by M. R. Forbes
“That you, Sheriff Duke?” Josh said.
“Affirmative. What’s your status, Josh?”
“I’m inside the Block Twenty-four stairwell, humping my way up to the sixth floor. What’s up?”
“The Governor asked me to head over that way, but I got a call from Natalia. She found something unexpected in the maintenance corridors.”
He wasn’t about to tell the Deputy what that something unexpected was. There was no point getting him involved when there was nothing he could do.
“It better be important, Sheriff,” Josh said.
“It is. Keep an eye out for Francis, bring him back to the Station. And lock down his apartment. I don’t want anyone touching anything in there.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hayden disconnected. He wanted to contact the Governor, but he didn’t wear a comm badge. He said anyone who needed him that bad would be able to find him.
Hayden didn’t need him that bad.
“Natalia Duke,” he said.
The badge beeped as it connected.
“Nat,” he said. “I’m on my way to Control.”
He waited a few seconds for her to answer.
She didn’t.
“Nat?”
He waited a second time.
Still no answer.
“Natalia?”
He grabbed his badge, unclipping it from his collar and bringing it to his face. The indicator light said their badges were connected.
“Natalia?” he said again, louder this time.
She still didn’t respond.
He had felt cold before. Now he was truly panicked. He clutched the comm, breaking into a sprint, heading in the direction of Engineering.
“Natalia!” he repeated.
Nothing.
He tapped the badge to disconnect.
“Engineering,” he said, his breath heavy.
He couldn’t think. Couldn’t focus. Couldn’t concentrate.
“Sheriff Duke?” Mae said.
“Mae, did Natalia make it back to Control yet?” He said it breathlessly, a mix of fear and exertion.
“No, Sheriff,” Mae said. “Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not. Nat isn’t answering her comm.”
“What? How could that be?”
“I don’t know.”
“She was in Section C. I’ll go and look for her.”
“No,” Hayden said. “Stay in Control. I’m on my way.”
Only now did he remember the tapping he had heard in Section C. How could he have forgotten it? Maybe it wasn’t nothing after all.
He disconnected again. “Natalia Duke,” he said, contacting her badge. It beeped when it connected. “Nat, please tell me you’re there.”
She didn’t answer. Again.
Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it.
He felt the tears spring to his eyes. He felt the rush of desperate adrenaline. He picked up the pace, sprinting hard through the split, reaching Metro Park South. He raced through the park, the residents there turning their heads to watch him.
He made it to the access hatch, breathing heavily, a cold sweat dripping from his brow as he tried to type in the code, fumbling twice before getting it right. It slid aside, and he ran in, retracing his steps from the night before, when it had been him in Section C, examining the waste system.
Why was she out there by herself? What could have happened to her? He kept trying to raise her on her transceiver, but she didn’t answer. Was she hurt? Was she dead? What the hell happened?
He charged through the maintenance corridors, back to Section C.
“Nat,” he cried out, his voice echoing in the empty passages. “Nat, where are you?”
She didn’t answer.
The secure hatch was where? He tried to remember the map from the night before. It wasn’t far from where he had checked the waste system. He wiped the moisture from his eyes, reaching for his gun and pulling it from his hip. If anyone had hurt Natalia, he was going to do more than stun them.
He would kill them with his bare hands if he had to, law be damned.
He reached the end of the corridor, turning to the right to face the secured hatch. It wasn’t like the other hatches inside Metro’s perimeter. It was heavy and thick and had a line of yellow and black stripes along the outer edge. There was no control panel on this side. No way to open it.
He looked to the area ahead of it. There was blood on the floor, a thick smear that covered the metal surface. Something was resting the blood.
Natalia’s transceiver.
He ran over to it. Knelt down. He was barely holding himself together. His eyes ran. His lip quivered. There was so much blood. But no body. She said there had been a body. Whose blood was he standing in?
He followed the smear to the hatch. It disappeared below it in a line.
“Naaaaattttt,” he shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing in the corridor. “No! Damn it!”
He walked to the hatch. He bent down. There. A handprint in the blood. Only the fingers were sticking out through the hatch, as if they had reached under from the other side. The fingers were small. A woman’s hand? Was it Natalia? Was this her blood?
He felt along the bottom, trying to find a seam, desperate to find a way to open it. He scraped his fingers along the floor, breaking a nail on the intersection of steel, shoving his fingers forward to get beneath.
He couldn’t. Of course, he couldn’t. There was no way to open the door. They had tried. He was sure they had tried at some point in the last. What? Almost four hundred years? Francis’ words came back and hit him in the gut like a sucker punch.
“Ignorance is bliss, Sheriff.”
No. It wasn’t. Not now. Not ever. Ignorance? What kind of ignorance led to this? Natalia was missing. There was a trail of blood from this side of the secure hatch to the other. Someone was out there, where no one should have been. Someone may have taken his wife.
Who?
“Natalia,” he shouted. “Nat!”
No answer. He didn’t expect one. Not anymore.
He continued to scratch at the hatch. There was no way through. Not like this.
He had to make a choice. Fall apart or figure it out.
He wasn’t about to abandon her.
He would figure it out. He knew where to start. He knew who knew how to open locked hatches.
He had to get back to Block Twenty-four.
10
He ran back through the maintenance corridors. His heart was pounding, his breath ragged. With every step, he felt like he couldn’t take another one. His body didn’t want to support him. His mind didn’t want to stay strong.
She was gone. His love. His life.
How could that be possible?
They weren’t alone on the Pilgrim. That much was obvious. Not unless someone in Metro was playing some kind of sick joke. Could it be Francis? No, he wouldn’t have had time. The Governor? Was he that mad at him that he would do something like that?
He didn’t know what to think. What to believe. That door had been sealed for four hundred years. It hadn’t opened when they were supposed to arrive wherever they were headed, why in the universe would it have opened now? And why did whatever was on the other side take Natalia? Clearly, they wouldn’t have been expecting to find someone there. Was it because she had found the body? Were they trying to hide something?
It seemed everyone was trying to hide something.
He reached the main corridor that passed Control. Mae was there, heading in his direction.
“Sheriff,” she said, concerned when she saw his red face and sweaty brow. “Did you find Natalia?”
“No,” he said, the word coming out more violently than he intended. He didn’t slow as he reached her.
“Sheriff?” she said. She turned to watch him run past, and then made her way back into Control.
“Deputy Bradshaw,” Hayden said, tapping his badge.
He could barely get the words out; his body w
as working so hard. He knew he should have stayed on top of his daily runs, to make sure he would be ready for anything. He had let himself slip. He had gotten too comfortable. All the Sheriffs did as they aged. Hell, that was one of the perks of being the Sheriff. But they didn’t have to deal with what he was dealing with. The turbs had only started ten years earlier. Everything had been so much more peaceful before that.
Bradshaw didn’t respond. Why?
“Bradshaw,” he said again.
This didn’t make any sense. He glanced down at the badge, realizing it hadn’t beeped. The connection wasn’t made. The indicator was still red. Something was wrong with the transceivers. It figured if anything were going to break right now, it would be that.
He reached Metro South Park. He had to stop then, leaning over from his waist, holding his hands on his thighs and gulping for air. There was no time to stop. No time to breathe. Natalia was in trouble, and every second counted.
His heart thudded in his chest. Sweat dripped off his head. His mouth was dry. His body shook. He looked up at Metro. The blocks came within a half-dozen meters of the membrane at the top, just far enough away that nobody could damage it and defeat the illusion of a sky. The brightest light was active, drenching the city in sunlight, moving slowly across the drape as the day progressed.
He sprinted again, running across the grass to the edge of Metro, reaching Block One. He thundered down the split, streaking along the porous pavement, crossing one block after another. Five. Eight. Eleven.
He tried Bradshaw again, but his transceiver still wouldn’t connect. He needed his damn Deputies, and he couldn’t reach them. It was as if fate had decided to screw him, and good. His life had been too perfect. Too easy. He needed some hardship. Some adversity. To hell with adversity. He needed his wife.
Block Fifteen. Block Eighteen. He was getting into the more dilapidated portion of the city, where the younger residents and the secondary service citizens were housed - the jobs that weren’t deemed critical to the survival of the city. Cleaners and patchers, clothing renovators and creatives.
There were hundreds of small, individual roles to fill in Metro, each one originally intended to prepare them for life on their new world, slowly adapted to keep the city from falling apart. They were shifting what they had forward, keeping the place operational from Engineering back. The deeper blocks down to the last one, Thirty, were in the worst shape.
Hayden reached Block Twenty-four, slowing as he approached the sliding door that would grant him entry. Only this one didn’t slide anymore. It was permanently open, a wedge of metal keeping its weight from pulling it closed. Deputy Hicks was standing just inside, gun in hand.
“Hicks,” Hayden coughed, trying to catch his breath again. His legs were on fire. So were his lungs.
“Sheriff?” Hicks said, looking at him, his eyebrows creasing at the sight. “What the hell happened to you, Sheriff?”
He ignored the question. There was no time to explain. “Where’s Bradshaw? Where’s Francis?”
“Francis?”
“The suspect we were chasing here.”
Hicks made a face Hayden couldn’t read. Confusion? Fear? There was something about it he didn’t like.
“Uh. Sheriff, I don’t know how to tell you this, but, well.”
“Spit it out, Hicks.”
“The suspect is dead.”
Hayden didn’t think he could have been taken by surprise again. Not after what had just happened. He was wrong.
“What?”
“Bradshaw is on his way to Medical with lacerations on his arms and face. Aahro is securing the scene.”
“You’re saying the suspect attacked Bradshaw?” Hayden said.
“Yes, sir,” Hicks replied. “Came at him with a homemade knife. Told him he would rather kill him than let him have it.”
“Have what?”
“I don’t know, sir. I got here too late. You’ll have to ask Bradshaw or Aahro.”
“The cube is secure?”
“Yes, sir.”
He needed to get up there, to see what it was Francis had been protecting. He had been willing to die to try to keep it from their hands, and Hayden was certain it had something to do with what Francis and the friend had discovered. Maybe it was a device that could open doors? He needed that more than anything right now.
“I’m heading up,” Hayden said.
“Yes, sir,” Hicks replied.
Hayden entered the Block. As he passed Hicks, he noticed the deputy’s badge indicator was green. He had a connection.
“Sir?” Hicks said.
“What is it?”
“Is that blood on your pants?”
Hayden looked down. Some of the blood had been picked up by the cuff, and some had splattered as he ran through it. He did his best not to think that it was Natalia’s blood. That it belonged to the body she had found. He had to believe that, or he wouldn’t be able to keep going.
He looked Hicks in the eye and then continued to the stairwell without responding.
The stairs were dim. More than half the lights were out and unable to be replaced. The tile on the floor was old and cracked, more worn than the rest from years of added traffic. Hayden hardly noticed as he climbed to the sixth floor, moving as fast as his body would allow. He still felt the chill in his nerves, the panic in his head and heart. He was holding it tight, barely keeping it under control. He needed to stay level-headed and solve the problem. That was the only way he was going to see his wife again.
The sixth floor was quiet, the residents there all moved from the floor while Law completed their investigation. Deputy Innis was guarding the stairwell when Hayden arrived, and he moved aside immediately to allow him through.
“Sheriff,” Innis said. “Are you okay?”
Hayden nodded. “I just came from Engineering.”
Innis whistled. “That’s a long haul, Sheriff.”
“Tell me about it. It damn near killed me.”
Innis laughed. Hayden continued down the corridor. Francis’ cube was easy to spot. The door was open, and blood had been thrown out onto the walls and floor.
“Geez,” Hayden said without thinking.
“They made a damn mess,” Innis said, overhearing him. “That asshole nearly killed Bradshaw.”
“He went to Medical,” Hayden said. “Under his own power?”
“No, they came and got him.”
Medical was the only office that still had use of a transport. The powered gurney wasn’t fast, but the hospital was situated right in the center of Metro, keeping it within ten minutes of any location in the city.
Hayden turned back to the cube. He moved to the doorway, looking in.
The cube was a mess, which was saying a lot. Nobody in Metro had all that much, to the point that when a living space was disorganized, it still didn’t look cluttered. Beyond the blood stains and marks that had made it to the walls and covered the floors, the amount of crap the kid had collected was both impressive and frightening.
There were scraps of metal in one corner. Broken pieces of lighting fixtures, tiles from the floor, chips of synthcrete and a stack of cloth that would have gotten him arrested on the spot if they had known it was there; cloth that was now ruined with blood.
There was also more furniture than any single cube should have. Beyond a table and one chair for a single adult, beyond the fold up bed in the wall of the smaller cube, Francis had collected three more tables, six more chairs, and had somehow also gotten his hands on a display like the ones they had in Engineering. His place was stuffed to the brim, with only a narrow corridor to pass from the entrance to the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and the different piles of materials.
“How the hell did he manage this?” Hayden said.
Deputy Aarho was on her knees next to the table with the display on it, bent over a broken shard of green plastic with silver etchings in it. She turned her head back to look at him, surprised to hear this voice. She shifted her pos
ition to face him better.
“Sheriff Duke,” she said. “I didn’t know you were on your way down.”
“My badge isn’t working right,” Hayden said. “What is that?”
“This?” she said, pointing at the plastic. “Is a circuit board.”
“Okay,” he replied. Natalia had spoken about them before, but he didn’t know that’s what they looked like. “What was it for?”
“I don’t know yet. It’s broken.”
“I can see that. I don’t suppose that’s what Francis was trying to keep Bradshaw away from?”
She nodded. “How did you know?”
Hayden did everything he could to keep his face straight, despite his sudden internal despair. “Lucky guess.”
“The more important question is, where did he get it?”
“Where did he get any of this stuff? No, I want to know what it did. How it worked.”
And who the hell might be able to fix it if it could help him find Natalia.
“Who cares?” Aahro said.
“A man died to keep this out of Law’s hands,” Hayden growled. “Bradshaw is with Medical. What was he so desperate to protect and why? Those are important questions, Deputy.”
Aahro’s face flushed. “I. I’m sorry, Sheriff.”
Hayden scanned the room again. Why would a man who lived alone have so many tables and chairs?
He knew about the one friend, even if he didn’t know anything about him except that he had a weird haircut. Were the others who were with him on this?
“Did you find anything that might give us an indication of who he liked to hang out with, or places he liked to go?”
“No, Sheriff. I know this place looks like a disaster, but our perp was very careful to keep personal items out of the equation. Usually, a cube has at least one or two keepsakes. This guy has all kinds of scraps, but nothing like that.”
Because Francis knew what he was doing might get him in trouble. Because he had something to hide. A way to recover some of the data from the PASS that had been lost. A way to hack into maintenance boxes. And now Hayden was pretty sure they weren’t alone on the Pilgrim.
He clenched his jaw. And that whatever was out there, it wasn’t very friendly.
