Rift

by Andreas Christensen

  Chapter 17

  DAVE

  Dave removed the VR headset, and put it gently beside his monitor. He still didn’t entirely trust Counselor Novak, but how could he not do this? How could he not look at the video? Especially since hearing what they were planning for Sue. He quickly locked the system and got up. Then he walked over to the fridge and grabbed a water bottle. He almost emptied the bottle, his thoughts racing, going through every detail of his virtual encounter with the Legacy Counselor. However weird it all seemed, it made sense. He’d never even heard of anyone transferring to the Wardens. If you messed up in any of the Services, it was off to the Corpus or out of the Services altogether.

  He checked to see if Hasle was there. Only when Dave was absolutely sure he was all alone, did he unlock the system again. He checked his messages for the tenth time in the last fifteen minutes. He went through a couple of short documents, but his mind was elsewhere, and it was time to end the procrastination.

  He opened his private folder and went through the first levels of security. Then he inverted a subfolder, decrypting the access path to another folder, and finally, invisible beside the latter, he tapped his screen lightly.

  A key prompt jumped up. He quickly entered the key, and finally, the folder he had received from Novak appeared. He opened it. Two files. One video file and a simple text file. He opened the text file and memorized the twelve-digit code. Then he closed the text file, and let his finger hover over the video file icon for a second.

  Don’t do it until you’re absolutely certain you are ready, Novak had said. Dave tapped the icon, and another key prompt jumped up. Twelve digits. He began entering numbers, letters, signs.

  Be prepared to face the consequences. Yeah, right.

  How could he be ready? There was no such thing.

  Are you certain you wish to continue? Bold letters in front of his eyes. A blinking question mark. Red no, green yes.

  He tapped the green icon.

  For a moment, the screen was black. Then the video began. The chirping of a bird was the first thing he heard, before the image adjusted and he could see.

  He was looking at himself, from the back. Then he was looking at the others. He recognized some of them. Kirilov, Scott, Greer.

  Guns aimed, fingers on the triggers.

  The sound suddenly stopped on the video. Dave looked at the volume indicator on the left. He swiped it up to max. Still nothing. Must be a technical error. Perhaps a separate file that hadn’t synced when he opened the video. He moved the cursor back, just a couple of seconds of playing time and pressed play again, hoping this would work.

  As the sound returned, the view changed. Something moved on the far side of the clearing.

  A man appeared, ragged clothes hanging loose from his shoulders. Zoom in. Shaggy beard, hollow cheeks. Dave could instantly tell this man was starving. He was looking at the man entering the clearing again. Zoom in. The man’s eyes, scanning the area in front of him. Then he signaled something, and the others followed him out of the brush, into the clearing. Men, women, children. A baby in the arms of its mother.

  Warily, one step at a time, everyone looking around, even the smallest children. All except for the baby, sleeping soundly.

  What were they so afraid of?

  He turned the sound down, just enough to hear. He knew what was coming next.

  The view zoomed out again as the first shots rang out. The man was the first to fall.

  Dave didn’t blink.

  Somehow, in the back of his mind, he had realized as soon as he’d seen the poor man.

  “What the hell is this?” he heard Greer scream through the commotion. The camera switched to Greer, who stood up, his night vision goggles pushed up on the top of his helmet. Dave mouthed Greer’s next words silently.

  “What have you done to us? Why…” The drone was filming from behind, and the explosion from Greer’s chest only showed the red haze outside of his silhouette, for which Dave was thankful. Then he saw—all too clearly—Kirilov’s face as he looked around, making sure his rifle quickly pointed away from the dead man.

  Dave realized he was clenching the edge of his desk so hard that his knuckles had turned white. He felt the bile in his throat rising and swallowed hard. What have you done to us? he thought, a single tear running down his cheek. He gritted his teeth and made himself watch as all the Wardens kept firing at those poor people. Had he stopped firing once he heard Greer’s screams? He didn’t remember. He didn’t think so. And what did it matter?

  He began to look away as the slaughter went on, but decided against it. He needed to see this. It was the truth. The raw, unfiltered truth.

  He remembered the words now. From when they got the so-called vaccine. Juri, the medical assistant, who had to be subdued and dragged off by three Wardens.

  Ignorance is Bliss.

  And then, after the carnage, just as he passed out. A soft voice in his ear.

  Ignorance is Bliss.

  It had some truth to it. But it wasn’t the truth. It was all a lie. A big, horrible lie.

  So this was how they “protected” the Covenant. This was how they kept out those from the outside. Why? What was the point of this?

  He watched through it all, forcing himself to see every single piece of footage, even the parts that made him shake and sob. Eyes open, gritting his teeth, breathing slowly to keep the contents of his stomach down, not giving himself a moment’s respite.

  The video ended abruptly, as the airship returned to pick them up.

  Silence. The icon completely still on the monitor.

  As if nothing had happened.

  He had been searching for a murderer, and what he had found was more than he could have imagined.

  Kirilov was Greer’s murderer.

  Then it struck him, like a blow to the head. They were all murderers. All except Greer, who hadn’t fired a single shot. Greer, who had cried out. Who had seen everything for what it was.

  Dave didn’t open the file again, but he began mentally replaying the scenes, and everything that had happened up to that horrible scene.

  After seeing the truth, the pieces began to fall into place.

  Greer had thrown off his night vision goggles. Dave remembered that annoying flicker in his own goggles. A glitch on the edge of the screen. The screen that made humans look like monsters.

  The syringe before leaving camp. A serum to get the mind ready for what was coming, to tear down the defenses of logic. Then the blue pill, another dose of medication, numbing the mind just enough to accept what you saw. Enough to not question it, but not enough to limit combat efficiency. And finally, something he only remembered now that everything began to return to him, the red pill, which blurred the memory, made it difficult to remember the details.

  You have to see for yourself, everyone had said.

  Dave had seen it all. And now he remembered.

  The words of Counselor Novak came back to him. Once you use the key, it might trigger an alert.

  Dave looked around and shook his head. Of course, somewhere an alert would go off, but not anything audible. No sirens or alarms wailing. Just a silent notification of what had happened.

  Someone could be bursting in that door any moment.

  Be prepared to face the consequences.

  Dave quickly copied the file onto a memory card and stuck it inside his boot. Then he locked the computer and got up.

  Time to face the consequences.