by Simon Archer
“Nic’s right,” Lin said, rising to my defense. “None of this is adding up. I’ve been with him this whole way, and I’ve seen everything he has. He’s right. There’s just something very off about this whole thing. It’s not right. It’s very, very wrong.”
“You just can’t be serious,” Pace said again, turning his attention to Lin now. “You believe this bullshit?” He pointed at me accusatorially.
“Maybe the news stations are right,” Granger said, looking like he couldn’t believe what he was saying almost as much as he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “This is absolutely insane. You’re absolutely insane. You can’t all think this!” He looked around at the foxgirls, Clem, and Semra, asking them with his eyes if they agreed with me.
“I believe it,” Semra said shortly, to my surprise. “I was just down at the docks with them. I thought they were crazy at first, too, but then when I heard what these shippers had to say, well, let’s just say that none of it adds up. None of it at all.”
“What do you mean, none of it adds up?” Bel asked. “What did they tell you?”
“None of them have ever actually docked anywhere other than Termina,” Lin explained. “None of them. They meet other ships by the shore and distribute cargo that way. No one from Termina has ever seen anything from the outside world.”
“Which leads us to believe that maybe, Achilles and his men were from there,” I continued for her. “Or at least they’re in contact with them. Those papers with messages to someone Achilles seemed afraid of that we were looking at yesterday morning? The orders the outside world sends to the shippers at the docks look pretty much exactly the same.”
“And they use some kind of weird old machine to send the messages, too,” Malthe jumped in eagerly. “Just like Achilles and his people used burner phones and old radio signal technology to hide from us. Don’t you all see? None of it adds up. Or all of it does, from our perspective. Something is going on in the rest of the world that no one wants us to know about.”
“And we can’t find Achilles anywhere in the city or around it,” Clem finished for us. “So he has to be somewhere else. The guys who broke out of the Void with him, too, and the ones who rescued them. This is the only option, don’t you see?”
“I… I…” Pace stammered, looking around at Bel, Granger, and the rest of the board members with a stunned and floored expression on his face. And that same expression was mirrored back at him at every turn.
“It’s just… all so much to take in,” Bel said with a small, apologetic smile on her face.
“I know,” I said. “And we can discuss it as much as you like. But myself, the foxgirls, and maybe some others are going on a ship out of here this afternoon. We’ve already set it up.”
If everyone was shocked and freaked out before, they were even more so now, and they all started talking at once.
“So that’s what’s going on, Joch?” Pace asked in an accusatory tone, his voice rising above everyone else’s. “You’re just fleeing when the going gets tough?”
“That’s not fair!” Kira cried. “Nic’s done everything, risked everything for us, this company, and this city. And now he’s doing it again.”
“I agree, that’s not fair, Pace,” Granger said, reluctantly disagreeing with his friend. “There’s no way anyone in their right mind would leave the city. It wouldn’t be escaping anything. It would be heading out into a practical wasteland. It would mean exile. So he must believe this is our best shot of finding the guy.”
“I do,” I said, nodding to Granger gratefully.
“I know, I know, it’s just so crazy,” Pace said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“I know it is,” I said in as reassuring a voice as I could muster. “And I appreciate that what I’m asking of you is a lot, I really do. It’s just that we really need to move quickly on it, and it’s come about very quickly, too. And I wanted to be very sure before I brought this to you.”
“I-I just…” Bel stammered, her voice trailing off a bit as she tried to find the right words. “I just find this all very difficult to… not believe exactly. I trust you all so much. I just find it difficult to wrap my head around is all.”
“You and me both,” I told her with a small smile. “Believe me. I know how difficult this must be for you because it’s just as difficult for me as it is for you. I’m just a bit further along in the process than you all are, is all.”
“What are we going to tell the press?” Pace asked. “It’s not like they won’t notice you’re gone for… how long will you be gone for?”
“I have no idea,” I said, shaking my head. “I know as little about the rest of the world as you all do. Weeks, probably.”
“Weeks?” Pace asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the table as the rest of the board members gasped their surprise and concern. “You can’t be serious! They’ll definitely notice you’re gone for that long.”
“I know,” I said, running my fingers across my chin as I thought this over. “The question is, what do we tell them?”
“You don’t have a plan for that?” Granger asked, incredulous.
“As I said, this has all come together very quickly,” I said. “I haven’t had the time to think much about this yet. I suppose that first, we should decide who’s going. The foxgirls, Malthe, and me, plus another one of the binders.” I looked at Clem and Semra, as the other two binders on the board looked at each other.
“I’m fine with going, I guess,” Clem said. “What about you, Semra?”
“I’d like to go, too,” she said, and they both turned back to me.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I need one of you to stay here and act as interim CEO in my place. And honestly, I think that you’re better suited for that role, Semra. No offense, Clem.”
“None taken, I guess,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve never been the boss man type. And, well, Semra definitely is.” A number of us let ourselves laugh shakily at this.
“Alright, then,” she relented. “I would like to go with you, but I suppose someone has to run things in your absence. And it might as well be me.”
“That’s the spirit,” I said with another laugh. “It’s settled then, Semra will be in charge while I’m gone. So the foxgirls, Malthe, Clem, and I will go.”
“Hold on,” Lin said, to my surprise. “I should go too. You’ll need someone with diplomatic skills if we’re going to interact with people from other lands, after all. And no offense, but none of you strike me as the type to be all that good at that sort of thing.”
“Hold on,” Clem protested, turning to face her in his chair. “This is going to be very dangerous…”
“My point exactly,” she interrupted him, avoiding meeting his eyes and looking at me instead. “You’ll need someone like me there with you.”
“Very well,” I said with a short nod to her and a regrettable look to Clem. “You’ve got me convinced. So the seven of us will go, and the rest of you will stay here and run things while we’re gone. Now don’t make a mess of my company, you hear?” There were some more small laughs at that.
“We’ll do our best, Joch,” Pace said. “But the question remains as to what we’re going to tell the press.” I thought about this in deep silence for a moment.
“Okay,” I said finally. “I think I’ve got it. We’ll tell them we’re going down into the tunnels for the foreseeable future, to look and scour the whole place for Achilles.”
“Haven’t we already done that?” Semra asked. “What do you think everyone thinks we’ve been doing for the past two days?”
“I know,” I said. “But they don’t know all the details. No one but us and Achilles’s people have ever been down in the tunnels, after all. The general public doesn’t know much about the whole situation. We’ll add extra security to each entrance we know of. Malthe, can you send instructions on that? Give the map to everyone else?”
“Already on it, boss,” Malthe said, pulling out his E-pad to d
o so.
“Good,” I said, turning back to Semra. “Tell the press and Parliament that we’re going out of radio range, and you’ll be running things for the time being, until we get back. And that we’re confident we’ll find Achilles this way, but it could take a while because there’s a lot of uncharted territory down there. That we think our best shot is to immerse ourselves in their way of life beneath the city.”
“Okay…” Semra said, nodding slowly. “But why can’t you update them yourself, Joch? They’ll have more trust in you.”
“They think I’m crazy,” I laughed. “You said so yourself.”
“Yeah, but it’s all relative. I work for you,” she said. “So they think I work for crazy, which is even worse than crazy itself.”
“Let them,” I said with a shrug. “But TelCorp still has the power here. Law enforcement has nothing on our power. I trust you to keep the rest of the city at bay. I’ll introduce you to the press, but I think everything else should come from you, so people start to see you as the head of the company for now. So you start to gain their trust or at least some semblance of respect. The press already fears you, so I have no doubt that you’ll figure out how to win them over, or at least assuage them for the time being.”
“Will there be any way to contact you while you’re gone?” Semra asked. “For instructions or updates or anything like that?” I looked at Malthe to answer this question.
“We’ll try to use our current tech and the burner phones and other stuff the tunnel people used,” he said. “But we can’t guarantee anything. The shippers can’t communicate with us when they’re gone, so I doubt we’ll be able to. Both of our groups should just assume we’re on our own for now.”
“That’s… I don’t know how I feel about that,” Bel said, looking more than a little panicked. Her expression was mirrored across the table.
“I know,” I said sympathetically. “Me neither. But I’m telling you that this is our best shot. We have to take it, otherwise who knows what’ll happen.”
“If Achilles is gone, maybe he just won’t come back,” Bel suggested hopefully. “Maybe they’ll just leave us alone, and none of this will be necessary.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But we discussed that ourselves earlier. We can’t count on that. For whatever reason, these people care a whole lot about Termina and what we do here. They want to control us. And I don’t think they’ll stop at anything to be able to again. Those message logs revealed that much, right?”
No one seemed to have an answer for this.
“Look, I know this is scary,” I said after a moment of silence. “I’m scared, too. But this is what we have to do, so we’re going to do it. And I have every faith in the world in every one of you. This will work out. We’ll get to the bottom of this. And if something happens to us, you’ll figure out how to move on from that, too. The smartest and most powerful people in the city are sitting around this table. That won’t change when a few of us leave.”
“Okay,” Semra said, swallowing audibly and hard. “Okay. I think we can do this, too. This is our best shot, I agree with that. So we’ll do it. We’ll figure it out. It’ll take some improvising, but we can do that.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Now, are there any last questions before we go downstairs?”
More silence ensued before Bel finally spoke.
“It’s not a question, but I just want to tell you good luck. Please, take good care of yourselves.”
“Yes,” Pace said, nodding. “We’re counting on you, Joch. Don’t let us down. You never have before, just don’t start now.”
“I won’t,” I told him. “I promise you. Each and every one of you.”
More uncomfortable silence ensued.
“Should we head downstairs then?” I asked Semra. She nodded, and she, myself, and the rest of my team rose to head back downstairs and face what was coming.
13
Achilles
“I don’t believe it,” I said, shaking my head in bewilderment at the small holovision screen across the wall from my bed in the ship’s cabin. “I don’t believe it one bit.”
“Well, sir, you did drop that hint when he captured you,” my associate told me from over the intercom, through which I was communicating with our main office in… well, somewhere else, suffice it to say.
“Yes, but I never actually believed they would make anything of it,” I said, growing a bit flustered. “Joch never even mentioned it again, when he came to interrogate me at that insufferable prison they stole from me.”
“Then why did you say it in the first place?” my associate asked, a question that I knew was coming but had been dreading. There was more than a hint of annoyance in his voice. I knew better than anyone that my little throwaway comment that day had not gone over very well with the higher-ups.
“I don’t know,” I spat. “It wasn’t exactly the finest day of my career. I wanted him to know that I knew something he didn’t! Even if he didn’t understand it. Especially if he didn’t understand it.”
“Well, at least he hasn’t announced to the whole city that he’s coming after us on the other continents,” my associate continued. “And it’s not like he knows anything about the outside world. None of them do. So they won’t even know where or how to start looking for us. And they’ll damn well go into culture shock the second they set foot on another continent, no matter which one it is they’re going to.”
“Do we know which one they’re going to?” I asked quickly. “What is this shipper’s cargo?”
“We’re working on finding that out, Mr. Tibor,” he said. “We should have that information soon. But the likelihood that they’re first stop will be anywhere close to us is small. Most of Termina’s outsourcing goes elsewhere.”
“They’re outsourcing goes everywhere,” I spat. “Everyone in the outside world wants a piece of Termina, they’re right about that much.”
“Yes, but just statistically speaking, the outsourcing is split five ways, between the five continents,” my associate explained patiently. “So chances are it isn’t going where you’re going. But we’ll get a definitive answer on that soon, Sir.”
“Wants a piece of Termina,” I muttered, returning my attention to the holovision screen set against the quaint wooden backdrop of my cabin. “They’re not right about that. It’s just a happy accident that it’s true, in a way. They think everyone reveres Termina. But no, we just like laughing at it. And watching all their escapades on the holovision.”
I watched as that blonde idiot he put in charge of TelCorp talked to the reporters some more. I checked the bottom left corner of the screen. Ten million people were watching. Those were some high ratings for the modern world.
“That being said,” my associate said as if he were watching with me. He probably was. “It’s not just Termina that’s the spectacle right now. It’s us and, more specifically, you. We don’t like that you’re making such a mess of things, Mr. Tibor. People are getting nervous. They may like watching the goings-on in Termina, but they don’t want to be in the middle of it. No one wants any of this mess seeping into the outside world.”
“You think I don’t know that,” I spat, raising my voice for the first time since the day I’d been captured. “Of course, I know that! And I have a plan. We’ll deal with this.”
“And what, exactly, is your plan?” my associate asked pleasantly, though there was more than a hint of an ominous tone hidden in there somewhere like no one actually thought I had a handle on this situation, and there would be consequences for it. I didn’t like that thought. I didn’t like it one damn bit.
“Well,” I said slowly, trying to buy myself some time since, honestly, I hadn’t actually thought of a plan yet. But I didn’t want them to know that.
“I’m waiting, Mr. Tibor,” my associate said. And there was more of a hint of that ominous tone lurking in there now.
“I know,” I snapped. Then, I thought of something. I was so painfully obvious, and I cou
ldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. “I know! It’s just like you were saying. They’ll have culture shock the second they set foot on one of the continents. And more than that, they’ll stick out like a sore thumb. This problem will take care of itself. They’ll be recognized immediately as from Termina. Hell, they’ll be recognized immediately as themselves. They are seven of the most recognizable reality stars in the world, after all, even if they don’t know it.”
“And you don’t see that as a problem in and of itself?” my associate asked. “Mr. Tibor, the second they’re seen, everyone in the world will know how much we… no, I mean you… have fucked this up!”
“Well then, we’ll set people up at every dock in the goddamn world!” I cried. “It’s not like we can’t do that. We have the people and the means. So do it! But chances are, they won’t even make it that far. They’ll get caught on the ship that retrieves the cargo, whatever it is. So we find out what order it is and put our people on that ship!”
“Now that,” my associate said, and I could almost hear the smile in his voice. “Is what I call a plan. I’ll be in touch, Mr. Tibor. Please refrain from making any more mistakes before we speak next.”
And before I could come up with a sufficiently snide remark in response, he clicked away and ended the call, leaving me to watch the events in Termina all on my own.
Oh well. It was always a good show.
14
I led Semra over to the reporters and left everyone else behind us in the entrance to the building. No reason to clog up the traffic.
“When I start walking away, you run straight out here and follow me,” I instructed them. “Don’t hesitate and don’t stop to talk to anyone. No one at all.”
“Understood,” Cindra said, nodding to me.
The reporters went wild when we walked out there, not that I’d expect anything less.
“Mr. Joch, do you have any comment now on the allegations that…” the same pesky little reporter as before started to ask, ignoring Semra and jabbing the microphone right back in my face.
