by Rob Horner
Instead of answering directly, I said, “It’s Friday the nineteenth, Officer King.”
“Brian, please.”
“Okay, Brian. So…yeah…five days—”
“I was…one of those things…for five days? I feel fine now, though.” He stood up, giving himself a scan like he expected to see some residue of his time as a Dra’Gal, a leftover scaliness, or something. “How did I get back to…me?”
“The word around here is Purging,” I said. “It’s a part of my power, to be able to purge people.”
“So, you…um…purged me?”
I nodded.
Smiling grimly, the tall man stood and took a step toward me, holding out his right hand. “Thank you,” he said as we shook. “I’m not sure what to do now, but I am very thankful for you.”
Once he dropped my hand he said, “Now I guess I need to get back to the station, see what I can do to help out.”
I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to be allowed, at least not right away. But it needed to be others who made that decision and got his agreement. No matter how many respect points I may have earned, it wouldn’t be enough to allow a sixteen-year-old to tell a police officer what he could and couldn’t do.
Instead of contradicting him, I said, “You might want to get out of the hospital scrubs first.”
Twenty minutes later, scrubbed, shaved, and dressed in loose-fitting sweat clothes, Brian emerged from the bathroom as Ricardo and Tiffany entered the infirmary. A round of introductions followed, with the Hispanic doctor finally looking at me, asking, “How much have you told him?”
“I told it the way I know it,” I said. “I figured it would be best if Fish and Iz filled him in on everything else.”
“Good,” Ricardo said. “Mr. King, why don’t we all go get some food, then you and Johnny can get the full orientation on our resistance operation?”
“Resistance?” the big cop asked. “You wouldn’t be calling it that unless there were a whole lot more of those things than just what I saw in my precinct.”
“You have no idea,” the frail brunette replied. “This is a world-wide battle, and we’re just one part of it.”
“You buying this?” Brian asked me.
“Remember my story?” I asked him. “I had a front row seat to the opening act.”
He was silent for a moment, then said, “Yeah, I guess you did. All right, Doc’, lead the way.”
Chapter 9
Fourth floor: sporting goods and firearms
My first trip through Mandatum had been linear and rushed: from blind inside a dark van to an underground garage, then herded down multiple flights of stairs and through a room full of people with faces and names that hadn’t yet come together in my head. We’d entered an elevator, walked down a long hall, and then I got to work. For obvious reasons, I didn’t remember the trip to the infirmary.
Considering how the last week of my life had gone, this sort of hurrying to get somewhere to do something without stopping to smell the roses was becoming the norm rather than the exception.
Like the large room where the prisoners were kept, the infirmary was also on the lower level. Most of the sleeping quarters, the laundry, the gym, and other things that make living in a militarized location tolerable were down there. The upper floor was much smaller, containing the dining hall, a staging area where equipment was kept, the assembly room, and a massive operations center, where Fish sat like a spider in the middle of a gigantic web of audio and video feeds and satellite images. His official role was go-between our people and his. He coordinated efforts between the American government and other official entities around the world.
It would be hard to describe the underground portion as anything other than a warren of hallways and rooms. The best I can do would be to provide a tour guide perspective from the elevator, which opened into what everyone called the Rec Room, more because of the large screen television than anything else. The elevator doors were on the western wall. To the north was a short hallway that opened into Barracks One, which had twenty-four rooms that could each sleep two people. None of the regular rooms had bathrooms or showers. Instead there were men’s and women’s bath facilities along the far northern wall. In the northeast corner was a bolt-hole tunnel, constantly guarded, that led somewhere away from Mandatum.
The eastern doors out of the Rec Room led to a crossroads. North provided another way to get to Barracks One, while east led to the gymnasium, men’s and women’s locker rooms, and saunas. Turning south here led past a stairway that connected a similar hallway on the first basement level and continued around a corner back to the hallway we traipsed down when we came to heal the infected.
That southern hallway from the Rec Room, which led to the Distilling Room, was also where the medical offices and infirmary were. There were several doors on both sides of the white hallway, and one of them led west to Barracks Two, which is where most of the regular soldiers slept. Fish would later tell me that it hadn’t been anyone’s intention to segregate the Chosen from those who remained normal, it had just happened. There was a lot of fraternizing between the two groups, meals shared in the cafeteria and games played or television watched in the Rec Room, but at the end of the day, there was something about not being Chosen that most soldiers couldn’t get over, like a best friend suddenly getting a battlefield promotion to General.
Brian and I got the nickel tour as we left the infirmary, turning left into the tunnel. A right would have taken us back to the Rec Room and the elevator. Going left meant heading back toward the Distilling Room, but we quickly turned left again, into the hallway running east. It quickly doglegged north, running past the stairs, which Ricardo assured us was the only other way to move between floors besides the elevator. Just past the stairs on our right was the gym. A left turn at the crossroads took us back to the Rec Room, entering it across from the elevator.
The room was empty so early in the morning. Like many military facilities, Mandatum lived and died by a schedule. Meals were served at specific times from the large kitchen on the ground floor, the food coming downstairs via a sizable dumbwaiter that serviced the cafeteria. Snacks could be ordered by intercom at any time, though only those who missed a meal because of an operation could get something more than a pack of crackers and a soda. To those living outside the times, safe from the reality of Dra’Gal trying to take over our world by taking over our people, that may seem harsh, but it was a small price to pay. After only five days of constant worry about everything from dreams that predicted my ultimate defeat to the loss of my friends, this restriction on eating was a small price to pay for a measure of security, a sense that someone had taken charge, had a plan, and would find a way to make things right again.
“What happened with the security guard?” I asked as we crossed the Rec Room. Brian moved slowly, his hands and eyes roving the setup, noting the construction of the furniture. Honestly, if Iz hadn’t told me the purpose behind the heavy metal bases, backs, and table legs, I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. The furniture looked good, in that modern-deco style so fashionable in the late 80s and early 90s.
“I don’t know all the details,” Ricardo answered.
“Josh has been here almost as long as Iz,” Tiffany added.
“And before you ask,” the doctor continued, “we have a scanner that can detect Dra’Gal influence, but it requires the infected person to come close to it, much different than what Angie can do.”
“So,” I said, “he’s been vetted before, and he obviously passed.”
“Right,” Tiffany confirmed.
Remembering something seen on the carnival midway, where a uniformed soldier stood guard over a group of about twenty people, I said, “Is this scanner handheld, like a tricorder?”
Tiffany giggled, lightly slapping Ricardo’s shoulder. “That’s what he called it when he saw one. You two are such nerds.”
We’d reached the smooth west wall. Ricardo reached a hand into the collar
of his shirt, fished out one of those cards, and pressed it to the wall.
“So, the big question is: when did they get to him?” the doctor finished.
“Hasn’t he woken up yet?” I asked. Beside me, Brian jumped as the wall opened, revealing the white elevator cab beyond it.
“That’s actually why we came to get you. They all woke up at the same time, like there’s a specific reset timer the human body goes through after being rid of a Dra’Gal presence. It’s a very interesting phenomenon—”
“What he means to say,” Tiffany broke in as we entered the elevator, “is that we figured if Josh came around at the same time as the others, then there was a good chance Brian did too. We thought you’d like some help getting him acclimated.”
My stomach rumbled loudly, which made the couple laugh. “And we figured you could use some breakfast,” she finished.
Brian remained silent throughout the conversation, despite that he had to be bursting with questions. No one had come right out and talked about an alien invasion, but they weren’t avoiding the strange terms. His blue eyes watched everything, and I was sure he listened twice as hard as he looked. Fear and disorientation may have had control of him when he woke up, but he’d worked through it. He was probably a damned good cop if he could function with this equanimity in such a strange situation.
I couldn’t begin to predict what my reaction might be, to wake up in a strange place surrounded by strange people spinning an outrageous tale of monsters and human possession. Especially if my last waking memory was of something similar coming after me, attacking me in my workplace.
“What happens to the people?” I asked. “You know. After they’re purged?”
“To be honest,” Ricardo answered, “this is our first time dealing with it.”
“Oh yeah. Right.”
“We have a plan for it, of course, but we’ve never had reason to implement it.”
“What’s the plan?” Brian asked, his first contribution to the conversation.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Like the Rec Room downstairs, the Assembly Room was empty. Ricardo and Tiffany led the way past the bulletproof barricades masquerading as furniture.
“I can see why you might be interested,” the doctor answered. “And as you know, your memory from before you were…um…possessed…is unaffected.”
“I remember everything about that night,” the cop said softly.
“Yes. Right. Well, the plan is to ferry them a group at a time to the mall and make sure they have a way to get in touch with their families. That’s after they clean up some, of course.”
The Hispanic man spent a moment looking at the tall cop before adding, “You will have the same option, but you’ll also be offered the chance to stay and work with us.”
“Because I’m a police officer?” he asked.
“Because of your ability,” I answered.
Light flashed in Brian’s hands, resolving into a can of Pepsi. Tiffany clapped softly, like he’d performed a magic trick. With a second flash, the drink disappeared, gone back to wherever things went when he dismissed them. “Johnny told me a little about what he can do. Does that mean that there are more like us here?”
“There are a good number with special abilities,” Ricardo answered.
“Can you bring back that Pepsi?” Tiffany asked shyly.
“And there are also some among us who fight to protect us, our country, and our way of life.”
“Soldiers, huh,” Brian said. “Does that mean this is a government-sanctioned operation?” The Pepsi can reappeared in another flash of light. Brian offered it to the petite brunette.
Taking the can hesitantly, Tiffany said, “It feels normal, not even cold.”
“Sorry, I don’t keep my sodas refrigerated. I just pour them over ice. The carbonation seems to last longer that way.”
“Okay, watch this then,” she said.
Stopping near the eastern door of the Assembly Room, Brian and I watched the can of Pepsi become…something different. There was no light associated with Tiffany’s ability, nothing to prevent the eyes from seeing everything, though that didn’t necessarily translate into understanding what was being seen.
First, all the color drained out of the twelve-ounce can, so that blue aluminum and white circular logo faded into a dull gray the color of molten iron. The surface bubbled and roiled like water boiling in a pot. The can collapsed into a gelatinous mass. It looked liquid, like something viscous and sticky, but it didn’t drip over the sides of her hand. It remained adherent to itself, though it…oozed between her fingers.
“They call my ability Matter Transmutation,” Tiffany said. “It started out with me basically just being able to melt things. But I’ve been practicing—”
The mass pulled back into itself, the dangling portions flowing back into the main body of sludge in her hand. Without any visible effort on the brunette’s part, no wiggling of fingers or curling of hand, the goop began to spread out, some of it laying across her palm, while more formed a roughly ovoid shape and reached out past the tips of her fingers. Within seconds, the mass formed a recognizable shape, that of a small, semi-automatic pistol. The colors changed, going from iron to chrome for the barrel, and wood for the butt. The colors weren’t quite right, and the overall design wasn’t accurate. For instance, there was no trigger guard, and the slide didn’t look like it would…well…slide. It was more like a rendering of a gun done by an artist who had never held one.
The whole process took far less time to complete than it took me to describe it. Just a few seconds, really. Then Tiffany was handing the soda-turned-gun back to Brian.
“It’s too light,” he said, hefting the gun. “And I’m not sure it’ll work.”
“Oh, it won’t,” she said. My power changes things from one form to another, but only things I can picture. It isn’t a magical change, you know.”
“Mass is conserved,” Ricardo said, “not created or diminished. If she knew the intricacies of a firearm, she could probably make one.” He placed his arm around Tiffany’s waist. “But this is impressive even if all she uses it for is to melt a fence to the ground.”
“It certainly is,” Brian said. Then, “Mind if I keep this?”
Tiffany smiled. “Go ahead. It was yours to begin with.”
“Well, I won’t be drinking it now, that’s for sure,” he replied, smiling. Light flashed around his hands, and the gun disappeared.
“Are there any limits to what you can summon?” Ricardo asked, echoing my question from the infirmary.
“So far, just what I can hold in my hands,” the cop replied. “I tried to get my cat, just to see if I could, but nothing happened.”
“Still, even if you’re limited to inanimate objects, that’s a heck of an ability,” the doctor said. “We have another gentleman here who can teleport himself and others. You and he might complement each other perfectly.”
“What about you?” Brian asked. “What can you do?”
“Me? I’m a doctor, and a healer.”
“The way you said that makes me think you’re not talking about the incense-burning, new-age type.”
Ricardo laughed. “I may look brown, but inside I’m all Western Medicine.”
Tiffany and I joined in the laughter.
“Wounds close like magic,” Tiffany finally said. “It’s amazing.”
The white card appeared again, opening the double doors in the east wall. Every room required the card to enter or leave, just another security feature of Mandatum. Brian asked if there was a master control room where all the doors could be opened or locked down, but neither Ricardo nor Tiffany knew the answer.
A hallway opened before us. Matching double doors stood on either side ten feet in. Beyond the doors, the hall continued. There was a secondary hall opening to the right perhaps twenty feet along, and a final set of doors at the end of the hall a few feet past that.
“On our left is the Staging Area,” Ricardo a
sked. “It’s really more of a storage room, an armory, if you will. Helmets for everyone, and some weapons lockers for the military men.”
Brian’s eyes opened wide as he asked, “They aren’t left unlocked, are they?”
Ricardo shook his head. “I’ve never seen them opened, actually. The soldiers have a separate armory near their barracks. I think this is more of a backup cache.” Catching the look in the cop’s eye, he added, “And yes, the weapons are secured. Double locks, I think. One to open the locker door, and another to release the weapons from their cradles.”
The answer seemed to satisfy the cop, who said, “Sorry if I jumped in like that. With all the doors being locked, I wondered if there would be any other measures to restrict access to the weapons. It’s just the cop part wanting everything to be safe.”
Ricardo waved away the apology. “Don’t worry about it, Brian. A lot of your concerns will go away once you meet Iz and get a feel for the military presence that protects us.”
We’d stopped by the doors just inside the hallway. There was a placard on both sides. As Ricardo said, the sign on the left read Staging Area, while across the hall, on our right, was a sign that said Cafeteria.
“At the end of the hall is the Operations Room. We’ll go there after we eat. I want to caution both of you to keep an open mind when you go in there.”
Considering all that I’d seen, heard, and learned since running into these people, that was a good warning. How would the police officer react to learning he’d stepped off the relatively tame streets of Virginia Beach and straight into a Robert Heinlein book of military science fiction? Maybe I could try to slip more Star Trek references into our breakfast conversation.
“That side hallway doesn’t really go anywhere except around the cafeteria. There are a few more offices, a couple of supply rooms, and the stairs back down to the lower level,” he finished.