It really wasn't a pleasant experience being wedged together by the force of gravity while a gust of thick air suddenly roared through the vent below us. All three of us were a jumble of limbs and backpacks and gear and guns as we cried out in agony at every jolt on the way down. I saw a bright silver grate rimmed with light rush up to greet us from below, and just as suddenly shattering into pieces beneath our combined weight when we smashed through it. This unpleasant joyride was accompanied by a flash of blinding light and a loud crash as our sore bodies came to rest; and we laid there with the wind knocked out of us. It took a dragging moment to gather our bearings while all three of us were moaning in pain, until we realized one by one that we were no longer alone.
Dazed, I looked at the cold white gunk covering my hands, thinking I was somehow grotesquely injured, only to realize it appeared strangely like a crème filled bagel. Without even thinking, I gave it a lick to see if it was real. Haiti himself was headlong in a tray of biscuits with a dozen or so little sausages on toothpicks stuck throughout his dreads. In a nervous jitter, Thorn sat up and hastily brushed off tiny crab cakes covering chest almost as he imagined they were enormous bugs for a brief moment while in stunned disorientation.
In that second, it struck me that was the familiar scent of baked food I had smelled before, wafting its way up the exhaust vent of the air circulation system. It all made sense now; well, except for the dozens of people staring at us around the large room in utter silence with their mouths agape.
I couldn't think of anything to say in our defense for crashing their party, so I just gave a short wave and said 'Hello' in an tone of embarrassment as chunks of whipped crème flopped off my hand and into my lap. Several men in grey vestments rushed forward as a taller man with sandy grey hair nudged his way through the crowd before us. The wrinkles on his face didn't detract from the stone-like glare beneath his dark eyes. He wore an audaciously decorated white coat covered with a ludicrous amount of medals, making it look like it came from a costume shop more so than anything formally military.
"I believe you three weren't invited," he declared in a staunched tone with a heavy hint of accusation seeping into his words, and then promptly motioned to the guards in grey to cart us away to the murmur of the crowd around us. As we were hauled away by force, Thorn attempted a brief struggle, only to get himself zapped with a stun baton as a reward for his defiance. We were dragged out of a large hall that had been decorated into a hack attempt to resemble a ballroom, with each of the patrons present dressed in quite lavish if not entirely ridiculous garb. Many of the onlookers peered over one others shoulders just to get a look at us while they stared in disbelief. One thing was for sure; this was certainly a different world than the one we had left above.
I was hastily dumped into a small room as the door locked behind me, without a clue as to what had happened to Thorn or Haiti. Still in a state of confusion, I didn't have to wait very long until a older lady with wispy white hair stepped through my door with a cloth in her hands. She gave me a quick look up and down and handed me the towel.
"Here you go, dear. Clean yourself up," she said kindly, "that was a rough spill you took there. Are you alright; nothing broken?"
"Sorry about ...all that," I hesitated in reply, "we had no idea were we were or that anyone was down here," I mumbled as my shaken excuse while I checked my bruises from the fall. Lucky for us they weren't serving shish kabobs and hot oil fondue on that banquet table we had fallen onto.
"You will have to forgive the General, he is a bit eccentric and a little overzealous at times, considering we haven't had guests in a such a long while," she offered as an apology, "the guards didn't rough you up too much I hope?"
"No, I'm fine, Ma'am." I muttered politely.
"Ma'am? Oh, my, you are the proper one," the old lady smiled, "you can call me Beatrice, dear," she offered as she led me by the shoulder over to a seat in an adjacent room after waving her hand over a sensor board on the wall. The chamber beyond was lavish to say the least. Old style wood furniture decorated the area along with plush deep red velvet cushions. It was quite old fashioned, much like my host whose hair was neatly tied up into a bun.
"I was wondering about my friends..." I began to ask, but Beatrice quickly cut me off.
"They will be fine dear. The men were taken to a different section of the facility," she stated shortly, "but luckily for you, Kane left you in my company."
"Kane?" I inquired in my confusion to her reference.
"Oh, yes, General Kane; but he prefers his military title above personal mentions," she grinned as walked over and poured a hot cup of liquid from a dispenser set in the wall, giving it to me as she took a plate of breaded cookies from a shelf next to it. The aroma wafting from the steam was fantastic, finally recognizing the almost forgotten scent of orange tea. My mouth watered, I hadn't had hot tea in as long as ...well, as long as I could remember. I politely took a few of the spiced breads offered, trying not too appear too much like a ravenous animal while I devoured them in short order. Beatrice just sat there and looked at me for a few silent moments with what appeared as a measure of sympathy in her eyes.
"What is this place?" I finally had the gumption to ask as I wiped the crumbs from the corner of my mouth.
"You mean this facility?" she raised her hands and gestured over to a framed poster on the wall that had been used as an advertisement of some sort in the distant past, "It is, well, it was a fallout shelter of sorts; known as Fallhaven, but we just call 'Haven' for short," she answered while a notable darker look in her aging eyes flashed over her face for a brief second as she turned back to me, "And where do you come from, dear...?" she inquired, as to my own name.
"Cait, or Ciaty if you wish," I blurted back. Unwavering, she looked at me with a raise of her eyebrow, as incentive that she was still curiously somehow awaiting my full answer. "from the surface above Fallhaven ...I think," I uttered finally.
"You mean you're not sure?" she inquired with a jest.
"No, I mean we are from the surface but there was some sort of subway connection that took us here, and I'm not sure how far away that was," I tried to answer as best I could, though still a little fazed that she wouldn't know that. A slightly worried look washed over her face again, only to quickly fade with a practiced grace.
"Oh my, what a journey you must have had," Beatrice began to embellish to change the direction of the conversation, and I too wanted to avoid that subject; not knowing what they would do to us if they discovered we had fought our way through a horde of the infected after our arrival at the rail station. I could only hope Thorn and Haiti too, had the wisdom to keep their mouths shut and that obscure fact to themselves.
"We, um, then we made our way down a duct system until we ended up here," I quickly chimed in to draw her off the subject, as I realized I had to be more careful about what I said.
"Oh, I see..." the old woman trailed off for a moment, "lucky for you then, as a bunch of those diseased animals broke into the compound and we have been trapped down here because of them for quite some time now," she explained. Her words made sense now, revealing that was why there was a mass of Weeper's in the level above.
"You mean there is no other way out of here?" I asked with a hint of concern choking my voice.
"Oh, I believe there was at one time, but it's been so many years that some of this fancy machinery doesn't work anymore and other exits collapsed as a result from earthquakes. The General and his security staff keep us safe though, so don't worry your little head there, Caity," she smiled as she gave me a motherly tap on the head, and stood up to activate a button by the door. Shortly thereafter, another woman showed up, "Elise here will escort you too your guest room, which will be locked for the first few days of your stay, for your own safety of course," Beatrice noted with a dry smile as she motioned to the pale faced guide awaiting me at the inner door, "We have a lot of curious people here that will only hound you with questions. Be assured we will all finall
y get introduced when the time comes, so you have some time to get some proper rest, dear," she offered as I got up and was placed in the company of the chaperone who escorted me out into the hall and out of sight.
Moments after the door closed in the old woman's private chambers, the ornately framed poster of Fallhaven lit up and the image of General Kane blurred in through its display as Beatrice stood before it.
"So," the wrinkled face of the General asked with a raised brow, his dark penetrating eyes losing none of their effect over the flat screen, "do you think she bought it?" he inquired. In response, the old woman casually tilted her head with a look of numb disregard,
"Trust me, Kane; I know what I'm doing." she answered coldly as she nodded in assurance.
Masquerade
After exiting my hosts lavish quarters, I could not help but notice there were still a pair of guards clad in starched grey uniforms outside the door, blocking the hall entrance from whence my close comrades and I had been dragged in so unceremoniously. My escort, Elise, showed me to a private room after winding through a maze of halls, each section was color coded to distinguish their designated areas. While passing one corridor I got the brief glimpse of two workers scrubbing something like graffiti off the wall that I couldn't quite read in its entirety because they were standing in the way, my pause was noted by my chaperon who hastily turned me back on course towards our destination.
"May I ask about my friends?" I inquired.
"You will be reunited with them in due time, I would suggest that you be patient," Elise stated abruptly. At the end of a hallway I was pointed into a small room, observing at first glimpse that it had all the bare essentials and aesthetics of a cell. As stupid as it sounds, I was almost giddy to find a working toilet along with a sink and clean running water. Elise took a moment to demonstrate how to operate the sonic shower and where to dispose my current clothing and pointed over to the sanitary tan jumpsuit folded up on the counter they had left for me to wear. Following her stern guidance were instructions that my meals would be delivered to my room twice a day. After my escort left, I gave a glance around the room; noting that it was most likely my guest unit was bugged; but if there was a camera in the room, I had to admit they had done a damn good job of hiding it.
There was no way to open the door from the inside, so figured I would make the best of the situation by getting some overdue rest, but even that train of thought was difficult to accomplish as I kept worrying about what had happened to my companions. Likely, they were also being detained for a set timetable as a precaution to check us for signs of exposure to the MN4 virus, under the guise of our complimentary guest quarters, of course.
I noticed that there was also a similarly framed poster of Fallhaven shelter decorating the bare wall as the only form of decor in my room. It displayed a retro twist in the marketing design boasting the shelter as the place for "health & safety" and "all the conveniences of home" among other such highly inflated claims. Apparently, though, it was all legit; nobody could deny that this asylum had kept all their sorry asses alive and well down here while the rest of society fell apart at the seams in the world above.
I remembered seeing advertisements for places like this long ago, and it was common knowledge that they did not come cheap. Some very well to do families invested their entire life savings into reserving spots in these types of sanctuaries for their own children as an insurance measure rather than putting their kids through college. In hindsight, of course, some might agree it ended up as a damn wise investment.
I think it was back in the early 2020's that 3D and holographic gamers were the new surge in technology design. Most everyone alive had an alternate persona they rendered in the digital world. In most cases, overseas resource wars were purely fought with unmanned drones and robotic counterparts so there was little human-to-human contact on the battlefields. Unless of course, you were from a country that wasn't flush with such high-end technological advancements and military hardware, and their soldiers were forced into personal combat against a faceless enemy.
In my opinion, I thought it was a pretty chicken-shit method of combat by utilizing armed droids and bomber drones while sitting in a safe little room far out of harms way. Especially so since the worlds governments used the taxpayers funds to create these robotic innovations and entered into hostile incursions and initiated wars by invading and occupying foreign lands without any form of public approval, whatsoever.
That is where the hallowed gamer community came in. Most everyone knew that there was little privacy left in the real world and that tabs were being kept on everyone and everything from our bank accounts to copies of our digital messages sent across the net. Everything you did and said was analyzed or scrutinized by national security agencies or all-powerful corporations for marketing purposes. Everyone had their personal life monitored in either one fashion or another.
There were astonishing but believable rumors that surfaced every now and then from the media that supported those facts, but these rare occurrences were quickly snuffed silent and white-washed from existence. Every government on the planet abused their ability to cleanly snip public information from the net communications, as if it had never occurred; even people working in the field of media were far from candid about their jobs. It was a scary thought to think that everything said and done was being either scripted, censored or controlled to a certain extent. Any bad publicity about the questionable conduct of the Government or their military personnel were promptly drowned out with a landslide of misinformation.
More than once I remember hearing stories that the military industry created combat drones on such a grand scale that they began utilizing video games played on the net by the unwary public to service real-world war engagements. Nobody really believed it, but pretty much everyone knew a hardcore player who liked to brag about their stats, and there were also well paying prizes for those qualified to enter international contests who sought such highly skilled gamers.
I remember back when I was in college and reading recent historical data about how tens of thousands of people would endure unpleasant and hostile weather simply to watch a live sports game held within massive arenas, and they were frequently assigned so far out in the stands where they couldn't actually see crap. On top of it, the majority of the audience would actually pay enormous sums for seats to suffer abysmal conditions of blaring heat, rain or snow, just to watch a bunch of ghastly overpaid sports players who were usually pumped up to their eyeballs with steroids just to dink around with a ball? It sounded nuts to me, but the history records proved it happened.
It was a fad of the times to pay personal income just to watch a small group of idiots run around on a field to play a game; fortunately, our society had progressed past such idiocy. Sports were originally invented for personal fitness; and were actually a degree of healthy exercise and a bit of fun to play for the individual, but tedious and excessively boring to watch for those who were actually educated and cultured. Fundamentally, in our modern world, someone monitoring any type of sports as a spectator considered it about as entertaining as watching the participants exercise at a gym. Truly, it was boring as balls.
The fine line of friendly competition between schools, cities or countries was blurred when the tyrannical police state was introduced. Everyone had a much smaller picture back then of how the world actually worked, and patriotism was expected of all. Now that I think about it, I could imagine it was possible that combat programs could have been infused into real-world controllers through the gaming net, but nobody could truly believe mere rumors they read online ...could they?
The Gaming community evolved into a different shade than the nefarious social networks that were so popular at the time. The governmental departments of our paramilitary police could eavesdrop on personal communications over satellite; targeting virtually anyone. However, they seemed to be clumsy if not outright incapable of intercepting online games, where the social gaming communities passed inf
ormation and data among themselves in real time. It soon became clear that if government security agents were able to actually access and 'play' within digital arenas alongside other gamers, they would usually stick out like a sore thumb and were promptly booted from the privately owned servers.
Gamers further had their own identities hidden through server jumps and the virtual world soon became the only place where people could converse with confidentiality and without fear of reprisal. It soon expanded into a unique niche that outsmarted the government spooks. The nosey authorities that be, tried to counter this by creating their own gaming servers to entrap members into their web of surveillance with the lure of contests and valuable prizes; but most of us were too savvy to fall for that ruse.
Like an idiot, I had no idea that that poster on the wall was a communication and surveillance device until three days later when it suddenly blinked onto another background and Beatrice was there to greet me on its screen. I was so startled I jumped.
"Good morning Caity," she gleamed as the lights in my room began to gently lighten, proving she had control of environmental conditions in my cement cage, "I hope you've caught up on your rest. A brief excursion has been planned for you today, please be ready in fifteen minutes to meet the Director." she smiled at me through the screen, giving momentary pause as if awaiting my reply, but I was too dumbfounded to say anything until after the screen switched to the countdown of a clock, giving me barely fourteen minutes to prepare myself.
I had washed my clothes by hand in the sink days before and set them out to dry. Against the escorts repeated requests that I place my old attire the disposal whenever they brought my meals, though I noted that she never once made a move to actually touch them, nor me for that matter, which confirmed my suspicions that I had been held here for quarantine observation. Regardless, I donned the placid tan jumpsuit they had furnished and tucked away my old clothes in a dark corner behind the counter beyond line of site from view-screen.
Broken Mirror: Apophis 2029 Page 10