Expelled

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  “You don’t have an exact number?” Jayne asked, frowning.

  “That’s the problem with these old low level buildings,” Vlad said helplessly. “All the detritus from the upper levels filters down here for hundreds of years and builds up like soil. And meanwhile the new construction above weighs down on the old, pushing it down. With time the buildings slowly sink, floor after floor buried a little at a time. There’s no telling how old this blueprint is, or how many floors might have sunk underground completely.”

  “Because this situation wasn’t enough fun already,” Jayne muttered. She turned to Cameron, nodding to get his attention. “I’ll take the bottom, you take the top?”

  “Well that would certainly be a change,” Cameron replied, a grin in his voice that she could imagine despite his mask.

  “Don’t get used to it,” Jayne teased him in return.

  “I would love to hear about your sex lives later, I really would, but let’s stay focused,” Merry said dryly. “We’ll call you with updates as soon as I break his jamming signal. Be safe.”

  “We will,” Cameron promised.

  “Just hurry with those comms,” Jayne said. “I need you two watching our backs.”

  “We won’t let you down,” Vlad replied. “Probably.”

  “Very reassuring, Vlad.”

  “You’re charging into the lair of a murderous lunatic with a grudge and a ton of radioactive material. I’m just being realistic.”

  Jayne shook her head and motioned Cameron forward. They approached the factory cautiously, hands on their weapons. They located a small window which opened inward silently. The hinges had clearly been recently greased. She and Cameron shared a look, and then moved carefully inside.

  The inside of the factory was pitch dark, no light filtering through the half-buried windows. Smog particles floated through the beam of Jayne’s flashlight.

  The floor seemed unfinished, gutted and empty. There was no sign of Burrett. Jayne nodded towards a stairwell in the back corner. She dimly heard Cameron’s voice, muffled behind his mask, and she tested her comms, unsurprised to hear only static in return. Burrett’s signal jam was already working. She reached for Cameron, putting a hand to his jaw in order to create a direct connection.

  “Can you hear me?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he replied, holding her hand in place with his own. His voice was quiet, crackling softly with distortion, but audible. “I just wanted to tell you to be careful.”

  “Same to you,” Jayne replied. She swallowed as the fear she’d been ignoring tried to rise up, twisting knots in her gut. “You’d better survive this. You still owe me ceviche, remember?”

  “Right, I forgot you’re only keeping me around for my cooking,” he said with a chuckle.

  “You know how long it’s been since I had a home cooked meal?” she replied. “I’m not giving that up easy. So promise me you’re not going to do something stupid and get yourself killed, alright?”

  He squeezed her hand.

  “I promise,” he said. “On one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You have to stay for breakfast. No more sneaking out after I fall asleep. I want to wake up next to you.”

  Jayne’s heart twisted in her chest. She took her hand away from his mask, trying to catch her breath, to control the strange burst of joy and fear that request caused in her. She knew what he was really asking for and she wasn’t sure it was something she could give him. Cameron was good. Too good for someone like her. She didn’t want to fuck that up…

  He touched her cheek, reestablishing the connection and turning her face back to him.

  “You don’t need to answer right now,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later. Just focus on getting through this in one piece.”

  She nodded in agreement, unable to find words. His hand slid around to the back of her head and pulled her forward just slightly to bump his mask against hers. The closest to a kiss they could manage right now. It still made Jayne flush with warmth. Then he let her go, and she watched him head up the stairs, moving slowly and cautiously. She was grateful, as she headed in the opposite direction, that they hadn’t said the word “goodbye.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Abandoned Factory, L0, Theron Techcropolis, Amaros

  Jayne made her way down the stairwell, the beam of her flashlight cutting through the smoggy dark. The next floor was only slightly less empty than the first, and the sporadic piles of dust-covered detritus looked entirely too much like people for her comfort. The windows on this floor were completely underground. One had broken, and earth spilled into the room. It had been tracked across the floor by people and animals over time. Jayne didn’t want to imagine what kind of animals lived down here. Come to think of it, she didn’t want to imagine the people either. Those tracks couldn’t have all been made by Burrett.

  She kept going down, deeper into the sunken building, passing through burned out spaces filled with ash and garbage. On one floor, a section of the wall had buckled, timber and metal and drywall bowing and splitting. Jayne shivered at the uneasy reminder of how many thousands of tons of building stood above her, on unsteady foundations.

  The stairwell ended on a finished floor. A narrow hallway stretched ahead of her, lined with cheap fiberboard doors. Jayne swept the hall with her flashlight, not sure what she was searching for. There was no sign of any stairs leading further down. The air was perfectly still and silent.

  She reached for the handle of the door nearest her, then hesitated a second before her hand made contact. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Some ancient animal instinct recognized danger before her conscious mind could catch up.

  When she was young, her family had briefly lived in an apartment with a scorpion problem. She felt suddenly like she was back there, reaching for something and catching herself a second before she saw the tiny brown arachnid. Only this time it wasn’t a scorpion, it was a motion sensor, just between the door handle and the frame. She might have missed it entirely if she hadn’t been trained to recognize them during the Academy’s course on IEDs. It was a black rectangle about the size of a dime. They weren’t particularly complicated or expensive. You could buy a bag of them cheap at any hardware store. All they did was emit a tiny, hard to detect, high frequency radio signal and measure how long it took that signal to bounce back to it. If it detected an interruption in that signal, it would trigger whatever device it was attached to. And considering some of the things Jayne had seen in Burrett’s plan, that was unlikely to end well for her.

  She left it long enough to carefully check the rest of the doors, nearly missing another motion detector near the floor further down the hall, like a tripwire. They were all similarly rigged. This presented Jayne with two likely options: either none of them were trapped, and the motion sensors were just a rudimentary alarm system, or they were all trapped. Both seemed equally in character for Burrett.

  She retreated to the stairwell to consider her options, roughly gauging the distance between the stairs and the first door. It was unlikely any trap would be particularly explosive. There was too much risk of them setting off the others in a chain reaction that could potentially endanger the stability of the building. However, activating any of them would almost certainly let Burrett know she was here, if he didn’t already. But she didn’t have the tech or the time to disable them and there was only one way forward.

  She took off her shoe, retreating as far back up the stairs as she could while still being able to see the door. Then she chucked her shoe at the doorknob with as much accuracy as possible.

  There was a quick beep from the motion detector and less than a fraction of a second later a cluster of barbed metal spikes about the width of her thumb erupted through the thin fiberboard of the door. They were long enough to nearly reach the opposite wall. Jayne’s heart raced in belated panic. If she’d been standing anywhere near that door she would be dying a slow, painful death right now.
/>   She came back down the stairs cautiously, wary of any secondary effects. The door was still closed. The spikes looked like they’d been roughly hacked out of sheets of scrap metal. Probably the corrugated steel panels used in the cobbled together walkways higher up. She put her shoe back on only to remove her jacket and use it to safely grip one of the spikes, which was thankfully fairly easy to pry loose from the door. Her jacket was unfortunately worse for the wear by the time she’d removed all of them, but the spikes, about four and a half feet long, would at least be useful. She used one to carefully prod the door further open from a safe distance, unsurprised when she heard another beep and a noise like a muffled gunshot.

  She peered through the door carefully, seeing the device that had shot the metal spikes in the center, and another to the right of the door that had sprayed buckshot across the room when the door opened. Worse was the fact that the room was otherwise empty, a 7x7 space, with identical doors on the opposite and left-hand walls. She really hoped that didn’t mean what she was thinking it meant.

  With similar caution, she opened the door across the hall, carefully avoiding the traps there as well. That door also hid a 7x7 room with identical doors. So did the next room she checked. She groaned. It was a maze. Fucking Burrett. She didn’t have time for this. Maybe if she went back out and got Merry to lend her something that would disrupt the sensors—

  “Good evening Jayne.”

  A hidden speaker crackled to life. Jayne’s spirits sank even lower.

  “Burrett,” she muttered.

  “I’m so glad you could make it,” he said with genuine fondness. “I can’t wait for you to see all that I’ve put together for you. It’s only a prototype of course, but I am rather proud of it considering the circumstances.”

  “I’m sure you did a great job,” Jayne said, scowling. “But I’m not really interested in the tour.”

  “I’m afraid I must insist,” Burrett said with a small, indulgent laugh. “And you simply must move more quickly. Your little friend really can’t wait for you to take twenty minutes going through every door.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Jayne replied. “I’ll be moving a lot faster once I can turn off your cheap little motion detectors.”

  “Ah, but Jayne, that wouldn’t be as exciting!” Burrett said, in the tone of a scolding parent. “If there’s no drama, there’s no point. And I have not put all this effort in for nothing.”

  Jayne heard a beep behind her and turned her head to see a vertical line of laser emitters burning through the wall beside the staircase. The beams seared through the air like red-hot iron bars, to set fire to the opposite wall, melting the paint and plaster. And then another line activated, closer to her.

  “I would suggest you get a move on,” Burrett said. “I’m a patient man, but we do have a schedule to keep here.”

  Jayne ran, dodging burning lasers as they cut her off from her only escape. She darted further down the hall, forgetting the tripwire she’d seen earlier. She heard the beep as it went off and gambled on throwing herself to the floor, narrowly avoiding a scythe-like blade that swept across the hall at knee level. A breath later she noticed the lens in the baseboard of the wall in front of her. She closed her eyes, but not fast enough to avoid being blinded by the flash it emitted.

  She rolled aside with a shout, heard a thunk as something missed her. She could still hear the fizz and crackle of the lasers coming, filling the hall with heat and smoke. She stumbled to her feet, struggling to see through her dazzled vision. The lasers were hot red-white blisters against the whiteout blur of everything else, including the glowing red spots of another line appearing right beside her.

  Before she could think better of it, she slammed the metal spike in her hand into the wall beside the emitter and wrenched it to the side, twisting the emitter. The laser burned across the far wall and into a door, burning through it and reducing the trap waiting behind it into a pile of melted slag.

  She moved the spike to turn the laser out of the way again and yanked it out of the wall, stumbling through the opened door, still mostly blind. She walked directly into a jet of some kind of gas which, even filtered by her mask, left her reeling and lightheaded. She stumbled against a wall, then immediately away from it as she felt it heating up. More fucking lasers. Head spinning, half blind, she chose a door at random and jabbed the motion sensor with her spike. The door exploded, showering her in MDF splinters and throwing her back, nearly into the lasers. She caught herself and kept going, throwing the spike through the door ahead of her to activate the next trap, a grid of razor wire that slammed down with terrifying speed. Dodging around it, she didn’t see the swinging club that hit her in the side of the head.

  Her vision blacked out for a heartbeat and she went to her knees. Dazed, she dragged herself into a corner, trying to slow her panicked breathing. Part of her wanted desperately to rip her mask off in a desperate bid for more oxygen, but she knew it wouldn’t help. The air in here was all stinging smog and noxious smoke. Her mask was struggling to pull any oxygen from it at all, even with its powerful police issue CO2 scrubbers.

  She scolded herself silently. She’d been trained for this, to keep her head in this kind of situation. She forced herself to slow her breathing and focus. She knew Burrett wouldn’t let her catch her breath for long. But maybe he’d give her a minute more if she could get him talking.

  “Why are you doing this?” she shouted, her voice muffled by the mask. “What are you after?”

  “Who says I’m after anything?” Burrett replied, and she tried not to show her relief, taking a few more seconds to regain her bearings. “Maybe I’m just crazy. Maybe I just enjoy a little cat and mouse.”

  “You spent years in a government black site, risked your life to escape,” Jayne pointed out. “You could have just disappeared, gone into hiding, started a new life. I refuse to believe that you would give up that chance just for the sake of fucking with me.”

  “Oh Jayne.” Burrett laughed. “You would never have just let me quietly retire. You would have hunted me to the ends of the galaxy, even if I’d never hurt another living soul again. Wouldn’t you?”

  Jayne didn’t answer, focusing on her breathing. Her head was starting to clear, her vision coming back. She didn’t think he was going to let her sit here much longer.

  “And you weren’t the only one,” Burrett continued. “The government that put me in that box to begin with, a thousand other criminal and political groups after the knowledge I possess, I knew when I escaped that my freedom would be short-lived. I intend to make that time matter.”

  “How?” Jayne demanded. “What’s the point, Burrett?”

  “Drama, Jayne. Nothing but drama. To force people to look at the things they would rather ignore. To open stubbornly closed eyes. I’m writing a play, Jayne. In this little prologue you are my adversary, the Javert to my Jean Valjean, if you will. Misguided and stubborn but noble, acting in desperate service to a system that despises you, that will throw you away as quickly as it did me. A poignant sacrifice to foreshadow the coming dramatic climax.”

  “I don’t know,” Jayne said with a harsh, broken laugh. “This seems a bit more like Saw than Le Mis to me!”

  “The two have some similar themes, if you think about it.”

  “Yeah, I’ve never actually read Le Mis, but I’m pretty sure Jean Valjean never trapped Javert in a labyrinth full of death traps.”

  “Well, we can’t all be Victor Hugo. Come along now, that’s enough monologue. The audience demands action!”

  Jayne scrambled to her feet, eyes darting in fear of whatever he was planning to send after her.

  “I still don’t get what the hell you’re trying to accomplish here,” she said, edging towards the nearest door. “But if you think you’re the hero in this story then you really are insane.”

  She jabbed her spike at the sensor and ducked away, dodging another jet of gas. She avoided the swinging blade trap that followed it almost ea
sily.

  “That remains to be seen, dear Jayne,” Burrett replied. “I suppose we’ll know when – if – you make it down here in time.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Outside the Abandoned Factory, L0, Theron Techcropolis, Amaros

  Outside and a safe distance away, a heavy van-style cruiser hovered. A sleek black sports model, utterly out of place in this part of the city, pulled up beside it. The back of the van opened just long enough for the car’s occupant to slip from their vehicle into the other one.

  “Tell me you’ve got communications,” Alfonso said in lieu of greeting, dusting off the smog soot that had gathered on his suit during even that brief moment outside.

  Vlad had opened the door for him. Merry remained huddled over a computer, working frantically. Madison and Bill sat in the front seats, watching the building.

  “Not yet,” Vlad reported. “We’re still working on it.”

  “Why the hell not?” Alfonso looked slightly horrified. “She’s been in there alone for half an hour at least!”

  “Burrett’s jamming device is some next level shit,” Vlad explained, offering Alfonso a seat and returning to his own next to Merry. “Quantum tech. No one has this. I thought it was theoretical.”

  “How in God’s name did he get his hands on something like that?” Alfonso asked, ignoring the seat. “That technology hasn’t even reached military clearance yet.”

  “I think he might have built it himself,” Merry said through gritted teeth, not taking her eyes off the screen or slowing down. “Which means he’s a hell of a lot smarter than I am. Well, probably not. But he is smart. I’m trying to trace it back, find some way to neutralize it, but it’s literally working on a subatomic level… it’s a fucking achievement that I can tell what he’s doing at all!”

  “I keep telling you, you need to stop focusing on the code and look at the hardware,” Vlad pointed out.