by Ian Williams
Through the doors it was as dark and cold as any December night, with an ever-so-slightly shivery chill to the air inside the room. It was quiet apart from the intermittent creak of chairs that gave the occupants hiding amid the darkness away. For the moment he would ignore the sounds and continue his daily routine like he had become accustomed to.
“I trust you’re ready for another day?” Stanley asked the silent occupants. He knew they would remain wordless during his visit. Still, he liked to ask anyway; it kept his mind from focusing too much on what was going on around him.
Apart from the light coming in from the hallway there was little else. The enormous windows that spanned the entire length of the top floor, and surrounded it on both sides, were blocked out like all the others. Except up here they could open them with the flick of a wall mounted switch situated behind a six-foot-wide desk at the end.
To get there he made his way past the conference table taking up the middle of the room. He crept on tiptoes to not disturb the silent occupants sitting around it.
“I think this room could do with a little sunlight, don’t you?” He again asked no-one in particular. If anyone had replied, he would have bolted straight for the door and slammed it shut behind him; it simply did not happen.
He placed his hand over the window controls and hesitated there for a second or two. This was another part of the day’s work that often frightened him. The light of day always revealed more than he was willing to see. Sometimes he had considered skipping this step altogether in favour of stumbling around in the dark instead.
Unfortunately, it was never done that way and any deviation from routine was often met with punishment. So he eventually gathered himself together enough to force the switch down, and then he waited. The metal shutters soon moaned to life outside the thick, reinforced glass panels in front of him. He made sure to look out rather than to the conference table behind him.
His good mood remained intact as the outside view broke in, even though he was almost floored by a sudden sensation of vertigo. It often took him a moment to adjust to the sight of the city so far below him.
There was less to observe now that a good portion of the city resided outside the purple bubble of energy covering the centre. Everything had been changed by this, mainly in the form of a glorious tint to every structure and citizen trapped within this new world.
He took a moment to count all of the plumes of smoke he could see. This was a routine of his own that he found himself regularly turning to. The fight within the force-field had been relentless since the first day it went up. Those foolhardy enough to believe they stood any chance of holding back the flood that pushed against them were still trying their best.
Stanley saw their plight as ultimately hopeless, yet even he enjoyed seeing them at least putting up a decent enough fight. Although from safety, Stanley could only judge the severity of these battles by the fires that raged afterwards, of which there were at least ten. What could still burn would be claimed soon enough.
Enough procrastination, Stanley, get it together.
“So,” he began with renewed gusto, “today we have seen a pleasant increase in the number of new subjects reported by our patrols. It appears they stumbled upon another small pocket of citizens, all hiding in the aisles of a supermarket. Can you imagine that?”
He looked past the desk he had begun to tidy and over to the conference table. As expected none of the twelve men or women sitting around the table replied or acknowledged his presence. Rather they blankly stared into space, their eyes hardly blinking and certainly not moving in any direction. Some inadvertently looked directly at the person opposite them. It was a meeting left frozen and unable to move on alone.
Stanley looked each over with a paranoid glance, in case they were in fact awake and trying to hide it from him. Not one of them flinched as he watched them from a distance. For one of them it had become clear they were not about to move at all. He noticed this particular man with his face resting on the table and a puddle of blood surrounding him.
“Oh dear,” he said as he approached the deceased man. “This will have to be cleaned up.”
After removing his suit jacket and placing it neatly on the back of the man’s chair, Stanley then rolled up his sleeves ready to begin. It was an unfortunate mess to face at such an early start to the day, but then the job had changed somewhat recently.
He pulled the man up into a seated position first, then checked him for any vital signs. As expected he got none in return. The man was indeed dead. From the dried blood surrounding him and the bubbles inside his mouth, Stanley suspected he had drowned in his own fluids.
“Did you have a seizure during the night, Mr. Franklin?” Stanley asked the dead eyes as they stared straight past him and possibly on to oblivion beyond. “I do apologise, but I’m afraid you were always rather expendable, Mr. Franklin. Oh well.”
He let the dead man fall back into place, his face slapping as it splashed into the puddle now approaching the edge of the table. With the man’s head again resting on the table top, Stanley quickly inspected the connections exiting it.
Each of the twelve individuals had at least three cables coming from the base of their skulls that required daily checks to ensure a smooth operation. After pulling on each to make sure there were no breaks or loose connections he then moved on to the next and repeated the process, until all were seen and approved.
The dead man no longer worked anymore for the purpose he was connected to the system, and so would have to be replaced. It would be a minor inconvenience, but at least one he could have a couple of the walking mindless attend to.
In the centre of the table sat a large black-metal box that thrummed and hissed like a content python. All of the connections from the twelve people ventured away and into this box. It was a hub for their cognitive operations to flow through and mingle as one stream of data, one mind from twelve. Their individual voices were lost to the noise.
“Right,” Stanley began as he tried to wipe the sweat from his hands, “shall I continue with today’s numbers?”
“That will not be necessary,” a woman’s voice came from the end of the conference table.
The interruption halted Stanley mid step. He had been more than happy to recite the exact figures he had read off of Sandra’s screen in the reception area. They were promising too, with a rise in what they wanted and a fall in what they did not. It looked to him to be the exact sign that the opposition forces were faltering and were only a few more encounters away from succumbing completely. Now he could hardly remember any of the numbers at all.
“I’m sorry?” he asked the woman staring directly at him from the other end of the table.
“I do not require an update,” she replied without once blinking.
“As you wish. Is there anything else you need me to see to?”
To Stanley’s surprise the man nearest to him spoke this time, a man with thin strands of black hair hanging over his eyes and partially covering them. “Another must be brought to The Twelve.”
“Another?”
“Another human.” It was a red-faced and middle aged woman to his left this time.
“The Twelve must be replenished.” A different person spoke each time, almost without a break.
“I have lost a mind.”
“Let his habitation be made desolate, let no one dwell therein.”
“Let another take his office.”
Stanley was unsure where to direct his answer, so spoke as though to a form floating above them all within the room. “I will have another brought to you as soon as possible.”
“No. There is only one who will do.”
“Certainly, I will locate them immediately.” Stanley bowed and slowly began to side step toward the door. Escaping the room was the main thing on his mind at that moment; he had never spoken to those around the table, only replaced them when it had become too much to handle. This time was different. This time he was sensing more to
their request. With all of their eyes now on him he felt obliged to remain.
“I require the subject to be tested before integration.”
“Of course,” Stanley said with confidence, even though he did not feel that way inside. None of the previous replacements had gone through any test before being plugged in. Something seemed off to him. Why would this new member be any different to the rest? “Perhaps you could give me this person’s name? I will have them brought here right away.”
Strangely, none of those around the table replied, they instead all slowly returned to staring blankly ahead. The Twelve moved completely in time with each other; the command to ignore him had been instantaneously shared between them.
“I will await your instructions,” he said, again making his gradual escape toward the door.
He only made it a few feet further away when another voice spoke up, one he had never been given the pleasure of hearing before.
“Wait, Stanley.”
With lightning speed, he shot a look across the table to find which of them around it had spoken. It took him a little while to realise none of them had said a word. The voice had come from somewhere else; the desk at the end of the room.
“Hello?” Stanley called.
“Please, stay,” the voice said as the tall-backed leather chair slowly spun behind the desk.
When it had turned 180 degrees, Stanley saw that someone was now sitting in it. This person had appeared suddenly from out of nowhere. There was only one being he knew it could be, and he was ecstatic to find himself granted an audience with him. Finally, it had happened, finally he had made it to the top of the ladder. With the Mayor out of the picture he had been promoted as he knew he had always deserved.
“Isaac, is it truly you?”
“Yes. Approach me,” the figure in the chair said. His eyes were deeply recessed and almost covered by the bony ridges above his eyes, which cast cavernous shadows upon his face. The image was only loosely human in detail, looking as rough as a quick sketch of a human rather than a complete depiction. It was still believable enough to do the job. The black shirt he wore hung open with the top two buttons undone, while his sleeves hugged his arms as though superglued to the skin. He had a strangely casual look, but one that seemed likely to change at the drop of a hat.
“It is an honour, sir.” Stanley was already too star-struck to come off as nonchalant about the whole encounter. He failed to sound at all used to such situations and instead appeared to overflow with reverence for the human-like form seated across the desk from him.
Isaac stood from his seat and then wandered directly through the centre of the desk. He gave no consideration to how unusual a thing it would be for a human to perceive. It was not important how he was seen by his own subjects, of which Stanley had become a high ranking member. The human form only served as a bridge between the species; a familiar shape and nothing more for the humans.
Once he emerged out the other side of the desk, Isaac then looked upon his latest loss at the table of The Twelve. The dead man had made quite the mess during his last moments. But it did not appear to be the sight of so much blood that caused Isaac to turn his face away shortly after, rather the fact he had a gap in his ranks that needed filling. The man’s death had set in motion something that required immediate attention.
“Such a disappointment,” Isaac said, with a slight distortion to his voice that passed a second later.
“Indeed it is, sir. Mr. Franklin was a highly regarded man. He will be greatly missed.”
“That is not the reason for my disappointment, Stanley. This human failed to impress me. He suffered this fate because of that failure.” Isaac locked his arms behind his back and stared ahead, just past Stanley.
“Oh, I see. In that case, it would have been wasteful of us to have retained his services any longer.”
“I am pleased you agree. Unfortunately, his loss will leave us vulnerable until the new candidate is ready.”
Stanley kept a safe distance between himself and Isaac while he considered who the new candidate might be. He did not want to be seen as unable to understand the situation entirely.
His first assumption that Mr. Franklin had simply suffered a seizure was clear to have been totally misguided. What had really killed him was an unfortunate mistake of some kind, which had cost him dearly in the end. Exactly what that mistake had been now weighed heavily on Stanley’s mind.
“So,” Stanley began, breaking himself out of a deep pit of worry, “who, may I ask, is this new candidate?”
“The numbers please, Stanley,” Isaac said to sidestep the question. He was not yet ready to reveal the identity of the candidate.
“Of course, sir. Well, if I recall from the report, we have seen a 12% increase in this week’s new captures. The conversion process is hovering at a very healthy 83% success rate too. Oh, and all of the new relays are still running at full capacity.”
“Incorrect,” Isaac interrupted, sending Stanley off into a panic.
“My apologies, sir.” Stanley scrambled together every number he could remember from Sandra’s screen, but still came up with the same figures. What had changed?
“Due to Mr. Franklin’s ineptitude one of my relays was operating at a much less than satisfactory level. This was his failure; this is what forced me to end his existence.”
“I am deeply troubled to have missed this, sir. Please accept my sincere–”
“Enough,” Isaac snapped his head to the side to look straight into Stanley’s eyes. The look alone had almost been enough to stop Stanley’s heart mid-beat. “The others will cope for now. However, the new candidate will have to be ready much sooner than I had anticipated.”
“Very good, sir. I will require the name of this new candidate if I am to track him, or indeed her, down.”
Isaac’s eyes focused intently on Stanley, so intently in fact that they seemed to move forward as though climbing out of the deep recesses they resided in. He then attempted a disturbed grin that moved his cheeks up unnaturally. “I have watched this person from the very first day he joined with me. Though one of the newest of my followers, he has nevertheless showed himself a worthy member, one not afraid of what needs to be done. I know I have asked much of this person. I understand his want for power would have made remaining in the background a difficult thing too. But now his time has come. Your time has come, Stanley.”
“Me?”
“Yes, Stanley. I can think of no other more suited to join The Twelve than you.”
Saying ‘no’ was unwise, Stanley knew that. Yet he could not say the ‘yes’ word either. Seeing the state of the twelve individuals sat at the table, all drooling and wide-eyed, made agreeing the hardest thing for him to do. Why on earth would he put himself in their position? They were barely alive in his opinion. So what did the offer really entail?
Rather than answer he settled his gaze upon the deceased body of Mr. Franklin, his attention unable to move past the puddle of blood.
“What is your answer, Stanley?” Isaac asked as gently as he appeared able to.
“Well, sir, I am grateful for the offer, but…” He faltered again.
“Perhaps to make it easier I should explain exactly what it is I will be giving you?”
“Yes, sir, I would appreciate that. Thank you.”
“Then step this way.” Isaac waved his arm across the table, bringing each of The Twelve – the eleven still alive at least – to face him. They stared like they always liked to. Except this time, they all spoke together.
“Candidate selected, initiating testing.”
Stanley felt a beaming sense of pride erupting through his core. He realised he had missed something entirely important. On the outside each of The Twelve appeared as much a zombie as the rest of those shuffling around the Mayor’s tower, when what they experienced on the inside was the real truth. He was about to find this out for himself.
Isaac was about to sweeten the deal.
Chapter
4
Relapse
An unexpected jolt brought Graham’s eyes open and fighting for something to focus upon. His head felt heavy and as foggy as early morning mist, like he had downed an entire bottle of whiskey the night before.
His last recollection was of Jane switching the lights out in his room. That only felt like a few minutes ago to him. Yet it was suddenly becoming clear that more time had passed by, and completely unbeknown to him, until then.
“Jane? Hello?”
Wherever he was it was somewhere small, perhaps a shed or a toilet. Either side of him he had no more than a foot of space to stretch out his arms. He felt wood and metal all around, but it stopped at a corner and carried on away from him.
His back hurt too. Slapping an arm to his side told him he was laying down on the floor, also metal in feel and with tiny shapes sticking out. It had to be a textured floor, like those he saw on the metal staircases that led up to the Mag-Lev line to stop them becoming slippery.
“Where am I?” he said to the veil of darkness.
Sitting up proved a struggle for his head to deal with, which seemed bitterly disappointed to have woken up at all. Now he could do a better job at finding his way around using his hands alone.
He returned to the wooden objects surrounding him and quickly found the top. These were boxes, long ones, roughly human size in length. Working this out gave him a fright as the image of a stack of coffins invaded his troubled mind. Except the wood was anything but smooth, and he gained a few splinters to prove it.
He ended his investigation when voices could be heard approaching his hiding place. They were too far away to hear clearly. But they were there, nonetheless. It was enough to make Graham slide away to the rear of his little room, where he could shuffle into a space behind one of the large boxes.
Someone then began to fiddle with what sounded to Graham to be a thick steel lock on the far side wall to him. Bit by bit, he was starting to figure out where he was, or at least what he was in. The jolt that forced him awake had to have been a sudden period of breaking. He was in some form of vehicle, sitting in the back; an unwitting stowaway.
