“Is it much further?” she finally asked.

  A second later she stumbled on nothing while walking on the girded walkway beside the magnetic rails.

  Bear paused and looked her up and down. He reached into his giant coat and rummaged around for a few seconds before producing a protein bar and a bottle of water.

  “Here,” he said, handing the two to Mia before continuing on his way.

  She wolfed down the bar in seconds and finished the water in half as much time. With something in her belly, she felt the energy slowly seep back into her body and was able to focus.

  They had passed three people in the tunnel, and though they looked busy fiddling behind panels or tinkering with screen pads, she knew they were actually guards, or at least a watch.

  “Who is this man we are going to see?”

  “A new friend, kind of like you,” Bear said without turning or halting. “And like you he’s from a different sanctuary.”

  “The Mountain?”

  “No,” he replied, and Mia had the feeling she needn’t press.

  A minute later and they came to an alcove built into the tunnel, and within that a door.

  Bear paused.

  “Here we are.”

  “What’s there?” Mia asked, nodding past him.

  “An old control room for the maglev rails that isn’t used anymore. It’s obsolete, meaning there’s no reason anyone should ever have to enter this room again, which makes it useful sometimes when we need to hide something…or someone.” Bear turned back to the door and rapped a pattern on it; two knocks, followed by a pause, then three more. A few seconds later there was the brief sound of metal scraping on metal, as if something heavy was being moved on the other side. The door opened, revealing a young man whose gaunt face and big eyes were like a caricature, hair cropped so close to the skin it was difficult to tell what color it was. His eyes were dark and shifted from the big man to Mia a couple of times before he even spoke.

  “H-hey, Bear,” he stuttered.

  “Patrick. Are you going to stand there blocking the door or let us in?”

  The young man’s mouth twitched as he stepped aside and Mia had the feeling that if she sneezed he’d probably fly out of his clothes to get away from it.

  The room beyond was nondescript. Whatever monitoring systems that once occupied it were gone now, but there was evidence of them everywhere, from the wires dangling out of the walls to the half-circle rows of desks situated two by two, side by side. A few chairs on wheels were scattered about, abandoned long ago and cracks of age across the cushions. In the far corner there was a messy cot, some stacked dishes, and a door a few feet to the side, which by the smell was the bathroom. In fact, the whole room smelled unpleasant, a mixture of body odor and sweat, fear and anxiety. It was all Mia could do to keep from gagging.

  Bear shut the door behind them and then slid the massive bar in place. That was the sound of steel grating that she had heard in the tunnel. She doubted very much this room had ever required such security, and decided it must have been put there just recently.

  Patrick stood off to the side, dressed in drab coveralls, arms behind his back, head somehow hanging down while still looking at the both of them.

  “W-who did you bring?”

  It seemed his stutter was a real speech impediment, and not a nervous tic, or maybe he was nervous all the time.

  Bear introduced her.

  “This here is Mia.”

  “Hello, Patrick,” Mia said as gently as she could.

  She understood what it felt like to be on eggshells all the time. A wave of pity overcame her as she looked upon the poor boy. Whatever had happened to him was etched in premature lines on his face, not to mention the body tics that ran rampant across his frail frame.

  Bear walked slowly over to the chairs, fully aware of how skittish Patrick was, and gathered two of them, wheeling one towards the young man.

  “Have a seat, if you don’t mind.”

  If Mia had seen this Bear in the first place, she would have considered him a gentle giant. As it were, she still remembered the blows he rained upon her in the recycling plant. It kept her on guard, since she still didn’t know why she was spared or needed.

  “You might as well sit too,” Bear said to her.

  Mia found her own chair and pulled it close so that the three of them formed a triangle. The young man’s leg jumped up and down a mile a minute and he wrung his hands as if he didn’t know what to do with them. When he noticed Mia looking at them, he self-consciously put them beneath his thighs.

  Bear leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees, hands clasped.

  “Are you doing okay in here?”

  Patrick shrugged, eyes darting back and forth.

  “It’s l-l-lonely,” he confessed. “I miss my mom.”

  His voice broke at the end, and he quickly wiped a tear away before sitting on his hand again.

  “I know you do,” Bear softly said. “Is there anything I can get for you? Chase said you didn’t want the books. How about some music then?”

  The young man’s eyebrows went up.

  “Y-yeah, I w-would really like some m-m-music.”

  “What kind?”

  “R-rock and roll. Any kind w-will do. I’m not particular.”

  “We’ll get that for you,” Bear said with a smile.

  “Thank y-you.”

  The big man looked to Mia.

  “As to why we’re here, Patrick. Our new friend here might be of some help in the near future.”

  Hopeful eyes turned to her.

  “You can help find them?”

  Mia opened her mouth but no sound came out. She didn’t know how to reply.

  Thankfully, Bear interrupted.

  “Maybe…but what we really need is for you to tell her what happened, in your own words. Her help is kind of contingent upon it.”

  Patrick started to shake his head. He leaned back and away from the two of them. The wheels under the chair squeaked as he scooted back a foot.

  “I-I-I-I can’t. Y-y-you s-said I w-wouldn’t have to t-tell it anymore. Y-you promised!”

  The anguish on his face was heartbreaking, almost pathetic.

  “W-why can’t y-you tell her?” he blubbered, on the verge of collapsing in tears.

  “Patrick-” Bear started to say, but this time Mia interrupted him.

  “Please,” she said gently, reaching out with her hand, ignoring the big man to her side. “Patrick, please…”

  Mia grasped his forearm and eased it towards her. He flinched but let her draw his hand out from beneath his thigh. She clasped it in between her palms.

  “I don’t want to upset you. Just help me to understand what is happening. I promise I will do what I can, but I need to know.”

  Patrick was looking down at her hands holding his. The thigh that had been jack-hammering slowed to a stop. He nodded a couple of times.

  “Okay…okay,” he said without stuttering.

  He took a deep breath as Mia laid his hand down on his knee.

  “Where are you from, Patrick?” she asked him.

  His eyes glanced up at her and then away shyly.

  “Charlottesvile,” he replied. “I guess you’d call it N-New Charlottesville.”

  Mia shot a surprised look over at Bear but veiled it before the young man could spot it. She mentally recalled all she knew about the sanctuary; coastal city, conical shaped with the point facing the ocean, a wall almost as large as the one in Akropolis but completely covered with a solid roof whereas theirs was protected by just an electromagnetic field. Her father had always wanted to go there, wanted to see the ocean and the waves crashing against the shore. He never made it out of his own sanctuary though.

  “What do you do there?” she probed.

  “I…I man the UHF band phased array radar…or at least, I d-did.”

  Patrick saw her confused look and flashed a tiny grin. When he did that he looked like a little boy. It was obvious he had been met with this type of look often.

  “It’s an old type of r-radar. We use it to m-monitor the storms, especially the hurricanes. It sits on the w-west wall away from the shore s-so it doesn’t get damaged. It’s the only reason I’m alive.”

  The last sentence was said with such regret that Mia’s composure almost broke. How many times had she wished for an end to her suffering?

  “I’m glad you’re alive, Patrick,” she consoled him. “Tell me what happened.”

  He nodded and continued in a softer voice.

  “We use the radar to g-gauge incoming storms. It f-forms a 3D image on a view screen and w-we, I mean I, can extrapolate the g-growth pattern and course to see if it’s a threat.”

  “You must be very smart to have such an important job,” Mia said.

  Patrick glanced at her sheepishly.

  “I understand things. I don’t know h-how I understand them…I just d-do. My mom says I have a gift.”

  “I agree,” Mia said.

  This seemed to give him courage.

  “It w-was about midnight. I was tracking an inland s-storm, g-gale force winds about a hundred miles out when I spotted it.”

  “Spotted it?”

  “I d-don’t know what it was. Something small, m-moving fast…very fast.”

  Mia looked to Bear who had sat silent this whole time. He didn’t proffer any insight.

  “What was it,” she asked. “An air transport?”

  Patrick shook his head slowly.

  “It was bigger than that, b-bigger than anything w-we have that flies.”

  The young man looked up at the ceiling, as if he recalled the moment.

  “It came from the sky,” he said, pointing up. “One moment it wasn’t there…then it was.”

  Mia couldn’t help herself. She glanced up, realized how foolish that was, and reached out to touch Patrick’s forearm instead. He blinked at her as if he were coming out of a fugue state.

  “The object from the sky,” she prompted.

  “I…I extrapolated its trajectory. It wasn’t hard…it w-was coming right at us…point of impact a half-mile offshore.”

  “In the ocean?”

  He didn’t even nod; just stared with haunted eyes.

  “I sounded the alarm,” he continued in a whisper. “But it didn’t do any good. A f-few seconds later it hit, and all the sensors went offline…even the lights…everything.”

  Patrick reached out and grabbed Mia’s wrist. His grip was surprisingly strong, fingers like a steel trap.

  “The ground shook.”

  His hollow voice only hinted at the fear he felt.

  “It lifted me up and threw me…I don’t know how far…I fell down the hallway, down the s-stairs…when the emergency lights came on I started to run.”

  Tears were streaming down his face.

  “I didn’t even think about anything else. I j-just wanted to g-get away. Everyone was screaming and r-running and…someone grabbed me and dragged m-me to the elevator and it-”

  He was gone, lost in the memory.

  “It broke and we f-fell…but I didn’t die…they died b-but I didn’t die.”

  Mia ignored the vice-like hand that was squeezing her arm. It was painful but she couldn’t pull away.

  “What happened then, Patrick?” she urged. “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know, I d-don’t k-know. I-I got to the Maglev-Train. People were pushing and sh-shoving and s-screaming and I pushed someone down-”

  Patrick broke down into sobs, head bowed.

  “I pushed them down so I could get on!” he wailed. “I was s-so scared! I was s-scared!”

  He buried his head in his hands, loud convulsive gasps wracking his body. Mia pulled him to her instinctively, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, squeezing him tight, shushing him as she would a small child, as she would have done with her child had wakened from a nightmare.

  She wasn’t sure how long they sat there like that, him in her arms, but eventually the sobs tapered off, and when he was able to sit back with a bit of composure, she could see the embarrassment stamped on his face. When he started to pull away, she quickly snagged his hand and held it in hers, refusing to let him go. After a brief moment of tugging, Patrick relented and slumped in his chair, squeezing her hand in return.

  “I saw it,” he whispered to her then.

  Mia swallowed the lump that had jumped up in her throat.

  “What did you see, Patrick?” she replied.

  “The water…when the Maglev-Train pulled away, I was in the back…I could see it come crashing down…they were there one second…and then they were all gone…everyone…everyone…”

  He looked past her, through her.

  “I’m so tired,” he murmured then. “Can I lie down?”

  “Of course you can,” Mia said.

  She helped him stand to his feet and walked him towards the cot.

  “I’m so tired,” Patrick repeated apologetically.

  “I know, Sweetheart.”

  He laid down on the cot and turned towards the wall, curling up into a ball. She covered him with the blanket and stood up, the tears rolling unchecked down her cheeks.

  They stood outside the door. It was closed but not locked. Patrick had fallen asleep almost the moment his head had hit the cot and even through the door they could hear the echoes of his snores.

  Mia was leaning against the curved wall of the alcove, emotionally spent and physically drained. Bear stood across from her, his expression unreadable.

  “What the hell happened there?” Mia asked him, her voice low so as not to disturb the sleeping boy.

  “We’re not exactly sure,” Bear responded. “We were inspecting cargo when we received the call of an unauthorized incoming transport. We followed protocol and sent a message to the ASF and the Pantheon…and then we went down to wait and see. The moment the Maglev-Train pulled in, the tunnel closed behind it, sealed up tight.”

  “And?”

  “And it was full of people…hundreds of them, all telling the same frantic story to my crew…the ground shaking and the ceiling crumbling and the walls collapsing and…and the ocean swallowing everything up.”

  Mia shook her head in disbelief.

  “Do you think it’s all gone…the whole sanctuary?”

  “Not certain. They were in shock,” Bear remembered. “Some of them weren’t even making any sense. We set them up in the hub, brought them blankets and food and water. Some of my people even knew a few of them. They worked the same job, just on the opposite end. Sometimes they’d ride a train up if they wanted to visit or shoot the bull on a day off; sometimes we’d do the same. But there wasn’t much time to make sense of what they said. Before they were even settled down the ASF arrived.”

  “Where are those people now?” Mia asked.

  Bear frowned.

  “That’s the thing…we don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I mean the ASF showed up. They escorted my crew out of the hub with some bullshit story about trauma and unnecessary stimuli; kept us out for the rest of the day. By the time the guards let us back in, we were informed all trade and trains had been suspended…and all those poor devils were…just gone.”

  “And Patrick?”

  “He’s a smart one alright. The moment the ASF showed up he took off and hid. It couldn’t have been that difficult with all those people milling about. One of my guys found him the next day hiding in one of the tunnels. When he told us what happened in Charlottesville, we hid him here in case the ASF came back looking for stragglers.”

  Mia felt like she was in shock herself. Thoughts tumbled around in her head, and each time she grasped onto one, another would come along and knock it loose back into the maelstrom.

  “They must have taken them to the Pantheon. It’s the only place with medical facilities large enough to handle that many people.”

  Bear shook his head.

  “We went there…a few days after, when we realized we hadn’t heard anything on the daily announcements. We were told that they had been cared for and integrated into the city until they could figure out what was going on. But like I said, some of my crew knew a bunch of them, and they couldn’t find them in the database when they went looking.”

  Mia sighed.

  “That many people…it’s possible they didn’t have the time-”

  But Bear was shaking his head again.

  “We thought that at first too, until we found someone had deleted all transport logs for that day.”

  Something dawned on her.

  “That’s what Frank was talking about when you first brought me into that room. Something about a log and two extra cars?”

  “That’s right. They erased all records of transports,” he explained. “But they forgot or overlooked that when you load extra cars on the Maglev-Trains, the mainframe has to measure the weight differentiation to evenly distribute the superconducting magnets. It creates a log of the accommodation in case the same situation arises. That way the mainframe doesn’t have to do the computation twice. The log shows where the train was loaded, which was the East Tunnel, and because every tunnel is unique and requires a different set of computations, the computer had to also log the destination, which is-”

  “The Red Zone,” Mia finished for him.

  “Correct.”

  “You think that’s where they took all those people?”

  “It’s the only answer that makes sense,” Bear reasoned.

  “And all of you,” she paused, slightly flummoxed. “You just want to go there and…and what, rescue them?”

  “They’re people,” Bear replied evenly. “Living breathing people. Whatever happened in Charlottesville, someone is trying to keep it quiet, put a tight lid on it, and in my book that ain’t right.”

  Mia glanced at the closed door. Beyond it a boy slept, exhausted and traumatized, afraid and guilty…alone. When she looked back to Bear she had made up her mind.

  “Okay. Let’s go to the Mountain.”

  Bear grinned, and Mia returned it.

  The moment was short-lived. They noticed the sound of approaching feet pounding down the tunnel. It wasn’t long before Chase appeared, sweaty and winded, eyes wide with barely constrained alarm.

 

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