by J. Kowallis
“We’re gonna have to move slow. Be absolutely quiet,” I whisper. “Sound travels like thunder in here.”
Picking up my hand and opposite knee, I set them down again gently. Every once in a while, one of us bumps loudly against the wall, and each time, I feel my chest constrict. We keep crawling. Fifty feet, eighty feet, and then the tunnel vent comes to a vertical climb.
“We gotta go up,” I whisper back to Nate.
From around his waist he pulls a mounting thread and tosses it to me. “Here you go.”
I hiss, nearly missing it. Nate’s face tenses.
The mounting thread mechanism is round and flat on one side, domed on the other. With a glance up the vent, I calculate the height to be about thirty feet. I program the height into the device. I place the flat side against the side of the wall and pull out the carabineer from the side of it. Dislodging the thread and carabineer activates the mechanism and it begins to ascend the wall of the vent. I wait until it climbs the full thirty feet and then attach the silver carabineer to my utility belt. With one tug, the mounting thread starts to retract back into the mechanism, pulling me up. It’s slow moving, and I carefully touch the walls with my hands to keep from knocking into the sides. Once at the top, I climb over and detach myself.
“Your turn, Ransley,” I whisper. “Ready?”
She nods and holds out her hands. I release the mechanism’s hold on the steel cord and toss the carabineer back down to her. While waiting for her and Nate to join me, I turn around and look down the vent. There are more openings into rooms on this floor. I move forward to the closest one and look down. It’s an office, but empty right now.
Then, a beeping ring comes from one of the farther openings and I move quickly, but quietly toward it.
“Public Four Report Department,” a woman’s voice carries.
I reach the opening and look down. The woman sits at a long clear desk, wearing a different version of the black uniform we’re wearing. She’s a guard. My breath subconsciously holds back the longer I listen.
“At what time was this? How many were there?” Her fingers travel to her digital projection screen and she starts to work on it, looking up video files. “You didn’t see them? Why not?”
It’s the laundry owner. He’s reporting us.
“I’m sorry, you were what? Frozen? The name ‘Rambo’?” She gets to the right time stamp on the videos she’s looking at, but each one looks fine. An empty store. “I’m sorry, I must have the wrong time stamp. Can you repeat that for me?” She frowns and scans through the videos. I can tell when she arrives at the time we left because the body of the launderer suddenly appears on screen, laying face down on the ground. No sign of us.
The woman swears. “No. Um, I’m sorry. But thank you so much for reporting this. We’ll have it taken care of in no time.”
She ends the call and leaves her seat, storming out of the office.
“We’ve been made?” Nate’s voice says in my ear.
I jump, not knowing he was there already.
“Sorry,” he whispers.
“No, you’re all right. So are we. For now. The cloakers did their job. The videos cut us out. Paused the recordings on a shot of an empty room. But from now on, they’ll be watching their feeds closer. The moment people disappear and reappear like that, they’ll know one of us is out.” I look over my shoulder to make sure Ransley’s not within hearing range. “We’ll need to stay indoors during the day while we’re here.”
“I agree. But let’s keep going. We’re not safe yet.”
I nod and look back at Ransley when she crawls up behind. “You ready?”
She nods in return and we plunge deeper into the vents, heading right for Roy’s cell.
―CARMEN―
How many years had she been doing this job now? She lost track. In all that time, she’d never seen anything like it. Fantasy. Science fiction. Whatever it could be called. The odds of finding a subject that could project his body into identical duplicate forms were unimaginable. Because of the Nexis and her own work, she couldn’t take her eyes away. Five. Five duplicate forms of the subject walked around the observation room. Each an exact replica of the original. The initial subject leaned against the wall in a chair, narrowly watching each of his forms. Not just watching, concentrating on them. He’d folded his arms, keeping his ankles crossed in front of him. Apathetic, and not like the erratic behavior the subject had experienced the initial day he’d been brought in.
Two other forms practiced fight techniques. A third dissected a complicated statistics problem on the provided white board. Number four sat comfortably on the white chair provided with a copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and the fifth simply rippled a coin between his knuckles while sitting on the floor.
It was the readings coming from the initial subject’s mind that interested her most. Not only could he control the actions of each form, but simultaneously learn from each one. Literal multi-tasking—with an increased capacity to learn, and amplified abilities.
“It’s mind-blowing, isn’t it?” Dr. Folland came up behind her and expanded the control screen near the blind glass.
“Most definitely. Take a look at this, doctor.” Carmen reached up, sliding a section of the screen her direction and motioned with her hands, causing a file to pull up. “Look here. His spikes are off the charts. Average subjects, even amplified subjects that I’ve seen before, never have these types of reactions. This is unseen in any documented case.”
“Yes,” the doctor murmured, with a nod of his head. “You truly outdid yourself with this subject, Carmen.”
“This isn’t my doing. I mean, it is, but it’s not. Most of this is how his own mind reacted to the Nexis procedure.”
Dr. Folland smiled and collapsed the screen. “Well, I’m not surprised. He’s definitely unique. Listen,” he turned to her, “management has decided he’s ready for a position. So, we’ll be assigning him quarters in the building for a short time period before he can go find an apartment. Keep an eye on him for a couple hours while I straighten out the details. Go ahead and issue him Public regulation clothing, and I’ll be back soon.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
Carmen slipped the strapped glove over her hand and pressed the screen consol pad to the left of the subject’s observation room. She watched the sensors, invisible to the subject, run up and down the room, scanning his measurements. When it completed, she removed her hand and left the observation area, taking the glass elevator to the thirtieth floor. Carmen walked out, and headed for the Issuance Office.
A familiar face greeted her with a smile. “Carmen,” Juan said, walking to the desk, “I assume we have a new subject we’re assigning today?”
“We do.” She smiled in return.
Juan slid his finger across the small sensor on the desk and a screen appeared in the air between him and Carmen.
Carmen placed her strapped glove hand on the screen and it read the figures stored in the sensor’s memory. Bright white light traveled up and down her hand, and then disappeared. A sliding partition against the wall opened and a set of men’s issued Public clothing slid across the counter, tightly packaged.
“Subject’s ID?” Juan said, looking at his own projection screen.
“D156,” she replied while scooping up the package in her arms. “Gracias.” Carmen turned to leave with the clothes in her arms.
Carmen headed back for the subject’s area. D156 still sent her into shock. It was possible to transfer multiple sources of information at the exact same time through one mind and several bodies. And she was a part of it. It was her who created the open doorways.
She smiled to herself, opened the door, and glanced through the blind glass once more.
Her hands went limp and the pile of clothing fell to the ground. Back in the corner of the room, a vent hung open, swinging back and forth on its hinges. A set of feet, followed by legs, and a full body slid through, grabbing onto the edge. It was a woman with sha
rp silver eyes. She dropped to the ground in a squat, her hand balancing her. The woman looked at the blind glass for a moment, and the hairs on Carmen’s arms stood at attention. She looked right at her. The woman then turned to D156.
The woman with silver eyes spoke to him, but Carmen couldn’t hear a word. Another movement from the vent caught her eye and her heart leapt into her chest when a second woman dropped in, her hair chopped like a boy’s, followed by a large broad-shouldered man.
“No,” she whispered. “No . . . no, no . . .” she reached out, slamming her hand into the pad. A keypad appeared and she pressed two separate numbers. Blue revolving lights strobed and alarms sounded through the hallway. The woman with silver eyes picked up the chair one of the D156 replicas had been sitting on and hurled it into the blind glass. Carmen ducked.
The chair slammed in the wall next to Carmen’s crouching body, almost landing on her. Screaming filled Carmen’s ears while the twinkled slivers of glass scattered on the floor. Glass rained from her head to her shoulders. The woman who threw the chair looked down on Carmen, gazing at her with urgency. The woman began to climb over the windowsill.
Carmen scrambled to her feet. She pushed herself up and shards of glass pierced her palms. It stung first. Then the warmth of blood. Throbbing.
The silver-eyed woman grabbed at her from behind but the sound of power-gun blasts echoed down the hallway behind Carmen and the woman ducked, releasing her grip. Carmen struggled to crawl backward, her hands leaving behind trails of crimson on the polished ground. She glanced behind to look at the silver-eyed woman, but she had left Carmen alone. Guards dashed by, hurrying inside the observation room. Rounds repetitively shot through the room and Carmen scuttled against the wall, looking behind herself.
She needed to get out of here. Where was the door?
Carmen jumped when another guard fell to the ground near her. He’d fallen on his power gun. If she could just get her hands on it.
A set of hands pulled another guard headfirst through the broken window. The guard’s clothing ripped on the broken glass around the window and gunfire came back through toward the remaining guards.
Carmen pulled herself forward and attempted to push the guard’s body to the right with her elbow and grip the gun with her injured hands.
When the firing from the room stopped, Carmen looked up to see the remaining six or seven guards jump to their feet and fire more rounds. They ducked, and D156 flew through the window. A couple guards didn’t get down fast enough and the body plowed into them, knocking them against the wall next to her.
D156 disappeared and Carmen realized he was fighting the intruders as he’d been designed to do. Despite the satisfaction she felt in his programming, her throat tied in knots. Even the throbbing pain in her palms became numb by the fear that pumped through her heart.
She yanked the weapon once more and released it from underneath the corpse. Aiming it into the observation room, she waited for her first visual of the intruders.
Power shots reverberated again from the inside of the room and three more guards fell, their bodies dropping to the floor with thuds. Carmen saw the second woman and fired.
“Mierda!” the woman disappeared beneath the hole where the glass had been. Another large group of guards started running into the room.
The shots leaving the observation room hit each guard square in the chest. Then, the broad-shouldered man who had dropped from the vent, vaulted over the windowsill into the room with Carmen, and looked back.
“Reg!” he yelled. “Get down!” He fired again and turned his attention on the guards coming into the control room.
Even from where she sat, Carmen saw the veins and tendons in his hands tense each time the trigger was pulled. Two, three, four guards down.
Her fingers shook. Carmen activated the power gun once more and aimed it up.
“Nate!”
The man turned on Carmen and instantly fired. His shot pierced her weapon with a vibrating burn and it exploded in her face. Pieces of the gun lacerated her face, her lips.
Carmen spun her attention back to him, petrified. The last guard fell to the floor at the broad-shouldered man’s shot. The moment she moved, the man aimed his gun at her again. He breathed heavily, blood oozing from a laceration across his cheekbone.
“What’s your name?” he barked.
Before Carmen could form her own name in her mind, the man was rammed from behind. D156 stood over him, his chest heaving with exhaustion. Two of his forms stood beside him. One looked to her for a brief moment before fixating on the man once more.
“Kill him!” Carmen ordered.
The man aimed and a round of power shots buzzed. D156 danced around each shot, each missing their intended target. D156 caught the broad man by the throat, slamming him to the floor. The broad man kicked out with his feet, leveling the subject to the floor with a crunch of his arm under his body. From then, the fighting became a blur. Carmen couldn’t focus on who moved where or which body had crashed into which walls. All three forms of D156 pelted the broad man with their fists and feet.
The man roared, beating his elbow into the side of one of the duplicate’s head. Or had it been D156? She couldn’t tell anymore. The broad man threw a fist. D156’s replica fell back on her, crushing her leg into the floor. She screamed in pain and tried to back away. A gun fired from within the observation room. D156 was pelted with the shot and fell onto her again.
Carmen’s head knocked back against the wall with heavy thud. A sharp cracking sound traveled to her ears, and the room spun around her. Black stars grew and warped her vision. Dark. So dark.
―
Something . . . was wrong. Her head. Get . . . away. So much pain. Too much pain.
―
The woman with boyish hair reached down, picking a man up and shoving him against the wall. D156.
―
“Ransley! Don’t!”
Hands grabbed for Carmen. “No . . . no, no, no. Leave me alone, please,” she begged.
―
“Nate?!”
“Are you all right?” the broad man called to the woman’s voice.
“What happened to Roy?”
“Roy’s gone.”
“Is the employee with you?”
“Yes.”
“Bring her and let’s go!”
Carmen was hoisted up and slung her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Glass crunched.
―
Blood rushed to her skull, pounding, beating, hammering her brain. It felt so wrong. It hurt too much.
Carmen heard a deep hollow clang. The sound of someone climbing through a vent. Jostled back and forth. She tasted the dense air of the city. Alarms blared. More noise. Sharp pains. The woman with silver eyes.
More movement. So much pain. Darkness. It was too much. Too much. Sirens.
Let me go, she thought. Take me back.
“Where the hell do we go, Reggie?!”
“I know where she lives!”
“We don’t have time, Reg! We have to lose our tail!” the man yelled.
Carmen slumped.
The world spun faster and faster. The sirens split, dying in volume. The light filtering through Carmen’s struggling eyelids died. The pain soared, and her brain shut off.
―ESTEVAN―
Estevan leaned over his knife, running the sharpening stone over the dull side. The sanding stone slid down, down, down. The grating sound of the stone on steel rang with a metallic resonance. Each time the stone lifted off, his heart beat a little harder.
Where was she? Was she all right? How could he have let her leave?
Ransley couldn’t contact him, and he knew that. If he could somehow know she was unharmed. He wanted her back. He wanted her safe.
Of course she wasn’t safe. Going into Public Four guaranteed she wouldn’t be safe. She was foolish, reckless. More importantly, he was stupid for letting her go.
He raised his wrist, sliding the back of it a
cross his forehead to wipe away the droplets of sweat pouring into his eyes.
“Estevan?” A voice softly called his name and he turned around. Dina’s sunken face beamed and she walked up behind him holding a bowl. Squints trotted at her side, his tongue hanging out over his yellowed canine teeth.
“¿Sí?” he asked, resting the knife on his knee.
“I have some soup for you.”
“Soup?”
“Well,” she smiled again, “boiled water with White Clover and caramelized Mistol.” Her brown eyes looked into his and narrowed slightly. It was obvious to Estevan she was worried about him. Though she was trying hard not to show it.
He set the sharpening stone on his other knee and held his hand out for the bowl. “Gracias, mujer. That sounds delicious.”
She waited. Her eyes still studying him out.
“Really. Thank you,” he added again, this time returning a nod.
Dina rested her hands in her back pockets, watching him lift the bowl to his lips and slurp in the boiled floral leaves, roots, and the sweet syrup of the Mistol. The soup surprisingly filled his belly, but it was the only thing Dina had been able to make for days, and he was tired of it. Without Roy providing for the community, they were struggling to find the edible nutrients they needed.
He finished off the soup, dipped his finger in the bowl, and ran it along the sides sucking the remnants off his dirty fingers.
The whole time he ate, he thought about Ransley. He tried to think of ways she’d possibly make it into the city without being picked up. People didn’t go within two miles of Public walls, in fear their mere proximity would guarantee their capture. She had to have been caught. He couldn’t think of any other possibility.
“Estevan?”
His attention came around to Dina again. She knelt next to him, but she wasn’t trying to smile anymore. “You’re thinking about your daughter, aren’t you?”
Estevan pursed his lips and ran his tongue along his fuzzy teeth. “I wish I knew where she was. I shouldn’t have let her go.”
