by Grant Pies
“Thank you!” the shirtless man said. He tried to pat Ash on the back, but Ash dodged out of his way. In the light, Ransom saw that his entire left arm was missing. His shoulder was wrapped in bandages soaked through with blood. “You are so kind. Such a sacrifice,” Fink said in amazement.
“Too bad they didn’t volunteer sooner, Fink,” Baker said with a chuckle. “You might still have some of your arm left.” The rest of the men burst into laughter.
Fink looked down at the ground and held his remaining hand to the bloody stump. His forced smile drifted away, and he winced in pain.
“Yeah, too bad,” Fink said to himself as the other men laughed.
Ransom looked at the one armed man and smelled the metallic smell of blood in the room, and he thought for a moment that he should fight his way out. For a moment he thought dying by one of these weapons the men carried would be better than whatever awaited them in this room. But just as quickly he thought of Gray, and how any hope he had at living would die with Ransom should he fight back here. Baker prodded the barrel of his weapon into Ransom’s back, pushing him further into the holding cell. Baker slammed the heavy door behind them. There was only darkness but for a sliver of light that came from a small opening in the door.
“Sheppard and I will take Fink back to the group,” they heard Baker say outside the cell, his voice muffled by the thick door. “You two stay here. Keep an eye on our new guests.” His voice trailed off as he made his way down the hall. “Tonight,” he shouted back toward the two remaining guards near the door. “Tonight we’ll have a feast!”
CHAPTER 43
5280
NEW ALCATRAZ
“So we can’t just shoot them?” one of the men outside the door asked the other. “Like in the head? You know, quick.”
“I don’t think so,” the other man answered. “Baker doesn’t do it that way. Something about keeping the blood flowing. You’ve got to drain the blood first, and that’s harder to do if the heart isn’t pumping.”
“We didn’t drain Fink, though,” the first man responded. His voice sounded unsure.
“Fink was different. He is one of us. He just drew the short straw, that’s all. Look, Archer, I know this is new to you, and in the past you just showed up and ate your meal with the others. But this is something everyone’s got to help out with.”
Ransom strained his eyes left and right to try and see where the two men stood. He caught a blurry glimpse of a figure leaning against the wall to the left of the door. It sounded like one of the men was pacing back and forth. Ash and Merit walked the perimeter of the room. The floor was coated with a congealed liquid that crawled on the floor towards the drain in the middle of the room. Either the floor wasn’t sloped enough, or the drain was backed up because the thick liquid puddled on the floor.
“It’ll get easier. I promise,” the other man told Archer. “The first time is hard. You never know how much pressure it takes to get through the skin, and the smell can be pretty strong. But you get used to it.”
“If you say so,” Archer said unconvincingly.
Merit found a remnants of old clothing balled up in the corner of the cell, soaked through with blood. Tattered pants and ripped shirts. Some Merit had never seen before, like one item that was pants and a shirt sewn into a single article of clothing. He held the brittle and frayed orange-brown item, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger. He tilted his head and looked at what was left of the old outfit. He could make out a long string of symbols sewn directly into the piece of clothing. Some of the symbols were letters he recognized, although they weren’t arranged into words he knew, while some of the symbols he had never seen before. He dropped the tattered and blood soaked item, and it smacked against the wet floor.
“What are we gonna do?” Merit asked. “What are those things they have? Guns, they called ‘em,” he said, only slightly mispronouncing the word.
“Whatever they are, they weren’t made for any good purpose—that’s for sure,” Ash said. His voice boomed inside the locked room. “Only made for killing, I figure. No reason for something like that to even exist.” Ash stretched his head back and peered at the ceiling. He examined each corner of the room for something that would give him an upper hand against their captors.
“You say that now, when those things are turned against you, but you won’t be saying how useless they are if you get a hold of one yourself. I think you would find a weapon like that pretty useful against a group of people such as this,” Ransom said. He turned his head away from the opening in the door so Archer and the other man didn’t hear him.
“That’s a big ‘if,’” Ash said.
Merit knelt down by the pile of clothes on the floor. He pushed them around and felt for any object buried in them. The further down in the pile he dug, the wetter the clothes were. The clothes at the bottom of the pile were soaked through with the same thick liquid that coated the floor. With even the slightest touch, warm fluid leaked out of the cloth. At the bottom of the pile, Merit felt something hard. He dug around until he pulled out the object.
“Hey,” Merit whispered. “I think I found something.”
“Over here,” Ransom said and waved his brother over to the door. Merit held the object up by the beam of light shining through the small opening in the door. The object was covered in thick, dark blood, and was about as long as the width of Ransom’s palm. The three men tilted their heads and looked at it from all angles. Merit rubbed the object until the blood came off. Underneath was an off-white rounded stick. It appeared broken and came to a natural point.
“It’s a bone,” Ransom said. He held his hand out, and his brother handed him the object. It had a nice weight to it for being such a small bone. He wrapped it in a loose part of his clothing and made a fist around it. The shaft of the bone was hidden inside his hand, and the point was all that protruded out of his fist. Ransom knelt down and ran the bone back and forth on the cement ground. After repeated strokes, he held the bone up and touched the point with his finger. “It’s getting sharper,” he whispered. He ran the bone across the ground several more times, and then shoved it inside the neck of his boot. He looked at his brother and Ash. “Remember, if we get separated, just follow the blue line on the ground.”
CHAPTER 44
2075
GRAY MOUNTAIN, ARIZONA
The SUV we drove to meet with the Golden Dawn was more cramped on the way back. All of us, including the unconscious TDA agent, bounced around inside the car as we climbed and descended the barren sand dunes of the desert. Orange sand kicked up behind the tires in big, spiraling waves. Vesa held her hand up against her ear. The bright blood that soaked through the linen around her head was a contrast against her porcelain skin.
Doc brought the car to a sudden stop once he made it inside the garage at the old motel. He jumped out without a word and left the job of unloading our living cargo to the rest of us.
“What’s his deal?” I asked.
“Maybe it wasn’t how he expected. Killing Quinn and all,” Whitman answered. “I’ve never killed anyone, but I can only guess the result isn’t exactly all that fulfilling.”
“It isn’t,” Vesa said as she pulled the TDA agent out of the car, tucking her arms under the man’s armpits, and pulling until his feet thudded onto the solid ground. Whitman grabbed the man’s feet, and the two of them carried him into the motel, and locked him in one of the empty rooms. We had bound his hands in the car, and Vesa spun his ski mask around, so his eyes were covered.
“I’m going to get cleaned up,” Vesa said. She walked down the motel walkway towards another empty room. Finn, the blonde man who greeted us when we first arrived, approached Vesa. He rubbed her shoulder and looked at her ear, unwrapping the linen. Vesa winced and brushed Finn’s hand away. He put his arm around her, and they walked into one of the empty rooms.
“Don’t worry.” Doc must have been watching me watch Vesa. “It isn’t all that serious.” I turned to look at Doc.
I tried to look confused, like I didn’t know what Doc was talking about. “If you ask me,” Doc said, “it’s pretty one sided on his part.” Doc slipped a hand-rolled cigarette into his mouth, cupping his hands around his face and lighting the tip. The smell of burning paper and tobacco wafted into the air. He drew in a long breath and puffed out a cloud of smoke. “So you say you have a plan?” he asked.
“Well it’s part of a plan, really,” I said. “Or the beginning of a plan.” I looked out into the desert air. The sun was barely above the tall rock formations in the distance. Its rays reached out and shimmered against the brown mountains and the small green shrubs that dotted the landscape.
“Well, I wish you guys luck with your part of a plan,” Doc said as he puffed more on his cigarette.
“You won’t be coming with us?” I asked. I couldn’t place why I felt a sense of disappointment. Doc just shook his head.
“I was in it for the Golden Dawn, Quinn, and my sister. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in what Whitman and the others are doing. You know, the fight against the Ministry and all that, but I’m not optimistic enough to join that fight. We all started too late in the game. We lost too much ground long before we even knew there was a fight going on.”
He joined me in gazing out into the distance. In front of the motel was a two-lane road. Or what was left of a two-lane road. The dark asphalt was cracked and consumed by the dirt underneath. It fell apart like it knew it wasn’t needed anymore, and it just gave up. No one came out this far anymore. There weren’t any resources this far out. At least no water.
“You ever wonder why so many people are intrigued by the idea of eternity?” Doc asked. A short gust of wind blew sand and small pebbles across the broken road in front of the abandoned motel. “When I was a kid,” he continued without really waiting for me to answer, “my dad would take me to work with him. He didn’t think much of our education system. He used to say the only difference between our government and the mob is the mob doesn’t have an eighteen-year indoctrination program.” Doc smiled at the memory. It was a smile I had felt come across my own face before when talking about my dad. It was a smile that meant his father was dead also. “Anyways,” Doc continued, “my dad worked on one of the recycling barges off the coast. He would press garbage into large cubes and line the cubes up along the docks. Other workers would load them onto the transport ferry. Dad wanted to line those things up as soon as the ferry left with the previous shipment. Something inside of him didn’t like to be idle, or maybe he just didn’t like the sight of an empty dock.” Doc took a long drag on his cigarette.
“But most other workers took their time. They knew how many pressed garbage cubes each ferry could transport, and they knew how long it took the ferry to go back and forth to the barge. Most of the time, they just sat around telling jokes, or sneaking drinks from their flasks. My dad was the only one that worked at a steady pace. The other workers waited and waited. Once they saw the ferry in sight coming back from the barge, they all rushed to pack garbage into the compressors. They panicked every time. They shouted orders out, scraped their knuckles, and sweated through their work clothes in those short minutes as the ferry approached.
“Most people are just like those dock workers. They take time for granted. They sit around and complain about their lives. They don’t realize they’ve wasted so much of it until it’s too late. That’s why they hope things go on forever. That way these eighty years, or however long someone is alive, aren’t really wasted. They’ll be wasted, sure, but it won’t matter if you really have forever. One lifetime, one of our lifetimes, is nothing compared to forever.” He drew another breath on his cigarette. The tip glowed a bright orange that matched the morning sky.
“It gives people an excuse to be lazy, complacent. It’s the ultimate form of procrastination. Why do something in this lifetime if you just have another, or another? If this was really it”—Doc shook his head—“if people knew there was nothing else after this, can you imagine how scared they would be?”
For the first time since he started to talk, Doc looked over at me. By now the sun was just above the mountains. The faint light shone on the beaten motel, revealing its true condition. One I hadn’t seen accurately in the cover of night. Whatever paint wasn’t chipped off was faded. The wood siding and wood beams that held up the overhang above the rooms were visibly rotted. The desert heat had pulled any strength from the foundations of this building until it shifted and cracked.
“So in a way, I can’t blame them,” Doc said. “Just like everything else, the Ministry is one step ahead of the rest of society. Everyone else is crossing their fingers, praying, sacrificing animals, or lighting candles in hopes it’ll somehow buy them eternity. Hoping it’ll somehow erase all of the time they’ve wasted in this life. All the while, the Ministry knows there’s nothing after this. They’re trying to create their own eternity. I can’t say I agree with their tactics, but at least they’re taking their fate into their own hands. It’s a whole hell of a lot better than most of us.”
I didn’t tell Doc how much he sounded like Quinn. I figured it’s easier on a man to kill someone who is different from him. It makes it easier somehow if the killer and the victim have nothing in common. Perhaps this is what was eating at Doc now. Maybe that is why his killing Quinn wasn’t as satisfying as he had hoped. Or maybe he was just wondering if Quinn was right. Maybe the slim chance that Quinn actually did jump to another mind ate away at Doc.
Doc pulled air through his cigarette one last time, holding the small, burning ember in his hand for a moment before tossing it onto the cement. He stomped it out as he puffed a cloud of smoke from his mouth.
“Good luck to you, Powell.” Doc put his hand out toward me. I shook it, and wished him well. “And don’t procrastinate,” Doc said as he walked away. I furrowed my brow. Doc pointed to the room that Vesa and Finn entered. “It’s not like she’s taken, Powell.”
Doc turned and walked slowly towards his own room at the motel, his hand resting on his pistol. For the first time since I left my apartment, I was alone. I sat on the cement walkway that lined the motel rooms, watching the sun climb into the sky. I hadn’t thought about eternity very much. I always believed the only eternity available to us was to relive our one life forever. I wondered if a true eternity would be better, if it would be better to live different lives forever. Maybe the best option would be to never repeat anything, and to never live for an eternity. Maybe the best thing for all of us would be to have just one life to live and make the best of it.
CHAPTER 45
2075
GRAY MOUNTAIN, ARIZONA
“It was an old friend I helped out.” For once I was the one explaining something to Vesa and Whitman. “He was caught by the Counter Insurgency Agency attempting to break into a secure government facility. He came to me to get advice on how to reduce the charges. It wasn’t the first time I had helped him out.”
The three of us sat in the same room we first met in. The room with the maps and blueprints tacked to the walls. Vesa’s friend, Finn stayed with the captive agent. The partially charged device sat on the table in the middle of the room, taunting us and our failure with the Golden Dawn. Blood congealed and scabbed around Vesa’s ear, and Whitman’s face was still splattered with blood from the other Golden Dawn member that Doc shot.
“He was trying to break into an underground facility in South Dakota. He had the government clothing and identification. He had bribed a few people.”
“Apparently not enough,” Vesa said under her breath.
“Yeah, not enough,” I answered. “But he was methodical. He did his research. He knew the protocol to get into the facility. He knew the lingo. He watched guards and learned their behavior. The IDs he got were spot on. Perfect. When he came to me, he explained his entire plan. Every detail. Like he wanted someone to pick up where he left off.”
Vesa paced around the room. Whitman simply sat at the table. His body was still, like he was pow
ered down in a sleep state.
“Why was he trying to break in? Which of their facilities was it” Whitman asked.
“It was a vault underneath Ellsworth Air Force Base outside Rapid City. He believed the underground facility housed a computer program that would allow him to create currency out of thin air. Better than robbing any bank in the world, he told me. The program didn’t transfer money from anywhere, so it would never be missed by anyone else. It essentially deposited money electronically into any account he wanted. Untraceable. At least that’s what he thought.”
“It’s not that unbelievable,” Vesa said. “The government has been creating electronic currency for decades now.”
“Right,” I answered. “So this guy made it into the facility. He made it down twenty stories below the surface. But he panicked once he got beyond his own plan. He had never seen a place like it. He had only heard of these underground facilities that the government built. He must have gone the wrong way, or just looked like he didn’t belong because eventually someone stopped him. They asked what he was doing, where he was going. He didn’t have any good answer.”
I paced around the table and glanced at all of the papers that hung on the wall. I saw a diagram of an android. It looked like the factory diagram that Wayfield provided me with on hundreds of cases during the discovery phase of an android trial. But this one had the words ‘dark time’ scribbled at the bottom, and next to them ‘Whitman’ and ‘cure’.
“This man,” I continued, “he provided me with the details of his plan. He sat in my office and told me this story over and over. He told me what he would have done differently and what he hadn’t planned for. He also put me in contact with the man who made his government ID for him. It was the only payment he could come up with for my help.” I stopped pacing and looked at Vesa and Whitman.
“So it isn’t okay to hack into the municipal power grids because they’re too guarded, but it’s okay to break into a secure government facility?” Vesa said and looked at Whitman and then at me. Whitman stared blankly back at Vesa. “What!” she said in response to Whitman’s silence. “That is what he is suggesting, right? That we follow the same plan that got some greedy two-bit hacker caught.” Vesa threw her hands in the air and let out a deep sigh.
