New Alcatraz (Book 2): Golden Dawn

by Grant Pies

  The unpredictable device sitting on my lap had worked, I supposed. No one really knew what it would do, or what it could do; not even Whitman. I couldn’t tell if this was a success or a failure. How long was my mind in limbo? Did it wait in some void of time until a body became available? Was there something about this particular person I inhabited? Were we connected in some way?

  I breathed differently inside this new body. I blinked differently. My body was sore even beyond the deep wound in my stomach, like I had been beaten, but my fists were sore, like I had also delivered a beating. I wrapped my large hands around my face to feel my new features. My hair was tangled and longer than I was used to. My new face had a strong jawline. I tried to stay calm, but I could only think I had made a horrible mistake by using the mind transfer device. I thought I would have simply gone to sleep, or that my mind wouldn’t survive outside of my body. I only wanted to keep my mind out of the hands of Wayfield Industries. Instead, I was even more lost and confused than before.

  I slung the bag over my shoulder and forced my new physical form to its feet. My knee cracked and popped under my weight, so I quickly shifted my weight off of that particular leg and looked down at the pool of blood on the cement. How long had I been sitting there? Had this other person wished to die as well? Is that how we were connected? Was he waiting for the life to simply flow out of him? Should I just sit back down, and let this truly be it for the both of us? What right do I have to keep this body alive if it didn’t want to be? The attorney in me argued and offered a counter to my own thought. Maybe the person that was here wanted to continue on, but couldn’t. Maybe he had something more to live for. Maybe I owe it to him to continue on.

  The person who inhabited this body before me had already tied a piece of cloth around the wound, a sign that he wished to survive. I reached and cinched the cloth as tightly as I could, blood still trickled down my waist and ran down my leg. The air rushed out of my lungs and my head spun for a moment. I placed my hand against the wall to brace myself. Once my vision and balance came back, I circled the perimeter of the armory and grabbed a rifle from the wall. I stuffed two pistols into the bag with the mind transfer device along with handfuls of ammunition. I didn’t know if I would need them, but someone had stabbed this person and whoever that was could have been just on the other side of the door.

  I pulled on the heavy door of the armory, but it barely moved. Something seemed to be wedged in the locking mechanism on the other side. The sound of the screeching wild animals in the tunnels wavered. Sometimes it grew closer and other times it drifted away. I swiveled my head around the room only to confirm what I already knew. This was the only door in or out. Someone had locked me in.

  “Perfect,” I mumbled to myself. My heart jumped at the sound of a stranger’s voice. I turned around in hopes of seeing someone behind me, but the voice was my own. It was the voice of whoever I was now. I rubbed my throat, like I could somehow get my old voice back. I grunted and cleared my throat.

  “Perfect,” I repeated. “Hello,” I said to myself to get familiar with my new sound. What have I gotten myself into? I wondered. Why did I mess with this device? I pulled on the door one last time with the same result. I pounded my fist against the thick metal. The thud spread out around me until the emptiness of the underground facility swallowed the noise. I debated whether I should scream for help, or if whatever was on the other side of the door was worse than bleeding to death in the armory. Maybe someone locked the door to protect me? But that made no sense. What a foolish thought.

  On the other side of the door I heard a muffled clicking noise, like someone was opening the latch. I stared at the metal barricade in front of me, and swung the rifle over my shoulder. I gripped the gun and pointed it toward the door, trying my best to stand tall and strong on my injured knee. Something metal clanged to the ground outside the armory, and the door swung inward. My hands tightened around the rifle, but I wondered if the gun was even loaded. I pulled the slide back and hoped to see a bullet slide into place, but I was disappointed. “Shit,” I said to myself in my new voice and decided my only choice was to pretend I had the upper hand. To act like I could kill whoever was on the other side of the door.

  In the dim light, I made out only one figure. It wasn’t a crazed animal, but a large man. A person much taller and broader than my old body, and still larger than my new one. Patchwork clothing, the same type that I now wore, stretched around his broad shoulders, as did a single strap of a bag stuffed with unknown contents. His biceps bulged, and almost ripped the thick twine that held each piece of skin and burlap together. His face was scratched, and his left eye was almost swollen shut. He took heavy breaths that made his chest heave up and down. With an unloaded weapon I had at least a chance to scare him away. Without the piece of metal in my hands, I would surely lose in a fight.

  I squeezed my unloaded rifle and shoved it at the large man. I puffed my chest up and shouted in my new voice as menacingly as I could.

  “Get the fuck back, or I’ll shoot,” I yelled. The man threw his hands out and slightly up. “That’s right,” I said, as I inched my way through the armory door. “Don’t you move, you piece of shit.”

  “Ransom,” the large man said. He furrowed his eyebrows. “What’s gotten into you?” he asked.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Don’t say another word or I’ll shoot.”

  “Shoot?” the large man asked. “What do you mean? What happened to you guys? Where’s Merit? Ransom, are you okay?”

  “Ransom?” I said. “What the fuck is ransom? Is somebody kidnapped?” I asked. “Were you holding me for ransom?” I stepped sideways to get around the hulking man standing in the doorway. He still held his hands in the air. The illusion of my threat was working for the time being.

  “Did you hit your head? Did those things beat you senseless?” he asked me. “Ransom, you are Ransom. You and your brother ran this way. Did you get split up? Is he okay? Are you okay?”

  Ransom, I thought. My name is Ransom?

  “What kind of name is Ransom?” I said out loud.

  The screeching animal sounds grew louder. They must have heard me shouting.

  “You must have been knocked out hard,” the man said. He started to lower his hands, and I didn’t seem to mind. Something in me seemed to trust him. So far he appeared to know Ransom. He appeared to know me. “They really beat the shit out of me,” he said and ran his hands across his wounded face. It was purple and puffy under the dim lights. “Did they stab you?” he asked and pointed at my stomach. I simply nodded. He saw that I favored one of my legs. “Here,” he said and wrapped his arm under mine and around my body, propping me up and helping me down the hall.

  “We gotta find your brother,” he said.

  “No,” I replied. Maybe Ransom had an allegiance to his brother, but I didn’t, and I had a strong feeling that if I didn’t get out of this vault soon, I never would. “We have to get out of here now. My brother will find his own way out of here. They may have already killed him.” I guessed, but by the looks of what they had done to me, it wasn’t a stretch to think Ransom’s brother was already dead.

  “It’s a maze,” my new friend said. “We’ll never find the way out.”

  I let the unloaded rifle fall to my side. If this man wanted to hurt me, he would have done so already. We made our way away from the armory at a slow pace.

  “I know the way out,” I said.

  We hobbled through the tunnels under Buckley Air Force Base. Only moments before…to me anyways, the halls were filled with bright flashing lights, agents with guns, and Vesa and I. My mind raced at the thought of her. What happened after I left my body? Did I simply go limp and lifeless? Is Vesa alright? Am I dead? The pain in my knee pulled my thoughts back to the present. The brute that was apparently my ally leaned into me to bear even more of my weight for me.

  “This way,” I grunted. By now my bad leg dragged behind me, and the blood from my stab wound leaked out of my pant le
g, tracing a trail of blood from me back to the armory. The weapons and the bag pulled my neck down. Every movement was a chore. Every breath was like a knife re-entering my stomach. I wondered what this person, whose body I inhabited, had eaten in the hours prior, because whatever partially digested contents were in my intestines surely had long since spilled out into my abdominal cavity.

  The halls took familiar twists and turns. The floor tilted upwards ever so slightly, indicating we were on the right track. We were leaving the underground portion of the base. I heard the shrieks of the unknown coming from other halls behind us. Maybe my brain was failing from loss of blood, but I believed I saw pinpoint lights moving towards us from the endless twisting halls.

  “They’re coming, Ransom,” the man said in a gruff, deep voice. “We have to go faster.”

  I tried to put a little weight on my bad leg, but I felt bone rubbing against nerves and tendons. With each step, it popped in and out of place.

  “We’re almost there,” I reassured him through gritted teeth. My new body was drenched in sweat from the pain and the effort it took to make each movement.

  We reached the main hall leading out of the base. I knew because it was wider than the other tunnels, and all of the colored lines that led to the various parts of the base had converged back together. I glanced behind to see a crowd of lights running towards us. They were far away, but moving quickly.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s those crazy fuckers that intend to eat us if they catch us, so keep moving,” the man said, and for the first time he sounded worried.

  Eat us? I thought. Just as I started to settle into the idea that I inhabited another person’s body. Now I began to consider my other surroundings. I knew I was in Buckley Air Force Base, but when was I? Who were these people? What had my mind jumped into?

  “Let’s go, Ransom, just a bit farther!”

  By now the man dragged me through the hall, almost jogging. Each shake and vibration increased the level of pain shooting through me. I felt it in my head and mouth. I felt it in my stomach and chest. There wasn’t a part of me that wasn’t sore and beaten.

  Just ahead I saw light. Real light that cast its rays onto a staircase leading up to a slim doorway. Behind us were the cries of the supposed cannibals. Before us was white light and open space. I hobbled up the stairs. I looked back and saw only a trail of blood and the lights of the cannibals growing larger and larger. We climbed out of the darkness and into the light. The burly man dropped me on the cold ground and slammed the heavy metal door at the top of the staircase shut. He found several rocks and piled them on top of the metal door on the ground.

  “That should keep those skinny bastards inside for a while,” he grumbled.

  It was cold outside the underground facility, but something about the place was familiar. The snow on the ground covered the distinctive orange desert sand I had seen so long ago. The air was different than it was in my present time. It was dryer. It was more like it was in the year 5065. The year I was in prison. I knew where I was. I was in a place that wasn’t really a place, but more of an idea. I was in the future. I felt the familiar loneliness that only comes after the extinction of the human race. I felt the landscape taunt me once again. Each gust of frostbitten wind was like a dare to try and survive. I somehow ended up in a time devoid of almost all human life, and a place where no one was meant to survive. Somehow I was back in New Alcatraz.

  Thank you for reading New Alcatraz, Volume II: Golden Dawn! If you enjoyed it, please leave a review. Or even better, refer the book to a friend. If you would like to read the final installment in the New Alcatraz series, check out New Alcatraz, Volume III: Loss Paradox. Thanks, and happy reading.

  Grant Pies