It was easily ten feet high and twenty feet across with a palladium glass face that showed the locking mechanisms behind it. She ran her hands all over it but couldn’t find any switch or button. Off to the side was what looked like a manual release wheel, much like the one she had seen previously, but next to it was a sign that read: Upon Emergency Lockdown This Door Cannot Be Opened.

  Claire tried anyways, struggling and yanking and cursing between her teeth. At one point she even screamed her frustration. It was no use. There was not the slightest give, nor would there be.

  She finally gave up in frustration and exhaustion. Putting her back against the door, she collapsed to the ground, feeling the first sobs starting to come up. After a few seconds of struggling, she couldn’t hold it back anymore. All the fear and panic, mixed with her weakened state and the emotional trauma was just too much. She cried, harder than perhaps the day her father died. It was a child’s cry, a helpless cry, filled with an ache and longing for comfort and safety that wouldn’t come.

  How long she huddled there at the base of the blast door she didn’t know, but when Claire finally raised her head and looked back the way she had come, she received a shock on par with the one she experienced upon waking in the roomful of dreaming prisoners.

  On the wall above the double set of doors she had emerged from were painted four large seals arranged in a rhombus shape, faded and unrecognizable except for one with an eagle, clutching what looked like branches with leaves in its claws. In the middle of the seals was print. The majority of the letters had been erased by time, but Claire was able to make out three words that set her head shaking in disbelief.

  Welcom T

  Che Mountain

  Complex

  Veritas

  “Here,” his father said, handing Quentin a steaming mug. “Drink this.”

  Quentin wrinkled his nose at the smell but took a gulp nonetheless. He gagged and made a face, wishing he could wipe the taste from his tongue.

  “What is that?” he grumbled. “It’s like a hot cup of dirt.”

  Griffin smirked.

  “Its coffee, freeze-dried and vacuum sealed, about three hundred years old.”

  Quentin handed it back to his father.

  “Well, I think it went bad.”

  “It’s supposed to taste like that. People in the Old World used to drink it daily.”

  “Maybe some things are better left forgotten,” Quentin said sarcastically.

  “Oh it is,” Griffin replied. “I found a case of it when we reappropriated some old helicopters to turn into air transports. I keep it in the lab; probably the last bit of coffee in the world.”

  His father seemed solemn at this prospect.

  “What’s a helicopter?” Quentin asked.

  Griffin shook his head.

  “It doesn’t really matter. How are you feeling?”

  Quentin thought about it for a long moment. He didn’t know how to respond. His brain felt jumbled, thoughts and memories swirling around like water circling a drain. When he’d woken on the floor in the hallway outside of the lab, he hadn’t been able to talk or fully grasp what had happened. It was like shock. He’d read about it but never really understood the state until he experienced it firsthand.

  His father had to practically carry him down the hall to another lab, which was thankfully vacant, and prop him on a stool against the wall, throwing a jacket over his shoulders.

  The shock had only lasted a couple of minutes, and now he was attempting to be reflective of something he didn’t understand in the least bit.

  “Quentin?” his father prompted.

  “I’m fine,” he answered too quickly. “I mean, I feel okay…physically, I feel okay.”

  “And mentally?”

  Quentin stared down at the floor but he wasn’t seeing it. He was thinking about those scattered memories and how real they had felt.

  “I don’t know what that machine did to me. I feel like…it showed me things that I don’t remember. Or maybe I do remember but not the way I saw it.”

  He buried his head in his hands.

  “It doesn’t make any sense. I’m not making any sense.”

  Quentin felt his father’s hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s my fault. This tech is not exactly tried and true. I should have run the data stream through the filters first. There might have been a surge in the virtual pathways or you could have downloaded-“

  His father stopped abruptly and his voice dropped low.

  “Son, I’m sorry,” he said solemnly. “I had no idea something like that might happen.”

  “I know, Dad,” Quentin replied, looking up with a faint smile.

  His father looking down at him with concern triggered a memory.

  For a moment, Quentin could smell fresh grass and feel the warmth of light on his face, but the sensations were gone just as quickly as they had come.

  “Can we go home?” he asked in earnestness.

  He was tired, exhausted really.

  “Yeah, Son,” his father said, helping Quentin to his feet. “But first I have to show you something.”

  “Can’t it wait?” he replied earnestly, already thinking about his bed despite the fact that it was midday.

  His father’s face was insistent, however, which piqued Quentin’s curiosity.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s about the girl.”

  While Quentin had been down to the labs below the Pantheon before, he had never seen such traffic like this in all the years. The moment they stepped out into the corridor, it seemed like the frenzied rush for the change of shift. There were lab scientists and techs rushing hither and to, turning to squeeze past peers and bumping unceremoniously against others without the slightest apology.

  “What’s going on here, Dad?” Quentin was able to squeeze out as they were standing aside to let some techs roll a cart full of equipment by.

  “I’m not really at liberty to say, Son.”

  For the next couple of minutes they were constantly sidling by techs and scientists, turning shoulders to avoid collisions, and generally trying to avoid being trampled. It wasn’t until they took a left a bit further down that the traffic died off and the noise of rattling carts and din of shouting voices receded.

  “Whatever it is going on it must be important,” Quentin said when they finally had a moment of near silence.

  “It is,” was his father’s short response, which usually meant that the subject was closed.

  But Quentin was feeling particularly curious on this day. Perhaps it was the Cloud and the barrage of memories that had assailed him, some of which he recalled and others that he didn’t.

  Had they all been real, or was it a product of corrupted data caused by unproven tech, like his father said? He knew as a child he had been sick for a long time, and he faintly remembered what that had been like; the confusion, the uncertainty. There were large gaps in his memory that had never been filled, a product of the brain trauma he suffered that day at the beach.

  Even that memory was faulty. Though all these years he’d dreamed of the ocean, it had actually been the Bay here in Akropolis, and there had never been a sailboat or jellyfish. Those things just didn’t exist anymore. He had simply slipped on something and drowned. The several minutes it had taken to resuscitate him had deprived his brain of the necessary oxygen needed, which resulted in the damage. The cluster of arteries in his basal ganglia had been almost destroyed, and it had taken his parents years to find the solution to repairing the damaged fibers.

  In reality, Quentin couldn’t count on any of his memories from those years. They all could have been faulty, which might also explain the corrupted data that was downloaded. Though every child was implanted with an uplink device and their memories stored in the Cloud, that information was only accessible if and when a person was revived as an adult. The brain damage he had experienced as a child might have everything to do with what went wrong when his dad hooked him up to the new machine.

  And yet…

  It had all felt so real.

  “Dad?”

  Quentin’s tone made his father halt his hurried pace. He turned around to face his son. There was something disturbing in the furtive manner he was exuding; the way his eyes shifted to and from, the clenched jaw…the twitching in his hands.

  “Did you see what I saw? On your machine, I mean?” Quentin asked, knowing he didn’t need to specify post-consciousness.

  Griffin licked his lips, opened his mouth, but no answer was forthcoming. Instead, he spun on his heels and continued at an even quicker pace down the hall. Quentin was caught off guard, expecting a different response, and had to run to catch up with his father.

  “Dad? Dad!” he called a few more times, but there was no reply, and he didn’t expect one.

  He had his answer anyways.

  The uncomfortable aspect was in the reaction he had received. Had those glimpses been so close to the truth that they had stirred painful memories in his father, or had they been actual truths?

  While Quentin was pondering this new puzzle, they arrived at his father’s office. Griffin waved a hand at the sensor and the door slid open with a slight hiss. He didn’t hesitate, but crossed into the room and immediately went behind his desk and crouched down beneath it.

  Quentin had a moment to look around, and noticed the slight film of dust on almost everything, from the desk to the chairs to the bookshelves, which were the envy of almost any person who stepped foot into the office. There were two potted plants sitting by the window, a jade plant and rubber plant by the look of it, drooping and discolored from neglect. That was a travesty in itself.

  “Guess you haven’t been here much lately,” Quentin mused.

  Griffin’s head popped up from behind the desk.

  “What?”

  “I said it doesn’t look like you’ve been spending much time here.”

  His father seemed to consider the statement longer than was necessary.

  “No, I haven’t. I’ve been mostly in the labs. There hasn’t been much time for quiet speculation or theorizing as of late.”

  “Does that have something to do with what’s going on out there?” Quentin again pressed, hiking a thumb over his shoulder.

  “I already told you I wasn’t at liberty to talk about that,” Griffin replied, a slight edge of annoyance slipping into his voice.

  The irritation in his father’s tone was just a little too much at that moment. Quentin had just lived through what felt like years of repressed memories, real or not, on top of losing the only other person he cared about in the sanctuary; not to mention the plethora of secrets his father had kept over Quentin’s lifetime in pursuit of the greater good of Akropolis. It was all so damn exasperating, which in turn made him indignant with resentment.

  He’d been kept in the dark the majority of his life, from the time of his illness to his mother’s death to his father’s work. Everything had always felt like one big secret, and frankly, he was sick of it.

  “Screw this,” Quentin said, waving at the door sensor and leaving before he could say what he really wanted to, and perhaps turning a moment of anger into a wedge between them.

  He was only a few steps down the hall when he felt Griffin’s strong grip on his bicep, right before he was spun around forcefully. There was a moment when the anger was boiling within him enough that Quentin almost lashed out physically, but the look on his father’s face bled all action out of him.

  “Please,” Griffin pleaded, the façade having finally dropped, replaced with a tired and haggard guise that Quentin hadn’t seen since he was a boy and the illness had him in its death grip.

  “Please, Son,” his father said. “I can’t answer everything right now. Trust me when I say you wouldn’t want me to. But please, come back into the office and we’ll talk. I wasn’t lying when I said it was important.”

  Quentin relented, following his father back into the office. After the door closed automatically, Griffin gestured towards one of the dust covered chairs in front of his desk. Quentin eyed it for a moment, reached down with his shirt sleeve, and gave it a single wipe before sitting down. His father stepped behind his desk.

  “Give me a second. I just found it here in the crate.”

  Griffin rummaged around a bit and then stood up, holding a flat rectangular object in his hands. It was a picture frame, about eight by ten and rather nondescript.

  “Sia,” Griffin said. “Please lock the door. Do not allow entry except with my permission.”

  Quentin raised his eyebrows in surprise as he heard the slight swooshing sound of the locks engaging.

  “Sia’s here?” he asked, reaching up behind his ear to depress the little bump there that usually synced him with their home AI program.

  His father declared,” Don’t bother.”

  Quentin’s hand was paused halfway to his ear.

  “But didn’t you just say-“

  “I did, and she is,” Griffin explained, sitting down at the chair behind his desk.

  He was still holding the picture frame with the back to Quentin.

  “Our Sia is the prototype to a new AI system I was building to handle all the daily operations of the Pantheon. Eventually, she’ll be able to link with the quantum computer and be a part of every aspect in Akropolis. Right now, she’s confined to the upper levels; a trial period if you will, running off contained servers. I’m the only one that can access her, other than the council if they so request.”

  Quentin was amazed at this revelation.

  “Is she…the same as our Sia?”

  “Yes and no. She is a direct copy of our Sia but she is separated from the program in our home, for security reasons. She knows who you are, that you are sitting here with me at this moment, but she hasn’t spoken to you since her transfer, which was almost eight months ago.”

  Quentin couldn’t help but to scan the room with his eyes, even looking to the ceiling. Of course, he knew there would be nothing to see. It was an instinctual reaction, as if he were trying to feel her presence in the room.

  Griffin leaned forward in his chair, holding the frame in both hands.

  “We can talk more about that later, if you’re interested. Right now, I’d like to hear what you know about the council members.”

  Quentin was confused and figured it showed.

  “I don’t understand-“

  His father held up a hand.

  “Just humor, please. What can you tell me about them?”

  Quentin, bemused, shrugged and shook his head.

  “I don’t know. Not much. I know there are twelve sitting members. They’re all human, no synthetics, and it’s a life appointment.”

  “And?” Griffin prompted.

  “They uh, pretty much run everything in Akropolis. The governors work beneath them, heading up certain districts in the city.”

  “Do you know any of them specifically?”

  Quentin held up his hands as if he were almost helpless then dropped them back to his lap.

  “Just names I learned in school. I mean, there’s Saanvi Bhatt, Yander, Egbert, Aflred Beltran, Moses Graham. I honestly can’t remember the rest. I don’t see what this-”

  “You forgot the most important one, the man who they all defer to, though his station is no more than theirs.”

  It dawned on Quentin almost instantly.

  “Oh yeah, Talbot. But he has to be due to step down soon. He’s ancient.”

  His father, expression grim, nodded.

  “He is definitely the oldest human, and in fact, he is due to announce his retirement due to health issues tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean he’s giving up any of his power.”

  “How do you know that?” Quentin asked, leaning forward, guessing that this was a time for answers.

  “Sia hears things, which means I hear those things,” his father stated flatly.

  Quentin cocked his head slightly to the side, his expression one of disbelief.

  “Are you using her…to spy on the council?”

  There was no answer from his father besides the stony silence.

  Quentin reeled from this information.

  “Dad…that’s…I don’t know…it can’t be legal. What if you were caught?”

  Griffin waved the worry away.

  “They have their secrets and I have mine, some of which are theirs. That part doesn’t really pertain to this conversation.”

  “What part does?”

  “Talbot,” his father replied, leaving forward as well. “Talbot steps down tomorrow, giving power to Misao Egbert, daughter to Councilwoman Egbert. That means, technically, all power and responsibilities will be transferred to her, including oversight of all special projects in Akropolis. That means she’ll have clearance for more of the…sensitive items and documents.”

  Quentin shook his head, bewildered.

  “Dad, I don’t know where you are going with this, but I think we’re getting off topic. I thought we were going to talk about Claire.”

  Griffin nodded.

  “I’m getting there. You see, a few years back Talbot’s daughter was in charge of the genome program. She was the one who invented the vaccine we have now. It only has a two percent success rate but it works, if only for a select few. Not too long after she created the vaccine she passed away; no revival order. A couple years later, her daughter took over in her mother’s stead, became head of the genome project. Now, from what I’ve heard, she is twice the scientist her mother was, brilliant beyond compare, and is on the verge of a real breakthrough.”

  “Well, that’s great isn’t it?”

  “It is,” his father agreed. “Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  Griffin’s grim bearing was foreboding, giving Quentin a sense of apprehension.

  His father looked down at the picture frame that only he could see.

  “Talbot’s granddaughter…the head of the genome program, has somehow disappeared.”

  Quentin’s breath grew shallow.

  “I attended a dinner a couple of years ago,” his father continued, though Quentin heard the words as if from down a long hallway. “All department heads were there. We were celebrating the successful test of a new project I was heading. It was there that I met Talbot’s granddaughter, and learned of her promotion. At the end of the night, we took a group photo.”

 

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