A person walked into the range of view from the right side and headed forward toward the cave. It was a man with blond hair, a black jacket and grey pants. Two soldiers came into view next, both soldiers holding big rifles.
“This footage was taken three and a half years ago,” Caurfo explained as the three figures made their way inside with the camera following a half-dozen yards behind. The two soldiers turned on high-powered flashlights attached to their rifles and took positions on either side of the blond man, who held his own flashlight in his right hand.
Blondie walked about ten paces in, turned to his right and approached the interior wall of the cave to examine it. The camera followed suit, giving Kettle and the rest of the audience a good look. The wall was way smoother than it should have been. It didn’t look like rock at all. More like a wall. It wasn’t flat though; Kettle could see undulations in the surface, some sections concave and others convex. It was startlingly black, too, like obsidian but not as shiny.
“Notice anything strange?” Caurfo asked to no one in particular, though he was looking in Kettle and Haley’s general direction.
“The whole thing is strange,” Kettle replied. “Caves don’t form like that. My dad was a volcanologist.” He didn’t know why he added that last part. It didn’t make him an expert on caves.
“Look at the reflections.”
Kettle leaned forward in his chair and scrutinized the image. Blondie reached out to touch the wall with his hand, and the camera angle showed a reflected hand reaching back. The two soldiers studied their reflections as well, which were distorted by the uneven variations in the wall.
“It’s reflective,” Kettle said, but he knew that wasn’t the point of Caurfo’s question. There was something else odd about the reflections, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Before he could figure it out, he heard Soup suck in his breath suddenly. Kettle glanced at his friend, who looked very disturbed. “What?” Kettle said.
“It’s not reflecting the flashlights.”
Kettle spun back to the display. “Oh, Jesus.” He knew that the flashlights were still turned on because they were illuminating Blondie’s back and the interior space that they were standing in, but in the reflections, he could make out the unlit glass at the front of the flashlights.
“That’s not possible,” Haley stated flatly. “The video has been tampered with.”
“I can assure you, the video is real,” Caurfo said flatly.
The three men finally turned away from the wall and continued walking into the depths of the cave. They trod slowly and scanned their flashlights left and right, occasionally glancing up to the ceiling, which was at least fifteen feet above them.
After half a minute, the cave split into two paths. Blondie headed to the right and the others followed. A short while later, they reached a four-way intersection. After a short discussion, they ignored the right and left options and resumed their path straight ahead.
“You won’t have to worry about the complexity of the cave network,” Caurfo told them. “We have the entire network mapped out.”
In all, it took about five minutes for the figures to arrive at their destination, a broad chamber, roughly thirty feet wide and twenty across. Blondie paced directly across toward the wall opposite the entrance. As he approached, his reflection appeared in the uneven rock, just as before.
Something else happened. Kettle nearly stood up out of his chair to get a better look. He could see an orangish glow gradually emerge surrounding the man’s reflection in the rock wall. The closer blondie got, the brighter the glow became, changing from a dim reddish hue to more of a dayglow orange.
Blondie got about six feet away from the wall and Kettle suddenly recognized the glow for what it was; there was a room behind the rock. It was a room with smooth metal walls. It was the Zeroes’ research facility. The rock wall between the man and the room shimmered like an illusion. It almost looked as if it were beginning to disappear completely.
Suddenly a little red light flashed repeatedly at the base of the shimmering rock wall. The two soldiers instantly sprang into action and ran toward their blond-haired companion. They grabbed him by his arms and started dragging him backward.
Then the whole screen flashed white and turned to black.
“What the hell was that?” Kettle asked, his finger pointing at the screen.
“Proximity mine,” Caurfo answered. “We don’t know if it was Yenshian or Avecki, but in the past, both sides have used the caves as shelter. One of them most likely left a mine in there as a surprise for the other side.”
“They died?”
“The soldier holding the camera survived the blast, albeit with significant burns.”
Haley cut in. “That was a room, wasn’t it? Behind the wall of the cave.”
“We think so.”
“Have you gone back to investigate?” she asked.
“Affirmative. The cave is still intact. The blast didn’t do any damage to the walls. In fact, the walls seem to be impervious to damage of any kind. We’ve attempted to bore into it with diamond-tipped drills, with no success.”
“It looked like the wall was about to disappear on its own.”
“The orange glow doesn’t appear for us. In the video you just saw, the glowing effect was a direct response to the man with the blond hair.”
“Why? Who was he?”
“He was Zero Stock.”
1.8 SAELIKO
This is more like it. She put her hands to the metal bars that constituted the outer wall of her cell. The familiarity of steel was a welcome change from the mysterious force field in the last cell. Steel she could understand, and that made her happy.
That wasn’t the only development making her world rosier. After careful deliberation, she had arrived at the conclusion that she wasn’t dead. The evidence had piled up in favor of her being alive and kicking. Quite frankly, she couldn’t conceive of an afterlife as bizarre as this, and the absurdity of it all testified to the notion that everything she had seen was made by human beings rather than divine creatures.
So, all in all, Saeliko’s mood was on the up and up.
On the other hand, she was a prisoner in a military base on a strange planet, which, all things considered, was not optimal.
She was going to rectify the prisoner part of that equation at least. She was confident that escape was probable, for she had had an epiphany regarding her captors and their technological superiority. Her epiphany could be summed up in one simple sentence: technology made them weak.
This was understandable. Even in her own world, she had perceived that most new inventions were the direct result of a person or group of people trying to accommodate their unbounded laziness. Why plough a field yourself when you could get a beast of burden to do it? Why drain the water out of a mine with buckets when you could employ a steam engine to pump the water? The application of the mind to solving life’s hardships inevitably enabled civilized society to become more efficient, but it simultaneously weakened the majority of people – both mentally and physically – who benefitted from that efficiency.
In this new world, wherever she was, that process had played itself out exponentially. Not only were the soldiers and staff she had seen physically unimpressive, they also lacked mental fortitude and independence. This was because they had willingly allowed themselves to serve the technology that enveloped their lives. One of the telltale signs was that everyone here seemed to only carry out an action when their clocks told them it was okay. People ate not when they were hungry, but when their timepieces said it was permissible. They even took bathroom breaks at scheduled intervals. What kind of brainless sheep waited until their clocks told them it was okay to drop anchor?
Saeliko was going to use this observation to her advantage. She reasoned that a people so beholden to the machines around them lacked the ability to think for themselves to any significant degree. This lack of creativity in turn meant that they probably wouldn’t anticipate
creative attempts to escape. In fact, these useless sods probably expected prisoners to just sit in their cells and accept their confinement as if it were an unavoidable condition.
It was time to put her theory to the test.
Unlike the tunics she was familiar with, the prison uniform here was done up with buttons rather than laces. She didn’t know what the buttons were made of, but it wasn’t metal or wood. The material was smooth, shiny and, most importantly, brittle. It took a little work, but by stripping off the shirt and hammering the button over the corner edge of the sink, Saeliko was able to break one of the buttons in half.
She put her top back on – minus the missing top button – and examined the two pieces. One of them now had a satisfyingly sharp edge to it. That’ll do nicely, she thought and moved toward the bars. She first ensured that the guards outside the cell weren’t observing her and then brought the broken piece up to her temple. She gritted her teeth and dug into the skin on the forehead above her right eye. After a few tries, she felt the shard sink in and the blood flow out.
“On to step two.” Saeliko pocketed the button and let out a wild scream, the same sort of scream that Ollan would have yelled out just before charging into battle. It was a genuine, ear-splitting war cry.
Then she rammed her head into the steel bars.
Well, she didn’t really hit the bars with her head. She kept her hand in the way to soften the blow, but to anyone looking on, it would have appeared that she had just charged head first into the metal.
She bellowed a second war cry and repeated her charge into the bars. She did it a third time for good measure, and then, content with the ruckus she had made, she dropped to the floor, closed her eyes and went very still.
Not three seconds later, she heard the footsteps of the first guard on the scene, who immediately yelled out for help. “Yorshiv! Damoric! Get your asses over here, quick!”
Two more sets of footsteps thundered toward the cell.
“What did she do?”
“I don’t know, man. I think she was headbutting the bars.”
“Fuck me! Why would she do that? Damn, okay, she’s bleeding. What do we do?”
“I don’t know. That’s a lot of blood. Is she breathing? Can you see if her chest is moving?”
“Oh, shit! What’s she doing now? Why is she shaking?”
“She’s having a seizure. That’s bad. Open the cell! Damoric, you hold her head up and make sure she doesn’t swallow her tongue. Yorshiv, call the med office. Get them to send someone as fast as they can.”
“Okay, I’m going in.”
“Med Five-three, Med Five-three, this is Yorshiv Dammon on Floor Thirteen. We have a medical emergency in Cell Two-seven-three. I repeat, medical emergency in Two-seven-three. Prisoner is concussed, bleeding from the temple and probably having a seizure. Request help immediately.”
“I’ve got her head. What do I do now?”
“Damn it, I told you! Check her tongue.”
“How do I do that?”
“Stick your fingers in her mouth and make sure she’s not swallowing it.”
“Okay, okay. C’mon honey, you’re going to be okay.”
“Here, I’ll try to hold her legs so she stops shaking.”
“Good idea. Okay, I see her tongue. She’s not swallowing it. Calm down, honey. Shhh, it’s going to be all right.”
Saeliko stopped shaking and opened her eyes. Then she bit down hard on Damoric’s finger, which was still protruding into her mouth, causing him to scream out in horror.
The other man squatting by her legs froze in astonishment, which made it all the easier for her to thrust her leg upward and kick him in the jaw with her foot.
Speed was important now. The man she assumed to be Yorshiv Dammon was standing outside the cell waiting to guide in whichever poor doctor was racing down the corridor. Saeliko had to get out before he could close the cell door again. She scrambled to her feet and lunged forward just as Yorshiv figured out what she was planning. He jolted into motion and reached out with his arm to shut the metal door, but it was too late. Saeliko’s outstretched arms grasped the door and shoved it forward, with the added bonus that it rebounded into Yorshiv’s head.
To his credit, Yorshiv stayed on his feet. He was a big man with a stocky trunk and thick limbs, and despite reeling backwards from the force of the impact, he managed to bring one hand up to ward her off while his other hand reached for the lightning gun at his belt.
She didn’t give him time to draw the weapon, instead closing in fast, dodging around his guard and punching him hard in the face while bringing a knee up into his kidney. Once he topped to the ground, she pulled out his gun and shot him. Then she turned around and shot the other two guards, who were just now following her out of the cell.
She waited patiently for the medical team to arrive, and she shot them, too.
When she was sure that everyone was incapacitated, she tore open the shirt of the nearest doctor and investigated his undershirt, which was a soft stretchy material. She bent over top of him and used her teeth and fingers to start a tear at the collar so that she could rip off a long strip. When she was finished, she took the material and wrapped it around her head to cover the cut on her forehead.
Step three.
The Saffisheen pirate jogged leisurely down the corridor toward the elevator and remarked briefly to herself how nice it was to finally stretch her legs again. She knew that there was a series of doors between her and the elevator, and she also guessed, correctly as it so happened, that the doors would be locked. She didn’t have a key, and these doors didn’t seem to have keyholes anyway. It didn’t matter; she wasn’t going through the doors.
She pushed a broad desk near the first door toward the corner of the room. It was heavy and her muscles strained considerably, but it got there eventually. When it was in position, she clambered on top and then reached up the wall to the grating over the ventilation shaft. It didn’t budge.
She locked her fingers securely around the thickest section of grating and then hoisted herself up so that her feet were planted horizontally against the wall just beneath the shaft. She hung this way for a moment, suspended over the desk. Next, using her shoulder strength, she began wrenching backward, trying to rip the screws holding the grating right out of the wall. She was willing to bet that whoever designed this part of the building hadn’t counted on anyone trying this maneuver, and she was also willing to bet that once the grating came loose, the ensuing fall was going to hurt.
It did.
The grating tore out of the wall and Saeliko slammed back down into the desk with a pained grunt. “Ouch,” she said dryly.
She got back to her feet and climbed into the now-open shaft, which was wide and tall enough for her to crawl through unhindered. Just in time as well, as she could hear the door next to the desk open behind her and voices shout out in confusion. Saeliko sped up and scrambled around the nearest corner in the ventilation just in case one of the guards managed to get in the vent behind her and fire off a shot to her rear.
Over the next few minutes, she covered a lot of ground. Whenever she reached an intersection, she chose a random direction. It didn’t matter where she ended up; the goal for now was to put as much distance as possible between herself and her pursuers. At one point, she found a shaft heading directly up, so she took it, shimmying upward with hands and feet pressing against the sides to keep her from falling back down. A minute later, the same opportunity appeared again, so she repeated her ascent. She guessed that she was now on the eleventh floor. It was probably time to look for a way out of the ventilation and find her way to either a staircase or elevator. With luck, she could get to the surface and escape the building once and for all.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” a voice called out from nowhere and everywhere. Saeliko whipped her head around to look behind her, but there was no one there.
“What?”
“I said, you’re not supposed to be here.
Do you know where you’re going?”
“Who are you? Why can’t I see you?”
“I’m Roy. I’m ARCOB’s AI.”
“You’re what? I don’t know what that is.” She looked around again but saw nothing.
“I’m just scanning your biodata now. Oh, my apologies. You’re Saeliko, aren’t you? You’re supposed to be in Cell Two-seven-three. Why aren’t you in your cell?”
“I decided to leave. Are you a ghost?”
“I am not a ghost,” Roy said as if insulted. “My records show that you’re from VGCP Eleven, so I’m afraid it would be difficult for you to understand what I am. For the time being, let’s just say that I am the building.”
“Buildings don’t talk.”
“You’ll have to take my word for it.”
“Fine.”
“You shouldn’t be in the vents.”
“Wait. Can you see me?”
“I can sense your location.”
“Can you tell me how to get to the surface? Can you tell me the way out?”
“You are not authorized to leave ARCOB at this time.”
She considered this. “Well then, piss off, Roy,” she said after a moment.
Saeliko continued moving down the shaft until she arrived at the next grating. She looked out and saw an empty room below, so she spun around onto her backside and gave the grating three hard kicks until it popped off and crashed to the ground. The Saffisheen pirate dropped down into the room and didn’t waste any time looking around. Instead, she flung the door open, came out into a hallway with a few startled looking men and women and began running down its length in search of a path upward.
People gave her strange looks, but no one tried to stop her. Saeliko guessed that wouldn’t last long. If Roy really was what he said he was, then he would start telling the soldiers where she was and where she was going.
“Hey, stop her!” a voice yelled out.
Her strides lengthened, and she bolted headlong around a corner and down another corridor.
Zero Site 1607 Page 10
