James Decker - Fallout

The building’s going to shake itself apart.

“Nix, is this it? Are they starting it?”

“No, these vibrations are abnormal,” he said. “I believe the power fluctuations are weakening the machine’s containment field.”

“What happens if it fails?” Vamp asked.

“It could explode,” he said. “Or, the gate could open out of control and begin to expand unexpectedly.”

Something flickered through an open doorway to my right as emergency lights snapped on. More scaleflies stirred up when the light hit them, launching away to fill the air with buzzing and swarming black bodies. Metal groaned, followed by a low thump that made grit sift down from above.

“Come on,” Vamp said. He pointed toward another set of double doors. “Through there.”

I triggered the security scanner with Gohan’s badge and we slipped through, closing the doors behind us. The large room on the other side was dark except for a single, buzzing light in one corner, and the glow from a bank of monitors on the opposite side. Structure-wise everything looked undamaged, but the tremors had knocked equipment down from a series of workstations and wall-mounted shelves. Computer stations lay on the tiled floor amid shards of broken plastic and glass. From the other side of the room, an electronic display cast a pulsing green glow.

“…breach in specimen containment units A through K,” a voice said from outside the door as footsteps passed by.

“It doesn’t matter. None of it will matter.”

The voices, and the footsteps headed away; then I heard a heavy door bang. Footsteps echoed in a stairwell; then the door slammed behind them.

I crept into the room, trying not to crunch the broken plastic as I tiptoed through the mess and used one hand to wipe the soot away from the computer screen that displayed the green light.

“An A.I.,” I said. I waved at the screen. “Hey, are you active?”

The screen flickered.

“Anyone home?”

The A.I.’s logo blinked on, skipping twice as a scalefly crawled across the screen.

“Rapture is ready for activation,” the A.I. said. “All personnel should report to the lower floors and await reunification.”

“How long?” I asked it. “What’s happening out there?”

“A cascading failure of Hangfei’s power grid appears to be imminent,” it said. “In response to this, the foreign forces offshore have begun arming their missiles. In response to that, the haan defense shield has begun to power up as well.”

“Holy shit,” Vamp called from the other side of the room. I looked over and saw he’d wandered over to the bank of monitors.

“How was Gohan able to build this place?” I asked the A.I. “Who on the haan side helped him?”

“That information is unknown to me,” it responded. “Please present your ID card.”

I held up Gohan’s card, and it scanned it.

“Guys!” Vamp called.

“My records show your ID has been used multiple times in disparate areas of the building,” the A.I. said, a leery tone entering its synthesized voice.

“What?”

“Gohan is here,” Nix said. “He has another badge and has used it to get access to the building.”

“Please verbally give me your ID number,” the A.I. said.

“Hang on.” I crossed the room to join Vamp, while Alexei and Nix followed.

“What is it?” I asked, but then I saw the monitors, and I saw what.

They showed different areas of the building. On one of the screens, the camera looked down at a room lined with shelving and sitting in rows on the shelves were big glass specimen jars. Scaleflies crawled around on the inside of the glass of each one. On another screen, two people were pushing a floating platform along between them that had been heaped with big bundles. As they passed by the camera, I thought the bundles might be body bags.

“What the hell?” I muttered. Vamp tapped one of the other screens with his finger.

“Not that,” he said. “This.”

The monitor looked down into a room full of floor-to-ceiling tanks, rows and rows of them, all filled with fluid, with a mellow light shining down from the top. Floating in each one was a person, stripped naked with their toes a little bit off the ground. There were women, men, girls, boys, old and young.

Some of the tanks were empty except for a haze of bright red that had settled down near the bottom. Floating in one was the empty, wrinkled skin of a man that hung suspended like a deflated balloon. In front of one of the tanks that had been drained, a big plastic waste drum sat, full of clothing, and rubbery skin.

“It’s them,” I said, staring. “I saw them… haan constructs were getting rid of the clothing, down in the sewers under the tower.”

“Are those…?” Vamp asked.

“Haanyo ng,” I said. “Gohan can see them. He’s giving the infected safe haven here, to finish the transformation.”

Qian might have been telling the truth, I thought. The haan might have been trying to undo, or at least control, what Sillith had done, while the whole time Gohan had been adding fuel to the fire. He could have been helping them, making sure their numbers grew, in an attempt to push us toward this point of no return. It could be true.

“Excuse me,” the A.I. called, “but I’m afraid I have to inform you that if you don’t recite your ID I will be forced to alert security.”

“Sam, the coast is clear. We’ve got to get out of here,” Vamp said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay, let’s—”

The words stuck in my throat as someone moved in front of one of the other monitors. “Sam, come on.”

“Vamp…” I said, pointing. He looked, and I could tell right away he recognized her, too. Alexei did as well.

“Petra,” he whispered, staring at the screen.

A little girl had stepped into the frame, carrying a pile of wet clothes that she dumped into the waste drum. When she turned and I got a good look at her face, I had no doubt. It was the little girl we’d found in the Pot months back when we’d been tracking down Dragan. He’d left Alexei with a friend, along with another girl he’d managed to free from Sillith’s laboratory. A little blond girl…

“It’s her,” I said.

Back in the other room, the A.I.’s logo turned from green to red, and a klaxon sounded somewhere inside the building.

“Damn it.” I waved for them to follow and made for the doors opposite those we’d entered. “Come on, we’ve got to move.”

As soon as I stepped through, light stabbed my eyes and the vibrations grew strong enough to set my teeth on edge. For a moment, all I could do was stare.

The doors had opened into a huge, circular space that stretched up several floors before turning to a great dome. A machine filled most of the area, towering up to the peak of the dome and surrounded by shielded haan modules that connected to it via branching pipes and cables. The main tower ended two stories above us where a giant orb floated, its hexagonal plating throwing off reflected light like some kind of high-tech disco ball. Above the orb, a second spire floated. Several other, smaller orbs moved through the air at different intervals around the monstrosity, like tiny planets. Lenses of some kind stared back in toward the central sphere as they made their revolutions.

“Nix, can you tell what it is?” I asked, stepping closer. In front of the machine’s base sat what looked like some kind of control console.

Nix stepped toward it, and I could sense his awe. Part of him, the part that consisted of shared memories from his fellow haan, recognized the machine.

He didn’t need to tell me. I felt his recognition, his amazement, and his fear. Gohan had done it. He really had done it.