by E. R. Torre
Nox was kept well away from that mass of people and escorted to a side wall. A small flight of metal stairs led up one floor, to a room overlooking the garage. Obscured rectangular windows hid whoever was inside that room. The trio walked up the stairs and paused at the upper landing.
“Against the wall,” Sergeant Delmont said.
Once again, the Mechanic did as told. While the soldier with the rifle watched her, Delmont knocked lightly on the door leading to the room.
“Come.”
Nox recognized the General’s voice and tensed. Sgt. Delmont anticipated this.
“Control yourself,” he said.
“What if I can’t?” Nox replied.
The burly Sergeant didn’t say. He opened the door and motioned Nox inside. General Spradlin sat behind his desk, reading a report. A second file, very similar to the one in his hands, lay on the desk. The sight of the General spiked Nox’s emotions. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, she looked around the room. She looked at everything but the General.
The room’s walls were filled with bookcases which, in turn, were cluttered with books and folders. The place looked like a record room yet, curiously, Nox didn’t see any computer devices. For that matter, there were no cell phones, monitors, or electronics of any kind. The lights in the office, incredibly, appeared to come from oil lanterns.
Nox walked into the center of the room. She could no longer avoid the General and looked directly at him. For a fraction of a second she felt her control slip. Violent instinct kicked in and she almost erupted. She forced it back. It wasn’t easy.
General Spradlin nodded and Sgt. Delmont removed Nox’s handcuffs.
Nox rubbed her wrists and eyed the burly Sergeant. Her gaze eventually returned to General Spradlin.
“This the best you’ve got?” she asked the General.
General Spradlin put down the report he was reading and eyed Nox curiously.
“Must be hard to keep control of your emotions,” the General said. “They told me you could barely move only a short while ago, yet here you are, standing without any help at all, doing all you can not to attack me right this very second.”
The General leaned back in his chair.
“The only thing standing between me and you are these two men.”
General Spradlin pursed his lips. Though Nox wasn’t entirely sure, she thought she saw the ghost of a smile appear on his face.
Go ahead. Prove yourself.
It was an unspoken suggestion, an unspoken command. Behind her, she felt Sgt. Delmont tense. He was ready for her.
Nox could no longer contain herself. She let out a yell and spun around like lightning. Her right leg was a guided missile, shooting up and slamming into the burly Sergeant’s crotch. He went down like a collapsing high rise. Before the other soldier could move, Nox rammed her body against him. He dropped his rifle. Momentum sent him backwards. Nox slammed the soldier against the wall next to the door leading into the room. The air in the smaller soldier’s lungs exploded out and he too slid to the floor. Both he and Sergeant Delmont withered in agony, for the moment incapable of any movement. The fight lasted a grand total of three seconds. If that.
Nox was quickly back on her feet. The discarded rifle lay within her reach. Nox’s eyes moved from it to General Spradlin. He hadn’t moved. At least it appeared he hadn’t moved. Yet before him, on the desk, where he dropped his report, lay a strange looking handgun. Nox recognized it as the one which took her down in the transport vehicle. Fast as Nox was, there would be no way to reach Spradlin before he used it.
“Very impressive,” General Spradlin said. He grabbed the handgun and held it loosely.
Nox stiffened. She had no cover. If he wanted to take her out…
Instead, General Spradlin slid open one of the drawers in his desk and dropped the weapon into it. He rose from his chair and walked to Sergeant Delmont’s side. He patted the man on his back.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” General Spradlin told him. “I know you two did your best. Please wait for me outside.”
Sergeant Delmont helped the other soldier to his feet. Murderous rage filled the Sergeant’s eyes when he looked at Nox. Then, abruptly, the rage was gone.
“She’s everything you said she was, sir.”
“And more,” General Spradlin said.
To the best of his ability, Delmont saluted his superior officer. He stumbled to the door, grabbed his partner’s rifle, and helped him exit the room. They closed the door behind them.
“Have a seat,” General Spradlin said when the soldiers were gone. “There’s much we need to talk about.”
26
Nox’s hands remained balled into fists but the unexplainable rage she felt against General Spradlin dissipated. For the most part. She tried to relax and took the offered chair in front of Spradlin’s desk. The General returned to his seat.
“Rest well?”
“How long?”
“You've been out six days,” General Spradlin said.
“Six...?”
“Quite. Do you remember anything?”
“I remember…some…most.”
“The hospital?”
“The bomb.”
“Bombs.”
Nox’s eyes opened wide.
“How many?”
“Twelve. Enough to do to the hospital what was done to the Yoshiwara bar. Don’t worry, they were found and defused.”
“Catherine?”
“Safe.”
Nox shook her head.
“She…she lost a leg.”
“Yes,” General Spradlin said. “Believe me when I say it could have been much worse.”
“What did you do to me?”
“Other than sedate you and allow your system to recover, not much at all,” the General said. “I’d claim credit for bringing you back from the dead, but you did that all by yourself.”
Nox’s eyes narrowed.
“Yes Nox, when we found you, you were dead,” General Spradlin said. “You were lying beside your friend’s bed, holding onto a defused bomb. You had no pulse. Your brain seized up, short circuited.”
“I got lucky.”
“We both know it wasn’t luck,” General Spradlin said. “Not entirely.”
General Spradlin grabbed the file he held when Nox first entered his office. He opened and read from it.
“You go by the name Nox. If the global database is to be believed, you arrived into this sorry world fully adult not more than ten years ago. That’s when you first started working as an Independent.”
Nox was about to protest his description.
“Excuse me, Mechanic,” General Spradlin corrected. “At this point in time, I imagine you’re the very last one.”
“Looks good on my resume.”
“The global database has nothing on your childhood history. No birth certificate, parents, or schooling. As for more recent times, what information there is on you is…sketchy. You pop up here and there, but you’ve spent these last few years by and large off the grid. There is no record of you having any other relatives. You have very few friends and acquaintances nonetheless you are a very good friend to have.”
“It's nap time. Will this take much longer?”
“Another thing the GCN doesn’t know is that you were in the Arabian War. You were a member of the Blue Brigades.”
Nox’s mouth closed.
“You were only a child.”
Nox looked away.
“We all were.”
“You remember when you first received the nano-probes?”
“How…how do you…?”
“They’re the reason you’re still alive, Nox. The nano-probes inside your body resuscitated you.” The General smiled. “I’ll ask again: Do you remember when you first received them?”
Nox couldn’t help but shiver.
“I…I was part of an experimental group back in the war. They injected me with those…those microscopic
nano-probes. They told me they’d remain in my body for a couple of years at most. They were programmed to detect trauma and swarm to any injuries I sustain. They repair whatever needed repairing and accelerated healing. The experimental trials were hell. Some of the other child soldiers didn’t make it through them. I was part of a group of fifty who tried out the probes before the whole thing was scrapped.”
“There were more than fifty,” General Spradlin said. “In fact, every one of the child soldiers was given the nano-probes.”
“That’s not what I remember.”
“Some of your memories of the war were… programmed…into you,” General Spradlin said. He tapped his fingers against the desk. “Every one of the child soldiers shared the same blood. Every one of you shared the same nano-probes. That and some other internal equipment.”
General Spradlin cleared his throat.
“Six days ago you followed an ambulance carrying your friend, Catherine Holland, from the Yoshiwara bar, her late business, to the TransCo Oil Hospital. I have no doubt you genuinely care for Ms. Holland and that’s the main reason you followed the ambulance to the Hospital. But that wasn’t your only concern, was it? You feared the device was intended for you rather than her.”
To this, Nox didn’t reply.
“You lingered around the hospital’s lobby, always close, but not too close, to Ms. Holland. You tried your best to keep track, unobtrusively, of how she was doing. I went over the Hospital’s security footage. You showed up here and there in the videos. At times, you stared into space, almost like you were in some kind of trance. Perhaps you were in shock, what with the explosion and the near death of your friend.”
“Is there a point to this?”
“At those precise moments when you appeared the most…distracted…the hospital was being bombarded by a series of very heavy electronic signals.”
Nox shifted in her chair.
“You felt them, of course,” General Spradlin said. “You felt them because they were directed at you. Whatever it is they wanted, you didn’t give it to them. They kept trying, flooding the hospital with stronger and stronger signals. I’m surprised you didn’t lose your mind.”
“We detected those signals,” General Spradlin continued. “We set up our own counter-transmission. It was a hasty job and not entirely successful, but it was good enough. The moment we broke the signals, you regained your senses. You rushed to Catherine Holland's room. I’m guessing it was the very first time in your entire life you had ever been in that room. Yet somehow you knew there was a bomb hidden in there. After taking out a pair of security guards, you found the device and disarmed it.”
“What about the other bombs?”
“The electronic signals also guided those devices,” General Spradlin said. “With the signals temporarily jammed, they were rendered useless. It was just a matter of time for us to find them.”
“Commendable work,” Nox said. “They should give you a medal.”
“Don’t really need any more,” Spradlin replied. He put down the file. “What were the signals telling you?”
Nox held her breath.
“They…they wanted me to join them,” Nox said. “Who are they?”
“People just like you. One time child soldiers.”
“There are no more child soldiers,” Nox said. “They all died in Arabia. Didn’t they?”
“Not all,” General Spradlin said. “What else did they say?”
“They told me Catherine wasn’t necessary…that she could be sacrificed. I wasn’t going to let her die.”
“She’s still alive thanks to your actions, Nox,” General Spradlin said. “In fact, not a single person in the hospital was injured.”
“I appreciate the information,” Nox said. “I really do. I should get going.”
She rose from her chair. The General said nothing. He watched her, his face a mix of amusement and impatience. Nox walked to the door and reached for the knob. She grasped it, but hesitated. She didn’t open the door.
“We both know you’re not going anywhere,” General Spradlin said.
Nox eyed the General once more.
“If you've got a point, why the fuck don't you get to it?” she said.
“The people behind the devices, behind the signals...their actions were two-fold. They attacked Ms. Holland to get your attention and draw you to the hospital. When you arrived, they were waiting for you. They hoped to convince you to join them. They knew there was a chance you wouldn’t. If they couldn't recruit you, their next option was to terminate you.”
“By blowing up an entire hospital and everyone within it? I'm not worth that kind of bloodshed.”
“They were also after me.”
Nox stiffened. She released the door knob and quietly returned to her chair.
“The attack on Catherine Holland was designed to get my attention as well,” the General continued. “The bar’s attacker left behind a single unexploded device, one that he knew I would recognize.”
“A Malakov.”
“Yes.”
“It still makes no sense. Who the hell are you? Why kill hundreds of people just to get rid of you and me?”
“There was one other –one last– reason they did this: To cover the fact that in all that commotion they kidnapped twenty four newborns from the Hospital's Elite wing.”
“Twenty four…?”
“Twelve boys and twelve girls. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
Nox’s eyes narrowed. Spradlin pointed to Nox’s blue tattoos.
“Those stripes on your face. Why did you keep them?”
“Because…” Nox began but stopped.
“They identify you as a member of the Blue Brigades. Twenty four members –twelve boys and twelve girls– in each platoon.”
“And I…and I always thought it was a nice fashion accessory,” Nox muttered.
“Your superiors during the war...they gave you orders through unconventional means. They sent those orders electronically, directly to you. Most of the receptive circuitry was in your backpack.”
“The rest?”
“They were in the nano-probes.”
“But…”
“The nano-probes were never meant to be just medical aids,” General Spradlin said. “They had other functions. They were receptors. And as you know, they are still active.”
“What do they –what do you– want from me?”
“I want you to help me.”
“Why the fuck should I?”
Spradlin closed the file before him and lifted it so Nox could see it. The file wasn’t very large, but it nonetheless contained at least two dozen yellowed pages.
“You had a life before the Arabian War,” General Spradlin said. “A proper identity. You searched for it when you got to the Big City. You searched real hard. You never found what you were looking for. Ever wonder why?”
General Spradlin laid the file back down on the desk.
“You never found it because all that information never made it to the Global database. It's all right here.”
Nox stared at the file.
“Most people didn't notice, but seven days ago –just a day before your friend at the Yoshiwara was nearly blown to hell– a new war began. The people behind it were behind everything that happened at TransCo Hospital six days ago. Although things didn't work out the way they wanted at the hospital and we’re still standing, they've moved on to the next phase of their operation. I need you to tell me what they're up to.”
“You want me to work for you or you burn that file?”
A small smile appeared on General Spradlin’s face. He pushed the file toward Nox.
“You want this file? Go ahead. It’s yours.”
Nox got to her feet and approached the edge of Spradlin’s desk. The file was there, within her reach, just waiting for her to take it.
“It’s yours,” General Spradlin repeated.
Nox grabbed the file. She was about to open it but hes
itated. She was a Mechanic. She had scruples. The contents of the file were hers the moment she earned the right to them. She held the file at her side, unopened.
“What have the people behind these signals done since the Hospital?” she asked.
“Quite a bit,” Spradlin said. He grabbed the other file from his desk and walked to the door leading out of the room. He opened it. Outside stood Sgt. Delmont.
“Come on Nox,” he said. “Let’s take a walk.”
27
They went down the stairs outside the office and returned to the garage’s ground floor.
General Spradlin guided Sgt. Delmont and Nox past rows and rows of vehicles. Nox noticed that beyond them, in the darker corners of the garage, were an equally large number of cargo containers. They were labeled. Some held rations, others medicines. Still others carried clothing and tools. The military was stockpiling an enormous amount of material.
“What are you doing with all this stuff?” Nox asked.
The General didn’t say. The loud voices of the crowds farther to their right drowned out any chance for conversation. An enormous group of people remained at the oversized doors leading into the garage and an equally large group moved in an orderly line to the basement doors. Everyone was escorted to the lower levels of the garage.
General Spradlin moved to a smaller door off to the side of the garage. He pushed that door open and, for the first time in a very long time, Nox felt a breeze and smelled outdoor air. She was surprised at how fresh it was. There was little hint of the smog that perpetually floated over the Big City.
Outside it was night and the stars were remarkably bright. The three were in a large courtyard. To their right the bulging line of people continued, extending from the garage entrance in a straight line some thirty feet thick and off to another entry point. The origin of the line was a fortified fence. The fence was part of a large concrete wall that extended at least twenty five feet into the air and served as the military base’s perimeter.
The base’s layout was that of an old time fort. The surrounding wall was designed to keep undesirables out. Generators stationed at the garage walls hummed loudly and were manned by armed guards. Nox wondered why a base this size needed its own electrical power supply.
