Chapter 28: Safe Space
Law enforcement became a planet-wide security system. The World Police was formed at the same time as the World Government. It was not a conglomeration of police forces; it was a meld of the many police and government security organizations that existed before the Swarm. Its purpose was to maintain order. It did not consist of sub-organizations assigned to a myriad of criminal activities. It was one organization that was responsible to serve and protect all. This unitary system had the advantage of instant communication of all data to all members of the organization. This was also a disadvantage, in that little, if anything, could be kept secret.
Jayne fell down and slid slowly off the PUT pad in the security headquarters foyer. The stinger charge had rendered her unconscious.
She woke and opened her eyes. Fear flooded her body. She reached up and touched her pained cheek. Her hand came away with a sticky stinger that had discharged through her face. It either made it through the PUT pad screening or discharged before the pad initiated. It must have been the latter because it was impossible to transport any active weapon or its ammunition unless it was security registered. She rubbed her cheek again and looked at her fingers. There was no blood. The stinger had not made good contact. She probably received only a part of the charge. The whole charge would have rendered her unconscious for at least 20 minutes. She slipped the stinger, still holding half a charge, into her pouch.
She looked around. There was no one in sight. It was late. She moaned and tried to get to her feet. Her strength was sapped. She was only able to crawl across the floor, away from the pad. If they were to follow her, in her present state, she would be easy to capture and easier yet to kill. She had to get her strength back.
Then the headache came and threatened darkness. She stilled herself. Movement brought stifling pain, with darkness as the only escape. She knew she could not pass out again. She lay her bruised cheek down on the cool granite floor and let the tension seep out as the coolness of the floor seeped in. The throbbing eased.
Jayne listened. There was no sound. She tried to move again but the pain stopped her. She bit her lip hoping the new pain would overcome the pounding in her head. The thought that her luck had truly abandoned her welled out from her core and spread like a black blanket. She let every part of her relax and release. She could go nowhere. She could do nothing. A tear formed at the corner of her eye. She made no move to suppress it and it rolled, unimpeded, down her cheek and splashed onto the floor.
Jayne lay quietly on the cool floor for at least 15 minutes. No one came into the foyer and no one left. She drifted in and out of consciousness and was just about to fall into the darkness once more when she felt, rather than heard or saw movement. She opened the eye that was not pressed against the cool floor. She could see a dark figure enter the external door to the foyer. It was too far away to make out any details. The figure moved furtively to the side of the entrance door.
Suddenly Jayne felt like she was expanding. It was as if a giant invisible balloon was inside her. It was slowly inflating, raising her body from the vulnerable position on the floor. Somehow it was also protecting her against the pain and the fatigue. Once she reached her knees, she crawled to the shadows of the corner. She pulled her knees up tight to her chest and peered through the dim light in the foyer to the shadows near the door. She could see nothing, but her skin prickled with the knowledge that there was someone, somewhere near; a dangerous someone. The invisible balloon that held her up expanded again and stretched her mind to fill the entire foyer. She pulled herself smaller into the corner and breathed slowly and deeply. She could see from all locations inside the mind balloon to all locations inside the foyer. The intruder was moving—a gray shadow slipped down the wall near the door and moved to the PUT pad array. It was searching for her. Jayne pushed back the building tension in her body. She relaxed and strove to blend with the background. She was the corner of the room; part floor and part wall; part color and part shadow.
The figure stood looking down at the PUT pad array. It reached down and touched something on the floor, brought it to its nose, sniffed and rubbed it between its fingers. The figure was a man in a black bodysuit. He turned suddenly and followed some faint footprints leading from the PUT pad to the place where Jayne had collapsed on the floor. Jayne remembered stepping into the blood pool that oozed from the security man’s head. The man in the black bodysuit was following the bloody footprints. He would soon stumble upon her in the corner. Jayne pushed to keep the mind balloon expanded. If she could keep it, she could stay hidden. As she pushed, the pain in her head pushed back and she lost the thought that was not a thought and the balloon collapsed in on her. She whimpered with pain.
The man searching for her turned toward the whimper and then quickly turned back to new sounds entering the room. Three security men burst through the entrance door. They were coming off shift and were in a jovial mood. The dark figure froze and watched. Jayne saw him turn quickly to the PUT pad array, just as two of the pads activated. Two more security men, stun weapons ready, jumped off the pads, saw the intruder and fired. The stun weapon charges stuck to his chest but did not stop him from moving to an activating pad at the end of the array. There was a spark at his feet as he moved. The stun charges went to ground. He stepped on the pad and disappeared.
Jayne whimpered again and the two security men turned to see her crouched in the corner. The other security men had their weapons drawn and their faces flooded with questions. They all moved toward her. One of the pursuit men turned to the new arrivals and said dismissively, “We’ve got this. You can read the details in tomorrow’s daily report.”
The one who had not spoken, crouched down beside Jayne. He spoke quietly and reassuringly, “It’s alright, Ms. Wu. You are safe now. We will take care of you. No one will hurt you.”
He turned and looked at the other security men moving out of the foyer. He waited until they were well out of hearing range and whispered, “We are Sentinels. So were the man and woman that met you at the arena. They were to take you to our private facility, but somehow they were discovered and killed by the Forevers.”
The other Sentinel, dressed as security, touched the first man’s shoulder. He stopped speaking and turned. The two made eye contact and an invisible communiqué passed between them.
He continued, “We will tell you more later. We have to quickly get you to a safe place. Can you stand?”
Jayne shook her head that was pounding with increased vigor.
“Here, take this,” he said and he handed her a small white capsule. “Your cheek is swollen. It looks like you were hit with a stinger.”
She hesitated.
“It will help with the stinger pain,” he said and he smiled as he reached to help her stand.
Jayne groaned louder and grabbed his arm for support. She slipped the capsule into her mouth and thought, “If they are going to kill me, a poisonous capsule is not a bad way to go. On the other hand, if it eases this debilitating head pain, that would be great.”
He helped her to the door, followed by his partner.
As Jayne looked toward the PUT pad array, he explained, “We can’t take a pad. They are tracking you with some pretty sophisticated tools. We have to go by ground.”
The other man reached them and spoke firmly, “You need to give me the star around your neck.”
Jayne hesitated.
“It might try to inject you with new nanobots. Don’t worry, you will get it back when we are sure it is neutralized.”
Jayne reached up and unhooked the necklace and handed it to the Sentinel.
He took it from her and placed it in a small container that he took from his pouch. A reflexive shiver, reminiscent of nausea, ran down her spine as she watched the star disappear. He slipped it back into his pouch, opened the door and headed down the stairs leading away from the security building. They climbed into an automated street glider that appeared out of the darkness. Once they were inside
, the glider carried them back into the darkness.
“They won’t stop until they lose you completely. They will send more of those black jumpsuit boys to every location they think you might turn up. We have to conceal you quickly. Give me your VID,” he commanded.
Jayne hesitated. Her VID was her lifeline. Without it, she was lost.
“It is no good to you in its present state. It is, however, a way they might track you. Who knows how they may have modified it. By the way, have you taken the capsule I gave you?” the Sentinel asked.
Jayne nodded.
“Good!”
Jayne reached out for the door of the street glider.
The Sentinel sensed her fear and spoke again. “Relax. I didn’t lie. The capsule will take away your headache but it will also remove any new or residual nanobots from your system. Remember, we have to hide you.”
Jayne relaxed and swallowed the capsule. Soon the pounding in her head ebbed away with the hum of the street glider. Suddenly the sound changed. Jayne sensed that they had entered a tunnel. Street gliders had no windows. You could not see outside but they were not soundproof. The echo of its own sound, reflecting back from tunnel walls, continued until the glider slowed and stopped. The two Sentinels on either side of her did not move. They did not respond to the obvious fact that the glider had stopped. Jayne felt a bump and realized that the glider was still moving but no longer under its own power.
“What is happening? Where are we going?” asked Jayne.
“To a safe place,” replied one of the Sentinels.
“How? We are moving but we are also not moving,” said Jayne rather cryptically. Then the thought dawned. “We are on a flier, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” said the Sentinel.
The other turned to Jayne and spoke. “We are going somewhere very secret. This somewhere does not remain in one place very long. It moves to some place new every time an individual leaves or arrives. There is no way to determine exactly where it is at any moment in time. If someone were able to somehow track us to its location, it will have immediately moved to some new secret place as soon as we arrived. All this is controlled by a Baby Q. The encryption is based on quantumly entangled carbon atoms. This code is impossible to break. Only the Baby Q knows and he’s not telling,” chuckled the man.
“You mean, ‘She’s not telling,’ don’t you?” said Jayne, as a wry smile formed on her lips.
“Perhaps,” said the Sentinel. “Perhaps.”
Silence became the norm. The only noise came from the breathing of the two men. Their uniforms were somewhat restrictive for breathing silently. Jayne used the quiet to reflect on what had happened to her since she awoke in her quarters. She thought about the mind balloon that formed in her head. It allowed her to intimately know its contents. She realized that the balloon metaphor was inadequate to describe what happened. It was more malleable. It was more like a bubble. No. A long tube of bubble that formed from the ‘bubble making ring’ of her mind as it moved quickly through space-time. At the formation point, the worm of bubble was closed and open at the other end. It was open until there was enough space and time inside of it. Then it shut closed and wobbled and jiggled the space-time inside. It was then that Jayne could ‘observe’ everything that could happen. Nothing was for sure. There were only probabilities of events. There were an infinite number of things that could happen. Almost everything was ignored by Jayne, except that which fitted the focus, just like looking for a person wearing a red shirt in a large crowd of people. You would ignore almost everything except flashes of red. Those are the points you would focus. You would know that there were many other people that might possibly be wearing red, but the red was partially concealed under other clothing. These others would not grab your attention unless there were no obvious red shirts. You would then alter your search to include other possibilities. The likelihood of finding what you were looking for was only a mathematical probability. In Jayne’s case, she had no idea what she was looking for, except that which was dangerous. She could always see danger before it arrived.
The space-time bubble that her mind created was new to her. It covered a much larger space than before. It also covered a much longer time frame. She had always been able to see at least a second or a heartbeat into the future. She had just called that ‘luck’. Now, after the events of this day, Jayne realized seeing into the future was restricted by the size of the mind bubble she could create. She tried to create one now, but the throbbing in her head immediately swelled and she gave up. She shut her eyes and drifted into a fitful sleep.
She woke in a bed not unlike the bed in her quarters. It was part of a molded wall. She sat up and saw other beds just like the one on which she was sleeping. It was a mini-dorm. She got up and stumbled to the door at one end of the dorm room. It was locked. She slowly walked back to her bed and sat down.
She hurt all over. She rested her head on the pillow. She had to use the bathroom but she was just too weak. Her thoughts reflected on her newly discovered skill and the realization she had been doing this her whole life except on a much smaller scale. She was lucky, yes, but lucky with a twist. She had always been able to create mind bubbles, but the act had always been instinctive, never deliberate and she had never named it before. It had just happened unconsciously. But now the stress of the last few days had changed the way she thought of, what she now called, ‘pushing’.
She closed her eyes and pushed with her mind and created a mind bubble. She did not explore. Not yet. She pushed. The mind bubble grew. It was filled with walls and rooms and moving people. She pushed and machinery came into view.
“One more push,” she thought, “and then I will explore. I will search for the dangers and the meaning of what is happening to me.”
Jayne pushed and the bubble grew. Suddenly it popped. No! It had not popped; it had enclosed something completely. Beyond the surface of the bubble was nothingness. She looked. Inside her bubble was a unit of curved material. Jayne strained to see it all. This bubble was the biggest she had ever created. The time was very short. It was a large picture over a very small amount time. She realized that the bubbles she created could be small over a long period of time, or large over a short period of time. The bigger the bubble, the shorter the time. This one was huge, encompassing a single object. Suddenly Jayne understood what she was looking at. The detail was blurred with possibilities but she recognized the shape. It was a ship. A spaceship. She was inside a ship in outer space.
Jayne sucked in her breath. The bubble collapsed. The door at the end of the room suddenly opened and a woman entered.
She smiled and spoke. “I see you are awake. If you need to use the ‘head’, it’s through there.” She pointed to a side door at the end of the narrow dorm room. “I am going to give you a shot to help with the pain. Those sticky stinger effects can really hang on. Here is a change of clothes.” She patted a jumpsuit and a pile of clean underwear in her hands. “It probably won’t fit but we were not expecting you.”
“Where am I?” asked Jayne falteringly.
The woman gave her a ‘you know I can’t answer that’ look.
“I’ll come back in five. I think you should use the ‘head’ to freshen up a little. You look a bit of a mess. There is some blood and some other material you don’t want to know about still stuck to your clothes,” the woman said. She reached out and pulled down Jayne’s collar, revealing a smear of blood on her skin. “Now sit. I will give you this to help with the pain and calm what I assume are shattered nerves.”
Jayne sat and the woman injected her with the needle. Jayne felt the pain and the tension ebb.
The woman left the room. She did not lock or even close the dorm door.
Jayne cleaned up and put on the oversized jumpsuit. She had to roll up both the legs and the sleeves. It was clean and that was a huge improvement. Jayne was surprised at the bits of blood and bone she had missed. Her other clothes were ruined. She thought of the Sergio Partelli. If she had
worn that suit, she might have avoided a lot of this. Some of its camouflage functions might have fooled the sniffers. She would have blended into the background of whatever she was near. The suit could have created a new olfactory signature for the sniffer. It would have made her look and smell like a tree or a cool piece of concrete. It was time she started to think about being kidnapped or killed every time the system told her to go somewhere. So far she was two for two. She took a final look in the mirror and laughed. The single braid of hair still held, but the frizzies around her face made her look like a clown with one painted cheek. The bruise left by the stinger was a mottle of red and black and green and yellow.
Jayne stepped through the open doorway and was immediately met by another young woman.
“I am to take you to the interview room on deck C,” she said.
“So I am on a ship. Where are we?” she asked.
The woman leading her did not speak. She simply gestured for Jayne to move.
“Are we in space? How did I get here? What kind of ship is this? What is the name of the ship? What is your name?”
“Coventry,” responded the girl.
“Is that the name of the ship or your name?” asked Jayne.
“My name is Coventry,” she responded and she opened a doorway. She gestured to a chair in front of a table. “Please sit. Someone will be with you shortly.” She immediately turned, closed the door and walked away.
Jayne sat and waited.
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