Mr. Gall, I would never hurt you…
…was what his mind intended his mouth to say, but some low-pitched burble came out instead. This caused Mr. Gall’s eyes to widen to the point that Letho feared they would fall out of his skull and roll across the floor, leaving a trail of wet behind like a snail.
Letho issued a nod of sorts and left the office, surging past coworkers that peeked over cubicles with shocked expressions. The braver ones were standing outside of Gall’s office, having been drawn by the arrival of the station inspectors. In the uneventful life of a Red Sector worker, the events that were unfolding now were nothing short of history in the making.
None of them said a word. A lady that had always been kind to Letho, often assisting him when his compuscreen wouldn’t power on, was crying.
“What are you staring at? Get back to work!” he roared as he ran.
Just then, more station inspectors began to pour into the office proper. Letho broke out into a sprint, heading toward the emergency stairs. His vision took on that eerie, too-sharp perspective. It was like some sort of visor had slid down over his face. He could see the station inspectors moving toward him as men in a dream. For a moment he thought that he could see where they were heading before they got there, making it all too easy to avoid them.
He tackled two more station inspectors at the entrance to the stairwell, bowling them aside. He encountered a few more on his way down the stairs, and sent them into oblivion with bone-jarring shoulder tackles. They fell like gamebones all around him; Letho could almost hear the clack of the dotted and lined blocks as station inspectors stumbled into his downward trajectory and were knocked aside.
He burst through to the downstairs lobby and was greeted by a cadre of station inspectors in riot gear, wielding Tranq-rifles. He tore into a full-speed run again, and felt the hot sting of Tranq-rifle darts piercing his calf and shoulder. Things started to get hazy, and his run slowed a bit, but it was not quite a stagger yet. Letho continued toward the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, his vision blurring, sounds around him beginning to distort and run together.
Not far away, the lights of the shuttle terminal flooded his swirling vision. The floor spun and melted beneath his feet. People were shouting, and tranq-rifle reports filled the air.
The window of Letho’s vision began to shrink, and everything he saw took on a broken look. The movement of the station inspectors before him stuttered and shook, as though frames were missing from some hideous film that only he could see.
Blessedly, the station inspectors were no longer firing. Their voices were coming in through some sort of fog, and Letho no longer knew why they were shouting or whom they were shouting at. He lumbered forward on wobbling legs, spittle rolling over his slack lips, unaware that he was caterwauling like a wounded animal.
The station inspectors were gesturing toward him, but he couldn’t decipher the meaning of their moving arms. He froze, amazed at the way their arms trailed and blurred.
Some part of his mind snapped as he realized that several of the inspectors were coming up from behind him and on both sides. Summoning what strength remained to him in his last fleeting moments of consciousness, he thrashed forward like a man running through waist-deep water.
He didn’t know where he was going; all that remained was the base instinct to flee. The shuttle swam into his vision, juddering and blinking as his brain fought to make sense of the information his eyes were sending. He was almost there. His escape vehicle was waiting for him. Once he got home he would lie low for a while. The station inspectors would leave him alone, forget about him. Everything would be okay.
He felt a guardrail hit him hard in the midsection, eliciting an oafish Ooof! and expelling the remaining air in his lungs.
Forgot about the guardrail.
The world began to tumble. He felt the rush of air on his skin, his stomach lurching as he hurtled through open air. Next came pain, and flashes of head-scrambling light, as he buffeted against convoluted tangles of pipe and metal boxes that housed thrumming circuitry. He cried out as a jagged edge tore a gash in his leg.
With an unceremonious thud, he landed at the bottom of some sort of duct—well below the shuttle platform. He rolled down the sloping surface into a black maw, and felt himself tumble a bit more before the world was completely devoid of meaning and time.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
“I ain’t goin’ down there. You can climb down there and get him your bleeding self,” said Station Inspector One.
Station Inspector Two nodded, his hands massaging a throbbing, swollen windpipe. “Yeah, we’ll let the next shift worry about it. He’s probably dead anyway, poor bastard.”
“Poor bastard?” the wounded inspector wheezed. “Did you see what he did back there?”
“Yeah. I’ve never seen anything like that. He was so fast. It was unreal!”
“Sure put up a good fight, didn’t he? I swear I ain’t never seen anything like that. That guy was a real ass-kicker.”
“Until we got a few tranq darts in him, that is,” said Inspector Number Two. “He was an ass-kicker. If the fall didn’t kill him, the tranquilizer in his bloodstream will.”
They both laughed, and after a moment the wounded inspector collapsed, his face red. He waved off Inspector Two, who had taken it upon himself to bend down and guffaw right in his partner’s face, spewing gobbets of spittle and leftovers from lunch onto his own faceplate. The two inspectors collected themselves, straightening collars and checking weapons as other station inspectors made their way over to peer down into the darkness that had swallowed the enraged suspect.
“Hey, one of us should go down there, right?” one of the other inspectors asked from near the guardrail.
“Go ahead, get yourself killed.” Station Inspector Number Two made a be my guest gesture. “I’m not going down there. Like I said, let the next shift worry about it. I need a drink.”
FIVE - The Underneath
The air was thick and chewy; it hit Letho’s chest hard, making it difficult to breathe. The acrid but sweet scent of well-oiled metal filled his nostrils. The odor was tinged with another smell that he couldn’t place, an earthy musk-scent. Sweat that couldn’t perform its primary cooling function coated his face, unable to evaporate into the cloying¸ humid air.
Letho’s body screamed as he attempted to move. He willed himself to rise, but his body didn’t respond. He drew his hands from the floor, flexing them. They felt sticky, wet.
He lay in a puddle of blood, urine, and vomit. He could identify the mixture by its smell, a cloying scent of bile and copper. The sheer size of the puddle filled Letho with panic. His mind swam, eyes rolling back as he felt the need to vomit again. He fought to regain control of himself, to maintain consciousness; it was like clinging to a rope dangling over a black-toothed maw.
The gash in his leg screamed as he tried to roll onto his side. He clamped his mouth shut, trying to stop the expulsion of a wounded animal cry. Tears streaked down his face as he placed his hands on either side of the wound. It was long and ragged, a meandering canyon that looked as though a madman had carved it into his leg. It began to weep precious red anew, and the flesh surrounding the rip felt warm and too tight. Part of him imagined what a magnificent scar the wound would produce, and he would have laughed if his jagged ribs had allowed the luxury.
He struggled to his feet, and the world lurched and spun as he fell on his face. His limbs were like hanging sacks of meat, his mind still a brimming bowl of scrambled sim-eggs.
He pressed his fingers together, hearing the familiar click, but he couldn’t summon the comforting glow of his uCom.
Sila.
Deacon.
Mr. Gall.
Anyone.
No one can find you down here, Letho.
He staggered further into the darkness, eyes clamoring for the tiniest shred of light, but finding none. The darts’ effects still lingered, numbing his senses. The amount of poison that flowed in
his veins should have killed him, but somehow he survived, stayed conscious, and kept walking. The tranquilizing agent numbed his body, keeping the pain at bay, a dubious fortune.
He stumbled in the dark for what seemed like an eternity. The sweet musk scent grew stronger; it was his only beacon in the tunnels that coiled deep within the Fulcrum station.
After a time, he finally grew weary of bumping his head on bundles of wires and stumbling over low clusters of pipes that he couldn’t see. He collapsed to the floor, inching backward in hopes of finding a wall to lean against—or, in the worst case, an unseen chasm that would claim him with but a whisper. Either way it promised a kind of respite from his pain.
At last his back touched the warm, comfortable press of a vertical plane. From somewhere above him cool droplets of water splashed onto his forehead. His tongue lanced out and captured one of the drips. It was acerbic, but he was so thirsty.
“What have I done?” he asked.
His voice echoed for what seemed like days, mocking him.
As time passed, the fog that clouded his mind began to dissipate a little, and shards of the recent past began to emerge from the mist.
I attacked station inspectors. No. Impossible. I would never do something like that.
He saw the inspector whom he had struck in the throat, as clearly as if the man’s fear-contorted face hung in the pulpy darkness in front of him.
But you did, Letho. You most certainly did. And you were quite good at it, too. Didn’t know you had it in you, kid.
“But how? I’ve never hit anyone before. I don’t even know how to!”
Recent developments would appear to indicate otherwise.
He tried to close out heavy thoughts, but they slipped and crashed against the walls he had put up in his mind, like unbound crates on a ship in turmoil. Shuddering from the cold, wheezing from a punctured lung, every muscle torn and knotted, Letho gave up and cried himself to sleep.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
“Letho,” someone said.
Letho’s eyes weren’t working for some reason. He could feel a cushion beneath him and a blanket covering his body.
A jolt of fear coursed through his body as he struggled to get up, only to find that he was bound by some sort of rigid apparatus.
“Letho, we mean you no harm,” said a familiar voice. “We have mended your wounds, but we have bound you to your bed for your own safety.”
Letho stopped struggling, but his fear continued to rise. The combination of his wounds, the realization that he was trapped, and his inability to see drove him to the point of madness.
As he thrashed, the deep wound in his leg complained, and he felt an unpleasant pulling sensation there like crusted eyelids attempting to open.
“Where am I? Why can’t I see?”
“You are in the underneath. The place where the work is done to ensure the continuing safety and comfort of the Centennial Fulcrum. The bad medicine from the station inspectors’ darts has made you blind. Your vision will return in time.”
The voice that Letho couldn’t quite place continued. “You have many questions, Letho, but for now you must rest. And you must remain bound, I am sorry to say. Your wounds are grievous, and the medicine will not work if you do not lie still.”
Letho’s fear and panic rose to the surface again. “Let me go!” he roared.
A new sensation began to take hold. His mind seemed to spin, to jerk, as though someone had touched a live wire to his frontal lobe. Fear, irrational and vital, surged into his body like the first torrents of spring coursing down dry riverbeds. He felt the urge to get up, to run, to get away. His mind jolted again and he felt as though someone had tilted the room around him.
“Letho, you must stay where you are. The time that comes next will not be pleasant for you, young Eursan. You must be purified before you may stand before the Elder.”
“Purified?” he moaned. “What the hell does that mean?”
Terror returned as lurid images danced through his head like the specters that torment children in dreams. Why did he need to be purified? Were they going to eat him? Or worse?
“We will bring you food, and keep your body clean as the bad medicine leaves your body. May Je-Ha watch over you in your time of suffering.”
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
The chief inspector sat at his desk, eyeing bold text on his computer screen. A new report? He hadn’t had a new report in months. He scanned the report, eyes widening. Nothing like this had happened in years, not since he had taken over the chief inspector job from his father. He read the inspectors’ firsthand accounts and scoffed.
“Yeah, right. No way some soft-headed Red Sector yokel got the drop on two of my guys.”
He typed a few keystrokes into his dusty, worn keyboard and brought up the security feed. What he saw quickly changed his assessment.
How can he be so fast?
Why didn’t the stun bolt take him down?
And then he saw the boy’s fall. He saw him struggling toward the approaching shuttle. He saw the guardrail that the boy hadn’t noticed in his drugged state. He saw his body topple over, too sedated to thrash as it disappeared into the dark.
“Blast it! Computer, back up the video and do a facial scan. Find this guy for me!”
“Analyzing facial structure, cross referencing with fulcrum station identification records. Suspect is Letho Ferron, Red Sector worker, identification R25-0219.”
Upon hearing the suspect’s name, the chief inspector’s face became drawn, his eyes a little more focused.
“Is he alive? uCom scan please.”
“Unable to access visual image. Receiving vital signs. Vital signs normal, but subject is highly agitated.”
The breath that the chief had been holding burst through his lips, causing them to flap like shutters in a storm.
“Interesting. Keep me apprised of the situation. I would like to speak with the station inspectors that were involved in the altercation. Please send a notification to their uComs.”
“Processing. Requested notifications have been sent.”
Letho Ferron. What have you gotten yourself into now?
He attempted to draw information from the depths of his brain, but he was getting old, and every day it became harder to access that kind of information. He had reached the age where the non-mission-critical items were getting thrown out or destroyed as time did its dirty work.
You old dog, you ain’t that far gone yet.
He twirled his mustache, as he often did when he was lost in thought. The mustache was still jet-black, though the hair on his head was an iron gray peppered with streaks of white.
Age and status did have their benefits. After all, he was the one sitting behind the desk when all those inspectors got their asses handed to them by a Red Sector worker.
Still, the young man that lived inside him would have loved to have been right there in the thick of it. He missed the adrenaline rush, the uncertainty, making split-second decisions while on the move.
Two station inspectors arrived moments later. Embarrassed, their heads hung low as they entered the chief’s office.
“Boys, take a seat. So how are y’all doin’?”
“Okay, sir,” said the one with the neck brace.
“Just fine, a broken rib, but the doc says it will heal up nicely,” said the other.
“So, what can you tell me about this Letho Ferron character?”
“Nothing that we didn’t put in the report, sir,” said one of the inspectors. “It was the weirdest thing. I have never seen someone move that fast. It was like he was a ghost or something. When he moved you could hardly see him! And nobody can take a stun bolt and tranq-darts and keep running. Not even a slave bear.”
“Yeah, that’s the part that’s got me hung up. You sure that both darts hit him?”
“Yes sir, right in the throat,” the inspector said. “It didn’t even faze him.”
“Maybe he was on the junk?” the second inspecto
r offered.
The chief shook his head at this notion. “Mind telling me why no one went after him?”
“Sir, we didn’t have the proper equipment to get down there. We wanted to, but—”
“But you were pissed that he kicked your asses and wanted to give him a little payback,” he interrupted. “What if I told you that he was alive when he landed, but bled out because no one came after him?”
The two inspectors’ faces became drawn, pale.
“Sir, we didn’t… he couldn’t have… there was no way to…”
The barrage of excuses rattled in the chief’s ears. He brought them to a stop with the crash of his giant fist on the desk.
“Since you two were the lead inspectors on this, the responsibility falls on your shoulders.”
The two men blanched as though the chief had told them he would be their executioner himself.
The chief was silent for a long time, twirling his thick mustache. Just as the silence was becoming palpable and the two inspectors were beginning to shift and fidget in their seats, he spoke. “Of course, the way I see it, if he’s man enough to lay hands on an inspector, he’d better be man enough to face the consequences.”
The two men nodded, faces softening as the implication set in. The second inspector gasped, and looked as though he was on the verge of tears.
“You two understand me?”
“Yes sir!”
They bounded from their seats to shake his hand and say “thank you” at least three times each. He guided them out of the office with pats on their backs and a smile.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Letho awoke again in near-darkness, with no way to mark the passing of time. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious or how long it had been since he’d fallen into the domain of the Tarsi. He was pleased to find that he was no longer bound. Someone had replaced his sullied jumpsuit with a fresh one, and when he smelled under his armpits he found a clean, citrus scent where he’d expected noxious odor. When he stood, a deep ache spread across his leg, but the tearing-open sensation was gone.
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