Broken Mirror: Apophis 2029

by Michel Savage

  He could hear Haiti and Beatrice bickering with one another as their ethnic friend argued the question as to how they were supposed to subdue that creature with only a single pistol between them. The old woman suggested they should use the recycler as a distraction. The sad fact was, they really didn't have a clue what to do after getting that monstrosity past the bulkhead doors to the bottom level if they couldn't lock the doors and entrap it and hope it would fall into the recycler. Thorn was starting to get nervous about their choices, and didn't relish the idea of being torn limb from limb like a rag doll.

  "Well, it looks like this is going to be a one way trip," Kane smirked, noting Thorn’s hesitation, "I would assume you're going to need my help on this one, young man," he added with a crass undertone as he held up his bound hands to have them untied by his captor.

  Thorn pondered his choices for the moment and finally untied the General, who rubbed his wrists as a wry grin grew upon his thin lips. While Haiti and Beatrice squabbled about a course of action over the speakers, their verbal quarrel slowly died down and they promptly brought up a schematic upon the video panel in front of the two men. One of the split screens showed the security camera footage of the hulking creature wandering down into the refuse chamber.

  "We just turned on the recycler drum. You need to get down there and somehow blockade the stairway to keep that thing trapped within that chamber, or lure it into the recycler," Beatrice advised curtly.

  "Betty, what are we supposed to do in there; politely ask it to jump into the grinder?" Kane added with sarcasm.

  "Don't you have any real firearms stored somewhere down here we could use to kill this thing?" Thorn inquired, "Where did you put our weapons? We could go grab those and try to put a few holes in its ugly head," he finished, satisfied with the logic of his proposal.

  "Almost all of the lethal weapons are locked up on the depository, a level above the control room, and our head of security is the only one with the key," Kane replied from behind him, "we don't allow the residents to carry anything harmful to themselves or others."

  "...Or to your authority," Thorn snapped back. Kane just rolled his eyes in response to the allegation, further agitating his opinion of the old bastard.

  Thorn wanted to suggest that Haiti secure their weapons from storage, and have is friend run them down to their location; but he actually didn't like the idea of leaving that devious old woman in the control room unsupervised. He could just imagine all the hassle she could cause in their effort to escape if left to her own devices. Thorn started to realize his own mortality in a way he hadn't felt before. Walking into a dead end chamber with nothing more than a few non-lethal shock bullets against something as powerful and unpredictable as that overgrown mutation started to pass the very fringe of outright stupidity.

  Back near the auditorium, Caitlin had made her way through several blind corridors searching for any survivors that hadn't found their way to the central cafeteria. Many of the residents were duly hysterical, having been shielded from the horrors that had mercifully passed them by over the past several years. Frankly, Caitlin was wondering how these people would adjust to the harsh life and psychological shock that was waiting for them on the surface, in comparison to what they had become accustomed too deep below ground. She turned around when she heard someone calling her name from an open room.

  "Caity!" a familiar voice echoed, "In the room to your left," the voice instructed. Cautiously wandering into the room she found Haiti's excited face peering at her through one of the video screen posters embedded on the wall. "We tracked your location on the security system monitors, and this was the nearest console," Haiti explained.

  "Where is everyone," I asked, "were Thorn and Kane able to trap that creature?"

  "Not yet," he answered with a sour look, "that thing ripped off the damn doors to the recycling chamber. It appears that everyone who is left alive has assembled at the cafeteria near the restricted access doors and ready to go. They are all look'in mighty worried too," he finished as Beatrice came into view of the camera.

  "We need you to guide the residents to the elevator," Betty mentioned.

  "Can't you just open the access doors to it from the control room and let them through?" I inquired. Betty fiddled for a moment at the control board and glanced back with an annoyed look on her face.

  "It's appears as if the automated lock has been manually disabled. There is a backup switch to engage it again on the bottom level," Beatrice replied.

  "Can't you reach Thorn or Kane, and have them do it?" Caitlin asked, shaking her head at the logic of the situation. Why hadn't Beatrice mentioned this earlier?

  "I just tried to reach them both, but they aren't answering. It appears they are already in the processing chamber, and we don't want to further antagonize that monster or allow it to get out again," the old woman answered. Caitlin shook her head again at the irony of the situation. They had just directed a rampaging mutant into the one chamber that held a reset switch vital for their escape.

  "...Hmm, fantastic," I muttered under my breath.

  "The problem is, there is only one console in that chamber and if we use the communications to reach them it could very well attract the creature to their presence," Betty admitted, "and we can't risk the chance of it damaging the junction box that resets the security doors." Unfortunately, this put Caitlin in the uncomfortable position of having to intervene.

  "You have to go down there, lass," Haiti budged into the camera view for a brief moment at the old woman's noted annoyance. After he fell away, Beatrice came back into focus.

  "We directed you to this residential room because it was the private chambers of our head of security, who keeps an emergency weapon under lock in there." Betty advised.

  "Are you sure he didn't already take it with him," I asked as I scanned the room around me, finally finding a weapons locker tucked within the wall.

  "Fortunately for us, it appears our officer in chief was one of the first victims of the attack," Beatrice mentioned as a flash from the security footage showed the individual she was speaking of left in a blood-spattered mess painting the floor and walls of the ballroom, with his left arm missing from its crumpled torso.

  "Unfortunate for him, I'd say," Haiti's voice butted in over the microphone.

  "One moment," Betty commented "...the log file shows that there should be a spare keycard located under the drawer of his desk. That should open the weapons locker."

  Searching under the desk, I found the key snugly fitted into a hidden plastic sleeve and removed it. It took me a moment to find the magnetic slot where the card fit in, and popped the lock. Wary of how useful this card might be, I slipped it into my pocket. The weapon nestled inside was huge, a bit on the side of overkill.

  It was a Centurion IV military grade ion blaster. These things were one of the latest phases of weapons technology. Instead of crude bullets that relied on an internal combustion shell to deliver a projectile, this used electrically charged laser light to deliver a pulse of energy. Honestly, I was afraid to pick it up, not knowing what its capabilities were or the kick it might have.

  The small white lettered operational instructions printed on its side were obnoxiously curt and mostly what I would consider gibberish. All I cared about was where the safety button was and how much ammo it had. I discovered a power switch that gave a satisfying hum when I flipped it on, but the glowing red readout on the edge of the scope meant nothing I could decipher; leading me to guess that it must have been made by a foreign manufacturer.

  "Where is this recycle chamber?" I inquired while turning back to the screen with the enormous sleek black weapon in my hands. Haiti's eyes widened for a moment when he got a glimpse of the gun, and then the screen brought up a diagram of the floor plan to the lower floors. Two levels down I found the access stairs and hall that skirted the tree nursery that Beatrice had showed me on our first tour. I headed out the hall and swiftly made my way towards the basement.

 
Kane and Thorn literally tiptoed their way down into the bottom level, occasionally freezing in place every time they heard a loud crash or metallic crack" echoing up the stairwell.

  "So, what's the plan, hero?" Kane pried, with what would have passed for sarcasm if he hadn't been so serious.

  "Is that the recycler?" Thorn asked the old man, referring to the loud mechanical hum that filled the air ahead of them; expecting that the General would recognize sound.

  "Could be," he paused in response, "I have no reason to come down here where the staff does their dirty work," he blurted. Thorn rolled his eyes to Kane's obvious insult of the shelter residents, as if they were merely serfs to the Emperor of Fallhaven. The two men reached the landing; it opened to a deep chamber of tightly knit pipes and vents. Stretched along either wall was a metal grill of floor plates, which hovered above a mass of conduit that filled a wide canal. Here and there, a tangle of pipes wove up from the central canal to their mated sockets in the ducts high overhead.

  Thorn though he saw something move among the layers of pipes at the far end of the chamber, and motioned for Kane to keep quiet as he ducked down next to the recycler. The processor was a massive mulching machine. It appeared to be an enormous rolling pin armed with layers of teeth married to a similar smaller cylinder. Anything going into it; was guaranteed not to come out in one piece. The deadly machine was mottled with streaks of rust and swathed with blotted stains from its years of overuse; it was truly a haunting monstrosity of marred and blemished steel.

  An inhuman grunt spurred the men to take cover as they wondered just how they were going to taunt the creature into the crusher. Recalling that this lumbering beast had been biologically engineered, Thorn began to wonder if there was a remote chance that the creature might be more intelligent than everyone had presumed. Normally, contaminated individuals had varying degrees of reaction to the virus, though it was usually the astute ones that ended up being the most dangerous and unpredictable. Some weepers lost all their sensibilities and incapacitated to even turn a simple doorknob. In most cases, it was usually that short period between initial infection and full turn of the illness that they were the most erratic.

  Thorn chewed on the thought that this oversized mutant might not be as mentally disabled like most weepers tended to be, then they were certainly in for a world of hurt. They had managed to lure it down to the bottom level through trickery of the speaker system and its attraction to forms of noise; but after getting a glimpse of the true size and weight of this behemoth, Thorn realized that their plan was probably futile. There was no way they could physically knock it from the platform into the teeth of the recycler; and since the doors to the processor room had been mangled, there was no way to imprison it down here. They had had to figure some other way to put this thing down.

  "There's a ramp lever on the far side that lowers the rail," Kane whispered to his captor, while pointing at the inset panel to their far right where there was a spacious nook in the block wall, "one of us needs to engage it."

  Thorn considered Kane's plan for a brief moment, figuring the kinetics were in favor of getting the beast to fall into the loading belt rather than getting it to flip over the safety rail.

  "I'll trigger it; you stay here and keep it in sight," the General suggested. With a note of hesitation, Thorn let Kane call the shots, since the control board he was pointing to looked more complicated than just a simple switch. Nodding towards the old man, he signaled him to make his move towards the wall as they crouched below the level of the rail while the creature lurched around the maze of pipes at the far end of the room, grunting in anger over the loud hum of the spinning grinder.

  The giant beast heaved itself onto the center walkway and began making its way towards their position. Thorn motioned Kane to hurry while he kept his eyes on the approaching monstrosity. It then occurred to him that something was amiss, regarding what advice the General had so casually mentioned just moments before. If he had never been down here before, how would Kane know that there was a lever that activated the guardrail in that niche? Glancing back towards the panel, he saw Kane slip in the alcove and disappear like a proverbial snake in the grass. Rushing over to the nook, Thorn just caught the panel door closing from a secret door beyond.

  "Bastard!" Thorn blurted as he hit the panel with the butt of his gun in aggravation, regretting his lack of judgment for having trusted Kane in that idle moment. Thorn shortly came to realize the level of that mistake, as his errant clamor caught the attention of their unwelcome guest lumbering towards him. The beast pushed its way through the bent pipes that groaned and hissed in its wake, its loud footsteps coming closer to where he hid in the recess.

  Beyond the false door, Kane made his way to the secondary reserve control room that had been his destination the entire time, and entered the security passcode while Thorn had been distracted by the creature. With a smug grin he plopped into the console chair in the shelter's backup control room, and flipped the power on, bringing up the security cameras in the recycler room outside. Kane switched on the intercom as the monster heaved its way towards Thorn, who was now trapped in the small alcove on the other side of the door.

  "I suggest that you release your weapon to my cohort, young man," Kane stated with a grim stare to Haiti over the camera that he brought up on his monitor, which was now connected to the main control room where Beatrice was being held. Haiti looked a bit shocked for a brief moment, as they were both viewing the same feed from the Recycle chamber where Thorn was but a moment away from imminent death.

  At that point, a shrill tone pierced the air over the line and the enraged beast ceased its rampage and slowly turned deliriously docile. Kane took his hand off the button on his console and the tone ceased as the creature's mood resumed; and it once again began to advance on Thorn who was aiming his stun gun at the creature. Once again, Kane activated the tone and the mutant went limp; proving beyond all doubt that he had control over the creature's response.

  "I wouldn't shoot it if I were you," Kane advised Thorn over the PA system, who nervously twitched his gun, "you can't stop it with that, let alone harm it. You'll only get yourself killed," he stated firmly with his usual arrogant undertone, "That was a modulating resonance you heard, which is digitally encoded to control these engineered mutations. It only works for a short while, so I suggest that you do as I say," he warned Haiti, who took but a few seconds to release his console over to Betty's control, having disarmed her captor.

  "I have his weapon now, General. Are we activating plan B?" Beatrice inquired.

  "I believe that would be the best option, considering the current circumstances," he pondered with a raised brow, "this isn't the most optimal timing, but we have no other choice. Go ahead and release the shaft," Kane ordered.

  Back in the main control room, Haiti sat in the corner as the old woman held the gun on him while activating the console. It was now clear to the islander that the secret secondary control room Kane was using had been previously erased from the base schematics, which is why they never noticed it before sending his friend down there.

  It would make sense that an astute mind like Kane's would have a contingency plan in place. He certainly had enough time down here to arrange one, and had pulled it off right under their noses. Over the com, Kane ordered Thorn to drop his weapon and to move out towards the door, reminding him that Haiti was now their hostage. Not fully realizing where Caitlin was at in the complex, he had assumed she was with the survivors at the evacuation shaft.

  "Wait a minute woman. Are you tell'in me that you let all those poor people getting killed when you could've stopped that creature at any time you wanted?" Haiti blurted out in a mixture of astonishment and disgust, while Betty waved her gun at him with one hand while busily enacting a backup protocol on the control console.

  "Shut up!" She snapped back while activating commands on the screen, "...And no, we couldn't access our auxiliary control room which overrides of the system; it only works o
ne way," she stated with a hint of guilt, "the mutations were groomed to respond to an embedded signal while in status, which is far above the capacity of normal human hearing. There was only one such accelerator beacon that we had in stock, so we decided to keep it secured in the spare chamber."

  "Accelerator beacon?" Haiti blurted aloud, "like some sort'a dog whistle to train them?"

  "Yes, something ...something like that," she babbled back in haste, as she activated the surface lift.

  A grinding deep within the structure could be felt through their feet as the stairways of the main shaft collapsed into the walls and the doors unlocked to the evacuation chamber. Survivors who had gathered in the main cafeteria rushed towards the opening gates to a circular cell positioned at its center. The scared and wounded inhabitants of Fallhaven poured into the chamber, carrying what they could; guided by the old automated system that instructed them to keep calm. Caitlin, however, was not with their group.

  General Kane was playing a dangerous game, but his plans for Fallhaven had gone awry. While they were all imprisoned within the bunker, he alone had maintained power and control. If everyone was duly released to the surface, there was nothing from keeping these discharged citizens from detaching from his command; since he could not possibly have enough loyal guardsmen that could act as a substitute for these thick shelter walls. Their freedom was not exactly in his best interests.

  Contemplating that, he made an executive decision and prompted a fallback program set on a timer before exiting the secondary control room, one that was untraceable to the main control chamber where Beatrice was. He detached the accelerator beacon from the console. It was a small cylinder with a battery drive which he could hold in one hand; knowing he had only moments to get back outside the vault door. He could see Thorn waiting for him at the stairwell entrance on the security feed.

  With a new wave of confidence, Kane released the panel hatch and picked up the gun were Thorn had laid it down. The mutant stirred briefly after the tone had ceased blaring over the intercom, but resumed its tone from the General's hand as he held it aloft like a singing torch towards the monstrosity. The mutant quaked in response, reacting as if it had been drugged. Kane kept the pistol pointed at Thorn, while glancing behind him with his beacon held back in the other direction to keep the creature at bay. It was the briefest of moments that it took Caity to step in from behind Thorn, the sleek centurion rifle in hand, aiming it at Kane, who reacted by wavering his paltry gun at them both.