The Collector

by Luna, David

  Slayter pushes Neil aside, eyes locked on the cabinet. Inna cowers into the darkness as Slayter marches directly towards her, the cabinet doors whipping open and light flooding in.

  “Neil!” Inna shrieks as Slayter drags her out of the compartment. A look of recognition overtakes Slayter’s face.

  “I’ve never seen her before,” Neil defends.

  Slayter shoves Inna towards Neil. He catches her.

  “Bind her hands,” Slayter orders, but Neil doesn’t move. “Are you with us or against us?” Slayter challenges.

  “Turn around…,” Neil tells Inna. She doesn’t cooperate, so Neil turns her by force.

  “I guess I can’t blame you,” Inna concedes. “I made my choice. You made yours.”

  Slayter tastes the mush cooking on the stove. “I don’t know what’s been going on here, but it’s no loss. Rats wouldn’t eat this.”

  “It was my grandma’s recipe!”

  “Let’s hope it dies with you then,” Slayter quips.

  “Let’s just get this over with,” Neil says as he binds Inna’s hands behind her back. Her brow furrows when he purposefully leaves one of them free. They share a look before he nods, on her side. “The Agency thanks you for your sacrifice.”

  Neil leads Inna away, but just as they pass the stove Inna grabs the pot with her unbound hand and hits Slayter with the scalding mush. He roars and backhands her away, his eyes narrowing and blackening much like they did when Paiton tried to fight back. This time, however, as he stalks forwards and reaches out to grab his prey, Neil intervenes and suddenly cracks him with his baton.

  Slayter stumbles backwards unfazed, absorbing half a dozen more of Neil’s blows before he whips Neil into the stove. The impact scatters embers from the flame against the wall and to the floor.

  “So this is what it’s come to?” Slayter asks. “You could’ve been like me.”

  The two men lock in a grapple, not noticing the curtain catching fire, or the floorboards. The flame spreads and quickly engulfs the rotted wooden objects in its path.

  Inna bats at the fire, but it’s too late. Seeing Slayter on top of Neil, she smashes a chair across his back, giving Neil just enough time to spring to his feet. He takes Inna’s hand and sprints towards the stairs.

  “My shop,” she reaches back. Neil almost has to drag her down the steps, leaving Slayter surrounded by the growing wall of flames.

  Neil shoves Inna inside the passenger door of the utility truck, then hops in the driver’s seat, but the ignition’s empty.

  “Dammit,” he hisses.

  They have no other choice but to flee on foot until Neil suddenly stops. He backtracks to unlatch the utility truck’s rear doors, revealing Raymond and Garrison still alive on the benches. With a two-fingered salute, Neil releases them before he turns to escape with Inna.

  Flames spread to the shop’s exterior, while upstairs Inna’s photo of the angel statue at her grandma’s wedding withers in the fire. Suddenly Slayter’s boot crushes it. The beast is on the move.

  Mazer thumbs the broken pocket watch out on the balcony overlooking Downtown. He turns it over to reveal an inscription: TO THE FATHER I NEVER HAD.

  Disappointed and betrayed, he dials his PDA. “I treated you like a son,” he speaks into the phone. His eyes find the haunting child statue eerily reaching out.

  Neil listens to the message while riding a SectorLink tram. He sits back-to-back with Inna at the end of a row.

  “Do you really think something’s better than what you had here?” Mazer’s voicemail continues. “We’re trying to make this city better. You’ve forgotten so much. I told you not to put me in this position. The Agency thanks you for your service. I thank you for your service. But you’ve left me with no other choice.”

  Neil hangs up as the message ends, then searches the database for his own profile. BREACH OF CONTRACT is now written in red, until it is suddenly replaced by an error message: NETWORK ERROR. UNAUTHORIZED USER. He pockets the deactivated device. He is officially no longer a Collector.

  “Whatever happens, I don’t regret the choice I made,” he reassures Inna. He reaches around to take her hand. She squeezes tighter.

  A Woman Passenger across from them notices their moment. “I’ve never seen a Collector with a partner before,” she says. She suddenly leans forward grinning, “Everyone deserves love.”

  Inna smiles, until the tram suddenly grinds to a halt and two SectorLink SEOs board through the sliding doors. The pre-recorded security message blares over the SectorLink P.A. system, “Random identification check in progress. Please remain seated.” The announcement repeats every few seconds.

  In the opposite direction, two more SectorLink SEOs board. Each group initiates their sweep, checking IDs and verifying identities against the database.

  Inna looks to Neil as the sweep boxes them in.

  “We’ll say I’m on assignment and you’re my volunteer,” he plans.

  “Won’t they check you anyway?”

  Neil’s face confirms she’s right. That’s protocol. “We need a diversion,” he says, grasping to come up with any sort of plan.

  Just then, he spots a man in his thirties with his back facing him in an adjacent row. Neil readies his shock baton as he inches closer. Inna quietly protests, but the security sweep already reaches the Woman Passenger across from her.

  Neil aims the baton’s electrodes at the man’s neck, about to zap him when he suddenly notices a little girl hanging on the man’s leg and playing – it’s her father. Neil’s taken aback. He looks to Inna as the second pair of officers reaches her.

  “Papers?” one SectorLink SEO asks.

  Inna pretends to search her pockets. The SectorLink SEO leans in to take her blood sample while Neil finds the next closest person, an Older Gentleman in his fifties.

  “Excuse me, sir. How’s your health?” Neil asks.

  The Older Gentleman notices Neil’s black combat uniform and immediately goes on the defensive. “Would you folks just leave me alone already? My health is fine and I’m not selling my life to you.”

  He turns around in a huff, but Neil secretly zaps him with the baton. The Older Gentleman convulses to the ground.

  “Officers, this man needs help!” Neil shouts. The SectorLink SEOs break away from Inna to tend to the man.

  “He was just sitting here and all of a sudden started convulsing,” Neil lies.

  “It felt like a shock…,” the Older Gentleman describes, still disoriented.

  “Sir, it’s okay. Just breathe,” one SectorLink SEO instructs. “You were probably having a heart attack.”

  “I thought I was healthy.”

  “I’ll find a med kit,” Neil chimes in. He backtracks, then grabs Inna and they slip away through the sliding doors with the officers distracted.

  Neil and Inna rush across the elevated SectorLink station platform and race towards the stairs.

  Soon they reach the water’s edge at the west bank and stop to catch their breath. Dead carp corpses litter the shore, while the back half of a small fishing boat is submerged underwater – the same boat Wade hoped to use to travel to the reactor out in the bay.

  The processing facility taunts them across the way on the opposite bank. Inna finds a rock and throws it at the factory, not even close. She growls as she does it again. She grabs another and wades into the water before throwing it, mentally losing it as she belts out screams of frustration. Neil goes in after her as she sinks further.

  “Stop. Inna, stop.”

  “I hate them,” she says as she shouts at the facility. “I hate you!” She chucks another stone, in past her waist.

  “Get out of the water,” Neil demands.

  She goes under just as Neil catches up and grabs her. “Let me go,” she shouts. “At least let me die on my own terms.”

  Their bodies splash violently as Neil wrestles her back to the shore before falling to the dirt, his arms wrapped a
round her to restrain her in place.

  “You can’t keep hurting people to protect us,” she says out of breath. “That’s not how things work.”

  “It’s how we’re built,” Neil counters. Inna squirms, but he pulls her closer. “When you see a volunteer carted away there’s a part of you thanking God it’s them and not you. It’s either them or us.”

  “So why us?” Inna cries. “Why do I deserve to live?”

  “I’m not going to lose you,” Neil says as he brushes her wet hair from her face.

  She breaks into tears. “We’re prisoners in our own city.”

  Something comes over Neil upon hearing her words. An idea. “You’re right,” he admits. “We need to leave. We have to get outside the Wall.”

  Inna laughs at how ridiculous that sounds. “Nobody leaves.”

  “You don’t work as a Collector without learning a few tricks,” Neil claims. “That loophole at the tunnels...that was just the first.”

  She wrenches her head back, curious.

  “There is a way,” he reveals. “And unless we hide the rest of our lives, it’s our only chance to be together.”

  Neil allows his words to percolate before he reveals his do-or-die plan, a last-ditch effort.

  “It’s called a transfusion,” he says, then follows it up with the ultimate question. “Will you come with me?”

  ******

  Monsters

  There was another monster sighting out in the Bay today. Do you think it’s real? Of course the person didn’t get a good look because he was standing on the bank, but he swears it had tentacles and even wings! I think the drought is taking its toll on this guy, unless…do you think the leaking Reactor has anything to do with this?

  -Quado

  21

  Quado sleeps nestled in the corner of the Public Access TV Station Control Room. No mattress. No padding. Just her satchel used as a pillow and a jacket draped over her as a blanket.

  Three small sacks of rocks dangle in midair beside the makeshift bed, each connected to the ceiling by thin rope, which continues to extend in multiple directions outside the control room door and into the corridor. Each sack has a handwritten label taped beneath it on the wall: FRONT, BACK, and ROOF.

  With the darkness comes complete silence, until suddenly one of the sacks crashes to the floor as one of the ropes gives out. The noise jolts Quado awake, immediately springing upright to inspect the wall and learning the fallen sack belongs to the one labeled as BACK. She pokes her head out into the corridor and listens for any sounds of movement, then collects her things as she readies to make an escape. After being blindsided in the studio before, she rigged the contraption of rocks as a crude alarm system, and with one of the sacks having fallen, she knows someone is here.

  Simultaneously near the station’s back entrance, Neil breaks free from a rope tangled around his foot. No thicker than a shoestring, he is unaware he just set off Quado’s alarm as he continues forward through the darkness while Inna follows close behind.

  “I thought you knew this person?” Inna asks, concerned about their stealth and secrecy.

  “It’s complicated,” he whispers. “We didn’t leave on the best of terms.”

  “You tried to collect them?” she assumes. “Did they actually volunteer?”

  “Only Slayter does that. Now quiet down,” he shushes her. “We don’t want her to run.”

  Neil steps out onto the soundstage and targets the dusty white sheet covering the cage on the table. Using Quado’s bird as leverage worked the last time he needed something from her, so he figures he might as well use the same tactic again.

  The parrot squawks just as Neil pulls the sheet off. “Rise and shine. Rise and shine.” However, unbeknownst to him, one corner of the white cover is connected to another hidden rope, this one much thicker. It triggers a domino effect, retracting upwards from Neil’s feet to a pulley system rigged to the lighting grid mounted above the soundstage. Neil immediately recognizes it’s a trap and shoves Inna out of the way just as a cargo net yanks upwards and whips him two meters into the air.

  “Neil!” Inna shouts.

  Neil’s legs dangle as he struggles to break free from the coarse mesh, but to no avail. Just then the soundstage lights whir to life, followed by the eerie laugh track.

  “You come to threaten my bird again?” Quado’s digitized voice blares out over the station’s intercom system.

  “Neil sucks,” the parrot squawks from its perch inside the cage. “Neil sucks,” it repeats, a newly learned phrase brought about after Neil’s recent visits.

  “Code 12.12.b. Looks like I got me another caged pet,” Quado taunts.

  Neil shields his eyes from the harsh soundstage lights as he looks up towards the control room window. “Quado, we need your help,” he says.

  The click from the intercom sounds over the speakers before the omnipresent voice follows, “Who’s we? Got bugs in your hair?”

  Inna picks herself up from the floor, also shielding her eyes as she faces towards the direction of the mystery person. “Neil says you’re the best at what you do.”

  “Humor me,” Quado says. “What am I so good at?”

  “Never losing hope,” Neil states.

  The sincerity of Neil’s words catches Quado off guard. From the control room, she can feel his eyes focusing beyond the bright lights and staring straight at her. She’s not used to someone being so honest. Silence fills both rooms until she presses a button on the control panel to lower the mounted lighting grid, which in turns lowers the cargo net. Neil’s feet return to firm ground.

  Moments later, Quado cranks the shaft on the portable generator to recharge life back into the soundstage. The eerie laugh track rings out.

  “A Collector and his assignment,” she notes. “The Agency’s slipping.”

  “Why the traps?” Neil asks.

  “Why not visit when I’m not asleep?” Quado fires back. “You’re just lucky you didn’t come through the front. We’d still be peeling you out of there.”

  Inna furrows her brow as she wonders just what kind of trap this lanky teenage girl could have set, but she quickly becomes distracted by the fully clothed mannequins positioned at the country themed kitchen table.

  Neil gets straight to the point. “We need your help. We need to find Sage.”

  “The market’s always moving.”

  “Where’s the last place they were?” Neil asks.

  “What makes you think I know?”

  “Pretty bird,” the parrot squawks mimicking the familiar female voice, presumably Quado’s mother. “Pretty girl.”

  “There’s eyes and ears everywhere,” Neil quotes Frank from the slums. “You’ve had to have heard something out on that corner.”

  Inna moves to examine the parrot inside the cage, taken aback by the bright rainbow of colors. “This is beautiful. This is supposed to be extinct.” She turns to Neil, her eyes lit up in wonder like a child’s. “Neil, it’s the city’s bird.”

  “Careful, it bites,” Neil warns from past experience before turning back to Quado. “What about the hidden tunnels? We both know those exist.”

  Quado hesitates.

  “Do you know the entrance?” Neil asks.

  Quado notices Inna extending her finger for the parrot. The bird inspects it, first nibbling at her, then as Neil cautioned, pecking hard at the tip. Inna pulls away. Quado clicks her cheek at the parrot, “Watch it, you stupid bird.”

  “Stupid bird. Stupid bird,” the parrot repeats.

  “It’s okay,” Inna says.

  Neil continues to lobby for assistance. “We’re not asking you to help the Agency or the Brigade. There’s a third side to this. The side I know you want to be on.”

  Quado cocks her head in confusion. Neil slides his PDA on the table.

  “If you truly believe the dam wasn’t an accident, maybe there’s something in there,” he offers. “It’s deact
ivated, but it’s the best I can do to help your parents.”

  Quado’s fingers twitch, nearly unable to hold her composure as she eyes the device that holds so much potential information inside its database. She knows she can hack it if given the chance.

  “You’ll need to blend in,” she says as she finally gives in and grabs the PDA device. “Otherwise they’ll scatter like roaches.” She tosses Neil a pair of clothes from a costume trunk near the side of the soundstage. The wardrobe is in line with the country theme of the set – a plaid flannel shirt and dark jeans.

  “This might be just as bad,” Neil says, scrunching his brow. As he removes his black combat uniform, he glances to the 4-stripe arm badge, hesitating before tossing it to the ground.

  “Neil sucks,” the parrot suddenly squawks again. “Neil sucks.”

  Quado laughs it off, slightly embarrassed. “Maybe I’ll teach him something new for next time.”

  Neil and Inna don’t react, too concerned prepping for their journey. It’s only then that Quado notices the seriousness in both Neil and Inna’s faces as Neil finishes changing.

  “This is a one way trip,” Quado says, realizing their true intent. “You’re going to ask for help to get outside, aren’t you?”

  Neil remains silent, while Inna takes his hand and squeezes.

  “A lot of people wonder what it’s like out there,” Quado says, now just as serious as them. “Maybe someday you can write about it.”

  “And you can post it,” Neil nods.

  Quado nods back. While not quite friends, it’s the closest she has that isn’t a bird or two mannequins, and now she knows this is probably the last she will ever see of him. It causes a sadness that surprises even herself. She preemptively wipes her eye before a tear can form.

  “Thank you,” Inna adds, catching Quado off guard with a hug. It’s Quado’s first human connection since the dam broke. She subconsciously accepts the embrace.

  “Time to lean, time to clean,” the parrot squawks in the familiar male voice to interrupt the moment, snapping Quado back to reality.