City Of Phase

by George Willson

  “No one,” Dorin said with a hint of defeat. “Gerard was it.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Halloway said. “You see, I have a responsibility to make sure people steer clear of this city and don’t phase out. When you all spread lies and draw attention to it, people get curious. They come and try things they shouldn’t.”

  “We spread no lies,” Dorin said.

  “No? Tell me how well the power plant worked out,” Halloway taunted. “Where’d you get that from? Hm? Someone who lied to you. Who else will try it?”

  “How do I know the lie didn’t come from you?” Dorin asked. The soldiers stopped forcing him back on just the other side of the fence inches from a painted line on the road that undoubtedly signified the edge of the phase shield.

  “Tell me if Keppler was your only leader,” Halloway demanded.

  “You know he wasn’t,” Dorin said with a smile.

  “He was the only one dumb enough to try the power plant though,” Halloway said.

  “We had to be sure,” Dorin said. “No one who had tried it before ever came back to tell us if they’d done it or not. We never knew if they’d at least shut it down. Now I know why. Maybe they did. But you prevented them from spreading their failure.”

  “You can’t shut it down,” Halloway said. “No one can. The power is provided from the inside, and it will last hundreds of years by itself.”

  “Someone will,” Dorin said. He nodded to Blake, Perry, and Michelle. “Maybe it’s them. Gerard trusted them. They’re certainly not from around here. Maybe that will give them an advantage. I don’t know. But I know this has to end eventually. When it does, the testimony of everyone you’ve ever thrown into this city will condemn you.” Halloway waved him off. The guards removed the handcuffs and pushed him into the city. He stumbled but stayed on his feet.

  “That’s why you’re not fixing it or even trying,” Dorin said. “You know that you’d lose everything if word got out. You know you’d be finished.”

  “Time for you to go,” Halloway said meeting Dorin’s gaze. Their eyes locked as the horizontal strips whipped around Dorin’s body.

  “I’ll see you again,” Dorin warned as he phased out completely.

  “I doubt it,” Halloway replied, and he turned to face Blake, Perry, and Michelle. He looked at each of them individually as they stared silently back at him.

  “You’re horrible,” Michelle finally said.

  “Perhaps, but that is not the issue here today,” Halloway said. “Who are you three? That’s what I want to know. The last time I asked, I recall that you, Blake, changed the subject without answering.” He nodded to Michelle while fixing his gaze on Blake. “I asked her, and she couldn’t tell me much. I’m counting on you to be more cooperative this time.”

  “Nice of you to remove the handcuffs,” Blake noted.

  “We are not completely uncivil, but I will not allow you to evade my questions this time,” Halloway said.

  “What would you like to know?” Blake asked coldly.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “Another planet. Earth, for the most part.”

  Halloway stared at Blake for a long moment before he shook his head. “All right. Let’s say for the moment that I accept that. How did you get here?”

  “Kind of hard to explain,” Blake replied. It was difficult for someone who had traveled in the Maze to accept what it did, much less a man who was skeptical about life beyond his little world.

  “That’s what your Michelle said as well before she told me all about it,” Halloway said. “Of course, she also said she really didn’t understand it, but I suspect you do. You’re the leader of your little group.”

  “I suppose you could say that,” Blake shrugged. “We really don’t acknowledge a leadership structure though. I’m about as open as anyone else to other thoughts on a situation.”

  Halloway shrugged in return and pointed to Michelle. The soldiers grabbed her by the arms and dragged her toward the city. Michelle struggled against them, and Blake took an instinctive step to follow her, but he was held back by other soldiers around him. He spun back to Halloway.

  “What are you doing?” Blake asked.

  “Ensuring some honesty,” Halloway said innocently.

  “I am being honest,” Blake said. “I’m sure she was as well.” A glance back to the guards showed they were taking Michelle to the same point where they had started with Dorin.

  “Honest?” Halloway asked doubtfully. “You’re aliens who somehow got to our planet without so much as a sign to anyone you were here, and then immediately teamed up with a rebel faction to save a city you’d never heard of? That’s not even remotely believable.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Blake asked.

  “If you’re some kind of advanced alien species, then I want to know the method of travel you used to arrive here,” Halloway demanded, “and no dancing around the point. No trying to make it easy for me to understand. You tell me what I want to know with all the mumbo jumbo you can muster. If you used it to travel, you have to know how it works to fix it. How did you get in the power plant without breaking any locks? If you aren’t from this planet, how do you know our language?”

  “All right,” Blake said, “but stop dragging Michelle away.”

  “And where did those stupid names come from?” Halloway asked.

  “I mean it,” Blake said.

  “You’re in no position to negotiate with me, Blake, if that is your name,” Halloway said. “You’ll find she’s right on the edge of the city.” Blake looked back to her to confirm this. “And there she will stay until I am satisfied.”

  “And if I can’t satisfy your questions?” Blake asked, not taking his eyes from her. He knew the answer, but until this point, he did not think Halloway would do anything. Now, he was not sure. The man was insane and would do whatever it took to get what he needed. He had already spoken to Michelle and had established in his own mind that she was expendable – her only value was as bait to make him talk. He looked back to Halloway, who stood in front of him, his hands clasped behind his back in a military at ease position. Blake sighed.

  “Our machine is called the Maze. It uses an interdimensional space-time vortex to basically punch a hole from its location where we live to where we need to be. The opening manifests itself as a pair of elevator doors that only those that the Maze selects can see and enter. We step through the doors and here we are.”

  Blake looked at Halloway’s eyes to gauge whether he understood anything Blake had explained, and the first incomprehensible expression he had seen on Halloway told him that very little of what he said made sense to him.

  “You did ask,” Blake said. Halloway’s eyes narrowed back into his cold expression as if he thought he had been tricked.

  “And where is this Maze located?” Halloway asked in a tone that sounded like he was questioning a child about a fantasy.

  “We don’t know,” Blake said, fearing the response this would evoke. “None of us do. It’s a secret to everyone who travels in it.” Halloway’s skeptical expression told him that his patience was wearing thin.

  “How is it you can live somewhere and not know where?” he asked.

  “The Maze selects its travelers from throughout space and time by opening its doors in front of us so that we can enter. We know where we are from originally, but not the Maze’s actual space-time address, as it were.”

  Halloway’s expression continued to darken as the conversation continued. Blake had to admit that explaining it just like that sounded like absolute nonsense, but truth was just truth. If it existed that way, that’s the way it was. Halloway did not appear to agree though.

  “May we have Michelle back?” Blake asked. He had, after all, fulfilled his part of the bargain by answering Halloway’s questions. Halloway glanced to the guards at the Carburast gate. An evil smirk crossed his face, and he looked ba
ck to Blake.

  “No, I still think not,” Halloway said, and he gestured to the guards. They removed Michelle’s handcuffs and pushed her hard across the shield line. She tumbled to the ground. Perry tried to run for her, but the soldiers guarding them held him back. Blake powerlessly watched Michelle climb to her feet, and then turned back to Halloway.

  “You said if I talked,” Blake began, but Halloway interrupted him.

  “I never promised you anything.”

  Michelle stood behind the line and looked between the two soldiers who had pushed her as nothing happened. Time seemed to stop and no one made a sound as the phasing they had expected did not happen. Blake looked at Halloway, and a touch of concern crossed his face as he watched his victim appear to escape his grasp.

  “Looks like you can at least witness our resilience,” Blake said. “How about if she can walk out of there?”

  “They will stop her,” Halloway replied impatiently never taking his eyes from Michelle, as if willing her to disappear.

  “Let her go,” Blake implored, taking a step toward Halloway. Halloway responded by reeling back and punching Blake in the face. The force spun Blake around, and he fell to the ground. Blake coughed, the wind knocked out of him from the impact.

  “I will give the orders,” Halloway yelled. “She will remain.”

  Blake raised his head and turned back to Michelle who walked to the soldiers who pushed her originally. He pushed her back, but she knew she was out of options and tried to push past him. He grabbed her and forced her back inside the shield, but as he tried to release her, she held his arm which caught him off guard. He stumbled forward across the shield line and fell to the ground along with her. The guard gasped and desperately struggled to his feet, but he had barely stood up before he phased out. Blake thought that perhaps his constant close proximity to the field made him phase out quicker than Dorin and Gerard had. Horizontal lines wrapped around her little by little, but she was still fine for now. Michelle tried to leave again, but the other soldier drew his weapon and trained it on her. He was quickly joined by another, so she stopped trying and looked at Blake.

  “Please let her go,” Blake pleaded, rolling himself onto his side to look at Halloway. “We aren’t part of your problem.”

  “You most certainly are,” Halloway replied and turned to a nearby soldier. “Get him up.” The soldier roughly pulled Blake to his feet as Halloway continued talking. “Ever since you arrived, you’ve been part of my problem. You said that you wanted to shut down the phase shield.”

  “Don’t you want it shut down?” Blake asked, hardly able to believe otherwise.

  “Of course not!” Halloway said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “This camp is here for the sole purpose of bringing in some of the worst prisoners in our country and throwing them into the phase shield to get them out of the way. The loss of life in that city is unfortunate, and no one planned this from the beginning, but at the end of it all, it gave us the perfect prison. We sit here to make sure people like you don’t find a way to take it down.”

  “That’s horrible,” Perry breathed. Halloway was quickly proving Gerard’s conspiracy theories to be true, but for reasons far worse than simple selfishness. They had willingly sacrificed an entire city of living people to hold the worst criminals their society had produced. If the shield were shut down, what would those people do? It did not matter. They would need to find a way because innocent people did not deserve the same fate as criminals.

  “There are families in there, though,” Blake said, recalling what he had heard about the makeup of the town. “Children, even. Do you know what happens when they phase?”

  “I don’t care,” Halloway said. “I’m simply following orders about putting people in, and I know they don’t come out. Just like your friend.”

  Blake looked back to Michelle who stared desperately back at him, and he knew that he was completely powerless to do anything to save her. He saw her mouth his name once more as the horizontal phase lines wrapped around her until she disappeared. Blake dropped his head and closed us eyes, avoiding the smile of Halloway.

  “Is that to be the fate of us all then?” Blake asked quietly.

  “No, of course not,” Halloway said. “I need you to tell me more about this vortex whatchamacallit. It sounds like a heck of a weapon.”

  “And that’s why we don’t know where it is,” Perry said angrily.

  “It’s not a weapon,” Blake said.

  “I would suggest you both consider who is in the better position here,” Halloway warned. “I still have two of you, so that means one of you is still expendable. Since Blake, here, is your leader, and apparently more knowledgeable about your machine, you can bet I’ll send you, Perry, through next.”

  “I don’t know how it works,” Blake told him impatiently, knowing it would make no difference.

  “I’ll give you a pen and paper and maybe you’ll remember,” Halloway said.

  “It’s not a matter of remembering,” Blake began to say, but Halloway interrupted him.

  “You have until tomorrow morning to show me something interesting,” Halloway warned him. “I’m sure it’ll take a few days to recall the workings of something this apparently complex, but as long as I see progress, then you live. If I don’t see any, then you die. Or rather, you spend eternity in Carburast. My own thousand and one nights.”

  Halloway gestured to the soldiers standing with Blake and Perry. “Return them to their cells,” he said. “They have much to think about.”

  The soldiers pushed Blake and Perry back to the headquarters, but Blake spared a moment to look back where he last saw Michelle. In that place, he saw her standing with Dorin, motionlessly looking out at him, possibly accusing him of abandoning her to this fate. Another push from the soldier told him it was time to go, but he was not sure how he would overcome this.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Halloway had Blake and Perry returned to the cell where they had stayed the previous evening, and Halloway hardly left them alone. He started by bringing them the paper and pen he had promised along with a small table on which to write, but he preferred to stand in the room for extended periods to watch whether Blake would write anything on the paper. Blake actually spent the majority of the day trying to sort out a solution to the problem of being trapped in the cell, but he had come up with very little.

  During the brief periods that Halloway did leave them alone, Perry looked around the room, but Blake remained wrapped up in the loss of Michelle. This was her first trip, and he managed to lose her. It made little sense for the Maze to take someone only to lose them in the first mission. This idea allowed him to hang on to the faith that they would rescue her somehow, but the “somehow” part of that equation continued to elude him. The heaviness of the mood had kept them silent the majority of the day, and while Perry endeavored to eat when their hosts provided food, Blake’s appetite was non-existent.

  As the sun dropped beyond the horizon again, Halloway had left them for the last time warning them again over what would happen if the paper remained blank through the morning while casting a glance at Perry. Blake did not need the warning. He knew very well how serious Halloway was with his threats, and if it came down to it, he would write something down before morning to spare Perry, though nothing he would write down would bring Halloway any closer to the Maze.

  Perry waited until the guard outside the door had decreased to one for the night shift before he looked around the room again for anything they could use to facilitate an escape. Blake barely paid attention until Perry broke the long-standing silence.

  “Nothing,” Perry said after he had gone over the room again. “I believe we are quite stuck at the moment. Not even an internal keyhole for the pick.”

  “No, there wouldn’t be,” Blake replied flatly.

  “Why can’t whoever it is that made your lockpick make one to undo a lock from the inside?” Perry asked impatiently and admittedly, rhetoric
ally.

  “It interfaces with the locking mechanism,” Blake sighed. “That’s just how it works. If we’re in a prison cell and can’t reach the lock, we’re trapped. We should be grateful we still have it.”

  Perry looked at Blake who had not moved despite his replies. Having surveyed every inch of the cell, he walked over to the single cot and sat next to Blake. Blake knew he had to snap out of this funk and be the leader that Perry needed him to be in this moment of crisis.

  Blake took out his scanner and set it it check for the presence of the communicator device on Michelle’s clothing, but it came up with nothing. As far as the technology was concerned, she was no longer present. In vain, he tapped the logo on his chest and said her name, hoping that it might penetrate that phase shield, but no response came. He sighed once more as Perry watched him silently.

  “The solution to this is simpler than it appears, I’m sure of it,” Blake said.

  “Remember when we were on Tellen,” Perry asked.

  “The jackal king,” Blake smiled and nodded. The inhabitants of the planet Tellen had two distinct intelligent species facing the sort of segregation problems that Earth experienced throughout its history with something as simple as different races or creeds from the same species. In addition to the incredibly adaptive human form that permeated most of the universe, Tellen also had a species called the Lishk, which was covered in fur with a pointed nose and ears that made their face look like a jackal. This had led Perry to refer to the leader of the group who had capture them as the jackal king, a moniker the leader neither understood nor appreciated as he thought it was an insult and initially set back their negotiations with him.

  “He didn’t care much for us,” Perry pointed out.

  “We were human,” Blake noted. “Still are, actually.” He was more interested in where Perry was going with this.