by Jason Luthor
“It’s not good luck or anything,” she tells me. “But . . . Cynthia fought through the Creep to find it after . . . after mom and dad died.”
I pull the cross and the small chain it’s connected to and pull it around my neck. Mandy takes the box from me and puts it in her pocket while I’m attaching it. Takes a second, but I get it to hang there, the cross just below my collar. Nothing big, smaller than my thumbnail, but it feels like something huge. “Thank you, Mandy,” I tell her before she wraps me up in a hug. After she lets go, I get onto my feet and let Cynthia wrap me up too, her lips pressing on my cheek as she hugs me.
“I love you, Mike,” she says as she lets me go.
“Aw. I love you too,” I tell her before I look down at Mandy. “And I love you too.”
Mandy nods and smirks. “I know.”
My eyes go back to Cynthia. “Really fought your way into the Creep to get this back, huh?”
“I know it seems foolish, but my father wore it every day of his life, until he and my mother died trying to protect me and Mandy. I needed something to remind me of the two of them. Both of us did,” she says as puts a hand behind Mandy. “Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did go back to see if I could find it. And I did, on the floor, left behind after the Creep attack.”
“I get it,” I tell her. “Symbols like this mean something. We don’t just let them go. This isn’t just something religious for you. It’s a symbol of your parents.”
“And now you have it. I know you’ll make them proud.”
“Going to make me cry over here, lady,” I joke as I look at the thinning crowds. “Come on. Let’s go get something to eat.”
Tommy’s Recording 19
Watching the world passing by, I can’t help but realize how little of the Creep is north of Central Freedom. I’m not the only one. Jackie’s looking through the small window in the transport. Every once in a while, she leans past me and takes a look outside. About an hour into the drive, she points to some of the banners hanging from the buildings. They’re long strips of red with the symbol of a golden fist sewn into them.
“What are those?” she asks.
The president looks over to her. “General Yousef’s banner. He lost his arm a long time ago, apparently in a fight that he’s never bothered describing to me. Ever since then, he’s been carrying around a golden arm that’s installed below his elbow.”
“It’s mechanical?”
“The finest biotech we have. Well, that Fort Silence has. Anyway, that’s how he got half of his nickname, the Golden Jackal.”
“Where did the other half come from?”
“Because he’s been able to scavenge more military tech than anyone I know, and he’s a pretty vicious predator when he’s in combat.”
Jackie doesn’t acknowledge it much before she sits back in her chair. There’s maybe half a second before Doctor Watson doesn’t seem able to hold himself back from talking anymore. I’ve been watching him flexing his hands and biting his lips, but he finally bursts out, saying, “I gave you your original suit, you know.”
She looks over at him and smiles. “Yeah, I heard that. I guess we haven’t really talked much since I got here. Thanks for saving my life.”
“When did I do such a thing?”
“Uh, well, I’m talking about back at the Tower, after my fight with Judge. I know they said you have trouble remembering things sometimes.”
He shuts his eyes like he’s in pain before waving her off. “No, no, I perfectly well remember those particular incidents. I was merely referring to the fact that my role in your recuperation was quite minor. For example, I may have put your body in the suit, but it was your own cells that drove your recovery.”
“Yeah, well, still. Thanks. For the suit, at least.”
“Of course.”
“You know, I always wondered, why did you put me in this thing? I mean, if it didn’t have anything to do with helping me get better, why did you do it?”
“Oh. Oh, ho, ho, ho.” The smile on his face is the kind the doc gets whenever he feels mischievous. “Although I had no way to be sure, I had my suspicions about the Creep cells migrating through your circulatory system. I suppose we should say that I acted on an educated guess. I guessed your cells would help you recover.”
“But why didn’t you think that I’d turn into . . .” She looks away for a second and squints. “Why didn’t you think I’d turn into a Creeper?”
“Miss Coleman, I have studied the Creep for close to 500 hundred years now. I, alone, have been responsible for watching its growth in the Tower. Given my rather extensive experience in observing and documenting its behavior, I took my particular line of logic to its natural conclusion. I was fairly confident that you would emerge with your faculties intact.”
“And if you’d been wrong?”
“Well, then you’d have turned into a mindless beast, of course.”
“That . . . that doesn’t bother you? Even just a little?”
“Why would it?”
Jackie shakes her head, like she can’t really believe he’s that oblivious. Honestly, we’ve all gotten used to the doctor’s lack of awareness, but she’s still adjusting to it. “So, how exactly did you end up living for centuries?”
“Hm. I’m given to understanding it was due to the particular type of Pocket Space field generated around my living quarters. You know the fields we use around Central Freedom? To repel even the slightest hint of Creep infestation?”
“Sure. The same kind of field the repulsion rods use.”
“Precisely. There was similar technology at work in the lab, in the Tower. You know, of course, what happens to anything stored in Pocket Space.”
“It stops aging. Food doesn’t spoil, that sort of thing.”
“Again, quite accurate. As I understand it, my proximity to the field being generated around my living quarters had a similar effect on me. In my case, it granted me a rather extended life.”
“You could have lived forever.”
The doc shrugs. “Perhaps.”
“Then why leave the room?”
“Why leave your Tower? Suppose I offered you a chance to stay where I had lived. The only condition would have been that you’d be cut off from the world, never able to answer all the questions you had about life outside the Tower. Would that have been sufficient for you?”
“No, I think I sort of made a reputation for myself as the kind of person who needs answers.”
“You have a scientist’s mind, one of inquiry. I possess the same. When the opportunity came to find out what the world outside had become, to understand the changes in greater depth, I had to take it, just as you would have.”
“Those Pocket Space fields you were talking about though. If they were keeping you alive, why don’t they extend the life of people out here? Like the fields generated around Central.”
“Two reasons, the first being the most obvious. Proximity and concentration of the energy influences the outcome. I lived within a tightly focused field, which granted the life extending properties I experienced. However, the larger concern is that the fields we create out here are poor replications of the original. In five hundred years, I have yet to determine a means of replicating the technology that was at work in my living quarters.”
“You didn’t design it?”
For a moment, the doc pauses. He’s smiling, but his eyes drift away like he doesn’t want to answer. Finally, he takes a deep breath and forces himself to talk. “I . . . do not remember. My hypothesis is that the human mind simply was not designed to acquire five hundred years’ worth of memories. I don’t remember whether I was the original designer or not, and no matter how much I inspect the technology, it’s almost as if there’s . . .” His eyes flair and his hands reach out, almost like he’s choking someone. “It’s as if there’s something missing from my mind. Not forgotten, but simply erased. I assure you, Jackie Coleman, that I have my own, quite personal reasons for having left the Tower. I
am not here merely out of scientific curiosity.”
She nods as everything goes quiet. It’s funny to sit there and listen to the conversation. It’s not that I doubt the doc or think he’s strange. It’s just, he’d never shared that specific detail, the one about something missing from his memory, before. We’d all assumed he was just forgetful. At that second though, when he’s talking to Jackie, it just feels like there’s something else was going on. It’s enough to make you wonder just what exactly is locked up in that mind of his.
Watson doesn’t seem to linger on it very long. “The suit was originally white, you know.”
“Really?”
“Of course. It was the ultimate Security suit, meant for only a select few. I had the colors altered to distinguish it from the rest of the armor in the production line. This one . . . this one was special. You could turn it back to its white color, of course, and the underlying jumpsuit that is a part of it. The nanobots that compose this armor can reflect any color you’d like.”
Jackie laughs. “This shouldn’t come as a shock, but I’ve always been a fan of black.”
Tommy’s Recording 20
There’s a point in the trip when it becomes pretty clear that General Yousef has things pretty secured up here in the north. The city buildings we pass by are obviously marked in flags carrying his symbol, and there are plenty of military vehicles on the ground watching us as we pass by. I’m talking about personnel transports, rocket vehicles, tanks, and anything else you could imagine. Soldiers lounge around on the sidewalks with rifles in hand while people walk from building to building like there’s no Creep to worry about.
Because there isn’t.
A lot like Central Freedom, I think they’re using types of Pocket Space fields to ward off the Creep, just with smaller pockets of it instead of the one, massive field we project over Central. They’ve also got a bunch of guns and equipment to back those fields up. There are no skyscrapers up here like the ones in Central Freedom, but it’s obvious that the city around Fort Silence used to be pretty wealthy. There’s none of the old brick and mortar buildings in the area. Everything’s shining metal and hardened glass.
The height of the buildings actually stands out. There are towers, but nothing on the scale of Central. Actually, lots of the buildings are low to the ground. Comparatively, I mean. A building that’s 40 stories high is still pretty tall, and there are more than a few of those scattered around. The area just doesn’t have the scale or scope of Central. Still, as we pass over one last ridge and the city starts to give way, I spot what has to be one of the more intimidating structures I’ve ever seen.
I’m not able to get a really good look at it until we pass the edge of the city and emerge into a huge field, the buildings falling behind us as we drive out into a huge circular clearing. When I say huge, I should really say gigantic. At the center of this grassy clearing are these massive, intimidating walls, thick enough to drive a car on. Over the tops of the walls, we see the roofs of buildings pushed together in clusters. The wall surrounding them is broken up every few dozen feet with heavily fortified guard towers and these quad barreled gun emplacements that could easily devastate even the heaviest armored vehicles. Still, what I’ve got my eye on is this one building at the center of it all. It’s taller than everything else around it and juts up like one huge, threatening block of concrete. Past the walls, past the buildings inside those walls, it just lifts up into the sky like this massive concrete block. There’s nothing beautiful or attractive about how it looks, but it sends one pretty clear message: this is a military institution, and it was created to maintain order by any means necessary.
We reach the front gates and get ushered in by guards without any problems. The second we’re inside, it’s hard not to start counting all the warehouses and vehicle hangars that we’re met with. A few places look like barracks for the troops, and others are just brick buildings sitting at the intersections of sidewalks. As many buildings as there are, it doesn’t feel crowded. There’s a ton of ground to cover inside the walls just like there was outside.
Still, it’s the military power inside that really stands out. It feels as if every building is guarded by troops or armored vehicles. A half dozen rocket vehicles are just casually tracking our movements as we drive down the street and toward the central administrative building, that big piece of concrete at the center of it all. As we’re driving along, we pass by a few tanks rolling by the opposite way.
I guess what I’m trying to say is . . . it’s intimidating.
It’s a while before we finally reach the front doors of that central building, but when we do, we end up parking on a huge stretch of paved ground. There are a couple of armored transports sitting up front and what I feel like has to be a dozen guys walking around in suits of power armor, a lot like what the raiders use, with a couple of differences.
We come to a stop in front of the main doors in time for two rows of soldiers to pour out, forming two lines and a path down the middle. I’ve barely stepped onto the grounds with Colonel Martin and President Branagh when I see a line of men in dress uniform walking between the rows of soldiers. They all look pretty important, like they’ve usually got better things to do. The best thing I can compare them to is the War Council, a bunch of vets past their physical prime but with the kind of experience you need to lead the troops. They’ve obviously gotten a lot done in their time since their chests are loaded in pins and medals.
Still, as important as they all look, they all stand aside as one last guy steps through the doors and starts making his way toward us. He’s not dressed nearly as flashy. In fact, he’s basically only got on his olive-green standard wear tucked into a pair of combat boots. He’s intimidating though, a piece of pure muscle. You can tell by the way the fabric stretches around his chest and biceps that the guy’s tough. He’s a little younger than I thought, maybe in his late twenties, and his head’s shaved pretty tight around the sides, so his hair’s barely dusting the brown skin underneath. What really stands out about him though is his right arm. It’s tossing faint rays along the ground as it picks up on the light from the nearby lamp posts. From just below the elbow and down to his fingertips, it’s all mechanical. Every inch of his forearm is robotic, but his fingers flex and probe the air just as easy as mine could. It’s an impressive piece of tech, and when he reaches his hand out, President Branagh doesn’t miss a beat. He stretches his hand back to greet him and flashes as big of a fake smile as I’ve ever seen.
“General Yousef,” he says.
“President Branagh,” the man shoots back. “Welcome to Fort Silence. I am told this is your first visit?”
“Yes. I was just a public service worker until a few years back. I never had any reason to come up this far north, although I do know you from many, many stories.”
“All flattering, I’m sure.”
“There’s a bit of truth in everything.”
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, yes? I suppose you’d want to be cautious. After all, look at you, arriving in a few transports. In return, I greet you with transports of my own and enough armored walkers to wipe you off the face of the planet.”
“That sounds vaguely threatening, general.”
“I’m only stating a fact.”
“I assure you, we’ve brought our own little show of force to remind you that we’re not here to be pushed around.”
That gets the most twisted smile out of him that I’ve seen in a while. “Is that so?”
The president looks over his shoulder and back to the transport. There’s a long second after he does, but soon I see Jackie’s armored leg stepping out of the door. When she touches the ground, she turns toward us, her fists hanging at her side while her eyes glow red behind her mask. All seven feet tall of black metal and Creep infused muscle looms over everyone else, and she’s shadowed by the doc, who steps out behind her. For the first time, I see the general’s smile drop. The glow in his cheeks goes out for a second bef
ore he composes himself, putting on that fake smile of his again. “Is this the infamous Dark Angel I’ve heard so many stories about?”
Branagh nods. “One and the same, general.”
“As you said, there’s always some truth in any story, but I have my doubts regarding the more amazing tales I’ve heard.” He steps past the president and looks dead on at Jackie. “You there. Can you speak for yourself?”
She just stares back at him for a second, her hand holding onto the top of the transport as she sizes him up, before replying in that electronically masked voice of hers. “Yes.”
“They say you can take out armored persons at will. They also say you can rip the doors cleanly off of armored vehicles. A little outlandish, wouldn’t you say?”
“They’re hard to believe.”
“And if I told my men to take aim at you right now and open fire . . . What would happen?”
“Nothing good. That’s not a choice you want to go with.”
“What about for sport? I have a secret to tell you. The suits you see behind you are being operated remotely, as are the vehicles. We try and use remotely controlled teams whenever we’re exploring unknown parts of the Deadlands, since that tends to save lives. Fort Silence may have the superior firepower, but we lack the personnel of Central. Would you be willing to give us a demonstration of your power?” Jackie doesn’t say anything. Instead, she looks over at the president, who looks pretty conflicted. He’s about to say something when Yousef cuts him off. “Can the girl not think for herself? This isn’t a war I’m trying to start with Central Freedom. I’m merely interested in an exhibition between two friendly rivals.”
That must get her angry, because Jackie’s fists squeeze tight as she says, “Your tech’s old. Those gorilla suits of yours might look intimidating, but they can’t keep up.”
“Prove it, then.”