by J. L. Lyon
Do not send reinforcements. No survivors.
22
301 STRODE THROUGH THE Silent Thunder compound, the melancholy aftermath of battle nearly overwhelming him as he surveyed the carnage. The Great Army had arrived first on the scene, and the chaos rained down upon the compound had spread throughout the entire city block. The worst, however, had fallen here at the epicenter.
Smoke still rose from the weapons of Great Army soldiers, both living and dead, as the former continued to sweep the compound for survivors. Spectral Gladii lay humming in the hands of their lifeless owners, whose bodies were most often cast before the fallen forms of unarmed women and children. The scenes left little to the imagination as to what had transpired.
“No restraint,” 301 shook his head, turning to Derek. “No mercy, no honor, and no humanity. Did all of these people deserve this, Derek? Is this justice?”
“Justice has nothing to do with it,” he replied. “This is about following orders. The Great Army is a machine of death, Captain. This is what they do.”
“And if we had gotten here first?”
“Then you would be dead,” Donalson said from behind them. 301 faced the entrance of the compound’s main gathering room—a sort of makeshift lobby—as the grand admiral approached them. “No room for restraint and sympathy in war, gentlemen. If you had arrived first there would be eight more bodies and just as much work for my men. Though I can’t say either of you would be missed.”
301 balled his hands into fists, but he had long since learned that any response to the grand admiral’s taunts was nothing but a waste of breath. “What of the children? Have you found them?”
Donalson gestured around cruelly, “I see many children, Specter Captain. The promise to bring them back was yours, not mine. The only traitors still living now wait in the compound’s meeting room and will join their comrades soon.” He grinned. “You’re welcome to search among them for your quarry, but I wouldn’t set your hopes too high.” He left them and walked back into the lobby, headed for the meeting room.
301 spared an aggravated glance for his partner before following. If there was any chance Elena Wilson’s children were still alive, he had to know. He had made her a promise and he intended to keep it, if he was able. But how many lives did that promise cost? He wondered. How many other children died because he convinced her to tell him about this compound?
Their blood would forever stain his hands.
They arrived in the meeting room to find six prisoners kneeling with their hands bound above their heads. Two Great Army soldiers aimed assault rifles in their direction, their faces as merciless as stones. Only one of the prisoners was a child, and at sight of his dark hair 301 knew he was not Elena Wilson’s son. The rest looked to have resisted capture to some degree. One man might not survive the night even if he didn’t face the firing squad.
Donalson began barking questions as soon as he entered, but 301 could see from the prisoners’ faces that there would be no answers. They were prepared to die. He stole a glance at the little boy and did a double-take. It was Eli, kneeling with the others, hands on his head, staring at 301 with a look of utter terror. His mouth opened and he mouthed the words, Help me.
“Captain,” Specter Marcus diverted his attention briefly as he entered the room from a side entrance, and when 301 looked back at the kneeling figures he saw only five. Eli had gone.
“What is it, Marcus?” he asked.
Marcus moved closer to them and gave the Great Army soldiers in the room a suspicious glare before answering, “We may have a lead on the main Silent Thunder compound.”
An image of Grace lying dead like those in the hall flashed briefly through his mind, but he shook it off. “Tell me.”
“The rebels made their last stand in a room they set up as a communications hub,” Marcus whispered. “I spoke to a soldier who survived the struggle, and he thinks they managed to send out a signal of some sort before being subdued. But I checked with the Halo-4s monitoring this block, and they report no broadcasts of any kind over the airwaves.”
“Are you certain the signal was sent?” 301 asked. “Perhaps they didn’t have time.”
“It was sent and uploaded to the communications log along with the tagline terminal frequency. We attempted to make another broadcast to trace its destination, but the hub is either damaged or highly encrypted. We haven’t been able to figure out how to send anything.”
“What about RF signals?” Derek asked.
Marcus shook his head, “The hub doesn’t appear to have that capability. That leaves only one possibility.” He paused and sighed, as though he knew they weren’t going to take him seriously. “They must have been using Quantum Comms.”
Derek let out a short laugh, but stopped when he saw Marcus was not joking. “Quantum Comms,” he repeated flatly. “Devices that broadcast through space-time.”
“Don’t look at me like that!” Marcus spat. “Listen, after Doctor Ryder’s disappearance from the Weapons Manufacturing Facility, Admiral McCall had me look over the facility’s inventory. Quantum Comms were listed. The rebellion could have stolen them before setting off that bomb, covering up the theft!”
“Quantum communication is just an outlandish theory,” Derek said. “What you saw on the inventory must have been part of a research project, but I assure you that kind of technology does not exist. And even if it did, these rebels would not know how to incorporate it into their communications hub.”
“Then what’s your theory, Blaine?” Marcus asked defensively.
“You go immediately to the most complicated solution,” Derek said. “When faced with a problem, you should consider the easiest solution first. They aren’t broadcasting by air, so that leaves…?”
Marcus shrugged his shoulders, prompting Derek to sigh and shake his head in annoyance, “Landlines. Every compound must be connected by communications cables, presumably underground. If we find the cable, it will lead us to their main base…and Grace Sawyer.”
Derek aimed his last words at 301, but the Specter Captain did not acknowledge them. If Derek was right, and the rebels communicated by a landline that could lead them straight to their base, then not only would the blood of these people stain his hands, but the blood of hundreds more…one of them the woman he loved. But there was nothing he could do to stop it—he could only hope Derek was wrong.
“There is a hatch in the main lobby,” Marcus nodded. “We think that’s how they travel between compounds, using the tunnels beneath the city. It may even be how they got in to begin with. If there is a landline that’s where I think we might find it.”
“Blaine and I will go,” 301 said. “I need you to start looking through the bodies of the rebels, see if you can identify Elena Wilson’s children. Get a couple of the others to help you, then get out of the way so the Great Army’s cleaners can do their job.”
“Understood, Captain.”
301 and Derek returned to the lobby, catching sight of the hard iron hatch that stood open in the back corner of the room. The light cast that corner in shadow, shielding the hatch from view. On his first trip through the room 301 hadn’t even noticed it.
They stepped over the dead as they made their way to the hatch, and 301 peered down into the deep darkness of the underground. He expected a poignant stench, but all he got was a whiff of stale air. “These aren’t the sewers?”
“No,” Derek shook his head. “Subway tunnels I expect, from where we are on the city grid. A primary form of transportation in the Old World...largely abandoned, now. The System still uses some to transport supplies, but no passengers.”
301 nodded. The majority of those living in any of the world’s surviving cities had unlikely ever visited another. Those that had may not recognize them now, as every city had changed significantly since the Persian Resurgence and the World System’s subsequent rule. Transportation from city to city was forbidden without explicit orders from the hierarchy, and even transportation within a
city was tightly controlled, situated above ground where darkness could not serve as an ally.
“Clever,” Derek nudged the hatch with his toe. “This would look like any other manhole cover from below, and if someone tried to open it they would just assume it had been sealed, and move on. No one ever sees them come and go, or even knows they’re here at all.”
“They aren’t here,” 301 said absently. “Not anymore.” He grabbed hold of the ladder and set his foot down on the first rung. “Got a light?”
Derek pulled two light rods from his weapons belt and tossed him one, “ You never come prepared for anything, do you?”
“Don’t have to,” 301 replied, switching on the light rod and casting its eerie white glow down into the tunnel below. “Not when I have a partner who is prepared for everything. Face it, Derek: you’re an overachiever.”
Derek shrugged, “When everyone around you just watches continually for your next mistake, you learn quickly to never fail. That’s what it means to be a Blaine.” He spoke the last statement with a mixture of pride and regret, taking 301 back to their conversation about his mother. Knowing about the Blaines’ darkest secret helped him understand his partner better, but it was proof that Derek would never understand the doubts creeping into his mind about the World System. “Let’s get this over with. I don’t want to spend a moment longer than necessary in this tomb.”
301 nodded and descended the ladder into the underground, the shifting light of the rod in his hand unveiling an Old World marvel by the time his feet met solid stone. The tunnel was wider in the section he descended into, and he saw the remains of a staircase off to the right, sealed off from the surface at some point during the wars. Where he stood looked to have been a platform of sorts, and there was a drop-off to reach the tunnel itself. Darkness spread in both directions, making it impossible to estimate the tunnel’s span. Miles, at least. He looked over the edge of the platform to see metal tracks, rusted to uselessness with age and disuse. But the tunnels themselves were sturdy enough. 301 doubted anything short of a bomb or an earthquake could shake the stone.
He heard Derek’s boots hit the ground and turned to see him examining the sight, no less amazed, “You can say one thing about the people of the Old World: they knew how to build things to make their lives easier. Too bad they didn’t spend a bit more time building a peaceful civilization.” He lifted the light rod over his head to get a look at the high ceiling, “We should split up and cover more ground. If there’s a landline it will be visible someplace close.”
“I’ll take this side,” 301 said. “You take the other.”
They parted ways, and the pools of light made by their rods each seemed weaker without the other. 301 lifted his high above his head, stretching toward the curved stone top of the tunnel where be believed he would have installed the line had it been him in that compound. But there was nothing. Not even a shadow moved across the stone, as it surely would have if a communications cable were present. He turned his attention to the columns, watching for anything unusual on their worn faces. Still nothing. He was beginning to consider the worth of Marcus’s Quantum Comm theory when something at the top of the sealed stairwell caught his eye.
Not a shadow—for it didn’t move with the shifting light—but not a solid object either, something black ran down in a perfect line from the ceiling all the way to the floor beside the stairwell. He moved in close and touched it with his fingers. The tips came away black, and he smelled them.
Ash.
And then he understood. The rebels who made their last stand were not trying to send a message, but to safeguard their comrades by destroying the line to their primary base. The line of ash was too perfect to have ended up there by chance. A small cable had once been attached there, and he suspected the black line would lead him right to the rebellion’s largest force. Lucky I found it, he thought. In this darkness it will be difficult to follow even now that I know it’s there.
A vision of the bodies upstairs, and of Grace among them, again flashed through his mind. If he revealed what he had found, many more would die—and regardless of whether it was his blade that slew them, every single life would be his responsibility. His was the mistake that led to all that death above, though he had to admit he was given little choice in the matter. But this time it was different. This time he could stop it.
“I’ve got nothing!” Derek called from the other side of the platform. “What about you? See anything?”
301 stared straight at the line of ash, knowing full well the cost if he was caught in a lie. Derek had left little to interpretation in that regard. But when he weighed the options in his mind and thought of living in a world without Grace, the choice was simple.
“No!” He called, already returning to the ladder. “Nothing here, either!”
He heard a curse echo through the tunnel, and as Derek came back into sight he shook his head, “I was sure there’d be—” His eyes widened suddenly, visible to 301 even though he was still several feet away, “Captain, behind you!”
But 301 had already detected the movement, a sense of change in the air that came with another’s presence. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a dart of shadow and a flash of steel, and he dropped the light rod and came round just in time to meet his attacker, stopping the hand that sought to plunge a knife into his neck. In an instinctual battle rage, he bent his assailant’s elbow and shoved the knife into the rebel’s chest instead.
It all happened in a split second, not long enough for 301 to register the stature of his opponent, the softness of the skin at both wrist and elbow, or the ease with which he made the final stab. By the time he did, it was already too late.
He stared with terror into the bright blue eyes of a girl no older than sixteen, who gazed back with a look of shock and pain. He withdrew the knife from her and threw it away from them, then knelt with her in his arms as she struggled to catch her breath. Her lungs were punctured, and she didn’t have much time.
As he watched her die, helpless to save her and wishing with all his being for the ability to turn back time, he suddenly became aware of someone else beside him. Eli sat to his right, watching the girl with intense sorrow. But then he reached out for her, brushing strands of platinum blonde hair out of her face. 301’s eyes widened as the girl seemed to respond to Eli, who had never before been able to impact the corporeal world.
“I’m sorry,” Eli said desperately. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know...” he paused, on the verge of tears. “What’s your name?”
The girl answered in a rasping whisper, “Kacie. My name is Kacie...Jordan.”
Eli reached forward and touched his finger to her forehead, then ran it softly down the bridge of her nose to the tip. It was a familiar gesture to 301, somehow, but he couldn’t quite place it. “Everything is going to be okay, Kacie,” Eli said. “Everything is going to be okay.”
She smiled briefly, but then her expression turned grave. “Please don’t tell. Please don’t...” She had no breath left to finish her plea, and within a few seconds that bright light in her eyes went out.
23
301 FELT HIMSELF TEETERING on the edge of panic. During his time as a soldier he had killed many men, and their faces still haunted him years after the fact. But all those men would gladly have killed him had he not done them in first. Never had a woman died by his hand...never a child. The seriousness of what he had done pressed down upon him until he felt he might be crushed by it. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. All he could do was look upon that vacant stare and despair.
Eli reached forward and closed her eyes, then turned his attention to 301, “You will carry her with you for the rest of your life.”
301 realized that Derek stood a few feet away, watching him with a wary eye. “She must have come through the hatch when the attack began, hoping to escape.”
301 nodded slowly, “Yeah...she must have.” But he knew the truth. She hadn’t been trying to escape at all. She had
been guarding the evidence of that burned out landline with the intent to kill anyone who found it. She had given her life to protect the rest of Silent Thunder.
No, he thought with great regret, I took her life. I stole it from her. I could have disarmed her, captured her, anything but what I did.
“It’s not your fault, you know,” Derek said. “She may be a young girl, but she would have killed you.”
Maybe. But maybe that’s what should have happened...maybe I’m the one who deserved to die.
“What was that...thing you did?” Derek asked.
301 looked up at his partner in confusion, “What thing?”
“You touched her forehead,” Derek demonstrated on his own, running his finger down to the tip of his nose. “Then you told her everything was going to be okay.”
Blood pounded in 301’s ears. He looked over to where Eli had been and saw nothing, but when he gazed upon Kacie’s lifeless face he saw something he had not marked before: a thin line of blood ran down from the center of her forehead to the tip of her nose. He raised his hand and saw it was covered in red—the hand that dealt her the final blow. But it hadn’t been him who made that gesture. It wasn’t him who told her everything would be okay. It was Eli, wasn’t it?
“I…” he stammered, taking a breath and wetting his dry throat. “I don’t know. I just thought she needed…comfort.” 301 stood to his feet, finally forcing himself to walk away from her body, “Come on. It’s a dead end down here. Maybe Marcus found something up there we can use.”
Derek continued to watch him suspiciously, but 301 didn’t care. All he wanted to do was get as far away from that girl as he could, wash his hands of her blood, and be done with it.
But every step he took to escape brought him that much more into captivity. Her face loomed before him, the pleading eyes of a girl on the cusp of life extinguished in a cruel final breath.
You will carry her with you for the rest of your life, Eli had said.