Landing on her feet at the control screen once more, she continued to click boxes as those freed by her swarmed over the robot just as Tammy’s people had done in the previous room. Finishing her task, she turned in time to see these foreign people hefting the ruined mechanical being over their heads, carrying it away in a crowd as sparks and thick fluid rained down upon them from the broken machination. Two down, one to go. Sam blinked out of the room.
Reaching the intersection where the three corridors created a tee, she found herself in a crowd of Tammy’s people. Like her, they moved towards the room where the humans were confined. She assumed that her brothers and Tammy were up ahead, but didn’t immediately blink to their aid. Instead she recalled the silent promise she had made to return to the small girl in the glass cage just ahead. Something about the small girl had called to her and she wanted to know what it was very much.
Joining the crowd, Sam walked at a hurried pace towards the giant room ahead where the humans were being held. As she reached the room, shouts and cries arose from somewhere unseen as human words began to rise above the din. Humans were being freed. Looking above the heads of those around her, Sam spotted the upper corner of the glass cage the girl was confined in, and focused her power.
Opening her eyes once more, she blinked down to the floor below to look through the glass to the girl within the cage. She remained, as before, standing tall, this time with a strange smirk on her face. Samantha hadn’t a clue what the small girl was thinking, but was curious beyond belief to find out. This in mind, she was forced to turn away as her attention was pulled towards a great cheer that erupted from somewhere across the room. Turning, she got to witness as the glass cells began to open, one wall of each one dropping down into the floor, as humans began to flood out of their confines. Spinning on her heel, Sam watched as the girl patiently waited for all those locked within her cell to depart before making her way casually to the exit. Sam walked around the cage as best she was able through the growing crowd to meet the girl, and in turn the girl circumvented the glass walls to do the same.
They met somewhere in the middle, though with the tumultuous shouting and roaring sirens, their words were lost to each other’s ears. Unexpectedly, the small girl with beaming eyes reached out and took Sam’s hand as if she were concerned about being separated. Sam looked down to the girl with a nod of approval and began weaving through the thick mass of malnourished bodies in the direction she imagined her siblings would be.
* * * * *
His second victim had went down much quicker than the first, and for that Jack was thankful. Those that Will had recruited were more than ready to bring the fight to their captors, if only Jack had a direction to point them. They needed information, but it was simply too loud to shout above the crowd and the sirens to ask the newly freed people for guidance. Tammy had said that she was to be their guide, but she knew just as little as the rest of them about this place. City of Angels or not, the ins and outs were still a mystery.
Looking to both, Tammy and Will, Jack took the lead, waving to them to follow, and began making his way back in the direction they had come. They needed to find Sam and come up with a plan. Perhaps she had found a way off of this floor of the structure or something that would show them where to go.
Looking about, Jack noted his surroundings and those that filled it. They were a ragtag bunch, mostly skin and bones, but their energy was amazing. It was no wonder that Tammy’s people had survived for so long on a dying world and then in captivity. He couldn’t help but wonder if humans would have been able to survive the same. Looking about the room, now a mix of three races, he also wondered what would become of them in the days and weeks and months to come. Everything was different now.
It was perhaps ten or fifteen minutes when Jack spotted Sam one aisle over with a small girl in tow. Changing direction in order to intercept her, he looked back to be certain both Will and Tammy were still with him.
“Sam,” Jack shouted, rounding the last cell that stood between them.
Though she didn’t reply, Jack watched as Samantha’s head swiveled around and a smile parted her face in recognition. Making his way to his sister’s side, Jack waited for Will and Tammy to join them before making his intentions known.
“We need to keep moving. I haven’t seen any exits off of this floor. We might have to go back to the ventilation.”
“Let’s find someplace where we don’t have to shout,” Sam added.
“Quiet, please,” Will shouted as those immediately surrounding them fell to silence. “I said, quiet please,” he shouted again as more of the room silenced their cheers and shouts. “Quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet,” he repeated again and again until at last the only sound permeating the room was the rhythmic shrieks of the alarms.
“Thank you, Will,” Tammy said with a grin.
“You’re welcome,” the boy replied with a mischievous smile of his own.
“We should get out of here,” Tammy suggested.
“I’m with you, Tammy. They have to know we’re here by now. We need to get moving,” Jack agreed. “Have any of you seen a way off of this floor?”
“I have.”
Jack looked down to the small girl who still held hands with Sam, having forgotten her presence. Looking up to his sister, she simply shrugged her shoulders with an awkward grin and turned back to the small girl.
“Who are you?” Jack asked.
“I’m Cadence. Cadence Dakota.”
“You know how to get out of here?” Jack asked.
“I know a lot more than that,” Cadence smiled.
“Like what?” Sam asked, leaning in.
“Like that there are more than forty floors just like this one, all filled with prisoners. Some of them are monkeys and others are bugs, but they are all prisoners just like we were.”
“Can you get us to them?” Jack asked, thinking to free them all.
“I can, but they would probably expect you to go to the other slaves next,” Cadence said with a knowing look.
Jack nodded. The kid was right. He had to think. They needed to shut this place down, destroy whoever was in charge, and make them pay for what they had done. Then they could free all the slaves.
“How do you know so much?” Jack asked the small girl.
“I escaped once, and was free for six days. I’ve been all over this place. It’s huge.”
“Can you tell us how to shut it down? How to destroy it? Who is building it? What it’s for?” Jack questioned.
The small girl seemed to think on his questions a moment before she pieced together a reply.
“I don’t know who is building it, or what it does, but I think I know where they are. There are these elevator-like things that run up and down the whole thing. Down here everything is pretty basic, but the higher you go the more… different things look. Like we’re in the basement and all the cool stuff is upstairs. If you want to shut it down, I think you need to go up. There is a floor where all the wires and tubes lead and I think it is like the brain or heart of this whole thing. Like a reactor or something.”
“Have you been there? Can you take us there?” Jack asked. The girl’s description sounded promising. Glancing up momentarily, he witnessed as hundreds of pairs of eyes stared at them intently. The freed slaves were listening in as well.
“I’ve only seen it from the elevator thingy. There were too many guards so I had to keep moving.”
Made sense. If it was important they would be guarding it. Jack wanted to have a look for himself.
“What else?” he asked.
“Above that floor, not much further, is the top floor. I haven’t been on it, but saw it for a moment from below. It wasn’t completed then. I think whoever is running the show here is up there. Slaves weren’t allowed up there, the robots were doing all the work.”
Jack pondered all he had heard for a moment before looking to his siblings and Tammy. They all stared at him in return, awaiting his command. It seemed p
retty obvious what they needed to do. If they wanted to shut this place down, they needed to investigate this reactor thing. From there they could move onto making those responsible pay for their actions. Jack’s mind was made up.
“Show us where this elevator thing is,” Jack said, thrusting his shoulders back.
“Wait,” Sam interrupted. “Why were you so calm when you saw me?” Sam asked the girl.
“I read a lot. Well, I used to. The aliens never win. I knew when I saw you that things were about to change,” Cadence admitted with a smile.
“Lead the way,” Jack said, as the small girl began tugging Sam’s hand back towards the intersection in the corridors.
* * * * *
Will followed Jack down the hall with Tammy right on his heels. Ahead, Sam followed the girl, Cadence, who Will guessed was probably a grade or two above him. Ahead of them it was as if the seas were parting, as human and alien alike moved aside for them to pass. Behind them, again the sea was mended as the gap closed and those they passed turned to follow.
It didn’t take long for them to reach the end of the corridor and when they did, Will watched the girl approach the metallic wall. Touching a portion above her head, Will was surprised as an entire panel of the wall slid out and to the side, revealing what could only be described as a cylinder of light. Pulsing yellow and then green, the light seemed almost to be alive and Will wondered if this was perhaps some kind of trap. Who better to use as bait than a defenseless little girl? It seemed the perfect plan for a super villain. Whether it was or not, the situation was a reminder that Will needed to focus on being a hero, and think like all the greats did.
“This one goes up,” the girl said, her large eyes looking into Jack’s face. “The one over there goes down,” she said, turning and pointing just a few feet away. “At each floor, a ball of light will appear. You can either step off, or touch the light to continue moving upward.”
Will watched Jack and Sam nod, and hoped that it wasn’t a trap. It was obvious that she wasn’t planning on coming with them, though he couldn’t blame her. If he had been a prisoner here, he wouldn’t want to stick around either. Nodding his understanding as well, Will stepped forward as all three, Jack, Samantha, and Tammy, began moving towards the would-be elevator, but paused before entering with them.
“What is it, Will?” Sam asked.
“We need a distraction.”
“Huh?” Sam said, one eyebrow rising.
“If we’re going up to fight the bad guys and break their stuff, then we need them and their guards distracted.”
“What you got in mind, little man?” Jack questioned
Turning back towards those gathered in the corridor, Will smiled to himself.
“Go and free all of the other slaves,” he shouted into the crowd of thousands. “Free them like we freed you and fight to make sure you are never locked in a cage again!”
As Will turned to join his siblings and Tammy in the light thingy, a cheer erupted behind him. That should do it.
Inside the elevator was unlike anything Will had ever experienced before. From below him it seemed the air rushed up beneath his feet, though he couldn’t exactly feel it on his skin, and neither his nor anyone else’s hair moved from its passing. The odd yellowish light was harsh on his eyes, forcing him to squint and for some reason his stomach began to twist as if he had the stomach flu. Looking both down and up, it appeared that the odd shaft of light continued in both directions for eternity, but Will didn’t look long as it made his stomach turn even more. Instead, he turned his attention to the glowing orb in front of him with squinty eyes and watched as Tammy placed her hand within it as his stomach lunged into his feet with a jolt.
Looking ahead he could see another floor nearly identical to the one they had just left and hoped silently that there weren’t too many more between themselves and their destination. He doubted very much that his tummy could take that kind of abuse.
As it was, as Tammy presented her hand again and again as floors flickered past, each within the blink of an eye, Will lost count. Closing his eyes tightly and swallowing the bitter acidic bile that arose time and time again, he was finally pleasantly surprised when once again they lurched upward for what seemed a final time.
This time, when his stomach began to knot itself once more, it was for an entirely different reason altogether.
* * * * *
This was it. This had to be it. It met the girl’s description. Peering out beyond the luminescent elevator they rode within, Tammy could make out many of the details that lay beyond. Ahead of them, a myriad of tubes and hoses joined with wires and pipes to create the floor, walls, and ceiling. Lights of various color and size hung here and there, seemingly at random, flashing a dizzying display that danced upon the uneven surfaces of the grand chamber. Suspended from the ceiling of the great room hung, like a pendulum, a great tear-shaped orb of what appeared to be glass. Within it light pulsed, and the thing reminded Tammy uneasily of a heart.
Beating life into the entire structure this reactor, as the child had called it, dangled upon a series of twisted and bent wires that attached to the ceiling at irregular intervals and places. Woven together, the metal bits that bound the reactor aloft appeared to be the blood vessels to the heart they served.
Though light flashed here and there, constantly illuminating the room, it was such that shadows splayed out first one way then the next as if the room was in constant flux. Gouges in the wall of melded metals lay darkened, spared from the luminous flashes, concealing any number of horrors that Tammy could imagine. Looking out into the twisted room beyond, something felt wrong about it. Something warned her to turn back. Something within her screamed that to enter the room would be folly.
Again and again the prophecy played over in her head, forcing her to recall the fallen guide it spoke of. Fallen. Lost. Dead? The words could be interpreted any number of ways, but that still didn’t make her feel any better. Would this be the place?
It didn’t matter. Tammy knew what it was they had to do, and as such she was the first to step out of the pulsing light of the elevator and onto the tangled floor of the room. Carefully placing her steps amongst the tangles of wire and hoses below, Tammy crept into the room with her companions behind her. With her eyes darting this way and that she was no more than ten paces into the giant chamber when she first felt the change. So full of power was the room, that with every pulse of the main reactor at its center, her hair rose upon her head only to fall once more when the light faded. It was peculiar, to say the least, but cemented her resolve. If there was that much energy in the room, this had to be the way to shut it down.
As slow going as it seemed, it felt like only a matter of minutes before they reached the center of the room, though her panting and beating heart said differently. Could time become skewed in a place with so much power? This was no place to ponder such things.
Looking up at the huge energetic capsule above, Tammy could see no way to reach it with ease. Sam could of course teleport up, and Jack could lift them telekinetically, but to what end? They needed to figure out a way to shut it down, or perhaps break it.
“What now?” she asked no one in particular.
“We have a closer loo…” Jack dove aside as the blast of blue light flashed past him.
Looking across the room it seemed Tammy’s imagined nightmares had come to life as dozens of the robo-sapien guards poured out of a rent in the wall where light did not touch. Raising their weaponized arms, they took aim at her and her companions and began firing flashes of focused blue light that snapped and crackled as it sailed through the air around them.
Realizing their predicament, Tammy turned to run as Will attempted to jump away, his ankle becoming caught by a twist of wire as he tumbled to the ground in a heap. Jack was already in the air above and Sam blinked away, leaving Tammy and Will to fend for themselves. Blue pulses of light erupted around her, but there was no time to delay. Turning her attention to Will, Ta
mmy grasped at both his foot and the wire, and with a tug and a twist she set him free. Rising from the floor, she saw as a blue pulse was released in their direction, and shoved Will out of the way just in time to save him from the blast.
With searing pain in her shoulder, Tammy’s vision swam as she lay looking up from the floor. Though she could hear her ears ringing and feel her heart pounding, she never felt so relaxed in her life. Closing her eyes, she let the room and the world fade away.
Chapter Five
Jack watched Tammy take the hit but there was nothing he could do about it. As much as it pained him to watch her crumple to the floor, a writhing mass of limbs and blood, he needed to focus. From above the heads of his siblings, the robot guardians of the alien prison city concentrated their fire on him. Using his power against the floor and walls, he managed to soar about the room, held aloft by nothing more than the power of his mind. Here and there the aliens’ shots hit tubes and wires and pipes, the laser-like power tearing, searing, and melting sections away when it struck. In more than one instance sparks began to spray from the damaged conduits, and in one location, Jack noted a blue luminescent fluid leaking from a newly formed break in a pipe.
Nearing a wall of the immense room with the robo-guards’ shots trailing just behind him, Jack spared a look back to witness Sam landing upon one of the guards' heads at the same time as Will dove behind a bundle of twisted pipes. With blasts of blue light all around him, Jack focused his mind and rocketed upwards before diving once more with blasts of crackling light right on his heels. In this confined space with an enemy that was better prepared and armed, Jack knew it was only a matter of time before he or one of his siblings took a hit. He had to do something and fast.
Children of the After: The Complete Series Page 40