Fallen Metropolis (Omnibus Edition)

by Matthew J. Barbeler

  “No.”

  “You should tell her,” Vynce said with a sad smile.

  “Vynce, I...”

  “No, you should tell her. We don’t... We don’t know if we’re going to make it out of this place alive. She should know.”

  “You’re okay with this?”

  “I’m sure I’ll get over it. But if you ever hurt her, I’ll hunt you down and hurt you just as bad. You can guarantee that,” Vynce said.

  “Of course. I would expect nothing less. You and Ava, though you are not together, you are still close in the futures that I have been part of. You and the rest of the crew of the Icarus. You are all as close as family.”

  Vynce thought on this for a moment and took comfort from Jaxon’s words. Even though he and Ava would never be together together, he would still have her in his life. She would always be there, watching his back just as he watched hers. That’s how it had always been, and if it remained that way for the rest of his life, he would find a way to be happy with that.

  “You told us when you joined us that you wouldn’t tell us of our futures. But you just gave me a glimpse into my own. Why?” Vynce asked.

  “Because you may need some hope to get you through the rest of what remains of our mission.”

  “We survive, then. Ava and I can’t be around on the Icarus in the future if we don’t make it out of the Metropolis Seven alive.”

  “That statement is accurate. However, the mere involvement of a time-traveler can completely change the course of events for better or worse. There’s just no way to tell for sure.”

  “So why did you come here? Why did you come back onto the Metropolis Seven?”

  “It wasn’t by choice, believe me. I was on a mission of great importance. The existence of civilizations hung in the balance. But we’re always taught that just the appearance of a single person who wasn’t present in the initial flow of time can be enough to slightly change events from their original course. One of the first examples they showed us in the academy was a diagram of one hundred people on a crowded sidewalk on New Earth. The aim of this theoretical mission is to save the life of a council-member from assassination. It was a non-firearm assassination. The assassin in this instance was to use a syringe filled with a slow-acting poison. He would inject the council-member, leave, then let the poison do its work. The first time this simulation was run, the flow of pedestrians was interrupted and changed so much by the addition of a single extra person that a civilian was pushed out into the street, hit by a car, and killed.”

  “So, by being there at all, another was killed?”

  “Yes. But that’s not the only consideration. The actions that person would have taken during their lifetime would never have happened. Any children that person might have borne would never have existed. Just because I was there.”

  “Like the butterfly effect?”

  “A butterfly flaps its wings on the shores of New Melbourne and the American Federation gets cyclones? The analogy is adequate, but with ramifications which echo throughout generations. Imagine if you had killed the man who invented the nuclear bomb. Imagine if the second Old Earth World War hadn’t come to a decisive end. Imagine if the war had instead been allowed to fester and rot and corrupt world relations until we destroyed not only ourselves, but our entire planet. One life. One action. One change. That’s all it would have taken to make it so that humanity never left Old Earth and took flight into the stars.”

  “Has anything like that ever happened?”

  “There’s no way of knowing for sure. No agent is able to access any information about the missions of any other agents. But we did reach the stars, didn’t we? Who’s to say? Without the involvement of the Agency we might never have made it off-world in the first place.”

  “That’s a scary thought.”

  “Yeah. But after you’ve been doing it for as long as I have, you start to trust your instinct more than anything else. That’s something they also taught us very early on in the agency. We’re all intrinsically linked to the energy of the universe on a quantum level. Travelling through the timestreams gives us a certain... sensitivity to the underlying patterns of the universe. We’re taught to follow these instincts.”

  “Are you saying that the universe itself has a will? You’re not one of those kooks who believe in a guy with a giant beard sitting in a black hole in the middle of the galaxy, are you?”

  “No. Nothing like that. But the universe fosters life. Think about how infinitesimally unlikely it is for biological life to exist at all. Whether or not the universe has a will of its own isn’t something that I think we can truly comprehend. After all, we know it has rules which must be followed. But I know that if we can prevent some violent atrocity, something tugs at us and leads us to a solution. They call it a time-traveler’s instinct, and I don’t know what else to call it,” Jaxon offered with a shrug.

  “So that instinct. That feeling you get in your gut. Is that the same as what non-time-travelers feel?”

  “Yes, but a number of other factors also come into it. You might feel your fight or flight reaction and think it instinct, but it’s not quite the same. It’s a feeling inside that tugs you in a certain direction or attracts you to a certain person. Perhaps it happens to us because we travel through the boundaries of reality with a certain purpose, and when we pursue that purpose we’re more in tune with the universe. One of my old instructors at the Agency used to say that the universe will hold your hand if your purpose is for the greater good, but it’ll block your path if it is not.”

  Vynce thought on that for a moment then said, “You’ve done a great job of getting me off topic. Why did you come back to the Metropolis Seven?”

  Jaxon smiled and said, “As perceptive as ever. I came back to the Metropolis Seven because I had no other option. Something happened on my last mission, and I was trapped outside of the flow of time.”

  “What? Outside the flow of time? How does that even happen?”

  “That’s a very long story. When you try and circumvent the rules of the universe, well, sometimes you find yourself on your own. The only constant in my life after the events on this ship has been Captain Goldwing. We continued to bump into each other on and off for the next twenty years, so I configured my emergency jumper to his time signature.”

  “So, he was your escape rope?”

  “Exactly. Unfortunately, in doing so, I tied him to this place at this time in all flows of time. A knot in the escape rope, if you like. He became a fixed point in the space-time continuum, so he is destined to board the Metropolis Seven, no matter what I do in his timeline. I could go back and try to change his timeline, but he would still find a way onto the Metropolis Seven. He’s tied to it now, just as I am tied to him.”

  “What were you doing that stranded outside the timestream?”

  “I made a mistake with the best of intentions. My mission was to retrieve something extremely small, but priceless beyond imagining. I need to get it back to New Earth.”

  Vynce nodded and said, “You’re a good guy, Jaxon. Look, I’m sorry if I’ve been weird or whatever.”

  “It’s understandable. It seems like this is the first time any of you have met me, so I can’t just walk in and expect you to know who I am. This is one of the downsides of timestream hopping. You can never be sure if a person you know will know you at that point in their timeline. For what it’s worth, I have valued your friendship over the years. And I hope you will come to value mine, too.”

  “I think I’m starting to.”

  “That makes me glad to hear.”

  The operating theatre doors opened, and Ava walked out. There were black bags under her eyes, but her mouth was upturned into a tired smile.

  “My two boys, getting along. That’s what I like to see.”

  Vynce smiled and looked away.

  “Good to see you up and about again. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little scared,” Vynce said.

  “Me too,” she sai
d. She put her remaining hand on his shoulder and pulled him in for a hug. The tension drained out of his body as he embraced her. He couldn’t stop the tears from welling up in his eyes.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Ava asked.

  “I spoke to Captain Goldwing,” Vynce said, wiping his eyes.

  “Is there any word from the Icarus?”

  “They haven’t been able to contact the ship. The comm unit you gave him was destroyed,” Vynce said to Jaxon.

  “That is unfortunate. I don’t have another,” Jaxon said.

  Vynce continued. “Captain Goldwing, along with Raze and Al, are climbing Metro Tower right now. From there, they’ll take control of the ship. Once they do that, they’ll contact us over comms and we can start moving everyone down to the hangars.”

  “You’re going to move hundreds of injured and dying through the infested streets? People are going to die,” Ava said.

  “People have already died, and I don’t expect that they’ll all make it. I don’t think any of these poor fuckers really expect to make it off the ship alive. But it’s the only plan we’ve got. There are evac shuttles down in the hangar, and they’re the only way we’re going to get off this ship.”

  “What about our shuttle back near the engine room?” Ava asked.

  “We’d be lucky to fit ten people in that thing. Not even the Icarus could carry all of these passengers. We might be able to carry some, but not all. We’re going to need the evac shuttles if we want to save as many as we can.”

  “The more arms we have carrying guns, the greater chance of success we’re going to have,” Ava said. “How many guns do we have right now?”

  “There’s enough to go around. We won’t save all of them, but we can save some,” Vynce said.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Draco aimed his grapnel launcher up into the darkness of the elevator shaft. In his low-light vision he could barely make out the bottom of the elevator carriage sitting high up in the shaft.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said and fired.

  The rope unspooled as the magnetic head flew higher. It hit the bottom of the elevator carriage with a dull clunk. Draco flicked the switch on the side and the magnetic head affixed itself to the bottom of the carriage. Draco then pulled the second trigger and he was pulled up through the elevator shaft, all the way up to the bottom of the carriage.

  Draco looked back down the shaft but could not see Raze and Aloysius over the glare of their flashlights. Draco held onto the grapnel and looked around for some way into the carriage itself. The bottom was thick steel that would have to be welded through, but they didn’t have the time. Draco looked around the shaft for any other ways he could bypass the carriage that blocked his ascent.

  Further down the shaft Draco saw closed doors that lead into the tower. There would no doubt be an emergency staircase that linked all of the floors together. Draco dreaded what might be inside the tower waiting for them. If Aloysius’s reading had been right, and one of the floors had been outfitted into makeshift research laboratories, there was no telling what they might encounter.

  Draco saw no other option. They could only cross to the higher floors from the twenty-third floor, and if they were lucky they would be able to head up the other elevator shaft to the top of the tower. It would definitely beat walking up forty-seven flights of stairs.

  “The carriage is blocking us from going any higher. I’m going to open one of the doors here and we can work out what to do when we’re all inside,” Draco said through the comm channel.

  “Copy that. Let us know when we can come up and join you,” Raze said.

  Draco squeezed the second trigger on the grapnel very gently and the rope unspooled slowly and lowered him down further into the shaft. He released the trigger when he was level with the closest elevator door. He slowly shifted his weight back and forward. He swung in small arcs to begin with, but the magnetic head held tight. The door itself was flush with the wall, and there was absolutely nothing to grab onto. There was no way he could find any leverage to pry the doors open like Aloysius had done with the door below.

  “This might be a little noisy, boys. Keep a sharp watch,” Draco said. He pushed off from the far side of the elevator shaft and readied a powerful kick. He came closer to the door and sent a command to his grav-boots to send out a repulsive magnetic wave from the sole of his feet. His foot hit the doors, and they buckled outward, revealing a small crack of darkness between the doors. The repulsive wave of force knocked Draco backwards at an angle and he spun uncontrollably. He put out his spare hand to try and steady himself against something, but there was nothing to grab onto. He spun in the darkness and lost all sense of direction. He closed his eyes and waited for the rope to come to rest.

  “You all right up there, Captain?” Raze asked.

  “I will be.”

  “Hang tight.”

  Draco opened his eyes again as he felt himself slow back down. When he was stable again, he kicked off from the far side of the elevator shaft. He drove himself against the door again, commanding his grav-boots to send out another repulsive wave of force. The door crumpled open even further. The magnetic force bent the doors outward like a blossoming steel rose.

  Draco surveyed the darkness beyond the door opening. There was a sound in the room beyond the door. It was a faint fluttering, like dry leaves being driven over cobblestones by the wind. Beyond the makeshift opening there was the dark shape of a couch and a reception desk. Neither the desk nor the couch had been overturned or destroyed.

  Draco swung himself over to the opening and grabbed onto the edges of one of the doors. He squeezed through the opening, widening the doorway as he went.

  “Come on up. I’ve opened the door directly below the carriage. It might be a bit of a squeeze, but we can get through,” Draco said.

  “I’ll come up next,” Raze said. “Don’t go exploring by yourself. Wait for us.”

  “Yes sir,” Draco said dryly and exchanged his grapnel for his rifle.

  Raze zipped up the shaft, and Draco grabbed his hand as he reached the door. Draco pulled him towards the opening. Raze disengaged the magnetic head from his grapnel and reeled in the remaining length of rope.

  “I’m in Al. Come on up,” Raze said.

  “I shall be there momentarily,” Aloysius said.

  Draco saw the magnetic head fly up the shaft and affix itself to the bottom of the elevator carriage. Aloysius ascended the shaft and Draco pulled him through the opening too.

  The reception area would have been rather pleasant if the lights had been on. But by the beams of their flashlights, the room was eerie. Nothing here had been destroyed like it had been in the rest of the Metropolitan District. It was as though this floor had been completely abandoned all at once.

  The reception desk was large enough for two people to sit behind, and a pane of glass separated the front of the counter from the back. There were two clusters of small holes in the glass, which would have allowed people behind the counter to speak to those in front. To the side of the counter was a door with a swipe card panel next to the door handle. Aloysius went to approach the counter but stopped in the middle of the room.

  “What is that noise?” Aloysius asked.

  “I don’t know,” Draco said.

  “It sounds like waves. Can you hear the ebb and flow?” Raze asked.

  Draco concentrated and noticed the rhythmic pattern of the sound. It came in pulses. Every alternate sound was slightly louder and sharper than the first.

  Draco approached the door and tried the door handle. It didn’t turn. Even though the power was out, the doors were still locked. Draco took a step back from the door and rammed it with his shoulder. The wooden door splintered around the lock and swung open. Draco walked through and around the back of the reception desk. Their flashlights revealed that behind the desk was an open plan office with multi-screened workstations in neat pods of four.

  “I can’t imagine having to go to work ev
ery day on a ten-year long vacation,” Draco said as they walked through the pods.

  “Metropolis cruises aren’t for most people,” Raze said. “Some people just can’t function in normal society. They try everything to find some way to escape. Some of them try to lose themselves in hologames, literature, vidserials... Some people just want to get out there among the stars without having to worry about galactic politics and the baggage that comes with the rest of human society.”

  “You wouldn’t be making a subversive comment about your Captain there, would you Raze?” Draco asked.

  “We all have our coping mechanisms, Captain. It’s no secret that you’d do everything to fly again if your wings were clipped and you were forced to live on the ground,” Raze responded.

  “Much like your father,” Aloysius added.

  “Some people just don’t fit the frame that society wants to put them in, so they come to a place like the Metropolis Seven to find somewhere they do fit in,” Raze said.

  “And there are some people who would kill for a steady job that they could come to every day for ten years,” Aloysius added.

  “Not to mention that their job would also let them explore the galaxy on weekends.”

  “That too. In fact, why don’t we go on a Metropolis cruise once we’re done here?” Aloysius asked with feigned excitement.

  “We don’t have to wait until weekends to explore the galaxy and have adventures on the Icarus. That’s just work for us,” Raze said.

  “Of course, how silly of me” Aloysius said.

  “This situation could be perfect for some, but it’s definitely not for me,” Draco said.

  The continued in silence. The fluttering, wavelike sound became more noticeable. On the other side of the pods of workstations a green emergency light flickered back on. Draco, Raze and Aloysius raised their rifles and aimed them at the sudden glow in the darkness. The green light showed an arrow pointing deeper into the floor towards an emergency exit.

  The lights on their floor came back online in a wave from the far side of the room. The workstations were bathed in light as they came back online. The workstations began to boot up. The displays showed the EarthTech symbol – a spinning image of New Earth - as the login screen loaded.