Beat

by Jared Garrett

  The idea was interrupted by the robot escort drawing to a whirring stop in front of the door that was the end of the hallway. For a moment, the complete silence left me feeling suspended, in some kind of stasis.

  Then the door disappeared into a wall with a soft hiss and yellow light spilled out.

  “Proceed.” The robot’s voice clanged metallically. I was almost happy to obey, despite not knowing what was coming. I passed through the doorway and found myself in a medium-sized room that couldn’t have been much bigger than my bedroom. Only where my bed would have been was a glass-looking table that seemed to sprout from a wall. The table doubled as a skreen, as countless icons and images and lists fluttered across its surface. I looked around as the door slid shut behind me. The walls of this room were pale to the point of almost having no color, but what color was there was green. Recessed yellow lights illuminated several doors, one of them looking a lot like an elevator’s doors.

  “Proceed to the desk.”

  The voice came from above. I looked up, noticing small, circular spots of mesh, maybe six of them, scattered about the ceiling. Speakers.

  I obeyed, confused. It seemed like there were no humans down here.

  The moment I stood next to the desk, a panel opened in the nearby wall and a skinny, polished metal arm extended. It was shinier than the chrome I had seen sometimes in the Enjineering Dome. An optical sensor opened at the end of the arm, casting a gold light on my face, making me blink. The sensor slid down, maybe ten centimeters in front of my body, until it came to my hands. Had it noticed the spoke?

  “Nik Granjer. Identity confirmed.” The voice came from the speakers again. “Personal Assistant inoperable.”

  I felt a brief wave of relief, but couldn’t dispel my growing sense of unease. I was sure the Prime Administrator was supposed to be down here.

  Another panel opened in the wall to my right, this one about a meter below the previous one. Another practically glowing arm extended, this one fast, and stopped at my Papa. I saw the optical sensor it must have been using to know where it was going, but only briefly, because the end of the arm flipped into the body of the arm, then swiveled almost noiselessly. A moment later, another tool flipped out of the arm and glowed for a moment. The arm slid back into the wall.

  “Proceed.” This time the voice was accompanied by another soft hiss and a door a few meters along the wall from the desk was swallowed into the wall.

  I swallowed, my heart thudding heavily. What were they going to do to me?

  The open doorway seemed to beckon me forward, but I hesitated, tempted to turn and run. The Enforsers had started by trying to kill me, but if the New Chapter wanted me dead, you’d think the Enforsers wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of bringing me back to New Frisko.

  They had to want me alive now for some reason.

  But I had no idea why. A sour tasted filled my mouth. I couldn’t go in there. But if I ran, they might actually kill me.

  “Proceed.” The voice clanged from the speakers in the ceiling.

  “I’d rather not.” The words had to squeeze through my tight throat. I forced a laugh. I was arguing with speakers.

  I couldn’t just stand there.

  I stepped forward, my legs shaky. No. They’d been controlling my life, the life of everyone I knew, for as long as I remembered. In a way, they controlled the Wanderers, too. I couldn’t let the fear that bubbled in my chest control me. Besides, if I was immune, I could help everyone. Right? No, that was stupid. The Wanderers couldn’t all be immune. Either they were or the Bug was gone.

  But then there was Bren, dead from the Bug.

  I tried to make my next step firmer. By the time I passed through the doorway, the strength had come back to my legs. I straightened my back and looked around. I was in some kind of closet-sized space. But it was shaped like a cylinder and lit by only one inset light directly above me. Colored lights flashed all around me, with soft pops and hisses accompanying the blinding explosions.

  “Proceed.”

  A door in front of me slid into the wall. The room on the other side was well lit. I stepped through and glanced left and right. The room had four walls, three of them covered with multiple flat skreens. The door I’d come through was at the corner of two walls. If I turned left, I’d walk directly into a wall; the room was laid out to my right. I turned.

  A wide desk of the same clear material I’d seen earlier, kind of like glass, but not as glossy, sat in front of a wall that looked to be one big window. The view outside was of trees and mountains, with a sky of a perfect blue.

  But we were at least a hundred feet below ground.

  That had to be one giant skreen, not a window.

  I had avoided looking at the man behind the desk for as long as I could. The Prime Administrator. He sat there looking at me through narrowed eyes. I’d seen his face plenty on skreens around the city, but in person, he seemed a little thinner, his low, flat cheekbones more pronounced. The way he sat in his white chair, staring at me, his head thrown slightly back made it seem like he was literally looking down his nose at me.

  “Mr. Granjer.” He stood, his voice instantly familiar. I’d heard him explain directives and rules hundreds, maybe thousands of times. A little bit nasal, and fairly high-pitched, he sounded younger than his years. He had to be around fifty.

  The Prime Administrator held out his hand. “I am glad to finally meet you.”

  “What?” Why was he being so polite?

  He smiled. “I see you are confused. No surprise, of course. There’s just been the most dreadful of communication breakdowns.” His hand dropped to his side. He sat. “Please, join me.”

  It sounded like he’d practiced each word a hundred times.

  His hand brushed a spot on his desk and a section of the floor bulged upward, resolving into the shape of a chair. Bug me. That’s amazing. My mind raced. Nobody had tried to kill me in over an hour, or betrayed me for that long. Something awful had to happen soon. I scanned the room, noticing another door on the wall with the doorway I’d come through. This new door was in the opposite corner. There was another door behind and to the Prime Administrator’s right, also in the corner.

  “Mr. Granjer, I assure you nobody is going to hurt you.”

  I met the man’s gaze, took a breath, and sat on the incredible chair. I’d never seen morphing material like that. “That’d be new.”

  He laughed. No, he actually chortled, his hands going to his stomach and his mouth stretching wide. I felt like a cold, oily drop of something slithered down my spine.

  “Yes. Again, that is all due to a very unpleasant breakdown of communications.”

  I stared at him. “Being shot at? By real bullets? And being attacked by a bunch of Ranjers? And then being kidnapped and brought here?” I had to take a ragged breath, try to slow down. I felt my pulse behind my eyes. “That’s either a breakdown of communications or . . . ” I had no idea how to finish the sentence. I glared at the Prime Administrator. “My friend’s dead.”

  “Yes.” The man’s face changed somewhat, the ends of his mouth turning down a little and his eyes closing once, briefly. “What a terrible thing.” Every word, every movement of the man seemed completely rehearsed. There was something very wrong here.

  “Well how’d he die and not me? How’d the Bug get him and not me?”

  A moment passed. “We are still unsure. Perhaps you are somehow immune to the virus.”

  “If I’m immune, then so are all the Wanderers!”

  “The Wanderers are a myth.” The response came rapid-fire, automatically.

  Fury pushed me to my feet. I felt my face grow hot. “Spam! I was with them, met them. They gave me food.”

  The Prime Administrator didn’t react to my shouting. “Impossible. Anyone living outside of the New Chapter would be unsafe and would die within days.” He said this as if it were fact. He had to know I wasn’t lying.

  I opened my mouth, trying to figure out what to shout at
him next.

  Wait.

  I’d heard that before. I’d heard his voice say those exact words before. At least once or twice. The oily feeling slid further down my spine.

  “Wrong. That’s just completely stupidly wrong. I just survived for almost a day out there.”

  A moment of silence. “We would like to understand why. We think you can help us finally destroy the Bug.”

  That set me back and I sat again. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I assure you I am speaking the truth.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Mr. Granjer.” The Prime Administrator stood and strode out from behind his desk, sliding his hand along one edge. A wall of skreens turned on, with images of people clarifying almost immediately. I recognized the exterior of the School Dome and even felt like some of the faces I saw were familiar. Other images, obviously from all over New Frisko, filled the rest of the skreens on the wall. “You might have the opportunity to change the lives of these people significantly. But we need you to cooperate and help us keep everyone calm.”

  “Keep them calm?” Better safe than sorry, better calm than dead. The motto of the New Chapter flashed through my head. “What do you mean?”

  “People are aware of Bren Radklif’s death. There are rumors that the knockout didn’t work and that the Bug killed him.”

  Those weren’t rumors. The knockout didn’t work because of me. I shook the grief away. “He did die of the Bug.”

  “Certainly.” The man, who stood a maybe a couple of centimeters taller than me, raised his arm toward the wall of skreens. “But these people, your friends and family, are worried that they are in danger now, too. They are not sure they should trust the knockout. But of course they should.” He gestured at the skreens. “Here they are, living productive lives. I see them each day of their lives, here in my office. I know that they need to trust that we as the leaders of the New Chapter have their best interests in mind and are trying to keep them safe.”

  I wanted to argue with him, but couldn’t find anything to say. “So?”

  “We know you were there with Mr. Radklif when he died. We have talked to the others in your little group.”

  A memory of Pol, Melisa, and Koner, all of them staring at me in surprise last night, flashed behind my eyes. “What?”

  “They were very forthcoming about your activities of that night. They have returned to their productive and calm lives.”

  “But you had to know we’d been doing that for a while. The Papas tell you where we are.” I stared at the man. “Don’t they?”

  “Of course. It was harmless play until you found a way to endanger yourselves by avoiding the knockout injection.” He stared at me. “The people of our New Chapter need your help now, Mr. Granjer.”

  Feeling antsy at having to look up at him while he strode back and forth in front of the skreens, I stood too. “With what?”

  A moment of silence passed, then stretched uncomfortably while the man looked at me with his brow furrowed. Finally, he spoke again. “The people of our New Chapter need your help now, Mr. Granjer. They need to be reassured.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We want you to tell them the story of that night. Tell them that the knockout injection works, but that Mr. Radklif found a way to avoid the injection.”

  “What about me?” I couldn’t believe they seriously wanted me to just tell the truth.. Something else had to be going on. I couldn’t deny the fact that I wanted the world to know how Bren had died. Maybe revealing the secret would take the guilt away.

  I glanced at the skreens, the images of people going about their ordered, calm lives in New Frisko. In several images, there were small clusters of people gathered around public skreens, obviously listening anxiously to whatever the Speekers were saying. As the Prime Administrator spoke, I scanned the rest of the skreens, noting the familiar faces.

  “That, unfortunately, is where we must bend the truth a little. For the good of the New Chapter. We would ask you not to talk about your experience. Your friends have agreed to this, for the good of our society. We ask that you tell this helpful untruth to help your people. In addition, we need to study you and discover whether you really are immune to the Bug.”

  A skreen about halfway up the wall, toward the right side, caught my eye. Hope Park at night time. The surveillance camera must have been panning, because the image moved steadily left. What I saw next took my breath away. I fought to control my expression.

  I floundered for something to say to fill the silence. “S-study me? You mean cut me open?”

  “Of course not.” A genial smile spread across the Prime Administrator’s face. Beyond him, the image of Hope Park panned some more, revealing a group of people standing at the base of a tree. I tore my eyes away from the skreen. “We simply need to do some blood work. We need to run some preliminary tests.” His flat eyes met mine. “We will see where we go from there.”

  I thought fast. Something was going on here, something strange. But I might be able to figure out a way to expose the complete truth. I had to be careful. And I had to be sure. “But if I’m immune, so are the Wanderers.”

  “The Wanderers are simply a legend.”

  “You already said that.”

  Another strange moment of silence. “We must keep you here for now and find out why you were able to avoid infection. But we need your help, Mr. Granjer. We have no wish to harm you.”

  If I stayed here, they could do whatever they wanted with me, especially since nobody who cared even knew where I was. The Prime Administrator knew I knew he was lying. He had to. And I’d seen him say the Wanderers were a myth or a legend on a skreen.Which I now knew was totally false.

  How much more of this was just a big lie? This was bad. A knot of fear in my gut sent tentacles crawling up into my chest.

  “Will you help us? Will you reassure the people of New Frisko that the knockout injection is their best defense against the Bug?” The man looked directly at me, his face set in a sincerely pleading expression. His eyes didn’t move from mine.

  I had to stall. I needed more time to figure out what to do. What I’d just seen . . . I felt like it could help. I just needed time to come up with a plan. “Yes. I’ll help you.” I figured that if I appeared cooperative, they might not guard me as well as they would otherwise. That might give me more opportunity, too.

  The Prime Administrator smiled. “What excellent news. I appreciate your willingness to be of assistance.” He stepped forward and extended his hand.

  I grimaced inwardly, gritted my teeth, and took his hand, shaking it. His hand was surprisingly warm to the touch. Warm and dry.

  I stared at him, wondering what was really going on behind the man’s dark eyes.

  I would find out. I was going to find out exactly what was going on and then I was going to bring it all down. Because the Bug had to be gone. It had to be, no matter what had happened to Bren. The Wanderers were real and they were alive.

  Something else had happened to Bren.

  The Prime Administrator took two long steps to his desk and touched a spot near his chair. The door to his left slid open without a noise. One of the treadmill robots appeared with a metallic whir.

  “Please follow my assistant to a room we have prepared for you. I’m sorry, but in the interests of our tests, we can’t have you eating or drinking for the next twelve hours.” He lifted a hand toward the robot. “Furthermore, we will replace your Personal Assistant after the tests. We don’t want the knockout injection to skew our tests in any way.”

  I wondered what that meant, but doubted he would be forthcoming if I asked anything. “Okay.” I followed the robot, stealing another glance at the skreen that had caught my eye. The image had changed to a busy walkway.

  As the door closed behind me, I looked back. The Prime Administrator was already settling back into his chair.

  The robot hummed gently down the hallway, which looked exactly like the one
I’d come though on the way to the Prime Administrator’s office. This hallway ended at elevator doors. When the doors closed, we descended for about ten seconds.

  I stood still, studying the robot but also letting my thoughts race. What I’d seen on the skreen had sparked the beginnings of a plan. I would still have to find out the truth about the Bug and how Bren had died, but there was a simple way to prove to New Frisko that something was wrong about what the New Chapter’s leaders were telling them.

  I followed the Prime Administrator’s robot assistant down another hallway, also totally blank of anything but pale gray. I guess if I liked gray, I would be in paradise.

  The clip I’d seen. Apparently the skreens on the Prime Administrator’s wall looped footage from all over New Frisko, and from more than just the present. The group of people I’d seen standing under that tree had been the Pushers.

  And I’d watched myself walk toward my cycle. The clip was of last night in Hope Park with my friends. I needed to reach them, contact Melisa, or Pol, or Koner. I needed to get my hands on it and show it to everybody.

  But that was only part of the plan. I was going to find out why the New Chapter was lying to the people of New Frisko. And maybe the other cities, too.

  Then I was going to bring the whole thing down.

  CHAPTER 20

  The pale door slid quietly closed behind me. Immediately I felt as if I was being squeezed, not hard or anything, but by the pressure of an enclosed space. The room was about the size of my room at home, with much of the same arrangement: a bed, a small table next to the bed, a bathroom through an open doorway, and what looked like a Klothes-Jeni. I wondered if, in the morning, I would find the same outfit I’d always found in my own Jeni at home every day. I’d grown up wondering how it worked, but soon after starting work in the Enjineering Dome, had learned that it wasn’t all that complex.

  Bots, very similar to the maintenance bots that ran throughout the city, visited each house and accessed the Klothes-Jeni, switching out dirty shirts and such for cleaned ones. Since everybody wore pretty much the same thing every day, and many people wore the same thing as each other, it was impossible to know if you were getting your own things back. And, really, it didn’t matter.