#1 Shades of Gray- Noir, City Shrouded By Darkness

by Kristie Lynn Higgins

  Kim's tone and attitude didn't change. "You should have expected this. We knew the T-3s attacked the Factory. It probably happened days ago. You should be used to this smell by now."

  "How can you say that? No one should ever get used to this stench."

  Ignoring her comment, Kim continued around the corner, led them passed a security desk, and entered the Green Division, and Kim could tell Kat was appalled by her callousness as she followed her. A few dead S.C.Ms. lay in pools of congealed blood along with more than a dozen bullet riddled techs, and with her mind on the disk, Kim continued the conversation as if they never came across any dead bodies.

  "You'll go to Research Lab Five that is located in this division, and I'll go to Computer Lab Two located in the Yellow Division." She showed Kat the blueprint as they hurriedly walked through the hallway. "Once you're done, meet me here." Kim pointed to a security desk on the blueprint that was located at a checkpoint in between the Green and Yellow Divisions.

  Katharine's view...

  I can't believe Kimberly's this cold. I put a hand to my stomach, feeling sick after seeing all those dead people. I notice they don't bother her at all. Doesn't Kimberly care about anything? I remember the spare room at the apartment. Kimberly did care about her mom, but what about now? Isn't there anyone? What about her father? I feel sorry for her. She seems...

  Kimberly's view...

  "Do you understand where we are to meet?" I ask and notice that woman has been staring at me instead of the blueprint. What's she looking at? She does seem bothered by something. I repeat, "Do you understand?"

  Katharine's view...

  She seems... Kimberly seems lonely.

  I peer at the blueprint where Kimberly points, and I nod.

  Kimberly's view...

  "Great, let's do this," I say as I fold the paper and place it in my knapsack.

  Why is she looking at me that way? It's giving me the creeps.

  Katharine's view...

  I notice her irritation and turn my focus to the hall where more bodies litter the area. I look at the terror stricken faces of the Factory's employees as a deep feeling of pity rips at my gut. I don't look at Kimberly, but I know she regards the people as debris in her way. Is this who Kimberly is? Is she really uncaring and callous? Is she the kind of person that death's no more than a byproduct of her job?

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Help Us

  6:47 P.M...

  Kat lagged behind Kim a bit as they rushed through the halls of the Green Division, and they continued running as Kat lost count of the dead. She stopped when something caught her eye and then hurried back to a door that had been knocked in. The room was B10-148 and inside, three men were strapped to the examining tables. Kat rushed in as she uttered, "Argus?" She moved to his side, finding he had been badly beaten and had a bullet wound in his left leg.

  He looked at her with his good eye; his other one was too swollen to open. His throat was dry as he rasped, "Kat? How did you..."

  "Shh..." she said, worried over his injuries. "Don't talk." She started on his straps.

  "For Ares' sake!" Kim rushed in. "What are you doing?" She noticed the men. "Hades! We don't have time for this."

  "Then help me!" Kat snapped and motioned to the two men. "Release the techs."

  "Yeah, release us!" Maxwell and Peters pleaded.

  "We don't have time for this," Kim repeated and then when she noticed Kat wasn't listening to her, she went ahead and helped the techs. Once she released the two men's hand restraints, the two men started to undo their own leg restraints. "What happened here?" Kim asked them as Kat helped Argus to his feet.

  "The T-3s went rogue," Peters replied as he got off the table and went to assist his partner with a leg strap he couldn't undo.

  "They killed everyone here except us." Maxwell took his partner's hand and stood. "I was sure they would come back and torture us like they did that man." He motioned to Argus and mumbled, "They still might."

  Argus asked, "Who's behind the attacks?" His face contorted with pain as he leaned against the table, removed his belt, and tightly buckled it on his left leg to slow down the bleeding. He grunted with the effort.

  "No one's behind the attacks," Maxwell replied.

  "What my partner means is that the T-3s are behind the attacks." Peters rubbed his bruised wrists. "And we don't know why."

  The techs looked to the two women.

  Maxwell asked, "Who sent you? The Sphinx Corporation?"

  Kim shook her head.

  Fearful their rescuers might end up being the grim reaper, both techs looked at one another and took a step back.

  "Are you here to save us?" Maxwell felt around the table behind him, searching for a weapon.

  "Yes," Kat answered before Kim could.

  Relieved, Peters questioned, "How can we repay you?"

  Kat asked, "Do you have a vehicle?"

  "Yes." Maxwell pointed his thumb over his shoulder. "As long as the T-3s haven't set it on fire."

  "Then take this man to a hospital." Kat faced Argus and gently stroked his injured cheek; it was the same cheek she had struck days earlier. "And we'll call it even." All the grief and anger over his involvement with Preacher's death faded at seeing him injured.

  "Kat... I..." Argus' voice cracked as he looked deep into her hazel eyes. He could tell she cared for him, and he was ashamed. He had caused her so much pain and anguish over the past year and yet here she was saving him. "I..."

  "It's okay," she whispered. "My thanks for rescuing me when I was in the hands of the Factory, so think of us as even." Kat took a step back. "Now please, go with these men."

  He nodded, not knowing what to say.

  She looked to the techs. "What are your names?"

  "I'm Peters and this is Maxwell."

  "I'll try to remember. I'm bad with names, now please hurry. Argus needs to get to the hospital."

  Maxwell grabbed Argus under his arm and started out the door as Peters led. The three men hurried through the hall toward Research Building 10's front entrance. It would take them some time to get there.

  "Can we continue our mission now?" Kim folded her arms. "Or are there some lab rats you want to rescue? Are there some rabbits you want to set free?"

  "Oh, I almost forgot." Kat shouted after the techs, "Wait!" She rushed into the hall and to the men. "Take this." She handed Peters her Beretta and magazines. "Do you know how to use one?"

  He glanced at the gun and took it. "Yes, and thanks."

  Kat started, "To terminate an Un-Man you have to..."

  "Hit the automaton brain between their eyes," Peters interrupted her. "Yes, I know. It was me and Maxwell that decided the Un-Men's vulnerability. They're still hard to kill, but not indestructible in case something like this happened."

  The three men hastened their steps.

  Kat watched till they were out of sight, turned to rush down the hall, and almost ran into the scowling Kim.

  Kimberly's view...

  "You didn't give that man your only gun, did you?"

  "Maybe..." she answers me like a child who isn't sure if she's in trouble or not. "They might run into a T-3; they'll need it."

  "And you don't think you will?"

  She shrugs as she tells me, "I plan on avoiding the T-3s, and you destroyed my tracking beacon, so they don't know I'm here. Hopefully, I won't run into any."

  Feeling a bit responsible for what's going to happen to her, I blink twice. I feel like I've been caught in a lie, but that woman doesn't know I betrayed her stupid trust. I think about how I'm going to hand her over to the Rogue. I frown at my own thoughts; surely I'm not feeling guilty. She's the idiot who gave her gun away, and if she dies, it's her own fault.

  I tell her, "Come on, let's get this over with." We hurry through the corridor as I question, "Was that blond guy a friend of yours? I mean the two of you acted..."

 
"No," she interrupts me. She sounds like she's not sure how she feels about him. "He's my shadow. He's my constant phantom in the darkness."

  "O-kay..." I utter.

  Even her friends are freaks.

  We run through several more halls, and I stop and say, "Here's your room." I slide the green keycard down a reader, unlock the door, and hand the card to that woman. "Be careful, the T-3s might not know you're here, but that doesn't mean you're safe."

  "I know." She takes the card, starts in, and pauses. "Good luck. I hope one of us finds the disk."

  "Thanks. Ah... See you later."

  I rush across the hall, feeling like my whole body's made of lead, and it's dragging me down. I can't be feeling guilty. Closers don't experience guilt. I pause in my tracks. The Rogue did want a fight, so it's only fair that I give it what it wants, so I hurry back to the Research Lab and yell, "Katharine!"

  That woman returns to the door. "Yes?" Hopeful, she asks me, "Did you find something?"

  "No, I only wanted to..." I hand her a PPK and some magazines. "Here, take my backup."

  "Thanks." She takes the gun and starts back in as she tells me, "Stay safe."

  "Sure, you too."

  I continue through the hall. There, I can say I did help her, and now my mind can rest at ease, not that I ever felt a smidgen of guilt. That strange woman means nothing to me and discovering who murdered my mom is more important than any stupid project's life.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The Two Rooms

  7:10 P.M...

  Kat entered Research Lab Five and found the room abandoned; cobwebs and dust abounded, and a musty smell lingered. She set her backpack on a chair and stared at the gutted computer workstations then moved on to three rectangular tables, and they contained racks filled with test tubes labeled with numeric codes, beakers containing liquid in a rainbow of hues, and about a dozen binocular microscopes. A poster of the periodic table containing 126 elements hung on the wall. She counted the different colored squares and thought she remembered there being only 118 elements. Kat shrugged. She searched through drawers and cabinets, under tables and chairs, and every crack and crevasse that could possibly hide a disk. She searched twice, but found nothing. Kat saw a door in the back of the room, walked to it, and paused, wondering if she should enter. She glanced above the door to a name plate, The Gallery. Kat wiggled the locked knob and noticed the door had no keycard access only a hand scanner. She could go back and drag one of the employees in here, but she didn't think she wanted to touch any dead bodies. Kat looked at her right palm. She could try her hand; she was part of the Sphinx Corporation. It could work or she could set off an alarm then the T-3s would know they were there. Maybe she should ask Kim or she could just take the chance. The T-3s might not know why an alarm was going off if she set off one. Kat shrugged, placed her hand on the device, and held her breath, not knowing what would happen. She winced and leaned back slightly as if the scanner would explode.

  The reader buzzed as a horizontal bar of white light scanned her palm, and the reader stated in a male robotic voice, "Hand print not on record." It scanned her palm a second time with a vertical bar of blue light and stated, "No cipher detected. Access denied."

  Kat straightened her stance. It didn't let her in, but at least it didn't sound an alarm. She stepped back from the door. It did mention a cipher. Didn't that mean zero or code? Kat stared at the star on her left palm. Or maybe a mark? She placed that hand on the reader, and the device activated again, scanning first with the horizontal bar of white light.

  "Hand print not on record," it stated and scanned her palm a second time with the vertical bar of blue light. "Cipher detected. Activating micro-reader." A diagonal bar of white light scanned her palm. "Access granted."

  The door unlocked, and she turned the knob and entered a larger room lit only by accent lights. She left the door open in case Kim came in looking for her, paused just inside the entrance, and scanned the area. The room smelled old, not musty like the other one but old like a museum. No computers or lab equipment were inside only several life size white marble statues, and they were all of the same bearded man in different poses. He was wearing a robe and holding various objects, and all of the statues pointed to a wall in the back. She walked to the wall, and it looked like the others in the room; it was tiled with light brown marble. Kat started to put her hand to the wall when she felt heat and something vibrating against her leg. She reached into her thigh pocket, pulled out the music box, and found a blue square on each end she had never seen before glowing through the metal. She touched them at the same time, and the hologram of Theresa Griffin appeared.

  "Katharine, so I see Kimberly gave you the box as instructed." The hologram glanced around the room and stated, "It is safe to talk."

  "You look just like her." Kat waved her hand through the 3D image. "Like Kimberly. She told me about you." She paused and asked, "Why did the music box vibrate?"

  "My sensors detected an object nearby that you need to retrieve."

  Excited, she asked, "The disk Kimberly is looking for?"

  "No," the hologram answered, not sure what Kat was talking about. "A Data Crystal."

  "A Data Crystal? Like on Star Trek?"

  "Star Trek? Is that a space program one of the corporations is working on?"

  "No."

  "The device I am talking about is especially designed to transfer information to this data storage unit. The Data Crystal is behind you."

  Excited, Kat turned and noticed one of the statues held out his hand with a white crystal as if offering it to her. She took hold of the two inch obelisk and lifted it from his marble grasp.

  "Now–" the hologram started, "–place the flat part of it on the bottom of the music box."

  Kat did, and a glow emanated from the crystal, and the light threw out a spectrum of colors around the dimly lit room.

  The hologram closed her eyes as the storage unit downloaded the data. "It is complete." The hologram opened her eyes, looking to her.

  Kat placed the crystal in her pocket and glanced at the statues again. "Who is he?"

  "He is Ginn L. Irynkissgthie."

  "Why does the Factory have statues of him? And why so..." Kat turned to the entrance.

  lub-DUB... lub-DUB...

  "What is wrong?" the hologram asked.

  "We have company." Kat set the PPK's safety off and took cover behind a statue.

  "The Alpha Phase," the hologram spoke then lowered her voice. "The ability to sense bio-mechas; I thought I would never see it fulfilled."

  The hologram's statement puzzled Kat, and she asked, "What do you mean by fulfilled?"

  "Never mind that now. What is it?" the hologram whispered. "An Un-Man?"

  Kat focused her ability, stretched out her senses past the next room and into the hall, and detected it. The bane of her existence had found her again.

  "Worse!" she forced out as she stared at the entrance.

  Fear seized her like a python, and it wrapped itself around her and squeezed the courage from her, and she could hardly breathe.

  The Rogue stepped through the door, searched the room, and noticed the pointing statues. "I think I like it better; yes, it is better we cannot track you anymore. It is more sporting, and as for your question, Pandora..." The Rogue glanced behind the first statue, searching for her. "Why does the Factory have statues of Ginn L. Irynkissgthie some obscure composer from five hundred years ago whose only work was never finished?" It continued searching. "I wondered the same thing, but have yet to find the answer."

  Kat backed up, moving into the shadows and dared not engage this Un-Man.

  "On a different note, while I was searching I did find something interesting buried deep in the archives of the Factory. Before they developed bio-mechas, the Sphinx Corporation explored a very interesting concept." The Rogue peered behind another statue. "They tried to develop organic
-mechas; they were machines with flesh and bone that could pass as human. They can pass more than us and as you know, Un-Men only seem human on the outside. Certain things give us away like wires and circuitry when we are injured or black oil when we bleed, but I am straying from my purpose." The Rogue scraped its blade across a statue's steel base and friction-flashes ignited. "Come out Pandora, let us end our battle here."

  She pressed her body against a wall as perspiration speckled her face.

  "What are you afraid of?" the hologram whispered. "Disable it. You have the ability."

  "I can't," Kat whispered and remembered the countless battles where it nearly killed her. "It's the Rogue, the only Un-Man I'm unable to destroy, and it's fast so very fast."

  "Oh," the hologram said with a hint of worry. "I will leave you to your work."

  Her image disappeared as Kat considered if her purpose, the reason she existed was to destroy bio-mechas. The thought frightened her more than the thought of facing the Rogue. Maybe she had been created only to destroy. She stared at the PPK for a long time, wanting to run away, but there was no other way out of the room. She'd have to face the Rogue if she wanted to help Kim, so she gripped the music box and gun, took a deep breath, rescued her courage from the fear python, and stepped from the shadows.

  "Who were you talking to?" the Rogue asked.

  She lifted her hands, motioning to the room. "Do you see anyone?"

  "No, are you talking to yourself? Are you near your breaking point?"

  "Let's get this over with."

  Kat lifted the gun, firing three shots, and the Rogue quickly moved and evaded the projectiles, and then it lunged for her, bringing the knife overhead and struck. She crossed her wrists and blocked its hand, and her arms shook as the blade bore down millimeters from her face. The Rogue toyed with her; it could easily overpower her if it wanted to. It lifted its hand and struck again, hitting her block, and this time, the blow knocked the music box from her hand. It slid across the floor, hit the corner of a statue, opened, and Unfinished Melody played. Kat struggled against the Rogue while fighting the hypnotic effects of the melody.

  The music box played several notes, and the Rogue leaped back. It looked to the music box then back to Kat. "Why do you..."

  She put a free hand to her head, fighting the sleepiness. If she fell into the Drifting Time now, the Rogue would kill her. She had to fight it! She had to stay awake!