Before the Nothingness

by Kevin George

  Maybe I’ll get lucky and Clang will shove me back into the tunnel and let me go back to the village. . .

  Or maybe I’ll have to get back there myself. . .

  A surge of adrenaline rushed through him and he hopped to his feet, ignoring the fatigue that had turned his legs to rubber. The supply room brimmed with shelves full of tools and materials, more than enough for Horace to find something to break through the locked door and aid his escape.

  He settled on a simple hammer, intending to smash his way through the door’s handle and anyone outside that might try to stop him from reaching the tunnel. But he no sooner wound up to take his first swing when a beep sounded from the other side of the door, which swung open. Horace readied an attack but dropped the hammer the moment he saw a familiar face staring back at him.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again. . . at least not in The Mountain,” Samuel told his son.

  “My identity. . . it was discovered by the other villagers. . . they were coming after me,” Horace muttered.

  The sight of his father brought a crashing halt to the fight flowing through Horace. In an instant, his years of freedom—years of learning to live and survive on his own—seemed like a distant memory and he once again felt like a foolish child. Still, Samuel no longer carried the same gravitas as he once had. He looker thinner, his eyes sunken, the hair atop his head receding while the hair on his face was scragglier. Horace’s father had never been an imposing figure, but he now appeared less significant than ever.

  Samuel nodded. “We saw them dragging you toward The Mountain and assumed they were using you as bait.”

  “You saw me in trouble and did nothing to help?”

  “Did the drone not lead you back to your ISU in the middle of the storm?” Samuel asked. “As I recall, you were the one who wanted to become a villager, you were the one responsible for hiding your true identity. How did you blow your cover?”

  Horace clenched his jaw and suddenly wished he hadn’t dropped the hammer. Through the open doorway were several guards, probably too many to fight off.

  “I didn’t blow anything,” Horace snapped, feeling his cheeks burn. “Maybe the villagers figured it out when I was given grandfather’s ISU.”

  “Which was his final request, not mine,” Samuel said, crossing his arms. “You can’t blame me for—”

  “I can blame you and everyone else in The Mountain for ignoring ISU-Ville and condemning the villagers to chaos and fighting and frozen deaths,” Horace said. “I don’t even blame the villagers that tried using me to save themselves and their families.”

  “My duty has always been to The Mountain,” Samuel said. “We’ve spent the last few years trying to survive, just like you and your friends.”

  Horace shook his head. “We both know The Mountain holds an embarrassment of riches compared to ISU-Ville. It would be easy to find a place in here for every villager on the verge of freezing to death.”

  “Nothing in this new world is easy,” Samuel said. “Our supplies have lasted because our people haven’t allowed themselves to descend into chaos. Even if we took in more people, that would cause the depletion of Mountain resources and ensure both groups perishing.”

  Horace snorted. “And of course Samuel Jonas and his people must be the ones given priority.”

  “You may complain about the Jonas last name, but I’m told you made your true identity known the moment you were caught sneaking back into The Mountain. That name is the only reason you weren’t kicked out of here—or worse—as soon as you were discovered,” Samuel said.

  “And yet I was locked up in here,” Horace said.

  Samuel motioned toward the open door. When Horace hesitated to leave, Samuel stepped out first and looked over his shoulder.

  “Coming?”

  Horace sighed, wanting to do the exact opposite of whatever his father said. But one glance at the security guards—both of whom stared directly at him—told Horace that patience would be important. He followed his father out, but the guards stepped in front of him.

  “Let him through,” Samuel said, his voice tinged with annoyance.

  The guards didn’t budge. “We haven’t received Board approval for admitting any. . . visitors,” Clang said.

  “This visitor is my son and if you don’t move now, I will be sure to get Board approval to expel you.”

  The second guard remained leering at Horace, but Clang stepped aside and waved him through. Samuel strode across the hangar floor and Horace hurried to keep up. Once they bypassed the elevator and reached the stairwell, the guards hung back, allowing father and son to speak privately.

  “Trouble with The Board since grandfather died?” Horace asked.

  Samuel huffed, but didn’t deny it.

  “Think it was smart to snap at the guards?” Horace continued. “Don’t you want them on your side if they’re the reason you control this place?”

  “For someone that wanted to ignore his family name and live like an outsider, you sure think the way a leader does,” Samuel said, glancing back at his son.

  “I’m nothing like you, if that’s what you’re implying,” Horace said.

  Samuel stopped so suddenly that Horace nearly bumped into him. Father looked down at son, their eyes meeting momentarily, both of them looking away to deal with the awkwardness.

  “I realize the way you remember me,” Samuel said. “For a long time, I wasn’t a great father. I wasn’t a great person. But after the death of my father, something changed in me.”

  Horace couldn’t suppress a snort.

  “You would’ve witnessed what I mean had you stayed in ISU-Ville a bit longer,” Samuel said. “The girl—the one who saved you from the group that kidnapped you—said you’d gone underground forever, but I didn’t believe you were really coming here.”

  Horace hopped up the two steps separating him from his father. His eyes narrowed and he stepped so close to Samuel that he nearly bumped him.

  “You spoke to Carla? When? Where? I swear to God if you’ve brought her here to threaten me with. . .”

  “She’s still in the village and she’s safe. . . probably safer than she’s been for a long time, like everyone else there,” Samuel said. “I just got back.”

  “You went to ISU-Ville? Why?”

  Samuel looked down the stairwell, checking to see that the pair of guards hadn’t followed them. When he was certain they were alone, he sighed and sat down on the steps. Horace didn’t need to know his father well to see the fatigue in his eyes. Samuel patted the step beside him, but Horace remained standing, his arms crossed in defiance. Samuel didn’t speak until Horace sat down on the step below him.

  “Watching the breakdown of ISU-Ville—watching you put in such danger—finally convinced me to deliver the answer we’d been promising all along,” Samuel said. “The Hybrid Blast.”

  He proceeded to explain the history of the Blast, not leaving out a single detail, even including stories of early trials and possible side effects.

  “Like the beast that almost killed me before I left? That’s what you’re doing to the villagers. . . to all of my friends out there. . . to. . . Carla,” he said, whispering the final word.

  “We didn’t force injections on any villager,” Samuel said. “And we told them about potential side effects. Not everyone took it, but most did. They understood the importance of survival by any means necessary. The risks of accepting the Blast weren’t nearly as bad as the risks of turning it down.”

  “Easy for you to say living here,” Horace said.

  “Like how difficult it was for you in your grandfather’s ISU? All of the extra supplies you had that others didn’t? I didn’t see you in a rush to hand them over,” Samuel snapped. “Look, I don’t want to fight. What’s done is done, and we can only hope Dr. Weller’s changes to the Hybrid Blast allow the villagers to live longer.”

  “It could be a disaster,” Horace said.

  “The beast that attacked in here changed wit
hin seconds of taking the Blast,” Samuel said. “Not a single villager showed immediate changes upon injection.”

  “And how do we know they haven’t changed since then? That they haven’t all. . .”—Horace’s throat tightened and he had to summon enough anger to get through the next part—“. . . that they haven’t turned into beasts and killed each other?”

  Samuel frowned. “We don’t know, but we can go find out.”

  Horace gazed toward the bottom of the stairwell before nodding and following his father up. Samuel glanced down at him several times, opening his mouth as if he had something to say, closing it each time without uttering a single word. The awkward tension between them was palpable, growing more uncomfortable as their silence lingered. Horace had trouble summoning the degree of anger and hatred he thought he should feel toward him.

  When they reached the security level, Horace was surprised to find it no longer bustling with dozens of people. He expected to see workers scurry toward his father to speak with him or point something out. Instead, the workers mostly ignored them until an ugly, squat man rushed toward Samuel.

  “Wait here,” Samuel told his son.

  Horace watched his father pull aside the other man, whose eyes narrowed as he turned from one Jonas to the other. Samuel muttered to him quietly. His exact words didn’t reach Horace’s ears, but his angry tone did. The security guard eventually stomped away and Samuel waved Horace toward a tiny corner of the room.

  “Time to take out one of the drones,” Samuel said, finding an empty work station that possessed the proper equipment.

  Horace glanced toward the far end of the room, where the private workstations were located.

  “We’re not going to your office?”

  Samuel glanced up, his jaw clenching as he shook his head. “I don’t spend as much time in here as I used to. I volunteered my old office for some of the other workers.”

  Horace lowered an eyebrow, sensing there was more to the story than his father admitted. Samuel donned the flight goggles and a holographic image arose from the workstation, showing him select a drone (but not after finding many of them with large red Xs through them, as well as some of the long-range drones silhouetted with the message “Unavailable to this User” written beneath them). Samuel flew the drone through its hangar bay and out of The Mountain, the image quickly plunging into the snowy whiteness of the outside world.

  Horace watched the empty world pass beneath the drone. At one point, he spotted several people on the ground beyond The Mountain, but he realized they weren’t moving, some of them partially covered in snow already. Horace had assumed this fate for his kidnappers, but he’d never hoped to see what happened to them. Still, he couldn’t avert his eyes and was glad when the drone soared past them moments later.

  The next few minutes passed in silence. Horace began to wonder if his father had flown off course and was heading somewhere into the White Nothingness. But the silhouette of the first ISU eventually appeared through the shadow of the snowstorm and Samuel lowered the drone for a closer inspection of the ground. He slowed the drone until the holographic footage came in perfectly clear.

  At first, no villagers were to be found. Horace’s stomach sank and he imagined Carla being torn to shreds by one of the beasts that his father created; worse, he imagined Carla turning into one of those beasts.

  “There,” Samuel whispered.

  Seconds later, the first villager appeared. Horace only felt slightly better to see the person—if that’s what he or she still is, he thought—moving around, apparently focused on the ISU. The farther the drone travelled, the more villagers appeared to be outside. It didn’t surprise Horace to see people out and about, but they no longer huddled around in groups. Instead, the villagers seemed focused on their ISUs, many of them atop their roofs, changing solar panels or sections of greenhouse glass.

  “So?” Samuel asked. “Is this better than things have been?”

  Horace frowned, though his father couldn’t see it within his goggles. He also didn’t mention how everyone looked calmer, that the village looked orderly, just like it had been when he’d first arrived at ISU-Ville. As the drone proceeded farther into the village, one thing stood out to Horace more than the general calm that had been restored. As his eyes scanned from one villager to the next—desperately trying to find Carla among the people—Horace noticed many of them no longer wore their hoods pulled high over their heads. He even spotted a few villagers who’d abandoned their parkas altogether.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Horace muttered. “It’s freezing out there, even with a coat on. They’re going to freeze to death.”

  He finally looked at his father, watching a smile form below his goggles.

  “Not if their body composition has changed,” Samuel said.

  He lowered the drone until it hovered a few feet above the nearest ISU. Several villagers spotted it and waved, but their waves didn’t seem to indicate panic. Horace couldn’t remember the last time his fellow villagers acted so friendly to a hovering drone.

  “Adjusting camera,” Samuel said. “Take notice to any differences. I’m sure Dr. Weller will want to know about them.”

  The drone’s camera zoomed in on the villager atop the nearest ISU. Horace knew this wasn’t the section of village where Carla lived, but he was still upset it wasn’t her. Once he got over that initial disappointment, he recognized the face of the villager. . . sort of. The older man was one of many villagers that had spent most of his time outside, huddled around with others, complaining about The Mountain and the Jonas family and the lack of supplies and leadership dooming them all. But now the older man wore no parka and smiled as he stared up at the drone, waving with one hand while holding a solar panel in the other.

  “He should need both hands to carry that,” Horace said.

  “Increased strength,” Samuel said. “And was his face always that puffy? His clothes always that tight?”

  Horace shook his head. “Nobody’s been eating as well as they once did. Most of the villagers’ clothes have been hanging off their bodies recently, certainly not as tight as that man’s. And what’s that near the side of his face. . . and near the side of his neck. . . and his hands. . .”

  Horace moved his hands closer to the holographic camera footage, spreading them apart to enlarge the image. His brow furrowed and he took a step back, certain of what he was seeing.

  “Tufts of white hair,” he said. “Just like the beast from before.”

  Samuel shook his head. “Similar to the beast, but not nearly as much. We expected some degree of fur growth to provide another layer of protection from the cold. Doesn’t seem to be bothering that man; doesn’t seem to be bothering any of them.”

  The drone rose higher into the sky and soared above ISU-Ville, where they found a similar scene of calm among the villagers. The Jonas ISU remained underground, but villagers no longer crowded around the empty space where it normally stood. Horace held his breath as the drone approached the far end of the village, but he saw no sign of Carla outside and her family’s ISU was no longer above ground. He wanted to ask his father to keep the drone hovering in place, but he had no idea how long Carla and her mother would remain beneath the surface.

  “Looks like a positive first day to me,” Samuel said, banking the drone to take another pass over the village.

  “Hopefully it stays like that for a long time,” Horace said, unable to shake the feeling that ISU-Ville—and Carla’s life—had improved immediately after he’d left.

  ONE YEAR LATER

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Twelve months after the villagers volunteered to be injected, morale remains high in ISU-Ville and we’ve seen a return to the success of their world similar to the first days my father lived outside,” Samuel announced. “The people living there. . .”—several snorts erupted around the table, none louder than Martin LeRoque’s—“. . . have banded together to share supplies once horded by so few. Our drones haven’t de
tected further ISU malfunctions and we’ve seen no gang formations or takeover attempts at any of the supply bunkers. It’s safe to say the Blast experiments have been proven an overwhelming success.”

  Samuel looked at the faces of the men and women sitting around the boardroom’s table. Many wore satisfied smiles or nodded their approval; even Betty Van Horn appeared impressed with the Jonas elder at the head of the table and Jason Nickal gave a big thumbs-up.

  “Success? More like a waste of Blast resources if you ask me,” Martin grumbled.

  “I’m afraid,” Samuel began, not bothering to hide the smug smile creeping across his lips, “that nobody did ask you. But the Hybrid Blast could be easily reproduced in the labs for our use, if the need ever arose.”

  “And the deaths?” asked a voice in the corner.

  Samuel turned his head just slightly, his top lip curling. He quickly regained control of himself and returned his gaze to The Board, to whom he flashed his winningest smile.

  “The Hybrid Blast is still considered our backup plan as Dr. Weller continues his research into the—”

  “The boy had an interesting question,” Martin interrupted, his face aglow with anticipation. “What about those deaths?”

  “Well,” Samuel said, swallowing hard as he avoided turning to Horace, “yes, we had two villager deaths in the last year. Nothing we could do about that.”

  “Two isn’t that many,” Betty said. “The Mountain lost more people than that this year, and even one or two from natural causes. Losing two villagers—especially considering the worsening weather—isn’t bad at all.”

  Martin usually reserved his glares for Samuel, but he aimed one toward his former ally this time. Betty noticed and gave a small shrug. Martin leaned back in his chair, defeated. Samuel opened his mouth to change the subject but Horace stepped forward.

  “Is nobody going to speak about how those two villagers died?” he asked. “Is nobody going to question the violence of the fight between them that ended in both of their deaths?”

  Martin leaned forward again, placing his elbows on the table as he looked to Samuel for answers. Samuel tried not to grimace at his son and instead turned to Dr. Weller, as if he might want to jump in with an explanation. But Nigel shrugged, continuing his propensity to avoid giving bad news to The Board. Samuel’s distaste for the scientist grew deeper every time he saw him.