by Simon Archer
He pulled out his laptop as if to prove the point.
“Yep,” he said, throwing his arms up in the air. “Just like I thought, every single damn one of them watches this thing. Every household I can see is tuned in. Every single fucking one. Everyone in Termina will have seen this image by now.”
“Great,” I said sarcastically. “Just what we need, more bad PR after everything that happened two weeks ago and the breakout today.”
“Shhh,” Kira shushed us, pressing a finger to her lips. “I want to hear what they have to say, even if it’s bad. We should know about it either way.”
“There’s no way it’s not bad,” Kinley said in a huff. “No fucking way.”
“Shhh,” Kira shushed again, just in time for us to hear the main anchor ripping me a new one.
“And if Nic Joch thinks that he can still maintain control of this city after today, he has another think coming,” the man with perfectly gelled hair was saying. “This is all just absolutely ridiculous. He has no control over this city, none. We used to be able to trust TelCorp. Sure, maybe Elias Berg was sleazy and didn’t treat everyone right, but at least this city had some peace and quiet every once in a while back when he was in charge. We can’t say that now. Not a chance in the world.”
“You’re right, Jinn,” the woman with long, perfectly straight blonde hair sitting next to him said in her characteristic silky-smooth voice. “Everyone in this city’s running scared. And it wouldn’t surprise me if the riots started back up soon. We’ve had those every time something’s gone wrong lately, and I doubt this will be an exception.”
“Now, my friends, to be fair, I don’t think there will be any more riots this time,” an older man who had clearly had about ten bad facelifts sitting across from them reasoned, waving his hand in the air lackadaisically. “There simply aren’t enough people left to riot! The ones who are most scared are staying home, trying to keep away from this big bad man TelCorp and Nic Joch are so keen on finding. All the brawlers are dead after the binding civil war and what happened this morning in the Void, and a healthy dose of the nightclub clientele is too. Who would riot?”
“That’s fair, Holt,” the first man, the anchor, said with a hollow laugh. “Nic Joch will have killed everyone who would be brave enough to riot by now. Why would anyone left be stupid enough to go out in the streets, anyway? They’d be risking TelCorp’s wrath, after all, and we all know what that would get them.”
The anchor waved a hand in the direction of the aerial view of the streets around Parliament, and the screen went back to showing that in full, panning away from the talking heads. But not being on screen anymore certainly didn’t shut them up.
“Now, let’s get back to what you were saying about Achilles Tibor, Holt,” the woman’s silky smooth voice continued. “What do we really know about this man, really? Nic Joch would have us believe that there’s not much to know, that he lived off the grid down in the tunnels for so many years. But what proof do we have of that, really, other than TelCorp’s word for it?”
“You’re right, Tilda,” the old man said, in a tone that indicated that she was really on to something there, somehow. “There is something to that, I think. For all we know, Achilles Tibor was just trying to keep this city safe from the likes of Nic Joch and this new version of TelCorp he’s created for himself. We know nothing about this at all! This man could’ve been protecting us the whole time, for all we know, and TelCorp’s trying to take him out! Claim the city for themselves!”
“If that thought doesn’t get you rioting out in the streets, I don’t know what does,” the anchor said with a hollow laugh, much like his co-host’s. “We’re going to have to go to commercial break now, guys, but we’ll be with you the whole night here at Termina’s News Headquarters, and we’ll be bringing you live updates about all this madness at TelCorp and the Void.”
“Ugh,” Cindra scoffed, turning off the holovision with an exaggerated, disgusted motion. “Can you fucking believe them? I mean seriously, they can’t actually believe that bullshit.”
“I don’t know, can we really blame them?” I asked with a shrug, and everyone stared at me in shock. “I mean, think about it. It’s true we’re not really giving them much to go off, because we don’t have much to go off ourselves. We need to figure something else out, and fast, or public faith in the company is going to go right down the toilet if it hasn’t already. And if we don’t figure this out, it honestly probably should. I wouldn’t believe this if I were just a regular bloke trying to make my way in Termina. It’s a wild story, with a secret underground organization that rejects technology. I mean, it’s completely crazy!”
“It is hard to make much sense of everything,” Kira admitted, biting her bottom lip as she leaned forward on her knees. “I mean, Serenity General healed my concussion in a matter of minutes and grew back all the skin on Nic’s back today. Who would reject that kind of tech just for some kind of… what, political statement? Religious commitment? I don’t know. It’s just so hard to believe.”
“Then there’s the question of what all those papers mean,” Cindra said, gesturing in my direction as I was still holding on to the things.
“Where’s Achilles gone if he’s not in the tunnels?” Malthe continued. “And where could he possibly be in Termina where we can’t find him?”
“What if he’s not in Termina, though?” I asked, finally voicing the thought that had been percolating within me all day, and everyone gave me another, even more shocked stare at that statement. “When I captured him, Achilles warned me that there was more to the world than just Termina. We tossed it off as an empty threat, a sign of him grasping at straws when he was about to be captured. But what if it’s actually true?”
“But it can’t be,” Kinley said, shaking her head and rising to squeeze in on Cindra’s other side on the couch. “It just can’t be. No one leaves Termina, except shippers delivering goods, and they always told the tale of how empty the rest of the world is.”
“How much do they get to see of it, though, really?” I asked. “Just bear with me for a minute here, okay? How much could they really know about the outside world when they’re just dropping off goods in another dock? And no one ever comes here. Just like Semra was saying earlier, if Termina really is the best place in the world, why doesn’t anyone else ever come here? Shouldn’t we have some kind of huge ass tourist industry, if the rest of the world is just shit?”
“But what we said earlier is probably true, though,” Cindra argued. “There aren’t that many jobs outside Termina, so they probably can’t afford to come here on vacation. It would be way out of their price range.”
“So why aren’t they coming here to find jobs, then?” I asked, and no one seemed to have an answer for that. They just all stared at me, dumbfounded. And then the doorbell rang, a soft, low, dinging sound kind of like wind chimes knocking together.
“That must be the food,” Kinley sighed, shaking her head to clear it and rising to cross to the door.
Two service drones whirred inside when she opened it, depositing a virtual buffet of assorted foods from various restaurants on the dining room table.
“I didn’t know what everyone was in the mood for,” she shrugged, rearranging the food on the table and setting out some plates and silverware while she was at it. “And we haven’t had anything to eat since the board meeting this morning. So I just ordered a little bit of everything.”
“Sounds like a good move,” Malthe said, licking his jobs and jumping eagerly from his seat to get the first shot at the assorted foods.
I was only vaguely hungry myself, and Kira was probably even less so, but with everything that was going on, I didn’t know when we’d get to eat next, so I got up to go get something and motioned that she should do the same. She reluctantly followed me after Malthe and Cindra.
“But c’mon, Nic,” Malthe said through a mouthful of egg rolls, continuing our conversation from before the drones had arrived. “There
can’t be anything outside Termina. There just can’t be. Not of note, anyway. We would know if that were the case, wouldn’t we? The rest of the world would need more exports for a higher population, and there’d be more of a market for all kinds of things. None of it makes any sense.”
“Plus, if Achilles and his people were really from the outside world, wouldn’t someone have noticed them when they arrived?” Cindra asked.
“Possibly,” I said, thinking this over. “But no one noticed them leaving the Void. Hell, no one even noticed the Void until we showed up, and it’s a giant fucking island sitting right off the coast of our own damn shore. So clearly, they’re good at this whole secrecy thing.”
“Well, it’s not visible from our shore,” Malthe said defensively. “Though I admit it is bad and weird that no one noticed it before then. Well, I did find a few of those missing cruises in the database from around that area….”
“You think they killed people who got to close to the island?” Kira asked him, her eyes wide.
“Oh yeah, I mentioned it a couple of months back,” Malthe said, waving a hand flippantly in the air. “It’s not really all that surprising, is it?”
“No, it’s not,” I said, pursing my lips together. “None of it is, at this point. Because all of it is, so it just all cancels out.
“You really think this is a possibility, Nic?” Malthe asked, giving me a perplexed look and running a hand through his hair nervously. “I mean, this would mean… well, I don’t even know what it would mean….”
“It would mean that everything we think we know about Termina, and about the whole damn world for that matter, was a lie,” I said, my tone and expression both grim. “But if it is, don’t you think we should find out sooner than later?”
“I would already consider this later, wouldn’t you?” Kinley asked sardonically. “It’s been a long damn time if this is the case. I mean, when was Termina even founded?”
We all looked around at each other, assuming one of us must have the answer to this question. But no one spoke. Finally, I threw my hands up in the air.
“See?” I asked. “We know nothing we think we know.”
“I just… always thought that Termina had always been around,” Malthe said with a shrug. “You went to those fancy schools and had those fancy tutors, boss, what’d they tell you about it all?”
“Pretty much the same,” I said, furrowing my brows together as I tried to remember. “I just never thought to question it much. I mean, why would I, after all? Ever since I can remember, this is what they told us. That Termina was the biggest, boldest city in the world, and that the rest of the world depends on us for everything. And that the rest of the world isn’t all that big, to begin with, anyway. But then again, everything I thought I knew about my dad’s company turned out to be false, so why not this too?”
“Uh, because it would mean everything we thought we knew is wrong,” Cindra said, still arguing her point as best she could. “And I mean literally everything. Before, it was just TelCorp. Now…. No, it’s just too crazy. It’s all too nuts. It’s impossible. Someone would’ve figured it out by now, someone would’ve started asking some goddamn questions just like we are now.”
“Just like someone would’ve drifted by the Void while out yachting,” I said, meeting her eyes. “And they did. And Achilles’s people knew about it, and they fucking died. Could be the same here, too.”
“But what about the shippers?” Cindra asked, obviously flustered.
“What about them?” Malthe asked.
“Well, they go to these places! They must’ve figured something out about everything….” she said, doubling down on this point.
“Well, like I said, they probably don’t see much of the mainland,” I reiterated. “And if any of them did figure it out, someone probably killed them. There are a lot of accidents at sea, now that I think about it.” Cindra opened her mouth and closed it again, unable to find a retort for this particular point.
“No,” she said finally, shaking her head. “Absolutely not. I just don’t get it. This can’t be. I mean, this would mean… If someone’s managed to fool us for this long, then…” Her voice trailed off as she became too afraid to finish. But I knew exactly what she was thinking and finished for her.
“It means that we probably aren’t as powerful as we think we are,” I said, staring wide-eyed down at my plate as I spoke, not wanting to voice the words, though I knew that I had to, someone had to. “It means that there’s some force out there that’s beyond us, that we know nothing about, and that knows a helluva lot about us. And that means… well, I don’t know exactly what it means for us. We’ll have to figure that out. But we have to do something. We can’t just stand around and let this continue.”
“Maybe they’ll leave us alone,” Kira piped in hopefully. “Now that they’re all gone. If they really aren’t on Termina anymore, they’ll leave us alone. Go back where they came from and make trouble there. Let us get on with our lives.”
“I don’t think we can count on that,” I said darkly. “What did the last of those papers with the messages on them say this morning, Malthe? What was it again? That these people were retreating, but they’d come at us stronger next time? Regroup or something like that?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Malthe said, staring down at his plate now, too, not meeting any of our eyes.
“So, what do we do?” Kinley asked, looking up at me with a fierce expression on her face.
“We can’t just sit here and let them do this to us. We really can’t. They could come back, with a whole fucking army or something.”
“They had an army before, and we killed them,” Malthe reminded her. “Well, we killed most of them, anyway.”
“They could have an even bigger one, though,” she said, her eyes wild. “A better one. And they could have tech that we can’t even imagine having! They could have anything, be anything, be anywhere.”
“This is all true…” I said, nodding slowly. “But we have to keep our bearings. We can’t let possibilities keep us down. We haven’t even confirmed they’re not in the tunnels below the Void yet. We’ll check there first thing tomorrow still and then decide what to do.”
“Exactly,” Cindra said, placing a hand over one of Kinley’s in a comforting gesture. “Besides, these people hate technology. They won’t try to use any that we don’t have. They don’t even use any that we do have.”
“We don’t know that,” I said, shaking my head. “Just like we were talking about back at the hospital, it doesn’t make any fucking sense that they would reject technology like this. What if it was just a Termina thing? To escape our detection. They could have anything they want out in the rest of the world where we aren’t looking for their signals.”
“Yeah, they did use tech, just not tech we used,” Malthe reminded us. “They used the old burner phones and radio signals to communicate and all that shit. And they used regular tech to communicate with their employees on the surface. They just used code. And they had to use some kind of tech to send those messages we have copies of. That all makes me think their rejection of tech isn’t some kind of weird political or religious statement, it’s a practical thing, to keep us out of their hair.”
“That… is a frightening thought,” I said, giving his a side-eyed look. I did not like that idea at all.
“Oh god, what happened to not speculating about all the wild possibilities,” Cindra groaned, throwing her head back in defeat. “Can we go back to that, please?”
“Yeah, we can do whatever we want tonight,” I said kindly. “Whatever we want. We don’t need to talk about all this now. We should get some rest and see what we’re facing tomorrow. We’ll have a better idea in the morning if no more tunnels cave in on us when we’re down there, that is.”
We all laughed nervously at this idea.
“I can just send some drones in like I did this afternoon with the rest of the tunnels up here,” Malthe suggested. “It woul
dn’t risk anyone’s skin, and it would save us time. I could send them down there while we’re checking out the Void itself.”
“I think that’s an excellent idea,” I said with a sigh of relief. “There’s no time to waste, and those tunnels, if they exist, aren’t all caved in as badly since that’s not where the battle was, so they shouldn’t be as hard to navigate. The drones will be fine.”
“Excellent,” Malthe said. “I’ll program them for that tonight, no problem, boss.”
“Good,” I said. “Then let’s eat. I’m starving.”
I wasn’t, actually, but I made myself do it, anyway. Who knew when I’d get the chance to again.
It was good, too, though my stomach still churned a bit from all the meds and the pain. My back was still sore, as it regrew my skin, but I could already tell it was tougher and stronger, even from when I woke up an hour or two ago. I had some of the egg rolls, some kind of pasta I couldn’t quite place at the moment, and some steak. I figured I needed the protein. It was an odd mix of foods, but it was what I found I could stomach. No alcohol, though. As much as I wanted it, I was already doped up enough. I had some tea that Cindra brought Kira and me instead, and it helped my stomach.
“Well, I’m beat,” Malthe said when most of our plates were empty, stretching out his arms behind him and yawning. “I’m gonna head to the guest room.”
“Sure thing, man, see you in the morning,” I said with a smile. “The rest of us should head off ourselves soon.”
“Wait,” Kinley said, holding out her hands to signal for us to stop, to stay at the table. “I just have one more question if that’s okay.”
I nodded to indicate she should continue, though my body ached for my bed and my soft sheets.
“What…?” she started, before stopping again because it was too difficult, and then starting again because she had to get the question out. “What will we do, if Achilles isn’t here in Termina? Will we go after him? Will we leave the city?” She asked this in hushed tones as if voicing the possibility in and of itself was sacrilegious in some way. And it was, as far as pretty much everyone in Termina was concerned.