by Jamie Nash
“Two—”
The W.I.T.C.H. Doctor unleashes a barbaric barrage of blows zinging through the air. Its aim is right beside the bulkhead, targeting the area around the lockbox. The first few blows either miss or glance off the steel.
I yell in agony like I'm the first horny teenager eating a chainsaw in a VHS slasher movie. In response, the robot doubles down on the violence. The guys join in on my screaming. We’re not going to win any Oscars, but the act works.
The W.I.T.C.H. Doctor blindly slices and dices. The large bone saw smashes the light above the door. Then the circular blade bites into the metal bulkhead. The drill stabs into the walls. From our relative safety, we shriek and cry. The tentacles zero in on the metal box. First with a few glancing blows. Then several solid hits ring out like crashing symbols. The saw and drill dent it and slam it. We squeal even more. “Stop! No! Stop!”
The saw finally bashes the box’s door off its hinges. The entire box half hangs off the wall, leaving the keypad beneath it accessible. The robot keeps up the killing for a few more seconds as we fall silent. Then it steadies, probably listening for signs of life, contemplating its next move.
I step to the ravaged box, holding my breath, trying not to make a peep. Its wires hang exposed from the wall but are luckily still connected. This has to work. With shaky hands, I punch in the code. A shrill blip answers. With a loud rumble, the bulkhead retracts into the ceiling. But only halfway—enough to duck under.
But he hears.
The surgical robot jerks back to life. Shaft and Crazytown dive through the new opening. The machine blasts toward me. Murderous arms cutting wildly through the air. My legs go numb. I brace. Shaft rips me backward. We both topple to the other side, hitting the ground. The W.I.T.C.H. Doctor thunders at us. There’s no escape. I close my eyes.
A deep clanging sound reverberates through the room as metal hits metal. A wall of steel is in front of me. The bulkhead has closed. Just in time. From the behind the curtain of steel, I hear the gonging of the mechanical monster trying the burst through. A soft hand touches my arm. “Are you okay?”
A raven-haired girl about my height and age stares down at me. Seeing someone else, anyone else … takes my breath away. My guardian angel.
I fumble for words. “I, um, uh …”
She’s skinny but not frail, harder and muscly. She’s like a mirage. Her gorgeous dark eyes stare back at me. They’re ninety percent pupils. It’s freaky. “He will eventually break through that door. We need to hurry,” she says. There is confidence in her voice, even arrogance. She’s the boss, and she knows it.
She’s even got clothes—real clothes. Not this stupid wetsuit or even that gaudy robe Shaft’s still wearing. It looks like a flight suit. An Air Force type deal. It doesn’t have any patches, or insignias, or flags. It’s just boring brown. In this spaceship, it’s the height of fashion. She squeezes my wrist and yanks me to my feet. There’s some force there. The girl’s been doing her Jane Fonda workout.
She turns to the dark hall that stretches before us—presumably our escape route—flashing the right side of her scalp where a large patch of hair has been cut away. It’s more than some tragic beauty salon accident. On the raw bruised skin, a hideous stitched scar mars the side of her skull. The wound curves from the front of her temple to the back of the head, finally ending in a question mark curve by her ear.
She must have had a run in with the butcher-bot or Dr. Frankenstein.
My gaze lingers too long. She catches me out of the corner of her eye and whips away, hiding the stitched section with her hand, playing it off like she has a scratch. “We must hurry,” she says.
Shaft, Crazytown, and I stand there like socially inept geeks who just got asked to the prom by the lead cheerleader. They’re as enamored or weirded out by her as I am. She lets out a sigh and hurries off down the hall. A large ring of keys jangle off her belt loop with every stride. I sprint after her. The boys are right behind me.
We jog through the twisting sewer-like corridor, ducking beneath its rusted tubes and sweaty plumbing. It's as if we've descended from the kitchen into the drainpipes. The air is thicker here, noxious. The occasional flicker of a red bulb lights the way. Every step presents another choice—left or right? Turn or straight? Miss Flight Suit doesn't hesitate. She knows all the moves like some Pac-Man junkie with a pocket full of quarters.
I kick something. It rockets off my toes and smashes into the wall before it settles. It’s one of those security cameras. New girl must have ripped it off the wall and dismantled it. Our stalker must be keeping tabs on her, too.
She stops at a thick steel door, the kind you’d find on a meat locker. Her fingers raise the key ring. There must be sixty keys in all shapes and sizes. It’s something an overworked high school janitor would have, yet, she finds the right key immediately, deep in the middle of the ring.
She’s done this before. She unlocks the door and shoves inside. We follow.
A twenty-inch television paints the walls with a flickering green light. The room is about the size of my bedroom when I was in high school. Unlike my bedroom, there are zero Billy Idol posters. Instead, the walls are covered with metal cabinets. They remind me of the fuse box that sits in the moldy corner of my uncle’s basement. Uncle Jim. He was the one who drank too much, and fought in Vietnam, and listened to CCR, and couldn’t stop talking about how Reagan was butt-fucking America. He owned a bong shop and collected Heavy Metal magazine. I should’ve paid closer attention to those. Maybe I’d know what the hell was going on right now.
The TV shows a black and white view of the medical lab—the house of horrors we just escaped. I recognize the camera angle. “That was you?” I say. “Watching us?”
“No.” She pushes the button on the front of the television. Pops off the screen. Apparently, we weren’t supposed to see that. We probably weren’t supposed to see the hodgepodge of computer parts and the keyboard right beside it either. Her worried eyes scan us. “No. It was not me.”
Crazytown puffs up his chest and steps toward her. His nostrils flare. His fists clench. “You were trying to kill us.”
“Of course not.” She takes a baby step backward, the kind she probably hopes no one notices. “I saved you.”
“Whoever was using that robot was using this camera.” Shaft flips the TV back on.
No, no, this all wrong. She’s our guardian angel. She saved us.
She shakes her head. “I worked my way into the camera system. I was watching what he was watching. The robot was him.” She jerks her head toward the ceiling inferring some imaginary ‘him.’
“Who?” Crazytown whispers reverently. “God?”
That hangs in the air for a moment. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I change the subject. “Does this show all the cameras?” I turn to the keyboard that presumably controls the TV’s view and tap the spacebar.
She rips my arm away. “No!” She snaps. “You do not know how to operate this.”
My gaze burrows into her. She talks funny. Like she got an ‘A’ in Advanced Placement English and wants to rub it in our faces.
“She’s lying.” Crazytown pokes her chest.
He’s right, but she’s not a killer. I wedge myself between her and Crazytown. “Please,” I say. “Just be honest. What’s going on?”
She shakes her head.
“You know something,” I say.
“No.” She gazes deep into my eyes as if she can see into my brain.
“You have clothes. You know computers. I know you helped us.” I rest my hand on her shoulder, playing good cop. Her uniform is bone dry. I touch her hair. It’s also dry. She flinches away. My suit is still moist from the chemicals. My hair is still damp. Unless she’s rocking a blow dryer back here, there’s no way it can be this dry. “You didn’t come out of one of the cans like we did,” I say.
“What?” She nervously twists the zipper on the front of her jumpsuit. “You mean the cryopods?”
�
�Of course.” Crazytown nods. “Cryopods! I knew it! It’s Alien. All of this. Fucking Alien.” He presses the point. “They freeze us, right? Keep us suspended.” Suspended. The word is odd. It’s like we’ve been taking a break from something. In this case, our lives. In this case, everything.
She scans our faces, reading us, calculating her words. “We must be making a long journey through space. So, they freeze us and then wake us up when we arrive. That is why we have all the old magazines.”
My heart thuds. “Old?” Those magazines are from 1984, my sophomore year of high school. Most of them populated the rack of my school library. Well, except for the Playboys. But I had teenage brothers, so even those are all too familiar.
“How long?” Shaft asks. His voice shakes like he’s asking a doctor his prognosis.
“I am not sure.” Her eyes shift. “I do not have any answers.”
Shaft’s face reddens. His fist clenches. I don’t think the old ‘don’t have answers’ routine is going to fly.
“Who are you?” Crazytown asks. “Why are you doing this to us?”
“I …” Her mouth suddenly closes. Her lips purse. In one big, backward step, she lunges out of the room and slams the door.
Crazytown flings forward. His hand wedges between the door and the jam, taking the full brunt of the slam. He howls in pain, but his crushed fingers block the closing door. “Help!” He squeals. Tears roll down his cheeks, but he holds firm.
Shaft rams his shoulder into the door. The girl frantically fights on the other side, getting low, fighting for leverage. She’s strong, but it’s three to one. The door flings in her direction. She falls, crashes flat onto her back. She crawls away, but I slip behind her, blocking her escape.
“I am trying to help,” she says. “You are only safe locked away.”
Crazytown shakes his bruised and purpling hand at her. “I’m going to murder your fingers.”
Shaft grabs him and keeps him at bay. “Not yet.”
They share a silent communication. Even as out of his mind as he is, Crazytown must know she’s our only hope of figuring out what’s going on. He fumes for another second, then rips away. “Stupid door!” He stumbles back into the room, kicking walls and venting into thin air. “Stupid, stupid girl!”
“Who are you?” I ask.
The girl sniffles and snorts holding back tears. I wish I had that effect on her, but it’s just an act. I know it. She affects a helpless sing-songy voice. “I … I do not remember anything. Just like you. I have no memory.”
“How do you know we don’t have memories?” Shaft asks, the anger dripping from his voice.
“I … assumed,” she stutters. She again searches our faces for buy-in.
She won’t find it here. She can’t feed me a crock of shit and tell me it’s Hamburger Helper. I grab her face to look me in the eyes. “You know we came out of those contraptions. You know the proper name for ‘em. You know how to hack the cameras and navigate the hallways. You’ve got frickin keys. Who are you?”
“The one who saved you,” she says.
Crazytown slugs the wall and immediately whimpers in pain. He’s not doing his broken fingers any favors. Shaft skates in beside me and joins in the questioning. “How long have we been asleep? A year? Ten?”
“I do not know. Honestly.”
Crazytown charges in. “I’m going to kill you. Honestly!” Crazytown furiously grabs her arm and drags her to the door. He positions her hand in the doorframe. “How about we put your fingers in the door? Slam it a few times for yucks and giggles?”
“Stop!” I grab Crazytown. He whirls on me and cocks a fist. I flinch, but the blow doesn’t come. He holds back. This is the last time he’s going to hold back.
“You’re lucky my fingers are broke,” he says.
“Please,” I plead. “Just let me talk to her.”
He stomps away and down a corridor, screaming. He stops just short of us, around the corner, lingering. We can hear him yelling and grumbling.
“He must quiet down,” the girl whispers.
“Why?” I ask.
“He is listening.” The girl nods to the ceiling. She means ‘him,’ the shadowy somebody who is trying to kill us. The Phantom of the Opera. No, the Phantom of the Space Opera. That’s what he is. And now my would-be killer has a name.
I’m so damn clever.
The woman continues, “I have disabled the cameras back here. But there are speakers in the walls. An intercom system.”
“Who is he?” I ask.
Her eyes drift to the floor, avoiding mine. She still won’t say. I kneel beside her and nod back to Crazytown, who is still grumbling to himself. “He’s insane,” I say in my best conspiratorial voice. “He tried to kill me earlier. He’ll hurt all of us. I can’t hold him off forever. You have to give me something. Something real. So he knows you’re on our side.”
She spies Crazytown. He doesn’t disappoint. He stomps his feet like a toddler.
“I can protect you.” I twist the corner of my wavering lips into a smile. “What’s your name?”
“I uh …” She glances down at the uniform. There’s a name tag on it. She reads, “Taylor.”
“Taylor, good, that wasn’t so hard,” I say. “What year is it?”
She sucks air through her nose and looks away. “The year is 2412.”
My face, my hands, my stomach, go numb. My lungs can barely summon the breath. “You’re lying.” But I know she’s not. It’s too specific to be a joke and too outrageous to be a trick.
It’s 2412. That’s what? Four hundred years?! No wonder I can’t remember anything—my brain and body have been stewing in that crock pot of chemicals for centuries. Any brothers or sisters would be triple great-great-great-great-grandparents by now. The TV shows I used to watch are centuries old. My friends are dead. My pets are dead. Everything. Dead. Dead. Dead. I should be dead too.
My next birthday cake is gonna be a frickin inferno.
The guys don’t speak. They’re probably doing the math or mourning everyone and everything they ever knew. Our world is history.
“There is a man,” Taylor says. “He has been keeping us here.”
“Keeping us?” I shudder. “Why?”
“We are his prisoners.” She takes tight shallow breaths. “But something went wrong. We got loose. Now he wants to kill us.”
This only confirms the obvious, yet somehow, hearing it from someone in the know makes it even more real. “Who the hell is he?” I ask.
Taylor shakes her head. “I do not know.”
“Then who the hell are you?” I ask, angrier this time.
“One of you.”
“I don’t think so.” I grab her jacket and yank it down exposing her shoulder. My big Perry Mason reveal. I’m going to prove she’s different once and for all. But instead, there’s a barcode etched on her upper arm. Just like ours.
217.
“See.” Her lips quiver like she’s just dodged some bullet. “Just like you.” She pulls the jacket back on, keeping her eyes on me like I’m a Rubik’s Cube she can solve with a few twists and turns.
This whole thing makes no sense. She’s our savior, but it feels more like she’s leading us to our death. She tried to lock us in that room with the monitor. Everything she says feels suspicious, selling too hard, feeding us what we want to hear. I’m convinced she needs us but not for the same reason we need her.
I study her puppy-dog eyes. She thinks I’m on her side. I want to be, but I also want to live. “We’ll lock her in this room like she was going to do to us,” I say. “Then we’ll find our own answers.”
“No! He will kill you!” She shouts, losing all control like I’ve sentenced her to death. She abruptly stops, takes a deep breath, and calms. She continues in a soothing, emotionless voice. She might as well be a telephone operator. “He is trying to get at the servers. The computers control everything. I have been blocking him from here, but there is only so much I can do. If I don�
��t beat him to the system, he will take control of the life support. He will kill us all.”
“Three-two-three.” Her eyes meet mine. “I short-circuited the door to send that signal. You would be dead.”
She’s right. She wouldn’t save us just to murder us. There’s someone else who wants us dead. And if she’s telling the truth about that, maybe she’s telling the truth about the server room. Maybe. “Where are these servers?” I ask.
“Up there.” She points to the ceiling down the hall. A manhole-sized steel hatch looms over us.
I back away, and gesture for her to show us. Slowly, she gets up. We let her but watch closely. She heads into the room with the monitor and grabs the lone chair. She positions it beneath the hatch and steps up. “The computer servers are on the upper levels.” She raises her key ring, again finding the right key on the first try—a large copper one. She inserts it into the keyhole beside the hatch and twists. The heavy disk of metal droops a bit, unseals. It allows her to slide it away, revealing a dark shaft of shadow.
A tunnel.
There are rungs built into its walls serving as a makeshift ladder. She reaches inside and pulls down a short, retractable ladder that leads into the mouth of it. “There is a room with servers that I have been seeking. I discovered it just before I found all of you and saw you were trapped in the control room. You delayed me from my original task. But if we get there first, we can change the passwords. We can take control.”
My eyes stare up the thing. It’s a long climb and a long way to fall if you slip.
She continues, “The server room is on the third level. He is probably on his way there already. I cannot wait.”
“Cool,” I say. “We’ll all go. A class trip.”
“No!” She snaps. Her tone warrants another stare down. The enigmatic lady doth protest too much. Again, she softens her mood. “I need to go alone.”
“Of course she does.” Crazytown kicks the wall. “She probably has a bazooka up there or another surgery robot.”
Shaft takes my arm, pulling me away from the other two for a sidebar conversation. “He isn’t wrong. We can't trust her.”
