by Tarah Benner
I can feel the bile rising up in my throat. After all the shit I gave her, Maggie wasn’t a spy. She didn’t steal my SPIDER data, and she certainly wasn’t involved with the hacks.
I don’t know why she’s been kidnapped — only that she’s in danger.
“Can you get me into the restricted area?” I say in a rush, trying to push back the horrible thoughts that are flooding through my brain.
“Uh . . . yeah,” says Ping, shifting gears and pulling up another screen with dizzying lines of different-colored code. “It might take some time, though.”
“She doesn’t have time!”
I’m feeling desperate. For all I know, Maggie could be dead. It’s been thirteen hours since she was snatched. Either she’s already been killed, or she’s in serious danger.
Waiting for Ping to hack Elderon’s mainframe is pure torture. All I really want to do is storm the restricted area. Instead, I have to sit and wait while Ping’s hands dash across the keys. I don’t have clearance to access that part of the building, and I can’t tell the higher-ups because I don’t know whom I can trust.
Whoever kidnapped Maggie is part of the Space Force, which means I have to treat the entire organization as though it’s been compromised. I’m furious that Maggie’s kidnapper is one of us. He’s been right under my nose the whole time.
“I’m in,” says Ping after what seems like forever.
I breathe a heavy sigh of relief. I just hope that we’re not too late.
“Take that, you fucking space fascists,” says Ping around a yawn.
“I can go?”
“Not yet . . . I still need to go in here . . . upgrade your clearance . . .”
“Hurry!”
“I am. I am . . .” Ping’s fingers start to fly. I spot my own name and a long alphanumeric code. This must be how the Space Force controls which parts of Elderon its operatives can access.
“And . . . done!” says Ping, breaking into a triumphant grin.
I don’t even have time to thank him. As soon as he finishes, I bolt through the door.
I already grabbed a rifle and a pistol from the armory. It isn’t technically allowed, but I’m breaking all kinds of rules, so I might as well go big.
It feels warranted under the circumstances. I have no idea what I’m running into — only that I’m going head to head against someone who’s trying to get Maggie out of the picture.
Luckily, the hallways are mostly deserted. Dinner ended almost an hour ago, and most people have already retreated to their pods.
I take the back stairwell three steps at a time and sprint through Sector J to the restricted area. I try to visualize the blinking dot where Maggie’s Optix was shut off, but I don’t even know if that’s where she is.
I pass several “Top Level Personnel Only” signs as I fly down the hallway, and the warnings become more aggressive the farther in I go. There’s no way to play this off in the event that I get caught, but I don’t encounter a single living soul.
Finally, I reach a set of heavy double doors. They’re locked. The restricted area requires three-way biometric authentication, and I just hope that Ping didn’t screw this up.
I press my palm against the fingerprint pad while the scanner reads my face. My voice doesn’t sound like my own when I speak my name for voice recognition, but miraculously, the light above the scanner turns green.
I pull open the door and hurry inside, glancing up at the camera pointing down from the ceiling.
I’m hoping Ping can do some hacker magic to make that footage disappear. I’d be in deep shit if anyone found out I was here.
Lights flicker on down the hallway. The walls around me are a plain slate gray, and everything has a sparse, utilitarian feel. There are no screens or frozen yogurt stands — just row after row of fluorescent lighting and two sets of dotted lines on the floor. I’m probably one of the few humans authorized to walk these halls.
As I approach the second set of doors and scan myself in, I get a faint tingle of paranoia on the back of my neck. I am totally and completely alone, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched.
I walk down a long hallway toward a door with a large yellow sign warning me about autonomous bot activity going on inside. A room seldom used by humans seems like a good place to hide someone, so I chamber a round in my pistol and let myself in.
The door whooshes open without a sound, and I step inside the room. Light pools around me just inside the door, and I pivot at the hips to scan for threats. The place appears to be deserted.
The door closes behind me without a sound, and I’m thrust into total darkness. I flip on the light built into my Optix, and a tiny white beam pierces the shadows.
I take a step forward, and my footsteps echo loudly around me. I keep my pistol raised. My heart is pounding.
I turn to my left, and the light from my Optix pans up a pair of gleaming steel tibias connected to titanium joints operated by wires. Fanning out from those joints are a pair of solid steel femurs with metal wings that vaguely resemble something human.
I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s a bot.
These are designed for performing maintenance on the exterior of the space station. Their breastbones are solid plates of metal, but I can see through their abdomens to wire innards and an ugly jumble of moving parts. Where the colony-facing bots all have moveable glass eyes, these just have dark pits where their eyes should be.
They look like the undead — zombie robots. It gives me the fucking creeps.
I want to call out for Maggie, but I know that isn’t smart. Whoever dragged her here could still be in the room, and I don’t want to give up my position.
I turn down my light and keep moving, eyes scraping the corners for any signs of life.
I comb every inch of the place, but I don’t see Maggie anywhere. All I see are bots and scaffoldings, and there isn’t any sign of a struggle.
She isn’t here. I search every corner, even checking behind the stationary bots, but there’s no sign of her or her kidnapper.
Finally, I come upon a set of airlock doors. There’s only one place I haven’t checked.
I hit a button beneath the keypad, but all I get is a beep of protest. The keypad flashes. I need a code.
I call Ping.
“Did you find her?” I can tell by his tone that he’s just as worried.
“No. Not yet. I need you to open this airlock.”
“She’s in the airlock?”
I glance over my shoulder to make sure I’m still alone. “I don’t know. It’s the only place I haven’t checked.”
“Hang on.”
I hear the clacking of keys in the background, and the faint prickle on the back of my neck intensifies. I whip around, ready to fight, but there’s no one in the room but me.
“Shit,” says Ping. “That airlock’s closed until midnight.”
“What?”
He shakes his head. “There’s no maintenance scheduled for tonight, but that’s the door they’d go through.”
“The bots?”
My mind is racing. It doesn’t make any sense.
“Can’t you override it?” I ask.
“I’m trying, but . . .”
“But what?”
“They put safeguards in place to keep the inner door locked. They won’t let me unlock it when the outer door is about to open.”
“When is the outer door going to open?”
“About five minutes.”
“What?”
Blood rushes to my muscles. Maggie could be behind those doors. My first instinct is to kick my way through, but I know that that’s impossible.
“Ping!” I shout. “Maggie could be inside the airlock! You need to figure out how to keep that outer door from opening.”
“I can’t,” he says, a slight edge of panic to his voice. “Once it’s set, it can’t be changed without an administrator key code.”
“Can’t you get one of those?”
&
nbsp; “There’s no time.”
“Then you have to open the inner door.”
“But if the outer doors open while the inner doors are —”
“Don’t tell me you can’t!” I shout. “Find a way!”
I look around for something I could use to pry the doors open — a crowbar, a screwdriver — anything. Deep down I know it’s useless, but my desperation is mounting by the second.
Ping’s back. “I have an idea . . .”
“Better be a good one.”
I check the clock. We’ve only got two minutes before those doors are set to open. If Maggie’s in there, she’ll be ripped out into the vacuum of space as soon as the airlock unseals.
“I’m cutting the power to that whole sector,” says Ping. “Everything that’s linked to the restricted section will shut off — servers, modems, the external exit systems . . . When I turn it back on, the system will reboot itself. Any scheduled missions should be scrubbed, and you should be able to open the doors.”
“Should be scrubbed?” I repeat.
“It’s just a theory . . .”
“Fine!” I say. At this point, we are out of options. “How long will that take?”
My clock says we have less than a minute.
“Ping . . .”
No answer.
“Ping!”
Just then, the keypad shuts off. The little blue light fizzles out, and silence fans out all over the room. The only light in the entire storeroom is coming from my Optix, and it’s eerily quiet without the hum of electronics working behind the scenes.
All I can hear is the sound of my own breathing. Even Ping’s feed has gone dark.
I wait. I don’t hear the sound of the airlock opening, but I’m not sure if I would hear anything. Seconds go by, and my stomach twists into knots. If this didn’t work . . . If Maggie was in there . . .
Suddenly, everything springs back to life. The storeroom is filled with the faint hum of electronics, and the keypad blinks blue. I feel a rush of cool air as the HVAC system kicks on, and the row of bots light up behind me.
When Ping said he rebooted the whole system, he really meant he rebooted the whole system.
I slam my hand down on the button under the keypad, and the airlock doors whoosh open. I’m relieved when I’m not immediately sucked into space, but my relief fizzles out when I see Maggie on the floor.
She’s crumpled in a heap against the outer door, and she’s got a wad of blue fabric shoved in her mouth. Her arms and legs are bound with zip ties, and she has a nasty bruise across the bridge of her nose.
“Maggie?” I croak, stowing my pistol in its holster.
She doesn’t respond.
“Maggie!” I drop to my knees and turn her over. Her skin is pale and cold as ice, and there are painful-looking scratches all over her wrists. I swallow down a wave of disgust. Whoever did this, they were brutal. But Maggie did not surrender.
I hurry to loosen Maggie’s gag, and then her eyes crack open.
“Maggie!” I gasp, relief spilling through me.
Her gaze is slow to focus, and tears erupt in her blue-green eyes.
When I release her gag, she sucks in a deep shuddering breath. She lets out a little moan, and I pull out my knife to cut her zip ties.
“Jonah?”
“You’re gonna be okay,” I say, slicing the ties around her wrists.
“Jonah, it wasn’t me . . .”
“I know,” I growl, furious that I let it get this far.
“It’s Buford,” she croaks.
My insides freeze. Surely she didn’t just say what I think she did.
“Who?”
“Buford,” she repeats, her eyes slightly glassy and unfocused. She’s been trapped in here for almost fourteen hours. She has to be teetering on the verge of shock.
I cut the ties around her ankles and grab her around the shoulders. She winces at my rough touch, and I immediately soften my grip. “Sorry.”
She shakes her head.
“Maggie . . . Are you sure it was Buford?”
“Yes!”
“Why would he —”
“I don’t know,” she gasps, tears shining in her eyes. “We have to go . . .”
“We will, but —”
Suddenly, I hear a high-pitched whir behind me. Maggie’s eyes widen in panic, and I wheel around just in time to see one of the bots flying toward me. It moves like a human propelled by springs, its empty eye sockets fixated on us.
“Shit!”
I scramble to my feet and take aim at the bot. I fire, but the bullet just ricochets off its chest.
Panicking, I grab Maggie by the arm and haul her out of the way just as the bot careens into the airlock. It moves like a person with superhuman speed, but it doesn’t corner fast enough. The bot smashes into the outer door, but it rebounds immediately and pivots to face us.
My stomach turns. That did not just happen.
But the other bots are waking up, and they’re all turning in our direction. I don’t know what happened when Ping reset the system, but the bots are awake, and they’re coming for us.
“Run!” I breathe.
Maggie doesn’t hesitate.
We sprint across the room away from the bots, and I hear the groan of their joints as they move. Loud mechanical footfalls echo behind us, but I just focus on the door and pull Maggie along.
I sprint toward the door with Maggie in tow, and the bots seem to pick up speed. The door opens automatically, but it doesn’t close fast enough. The bots spring through one after the other, and I push my legs harder.
Maggie is having a difficult time keeping up. The hallway ahead is long and straight. There is nowhere for us to hide.
I hit my Optix. “Ping!”
“You got her?” His voice is ecstatic.
“We’ve got a problem,” I huff.
“What?”
I turn to look over my shoulder, panning my Optix over the rogue maintenance bots.
“Oh, shit. Are they . . .”
“Yeah!” I growl. “You have to lock the doors behind us.”
“No can do.”
“Ping!”
“There’s no time!”
“Just do it!”
My legs burn as I push them harder. Then Maggie stumbles, and I almost lose my grip.
I can feel her arm slipping through my fingers, but I manage to grab her at the last second.
I glance behind me. She looks as though she might pass out, but we’re almost at the first set of doors leading out of the restricted area.
“Ping!”
“If I lock it, you won’t be able to get through.”
I let out a growl. I can’t form real words. I need all my energy to get me and Maggie out of here alive.
I swipe us through the first set of doors, and the time it takes for them to open are precious seconds lost.
The bots are quickly gaining on us, and soon one’s snapping at Maggie’s heels. She screams, and the horrible thing seems to pick up speed.
It runs like a track star propelled by Satan. The bot reaches out with its cold dead hands, and Maggie lets out a scream of terror.
I jerk to a halt but don’t let go. The bot has her by the neck, and it seems to be tightening its hold. Maggie kicks and thrashes, but it’s no use. The bot is stronger than both of us.
I watch in horror as it straightens its torso. I can hear the hydraulics lifting it higher, and Maggie’s feet leave the ground. Her face is turning an alarming shade of red. She’s kicking at the air — completely petrified — and there is nothing I can do.
The bot could break her neck. It would be that easy — one simple jerk at a forty-five-degree angle — but it’s going to strangle her instead.
Feeling desperate, I bring the butt of my rifle down on the bot’s mechanical joint. The clang of metal pierces my ears, and I hit it again.
The bot doesn’t release her, but its hold is weakened. I continue to beat the bot’s joint with my rifle
, huffing and hacking like a madman.
Maggie jerks her body desperately, and I grab her around the waist. She looks down. Our eyes lock. I know we’re out of options. I tug her down as hard as I can, and somehow she slips free.
Everything that happens next is a horrible blur. I catch Maggie as she falls to the ground, deep painful gashes spewing blood from her neck. She gasps for air and chokes for dear life, but I just grab her hand and run.
I don’t look back to see what the bot does next. I can hear the others gaining ground, but we make it through the next set of doors.
“Ping!” I yell.
“We lost some!”
“Not all of them!”
We’re approaching the last set of doors separating the bots from the rest of the colony. The doors open automatically, and I hit the button to seal them before the bots come through.
“Come on, come on, come on,” I mutter.
But the rest of the bots are just yards behind us, and the stupid doors won’t move.
We’re out of time.
Keeping hold of Maggie, I turn and run. There’s nothing else I can do.
35
Maggie
My body gives out just when we reach the archway leading to the barracks. I feel my legs wobble beneath me, and Jonah lurches forward to catch me before I hit the ground.
He smells good — some bright citrusy notes from deodorant or cologne. It’s clean and fresh and completely human, which I find comforting at the moment.
I allow myself to lean against him, and he keeps one arm locked around me as he pounds on a keypad mounted beside the archway. It must be some emergency lockdown protocol, because a second later, a door seems to unfold from the wall, sealing off Sector Q from the rest of the colony.
Jonah scoops me off my feet, and I feel a surge of embarrassment that I need to be carried. Jonah doesn’t speak or even pant. It’s as though I weigh nothing at all.
He walks me down to his room, scans himself in, and deposits me on his bed. His blanket is folded in a perfect rectangle, but he shakes it out and drapes it over my shoulders. Then he disappears, and I take the chance to study the picture above his bed.
It’s the only personal item he has in the room, so it must be important to him. It shows a pretty woman with long dark hair and two boys that look like her sons.
