by Dan Marshall
“There may be an alarm set to go off if there are too many failed attempts,” Adam warned. Pavel turned back, an annoyed look on his face, but his expression softened as he realized Adam was right.
“We’ll need to find some other way to get in,” the doctor said. “Some way to take the system offline or interrupt it.” He looked Adam up and down and commanded, “Give me that sword.”
Adam had no idea why Pavel wanted the sword, but obeyed, lifting the blade over his head and handing to the elder man, who grabbed it from him and raced back up the stairs. After a few moments of silence, Adam heard the door above swing back open and Pavel called down, “This is going to be a bit messy.”
When Pavel reached the bottom of the stairs, Adam was aghast at what he saw. A six centimeter square of skin with blood dripping from one side and smeared on the other. Pavel’s face was blank. His hand extended to return the sword. “Here, you can have this back,” he said. Adam put the sword in place against his back as Pavel took the piece of skin and slammed its bloody underside against the glass keypad, where it stuck in place with a wet slap. “Use the electrodusters on this. Don’t even have to hit it hard, just make contact.” Pavel moved around Adam, grabbed the door handle, and applied downward pressure.
Adam wasn’t sure why he did what he did, but he coiled his arm back and punched the square of skin with all the strength he could muster. The dusters smashed against the skin, producing a bright arc of electricity. The glass underneath cracked and popped. Pavel’s hand moved as the handle gave way, the door opening along its path.
The room beyond the door was familiar. Rows of cubicles, each like the last, their bubbled tops giving the appearance of a room full of eggs in a large, open carton. Adam felt a chill of recognition as he realized this was the room from his dream of Damen’s death.
Unlike the cubicle farms to which Adam was accustomed, in which there was a near-constant din of conversation, chairs moving, and phones ringing, this room was deathly quiet. Pavel and Adam ducked down one of the aisles, and Adam opened the milk-white door to the first cubicle in that row, sliding it along its track to find a man inside he had never seen before. The man wore a Lightcap and stared intently at the screen, where lines of code appeared at regular intervals.
A sudden sound of movement came from down the hall where they had just emerged, which caused Pavel to push Adam into the cubicle and follow behind him. The door could not softly slide back into place quickly enough to suit Adam. They heard rushed footsteps and muffled voices one or two rows away. Adam couldn’t make out what they were saying but thought he heard the words “she” and “restraints”.
The man in the cubicle did not stir or acknowledge Adam and Pavel’s presence in any way, as if they weren’t even there. Adam leaned over the man’s shoulder in an attempt to read the lines of code on the screen, but Pavel grabbed his shoulder and said, “We should go. It seems as if they were headed deeper into the building, not where we came from. We need to find Aria.”
Pavel nudged Adam out of the cubicle and exited closely behind, putting the door back in place. The motionless man remained, his eyes focused on his computer screen as he added more lines of code. They went to their left, in the same direction the voices had retreated. Reaching the end of the row and emerging into a perpendicular hallway, a commotion on their right caught their attention. With their heads turned to their right, neither Pavel nor Adam saw the men who approached from their left until they ran past. Adam and Pavel both reflexively flinched as these two Blues entered their side view and continued beyond.
Adam and Pavel, stunned not to be confronted but ignored, saw that these two men also wore Lightcaps. The Blues turned and entered a door on their left, sounds of struggle coming through the gap where they entered. Pavel and Adam looked at each other, then ran down the hall to where the men had gone and threw open the door.
They found a small room with a lone table centered in the middle. Aria lay upon the table, struggling ferociously, one of her arms strapped down to it. Her free arm locked around the neck of a struggling Blue from behind. Four other Blues circled her, wary of her flying legs. The free Blues looked up as Adam and Pavel entered the room. Aria used the distraction as an opportunity to throw her leg into the air, where it connected with the closest man’s neck. His throat emitted a sickening gurgle as he went down.
The Blue in front of Adam turned and threw a punch to Adam’s chest. The glancing blow hurt, but the ballistic vest helped absorb most of the impact. Adam had reflexively tried to block it and mostly failed, but he found himself in an advantageous position to jab the Blue’s face. A loud crack and sparks trailing over the man’s skin from the point of impact indicated almost a million volts discharging in an instant. The man’s head jerked back along the axis of his neck before he sagged to the ground.
Pavel had already handled one of the Blues, who now lay on the ground behind him convulsing, and blocked the attempted strike of another wielding a truncheon. Adam observed the practiced grace of the elder man, who grabbed the Blue’s wrist with one hand and expertly delivered his other palm to the elbow with a nauseating crunch. The Blue cried out in pain, the sound of his shock bouncing off the walls of the room. Pavel slid his hand down to the man’s wrist, grabbed the baton from his hand, then brought it crashing down on his temple.
“Nothing personal,” Pavel said.
Aria still had one Blue from behind, his gasps growing more and more desperate, each attempt to remove her arm more futile than the last. Adam drew the katana and cut the bonds holding her right arm and leg. Aria took the katana from him, brought it to the neck of the Blue who struggled against her, and drew her arm quickly, as a cellist controls the bow across strings. The man sank to the ground, choking on his own blood and carved flesh.
“Thanks,” she said as she turned to face them. “Let’s go.” A klaxon sounded as they walked through the door, and hurried footsteps came from every direction. A dozen Blues emerged from different rows and hallways, all wearing what appeared to be Lightcaps, and surrounded the three of them. Each Blue had a gun or baton drawn.
“Hands up!” said the closest one.
Pavel and Aria stood in front of Adam, who didn’t think they had much of a chance to fight their way out of that. He reached into his right pocket, flipped open the cover of Dej’s device, and drove his thumb against its button. Adam shuddered as the Blues’ faces changed from dull sternness to wild abandon. Their hands opened and their weapons dropped to the ground. They began to run, banging into walls, each other, and any other obstacle they met. One of the workers broke through a cubicle door from the inside with a crash, its cheap plastic splitting with a crack as he unknowingly threw his body against it. Adam would have found this amusing under different circumstances, the mayhem reminding him of slapstick comedy.
“The radios are fried,” Pavel said, “so they’ll have to be repaired by hand. We need to find Dej and Sera.” They had decided Sera would most likely be near LaMont, and they hoped Dej would be too. The executive suites were one level down, requiring them to go back to the staircase. The alarms still blared, but no more guards appeared. The trio pushed through the crowd of frenetic Blues and workers, the bodies bouncing against them and flying off at odd angles as they went down the cubicle row. No guard stood at the staircase door.
Aria took the lead with her red-streaked sword like a sharp-tongued guide. Adam followed behind her, with Pavel in the rear. After going down a flight of stairs they stood at the stairwell door, where Aria held up her hand. Adam and Pavel stopped. She opened the door, pushing it with enough force to make a half circle arc and end against the wall. They went through. Because of his height, Adam saw motion to his right a split second before Aria reacted to it. A Blue was raising his truncheon with the intent to bring it down upon her head.
Adam saw movement to his left as well and turned just in time to see a raised gun. He lurched toward the Blue wielding the pistol. A sudden bang assailed his ears as his st
omach was pinched with a warm sting. Before the shot, Adam had started to swing, and his swing continued despite the shock to his abdomen. His fist connected with the jaw of the Blue, not hard enough to cause damage on its own, but the voltage discharged with a splitting snap. The Blue dropped with a thud. In his soreness, Adam could not help thinking he could get used to these electrified knuckles.
Adam turned to see Aria standing over the man who had attempted to beat her. He lay partially decapitated on the floor, slumped sideways against the wall, his mouth opened in surprise. Blood still gushed from his neck. She wiped her sword off on the dead man’s uniform, leaving a thick red smear on his blue fabric and gold accents. Pavel still stood in the stairwell.
“This way. We have to find LaMont,” Aria said as she led the two men down the hall.
The hallway reminded Adam of the hallway leading to room 4C in the Adaptech building, cold and white. They headed to LaMont’s office, which lay at the end of the hall according to the datafile. Aria held up her hand as a signal to the men behind her to stop, then motioned to her right with her sword.
They pressed their backs against the wall to their right and Aria crouched down, her sword held steady in front of her. A heartbeat later, she charged around the corner. Pavel and Adam heard a shout of surprise, then the sound of Aria’s blade slashing through flesh, sickening and wet, followed by a gurgle. A gunshot. Two thuds. The men lunged around the corner to see Aria bent over as she pulled her sword from two Blues. She had stabbed one through the neck, then used him as a shield and drove him into the other man, stabbing him in the head. The smell of blood mixed with gunsmoke hung in the air.
“Halt!” came a voice from behind them. Adam turned with Aria and Pavel to see two more Blues bearing down on them in a full sprint from the other end of the hallway. Pavel, closest to the Blues, reacted immediately. He pulled his gun from his pocket and fired a shot. The bullet hit the closest Blue on his upper right cheek, causing him to fall to the ground, carried forward by his momentum. The remaining Blue dodged to the side, leveled his weapon, and fired twice at Pavel. One of the bullets impacted against Pavel’s left arm, causing the old man to spin and fall at Adam’s feet.
The Blue advanced on Pavel, who lay motionless on the carpet, raising his gun as if to fire. Aria still struggled to remove her sword from the neck and skull of the two Blues she’d killed. Adam didn’t know what else to do, so he rushed forward, prompting the Blue to turn the gun on him. Pavel swung his legs up, blurred against the dark navy of the gunman’s uniform, and kicked the gun as it fired. Adam could have sworn he felt the bullet brush against the right side of his scalp before he tackled the Blue. Pavel had twisted his torso while he kicked, and wrapped his arms around the Blue’s legs just as Adam’s hit sent the guard crashing on the floor. His head bounced against the ground with a sound of cracking plastic, a disoriented look on his face.
Pavel and Adam got to their feet as Aria finally pulled her blade free. Pavel bled from his left shoulder. The bullet had entered just next to the ballistic vest, ricocheted off bone, and exited after traveling a straight path through the old man’s bicep. Aria’s eyes widened when she saw the blood, and she raised her sword to strike the Blue.
“Wait!” Adam cried. Aria turned to look at him. “You don’t need to kill this man.,” Adam continued. “Look, his Lightcap is damaged.” He motioned to the man, whose eyes rapidly blinked, focused on nothing.
Aria, incredulous, asked, “Are you fucking kidding? Nothing wrong with having one less Blue around. Besides, it could just be temporary. Maybe the Lightcap will reboot, and then he’ll come up from behind and shoot us in the back of the head. Is that what you want? Let’s just kill him now and be done with it.”
Pavel stepped between Aria and the fallen Blue, grimacing at the pain of movement. “Aria, we are supposed to be the good guys. Adam is right. There is no need to kill this man. He’s no longer a threat to us. If you’re that worried about it, I’ll take his weapon.” Pavel picked up the man’s gun and stuck it into his waistband behind his back. Aria said nothing and lowered her sword. She remained silent while Adam tore off a piece of his shirt and tied it around Pavel’s upper arm, then turned abruptly and continued down the hall. Adam and Pavel followed her.
They made it to LaMont’s suite without further interruption. A monolithic slab of obsidian, shiny black with vertical handles of brushed metal, served as the door. Aria did not pause to make sure Pavel and Adam were ready. She pulled the door open and they stormed into the suite. The door closed behind them with a hiss, driven back against its frame by hidden springs.
The trio was shocked to find themselves in an apparently unoccupied room.
Aria slammed her fist on the empty desk. “Of course it would be empty! This was LaMont’s office while he was third in line. With Montery gone, of course LaMont would take his old office. Probably bigger, or has a better view,” she hissed.
They each went in a different direction to look for any clues. The suite, with a main room several times bigger than LaMont’s office at Adaptech, looked as if it could have doubled as a luxury apartment. No wonder he spends most of his time here, Adam thought. A few chairs lined the wall along a bay of massive windows overlooking New Metra City far off in the distance. Adam caught himself looking out, his ghosted reflection superimposed over the glass, speckled with the light of the buildings outside. He heard a muffled noise from an adjacent room a few feet away and went to investigate it. Adam was unprepared for what he found when he turned the corner.
“Aria! Pavel! Over here,” he yelled. Dej sat in an office chair, his arms taped down, his body slumped. Adam could see Dej’s chest rise and fall almost imperceptibly, but could also see drops of blood falling from his chin onto his shirt. He ran up and began trying to free Dej from the tape, but it was secure and Adam had nothing sharp with which to cut it.
Aria got to them first, followed shortly after by Pavel. Aria cut the wraps binding Dej’s arms to the chair with her sword. Pavel cleaned up Dej’s face as Aria worked. Adam tried his best to stay out of their way. Dej stirred and groaned, but he did not speak.
“Dej,” Aria said, as she crouched in front of him and cupped his face with her hands. “Wake up, love.” She cried and wiped her face.
“We’ve got Dej. We need to get out of here,” Adam said, then pointed back toward the door.
Pavel, who had spent his time examining the few things occupying the office, turned toward the others and said, “We may have a problem. It is clear they either expected us to come here or put Dej in this room for a reason—either as punishment or to get rid of him.” His eyes jumped to Aria as he finished.
Aria didn’t say a word, but she hoisted Dej by his left arm, her right arm behind his back to offer support. His head sagged, but Dej appeared to be able to put some weight on his legs. Adam rushed to grab Dej’s other arm. The quartet made it back to the dark door, but it wouldn’t open.
“Are you kidding me?” Adam demanded. “We walked right into a trap! That’s great.” He could scarcely believe they hadn’t thought to prop the door open.
“It may not be as dire as you think,” Pavel said, walking over to a glass touchscreen mounted in the wall to the right of the door. He touched it, and it lit up. “I’ll take care of this, you take care of Dej,” Pavel said, his fingers quickly moving across the screen.
They carried Dej to a plush chair close by the entrance. Aria snapped her fingers in front of his face in an attempt to wake him, but her action had little effect. Dej’s eyelids were fluttering, but he had not opened his eyes or spoken. Pavel called Adam over to him.
“This is worse than I thought,” Pavel said as he pulled up a file on the screen. “Control access is completely locked out, so the door cannot be opened from here. I was able to gain read-only system access, though, and it appears the environmental systems have been set to remove all oxygen from the room.”
“What?” asked Adam, not quite believing what Pavel said.
“Couldn’t we just use the electrodusters like before to zap the system and overload it?”
“Probably not. Besides the fact the skin would have to come from one of us, I am not convinced it would have any effect, since control access to this panel has been revoked.”
“Aria!” Adam shouted as he turned and looked back at her. “We have more important things to worry about than Dej right now. This room is slowly turning into our tomb.”
Aria looked up at him, got to her feet, and said, “What do you mean?”
Pavel responded before Adam had a chance: “Environmental controls have been set to remove all the O2 from the room. The doors and windows are sealed—no way for fresh air to get in. We need to find a way out.”
Adam motioned to Aria to follow him and went back to the large floor-to-ceiling windows near where they had found Dej minutes before. He walked over to the side of the chair where Dej had been seated, then looked and her and nodded toward the window. Aria took the hint and positioned herself on the other side of the chair. They lifted their respective armrests and turned toward the window.
“On three?” Adam asked. Aria nodded. They both swung back. He counted: “One . . . two . . . three!” Their swings grew wider with each number, and they launched the chair toward their own faint reflections when the count ended. For a second Adam thought their plan had succeeded, as the chair smashed into the window with a loud boom. Steel and fabric met a tinted pane that bowed but did not break. At the moment Adam was sure the chair would pass through in a hail of shards, the glass bounced back and sent the chair hurtling across the floor. It slid with a screech and ended about a meter from their feet.