by Ian Williams
“What are they doing?” Phoenix asked from the rear, beside Graham.
“They’re heading back where we came from. The others will be resetting soon.”
“We don’t want to be outside when that happens.”
Captain Rigs interrupted before Phoenix or Rhys could go on. “Hey, can you cause another EMP blast?”
“No we can’t, buddy.” Jack spoke with a refreshing bluntness. “We used what we had to save your sorry ass. That EMP was supposed to bring down another relay.”
“That was you?” the Captain replied. The surprise in his voice only seemed to annoy Jack even further.
“What, you don’t think we’re capable of fighting back? Let me tell you, Rambo, we’ve been doing just fine without your help.”
“Jack, will you chill the fuck out,” Phoenix said. “Can we move yet?”
“It’s safe, let’s go.” Rhys raised his weapon to chest height as he stepped out from cover. In the moonlight they were too difficult to spot from a distance. But the safety of the night would do nothing against the drones, should they reset while the small group remained in the vicinity.
Graham was thankful to see that their route was not to be outside all the way; that seemed like suicide to him. Not only were the resistance utilising the farming towers’ processing buildings, they were also using the tunnels as well. Access was ordinarily limited to only certain parts of the city, with small tunnel entrances situated around for maintenance crews. What he saw ahead of them was not one of these. Instead access came from a large hole in the pavement.
Surrounding the broken ground sat the remains of a twelve storey building, one once used as apartments for those lucky enough, at the time, to have afforded to live this close to the city centre. The entire front of the building had been stripped away and lay scattered about. Whatever had devastated the structure appeared to have been powerful enough to break through the earth beneath it too.
Rhys stopped at the edge of the crater and pointed down to the water-logged and muddy floor a few metres below. A creak above him halted his imminent explanation. He shot a look up to the shell of the building near to them as a piece of the flooring high above fell to the street. The noise made him cringe in response. He knew it would attract attention that they could not afford. “The tunnel access is just down there,” he finally said to the group. “It’s another ten, fifteen minutes to the end.”
As the first few of them followed Rhys into the hole an explosion in the distance rang out. Graham turned back the way they came and saw the building he and the others had been pinned down in start to lurch to the side a little.
No doubt in reaction to their enemy disappearing before their eyes, the Sentients had taken to blasting the building apart. He saw the drones that had been only moments from ending his existence sending beam after beam of angry energy into the empty floors of the skyscraper. They wanted every hint of Graham’s group wiped clean, it appeared. As if their failure was too much to bear.
One by one, Graham and the others leapt into the knee high puddle at the bottom of the crater and climbed into the city’s bloodless veins. None of them cared to hang around and see the result of the enemy’s barrage.
Chapter 15
The forgotten
After only a short while the violent shaking from the attacks on the surface settled down. The enemy Sentients were obviously furious to have been evaded so suddenly, and were taking out their frustrations on the city instead. Each boom and rattle of the earth above Graham’s head had been the destruction of yet another part of his beloved city. The enemy were ruining it all at the slightest hint of the resistance.
Walking single-file through the cramped tunnels was an uncomfortable thing to do for Graham, partly because of a building sense of the weight above his head. He already had the claustrophobic privilege of exploring the underground tunnels before, and did not enjoy the reminder. At least that time he was with his sister, Ruth.
On that day he would never have imagined it would have led him to this point.
At a split in the tunnel they took the path heading off to the right at a 90-degree angle. All along their route they were joined by metal tracks running on the floor. These were used for the farming tower to send their produce speeding along in small carts, one Graham remembered having to climb into with Ruth on the day it had all started. Luckily for them the automated carts were as powerless to go on as the frozen Sentients had been earlier.
Every now and again they came across others strolling along the tunnel in the other direction. Most of these spoke to Rhys and then stared as Graham and his soldier friends followed closely behind. They were all ordinary people, with no obvious military training of any kind. Somehow these lucky few had survived against the odds, and against an enemy that saw them as nothing more than receptacles for its Sentient army.
The tell-tale signs of some remnant of civilisation began to appear soon enough. Small lamps hung from the ceiling, which occasionally were low enough for one of them to bash their head against. These were ancient looking pieces of equipment, the type only someone interested in collecting old tech would ever own. They were spread apart by a hundred feet or so, which left parts of the tunnel ahead of them hidden from view.
“Hey. How are you getting power down here?” Captain Rigs said toward the front of the line.
Rhys tapped one of the lamps as he wandered past. “They’re rechargeable. Each charge lasts a couple of days, then we swap them out for charged ones.”
“OK, so how are you charging them? Our Intel showed the old relays were out of action. Our own equipment works off battery packs built into our clothing, but they’re to keep us off the grid.”
“The relays aren’t offline, there’s something interfering with them, some kind of dampening field. We think the new relays, the ones keeping the shield up, are sending out some sort of signal that prevents them from powering devices wirelessly. To get around that we’ve hooked up a couple of power cables to the nearby relay. We get a trickle of power from that; not quite enough to live as comfortably as before, but it’s better than nothing, right?”
“Won’t that be easy for the enemy to find?” Watts said, just as he tripped on the rail beneath him. He skipped for a metre or two before finding his feet again. “Shit.”
“It’s pretty well hidden. We covered it with debris. It’s a mess up there. Or had you not noticed that?” Rhys smirked to Phoenix, who did the same to Graham.
“Too busy making their own mess,” Jack added.
As before, the fourth member of Phoenix’s group remained silent.
Eventually Rhys brought them to the end of the tunnel, where a thick steel door the size of a Mag-Lev pod blocked their path. He kicked the metal with his steel-toe-capped boots and waited. Someone on the other side then began the process of lifting the door for them to enter through.
Graham stepped back as the wall of steel slowly lurched up. When it reached high enough for the group to slip beneath he followed the rest through. On the other side he saw a line of men standing with a rope in their hands and holding it tight. With little power to spare the resistance relied on brawn more than ever.
The basement floor of the processing plant was more than large enough to hold many families within. It went a good hundred feet or so in each direction and was encased in thick concrete walls that reached twenty-feet high. The view above their heads was marred though, by a messy route of chutes that crossed over one another in places. It was an eyesore to an otherwise open space. Their days of transporting anything from the farming towers’ carts were behind them. Now they served as hanging points for drying clothes.
The small lamps were no good for such a large space, so standing lights from an abandoned home were set out instead. These were physically connected to a power source by a web of wiring that trailed a path across the chutes above their heads. Those living there were making a good go of it, in the face of overwhelming odds too.
Sounds of famili
es trying to keep some normality to their daily lives made Graham smile, for the first time in a while. He could hear children playing nearby, somewhere behind the automated sorting bays that had once taken the contents of the carts and sent them to the correct chutes. Laughter from their tiny mouths brought a reminder of Alex to the front of his mind, followed then by a more depressing thought: however settled these people were, he knew they would not be forever.
A thump made a few in the group turn quickly to check behind them. Gregson even grabbed her weapon in response. She lowered it back down when she realised the steel door had been shut again. For the moment they were safe, even if their senses still kept them on high alert.
“It isn’t much, but it’s home,” Rhys said. “Come on, I’ll give you all the guided tour.”
Heading down the side wall to their right, Rhys walked them around the unloading bays, to where the families had taken up temporary residence. All the way to the staircase at the back of the room were makeshift beds made of blankets and coats, or whatever they had arrived with. There were people everywhere, just like at the refugee camp Graham had awoken at. Except these families survived on whatever they could scavenge from the surface.
Off to the side was a pile of tinned foods as high as Graham’s knees.
“This is where we sleep. Well, for those of us that can still sleep anyway. We can find you all some space to crash for a while, if you like. Over there is where we wash,” Rhys said, pointing to a stationary cart filled with grimy looking water beneath the stairs. “And up there, in the control room, is where we hold meetings and plan our trips out. I’ll introduce you to the others once you’re settled. That’s where we’ll do that. So, any questions?”
Captain Rigs stepped forward. “We’ll worry about settling in later. I want to meet whoever’s in charge here right away.”
“Sure,” Rhys replied with a roll of his eyes in Jack’s direction. “You’ll want to speak to Clement, since he’s the closest thing to a leader we have here. Follow me then.”
“Hey, Rhys,” Phoenix said. “Mind if I steal Graham away for a while? There’re a few things I need to show him.”
“Go ahead. I’ll swing by with the others in a bit. Jack, you’d better try and rest.”
Jack sighed. “I guess you’re right. I’ll be in my room if anyone needs me.”
As soon as the others set off, Graham heard the Captain begin his next question. It was about the security of the basement this time. He appeared to see it as his new HQ now, and aimed to secure it as best he could. Graham was thankful to see this.
“Graham?”
He watched the rest of the group leave too closely, so when Phoenix touched his arm he flinched a little with surprise. His mind had wandered again. Strangely he was feeling a little lonely after losing the extra voice in his head. He worried the EMP had removed it permanently. “Sorry,” he said.
“It’s OK, just wanted to talk to you without the others here. I’ve got to say first: you look like shit. I almost didn’t recognise you under all that hair.”
“Thanks.” He ran a hand through his beard as he spoke, bringing his own attention back to the looseness of his skin.
“So, Elliot and the gang got you out then.”
Graham nodded nervously. He knew where it was going and that he could not hide a thing from her. Explaining it all was his only option this time, no avoiding the uncomfortable truth.
“What happened after that? And why come here?”
“OK, but this is going to sound like I’ve gone crazy or something. When I woke up I found I’d been in a coma for three months. I was fine to begin with, then I started experiencing blackouts. I’d be some place to start with and then the next moment I’d be somewhere else entirely. There’s something really wrong with me.”
“What, you couldn’t find a doctor outside the city?”
“No, it’s not like that.” Graham turned his gaze toward a game of chase going on nearby. He let it distract him while he shared his symptoms with Phoenix. “It’s more than just blackouts. There’s another voice in my head, one I don’t always recognise as me.”
“Really? Can you hear him now?”
“He’s gone quiet, has been since the EMP blast.” He rubbed his bandaged wrist for a moment before going on. “There’s something I need to do, but it’s something I really don’t want to do. If what happened to Stephen after his trip into the Sentient world is happening to me, then I want to know. Problem is, there’s only one way of finding out.”
“And what's that?”
“I’ve got to find a way back into their world somehow. It’s the only way to know for sure. Apart from Stephen, I don’t know of anyone else who’s suffering with problems like these. It’s got to be something unique to the way Stephen’s mind and my mind were taken back out of their world.”
“That’s not true, Graham,” Phoenix said, looking toward a rusty door in the back corner of the room, the one Jack had only moments ago disappeared through. Her gaze brought Graham staring that way too.
“Which part isn’t true, the last bit?”
“No, you and Stephen aren’t the only ones with symptoms like those. There’s someone here going through something similar too.”
“What, who?”
Phoenix began to weave a route through the families and head for the rear door. She sidestepped the playing children along the way. “It’s easier to show you.”
Sticking close by, Graham made his way behind her. He tried his best not to step on anyone’s things while picking his path, but some of it was unavoidable. How this many people had coped like this for the last three months was beyond him. They were living right on top of each other. Arguments had to break out on occasion.
Phoenix held the door handle in her right hand and hesitated to turn it. “Jack is the human whose body Luke used while in our world. A couple of days after we removed Luke’s mind and uploaded it back to the Sentient world, Jack started to change. He’s now…well, not always himself. I should let him explain.” She pulled the stiff door open and allowed Graham inside first.
Through the door there was a dark room, much darker than the one they were leaving behind. Graham could just about make out Jack’s figure sat in a chair at the other end, with a small table top lamp next to him. He ignored their entrance.
“Jack, can we come in?” Phoenix asked this with a gentleness to her voice that Graham did not realise she possessed.
“Sure, what’s up?”
“For starters, you’re supposed to be resting.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.” On Jack’s table was an array of electronic trinkets, some of which were less than complete. Yet there were hints of an order to it all. Graham could see as much from how perfectly aligned they were in relation to the piece next to them. Jack was building something.
“What are you doing in here?” Graham asked, stepping into the gloomy room a little more.
“I make…things. Things people can use.” Jack returned to his table a moment later. “Only problem is, I have no idea what most of them are for.”
Phoenix explained it further. “He hasn’t slept in months, not like normal people anyway. We find him working on these gadgets most nights. Tell him, Jack.”
“Wish I could. All I know is that when I fall asleep each night, I wake up the next day and find I’ve been making things. It’s like my mind can’t shut-down properly anymore, like it stays on autopilot or something. It’s fucking weird, to say the least.”
“He’s the reason we were able to destroy that relay the other day. During one of his ‘episodes’ he designed a working EMP bomb, from nothing but spare parts we scavenged from the surface.”
“I guess it’s some kind of leftover knowledge from that Luke guy I had stuck in my head. Most of this stuff is pretty useless, though, unless I can figure out what it does.” Jack picked up one of the implements in front of him and threw it back down again in frustration.
“See that metal cylinder ov
er there?” Phoenix drew Graham’s attention to what appeared to be two sections of the ceiling chutes welded together on the floor beside the table. “It’s one of our EMP bombs. They use a row of pipe-bombs surrounded by metal coil and sealed inside a cylinder. All we’ve had to do, once he’s finished making them, is charge up a power pack from Rhys’ old tech collection, then set it all up wherever we need it.”
“So you used one of these to bring down a relay?”
“Sort of,” Jack answered with his back turned. “We used one to temporarily knock out the nearby enemies and the relay, then we used a bag full of pipe-bombs to blow a hole right through it.”
“This is what I wanted to show you,” Phoenix continued. “Jack is definitely suffering side effects from having Luke in his head. It could be the same for anyone who’s had a Sentient in control too. It could be what’s happening to you as well. He’s also proof of something else–”
“That people can survive after the Sentient is taken out,” Graham finished the thought for her. “We have to show Captain Rigs this. Jack can prove to the military that we don’t have to kill Isaac’s soldiers. If we took Luke out of him, then we could do the same to the others.”
“Woah, woah, slow down, Graham. I’m not so sure it would be possible to save that many. And anyway, Luke was only in Jack’s body for a little while.”
When Jack leant over to the toolbox beside him he showed them the side of his head. The blond hair had been shaved away, just by his ear and over his temple. This was where a black box had once been attached, but now all that remained was a large square of gauze in place instead. It suggested an injury rather than a mind replacing device. The cotton hat had hidden it from view before.
Graham gestured silently to the same area on his own head to ask the question.