H2O

by Belateche, Irving

  Night fell, and darkness engulfed Sunol. We all rested, but no one slept. At two a.m., we headed to Palo Alto. With our headlights off, we drove around the Bay, through more dead towns. The marauders had scouted this route for months and knew every inch. In the moonlight, I saw silhouettes of decay. Deteriorating buildings, abandoned cars, crumbling street lights and storefronts. These once densely populated towns were considered extremely dangerous, but the marauders knew that was a lie. These towns, like Palo Alto, were free of the Virus.

  We arrived at the outskirts of Palo Alto and split up. One team headed to the power lines, one to the water reservoir, one to the food warehouse. The two remaining teams, including ours, headed toward the campus of what used to be Stanford University. There, my father’s team would head to Crow’s headquarters, located in an old administration building, and the rest of us would head to the Stanford Linear Particle Accelerator.

  The Line was housed in the central building on the Accelerator grounds. In that concrete structure, electron beams used to blast atoms into tiny particles. My father found it ironic that a place which had once been home to advanced scientific research was now being used to keep the population of the Territory ignorant.

  We wound through Palo Alto following the route mapped out by the scouts. We didn’t see any Fibs. We drove into Stanford Hills, northwest of the campus, and parked our cars in a deserted neighborhood. Then we continued on foot.

  My father, Lily and their team headed toward Crow’s headquarters. Benny, Miloff, Sanders, Platt, Uli and I headed toward the Linear Accelerator grounds. We carried machine guns, grenades, and explosive charges.

  We crossed Branner Drive, which separated Stanford Hills from the Accelerator grounds, then entered the grounds, a series of unkempt lawns and empty buildings. Only three of the twenty Accelerator buildings were in use. Miloff, who’d played this night over and over again in his head, led the way and we stuck close to the empty buildings, using them as cover. Up ahead, I saw moonlight glinting off the ground. That meant asphalt and that meant Pep Ring Road, which the Fibs used to drive through the Accelerator grounds.

  Miloff motioned that the road was clear and we crossed it, then moved passed the Heavy Fabrication building, and headed toward the Metal Stores Shelter. We hadn’t come across any Fibs, but that only made me more fearful. I thought that somewhere out there in the darkness, they were waiting for us.

  We stopped at the Metal Stores Shelter. The entrance to the Line was less than a hundred feet away, across a parking lot and a grove of trees. To our right stood the Controls Building which housed Fibs. Once we began our assault, Fib reinforcements would come from Controls, but the building was dark for now.

  We hid in the shadows of the Metal Stores Shelter and waited for the other teams to launch their attacks. If everything went according to plan, the Fibs would pour out of the Controls Building to respond to the strikes across town, and there wouldn’t be any reinforcements left to protect the Line.

  Across the parking lot, through the grove of trees, I saw the amber light from the entrance to the Line. Because of the trees, I couldn’t see the entrance itself, but I knew that four Fibs were standing guard in that dim light, chatting, joking, and trying to stay awake. This entrance wasn’t originally part of the building. It was constructed later, specifically for the Line. Double doors led to an outer room which led to the building’s long inner chamber. The Communications Center was in that chamber, and the restricted area, the heart of the Line, was a little farther down.

  During our briefing, Sanders had told us that the marauders had considered using the original entrance, but decided against it. It’d been barricaded long ago and was far from the heart of the Line. There were too many barriers and unknowns over such a long stretch of the Accelerator chamber.

  We all began to look to the east for the signal, a tiny flare. A yellow light, twinkling for a fraction of a second, indistinguishable from a star in the sky. It was the signal for the other teams to attack and for us to start a two-minute countdown. Within those two minutes, we hoped to see Fibs pouring out of the Controls Building, on their way to defend Palo Alto’s critical sites.

  Time, of course, slowed down as we waited, and just as I was thinking that something had gone wrong, the yellow flare flickered against the black sky. Miloff smiled at Sanders, then looked at his watch, and started the countdown. Miloff treasured that watch. It was a Remnant, a wind-up model, that his wife had restored.

  We heard faint explosions. A good sign. The others had begun their assaults. I glanced at Benny and he was staring down at his machine gun. I knew exactly what he was thinking because I was thinking the same thing. We were both hoping we wouldn’t have to use our guns.

  My heart was thumping fast. I felt it in my throat and tried to will it to slow down. But the only thing that was slowing down was the time. Miloff looked at his watch again, then at the Controls Building. It was still dark. The Fibs hadn’t been alerted. Miloff looked to Sanders and shook his head.

  I heard more faint explosions and saw Benny’s leg start to jitter. If the Fibs in the Controls Building didn’t leave soon, we’d be outnumbered. My heart shifted into an even higher gear and I took a deep breath when suddenly, the lights in the Controls Building flicked on. I glanced at Miloff and saw relief sweep over his face.

  Seconds later, Fibs poured out of the Controls Building, ran to their SUVs, fired them up, and screeched out of the parking lot.

  They roared past us and onto Pep Ring Road.

  We all pulled out our hand grenades, and waited for the SUVs to round the far curve. As soon as their tail lights disappeared, we left the safety of the shadows and sprinted toward the grove of trees.

  We knew that the four guards at the entrance would now be on high alert because they’d just heard their colleagues race off. But that couldn’t be helped. Our plan was to attack immediately while they were still confused about what the hell was going on.

  Benny and I veered to the left and tossed our grenades over the grove. Before they landed, we launched another set. On the far right, Platt and Uli did the same. Miloff and Sanders hadn’t veered off. They were headed straight through the grove. The grenade blasts rang out, one after another, in a quick symphony of explosions. Then I heard Miloff and Sanders laying down machine gun fire and I started through the grove, with Benny at my side.

  I cleared the trees and saw chaos and destruction. Two of the guards were down and two were stumbling, dazed and bleeding. Small chunks of the building’s walls littered the ground and chalky dust floated in the air.

  Miloff and Sanders ran through the debris and into the building. Benny and I followed, and Platt and Uli were a few steps behind us.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  We raced through the outer room, through a door, and into the inner chamber. We sprinted down the chamber, passing abandoned Accelerator equipment, huge and far more sophisticated than anything I’d ever seen. Up ahead, I saw a room built into the chamber. The Communications Center. And farther down, I saw a wall. A barrier. It ran all the way across the chamber and I knew that on the other side lay the heart of the Line.

  Miloff and Sanders barreled into the Communications Center, ready to take on the two Fibs manning the Line. It was possible they’d deserted their posts, but we were pretty sure they’d never leave in the middle of a crisis unless Crow ordered them to. Benny and I continued toward the barrier and let Platt and Uli take the lead.

  They arrived at the wall. There was a steel door smack in the middle, but it had no handles and no visible way of opening it. Uli looked it over, ready to make a quick decision. To me, the door looked as sleek and formidable as the alien facility at Black Rock. No way we’d be able to open it. Uli turned to Platt. “We go with the cables,” he said, which meant he thought the same thing. No way to get through here in the next thirty seconds.

  We all looked up, to the top of the barrier. We knew there’d be cables leading from the other side of the barrier to the C
ommunications Center. Benny spotted them first. They ran along the chamber wall to our left, right above the Accelerator equipment.

  Uli scrambled up onto the equipment and we followed. The cables ran from the Communications Center into a grate right in front of us. Uli took a second to assess the grate and I thought he’d pull out one of the tools he’d brought and pry it open, but in one powerful motion, he kicked it in.

  We crawled inside and followed the cables through a ventilation channel imbedded in the concrete wall. The cables exited through a grate on the other side of the barrier. Uli kicked that grate out and we climbed out onto more oversized equipment, then scrambled down to the chamber floor.

  I saw two distinct set-ups.

  One, I expected to see. The servers, routers, and switchers that made up the heart of the Line, neatly ordered and effortlessly humming.

  But next to it, I saw another set-up. Two large metal blocks, both bigger than any of the Line’s hardware. They were rectangular, silent, and fiery bronze, the color of the cylinders that had descended from the golden ship. And while the routers and servers were adorned with LED readouts, screens, and switches, these monoliths were perfectly smooth. Not one seam or rivet anywhere along their gleaming surfaces.

  Ten cables connected the silent monoliths to the Line’s hardware and, as soon as I saw those cables, I knew that the monoliths were the aliens’ Earth station. They were how the aliens controlled the Line. And us.

  Benny focused on the fiery bronze blocks. No doubt, he wanted to study them. But our job was to find out how the aliens controlled the Line, and we had. They controlled it remotely, from somewhere across the universe. And now that we knew, Uli and Platt had to do their jobs. They placed explosive charges on the monoliths and on the routers, servers, and switchers, then set the timers.

  We had four minutes to get out.

  We crawled back through the ventilation channel, past the barrier, and climbed out on the other side. We raced through the chamber. Miloff and Sanders were waiting in front of the Communications Center, holding two Fibs at gunpoint. As we approached, they shoved the Fibs forward, and we all ran toward the outer room.

  But when we got there, we ran into an unpleasant surprise. Twenty to thirty Fibs, weapons drawn, waiting for us. One of them shouted, “On the ground!” We didn’t move and I’m sure they would’ve gunned us all down if it hadn’t been for the two Fibs from the Communications Center. They were between them and us.

  We had two choices. Get on the ground or engage in a firefight and get slaughtered. Sanders made the choice. He put his weapon down and started to lie down on the ground. I saw him mouth to Miloff, “Line’s going down.” He was right. In thirty seconds or so, the Line would be destroyed. We all followed Sanders’ lead and, as we put our weapons aside and lay down on the floor, Crow marched in. But he didn’t stop to bark out any orders. He continued past us and into the Accelerator chamber. Miloff whispered to me, “Crow’s going down with the Line.”

  “Get up,” shouted one of the Fibs. We did and the Fibs collected our weapons and herded us out of the building. They marshaled us through the grove and lined us up against the wall of the Controls Building. Lily and the marauders who’d gone to Crow’s headquarters were already lined up here. Except for my father. I didn’t see him.

  I looked over at Miloff and he was checking his watch. He looked puzzled and I knew why. The explosives should’ve gone off by now. Crow must’ve shut them down. But how was that possible? He couldn’t have had enough time.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  A dozen Fibs trained their guns on us. I glanced over at Lily and wanted to ask her what had happened to my father. Sanders, who was lined up next to me, must’ve read the worry on my face because he said, “The other entrance, Roy.”

  And he didn’t have to explain anything more. I knew what he meant, and the respect that I’d lost for my dad was restored and grew tenfold. Will Xere was executing the back-up plan. A plan to get into the building through the original entrance. My dad was racing through the Accelerator chamber toward the heart of the Line.

  Crow stepped out from the grove of trees and headed over to us. “Very brave,” he said. His eyes reflected bemused anger, as if he admired our ambitious plan. He focused on Sanders and Sanders held his stare. Crow stepped up to him and it was all over in a flash. Crow raised his sidearm, shot Sanders in the head, and I felt blood spatter onto my cheek. Sanders crumbled to the ground.

  Crow lowered his weapon, locked his other hand over his silver belt buckle, and scanned the rest of us. I was shaking, holding my breath, and I could feel Sanders’ blood running down my cheek. I didn’t move and didn’t make eye contact with Crow.

  I don’t know what he’d planned next, to execute us all at once or kill us one at a time or send us to Devinbridge to rot in the penitentiary, but I’d never find out because right then a massive blast rocked us all. I looked toward the Accelerator Building and saw raging flames and thick smoke billowing over the grove of trees. My dad had reached the heart of the Line.

  In the chaos that followed, we all ran. Some Fibs took off after us, but Crow ordered many of them to secure other areas of the grounds. I caught up to Lily, grabbed her hand, and we sprinted away from Pep Ring Road and into the dark. I tried to remember the layout of the grounds, but it was hard not to think about my dad. I was sure that the back-up plan hadn’t called for timers and that he’d been killed in the explosion. That was why he hadn’t sent another marauder in.

  Lily and I ran parallel to the Accelerator Building, but kept to the shadows. Behind us, I could hear gunfire. I remembered that the Accelerator ran under the 280 freeway and thought we could use the freeway as temporary cover. Then, if luck was on our side, we could head south to the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. After the assault, all the teams were supposed to meet at its southern border.

  We made it to the freeway and found Miloff, Uli and Platt already there. I looked back toward the grounds, hoping to see Benny running our way, but I didn’t.

  We started south. The original plan was to go back to Stanford Hills Park first and drive to Jasper Ridge, but now, we’d be hiking. After a mile or so, we had to leave the cover of the freeway and cross open land. I expected to see helicopters, but the skies were clear. We entered the north end of the Preserve and found cover again in the wilderness.

  We moved through Jasper Ridge as fast as we could, until we arrived at its southern border. The other teams were there, minus five marauders including Sue Chen and Benny, the two we needed to run the new Line. On the positive side, the others had been able to drive here, so we had three cars.

  Miloff debated with the other marauders whether to wait for Sue Chen and Benny, while I looked to the forest and thought about the sacrifice my dad had made. The plan hadn’t gone perfectly but thanks to him, the first objective had been met, in spectacular fashion. No one would ever forget that blast.

  Miloff and the other marauders decided not to wait. They didn’t want to risk the Fibs tracking them down. So we climbed into the cars, and just as we were pulling out, Benny darted out of the forest.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The trip south had been mapped out by Miloff. He’d mapped it out knowing that the Fibs would be hunting us down after Palo Alto. The route avoided all towns (populated or dead), freeways, wide boulevards, and roads easily visible from the air. It was rural roads and the back roads of National and State Parks, all the way down to Santa Barbara.

  I rode with Miloff, Benny, and Uli. The mood was somber. Miloff said a few words about my father, formal words about his sacrifice and his commitment to freeing the Territory. Then he looked me in the eye and said, “I’m sorry.” Not formal words, but personal words from his heart. Acknowledging that I’d lost my dad.

  Miloff then talked about Sanders, too, but there was a hardness to those words. A hardness that reflected his desire to avenge the cold-blooded execution of his good friend. He also spoke about completing the mission. He wa
s determined to get the new Line up and running and, as he talked about that, I began to understand what he was feeling. Sanders and Crater were gone. My father was gone, too. The Jonah Wolfe and the Will Xere chapters of the marauders’ story had ended tonight. If there was going to be a next chapter, it was up to us to start writing it.

  Our adrenaline started to ebb and we settled into a quiet anxiousness. The night was silent. Dawn was a few hours away.

  Miloff talked about the upcoming morning. The original plan called for Sue Chen to fire up the new Line at dawn. In towns up and down the Territory, the workers who ran the Line would come in to do their jobs and see what they’d always seen. The Line would look no different. But the first message they’d get would be completely different.

  My father had planned to tell them to gather their Town Councilmen and once they’d done that, he was going to tell those Councilmen that the Territory was a mining colony set up to steal our water. Then he planned to call for a summit of all the Town Councils to explain what was going on. He knew that he couldn’t just blurt out that aliens had enslaved us. The Councilmen would want proof. But by the time of the summit, the Councilmen would already have some proof. Trade would no longer be geared toward getting water to Black Rock and all those patterns would’ve changed. At the summit, my dad would offer to take representatives to Black Rock and show them the alien storage facility.

  Now, if the aliens decided to attack, his entire strategy would be different. It’d be about organizing and defending. Ironically, that would be easier because the marauders wouldn’t have to prove anything and the Fibs would help defend the Territory.