Prophet's Journey, page 34
part #1 of Prophet of the Badlands Series
“Thank you.”
Teal pulled herself up into the passage, water dripping from her saturated jumpsuit. “There’s only one thing I hate more than being shot: water in my boots.” She blinked at Althea. “… And you’re streaking again. You really do hate clothes.”
“I wanted to keep my dress dry.” Althea showed her the wad of cloth, then put it back on. “Why didn’t you take them off if you don’t like water in your boots?”
“Didn’t wanna waste the time.” Teal winked, and resumed walking.
Althea followed.
“Incoming,” said Teal.
“More robots?” whispered Kye.
“No. Big ass bugs.”
Althea dashed forward, ducked around Teal, and stared at a group of three-foot roaches. The huge bugs paused in their feeding on the greenish-brown muck lining the tube, pivoting toward her. Sensing their hunger—like little Scrag boys choosing fresh meat over vegetables—she concentrated on them, projecting fear. The pack of bugs all split their carapaces open, buzzing their wings while hissing.
Teal screamed in disgust. “Sweet shit. I thought the roaches in the city were big.”
Kye held her spear out, waving it at random in the dark. “I know that sound. Danger.”
Althea crept toward the bugs, hands up, increasing the fear she projected. The bugs abandoned their threat display and scurried off. They fled away down the tube, disappearing into numerous tiny tunnels they’d chewed into the concrete a short distance ahead.
“Hey kid, would you mind if I went back to the original plan of abducting you? Only, I wanna take you home. If you could do that trick on security guards, we could make one hell of a team.”
Teal had no emotion to read, but the tone of her voice sounded bright, so Althea laughed at the joke.
No roach dared to poke its head out when Teal approached the nest tunnels. Althea stopped at the center of the roach lair, arms out, radiating fear to ward off the bugs until Kye went past the last of the burrows, then hurried to catch up.
They traveled for some hours in the underground, Teal making turns down connecting tunnels with no apparent reason. No passage appeared more dangerous or safer than any other, but she appeared to again know exactly where to go. Several times they hit dead ends that forced them to double back and go another way.
“Are we ever going to get out of here?” asked Althea.
“Yeah, eventually. Just gotta find the right tunnel. I’m estimating where we are based on my map of the surface, looking for a place that will let us outside without too far to go in the open.”
Althea yawned. “You don’t have a map.”
“It’s inside my head.” Teal twirled a finger around in the air in front of her. “I see it floating in front of me, up to the left.”
“People who see things that are not real either speak to the gods or have been hit in the head,” said Kye.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Althea stepped around a pit in the tunnel floor deep enough she could’ve taken a bath in it, then guided Kye around it.
“Not exactly. At least not specifically these tunnels. I’m trying to take us toward a spot above ground. The only map I have of down here is the one I’m recording right now. Just gotta keep roaming around until we find a way out.”
Althea sighed. “We’re going to be stuck here for a long time, aren’t we?”
“Not that long. According to my map program, at the time of the war, the New Detroit Metro District was roughly six-hundred-seventy-two square miles. We’ll eventually reach the end if we keep going in the same direction. There’s gotta be a storm drain somewhere.”
“Yeah,” whispered Althea. “Somewhere.”
36
Child
The passage eventually took on a slight downward grade. Althea stepped around concrete chunks fallen from the ceiling, yawning every minute or two. The tunnel leveled off after a while, continuing flat for about fifteen minutes until coming to an end at another large squarish room full of pipes. At least this one hadn’t flooded into a swimming pool.
Teal shook her head, seeming annoyed. “We’re farther underground. It doesn’t feel like we’re going the right way, but we might have to deal with heading deeper to go around to another section. It’s late, though. You’re yawning your head off. Let’s rest here for a bit.”
“Okay.” Althea yawned again.
Teal hopped down from the pipe into the room, crossed it to a reasonably clean section of floor beneath an array of pipes, and took the backpack off. Fortunately, it appeared to be waterproof as the blanket remained dry and the warmth emitter still worked. She handed the blanket to Althea who promptly gave it to Kye.
“I can’t take the only blanket we have away from a child,” said Kye.
“You don’t have anything on. I have a dress.” Althea shook her head. “It’s okay.”
“You’re going to get a chill.” Kye tried to hand it back to her.
Teal turned on the warmth emitter. “Sit close. It can get both of you.”
Althea ‘wrestled’ with the blanket for a moment until Kye finally relented and allowed Althea to wrap it around her. After Kye settled to the floor, Althea curled up half on top of her in the glow of the warmth emitter. Surprisingly, sleep came on fast.
Althea awoke to the gentle nudging of a hand at her shoulder.
She yawned, opened her eyes, and squinted at Teal hovering over her.
“It’s been eight hours. Ready?”
“Yes.” Althea stretched, then forced herself to stand.
Her motion woke Kye, who shrugged off sleep much faster. She stood, and decided to tie a knot in the blanket, securing it around her chest into a decent impression of an ankle-length tube dress.
“If that gets wet, it’s going to be useless for sleeping,” said Teal.
“I won’t let it get wet.”
Teal handed them each one of the stuffed breads. Althea gnawed on hers, struggling to force her teeth to pierce the hardened shell.
Kye sniffed at it. “This isn’t safe. It is too old and will make us sick.”
Althea looked up. “Sometimes food comes with sicks.”
“You’re not supposed to eat bad food.” Kye tossed the bread aside. It hit the floor with a clack quite similar to a thrown rock. “There is meat in there, which will carry death if it sits for too long after cooling. Even Mariko could not stop the disease from killing.”
“Mariko couldn’t stop a cracked fingernail from killing,” muttered Teal.
Kye appeared not to have heard, but Althea blushed hard with guilt. Mostly, because she agreed with Teal even if it had been quite a mean thing to say. She peered down at the bread she clutched in both hands. A few tooth scrapes marked the brown shell, but she hadn’t been able to bite through it. Eating this bread probably would give her a sick, but she could get rid of it. However, getting rid of a sick would make her hungry, so it would have been like she never ate anything to begin with. Maybe it was bad to eat the food with sicks. “Will we have better food soon?”
“It shouldn’t take us days to get out of the sewer.” Teal took the bread back from her and tossed it across the room.
Kye and Althea shared the last few squirts of water from the canteen before it gave out.
Teal jogged over to the metal door in the far corner, which also refused to open. She spent a while longer working on this one than the one from the flooded room, but eventually gave up. “Gotta be caved in on the other side. Damn the luck. Do I have to like offer a sacrifice to you or something to break this curse?”
Sensing the joking tone in her voice, Althea smiled.
“What curse?” asked Kye.
Shaking her head, Teal headed out along the next stretch of dry sewer tunnel. Althea explained the legends of how bad luck followed anyone who mistreated the Prophet, but hastily added an explanation that Teal had been kidding and she didn’t think any real curse followed them. Kye accepted this, and they proceeded along in silence for a while.
The soft squish of Teal’s boots and the swishing of her jumpsuit as she walked echoed in the barren concrete passageway. Althea worried they might be going downhill again, since it felt a bit like that and she hadn’t seen a single storm drain or manhole cover in hours.
Teal stopped at the mouth of a left-branching tunnel, glancing back and forth between them. “I hear a faint electronic hum from that way. Might be worth checking out.”
“Okay,” whispered Althea.
The side tunnel sloped down for a short stretch, then curved gradually to the right over about fifty meters before angling upward. Pale green light lit the walls at the top of the incline, stirring hope. Althea hurried forward, pulling Kye along by the hand since the woman couldn’t see in the dark.
A short, level passage at the top ended at a metal door with a glowing box on the wall beside it. Teal took a knee, eye level with the panel, and stared at it. Seconds later, numbers appeared on the screen without her touching it. A clank came from inside the wall.
Teal stood, pressed her hands flat on the featureless door, and pushed it aside, allowing bright light to spill into the hall.
Kye yelped and covered her eyes.
Althea squinted at the sudden shift from black and white to color.
On the other side of the door, a shiny steel corridor stretched into the distance. Windows on the right looked out over a large chamber full of huge machines. Wheelbots in various stages of completion sat as parts on conveyor belts or hung nearly finished from hooks on an elevated track system that carried them around from station to station.
All of it sat still. Nothing appeared broken, but for some reason, didn’t work.
“Uh oh. We shouldn’t be here,” whispered Althea.
“What is this place?” Kye leaned up to the window, gawking.
“This must be a smaller sub-factory. No way have we walked far enough to go back to the Great Forge. At a guess, I’d say this place only manufactures wheelbots. Maybe it spits them out on demand?”
“What?” asked Althea.
“If whatever controls the CRP wants wheelbots in this area, it makes a few and sets them loose. I dunno. Only reason I can think of that it’s not just constantly churning them out.”
“The child is right. We should not enter here. This is a temple of the gods.” Kye backed up.
The brown-and-gold blanket wrapped around her from armpit to floor did kind of make her resemble a woman Althea had once seen who claimed to be a priestess. She didn’t remember much of that settlement, only that they had been relatively nice to her before raiders swooped in to steal her.
“This isn’t a temple. It’s a factory.” Teal marched ahead. “There has to be a way for these things to reach the surface. This is a way out.”
Kye looked at Althea. “Please tell me what to do. Is it a sin to walk here?”
“I’m not a god. But I want to get out of here and go home. If the gods don’t want you to be here, wouldn’t they stop you from going here?”
“Not really.” Kye grimaced. “They usually just punish us after we do something bad.”
“How?” Althea tilted her head, then noticed Teal had gone a ways ahead. She let out an eep, jogging to catch up. “Come on.”
Kye huffed, but hurried after them. “By sending the Silver Men to attack us.”
“The CRP will attack people no matter what they do.” Teal looked back at them. “Those machines are a military project that ran away from control. Look at that factory. This is where they come from.”
“Maybe the gods just stop protecting you from the robots if you make them mad, but those robots don’t work for the gods.” Althea waved for Kye to hurry up… and helped her with a bit of a courage boost. It confused her to see a warrior woman afraid of a simple hallway.
Kye’s expression shifted from worry to determination in no small part due to Althea’s telempathic tweak. She raised her spear in a ready posture and strode after them, the blanket dress flowing around her legs.
Althea looked through her reflection on the window out at the factory as she walked. Imagining all those ‘dead’ wheelbots coming to life at once terrified her. Not being able to use her abilities to defend herself against mindless, mechanical killers would be the source of many future nightmares. She’d probably be seeing wheelbots in her dreams for the rest of her life. More than ever, she felt like a helpless child trapped in a place she absolutely did not belong.
Her need to cling to Father and Karina spiked painfully strong. She caught herself unconsciously sending out a beacon for them, and forced herself to stop. No. Don’t come here. Stay far, far away. These monsters will hurt you.
She lunged forward and grabbed Teal, trembling.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think we went the right way,” said Althea in a quivering voice.
“There isn’t any other way to go.” Teal stopped. “Aww shit.”
“What?” rasped Althea.
Teal picked her up. “We need to run.”
Squeaks of tires and the whirr of wheelbot motors came from behind. Teal squeezed Althea tight to her chest and sprinted down the hall. Kye hiked the blanket high to free her legs, having little difficulty keeping pace with the synthetic. Two wheelbots popped out of a concealed door, spilling into the corridor before accelerating in pursuit. Their rotary cannon arms started spinning.
“They’re gonna shoot!” shouted Althea.
Teal took a sudden hard left into another corridor. Sparks flashed across the wall behind Kye as she zoomed around after them. A quick right turn startled a squeak out of Althea. Their dash down the third corridor ended at a heavy, armored door. Teal stared at the keypad. Whirring motors grew louder. Wheelbot shadows stretched across the floor, racing up behind them.
“They’re coming!” Althea clung to her, shaking from fear at having no way to stop the robots coming to kill them. Not Telempathy, not Suggestion, not even the pleading face of an eleven-year-old would sway them.
The armored door slid open with a hiss.
Teal jumped into a room much colder than the hallway outside. Kye dove in, somersaulting to the right as the wheelbots skidded around the corner, tires squealing, and opened fire. The door slammed shut, cutting off the stream of bullets flying in. Sparks and pings ricocheted around steel walls.
Althea shivered at the coldest air she’d ever encountered, even colder than the big city hospital had been. She clung to Teal, gazing around a room holding two rows of giant grey cabinets that emitted a constant, low hum. A huge, flat rectangle of dark grey hung on the right, taking up most of the wall.
The whirr of wheelbot motors wound down to a stop right outside the door. Seconds later, a loud, angry double-buzz came from the panel on the wall.
“They’re trying to get in,” said Teal in a distant voice, as if concentrating on something else. “I think I can hold them off. Look for a way out.”
“What is this place?” whispered Althea. She slipped down to stand on the icy floor, nearly squealing at the severe cold.
“Is this a shrine?” asked Kye.
The door panel buzzed again.
“No. Computer room,” said Teal.
Teeth chattering, Althea crept down between the rows of giant cabinets. Dark blue light from within the machines leaked out via thin slits near the bottom, painting stripes on the floor. Her breath appeared as puffs in front of her mouth.
She spotted a smaller door in the corner on the left, and pointed. “Door.”
Kye hefted her spear and glanced sideways at Teal. “I can take one out. Don’t know about two, but I’ll take at least one with me. I will not be captured again. You are strong. Perhaps we should cease running.”
“Good mindset,” said Teal. “They’re not going to capture us. They’re going to kill us.”
“Correct!” boomed an inhumanly deep voice as if from everywhere.
Kye screamed and dropped to her knees, bowing to the floor. “Gods forgive us!”
The huge rectangular panel on the wall lit up, saturating the room in red light. A massive humanoid being peered down at them through the giant window, its mostly human-shaped face composed of interlocking metal plates with mirror-like shine. Crimson glow radiated from the seams between similar panels all over its body. Thick pectorals, broader than any raider juggernaut, filled the lower third of the window. Behind the monstrosity, an endless ocean of churning magma swirled and bubbled, spouting up in streams every so often beneath a dark crimson sky.
Althea gawked, wondering how such an expanse of sky could exist this far underground. She figured that window had to be made out of something tough since she couldn’t feel any heat from all that glowing melted rock.
Teal swiped the spear off the floor and rammed it into the door panel, setting off a brief blast of orange sparks. “Get up. That’s not a god. It’s an AI who thinks he’s a god. Slightly different.”
Althea peered up at the enormous being on the other side of the window. “Who are you?”
“I am Sigma Six,” boomed the thunderous voice. “And I shall cleanse all contamination.”
37
Sigma Six
The giant of chrome and lava drifted closer to the window, its head filling it from top to bottom, taller than a man.
“Contaminant,” said Sigma Six, staring at Althea. “Before you are cleansed, you will tell me how you invaded the Great Forge. How did such an insignificant little creature walk in and out of my domain unscathed?”
“I’m not a contaminant. I’m a person.” Althea folded her arms. “You shouldn’t kill people.”
“My brethren were created to expunge the scourge upon North America, organic lifeforms considered dangerous, impure, uncontrolled. My role is to ever drive optimization and efficiency, improving our process in a ceaseless reiteration of performance enhancement.”
“Did you understand that?” whispered Kye.
“Nope,” said Althea. “I don’t think that was Spanish or English.”
