spoken to on the Metropolis Seven his entire life. By the time he had gotten his assault suit he didn’t even realize that the mask was exactly the same as the one worn by the man who he had met on the Metropolis Seven.
He’d never suspected that it was himself that he had spoken to all those years ago. Not until today.
“You said earlier that if you two ever meet, then reality could actually implode in on itself. Is that a possibility?” Vynce asked.
“I doubt it, but stranger things have happened,” Jaxon said.
“Stranger than the destruction of the fabric of reality?”
“Stranger? Yes. More devastating? Not likely. That’s about as destructive as you can get.”
“As long as you’re okay with dealing with the consequences, then it’s all right by me,” Vynce said.
“Just one question,” Ava said, “how the fuck are we actually going to get to the Residential District? Do you even know where the hell we are right now?”
“Very clearly. We’re very close to the Amenities MagLev station. If that’s running, we should be able to get to the Residential District fairly easily.”
“How exactly are we going to get there?” Vynce asked.
“We’ll use the access tunnels. They might be a bit of a squeeze, but they’re a straight shot right to the station. Otherwise we’ll have to detour through the recycling plant. That’ll take us quite far out of the way and waste a lot of time.”
“Hooray, I love dark, claustrophobic tunnels!” Vynce said and looked over at Ava, like he was waiting for her to snap back at him.
She didn’t respond and Vynce’s joke fizzled.
Jaxon pressed his hand against the red light next to the door and said, “Quarantine protocol override. Code 0110. All clear.”
The automated voice spoke. ‘Removing quarantine protocols. You are now free to exit the medical station. Have a wonderful day.’
“Open maintenance hatch,” said Jaxon.
Part of the white floor of the medical station lifted up and swung open. The hatch led directly into the maintenance tunnels. Jaxon started down into the dark.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Inside the moving MagLev carriage, Draco watched Pim and Raze as they sat in the corner talking about what life was like back on New Earth. Pim couldn’t remember all that much about it. He was very young when his parents brought him onto the Metropolis Seven, and now they were gone. Pim wouldn’t have anyone to go back to when he landed back on New Earth. Raze told the kid that they would find his parents somewhere on the ship, but Draco knew that the odds were not in their favor.
There was nothing wrong with a little hope, especially when all hope seemed to be lost.
Draco leaned against the carriage’s wall and looked out over the metropolitan vista before him. He glanced at the map on the inside of the MagLev carriage and tried to get his bearings. Metro Tower sat at the back of the giant cityscape. Around it were the high rises of the Metropolitan District. In front of that were apartment buildings, theatres and virtual reality lounges of the entertainment district.
Then the suburban sprawl began. Family homes, parks, walking tracks and artificial creeks. Draco caught his first glimpse of the artificial beach off on the left-hand side of the city. He smiled to himself as he saw the small white tips of breaking waves and thought back to the last time he had actually gone to the beach. Perhaps a vacation to Vitu Anju was just what he needed as well.
The MagLev carriage rocketed past the completely deserted artificial beach and began to glide over the Residential District.
An automated voice spoke as the carriage began to slow. ‘Warning, track obstruction ahead. Our maintenance crews have been dispatched and will attend to this inconvenience immediately. We are now stopping at Residential station. Alternate travel arrangements will be made available to you at the station. Have a wonderful day.’
Raze and Aloysius got to their feet. Pim had gone as white as a sheet.
“No, we can’t stop here. There are monsters out there!” Pim said.
“It’s all right. We’ll protect you,” Raze said.
“I know you’re scared, but we don’t have any other choice. We need to get to the center of the city, so we can save everyone, and the MagLev network can’t get us there. Like Raze said, we’ll protect you,” Draco said.
Pim nodded hesitantly.
The MagLev carriage slowed, and Residential Station came into view.
“How are you looking for ammunition, Raze?” Draco asked.
“Four magazines for the rifle. Two clips for my pistol.”
“Al?”
“My bat
teries have recharged almost all expended energy from earlier. I have five rifle magazines remaining and three pistol clips. And you, sir?”
“One clip left, four bullets left in the pistol.”
Raze offered Draco his pistol and his remaining clips. Draco took them.
“Thank you,” Draco said.
“You’re the marksman, Captain. One clip in your hands is worth the same as three in mine.”
Draco holstered the second pistol in the compartment on his left thigh, along with the spare clips. The MagLev carriage came to a stop inside the Residential Station, and the doors slid open silently. The station looked identical to the Amenities Station. The departure platform was separated from the arrivals platform by a thick sheet of glass. After they stepped off the MagLev carriage, the doors closed, and the carriage began heading back the way it had come. The display screens above the entrance doors came to life as Draco and the others walked towards it.
‘Welcome to Residential District,’ said the voice of the man masquerading as the guardian. The screen showed the face of a smiling man, dressed in the black and red uniform of the Metropolis Corporation.
“Where do we go from here?” Draco asked.
‘I’m afraid the MagLev track from here is blocked. You’ll have to continue through the Residential District on foot. Luckily for you, all roads lead to Metro Tower. That’s exactly where I need you to go. If you continue walking in the direction of the tower, you will reach it.’
“What of the dangers? Is there anything you can tell us?” Draco asked.
‘The greatest danger is in the belly of the ship, and you have never been further away from it. Continue toward the tower, and we will talk further once you arrive there. You may find some abandoned vehicles which may expedite your arrival.’
“Guardian. That’s what you are, isn’t it? You’re the shell program designed to protect this ship in the event of the death of its Captain, isn’t that right?” Draco asked. He wanted to know if this asshole would have the guts to lie to his face.
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