Exile: Arc

by Jack Lance

  Let go. Let me drive.

  “No! I’m not mad.” Bailey whispered weakly.

  Bailey tied the cops hands together with some old plastic covered chain and lifted the body of the officer effortlessly over him, hooking the chain over a hook dangling from the ceiling. The officer hung as Bailey sat back against the scarred work bench that lined the rear wall. There was an old half smoked cigar in a tin tray to his right, so he lit it with a slightly shaking hand and tried to assess what he had done. He took a long draw on the old stick, but it didn’t seem to help.

  “I feel… faint?” Bailey hissed as he exhaled.

  What does your heart tell you to do?

  "You're trying to..." Bailey said while shaking his head and looking around the lost place he had come to for some sign of familiarity or console.

  He caught sight of himself again in a tall, warped mirror leaning against the side bench. His own face was stretched in three directions by the pummelling the mirror’s face had taken.

  This universe is a dream. Life is a dream. You are a dream. Listen to my voice.

  Bailey stood up and walked over to the officer with a swagger like an old gangster from a cheesy movie. He took his domed helmet off and dropped it at his feet, then proceeded to blow cigar smoke into his face, waking him slightly.

  “Uhh. You’ll never get away with this.” he said coming to. “They’ll notice I am missing and search this place with prejudice.”

  Bailey, having seemingly heard enough turned to the officer, stepping at him, and side kicked into his stomach.

  The officer’s body swung back and then forward, as Bailey side stepped to be missed.

  “I’m telling you straight…” the officer began, cut short as Bailey winded the words short with a punch, followed by a furious barrage of more punches to his chest and stomach.

  The officer coughed and swung before Bailey who stood staring at him, a crazed, fixated look on his face.

  The codes…

  “The codes.” Bailey said with a kind of childlike drama. “Your passcodes for Border-Sec intra networks.”

  “I am a trustee! Go to hell you…” he said before being stuck hard across the head. Bailey followed with more punches, bending his face left and right.

  The officer’s face was pouring blood from cuts afterward, but he still spoke “You can kill me. I swore allegiance to Cequodus Border-Security. I swore allegiance to my homeworld. Oh why was I sent here to this place? I am a police officer!”

  “All this will end. Just tell me the codes.”

  “You know you will have to kill me anyway. My integrity! I’ll never tell you!” the officer whimpered, injecting fury into Arc Micormic.

  Bailey struck him some more before catching sight of the cop's identity wallet hanging half out of his jacket pocket. He took it from his shaking body and took from it a picture of the man’s family. It had been taken in the biosphere, indicating he had made his family here on the colony.

  “Oh God no.” the officer panted as he saw the photograph.

  “Just tell me the codes… And only you have to die.” Bailey spoke.

  “Password is Seikonjelles. It’s the colony where I was born. Security code is 1357, should it be required. It never is.” he panted, and Bailey turned away smirking like some comic book villain.

  Bailey took a jagged, oil stained knife from the backmost work bench, and brought it up to the chest of the hanging officer. Slowly Bailey fed it through the buttons of the armoured uniform, and into the chest, piercing the heart.

  Bailey stepped away from the officer slowly, watching the body buck and jerk against the blade. Eventually it stopped moving and hung lifeless between the cul de sac of workbenches.

  Bailey stepped back and sat up on the rear workbench, and rubbed his sore eyes, wondering if it was all a dream. He looked at his fingers and saw a streak of blood and felt even more dizzy and unreal.

  He was noticeably being guided now, with the lack of morals only experienced in dreams, but with far more grace and precision.

  As if watching someone else his hand took the multi-com from his pocket and threw it onto the floor just below the dead cop’s feet, skimming through the growing pool of blood.

  Immediately the Branch operating system began within the multi-com, and a huge, high definition holo-terminal projected over it, swamping out the view of the corpse and the trailer behind it.

  Bailey looked over the display with glazed eyes, as the square options orbited slowly around the point of light. He chose “Public Internetwork” written within a dark green square, reaching up to tap it as it flew by.

  We need some friends.

  On selecting it, all options fluttered over his shoulder with a thrum. The terminal expanded into two white pages, while spewing out new options that orbited at a wider distance, so to pass by behind him.

  Bailey suddenly found himself sitting within a strange collage of moving colour and light, with his arms compelled to manipulate the pages and options that hovered before him. Somehow he seemed to know the intricacies and nuances of computer sign language, so to zoom, select, copy, paste, delete and a host more within the Branch operating system.

  His finger pressed against the search box while he seemed to say “Civil service trustee login page, flag, secure web protocols.”

  A number of search results came back, with the third being the one he needed, and so his finger tapped there.

  He now looked at the login page for colony trustees, that were just exiles like himself that had been granted an especially trustworthy role to top up their allowance a little higher than a regular job. He tapped the name field and said the name of the cop, then the pass field and said “Seikonjelles.”

  Both pages fizzed and then became the Civil Service internal network. The left page was entitled “City Archives” and amongst it’s long list was the option for “Advanced Census”, and so he double tapped there, opening a third page that he dragged away to the side.

  The new window began to populate with the names and expandable details of everyone recently brought into the colony, with other tabbed pages for histories going back a decade at a time. While it did so he left it for a moment and turned his attention to the rightmost page, that was entitled “High Security Services”.

  Within it’s lists was the option for “Raw Command” at the very bottom, illustrating how rarely it was selected. Bailey double tapped it, entered the passcodes, and both pages turned black. The left most page filled with a green line that danced as Bailey spoke, while the one on the right filled with the text spoken. With this window brought much more control over the services on the network, but only if you knew the complex computer language that ran the services.

  Arc apparently did.

  “Open surveillance grid.” Bailey said, and a new window popped out of the pages and hovered just above them. It filled with a complex inventory of camera hubs at various points within the prison.

  “Individual, search by name.” he said and then turned to the city census, and reached out to the search box at the top of the long list.

  Pressing the box he said “Find me exiles with the following attributes. Identity theft. Concealed murder. Mutilation of corpses. Hacking. Marksmanship. Honour. Persistent sexual inadequacy…”

  Bailey continued to lay out the attributes the darkness required, and desired. For each attribute a new window popped out of the main and populated with the relevant names and addresses. He dragged them to the left and right stacking them in a mini totem like pole at either side of the main windows.

  Once each new window had been created he worked through them, sorting the list by extremity of that attribute in the life of the person. At the top of each list he double tapped the name and watched as the two main pages dimmed and minimized, and were replaced in the center of the room by a slowly rotating hologram of the person. He linked the surveillance grid to the name and found a live feed of what the person was doing in a set of windows just over the shoul
ders of the hologram.

  With each person he recorded their data onto the drive within the multi-com.

  Chester Barron, a tall muscular man, and coincidentally the man he had been told was leading the escape. He was sipping a coffee alone at a café along the promenade somewhere in the city center. Wendall Jayne, a demure but intelligent looking lady, that was busy taking a morning bubble bath, according to the infrared camera nested within trees opposite her cottage in the outer neighbourhood belt. Nash Fincle, one of the notorious Fincle twins, and current primary leaders of Old Gang syndicate. Currently, he was watching a gang of thugs beating an old man to death, safely hidden behind a one way window in the Old Gang building, that didn’t look to be part of the metropolis.

  Name after name and person after person. He found the ones he wanted and saved them to disk.

  The last window was a search for someone with starship command experience. The field was empty but for one cryptic entry. It read “Incoming” and on double tapping it he expanded the hologram of a short stocky black skinned man wearing reverend garb, dog collar and all.

  “Incoming?” Bailey murmured, and the civil network help system answered “Affirmative. Exile currently inbound to prison.”

  “Where?”

  “Reverend Dane Angell is currently being deployed into hatch 7-Y. He is to be collected by colony robot 647933UAX.” it said.

  “Connect surveillance. Show me!” Bailey said and watched the surveillance screens that suddenly began to focus in on one of the golden robots as it walked from a police vehicle in a place that looked to be beneath the sea. The whole roof of the room was glass and viewed schools of real Lantis fish that must live all around the island.

  It was where the sea met the outer wall and within the room the grey stone seemed to stand ominously over the tiny figures within. There was a waterfall flowing from a large stone pipe above, toppling to the ground and down through a grated drain.

  This is how exiles normally enter the place. Be thankful you had a softer landing.

  Bailey turned one of the cameras to look directly at the waterfall, that looked eerily similar to the fountain in Red Sector, and watched as a chubby girl with long blonde hair flew out of the pipe. She fell down the long drop and landed on her knees on the jagged metal drain. She grabbed her thigh and screamed out at the ceiling, with one of the sharp lengths of metal cutting deep into her knee. The robot that had been assigned to collect her ran over to her and pulled her roughly from the drain, then began running a medical device over her body to heal her.

  A tiny black streak entered the water flow from above and then a man wearing a dark suit fell from the pipe and landed like a coil on his feet and hands within the falling water. He slowly righted himself and walked out of the falls to the robot, and was then escorted away.

  “Where is he going?” Bailey watched himself say, and then watched the reply from a great distance within his daze.

  “He is a reverend of the Church of the Naturalistic Mind, and will be stationed at the cathedral in Old Gang Central.”

  “Old Gang ai?” Bailey said rubbing his stubbly face. “Save data and presets, and exit.”

  Bailey jumped down from his perch on the workbench as the gases were deionized and the huge hologram faded. With all the digital razzmatazz gone he was once again standing in a dingy workshop with a cold corpse hanging from a hook.

  Bailey stepped forward and unhooked the body, then dragging it to a walk in cupboard at the right. He looked at it lying on the plastic sealed floor, a new pool of blood growing, and then staying the same size around it.

  This is bad. We will need to get rid of the body, and fast. And that includes all traces of it on the surveillance grid. You can't sleep just yet.

  Bailey, still somewhat entranced, closed the cupboard door, and then dozily headed out of the building, and then back across the city to Colec’s apartment.

  Without turning on the lights he grabbed the body of the savage dog and dropped it into a large sports bag. Racing back the same way he took the sports bag to the warehouse and tipped the sleeping man eater on top of the corpse. Bailey locked the door of the cupboard and turned, looking around the interior of the warehouse.

  His eyes were a deep red and shaking slightly like a madman.

  “No.” he hissed.

  You know, I wouldn’t have thought of that.

  The Hot Situation.

  By morning the next day Bailey had returned to his own house on the row, and was reclining in the garden under the buzzing sun lamps. He had been reading through a newspaper he’d found in Gen Colec’s workshop, but now simply sprawled in a pair of shorts under the heat.

  During the early morning he had hacked the Border Security records beginning with the dead officer’s passcodes, then spring boarding to higher and higher security clearance levels. The higher clearance allowed him to delete that nights surveillance records for the warehouse, replacing them with garbled data as if a virus had had its way. Eventually he got some sleep, but only after handing in the officer’s notice and a crazy sounding letter suggesting he had gone somewhat insane and turned to an undisclosed religious cult.

  Whether this would be believed was another matter, but it would stall a man hunt for a long while to come.

  And by then the cop will be dog shit.

  “Today’s the day, Mr Bailey.” he heard the voice of Barton Beldin approach from behind, and the lighter footsteps of his wife. “Time to meet the guys you will be working with. They know a lot more about your role than I could ever explain, and they're eager to meet our new golden boy.”

  “What? Right now?” Bailey looked at him through his shades.

  Cix leant down and closed the magazine on his lap, and said “Right now.”

  Bailey got dressed quickly, and left the house feeling refreshed, having caught a few hours sleep under the sun.

  The Beldins had brought a nice car, larger and more valuable than the one they had given him. Bailey sat in the center of the back seat, while they took the car up onto the crystal highways.

  The car drove over a route leading to the west, over where the cultivated land became dustier, and then desert.

  They drove down to the desert where the tunnels of the crystal highway ended, leading out onto the biosphere island. An obviously filled-in concrete road took them across the boiling sand. It ran up over a hill and down a long slope toward the edge of the island. Here a large beach ran down to the water.

  So close to the sea now, it looked as if it stretched out into infinity, almost unnaturally so.

  They got out of the car and walked along the coast to the beginnings of a pier that seemed to lead out into that infinity. They walked up onto it and the couple took heavy fur-lined blazers from a white wood hut. Bailey took one, looking up at the blazing artificial sun in the roof of the biosphere cavern.

  “You want me to put this on?” Bailey said, as the other two put on their blazers.

  “Now.” Cix pointed, and so Bailey shrugged and pulled it over his shoulders.

  Bailey walked slightly behind them as they walked out to sea along the pier. The sweat poured from him.

  They had brought with them a shoulder bag each from the car, not mentioning what was in it, not that they had mentioned a great deal so far.

  “Oh Gosh!” Bailey said, feeling a little light headed.

  Barton looked at him over his shoulder and smiled “Build up your heat. You’ll need it.”

  Bailey nodded and followed them further out to sea.

  The shore grew smaller and smaller, until it was just a thin yellow blur in the intense heat waves.

  “Here.” Cix said and ran forward slightly. “Watch.”

  Bailey stepped up, watching as she picked a small pebble from the pier, and threw it forward, along it.

  The pebble seemed to hit a forcefield, causing the view ahead to ripple and hiss with static.

  “Come.” Barton said and Bailey followed them to the forcefield’s edg
e. Together they pushed through its membrane. The static tried to grab them at the touch, but with a little shouldering they made it through to the pier beyond.

  Bailey scanned around the interior, finding they were at the inner dome wall, where the sea ended, crashing up and along it in fair sized waves. Ahead, at the end of the pier it widened slightly, unlike any pier he had ever seen, to an area afore a large grey door in the wall.

  As they got closer he appreciated more and more its size and height. A relatively small panel to its left changed its display and bleeped a couple of times, almost as if to say “Come on, just try and open me.”

  Barton took a small remote control from the front pouch of his bag and pressed a button, aiming it toward the flickering panel. The giant door groaned slightly then began sliding to the left, spilling bright white light onto the dark place between the forcefield and the dome.

  “Took us ages to crack the codes for this door.” Barton said, with a loaded sigh. “Come along.”

  Bailey followed them through the doorway squinting against the brightness until the interior became visible. A corridor came to sight, first the bright blue domed lighting on the ceiling high above, then the white walls and rail track that ran along its length.

  They walked along the corridor than ran down in a broad spiral. Bailey squinted against the clinical, brightly illuminated sheen that seemed to wash over everything within.

  “We’re in the dome wall.” Cix said. “Can you hear that, and the vibrations? They are the recycling plants. It’s a big part of our way off the planet.”

  Bailey could hear a hum every few seconds, and the vibration all around them.

  They walked along the huge corridor until they reached its end. The clinical paint ended and the old stone and brick below it stretched out into a tall hexagonal hall. Bailey realized now why they needed the heavy coats, as a freezing wind flowed over him. He put up his hood as he stepped into the cold, wet concrete place. The railway turned as it entered and ended at an archway to the right, which itself had been sealed shut by melted steel.