Perception Fault

by James Axler

  The not-so-subtle message wasn’t lost on Ryan, either, and he shrugged. There was nothing in the deal he’d made with each leader that said he had to keep quiet about either of them. “I can tell you what I know about both of them, which isn’t much.” He laid out what he had discovered about both sides—Carrington and his vision of a free city, and Tellen leading his ragtag but well-armed army of revolution. He talked about what he had seen in Denver, both the good and the bad, and even speculated about where the rebuilt city’s power was coming from. The only thing he didn’t mention was that the people of the Bunker had Carrington’s daughter among their guests. He didn’t want them to have that much leverage.

  When he had finished, he leaned back in the bed and fixed Carr with his steady stare. “Okay, I’ve given you about all I care to at the moment. Now take us to our friends.”

  “Fair enough, Mr. Cawdor. After all, I’m sure there will be plenty of time to talk later. Commander Waltrop, if you would escort both of these men to their friends so they can catch up.”

  “Certainly, sir. Mr. Cawdor, Mr. Dix.” Waltrop gestured at the door, indicating both men should precede him through the exit.

  As J.B. fell in step beside him, and they passed through the thick door, he muttered out of the side of his mouth, “That what you call mouths shut and eyes open?”

  “When the other side already knows you’re slinging bullshit, throwing more usually doesn’t help.”

  J.B. accepted the Trader’s wisdom with a nod. “So what are we doing?”

  “Going along, for now.” This was the third time Ryan had been surprised by a potential adversary, and it was a feeling he liked less and less every time it happened. Also, he needed to learn more about this place before he formulated any kind of plan, and what he had seen so far—the formidable security, the incredibly high level of tech—hadn’t filled him with confidence regarding their ability to escape. But first things first. He wanted to see that the rest of his group was unharmed, and find out if they could add anything to what he’d seen so far.

  Once in the corridor, Ryan was unsurprised to find two other well-muscled sec men in armor and carrying submachine guns flanking the entrance to their room. The two men fell into step a pace behind and to each side of each man, while Waltrop stayed a few paces away, outside easy reach.

  “Just follow the blue line, gentlemen, and it will take you to your destination.”

  Ryan looked down to see a glowing blue line on the floor. He trailed it through the spotless white hallways, broken only by several more of the large airlock doors. They passed medical staff intent on their own duties, pushing small carts laden with equipment of reading some kind of electronic touch pads, every few seconds. The line led to an elevator, which opened when Ryan pushed the button. They entered, and saw that the button for one floor was also glowing blue. “I assume this is the one.”

  “Correct.”

  Ryan pushed it, and found he could barely tell that the elevator was moving. A few seconds later, the double doors opened, and he faced a nearly identical hallway, this one carpeted, with walls painted a soothing pale beige. The doors were more normal, as well, opening on hinges instead of the complicated airlocks in the hospital wing. The blue line led to two doors halfway down the corridor, one on either side of the hall.

  “Krysty Wroth and Mildred Wyeth are in the room to the left, and Jak Lauren and Theophilus Tanner are in the room to the right.”

  “Where are Caddeus and Rachel?” Ryan asked.

  “They are being held in a separate facility,” was the only reply.

  Ryan shrugged. That was something they would deal with when the time came, if possible. He went to the left door and waited for Waltrop, who spoke into a small earpiece. After a moment, the door clicked open, revealing the two women inside.

  “Ryan!” Krysty rose to her feet in a single fluid motion, but before she could reach him, he stepped aside to reveal the men in the doorway, holding his hand up in front of him, out of their sight, to warn her from showing any obvious affection for him.

  “Good to see you, Krysty.”

  Mildred had managed to repress her similar reaction upon seeing J.B., and had sat on the bed again, her right hand twisting the bedclothes the only sign of her nervousness.

  “You folks probably want to talk, so we’ll leave you alone for now.”

  “Any chance we can see Jak and Doc, as well?”

  “The administrators are not comfortable with letting all of you congregate in one place at the moment. Perhaps something can be arranged later.”

  “At the very least, can you get Jak outside for a bit? The kid gets a little stir-crazy if he’s confined for too long.” Ryan caught the sec man’s gaze and held it with his own. “Something like that might be remembered later on.”

  Waltrop’s expression didn’t change one bit. “I’ll see if anything can be done.” He let the door close in front of him, his eyes never leaving Ryan.

  Krysty waited until the door closed, then came up on Ryan fast, pushing him into the corner next to the door underneath the camera’s ever-watching eye. Her arms wrapped around him as she kissed him long and hard, then buried her face in the juncture of his chest and neck. Her whispered words carried up to his ear. “Saw you out on the ground when J.B. pulled you out of the tunnel, with blood everywhere, and your face so pale… I thought I’d lost you for good.”

  Ryan took her chin and lifted her face so he could stare into those emerald-green eyes, thinking like as not that he might drown in their depths someday, and that it would be a damn fine way to go. “I’m still here, walking and talking, so don’t you go putting me in the ground just yet.”

  Near the other bed, J.B. and Mildred had enjoyed their own quiet reunion, and now Mildred turned back to the other two. “You see Doc or Jak yet?”

  “No, but I spoke to both of them by walkie-talkie yesterday. Jak’s getting a bit wild, so I’m trying to get him outside for a while before he does something permanently bad to someone in here. How about Caddeus or Rachel?”

  Mildred shook her head. “Nope, haven’t seen hide nor hair of either since we arrived. From what I gather, she’s also been kind of a handful during her stay here.”

  Ryan frowned. “Yeah, that’s what I heard, too. I assume you two haven’t tried anything yet.”

  “No, and neither have they—other than getting the distinct feeling that the guys around here haven’t seen a woman in a while, we’ve been treated very well.” Krysty’s eyebrows narrowed. “Any idea what they plan to do with us?”

  Ryan shrugged as he exchanged a puzzled glance with J.B. “That’s the thing. We’re not quite sure yet. Why don’t you tell us what happened while we were in the caves first.”

  “Not that much to tell.” Krysty recounted their encounter with the Native Americans, and how Jak’s inspired driving had helped them fight off the warriors. “Just when we were done and coming back to the ambush hole, we saw this big old flying machine drop out of the sky in front of us. It was either stop or crash into it, so we chose the former. As soon as we come to a stop, these other vehicles seemed to come out of nowhere and surround us—and I don’t mean they drove up to us, they appeared out of nowhere, like they had been invisible and decided to appear around us. They were also armed with things we haven’t seen in a long time—like the stuff we saw at Crater Lake, only theirs worked a lot better.”

  Ryan nodded as he listened, remembering the isolated compound of insane whitecoats that had been working to finish the job skydark had begun all those years ago. They had put an end to the whitecoats’ madness.

  Mildred broke in. “They chased off the rest of the riders and shot them out of their saddles. The vehicle-mounted weapons had to be some kind of laser—just point and shoot, a blink of light flashed, and people were dying left and right.”

  Ryan held up his hand to stop her. “You don’t think these guys are linked with Major Burroughs and his people, do you?”

  Krysty shook her hea
d. “Not from what we’ve seen. This seems to be a self-contained facility with no contact with anywhere else—at least, not that we know of. Anyway, don’t you think if they’d told Burroughs they had us, he’d be making tracks up here?”

  Ryan conceded the point. They’d left Burroughs in a pretty high state the last time their paths had crossed. No doubt he’d love to get his hands on them again. “Yeah.”

  Krysty continued, “Anyway, everything we saw was a pretty strong inducement to surrender when they asked, and it’s not like we had much of a choice. Jak was for trying to fight our way out, but the cooler heads prevailed.”

  Mildred sat on the bed now as she warmed to their tale. “All of the men were dressed in those armored enviro-suits like the ones they used when we were in quarantine, only bulkier. They could probably stop a rifle bullet, maybe even a .30-caliber shell. They asked us if we were allied with the men in the vehicles near the city, and Krysty and I just looked at each other, ’cause neither of us knew what the hell they were talking about.”

  “So one of them shows us a picture on a small monitor of a few mil wags taken from an aerial position. It seems either Carrington or Tellen sent another convoy to shadow us and see exactly what we would find out here. We both say—”

  “That we’ve never seen them before in our lives. The man nods and tells us to keep watching the monitor. The picture continues for a few moments, then boom! The group is vaporized, just like that.” Mildred snapped her fingers. “That’s why they wanted us to keep watching. They were looking for any kind of reaction to those guys getting killed. Damn, I’m getting slow in my old age.”

  Krysty grinned at the other woman’s flash of insight. “There’s a whole lot about these people we don’t understand. We see the fireball in the distance, and a second later, we hear the report of the bomb they used. These people have some heavy-duty tech. That came from what they called a remote-piloted drone vehicle, if I heard them correctly.”

  “And their medical equipment, too… Ryan, do you mind if I look at that shoulder?” At his nod, Mildred waved him over. “Sit on the bed, please. It’s easier to examine their work.” He did so, and unzipped his jumpsuit enough so she could examine his healed injuries. “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t believe it. I’d have thought you’d be on your back for at least four to six weeks, maybe even immobilized in an upper-body cast while your bone knit back together. Instead, you were out how long?”

  “J.B., you said I was out two days, then another one in the bed—it wasn’t fun, let me tell you—and this morning they let me out of the frame that had been holding me in place and said I could walk around.”

  “And you feel fine?”

  Ryan raised both arms above his head, then lowered them, then stretched them both out to either side. “Occasional twinge now and then, but otherwise I feel fine.”

  “That’s unbelievable, is what it is. Okay, so they have incredible weaponry and medical tech that’s beyond anything we know. Anything else we’ve found out about them?”

  “Yeah.” Ryan motioned everyone closer around him. “Apparently, they need women.” He detailed the encounter he’d had in the middle of the night with the mysterious person who had warned him about the whitecoats and their true goals.

  “Did you believe him?” Krysty asked when he’d finished.

  “I’m not sure. The administrator isn’t coming off like a guy who’s keeping us prisoner so they can impregnate both of you and Rachel, although mebbe he’s trying to get on our good side to lull us into a false sense of security.”

  “Doubtful,” J.B. chimed in. “If that was the case, why heal us? Could have chilled us, tossed our bodies in the desert and had you women all to themselves.”

  “Exactly. They want us alive for a reason. I’m just not sure what that is right now.”

  “So what do we do?” Mildred asked.

  Ryan stroked his chin as he thought about what could happen next. “No doubt Administrator Carr took what I told him about Denver, Carrington and Tellen to the rest of his buddies, and they’re figuring out what to do with this information. Once they’ve chewed it over for a while, I figure they’ll probably come back to us and inform us if and how we fit into their plans. If we do fit in somehow, that doesn’t involve being kept here for some kind of experimentation, then we’ll go along until we decide otherwise. If not, then we’ve got to figure out a way out of here, which isn’t going to be easy from what we’ve seen so far.”

  “Yeah,” J.B. said, “the sec here is some of the best I’ve ever seen, almost airtight, with well-trained men armed and ready at a moment’s notice.” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Our only choice may be allying with this rebel group, assuming it actually exists, and using its force to fight our way out.”

  Ryan frowned. “Let’s see if it actually comes to that first. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Carr seems to be on the level, and until he makes a move, I don’t see a lot we can do except keep our ears and eyes open and mouths shut. Try to find out as much as you can about the base and the people in it.

  “We don’t have much choice. They’ve had the upper hand from the start, stripping us of our gear and keeping us separated so we can’t plan. They know what they’re doing. Carr and Waltrop know we won’t leave here, assuming we could find our way out of this maze in the first place, without the others. The main thing we have to do right now is to keep them from figuring out who Rachel is. If they learn that, all the leverage goes to them.” Ryan stretched again and headed to the door. “Let’s see if I can talk to Doc and Jak, then we’ll try to get an audience with the administrator.”

  As he finished talking, the door opened, and Waltrop appeared in the entryway. “Mr. Cawdor, Administrator Carr would like a word with you—privately.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Ryan rose slowly off the bed, squeezing Krysty’s hand as he did. “Will anything be done about Jak?”

  “The best I could arrange was to let your friends see him, in hopes of calming him down. An escort is ready to take them to him, so if you would accompany me…”

  “What about the other two members of our group— Rachel and Sergeant Caddeus?” Mildred interrupted. “We’d like to see them, as well.”

  “I cannot speak to that right now, but perhaps after you talk with Administrator Carr and the others, something can be arranged.”

  That sounded familiar—the exchange of a favor for a favor. Behind his back, Ryan released Krysty’s hand, then gave everyone the signal to stay alert, but not to try anything against their captors until he returned. The understanding was that the rest of the group would give him twenty-four hours, then, if he didn’t come back in that time, they were to try to escape any way they could. If they could find him along the way, great, but they all knew they weren’t supposed to make any effort that would put them in danger. Ryan hoped it wouldn’t come to that. They had all been through so much together that to lose anyone would be like losing his own limb.

  “Lead the way.” He followed Waltrop into the corridor, where the sec man motioned for him to walk in front. “Any progress on finding out who broke into my room last night?”

  Waltrop grunted. “Not yet.”

  Ryan glanced at the sec man out of the corner of his eye. “Whoever it was had to have a pretty high sec clearance to get inside. My jack’s on one of the men in your department.”

  “Plenty of doctors in the wing with access, as well. Don’t worry about it, we’ll find out who’s responsible soon enough.”

  Ryan considered upping his interrogation in the elevator, but decided against it. Waltrop could stonewall him all day, and if the sec leader wasn’t part of the rebel group, saying anything about it would just put him on guard.

  They walked down the corridor to the elevator. Ryan tried to figure out if they were ascending or descending, but the metal box traveled so smoothly that he couldn’t tell. After a thirty-count, the elevator stopped and the doors slid open, revealing another h
allway, this one featureless except for the lone door at the other end.

  “Only one way to go.”

  Ryan twitched his shoulders, then his biceps, then his wrists and hands, listening all the while for the telltale sound of Waltrop’s blaster clearing its holster. This would be the perfect spot for an execution, but he wasn’t about to give the other man the satisfaction, or the chance. When he checked the sec man out of the corner of his eye again, he saw him relaxed and walking a pace back, his arms loose at his sides.

  This whole thing just gets weirder and weirder, he thought as they reached the door, which slid open when he was a step away. The room inside was brightly lit and held a long table at the far end, with places for six men sitting behind it. Five of those places were occupied, with Dr. Agathem and Administrator Carr in two seats, next to three men Ryan didn’t recognize. Upon his entry, the murmur of conversation between the men died away.

  Waltrop passed Ryan, walked over to the sixth seat and sat down. Carr closed a manila folder in front of him and regarded Ryan with that same scrutinizing, magnified stare. “Mr. Cawdor, thank you for joining us. No doubt you’re wondering why I’ve asked you here.”

  “It crossed my mind.” Ryan noticed the empty chair in front of the table, and sat in it.

  “Let me introduce the rest of the administrators who oversee the Bunker. You already know Dr. Agathem and Commander Waltrop. The man to my far right is Kenneth Galbrait, head of research and development, the man next to him is Arnold Mayweather, chief of internal operations, and the man on my far left is Charles Kilenny, head of agriculture and food production.”

  Ryan eyed the last man, a tall, thin redhead with a prominent Adam’s apple. “Should have a word with you. Your menu needs some work.”

  “We do the best we can with what we have, Mr. Cawdor,” Kilenny replied. “Although I would be open to hearing any suggestions you may have on the matter.” His tone straddled the line between subtle sarcasm and outright dismissal, but Ryan let it go. That wasn’t why he was here. Instead, he focused on Carr as the small man ended the subtle hostility simply by clearing his throat.