Beat

by Jared Garrett

  I ran my fingers down the elevator door, searching for a gap I could use. Nothing. I should have left the thing propped open. I let my left hand drop and felt my entire body slump. End of the road. I had robots behind me, guards of some kind for sure coming up the elevator. And they would want to kill me once they realized I had no intention of going along with their cover up.

  The cover up. Maybe I should just go along with it. I remembered Bren’s last moments. How scared he had been. The confusion in his eyes. I couldn’t go along with it. For Bren. For everyone else, whether or not they realized that the New Chapter was based on a lie.

  A lie that covered up the truth about the Bug.

  I had to find out if I was right. Not just for everyone else, but for me. I couldn’t let them beat me, like they must have beaten anyone else who had tried to figure out what was going on before.

  The freaky robot had seen me only a minute or two ago. No way could human guards have reacted yet.

  If I called the elevator—I hit the button. I had to risk it; I couldn’t get this door open. Less than thirty seconds passed before I heard the elevator car approaching. A hum, then a few faint clicks, and the door slid open. I braced myself to jump anyone who might be in there. I even stumbled a step when the opening door revealed that the car was empty.

  Bug me. My heart hammered like a crazy carpenter or engineer. Within seconds, the door slid closed behind me and I felt myself moving down. It didn’t take long to get to S3. I remembered the long tunnel I’d seen stretching out from S4 on the schematics, but I couldn’t leave yet. I had to find out if I was right about the Bug and the knockout. I had to.

  I clung to the side of the car as the door slid open. No shouts, so I peered around the bank of buttons into the corridor that led to the labs. Nobody. Which made sense. Where would they expect me to go? Not for the first time in the last hour, I felt thankful that they hadn’t plastered Prime One with cameras. Their confidence that the people of New Frisko would obey without question was serving me well. They would have to search all over the building, although they probably had some way of monitoring the doors that opened. And the elevator. I had to expect that robots or guards could be right behind me.

  I stole another glance down the corridor outside the elevator, which was probably four meters wide and four meters tall. I had no trouble seeing due to the lights that had flickered to life when the elevator door opened. I slipped into the corridor and had a revelation just in time.

  I jerked back and stuck my body in the way of the closing elevator door, yanking off my zip. It took precious seconds, but I was sure this would be worth it. I dropped the zip in the path of the elevator door, stepped into the hallway, and held my breath. The door squeezed the zip against the slot where the door was supposed to seat, but it couldn’t close all the way and it bounced back the other direction. That might slow them down. I hadn’t seen any other elevators, although there had to be more, or at least some stairs.

  I exhaled and searched the hallway, calling back to mind the schematic I’d seen a bit earlier. That main lab should be down this hall and around the first right turn. I came to the door I was looking for. Big pale, green letters were plastered across it, proclaiming simply “LAB.” The door didn’t slide open.

  I stood there, mentally yelling at myself. Stupid. Of course the door would be locked; this part of Prime One was too important. And I had no way to open it.

  But I had to get in there.

  I kicked the door. It didn’t move. I kicked it again. The same result. “Stupid.” I stepped closer and looked closely at the door; it was just like the rest of the pocket doors all over New Frisko. A three-foot wide panel that slid into the wall when activated. A gray and black sensor pad was on the wall to the right of the door; that had to be how to get in. It probably only allowed access to a few people. Special people.

  Spam. People like the Prime Administrator. I reached for the pocket on my zip. The elevator! I ran back the way I’d come. My zip was steadily getting stuffed into the slot for the elevator door and there was a loud, high-pitched alarm sounding from inside the elevator. I took the place of my zip, grabbed it and found the small green card. It was the same color as the letters on the lab. I knew this would work.

  On my way back to LAB, I passed several other doors. I pulled up short at one. COMS. I didn’t waste time to question the idea, but scanned the Prime Administrator’s card and darted into the room. Yes! Communication technology clustered on tables throughout the room. I did the fastest circuit I could manage, trying to take in every bit of tek in sight. On the last table before I hit the back wall, I found what I was hoping for: EarComs. I grabbed a few and ran to the door.

  Seconds later, I flashed the Prime Administrator’s card in front of the sensor. The lab door made a sucking noise then sank in maybe a centimeter. A long second passed. The door slid into the wall.

  I stepped through and the door closed behind me. I stayed in that spot, assessing the room and stuffing my handful of EarComs into a pants pocket. I figured the room was maybe ten or fifteen meters on every dimension. Three wide silver doors with big levers for handles lined the wall to my left. A couple of shining plasteel tables ran lengthwise from a couple meters in front of me toward the far wall, dividing the room into three sections. These tables were empty. On the right-side wall extended another long table, this one holding several large monitors and a bunch of instruments that I didn’t recognize.

  The silver doors first. I pulled the first open and was assaulted by cold air. These were cooling units. A light flickered on at the ceiling of the room, illuminating maybe twenty tall metal cylinders, all of them with a bright red triangle on them. The cylinders came up to my chest and were a meter in diameter. Making sure the door wouldn’t close behind me, I went to the closest cylinder, peering at it. No labels, only the big red triangle. I pushed it carefully; it didn’t move. I tried tipping it—still no movement. It had to be a couple hundred kilograms.

  I felt around the top of the cylinder, discovering an almost non-existent seam that ran all the way around its diameter. So the cylinder had to open somehow. I ran my hands all over the thing, but couldn’t find a button or keypad or anything. Straightening from my crouch, I banged the top of the cylinder in frustration.

  It gave a little. A hiss followed and the top of the cylinder popped up, then rotated open, revealing hundreds, maybe even thousands, of vials. I’d seen these before; they were the knockout refills that the Admins used on our Papas every month. I glanced down at the red triangle on the cylinder again, dreading what that meant. The horrible, impossible idea I’d had in the Prime Administrator’s office danced back into my mind.

  I forced down the fear that wanted to stop me and reached into the cylinder, holding my breath. The vials weren’t glass. They felt like some kind of transparent plasteel. I pulled one out, realized I was holding my breath again, and carefully exhaled. The liquid inside the vial was slightly see-through, but was tinged green, the color of a new leaf. This was the knockout; I’d seen it every month of my life since I was brought out of the Nursery dome. Everyone knew that babies’ heart rates were way faster than normal grown people’s, and the knockout might not be safe for them, so small kids had to be kept in a really carefully controlled environment every minute of their lives until they were about four years old. My parents told me that they would visit me every day during that time, but it wasn’t like I could remember that.

  I didn’t get why a huge cylinder of the knockout had a symbol that looked like a danger warning on it. I wanted to act like I didn’t know the answer, but I couldn’t deny it. This had to be why I had lived and Bren had died.

  Gripping the vial carefully, I left the big cooler and headed for the wall of instruments. I needed to see if I could find proof. The video would be enough to make some people question the New Chapter’s preaching about the Bug, but there was no way for me to prove to anybody that the vial I held was more than just the knockout injection.
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  This vial was how the New Chapter kept us controlled. The knockout wasn’t saving us from anything.

  The first monitor came to life when I touched the space in front of it on the desk. A keyboard illuminated under my fingertips. After a few seconds of fiddling around, I realized that this computer wasn’t encrypted or secured. “Mr. Prime Robot-thing didn’t think anyone would get in here,” I said under my breath. “Bug him.” I tapped a little more, feeling like robots or other guards would burst in the room in a just a few heartbeats.

  Most of the directories that appeared on the monitor meant nothing to me. Scientific and technical words mostly. I scanned through them quickly. One directory was called “Development,” while the one under it was called “Eradication.” I hesitated for a moment, then selected “Development.”

  Before I could see the directory, noise exploded in my ear, so powerful and sudden I felt like my body was being squeezed, my head pressed down on my neck. I flinched, my heart rate instantly breaking 100. I spun, scouring the lab. Nothing new appeared. Gripping the vial in my right fingers, I cursed the cast on my arm again and ran to the door. Bright red lights flashed from inside the light fixtures built into the ceiling. I couldn’t tell where the noise was coming from, but every time it sounded, I felt like something sharp was cutting out a part of my brain.

  I tore toward the elevator, praying my zip was still there.

  I don’t know if I felt a change in the air flow or pressure, or detected a change in the pitch of the alarm, but I turned on instinct, just before bending to retrieve my zip. One of the doors down the hallway I hadn’t checked out burst open, spilling Enforsers in their dark uniforms and sculpted armor. They immediately raised their Keepers. I heard clicks as the ammunition clips rotated. I fell backward into the elevator in the same second the guns blasted, fire licking out the front of the barrels.

  Concrete dust and bits exploded from the wall I’d just been leaning on, splattering my face. Real bullets. Drek. Something hit my right eye, digging painfully. I grabbed my zip with my left hand, still gingerly holding the vial in my hand and praying the elevator door would close. And that it was bullet proof. I hit S4. That tunnel that led to the Dumps. The Enforsers and guards had to expect me to go up; they wouldn’t expect me to use the conveyor belt tunnel. I hoped.

  The elevator door slid closed, but some bullets slammed into the wall right next to my knee just before the door seated itself. I tucked my legs up, rolling frantically away, blinking fast to try to clear my eye.

  The elevator didn’t move. Had I missed the button? I glanced over, peering through my left eye. The S4 button flashed red. “Come on!” I flung myself at the button panel. “Move!” Red flashing. A small black sensor panel next to the S4 button. I dug in my pocket for the Prime Administrator’s card. Bullets hammered the outside of the doors. I had seconds before the Enforsers hit the button to open the door from their side.

  I flashed the card at the sensor. The button stopped flashing then glowed creamy white. A half-second, then the elevator jerked downward. My heart skipped in relief. “Please think I’m going up.” I knew this was stupid; they would know I was going down. Down was my only way out. But if this was the only elevator down, which it seemed like it had to be since the Enforsers had obviously come from stairs, maybe I could get ahead of them. I forced my racing thoughts to slow down, taking slow breaths. I rubbed my left eye; a little pebble of concrete came out on my fingers with a trace of red.

  I blinked. Good, no longer half-blind. The elevator car jerked gently and stopped. I had about two seconds before the door opened, during which I yanked my zip over my cast and got my other arm started.

  The door slid left. I poked my head out. Red lights spun on the walls, intermittently painting the walls of the brightly lit corridor that stretched left, right, and straight ahead. Conduits, pipes, air vents, and other things that I couldn’t identify plastered the walls and ceilings. I saw nobody, but the alarm was still sounding, and I quickly found the door that matched the stair door on the level up. They’d be coming through there. I mentally reviewed the schematic I’d seen, hoping I wasn’t remembering wrong, and darted out of the elevator, tearing up the hallway that led directly in front of me. I had about forty meters of hallway to cover before the hallway ended at a T. Halfway down the hall, over the alarm, I heard shouting behind me. I tossed a look over my left shoulder. They weren’t in sight yet. I poured on the speed and reached the T, turning left.

  This hallway stretched about thirty meters and had several entrances to rooms and other corridors. Running past lengths of conduit and pipes, breaker boxes, and one that said EMERGENCY POWER, I took the second hallway that led off to the right, wishing again that I could take this stupid cast off. Maybe it had been the crawl through the air duct, because I felt like I had hit a peak of agony in my right arm and that everything was downhill from there. It felt looser than it had in, well, a day.

  The hallway dead-ended at a blank, gray concrete wall. It looked as old as the rest of the walls; it couldn’t be some new addition left off the schematic. I took the vial from my sweaty right hand, rubbed that hand dry on my zip, and put the vial back in my hand, not wanting to take a chance on it breaking in one of my pockets. I spun back the way I’d come. I ran hard, turning down the first hallway I’d passed.

  The shouting grew louder, echoing and mixing with the physical volume of the alarm. I wished I could find that alarm and blow it up. Why had they made it so bugging loud?

  This hallway dead-ended too.

  “Drek, bug, fragging bug!” It was like one of those dreams where you’re trying to get somewhere, but your legs don’t move fast enough and it feels like you’re moving through transparent mud.

  I had to have missed something. There had to be a way to get into the conveyor belt tunnel.

  Back again to the main hallway. I poked my head out. Explosions over the alarm. Concrete chips splattered my face. Throwing myself back, I saw a group of Enforsers pouring down the hallway, right at me.

  Panic slammed my lungs into my throat. No. Not here. Not now. I scoured the main corridor. Where was that stupid tunnel? It had to be here.

  I spun again and ran down the branch I was in, feeling the Enforsers getting closer. With their Keepers. And real bullets. I wanted to tuck my shoulders up as I dashed toward the dead end. How would it feel to—I pushed the question away.

  Near the dead end, I found it. A door that blended into the concrete but was metal. “Don’t be locked.” I slammed into it and it gave way, swinging open and banging against a wall then bouncing back. I dodged it and shoved it closed with my foot, searching the bland, all-concrete passage for something to block or lock the door.

  The conveyor belt tunnel was lit by intermittent track lighting built into the ceiling, and that was enough to see that there was nothing going by on the conveyor belt. Which shouldn’t surprise me, since this was the end of it. I glanced down the hallway again; it ran straight for hundreds of meters. No matter how fast I ran, it would be easy for them to get me, and the conveyor belt was too low to the ground; I couldn’t use it for cover.

  I had no time. Maybe I could jam the door. I bent, yanking off my zip. There was a slight gap between bottom of the door and the floor. I shoved both sleeve cuffs through the gap, then stuffed the rest of the zip as deep into the crack as I could. This wasn’t going to work.

  I yanked at the door, kicking the zip at the same time. The door stopped after a few centimeters. I yanked harder, keeping the zip in place with my foot.

  The door jerked a little, then stopped. A gap of maybe two-tenths of a meter was left. This was not going to hold for long. I turned and ran, wishing I could break the lights above me. Of course, that wouldn’t help much either, since the Enforsers had to have night-vision goggles.

  I ran faster. The pounding alarm’s pressure in my head decreased as I tore down the passage. I fought the urge to look back the way I’d come. Just run. I moved it, glad nothing was comi
ng out of the regular holes in the walls of the tunnel. I didn’t need extra noise beyond the fading alarm and jouncing hum of the conveyor belt. It was too late at night, or early, really, for garbage to be coming down the chutes to the belt.

  Still running, I considered my next move. I had the vial, EarComs, and a theory, a good theory, but I needed proof. Sucking wind, I willed my legs to keep moving. They hurt and felt heavy. My lungs felt like they were being chewed on. I needed to stop. But I needed to not get shot.

  I felt myself slowing. This was completely insane. I didn’t know what to do even if I got proof. Was I going to single-handedly bring down the entire New Chapter?

  If I stopped and gave up, they might just take me in.

  Nope. Those were real bullets back there. They were done pretending they wanted my help. They had something to protect, and they thought I could damage or expose it. They thought I could do damage to it. Did the Enforsers know everything? I wished I could think about that, try to figure it out. No time.

  I forced my legs to go faster. I felt sure I was at 160 beats per minute. Maybe higher.

  I wasn’t done.

  I pushed myself harder, forcing my head to clear and fighting off the thought of a bullet hitting me in the back. My lungs hurt. My whole body hurt. I soaked it up. They were chasing me because they were bugging scared. Of me. Of what I might do to their control.

  They were scared of me.

  As I ran, a plan came to me, as did the sound of shouts echoing from behind me. The alarm had faded; this tunnel must have already led me out from under Prime One. How much farther to the Dumps? Would they be waiting for me?

  Maybe. But maybe I’d get lucky again, like I’d been with my zip. The thing must have held that door shut for a little while, because I never heard a gun fire while I ran. Maybe the spoke stuffed inside the zipper had saved the day again. I ran on, forced to slow down a little because my legs just couldn’t keep up the pace. But I kept moving.