Empire of Lies

by Andrew Klavan

  Thank you, I thought.

  The lights started blinking again. The closet door opened and shut. Maryanne was gone. I brought my palm to my face and swabbed away the sweat.

  Thank you.

  I stumbled out from behind the coats. I felt empty. Disgusted. Weak and dead. I stood in the center of the closet, hunched, panting, pouring sweat. I stared grimly at the base of the door. In the line of light at the bottom, I saw shadows passing: the workers, the guards out there. I was still trapped. In minutes, the theater would be ready, the show would begin. Rashid's gang of killers would be ready, too. I had to find them. I had to find Serena. I had to clear out the theater. And I couldn't even think of a way to get out of here.

  Once more, the lights began to blink, and now there was a rhythmic chime as well, a warning tone, telling the audience to take their seats. I looked around me, searching for an idea. I noticed the shelves holding stationery and pens and the like—metal shelves with gray cardboard boxes on them. Some of the boxes had lids; some were open to show pads, envelopes, and forms of various types inside. I stepped over to them. I saw a smaller box with a blue fabric lanyard snaking out of it. I looked in and saw a tangle of lanyards attached to the sort of plastic envelopes you use for ID cards. Quickly, I untangled one lanyard from the rest, tugging until its plastic envelope came free of the others.

  I glanced down at the line of light beneath the door. The shadows had stopped moving there. The people, I guess, had taken their places. The show was about to begin.

  I grabbed a piece of paper off one of the pads. Tore off a square. The light in the high ceiling above me dimmed and dimmed and went out. Darkness settled over me. Feeling my way, I worked the blank square of paper into the plastic envelope. I pulled the lanyard over my neck. In the dark, maybe it would pass for an ID card.

  I could see nothing now but the light at the bottom of the door. It had changed from a bright line to a smoky red glow. That would be the glow of the sign above the emergency exit, I figured. Aside from that, it must be dark now in the corridor, too. If I had any chance of getting out of here unseen, this was it. Empty as I was, weary as I was, weak as I was, it was time to move.

  I took a breath. I went to the closet door. For a second, I thought about cracking it open, peeking out to see if the way was clear. But I decided that now, in the dark, it was best to act boldly, as if I belonged here. So, with tension like a fist in my throat, I pulled the door open quickly and stepped out into the hall.

  I entered the dim red glow of the exit sign. At the edge of the glow, I could see other figures: those workers and guards. I could sense more people farther off along the hall as well. I could feel them there, standing still and quiet as the show began in the auditorium.

  Music started. Brass and strings, slow, solemn, and yet somehow triumphant: the grand opening theme of the first Real 3-D movie ever, The End of Civilization as We Know It. The music was muffled by the corridor walls, but still loud. It still surrounded me. As I started striding along the corridor, my footsteps fell naturally into sync with the majestic beat of the sound track.

  Soon I could make out the plainclothes security man posted at the far corner. He stood with his hands behind his back, scanning the shadows. As I came near him, the gleam of his eyes, the outline of his features, the coiled wire running up his jaw to his ear, all became visible in the red light. I offered him a quick businesslike smile. A wave of the hand to distract him from the blank ID card around my neck. He smiled back indulgently. I went past him, and continued around the corner.

  There was more red light in the next hall, a sign about halfway down pointing back to the exit behind me, and a bare red bulb at the far end. The bulb illuminated a heavy metal door with a push-bar across it. Yet another guard was posted here, standing to one side of the door, a great black shape limned by the misty red light. Judging by his position, he was distracted at the moment. He was leaning off to one side, trying to catch a glimpse of the show. The music lifted and swelled as I went toward him.

  As I came near, the guard noticed me. He straightened, looked me over. I smiled again, pointed at the metal door, and held up the bogus ID tag around my neck as if to let him read it. I covered it with my thumb, but it didn't really matter. He barely glanced at it. He went back to trying to see the movie.

  I approached the door. I could make out a word stenciled onto it: STAIRS. That's what I wanted. Rashid had told me the blast would be most powerful in the cellar. He told me he thought Jamal would leave Serena there. Because he loved her and wanted to impress her, because he wanted her to witness his great achievement and to be a part of it.

  I pushed the door open carefully to keep the noise to a minimum. At that moment, there was a loud gasp of delight from the theater. I hesitated—but it was just the audience—some three thousand people getting their first look at Real 3-D technology. There was an outbreak of applause.

  I went into the stairwell. The applause faded behind me.

  At first, there was dim white light in here. A small square fluorescent lamp was fastened to the wall just above my head. It spread a pale glow over the falling and rising flights of gray steps. I was glad it was there. It helped me find my way to the downward flight, helped me get a grip on the banister. But as I descended into the theater's cellar, the light grew fainter. The music grew fainter, too. I heard another burst of applause and a burst of laughter, but they sounded very far away.

  Then, when I reached the cellar door and pushed through, I stepped into what seemed at first impenetrable blackness. I knew at once that this was strange; wrong. There should have been some light, some small light somewhere. But when the door slipped from my hand and clacked shut on the stairs behind me, I could see nothing, absolutely nothing out in front. There was silence, too. The air felt deep and thick with it, like a cushion pressing in on me.

  I stood where I was, staring uselessly, afraid to move away from the exit, afraid to remain there and do nothing. That dark, that silence—they were so dense, so present, so palpable that, for the first time, I began to believe I was going to die here. For the first time, that possibility became real to me. With the dark so deep, so vast, with the silence so eerie and oppressive, I could not see how I would be able to do what I needed to do here; how I would ever find Serena, how I would locate the detonators and disable them. Even with Rashid's frantically precise directions, his complete knowledge about how and where the explosives were planted, it seemed an impossible task. I had a sure sense that time was running out, that it may have run out already. The show had already started. There was no more reason for them to wait. There was just me and the dark and the silence and the coming explosion.

  So I began to believe I was going to die. At that point, the thought came almost as a relief. I was so sick of myself, so sick of the things I'd done that night. Sick at what I'd done to Rashid. Sick that I had crouched in that closet as if I were some kind of predatory monster, ready and willing to strangle that poor girl, Maryanne. How was I supposed to go home after that? Make love to my wife, play with my children? How was I supposed to go to church again and shake the hands of my neighbors there and wish them God's peace?

  To be honest, if it had just been me, I think I would've sat down right then, right there, invisible in the darkness. I think I would've just laid my forehead on my knees and waited to be blown away.

  But of course it wasn't just me. It never was. Serena was out in that blackness somewhere. And the people upstairs—all those thousands of faces, flickering in the movie-light—and the faces waiting on the street outside—and the faces all over the city and on the TV, too—the faces in the wars all around the world which somehow were one war and which somehow, insanely, I'd become a part of.

  So I took a step forward, a slow, tentative step into that almost-visible dark. I began edging forward bit by bit, staring, listening. Unable to see—blind here—blind completely—I became aware of sounds first. It was not as silent in the cellar as I'd originally thought.
There were still some muffled noises from the theater above. Voices—music—dim—impossible to make out. And there were other sounds, too: a steady hum of machinery, an electric buzz, a soft click or two, the hollow whisper that a furnace makes. My foot touched a wall, but when I reached out my hand to the right, I felt a space beside it, an opening, maybe, into another room, another hall. I couldn't tell. I went through. I went slowly on, feeling my way. I could sense death near me, like a figure walking beside me in the dark.

  Soon I became aware of something else. A smell. It was faint but definite. Sour, stinging, organic. It was the smell of sweat and urine, the smell of fear: a human smell. I tried to follow it.

  The scent grew thicker, harsher, step by step. My heart beat harder. I paused to sniff the air, to test it, trying to figure out the way to the source. Then I started moving again, reaching out with my hands to feel the way.

  I don't know how long I went on like that. I remember I banged my shin at one point. At another point, I stumbled over something hard and staggered into nothingness a few terrifying steps before I regained my balance. Mostly, though, I just moved, slowly, blindly, my hands out in front of me, until the progression became dreamlike, until it seemed it would simply continue and continue and never end.

  Then at last—at last, I began to see. Not much at first. Small lights here and there, lights I guess the killers couldn't disable. There was a green indicator on a machine of some sort and a red indicator not far from it. And there was another of those soft white fluorescents glowing somewhere around a corner out of sight. My eyes fed on these and began to pick out shapes. Large, looming structures all around me. There was nothing I could make sense of. The trace of grillework here, a clawing metallic arm arching overhead, a large clockwork of some sort with pendulums and pistons moving quietly but powerfully. I felt I had stepped into the heart of some great and terrible machine.

  I stopped moving. I peered around me, disheartened, bewildered. Where the hell was I? What was I supposed to do now? How would I ever find the detonator in this dark? How would I ever find Serena?

  The smell was dense here, dense as dense. My nostrils stung with it. My eyes teared. And the noises: guttural hums, periodic soughs, steady whirs of movement—they were louder, closer. I felt as if black mills and engines were hovering over me in the darkness, hovering almost hungrily, like living creatures, ravenous beasts. For a moment or two, in my tension and confusion, the sounds of them, their huge presence, that smell—it all nearly overwhelmed my senses.

  And so, for a moment or two, I didn't hear those other, softer sounds nearby: the sound of something moving on the floor, the sound of a soft, struggling, breathless human voice.

  Then I did hear it. I turned quickly, searching for it. I stepped blindly toward it. My foot touched something heavy and soft. I dropped to my knees, reaching out with my hands. I felt her. Yes, and I could see her now, too. I could make out the dim shadow of her. Struggling, tied. I put my hands on her arm.

  "Serena!" I said, my voice breaking. "Serena. It's me. It's Jason."

  She struggled harder, went on trying to speak even more urgently than before. I felt my way to her shoulder, to her face. I felt for the gag across her mouth. It was the same sort of duct-tape gag I'd used on Rashid. My heart was wild as I tried to get a purchase on it. I was wild with surprise and joy—and surging terror, too, because she was alive—which meant there was a chance I might save her—which meant there was a chance I might fail to save her, a chance she'd die under my hands.

  My fingers found the edge of the duct tape. I worked it off her. I felt for the rag in her mouth. She was already trying to spit it out. I got the tip of it, worked it between her lips and pulled it free.

  Serena gasped and coughed. She gulped air. I held her close to me, my eyes swimming. I felt her press her face against my neck. Then she pulled back. She looked up at me. I saw her eyes gleaming out of the dark.

  "I knew it, I knew it, I knew it," she whispered fiercely. "I knew you'd come for me."

  A Lost Chance of Escape

  I tried to free her. I picked at the duct tape that bound her wrists behind her back.

  "Don't," she croaked. "There's no time. Jamal already went upstairs. He has the button."

  "Damn it!" I said. I couldn't get the tape off her. I couldn't find the end of it.

  "Stop," she whined. "We have to go."

  "Okay." I looked around at the vague and monstrous shadows. "We have to find the detonators."

  "That's no good. They're all over. They go off if you touch them. There's a timer, too. It goes off no matter what. We have to get out."

  I nodded once. She was right. I worked my hands under her. I took her into my arms and stood. She was small and light, nothing to carry. And I guess the adrenaline must've been pumping through me, too. I barely felt the weight of her.

  As seconds passed, I stood there, holding her, looking around, disoriented. The looming, grinding machines—whatever they were—seemed to hem me in and bear down on me on every side. I couldn't see a way through them. I wasn't even sure which way I'd come.

  "Go that way. That light," Serena said, lifting her chin toward it.

  I found it. That pale fluorescent light around the corner, the one I'd noticed before. I moved toward it, maneuvering through the gothic silhouettes. Now I could make out the doorway. I maneuvered her through it. I came into a corridor. I saw the light. It hung above a door.

  "Hurry," she said.

  I carried her down the hall. The smell of her surrounded me. I could smell her fruity little-girl perfume and the cotton of her sweatshirt, clean and soft as a baby's pajamas. I could smell the urine where she'd wet herself and her sweat which carried the scent of her sex in it and the scent of her fear which was stronger than all the rest. In the pale light, I could see her frightened features, scrunched and shuddering. She was crying with terror. I felt an almost-crushing tenderness for her, something like what I'd felt for my children when they were babies in their cribs.

  "We're gonna be all right," I told her.

  "We're not," she whimpered. "He's already there. It'll happen any second. We're not gonna get out in time."

  I set her down, one arm around her, so I could get a hand on the doorknob, open the door. I lifted her into my arms again and carried her into the stairwell.

  I went up the stairs quickly, taking them two at a time, rising toward the brighter light above. I could feel now how unnaturally strong I was, how quickly my mind was working, outstripping time. I thought about what I would do when I got upstairs. Would I be able to save Serena and come back to try to clear the theater? No. I knew there was no time to do both. I had to choose. I either had to get her out or try to get everyone out. As I took that single flight to the upstairs door, whole worlds of tragedy flashed through my mind. There was the world in which I rescued the girl but all the others in the auditorium died; the world in which I tried to save everyone, but Serena was killed for my useless heroics; the world in which I got some people out, but not Serena...

  I crested the flight, reached the landing, the door. This time, I managed to turn the knob without putting Serena down. I pushed the door open with my foot and held it open with her body. I stepped out into a dark corridor.

  At once, there was a loud blast, a huge explosion. Serena cried out. The floor rattled under my feet.

  I froze, eyes wide, mouth open. I felt Serena's body seize and stiffen in my arms.

  But nothing happened. No gust of wind and flame, no destruction. Music rose. A patter of small arms fire sounded.

  "Shit!" Serena said. "The movie."

  I gave a quick, silent laugh.

  The exciting music soared. I took one quick look around, this way and that.

  There it was: the red light of an exit sign to my right, a guard standing underneath it. It was our chance of escape. I could get out that way. I could save Serena's life and my own.

  To my left, I saw the swinging doors into the auditorium. There
was a uniformed usherette standing there—a tiny old woman with black and silver hair.

  I looked toward the red light. I looked back to the swinging doors. I made my choice. I barreled down the hall toward the auditorium. I had to try to clear the place. Even if it killed us both, I had to try.

  I reached the doors. I turned my back to them. Serena's feet swung around and the ancient usherette had to leap out of their way.

  The usherette began to say something. It sounded like "Ut—"

  Then I hit the doors with my back. I carried Serena through, into The End of Civilization as We Know It.

  The End of Civilization as We Know It

  The music surrounded us, brash and loud. We were bathed in strobic light and shadows. I charged through the flicker, up an inclined aisle, gathering my breath, gathering my courage.

  I started shouting even before I reached the auditorium, my voice nearly drowned by the music.

  "Bomb! There's a bomb in the building! Get out! There's a bomb!"

  I plunged into the center of the movie.

  It felt like that. It felt as if I'd crashed through the surface of the show and become a part of it. I had broken out of the aisle onto the stage of a vast amphitheater. Tiers and tiers of seats rose into the glimmering darkness all around me. Eyes gleamed up there, gazing down at me. Hundreds of faces came halfway into view then vanished as the shifting light from the scene below played over them and passed by.

  I was in that scene. I was lost in that light: light and color and shapes and figures ringed round by the tiers of gazing eyes. There were the pyramids of Giza rising toward the sky; and there the sphinx of living rock standing its ancient guard. Trucks were rumbling past in the distance. Men in khaki uniforms ran here and there. Other men in flowing white Arab robes strode past. On every side of me the lone and level sands stretched far away.

  Apparently, the way the new 3-D technology worked, no matter where you were in the seats above, the images seemed clear and life-sized and bizarrely real. But down where I was, the picture was distorted. The buildings were slanted, some huge, some too small. The people were stretched and blurred and of different sizes. Vehicles and running men became elongated as they went past, then suddenly vanished. Images became more and more transparent the closer they came. The effect was swirling, dazzling, phantasmagorical—yet even for me, at moments, it was completely three-dimensional, thoroughly alive.