by Paul Teague
‘There’s no way to control it, Joe. I’ve been here for six years. Believe me, we’ve tried. At the heart of it all is Delman. He holds the key to Catharsis and we need him here at Centrum. He’s cutting it fine if he intends to come back. He must have a plan to preserve his own life, but we don’t know what it is.’
‘If you’re an Immune, why didn’t you leave The TriPlex like Delman did? Couldn’t you have just walked out and come to us? We thought you were dead for six years. We were thrown into The Climbs after you were taken.’
Joe was angry. It had happened slowly, creeping up on him. He’d thought he’d have been relieved to see his father, it was all he’d thought about since Matt had been taken from the house by the Centuria. Now he felt resentment that his father had abandoned them to live in this place of comfort. He’d been alright all the time so why didn’t he come for them?
‘I can’t leave via The TriPlex, Joe. I had my implant removed when I exited. We didn’t know what their purpose was at that time. The surgical team here thought it was a danger or it could be tracked. Turns out they were wrong and they should have left it alone.’
Joe didn’t like the sound of what he was hearing.
‘Implant?’ he asked, not really wanting to hear the explanation.
‘You went through Psych-Eval, yes? It’s the most painful thing I ever experienced, and I’ll bet it was for you too. That’s because they placed an implant directly into your brain. It controls how you see and experience The Grid, it feeds into your senses. The Grid is an artificially generated setting which doesn’t actually exist. The implants control your senses so you think you can see, hear, touch, taste and smell the environments. They’re not real, they don’t exist. I had mine removed as soon as I got out of The Grid. It was destroyed in case it created any security issues. If I enter The Grid without an implant in place, I’ll be terminated immediately. It’s like a one-way valve. Nobody is supposed to leave the Sectors, nobody is supposed to enter them. We’ve tried to send people without the implants. It’s not nice what happens to them.’
‘So how did Delman get out if the rumours are true?’
‘There’s a lot you need to know about Delman, Joe. This all comes to rest at his feet. He has no Gen-ID, nobody in Centrum has one. We all know him as Delman, but that’s not his body. The reason he can come and go as he pleases is because he’s hijacked the body of the most senior person in Centrum. He’s using the body of our legally appointed President. All of our leaders have been placed in Cryo.’
Joe could barely believe what he was hearing. Less than an hour ago he’d been fighting for his life in the labyrinth, now he was being told some incredible story by the father he’d thought dead for the past six years. Much of it made sense, the implants especially. He’d seen what had happened when the water butt had pixelated and turned into the elevator. It made sense that The Grid environments were generated in some way, how else could they be able to control the Modes? But he’d seen people die, that was no illusion. When people perished in The Grid, it was for real. Or was that a deception too?
Joe could see that Matt wanted to move on. He seemed frustrated at having to explain so much, but Joe needed to understand.
‘What’s Cryo?’
‘It’s a state of suspended animation – bodies can be frozen and re-awoken at a later date. Delman should be well over one hundred years old by now, but he’s been body-hopping. His original body is here in Centrum, but his consciousness is using another host body which is younger.
‘It’s a lot to take in, Joe, I know, but I need you to believe me. You have to trust me as we have very little time now. It’s a different world down here, and it took me some time to adjust to it. We must get Lucy patched up and then there’s something urgent we need you to do.’
Joe was beginning to see where this was leading, but he wanted to hear it from Matt first.
‘How did Delman exchange bodies? Why did he do it?’
‘It’s the reason he can go anywhere he pleases, Joe. He’s in the body of the President, a man called James Morgan. Morgan was the President before any of this happened, the power of leadership resides with him. He has access to all areas, including the Sectors; he has a unique implant which allows him to do this. For some reason, Delman stole Morgan’s body and went into hiding in our Sector. We always knew him as our President in The City, but down here he’s the most senior person in Centrum. We need you to bring him to us. He’s our only chance of stopping Catharsis. We need to know why he did what he did.’
‘Surely he’ll perish too when Catharsis comes? What can we do to get to Delman?’
‘You can go back into The Grid, Joe. You and Lucy. If we don’t remove the implants, you’re safe to go back in there. Nobody else can get in, only Delman has the ability to come and go. We don’t know how he does that, but he’s figured it out. Delman is the key to all of this so if we can get to him we may be able to postpone Catharsis and try to buy more time, find another solution.’
‘What is it that you want us to do when we’re in there?’ asked Joe, terrified at the prospect of having to enter The Grid again.
‘We need you to get to Josh Delman. Somehow we have to get some answers from this man. We need to know why he took Morgan’s body and what can be done to avert Catharsis. Delman is the key to all of this.’
Extraction
Wiz’s eyes were closed. He could barely force himself to watch. He couldn’t believe what he was doing, this was his best friend’s brother. The City drove everybody to do crazy things eventually, it was one twisted place. Most of the blame for that came to rest at Damien Hunter’s feet.
As Wiz began to complete the squeeze on the trigger, Dillon’s sobbing was replaced by the flash and boom of an explosion. It was suddenly mayhem in the basement area. A steel rod was lodged in the chest of one of the Centuria but he was still standing, as if he hadn’t registered that he was supposed to be dead.
The other Centuria were covered in dust and everywhere there were small fragments of concrete. Dillon was face down in a cloud of dust, completely grey except for a rich, red circle of blood which was beginning to pool by his head. He’d been struck by a concrete fragment.
All Wiz could hear were the muffled shouts of Centuria. What had happened? There was a bright light in the room which made it difficult to see. The Centuria were falling, one by one, and there was gunfire, the spatter of blood and flesh as bullets found their target. The Centuria were all dead, and there was firing from the far end of the basement where the guards at the exit were being shot at. Who was shooting? Wiz wondered if he was still alive, had he been shot? Had he killed Dillon or had he been wounded in this battle?
Wiz stood there, dazed. He didn’t know whether to run or fight back. This didn’t seem to be about him. The dust began to clear and he turned to see who was responsible for the carnage. He didn’t recognize anybody, they weren’t Centuria, so who were they? He was surrounded by exploded concrete, iron bars and dead bodies. Dillon was being attended to – somebody was giving him medical attention.
‘Is he alive? Did I kill him?’ Wiz asked, dazed and shocked. His ears were still ringing. He couldn’t hear properly, the voices sounded as if they were in another room even though the people speaking were right next to him. Then a face he recognized emerged from the dust. It was Jody, the Centuria he’d met on the rooftops earlier. It took him a moment to place her.
‘What’s going on?’
‘You’re safe, for now,’ Jody began. ‘You made it difficult for us when you switched off the WristCom, we couldn’t track you. We had to take a chance in the end and blow out the wall. We had to hope you wouldn’t be near the blast.’
Wiz got it. They’d picked up the signal when he’d activated the WristCom when they were in the elevators. They must have tracked them. And he’d turned the WristCom off, probably just when they needed the tracking signal most. Well, they’d intervened in the nick of time, a second later and he’d have executed Dillon
. How could he have lived with himself if he’d pulled that trigger and survived himself?
‘Is Dillon okay, will he be alright?’
Jody looked at the medic who was attending to Dillon’s head wound.
‘He’s suffered some minor head trauma, he’ll be okay when we get him back to base.’
‘You’re lucky, Wiz. We had to gamble when we blew the wall. We knew you were in here somewhere but we didn’t know where. We need to evacuate the building fast. This block is a nest of Centuria, they’re coming down from the upper levels.’
The dust had settled enough for Wiz to fill in the rest of the story. A hole had been blasted through the wall to his side – it must have taken some serious explosives to get through that. There were twisted steel supports and concrete rubble strewn all over the floor of the basement. Dillon had been lucky only to get a head wound. Wiz could barely believe his luck in escaping unharmed. There were armed men and women securing the area and engaged in a gunfight with the Centuria who were gathering around the doorway, alerted by the blast and the commotion.
‘Okay, let’s move out!’ Jody shouted, indicating to Wiz that he should follow her.
‘Blow the door!’ she yelled to the fighters at the far end of the basement. There were three more explosions, smaller this time, and then the firing stopped. Wiz was aware of armed soldiers moving through the hole in the wall. It was quite a struggle for him to squeeze through and not the first time his height had caused problems for him during recent events.
They had to run up a bank to get away from the building. His ankle was still troubling him, but he was moving more easily than before. Jody urged him to take care, the Centuria had begun to gather outside the tower block now and were firing on them. There was a black vehicle waiting at the roadside. Wiz was bundled inside it along with Dillon who had been placed on a makeshift stretcher. He was still out cold. Jody jumped in behind them, pulled the doors shut and the van screeched off into the night.
‘You okay?’ Jody asked. Wiz nodded, his hearing was beginning to return, though there was still a high-pitched whine accompanying everything that was said. He could hear the gunfire outside fading into the distance. Whatever their destination, it seemed to involve a lot of twists and turns, hurling them from side to side as the van lurched one way and then another. The medic was holding Dillon’s head as steadily as he could but it wasn’t the best environment for a casualty.
‘What will happen to the others? Will they get away?’ Wiz asked.
‘Now we’re out safely, they’ll just blend into The Climbs. The Centuria will never be able to track them.’
‘What about their Gen-IDs, won’t they be able to locate them that way?’
‘We have a fix for that, Wiz. You’ll need to get yours sorted as soon as we arrive at HQ. Dillon will need his fixing too. Place this over your tattoo for now.’
Jody handed him a metallic sheet which wrapped around his arm and adhered to his skin. The medic was doing the same to Dillon.
‘What happened?’ asked Wiz, still not sure what was going on. It had taken place so fast: one minute he was about to kill his best friend’s brother, the next he was in the middle of a gun battle. He’d never seen such blood and carnage before.
Jody looked at him, unsure whether he was ready to grasp the enormity of the situation.
‘We just started the revolution, Wiz. Fortrillium know we exist now. It’s a fight to the end, and it just began in that basement.’
Rebels
Talya felt that events were moving to a critical point. So far she’d not had to declare her hand fully, but now she had to take sides. Once she’d made her appeal to the citizens on the screens of The Climbs, that would be it. There would be no more subterfuge, no more skulking in the shadows. President Delman and Damien Hunter would know exactly where she stood. She was making a direct challenge to their authority. She would become the enemy, not just a pawn or a thorn in their side, but the target of their hate.
She would commit Lucy to this course of action too. Wherever Lucy was, she would become an immediate target when Talya appeared on the screens. She’d stayed alive in The Grid. Talya had watched the replays over and over again looking for clues and she saw no evidence Lucy was dead. The highly edited film made it look that way, but there was not a single shot of Lucy’s body. The same went for Joe. There were some horrific fighting scenes with the creatures, and he’d certainly been struck, wounded and knocked to the floor, but in the highly edited montage there was no view of his dead body, just the implication that he’d died. Talya was sure it was trickery.
Something had happened, just as when Matt was in The Grid. She struggled to remember the precise details, it had been a long time ago. A lot had happened since then. Matt had been in the final stages, and she’d been certain that death was not far off for him. He was tired, weak, bruised and weary. The threats were coming thick and fast, while all the other Justice Seekers in that trial had been finished off. She’d suppressed the memory, it had been hard to watch at the time. She’d seen it in his eyes, she actually saw the point at which Matt had given up. He’d resigned himself to certain death, he’d seen that he couldn’t evade it anymore.
The cameras had been merciless, zooming in on his face, showing every last bead of sweat, splash of blood and agonized expression. The light faded in his eyes before he was dead, but then the screen went blank. It was black, as if the feed had failed. The commentators seemed confused, they had no idea what was happening. They’d filled in the time, recapping the action and speculating on what had happened to Matt. The screens must have gone dark for over ten minutes. It felt like an eternity to Talya who was waiting to find out what Matt’s fate had been. Replays and montages were hastily played on the screens, rousing disquiet among the viewing audiences. They knew this was an execution, they understood what was playing out in front of them, but they wanted the man put out of his misery. He’d been hounded and tormented in The Grid, he’d put up an amazing resistance and encouraged his fellow Justice Seekers to fight and survive. He deserved a fast death with whatever honour was possible in such a terrible place.
Talya had never seen Matt’s dead body on the screens. None of the replays showed a body. They displayed some horrific scenes, and Matt was certainly under great threat. But there was no evidence. And now exactly the same thing had happened with Lucy and Joe. Was there something she was missing? Had a deception taken place? Was there a way out of The Grid? Had a deal been struck? Whatever had happened, Lucy was either out of The Grid or she was dead. Talya needed to carry on, and she thought it unlikely her actions could place Lucy in any more harm. Lucy had already shown herself to be an awe-inspiring survivor. Talya thought she could probably learn a few lessons from her own daughter. Talya had been hasty and foolish. She’d placed Lucy in enormous jeopardy when she’d made her outburst to Damien Hunter. She had a highly trained legal mind, yet she’d displayed the same erratic behaviour that she’d feared would land Lucy in trouble. She’d let her emotions rule her actions – her maternal instincts had dominated her professional reactions. That’s why she’d become so popular among the citizens of The Climbs and Silk Road. Her passionate outbursts and emotional appeals had cut through the bland official speak of Delman and Hunter. There was something in her passion that resonated. Perhaps it was just her ability to speak the truth, it was in short supply in The City.
Lucy had grown up, she was a woman now and a formidable one at that. Talya felt a pang of pride that, however this all turned out, her daughter was amazing. Tom would be proud of what she’d become. Talya had to leave Lucy to her own devices now, if she was still alive. She and Joe were more than capable of taking care of themselves.
Talya watched the replay of Lucy and Joe’s final moments one more time. Leo and Jody were right – she was the best person for the next difficult task. If she’d known there was a resistance movement six years ago, after Tom’s death, she’d have joined it straight away. Perhaps they could have ch
anged things sooner if the rebels had made themselves known to her earlier. They seemed well equipped, and it was remarkable that Law Lord Brad Sivil was involved. There were so many deceptions in The City – people seemed to be one thing but were often another. She had thought Brad Sivil was the enemy, yet like so many others within The City’s walls he was just biding his time, waiting for the moment to strike. Who would have thought it?
There were new and shocking developments in The Grid to take on board too. The noose was beginning to draw tight, she felt as if she was beginning to choke. So many people who’d helped and colluded with her had suffered in terrible ways. Talya was beginning to think that she was the mark of death.
Hannah was in The Grid now so Delman must have worked out what she was up to. She looked as if she was in reasonable health. Had Talya been the one to expose her to Fortrillium? Mitchell was in a terrible state, his eyes had become resigned and lifeless, much as she recalled Matt’s in his final moments. And Jena, how had they caught Jena? She’d been so fragile, but now Talya could see a new determination in her eyes. That light had been extinguished six years previously, and she was beginning to see the signs of her old friend returning.
Talya was saddened to see Max among the new Justice Seekers in The Grid. That was her doing, she had no doubt about that. The poor man, she’d tortured him and threatened him until he had no choice but to comply. And for his trouble? He’d been thrown into The Grid. She felt responsible for Max, he was just an ordinary citizen who’d got caught up in something that was none of his doing. She owed him one. Talya was in his debt.
There were others in there too. One of Leo and Jody’s friends had been thrown in The Grid, and they were anxious to save her. There was the man from the Institute, Rampage they called him on the screens, and Clay and Ross, who’d both worked so hard to keep Joe and Lucy alive. Their lives were inextricably linked now, they were bound together by a common purpose. To survive and conquer.