Utopia: A Dark Thriller: Complete Edition

by Adam Steel

  ‘Least you’d go out with a bang,’ Lucian replied.

  Lucian was soaked in sweat and he looked as though he was cooking in his leather jacket.

  Finally, the tentacle sank back under the metal flooring again. Ellie felt a surge of relief to be off the evil contraption. Her hands and knees were pink and blistered from the heat and she was thinking that if they survived, she would still have blisters for weeks. The others shuffled off the pipe behind her. They rested for a moment, taking a short breather. The pipe had been as much an emotional journey to each of them as a physical one. The reality of the mason’s foul plans – literally under their fingertips – had been a chilling experience.

  Ellie looked back over the party: confused. Max was grinning at her in the bluish light. Then she realised that all their hair was standing on end. They all looked like the cast from a Japanese cartoon, with spiky hair stuck out at crazy angles. Her hair had shot up like a huge, blonde Afro until it filled the top of the duct. She fumbled, embarrassed and trying to correct the worst of it.

  ‘One sec, need my pack,’ Irish spoke up. ‘I’m sure I have a hairbrush in here…between the dynamite and the axe.’

  A few muffled sniggers from the others, helped to ease some of her tension. Nothing ever seemed to bring Irish down. She suspected that it was because he had nothing left to lose and so he treated life accordingly and she wished that she could feel the same.

  Ellie tried to see past Max to get a look at Jon Li. She couldn’t get a clear look, but she could hear his laboured breathing.

  Max coughed at her. She quickly composed herself as the seriousness of his situation dawned on her. She flicked the torch back on and looked ahead down the duct.

  ‘We must be almost there.’

  Ellie unravelled the Genie blueprints and studied the duct layout.

  ‘There’s a side opening ahead. It leads out into some kind of storage room. I think that it leads out from the loading dock. Our exit is further down the duct…comes out in a machinery backroom. It should be quiet in there.’

  They got moving again. The opening was ahead of them, in the side of the duct, just as the blueprints had indicated. Ellie flicked the torch ‘off’ and gestured to the others to be silent. She took the side junction and edged closer, and peering through the grill into the room beyond.

  The room was huge. The ceiling was too high up to see its entirety. The walls were solid white, except for the one directly opposite from the grill. The entire far wall was covered in hexagonal holes. It was like an enormous, honey comb of a beehive. Black objects, rested in some of the holes. Others were empty. Each space had its own separate lighting. There were thousands upon thousands of hexagons. The wall stretched far beyond her line of sight. Large robotic arms dominated the scene. Some were extracting the black objects and hanging them onto large chains, which came down from the ceiling. Each time one of strange objects was hung up, the chain hoisted it obediently away.

  Pods, Ellie thought as she remembered her horrific nightmare, black pods.

  Her eyes went to the floor and widened when she saw what was being worked on. The ground floor of the room was a hive of activity. There were white-clad technicians scurrying around the room. They were over-seeing the operations. Two large doors opened in the wall and a small truck rumbled in. It resembled a forklift, except that it had a sterile box on the front instead of prongs. With a whirring ‘clunk’, it unloaded a pile of bodies unceremoniously, onto a white tiled floor. They were covered in the glowing, blue substance. She clapped a hand over her mouth as she gaped at the scene. Technicians were counting the bodies and making notes on clipboards. Robotic arms began to lift the bodies up. One by one they moved them across the floor, trailing the blue liquid before zipping them into large black flexible containers. Another arm then lifted them one by one, into the hexagonal holes.

  Ellie watched in horror as the hellish production line continued.

  A commotion broke out in the loading area. One of the lifter arms whined as it held up a struggling person from the new pile of bodies. His screams echoed across the room and rang in Ellie’s ears. He looked like a fly in the hands of a small child. Shouts came from the technicians as they gestured towards the struggling man. His screams ‘gargled’ when the Blue-Velvet that he was covered in, sank down into his throat. Two men with rifles came running over to the beleaguered robot arm and shot the man. The gunshots echoed across the room, and the figure went still.

  She jumped, when a push from Max, landed in the small of her back.

  ‘What is it? What’s out there?’ Max said.

  Ellie swallowed. She couldn’t find the words to describe the horror in front of her.

  ‘We’re close,’ was all she could manage.

  Ellie retreated from the duct grill, back up to the junction where the others were waiting and signalled for them to continue down the duct towards the maintenance area. She could see that the duct opening they were looking for wasn’t far and she peered out into the small room in front of them.

  It was empty.

  Ellie gestured to the others to man-handle the axe forward and they passed it from one to another, until she had it in her hand. She shuffled back and butted the grill opening with the axe head. She waited a few seconds to see if the noise had alerted anyone, but the omnipresent humming in the background seemed to drown it out. A few strikes later and the metal buckled. She carefully prised the opening off and eased her head out of the opening. The room was small and it was a short drop to the floor. Max had to grab her feet while she lowered herself down onto her hands. In one smooth movement, she slid from the duct and stood up, dusting herself off.

  Her feet stood in the Genie facility for the second time in her life.

  The walls were covered in bulky, electrical equipment. The entire place had a resonance of flowing power and the electrical humming noise was everywhere. She saw that the tentacles of Genie ran outwards through the walls of the enormous complex. She felt as though she was inside of an immense alien spacecraft. Unlike the chamber before, this chamber was all metallic.

  Blinking computer lights surrounded her.

  A door, at the far end, was closed.

  ‘Hey?… A little help here?’ a voice called out from the duct.

  Ellie turned to see Max half in, and half out, of the grill. She helped him out, and one by one the party were born out of the duct. Irish crashed down last. He stretched, flexing his muscles: obviously glad to be free of the confining space.

  ‘Thank fuck for that. I thought my arse was going to end up a permanent square shape,’ he added, brushing himself down of the dust from the duct.

  ‘Quiet!’ Max hissed, and came up on him quickly.

  Max helped him to pull the rucksack through the opening and the two men lowered it to the ground slowly down to the floor. Max and Irish hauled the bulkier weapons from the bag and handed them out. Lucian and Max ran a last minute check on their weapons while Irish hoisted his hunting rifle. Red did not bother to check his pistol. He stuffed it into his trouser belt. Max instructed them quietly while they worked.

  ‘We have to move fast. Once we get spotted it’s over. We have to get as close as possible first,’ Max whispered.

  Max slung his shotgun across his back on a makeshift belt before tapping a single Apexir hit out from his pocket. He swallowed the red pill dry and continued to talk while the effects took hold.

  ‘If you see anybody working down here we have to take them out fast and quietly…No shooting!’

  ‘No problem,’ Lucian answered grimly.

  ‘So no blowing them up yet?’ Irish quizzed, while he slung his rifle across his back.

  Max glared at him in response. The big man hoisted the fire axe up, and brandished it in both hands.

  ‘Pity…Oh well,’ Irish shrugged.

  Max waved Ellie over to him.

  ‘Let’s see the map. How far is it?’

  Ellie spread the document across the floor and they leaned i
n to look.

  ‘We are here,’ she said, pointing at a blue line. ‘We’re directly beneath Dome One on the surface. It’s a maintenance area. The generator is housed here…’ she said and moved her finger across to a huge room on the blueprints. ‘So, we must pass along here. Past the… storage room’ she said and paused.

  She couldn’t think of a word to describe the ‘hive-room’ that she’d seen through the grating.

  Lucian frowned as he observed the document and asked, ‘Where is the laboratory complex?’

  Ellie looked puzzled.

  ‘That’s over here,’ she said, pointing at a separate facility a short distance away. ‘They’re connected underground in several places, but don’t worry, we won’t need to go through the labs to reach the generator,’ Ellie added.

  Lucian nodded.

  ‘Right, that’s enough. Let’s move,’ Max said.

  Max rolled the document up and handed it to Ellie.

  ‘We don’t know what kind of security they got down here so be careful,’ Max warned.

  Max leaned against the door and gently tapped the handle. It was unlocked. He edged the door open and slowly peeked through the gap. A larger room lay beyond them. It was similar to the one they had been standing in. Multiple pipes ran along the walls. They were similar to the ones in the duct. They were all pulsating and flickering in a blue colour. At the end of the room there were two technicians. They wore white coats and were standing in front of a wall working on a piece of equipment. They were adjusting dials and making notes on two clipboards. A corridor stretched away into the distance near to them. The pipes curled around the corner and bathed the passageway in the same glowing blue light.

  Max looked back at Lucian. He held two fingers up at him then pointed through the door. Lucian nodded curtly to show that he understood. Max edged the door open and stole silently into the room, followed by Lucian. They kept low as they moved forward. The two technicians did not turn around.

  Max could hear them talking about the work. His pulse slowed, as he prepared to pounce. A settling calm fell across him as he closed the distance. The Apexir kicked-in and his combat vision came into focus. Time began to slow and through his eyes the two technician’s movements slowed down becoming ghost-like. He could see every minute movement the men made in perfect detail.

  ‘Power outputs fluctuating again,’ the first technician said, and scribbled another note in the margin.

  ‘Yeah, resource inputs getting erratic, and the Docs’ are forever tweaking the system, don’t know how were ever supposed to keep up,’ the second technician complained.

  A flash of metal whipped across in front of the second technician’s eyes. He looked startled at his co-worker (who was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling). A thin line had appeared in his neck, which ‘yawned’ wide into a gaping red mouth. Before the second technician could get his mouth open to scream, he felt himself pulled back hard by a thin collar around his neck. Pain shot upwards through him, as he was dragged backwards. He got a good view of the large man that was kneeling behind his co-worker with a bloody knife in his hands. His hands struggled for purchase on the wire of pain as he was brought to his knees. Lucian had the second one, and was strangling him from behind with the barbed wire. The technician struggled fiercely, clawing at the wire around his neck. Max closed on the second technician and clamped a hand over his mouth to stop him from screaming. Blood began to pour over Lucian’s hands from the barbed knots which were cutting deep into the man’s neck.

  Max’s face was complacent. He was calm and resolute. To him it was business.

  Lucian’s contorted expression revealed that he was relishing every second of throttling the technician to death.

  The rest of the party came round the door and Jon Li covered Ellie’s eyes from the awful scene. Irish watched, unmoved by the horror. Lucian pulled harder on the wire and Jon Li could see that it was cutting Lucian’s hands. Lucian did not seem to care. His eyes blazed hatred. Jon Li was thinking that Lucian had always seemed so controlled, but he supposed that the man had a lot of vengeance in him. The technician finally stopped struggling and Max took his hand off the man’s mouth. He sank to the floor and did not move. Lucian savagely ripped the barbed wire from the man’s throat. It tore the flesh open, and a stream of blood pooled from the gaping wound.

  Max got to his feet to see Jon Li pointing frantically at the other end of the room. Another technician had come round the corner from the passage and was gaping at the blood splattered scene. In a fraction of a second he would come to his senses, and run to raise the alarm. Max could see the technician was going to run, his face a picture of raw terror. He levelled himself and flicked the hunting knife upwards, catching it point first between his fingers. His arm went back, and he threw it full force, at the technician. The man caught it straight in the chest. It sank in him up to its hilt, and a large, red butterfly of blood spread its wing’s across his neat lab coat. The man coughed up a gout of blood and sank to his knees. The petrified confusion was still painted on his face.

  Irish stepped forwards down the corridor and stood in front of him. He looked down at the kneeling man and hoisted the fire axe upwards. The man slowly raised his head. Blood was stained on his lips. Irish smiled down at the man.

  ‘Hi. Name’s Irish. You killed my boy.’

  Irish’s mouth contorted hideously when he brought the axe down with all his strength on the man’s head. The technician's head split open like a ripe fruit. The axe split him from head to sternum. The two halves of the technician peeled open, and the knife fell out, ‘clattering’ to the floor. A fountain of blood splashed Irish. Irish glared at the eviscerated body and then he looked back at the others.

  Red slouched against the wall and shrugged his shoulders at Irish. He didn’t seem bothered in the least. Jon Li retched at the sight, but he kept his hand firmly clamped over Ellie’s eyes.

  ‘I feel better already,’ Irish gloated, and with a smile, he extracted the axe. ‘Now let’s go and blow something up.’

  Max retrieved his knife from the pool of blood on the floor, and wiped it on his trousers.

  The party moved onwards.

  They saw no point in trying to clear the bodies away. The mess (that Lucian’s and Irish’s retribution had made) would keep a cleaning crew busy for hours.

  Ellie felt her feet slide on something underfoot as Jon Li guided her blindfold past the scene. When they had rounded the corner Jon Li let her see again. It was obvious to her that that Lucian and Irish had inflicted carnage because both men and the axe were bloodied. She felt giddy. She hadn’t been prepared for the bloody violence that the Dustmen would unleash when they caught up with their tormentors.

  The Dustmen’s rage was primal and uncontained.

  Ellie felt naïve and it stung her mentally to realise how unprepared she was.

  Max already knew what she was feeling because she had turned a ghastly shade of white. Fucking intellectuals. They think they know so much…so arrogant. She thought we’d come in - knock a few people out - and blow the thing up nice and clean. Must really hurt when they find out how little they actually know. This is WAR, he thought.

  They all crept forward through the many rooms. Ellie was thankful that most of them were unoccupied. Another technician that they had stumbled upon had met his end from a strike by the blunt end of Lucian’s shotgun. His skull cracked under the impact. They had chosen a route that led them through the back rooms where they were least likely to be disturbed. The ever present humming noise grew louder and each one of them could feel their destination closing in. Lucian called the group to a halt at an intersection. Ellie quickly broke out the blueprints.

  ‘We’re on target. It’s that way,’ she said and pointed down the corridor to where a set of blue sparkling pipes, hugged the wall.

  Lucian cocked his head at the diagram and nodded to a side door.

  ‘That leads to the labs. Correct?’ he said, studying the map.

  Elli
e nodded her head in agreement.

  ‘Yes, but again, we don’t need to go that way. We…’

  Lucian cut her off, abruptly and nodded to Jon Li who had stepped forward.

  ‘It’s time,’ Lucian said.

  Jon Li nodded.

  ‘Yes. Yes it is,’ replied Jon Li.

  He turned to Ellie, and putting both hands on her petite shoulders, he said, ‘I’m sorry my love, but I can’t go any further with you.’

  She stared back: her expression one of confusion: her eyes searching deep into his for an explanation.

  ‘What? What do you mean? We’re almost there!’ she spluttered.

  Lucian nudged Jon Li and gestured to the door leading into the laboratory complex.

  ‘Let’s go Li. We don’t have long.’

  Jon Li ignored him.

  ‘Ell. I need to tell you. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I’m so sorry for all of this. I got you in this awful mess, but I’m going to make it right.’

  Jon Li shook her shoulders once, very slightly.

  Ellie shook her head and said, ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying!’

  ‘Keep it down,’ growled Max. ‘Look Li, we don’t have time for this.’

  Jon Li glared back at Max, meeting his gaze full on.

  ‘Shut the fuck up jarhead. You don’t like me and I don’t like you, but for now, just fucking shut up.’

  Max was surprised. There was something in Jon Li’s voice that was determined and dangerous. Max could see that here was a man who had accepted his fate and he had nothing to lose (would do what he wanted) and couldn’t be intimidated.

  Ellie brought Jon Li’s eyes back to her.

  ‘We can finish this Jon. The generator is just down there. Then we can go home, together.’

  Jon Li took both her hands in his and said firmly, ‘I’m not going to the generator. I never was. I couldn’t tell you Drago’s real plan for me, you’d never have agreed to let me go.’

  Red looked up: his interest peaked.

  Lucian sighed, cut in and said, ‘You guys are going to the generator. Me and Li have a different mission. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you, but it’s too late to argue now. We’re going to the labs.’