by RMGilmour
“Aleric,” Haize called. “Show her the city.”
16
The Spire
“I hope you can climb,” Aleric stated.
I was no longer surprised at anything they said to me, or requested of me. I used to climb trees when I was a kid, but that was about the extent of it. But like Haize said, time to be brave.
“I’m sure I can,” I responded.
“Then follow me.”
He took me in through the trees and we followed the line south and then south-east to where the trees grew to their enormous size. The base of one was almost the size of the tree hut! I looked up, to gauge how tall it may have been but the foliage was too thick.
Aleric stopped before a tree of similar size, whose branches began to divide lower down. Well, at least it wasn’t a building, or a cliff. A tree, I was sure I could handle. To my right was the field of graves we’d dug the previous day, but the holes were now covered over as though they didn’t exist.
“Climbed a tree before?”
I nodded, turning back to him and the tree, but never anything this size and I wondered how far up we would be going.
He chuckled, “Just step where I step.”
I watched him climb the lower limbs, placing my hands and feet where he had; my boots provided traction on the thinning branches as I reached higher up. I looked down only one time during the climb, to see that we were already a fair way up, and I realized it was as easy as it used to be when I was a kid. Climbing a tree, it seemed, was like riding a bike, the skill-set needed returned when necessary.
As we neared the top, the branches began to flex beneath us. I tested each one for its stability and strength before planting my weight upon it, though Aleric didn’t seem bothered by their narrow, delicate size.
He soon stopped, and as I climbed up the last few branches, he pulled me to the top to stand next to him.
“Wow!” I breathed, as I looked about me. On one side of me beyond the fields and the hills, was desert, the heated air waving to me. And far off in the distance, barely a glinting spec, was the dome. On the other side of me was the mirrored wall, reflecting its sinister-looking, rainbow patches in the sunshine.
We still weren’t anywhere near high enough to see over the top of the wall, but we could see through it, and we were well above the roofline.
The city stretched on for miles inside. I scanned northward and then across to the east, but the wall did not end, it just went on and on. And I would never have guessed how far across the landscape the city sprawled. It seemed endless. Inside, there were numerous structures all of them white, different shapes, low to the ground, and all perfectly situated next to one another. There had to be millions of people residing behind those walls, and somewhere amongst them was Jordan. Even if I could have found a way in, there was no way I would have found my way to him.
The city however, wasn’t completely white. Far off inside was a tall, blue beacon, pointing skyward, shining like crystal, and standing taller than every other building.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing in its general direction.
“That’s the Spire.”
I gasped at hearing the word Haize had used the previous day with Jordan.
“What does it do?”
“Well,” he began, drawing out the word. “You remember the insertion process?”
I nodded. Of course, it was glaringly vivid in my imagination.
“That’s where the… people go, once they’re inserted. They either stay there, or are reproduced.”
I’m sure the color drained from my face, as I realized the implications of Haize’s words to Jordan. I clutched the tree branch, digging my palm into its coarse edges. The pain helped keep me in place.
“Don’t look so horrified,” he said. “Think of it as a graveyard. Surely you had those on Earth.”
This was true. It was nothing more than a graveyard. However, the Guardian brought people back from that graveyard, and I couldn’t stop the flood of images from a dozen different zombie movies, as they materialized from my well of memories. Though what exactly the Spire may, or may not have held, was too gruesome to associate with Jordan, and I dug my hand into the tree again in an effort to halt the idea from taking hold.
“Your hand is bleeding,” he said, and I looked down to see a dark red spot trickling out from under the soft skin, between my thumb and forefinger. I chose to ignore it. The pain was welcome. And I looked back up at him.
“Why are we up here?”
“So, you can see the layout of this part of the city.”
“It just looks like a jumble of shapes.”
“Look closer,” he said. “The streets and buildings are shaped and clustered to form arrows, all pointing toward the Spire.”
I narrowed my eyes to try to see what he was seeing. I’m sure it would have been easy to see it from overhead, but from this angle, they still looked randomly bunched together, unstructured.
I chewed on my lower lip, studying the shapes, but I just wasn’t seeing it. I then attempted to analyze how the buildings were put together, instead of simply trying to see the overall effect. And that was when it became clear. All the streets were straight and connected by angled pathways forming an arrowhead. The houses formed simple lines, all of them, lined up and leading to the place of death.
“Why would they construct the city like this?” I was sickened by the design, as pleasing as they’d attempted to make it.
“The Spire is not just their graveyard, it’s also the heart of the city, where their Central Unit is.”
This I could understand. The city sprawling around its heart and all roads leading to the centerpiece, the machine that ran them, giving them all their wants, all their needs. And this was how Jordan had lived for hundreds of years, oblivious of everything outside of his sphere. No wonder he came looking for a new perspective.
“Why are you showing me this?”
“Because you’re going in,” he smiled.
“Huh?” I gasped, not sure I’d heard right. But he didn’t repeat himself. “How can I get in? Jordan said there isn’t a way for me to get inside.”
And the doubt crept inside my heart once more - maybe he didn’t want me inside his city, but I forced that away. I was not going to let any self-deprecating thoughts take hold. He loved me, I felt it every time he looked at me, every time his presence reached out for me. There had to be another reason.
“If you’re done berating yourself… what he would have said was, there isn’t a way for you to safely get inside, without being detected by the wards.”
And there it was. Jordan’s reason. He wouldn’t risk my life.
But apparently Haize and Aleric would.
“And you want me to go inside, attract the wards and lead them out?”
“Can you run fast?”
“You must be joking.”
I wasn’t in too terrible shape, although jogging up and down a river bank could hardly be used as a means to measure my speed, for then I was only running from memories. And I’d only been to the Arena twice. But he wanted me to run from reproduced, Guardian-controlled, trained killers, the same killers whom everyone went to great lengths to avoid.
“Why do you need to do this?” I breathed, suddenly hoping the tree branch I was standing on would snap. A broken bone or two was preferable to wards on my heels, if they even needed to get that close.
“Process of elimination. We trap them and hold them. They can’t regenerate back inside the Spire, only to be brought back out of it again.”
“But you’ve done this before,” I said more for myself, trying to put the pieces together. “So then… you have wards that you’ve previously captured, being held somewhere.”
“Yes,” he answered, and held up a small, oblong-shaped disc between his fingers. “You’ll see,” he grinned. “Keep your eyes open and look up. Stay completely still. Don’t blink.”
“
Why?”
“Trust me,” he said, as he held my chin steady with his free hand. “I won’t hurt you.”
No, you’ll only send me to my death, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t make the words come out. I didn’t want to believe that they would willingly put my life in danger. So, I did as he said and looked skyward.
I saw a bright green flash and felt a brief pinch behind my eyes. I blinked, hoping he was done.
“What was that?”
“Enhance your vision to see where the traps are. Look down at the field below. Remember the hole you dug?”
I did as he said and saw a similar series of rectangular shapes upon the ground, only now some of them were outlined in green light. Others, much further away from where we’d dug, glowed solid green.
“What’s the difference?”
“The solid light holds a ward. The outlined markers are waiting for one. We have several fields like this around the city, some larger than this.”
I followed the lines of green lights upon the ground and the further across I scanned, more solid markers could be seen. It was a sea of green graves. There had to be hundreds of them.
“And they can’t get out, right?”
“No, once they’re trapped, they’re there for good, or until we let them out. The fields have their own power source, completely separate from both the Central Unit and the Colony,” he told me, although as he did more zombie images raked through my mind. There were some college parties I really could have done without.
But the gruesome images from those movies caused me to question the sanity of their hunting process. What if the reproduced people in those graves were starving to death? Wasting away? Clawing at the walls, trying to dig their way out? Were they being slowly tortured to death? If they were, then it was inhumane and barbaric to trap them in such a manner. But then another voice in my head rose to argue that they were no longer human anyway, so what did it matter?
Confused, sickened, I turned to face Aleric. The disgust must have been clearly etched upon my face, for he placed a hand on top of mine in an effort to calm me.
“When they go in, they are suspended by the frequency, neither alive nor dead. But frozen. Unaware,” he reassured me, as though reading my mind.
“How do you know? What if your frequency doesn’t work the way you think it does?”
He mashed his lips together. He had more to say, but stopped himself before he did. Information, I was sure, he was not meant to reveal.
“I just know. It works exactly the way it was designed to work. Trust me, you won’t be hurting them. But if they catch you, you’ll sure wish you could.”
I wanted to press him for more details, I wanted to know exactly what they would do if they caught me, but I decided against asking those questions. It would be better if I didn’t know. Better to focus on running really fast.
“You can also see the signals that protect us as well,” he explained, trying to change the subject. “Look back toward the Colony.”
I did. But I couldn’t see anything different about the landscape and turned to question him.
“Focus not on what is obviously there, but on what is in the background.”
I stared back in the direction of the Colony, at first only seeing the fields and the hills again, but I tried to do as he suggested and adjusted my focus, almost squinting, attempting to see something more. And then I saw the patterns and understood what Lena had seen, even at such a distance.
It was a finely woven net of the palest green, almost white, barely discernible in the daylight. It surrounded the fields, the hills, and the cliffside entrance to the Colony. I followed its line as it traveled across the desert all the way to the Arena, and then south through the forest toward our tree-house. I was amazed at the land mass they’d covered.
“Wow!” I breathed, admiring their work.
“Thank you,” he said, and I could hear in his voice that he was smiling, proud as though the frequency was his invention.
But I was distracting myself from what was coming. I silently groaned, knowing there was no way to get out of what I’d agreed to do, without giving in to the weak person I was trying to get away from.
“So, you want me to go into the city and lead a bunch of wards out to this field,” I repeated, indicating toward the green outlines below us. “And what if they catch me?” I asked, immediately wishing I hadn’t. I needed that question and whatever response he was going to give me, to disappear before it shattered the fine layer of bravery I was trying to maintain.
“They won’t. You won’t be going that far in,” he said, and pointed to a smallish white building, just inside the wall. “That’s where you’ll enter. Walk around to the front of that building and then go left. You shouldn’t have to walk too much further in, but in case you do, you need to remember the way back.”
“How will I know when they’re coming for me?”
“You’ll feel it. Right here,” he said. He bunched his fingertips together and forced them into the center of my chest, pushing me backward. “It won’t hurt, at first, but it will feel like you’re being pulled. The moment you feel it, run. And once you’re out, watch the ground closely, lead them toward the open catchments and try not to fall in.”
I’m not sure at what point my breath had caught in my throat, possibly when he tried to knock it out of me, but it took several more moments and the brief appearance of black spots in my vision, before I exhaled and forced myself to breathe in again.
All I really had to do was walk in, get their attention and lead them out, the hunters would do the rest. Aleric explained that if I led them directly over the catchments - the graves - no fancy names, I needed to call it like it was - will immediately sense their presence, activate the frequencies, opening the hole, dropping them in and then sealing them inside. The hunters would also be there to stun them and then force them into a grave, and seal it before the Guardian could recall them to the Spire.
Easy.
I gripped the tree branch once more; the pain held me steady as I struggled to stop the insane laughter that began to bubble up, from escaping. I didn’t want to scream either. I wasn’t sure I could even if I wanted to. That switch was off, at least, for now. But laughing at their plan was hardly appropriate either.
I needed to know why they wanted me specifically, and what was different about their hunts when Grid was their bait, as opposed to when others, not from Earth, had been.
“I don’t know,” was his answer, though he studied my reactions carefully as he spoke. “When Grid went in, they came out in force. Perhaps because your emotions are so near the surface, it’s easy to sense your fear. But maybe also because your bodies contain natural contaminants and defects, that ours don’t. The wards were designed to protect the city from every type of hazard. And with you inside their perfect city, imagine the biological chaos you could cause.”
I should have been offended in numerous ways by what he said, but after spending day and night in their company, they’d accepted me, treated me as one of their own. There was nothing they could say or do that would spur me to outrage against them, or estrangement from them, apparently even sending me to my death.
“Well,” I sighed. “If the wards don’t kill me, Jordan most certainly will.”
Aleric’s laughter shook the tree top. I should have clung tighter, but I was again hoping the branches would release me. No such luck.
I peered back down into the city, to the entry point he’d indicated, and memorized the layout. In, left, arrow-right, left, arrow-right, left again if necessary, deciding it would be best if I stuck to a pattern that could be easily reversed. And the pattern I chose, was to not box myself in against the wall; to give myself room to run should I need it. I was going to need it.
The climb down was easier than going up and took far less time. Falling would have been preferable. Aleric then led me to the wall, showing me the quickest path through the trees t
o the field. And once facing the field, I would need to move left - there were more empty graves in that direction.
“You got it?” he finally asked me.
“I think so,” I exhaled, nodding. But I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew about the wards was what everyone had told me, which wasn’t a whole lot. For all I knew, I was their sacrificial lamb. I didn’t know them, not really, nor what their intentions were. I’d taken everything at face value, blindly accepted every word, but neither Grid nor Jordan had refuted anything they’d said about the wards.
“Isn’t there an easier way? When they come out of the city at night?”
“We do, on occasion, but it’s not as effective. It’s too hard to get them into one group and we don’t have as much control over where we need to lead them to.”
“Ready?” came Haize’s voice, and I turned to see her and Lena walking toward us.
Not even a little bit! I wanted to scream at her.
“Here,” she said. “Give me your hand.”
I did so, willingly, before she decided to use force, and she slipped over my left hand a small, tan-colored, fingerless glove.
“What is it?” I asked holding my hand up to inspect it. It was fine, skin tight, but it didn’t hurt and I had full use of my hand.
“You used something similar to this at the Arena. When a ward is too close to you, make a fist and force the tension from your hand, like a pulse…”
“The way I showed you, flex your wrist,” Lena interrupted.
“And it will emit a frequency around you that disrupts their power and the Guardian’s control over them. Essentially it kills them, sends them back to the Spire, until they are regenerated once again, but it will get them away from you.”
“But I thought the point was to lead them out to the graves, not to let them go back?”
“It is,” she said, her tone turning urgent. “Only use this when they are too close to you. Don’t let them take you, no matter what. Understand?”