Broken Mirror: Apophis 2029 (15 page)

  "Halt!  This is a security section, you three are to leave immediately," the guard barked as he pointed his gun at us.

  "No, wait a moment," Kane ordered the guard to stand down, "since they're already here, I can imagine these new members might be able to help enlighten us to the situation at hand," he finished with a look that I could only perceive as contempt.

  "Yes, I imagine they could," Beatrice cut in, while taking a moment to fixed her ruffled bun, "Tell us the truth about how you really got down here to Haven and got passed the infected on the mall level?"

  It was a final revelation that these two were fully aware of the hordes of carriers on the section above.  Kane promptly sat down at a console and opened a com that echoed through the halls of the complex. 

  "This is a code orange; a lockdown is now in order for all residence.  All citizens are to remain in your quarters or report to your nearest emergency stations and await further instructions," At this he hit a series of codes on the board and a resounding emergency alarm kicked in.

  "Are we going to escalate this to white?" Beatrice asked in haste, a worried look washing across her face.  The General looked just as tense, giving her a shrug of disapproval to reveal that code, considering the present company.

  "What does that mean, going 'white'?" I blurted out, not like being left in the dark.  Beatrice gave a distressed glance my way, realizing what she had divulged.

  "A code white means, Evacuation," Kane stammered.  His words made my head spin for a moment, but apparently, this admission was of no surprise to the pair of guards in the room.

  "Evacuate where, to another section of this complex ...or up to the surface?" I demanded, almost knowing what his answer was going to be.  As much as Kane liked to present himself to be self composed in front of his men; I caught him biting his lip in apprehension to my question. 

  "There is a means to get topside, but I will stress it is not without a measure of risk," he finally admitted. 

  It took a minute for me to connect the dots; there was a way to the surface but these two self-appointed bastards had kept that fact a secret to the others in order to keep their positions of control.  I just shook my head in disgust at the way that some people are such iconic examples of the worst in human nature.  I was so angry I wanted to scream, though I struggled to keep a bit of equilibrium in the presence of my friends. 

  "We actually did arrive here through a subway system as we said," I granted in our defense, "but there was a level that was filled with Weepers."

  "Weepers?" Beatrice asked in dismay; her statement revealing just how long everyone had been holed up down here.

  "Yes, it was a common term given by the media after the plague hit the main population, it was used to describe anyone who has the sickness," Thorn exclaimed, while Haiti nodded his head in agreement.  To me, it revealed that Fallhaven itself and any other vaults like these had been filled to the brim and locked up at the drop of a hat when Apophis fell from the sky.  When you think of it, that was an astonishing amount of construction and supplies and a whole lot preplanning that just didn't add up in my opinion.  I clenched the data cards hidden in my pocket that I had swiped from Betty's desk, wondering what secrets they might contain.

  Kane motioned to one of the guards to lock the door.  As he moved to the keypad, I stepped over towards Beatrice and tugged Haiti's arm as I passed by him.  It was obvious Kane had become so relaxed and insolent of the sheep he had turned his citizens into over the past several years that he was not used to having anyone second-guess him.  Within his usual cavalier attitude, he noted aloud why he was locking the door ...it was his measure of control, just to see someone sweat.  It was a well worn tactic he used to determine the level of weight and sway he had over an individual.  Unfortunately, for him, that was the wrong impression to have about us.

  "There
,
of course, is the matter of your cooperation and required silence in this affair," he disclosed in a smug tone as the guard tapped in the lock code, "after we address this breach we can't have you going around and..."

  Cutting him off, I had already predicted the rest of his arrogant nonsense he was blabbering to us; and took the opportunity of his distraction while he was gloating to shove Beatrice into his lap.  As tall as I was, I could put some weight into it and she went sprawling across the console in front of him.  The old woman was taken entirely by surprise to this turn of events, as was the guard who turned to catch her was promptly rewarded with an uppercut jab by Haiti, who had taken my cue.  Thorn too had strapped the guard who had been occupied locking the portal while his back was turned; having used the belt from his brown jumpsuit to garrote the sentry around the neck and bending his arm behind his back.

  The guard struggled a bit more than Thorn was in the mood for, so he smashed the man's head into the console on the wall, and he dropped like a stone to the floor, unconscious.  The keypad he hit with the unfortunate guard's forehead answered in dispute with a crackle of sparks.  Kane and his companion unraveled themselves from their tussle at the console only to find Haiti and Thorn pointing their guns at them.  The General was a lean man, but not so stupid as to fight those odds.

  "...Can't let us go around telling everyone you've been keeping them imprisoned down here all these years," I continued with his train of thought before he was so rudely interrupted, "just to keep them under your thumb, huh?" I spouted with revulsion.  

  The look on his face was priceless; a mixture of defiance colored with admission.  They had been pulling the strings for so long they had entangled themselves in the weave of their own lies.  Of course, he would have to kill us to silence us; or, as we would shortly discover, something far worse.

   We secured the two guards with their own cuffs and tied up Beatrice and Kane to their chairs with our loose belts.  Taking a spare chair, I sat down at the console they had been hovering over and inserted one of the data cards I had swiped from her desk.  The first card was a process log of the names and number of people residing in the complex.   Within the log was a series of highlighted names of deceased individuals; their duties assigned and date of ouster.

  It was that noted correlation between the eviction and listed casualty dates that bewildered me, and I could not find a cross reference to what it meant.  Hoping the second card I had in my possession would provide some clues, we discovered it brought up a three dimensional blueprint of the complex revealing how it was tied up to the hydro generators on the surface miles away.  The subway grid affirmed its connection to several other similar complexes much farther away.  However, the ping status of their grid activity was dark.  Apparently, Fallhaven was the only housing shelter currently operational on the entire system.

  "Aye, bring up them schematics there," Haiti requested as he pointed to a section on the holographic map on the levels where we were located.  Zooming in on the details, I could trace where we had come down from the surface and bypassed the ventilation, down into the main storage chamber the Haven residence had remodeled into their main assembly hall.  It was from there that I followed the trace of the ductwork where that creature had broken through; back up to discover its origin.  Backtracking in a few twists and turns brought us to that odd cryogenic chamber and out to the air filters in the greenhouse with the UV lighting system and those mutated fruit trees.

  "Ah, that be the freaky fruit jungle there," Haiti exclaimed with a shiver, "Eh, are cameras in those areas be work'in?" he inquired, noting the icons situated on the map.  Following the ID number, I brought up several live feeds from the halls; lucky they all seemed to be quiet, except for what we found in the stasis room.  Within, we could saw that one of the cylinders had been cracked open like an egg, with gouts of steam jetting from its shattered pipes.  That got us worried.

  "What the hell was in that?" I demanded with a note of apprehension as the three of us turned from the hologram map towards Kane.  The look in Beatrice's eyes said volumes as she stared unblinking at the broken container on the screen.  Kane tried to posture himself with a reply.

  "That, Missy, is none of your business," he spat back.  Thorn stepped up to give him a punch in the face while Kane flinched from the expected blow, but Thorn withdrew on the last second and ended it with a slight jerk of the old man
’
s chin instead.

  "Pffft, you're not worth it," Thorn professed with disgust.

  "Look, whatever you had in there is now running wild in the complex, and we need to know what it is and how to stop it," I urged, stating the obvious gravity of the situation.  Beatrice was genuinely frightened; her eyes were full of dread.

  "That ...that level was a test project for the MN4 mutagen," she stammered. 

  "Keep your trap shut, Betty!" Kane griped as he snapped at her from his seat while he tugged at his constraints.  It was clear Beatrice was more afraid of dying or devolving into one of those atrocities than she was of the General, himself.

  "This shelter was funded by the government to house elite members of the cabinet and their families," she admitted hastily, "as were the other similar facilities tied to this complex by the underground air rail.  There were a few medical departments that were altered into genetics labs to study the virus."

  "To try and find a cure?" I pressed, noting the direct connection route from the arboretum where we had discovered the mutated plants.

  "...It started out that way," the old woman finally conceded, but that slight admittance only kindled the questions to follow. 

  Switching back to the personnel logs, I found several recordings after a few minutes of digging; a few of them were from Kane himself.  What they revealed made our stomachs turn.  The notations of resident deaths were, in most every case, where someone had been banished to the upper levels where the infected thrived.  These were all victims of Kane's pride
,
of course; his sentence to anyone who crossed him or refused to bend to his will over the past several years of his reign. 

  "What kind of
thing
were they creating in there?" Thorn asked, referring to both the genetically modified plants and human mutations.

  "We had a few government scientists assigned to our site that started filling stasis chambers with experimental subjects.  Not to cure them, but to exploit the disease," she added, "We suspected it was to use against foreign nations as a type of biological weapon." 

  Her claim didn't make a lick of sense, since the world was already experiencing a shit storm as it was; who in their right mind would make things worse?

  "For what possible reason?" I had to inquire, as I struggled to get the words out while shaking my head in complete bafflement.  Turning on a live feed in the lower decks, we saw the giant mutant had freed itself from the ventilation system and was now tromping through the halls, crushing the heads of anyone that stumbled within its reach.

  "In case there were other countries that survived the epidemic in better condition than ours, idiot girl," Kane barked in with a shade of contempt, "anyone who found a real cure would have total control and the leverage to get anything they wanted.  Every other country would have to concede to their demands."

  Though his words had conviction, it was from faulty, if not entirely tainted logic; one that only someone with a warped and twisted military mind could conceive as remotely rational.  Of course, the idea of it was entirely insane.  I completely lost my composure.

  "Are you two fucking deranged?" I screamed back at them, so much so, as
to make both Thorn and Haiti jump with a note of surprise, "what kind of irresponsible nut considers forcing their authority or thoughts of domination with everything falling apart around them?" I glared at them both for a heated second, "There are no boundaries anymore, or countries to conquer.  If you had bothered to pull your head out of your ass and see what its like topside you would have noticed there are more pressing matters rather than rotting down here playing Emperor Kane!" I finished, feeling exhausted.  Nevertheless, in my furious rant I had made a point; everyone down here including Kane likely had no clue just how far the world and our collective societies had dissolved over the past half dozen years. 

  "Aye, there are no governments left to rule, lad," Haiti tossed in, with a kind hand on my shoulder to comfort me as he addressed Kane.  Thorn pointed out all the dead zones on the connecting air rail and chimed in.

  "Didn't you ever stop to wonder why the other shelters aren't responding?" Thorn asked calmly, bringing back a sense of rational awareness back into the discussion, "So what exactly happened here and made you want to stay in this hole?" He petitioned, though deep down the three of us already knew the answer.

  This facility, as were all the other bunkers on the diagram, were connected by hundreds of miles of underground tunnels via the subway system which were all built several years in advance, and in complete secrecy from the general public.  It made us suspicious that the Authorities had already known the asteroid would make impact and had been well prepared for its aftermath.  The contagion that it carried and spread across the globe had likely been an unforeseen contingency that had decisively thrown a wrench into their plans; destroying any idea they might have had for their continuation of government.