“What is a battery?”
“Never mind,” Dave said, walking under the sphere. It was the size of a small house and hurt his eyes to look at it. The outside was translucent and appeared to be a clear container. At the centre was a beach-ball-sized core blazing with blue light.
Dave turned and walked away, following the cable through the doors opposite to where they had entered.
Serif followed with the torch in hand, lighting the way.
The hallway was smaller in this area, and zigged and zagged around pillars as wide as a car connecting the roof and floor. Dave wondered if there were other floors that these extended to. The purpose was less than decorative and appeared to be more mechanical and exposed. Conduits for power or fluid were exposed. Everything was silent, and he wondered if it would have been loud here in the rear of the ship when it was operating. If it was the rear at all.
The cable ran toward a central pillar, and the metal core was peeled away and crudely welded directly into the main metal pillar of the room.
“They were trying to discharge it,” Dave stated. He shook his head and looked around the mechanical room.
“Why are you shaking your head?” Serif asked.
“If they were part of the ship’s crew, they should have known that they couldn’t have discharged that much energy. Look at it. It’s like a nuclear reactor. There’s no way you’re going to deplete that charge using a cable. They got fried. The energy discharged through them before it even got to the pillar. They would have been better off discharging it in that room or breaking the core.”
Serif looked at Dave blankly as Dave worked through the problem while walking back to the core.
“Why wouldn’t they just try to shut it down though?”
“Maybe they couldn’t... or didn’t understand how to. I don’t know what I would do with it.
That’s probably true... What if they are not from the ship?” Dave turned to Serif.
“They are from the curtain? I have never seen things shaped like those. Not even in stories.” Serif pointed at the mass of bodies and limbs holding the rod.
A distant voice howled down the hallway, freezing both of the men in their tracks. It came again. “Serif!” The sound was distant and tentative. There was fear in the voice of the man calling out.
“Down here!” Serif yelled, walking around rather than under the sphere. He stood at the door and raised his torch. “Come this way!”
Clanging feet resonated with the deck as the man began to run toward them.
Breathing hard, he crawled through the hole and paused, looking at the ever-changing light from the orb.
“What’s wrong?” Serif asked, snapping the man out of his amazement.
The man’s wide eyes told Serif everything he needed to know before the words came. “They are here. The zealots are in the square... hundreds of them.”
“Get everyone inside, hold the room. If you lose the room fall back here. We need time,” Serif told him.
The man scrambled off, and Serif turned to Dave. “Whatever you are going to do, you will need to do it quickly if we are to survive.”
Dave paced around the room, mentally inspecting the ring on which the sphere sat. He wished that Tony was here now. The man would have taken one look at this and understood how it functioned, maybe turned it off.
“How do you collect energy from a source?” he muttered, looking up at the sphere. The only material in contact with it was the metal ring suspended from the walls by three tapering shafts. At the wall they were as thick as a man, but nearer the core, they pinched tightly to a thin point.
“Why would they build in a thinner point in the shaft?” Dave wondered aloud.
His eyes recognized it, but his brain wasn’t processing what it was. He dug at the idea, which sat just below the surface.
“Maybe it is supposed to break so they can move it?”
Dave’s face lit up. “It’s a fuse!”
Turning to his friend, he grabbed the man by the shoulders. “It’s a fuse. If the produces too much energy it burns through it and disconnects from the equipment.”
Serif stared at him like he was talking in a foreign language. “Why hasn’t it broken?”
“Because it isn’t producing even remotely enough energy. The dome... the field… the curtain… it isn’t at full strength! The ship is damaged and pulling materials from outside to power it.”
“If they couldn’t stop it, how can we?”
“Because we have this!” Dave pulled the remaining det cord from his pocket and inserted it into the chemical timer. He looked at Serif and pointed upward to the thinner support arm of the ring. “Give me a boost.”
Serif stood near the wall and crouched, letting Dave step onto his thigh and then shoulder. Dave wobbled a bit as he stood tall on his friend’s shoulders and reached up the seamless wall for the metal outcrop that held the ring.
“What are you doing?” Serif asked as Dave pulled himself up onto the horizontal pole.
Dave could feel energy humming through the metal beneath him. He wondered for a moment what was on the inside of the metal and how much insulation was protecting him.
“The fuse point near the ring holds the sphere and is the weakest here. If we can disrupt it and knock it off centre, maybe we can get it to ground. It will discharge through the hull of the ship, and the dome will fall.”
“Is that safe?”
“Not at all. It’s the best-case scenario.”
“What is the worst case?”
“There’s a thermonuclear explosion, and we all die very, very quickly, and then the dome falls.”
“I think your first choice is probably the better of the two.”
Dave shimmied across the thick outcropping to the thinnest point, as close to the sphere as he dared get. Already his skin was feeling the tingle of a static charge, and he wondered if the det cord would be spontaneously ignited by the ethereal current.
He could see that the pinched area was still covered by the plastic-like shielding that covered most of the beam he was lying on.
Looping the cord around the wrist-thick metal structure, he packed each wrap tightly together before setting the timer.
“Get ready to move,” he called down to Serif. “We don’t want to stick around for this.”
“I’m ready whenever you are,” Serif said, standing by the door. He had relit the torch and was holding it aloft in the brightly lit room.
Dave paused for a moment and took a deep breath before setting the duration of the timer. He wrapped his hand around the pin of the chemical timer. This was the last length of det cord, the last the chemical timer and their last chance.
He pulled the pin, and a familiar puff of smoke wafted upward. Quickly, Dave shimmied backward before sliding off to hang. He gauged the distance and let go, landing less than gracefully on his rear with a thud.
“Go! Go! Go!” Dave yelled at Serif. Quickly recovering, he moved toward the burned hole in the door Serif was pushing through, torch in hand.
Turning, Dave paused for a moment to check that the explosives were still in place and that his fall hadn’t dislodged it. He took a last look at the house-sized ball of energy. He wished Tony could have seen it. The man would have appreciated the physics of it. He doubted that Tony would have let him try to use explosives to fix the problem though.
Diving through the hole, he scrambled across the metal and then ran down the hallway. Serif was wasting no time moving back to where they had come in. Their feet rang on the metal walkway as they careened toward the small room they had entered through.
Again they crouched and leaned through the hole and could see the dim grey light through the broken metal. The disorientation caught both of them, and they fell sideways as they left the artificial gravity. Dave felt bile rise in his throat but held back as he fell. The other two men standing guard grabbed him midair and ensured he didn’t hit his head.
Dave took a moment to get his bearings
before standing. “We need to go.”
“They are searching for us,” one of the men whispered. “And we think they are a few floors down.”
“How many?” Serif asked, putting out the torch with a rag.
“There are more now. Their numbers have grown. Maybe three hundred?”
Genie shook her head and sheathed her sword, emphasising that it needed to stay in its scabbard.
“We can’t fight them,” another man said. “Are you done inside?”
Dave nodded. “We don’t have much time. Maybe another ten, fifteen minutes? We don’t want to be around here when that goes off.”
“I thought you were not expecting an explosion?” Serif asked, wide-eyed.
“Oh, there will be an explosion, it’s just that how small it is going to be is up for debate,” Dave stated.
“We’re stuck,” one of the men stated. “How are we going to get by?”
Serif crept to the open side of the building and peered over the edge. A crowd had formed and was milling about in the streets.
“What about the elevators?” Dave asked.
“That would be a long slide,” Serif said, “but I think we could manage.”
Serif turned to Genie. “Go check the shaft, open the door, and see if the cable is still intact.”
She immediately ran off toward the elevators in the hallway.
Serif turned back to them. “If we can get their attention, and they come up, maybe we can catch them in the blast or sneak by them at the bottom, but for this to work, we’ll need most of them off the ground floors. I will create a distraction that will bring them up here.”
“We are about thirty floors up,” Dave said. “That trick with the elevator cables worked well when it was only a few floors.”
“Just don’t go quickly, take your time. If you slide quickly you will burn your hands or lose your grip,” Serif said.
“Bad time to mention I don’t like heights?” Dave said.
“Yes,” Serif retorted.
Genie returned from opening the elevator, giving them the thumbs-up.
“Good, start down now. I will follow,” Serif pointed.
“Do it quick. We have less than ten minutes left,” Dave said, tapping his watch.
Serif stood at the edge and watched Dave and the others move to the elevator in the hallway. Hands began work prying the doors open.
Turning back to the open wall of the building, Serif picked a heavy metal filing cabinet and leaned into it, sliding its bulk toward the open air. The leading edge tipped over out into the open air beyond, and Serif barely caught himself before tumbling over with it.
The filing cabinet flipped end over end, diving toward the ground below.
On all fours he peered over the edge, watching yellowed papers stream from open drawers. A cloud of material left an expanding trail of entropy. At the bottom it landed flat, crushing three zealots in the crowd, and the horde turned to look up. Serif could see them spot him and charge into the building like a uniform mass of ants. A moment later a thundering boom echoed as the sound caught up to the visual.
Realizing the damage he could cause to the clustering crowd below, Serif eyed the rest of the office furniture.
A moment later, a desk, followed by another even larger filing cabinet and a photocopier were launched over the edge, each time landing on groups of the infected.
Serif could see the mass of bodies pressing inward as a single organism, each part of the queen’s group communicating where Serif was.
He stepped away from the open wall ran to the dark elevator shaft; he could hear the zealots thundering up the stairwell, hissing through their clamped teeth.
Serif kicked away the piece of wood that the others used to shim open the doors and jumped for the thick cables. Behind him, ancient springs slipped the doors closed, encapsulating him in darkness.
Below him, subtle noises echoed upward from Dave and the group slowly shimmying down the cables.
Serif wrapped his legs and arms around the bundles of steel threads and eased up on his grip to begin the long slide. In the darkness, each floor was highlighted by a thin vertical line of light blazing through cracks in the elevator doors.
After a minute came a whisper from the dark. “You’re right above me.” It was Dave clinging to the cable below him. Serif slowed his descent.
The other two had zipped down at a rate faster than Dave was comfortable with.
The descent had taken well over five minutes, and Dave’s arms and legs burned from the tension. He was wondering if they would hold out for the rest of the descent when the sound of the dark room changed and the subtle echo of the cable sliding between his raw legs and hands rang back, giving him the impression that he had arrived at the floor.
Mercifully, his feet touched the top of a metal elevator, and hands reached out to support him in the dark as he released his cramped muscles. Aware that Serif was above him, he stepped to the side.
The whispering shushes in the dark urged him to stay quiet. Dave got his bearings as Serif touched down next to him. Hands guided Serif and himself to a small crack of light against the wall at eye level.
Peering through, Dave could see feet pattering by, but only one at a time and all in one direction, toward the stairs next to the shaft.
“We don’t have much time left,” Dave whispered as quietly as he could.
A hand squeezed his shoulder twice in response.
Dave could hear the weapons drawing from their scabbards, and the light was eclipsed as one of the men climbed onto the thin edge behind the elevator door. Genie climbed up with another man to stand on the small interior ledge.
Dave could see her face peering through the crack, illuminated by the weak light. She tapped the other man’s shoulder twice in the dark, and they pulled in unison. The door groaned as it was forced open.
“Go,” Serif whispered, and Genie and the other man shuffled out of the way and into the hallway. She waved for them to follow quickly as she held the door.
Dave clambered up the side and exited the elevator. He turned to help hold the door for Serif. The group poured out into the hallway.
Dave could see a large “3” painted on the wall opposite the elevator.
Serif motioned to the stairs next to the elevator, and Dave cringed. They would have to work their way through the stragglers on their way up.
Dave’s hands felt like hamburger as he drew the crude blade from his belt.
The men flowed through the door, downward, silent in the darkness of the stairwell.
Chapter 26
The stairwell opened into the familiar lobby. Luckily, most of the crowd had dispersed up the stairs past them. The majority of the horde was inside the building and above them.
Dave realized that the moment they stepped outside, they were targets in the open. No matter where they went or hid, there were over three hundred searchers above them who would be dedicated to hunting them down.
Serif peered around the corner; a large group had gathered just outside the sheered wall of the tower.
“There are twenty or thirty outside in the street,” Serif pointed out. “It’s the only way in or out.”
“Can we run for it?” Dave said, checking his watch again.
“How much time do we have?” Serif asked.
“A minute or two.”
“How big will the explosion be?”
“It will either level the building and kill everything for a few miles, or we may not even notice until the field or curtain falls. I seriously don’t know.”
A rumble above them shook the building and scattered dust and concrete from the ceiling.
“It’s early! Go!” Dave urged, and the men’s indecision was broken.
A thundering crash built above them, growing louder with each second. The four men tumbled and fell sliding down the pile of rubble and out into the open.
Dave could see the zealots’ heads locked back, looking straight up with mouths open, bo
dies writhing. It looked like a macabre group of people standing and trying to catch invisible rain in their mouths.
Not willing to pass on the opportunity to escape, Dave clambered after Serif and his people, turning away from the group. Grey dust began to shower them, and concrete blocks landed and exploded into powder as they hit the surface of the street.
“Get away from the building,” Dave yelled at Serif, who looked up and immediately veered left.
A large shadow loomed over them, and the group dodged down an alley, moving directly away from the imploding structure. A wall of billowing dust flowed around the remaining structures, wrapping itself around cars, concrete, dead trees, and between footings of the remaining towers. The sustained booming faded to a crumbling halt, and Dave chanced a look backward only to see the grey wall of dust only feet away.
The zealots that had remained on the bottom floors of the building exploded out into the street and dodged around the depression in the asphalt from a gravity well. Dave could see the line of people following Serif toward a set of main doors set in the building across the street. The air around him began to grey, and he coughed on the choking powdered concrete. It filled his mouth and nose, driving into his lungs with each breath.
Stumbling forward, he felt his toe catch, and he fell, only to mash his knee into the ground hard before rolling to the side.
Forcing himself to back to his feet, Dave shoved his chin under the collar of his shirt and blinked away the irritating dust. His eyes burned, and he stepped forward, unsure of which direction he should be travelling. Everything around him was dark, and his outstretched arms reached for anything.
He coughed loudly and called out for the group.
No replies as he paced, stepping through the swirling dust. With each step, his coughs became more and more irritating with each lungful.
He smiled and stood up as a dark-clothed figure jogged near him out of the dust.
“Over here!” Dave coughed, and the figure stopped, turning.
Dave could hear the clacking of teeth. he took a step backward and turned to run. Another figure appeared, like a shadow, stumbling through, and then was gone.
The Black Page 19