by Ian Williams
“Please, Anthony,” Phoenix continued. “We’ve known each other for a few years now, you can trust me.”
“No. I can’t.” Anthony slowly stepped around her and then stopped in front of Pete. He smiled a creepy smile that was only returned out of fear of the possible consequences associated with not doing so. “How about I make the choice a little easier for you.”
She did not like the sound of that. The cogs were working away inside Anthony’s head and threatening to wear out from overuse. He was concocting some God-awful way of punishing her, she knew it. The last time he did so he left a grown man crying in pain and dribbling blood from his mouth. Elliot had been at least twice her size too. She could not imagine what the same would do to someone of her slightly petit size. “Please,” she tried again.
“Quiet,” he ordered. “You have a decision to make. Will you stay with us, or leave?” He removed a gun from the back of his trousers and held it against Pete’s head. “I warn you though, leaving will carry a price.”
“What are you doing? Stop,” she said as she clamped her sweaty hands together.
An unspoken time limit had been placed on her choice. Once again the other guard watched rather than let another hostage free. Only two more remained. After the last hostage was out she would have to follow soon after or lose her only chance to be reunited with her brothers. In reality she knew the choice was not really between staying and leaving. It was between Pete and her brothers; who was more important to her?
“You want to leave so badly, so go. Don’t let us stop you. Isaac will have no need for doubters such as you.”
“No, I’ll stay. I’ll stay. Please, just put down the gun.”
“Sir?” Pete said. “I’m with you. I’ll do whatever you ask of me, just let her go.”
Anthony laughed, then wiped his mouth with his free hand. “I have a gun to his head and he’s only interested in what happens to you. Is there no-one in this fucking building with any notion of loyalty? Here, let me make up your mind for you.”
Phoenix watched in terror as Anthony suddenly pulled the trigger. “No!” she screamed at the top of her voice. All the time she had been searching for a way to turn his rage around she had not once thought he would actually fire. But he had and it sent a wave of panic through the last two remaining hostages, who scrambled for the door. They shoved the guard out of their way and ran for all their life’s worth out into the waiting arms of the police.
Without any sign of pain, Pete fell to the floor like a stack of boxes. A small entry wound with a grey ring of smoky deposits sat dead centre in his forehead. Where he lay on the ground, a look of shock upon his frozen face, his blood soon surrounded him. He was dead and she had been the reason.
She dropped to her knees and sobbed over the body. Without realising it, her jeans instantly began soaking up Pete’s blood. “Why?” she said, rocking back and forth. “Why did you do this?”
“It needed to be done, Phoenix. You’ve been given enough time to choose a side. To say that I’m hurt is an understatement. You’ve deeply wounded me. After today you would have been treated like a queen. Isaac’s new world order would have had many uses for someone as talented as you.”
“Fuck you, Anthony. And fuck Isaac.”
He took a tight hold of her arm and forced her to her feet. “You’d be wise to hold your tongue in future, Phoenix. I’m only letting you live because I still see a chance you may change your mind. Once you’ve found your family you should come and find me. If you don’t, then the next time I see you will be moments before you die.”
“Sir, is she going?” the guard said, standing nervously by the door. He only just managed to shut it in time after the last hostage had burst free.
“Yes. Get her out of here. I have the future to prepare for.”
She stood motionless and staring at Pete’s body as Anthony stepped back into the darkness. He did not say a word more to her, the job was done. He had made his feelings toward her clearer than glacial mountain water.
“Phoenix?” the guard asked gently. “Come on. You need to go now. Otherwise the hostages might say something about this.”
“Fine, I’m going,” she said, still with both eyes locked onto the bullet hole in Pete’s forehead.
“Good luck with finding your brothers.” The guard then patted her on the back and began to open the door. “One more hostage coming out,” he called through the gap.
She did not look back after that. Her only interest was with getting out and getting away from death. Except with one look at her knees she felt like she had been dragged right back there with him again. The blood had soaked into her new jeans. It was still warm too.
“Quickly,” a waiting officer called to her. “Hey you, with the red hair. Keep moving until you get to us.”
Running like she was scared for her life was not an act at all, but the truth. She dipped as she raced toward the officers. It surely looked as if she were afraid a sniper would take her head off if she kept it up. Exactly as she needed them to think. Moments later an officer wrapped his arms around her and ushered her away, acting as a human protective blanket.
“It’s OK, miss, you’re safe now,” the officer told her.
“Thank you,” she replied. He did not know the half of it. If he knew he helped one of the terrorists escape he would probably have throttled her. It was time to put the next part of her plan into action. “I think I’m gonna puke,” she yelped.
This was not part of the plan at all. She ran to a wall and bent over. The sudden jerking motion caused her a temporary moment of dizziness. Things had gotten totally out of control, the same went for her stomach, which felt determined to empty itself all over the street. After a less than effective gag, she was left with only saliva to spit out. The sickness remained, despite there being nothing to bring up.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe here. Just take your time. I’ll wait over there for you. We need to ask you some questions before you speak to anyone, OK?” The officer left her to empty her stomach in peace.
A quick look soon confirmed that he was paying more attention to what was going on with the other hostages than he was to her. He became distracted. Just what she needed. So, without once peering behind her, she straightened herself up and left the scene. Along the way she fought off the emotional pain running through her. She spat mucus and tears on the ground as she walked, expelling the bad one mouthful at a time.
By the time they worked out she had not been one of the hostages she would be long gone and on her way to whichever police station held her brothers. It occurred to her that she had no idea where to start searching for them. They could have been taken to any of possibly a hundred. She could not even say exactly how many were in the city.
She decided her first task after gaining freedom was to steal one of the police officers’ devices. With a generous helping of her nano-circuitry spray she would be able to commandeer it and search the police database as though she were one of them. Crap! she thought, upon realising that she had left the spray can at the hideout. She would have to pick it up on her way.
With the stealth of a well-trained thief, she had a device away with little trouble. Whoever had left it sat on the table near the edge of the scene would soon find it missing. She on the other hand now had the police’s technology working for her.
Finally the time had come to do what she knew she should have done the moment she learnt of her brothers being caught: she would go get them back. Anyone planning on getting in her way now would have to shoot first. Otherwise she was ready to rip them apart and feast on the carcass like a hungry predator.
Pete’s death was to be avenged one way or another, she quickly decided. She did not yet know how. All she had stored up inside were equal amounts of rage and sorrow, jostling for her attention. Whichever went on to win would then dictate her actions from that point on.
Chapter 13
Friend or foe?
Graham’s legs ached from a
walk he would have considered a marathon if not for the mounting pressure. There had been little choice in the matter, so the pain was less severely afflicting him than it would have otherwise. Still, his legs had valiantly carried him across the city, with only the occasional rest when he and Ruth caught a Mag-Lev car – which Petra’s device had allowed them to do so anonymously. Time was running out for them and Elliot. With the sun now threatening to dip behind the highest towers in the distance, he knew it more than ever.
The directions they followed on Petra’s tablet device told them where to go at each turning. Currently it was telling them to continue down a small dirt-track road, after it had already led them so far away from the city-centre that they could see only the tops of the highest buildings now. This area was all about processing and industry, and included quite a few buildings dedicated to nothing but the farming towers a few miles away. A link to these unmanned and multileveled agricultural behemoths was becoming increasingly obvious.
No more than three streets remained ahead of them, which meant they had either been tricked or they were nearing something important. The directions did not seem to be taking much of what surrounded them into account. Graham scanned ahead of the instructions by swiping the map up. All he could see was where it stopped and then sped away in a straight line. He searched the area of the map beyond the last street. There was nothing he could see that followed this at all.
The time written at the top of the tablet said 6:40pm. They had been travelling for over two hours to arrive at this area, and the dead end he now stared at. While looking down at the device in his hands he noticed a sudden invasion of static and an odd string of letters, or a code of some kind, pervading it. It replaced the entire set of 3D directions they had been stuck following, physically washing them away like a tidal flow of fuzz across the screen. He was left with a 2D display. The tiny structures that had been reaching out of the plastic now sat flat and lifeless as the disruption continued.
“See, there it is again,” Graham said, shaking the tablet in an attempt to loosen the invasion as if it were sand trapped inside a shoe.
“What?” Ruth replied.
“It’s the third time I’ve seen this in the past hour. Something must be wrong with the nearby power relay. It goes after a minute or so, but it’s strange. Nothing should be affecting the device like this.” He tapped the screen a few times to see if a physical input could overcome the error. Whether coincidence or not, the screen cleared and continued to point him in the direction ahead as if nothing had happened at all. “Look, it’s cleared again. I think I’ll leave it in 2D mode from now on. Maybe there’s a problem with the 3D setting.”
Either because she had not seen the relevance or was just not interested, Ruth walked beside him without replying. She had been quiet during their journey and had only engaged in conversation when he managed to coax a reply out of her. He felt apprehensive too, although his coping mechanism involved talking regardless of whether the other person listened or not. Dino’s death had shaken them both.
Finally they reached the point where they could go no further – unless interested in taking to the fields beyond the fence in front of them. With no buildings left to block the evening breeze, Graham felt a slight chill against his face.
From the instructions, he saw that the off-road route was not going to be necessary. The reason they could not see where the path led, was because it appeared to be inside the building to their right. Whatever resided behind the door, it was linked to the farming towers in some way.
“In here,” Graham said, pulling Ruth toward the door. Luckily it was unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped inside. It was soon clear that it did not really need to be sealed shut from the public. Anyone getting inside would find nothing of worth to steal.
“You’re kidding me?” Ruth took the lead and walked into the centre of the large and empty warehouse. She extended out her arms and turned on the spot, demonstrating the amount of space she had to her disposal. “It’s deserted.”
“Shit, we’ve been screw–” Before Graham could complete his sentence he heard a message alert from his small tablet. It had been silent the entire time between Petra’s bar and this warehouse. No-one but her knew they had it. Except for… “It’s him.”
“Who?” Ruth said.
“The Sentient Collector. It’s him.”
“Well, what does it say then?”
“I don’t understand the message. It just says to get in.” Graham searched about him to find anything that he could enter or hide inside. Perhaps someone was coming and it had been meant as a warning? That seemed particularly unlikely to him, considering they had not seen another soul since arriving. The area was dead for the evening, with all workers having already finished for the day and gone home. He assumed anyway. He did not really know what the place was used for.
“Wait,” Ruth said, freezing on the spot. “I can hear something.”
Her hearing was much better than his. He could not hear a thing – apart from his own breathing. Then, seconds after she silenced him, he could hear it too, an echoing noise of scrapping and the occasional screech, like metal against metal. Something was coming.
“It’s coming from over there,” Ruth pointed to the back of the building, where no light shined at all. It was hard for anything to be seen in such darkness.
They slowly wandered into the darkness with only the light from Petra’s tablet device to light the way. What little light it shone around was reflected enough to spot any solid surface in front of him. When he could go no further he stood and felt the structure only inches away. It was cold to the touch. Metal.
A gap in the wall ran all the way down to the ground. He could just about fit a finger in between it. Was it in fact a large door? Peering between the two large metal plates he could make out a faint glow. Along with the approaching sound he could now make out light following closely behind.
With his nose squeezed tight against the metal he was shocked when the door suddenly slid open. An almighty rumble gave away the massive weight of the doors as they moved apart. He almost fell through and only just stopped himself from lurching forward at the last moment. Now he could see what The Sentient Collector was talking about and the reason behind the odd noise.
“What the hell? Is he serious?” Ruth called from behind him.
He chose not to reply, and only chuckled to himself over the absurdity of the whole thing. What approached was an empty rail-cart used to transport produce from the farming towers and into the city. They were expected to climb aboard it like a theme park ride, heading into a cave of wonders or a ghost tunnel. It made sense for moving D-Stims and MARC filled Cage’s, but people? Surely this guy had a better way in and out?
“I don’t think we have much of a choice,” Graham said. “You want shotgun?” He waved his sister ahead.
Ruth tutted while staring at the cart. She was trying to work out how to go about climbing aboard with dignity, probably. He knew her too well. She may have always been the more athletic and much sportier type as youngsters, but he had been the more adventurous of the two – or reckless as Petra had correctly called him. She would get in only after encouragement.
“Before we do this, can we check on Elliot?” Ruth asked before taking the tablet from him.
“Sure, be quick though. We still need to find this guy.”
Ruth held out the device and waited for something to happen automatically, as it usually did. It took her a few seconds to realise this was not going to happen. The tablet could not read their biometrics. Petra had obviously done this to keep her details from being recorded, a smart move to keep her identity a secret from Simova’s prying eyes and ears. There was no need to tell Ruth this. Graham knew she was on top of things.
An audible sigh and a roll of the eyes later, Ruth manually instigated a call home instead. “Hey Elliot, how you doing?”
Although facing the back of the tablet device, Graham could still see the beaming face
of Elliot through the clear back plate. It was hard for him to admit that he still struggled to look at his friend in such a state. He could only imagine what it must have been like for him stuck at home while others sought out the one person in the city no-one knew anything about.
“Babe? Oh, thank God. Are you both OK? I’ve been worried sick. Where are you? I can’t see your location.”
“Don’t worry Elliot, we’re fine. We think we’ve found The Sentient Collector. I just wanted to check on you before we go.”
“Go where? Please be careful, honey.”
“We will be. I think we’ll be out of reach for a bit though. We’re about to leave the city. You just rest for now.”
“That’s all I’ve been doing. Jane and Alex have been great. I just wish I was with you there, helping out. If I wasn’t such a burden then you–”
“Shut up, Elliot. You’re an idiot for getting involved in this, but you’re not a burden. I’ll call again when we’re able to. OK?”
“Fine,” Elliot faced away from the screen for a moment and then turned back. “Make sure you don’t hang around if something feels wrong. Use that thing I gave you. You remembered to take the thing, didn’t you?”
“You’d better talk to G about that.” Ruth passed the tablet over.
Elliot had to wait for Graham’s reply as he turned the screen to face himself. “Yeah, well, I’m afraid I smashed the Taser-stick to pieces. It was kind of an accident. I hit some guy really hard in the face with it.” He was unsure if telling Elliot this would make him feel any better or not.
“Clumsy twat!” Elliot said with a twinkle in his eyes.
The presence of even the tiniest amount of humour behind Elliot’s strained and stressed expression made Graham’s heart skip a beat. For a split second he felt like he was with his friend as normal, and without the threat of death hanging over them. He managed to catch his breath in time to nip a tear in the bud. He sniffed, sucking air through his nose and the moisture back into his tear duct.