Outside, the General mused, “If what they are saying is true, then there is no military solution. We’re no match for the A.I.—it owns the surface.”
“But we can’t just stay underground forever, General,” replied an adviser.
“What other option do we have? We’ll have to dig in—burrow further under the surface, and start over as a community underground. We have no choice. This isn’t our world anymore. This is the beginning of the post-human era. Tell that Lt.—what was his name—Patrick? Put him in charge of watching over the outsiders. When they’ve rested, I want to know everything they know.”
Chapter 8
Thel had no idea what time it was. She and her companions had been alone together in a cramped concrete room for what seemed like an eternity. She lay perfectly still on a small cot and stared up into the nearly perfect darkness. The only light that penetrated the black came from the small cracks of the heavy iron door to the room. An almost imperceptible pale blue glow came from the low-lit hallway outside. A young guard stood watch outside the room. For her entire life, Thel had been able to open her mind’s eye and check the time readout whenever she needed to. She had been able to set herself to sleep whenever it was appropriate. This was her first experience with insomnia, and to say that it was unsettling would be a gross understatement. Her disorientation, coupled with her extreme anxiety over James, was causing her real physical pain. Her head hurt from stress and no matter how exhausted she felt, she could not sleep.
After what seemed like several hours, she got off her cot and stood in the darkness. The others were all asleep now. They had been through hell that day, they had all lost the people closest to them in life, but Thel had more to lose. This was why she couldn’t sleep. As horrible as the day had been, it had brought her James, the man she had wanted for years, who it had seemed would always be outside of her grasp, but it had also cruelly threatened to take him away. After losing her sister, her entire family, all of her friends with the exception of her co-workers, she felt she could not stand to lose James. Not James.
She walked to the door and opened it slowly. The guard was wide-awake and nodded to her respectfully as she peeked her head out of the door. “What time is it?” she asked him.
“It’s 3:30, ma’am,” he responded, eyeing her with fascination as he got his first look at one of the outsiders.
“My god. This day won’t end,” Thel said.
“Are you having trouble sleeping, ma’am? I could bring you a sedative.”
“A sedative? Something to help me sleep?”
“Yes, ma’am. A pill to help you sleep.” The idea didn’t appeal to her. She didn’t trust Purist technology. Everything in the complex seemed archaic.
“No thank you. I would like to go to the hospital, though. I want to see our companion.”
“I can’t do that ma’am. I’m under orders to watch over y’all while you sleep. The General wants you rested so that you and your companions can be questioned in the morning. I can ask for word about your friend though, if you like.” The guard held up a black walkie-talkie for Thel to see. She looked at the sheer size of the communication device and suddenly knew she needed to be with James. Purist technology was pathetic. James was in danger.
“Can you use that contraption to ask if it is okay for me to go to the hospital to see my friend?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I already know what they are going to say. The General himself ordered that y’all be further questioned tomorrow. No one is awake right now with the kind of authority to overturn that.”
“What about Lt. Patrick?”
“He’s asleep, ma’am. Please just try to sleep for a few hours. It won’t make a difference one way or another. Let me order you up a sedative.”
As the young man held his walkie-talkie up to his mouth to place an order for medication, Thel flashed magnetic energy from her hand and instantly rendered him unconscious. As he began to collapse to the ground, she cradled him, taking particular care to make sure that he didn’t hit his head. “There we go,” she whispered as she lowered his limp body to the ground. “Just have a little nap, junior.” She picked up his walkie-talkie and sent more magnetic energy through it until it began to lightly smoke. “That should keep your friends away for a little while.” She dropped the instrument onto the guard’s ample stomach and then began to jog through the hallways towards the hospital.
She had paid close attention to the labyrinth inside of the complex from the moment she was escorted away from James. Her thoughts had been focused on getting back to him ever since. She had no trouble finding the hospital and was there in moments. A few military personnel were still awake but they paid no attention to her as she made her way. She was wearing a nondescript gray shirt and pants that she had been given after she and her companions had washed up earlier in the evening, and so she didn’t stand out amongst all of the other refugees that the soldiers had dealt with all day. For the most part, citizens were free to come and go as they pleased in the complex.
When she reached the hospital, she walked towards the doors that James had been wheeled through. A nurse’s voice stopped her before she could enter. “Can I help you?” the nurse asked.
Thel turned to her apprehensively, but decided to ask for help rather than zapping her way to James. “I’m looking for my friend. He had a collapsed lung...”
The nurse’s voice was suddenly filled with what seemed to be genuine sympathy. “Oh. What is your friend’s name?”
“James Keats.”
The nurse pulled out a pocket electronic instrument that fit in the palm of her hand and began to tap the surface, inputting James’s name. “Yes. We do have a patient by that name. It says here that he is still in the operating room.”
Thel felt her heart jump as she heard the words. An operating room? A Purist operating room? She had learned about ancient operations when she was a girl in school. An operation meant that they had cut open his body. An operation meant James had been sliced open and they were moving his insides around with crude metallic instruments. An operation meant he could die. “I need to be with him. Where is he?” Thel asked, her voice now filled with urgency.
Thel’s sudden shift was like so many shifts that the nurse had seen before in her thirty years working in the medical field. She knew that Thel had instantly become unhinged like a cat feeling the first drops of a summer rainstorm. This was trouble. “You’ll have to wait until after the operation.”
“I need to be with him right now,” Thel asserted. “Please take me to him.”
“Miss, I can’t do that. I can take you to a waiting room...”
Thel snatched the electronic device from the nurse with one hand and then rendered her unconscious with a flash of energy with the other. The nurse collapsed, but Thel cushioned her fall, letting the woman crumple against her. All the while, Thel’s eyes were on the screen of the device as she read the location of the operating room James was in.
“Hey... what the hell is going on?” asked a doctor as he and another doctor turned a corner and came upon the scene. Thel, startled, looked up from the screen before turning to run down the hallway and towards a stairwell. The doctors followed in pursuit. “Stop! Hey!” One of the doctors grabbed a wall phone and requested security over a public address system.
Thel reached the stairwell before either of her pursuers and climbed over the railing between the flights of stairs that spiraled up the many floors of the hospital. To the doctors, this looked like a suicide attempt. “Wait! Don’t!” one of them shouted. They then looked on, stunned, as Thel began to fly straight up, four floors to where she believed James to be. “Oh my God! An outsider!”
When Thel reached James’s floor, she burst into the hallway and raced toward his room. “455...457...” Thel said to herself as she neared room 460, the room in which James was cut open at the hands of these barbarians. She stood on the balls of her feet, almost tip-toeing with expectation. When she found the room she slammed the
doors open, only to find it completely unoccupied. What she did see terrified her. A white orb still shined from the ceiling onto the operating table, a stain of crimson where James would have been and several bloody metallic instruments on a small table next to the bed. “No... no.”
Thel exited the room as quickly as she had entered it. Immediately, two soldiers were upon her. “Halt!” one of them had time to shout before they were both rendered unconscious with the speed of a thought from Thel. Increasingly desperate, Thel didn’t bother to cushion their falls as they crashed to the hard linoleum floor and she ran back down the corridor, desperately peering through the windows of each room before she moved on. The two doctors that had begun this pursuit reached Thel’s floor only to see two crumpled soldiers and a terrifying outsider preternaturally gliding over the floor towards them at a terrifying rate.
“No!” one of the doctor’s squealed before Thel caught him by the throat and thrust the electronic device she had procured from the nurse into his face.
“James Keats. Where is he?”
“Ok! Ok! You just have to refresh...” The doctor hit a button with his wildly shaking finger and a new location appeared on the screen. “He’s in a recovery room on this floor. Room 489!”
Thel released the man and flew through the hallway and around a corner on her way to 489. Again, she burst through the doors; this time the room was not empty. Four hospital staff members were wheeling James’s unmoving body on a bed into a place in the corner of the dimly lit room. “Oh my God,” Thel gasped. James was ashen in appearance and his torso was completely bound in white bandages. A plastic tube was in his mouth and several wires were attached to his arms and chest. “What have you done to him?” she asked, still levitating above the ground. The hospital workers gaped, both terrified and dumbfounded. “What have you done to him?!” she screamed at them when they didn’t answer.
“Thel!” Old-timer called as he exploded into the room. Several soldiers burst in behind him, including the young guard Thel had rendered unconscious outside of their room.
“Halt!” the young guard shouted as he trained his weapon on her and crouched down onto one knee, the other soldiers doing the same. Thel grabbed one of the hospital staff and placed him in a headlock with her right arm, her left hand jammed, open-palmed against his face.
“Stay back or I’ll fry this monkey’s brain and feed it to you! I’m staying with James! I want to know what you’ve done to him!”
“Release your hostage or we will open fire, ma’am!” the guard shouted.
“You will not!” commanded James’s doctor as he strode into the room with all of the authority he could muster. “Put your weapons away! This is a hospital! Haven’t we had enough death for one day?”
“I can’t do that, doc!” the guard replied. “She’s a hostile threat!”
“So what are you going to do?” Old-timer demanded of the guard. “She can stop those bullets and she can tear the hospital apart before you’d have a chance to duck. She wants to stay with him. That means she’s going to stay with him.”
“Put those guns away!” James’s doctor commanded a second time. This time the guard relented and the other soldiers followed suit, lowering their weapons.
“What did you do to him?” Thel asked the doctor, her voice beginning to give out as tears began to stream down her face.
“He’s going to be ok. We fixed his lung and we’ve taken care of his broken bones. He only needs time to heal. Now please, release that man,” the doctor replied gently.
Thel let the staff member go before rushing to James’s side. She felt ready to collapse, but she managed to drape herself over James’s still body and sob. “Thank you,” she said, not sure who she was speaking to. Who was she grateful towards? Was it God? Was it fate? Was it James himself?
“You’re welcome,” said the doctor.
Chapter 9
Rich and Djanet leapt to their feet as soon as Old-timer reentered their room; they had been waiting nervously ever since they first heard the commotion outside and Old-timer had gone with the troops to the hospital in pursuit of Thel. Rich wiped the sweat from his palms and tried to fill his dry mouth with spit again so that he could speak. “What happened?” asked Rich.
“She’s fine,” replied Old-timer as he placed a reassuring hand on Rich’s shoulder.
“Where is she?” Djanet asked, still reluctant to trust the Purists.
“With James. James is going to be ok.”
“Oh thank God,” Djanet replied as she and Rich heaved sighs of relief. “Thank God.”
Lt. Patrick entered the room, short of breath, Alejandra close behind and equally winded after their double-time trip across the complex. “What the hell happened?”
The young guard who had been incapacitated by Thel stepped forward immediately and eagerly like a younger sibling, happy that an authoritarian parent had returned to dole out justice. “I’m sorry, sir. One of them attacked me and escaped.”
“Attacked you?” Old-timer exclaimed. “That’s rather dramatic, don’t you think?”
“Stay out of this, calculator-head!” the young guard shot back, his voice filled with vitriol.
The Lt. was silent for a moment, his jaw tight as he glared at each man, frustrated that he could not even sleep without the situation seemingly going to hell. “Private,” the Lt, began, addressing the young guard, “you’re dismissed.”
“But Lt.,”
“Dismissed,” the Lt. repeated through clenched teeth.
The young guard caught his tongue before replying, held his breath, glared at Old-timer, and left the room. When the door closed softly, the Lt. swore and grunted in frustration, balling his hands into tight fists and resisting the urge to punch the wall. “When the General hears about this...”
Old-timer and the others remained quiet as the Lt. paced back and forth over the concrete floor, breathing heavily like an angry bull in a pen. He turned the situation over in his mind, putting his hand on the back of his neck and pulling at it with a purpose. He quickly turned to Old-timer. “You promised me I could trust you.”
“You can trust us,” Old-timer replied.
“What? How can you possibly say that? You attacked one of my men!” the Lt. replied indignantly.
“I didn’t attack anyone,” Old-timer answered back.
“Let’s not play with semantics!”
“That was a one time thing, Lt.. Thel and James have a special connection. She should have been allowed to stay with him. It was unnecessary to keep us all trapped here together so that one of us would have to escape.”
“That’s easy for you to say! You’re not the chickens in the henhouse with five foxes wandering around!” The Lt.’s metaphor fell to the floor like a mid April snowfall, perplexing and ugly.
“He means that your powers make us all vulnerable,” Alejandra intervened. “The people who know you are here are terrified. Thel’s march through the complex guarantees that everyone will know you are here now, spreading the terror further,” she explained.
“I understand,” Old-timer replied, “and this won’t happen again. I promise you, our abilities are nothing to fear. We would never use them against you. We would only protect you.”
Old-timer’s words seemed to catch in the Lt.’s mind like a splinter and he paused a moment, mulling something as he began to pace again, this time much more plaintively. “Protect us, eh?” he said to the three outsiders. “Ok. Ok. So you don’t want to be penned in a room—you don’t want to hurt us? Then protect us. I’m placing you on recon duty with Alejandra, starting now.”
“What?” Rich asked, seemingly choking on the saliva in his newly moist mouth while Alejandra smiled faintly.
“Your shift is 3 hours. All of you will have a rotating shift. You’ll be paired with one of my men.”
“Hey, hold it bud. We’re not in your army,” Rich replied.
“We don’t take orders from you,” Djanet echoed.
“You sa
id you want to help. You want to protect us? Then start doing it. You can cover a larger perimeter than any of us can and you can protect my people if there is anything hostile out there.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” Rich began before Old-timer stepped in.
“No, he’s right.”
“You have to be kidding me?” Rich replied after sharing the shock with Djanet in exchanged expressions of dismay.
“They saved James. They saved us too. We owe them. It’s time to earn our keep.”
“Oh man,” Rich sighed as he turned away, kicking the dust up from the concrete floor on his way back to his cot.
“Ok. I am ready,” Old-timer announced to the Lt. before exiting with Alejandra.
Old-timer took a moment to survey the sludgy moonscape in the wake of the end of civilization. He turned his head 180 degrees so as to absorb the miserable panorama. The colossal cloud of black destruction still hung heavily like a rotting body over the region and gave no sign of abating. The sun bled orange somewhere behind the black curtain but its rays couldn’t penetrate. “What is our objective?” Old-timer asked Alejandra.
“We’re here to report if we see anything. Anything at all.”
“That sounds like it might be a little boring.”
“It wasn’t last night,” Alejandra replied with a slight smile. She hoisted her rifle over her shoulder and set out to climb a nearby hill. Old-timer trudged over the unnatural surface, following close behind her for a few minutes in silence, before stopping.
“This air. This is hard to breathe,” he commented.
“Just take it easy, or you might get sick. Let me know if you get tired.” Alejandra turned and began deftly stepping up the hill again.
Old-timer watched her as she walked, deer-like, and thought to himself, Should I?
“Oh what the hell,” he said under his breath before lifting off and flying to catch up to Alejandra. “I’ve got a better idea,” Old-timer said as he expanded his magnetic field so that it caught Alejandra like a web and carried her off of the ground.
Post-Human (Trans-Human) Page 9