Binary Pair

by Michael-Scott Earle

  Tunar-Roz glowered at the drone, but then she nodded and stepped away from Eve.

  We watched the vampire toggle the system on and off for another few minutes. The work was all sorts of boring, but the drone’s wide angle lens kept catching Commander Tunar-Roz pacing behind Eve, and it was plain to see that the woman was getting annoyed with the delay.

  “There! That’s it! Yes!” Zea shouted when the password field was suddenly filled with blocks of text.

  “You did it?” Tunar-Roz asked as she leaned over Eve to stare at the screen.

  “Kind of. It will take a few moments to crack the password. Then Eve can upload your file.”

  “Ahh. Speaking of that.” The commander pulled out a data fob and laid it on the terminal beside the ports. “We’ll be using this data drive, instead of the one I gave you earlier.”

  Chapter 14

  “Shit,” Kasta, Paula, and I hissed at the same time, but we were muted, and Commander Tunar-Roz, her marines, and Eve couldn’t hear us.

  “That is fine,” Eve said as she reached for the data drive.

  “Uhhh. Hold up,” Zea said, and I could hear her trying to hide her panic.

  “What?” Tunar-Roz growled, and it was obvious she guessed what we were up to.

  “I ahh… I…” Zea was trying to figure out what to say.

  “Zea, it is fine.” Eve turned to the woman standing next to her. “As long as Commander Tunar-Roz has given us the same software packet she gave Adam and me?”

  “It’s the same software. We just want to make sure it is our software and not something you decided to tweak,” the commander spat.

  “I can understand your suspicion. We will use your new datastick of course. Zea, can I insert it in now?”

  “Uhh. Yeah, you can--”

  “What the fuck was that?” One of the marines whispered, and the drone spun around in the air to see him raise his rifle.

  “What?” Commander Tunar-Roz pointed her own weapon.

  “I saw it too,” another marine whispered. Now they all had their rifles up, and they were pointing toward the dark side of the large room.

  “What did you see?” Tunar-Roz demanded.

  “Just wings, but bigger. There!” the marine shouted and the men all twisted their weapons to point to the right.

  “It’s behind the wall over there,” another marine said, and Zea turned the drone’s lens to look in that direction. I didn’t see any movement, but panic was flooding my stomach. Shit. I should be there.

  “Clark and Maxwell, go check it out,” the commander said with a gesture of her right hand. The two men nodded and then made careful steps toward the other side of the room.

  “Get the software uploaded, now,” the woman growled at Eve.

  “Of course. Zea, should I insert it here?”

  “Yeah,” Zea kind of whined, and the drone zoomed in on the port where the vampire pushed the data stick in.

  The camera moved to the screen of the terminal, and the menu opened. But then there was the sound of gunfire from behind the drone, and everyone turned from the screen to see what the Marines were shooting at.

  “It flew down to the bottom level!” one of the marines screamed. “It’s fucking huge! Two meters tall!”

  “Hold the perimeter here!” the commander shouted. “Don’t follow it!”

  “Movement to our left!” another marine shouted, and they all turned in that direction.

  “Get that fucking software executed!” Tunar-Roz screamed at Eve.

  Then one of the marines started shooting.

  “Zea! Help me get this!” The tone of Eve’s voice wasn’t her usual calm cadence, and my heart ached to hear her fear.

  “Press on the middle icon!” Zea shouted, but there was another spray of gunfire from the marines, and the hacker had to repeat her words.

  Eve touched the screen on the middle icon, and another folder opened to display a group of files. Eve moved her hand down a bit on the list and pressed the icon that said “Lith_Dae_pass.” As soon as she touched the icon, another screen opened, and a progress bar began to advance.

  “It is activated!” Eve called out to Tunar-Roz, but the commander was firing her rifle into the darkness, and just nodded back at my friend.

  “They are too fucking fast!” another marine shouted, and Zea spun the camera around to see the marines shooting into the darkness. I still didn’t see any of the drone movement that they were firing at, and the beast in my stomach screamed with frustration.

  “It is almost done!” Eve shouted through the breaks in the rapid fire.

  “It flew downstairs!” one of the marines shouted.

  “Who has eyes on the second one?” Commander Tunar-Roz demanded.

  “It’s behind the shelves here!” one of the other marines shouted, and Z swung around the drone camera to where the marines were pointing their weapons. I saw the shelves they were talking about. They were filled with old style paper books that were now riddled with bullet holes.

  “There!” One of the men screamed, and the other marines started shooting.

  “I can’t see the drone,” Paula said as she moved the screen on her wrist. “This viewscreen is too small.”

  “We need to get ready to run into the bunker.” I was even more concerned about Eve now that there were drones in the government center, but there was nothing I could do to help her beyond finishing our mission.

  “The program is done!” Eve called out, and Zea’s drone spun around to see that the progress bar was moved to “Completed” status.

  “Press the green button,” Zea said, but Eve was already tapping her finger on the screen. The menu changed to a map of the city, and there was a menu of options on the right side.

  “It appears to have worked,” Eve said.

  “The other one flew downstairs. Why the fuck can’t we hit it?” one of the marines shouted.

  “Open the door to the southeast bunker,” Tunar-Roz ordered Eve.

  “Of course.” The vampire pressed one of the buttons on the right that said Bunker Management. Then she pressed a few other menu buttons, and the screen said Opening Bunker Door.

  “It is opening,” Kasta said as she nodded to the front of the car where vehicle's control monitor sat. The twins and I watched the massive metal doors crawl open, but I looked back to the screen on Paula’s wrist when I heard Commander Tunar-Roz speak.

  “You are done in that chair. I’ll take control now.”

  “Very well,” Eve stood and then took a step away from the control terminal.

  “Clark! Keep an eye on her,” the commander said.

  “Yes, Commander,” the marine said, and he gestured for Eve to stand next to the wall some three meters from the terminal. Eve walked over there without complaint and casually leaned against the wall. The drone camera spun around to the other marines. They were all positioned near the stairs and pointed their rifles down to where I guessed the drones had escaped.

  “Tell your captain that we’ve done our part. Have him confirm the doors are opening and that his team is going into the next bunker,” Tunar-Roz said to Eve.

  “Adam, did you hear?” Eve asked.

  “Yeah. The door is opening. We are going to drive in,” I said. This was bad news though. If we were using Lith Dae’s original code, they would be able to close the doors of the southeast bunker as soon as we opened the northwest’s doors.

  We were walking right into their hands, and there was nothing we could do about it, or they would shoot Eve on the ground, and attack Zea in orbit.

  “Get a move on,” the commander called, but I didn’t respond to her.

  “Adam, I muted Eve’s line so she can’t hear us.” Zea’s voice came through the transponder.

  “What can we do?” I asked.

  “Eve installed our code,” Zea said with a giggle.

  “Huh? How?”

  “I have no fucking idea, but I’m looking at it right now. Lith Dae just uploaded it, and I have th
e backdoor. I think when they got distracted by the drones, she switched the data drives.”

  “There weren’t any of the bird-drones,” I said with a laugh.

  “I didn’t see any through the camera. Did you three?” Zea asked.

  “No,” I answered.

  “Are we missing something?” Paula asked.

  “Eve has powers. She calls it ‘witch magic.’ She can make people see and hear stuff that isn’t real,” I explained. “We didn’t see the drones on the camera because there weren’t any. She created the illusion. Everyone turned away from her, and she switched the data sticks. She must have read Tunar-Roz’s mind and known she was going to try and give us a different data drive.”

  “I gotta tell you. I almost pissed myself when that bitch pulled out the new data drive. I feel like an idiot for not guessing it would happen.” Zea let out another laugh. “But the joke’s on them. They think they got us, but we still have them. If they try to fuck us, I can cut communications on their end. It won’t last forever, but it will probably give us some wiggle room to escape if we need it.”

  “As long as they don’t try to kill Eve,” Kasta said as she looked at the screen on her sister’s wrist.

  “And as long as we can get past whatever security measure are in this bunker and open the other one,” Paula said as she pointed to the screen of the car. The bunker doors were now open wide enough for our car to enter.

  But there was a whole lot of darkness on the other side of the door.

  “Let’s get a move on,” I said.

  “Should I send the two cars in first to scout?” Kasta asked.

  “Yeah just have them roll around in there a bit.”

  “I don’t have a screen to show you what they see,” Kasta said. “Unless you want to take eyes off Eve?”

  “No. Just let us know if you see something,” I replied, and I saw the two drone-cars roll past us on our vehicle's monitor.

  Paula and I waited what felt like an hour, but Kasta didn’t speak.

  “I’ve gone around the perimeter and didn’t see anything interesting,” she finally updated. “Should they fall back and park by the doors?”

  “No automated security systems?” I asked, even though I knew she was going to say no. We hadn’t heard a gunshot or any noise come from the inky darkness inside of the bunker.

  “Nope,” she answered.

  “Alright. Leave the other two cars on each side of the door in case something goes wrong, we can keep the doors from closing.”

  “Will do,” Kasta said, and I felt our vehicle begin to roll forward into the oppressive darkness of the bunker.

  “Will the bird-drones enter through the open bunker doors?” I didn’t like the idea of them being able to follow us.

  “The armor over our car seems to have worked,” Paula said. “They didn’t attack us while we were sitting out in front of the bunker. A few might stray inside, but I don’t really want to close those doors behind us.”

  “Me either,” I agreed.

  “Shit, it is dark,” Paula said after we passed the open doors. It was like we were rolling into a pool of ink. The darkness was so thick, the sound of the wheels rubbing against the ground beneath us was the only indicator of our movement.

  “Turning the headlights on,” the android said a half-moment before they flared.

  “Ha. That’s not much better,” Paula said. The headlights were piercing the darkness a bit, but they weren’t showing a wall or any other features of the inside bunker. It was just more ebony air that seemed to suck down the light as if it was a black hole.

  “My dragonfly drones, as you call them, can search quickly. Can I bring them inside?” Kasta asked.

  “Yes please,” I answered. We had wanted to save those drones until we ensured no automated security could shoot them out of the air.

  “They are entering and can do a full sweep in a few minutes.”

  “Got it,” I said, and then we continued to roll through the darkness for another half minute.

  “This place feels oppressively huge,” Paula said with a long sigh. “Like we are inside a coffin.”

  “We aren’t rolling that fast. I know the outside dimensions, we should see the wall right… now.” As soon as Kasta finished speaking, the headlights of the car bounced off the side of the domed wall. It was made of smooth concrete, and the stone was polished a bit to reflect some of our light back into our sensor cameras.

  “Nothing this way,” the android said. “I’ve searched the walls, and now we have driven through the center.”

  “There has to be something here. The map showed us an elevator. This can’t just be an empty building,” I said.

  “Oh, one of the recon drones found something. In the middle-ish of the room. We drove south of it when we crossed. I’ll turn the car around, and we can investigate.” Kasta pointed to our rear, and the car started to back up slowly. Then it turned around and drove toward where I thought the exit doors were.

  “Here it is,” Kasta said, and we peered down at the monitor at the front of the car.

  “Looks like an elevator terminal,” Paula said. There was an obvious indent on the concrete floor, and a meter tall and two-meter wide pedestal positioned on the corner nearest us.

  “Drive around the indent on the floor,” I ordered. “I want to see how big it is.”

  “No need. The drones just scouted it. We can fit two of these cars on the lift. The question is: will it work to take us down?” Kasta shrugged at me.

  “Pull the car up on the spot and let’s go look at the controls.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” Paula said, and then she let out a nervous giggle.

  The vehicle moved forward some three meters, and then Kasta nodded at me. I reached over to the side of the car and then popped open the door handle. The hatch was extremely heavy because of all the armor we added, but I pushed it up without much issue.

  “Looks like it has power,” Paula said after we climbed out of the car and walked over to the control panel.

  “Let’s lower it,” I said as I swung my rifle around. The light at the end of the weapon cut through the darkness like a hot laser, but I didn’t see any of the bird-drones.

  “None have entered. My drones are listening for their wings. I’ll let you know if we are in danger,” Kasta said as she rested her palm on my shoulder.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I’m lowering the elevator,” Paula whispered.

  Then the ground shuddered, groaned, and began to descend into a pit of darkness.

  Chapter 15

  “Good thinking with the booster,” Zea said through our transponders. “I wouldn’t have been able to get a signal through the bunker if it wasn’t there.”

  “I’m surprised you are getting anything at all,” Paula said. We had only descended for half a minute and it was impossible for me to tell how far down we were. The walls of the shaft were a dark concrete that didn’t reflect the car lights very well.

  “We are fifteen meters down,” Kasta said as if she read my mind. “The booster will probably work well for another fifteen, then you’ll lose the signal.

  “Okay. I’ll keep an eye on Eve. The marines are still watching for drones inside the government center, and their commander is waiting for your update,” Zea said.

  “Do you think they will try to kill her once we have opened the doors to the northwest bunker?” Paula asked.

  “Only Eve knows for sure since she can read their minds.” Zea sighed. “Good news is that I can cut off all their communications with the flip of a switch, so we--”

  “Zea?” I asked after a few seconds.

  “Ships… They… totally screwed…” her voice was cutting in and out, and I guessed we were finally out of the range of the booster.

  Then the elevator walls gave way to another open space, and I swept my rifle light around us to check the sides that weren’t being lit but the car’s headlights.

  The
side of the lift with the control desk was attached to the wall with a magnetic attachment. So the elevator platform had placed us on the side of another large and open cavern. The walls here were high, maybe ten meters, and they were cut out of steel instead of the concrete.

  The open floor surrounding us was covered with hundreds, maybe even thousands of the bird-drones.

  “Get in the car!” I hissed to the twins. They were already moving, and they dove into the back seats half a second before I grabbed the hatch and brought it down on top of us.

  “You both okay?” I asked. I was sitting in the front seat now, and I turned around to face them.

  “They didn’t attack us,” Kasta said.

  “There power source must be depleted. They probably came down here, got stuck, and then didn’t have any light to recharge,” Paula mused.

  “I’ll send the drones out and see what they can find,” Kasta said as the two women untangled themselves.

  “We aren’t getting the feed from the drone watching Eve so I can use my display for one of the drones you are flying,” Paula said.

  “I’m spreading them out,” Kasta said, and her sister nodded as she pressed her fingers against the screen on her wrist. Then she held it up to my face so I could see from one of the dragon fly drones that descended the elevator shaft with us.

  “I think you are right about the bird drones,” I said. “None of them are moving.”

  “They are everywhere. Must be over five thousand of them. I don’t even see an empty patch of floor.” Paula shook her head.

  “Drone number one has found a set of doors. There is a label on top that says ‘Living Quarters.’ Do you want to see it?” Kasta asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, and Paula flipped over the screen so I could view the doors. They looked stout, but I didn’t see a lock on this side. There was Russian writing stenciled above the double doors, and the paint was a light green color.

  “How far away are those doors?” I asked.

  “Eighty meters from our location,” Kasta answered.

  “Let’s drive over there and--”

  “Not going to work,” Paula said. “We have to walk. All these drones on the ground will get caught in the wheel wells of the car, or their needles will shred the tires. Especially since we put the armored layers over the edges of the wheels. We won’t get more than ten meters before we aren’t able to roll.”