by Andrew Gates
Sanja stepped off of her broken scooter and walked toward his when the Navy woman panicked again.
“Hold on, just a second!” she hollered. “How do you know we’re under attack, huh? How do you know? Who could be attacking us?”
Suddenly, only about 30 meters ahead of where they stood, the yellow walls ripped apart in one quick motion. Metal flew in all directions and what seemed like hundreds of people flooded into the yellow zone through the newly formed hole, all of them screaming in terror. Among the crowd was some sort of four-legged machine, easily twice the height of the people running around it.
“What the fuck-” the woman started.
“There’s your proof,” Sanja finished, pointing towards it. “We need to go, NOW!”
For some reason Sanja decided not to bother with the scooter. She took a quick glance at the four-legged machine before she started running as fast as she could in the opposite direction.
The machine’s structure vaguely resembled a body. It had four sharp pointed legs on the bottom and a long ovular shell behind it, like a buttocks. It had a slender torso and two very long arms coming off of the body with sharp pointed claw-like fingers. There appeared to be tanks on its backside, probably air or water tanks of some sort. And the entire machine was covered in some sort of sleek blackish metal that Sanja did not recognize.
Whatever it was, it just ripped a hole in the metal wall of the transition zone. She needed to get the hell out of there and fast.
Her bare feet slammed against the floor. It was hard to run in her skirt, so she lifted up part of it, giving her legs a wider range of motion. She could hear the commotion behind her. People screamed. Metal ripped apart. She even heard gunshots.
For the first time in 200 years, war had come to the Atlantic Station.
And we don’t even know who our enemy is.
IRIS HELD THE POD TIGHTLY in her hands as she nervously scanned through the data. After four evenings of grueling work, she finally managed to translate the entirety of the transmissions between the stations. The hardest part had been developing the key. But once she had her basic grid of pronouns and verb forms, the rest came easily, or at least close. Thankfully there were not very many transmissions to translate.
“So what do we do with this information then, Ms. Vitneskja? How does this help us?” the government contractor asked as Iris explained her findings.
The excited researcher did not have a simple answer to this question. She knew this information was important, but she did not have enough to back herself up just yet.
“I’m not sure about that. At least not yet. But I have a strong feeling it has something to do with that orb. The two things are just so irregular, they have to be connected,” she explained, telling Dr. Parnel what she could.
“Look, this all sounds pretty crazy,” the doctor said. “But neither of us are experts on this. Here’s what we’re going to do: I want you to prepare all your findings in writing, just like you do with your regular weekly reports. But I want this report done by tonight. I don’t care if you have to stay up until school starts.”
Those words hurt. Iris had already spent so much time over the last few days translating this, in addition to her regular work at the school. She was now juggling the work of two fulltime jobs at once. She did not foresee herself getting any sleep anytime soon.
“Send a copy to me and forward one to Dr. Ahmet Bay. I’ll give you his Meganet contact information after this call. He’s a physicist who works alongside me,” Dr. Parnel continued. “He helped with my initial analysis of the crashed vessel. I want your report to be as detailed as possible. Share it with me and Dr. Bay and nobody else. You are aware that anything you find as part of this investigation will remain classified.”
“I am,” Iris replied. As if I needed reminding at this point.
“Good. So I will expect to see this in writing as soon as possible,” she said.
Iris sighed.
“I can do that, but it might take me some time. There is a lot of data. Would you like me to include my full translations and grammar charts and-” Iris was stopped short.
“Share that and share your hypothesis. Everything you’ve read about Einstein and time and how you think that plays into this. Include that too. That’s the part Dr. Bay will be the most interested in seeing. Half of my job is knowing who needs to look at what. I’m sure I’ll share other details with other specialists as well. That’s how I handle every report you’ve sent to me so far. But I want him to see your full report.”
“Okay, I can do that.”
Iris wiped her eyes. She was going to need to stay awake somehow tonight.
“Look, I’m receiving another call on my personal pod. Keep me updated on any new findings you have, okay?” the contractor added.
“Very well. I’ll send you my report as soon as —”
Dr. Parnel ended the call. Iris wondered if she was really that busy or just trying to maintain an image. Either way, she was a hard woman to work with.
The worn out teacher put her personal and work pods down on the countertop. She walked over to the couch and let herself fall down onto it. The soft cushion pressed against her warm sweatpants. Oh, the comfort, she thought with a smile. She wanted to enjoy a moment of calmness before losing herself in her writing for hours.
She closed her eyes and slowly began to drift asleep.
Minutes later she awoke to loud noises coming from outside the front door. Iris opened her eyes, not even realizing she had fallen asleep. It certainly wasn’t her intent.
She reached into her sweatpants pocket for her pod, but quickly remembered she had placed both her pods on the counter. She sat up and stepped on the floor. Her feet felt cold and wet. Iris glanced down. Sure enough there was a layer of water covering her floor.
That’s no good, she thought to herself. She leaned down and dipped her finger in it and brought it to her mouth. The taste was salty. Oh that’s no good at all.
She looked up and realized that the lights were flickering as well. They never went off, but they would rapidly bounce between full brightness and medium brightness. Iris stopped moving and just paid attention to the room around her for a moment, searching for more irregularities.
That’s when it occurred to her that the loud noises outside were screams.
Iris felt her heart rate pick up. She quickly jumped off the couch and grabbed her personal pod off the countertop. She turned it on and read the time. To her surprise it had only been a half hour since she had gotten off the call with Dr. Parnel. Almost no time had passed, yet the station was partially flooded and there was panic in the halls.
What happened while I was asleep? She wondered.
There were several missed calls on her pod. Two were from her mother. One was from Dan. Unfortunately the calls would have to wait. Iris went to her room and grabbed some shoes, the most waterproof ones she could find. She put them on and walked to her front door. She could hear the sounds of screams get louder and louder as she approached it. Nervously, she reached for the handle and pulled the door open.
A crowd of people ran from left to right through the hall. Iris tapped her pocket to make sure she had her keys and closed the door.
“Where are you going?” she screamed to anyone who would stop to answer.
A family of four ran by her, a mom, a dad and two little girls.
“You should get going!” the man said to her. “It’s coming from that direction.” He motioned behind him as he ran forward.
“What is?” Iris asked.
One of the little girls stared at her right in the eyes as she ran forward. For a moment it was as if the world stopped and all that existed were Iris and this little girl.
“The monster,” she answered calmly. “The metal monster is coming.”
Despite the chaos around her, Iris heard the words perfectly.
The monster. The metal monster is coming.
Suddenly a loud boom erupted from behind the cr
owd. Iris looked up towards it as a great shadow covered the white walls. The metal monster.
Iris darted in the direction of the crowd. She did not know where they were going, but she knew it was away from the monster, whatever it was. Any tiredness she had felt only moments ago was gone. She had not been this alert in years.
As the thick crowd approached the end of the residential sector, the walls opened up into the yellow transition zone. A wall of armed Navy stood by the corner, keeping a large space between them to let civilians run through. Iris pushed through the guards with the rest of the crowd and ran to the far side of the yellow zone. Unlike the others who kept running, Iris turned to watch what would happen next. As long as the Navy is here, I’ll be safe.
The crowd of people began to thin out and she could hear the stomping of whatever was back there. Before she could see the monster with her own eyes, the Navy opened fire with automatic rifles, blasting away all at once.
There they go. They’ll get it, Iris thought.
Some of the white-coated guards slowly started to back up, while others stood their ground. Iris started to get a bit more nervous. She saw one man throw his gun down the white hall, turn away and run with the crowd of civilians.
Then she finally saw the metal monster herself.
The creature was completely black like onyx. It had four pointed legs, two with forward facing knees and two with back facing knees. Its legs were connected to some kind of elongated seed-like shaped butt. Its torso was thin, very thin, and it had two long muscular arms with razor-like claws. On top was a small head, boxy in shape.
It looks like a praying mantis, she thought to herself. A praying mantis was an old surface era animal, a small flying creature known as an insect. But this was no insect. This thing, whatever it was, looked mechanical and was easily three meters tall.
As the mechanical mantis approached the Navy, the line started to break apart even more. Those in the center of the line scrambled towards the edges and those on the edges nudged slightly to the outside.
Bullets seemed to bounce right off of its hard metallic outer shell like it was nothing. The mantis lifted its arms into the air and brought them down, smashing two people. Iris could hear their bones snap even from across the hall.
Clearly the Navy was not going to stop this thing. Panicking, she turned to her left and ran through the watery transition zone as two movers carrying dozens of Navy sped past her in the opposite direction, towards the mechanized attacker. She did not bother to turn around and watch the carnage but she heard a rocket blast from what must have been a bazooka followed by a loud non-human shriek that echoed through the already loud hall and sent shivers down her spine.
It shrieked, she thought. What kind of machine shrieks?
Iris could feel the heat of fire on the back of her neck. She briefly took a quick glance behind her to see what was going on and saw the monster covered in flames, but still smashing away at the men and women powerless to stop it. She faced forward again and continued running as the sound of more rocket fire erupted behind her.
As she continued to run further from the mantis, the corridor became increasingly more crowded. It did not take long before there were people all around her. At first this was a comforting thought, but this soon proved to be a false comfort. Once the crowd got thick enough, everything turned to chaos. Iris saw a father hoist his three-year-old son above his head and push over an elderly woman just to get ahead. A teenage girl abandoned her wheelchair-bound mother and jumped over a small boy. People were shoving, punching and kicking. Anyone lucky enough to be driving a power scooter was almost immediately pulled off and replaced by someone who only got about 10 meters before that person was pulled off by someone else.
Iris was no safer here than she was back by the shrieking mantis. She had to find a way out. Though it was hard to see through the crowd, Iris could make out the entrance to a green zone to her right. I have to get out of the yellow, she thought, pushing through the crowd to get to the commercial district.
When she finally made it to the green paint, she took a moment to catch her breath. She leaned against the wall and realized just how hard her body was working. It was as if she had just run a race. Her heart was pounding, her legs were stiff and she gasped for air.
The green zone still had a decent amount of people in it, but it was a considerably thinner crowd than the mob back in the yellow. She would be safe here for now, wherever she was.
“Did you see it?” a woman asked as Iris caught her breath.
She faced the woman standing on the other end of the hall. She was a pale woman in her early 40s with dark hair. She wore a long orange shirt with what looked like nothing underneath it. Next to her was a large boy, about the age of one of her students. He wore all white. Both were drenched in water.
Iris nodded her head to the stranger, too tired to answer verbally. The woman grabbed the boy by the hand and crossed over to Iris’s side of the hallway.
“My son recognizes you. He says you’re a teacher at his school,” the woman explained.
Iris looked at the boy. He was definitely the right age, though she did not recall ever seeing him before. He held tightly onto his mother’s shirt the way a toddler would.
“My class?” she asked, only able to say a few words.
The boy shook his head. He seemed shy or perhaps just very nervous.
“Jocelyn Colburn,” the woman said, holding out her hand. Iris shook it. “This is my son, Aloysious.”
Iris nodded and pushed herself away from the wall.
“Hi,” she answered between breaths. “Iris Vitneskja.”
“I know. Louis told me.”
A city of 3.7 million people and I happen to run into someone who knows me.
After a few more deep breaths, Iris felt like walking. While it was considerably safer here in the commercial district, she was still right on the edge of the transition zone, and therefore close to the danger. The mother and son followed along as she slowly moved further into the green.
“So do you know what attacked us?” the woman asked. Her voice sounded more panicked now than it had before.
Iris shook her head.
“Not sure,” she answered bluntly. “I saw them shoot it. Machine guns didn’t do a thing. Bullets bounced right off. Rockets seemed to work a bit better. They made it scream, so it’s possible they injured it.”
“Injured it? I thought it was a machine!” the woman said, following closely next to her.
“Machines don’t make the kind of noise I heard. The thing shrieked like it was in pain,” Iris explained, still moving forward through the flooded green halls.
Ahead of them Iris saw a group of teenagers smashing a metal chair into a store window. She decided to quickly turn down a corner to her right to avoid the looters. The government has lost all control, she realized.
“Are you sure about that? Maybe you heard something else.”
“I’m sure I heard it shriek. Plus it has the body like an organic lifeform, don’t you think? Four legs, two arms, a torso and a head. It’s all there.”
Iris felt wetness on the bottom of her pant legs. She looked down. The saltwater level was rising. Her shoes were now completely covered.
“What’s with all this water?” the boy asked.
“It’s a leak, Louis,” his mom explained. “Don’t worry. Someone will fix it.”
Yes, but how long will that take? Iris wondered.
“Where are you going, Ms. Vitneskja?” the woman asked.
“I’m going back. Back where the thing came from. I figure it won’t attack the same place twice, not after it’s already destroyed what’s there and moved on.”
The mom gasped and the boy looked distressed. Yet they both continued to follow her for now.
“Go back?” the woman asked.
“That’s where I’m going,” Iris replied.
The boy faced her mother, concerned.
“Mom?” he said.
The mother seemed hesitant, like she did not know what to say or do.
“I… I don’t know about that idea. We should probably stay here. We know it’s safe here!” she replied.
The woman stopped with her son, but Iris continued walking on her own. If they did not want to follow her, that was not her concern.
Though she did not exactly know where she was, the teacher had a rough understanding of how to get home. Iris continued to make her way through the green zone as the water level slowly rose higher and higher. Every now and then she would walk past an access point to the transition zone, where it would be a little more crowded, but overall her walk was fairly lonesome. It seemed the closer she got to where the mantis had been, the less people wanted to be there.
The water was covering her ankles by the time Iris arrived in her residential sector about 15 minutes later. The area was like a ghost town with not a single person to be found. She could not believe how it looked. Many of the walls were bent in or out, entire residences had lost doors or walls altogether. She saw food wrappers, clothes and even toys floating in the shallow water.
The teacher rounded the corner to her own hall and gasped at the sight. This was where she lived, yet it seemed so different, so horrifying. She sped up as she approached her own residence. The door had a large gash in it, straight down the center like a claw had cut right into it. She got out her keys and tried to open it but the door would not move. She pushed harder, yet still nothing.
“Shit,” she said as she let go of the door handle. The impact of whatever gashed it must have knocked the door out of place.
“Can I help?” a male voice asked.
Iris looked up towards the sound of the voice. A man walked towards her from the corner of the hall. They must have been the only two people around. Naturally, she felt suspicious and made sure not to take her eyes away from him.
“Oh, thanks,” she said as the stranger approached. She tried to sound calm, though in reality, she was nervous.
The man, whoever he was, wore a long coat with a tall collar and dark pants. He was completely bald and he hobbled as he walked. When he got to the door, he took the keys from Iris’s hand and tried to open it. He pushed just as Iris had, but it remained stuck in place. She stepped out of the way, giving him a lot of space.