The Sentient

by Nadia Afifi

  A short, muscular figure stepped forward beside D’Arcy and her captor, waving his gun in front of him as he spoke.

  “Whoever switched the elevators off needs to turn them back on,” he yelled.

  Amira recognized the high, thin voice immediately from Rozene’s worst memory. Sarka. A violent chill spread through her limbs.

  “Do it now, or we’ll start with this one!” He gestured at D’Arcy, who stood rigid under her captor’s grip. Her body shook, visible even to Amira, but her pale face was set with grim defiance.

  Amira scanned the crowd, her heart pounding hard against her rib cage. Singh was nowhere to be seen, nor was Barlow. Naomi stood in the front of the crowd, hands covering her mouth and her eyes wide with unmasked terror.

  After a pause, an elderly man stepped forward and walked toward the receptionist’s desk to reactivate the building’s systems.

  “Faster!” Sarka yelled. One of the generators stirred as power returned to the elevators. Bile soured Amira’s mouth. She needed to act. Quickly.

  The elderly man reappeared behind the desk, frail but rigid.

  In a swift moment, a crack echoed across the room.

  The old man collapsed onto the floor to the sound of terrified wails.

  The masked intruder holding D’Arcy made a jerking motion.

  A knife flashed. D’Arcy fell to the ground as blood splattered grotesquely across the marble floor.

  Amira clapped her hand to her mouth, muffling her cry. No, D’Arcy!

  The crowd scattered in earnest, screaming and running frantically in all directions. Several of the men fired their guns up in the air, one waving the flag of the Trinity Compound – an eagle grabbing a flaming, bloody heart, flanked by four crosses.

  D’Arcy scrambled away on all fours, leaving a trail of blood in her wake. Naomi crawled toward her, sliding in a swelling puddle of blood, and hauled D’Arcy under a table. At the epicenter of the frenzy, one of the men saw Amira, terror-stricken, on the mezzanine and raised his gun.

  Amira whipped around and sprinted toward the elevators.

  “Rozeeene,” Sarka cried tauntingly, stretching out the last syllable like a child playing hide-and-seek. “We’re coming for you. It’s time to go home!”

  The elevator doors closed on the frantic scene.

  Amira trembled in the narrow space, her arms folded tightly as she shifted from foot to foot, anxiety coursing like ice through her veins. Realizing her heels were still on, she kicked them both off, preparing to run. The ascent to the highest floor was agonizingly long and she could do nothing but stand there and watch the floor numbers climb, adrenaline coursing through her veins. The men would have begun their ascent shortly after her. She had minutes, maybe seconds, to get to Rozene first.

  Once again, the elevator stopped abruptly and Amira lost her balance, lurching forward. Someone had deactivated the elevators for a second time. Curses and banging sounded below. The men were also trapped in their own elevator. She squeezed through the doors onto the 211th floor and sprinted toward the stairs.

  Amira ran and pivoted around the winding steps. Her legs burned and she gasped for air, but she climbed without pause.

  Echoing footsteps rose from the stairwell. The men had also escaped their elevator shaft and were following closely behind.

  Amira sprinted into the ward’s entrance area. Sparkes stood at attention. The robot would not be aware something was wrong until the security lockdown on the elevators was reinstated. “Lock the doors!” Amira screamed as she ran past Sparkes into Rozene’s room.

  “What’s going on?” Rozene asked, bewildered, as a sheer layer of a clear material descended from the ceiling, fortifying the existing wall of glass between the ward and the offices, creating an additional protective barrier in Rozene’s room. The door locked behind them, bolts loudly snapping into place.

  Amira hunched over, her breathing heavy and ragged. As their eyes met, Rozene’s widened in fearful understanding.

  “They’re here,” Rozene whispered. Amira nodded, turning to look along the walls, the cabinets and drawers for something, anything, that would help them.

  Rozene screamed, a raw, terrified cry that cut Amira’s ears like a serrated blade.

  Amira whipped around. Three men in long black coats stood on the other side of the glass wall, watching them. They removed their masks. Sarka glared with wild, hateful eyes, Elder William Young gazed into the ward with calm interest, and Andrew Reznik stood apart from the other two, his cold blue eyes locked on Amira. Sarka cradled a large electromagnetic gun, shifting his feet like a boxer before the first bell.

  Amira and Rozene froze. They stared at the intruders, hardly daring to move. While she faced the Trinity Elder and his lieutenants for the first time, Amira’s head flooded with questions. How had they made their way in past security? Why had help not yet arrived? How long could they hold them off in that room? Was there a traitor within Pandora who led them here? A thin trail of smoke rose behind the men. Sparkes lay scattered across the floor as a collection of charred gears and limbs.

  D’Arcy. Amira shuddered, the trail of blood from her friend’s neck still vivid in her mind’s eye. Had Naomi stopped the bleeding in time? Would help arrive too late? A cry formed in the back of Amira’s throat, threatening her composure, but she forced her terror back.

  In a sudden movement, Sarka aimed his gun at the glass wall and fired. The wall shuddered under the impact, sending ripples out in all directions along the surface, but remained intact.

  Failing to breach the barrier, Sarka paced along the wall like a caged predator, scanning for a weak spot along its defenses. He paused, then swung his weapon with full force against the wall. The violence of the impact caused the wall to bend, but not break.

  Rozene shrieked and retreated behind her bed. The two women exchanged frightened glances. Sarka paced the length of the room and struck the wall again, first with deliberation and then with uninhibited rage, swinging with wild abandon. He fired another shot in desperation before returning to blows with the end of the gun. Reznik also paced, panther-like, with control and deliberation, never taking his eyes off his prey.

  The glass door shivered with each blow of Sarka’s weapon. Amira walked as calmly as possible toward the panel that controlled the room’s settings. Her face inches away from Elder Young’s, she avoided his eye while activating the distress indicator and keying in a message with shaking fingers: Under attack. Send armed support.

  Elder Young watched her with a leering smile as she backed away from the glass. Nearby, Sarka continued to strike the wall mindlessly, while Reznik kept an eye on Rozene. He glanced momentarily at Amira. Her ears rang faintly, dulling her senses, and she closed her eyes to push it back in her mind.

  “This one thinks she’s brave,” Elder Young said softly. “I know who you are, Amira Valdez.”

  She ignored him and withdrew, joining Rozene on the other side of the bed. As Sarka continued to swing viciously at the glass wall, the thinnest of lines spread from the center of the barrier outward like a crack in ice, widening until it would inevitably shatter.

  Rozene turned to Amira, her eyes round with panic.

  “They’re going to get in!”

  She was right. There was no time to wait for help. The glass would shatter in a matter of minutes, maybe seconds. New masked figures joined the three men on the other side of the glass – reinforcements.

  Amira scanned the room desperately, looking for something useful. There were various things that could be used as weapons to defend themselves, but they were outnumbered and nothing could outmatch the electromagnetic gun.

  There were no exits either. The only ways out were through the glass entrance or the windows.

  “The windows,” Amira whispered under her breath.

  She ran to the cabinets behind Rozene’s bed and flung the doors op
en. When she emerged, she threw an oxygen mask at Rozene.

  “Put this on,” she said quietly. “Get ready.”

  “A-Amira,” Rozene stammered. “What are you doing?”

  Amira ran past the windows, looking out of the Soma. They spanned most of the walls around the building. She scanned the room for something heavy.

  Elder Young’s glassy eyes widened in anger when he realized what she was about to do.

  “Faster,” he said sternly, as Reznik and the other men joined Sarka in striking the glass. “Faster, bring it down!”

  After a final, defiant glare at the Trinity men, Amira grabbed two syringes from a nearby table, lifted a chair and threw it with a forceful swing into the opposite window. It bounced away with a loud thud. Cursing, Amira grabbed the chair again, striking repeatedly at the window with all her strength. A crack formed down the center. With a a final battle cry, Amira threw the chair a second time. The glass shattered into pieces and scattered like fractured marbles across the floor as wind tore into the room, sending sheets and papers flying. She fastened her oxygen mask, grabbed Rozene by the elbow, and pulled her out through the window onto a narrow ledge.

  Both women shrieked as cold winds greeted them outside. They stood on a concrete surface that encircled the building and shielded them from the dizzying, teeming city far below. It was wide enough for two people to walk side by side, but the wind was shockingly powerful, whipping their hair and clothes in every direction while they pressed their bodies against the smooth wall and inched their way sideways along the building. All instincts screamed at Amira to run back inside, where the wind could not hurtle them over the edge, but the sound of shattering glass pushed them onward. They took slow, faltering steps toward the building’s corner, Amira struggling to look anywhere but down. She fought the urge to cry, to scream, to imagine falling to her death. Instead, she moved sideways, one step at a time.

  Pink skies signaled the early stages of dusk. They were on the eastern tower of the Soma. Toward the center of the building was a walkway that connected the two main towers together, one level below them. If they could reach it, they could reenter the building and attempt an escape through the West Tower.

  Rozene moved in front, inching sideways along the narrow ledge while she clutched her midsection for balance. Though the mask concealed most of her face, her eyes widened with shock and she faltered at each burst of unrelenting wind. A faint yell sounded behind them. Heart pounding, Amira twisted her neck to look back.

  One of the masked henchmen stood on the ledge, the barrel of a magnetic gun visible in his raised arm. He advanced, teetering with each clumsy step.

  A gust of wind spun around the building. The man’s foot slipped off and the rest of his body followed. He disappeared over the edge, faster than he could scream.

  Rozene stopped, sinking down against the wall until she sat precariously along the ledge. She pulled the mask from her face, gasping with eyes squeezed shut.

  I can’t, I can’t, she mouthed.

  Amira pulled out one of the two syringes from her pocket. A stimulant balancer, designed to help a person function through shock. Safe enough during pregnancy. Inching forward carefully, she gripped Rozene’s arm and pressed the needle into her skin. Rozene shivered but did not resist. After a moment, her eyes snapped back open and her posture transformed from limp to rigid. She looked fearfully at Amira.

  “We have to keep going,” Amira yelled, though the wind drowned out her words. “We can make it to the other tower. We’re almost there!”

  She grabbed Rozene’s arm again and Rozene pushed herself up, steadying her swelling frame before they resumed their trek along the building’s exterior. Amira stole a final glance at the open window before rounding the corner of the building, but no one else followed.

  The walkway stretched directly below them. Both women slid down carefully, so that they were standing on its shiny glass roof. A gust of wind blasted Amira. She slid onto her knees.

  Rozene screamed. Amira pulled off her own oxygen mask and brought it down with all her strength on the walkway’s ceiling, hoping for the same weak glass as in the windows in Rozene’s ward. After a few strikes, it gave, and they lowered themselves through the sharp, broken glass onto the walkway, Amira helping Rozene down.

  Back inside, safe from the elements, Amira sank onto all fours, pressed her head against the floor and let out a strangled sob. She didn’t dare scream – not yet.

  There was no sign of Elder Young and his men – Amira assumed they were not suicidal enough to chase them around the outside of the building, but they would not give up their pursuit so easily.

  Silently, they made their way across the still walkway into the western building, Rozene clutching Amira’s hand. The cityscape flanked both sides of the open walkway and Amira wished desperately to be on the ground, to disappear into the dense web of roads and alleyways below. Upon reaching the western building’s interior, Amira flung the stairway entrance open, nearly colliding with Valerie Singh. Rozene shrieked.

  “Dr. Singh!” Amira gasped. “They’re…they’re looking for Rozene.”

  Singh nodded wordlessly, motioning them into the stairwell.

  “Quick,” she said. “There are men above us, on the landing roof. We need to go down.”

  Rozene moaned in pain as they descended the stairwell.

  “I gave her a stimulant,” Amira said in a low voice. “A safe one from our stocks.”

  “She needs more than that,” Singh replied, her voice breathless. “The trauma…she could deliver early.”

  Shouts echoed along the stairwell and the three women froze. There were men on the stairwell several floors down, the tops of their heads pivoting as they ran up in single file.

  “We have to go back up,” Amira said.

  “No. Through the door!” Singh ushered them through the exit. They were on the 224th floor, at one end of a long hallway.

  Rozene stumbled and Singh linked arms with her while Amira supported her on the other side, the three women running together toward towering double doors on the other end of the corridor. Singh swiped her badge and they entered the Soma’s morgue.

  Rozene crumpled when she realized where they were. Tears streaked down her face and she retreated to the exit, but Singh gripped her arm firmly and pointed ahead.

  “We need to go in there,” she said gently, pointing to a smaller room shielded with a glass wall, not unlike the one on the 235th floor.

  “They got through the wall in Rozene’s room,” Amira said softly as Singh swiped them in. “They fired a few times and when that didn’t work, they just bashed their way in.”

  “This has special protection,” Singh said. “They’ll have a harder time on these walls. And even if they get through, they won’t find either of you.”

  Before Amira could answer, they entered a narrow, sterile room flanked on both sides by a high wall of freezer units. The room’s center hosted several tables for autopsies, thankfully empty at present. At the far end of the room, glass cases containing human heads suspended in blue liquid lined the wall. The heads were the color of chalk with metallic tags fastened at their temples, from which a bright current pulsated, sending translucent streams of light through their brains. Each case had a placard underneath it. Though not close enough to read them, Amira knew they contained the names of important figures: scientists, leaders, anyone wealthy or connected enough to place their dreams of immortality in the Soma’s hands.

  Amira stood, transfixed, before the array of floating tombs until a frightened sob broke her concentration. Singh ushered Rozene toward the freezer doors, where Nina Leakey and Jessica Alvarado had undoubtedly ended their short tenures in the Soma.

  Singh pulled one of the freezer doors open.

  “Inside, quickly,” she said. “And you, Amira, get in one on the other side.”

  Rozen
e shook her head, wringing her hands.

  “I can’t, please, no….”

  “You must,” Singh said with uncharacteristic softness. “There’s an emergency latch inside, in case someone is locked in by mistake, so just pull on it once the coast is clear. You can do this. Everything will be fine.”

  Singh handed a vial from her coat pocket to Rozene.

  “Take this once you’re inside,” she said. “It will stop labor if it begins. I’ll disable the freezer so that it doesn’t show the unit as occupied from the outside. Don’t be afraid. I won’t let harm come to you or the life you carry.”

  With that, Singh persuaded Rozene to lie on the slab and quickly closed the door.

  “What about you?” Amira asked, pulling herself into a unit on the opposite wall.

  “There isn’t time,” Singh said, rushing over to disable Amira’s freezer. “I can redirect them somewhere else. What is important is keeping her safe.”

  “But—”

  “You must promise me, no matter what happens, that you do not leave until it’s safe.” Singh’s face hardened, her insistence radiating from every feature. “No matter what you hear, you must do this. Promise me, if something happens to me, that you will finish what I’ve started and see this through to the end.”

  “But I don’t know enough to—”

  “You do. Promise me.”

  Before Amira could answer, Singh slammed the door shut, encasing Amira in darkness.

  It was unbearably still. Amira could run, even fight back if needed, but to be motionless was the cruelest state. She tried her best to breathe quietly over the deafening sound of her heart pounding.

  Singh’s footsteps trailed further away when they were interrupted by a loud banging sound, followed by more footsteps. Their pursuers had arrived before she could make her exit.

  “It’s the cloning heathen!” Sarka said, his voice now unmistakable to Amira. He followed his introduction with several shots of his gun. Another gun fired as well, and after a pause, a series of thuds and curses. From the sounds being made, the men seemed to be striking at the glass, as they had done in Rozene’s ward.