Lawmen- Rook and Berenger

by Matthew Kadish

  “What makes you so sure?” Berenger inquired.

  “If Roseca Villem had escaped through that door, the turret over there would have cut her down before she’d made it two steps away from here.”

  Berenger scratched his chin. “Yep, I reckon you’re correct in that assumption,” he agreed.

  “Roseca was a wall-rat,” Deckland said. “Her father said she was very skilled at finding ways out of places she was locked in. If she was able to make it away from here without being shot, she had to have found an alternative exit. Something that was overlooked by whoever was keeping her.”

  “Something without encryption,” Berenger added. “Something a ten-year-old could deal with.”

  “Exactly.”

  Berenger nodded. “No matter how advanced of a secret base you have, you need to get your air from somewhere, especially if you’re underground,” he said. “Seeing as how our victim was used to crawling through walls and whatnot, maybe there’s an air intake hidden somewhere she was able to crawl out of.”

  “That’s my guess,” Deckland replied. “But how do we find it? Did your drone have any data that could give us a clue as to where to look?”

  Berenger opened up the access panel on his bionic forearm and tapped at the touchscreen there. “Its scans of the area didn’t turn up much before it was shot down,” Berenger said. “Whatever is built into this mountain is hidden pretty well. There are a few hot spots in the area the drone recorded which could indicate something, or they could just be rocks baking in the sun. Hmmmm… well now, this is interesting…”

  “What?”

  “The drone picked up scans of biological material,” Berenger said. “They’re extremely trace amounts, but considering there’s nothing growing in these mountains, they stand out.”

  “Biological material, eh?” said Deckland. “Like blood? From cut feet, maybe?”

  Berenger nodded as he closed up his arm. “Seems likely,” he replied. “Let’s go and see.”

  Deckland followed Berenger as the two Rangers headed toward the coordinates the drone had marked as the location of its biological discovery. They circled around the area where the mysterious door was located, having to make their way across some steep and rocky terrain before they came to the location they were seeking.

  Berenger knelt down, looking at a jagged rock that jutted up from the ground with some small specks of dried blood on its tip. He scanned the discovery with his bionic eye and then scanned the path leading down the mountain in the direction of the plain.

  “It’s blood alright,” Berenger said. “This here rock must have been where Roseca Villem first cut her foot. There’s a faint trail heading down the mountain back in the direction where her body was found.”

  Deckland looked out into the distance to see the colony of Skinny Plains. Sure enough, though it was far away, Roseca Villem would have seen it – especially if it had been at night. Deckland turned and looked back toward the mountain from where she would have had to come and tapped Berenger on the shoulder.

  “Look,” he said. “Over there.”

  Berenger turned in the direction Deckland was pointing. On the ground a couple yards away, lay a rock façade and a thin metal grate. A few feet above the debris was a long rectangular opening built into the rockface of the mountain.

  “Well now, that’s an air intake vent if’n I’ve ever seen one,” Berenger said as he got to his feet.

  The two men approached the vent. The metal covering lying on the ground was dented and warped, like it had been kicked until it broke loose. The fake rock façade was open on its underside, designed to hide the vent while still allowing it to access fresh air.

  “It looks like there were only two fasteners holding the vent in place over the face of the duct,” Deckland said as he examined the opening. “From the looks of things, Roseca must have knocked it off its mounting.”

  Berenger nodded. “Yep, this is definitely how she got out,” he said, peering into the vent.

  “If this was Roseca’s way out, it may be our way in.”

  Berenger frowned. “It’ll be tight,” he said.

  “The vent is fairly wide. I think we’ll fit.”

  Deckland noted Berenger’s hesitation.

  “There a problem?” Deckland asked.

  “Nope,” replied Berenger. “Just never been one for tight spaces.”

  “That’s what’s bugging you? You’re not worried about the untold dangers that could be awaiting us within?”

  “Well, I wasn’t until you brought it up.”

  “If a wall-rat like Roseca Villem could do this, it shouldn’t be an issue for the legendary Braxxon Berenger,” chided Deckland as he gestured toward the vent. “Now get in there.”

  “Why do I have to go first?”

  “Because you’re slower and less spry than I,” Deckland said. “If you get stuck you’re going to need someone behind you to pull you out.”

  Berenger gave Deckland a displeased glare. “This is a terrible plan,” he drawled as he began to climb into the ventilation duct.

  “I know exactly how you feel,” Deckland responded before climbing in after him.

  Chapter 16

  The journey through the air intake channel was not a long one. Though the duct branched off to the sides from which sounds of air circulation fans emanated, the claustrophobic shaft also stretched straight ahead. After crawling through it for a couple of yards and sliding down a slight decline, Berenger came to another grate which was only loosely attached to the face of the duct, no doubt placed that way by Roseca to cover her escape. He carefully pushed it open to ensure it did not make a noise and worked his way out of the tight entrance.

  As soon as Berenger was out of the ventilation duct, Deckland followed, getting quickly back to his feet and drawing his sidearm. The two Rangers looked around at their new surroundings. It was a large, wide-open room with a circular landing target on its floor and various types of maintenance machinery along its walls. The ceiling rose high above them and they could see bulky mechanical arms mounted there supporting the inside of a fake rock façade, which rose upward in a dome shape.

  “It’s a blasted starship hangar,” Deckland said. “Look at the roof… the top of the mountain opens up to allow ships to land inside here!”

  “This must be where Pyle brought his ship to drop off the children,” Berenger said. “My guess is he’d fly in from the west to keep from being spotted and land here first, offload the kids he’d abducted, and then continue on to Skinny Plains with no one the wiser.”

  “Makes sense, I suppose,” said Deckland. “Less risk of being caught that way.”

  Deckland examined the walls. They were girded with metal beams and struts, but for the most part the walls were all rock. “It looks like the mountain was hollowed out, so this place could be hidden within it,” he noted. “How could anyone build something like this without being noticed?”

  “If this is indeed Stygaard’s doing, he could have easily passed off the construction as a mining endeavor,” Berenger theorized. “Used the colony’s equipment to hollow the mountain out, rotated the employees who oversaw the work off the planet, and then, had bots finish the construction. It’s far enough away from the colony that no one would have noticed it.”

  Deckland and Berenger remained behind the cover of some diagnostic equipment as they continued to study the room. There appeared to be two hallways that branched off from the landing bay. The Rangers carefully made their way around the perimeter of the hangar until they reached the first corridor, a short hallway leading down to a large metal door with locking mechanisms and a lever attached to its face. The two men approached and Berenger gave the apparatus a quick scan with his bionic eye.

  “Where’s it lead?” Deckland asked.

  “I believe this is the door we encountered outside,” Berenger replied. “It’s made from the same material.”

  Berenger grabbed the lever and pulled on it. The latches to the door�
�s lock retracted and the heavy metal door opened slightly to reveal sunlight from outside.

  “Good to know we won’t have to break any advanced encryption if we want to get out of here,” said Deckland.

  “Or crawl back through that blasted vent,” Berenger muttered. “One thing is for sure, though. This place was designed more for the purpose of keeping people out than it was for keeping them in.”

  “But we know there are people being kept here,” said Deckland. “Now we just need to find them.”

  Berenger nodded in agreement as he closed the door and latched it once more. “Let’s check the other hallway,” he said as he led the way back down the corridor. “But keep your blaster handy. There’s no telling what we’ll run into here.”

  Deckland and Berenger treaded lightly, each man holding his sidearm at the ready. There was an eerie stillness to the bunker, further enhanced by the constant hum of generators and the faint whistle of air pumped through its ventilation. The temperature within was also quite low, cold enough to make Deckland feel chilly. The cold should have been a welcome change from the heat outside, but the cooler temperature actually served to make Deckland feel more uncomfortable as he quietly followed Berenger to the second corridor leading away from the hangar.

  There was a closed blast door in the hallway with an access panel on its frame. Berenger and Deckland took position on either side of the blast door with their guns at the ready. Deckland nodded to Berenger, and Berenger hit the button on the access panel. The door rose up, revealing a long corridor leading to another metal door at its end.

  Berenger and Deckland aimed their weapons down the hallway, glancing around for any sign of trouble. However, the corridor was empty, filled only with low lighting and rows of doors on either side. The Rangers slowly made their way inside and Berenger immediately winced after crossing the threshold, his hand moving to his bionic eye. Deckland noted his partner’s sudden discomfort in alarm.

  “What’s wrong?” Deckland asked, quietly.

  “Don’t rightly know,” Berenger muttered as he shook his head. “There’s some type of electrical interference in here. It’s jamming the recording device in my eye…”

  Deckland could see Berenger’s bionic eye pulsing red, as though it were struggling to stay on. “You mean you’re not able to document any of this?” Deckland asked.

  Berenger knocked himself upside the head, causing the light in his bionic eye to fade. “Not with video or audio,” he grumbled.

  Deckland pulled out his datapad and called up the recording feature on it, only to find the screen a garbled mess of pixels. Whatever was jamming Berenger’s bionic eye was also affecting other recording devices.

  “My datapad’s camera is scrambled, as well,” Deckland said. “Whoever built this bunker wanted to make sure no one could record what was happening here.”

  “And that no evidence of what they are doing could ever be leaked,” Berenger said with a nod. “One thing is for sure… a whole lotta planning obviously went into whatever is happening here.”

  Deckland frowned as he put his datapad away. Not having video evidence of what they discovered would complicate things. He turned and looked at one of the doors to his left, which contained a window with a slide cover on its face and a slot at the door’s bottom that could be lifted open to push trays of food through. He moved the door’s cover aside and peeked into the room beyond.

  “What do you see?” asked Berenger.

  “Just a room,” Deckland replied. “Rock walls, metal grating for a floor, a bed, and a toilet. Pretty sparse.”

  “Not for a prison cell,” Berenger muttered as he opened the slide on another door.

  The Rangers checked each room, and each time they found the same thing within: metal grates, rock walls, small toilets, and narrow beds. But then, Deckland saw something that made him stop. Inside the fourth room he’d peeked into, there were drawings made by scratching a loose rock over the face of the wall. The scribblings were of stick figures and simple shapes. Like the kind a child would draw.

  “Berenger,” Deckland said, indicating for his partner to take a look at what he’d discovered.

  Berenger glanced inside and instantly came to the same conclusion Deckland had. “They’ve been keeping the children locked up here,” he said.

  Deckland nodded in agreement. “Twelve rooms for twelve children,” he said, noting the six doors on either side of the hallway. “But they’re all empty. Where are the kids?”

  Berenger looked at the door at the end of the corridor, gazing at it like one would a mortal enemy. The metal gateway stood before the Rangers ominously, as if daring them to discover what lay beyond it.

  “This way,” Berenger said.

  Berenger hit the button on the doorframe’s access panel, and with a soft hiss, the door slid open. The Rangers moved inside to find the hallway branched at an intersection, leading to the right and to the left. The Rangers peeked in each direction. To the left, there was another closed blast door. To the right, the hallway appeared to lead to an open room that was shrouded in darkness. Deckland followed Berenger’s lead as the Ranger turned to the right, cautiously entering the shadowy chamber.

  The inside of the area was littered with various types of medical equipment, some of which had active digital screens, which gave off just enough light to reveal impressions of what else was housed there. Deckland glanced around, able to make out various beds, monitors, and high-end surgical equipment. He frowned as he surveyed the scene, his gaze eventually drifting toward another door at the other end of the darkened room. The door was barely visible in the faint sickly-green glow of the displays from the idle medical devices.

  Berenger carefully approached the door, opening it to reveal another room that was pitch-black beyond. But the minute the door opened, a flood of cold washed over the men as their breath became visible in the newly frigid air.

  “RNGsus,” muttered Deckland, caught off-guard by the abrupt temperature change. “What is this room? A meat locker?”

  “Well, now we know what they needed such large air intake vents for,” Berenger said as he searched the wall next to the entrance for a light panel. “Need an awful lot of air to keep a place this chilly.”

  Berenger came across a touch screen control panel and activated it. Overhead, the lights flickered as they came to life, illuminating the room with a slow strobe. In those brief moments as the lights struggled to re-engage, the scene within the room was revealed to the Rangers in flashes that made both men’s breaths catch in their throats. Once the lights stabilized, Deckland gazed at what was before him in abject horror. Two rows of preservation tanks stood at the room’s center, their mechanical bases giving way to transparent tubes that were filled with clear medical jell.

  Within that jell were the twisted, deformed bodies of dead children.

  The children ranged in ages from what must have been four to twelve. Boys and girls of varying heights. They floated within the tanks, suspended in the jell. Some of them had extra limbs which grew from places they should not have been able to. Some had elongated spines and gnarled bones that protruded from their skin. One child looked like his face had split into two as a second head had tried to grow from it. The face of every single child looked pained and tortured, forever frozen in the throes of agony from the moment of their deaths. Though the deformities of the children all varied, one thing was crystal clear…

  They’d all died screaming.

  Deckland felt a feeling of numbness wash over him as he struggled to process the grim scene. In the back of his mind, he’d known the worst-case scenario was finding all the missing children dead. However, the horrific manner of their deaths had caught him by surprise, and he was unable to control his emotions. He could feel his throat clench and a tear run down his cheek, leaving a burning sensation in its wake from the cold of the room.

  “Great Observer…” Deckland whispered, unable to look away from the horrors before him.

  Bere
nger’s face was grim and stoic as he walked between the tanks. Whereas Deckland looked overwhelmed by the discovery, Berenger just looked angry, his brow furrowed into a scowl, his jaw clenched as though he were biting down the urge to scream in rage. He looked at a visual display on the base of one of the pods and tapped at it, reading the data that appeared.

  “What’s… what’s it say?” Deckland asked.

  “Details about what happened to the kid and how he died,” Berenger muttered. “Doesn’t even list his name. Just refers to him as ‘Subject 03’.”

  “What killed him? What could have possibly done this to these kids?”

  “Doesn’t say. Just describes the mutations that occurred and the medical data from the tank’s scans of the cadaver.”

  Berenger looked at the other tanks, gazing at the remains of the children inside as though he were committing each one to memory.

  “Why would anyone do this? To children no less?” Deckland asked, looking at the victims the same way Berenger was.

  “I do not know,” Berenger muttered. “But I aim to find out.”

  With that, Berenger turned, pulling both his blaster pistols from their holsters and began marching back the way he had come, headed toward the other blast door they’d passed by earlier. Deckland hesitated only briefly as his shock wore off and was replaced with the same feeling of righteous anger Berenger was no-doubt harboring, as well. Deckland turned and followed his partner, gripping his own blaster tightly. The two men took position on either side of the blast door once they’d reached it.

  “If the person who’s responsible for what we just saw back there is behind this door, Rook, I want you to know… I ain’t planning on doing things by the book,” Berenger cautioned.

  “As inclined as I am to bend the rules in this situation, Berenger, if the person responsible is back here, we need to bring him in alive…”

  Before Berenger could argue, Deckland held up his hand.

  “Alive,” Deckland stressed, “does not necessarily mean ‘in one piece’.”