Floor 21- Dark Angel

by Jason Luthor

  There’s a long pause before Dodger asks, “Jackie, how’s that possible? From what we know about the Creep . . .”

  “I know. Certain clusters, like the Northwest Creep Colony, control parts of the Creep. We’ve always thought of the Creep like a biological network, and that’s still true, but it’s become pretty clear to me that there’s something stronger inside of it.” She pauses, taking her time as she chooses her next words. “I still don’t know what happened to cause the August War and what human beings did to bring the Creep here, but I’m sure it had to do with experiments with Pocket Space. The Creep started being created in our world because we triggered something, so we have to turn off the trigger. But something else happened when we opened that doorway. Something else came through. It’s that thing that came through that is trying to get control the entire Creep, if it doesn’t have control already.

  “I’ve seen visions of it, this one, huge eye surrounded by a thousand smaller eyes, and tendrils squirming out of them as this huge mass falls out of the sky. But the last time I saw that vision, there were thousands of Angels on the horizon, all ready to fight. I think that there’s something bigger happening that we’re barely becoming aware of. We won a war to bring humanity together here in Central, but there’s a bigger war that’s about to come. A war between the Eye and the Angels. I think the Angels have been scavenging technology to get prepared for that war. For a long time, it was just a thought, until I saw that last vision of the two of them about to fight.”

  General Martin leans in. “You know I trust you by this point, Jackie. I just want to ask how we know we can trust these visions of yours. Couldn’t they just be hallucinations caused by the Creep? I hope I’m not offending you. I’m just trying to eliminate any other possibilities.”

  “I’m not offended. But no, they’re not hallucinations. I’ve had hallucinations. When I fight now, it’s like I can see a second or two into the future and anticipate most of the potential outcomes. These visions feel more like that, like I can see this outcome coming. It’s not just that though. I told you all that there are other minds in the Creep. Fragments. Well, there are other minds in there that are whole. Some people who die to the Creep never fade. They just persist, living on in that sea of minds. I’ve contacted two of them before.” She must see the council’s faces twisting up at the idea, because she holds her hands out. “If you can believe in someone who can fly through the air and open Pocket Space windows without needing any tech, then please believe what I’m saying now. I’ve talked to these minds. They were powerful, powerful people when they were alive, and they saw the Eye too.”

  Tommy looks at her. “It’s Judge and Sally, isn’t it.”

  She looks down at him. “Yeah.”

  He turns to the council. “The five second rundown on that is that Judge and Sally were two Creep infested people who were incredible psychics while they were alive. I’ve personally seen visions of them when I lived back in the Tower, so, as incredible as what Jackie’s saying right now, I’m vouching for her. I think she’s earned that much after defeating Yousef, anyway.”

  Neddy raises a hand at the back. “We’ll give you no arguments. Of course, this all sounds incredible, but we live in a world where a disease keeps regenerating over and over, pouring across the country and creating vicious monsters of everything it finds. Jackie, if you say this is a threat, then I believe it’s a threat. The only question we must ask ourselves is what we do now. Do we need to start preparing for a bigger war to come?”

  She nods. “Yes, but I don’t know what that means exactly. Not yet, anyway. Here, everyone has to pull together and make everything from Zone Delaware to Fort Silence as secure as possible. I personally think that the Angels are out here, observing the Creep while it’s doing its work and maybe even observing these enhanced human. Maybe they’re trying to take control of the Creep. I don’t know. But that’s the problem. The truth is there is still too much that we don’t know. So, I’m heading back to the Tower where I came from. It’s time to get some answers. After that, we can start really preparing for what’s to come. Because, I think, if we can get rid of the Eye and these Angels, we’ll finally get rid of the Creep. That’s all I’ve been fighting for since I left home.”

  Dodger’s Recording 27

  It’s just the bunch of us, like old times. Jackie, Tommy, and Me. And Mikey, in our hearts, as we sit in the Green Zone. Jackie smiles as she looks down on the lake and all the people boating across. “This is where he brought me. This is where I started to remember I’m human after all.”

  Tommy takes a deep breath. “Mikey had a way of doing that. I remember, back in the Tower, thinking he was the most popular guy around. He could have done anything with that. The guy could have been a complete jerk and gotten away with it. He had a lot of heart, though. He was always looking out for the little guy.”

  “I know. That’s why he took the time out to talk to me. He liked asking questions and so did I. He wasn’t the kind of guy to make you feel bad for being yourself.”

  “That whole trip down the Tower to rescue him and the other survivors from the old Scavenger team . . . I guess I kept wondering what you saw in him. Even after we found him, it was hard to really connect with the guy. He was so traumatized by what he saw in there.”

  I wrap my arm around Tommy’s. “Then he met Cynthia.”

  “Yeah. She helped him feel normal again. There wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t impress me with how positive he was after that.”

  “It was a little bit funny how hard he fell for her. I thought he was going to be obsessed over Jackie for forever.”

  She laughs. “Well, I’m happy he wasn’t. It was nice to run into him again when he was so at peace.”

  Tommy takes a long breath. “So, Jackie. You never actually told us what it was that happened to you at Fort Silence.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Did you want to share or is this one of those things you can’t talk about?”

  “Never that. Never again, anyway. Not talking is the worst.”

  That makes me chuckle. “That’s a big change for you.”

  “Yeah, well, not talking turned out to be one of the worst things for me emotionally and in the general category of ‘inadvertently starting wars.’”

  “Helped along by Yousef, of course.”

  “Sure, but we could have avoided so much trouble if . . . Well, it doesn’t matter. The Sha’b are with us now so, hopefully we never have a repeat of that.”

  Tommy nods. “Which is great, but you’re not getting away from this whole flying through the air, burning white fire thing you did.”

  “It’s not that big of a deal. You’d already seen me turn into a half monster and bleed red fire from my eyes.”

  “You know what you did at Fort Silence was a little different.”

  Jackie takes a deep breath before nodding to us. “It was different. And it is hard to describe. I’m completely sure I died again.”

  “Did the Creep brought you back? I mean, again.”

  “No.” She shakes her head, looking confused. “The Upper Domain. Pocket Space. We’re always talking about how people’s minds get trapped in the Creep. But, from my chats I’ve had with Judge and Sally, they tell me that it’s a little like floating through a pool of minds.”

  “Yeah, you didn’t really go into details about that, but it’s kind of a big deal to skip over the fact that you’ve been talking to those two.”

  “It’s really not that complicated. Their minds are still in the Creep, much more sane now and unable to ever come back again in physical forms.” She waves her hands. “It doesn’t matter, point is, they’ve said it’s like being able to drift into other people’s memories, like going from one dream to another.”

  “And that’s what you felt?”

  “Kind of? I just . . . For one minute, I wasn’t here anymore. I mean, I wasn’t here in this reality. I wasn’t alive, not like I know. I felt like I was to
uching . . .” She chuckles and looks at the ground. “I’m going to feel like an idiot saying this.”

  “Well, you’re just going to leave us hanging if you don’t finish your sentence, so don’t overthink it.”

  Jackie looks back up. “It felt like touching the universe, maaan,” she says with a laugh. She’s quiet for a little bit after that, and even though she’s still smiling, she looks . . . I guess serious, somehow. Eventually she looks up at the sky, at the sun shining down from the roof of the Green Zone. “I saw more visions. Better ones, I think. But I don’t know if they’re of the future or something else.”

  “What are we talking about here?”

  “At first I had this this out of body experience. Like, I could see me, or at least what was left of me. But, I could also see what Erin was doing in the Panzer at the same time that I could see Kali fighting on the ground. I could see Judge and Sally standing at the edge of the crater, waiting for me to get up. They were watching me, just like they said they would be. But I also saw . . . things that just make no sense at all. Things that aren’t in our world. These ships like the Dynamis, but bigger and gliding through the stars. A city floating in the sky.”

  It’s impossible to disguise the frown that’s on my face. “Was this like some near death experience or something?”

  “No. These were different places at different times. I could feel how real they were, like how I feel something when I touch it and feel it in the Upper Domain.” She smiles as she looks at Tommy. “Like I felt you, Tommy, when you saw me get shot out of the sky.”

  Tommy coughs a little and looks at the ground as he wipes at his face. “You . . . you felt that.”

  “I felt how sad you were. I just had one moment where I felt like I connected with everything in a way that I don’t even really understand yet.” She stops for a second as she stands there, her eyes shooting back to the lake for a second before looking back at us. “I was staring through a window into other places, and I don’t understand how or why. The weirdest part though . . . there was this younger guy, a teenager, staring back at me as I looked into these other places. Like he was connected to other places in the same way I was, and he could see the same things I was seeing.”

  I shake my head. “And why’s that important?”

  “Because he was doing the same thing I was. Connecting. The same way that I saw him, he saw me.”

  “So, there’s someone else out there who can do what you can do?”

  “I don’t really know. There’s still a lot to figure out about Pocket Space and how it makes the world work. It’s obviously a lot more important than we used to think.”

  “Yeah. Way more important, considering you and Doc Watson said that reality itself is built on top of it.”

  Jackie bites her lip for a second as she looks away. “Hey, I um, I’ve got this thing I need to do. Would you guys mind if we meet back up at home? I’ve got to solve one last mystery.”

  Tommy chuckles. “I’m not going to pretend like I’m surprised. What’s the mystery?”

  “The coordinates that were being broadcast to the Tower originally came from here, in the Green Zone. It was one of the mysteries I always wanted to solve but never got around to when I first arrived. I just want to find where they’re coming from.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Fill us in when you get back to the apartment?”

  She smiles at us. “Obviously.”

  Jackie’s Recording 48

  Underneath the Green Zone are the tunnels where the city’s gardens are kept. It’s just endless tunnels of towering stacks of vegetables that are artificially lit and watered using the purified water the city creates. What a lot of people don’t realize is how deep those tunnels go. There are more tunnels beneath those, tunnels where fresh water is sent around the city as part of its water system. But deeper than those, in back tunnels and downstairs that lead beneath the waterbed, are even older tunnels. They form their whole own maze, with the scary part being the fact that they’re no long powered. Everything’s dark. Which is fine for me, I guess. It’s not like I need a fire or a flashlight to get around, not with the lights built into my armor.

  As I’m wandering around, I make my own light, navigating the tunnels and following the radio signal that’s getting more and more clear on my earpiece. I originally started heading out east, to Central, once I figured out how to interpret the numbers. Then I just never followed up with any of it. I got diverted north by signals from Highpoint. That left this one last mystery unsolved. So, I’m standing there in the dark, listening to the numbers and remembering how chilling the voice on the other end is.

  Begin Transmission

  4, 0, pause, 4, 7, 4, 2

  7, 3, pause, 5, 8, 3, 0

  7, 3, pause, 5, 7, 5, 4

  The tunnels that far down get narrow. They weren’t meant for trains and don’t carry water. They just keep twisting and turning, with only enough space for a few people to stand shoulder to shoulder. After seven hundred years, there’s nothing alive down there. There’s not even Creep to find. It’s more like you’re just taking one long walk into the past, seeing all these machines where people used to work and spend their days making money. As I’m walking around, I can’t help but notice the monitors with the Apeiron company logo on them.

  Anyway, I spend enough time wandering before I finally find my way into an old maintenance tunnel. It’s a lot smaller than the main tunnels and looks like it was mainly for people trying to repair machines running the whole water system running above me. Or maybe for repairing things. While I’m walking through those tunnels, I have my suspicions. I keep wandering through those narrow tunnels, listening as the voice in my ear keeps getting louder and louder, the signal getting clearer, until I finally find a door. When I push on it, it doesn’t resist. It just creaks open and lets me in.

  I’m not really sure what I’m expecting to find. What I do find is just an almost entirely empty room. There are a few computers and desks along the walls, but nothing special. At least, that’s what I think at first. Because everything is so dark, it takes me a second to realize that the far wall isn’t actually a wall. It’s a massive all of glass, but I can’t see anything on the other side. That’s how dark it is. Pushed against that glass wall is a huge desk with one central computer terminal on top of it. There’s something else too, this . . . feeling. Pocket Space energy. It’s really intense, and I can actually feel my cells dancing inside of me as I’m standing inside the room.

  I feel like I’m having deja vu, a flashback to something I remember seeing back in the Tower. But I also kind of hope I’m wrong. Without wasting any more time, I walk to the computer and tap on the keyboard. When I do, the Apeiron logo, the infinity sign inside of a spoked wheel, lights up the screen for just a second. Then it fades, and all I see are the words, “RESTORE CHAMBER LIGHTS/N ?”

  Of course, I tap yes, and when I do, the glass wall in front of me ignites. Massive floodlights start lighting up the interior, and I can’t help but feel my chest tighten up. For the first time, I realize there’s a door leading past the glass wall, onto scaffolding that surrounds a massive, circular chamber. I go through the door and look down, staring into what feels like an endless abyss that plummets into the earth. That’s really not what’s important though. What’s important is the massive device that’s suspended in the middle of the chamber. It runs a few dozen feet above me to what has to be hundreds of feet below ground, maybe thousands. “A Pocket Space engine,” I whisper as I hold onto the railing, remembering the same one that was built into the north end of the Tower. “Why is it here though?”

  I stumble back inside, leaving the chamber behind me and returning to the desk. All I can think is that we’re going to have to investigate that. There was more happening between Apeiron and Central than I realized, but I don’t have the ability to understand what it could have been. The old Tower was powered by an engine like the one there, beneath the Green Zone, but the one underneath the zone isn�
�t powering anything. So, why was it built there in the first place? It’s just one more mystery that’s going to need to be solved. One more problem that we’ll have to tackle. At least, with the Northwest Creep Colony, Tommy will be able to divert more resources to investigating what’s going on below the city.

  I’m standing in front of the desk when I finally remember what brought me down that far in the first place. I take another look at the computer and realize there are a few more commands I can enter, including one to shut down an emergency transmission. I assume it has to be the one playing in my ear. So, that’s exactly what I do. I shut down the automated broadcast signal that’s been running for centuries. I’m not sure where the broadcast tower up on the surface is, but it was powerful enough to send a signal hundreds of miles away, to the Tower.

  Standing there, it just kind of hits me just how compromised the city was. Just how much everyone started hating Apeiron. I mean, for Carthage to set up a radio broadcast center from down in the guts of the city, at a place where Apeiron had built a gigantic Pocket Space engine, Carthage would have needed to have had the loyalty of workers from around the city. Then again, considering Apeiron created the Towers to basically save themselves and left most of the city to die . . . Well, I guess it’s understandable that so many people were turning on them.

  All of that’s running through my head when I look down at the desk and realize there’s a single picture frame there. By the time of the Following Fall, the Old World had mostly moved on to digital images. But old habits die hard I guess, and some people still took pictures. Photos from near the end of the world were layered in special chemicals, so a lot of them managed to survive the centuries if the Creep didn’t get them. That’s the situation with the picture there at the desk, and I take a close look at it, just to see what might be there.

  I almost actually stop breathing when I see it.