by N. P. Martin
“Dick,” Frank said as he walked out of the factory through the front doors. Michelle was standing outside waiting on him. She still seemed pissed at him. He couldn’t blame her.
“Ready to do your duty now?” she asked.
“I’m ready, yes.”
“Good. I’ll try to teleport us to the Facility.” She walked over and grabbed his arm.
“Wait,” he said, shaking loose from her strong grip. “Not so fast. We need a plan before we go storming in there, not to mention reinforcements. Don’t let your anger affect your judgment.”
Really, Frank? That’s just hilarious, you talking about clouded judgment, the man who neglects his duties to go on vanity missions.
Michelle’s face hardened even more than it already was. “How much time are we going to waste? We’re probably too late as it is.”
“Too late for what, Michelle? We don’t even know what we’re up against. Do you?”
“Of course. Leland and that demon Tolloch. They are both behind all this madness.”
“Well, let’s hope it’s that simple then, though in my experience, these things never are. There’s always more to the story.”
“Which is why we have to get in there and find out what the rest of the story is.”
Her youthful zeal and enthusiasm wasn’t exactly infectious to Frank. It just made him crave a drink or three. “Look, I agree with you. But we need weapons and back up, like I said.”
“I can get us weapons when we get inside the Facility,” she said. “And it’s probably best that we go in alone. More people will attract more attention, making it harder to move through the Facility.”
Maybe she was right, he thought. He could have called Eva and Sam, but he had already come close to getting them both killed the last time they tried to infiltrate the Facility. Despite knowing Eva would be pissed when she found out he made a move without telling her, he decided to go along with Michelle’s idea of just the two of them going in alone. He didn’t like the idea of having any more deaths on his conscience. “Fine,” he said finally. “We’ll do it your way. We’ll go in alone.”
You’re making a mistake, Frank. This will end badly.
“Doesn’t it always?”
“What?” Michelle said, frowning at him.
He shook his head. “Nothing. Thinking aloud. Beam us up, Scotty.”
Michelle’s frown deepened. “You’re really confusing me, you know.”
“Just teleport us to the Facility.”
Michelle didn’t teleport them straight to the Facility, but instead to a street about a block away from the place. After they landed, she let go of Frank’s arm, turned and vomited onto the sidewalk. “Travel sickness?” Frank asked.
Michelle wiped a hand across her mouth. “Using some of these new powers takes its toll on you sometimes,” she said. “You should see when I try telekinesis. My ears bleed.”
He looked around. “Why are we so far from the Facility? Your aim still off?”
“My aim is fine, actually. Follow me.”
Frank followed Michelle as she walked up the street, towards the old public library building it seemed. “Is there a reason why we couldn’t just have teleported into the Facility direct?”
“There is,” Michelle said. “The protective force field surrounding the whole Temple and Facility. You know about that, surely?”
“Yeah. I just thought you might be able to bypass it as you aren’t a demon.”
“No. Anything or anyone that tries will be vaporized.”
“Good thing we didn’t then.”
Michelle turned up the alleyway alongside the library building. The alley was narrow, with just a few dumpsters in it. Just as Frank turned into the alley with her, he stopped suddenly. “What?” Michelle asked.
“The silence,” he said.
Michelle frowned, but listened for a moment. “Why so quiet all of a sudden?”
“The streets seem empty.”
“Maybe everyone’s locked themselves behind closed doors. Wouldn’t you if you were a human?”
“I guess. Still seems weird though. Where are all the supernaturals then?”
Michelle shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“This is fucked up, I tell you. We need to get into the Facility, find out what’s happening here. Now.”
“This way.” Michelle moved up the alleyway. As Frank followed her, he thought about calling Eva, to see if she was alright. He decided against it though when he knew he would have to lie about what he was doing. Wherever she was, he knew she would be alright anyway. She was Eva, after all. “Here.”
They were standing over a manhole cover at the top of the alley. “The sewers?” he said.
“They’ll lead us right to an entrance near the center of the Facility,” Michelle said as she bent down and pried the lid up with her knife before pulling the heavy metal cover aside. “Once we get there, I should be able to get us to one of the kit rooms where we can get weapons.”
“Sounds good, but how are we going to avoid running into anyone? Knowing Leland, he would have wired the whole Facility off about us. Branded us traitors to be killed on site.”
“Then we do what we have to do,” Michelle said with the same conviction once possessed by her dead father. “We take down anyone who tries to get in our way.”
“And you’re okay with killing your own kind?” Frank remembered doing guard duty at the Facility himself once. It was part of the training, though he could never see the point. No doubt Michelle had done it also.
“Of course not, but what choice do we have? Besides, not everyone in there agrees with what Leland is doing. They might help us.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
“Leland and that demon killed my father,” she said. “I don’t intend to let them away with that.”
“Glad to hear it.” He motioned towards the dark hole in the ground. “Lead the way.”
The sewers were as you would expect—dark, cavernous, odorous—and Frank was more familiar with them than he would have liked. More than a few times he had chased some foul creature down into the sewers as it tried to escape from him. Maybe they thought going underground would be safe for them, like Hell. Whatever the reason, none of the creatures made it out of the sewers again by the time he was finished with them.
Michelle led the way, a beam of grace coming out of her hand, cutting through the darkness of the tunnels. “We should reach the Facility in about twenty minutes,” she said.
“How’d you find out about this entrance we’re heading too?” he asked.
Michelle’s combat boots splashed through the shallow water of the central channel as she walked, her blonde ponytail swinging across her back. “As part of Leland’s security team, I had to know about all the secret ways in and out of the Facility, in case we ever had to get out in a hurry.”
“Get Leland out you mean?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure there are other ways he didn’t tell us about though.”
“I’d bet the bank on that,” Frank said, kicking a rat out of his way that refused to move when he walked up to it. “Secrets and lies are Leland’s stock and trade. Always have been for as long as I’ve known him.”
They turned right up a narrower tunnel which then took them out into some kind of platform area where three huge pipes stuck out of the wall, water gushing out of each of them into a central channel. Michelle started walking along a side platform to avoid walking in the deeper water. Frank followed as they carried on walking straight. When the noise from the gushing water had receded a bit, Michelle said, “Being a Watcher is the only thing I’ve ever done that has made sense to me. Before that I was lost. Leland has succeeded in taking that away from me.”
“Don’t let a crook like Leland damage your faith in the calling,” Frank said. “What we do is important.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I know what we do is important, and I’ll never stop doing that.” She stopped and looked at hi
m. “I believed in the Council. Now, after what Leland has done, bringing the city to its knees like this, causing so many deaths, so much mayhem. I don’t think I can serve the Council anymore. How can I trust them after this, even if we get rid of Leland?”
Frank laughed. “Welcome to my world,” he said. “Even before Leland was in the high chair, I disagreed with the Council. It’s always been corrupt and self-serving. As an institution, the Facility is rotten to the core, always putting its own interests first.”
“And what do you think those interests are?”
“The same as those of any big corporation—money and power. You must have seen Leland have business dealings with people outside of the Watcher circle.”
Michelle nodded. “He has dealings with a lot of people that have nothing to do with what we do. I never got close enough to find out exactly what though.”
“Bet you never thought to pry either, did you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that you’re a good soldier,” Frank said. “Keep walking.”
“Like I said,” she said as they carried on through the tunnels. “I was loyal. I believed in the whole thing, including Leland.”
“Now you know different. Now you know the truth.”
“I wish I didn’t.”
Frank unconsciously touched the feather inside his jacket. “So do I,” he said.
Ten minutes or so later, Michelle stopped in the middle of one of the tunnels while she examined one of the brick walls. “What are you looking for?” Frank asked.
“The door,” she said.
“The door is in the wall?”
“Yep.” She looked closely at a particular section of wall, indistinguishable from the rest of it. Then she reached out and pushed on one of the bricks. Frank was surprised to see the brick sink into the wall of its own volition and then a second later a six foot section of the wall seemed to move back, forming a doorway.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Frank said.
Michelle was already walking through the new doorway. “You coming or you just going to stand there?”
A half smile on his face, Frank walked through the doorway and found himself inside a gloomy corridor, with just a few lights interspersed on the ceiling the whole way down. “This is us?” he asked.
“This is us,” Michelle said, lifting a metal panel on the wall and pushing the button inside. The door closed again with a rumbling sound. “We’re in one of the outer maintenance areas, near the middle of the Facility. Leland’s suite should be two floors below us.”
“I’m impressed. We need to get to a kit room.”
“Follow me.”
Frank followed her as they walked up the dimly lit corridor. In all the years he spent at the Facility, he didn’t remember ever wandering into any of the maintenance areas, although he knew they existed all around the Facility. He just never had any need to go in them or explore them. He was glad Michelle obviously did though. With any luck they could use the mostly unoccupied maintenance corridors to get close to one of the kit rooms without being seen. He would feel a lot more secure about things when he had weapons and possibly body armor. He was under no illusions about the possibility of getting shot at before they made it to Leland’s suite two floors below.
As they were about to turn the corner at the end of the corridor, they both stopped when they heard voices. They exchanged glances and pressed their backs against the wall. Probably just maintenance guys, which didn’t make them any less dangerous. Everyone in the entire Facility had Watcher basic training under them, no matter what role they were currently fulfilling.
When two guys in boiler suits walked around the corner, they stopped whatever banal conversation they were having. They both froze for a second, their faces dropping in surprise as they came upon Frank and Michelle.
Michelle hit first, punching the biggest guy square in the face. The other guy, young with short blonde hair, shook himself out of his initial shock and went on the attack, charging at Frank, his fist up and ready to drive Frank back into next week.
Or so he thought anyway, as Frank also charged forward with his arm clamped to the side of his head, his elbow pointing forwards. Just as the maintenance guy threw his punch, the point of Frank’s elbow speared into the guy’s chest, who couldn’t help but cry out in pain as he seemed to crumple over. A split second later, Frank had his hand on the blonde guy's head, slamming it into the wall, knocking the young maintenance man out cold. “How many of these guys are we going to have to go through?” he asked, looking over at Michelle, who was standing over the prone body of the other maintenance guy.
She shrugged. “As many as we have too.”
“I thought you’d say that. Let’s get rid of these two in case anyone finds them.”
There was a small store room just around the corner, filled with tools and rolls of cable and pipes and paint and everything else needed to keep a place like the Facility in good order. They dragged the unconscious men into the store room, then Frank used a screw driver to break the lock from the outside. “Should hold them a while when they wake up,” he said.
They carried on through the service tunnels at a steady but careful pace, encountering no one else along the way. Eventually they came to a door at the end of one of the corridors and Michelle stopped. “This door leads directly out onto the third floor. Just down the corridor is the armory. Once we get kitted up, I’ll teleport us straight into Leland’s suite.”
Frank nodded. “Let’s hope the bastard’s home.”
“He will be. If there’s one thing I learned while working for Leland, it’s that he likes to keep a distance from danger. That suite is the safest place he can be.”
“Not for long.” He motioned for her to open the door. “Let’s go.”
After they went through the store room they opened the door and found themselves in another corridor, only this was wider and the walls were painted a light blue color. Frank didn’t need the sound of gunshots nearby to know where he was. “The training floor,” he said.
The two of them looked up and down the corridor for a moment, but saw no sign of anyone, so they began to hurry towards the armory, which meant they would have to pass one of the firing ranges up ahead. The firing range was a massive room that had no door, just a big opening instead, which meant anyone could see in an out. If the firing range was occupied, which by the sounds of gunfire it was, there was a chance someone would spot them. “I doubt half the people in here know what’s really going on outside these walls,” Frank said as they started to come up on the firing range. “It just seems like business as usual in here.”
“That’s because it is,” Michelle said, occasionally glancing over her shoulder to make sure there was no one behind them. “Leland has went out of his way recently to insure no one knows anything.”
Frank was about to compliment Leland for doing such a good job of keeping his people in ignorance when he heard a clicking noise behind him. He stopped walking. So did Michelle.
“Stop!” said a young sounding female voice from behind them. “Turn around slowly!”
Frank and Michelle did as they were asked, turning slowly with their hands up at chest level. Frank was almost shocked to see a young girl dressed in a black guard’s uniform, holding a semi-automatic out in front of her. She didn’t look much older than sixteen, but Frank knew she must have been at least eighteen to even be here. “Take it easy—” Frank started to say, but Michelle cut him off.
“Sandra,” she said, like she knew the other girl.
“Michelle,” the guard said, not looking surprised to see Michelle at all. “You’re not supposed to be here. I have orders to kill you both on sight.” She seemed to grip her gun tighter, like she was getting ready to shoot them.
“Hold on!” Frank said as forcefully as he could without spooking the girl too much. The kid looked nervous. Probably never fired her weapon at anything other than a dummy target before. “Whatever you�
��ve been told, we’re the good guys here, alright.”
“He’s telling the truth, Sandra,” Michelle said. “You know me. You’ve seen me on this very floor, training you and the rest. Believe me when I say, you haven’t been told the full story.”
Sandra swallowed. “We were told you were working with the demons to bring down the Facility.”
Frank laughed. “Sorry,” he said. “That’s funny, considering what’s going on.”
“What is he talking about?” Sandra asked Michelle.
“Leland Cunningham, the head of the High Council, is the one who is working with demons,” Michelle said. “Only he isn’t trying to bring down the Facility. He’s trying to bring down the whole city. Have you seen what’s going on outside of here?”
The young guard looked unsure, but she still kept the gun firmly trained on them. Frank was getting agitated, nervous that others would come along and then they’d never get away. He started calculating the odds of disarming the guard before she managed to shoot him. Despite her obvious inexperience, the girl looked ready to pull the trigger, if only out of nervousness. He doubted he could disarm her unless he managed to get closer, which he knew she wouldn’t allow him to do. He hoped Michelle could talk the girl down soon.
“We’ve been told the demons initiated some kind of mass attack on the city,” Sandra said. “And that you two are helping them.”
“Think about it,” Frank said. “Why aren’t there teams out there trying to bring the situation under control? Why are you standing here pointing a gun at us instead of out there if the city is in such danger?”
The girl looked perplexed for a moment, then she said, “Councilor Cunningham said the angels told him we have to stand down, that they would sort things out first.”
Frank shook his head. “And you all believe that?”
“Yes, we...” She trailed off.
“Look,” Michelle said, beginning to almost imperceptibly move forward towards Sandra. “I know you just take orders. So did I. But believe me, Sandra, this time the orders are wrong. You need to tell everyone that.”
