by Nels Wadycki
The prearranged security access allowed Ana and Etienne to duck out through one of several blue metal doors which siphoned off workers into various side routes and work areas before they made it to the main factory floor.
They wore blue jumpsuits that matched the security doors and, by virtue of their one-piece styling, made it hard for the female employees to get in and out of the bathroom in any reasonable amount of time. Ana was surprised by the number of female employees walking beside them through the tunnel. She wondered if they even got bathroom breaks. The Greater States tended toward lax enforcement of laws intended to protect lower-class minimum-wage workers.
Ana and Etienne wore bandanas to hold their hair back and further blend in as worker drones in the colony. In theory, they would keep long hair out of the myriad of chemical processes and electrical and mechanical components.
The side corridor they shuffled into from the main thoroughfare branched off at various points itself into smaller corridors that formed a square—albeit a fairly disjointed one—around the perimeter of the facility. All in all, a kilometer of cold durostone ground to cover before they would arrive at the door that was essentially a mirror image of where they'd started at.
Ana pulled what looked like a stick of carrot from her lunch box and stuck it to the wall, pressing a tiny button on the flat top of the cylinder. Outside the context of pale blue duroplast box with pink and yellow flowers adorning the lid, the explosive resembled the sort of alkaline batteries used until the middle of the last century.
Sixteen charges, four for each side of the building, placed as close as they could get to a hundred meters apart based on calculations done on the schematic they'd been provided. Sticking and setting the charges only took Ana about thirty seconds apiece. It was the branching routes and doubling back to make their way down a different corridor that made the task annoyingly time-consuming. They'd entered during the post-lunch back-to-work shuffle, and needed to finish by the time the end-of-work bell kicked off the mass exodus.
Etienne stood watch while Ana placed the charges, her head swiveling back and forth like a security camera while her fierce clear blue eyes darted around more like an animal anticipating an attack. The corridors off of the corridors for their part remained eerily devoid of people. Nevertheless, the two of them bantered as they went so as to seem more casual if they encountered anyone. And as she'd imagined in the pool—before being assaulted by the raven reaper Natalya—Ana got in her question about the mind-controller.
"It came as a side effect of traveling back and forth," Etienne said. She didn't say traveling back and forth to where, but Ana had a pretty good idea. "The albinism as well as the thought-shaping ability. Some are stronger than others, obviously, able to hold up to the mental breakdowns that tend to come with frequent travel." And couldn't help but think of Jrue and Alando Piscina. Had they both already "traveled"? Were they mentally weaker than the man who she’d let get away? "They've come up with some modifications that reduce the effects and extend the amount of time before the side effects get really bad."
Modifications? Etienne had no idea how close Ana had come to those modifications.
Half of the charges had been set when they came to the dead end. Ana had seen it coming, and presumed Etienne had as well. She'd hoped it was a trick dead end with a ladder to offer them a way up through a duct and over to the other side. She had memorized the route, though, and knew the only opening was the way they'd come.
"Did we take the wrong turn back there?" Ana asked as Etienne pulled the schematic from inside the front of her jumpsuit. They'd both memorized the route, and Ana knew they'd gone the right way according to the diagram that Etienne held.
"Shit," Etienne muttered. "They must have changed it."
"Changed what?"
Etienne looked up, panic flashed in her eyes. "The building. They must have altered it after we got the blueprint."
"So, we go back and around the other way—"
"And hope that nothing else has changed."
"Yes, or we try to find a way through over here. We've only passed a few other hallways."
"Assuming that one of them goes through."
Ana hated always having to be the optimist. She preferred assessing reality with logic, but if Etienne brought up a negative counter to everything she said, then she'd have to continue being the positive one.
"We have to backtrack anyway," she said. "Let's just see if anything looks promising along the way."
They both knew the plan allowed very little time for rat maze games, but arguing while they were halfway around the building would only reduce the time available to find a solution. So they turned and hustled back the way they'd come and then back down the various offshoots that the schematic indicated might go through. Not that they trusted the print-out any further than they could throw it, which, even crumpled into the ball of paper that Ana wanted to make of it, was not far.
As they returned from the third dead-end corridor—each one further back toward the entrance—Ana thought perhaps they should have followed Etienne's pessimistic plan and started over from the other end.
The fetid stench that accompanied her self-loathing thought might not have been a self-imposed hallucination, but just a waft of her armpits as the chemical composition of her nervous sweat ran together with the output from the quickened pace of their search. A more complete analysis of her neuroses was halted by the echo of boots coming down the hall.
Etienne froze and held a hand out in case Ana hadn't heard. But Ana had already slung her small company-issue backpack off one shoulder and put her free hand inside where it closed around the handle of a slimline Needler.
Arming herself before she even knew who was coming might have been a bit presumptive, but Etienne did the same thing a moment later. Better safe than dead.
"…couldn't have just disappeared. There's only two ways in, and they haven't come out the other side or Jacob and Jarvis would have been on the comms."
While Ana believed that she could take Jacob and Jarvis before they could get on their comms, the important part of the statement was that they were indeed looking for the two women who'd sauntered in and disappeared for an unusually long time. Lost new hires they were not.
The men, presumably two of them like their friends coming in the other way, were still around a bend where the current hallway adjusted for some unseen bit of architecture behind the walls. Between that bend and Ana and Etienne was an open entry to what was probably another dead end. It was also the only possible place where they would have any sort of cover. Etienne knew it too, as any good agent would, and started jogging toward it, careful to be light on her feet. While the security guards, or whoever they were, walked and talked without any sort of attempt at stealth, Ana and Etienne could be much quieter and still be loud enough to give themselves away.
Etienne pressed her back against the wall closer to the direction from which the guards would come. Ana folded in beside her, both their guns up at a ninety-degree angle perpendicular to the ground.
"Go!" hissed Etienne, pointing with her off hand down the corridor in which they'd taken refuge.
"Go where?" Ana replied. But she knew perfectly well where her partner wanted her to go. She stalled because the odds were slim that this particular passage would be the one that would lead them to the other half of the building.
"Down there. You have the charges. Go down there and get through and get them set. I'll take these bozos and follow you. If it doesn't go through, then we'll head back together and try another one."
"Why don't we both take the guards and go back to the entrance. We can go in from the other side."
"They'll have someone watching the door. We can't go back that way now."
Ana did not like the prospect of leaving Etienne to get captured while walking into a confrontation with two security guards herself, but other options made themselves scarce.
With a nod as her only acknowledgement, Ana took off down
the hall. She didn't get far before she heard shots fired. The tiny needle guns were quiet, but not silent. Several percussive pops echoed down the hall in concert with the bass line of much heavier-caliber weapons. The sound died without an encore and gave no clue as to who had won the firefight. Ana just kept running. If Etienne was down, then Ana would be lucky to get out alive. If Etienne did as she’d said and dropped the guards, then she might be able to catch Ana since she didn't have to set charges along the way.
Since she didn't know the outcome, Ana just ran. She kept somewhat accurate track of her location in relation to where she'd placed the last charge before the dead end, and wasted no time in setting the charges once she passed that point plus one hundred meters. And the hallway stretched past that point and further.
She sprinted, but not full out for fear that she would run into the duo known as Jarvis and Jacob.
Her fears proved rational when, after clearing the corner to the third side of the building, five explosives still to prime, she turned into an alternate corridor, and ran literally smack into one of Jarvis or Jacob.
The two of them walked side by side, both of them very tall and carrying considerable bulk along with their sizable firearms. The extra weight slowed their ability to react, and after she bounced off the chest of whichever one she'd collided with, she simply aimed the gun already in her hand and opened up nine needle holes in him.
Unfortunately that gave the other one enough time to point the gaping maw of his barrel at Ana and pull the trigger. While the three-quarter-inch rail hurtled toward Ana, she let her momentum spin her back around the corner and she plastered herself to the wall. The huge piece of metal smashed into the durostone wall opposite Ana, and while durostone was so named because it was more durable than regular quarried stone, it was not made to hold up to ferromagnetic durosteel projectiles flying at a thousand meters per second.
After the chips and chunks of durostone were resting safely on the ground, and the resulting dust dissipated, Ana realized she was in a stalemate with the large man with an equally large gun. Really, it was the best she could have hoped for in the given situation. Neither of them could put a limb around the corner without the other filling them with high-velocity particulate matter.
"I've got one here," the remaining J-named guard said, presumably into a comm device of some sort. "Jacob is down. He's been shot." The only response was the whirring of the cooling system overhead. Ana hoped that meant Etienne would be following soon. She felt a spring of cautious optimism that the silence meant there was no help on the way. Ana's small hope did not preclude the more realistic notion that guards communicated on a direct link to each other and she needed to take him out before the rest of the factory's security force arrived. The building had at least two guards per floor at any given time, and Ana did not look forward to mixing it up with ten more if they were all as large and well-armed as Jarvis and the late Jacob.
Jarvis called around the corner, "Give yourself up and we can say you accidentally killed Jacob. Much less jail time for you that way."
Ana remained silent. She considered some sort of slide tackle maneuver, but it would have to be perfectly placed and executed to incapacitate Jarvis the way she wanted.
"I know you're there!" he shouted.
Short temper. Perhaps Ana could bait him and hook him around the corner.
"How do you know I'm still here?" she asked, knowing it was a ridiculous question. That was the point.
"I would have heard you leaving." Jarvis provided Ana the most obvious answer.
"But what if I was like a ninja or had a teleportation device or something?"
"Then you wouldn't be here talking to me!" His bluster grew and Ana tried to figure out how to turn the screw once more. If she couldn't draw him out, Plan B involved stalling until Etienne could catch up. That plan hinged on Etienne having survived whatever defense the first pair of guards had put up, but the radio silence made it seem probable.
"So you want me to toss my little tiny gun out there and leave you sitting there with that thing that could take my head off in a single shot?"
"If you don't, then I'll blow your head off anyway. If you surrender, you live."
Ana slipped one strap of the little pack she wore off her shoulder.
"Okay," she said, "I toss my gun and you don't blow me to bits."
Ana crouched, holding both straps of the pack together in her left hand with her gun ready in the right. It would be an awkward angle and she would have to be extremely precise.
She tossed the bag out right around Jarvis's eye level and leaned low around the corner, aiming and firing as fast her reflexes would allow. Half of Jarvis's reflexes reacted as fast as Ana moved, but unfortunately for him, it was the half that allowed him to pull the trigger on his oversized rifle and not the half that would have allowed him to adjust his aim. Ana popped three needles into Jarvis's forehead, sending him stumbling backward to collapse on the floor before he could get another poorly aimed shot off.
Ana picked up the last of the explosives which had slipped from her backpack before she tossed it. She stood, taking a deep breath as she looked at the two large holes in the wall. She considered taking Jarvis's gun in case she encountered anyone else on the way out and needed more stopping power. She checked the clip on the Needler and decided the trade-off for the weight of the extra weapon was not worth it.
Then she listened for a moment, trying to pick up a hint of anyone coming from either direction. She heard the frustratingly familiar sound of the central air conditioning blowing from the ducts, but nothing more. Nothing to do but move on.
Ana set the rest of the charges without further trouble, weaving through the remainder of the maze of tunnels, following the plan as it had been laid out in the blueprint. In the solitude of her march around the remaining four hundred meters of the perimeter, Ana thought about how Etienne had phrased her reaction to the altered floor plan. Maybe she was reading too much into it to think that the Continuum would have used their time-travel technology to acquire something as simple as the blueprints to a factory on file with any number of government agencies. In order for the plans to have changed, the Continuum must have obtained them before the fully functional factory had made it past the first-floor construction.
Ana passed through the door that mirrored the one through which she and Etienne had entered and hustled toward the transport vehicle in which the two of them had arrived. She stopped short when she spotted a pair of guards prowling through the rows of vehicles in the lot. Out of several levels available for hovercar storage, they had managed to trace Ana and her now missing partner to this one. Ana continued to hustle, but in a different direction, heading up a ramp that would take her to ground level. Still no sign of Etienne; no clue what might have happened to her inside the factory basement.
Ana avoided the guards in the parking structure, but wondered how many security cameras bore witness to her scramble to the street. If the system had been fed with her likeness, surely they would be after her already. Even the most basic of video algorithms would match her up with the woman who had entered several hours earlier.
Several hours. Ana checked the time. Talk about cutting it close. A bell called out from the factory. Even from the ground-floor sidewalk, Ana could see a commotion begin inside the building. The work day was over. Soon the structure that held the idle cars would be emptied of its contents and Ana could detonate the explosives and complete the mission. And either blow her partner up or leave her buried alive under thousands of tons of rubble.
If she had been a real Continuum agent it might have been difficult, but her cold-blooded Continuum nature would leave her no other option. As a Valkyrie Project operative, she figured it was a good opportunity to take out a Continuum agent while still maintaining her cover. Ana harbored no illusion that Etienne would do the same if their positions were swapped. Even if she wasn't privy to the inside knowledge that Natalya had regarding Ana's status as a triple agent, Et
ienne would push the button. And while Ana visualized the ruthlessness with which another operative would view the situation, she waited until the workers piled into their cheap hovercars and even cheaper four-wheelers and flew or drove off to whatever made up the rest of their daily lives. While the cars swooped from the garage and tore off into the skylines that connected the factory with the outside world, Ana hunkered down at the commuter rail stop, established solely for the purpose of serving the factory, and hoped she would avoid notice. She wasn't sure what miracle of stupidity saved her from being caught, but she was still there after the people had evaporated into the air.
At that point, Ana concluded that the only thing left to do was detonate the explosives and leave her so-called partner behind in the resulting hail of fire and durostone.
She pressed the button on the detonator and immediately knew she should have been further away. The explosives did not cause a graceful implosion as she thought they would. Instead they threw everything used to construct the building as far as their stored kinetic energy would allow. Ana dropped to the durocrete sidewalk, but not before stopping the momentum of several pieces of debris with various parts of her body. There would be bruises in the morning, that was for sure, but the mission had been accomplished.
--
Ana stumbled like a bird with a broken wing to the emergency pickup location. Had she really taken out the whole facility? Etienne and everyone remaining inside? She fought the feeling of compassion for her Continuum partner. She was, after all, a Continuum agent, and therefore, an enemy. But she'd proven herself a worthy colleague and as Ana sat in a hovercar headed for the nearest Continuum facility, she kept coming back to the fact that she'd sacrificed Etienne and everyone else in the building when she'd blown the charges. She hadn't believed Natalya's threats about the Continuum's mind-control abilities when she'd accosted Ana in the locker room, but maybe Ana had just grown more detached and professional with respect to this new war. She knew there would always be something to fight for or against. Had the practicality earned over years of service brought her to this empty crossroads?