When Darkness Reigns

by Preston L. Marshall

  “Six for disinfection,” the escort said.

  The old man's eyes turned on the speaker without moving the rest of his face. “Six?” he asked through the mask.

  “Yes, that's right.”

  “This way,” the old man said standing up from behind his desk.

  The old man stood almost perfectly straight as he led them down another hallway left of the desk. The old man's body was thin, but his arms were sinewy with muscle.

  The walls inside the infirmary were all spotlessly white and sterile. Every few yards were seams in the wall, but other than that they were naked and uninviting. A few yard back from the desk they came to a door the same color as the walls. The door had a window at the top with a sliding panel to cover it and a small hatch at the bottom. It looked like a door for an insane asylum, not a hospital. The old man fished a ring of thick iron keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door. Once the old man opened it, Radcliff stepped through. As soon as he was through, the old man slammed the door and twisted the key. There was a heavy clang. It sounded like the next foot of the wall on the right side of the door was the locking mechanism.

  Lumar was starting to get nervous. He couldn't fathom a reason why they would need to put them in someplace like that and use locks that strong. Maybe they'd done something wrong, but Wallace, Jesse, and Ford seemed unphased. It must have been standard procedure, but it seemed like overkill for a routine check-up. He wasn't looking forward to what was going to happen in his room.

  They continued down the hall. The old man opened one door after another. Wallace took a room next, then Jesse, Ford, and finally Nate. Lumar could only see the back of Nate's head the whole way, but he had a feeling Nate was feeling the same way he was. When it came Nate's turn to take a room he turned and glanced back at Lumar. Nate’s eyes were wide with fear. Lumar tried to reach out to him with his hand, but the old man slammed the door between them before he could get to him.

  “Watch the hands,” the old man growled. “You get them caught in that lock, it'll be so mangled we'll have to take the arm.”

  Then it was just Lumar, the guards, and the old man. They went past several doors without stopping. Lumar didn't know what that meant, but the further back they went the warmer it seemed to be getting in the hallway. He felt his back starting to sweat. They were nearing the end of the hallway. At the end the hall turned to the right. Around that corner Lumar could see a faint orange glow, the only color this whole area had. It was like there was a fire burning around the corner. They kept moving closer and closer to the turn. Lumar was starting to think they were going to take him to the fire, but just before they reached the corner the old man fished out his keys again and opened up the last door in the hallway for him.

  Lumar hesitated. He turned to see if he could determine the source of the light and heat coming from down the hallway, but all he could see was orange coming from somewhere beyond his line of sight. The old man's hand found his back and started pushing him through the door. The moment he was clear of the mental patient door the old man slammed it. The clanging metal sound of the locking mechanisms echoed off the walls of the room. It felt like it was banging on his eardrums. He could barely see from the intensity of the sound, but in a moment it ended and he was able to see again.

  The walls were padded just like Lumar expected, but beyond that the room looked like an ordinary doctor's office. Everything was still blindingly white on white. There was a recessed light in the ceiling that cast most of its light straight down on the center of the room where a hospital bed sat. There was a thin sheet of paper pulled across the leather face of the bed, just like in a normal examination room. There was a set of locked cabinets with a sink below them in the back left corner. There were a couple of chairs on the wall between the door and the cabinets. On the right side was a desk with a television set on it and a low-backed living room chair in front of it.

  All told it was a little more inviting than Lumar had been expecting. With everything being sterile white it was a bit of an eyesore, but the chair in front of the T.V. looked comfortable and if they had bothered to put a T.V. set in the room they must have expected him to watch something on it.

  He stopped by the sink and drank some water out of it before he sat down. It was ice cold and cleaner than any of the water Lumar had ever produced at the plant. He hated that he was able to intelligently admire the quality of water. It was a stupid thing to be an expert in, but this water had to have been melted snow from the mountains. He cupped his hands under the water and drank four swallows before shaking off his hands and dropping himself into the chair by the T.V.

  There wasn't a remote, but Lumar could reach the buttons on the front if he leaned forward. He turned on the television and held down the up channel button to see what his options were for channels. There were only three. Lumar frowned. He was used to having ten at home. His options were: the news, a re-run of a thirty-year-old sitcom, and one of those “see how it's made” shows on his favorite topic: water purification. He settled for the news. A pair of newscasters was talking about Sangent.

  “...Sangent City, Kansas earlier today. The level of damage is unbelievable here on the ground Meg,” the male reporter said. “The city was nearly completely destroyed.”

  “On the ground?” Lumar asked aloud.

  The news screen showed a woman, Meg, in the studio on one side of the screen with the male reporter standing in the middle of a debris filled stretch of road on the other side.

  The male reporter continued: “A rapid response team from Guardridge just arrived on the scene about half an hour ago. The official statement from General Derricks reported that the enemy retreated when the response team aboard the Eagle Class warship Shadow Hammer arrived on the scene.”

  Lumar didn't have to look at the clock on the news feed to know that it was getting close to noon. His stomach was reminding him to have lunch soon. They must have arrived over two hours ago by the looks of things. Shadow Hammer took off before they even landed. The warship must have arrived before the soldiers even let them disembark from the hovertruck. It didn't even take an hour in that little clunker and that warship was hauling from the moment it took off. They'd probably been able to make the trip in thirty minutes, maybe less.

  It seemed like a weird thing for the news people to be lying about. It just didn’t make any sense. The only people that it could possibly be affecting where the Lumar and the other survivors. It didn't sound right to him that the Sarsaul would retreat from just one warship showing up either. Those aliens were charging into machinegun fire on foot just to get a chance at killing them. Something that would do that wouldn't run away from anything. It was more likely that the hour or so that the news people weren't talking about was spent fighting off whatever Sarsaul were still there. If the Sarsaul weren't there when the Shadow Hammer arrived, it was probably just that everyone in the city was dead.

  “Fortunately,” Meg said, “General Derricks has reported that there were survivors and several military personnel and other strategic assets were recovered.”

  Lumar took another look at the backdrop that the male reporter was standing in front of. There was a blue street sign behind him. Lumar had never seen a blue street sign in Sangent before. All of theirs were green or black and white. The news crew wasn't even in Sangent. That really didn't surprise Lumar actually. The whole city was on fire when they left. The scene the reporter was in front of was sunny and clear. There was no smoke or fire casting its light over him. He even saw sprigs of grass growing up through the cracked cement in the background.

  Lumar turned off the television. On the one hand, he didn't honestly expect the news to be on the scene. The only way that could have happened was if Shadow Hammer took them with them, but that didn't make any sense. He had a feeling the news team was going to spin the whole thing into some great victory after the troops finally arrived on the scene. He didn't feel like hearing anything about that right now. The news wasn’t going to be reli
able for truthful information. This General Derricks probably called someone up and had them air this story in a studio somewhere.

  Lumar just hoped that Shadow Hammer had been able to rescue some of the people in town. Lumar wondered what they meant by strategic assets. It seemed like a weird thing to bother to mention when so many people lost their lives. He still feared that he and the people with them in the hovertruck were the only survivors. He wished the news people were actually there, maybe they could show some footage of people that might have gotten rescued.

  Lumar's mind wandered to another grim thought. Maybe Shadow Hammer had just bombed flat what was left of the city without bothering to stop and look for survivors. Lumar's days of model building and Nate's juvenile storm of trivial facts about the warship's payload came flooding to mind. Leveling a small city like Sangent would have only taken Shadow Hammer half an hour.

  Lumar heard they key slam against the back of the lock. His eyes closed and his hands covered his ears while the echoes of the mechanisms devoured him with their sound. He felt big strong hands grab him under the arms. He saw the light hanging over his head and felt the paper on the bed crunch against his back. There were two men in dark blue scrubs strapping his arms and legs to the bed. There was another smaller man in the room with a syringe in his hand. Lumar pulled his arms and legs against the restraints, but the big men held him down while the syringe plunged into his neck. Lumar screamed, but the sound died out a moment after it escaped. Lumar could feel his throat growing to weak. His voice squeaked out a weak whine. The world grew blurry and his eyes failed to stay open. The darkness swallowed him.

  Chapter Six

  The General's fingers covered his mouth. His nose rested on the points of his index fingers. His eyes were locked on the screen of the folder thin tablet on his desk. He was expecting, rather dreading, a call he knew would come at any moment. Sangent was under his jurisdiction. Even though he'd known nothing of the attack until after Fouste deployed his warship, he knew Helms would find some way to blame him for it.

  He was carefully calculating his defense and the likelihood of the President buying his excuses. His tabulations gave him confidence that he wouldn't lose his post, but he expected a lot of paperwork and more than likely some new personnel transferred in to keep a closer eye on him. Helms had a way of picking the most irritating bureaucratic minions to chisel away at even the most seasoned officer's sanity. Derricks was also contemplating ways to remove such oversight as quickly as possible. Anything could happen on an old battlefield. Sangent probably had a few places he could lose a bureaucrat.

  The screen came to life in front of his eyes. Intrigue washed over him. It wasn't the call he was waiting for, but what one he might have wished for. He tapped the answer button. It was video chat. Wispy hair and wrinkles appeared above a paper mask.

  “Sir,” Doyle, the ancient caretaker of the decontamination wing greeted him, “I found something I need you to come see.”

  “Was one of the soldiers compromised? You don't need to call me for that. Which one?” He knew who'd been in the ship that escaped Sangent. There was one name he would have liked to hear.

  “It's not that sir,” the old man said through his mask. “I've never in all my years seen anything like this. I don't even know how to explain it.”

  “Your innuendo is grating on my nerves,” Derricks growled even though he was actually curious to see what the old man found. “Is there something wrong with one of your patients?”

  “Just come down here. I'll tell you more when you get here. I don't want anything officially documented 'til I know what I've found.”

  “Fine,” Derricks replied.

  He didn't much mind getting away from the next call. It amused him to make the President have to leave a voicemail. Hopefully Doyle had something good. If it was good maybe it would be enough to turn the oncoming tide of reprimand.

  Derricks punched the hang up button with his right index finger and stood up from behind his desk. His feet took him along the familiar path to the elevator and down to the level where Doyle was waiting for him. Derricks had walked this path many times. Sometimes when someone became compromised he was required by protocol to oversee the incinerations that followed. Usually it was because the person in question was of a higher rank than Doyle, who was only a Captain. Occasionally it was because Doyle was unwilling to be the trigger man for someone's death. Usually it was someone he'd served with in the past, once or twice it was one of those old friend's children. Once it had been a beautiful woman. The old man just couldn't put her down. Doyle's unwillingness to execute persons that represented that great of a security risk was a trait that Derricks loathed, but he knew how hard it was to get someone to take a job like that. Doyle had been doing it for nearly twenty years now. Derricks had no interest in finding someone else to take over that job, so as long as the old man did what he was told Derricks could swallow his distaste of the old man's weakness.

  Doyle met him at the desk inside the glass cage of his station.

  “This better be good,” the General said.

  “I'm sorry for bothering you. It's not for what it usually is. This way.”

  They walked together to the back left corner of the wing. They past several locked doors. Derricks knew who the six people from Sangent were. Sergeant First Class Radcliff Miller, Sergeant Daniel Ford, Private First Class Wallace Wilkinson, Private First Class Jessica Stephens, and a pair of kids that took up arms in the city's defense: A Nathaniel Solaris and a Lumar Lee. He was only particularly interested in one of these people and hoped that's who they were visiting.

  Derricks frowned with disappointment as Doyle showed him his patient. It was Lumar Lee, a civilian. Doyle had just about all of his toys in the room cluttering up the floor: three wheeled tables covered in monitoring equipment, a portable x-ray and MRI machine, every surgeon's tool Derricks had ever seen before, and one of his burly male nurses to help him with all of it. There was barely enough room for Derricks and Doyle to enter the room.

  “Look at this!” Doyle said handing the General an x-ray picture.

  It was a slightly blurred, full-body image with a skeleton dominating most of the space. Around the bones was the thin outline where the man's flesh ended or at least that's what it looked like at first. Looking a little closer there was another faint outline around him. There were some specks around the shape of the body too like the film had been scratched up, but there was no sign that Doyle had been rough with the print.

  “This is from this man?” Derricks asked.

  The other outline almost looked like it belonged to a bigger man. This Lumar Lee was too thin for an outline like that around his bones.

  “Yes sir,” Doyle replied. “I just took it before I called you. Have you ever seen anything like this? It's almost like there's something wrapped around him that the x-rays are bouncing off. Look at how it's slightly out of focus. I took three pictures to make sure I took a good image, but it was the same in the others too.”

  Derricks had seen something like this once before, a long time ago. His right hand went to his face. His thumb cradled his jaw while his index finger ran the length of his lips. He said nothing for a long time. This would probably spare him the reprimand, but perhaps Helms would be a little too interested in this little discovery.

  “Sir?” Doyle asked.

  “What you've found here doesn't leave this room,” Derricks ordered. “Are you two the only ones that know about this?”

  “Yes,” Doyle said, “just me and my assistant here.”

  The nurse nodded silent acknowledgment of the order.

  “What have we found here though sir? What should we do with him?”

  “It'd be better for me if you didn't know any more than you do now,” Derricks said. “And we're not going to do anything with him. Release him as soon as the drugs are out of his system. You've kept him too long already. His companions are probably getting suspicious. Just make sure you keep him here. Tel
l him whatever he needs to hear to stay on at Guardridge. You understand?”

  “Yes sir,” Doyle replied. “What about the other civilian? Nathan Solaris? I haven't released him yet either.”

  “He was the engineer at Logan that developed the upgraded OS and synthetic muscle prototypes for the Crusader I understand?”

  “That's what the file said,” Doyle replied.

  “We recovered the prototype. We don't need the designer. Use the connection between the two civilians to make them both stay. I'm sure they'll want to stay together. I'll leave the how to you.”

  With that the General turned to leave the room. He contemplated how he should proceed with this information as his legs followed the path back to his office. He wondered if Radcliff knew what he'd found.

  “Of course he did,” the General said to himself. “Why else would he save this one person over anyone else?”

  Regardless, he'd be sure to keep a close eye on this Lumar Lee in the days to come.

  Chapter Seven

  When Nate came to, the old man with the surgical mask was towering over him with a tablet in hand. He felt a sudden breeze blow through the hospital gown he was now wearing as the old man moved near him. The last thing he remembered was being in his skinsuit. Nate's head was a little fuzzy. All he was sure of was that the old man was being awfully pushy with the tablet.

  “I need you to sign this,” the old man said.

  “Why?” Nate asked.

  “You've been drafted,” the old man answered, “unless you'd refuse to serve your country?”

  “What? What are you talking about? I wouldn't...”

  “Then sign,” the old man said pushing the tablet into Nate's chest.

  Nate's head swam as he sat up. The sedatives were still raging through his system. He took hold of the tablet and the stylus attached by a thin plastic cord. He scribbled the poorest signature he'd ever made across the digital pages, swiping through them one by one. His fingers still felt a little numb and the stylus felt like it was wiggling in his fingers, but he made his mark despite the clumsiness of his hands.