Hardin's Dilemma

by A.S. Morrison

lost something. This was him.

  “You have the necklace?” He asked without looking at us.

  “Yes sir.” Theen carefully put the small bag on the desk. I noticed the name plate on his desk. His name was Leric.

  Leric took the necklace out of the bag and admired it. It had a gold chain and a little rock with some kind of inscription for the pendent. “Ah, it’s beautiful. You can leave.”

  Theen turned to go. I was expecting more and so stood there, not sure what to do.

  “Wait.” Leric said.

  Theen turned back around. “Yes sir?”

  Leric turned the necklace over in his hands, squinting at us. “What do you think of the man who came from the wall?”

  A chill went through me.

  “We don’t know much about him.” Theen said casually.

  “No, I mean what’s your opinion of him?” Leric corrected.

  “I find it very strange that someone could have survived that long.” Theen paused. “I wish I could meet him.” He added as an afterthought.

  “And you?” Leric looked at me.

  I didn’t know what to say, but I thought of something quickly. “I wonder how he got out.”

  Leric nodded as though he was thinking the same thing. “It’s curious. Anyhow there is a room prepared for you. If I have any questions regarding this necklace I will contact you in the morning. If not then the train will be back around at noon.” He went back to staring at the necklace, signaling our time to leave his office.

  The man who took us there led us out and up more flights of stairs until we came to a dark hallway, probably twelve stories above the ground.

  The room he put us in was small, hard, and had several large bugs crawling on the walls and the floor. Even my old Residence didn’t look that bad. The beds were rock hard and only had a thin and holy blanket. Our clothes had been brought up and were on the beds. The man left us and we sat around, trying to figure out what to do next.

  “I saw that leader on my first morning in Azureland.” I said, thinking the last hour over in my head. “He was talking to someone about losing something and he thought it was there. In fact he knew it was there.”

  “Well don’t mention it.”

  “I won’t.”

  He stood up, the bed creaked horribly. “Alright, they usually keep the kitchens open all day. I’m going down to see if I can find anything to eat. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find something else too.”

  “Do you want me to stay here?”

  “You’d better for now.”

  After he left I went to the window. We had a nice view. It looked out over the whole city. I could make out the little people down below destroying an automobile. Theen was gone for a long time. I watched as the sun started for the horizon. The days seemed shorter here. After a while people started out of the other buildings and into the messy streets. They took little notice of anything around them as they headed for home, wherever that was. That one group of people grew tired of attacking the automobile, now a fiery wreck, and started terrorizing the people around them. I made the realization that there wasn’t much difference between Dizuria, Humurom, and Bozlin, except perhaps the food. I started to feel for the random masses down there in the streets being harassed for no reason. I wasn’t about to do anything about it, but I still felt for them.

  Theen came back with a sack full of bread and two mugs of soup. It was all pretty nasty tasting, but I didn’t mind, I had had worse.

  “Did you find anything out?” I asked hopefully.

  He finished his bread and answered. “I did. It seems that there are people around that are not wearing the usual blue uniforms like we are. They wear red pants, a red vest, and a white shirt. I couldn’t figure much about them but they looked suspicious. They would always look in all directions no matter where they went, as if someone was always following them. It was strange.”

  “Maybe they know something.”

  “We can hope. I want to go out tonight and sneak around a bit. You should come in case we see someone you recognize from the wall. You said you encountered them in there?”

  “Yes, but I never got a look at anyone’s face. I think they were all wearing gray. It’s hard to remember now. Every time I saw them I was running for my life. So they could have been wearing bright pink and I wouldn’t have noticed.”

  We finished our food and were ready to head out and look for clues. I tried to turn my anxiety into excitement, but of course it didn’t work. I imagined all of the great things that would come if we somehow stopped Dizuria right there that night. All of my ideas seemed so outlandish that I couldn’t even take them seriously as fantasies.

  Before we could leave someone came to the door. This man was taller and older than Leric, with white hair and a friendly smile that looked real. He appeared to be completely out of place in Dizuria. He introduced himself as Martvy, the second in command to Leric.

  “It’s nice to meet you two.” He said pleasantly.

  “Nice to meet you.” Theen replied.

  I stayed back, not sure if his appearance was a trap to make us feel safe.

  “It’s nice to finally get that necklace back.” He said. “We’ve wanted it for a long time.” He waited for us to respond, but we didn’t so he continued. “I hope your stay in Diz is a nice one. Don’t be afraid to seek me out if you need anything.”

  He smiled nodded. Right before he left he looked at me and gave me a stern look. It lasted for only a second, but it stuck with me. It seemed to say more than anything he could have spoken, but I didn’t seem to catch the meaning. Once he was gone we resumed our plan to explore.

  The dark hallway outside our door was even more ominous at night. There was a single electric light in the ceiling at the center of the hall. It didn’t illuminate much more than a small ring around it. There could have been anyone hiding just beyond the reach of the light. Theen and I tiptoed down the hall, away from where we had come earlier. We passed the light and were met by total darkness. Theen took the lead. I could only hear where he was by the creaks of the floorboards. Somewhere up ahead he made a small noise.

  “There’s a door here that’s open.” He whispered back to me. “Stay there for a second.”

  I did as I was told. I heard him go into the room and come out a minute later.

  “Nothing, just another room. I didn’t think they would keep anything up here with us, but it was worth a shot. Let’s go back to the stairs and go downstairs.”

  I followed quietly. The stairs were lit by more lights, making the journey down much less daunting. Voices could be heard on the stairs somewhere below us. They were too far down to worry about.

  The floor below ours had a large room just like all the others down to the first floor. Theen told me that they probably did that to confuse people so they didn’t know what floor they were on. We took a look around at all the doors. There were three on that level. Two of the doors were locked and the other led to a bathroom. The next three levels down had similar results. They each had a different number of rooms leading off, but most were locked or had bathrooms.

  “There could be anything behind these locked doors.” Theen complained several floors down.

  “They wouldn’t keep anything too secret unlocked.” I pointed out.

  “They would if they thought nobody ever came here.”

  “They might have locked them because we’re here.”

  On the next level we heard people coming up the stairs. We got off and sat in some of the uncomfortable wooden chairs scattered about, trying to look casual. Two people came up right as we sat down, a man and a woman. They wore the red vests and pants that Theen had mentioned. They talked as if there was nobody for miles that could overhear them.

  “So I didn’t know about the dark room.” The man said. He was large with long wavy hair.

  “My goodness how did you get out of it?” The woman asked.r />
  “I told them I’d rather protect Leric.” The man said

  “And they believed it?” The woman sounded amazed.

  “Sure did.”

  They continued up the stairs and vanished onto the level above. Theen put a finger to his lips and got up, following them up the stairs. I hesitated, but crept up the stairs behind him.

  The two in red got off at the next floor and went straight to one of the doors that had been locked. Theen and I hid on the stairs, only the tops of our heads were visible as we watched. The man did something to the wall beside the door. I could not see because the woman blocked my view. The door opened and they went in, closing the door behind them.

  “That’s it. That door must lead somewhere important.”

  “Or not.” I said.

  “Let’s hope it does. Come on, back to the room.”

  Late into the night we sat around trying to come up with our next move. Finally Theen made a plan that we could work with.

  “This is what we’ll do.” He yawned. “In the morning we will leave a note saying that we left early because something came up at home. Then we’ll try to sneak into that room and see what’s going on. If we get caught just say that we are looking for the kitchens, I’ve used that many times and always get away with wherever I’m sneaking around. You see they don’t care much if you wander around, as long as you leave as soon as they tell you too and don’t come back.”

  “But you do come back.”

  “They never remember me. It seems their minds are always preoccupied with other things to care about