by Brian Craft
“Progress?” Iris jokes.
“Look.” He points to the lighted elevator descending from the upper floors. “Grab the doors.”
They pry the doors open and a rush of cold stale air billows into the shaft from sublevel detention. Corridor #1 is directly ahead, its shiny black walls and green glowing buttons recede into the distance. Orion climbs out and pulls Iris up with him.
Iris circles the elevator, investigating the corridors that radiate outward from the shaft.
Orion's mind is oddly quiet within this space. There are no ghostly visions here because nobody ever returns from detention with a memory that Orion can access. It’s all strangely familiar to him though. He has a sense like somehow he’s been there before. The impulse prompts him to wander deeper down corridor #1.
Iris completes her orbit and joins him. “There are six. All like this,” she says, trying to see into the darkness of corridor #1. “Which do we take?”
A noise spins them around. Sline finally pokes his head out from behind his little monitoring station, petrified, staring back at Orion and Iris in disbelief.
"You," Sline states, gawking right at Orion. "You're the one from—" He looks up as if finishing his sentence with Icarus. Then he begins to back away. “Don’t hurt me!”
Iris braces, because she can feel a raw wave of fear emanating from Sline. She calmly walks over to him. “We aren’t going to hurt you. Just tell us where we are.”
Without taking his eyes off Orion, Sline answers. “Solitary. Sublevel detention.” He quickly glances around and then down corridor #3, where Terrence is imprisoned. “But I only watch them.”
“Who?” Orion steps toward Sline, who backs off a step.
“The inmates. The ones the doctor doesn’t want plugged into his grid,” he answers, trepidation ribboning into his voice. “So, they don’t spoil the mix. But I…I only watch them.” He repeats the last bit and trails off. He backs away and trips, scurrying away on his elbows until Orion reaches him and helps him on his feet.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Orion assures him. “What’s your name?”
“Sline,” he replies.
“Can we get out of the building from here, Sline? Is there any level below this?” Iris presses him.
“There’s a level below this, but it’s only the power transfer station for the building,” Sline informs her. “There’s no exit.” At his own mention of an exit, he compulsively checks the control panel that monitors the inmates.
Orion’s attention is pulled back to corridor #1. Walking a few steps he pauses in front of the first blackened cell. His reflection stares back at him.
Sline watches Orion warily, and finally offers, “There’s an emergency portal.” He points down corridor #3, moving that direction as if to lead them. “All the way at the end.”
Iris walks a couple steps into #3.
…
Burroughs rallies through his closed-circuit cameras, searching every inch of the building. He quickly turns off a display as a face forms over the image. Beads of sweat dapple his forehead now. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, his attention suddenly shifting around the office, searching empty corners and shadows. Fewer and fewer displays remain available to him, and each is now clearly manifesting the black, female face of GL.
He growls at the face haunting his displays until he spots what he’s been looking for, Orion standing in the sublevel detention corridor. “Perfect.”
Burroughs grabs his portable touchscreen controls and initiates the same camera image of Orion and a digital map of sublevel detention. “Trying the edge?”
Orion reaches to clear a window into the wall segment and, suddenly, a glass door splits horizontally across the middle in front of him. The halves slide into the ceiling and floor like a gaping mouth. The open cell exposes an insentient prisoner, Scryberg, his face frozen in madness.
“Oh my god,” Iris utters.
“They don’t feel anything,” Sline whimpers. “I just watch them!”
Sline pushes Orion away as another cell behind him splits opens. A brilliant emerald flash bursts from both cells and into the corridor, surrounding Sline. He slumps to the floor, unconscious.
Orion recoils deeper into the black corridor.
Sline’s action saved Orion by inches.
Burroughs slams his fist on the desk. “Damn it!”
Other cells split open in sequence along every corridor. Burroughs sickly voice echoes through everything. “They’re mine. Mine. Mine. Mine!”
“Orion, run!” Iris yells, and he immediately sprints after her down corridor #3 to an exit they can only hope is waiting.
The black wall segments are actually all cell doors, each splitting horizontally across the middle and spreading open like gaping mouths. Emerald green light floods the interiors of the containment cells, where inanimate prisoners hover in midair, trapped in suspended animation by beams of light pulsing into their heads.
Their faces are frozen in mindless oblivion.
Orion and Iris race to outrun the breaching doorways when flashes of brilliant green light burst into the corridor from inside the cells. Code Green energy bursts discharge and narrowly miss snaring the runners.
Cell after cell springs open in sequence as if the black corridor is slicing itself open from end to end. The green flashes strobe the darkness, silhouetting the runners for an instant each time as they run for their lives.
Doors open faster and faster, outpacing the runners. Each green flash a breath closer to snaring them.
“Faster, Iris! Run faster!”
Iris screams, “I’m not going to make it!”
He yanks her arm to swing her in front and throws his weight into her, launching them forward into the darkness.
They tumble across the floor past the last cell and slam into the dead-end wall, barely out of reach from the last Code Green burst.
Iris rights herself and edges back to look inside the last cell.
Immediately her face wrenches in revulsion. Terrence suspends in the cell, insentient and frozen in time.
“Terrence,” Iris utters softly.
Orion sees, too, and moves to help their captive friend.
The elevator doors open at the far end of the corridor and Plummer leads four security guards out, dressed for trouble with tazer gloves charged and glowing hot.
They spot Orion and Iris immediately and charge after them.
Orion hurries toward the exit portal.
“I’m sorry,” Iris whispers to Terrence as she backs away to help Orion.
The circular portal is designed to open only from the inside, and only in an emergency. Magnetic cleats cuff the edges around the entire portal perimeter.
“We can do this.” Iris grabs two of the cleats, Orion two others. They concentrate, but nothing happens.
Plummer and the guards are bearing down on them.
‘Clear’. A faint female voice resonates around them. It’s GL.
Orion presses his body into the portal, forehead at the center. He calmly converges everything.
“I can feel that,” Iris says.
Instantly a cleat snaps open, surprising Iris, she stumbles back. A second later more cleats pop, rapid-fire, counterclockwise around the portal until the final cleat releases and the portal explodes open. The round door swings down burying the top edge a foot deep in the ground outside. The sudden release throws Orion forward and he tumbles onto the soft grass.
He gets to his knees and drinks in the cool night air. He scans across the city lights and the welcome sight of freedom, but in the next instant, he howls in agonizing pain. Grabbing his head, he doubles over and collapses to the ground.
A second later, Iris is pulling him up.
“There are too many! Too many!” Unshielded by Mind Mastery, Orion is overwhelmed by a tsunami of voices and images overwhelming his brain. His face turns red and the veins in his head swell. He strains to look up at the city where millions and millions of minds co
nverge on him.
He begins to quiver all over, eyes stretch insanely wide as an insatiable grin permeates his face. “It’s magnificent!” The pain gives way to unbridled ecstasy, more phenomenal than a mainline of adrenaline straight to his heart.
Iris begins to quiver as well, physically sensing his spiral of emotions as if she’s feeling them herself. She fights the urge to absorb the feeling and looks back at the security team almost on them.
“Come on!” She drags him forward toward the crowds, the only hope of escape, deeper into the masses. She spots a Hivebeam exiting the bottom of Mind Mastery and extending into the city. “Follow the Hivebeam. We can find a maglev station.”
Orion struggles to keep his feet as he ventures a look back at the towering edifice of Mind Mastery, glimmering with millions of little reflective tiles. “We have to save them.”
A second later, they disappear into the crowded street.
Burroughs' face drains white as Orion disappears into the city.
He sits straight and runs his hand over his slick black hair. Squaring his jaw he speaks to the room computer, “Call Governor Roman.”
Orion hangs onto Iris while straining to rally under a mountain of minds. He looks bad, like a man whose lost control or sick. Passing citizens notice his behavior and part the way, their reaction certain to draw even more attention.
“Let’s get out of the street,” Iris says. Her own physical sensations begin to overwhelm her. Voice trembling she suggests, “And get a drink.” She shoulders his weight again, keeping him on his feet and pulls him toward a food center a block away.
“They’re fugitives!” Burroughs barks at Roman. “Deviants! Alert all citizens. Alert everybody! Let the scared city be our eyes and ears.”
Roman nods agreement right before Burroughs’s monitor fills with GL’s face, matching all other screens still on. Her image crystal clear, with eyes drilling into him.
‘Doctor Burroughs,’ GL’s whispering voice teases him.
He shies away and spots a small trail of ants marching across his desk. He viciously smears their bodies across the surface, taking his anger out over their escape. He stumbles away into the darkened office.
‘Doctor Burroughs,’ the voice whispers again.
He spins, expecting someone to be in the room. He spins again, checking the shadows and empty corners. Paranoid, he rushes backward and collides with the ant colony.
The big glass case rocks back a little, then rolls forward. It teeters back and then rolls forward again as the momentum carries it past the tipping point. Burroughs dives out of the way and the entire ant colony tumbles over where it explodes across the floor. The impact sends dirt and glass everywhere, carpeting the room.
Lying on his stomach and covered in dirt, Burroughs looks across the miniature earthy landscape. Crawling through the shadows, the little ants animate the floor as they scurry in all directions.
Like a man possessed, he starts smacking every ant he can reach with the palms of his hands. Flailing about like a fool.
Then he stops, glaring disgustedly at the wads of crushed ant bodies and soil caking his palms. He stands, straight and stoic, the view of Paragon City lay before him. He flings the muddy ant carcasses and mud at the window and marches out of the room on the chase.
CHAPTER 26
Slicing through the cool night air, a hundred feet over the thousands of unsuspecting citizens below, a security drone silently bisects the street with surgical precision. Its dark, stealth-like orbital body packed with multiple cameras and sensors that sweep the road, sidewalk, building façades, rooftops, people’s faces, and even estimate body size and clothing for thousands of people. They analyze crowd patterns and look for aberrations that might betray their target.
It all happens in an instant, and the individual drones feed the information to hundreds of other security drones that work in concert, tracing a search grid over the city. At designated cross streets, each drone turns in unison to connect the grid. Nothing is missed, and the searched grid expands.
The collected images and routes all feed back to the police, city planners, Burroughs, anyone with enough pull to affect life below. Officers at street level in individual transports, on foot, and in groups casually check the doorways, cracks, and windows.
To most of the citizens, the police presence is only part of the daily routine. Something to which they have grown accustomed, but not when you’re the target…
Iris and Orion fumble through the throngs of people, a perfect hiding place, between everyone. She pulls him along, herself beginning to struggle more and more with the awakening happening in her emotional awareness.
Orion is still charged with the ecstatic hit he received when exiting Mind Mastery and can't help his attention from being pulled in every direction. His dilated pupils overexpose everything, putting haloes around lights and streaks behind moving people and transports. But he's coming around as they slip under the food center entrance. A drone slips by overhead, with sensors probing every inch. Iris carefully peeks out enough to register that they are being hunted and to check that the vigilant eye of the drone isn't turning around. Satisfied that they haven't been discovered yet, she pushes Orion through the door.
They crouch as she leads him through the lines of waiting people, careful to avoid the view of security cameras. She and Orion make an effort to look casual as they hold their hands up to hide their faces.
Inside the familiar confines of a food center, Orion gains some lucidity through the millions of minds around him. His command of this new gift is growing. He’s learning to allow his body to act as a conduit, letting ideas flow through instead of being sorted and understood individually.
Iris leads him to the far back of the huge cafeteria-like room. The routine for hundreds of people standing in line to receive their rations carries on without anyone noticing them, or maybe more to the point, no one cares. Orion can't help but see these people differently now, they seem so much more drab and lifeless than he recalled from only a few weeks ago. He has been awakened and looking at the ‘security' that this society commands, all he sees are trapped people already in prison and marching toward Burroughs with cool efficiency.
A few people begin to notice that Orion and Iris are wearing the powder blue coveralls that look like prison garb. They’re smudged with soot from the incinerator and dirt from climbing the elevator shaft. Their bloody hands smear countertops and they are sweat-covered from their escape.
He and Iris are fugitives, and Orion can hear the people’s worried and suspicious thoughts.
“People are afraid of us.” Iris feels it.
He studies the faces in the food center. It's the universal center of life for them, where all walks converge. Funny that Orion lands here first, to see with new eyes this cross-section of his fellow citizens. "Maybe they want to stay in the dark," he replies, troubled that his spirit to resist won't be shared by all if they know the fight that will come. Maybe ignorance is bliss.
Iris reaches for the palm scanner so she can get water for them. Orion grabs her wrist to stop her.
“They’ll know instantly,” he says, his expression a stark warning.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “If we’re not out of the city or hidden within an hour, we’ll be back in Burroughs’s madhouse, and he’ll slurp our brains out. I’d rather not be thirsty, too.”
She pauses over the food dispenser knowing that the next step lights a fuse that they won’t be able to stop.
A spherical water container rolls between them and spins to a stop. A citizen nods a kindly approval, and then she moves away into the crowd. The empathetic gesture from a woman who can’t possibly know anything about them just swayed Orion in the right direction.
He retrieves the sphere.
Iris motions for him to drink first, so he pops the spout and lets the cool feeling of freedom wash over him. Then he rolls it to her. She finishes it with equally refreshing joy and pauses to savor it bef
ore she opens her eyes.
When she does, she sees Orion is reaching for the scanner.
“What are you doing?” she cautions. Examining his face to see if the voices have driven him mad.
Orion looks straight at her and then scans across the herding masses of people in the food center as if to say, ‘I'm going to give them that feeling,' indicating her empty water container and the drink that refreshed them. The unsuspecting citizenry with display screens in front of them and video walls filled with propaganda ads circulating around are about to receive their first wake up call.
“They’ll know instantly,” he states. Smiling and clear-eyed he assures her. He’s choosing to light a different fuse.
He closes his eyes and stretches out his fingers, holding it above the scanner. Then very deliberately he rests his hand on the glass. It illuminates, and the link detects the user. Orion tenses, his back stiffens, and suddenly his eyes snap open.
Iris sees a glimmering shine fill this eyes.
In a wave starting with Orion, the video monitors embedded in the rows of countertops and food processors and all the digital display walls fill with a torrent of images from all over the city: a woman sleeping, people eating, groups talking, maglev, offices, homes, parks, and the food center.
People in the crowd start to recognize images of them. Their private lives, on display right there in front of them. The shock of their personal moments appearing sends a restless murmur through the crowd.
Orion’s mind created a localized disruption and lifted the curtain for these people. And then he raises his hand off the scanner. The glimmer fades from his eyes.
The walls and displays all flood with bright red, and the words:
CRIMINAL ACT DETECTED!
This is the signal for everyone to run! Most stampede for the exit, while others anchor their palms on the counters, convinced surrender will save them further scrutiny.
Iris hugs herself as the twisty storm of people’s emotions splashes in around her: excited, scared, and confused. Orion grabs her, and they dart through the back exit.