Over the course of about three minutes the cube grows and the lines connecting the spheres solidify as it finds more points of commonality. As it adds more and more data, six of the lines turn red.
I blink. I can’t believe it. This was supposed to prove the sieve could handle the volume of data, but the red lines mean it’s found something of extreme importance.
A sphere in the middle of the cube is glowing. It’s passed beyond red to a pulsating orange, like the data it contains will explode if ignored.
I touch the pulsating sphere with one fingertip and as it centers on screen the other, less-important spheres drop away into the background. My palm swipes the sphere making it spin. As it does, the information it contains explodes out and arranges itself around the borders of the screen.
Each of the small rectangles shows a live video stream from the security network. Empty stairwells inside a vacant building. In one of them there are two people walking down. I tap the rectangle and it maximizes into the center of the screen.
Next to the footage are photos the facial recognition software used.
“Pause,” I tell the screen and the security video stops.
I compare the two people in the video against the photo. There’s no doubt in my mind. They’re the same people.
“Mark position and continue,” I tell the screen. “Roll forward to current position.”
The video on screen flickers by for a moment until it catches up with the live feed. The people in the video, Jay-Bee and Kara according to the photos, stop as if they’ve heard something. The guy, Jay-Bee, pumps his fist in the air and sprints down the stairwell. The girl, Kara, doesn’t look to be in any hurry.
I let the cameras follow them until they disappear into the basement of the building.
“Basement cam,” I tell the screen.
“No cameras exist in basement. Log installation request with maintenance?”
“Negative,” I say, fuming at having lost visual. I smack my forehead when a thought occurs. “Activate audio,” I tell the screen.
In vacant buildings, surveillance is video only since there’s no point in recording the sound of nothing. But the ability exists, and when the audio filters through there’s the unmistakable sound of cheering.
“Sir,” I say, getting my father’s attention. “I’ve located the terrorists.”
My father jumps up and is by my side before I can even blink.
“Show me,” he says.
“Screen, return to mark,” I say and the screen rolls the video back to the point I marked.
My father moves closer to the screen and inspects the still image of the pair on the stairwell.
“That’s them,” he says, almost a whisper. “What building is that?”
The screen responds quicker than I can and overlays a strong of letters and numbers onto the video. They tell us the building and floor number as well as the serial number of the camera.
“That’s right next to the western boundary of the east coast city. What are they up to?” he says, not so much to me but more thinking out loud. He straightens and looks at me. “There’s only two though, where are the rest?”
I tell the screen the scroll the video forward to the furthest point I viewed.
“I can’t give you exact numbers,” I say over the sound of a crowd of people cheering coming from the screen, “but that sounds like a hell of a lot of people down there.”
My father listens to the sound for a few moments and nods his head.
“This is fantastic work, Echo. In less than a day you’ve done more than the people out there ever have,” he says, pointing at the people out in the control room. He raises his arms and gently holds my face in his hands. “You are exceptional,” he says.
I feel my cheeks blush at his praise, and my smile must extend from ear to ear.
“What’s our next move?” I ask.
My father winks at me and then turns towards the screen.
“I’ve got a team ready for just this occasion,” he says, tapping a command into the screen.
The face of a severe-looking man pops up on screen. He must be looking into a wrist comms. The tightness of the shot gives nothing away about his location.
“Mister Jameson, sir,” he says.
“Captain Jacobs, we’ve located a terrorist gathering. Coordinates are on your comms.”
Captain Jacobs disappears as his finger obscures the camera. It swipes across the screen and his face returns.
“Acknowledge coordinates received, sir. ETA 20 minutes for incursion.”
“Terminate hostiles with extreme prejudice.”
“Acknowledged. Over and out,” Captain Jacobs says then disappears.
My father turns back to me.
“Thanks to you, this’ll all be over soon,” he says, grinning at me then turning back to the screen to watch the live feed.
A shiver runs down my spine.
My father leaves me to monitor the feed for any changes and goes back to what he was doing. I’m to call him back when the action starts. While I wait I pull up the photo of the girl from the stairwell.
Kara, it tells me her name is.
I stare at the photo as the minutes tick by. Nothing happens on any of the security feeds. The noise from the basement has died down to the point I can no longer hear anything.
The face in the photo haunts me. She looks... almost familiar. Maybe from one of my dreams I can never remember.
More minutes tick by. The incursion team should arrive any second.
As if waiting for my thoughts, the door to the stairwell on the first floor cracks open. A second later a dozen armed men swarm through. I double-check the volume of the camera. It’s definitely on, they’re just dead quiet.
“Sir, incursion team has entered on level one. Descending to basement now,” I call to my father, and he’s by my side again, watching the feed.
One by one the team sent to end the terrorist threat disappears beyond the limits of the security feed. A few tense moments pass. Neither of us breathe as we wait for the inevitable first shot.
But it never comes.
Instead, the screen in front of us beeps softly.
“Incoming call from... unknown,” the screen says.
I look to my father for confirmation.
“Accept,” he says, and Captain Jacobs appears. His face is streaked with something that looks like black paint.
“Sir, we’re too late. They’ve escaped through a tunnel. Based on its direction it looks to head under the wall into the Badlands.”
My father curses and punches the screen. Thanks to the implanted knowledge in my head I know the force required to break a screen is much more than a single punch can land.
“Can you follow?” my father says, the rage in his voice barely contained.
“Yes, sir. The tunnel is hand-dug and the roof is supported,” Captain Jacobs replies and turns the comms so it’s pointing into the tunnel. A hand reaches out and grabs a support beam and gives it a shake. “It looks like the slightest tremor could knock it over though. We’d need to go slow, so we’d lose a lot of time getting through.”
“Unacceptable!” my father shouts.
“May I suggest we collapse it instead, sir?” Captain Jacobs asks, the comms now pointing back towards his face. “A few explosive rounds fired into it should bring it down.”
My father scowls as he thinks it over. It’s obvious he’s not happy with this outcome, but I suspect he’ll go with the captain’s suggestion.
And the more I think about it the more it makes sense.
Even if the team could catch up with the terrorists, they’d be at a disadvantage. With the team being further in the tunnel and single-file, all the terrorists would need to do is start the collapse themselves. Captain Jacobs and his team wouldn’t stand a chance. They’d be buried alive.
“Fine,” my father says through gritted teeth. “Do it your way.” He then stabs a finger at the screen and the call cuts out.
“Echo, move your search to the Badlands beyond the wall. I want to know if they come out anywhere.”
“Right away,” I reply.
I get to work patching in the cameras inside the building. There aren’t any external cameras so I direct the ones inside nearest the windows to point towards the Badlands.
The images aren’t the best, so I run them through some stabilization and enhancement programs which clean them up a bit. It means the feed is no longer a live stream but more a series of single frames jumping ahead each second.
The image of the terrorist called Kara looks back at me from on screen. It still bothers me that I think I know her. I press my finger against the picture and am about to swipe to close it when it hits me.
I’m sure of it. I loved her once.
Through the audio feed of the stairwell camera comes a distant shout of “fire in the hole!”
My heart skips in my chest. This is wrong. I’m about to kill someone I loved. It’s too late to stop it though. I can feel tears welling in my eyes.
Seconds later a cloud of dust and dirt spews from the basement and obscures the stairwell surveillance feed.
I hope I haven’t made a huge mistake.
4 - Kara
Calmness overtakes me, entombed as I am in this tunnel. That’s weird. I thought for certain I’d be panicking. Has it been so easy for me to accept my death?
I can’t breathe. The weight of earth pushing down on me stops me.
There’s a weird scratching sensation against my arms. Seconds later it moves to my shoulders. I’ve never wanted to itch myself more in my life, but I can’t move. The scratching is around my head now. Past my ears and down to my neck.
Light!
“Kara?”
Sound!
“Kara?”
More dirt gets scraped away from me and my head is free. I want to suck in as much as my compressed lungs will let me, but I can’t. I’m pressed too tight.
“Kara, we’ll get you out. I promise,” Stilwell says.
I try to respond but can’t. There’s no air in my lungs to push out the words. Stilwell doesn’t pause. He keeps scraping away, clawing out great lumps of dirt with his hands.
Someone else helps too, I can’t remember his name. Nils, maybe? Sound right. If I make it out of here alive, I promise myself I’ll never forget it.
More fistfuls of dirt get removed and tossed from the tunnel. The weight on my back releases and my lungs inflate, sucking in the dusty air of my tomb.
I cough and splutter, the dirt tickling the back of my throat. The more I cough the more I inhale and the worse it gets. Tears stream down my face, but I’ve never been happier to breathe in a lungful of dust.
“We’re going to pull you,” Stilwell says and locks his grip around my right arm. Nils grabs my left.
I’m still buried to above my waist. Hopefully it’ll be enough. I flex and push out with every muscle I can think of, trying to loosen the surrounding dirt, anything that might give me a chance.
Through my tear-filled eyes and my coughing I see them brace a leg against the tunnel’s mouth and pull with all their might. My shoulders scream in response, feeling as though my arms will pull free of them any moment.
Eons pass as they pull on my arms and I don’t budge even an inch. They curse and grunt and pull, harder now spurred on by the lack of movement.
Others join in. Four people now grabbing hold of me wherever they can.
My body slides.
Maybe a quarter inch, but I’m moving.
“Yeah!” Stilwell cheers through gritted teeth. “Keep pulling, she’s moving.”
Another quarter inch, then another.
Then without warning I’m pulled free. I explode from the tunnel mouth onto my rescuers who have collapsed into a heap.
I roll off them and onto the floor as gently as I can. My rescuers stand and dust themselves off. We’re inside a building. It’s much smaller than the basement we just left, but after the constriction of the tunnel it feels massive.
“Jay-Bee! He was right behind me,” I say as my rescuers help me to my feet.
Stilwell and the others turn back to the tunnel, but before they can move someone shouts “NO.”
I turn my head and see who shouted. It’s Maliah, the woman who came through first.
“We have to-” I say but she cuts me off.
“No, it’s too dangerous. We have to move, there might be others coming for us.”
“But-”
“No buts. You lost a friend? I lost a husband. Everyone here lost someone they knew. Mourn them later. We have to move. NOW,” Maliah says, her right hand resting on the gun strapped to her hip.
Stilwell puts an arm around my shoulder.
“She’s right, we couldn’t save them even if we dug all night,” he says and nudges me forward.
The others are already filing up the short flight of stairs and out to the world beyond the wall. The sun is almost set now. Only a faint orange glow lights the door at the top.
I take one last look at the collapsed tunnel behind me, thinking of all those buried alive. As I watch, it falls in on itself again, sending more dirt and debris across the floor.
I turn away and trudge up the stairs in silence with Stilwell next to me. Out of the thirty of us who started this journey back in that basement, we’re now just a dozen.
When we exit the building, we see Maliah and the others aren’t waiting around. We’re looking straight at the sun. It’s barely above the horizon and I have to shield my eyes. It occurs to me that it’d blind anyone looking this way from the city as well, so for the time being it should hide us from view.
After about one hundred yards Maliah stops and beckons everyone to hurry along. She’s stopped at a crack in the earth. A ravine plunges deep into stone where there must once have been land.
The people at the front of the pack drop to one knee and then push themselves over the edge, disappearing from view. We hurry to catch up and Maliah waves us on.
I take a moment to peer over the side. The drop isn’t that bad, only six feet or so. I leap over the side, trying to land as softly as I can. My ankle jars on impact, but not too severely. It’ll probably hurt once I stop moving, but for now I can live with it.
Stilwell’s pack thumps onto the ground behind me, quickly followed by Stilwell himself and Maliah a second later.
“Come on,” Maliah says brushing past us. “It’s a long walk before we make camp, and unless you know where we’re headed you better keep up.”
She doesn’t wait for a response, her long legs picking up pace and striding away in front of us. Stilwell pats my shoulder and together we hurry along behind.
Walking the bottom of the ravine is easy going for the most part. As a group we make good progress, even after the sun has set. Our flashlights provide enough light to see where we are going.
After about an hour of walking we reach the end of the ravine. It peters out to a gentle slope so getting back to the surface is easy enough. Once we’re back on top, I see we’re still in the remains of the old city.
The moon casts enough pale light to make out details. The buildings here are in much the same state of collapse as ones near the wall.
Maliah tells us we can stop here for a few minutes, but we’ve still got a way to go before we rest for the night. Stilwell shrugs his pack from his shoulders and unbuckles the flap.
“Sip of water?” he asks, waggling a canteen at me.
“Yes, thanks,” I say and take the canteen from him. I pour a small measure of water into the cap, drink and then hand the canteen back to Stilwell. “Want some protein bar?” I ask him.
“Sure, if you can spare it.”
I reach into one of my pockets and pull out a dirt-covered bar. It occurs to me I hadn’t thought to check my pockets after being pulled from the tunnel.
Fortunately all the bars I brought with me are still there though a lot dirtier for the trip. I brush off as much dirt as I can and hand
the bar to Stilwell.
While he’s nibbling on the end of the bar, I turn my pockets inside out to empty the dirt out from inside them. When I’m done, I pick up the other bars and brush them down as best I can and stuff them back into my pockets.
My ankle is throbbing now we’ve stopped moving. I sit cross-legged and take off my boot and sock so I can massage it.
“Are you okay?” Stilwell asks.
“Yeah, just flubbed the landing when we jumped into the ravine. Think I may have twisted my ankle a bit.”
Stilwell hands me back the protein bar, and I stick it in a pocket with the others. He then reaches into his pack and pulls out a small roll of white fabric.
“Here, we should compress it otherwise it’ll get too sore to move on.”
He slides over and helps me wrap my ankle. The pressure of the bandage makes my ankle feel good, so I pull my sock and boot back on and stand up. It’s not perfect, but it’ll make walking easier.
Maliah announces that time’s up and we need to get moving again. Everyone gets back to their feet and we head further into the Badlands.
Two hours or more pass as we march our way through the remains of the decrepit city. Apart from the sound of our boots clomping along the old road it’s dead quiet.
Maliah told us to keep the chatter to a minimum, because while it may look dead you never know if there’s someone, or something, waiting in the shadows. And the further we get from the wall, the more likely it is we’ll run into trouble.
Another hour passes and my legs are aching. My ankle is holding up well though I suspect once I stop moving for the night it’s going to let me know about it.
After a long time Maliah’s pace slows as she looks around at the buildings on either side of us.
“This’ll do for the night,” she says then points to a building on the right. “That one looks safe enough, we’ll camp there.”
The building is like a fortress, so I can see why she chose it. Among all the collapsed buildings around it, it still stands solid.
Boneyards & Badlands: The Complete FTW Series Page 15