by Nate Phelps
To his credit, Brad only yelled at me once for disobeying him, and even left someone to fend off the mobs that were trying to get into the garage now that the craziness was over. He probably figured I’d suffered enough after being attacked by a madman.
I pondered what the terrorist had said to me about Johnny being watched. It bugged me. Usually, I wouldn’t pay any mind to something like that. There were plenty of wackos in Midhaven. He hadn’t acted like someone insane, though. His earnest plea for my help was throwing me off.
I had brought it up to Brad earlier. His response didn’t make me feel any better.
“Doomsday prophet, eh? I guess one end of the world isn’t enough for everyone.”
Whatever. I hadn’t been with the agency that long. These sorts of things probably happened all the time.
Finally, I finished my work and signaled to the angry Enforcer at the door that he could let everyone come to their vehicles. I escaped quickly and rushed to headquarters.
It was about five in the afternoon. Johnny never worked past four, completely refusing to take calls after that point. Never mind that most criminals had learned of this annoyingly regular schedule and proceeded with their illegal activities when he was off duty.
I reached HQ, a large hexagon-shaped building covered in dark blue windows. Shania let out a grateful sigh as I landed on the roof. I took her off and strolled through the entrance.
“Equipment, please,” growled Sandy, the receptionist. She was a small, stocky woman with her hair in a tight bun and spectacles clinging to her sharp nose. Every time I came in, she was squinting at her monitor, her face in a puckering expression. I was determined to win her over one day.
“How are you, Sandy?”
“Fabulous.” Her expression never changed.
She had me place my tools in a plastic container and my jetpack on a hook.
I rushed down the rows of cubicles and then a flight of stairs to office 12B.
Sarah looked up and smiled as I walked in.
“Don’t do it!” I said, pointing an accusing finger at her.
Her smile became mischievous. “Brad had me print them out. It cost him thirty-seven midcoin. He said it would help you understand just how behind you are.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want it. Burn it all.”
Sarah reached into her desk and extracted a stack of reports that was thicker than my head. She dropped them onto the desk with a thud.
I kneeled and laid my face on the giant stack, sighing heavily. “Just finish me off. Make it quick.”
Sarah pulled out a few more reports that hadn’t fit and placed them on top. “You are dead, sir.”
“Et tu, Brute?”
“Don’t worry. I know a really cool girl who’s going to help you.”
My head popped up and the papers flew into the air. “Sarah, you are my favorite.”
“Well duh, I’m freaking fantastic. Should we get dinner?”
“You off already?”
“Sure.”
As we made our way down to the cafeteria, I filled her in on my day’s adventures.
“You don’t know how lucky you are,” she grumbled as I described the water tower fiasco. “I’d trade places with you in a moment.”
“At least you don’t have to deal with people,” I reasoned.
“Hmm, this is true.”
We passed a group of Enforcer Agents, just off a patrol. Several paused when they saw Sarah and nodded respectfully toward her. She nodded back.
When we got to the cafeteria, I gasped. “Look! They have hamburgers.”
“Whoa! What’s the occasion?”
I rushed off to get the food before it was gone. Sarah set up the reports on a table by a window. When I returned, I set down the hamburgers reverently.
“It’s fifty-percent beef.”
“Fifty?” She raised an eyebrow. “That high?”
“That’s what it said.”
We gorged ourselves, careful not to drip any sauce on the reports as we wrote.
“Look at this view I got us,” Sarah said, proudly.
“It’s nice,” I said, looking out at the city. “I can see the Tower.”
“I can’t believe you go to school there. Working in an office wouldn’t be so bad if it was in that building.”
We continued to munch our food. I glanced at her as I scribbled down some notes.
Sarah Charles. She was five-foot-nine and limber as a soldier, my good friend, and one mystery that I really wanted to figure out. She had straight brown hair, green eyes, and a funny little dimple that only surfaced when she smirked, which was a lot. A little over a year ago, she’d been an Enforcer. Now she wasn’t. I still had no idea why. Apparently, she’d been pretty good at the job because every other Agent seemed to know who she was.
“Hey!” Sarah tapped her pen on the report in front of me. “Keep writing.”
I took a large bite of my burger and asked with a full mouth, “Why did you get kicked out of the agency?”
Without missing a beat, she said, “My boss had an irrational fear of zucchini. I hid one in his locker. The therapy sessions alone cost thousands of coin.”
The story was different every time. “I knew it. Makes perfect sense.”
Last time, she’d told me that she got fired because she’d let her friend get married in the middle of a mission.
My favorite was probably when she’d told me that she had a very intense case of Tourette Syndrome that caused her to shove anyone who was nearby. I bought it completely, and for the next few weeks she would randomly push me whenever she felt so inclined. It seemed an insensitive joke, but she claimed that her best friend had Tourette’s, so it was fine. In truth, that probably made it worse.
I turned my attention back to the report and marked down some different times and signed my signature at the bottom.
“You shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, by the way,” Sarah said. “What if we were on a date?”
“Ha!” I nearly spit my burger across the table. “I wouldn’t be dressed in my sweaty work clothes, for one.”
If only this was a date. I’d been infatuated with her since I’d met her nine months ago. She was just a tad bit out of my league, and the friend zone was up and running on all cylinders. I rarely saw her in the evenings—she always went out with other friends. I’d settled for quirky work friends.
“Did you do anything fun last night?” she asked as I puzzled over a particularly tricky page.
I laughed again. “You know me better than that. The Five Sentinel’s was on.”
“The Five Sentinel’s?” She laughed so hard she had to set her food down. “That show is terrible!”
“Hey, at least it’s original. I want to support the new artists so that we can have more in the future. It’s an investment. I’m tired of watching the same two hundred movies over and over.”
“You’re such a dreamer.” She reached over and patted my face.
I grinned and smacked her hand away. She looked even cuter than normal. A strand of her hair had pulled free of her ponytail and was dangling over her face. I was tempted to move it for her. Instead, I forced my gaze back down to my report.
“Cleaner!” called out a voice behind me.
I groaned. “It’s Kleiner.”
“I know,” said Brad as he walked up to our table. He glanced at Sarah. “Leaving your office early again, Ms. Charles?”
“Just a bit of remote work,” she said, unfazed.
“Hmm.” He turned back to me. “You head to Sanitatem tomorrow. I have the pre-work here for you.”
I perked up. “What time?”
“Eight. Don’t sleep in.”
“Yes, sir.” I did a geeky fist pump beneath the table.
“Get this finished,” Brad said, dropping his new papers onto the stack before leaving.
“I can’t believe he followed us,” said Sarah, watching him leave.
“Finally,” I said. “I haven’t bee
n to Sanitatem in weeks.”
“Yeah, yeah, shut up,” grumbled Sarah. “Some of us don’t get to leave the city all the time.”
“Oh, my bad. Maybe they’ll let me take you as my secretary or something.”
She threw her napkin at me, but she was smiling. “Your secretary? You can be my secretary. I’ll go flying around the city shooting stuff with gum.”
“Hey, BTX isn’t gum. It’s a highly processed fusion of synthetic materials that…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, so fascinating. Why don’t you publish a book about it so I can not read it?”
As we continued to work, the crazy man’s words returned unbidden to my mind.
They know about the weapon…
I had the sudden urge to tell Sarah about him.
“So,” I began, “I got my butt kicked today.”
She glanced up from her report. “Is that unusual?”
“You are such a jerk. I could have died, you know.”
She gave me a guilty smile. “Is that where the bruise came from?”
I felt my cheek and winced as I brushed over the sensitive area. “Just so you know, he jumped me when I wasn’t looking. He was babbling about the city being in danger and Johnny being watched and all this weird crap.”
Her eyebrow raised. “What else did he say?”
“He said, ‘They know about the weapon’.”
Sarah stared at me, dropping her pen. “He said those exact words?”
“Yeah, pretty much. Is that important? Brad thinks he’s a quack.”
Sarah startled mumbling to herself, staring past me. “He couldn’t possibly know. No way.”
“Know what?”
“Classified.”
“You serious?”
“Serious as dead people.”
“I don’t think that’s the right phrase. And since when is your clearance any higher than mine?”
“Who is this guy? Where’d he come from?”
I explained the story in better detail and told her all I knew. She hung on to each word.
“… after that, Johnny threw him against a wall.”
“Hmm, sounds like Johnny.” She sat back and scrunched her face.
“Eh,” I shrugged. “It was probably nothing. Want to hang out tonight? I could use some help finishing these up before tomorrow.”
She smiled, but then it faded slightly. “Sorry, I’m busy tonight. I have a surprise for one of my friends.”
“Secret things?” I asked playfully, trying to cover my disappointment.
“Oh yes.” She gave me another mischievous look. “My life is full of excitement.”
“Of course, it is. You’ve got me.”
She laughed. “True.”
I wish she wouldn’t do that in such an attractive way; her laugh made it harder to accept that I didn’t stand a chance with her.
“Oh, by the way,” she continued. “Don’t get eaten by a Crawler tomorrow, eh?”
My face fell. I’d been so excited about the trip to the other city I’d almost forgotten that I had to go outside the wall to get there.
Chapter 4
The next morning, I was back in the Agency getting the necessary permits to do my work in Sanitatem. It was something I should have done the day before, so I was in a rush. Going to one of the other cities wasn’t a privilege I was granted very often. I hadn’t been to Sanitatem since my last training session with Sam, the other me.
After seeing our success in Midhaven with preventing damage and saving resources, Sanitatem had begged to have me. Their Sentinel, Riker, was probably known as the friendliest of the bunch, but had a destructive reputation. His anti-crime efforts usually left a massive trail of debris. It was cool that they wanted me, but I wasn’t about to leave before I got my degree. I trained Sam instead, but it was still a work in progress.
I turned out of one office and ran right into someone coming down the hall. My permits spilled to the floor as I stumbled.
“Sorry,” I muttered hastily, as I stooped to pick up the papers.
The man I had bumped, crouched and helped me scoop them up. “Good to see you, Kleiner.”
I looked up and saw that it was Dr. Henry. “Hey!”
He was taller than me, with a square chin and small wrinkles around the eyes. He’d been a medical doctor years ago and had never given up the title. Other than the President, he was the most important man in the city.
“You’ve been doing great work,” he said, handing me the permits. “I’ve been keeping tabs on you. You’ve paid for that grant a hundred times over.”
“Yes, sir, we’re grateful for the money. The professor and I were able to purchase an entire new lab thanks to you. I wanted to make good on the chance you gave me.”
“Well, keep it up. I’m expecting more great things from you.” He pulled at his tie. “Blasted thing. Can’t breathe. Have to keep it on though for these stupid meetings. What can you do? Drop by my office if you ever need anything.”
I bit my lip as I watched him walk away. “Sir?”
He paused and turned, raising an eyebrow.
“There actually is something I should tell you.”
“Please do. Make it quick, though.” He waited for me to catch up before continuing towards his meeting.
“It’s about yesterday.”
“Yes, I read the report. I’m sorry, I should have checked in on you. That’s not the type of mess we want to get you in while you’re with us.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s just bugging me, sir.”
“I’m sure it was shocking.”
“It’s not that. I just wanted to tell you in person.” I looked around, feeling self-conscious. “Everyone thinks he was nuts, but there was something about him and what he told me. I’m not saying he’s right about anything, but I felt like I should mention it.”
“Maybe I’ll take another look at it. Thanks for the heads up.”
To my horror, I continued babbling. “Yeah, he probably was crazy though. All the talk about the city in danger and the weapon and Johnny being watched. I think it just freaked me out a bit.”
“Weapon?” Dr. Henry pulled up short. “Did I miss that in the report? Go over that again.”
Now I was really nervous. I related what the man had said to the best of my memory.
When I finished, he was staring into the distance and muttering just like Sarah had. “Unusual. Very unusual.” Finally, he turned to me and smiled. “We should talk later. You better hurry to the gate.”
I looked down at my watch. It was 7:40.
I said a quick goodbye and ran.
* * *
I stood before the main gate as it groaned and began to crack open on its massive hinges. Shania was in my right hand and a large satchel was draped over my shoulder. Johnny stood next to me in a black shirt and knee-length shorts. On my other side was a line of vehicles, packed with food, clothes, and other wares to trade in Sanitatem. One of these had its door open, waiting for me. Ricky, the driver, was probably annoyed with me, but I wanted a better view of the gate as it opened.
“You’re so easily amused,” said Johnny as I craned my neck upwards.
“I don’t travel as much as you do.”
Dozens of workers in brown overalls, walked along the top of the wall and climbed up and down the stairs carting material in large bins. Sparks flew up from the welders hard at work.
“What are they doing?” I asked. “Is it broken?”
Johnny shrugged. “They’re always doing maintenance.” The gate creaked loudly and then slowly began to open. “See you later, Cleaner.”
I stumbled as he leaped forward. His jump launched him at least a hundred feet through the air, arcing through the opening that appeared. It revealed the sloping green hills outside the city that led off into the forest. I never got tired of the view.
My driver honked and I climbed in. The lead vehicles had already begun moving, and it wasn’t long till the van ahead of us pulled out and we were
rumbling down the trail, out of Midhaven. The loggers had cleared a nice wide path through the woods. It had been used so many times, the grass had given way to dirt and the bumps had been leveled out quite nicely. Johnny bounded along beside us. His jumps became higher and longer as we left the city until I could only see him when he briefly touched back down.
We made good time and before long the trail narrowed and we were hedged in on both sides by tall dark trees. I would occasionally see blurs of white and it always made my stomach jump. What if those were Crawlers? I imagined them running alongside the caravan, creeping from one tree to the next.
The fact that no one had seen one in years did little to soothe my fears. They had made the forest their own long ago. Who would want to go in there?
Apparently, half the city. Ever since the Crawlers had disappeared, more and more people had been clamoring to go out and establish communities outside the walls. Stupidest thing I’d ever heard of, leaving the protection of a Sentinel and wandering into the one area the Crawlers might be hiding.
Heading into the mountains behind Midhaven or out into the desert by Lutosa made more sense, but I still thought it was a bad idea.
Dr. Henry was one of those who were preaching patience, but the overpopulation issue was becoming a bigger problem. I sided with him. The beasts were waiting for us to get comfortable. They would let us come out, get settled, and then strike when we were assured that we were safe.
I’d always feared them. Before I’d gotten to Midhaven, something had happened. I’d seen one. Every now and then, I experienced flashes of memory and could see the sharp teeth and gaunt eyes. I’d been on the wall but I couldn’t remember why.
An involuntary shiver rushed up my spine like ice water, jerking my head to the side.
“You okay?” asked Ricky, the driver.
My face burned. “I’m fine.”
Suddenly, dust exploded next to us and the car rocked. I shouted in surprise, grabbing the back of Ricky’s seat. It took me a moment to realize it had just been Johnny touching back down.
Ricky was laughing at me. “He got you good, bro.”
