The Riser Saga

by Becca C. Smith

  “We’re deep in the underbelly now,” Bill said almost to himself. Most of his excitement for adventure had been replaced by stress.

  “The holo-footage vault is down three flights. We’re almost there.” Ryan tried to be re-assuring.

  “Has Jason texted you yet?” Nancy asked.

  “No,” I said softly. I could tell she was trying not to show how concerned she actually was about Jason. Like it or not, the girl was hooked.

  The four of us went down the metal steps and finally arrived at our destination door.

  “It’s through here. I’m not sure what we’re looking for, but we’ll have to be quick,” Ryan told us all.

  “Let’s do it,” Bill said, followed by a deep breath to steady himself.

  Ryan opened the door.

  Crap.

  The room was shelf upon shelf upon shelf of holo-storage. It was intimidating. Each row was almost five-hundred feet long and had millions, maybe billions, of data slots on each side, and there were hundreds and hundreds of rows. There was no way we’d be able to find the holo-footage of my trailer park. I didn’t even know where to start.

  We entered the room, all of us with the same beleaguered expressions. There was no one to be found anywhere and no cameras. I was beginning to think that if there were holo-cams we just couldn’t see them. I couldn’t imagine a place like this not having visual security, but maybe Turner was that cocky. I hoped so, but I somehow doubted it.

  “Um,” I said out loud.

  “Yeah, um, sums it up.” Nancy shook her head. “Please tell me Genius Boy has some clue as to how we’re going to find this footage.”

  “Give me a sec. Let me think this through.” Ryan let go of my hand and walked over to one of the storage shelves. He ran his hand down the side and examined it every which way.

  “You mean this footage?” With an overconfident smirk and holding a small metal chip, Jason stepped out from one of the rows of storage.

  When Nancy saw him she forgot all caution and threw her arms around him in a great sigh of relief. “I was so worried, you jerk!” She kissed him quickly on the lips and Jason’s arrogant stature turned into dumbstruck slush in about a split second.

  “Hi,” Jason said lamely.

  “Hi.” Nancy pulled away and gave him a small smile.

  “You found it? In this mess?” I asked. My heart was singing with relief.

  “I know holo-storage like the back of my hand.” Jason was starting to get his swagger back. “But we better get out of here before they realize the footage I took is not the footage I checked out.” Jason tucked the metal chip in his shirt pocket. “I can’t leave the way I came. They’ll scan the chip and I won’t be able to leave with it. I hope you have an alternate route?” He raised an eyebrow to Ryan.

  “Yeah. Of course.” Ryan took us through the door we came in. Hopefully, we could catch up to our tour and no one would ever be the wiser.

  “Why didn’t you text us if you had the footage?” Nancy, for the moment, was still being nice to Jason though one wrong word from him and he’d be back in the doghouse.

  “Like I said, I needed an alternate way out. I knew Ryan would get you guys safely to the storage facility. I just had to wait.” Jason tried not to make eye contact with Nancy. He was obviously still struggling with how he felt about her.

  Nancy picked up on it immediately. “You’re such a baby, really!”

  “Guys. Not now.” Bill sounded like a dad quieting his rowdy kids.

  It worked. Both Nancy and Jason kept their mouths closed as Ryan led us through the grated metal maze.

  We were on the bottom floor of the four-story room, making our way up to the top floor.

  Nancy pulled me back against the wall. She motioned for the others to follow.

  “What?” Ryan whispered.

  Nancy pointed upward. “Jill’s dad,” she said as quietly as possible.

  Oh boy.

  Jill’s dad, Owen Forester, was Turner’s number one man. I had never seen him before and I admit I was curious to see the man who created the monster that was Jill. What kind of a man would take orders from someone like my grandfather and do the things he most likely had to do in his name? I had to see him. It was becoming a craving I couldn’t control. It was almost like if I could see Jill’s dad, I could see why Jill was the way she was. Just a peek.

  I poked my head out slightly to see.

  Owen Forester’s spinning black chasm almost winked at me in greeting.

  Even though I didn’t want to, I suddenly felt a pang of sympathy for Jill. How long had her father been dead? Constantly vying for daddy’s approval, but never getting it because he wasn’t alive anymore. It didn’t excuse her being the nasty that she was, but it did give some reason for it.

  I was about to tell everyone about Mr. Forester’s condition when I caught a glimpse of Turner joining him on the causeway.

  “Door?” Jason mouthed to Ryan.

  Ryan shook his head and pointed up one flight of stairs.

  “We’re screwed.” Nancy leaned the back of her head against the wall in frustration.

  “Of all the staircases in this monstrous building, they had to come to ours,” I said, thinking out loud. It was feeling very fishy to me. Especially since it didn’t look like they were going anywhere anytime soon. Yet at the same time they made no show of acknowledging our presence. They were just talking, or Turner was anyway, zombie-man was probably just listening to orders. It made me think of how Turner kept these corpses animated. It was obviously a different process than mine because he looked genuinely shocked when I grabbed control of his staff. Some kind of spell, but what were the results of the spell? Did the dead people retain all their memories and sense of self? Were they simply puppets like mine were? Or were they truly back from the dead under Gramps’ spell? Whatever it was, it was some serious mojo. Turner almost gained control back over his corpses by rolling his eyes and spouting out his power words. And what was up with all the eye color changes? First, in my mother’s vision with Grandma, then with Grandpa, was that a part of the spell? Brady said my eyes dilated when I activated the cockroach. Was there some connection there? I had so many questions racing through my brain and the only man who could possibly answer them wanted me dead. Good luck with that.

  “Are they going to move, or what?” Bill was starting to sweat. All the pressure and excitement and fear was bubbling over in a whirlwind of panic.

  I placed my hand on his arm. “We’ll be fine.”

  Bill’s shoulders relaxed visibly at my touch. He nodded.

  Ryan squeezed my other hand tightly. I could tell he didn’t like me comforting Bill very much, but he didn’t say anything because he knew Bill needed it. Extra points in my book.

  Before we could react, at least a hundred soldiers stepped out of every door from all four stories. All black spinning holes. An army of dead people. And all of them started marching down toward us. No wonder Turner had been standing there forever. He was waiting for us to try and escape to the door on the second floor. His master plan of having his men enter the room and grab us… not working out so well for him. As usual, his impatience overruled his good judgment. Good. Maybe we could escape from this. I tested the men’s black centers and they were just like his staff. Walls of resistance like bulletproof vests.

  “Did you really think fake thumbprints would work?” Turner’s voice echoed off the metal. He sounded amused.

  “What do we do now?” Jason asked Ryan. We weren’t near any doors, which was most likely why Turner decided to act impulsively.

  “We go down.” Ryan nodded to the cement floor about ten feet below us. “There’s a vent opening that leads to the lower level of the building.”

  The first of the dead soldiers jumped down to our platform and grabbed Jason’s arm.

  I took a deep breath and smashed through the invisible barrier like it was made of glass. It was crazy at how easy it was. I was expecting some kind of opposition, but my
mind remembered the sensation of ripping through the protective wall. I made the soldier release his grip on Jason. I slammed through all of the soldier’s invisible barricades and connected to their dark chasms of death. I tried to disconnect them from their black holes, but something was stopping me.

  “Not this time, little one,” Turner’s voice boomed from above.

  I looked up and his eyes were the same crimson as they were in Principal Weatherby’s office. He had more time to plan this time, to figure out how to prevent me from destroying his minions. And apparently it worked because I couldn’t disconnect the corpses from their swirling centers.

  I’d have to settle for controlling them.

  I made them all stop in their tracks.

  I could feel the struggle Turner was experiencing trying to make his soldiers move again.

  “Maybe you should have researched that a bit more, huh Gramps?”

  Turner was fuming. He began chanting loudly.

  I could feel my grip on the soldiers lessen. They were starting to twitch with movement.

  “I say we jump,” I said to Ryan and the others.

  It was the first time I noticed them all staring at me.

  I realized they had never really seen me in action aside from a dead plant or small insects. Only Jason was slightly unfazed since he was with me at the Virtual Reality bar, but even he looked a little dumbfounded.

  “Guys, seriously, he’s gaining control of them. I don’t know how much longer I can keep them disabled.” I needed them to snap out of it.

  “Right.” Ryan grabbed my hand and we jumped to the floor followed by the others.

  Ouch.

  And oops.

  It was just enough of a distraction for Turner to regain control over his boys. They started dropping like super humans to the floor next to us.

  Ryan grabbed the vent grating and flung it open. It was another drop, but only about five feet and it looked like a tunnel entrance to the right. “Everyone in!”

  Jason didn’t need to be told twice, he was the first to drop down.

  Nancy huffed in annoyance at Jason’s lack of chivalry. “Typical.” And she jumped in as well.

  One of the soldiers grabbed Bill and put him in a choke hold.

  I connected to the soldier’s black hole at about half power. Turner somehow blocked me out of the other half, but it was enough for Bill to fight back. He kicked the soldier back into the others and jumped down the vent.

  “You next,” I said to Ryan.

  “No way is that ever going to happen.” Ryan said with so much conviction I almost dropped down the vent.

  “I can actually slow these guys down, Ryan,” I said, my eyes pleading.

  Ryan reluctantly nodded and jumped down to join the others.

  The soldiers came at me. I had enough power over them to make them move in slow motion. It was surreal seeing hundreds of soldiers running toward me at a snail’s pace like I was watching an instant re-play on the holo-tv.

  I looked up at Turner and our eyes met. Though they were solid red I could still see something I had never seen before in them.

  Glee.

  I jumped down and joined the others.

  Ryan slammed the grating shut.

  “Come on. Through here.” Ryan wrapped his arm around me for support.

  “I’m only half-controlling them. I can’t seem to take them over completely. Turner is too strong and knows way more about this stuff than I do,” I said weakly. Connecting to over a hundred bodies was taking its toll on my brain. “He’ll send in live ones soon.”

  As if in unison to my statement I felt Turner release all his soldiers from their black holes, letting them die for real this time, and essentially making them useless to me. The stink was already starting to waft through the ventilation shaft’s opening.

  That’s when I finally noticed where we were. The shaft we jumped down was huge! I was standing and still had about two feet of headroom. A metal tunnel opened before us… dark and foreboding, but our only way out.

  “This leads down four more levels. That’s where the main power generators are. If we get that far, there’s an elevator shaft we can climb up that leads directly to the front gate,” Ryan said as bravely as possible, but I could tell he was as nervous as everyone else.

  Nancy pulled out a flashlight from her purse with a shrug. “I was hoping we wouldn’t need this, but…” She let that hang in the air, not needing to finish the thought, not wanting to. We were in big trouble and none of us knew how we were going to get out of it.

  “One thing at a time.” I gave Nancy a reassuring look.

  “Right,” she said, swallowing her fear, but not masking it completely.

  Nancy handed Ryan the flashlight and he took the lead. I had a moment where I felt like Larry the cockroach as we made our way through the giant man-sized shaft. Ryan guided us through the maze of twists and turns with ease. Nancy’s small flashlight was the only source of light to show the way. So far, we couldn’t hear any signs of pursuit, but we knew it was only a matter of time before we did. Jason took up the rear and Nancy, Bill and I were in the middle. I stayed as close as I could to Ryan for his protection and for mine.

  “Why didn’t Turner just shoot us?” Bill asked, breaking the intense silence.

  I hadn’t thought of that.

  “It would be definitive proof that he could bring the dead back.” Jason said as if he had been thinking about it the whole time. “If we all came back to our families riddled with bullet holes, but alive and well, there would be questions, investigations, you name it. He can’t take that kind of press or attention.”

  “So we can use that to our advantage. Knowing he can’t shoot us, he can only kill us with no marks essentially,” Nancy mused out loud then turned to Jason. “You have family?”

  Jason ignored her second question. “Let’s not kid ourselves. If we cause him too much trouble, he will take us down anyway he can and spin it so that we were somehow attacked by terrorists or something. For now, he wants Chelsan. Dead or alive, but luckily for us dead means he’s not using bullets. As for us I’m not sure what he’s willing to do.” Concerned, Jason glanced briefly at Nancy, but when Nancy returned the gaze he looked away.

  She grunted in annoyance.

  “No alarms either,” Bill said as if he were running through a check list of possible snags.

  “No. Maybe he doesn’t want any of the tourists to panic or word to get out.” Nancy suggested.

  “Or maybe he’s so confident he’ll get us there’s no need for alarms.” Bill was spiraling and I needed to snap him out of it.

  “Let’s just get to the main generator room, okay?” I said, turning to look at him.

  He nodded once and averted his eyes. I don’t think he wanted me to see him scared.

  We moved farther down into the bowels of the Population Control’s headquarters. Though I knew it was only four floors it felt like we had gone miles underground. Still, being that we were already three floors down at the start of our mission, seven floors underground was a bit intimidating.

  “Up here,” Ryan informed us.

  When we turned left we could see light looming in the distance through another grate about a hundred feet away. Ryan motioned us to stay while he checked it out. I watched him move slowly to the vent opening and peer out. Ryan’s whole body went slack, arms dropped to his side, not moving, as if something had stunned him.

  Danger or no, I ran up to him as fast as my legs would carry me. When I approached him he turned to me and his eyes were so full of terror and anger I nearly flinched at the onslaught of emotion glaring at me.

  “What is it?” I asked and touched his arm as if that might help him snap out of the nightmare he was obviously in.

  Ryan just nodded toward the grate.

  I looked through and I understood immediately.

  The vent opening was about eight feet above the ground so the entire room was visible. It was the biggest room I had ev
er seen. Almost as big as the hangers that held the skyscraper-sized hover-trucks from Clean-Up.

  It was exactly as Ryan described to me that morning before school.

  This was the place he was taken all those years ago by Turner.

  An I.Q. Farm.

  Hundreds of kids at computer stations, virtual reality mats, holo-games, all focused and ignorant to everyone around them. It was a frightening spectacle watching these hunched hollow-eyed children working on their invisible projects. I pulled Ryan in closer and he hugged me with all of his might. I could feel his emotions pouring into this one embrace. His fear, his sadness, his relief, his anger all jumbled together in a tangled mess. If he hadn’t been as quick witted as he was, he would have been one of those kids below.