by Rob Horner
There was a world of meaning behind the way he said things, both in the specific terms used, and in the things left out. Even though I was only sixteen, this way of saying things that avoided specifics or outright lies was familiar to me. It wasn’t political correctness, not quite, but a form of double-speak high school students are introduced to in the writings of Thoreau and Emerson.
None of this is to say that I thought Iz was lying. He wasn’t telling the whole truth, was side-stepping some questions and completely ignoring others, but it was more because he didn’t trust me yet, rather than for some nefarious reason. I couldn’t blame him.
I wasn’t sure I trusted anything about this operation yet, either. For all their talk of preparedness and wanting to warn the world about the Dra’Gal, a good part of me was astonished not only that this group existed, but that they would be so close by as to be there, at the same place I was, ready to rescue me. Something smelled off about the whole thing. There were clues to be found in what they said, and more to be learned by going along, so as we turned and started down the final flight of stairs, that’s what I resolved to do.
The double doors at the bottom of the stairs were identical to those at the top, but far heavier and stronger than they appeared. They had to be in order to meet Iz’s definition of a barrier and one of the lines of defense. The doors opened inward at our approach, an automatic eye sensing our presence, like at the supermarket.
We entered a large, square room, easily thirty or more feet on a side. High-backed couches and chairs were scattered about, though they rested on the floor rather than on legs. Though there was cushioned upholstery on the furniture, it was obvious, from what Iz had said on the way down that the pieces were meant to double as cover in case someone had to defend the room from an invading force. The backs of the couches and chairs were bulletproof. Even the tables served multiple functions. They were rectangular and made of metal, futuristic in appearance. They stood on legs short enough to make their use comfortable while sitting and could be tipped onto their sides for extra protection.
The undercurrent of noise swelled to a dull roar as the voices of more than a dozen people carrying on a half-dozen different conversations reached out to us.
Despite all the available places to sit, only two people were using them, an older woman, hair up in a graying bun, and a black man with more than a little white in his short-cut hair. They sat on different couches, both facing the door, facing me, though neither were alone. A younger black man made grand hand and arm gestures while he talked to the older, smiling through a funny story. An older white man, somewhere in his forties and already balding in places, stood next to the older lady, leaning in to speak softly with her.
Gina and James stood near the far wall, which featured a massive set of bookshelves, five or six rows tall, rising much higher than anyone would be able to reach. Next to them were two others I didn’t know but would meet soon enough, a pretty, young Hispanic woman and a guy with hair almost too red. Where Gina epitomized the ginger color, this guy would have been called “Carrot Top” by everyone I knew.
Aside from Gina and James, only a couple of others were in the black on black ensemble that seemed to be the generic version of a working uniform. I saw a petite brunette standing next to a tall, Asian man, though she had her arm around a Hispanic man about my size. Both were dressed for a nighttime operation. I wondered if they had been at the carnival.
There were others scattered around the room in groups of twos and threes, rarely more than that. Some had the bigger arms that made me think of Little Jack and Bart, soldiers who, according to Iz, were in that role because of their lack of special abilities.
What would that feel like, I wondered, to volunteer for something that must seem a dream come true, only to be disappointed? Like, Here’s the radioactive spider. Just let it bite you. Oh, too bad, looks like you’re not his type.
And yet, none of the soldiers I’d met seemed to regret their role. Did that speak to their belief in the mission, their devotion to the cause? Would I be man enough for that? How would I react in a similar situation? I knew how my father would want me to behave, and maybe that would be enough. Still, I don’t think I could resist harboring at least some resentment, some jealousy, toward the others.
None of that was apparent in any of the soldiers I’d met so far. Little Jack seemed perfectly at ease talking to a kid who had to be about my age, maybe a little younger, with a face sporting more acne than I’d seen on anyone other than the greasy ride jockey a few days ago. He was certainly too young to have been a soldier before all of this. He must be like me, one of those who got their powers a few days ago.
The conversations died down as we entered the room. Eyes of every color, from blue to green to brown, focused on me. I’d never appreciated being the center of attention in any place, preferring small groups of friends to an open stage, and a familiar queasiness twisted through my stomach. Was I supposed to say something to all these people? Why hadn’t Iz warned me, or helped me prepare something?
I was acutely conscious of my ripped and stained clothing and the funny smell coming off my shirt from the few minutes I’d spent on my stomach underneath a leaking trailer. Even though Angie healed my wounds, there was blood crusted in a few places that brought up wafts of a coppery scent whenever I moved.
Suddenly, the tall, Asian man who’d been speaking to the brunette and the Hispanic guy by the back wall appeared in front of me. I staggered back a step, feeling a rush of air arrive a second after he did. I hadn’t blinked, but the man had gone from standing thirty feet away to intruding into my personal space in less than a heartbeat. He had straight black hair and dark eyes, upturned at the corners. His mouth widened in a good-natured smile as he took in my reaction.
“Don’t freak, bro. I’m Jason Kim.” I blinked, and his hand had mine in a handshake, though I never raised my arm and couldn’t begin to tell you how he captured it. “You can call me Jay, if you want, or Kim, I’ll answer to that, too, or whatever you want, you know, just don’t ever call me late, ‘cause Jason Kim isn’t ever late for anything.” He had a rapid-fire way of speech that left me with my mouth hanging open. Everything about him was fast.
“Go easy, man,” the young black guy said, moving away from his conversation with the older gentleman. “I’ve known you for two days and I still can’t get used to how fast you move.”
Where Jason was taller than me, close to six feet, and whip-thin, this other young man was shorter and stockier, maybe five-four with shoes and close to two hundred pounds of muscle.
“I’m Chris ‘the S-man’ Steele,” the young black man said, shouldering his way in front of me. His skin was darker than James’, and made darker still by the short, tightly curled hair that moved from his scalp and into his sideburns, flowing under his chin and continuing up the other side. His brown eyes were friendly, and as I shook his hand, I noticed that his skin was hard as a rock.
“Feel that?” he asked before I could offer my name. His hand felt like chiseled brick that could somehow flex and move. “That’s my power. I can turn my skin into any substance I want, even steel. I’m the other brother from Superman’s mother.”
I couldn’t help it. This guy’s infectious smile and out-of-left field comment, heck, his whole presentation, drew a laugh from me.
“I’m John,” I offered as he dropped my hand. I resisted the impulse to check to make sure there wasn’t any brick dust between my fingers. It felt that real.
“Damn right, you are,” Chris said, moving to my side and turning to face the room. “Everyone, this here’s Johnny. Johnny, meet everyone.”
I didn’t bother to correct him. My entire life people have been calling me Johnny, no matter how I introduce myself. I hadn’t developed the confidence yet to ever contradict anyone and insist on “John.” A lot of that was due to a worry my insistence would be ignored.
The Asian man, Jason, was already back across the room, resuming his conversati
on with the couple by the far wall, though I hadn’t seen him move. Still, he turned when they did to look at me. A chorus of voices responded to Chris, names flying out in a jumbled chorus: Tiffany, Ricardo, Mike, Carmen, Jeff, no way to know whose name belonged to which face.
Gina started across the room toward me, leaving James with the beautiful Hispanic girl and the carrot-top, neither of whose names I was sure of, though “Carmen” might have come from that direction. Chris turned his smiling face back at me, giving me all the reassurance I needed. This was one of those guys with a face you could trust, open and honest. If he was smiling or laughing, then everything was all right.
“I love doing that,” he said softly, chuckling. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll get to know everyone’s name soon enough.”
Then Iz stepped up to my left side. “Not yet, though,” he added. “Let’s do what you said, first.”
He patted my left shoulder and began moving through the room, angling to our left. I followed him as closely as I dared, not wanting to appear too nervous by treading on his heels.
People rose and moved near us, men and women stepping forward to introduce themselves. The pretty Hispanic girl was Carmen, the Hispanic man was Ricardo, and his girlfriend was Tiffany, the brunette. Gina and James closed in like an honor guard, and Angelica appeared from the far right of the room, where a set of double doors led in the opposite direction from ours.
The not-quite whispers started as Iz and I passed the center of the room.
“Is he gonna--?”
“No way.”
“I told you he could.”
“Danielle will--”
“I’m with you,” Angelica said softly. “I’ll make sure you’re okay after.”
I nodded my thanks, very aware that what was supposed to have been a simple errand had now become a grand display. Later, after breaking my skull and putting myself in the infirmary, it would occur to me this was never going to be a simple thing. It was only a small part of what I could do, taking no more energy that most people expend getting up from a chair.
Iz had warned me.
My power was a game changer. It brought hope to what must have been a hopeless war, where eventually all your allies would be dead or working for the other side. Everyone would want to see it in action.
We were almost to the left side door, having navigated five couches and an equal number of chairs and tables, when I noticed a young man hanging back, sitting in a chair that had been turned so its back was to the corner. He had brown hair and eyes of some pale color that might have been gray or blue or green. His face was thin, with a foxlike set to his features. He had a lean body to match the face, with a torso engulfed by the width of the chair, so that he didn’t so much fill it, but disappeared into it. He sat kind of like a girl, with his legs tucked up and under him. He looked both distrustful and vulnerable at the same time.
It’s hard to be sure, but I was certain he hadn’t called out a name during the general greeting, and he’d made no effort to introduce himself.
“Who’s that?” I asked Angelica, indicating the corner chair.
“That’s Bradley,” she replied. “He’s not a bad guy, just someone who’s had a hard row to hoe. He’ll come see you, eventually.”
Something about the way she said that made me look at her more closely. She tilted her head up to meet my eyes.
“He’s got some strange ideas…about all of this,” she added softly.
We’d reached the far left of the large room, another set of double doors, though these didn’t have handles. Iz produced a badge from under his shirt, something that looked about the size of a driver’s license but was blank except for a gold square right in the center. It was attached to a lanyard he wore around his neck, which allowed it to extend as he reached his arm out. He touched the card to one of the doors, and they opened! Behind them was a large elevator car with white walls, a white tile floor, and a white grate-like ceiling covering several bright fluorescent bulbs.
I’d never seen anything like it. How could a card open a set of doors just by touching them? I’d seen credit card machines before, of course, and had an ATM card for my bank account, but there hadn’t been a magnetic stripe on the white card, just the gold square in the middle. How could a colored square tell the door to open?
Iz turned to usher me into the elevator with him but stopped when he saw everyone gathered around us.
“Guess you get an audience, kid,” he said. Then, addressing the crowd, he added, “Let’s get as many as we can in this ride. We’ll wait on level two for everyone else before going into the pen.”
A nudge from Angelica urged me forward into the car. Iz was already inside, and Angelica, Gina and James crowding in behind us. The older woman and the black gentleman joined us, as did the brunette and her Hispanic boyfriend.
The solid, stark whiteness of the elevator car was unnerving. It appeared to have been cast and molded into its shape, rather than put together by the hands of man. There were no seams where the walls met, no dividing line across the walls at waist height, where you often get mirrored panels above and a faux-wood finish below. The gratings on the ceiling, behind which the fluorescents hummed and glowed, also appeared to be of a piece, with no obvious breaks in their mesh matrix. Most disturbingly, as I turned around to face outside, there were no buttons or hand plates or scanners of any kind on the inside of the car.
With nine people in the elevator, Iz held up his hand, stopping the flow. Another tap of his card against a spot on the wall that looked just as white as every other part made the doors close.
“There aren’t any buttons because the elevator only moves between two floors,” he said.
The elevator descended.
Chapter 5
Elevators and frizzy hair
The elevator ride down was no longer than any other took to move from one floor to another. It didn’t accelerate faster or more smoothly, and it didn’t zoom or stop like something from a Star Trek episode, or like the glass elevator in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. For all the futuristic smoothness of the interior, it wasn’t any different from every other elevator I’ve ever been in.
It’s important to point that out, because there were some things in Mandatum that defied what I knew of modern technology, though they may seem commonplace today. Some might even seem archaic by modern standards, considering we humans have an amazing drive to never sit still, always wanting to update, upgrade, or improve things, often at great expense, without any real reason for doing so, and frequently with minimal improvement.
But the elevator? The basic concept of a box moving through a vertical shaft between floors and powered by electricity hasn’t changed much since Schuyler Wheeler patented his design in 1883.
For the short duration of the ride the crowd stood in an uncomfortable silence, as strangers forced to share a small space retreated into themselves. Eyes wandered the ceiling, the walls, and the floor, their owners doing everything in their power to project the sense that they were not looking at me. I can make that claim because it’s what I was doing, casting my eyes around, noting dozens of little details that might mean nothing, or might prove important later, but which definitely did not involve meeting anyone’s eyes.
The petite brunette, Tiffany, was taller than she seemed. The crown of her head almost reached my chin, which made her about five-four. She was exceedingly fine boned, with wrists that weren’t much wider than two of my fingers poking out the ends of her long-sleeved black shirt. She had skin so pale it had a slight blue tint to it, colored by the fine lines of veins running across the back of her hand. The one time her face turned my way, I was enchanted by the fineness of her features. They weren’t symmetrical, like Tanya’s, but rather had the delicacy of china or blown glass. Elfin is the word that occurred to me later, a throwback to the fantasy books I loved to read. Her eyes were a deep blue that seemed violet against the paleness of her skin, and though they flicked to me once, they went
right back to the Hispanic man at her side, smiling up at him.
Only the older woman seemed to pay any attention to me, giving me that grandmotherly once-over with her gray eyes as she turned in place, readying herself for the rides’ end. We’ve all experienced that look, the one that makes you feel like you’ve been weighed, measured, and cataloged in less time than should be possible. It’s always the older ones who do it too, those people who’ve seen and forgotten more wisdom than we can imagine. I was sure she could tell I hadn’t been eating enough vegetables or getting enough sleep.
Gina and James were to my right, and when I looked in that direction and saw him flash me a thumb’s up, I couldn’t resist smiling. Gina didn’t notice either my look or James’ response, instead staring at the elevator door like she could make it move faster by willing it to. It wasn’t a particular dislike of anyone in the room, but a general apprehension at being in an enclosed space, I would learn later.
She was pretty in that special freckle-faced ginger way, but she probably wished she’d had time to do something with her hair. After being sweat soaked in a helmet and air-dried during our van ride back, it now stood out everywhere, like the tail of a long-haired cat on a dry winter day.
Though there was no airflow in the elevator that I could sense, her hair straightened out even further as I watched, slowly transitioning from cattail to finger-in-a-light-socket clown wig. It wasn’t much of a movement, and no one else said anything, but it captured my attention enough that I didn’t look anywhere else.
Then the ride stopped, and the doors opened. I couldn’t immediately see the new surroundings and had to wait for some of the other people to step out. Exiting behind the young couple and in front of Gina and James, I was surprised to find myself in an exact duplicate of the room we’d left behind, with two exceptions.
“Figured you’d meet us here,” the old woman said, speaking to the middle-aged man who waited for us as we exited the elevator.