Shattered Lands

by ALICE HENDERSON

  The video ended. Rowan flipped through more notes, and then a series of graphic images depicting the experiments, human workers with altered DNA, scenes of what looked like torture. H124 turned away to find Raven standing behind her.

  He placed a hand on her shoulder. “So the night stalkers are . . .”

  “People they altered to work in the deep fissures and find fuel extraction points,” Rowan finished.

  Byron still stood across the room, staring down at the dried pool of blood. He met H124’s eyes.

  She bolted out of the room, and to the next stairwell. The others followed. She was able to cover fourteen floors before that stairwell also proved to be blocked by debris from the collapsed ceiling. She backtracked down the hallway one floor below. The entire floor, like the one they’d just been on, was comprised of a lab with tables and restraints. She took a service stair up a floor, and peeked down the corridor. This floor was also a giant lab. She went up flight after flight, peeking down the different levels, finding twenty-two more genetics labs.

  She decided to run up the narrow service stair. Suddenly her stomach tightened, and a sour taste filled her mouth. She swallowed the urge to retch.

  A moment later, Rowan caught up with her. “It’s okay, H,” he told her.

  “No, it’s not. Those workers . . . like me . . .”

  “It’s a terrible place. But these people failed.”

  “Only some of them did,” she countered. “Willoughby said a bunch of the Basin City execs transferred to other megacities when this one got too bad. There were no repercussions for any of this.”

  Rowan took her in his arms, and she pressed her face against his heat suit. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She heard Raven and Byron closing the distance between them, and wiped the corner of her eye.

  “You okay?” Raven asked as he reached them. “That was tough back there.”

  She pulled away from Rowan. “Your de-extinction lab was so beautiful. This is . . .” She readjusted the pack on her back. “Do you think they know they were once human?”

  Raven shook his head. “Maybe.” He waited. “Probably.”

  At the next floor, they encountered another collapse, and had to switch back to one of the other stairwells. She climbed up, hearing water dripping somewhere. She caught a whiff of something foul and rotting.

  As they climbed higher, they heard the stairwell door bang open above them. Everyone froze. She heard someone breathing up there, then a voice. “Hello?” it called down. It was a man’s voice, cracked from disuse, weak and barely audible. She leaned out over the railing and stared up, seeing a bearded face blinking back at her.

  “Are you . . . real?” the man asked. His long hair, matted and grey, hung in tangles around his shoulders. His face was smeared with grime, and his clothes hung in tatters off his gaunt frame.

  “Yes,” Raven said beside her. “We’re real.”

  The man erupted into a sob, and collapsed on his landing. Raven took the stairs two at a time to reach him, then bent over him. “Are you all right?”

  The man grabbed Raven’s arm, weeping as he clung to him. “I can’t believe it . . . I’ve waited so long . . . didn’t think I’d ever see another human being.”

  As H124 reached him, she caught the reek of urine, and the odor of his soiled clothes.

  “Where did you come from?” Raven inquired.

  “The Badlands. I came in here to strip down one of the transports. Then those things came. I’ve been hiding here ever since.”

  “How long ago was that?” H124 asked.

  He stared up at her, blinking vacantly. “I don’t know. Six months? I’ve tried to leave a number of times, but I haven’t been able to.”

  Rowan helped him up, and he hobbled to the stairwell door to steady himself. “You’ll take me with you, right? Take me out of here?”

  Raven nodded. “Of course.”

  The man broke down again, his deep gasps making his body shudder. “Let me get my things,” he told them.

  They followed him through the door and to the hallway beyond. He limped along the corridor, stepping into an exec office. The place stank of rotten food cubes and fecal matter. He hobbled over to a couch he’d been using as a makeshift bed, and rummaged through the dirty sheets that looked as if they’d been red draperies at one point. He started gathering his meager possessions into a small satchel. Rowan watched him move a PRD into the bag. “Wow, that’s an old model PX. You can’t get those anymore.”

  The man looked up at him in confusion. “What do you mean? This thing’s brand new.”

  Rowan wrinkled his brow. “They stopped producing them twelve years ago. They only made a few of them. Things were great for intercepting internal messages from the PPC. Made it easy to know the troop movements. The PPC figured out that little hack and stopped making them.”

  The man frowned. “You’re crazy. I stole this thing the week before I broke in here. Stole it right out of the factory in Delta City.”

  Rowan knelt down next to the man as he crammed a pocket pyro and an old, rusted multitool into his satchel. “Are you saying that the week before you arrived here, that PX was on the production line?”

  The man nodded, then, in terrible epiphany, widened his eyes. “Are you telling me I’ve been here for . . . twelve years?”

  “I’m afraid that’s what it sounds like.”

  The man stopped packing. He was frozen in time.

  “How have you survived here?” Rowan asked him.

  The man opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. He rocked back on his heels, then plumped down on the floor. “Kitchen’s full of food cubes . . . been drinking rainwater . . .” He licked his lips, mind reeling. “Twelve years?”

  “I’m sorry, friend. What’s your name?”

  At first the man didn’t answer. He just stared around, dazed. Finally he whispered, “Malcolm.”

  Rowan extended his hand. “I’m Rowan.” He introduced the rest of them, and Malcolm nodded at each in turn, mouth still hanging low.

  Finally he stood up, slinging his satchel over his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Raven hurried to the office door. “We have to do something before we go,” he told Malcolm. “You’re welcome to wait here if you like. We’ll pick you up on our way back.”

  “No way,” Malcolm said, his voice returning. “You’ll forget all about me.”

  “We won’t,” Raven assured him.

  “I’m coming along,” Malcolm said, his jaw set.

  “All right then,” Raven agreed.

  As they filed back into the hallway, Malcolm asked Rowan, “What does your PRD look like?”

  Rowan paused. “Excuse me?”

  “Your PRD. Let me see it.”

  Rowan pulled it out, and Malcolm snatched it out of his hand, He examined it from all angles, and switched it on. Rowan’s was code-protected, so he couldn’t see any of the screens. “What’s the code?” Malcolm demanded.

  Rowan reached for his PRD. “We’ll set you up with your very own once we get out of here.”

  “No!” Malcolm shouted, shoving Rowan’s hand away. He stuffed the PRD into his satchel. Rowan stared back at him, but the man’s dark eyes glittered wildly beneath his crop of grey hair.

  “You can hold on to it for a while,” Rowan said, “but I’m going to need it back to order our lift out of here.”

  Malcolm pushed past him, clutching his satchel to his side. “Where are we going?”

  “Floor 120,” Raven told him.

  “You go first,” Malcolm ordered, gripping the satchel as if they would rip it out of his hands at any moment.

  Raven took the lead, followed by Rowan. Malcolm glowered at H124 and Byron and said, “Well?”

  “Oh, no, mate. You first,” Byron said, speaking for the first time
since they met the man.

  Malcolm turned with a grunt, starting up the stairs behind the others. Byron gently took H124’s arm, holding her back. “I don’t like this. My gut is singing like an angry drunk with a bottle of cheap whiskey.”

  “I don’t feel so great about it either,” H124 whispered back.

  They resumed their laborious climb, ascending another twelve floors before they had to switch to a different stairwell.

  “Why do you think there aren’t any night stalkers in here?” she asked Byron, keeping her voice low.

  He glanced up at the others. “Don’t know. The PPC made their own towers to last. Maybe this building stayed strong enough to withstand their invasion.”

  “Or maybe,” she said, still whispering, “they avoid this place because it’s where they were made. Where they were tortured.” She met his eyes. “It’s like the House of Pain.”

  “The House of Pain?”

  “It’s from a book I read, The Island of Doctor Moreau. This crazy scientist created these animals, stitched them together using vivisection, twisting them into things they weren’t, forcing them to speak, to walk on two legs . . . their pain was excruciating.”

  He stopped and blinked at her.

  “After that, they never wanted to return to the House of Pain,” she went on.

  “That was in a book?” he asked, astounded. “Like something you’d read for fun?”

  She gave a shy laugh.

  “Sounds like a real heartwarming story.”

  The others had gotten a floor above them, so they started up again, but came to an abrupt halt when Malcolm bounded back down from the overhead landing. “What do your PRDs look like? I want to see them.” He gestured at her. “And I want to see that energy rifle, too. I’ve never seen tech like that. Did you get it here? I want to see it.”

  “No way,” Byron said. “Just keep moving.”

  “I said,” Malcolm enunciated, spitting out each word, “I—want—to—see—that—rifle.” He stared down the stairs.

  “And I said,” Byron snapped, “No way!”

  Malcolm dashed down the stairs, clashing with Byron on the landing. The latter lifted his gun, hitting him in the head with the rifle stock. Malcolm crumpled like a rag.

  Raven came from above, jogging down the steps. “What happened?” He saw Malcolm lying at Byron’s feet.

  “Crazy dude rushed me.”

  Malcolm slowly got to his feet, holding his head. H124 saw that he bore a fresh cut on his cheek. Silently he turned and climbed up toward Raven, then kept walking up. “I just wanted to see it,” he moaned over one shoulder. “You didn’t have to hit me.”

  “This is too weird,” Byron whispered to H124.

  They resumed their climb. When they passed Raven, the Rover said, “The guy’s been here a long time alone. He’s probably forgotten how to be around people.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Byron said.

  At last they reached the 120th floor. It consisted of a single luxurious office. At least it had been luxurious at one time. As H124 looked through the door, she saw dusty vases and sculptures, a grime-coated desk and couch, and furniture in disarray.

  And there, on a pedestal in the center of the room, stood the spacecraft section.

  “Yes!” H124 cried out, punching the air with her fist.

  They tried the door, but found it locked with a secondary system; a backup was in place in case the power ever failed. Using Dirk’s workaround, Rowan powered on the lock with his PRD, and cut and reattached wires. It took him a few tries before the heavy steel door finally slid open.

  Raven rushed to the section, looking it over. He let out a huge sigh. “It doesn’t appear to be damaged.”

  “What is that thing?” Malcolm asked, drawing closer.

  “The last piece of a puzzle,” Raven told him.

  “What kind of puzzle?”

  Raven slung off his pack and unfurled the maglev sled. “The puzzle that will save all of our lives.”

  As the copters aligned themselves, Malcolm got even closer, pointing. “What’s that thing?”

  “It’s going to carry this section out for us.”

  Gently, Raven and H124 lifted up the glass enclosure, and set it aside. He draped a clean skin over the craft, and it adhered to the spacecraft section, sealing it off. Then the maglev snaked out its levers, inserting them under the craft until it was lifted onto the sled. Raven set up the maglev to follow him.

  Other antiquities lined the shelves and bookcases on the walls, including some thin, framed books. One was called “Incredible Hulk #181,” another “Detective Comics #27,” and still another “Amazing Fantasy #15.” She also found a strange collection of artifacts among them. One was a black and white clay bowl with geometric designs. It looked very old. A smooth wooden club lay next to a white sphere that had red stitching, both covered in dust. She picked up a gold, metal circle with a little button on top. When she pressed it, one face of the object opened, revealing a surface with numbers. Then she picked up a flat, square case next to it, and brushed off the dust. On the outside she could make out the word “a-ha” below a picture of three men, and when she opened the case, she found a disk similar to the ones she’d first located in Delta City. She placed it in her satchel. Beside it stood a cube with grooves, each side a different, vibrant color. She blew the dust off this as well, and found that she could turn each side to mix up the colors. She returned it to its original pattern, and placed it back on the shelf.

  In a glass case, she found a cylindrical brass object tipped with more glass at either end, one side being narrower than the other. There was also an ancient-looking paper map, and a round, brass device with N-S-E-W written on it.

  As they readied to leave the room, H124 moved to the expansive window overlooking Basin City. Hundreds of fires gleamed as far as she could see, twinkling red in the darkness.

  They had begun to head out of the door when Malcolm suddenly picked up a chair and heaved it against Raven’s back. As Raven staggered forward, Malcolm ripped the energy rifle off his back, and shot him with it. Then he turned it on Byron, who dove to the side before he could fire. H124 flung herself behind the large desk. She brought her rifle around to the front, but Rowan beat her to the shot. He fired off his weapon, and a brilliant, sizzling light engulfed Malcolm. The old man fell to the floor, knocked out and jittering.

  H124 hurried to Raven’s side as Byron wrenched his rifle from Malcolm’s grip. He found Rowan’s PRD in the man’s satchel, and handed it back.

  Rowan increased his rifle to a higher setting. As Malcolm stirred on the floor, Rowan kept it trained on him.

  “What should we do?” asked H124.

  “Leave his ass,” said Byron.

  Raven thought a moment. “He’d just follow us. Let’s keep him with us so we know where he is.”

  Malcolm sat up.

  “You have two choices,” Rowan told him. “We shoot you and leave you for dead, or you walk in front at gunpoint. Either way, you do something like that again, and you’re dead. You can rot here.”

  Malcolm sat up, running his hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” He wobbled to his feet, then grabbed the desk to steady himself.

  Placing Malcolm in front, they started out of the room, the maglev hovering behind Raven. But before they reached the stairwell door, Malcolm turned and darted down the hallway, rounding the corner. They heard a door slam.

  They all looked at each other, half-puzzled, half-worried.

  “You should have just killed him,” Byron confessed. “Someone like him wouldn’t think twice about killing us.”

  They filed back into the stairwell and began their descent, the sled humming along. H124 was two floors down when the stairwell door next to her banged open. Malcolm collided with her, knocking her onto he
r back. She pushed at him, but his bony frame fell on top of her. He started ripping at the pack at her shoulders, trying to wrench it off. Then his hands closed around the energy rifle, and it went off, hitting the wall. She shoved him off just as Rowan snatched the back of the man’s coat. He thrust Malcolm against the wall, and again he fell.

  Malcolm lay there shaking. Then he struggled to his feet, once more refusing to stay down. “I need your tech more than you do,” he said, straightening his tattered clothes. “This is the score I’ve been waiting for.”

  Raven helped H124 up. Rowan upped the setting on his rifle yet again.

  Malcolm’s eyes glittered at the sight of the spacecraft section. “That thing must be valuable if you risked your lives to come get it.”

  “Not in the way you’re thinking,” Raven told him.

  Malcolm reached into his dirty satchel and whipped out a knife with a serrated edge. “I’m taking it. And something tells me you’re not the kind to kill a man over a piece of tech.” He started for the sled, brandishing the knife. “But I will. I’ll kill any of you who come closer.” He was halfway to the sled when Rowan shot him. Malcolm collapsed, his body convulsing on the floor.

  “Did you kill him?” Byron asked.

  Rowan checked the setting on the rifle. “No, but he’ll be out for a long time. We’ll be well out of here.”

  Byron marched back up to the landing and slung the Henry repeating rifle off his back, aiming it at the prone man. Raven grabbed the muzzle. “No!”

  Byron’s eyes were fixed on him. “Why not?”

  “He’s helpless right now. You can’t shoot him in cold blood.”

  “The hell I can’t. He’s going to wake up and start hunting us again. We had to put him down three times in how long? We can’t risk it.”

  Raven kept holding the muzzle. “He’s just desperate. Confused. He’s been here for so long he doesn’t know how to react. Probably all he’s thought about for twelve years is what brought him here—stolen tech.”

  Byron’s rifle kept on the man’s head, but Raven stepped in front of it. “No, Byron. He’s not PPC or a Repurposer. He’s one of us. One of you. A Badlander.”