Sanctuary

Joshua flinched. Something was not right, it was as if a thousand flies were silently buzzing above the Junkyard. He could almost hear them, but it felt as if there was a wall between him and the sound.

"Something's not right." he muttered. He looked at Vishka. "Do you feel anything?"

 

V had been quietly watching and listening as Roy and Jack spoke. The old man's reaction to the disc was enough to make her anxious but there was something else. It felt like a black velvet curtain pulled over the room. A curtain that hid something terrible.

V was relieved when the latch was undone and she began ushering the others toward the door. Whatever had made the place so oppressive was close, perhaps even at the door, and the group had to move quickly.

A glance at Joshua showed her that he felt whatever it was she was feeling and she nodded. He'd always been sensitive to things that the other kids were not just as she was and to a greater degree that she was. That was one of the reasons they'd dragged him along everywhere.

"Josh, you feel it, too. We're not safe." V said very quietly, more of a statement than a question.

 

As he undid the latch, Jack felt a wave of oppression hit his mind. He blinked hard and shook his head slightly, trying to shake the feeling. Didn't work. He paused for a minute, closing his eyes and focusing, trying to return to a relaxed and peaceful state of mind. He regulated his breathing, pushing the oppression to the outside of his mind and keeping his own consciousness in the center.

It was Them, and They were whispering to the minds of those sensitive to Their influence.

"We need to get out. Right now." Jack said.

 

V grabbed Jack gently by the sleeve and gave a little push toward the door.

"You have to go, we're following, trust me. But for obvious reasons you have to get out."

When he met her eyes briefly she unshipped the carbine from her back and readied it for firing.

"You can't keep defending our backs. It's time we defend yours." Her voice was just above a whisper, "Get going."

V looked back toward the other door, dread treading over her mind, half-expecting the door to burst inward any moment. She saw that the others had either felt the same thing she and Josh and Jack had or had taken their cue from the more sensitive ones. Everyone was grabbing their weapons and every face looked stony and intent.

 

Jack would have argued, had there been time. He had to watch out for these people. He had to make sure they all came back from this. But, right now, the only way to do that was to move. V's eyes met his, and he nodded, drawing a pistol as he crawled into the small passage. It was pitch black. He had to feel his way around in there.

Already he heard gunfire and muffled screams above him. Was no place safe? He moved forward as fast as he could.

 

Zefie felt her heart thudding against her ribcage as she followed Jack and V out the door. She clutched her rifle tightly in her hands, and was again overwhelmingly grateful to Vishka for at least partially healing her lungs. Of course, he was the one that had burnt them in the first place but she was trying not to think about that.

For a brief hour or so she had felt safe within the New Wall, but now they would be on the run for their lives again – and, if the disc Jack was carrying was as important as everyone seemed to think, the lives of humanity. Roy O at least had deemed it important and from what Drey and Spikey used to say about him Zefie was inclined to trust his judgement.

The faces of her friends flashed before her eyes: Neena, Jay, Kez … she’d just found them alive, and she could only hope they would survive again and find a new hiding place for a while.

There was nowhere truly safe anymore. They were here.

 

Zefie was next into the narrow shaft after Jack, squeezing through the small door and scuttling after him. V gave Josh a little push, "Go on," she told him and watched him squeeze in after Zefie.

V didn't much like the idea of bringing up the rear of the group but she would if everyone wanted to go ahead of her. She was pretty sure that nobody wanted to risk being shot in the butt as they squeezed through ductwork though having the medic get shot wouldn't be optimum either.

She shrugged as another of the group passed her and wiggled into the small space.

 

Jess refused to go in before Darmetrius, as did V, so he let out a sigh and shimmied into the duct.

"This sucks... I gotta follow this GUY down this tight little path," he said as he scurried through.

After hearing one of the ladies go in behind him, he turned back and asked, "How's the view?"

He let out a laugh as he kept going, the space was getting tighter.

"All these big tough gangstas crawl through this itty bitty space? How do they do it? Josh, whatever you do, hold any farts until we get out, man. I aint even close to kidding."

 

Jess stood guarding the entrance to the duct, bemused that once again they seemed to be running away from the enemy. However, the general had said that those disks were important. Wherever they went, she would follow and guard them. It was her duty now.

She froze, blinking. A humming sound seemed to be coming from inside her mind. Lethargy spread through her limbs.

The disks...


She loosened her grip on the rifle and pressed her hand against her forehead.

 

It seemed that the passage went on forever, twisting and turning itself about and occasionally angling sharply downward, all the while immersed in an impenetrable inky blackness. The sound of gunshots and yells quieted until all he could hear was the breathing of his companions behind him. Eventually he began to hear another sound. A dull mechanical whirring. As he went further it became louder. He rounded a corner and saw a dim red light blinking on and off eerily up ahead.

He motioned for quiet as he crept forward, keeping his pistol up in his right hand. As he neared the end of the tunnel, he saw that it was covered by a grate. He pushed it out easily and crawled out onto a small metal platform...

He stood up, and took in the amazing sight before him. The room was bathed in dim red light. They were on a metal platform with a pair of computer banks on it. And from it, a grated bridge passed over a chaos of machinery below; the trash compaction system. A maze of conveyor belts fed the raw trash into several different separation and filtration cylinders, and from there to the different types of compactors, incinerators, and mixers. A series of metal walkways hung suspended over the mess below. Extendable ladders are attached to the bridges at various key points...undoubtedly for the maintenance crew to get down there.

"Wow..." Jack managed. He poked his head back into the tunnel.

"Okay everyone. Come on out." He eyed the terminals with interest. They looked to be primarily control panels for the compaction system, but it was possible he might be able to get patched back into the rest of the system...if there was any left. First things first. Make sure everyone is out and okay.

 

Zefie was glad to get out of the crawlspace, the dark confinement making her feel claustrophobic. She pulled herself out after Jack, then scrambled to her feet and moved to the rail lining the platform they found themselves on while the others squeezed out.

The crazed disorder of the walkways and bridges reminded her of the climb between the Rows and the Junkyard. It would be something of an obstacle course to get across them all and out the other side, and Zefie was momentarily plunged into a memory of her childhood clambering around with Spikey and Drey.

Well, at least they wouldn’t have to jump any like they had with the roof.

 

Josh scowled at Darmentius. “I’ll try. No promises though.”

He crawled out after Zeffie and looked around. This, he had not expected. He just hoped the bridges were secure and wouldn’t break down while he, or any of them, were on it.

“So, does anyone have a map of this place?” He looked around. “Or are we just going to keep going until we stumble into the craft?”

He silently cursed their luck. First the Wall fell, then they got trapped in his apartment building, they reached a new Wall, which fell, and now they were… where ever the hell this place may be.

He offered a helping hand to Darmentius.

 

Darmetrius took the helping hand, and jumped down as quietly as possible.

"I aint no damsel in distress, I just didn't want to hit the floor too hard." Darmetrius explained.

After playing with his ponytail, he heard the next one reaching the end. It was one of the ladies, so he held his hands out with a smile to catch whichever angel popped out.

 

Jess crawled through the tunnel. It turned out all of those drills crawling through ditches and pipes served a purpose after all.

One of the men stood waiting with a grin, arms outstretched. She frowned and then shrugged the rifles off her back. They scraped along the roof of the duct and made manuvreing difficult.

She dropped the two rifles into his outstretched arms and then twisted out of the duct, using her arms to lower herself to the ground.

“Thank you,” she said, dusting herself off. She took the weapons back.

She stepped away and looked around. What a strange room...

 

V had ended up at the back of the group even though that hadn't strictly been her intention. The crawling seemed to go on forever and the scuffling, panting sounds seemed far too loud.

What really worried her was that the group probably didn't know to keep from thinking. And how did anyone go about that, anyway? She considered this as she crawled. If you told yourself to stop thinking then you started thinking ABOUT not thinking and pretty soon you had an entire thought process absorbed in thinking about not thinking.

She shook her head and tried to quiet her thoughts.

Then there was a gleam of light and Jess stopped ahead of her, something scraped, and then she dropped out of the end of the tunnel leaving a blank round space.

V poked her head out of the duct. Considering she hadn't heard shots she was relatively certain it was safe.

Jess was collecting her weapons from the man who was standing just below the opening. V scootched around so that she could go out feet first and dropped, aiming for a spot where nobody was standing.

 

"Anytime, sweetness," he said to Jess as he took her weapons.

He smiled at her not wanting help down, then V made her way down almost the same way. His smile widened a bit.

"I must have really rubbed you ladies the wrong way," he said. "I guess I'll have to make it up to you."

 

"There hasn't been any rubbing involved that I'm aware of," said V with a sidelong look at Dametrius that could have meant anything or nothing at all, "what is this place?"

 

"Looks like a big trash processing facility as far as I can tell." Jack said.

"Though...I'm not quite sure exactly where we are...relative to where we need to be." He walked over to one of the computer banks and sat down.

"But, maybe I can find out." He was pleased to find a terminal interface, complete with command line. Meaning he had access to what was left of the system...if anything.

 

"Alrighty, so Jack here got it all under control. Beautiful," he said before looking at V to answer her statement.

"As for the rubbing, let's give it a little time, love. I think I can definitely make it up to you," he said with a wink.

After that, he took in the scenery of dim red lighting, complete with conveyor belts and technological trinkets. He figured a geek would be in wonderland here.

"Kinda looks like a hi-tech sweat shop or something."

 

"That it does," V said, ignoring his rubbing comment and letting his endearments pass. He was obviously the kind of guy who came on a bit to every girl he met.

V eyed the metal walkways spanning airily over the equipment below it that looked as though it could be use for reducing metal elephants to mere rivets and scrap.

"I suppose we'll be going over those," she said with a sigh, "Jack, are you coming up with anything useful?"

 

"Well, the filesystem's been pretty much blasted to hell. Most of the major servers are down, which means most of Sanctuary's data has gone to the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky. But," He said, emphasizing the word and raising a finger.

"But, remember the terminal in the Command Center? That one the General called the map up on? Well, its still on! Somehow, They completely went right by it. And, the schematic is still up. I've managed to load it up here..." He moved aside, letting them see the schematic of the secret portion of Sanctuary.

"And it looks like we're on track so far. But we still have a ways to go." He looked at V and smiled.

"And yes, it does appear that we're going to have to take the walkways."

 

Joshua snorted. "If anything, it looks like a world of trouble." He looked around. Jack seemed bussy with the terminal, and Joshua knew this was not the time to rush things. He found something to sit on, and eventualy found a large metal bin. He sat down on top of it, taking a few deep breaths.

"Looks like Jack will be busy for a while." He looked up at V and Zeffie. "You two are more familiar with this area then I am. The Junkyard that is. Do you think these people will stand any chance?" He immediatly regretted the question. When had he turned so cold hearted? "Not that I mean they are chanceless. They survived this long."

You're making it worse.

 

Zefie glanced up as V came up beside her, looking out over the criss-crossing labyrinth of walkways and conveyor belts below them.

“Where’s yer sense of adventure, V? It won’t be that hard,” she grinned teasingly, then added seriously, “I think I see a route over. See, we go down the ladder here to that walkway, follow it round, then go up and over there, follow that then down and under, crossin’ to there. Then it’s along and up, over and up to that other platform.”

She pointed with one finger as she spoke, tracing the route in the air as she explained. She ran it over in her mind, and was sure it would get them to the other side.

With surprise she glanced at Josh, and shrugged. “Dunno. I hope so. There’re plenty o’ places to hide in the Junkyard. But ain’t nowhere real safe no more. They’ll find ‘em sooner or later if they do get away,” she rubbed the tattoo over her eye, and hoped her friends were alright. “If what they’re sayin’ ‘bout that disc is true looks like they’re best chance might be with us.”

 

"Well, we're gonna need to go in that general direction, but the map doesn't give details at this level. As long as we're relatively on the right track, that's really the best we can hope for." He stood up, gesturing to the metal walkway.

"Shall we?"

 

V felt a little dumb for betraying her dislike of heights. She had no problem dropping into the Junkyard and climbing back out over routes she'd gotten used to over so many visits. But going high up where she didn't know what would happen...she shrugged it off and stepped toward Jack.

"Lead on, Fearless One," she said with a smile.