Then again, there was always a deeper place to fall. He could always count on the Walrus to bring some dire news. His longtime predecessor had a knack for picking out the worst in every situation. That habit did help the Alpine develop machinery and procedures to stay alive. He also helped transform the sea-mount into a sustainable farm. In hindsight, it was no surprise that the Walrus of all people helped develop the platform's only continual source of food. Food was a preoccupation of his. A borderline obsession. He left a trail of despair everywhere he went. The only thing the rest of us could do was try to stay alive until his next meal.
Speak of the devil. Of course, the Walrus walked into his office looking like he just picked a fight with a polar bear.
“Walter. Good to see you up and about. I’m surprised you weren’t first in line for the rations.” Sycamore smiled as he imagined Walter doubled over, vomiting on the floor from the contaminated food.
“Yes. Yes. I'm here to report a murder, Sycamore.”
Sycamore’s smile disappeared.
Perfect. A murder. Just what he needed. Did the Walrus know about everything else that happened on the platform today? He said what was in all likelihood the only thing that could make this day worse, the only thing that could escalate the situation short of the platform sinking into the very ocean. Now he had to pay attention to the man.
The other people around Sycamore looked at each other, unsure of how to proceed.
“Who.”
“A boy. I'm not sure. He was young. A child.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us?
“His eyes were missing.”
“Missing?”
“Gouged out.”
Shit.
The pathetic bickering he could handle. How long could that possibly last? But this? This was permanent. It was something that couldn't be undone. Someone on the platform created a situation that prompted real retaliation. Was there really anyone on the platform that would kill a child? Sycamore didn't want to believe it. Maybe it was an accident, like so many others that they dealt with. If the boy’s death meant what he thought it did, the platform would not survive. How long would it take for that disease to inject itself into the real motivations underlying the arbitrary squabbles?
And where was Beatrice? Was she still trying to contain the riots in the lower corridors? She must have broken up that nonsense by now. She should be here now.
Sycamore sat behind his table and lost himself in his thoughts. He thought about what could have happened to the boy, and how he could replenish the platform’s food supply. There were too many pieces to the puzzle. Too many unknowns. He tried to sort through what he knew to find a solution to the slate of gnawing problems. There was a solution in there, somewhere, and he was determined to juggle the criteria until he found an answer.
“Where is the body now?”
“I brought it to the Good Doctor.”
“Did Dr. Gossamer have anything to offer?”
“She was busy.”
“Too busy to deal with a dead child?”
“This wasn’t the only incident on the platform. It isn’t even the only death.”
Sycamore sensed a moment of defiance in the Walrus’s demeanor. He was right of course. This wasn’t the only death. But it was the only one where they didn’t know who to blame.
Sycamore ordered the Roughnecks to bring in the Braided Woman and assist her Security teams to get control of the place. He would have the Braided Woman herself conduct an investigation into the murder. That should quell any concern that he isn’t taking this seriously, or that the problems on the platform could spiral out of control. The boy’s disappearance proved to rupture Sycamore’s apparent calm. In truth, he didn’t want to know what happened to the boy. Left to him, he would have let the whole matter die. But he couldn’t ignore the bustling crowds, the demanding voices and his own suspicions. There was going to be a search, whether or not he ordered the platform’s security to spearhead the operation.
‘Fine, Walter. You can leave now.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SAGE
The air. It wasn’t right. It was putrid. Soaked in body heat. And it was warm.
For the first time in her entire life, Sage was warm. It made her uncomfortable. It felt like thousands of microbes secreting fluids over her arms and neck. She could smell the sour odor from her armpits. It didn’t have the exhilarating vigor that came from exhaustion, that windswept feeling that only came from the ocean. It smelled like she was stewing in her own skin. Almost like a mild version of the Squatters that occupied the platform.
The worst part was that the stench wasn’t just hers.
Sage gagged at the thought of the spit, blood and vomit that soaked through her clothes. When she got out of this, the first thing to do would be to take a bath. A long one. With soap. Real soap, if she could find any.
Her right arm stretched out in front of her, her left wedged between her chest and the steel vent. If she could just move her left arm, then she could maybe worm her way forwards by pulling with her fingertips. As it is, she couldn’t get enough traction with just her right hand to pull herself forwards. Or push herself back. The only thing she managed to accomplish was create an occasional grating screech that came from fingernails scratching the aluminum.
Muffled screaming persisted around her. Maybe she would have been better off in the middle of the riots.
And there was an itch on her nose. She tried to reach for it with her left hand because it was closer, but only managed to grab at her lip a few times. She tried to turn her right arm back towards her face, but she couldn’t contort her wrist enough to reach her nose. However, she did manage to scratch an itch on her left ear. So it wasn’t a total loss. She decided to just scrape her nose against the vent itself. She squashed it into the aluminum and scraped it against the unpolished surface until she was satisfied. Having solved that annoyance, she nestled her face into the inside of her armpit so she could think.
How did she even get this deep inside the vent? Fear and adrenaline? When did she let her left arm get lodged between the aluminum and her chest?
Idiot, she mumbled.
She can’t crawl her way through. There isn’t enough space to move her elbows. She can’t claw either. So what else could she do? She could cry for help, but Sage didn’t like that idea. With everyone else on the platform shouting at each other, there wasn’t any guarantee that anyone who heard her screams would distinguish it from everything else that was happening. Her cries would only use up energy that she would probably need once she accepted that no one was going to come for her.
The other option was to wait it out. The people on the platform can’t go around killing each other forever. At some point, the fighting would stop. If she couldn’t get herself out of this, then someone would help her once everything settled down. Eventually.
That last thought gave Sage some comfort, helped her calm down. She could breathe. Of course she could breathe. She was in the air vents themselves. It’s probably the only place in the entire platform where she was guaranteed air. It might be warm and loud, but she had air. Even so, she didn’t want to be stuck in here forever. So…
Was there a third option?
Sage considered simply breaking the vent. Smash through it like some sort of wrecking ball. And she would be doing everyone else on the platform a favor in the process. For one glorious stretch, the people inside the Alpine wouldn’t have to listen to that obnoxious drone.
Drrr. Drrr. Drrr.
Until everyone suffocated to death.
Of course, that wasn’t a real option. She wasn’t strong enough to smash through the vents. Even with a running start, she couldn’t break these things, much less in a situation where she couldn’t even scratch her own nose.
Sage rubbed her nose against the aluminum. She unsettled some dust which hovered around her face.
Oh no, not in here. Shouldn’t have tried to scratch my nose on a dusty air
shaft.
She couldn’t avoid it. She shut her eyes in a useless attempt to suppress the sneeze. She didn’t have to imagine for very long how much it would hurt in this space where she couldn’t even fill her lungs with air. Sage let out a series of muffled snorts. That, at least, would minimize how much her ribs expanded and how much they pressed into the vents.
Her lungs were completely emptied, but she just couldn’t manage a deep breath, not with how restrictive the vent was. She’d have to settle for a shallow one instead, despite how desperately she needed to suck in a lungful of air. Partial inhale. Partial inhale. Between the restriction on her rib cage and the compression she put on her nose, she didn’t have any other choice.
The third option came to her.
Sage was lean enough to fit inside the vents, though still large enough to get stuck in this tight crawl. However, she could make her body even smaller.
As lean as she was, she simply had to exhale, and exhale hard.
With each exhale, her lungs would compress.
Maybe with compressed lungs, she could crawl forwards.
Sage pressed her toes into the vent and laid her right arm flat at a near ninety degree angle at the elbow. With her arm placed perpendicular to the vent, her movement would be more like an army crawl. She wouldn’t have to pull her entire weight forwards with just her fingertips.
So that was the plan. Partial inhale. Deep exhale. Pull with your arm. Push with your toes. Repeat.
It would work as long she didn’t have to make any sharp turns. But that shouldn’t be a problem. The vents should spider-web out to the residential pods fairly soon. All she had to do was find a friendly one.
She was making progress. It was inches at a time, but it was progress. She laid her forehead into the flesh on her forearm. The shallow breathing was getting to her. Not enough oxygen. She couldn’t keep these heavy exhales going without getting lightheaded.
Slow down, she told herself. Give your head a chance to catch up with what your body is doing. Suffocated and cramped. Body heat rising. The people on this platform were ripping each other apart. Slow down? If only it were that easy.
Stupid air ventilation system. Just small enough to keep everyone else out and trap her inside. Wouldn’t it be weird if she happened to stumble on someone else just then? But who else could possibly fit inside this space? There were a few young kids on the platform, but none of them were old enough or crazy enough to venture into the ventilation system during a full blown riot.
The twins, maybe. Hector and Vector. They were still young, and just the kind of troublemakers that would use the vents for their own amusement. They would probably place wagers on whether or not she could get out of the vents without their help.
Sage wondered what they were up to in that moment. She hoped that they were having an easier time of it than she was.
Her head slowly started to spin. For a moment, she considered simply taking a nap. She wiped her sweat off on her forearm. How easy it would be to simply give up. She shook her head. She couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t do that.
Come on, Sage. Two things to do today. Calm down. Slow down. And don’t give up. Fine. Three things. Three things left to do today.
Ever so slowly, she inched forward, crawling over a series of pods. The further along she moved in the air column, the more resonant the shouting became around her. The empty space amplified the screams and the bangs. Now she had to shut out the deafening noise. It was all part of staying calm, thinking about something else while her body went through the motions.
As long as she could maneuver through the limited crawl space, everything else was in her head. She wouldn’t let that panic get the best of her.
She was crawling over a series of pods. Faint green light emanated from the one below her. That helped. The bioluminescent dinoflagellates made the process a little easier. At least she didn’t have to contend with relentless darkness.
Soon, she would be looking down into the pods themselves. Sage didn’t have any idea whose pods they were. At any other time, she could probably just ask for help at the first vent she passed over. Whoever lived in there in would be friendly enough. But now, considering what was going on in the rest of the platform, people might be wary of some interloper hovering over them in the air vents. She should be cautious. Not just barge through the first opening she came to. Exercise some judgment, even if that meant crawling through the vents awhile longer.
Faint slats of light came into sharper focus. She pressed onwards. Eager to see who occupied the pod. Hopeful that it was someone friendly.
The possibility gave her something to think about, to focus on while she escaped the screaming in the platform’s corridors. It helped her block out everything else that was happening.
That is, until she felt something squishy under her forearm. She peered under her arm to see what she was crawling over. It adopted the pale green tinge of the light emanating from the pods, but its real color was unmistakable. It was a dark black that Sage recognized immediately. Somehow, an ocean leech had made its way into the vents to latch onto her skin with its anterior suckers. She knew these. They were another mutation—Hirudo medicinalis, a mainland species adapted to survive in shallow salt water environments like the sea-mount.
How did this get in here? She wondered.
Ordinarily, she would carefully press a fingernail underneath its sucker until the leech voluntarily detached itself, but her movements were too constrained by the vent for that option. It would tear at her skin if she tried to simply pry it off. Worse than some torn skin, there was a chance that it would release the bacteria in its stomach into the open bite, and if she pulled hard enough, part of the leech’s jaws could lodge into her skin. She knew more than one Farmer that made that mistake. As it was, she could either let the leech have its fill or deal with it once she escaped the vents.
Until then, the leech presented another problem. It limited the movement of her right arm. She couldn’t press it into the vent to move forward. To do so would run the risk of squeezing the leech and having its stomach contents ejected into her arm. That was the last thing Sage wanted. She had to keep her arm elevated.
This meant she was down to an elbow and her fingertips. It didn’t give her as much leverage or power as her forearm, but it would have to do. The different angle would at least allow her to see the vent immediately in front of her in case there were more leeches, which seemed likely. In all of her excursions to the sea-mount, she never saw just one leech.
Unlike most of the people on the platform, leeches had friends.
Blood and vomit. Sweat. And now leeches.
I really need to take a bath, she decided.
She was approaching the nearest pod.
There was another leech, but this one was above her on her left. It was still, almost as though it was watching her. Maybe it was watching her because it was concerned about its comrade. All the more reason for her to move about with care. She didn’t want to know what the second leech would do if she callously squished the one that was attached to her arm.
Partial inhale. Deep exhale. Pull with your arm. Push with your toes. Check on the leeches. Now they were moving. She needed to increase her pace or another leech would latch itself onto her skin. There was already one attached to her body. That was bad enough. But two? She hustled forward.
This was too much work for mere inches.
At least she could almost see into the vent in front of her. Once she was within arms length, she grabbed the slats with her fingers, exhaled, and pulled herself forward.
She had never seen the pod before, but she knew exactly who it belonged to. The white mask with the distorted nose. The mismatched plastic figurines. The general clutter. All of these gave the owners’ identity away. She was peering directly into the twins’ pod. Unfortunately, neither Hector nor Vector was inside. That probably meant they were caught up in the riots. If they weren’t back yet, then they could be hurt.
She wasn’t doing herself any favors by lying around in the ventilation system. And even if the twins were inside their pod, they wouldn’t mind her dropping in uninvited.
Four small screws kept the grill locked in place. The head would face the pod’s interior, away from Sage. She loosened each screw with her thumb and forefinger until they were nearly flush with the aluminum plating and the grill hung limp.
She opened up her palm and smacked the grill as hard as she could. It flapped open. Three of the screws came loose and scattered across the floor. A fourth screw stayed in its place and kept the grill from falling into the pod. Her arm went through the hole and scraped against the aluminum edge like a cheese grater. She winced at the stinging pain. Cursed when she saw that she was bleeding.
She edged her head and shoulders out of the vent, dislodging her left arm from the side of her body, and grabbed the edge of the vent with both hands. She slowly wormed her body out of the system until she flipped over and dangled from the vents with her fingertips.
Sage was finally in control. Between the relentless drone, the uncomfortable air, the cramped space, the blood-sucking leeches and the sharp edges, it hadn’t seemed like she’d ever actually get out of there.
She let go of the vent and soundlessly dropped to the floor. In the green bioluminescent lighting, she turned her arm over to inspect the leech. It was still there. She took her left thumb and gently pressed it under the sucker until the leech simply let go.
Now, where to put it?
She edged closer to the bioluminescent lighting that circled the walls to see if the twins happened to have something that would be useful for storing the leech. As she got closer to the light source, her eyes adjusted to the room.
“What in seven seas happened here?” She wasn’t holding the only leech in the room, but she was holding the only living one. They were all over the floor. The walls. The beds. Everywhere. At least now she knew why the twins weren’t inside their pod. It didn’t matter what was happening on the platform. Food riots. Exploding tanks. This pod was a complete sty. No telling how long it would take them to come back here to clean up this leech massacre.
The Platform Page 12
