The man looked him in the eyes. “I promise you, Troy. I am a friend. My name is Mirza. I will tell you anything you want to know. But you have suffered grave wounds that will worsen if you do not rest. I do not want to restrain you Troy, but I will if I must.”
Troy had nothing to lose by believing this man. He had a kind but firm nature, but Troy was still agitated. He was out and he was alive. He’d escaped the Corridor. But instead of being happy, his heart was flooded with horror.
“I took her place—Victoria!” he rasped through a scratchy, sore throat. “I’m supposed to be in that stasis pod thing. How did I get here?”
Mirza refocused those bright, blue-green eyes onto him, though his serene demeanor never changed.
“You are not in the pod because your friend got back in.”
“What?” Troy nearly leapt from the bed.
“Troy, I must ask you again, please, to not work yourself up.” Mirza raised both hands. “Your condition is stable, but it took a great deal of work to repair the damage the Corridor did to you. Work that is still in process.”
Why would Victoria climb back in? She was supposed to be free! He’d given up everything so she could escape, and she repaid him by undoing his plans?
A window to his right looked out on some kind of city, a strange, alien place like nothing Troy had seen before. He identified structures, but they were curved and streamlined, made of materials he didn’t recognize. Farther out he saw neatly arranged crops filling an enormous field. Beyond that, blocking all further view, was a mountain range with peaks that stretched above the clouds.
There were no streets in this strange city, and he could find no vehicles. But he saw a man strolling along a narrow path a few blocks away, and he saw signs of movement out in the fields at the base of the mountain.
He glanced back at his strange healer, who stood near the door of his small room, and then over Mirza’s shoulders to what looked like a waiting room outside. Beyond the waiting room, he saw a huge plate glass window, through which he could see a massive structure of a completely different build far off in the distance. A very familiar structure with an exterior covered in overlapping panels and pipes and bundles of cable. It had to be at least two miles away, but he could still see only a small portion of it through the window. It extended beyond his view in both directions.
“Is that…?” he whispered.
“The Corridor. Yes, Troy, it is.”
Troy forced his eyes away from it and shook his head. “How do you know my name?”
Mirza titled his head toward the window behind him. “She told me, of course.”
Troy frowned. “You mean the Corridor?”
Mirza smiled, almost chuckled. “Of course not.” He stepped out and looked down the hallway to Troy’s left. He motioned for someone to join him.
Into Troy’s room, a wheelchair was pushed by a black woman roughly the same age as Mirza. Once the chair was inside, she turned and left.
In the wheelchair sat Victoria.
Spontaneous tears leaked from Troy’s eyes before he could form words. She’d been cleaned up since he last saw her, and now she was wearing the same scrubs that he wore. She looked as overwhelmed and relieved to see him as he was to see her, and Mirza had to bar Troy to prevent him from jumping out of the bed toward her.
Still, Troy could come up with no words. At last, he managed one, turning to Mirza. “Explain.”
Mirza’s lips turned up into a slight smile. “You sacrificed yourself to save Victoria. She, in turn, did the same for you. Therefore the Corridor ejected you both. It is the only way anyone escapes the Corridor. The Black Room tests your will, your selfishness. Self-preservation versus self-denial. Only those who rise above their human nature are set free, and sent outside the Corridor’s walls for us to collect and care for.
“Put simply,” Mirza said in a matter-of-fact tone, “you are both here because you chose to love.”
Troy and Victoria exchanged a fleeting glance. Wasn’t it too soon to discuss that kind of thing?
Troy looked out at the unfamiliar city, and for a long moment, he was far away. His eyes unfocused, his thoughts drifted back to the sound of his mother’s voice, her singing to him. It had sounded so much like her.
“So my mother…? That wasn’t really her?”
Mirza’s features tensed and he shook his head. “I am sorry, Troy. That was the Corridor tempting you to leave Victoria behind. It was part of the final test.”
The replication of her voice had been so perfect. He couldn’t find the energy to be surprised that the Corridor could create this kind of deception. The blasted structure seemed capable of anything.
He returned to the moment when his eyes slid over to Victoria’s frail form, slumping in her wheel chair.
She spoke before he could ask, and despite her appearance and his own troubled thoughts, Troy found her familiar voice soothing. “I was in the machine for two years,” she said softly. “My muscles… ‘atrophied.’ Mirza is fixing me, but it’s going to take a while.”
Without thinking, Troy slid carefully down to the foot of his bed and took her hand in his. He felt like he knew this girl better than he knew himself, that her pain was his, and vice versa. No matter that this was the very first time they’d ever touched. Their hands were a perfect fit, and more was communicated in the weak squeeze they shared than all the words they’d spoken to one another.
Together, they turned back to face Mirza again and waited for him to explain the rest. The Corridor, how it came to be, where they were now, and who their host really was.
“To the best of my knowledge,” he began with a tone of great patience, “I was the first Runner to escape the Corridor, along with my Conduit, Parvana. You met her a few minutes ago; she brought Victoria into this room. That was almost fifty years ago. Since that time, others have also escaped, all of whom history believes to have died in another time. This is not the life any of us would have chosen, but it is a life, and we are grateful for a second chance to live it. This place… was made for us.”
Victoria’s gaze shifted to the window, and Troy knew she was searching for signs of life, just as he had earlier. “How many…?”
“Counting the two of you,” replied Mirza, “one hundred and seventy-four.”
“Is this Earth?” Troy blurted out the insane-sounding question before he could stop himself.
Mirza nodded. “This is Earth of what each of us considers the distant future. Somewhere in the early twenty-fourth century, we believe. And yes, it is just us here. Everyone else, the entire human population, came to an end many years ago. We have picked up the legacy of Those Who Came Before—the architects of this place, and of the Corridor—and are attempting to carry on in their stead.”
“You mean to tell me you’ve been here all this time, living right outside the Corridor? And you didn’t—I don’t know, turn it off? Shut it down?” Troy felt his temper rising as he shouted. “Why didn’t you save us?”
Victoria squeezed his hand gently.
Mirza’s cool wasn’t disrupted by Troy’s outburst. “We cannot. The Corridor is too well protected. It is surrounded by some kind of energy. We have tried to break through it. We even dug under the ground a few years ago. Those Who Came Before did not mean for us to access the Corridor, so it is, at least for now, impossible.”
“Those Who Came Before,” repeated Victoria. “Who were they?”
“The last remnants of mankind,” replied Mirza. “Survivors of a cataclysmic event that nearly destroyed our world.”
Troy shook his head, unable to get his head around this. “Why would disaster survivors build something like the Corridor?”
Mirza smiled knowingly. “You know why already, Troy. You followed their journey, walked in their footsteps. You both had the dream, as we all do. One final message from the Corridor, before the psychic connection is broken.”
Troy blinked. The dream. He remembered it. He saw the people, thousands of them.
He’d traced their path through endless hardship and struggle, and ultimately triumph. But it was more than a dream. It was real. It was history.
And it was paralleled by...
“They built the Corridor,” said Troy, the truth striking him. “Those people in the dream. So it’s… some kind of record? A museum?”
Mirza gave a slight nod. “Yes. But it is much more.” From within the folds of his robe, he produced a scroll.
Troy unrolled it on the bed, and Victoria leaned in. It was a pictogram containing a futuristic kind of cuneiform, applied to a very ancient medium. Troy assumed that this was how they first recorded the history that followed the disaster, as they may not have had access to any other means.
Troy couldn’t read the scroll’s writing, but the pictures spoke for themselves. At the top of the page was a brilliant white explosion, with dozens of tiny figures running from it. Beneath this was drawn a mountainous expanse, with those same escapees climbing across it. The next picture showed a terrible fire that seemed to spread across the whole world. On and on it went, familiar and astonishing.
“Hundreds of these scrolls were left for us by Those Who Came Before, containing their history, their knowledge and secrets, and their directives to us. The scrolls tell us of a Great Disaster that occurred on Earth long ago—but at a time we would call the future. They do not reveal if it happened as the result of war or the impact of a meteor, or some other catastrophe we have no name for. It tells only the story of the survivors.
“Most of mankind was destroyed, but thousands lived. Tens of thousands. Much of the world was rendered uninhabitable, so they gathered and set out to find a place of refuge, a place that could sustain them, where they could start again. Their journey lasted for dozens of generations. You saw their path. You lived it inside the Corridor.”
Troy’s weary mind struggled to keep up with the many questions that sprung with every new word from Mirza’s lips. “So why aren’t ‘they’ here now?”
“They died. All of them, more than one hundred years ago. The scrolls explain that the disaster that nearly destroyed the world also poisoned it, and no matter how far they fled from the destruction, it eventually caught up with them. It began when they were living underground in the caves. Over time, they discovered that their lifespans were decreasing. By the time their descendants packed up and left those caves, they understood that a contagion had infected their DNA because not a single man or woman born lived beyond fifty years of age. When they finally settled here and built this city, this refuge, the death rate had risen, and no one lived beyond thirty. It was only a few decades later that they became unable to have children at all.”
Victoria spoke up. “And that’s why they built the Corridor? To repopulate the human race—by…pulling people through time? People who were supposed to be dead?”
“In part,” said Mirza. “Think of it. A brilliant idea, is it not? Where better to find undiluted human material to continue our species than the distant past? With no remaining viable human DNA, our entire genus was facing extinction. So it was decided somewhere along the way that they would find the means to bring other humans here—humans who hadn’t been tainted by the poisons of the Great Disaster.”
Troy almost chuckled. “And they just happened to have access to a time machine? Why didn’t they use it themselves? Why not go back to a time before the Great Disaster?”
“The scrolls do not say. But having a great deal of time to consider this, I believe they did not want to pass on to their children the legacy of a world doomed to destruction.”
“So they chose to stay here and die off one by one?” asked Troy.
“They chose to stay and build the future,” said Mirza. “A future. For the human race. If they had fled, mankind would no longer exist.”
Troy fell silent, absorbing Mirza’s words. The old man was wise, Troy had to admit. It all made sense. Or it was starting to, at least.
“What about the animals? The plants? Did any of them survive the Great Disaster?” he asked.
“Those Who Came Before saved as much as they could. Everything that’s still alive on this planet is inside this compound, which we call the Dome.”
Victoria spoke again. “And the time travel technology?”
Mirza gestured toward the window and the city outside it. “Everything in our compound is built from the remains of what came before. Before the Great Disaster, they were a highly advanced race, already possessing time travel technology, though it was not widely known and used only under very controlled circumstances.
“The scrolls say that the survivors always had a leader, and the ninth of these leaders was an engineer of sorts. He collected debris—bits of technology, circuits and whatnot—as they traveled. He eventually stumbled across the remains of one of these time machines, though it took him years to piece it back together. It remained a secret, handed down and known only to the survivors’ leaders.”
“And now it’s inside the Corridor,” said Troy. “So I can’t go back to my life? My dad? And Victoria can’t go back to her time?”
Mirza shook his head.
His family, his father... He would never see them again. They were long gone, having lived and died hundreds of years ago.
He looked up suddenly at Mirza, a terrible thought striking him. “My dad… If my body disappears in my time, he’ll never accept that I’m dead. He’ll never give up looking for me!”
The sad look on Mirza’s face was the only answer Troy needed. The Corridor. Of course it had a solution for this. Mirza explained it anyway. “Not all of those that the Corridor chooses as Runners are known to history. Of these, it takes the ones who fail and alters their appearance to resemble those of us who escape the Corridor, and sends those bodies back to stand in for us.”
No. It couldn’t be that easy. There had to be another way...
“But there must be more time travel tech out in the world somewhere, even if it’s just bits and pieces. Can’t you go look for it?”
“Troy,” said Mirza with a note of finality. “You have to understand. There is nothing beyond the Dome but an uninhabitable landscape. We cannot leave, or we will fall prey to the same conditions that shortened and ended the lives of Those Who Came Before. Many years from now, the world will recover and become habitable again. Until then, here, and only here, are we able to live.”
“Then why make us Run the Corridor? I mean, if they meant for us to come here and carry on the human race, why try to kill us first? And why did they need the Corridor if they wrote down their history in these scrolls?”
Mirza nodded slowly. “The records are not entirely clear on every point, but on this fact they are precise. The journey of Those Who Came Before was a terrible struggle, but it changed them. It made them who they were. It taught them life’s most important lessons, it gave them a profound respect for the things that truly matter. It altered their perspectives in every conceivable way. Even though the journey was brutal, they became convinced that the maturity and insight it gave them was crucial to their coming together as a people to restore society and rebuild our world.
“So they decided that the only way they could pass on what they had learned to the ‘ancients’ they would bring here was to have them experience the same—or at least a similar—journey. The Corridor is a record of their experiences, yes. But it’s also a reenactment to impart their wisdom, to indoctrinate us into this new society’s way of living and being.”
Mirza was talking about a paradigm shift, a fundamental alteration to the people brought here through time. Had Troy been altered by his experiences in the Corridor? One glance at Victoria was the only answer he needed.
“They believed this was the only way they could ensure that we would not destroy ourselves, as the Great Disaster had nearly destroyed them. They struggled so long and so hard to preserve mankind, and they were absolutely determined to keep it from ending.”
“I guess I get that…” Troy firmly held Victoria�
��s hand, but looked at the Corridor in the distance behind her. “Sure wish they could have come up with an easier way to pass on their worldview. But given all they went through and survived…”
“The Corridor is a place of second chances,” said Mirza, leaning out from his spot by Troy’s bed to glance at the Corridor himself. “It gives another chance at life to those who died too young. I believe it is meant to teach us about the fragility and the preciousness of life. That it is not meant to be lived alone. Or taken for granted. Everyone who is brought here is given the opportunity to earn back their life. Just as you—both of you—have earned back yours.”
Troy leaned back against his pillow, absorbing. It was unbelievable. He was meant to die the night before he turned seventeen. And yet here he was, a living, breathing, seventeen-year-old male.
Was he worthy of this gift?
“Who were you, before?” asked Victoria. It was a question that had never occurred to Troy.
“I was a prince of the Babylonian Empire in what you call the seventh century, BC.”
Troy suddenly understood the man. His shrewd answers. His unflappable demeanor. The way he carried himself with grace and dignity.
“When I was brought here, and I escaped the Corridor alongside Parvana, it was a very long time before I understood and accepted my new circumstances. It is a difficult thing to know that everyone and everything you have ever known is gone, and you will never see them again. Fortunately, I did not have to face this alone. And neither do you.
“Now…” Mirza walked around to the end of the bed and prepared to leave. “You two just worry about getting well. Once you’re on your feet again, we’ll proceed with the ceremony.”
“What ceremony?” asked Victoria.
“The wedding, of course.”
“What?” Troy and Victoria blurted out together.
“We are here for the purpose of repopulating mankind. Marriage is required of all who escape the Corridor.”
Troy glanced at Victoria, and she at him. He supposed he did love her. But was he in love with her? He’d never had the chance to consider it.
Corridor (A MythWorks Novel) Page 13