Scavenger: Evolution: (Sand Divers, Book One)

by Timothy C. Ward

  Jeff smiled as he walked at the rear of the group, his fingers happily tapping on the hilt of a sheathed knife hanging on his belt. The smile may have been related to his younger brother lacking a similar addition to his attire. Enjoying the perks of the first born.

  Viky set the duffle bag down with a heavy thump beside Rush at the back of the elevator. “Don’t jump in there too fast, divemaster, I got dibs on the good stuff.”

  Nedzad stepped around the corner and into the elevator. With everyone inside, he inserted a key into a slot next to the button for LL4. The circle lit up and he pushed it. The elevator descended.

  He lifted and fit his AK into the new duffle bag he brought from LL3. “I got some shots to help against the poison you inhaled.” He looked up at Rush and Star. “And pain meds and burn patches in case you shoot me again.”

  Cool’s mother glared at Nedzad. “Can you just point the way so I can take my family and go?”

  “You can’t get out of here without my help, and I’m busy.”

  “Why do we need your help?”

  “Between us and the only unlocked door are bad guys with guns.”

  The elevator stopped and the doors opened to a reason why bad guys with guns would come all this way.

  Near the ceiling on the far end of the room two spheres rotated majestic swirls of golden light. The center of their spinning connection overlapped and emitted the brightest of its glow. Its brilliance was dimmed only by the L-shaped box they floated inside. The center’s incandescence was pure white and inviting to behold. Like two hollow worlds of light impacting to create a galaxy-destroying energy. Cords siphoned a glowing blue liquid which traveled along the ceiling and disappeared into the wall’s edge.

  Rush had seen wonders through his dive suit’s powers. But this, this was awkward. Like looking at an alien’s baby and knowing the mother was on her way back to her den. Humanity shouldn’t be allowed to witness such power. It would force evolution, and a new kind of war.

  Its presence erased words from thought and the strength to speak. It looked like it could spin forever, while always only one rotation away from turning the planet into ash.

  If controlled, and it was almost a joke to think it could be, it could power the world back into glory.

  “There it is.” Nedzad cast his hand upward at the glowing majesty and led them out of the elevator. “The Twin Suns.”

  They all stood under the trance of orbiting flares illuminating the room.

  “Have a seat, folks. Star, your shot’s in here.” Nedzad set his bag on the nearest table and waved Rush to follow him to the right, toward a shut door. “We’ll be just a minute.”

  He typed in a password on the keypad next to it, shielding himself from the group. Rush saw him type: 1873473. Why did he shield that from the group, but not him? Did he not trust them? Why?

  Nedzad walked inside, flicked on a light, and shut the door behind Rush. He leaned down, turned on a computer, and stood.

  “What are we doing?”

  “I need to check the Tank Room.” Nedzad unzipped his suit’s front pouch. “And give you this.”

  He took a hand-sized spiral notebook out of his pouch and handed it to Rush. “We can’t afford for this to get into the wrong hands. You’re the only one in our group I find trustworthy and responsible enough for the contents inside.”

  “But Warren’s still here.”

  “We’re going to take care of that.” Then he conceded. “If I think Warren’s influencing you, I’ll take it back.”

  Rush opened it and casually flipped pages, past a heading entitled ‘World War III,’ and many pages of handwriting, diagrams of mechanical systems, mathematical formulas, etc. “Wow. Some of this stuff looks better suited to Viky. She’s the engineer.”

  “You’re the one I trust. Any man who will run into to a door to save his wife is good in my book.”

  Rush laughed. “You remember what I said I did yesterday?”

  “I was a little surprised, but you said you had little choice and I believe you. Your remorse is deeply evident. I’ve made tough decisions like that. I wasn’t chosen for being perfect. Neither are you. You just need to do what you see is right and fight to see it through.”

  Rush lifted the closed book. “What do you want me to do? My first duty is to protect Star. Will this show us through to Denver? But even then, how do I avoid The Gov?”

  Nedzad pointed at the book. “That will help you. You don’t need to read it all right away. I’m leaving it with you just in case something happens when we go up after Warren. I know it well enough to write it upside down in sand. It’s time I passed it on.”

  “Wow. I…I’m honored.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m desperate, so don’t be too flattered.” Nedzad winked. “It isn’t a complete history or manual to much outside this base, but it will help you make educated reactions and guesses. There’s a library in here, shown on a map in this book, where you can learn more. When things settle, we’ll go there.”

  “Do you have any guesses what The Gov wants the Twin Suns for, aside from it being an obviously valuable source of power?” He wanted to mention his dreams and the strange sense that they were more than that. They felt like an omen he couldn’t ignore.

  “What are you thinking?” Nedzad’s penetrating stare and still composure demanded and yet eased Rush to produce the truth.

  “That blue color in the tubes coming out of the Twin Suns is what I see in The Gov’s eyes, in Star’s eyes now, sometimes. I had a dream on the sail to the mountains—where we got out and then walked—anyway, I had a dream where a crowd of people inside a city all had blue eyes like that. Like the tiny flares that shoot out of the Twin Suns, rising and falling around their pupils, but blue, not yellow.”

  Rush shook his head. “I don’t know for certain what I’m trying to say, but I wonder if The Gov needs the plasma for whatever he’s doing with controlling people.”

  “Hmm. I don’t know.” The screen lit up and he turned back to the book, flipped pages, and then handed it back to Rush with it opened to a chapter entitled ‘Reserve Tanks.’

  He returned to the computer and pulled up the screen he had up earlier. The third tank was at 96%, while the other two had emptied. “Crap. Something’s wrong. Tank Three isn’t cycling out.” He turned back toward the door. “First, though, I need to go up and keep Warren and his crew from making it down here, then lock that door. Once the base is secure, we’ll take care of number three. If I don’t return, use the book.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Use the syringe I have out there for you. Then, go and be a sentry. You’ll figure it out.” Nedzad pointed at Rush’s pouch. “Hide the book in there. And don’t show Star or say anything to anyone. Not until we know for sure The Gov’s control over her isn’t a concern.”

  “Sure.” Rush stuffed it in an inner pocket within the pouch, his water bottle in the outer portion. He took it out to have a drink. “But what’s any different about me and Warren’s control?”

  “I was there for the whole thing. He issued one command. I don’t know how many The Gov gave Star, so even if I successfully kicked him out of our computers, he may still have a hold of her.”

  “How could that happen though?” Rush capped his bottle and zipped it inside his pouch.

  “I don’t know. The Old World had nanobots delivering deadly diseases and controlling machines. Could be she got some in her system.”

  “But how did Warren…?” He’d cut Rush, but hadn’t done anything else that Rush could think of to transfer nanobots. “I used a suit of his. I wonder if nanobots were in the air tank. But I shared that tank with Star and she’s controlled by The Gov, while I’m controlled by Warren.”

  “I’m not sure.” Nedzad reached for the door handle. “You can reach me on the suit radio. I’ll set up a private channel and send it to your visor dashboard on my way up the elevator.”

  He pushed the door open. “Take care down here.”


  “Will do.”

  Avery waited at the front of the group, his gun ready. “About time.”

  Nedzad waved at him and Dixon to follow him into the elevator. He nodded at Rush from the back before the doors shut.

  Star and Cool’s mom sat at the table facing the Twin Suns, eating snake jerky. “What’d you guys do in there?”

  “He was just showing me some things in case something happens to him. He said there was a syringe out here for me?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Star picked up a syringe from the table and a clear jar. Her joviality had returned, and it made him smile. “I took mine already. I feel a bit better.”

  She avoided his eye contact. Rush took his right arm out of his suit as she stabbed the needle into the jar. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “Avery gave my boys guns and split them up to cover the two stairwells,” Cool’s mom said. “Viky took Cool that way. Said he’d be fine. Jeff went with Carroll. I must be the worst mother.”

  “You aren’t.” Rush squeezed his fist to form a vein for Star to stick.

  Star paused with the syringe over Rush’s arm and looked at Cool’s mom. “I’m afraid your sons are going to have to be soldiers from here on, Jen. There’s a tyrant out there that requires that from all of us. Dixon showed them how to shoot.”

  A new link popped up along the bottom rim of Rush’s dock view. ‘Nedzad’ hovered over the channel icon and then faded. “I’d go with Cool, but I have my own tasks back in that room,” Rush said. He picked up a stick of jerky and bit off a piece.

  Jen huffed and got up.

  Gunfire rattled off a few floors above them. Automatic shots. A second source returned fire, and then more unleashed their rounds.

  Jen sprinted down the hall toward the volley. “Jeffrey! Get back here.”

  “Rush, Nedzad’s been shot!” Avery’s voice came out of a radio on the table, shouted over machine-gun fire. “More’ve arrived. We’re on our way down. I didn’t see his book. Did he give it to you?”

  Rush tried accessing his visor channel to Nedzad, but the link was offline. Gunfire echoed from Jeff’s direction. Rush picked up a radio off the table. “Is Nedzad okay?”

  “He’s dead,” Avery said.

  No, you can’t be dead. I’m not ready to be the sentry.

  “Rush, this is important. Did he give you his book?”

  “No. You’re not leaving him up there, are you? How do you know he’s dead?”

  A burst of gunfire sounded in Viky’s direction. Rush keyed the radio. “Everybody retreat back to T.S.”

  He moved for Viky’s duffel bags of weapons on the floor. “We’ll hold them off from here.” He pushed some rifles to the side of the bag to reach grenades and took out as many as he could hold.

  He stood, turned to offer some for Star to hold, but she was gone. Not down the hall. Not among the rows of tables holding computers. Nowhere.

  The elevator dinged. Rush set the grenades on the table and drew his DL. Avery came out of the elevator first. New blood coated his hands and smeared over his cheek and neck. Dixon had new blood on his sleeve. He averted his eyes from Rush’s gaze.

  Avery lifted his visor. “Rush, don’t lie to me. If he didn’t have the book, then he gave it to you.” He glanced down at Rush’s pouch as he walked up to him.

  “I don’t care about the book. Star just ran away. Do you have the bolter?”

  “I left it in that bag in case we were captured.” Av pointed at the duffel Rush had taken the grenades from. “Why?”

  Rush checked the bag again, sure he hadn’t seen the bolter in there. His fears were confirmed. “It’s gone.”

  He switched to dive view and scanned the western end of the floor. In a room thirty five meters away, someone Star’s height put a small case in her pocket. “There.”

  What’s she doing? He ran around the elevator bay to another room rowed by cubicles.

  A brilliant white light shot out from Star’s left hand into the floor, cutting a circle. The bolter. The light dissipated, then she sat and dropped to the floor below. She ran toward Rush and crossed underneath him with another ten meters between him and the hole.

  The door into the room was locked. He stepped back, aimed his DL at the handle, and held the trigger for a two count. Whooooosh-zap! The door handle punched inward and fell through a new hole in the door. He switched to dock view and entered the room.

  Humming, eight-foot-tall computers were stacked inside pock-marked metal cages. The air was cool and the kind of clean scent he could breathe forever. He navigated through the aisles of cable-connected towers and their array of tiny lights to the hole Star had cut in the floor. Beside it was a tall, black safe with a combination lock. Rush held his DL trigger for a six count and then unleashed its electromagnetic blast on the lock. The black knob crumpled and dented into the metal, but did not break through. He tried the handle. Locked. He’d have to come back for it. Star may have emptied what was important from it anyway.

  Machine gun fire erupted on both sides of LL4, narrowing toward the T.S. room on the other side of the elevators. The floor shook from consecutive booming explosions. More gunfire. Rush switched to dive view. Figures left the cover of the elevator, rifles aimed at the crouched or lying figures north and south. Pop. Pop. Pop. One of the gunmen from the elevator took down three of the invading shooters. Three quick shots from the north left two gunmen from the elevator standing and three bodies dimming into an outline of orange. In their silence, Rush hoped his group were all okay.

  Star was almost under the Twin Suns and still running.

  He switched to a dock view of the office below, dropped onto the carpet, and rolled on his non-cast side. He bumped into a book case, knocking one onto his stomach. He brushed it off and hurried into an underground, cement-coated tunnel that ended in a T after the elevators. He switched back to dive view. Star was twenty meters ahead on a path veering left. His water bottle shook and crinkled against the book in his pouch as he ran.

  The elevator car carried a group of infrared forms glowing through the mobile blueprint of the car’s descent. Rush ran past the elevator toward the double door Star had used. The elevator dinged, and its doors opened behind him.

  “Stop right there.” Warren’s voice halted his steps so quickly he tripped over his feet and fell forward.

  He rose, straightened his posture, and awaited instructions.

  SCAVENGER: Twin Suns

  Chapter 4

  “Change to dock view and turn around,” Warren said behind him. “I want you to see my face.”

  Rush obeyed. Warren’s sunburn stood out stark against the white skin where his goggles and ker would shield him from the elements. His bare face smiled and his dark eyes bore into him. An orange flare arced inside the man’s left eye and then faded into the darkness of his pupil.

  Behind him, Avery walked Cool out of the elevator, his pistol pushed into the boy’s back. Rush should have noticed there were eight people on the elevator instead of seven. Maybe he should be trying to go after his wife. Warren might want what she took from the safe.

  “Where’s the book, Rush?” Avery asked.

  “I told you. I don’t—”

  “Do you have the book?” Warren asked, calmly.

  “Yes,” came out of Rush’s mouth before he could think.

  Warren walked up to him, the same cologne scent from before, mixed with a musty coat of sweat. “Hand it to me.”

  “Of course.” It felt good to make Warren smile. Rush unzipped his pouch and retrieved the book.

  “Thank you,” Warren said. “But I want you to keep it for now. Read up on their nanotech management systems. Find out where the lab is, how to run the equipment, and if you have time, where and how to use this base and its contents for defense and military purposes. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” Rush wanted to get started right away, and began to sit.

  Warren watched him and laughed. “Very good.” He looked over hi
s shoulder. “Charles.”

  A man Rush recognized from the Honey Hole exited the elevator. He was the one who’d given Rush the beer and gloated about his appointment with River.

  “Do you remember, Charles? He delivered my nanopack in your beer. Took a bit longer to work than I hoped, but we’ll make due.” He handed Charles a thumb-sized device with a white button on top. “If he does anything suspicious, click this.”

  “Like this?” Charles looked Rush in the eye, grinned his plaque-molded shelf of broken and dead teeth, and clicked the button.

  Lightning seared through Rush’s veins, sending him in a seizure to the floor.

  “Idiot,” Warren said. Flesh slapped flesh and something clacked on the ground. “Only if he’s disobedient.”

  The tremors of razor-pointed fire eased, leaving shivers across Rush’s shaking body. The obedience he felt to Warren was now as thin as a blanket chewed by rats. Rush might be able to find a way to fit through.

  That wasn’t a good idea, Charles.

  Rush mentally switched to dive view.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Warren asked. “Charles.”

  Charles’s infrared form moved toward him. On the floor above, a group of five sat with their hands interlaced behind their heads—the size and shape of Jeff, Jen, Viky, Dixon, and Carroll—while six brigands with rifles formed a half circle between them and the elevator. Rush imagined a crack on the floor between brigands and hostages. Sharp pain crackled from Charles’s clicker into his stomach. Hundreds of fangs bit deep into his abdomen.

  Focusing on the crack he’d make in the ceiling, he closed his eyes, became the pressure in the clicker’s bite, and then threw it off. The sonic blast hit the ceiling and ripped fissures left and right. Rush gritted his teeth and forced himself up to grab Cool. The ceiling broke open and collapsed. He shielded his face and moved Cool under him as the massive weight slammed into his back. Cool’s cry was muffled under the rumble of thudding rock.

  Infrared body forms were all around him, bright enough to be alive, but very still. Rush pushed out on the rock and wiggled his legs free, turned onto his stomach and shoved one rock after another off the pile until he could crawl out.