“Fifty years since the Reunion,” I said while I waited. “You’d think they’d have cleaned them out by now.”
“The increase in immigration has helped keep sickness a constant threat to locals. All it takes is one missed microorganism during decontamination or shipment to infect an entire block.”
I remembered how sick the Ringer on Earth had looked. How he was coughing up blood before he took his own life. I’d never actually been to a quarantine zone, but I couldn’t imagine a more depressing place in all of Sol. They were among the only places on Titan where the Ringers were granted some level of control, minus the legions of Pervenio security guards who monitored the entrances off the tram lines. Whatever this Doctor and his crew were up to, there were few better places in the Ring for them to hide.
All Ringers who showed signs of sickness were sent to quarantine, buried like ancient lepers within a mountain. It didn’t matter what the diseases were either. Most of them had no labels, or did once, but no longer affected Earthers and had their names lost in the annals of pre-Meteorite Earth. All I knew for sure was that getting the proper medicines from any of the sanctioned USF corporations with a stake in the Ring was as difficult as it was expensive. They were almost exclusively produced on Earth by Pervenio Corp and its subcontractor and shipped all the way across Sol.
“Consider me lucky for not being born in this wasteland,” I decided. “How’d they get in? The entrance to that rock can only be accessed through the tram line.”
“Their signatures disappeared beneath it,” Zhaff answered.
“Well, however they did it, I have a feeling that the Drayton woman who escaped got out the same way. We’ll find it.”
“We have to.” Zhaff stored his hand-terminal and scanned the horizon. “The quarantine zone enclosure is approximately eight-point-seven kilometers away. We must quicken our pace in order to ensure we retain a safe amount of oxygen and do not freeze.”
He’d conveniently left that part out earlier. I unconsciously cut down on how deep my breaths were, and we ran. He was decidedly faster, but I was able to keep close enough behind. Fear of suffocating had my adrenaline pumping and my legs churning despite how sore they were getting. If I was going to go, I’d prefer it to be in a hail of bullets or while I was drunk and fast asleep.
As we got nearer, the quarantine zone’s plateau filled my vision from end to end, obstructing the subtle glow of the rusty sky. Not even a single translucency interrupted the uniformity of the rock for the people inside.
I was busy studying the tunnel entrance located many meters above where we were, when Zhaff suddenly stopped. A noisy tram raced by overhead, breaking the alien silence of Titan’s surface that had prevailed after the first storm passed.
“What’re you doing?” I yelled over the racket. I leaned over to catch my breath.
He didn’t answer right away. As soon as the tram went by completely, the fizzle of gunfire zipped around my helmet, kicking up pockets of sand directly beside us. We rushed behind one of the tram lines’ columns for cover. The barrage came from above, and it didn’t relent.
I fired a few rounds blindly from behind the column to try to scare whoever it was before taking a quick peek around it. A group of objects darted across the ruddy sky, the flash of pulse-rifle muzzles giving away their positions. They were too small to be ships.
“They are attacking,” Zhaff stated. “Three of them.”
“Shit!”
Zhaff sprang up and sprinted toward the quarantine zone. I followed, weaving behind columns as they were peppered with bullets. We were halfway there when one glanced off my armored shoulder. The force of it knocked me off my feet, and a single winged attacker soared right over me. Zhaff somehow sprawled out of the way and got off a shot. It clipped the attacker’s wing, causing him to sputter through the air and crack his head against the side of a column.
I rolled over anxiously and checked my shoulder. It was only a scratch, not enough to compromise the suit’s integrity and expose me. Once I was sure, I hurried toward Zhaff.
He picked up the fallen attacker’s body with ease and handed it to me. “Take him,” he said.
I furrowed my brow at him, but as more fire whizzed by us, I quickly got his meaning. Without being dressed in a weighted suit, the Ringer’s thin body was incredibly light in the low-g conditions. I hauled it sideways around my free arm and wielded it like a shield before Zhaff and I continued to run.
Zhaff fired calculated shots as we moved, but even those didn’t strike our targets, which says a lot for the Children of Titan’s flying abilities. I decided to show him how it was done. Projectiles deflected off the armor of the dead Ringer I held as I slowed down and aimed my pistol over his hip. I unloaded toward a blur of motion in the sky. One of the two remaining attackers plummeted, slamming into the ground a ways off, kicking up a cloud of sand. The last one promptly changed course and flew toward the quarantine, out of sight.
“Well-placed shot,” Zhaff said flatly.
The praise had me grinning until I remembered I was reveling in a compliment from my teenage partner on his second official assignment. I forced my lips into a straight line and mustered my most serious tone. “We should hurry. We can’t give them time to set up another ambush.”
Zhaff agreed.
We reached the base of the quarantine zone without any other attacks and skirted along its craggy base. According to Zhaff, the Children of Titan went beneath the plateau, so we figured there had to be some manner of secret passage. It was strictly forbidden for anybody deemed healthy, Ringer or Earther, to enter a quarantine zone without proper clearance, especially beyond the visitors’ zone. I wished I still had my spotters so the thermal function might help me find it before Zhaff.
“See anything?” I asked Zhaff after a few minutes of searching. Everything looked the same to me. Sand and rock and metal.
He bent over, picked up one of the smooth stones, and scanned it closely with his eye-lens. After he placed it down, his head snapped to a nearby location. He got up and took long strides toward another cluster of rocks.
“It is here,” he declared as he went to grasp one. There was a subtle flicker of light distortion as his hand passed right through it and a portion of the ground beneath it. “A hologram.”
Once again, I had the chance to observe Zhaff’s enhanced senses in action. The Children of Titan probably needed special scanners to locate the passage, even after knowing where it was. I didn’t bother to ask him how he noticed the difference.
“Guns ready,” I said. I couldn’t kiss my lucky charm with my helmet on, but it’s the thought that counts.
We stepped through the hologram side by side, down a steep ramp into a rocky tunnel lined haphazardly with flickering lights. It was dim, but I could make out a sealed hatch a short distance away. I kept my eyes trained down the sight of my pistol as I stepped cautiously along, scanning the walls for any concealed charges.
“They cannot risk the seal with explosives,” Zhaff stated when he noticed my helmet turning from side to side. “That is an airlock ahead. Whoever dug this did so within the last decade, judging by the wear on the metal around the lights.”
“The Children of Titan must be using this to hide right under Pervenio’s nose,” I noted.
He agreed, then stopped in front of the access airlock’s control panel. “I can override the lock,” he said. He withdrew his hand-terminal and rifled through commands. He was so fast I couldn’t keep up with him. In no time, he sliced through the lock, and the heavy door of the outer airlock swung open.
I stormed into the dark cavern, my aim snapping from side to side to check my corners. It was empty. Zhaff stepped through calmly and shut the hatch behind him. There was a shrill whistle as the airlock resealed. My ears popped slightly, and then it got a little warmer inside my suit.
The inner seal opened in front of us. Expecting to meet a wall of gunfire, I rushed to the side of it and peeked around the corner. Again, I fo
und nothing but an empty hall and a silence so cavernous that I could hear my heart beating inside my suit.
I switched off my oxygen supply and took in a gulp of the stale air. “I’ll go first,” I volunteered, mostly to make sure Zhaff didn’t have another chance to handle everything on his own. I was getting tired of him striking first and making me look useless.
“I’ll be directly behind you,” Zhaff responded.
I wanted to tease him for being cowardly but thought twice. Courage had nothing to do with it. It meant that he wasn’t sure what awaited us. He was being cautious and for good reason. Whatever we found, chances were better of one of us getting out if he wasn’t shot first. The mission was primary. At every turn, I was beginning to better understand how his mind worked, and in my own bizarre way, I was also forming a greater level of respect for it.
I pressed on.
“Going right,” I whispered sharply when I reached the end of the tunnel. The craggy ceiling of the large hollow beyond was filled with wavering light fixtures. I popped out first, pistol aimed high. Zhaff did the same in the opposite direction.
I guess Zhaff didn’t think anything in the space we entered was much of a threat since he merely stated, “Clear,” and delved farther in. What I saw stopped me dead in my tracks.
At first glance, it appeared to be a large, dug-out hollow below the quarantine zone. Hundreds of masked Ringers lined the space from end to end. They were laid out under tattered blankets against the corroded walls. Rustling, moaning, and coughing filled my ears from every direction. Most of them turned to gaze upon me with their bloodshot eyes, their slender necks hardly able to support their heads. All of them were so skinny that I could see the outline of their cheekbones through their sallow flesh. I turned around to see more poor souls strewn across the floor and lying atop chairless tables—men, women, and even children so young that they weren’t as tall as my hips.
That was when I noticed the odor. The whole room stunk of body odor, sickness, and burned hair. My helmet’s ventilation systems probably helped alleviate some of it, but it was still enough to make me gag. On the far end of the space, I saw the crackling flames of a furnace behind a makeshift glass enclosure. I didn’t need to ask what it was for. I knew that infected Ringer corpses were burned to keep diseases from spreading, but the orange glow was enough to reveal the charred remnants of clothing filled by nothing but ashes.
Zhaff approached me, completely unfazed. “This hollow is clear,” he said. “The quarantine zone is directly above us, but this is not part of it. The smugglers must be in deeper.”
I’d been to the rotting sewer tunnels submerged beneath the Martian domes. I’d been to the most remote slums on Earth, and to the depths of asteroid mining colonies where being able to see the outline of your own hand in front of your face was considered bright. I’ve seen death all over and been on the end of the killing more times than I cared to count, but none of it could compare to this. Back on Earth, I lamented how thirty years of being a collector made me numb to suffering and bloodshed, but as I entered that new setting, apparently, I was wrong. Quarantine was a generous term. It was closer to a morgue.
In a trance, I stepped past Zhaff toward a blanket on a gurney right outside the furnace area. A motionless lump lay beneath it. A bony leg stuck out from the bottom, the skin mottled with inflamed sores. I peeled the blanket back from where I guessed the head would be with the tip of my pistol. Underneath lay a young female Ringer, her stringy hair matted against her damp forehead. Her jaw hung slack beneath her sanitary mask, and her glazed eyes stared blankly toward the ceiling, but I could hear that she was quietly wheezing. Alive, but barely.
A hand fell on my shoulder. I snapped around with my gun raised to find Zhaff bowing smoothly out of its line of fire.
“We must move quickly to apprehend the smugglers before we’re swarmed,” he said.
“There are so many of them,” I whispered. The smell of the sick and dying together with the heat from the furnace made me dizzy.
Zhaff glanced down at the young woman, then up at the rest of the room. “Generations of offworld breeding has made them vulnerable to Earth’s most basic microorganisms.”
“I know that… I just never realized it was this bad.”
“This space has been carved out below the actual quarantine operated by Pervenio Corp. This is what occurs when criminals attempt to operate beyond regulations.”
I’d figured most of that out, considering the hidden entrance. “Somehow, I have a feeling the conditions above aren’t much better. This makes the New Beijing sewers seem like paradise.”
“The Quarantines used to be worse. Most of the medicines required stopped being produced by Earthers centuries ago due to our adaptation to the Earth’s natural environment. Containment remains the safest option while research and production continue on Earth.”
I glared back at the wheezing young woman. “My daughter was around her age last time I saw her.” The thought of seeing Aria sprawled out to rot in the dark sent a horrible chill through my body. I took a step back and shook my head.
“There is no need to concern yourself. As only a first-generation offworlder, your daughter will have retained most of your immunities.”
I didn’t bother responding. I pulled the blanket back over the dying girl’s head and tucked in her leg. Then I followed after Zhaff as he started off toward the other end of the refectory. The countless soon-to-be-cremated corpses had me thrown. Every time I heard a cough, my gun snapped toward it. Every time I heard incoherent rambling from a Ringer on the precipice of death, my trigger finger itched to put a bullet through their brain and end their suffering. I tried to ignore it by concentrating on breathing through my mouth.
“Up here,” Zhaff said. “There is equipment running, and I am reading a collection of heat signatures.” He tapped me on the shoulder and motioned ahead toward a tall passage at the short end of the hollow. Bright-white lights emanated from the other side.
He abruptly rushed forward and put his back against the wall on one side of the entrance as if he’d heard something. He signaled me to move to the other side. I listened, but once I was there, I opened my mouth to ask him what was wrong. He placed a finger on top of his helmet’s visor over his mouth before I could.
A minute or so passed in silence before Zhaff sprang through the opening and pulled someone back. He slammed the intruder against the wall and nudged his rifle up under his neck.
He was a teenage boy, but definitely not a Ringer judging by his height. He wore a full hazmat suit for protection, but he appeared to be completely healthy. In fact, he looked familiar. I just couldn’t place why.
“Who are you?” Zhaff asked before I could.
“I’m… only an assistant. I… I…” he stammered as Zhaff glowered at him with his eye-lens. “The Doctor wishes to speak to the collector.”
I shot a look through the passage to see if anybody else was coming. It was clear except for the radiant, focused lights on the far side. “With me?” I asked. “Why?”
The boy staved off Zhaff’s glare and gathered enough confidence to respond to me. “You must see for yourself, Collector.”
“Why don’t you tell us right here and save us the trouble?”
“I can’t.”
Zhaff released the boy. “He is telling the truth.”
“My people will listen to the Doctor, Collector,” the boy said. “Your partner must wait here, but neither of you will be harmed as long as you hold your fire.”
I pulled Zhaff aside. “He’s just a kid. He might not be lying, but the Children of Titan were going to blow up Pervenio Station. They bombed New London. Do you really think they’ll keep their promise?”
“I do not, but you must proceed. I will stay behind to make sure nobody attempts to escape.”
“They’ll only allow you to wait out here if you are placed under watch,” the boy said.
“That is acceptable,” Zhaff replied.
&nb
sp; I was startled that Zhaff wanted to split up after being so adamantly against it back on Earth. “I’m not sure about this, Zhaff. I’d rather not wind up their prisoner.”
“Do not worry. I will not hesitate.” He nodded at me, the corners of his lips lifting subtly enough for me to know he’d developed a plan. I could almost mistake it for a grin.
“Are you sure?” I asked. He nodded again and backed away slowly. I was hesitant to follow the boy alone into the unknown, but I wasn’t about to let that show. “Come on, then.” I grabbed him by the collar and shoved him into the passage. When I glanced back over my shoulder, Zhaff had already vanished into the shadows.
“Wait. I must retrieve something,” the boy said. I gave him the okay, and he hurried past me back into the hollow. I kept my pistol aimed at his chest while he did, and he returned quickly, rolling the gurney that the dying young woman was on. “This way, and, please, holster your gun.”
“Do I have to?”
“Please. This is a medical facility.”
I grumbled but reluctantly did as the kid asked. Then I followed him. Only two days before, when we’d arrived at the Ring, there was no chance I would’ve gone along with whatever it was Zhaff was up to. Against my initial intentions, however, I really was starting to trust the Cogent and all his heightened senses. His assurance wasn’t enough for me to lower my pistol from the boy’s back as he rolled the gurney forward into another hollow, but it was enough to get me going.
TWENTY
The boy led me into a spacious cavern where two shadowy fighters slipped by us to keep an eye on Zhaff. More gurneys lined the rocky walls, divided by crudely hung curtains. Ringers lay on each of them, makeshift tubes sticking out of their bodies and attached to crude-looking monitors that beeped faintly. A middle-aged Ringer woman covered in rashes sat in one of them, her unsettling glare following me.
I quickly turned from her and looked toward the back of the cavern, where we were headed. Spotlights bathed a low table in front of a barricaded tunnel that led up toward what I assumed was the actual Darien quarantine that Pervenio operated. Someone stood beside it wearing a clunky hazard helmet on their head.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 22
