NANO Archive 01: The City of Fire

by Jason Crutchfield

  An infinitesimally soft beep barely reached the edge of Ihlia's hearing. She instinctively glanced in the direction of the phantom noise with an understandable “hm?” As Ihlia carefully maneuvered around the electrocapacitor plate, a tiny black box rested atop a pair of yellow cylinders fastened to the allegedly dangerous machine. The digital display of the black box clearly portrayed a timer counting down from five minutes.

  “Bradich, sir! Explosives! The facility is rigged to blow!” The young sniper snapped her head toward the commander, who rushed over to take a look. The two scientists, without skipping a beat, continued the finishing touches on their data collection.

  “Shit. It's a small explosive, but it'll take out this room and the nearby area. If they've got the whole place rigged then we don't have much time. These bombs don't pack much punch alone, but you never set one by itself. Ever. Donovan, Oswald, hurry up we have to get out of here.” Bradich hastily rushed to the door.

  “Conventional explosives. I wonder why they simply did not initialize the reactor self-destruct sequence. That explosion would vaporize the surrounding area far more efficiently and leave far less mess in its wake. How thoughtless,” Oswald mused.

  “Reactor self-destruct sequence?” Bradich looked toward his brother.

  “All laboratories have them these days. Research data in the field of nanites is more precious than all the wealth you could imagine. If a laboratory is compromised, overloading the reactors guarantees that any on-site data is lost. We don't put the data on the N-3 until we're sure of its use and have it mapped out properly. While in its research phases like the labs in Egypt, it's all classified. Privateer or not, if you're caught uploading data to the N-3, it's grounds for immediate execution.” Donovan pressed a few more buttons; a series of beeping noises and symbols flashed across the holocom terminal at which he worked.

  “What are the chances they've done that as well as set the structural explosives?” Bradich asked impatiently.

  “Slim,” responded Oswald, “the reactor explosion would be more than sufficient to demolish the immediate area. It won't blow things up a mile away, but the chain reaction is designed to wipe the lab and all its research from the face of the earth. There's no need for structural charges when you do that. I would assume they did not possess the proper initialization codes to do it themselves and killed everyone in the lab before forcefully acquiring them.”

  “They must have swept in, took the place by storm, copied the data, then set the charges. Although it makes little sense; the encryption to obtain a laboratory's data is no more complicated than the initialization sequence to self-destruct the reactors. Something is terribly off,” Oswald's rambles did not cease him from pressing the final few keys on his own designated holocom terminal.

  “We can worry about that later! There's no time!” Donovan called out as the holocom beeps ended in a flashing symbol. The holocom hissed, and the blue projection image vanished. “Excellent! We're done! All right, let's get out of here!”

  “Right, move out! Ihlia, cover the rear, I'll take point. Donovan, get this door open. We're operating on a fixed time limit here, let's go, go, go!” Bradich motioned like a trained military commander with his free hand. His other kept his assault rifle tucked beneath his armpit.

  The scene became hazy for me as I watched the group rush through the laboratory the same direction in which they entered. The walls cracked in my mind, and the details blurred in a mosaic of uncertainty. As the light threatened to fade and darkness encroached my fuzzy vision, I prepared for another transition jump. Instead, the images I perceived in my dream state snapped into focus at the last minute.

  I watched as the scene played out in slow motion in front of me. “I don't remember any of this… how am I seeing it?” I wondered as I watched Bradich wave his arms in a giant windmill motion, urging us to exit the facility. He stood at the door with his red face flustered and his lips parted to release a scream which I failed to discern.

  As I spun to behold the two doctors and the young Ihlia bringing up the rear behind them, a massive explosion rocked the corridor walls surrounding us from deep within the structure. Like a game of dominoes, one blast followed another and the blustering cacophony began bringing down metal, rock, and dirt all around the group.

  The young sniper glanced up as she reached the final stretch of the collapsing corridor. The fiery bubbles protruding from the walls and ceiling obliterated the structural integrity of the facility, and Ihlia realized that at their current pace the three of them would not only fall short of the exit, but they would not even reach the frantically waving Bradich.

  Ihlia's lips moved. Though I heard no sound, my ability to read those lips combined with the distant memory I seemed to be recalling elicited the words from my ghostly voice, “I believe you can change this world, Donovan.”

  As her lips closed and a smile tugged at each corner of her mouth, Ihlia increased her speed to its maximum and shoved both palms into the scientists' backs. The jarring blow propelled them forward through the exit just as the facility collapsed around her. As the darkness closed in, Bradich lunged back toward my former self with the name, “Ihlia!” roaring from his lips.

  “If only you died that way, Bradich, and ended my memories of you with that concern. The concern of the mercenary leader I remember…” I murmured as the complex fell atop the two mercenaries and darkness engulfed all.

  File 27: Happy Birthday, Ihlia

  I remembered what happened next all too well. Ihlia stirred from a state of unconsciousness to the sound of a computerized voice echoing through the compound.

  “Reactor self-destruct sequence initiated. Meltdown in… ten minutes… all personnel please report to the evacuation site.” The robotic voice possessed a condescending calm. The drowsy Ihlia might have experienced a chill if not for her gross mental faculties.

  As I appeared next to my former self, I watched her rise from a high-tech medical table. The action snapped various tubes and sensors from her body. Clad in nothing more than a typical hospital gown, the young Ihlia stumbled through the darkness. Only the dim blue glow of holocoms and rotating red lights mounted on the walls like twisted crimson lighthouses illuminated her surroundings.

  “Ugh… my head. What happened?” Ihlia rubbed her forehead and approached what seemed to be the only entrance or exit to her quarters. She pressed the button on the panel, and the door hissed open. Ihlia stepped into the corridor outside her containment room and looked around. With her mind still foggy, she struggled to recognize her whereabouts or discern the nature of what transpired. For a moment, she forgot her identity and even the last memory that led to her predicament. The sight of a scientist's corpse laying on the floor in front of her, however, instantly cleared her head.

  The shock of the researcher's body jarred her memories loose, and the jigsaw puzzle of events pieced themselves together. She reasoned that Bradich, Oswald, Donovan, and she must have barely escaped the collapsing facility near Giza, but then why the hospital gown and strange computer voice of doom? As her thoughts raced in an attempted to conjure the truth, an acute pain ripped through her brain; she dropped to her knees and clawed at the sides of her head in agony. The pain eventually subsided, and she decided to forego thinking too hard in favor of keeping the mind rending agony at bay.

  My younger version moved along the hallway straight in front of her, gripping the wall to support her as she staggered through the facility. Her journey carried her to a familiar door, and after she instinctively pressed another button, the door swished open. As she stepped into the dim room lit only by the whirling scarlet lights, she paused. The room vividly mapped by her brain struck her as familiar, though she remained unable to discern why until she beheld the bodies.

  “… The Eagles?” She stammered. The large black husk of Bit sat in a heap against a nearby wall. His forehead seeped blood and pieces of
his brain; behind him, a splatter of his crimson life force painted the wall a few feet above the back of his head. With the trick played by the flashing lights, the blood appeared midnight in color, and a small trail smeared down the wall until it reached Bit's position on the ground. After a bullet had blown through his brain, Bit had slammed into the wall and slid down to his final resting place.

  “Bit…” Ihlia called out softly and placed a hand over her quivering lips.

  Ihlia realized she stood in the middle of the common quarters of the Nanite Research Dome back in Cairo. Though unable to grasp the interim existence between Giza and the research dome, she understood that something went horribly wrong.

  “Insurgents? We were attacked?” She glanced around frantically for signs of an enemy; though if one appeared while she drunkenly meandered around in a hospital gown, she was in for a world of hurt. But as she swept the room for enemies, she instead found the bodies of more of her comrades. Downy, Gunther, Flint, Steele, and Welsch all lay in random mortified positions in the common quarters.

  Downy's body lay on top of the bar; he must have flown back onto it after taking a bullet in the brain. His red headband rested in lopsided disarray across his face, and terror gripped his frozen expression. Gunther found his eternal rest among innumerable broken bottles of sludge lining the back wall of the bar. Welsch hung limp on the bar next to Downy with his arms spread wide and his face contorted in pain. Only the twins wore a peaceful expression in their demise; in a pair of cots on one side of the room, single bullet wounds had burrowed through the center of their foreheads while they slept.

  Ihlia's eyes glistened, and her body quivered as she fell to her knees. I failed to understand why I perceived her facial expressions despite not knowing them first hand, but her shocked face and confused brain worked in tandem in an attempt to process the information flooding her senses. It was to no avail. Ihlia doubled over and vomited in between a symphony of distraught screams joined by a chorus of wails. But not a single tear dripped from her eyes. Not a single tear would drip from those eyes ever again.

  The robotic voice interrupted her grief, “Reactor self-destruct sequence initiated. Meltdown in… seven minutes… all personnel please report to the evacuation site.” Ihlia raised her face and, with quaking legs, forced herself to stand. She hobbled back to the entrance and gripped the wall for support. As she escaped the room that seemed more like a nightmarish hell than a common quarters, she whispered, “I'll make them pay. I'll make whoever did this pay. I'll never, ever forgive them, and I'll never, ever forget you guys… it wasn't… it's not supposed to be this way…”

  Her stumbling figure worked toward the facility's entrance; at least, she headed in the direction in which she remembered it. The whole way, her weakened body stepped over and around various fallen personnel. Littered with corpses ranging from militia guards to civilian researchers, a bloody path of death stretched before Ihlia like a paved road. In the final stretch leading to Cairo's desert oasis, the distant sound of thunder meshed with a streaming tip-tap of rain. Though more common than in generations past, precipitation in the deserts of Egypt was still a rarity often treated as an omen by the locals.

  “To think the sky would cry for my friends when I could not…” I stared at the grief-struck Ihlia. For some reason, her tear ducts produced nothing, nor did the grotesque scenery succeed in driving her young mind into shock. Ihlia approached the corner to the final hallway, and another familiar figure lay face up on the ground with a bullet in his head; from the corner of his mouth a mixture of blood and tobacco seeped down his cheek.

  “Not you, too, Jace…” Ihlia sighed sadly.

  As the final hallway stretched out before her, Ihlia's eyes found Loxley in the same position as the rest of her comrades except his face lay downward in a pool of his own blood. Ihlia's mind began twisting and she felt her mentality fracturing beneath the sorrow her emotions could not process. She lifted her hand to her skull and cried out in pain, agony, and what she believed to be intense sadness. Her incoherent noise stopped when she heard a southern drawl at the end of the path.

  “Bradich, I don't understand… Sug'.” Though the voice strained to release the gurgled words, it undeniably belonged to Shandi. As Ihlia stared down the length of the corridor, a pair of figures stood against the dark backdrop of the rainy night. The water streaks and occasional lightning flashes decorated the horizon like a retelling of her childhood in Yordleton. Ihlia's eyes widened when she witnessed Shandi's frame lifted from the ground by the powerful hand of their fearless commander. Bradich's tight clench around the southern belle's shirt forced her to struggle for air.

  “Now you'll see, little one. Now you'll understand why you should have listened to me… He's the one you can never forgive. He's the one who takes them all away!” I screamed at my former self as she stared helplessly at the scene in front of her. The words caught in her throat when she parted her lips, and her hand quivered furiously as she reached out to the woman that took her mother's place in her heart for so many years. “Shandi…” she managed to squeak.

  “You don't have to do this, baby. You never… had to do this. We would have gladly given… our lives… if you asked. But not like this, Sug', not like this… please. Don't you know, baby, how much we loved you? Don't you know how much I lov—” Bang.

  The loud sound of gunfire cut Shandi's sentence short and her head jerked back. The sentence she waited her entire life to say, the sentence that she sacrificed so much to one day be able to profess, was taken from her by the very man to whom she wished to say it. Bradich's free hand clutched a pistol, and as the tip smoked and the crimson-haired belle crumpled lifelessly to the floor, the commander sighed sadly, “I know, Shandi. I've always known.”

  Unable to suppress it anymore, Ihlia and I screamed in unison. The powerful yell reverberated against the walls and snapped Bradich's attention to us from his position seconds away from the exit, seconds away from the rare stormy night of the desert.

  “Hm? Ah, Ihlia.” Bradich meandered back down the hall toward my younger version. Still in a state of emotional and physical ineptitude, Ihlia shakily leaned back against the corridor wall. “I was wondering where they put you. I wanted to thank you. You, my brother, you were both right all along. They're the key. The nanites, Ihlia, the nanites are the key. I understand now after that little nap of ours. I know what I have to do. And you know what? It involves both my plan and my brother's.”

  “Bradich… How could you? We all trusted you! Shandi loved you! How can you do this as the commander of the Bald Eagles?” Ihlia cried out defiantly.

  “It is precisely because I am the commander of the Eagles that I must do this. I am sorry it must be this way, but I would rather this happen than for you to suffer. Like this, I can ensure that your transition to the next life is swift and painless. I cannot guarantee that in the times to come, so I am merely doing what a responsible commander should. Perhaps on some plane of existence at some time in the stream of the cosmos, you will understand and forgive me.” Each word brought Bradich a step closer to Ihlia.

  Unlike my former self, the commander seemed completely in control of his body and unaffected by the “long nap,” as he so delicately phrased it.

  “Bradich, I just don't understand…” Ihlia's words, laced with anguish, escaped her as the commander placed the hot barrel of the pistol against her forehead; it was the same pistol that murdered the entire complex.

  “You'll pay for this. I'll make you suffer worse than you made them suffer. I swear, I will end you,” I growled as I watched. The muzzle of the gun rested in the exact spot on which Bradich offered his kiss during Ihlia's surprise party.

  “Rest well, Ihlia.” Bradich pulled the trigger. The echoing click of the empty chamber drowned every other sound from the young Ihlia's mind. Bradich's lower eyelid twitched and a grin pulled at one corner of his mouth.

&nb
sp; “My, my. I thought for sure I properly calculated the number of rounds I would need to set all the Eagles free.” Bradich lifted the gun and tapped its tip against the side of his head repeatedly. “Is it fate? Perhaps coincidence or chance? I cannot be sure.”

  “Ihlia!” The distant echo of a familiar voice drifted through the corridors. Given its labored state, a high probability existed it belonged to one of the facility's researchers, and given the number of researchers acquainted with her name, Ihlia assumed it to be either Oswald or Donovan. My younger version stared at Bradich with an unchanging bewildered expression wrought with sadness; he stood and pondered the nature of his gun's empty chamber when the time arrived for Ihlia's “salvation.”

  “I see. Then I shall follow the strings the cosmos sets before me. Unfortunately, Ihlia, you shall remain a caged bird. If you experience pain and suffering, don't blame me. Blame fate. Radical action is needed for radical change. I understand that now; it only gets harder from here, my young friend.” Bradich turned and stepped over the corpses of his former allies toward the facility's exit.

  “When next you hear of me, it shall be as the harbinger of the true age. The harbinger of the final stage of human evolution. Harbinger, I like it. Harbinger…” The slender figure of the Bald Eagles' former commander paused one last time at the mouth of the tunnel.

  He turned his head back, and with a gnarled grin he shouted, “By the way…”

  “Happy birthday, Ihlia,” a flash of lightning and crack of thunder accompanied his words.

  The robotic voice echoed over the intercom system immediately after Bradich's twisted words. “Reactor self-destruct sequence initiated. Meltdown in… three minutes… all personnel please report to the evacuation site.”

  As Bradich faded into the night, a sudden pressure on Ihlia's shoulder snapped her from her bemuddled daze. “Ihlia! Quickly, snap out of it! We have to get out of here! This way!” Oswald, the living Oswald, stared down at the young Ihlia with impatience creasing his face. As he tugged my former version to her feet and dashed in the opposite direction of the facility's obvious exit, Oswald muttered a wish under his breath; he wished he never mentioned the existence of the reactor overload sequence so arbitrarily.