Dazzle Ships Read online

  I went for the door on the left, which was the closest.

  “Stop!”

  The voice was much closer than I thought possible for such a short time she’d been in pursuit.

  I climbed on the little platform. My muscles strained from the cold of the water and from being worn out with my funny crawl inside those tunnels. When I got to my feet, I raised my staff, impressed that it was deep blue where my hands had warmed it up. The rest of it was still dark.

  My pursuers were close. A shape splashed with long strides, but she was backlit by the high energy light behind her.

  I turned to the door, intended to release the latch so I could pass through.

  Locked!

  Of course, it would be locked. Nothing was ever easy.

  I spun my staff a couple of times in my right hand; then I thrust it right through the glass window on the top half of the door. It crossed my mind I could have destroyed an expensive piece of equipment, like the window that allowed us to see in the dark back in our cemetery, but I pushed the thought away when I heard the screams behind.

  My staff made short work of the glass, and with one last swipe along the bottom edge I hopped through to the other side.

  Ah ha!

  It was the same layout as our cemetery. Stairs down and ladder up. I chose up. Always up.

  I didn’t wait to listen for the people behind me. If I had any chance of losing them—

  The sloshing in my shoes made me realize just how impossible that was. There was no way I could dry off so they couldn’t follow my dripping trail.

  I ran and left crumbs like Gretel—Alex told that story, too.

  Behind me the big bad wolf slammed open the door, howling at the moon.

  I thought Alex would be proud how I remembered all his fairy tales.

  5

  I got to the top of the stairs and ran into the service corridor. Moments later I heard the woman’s voice again. “She went up,” she said, as if talking to her friends.

  The lighting was better than I remembered in the Complex. The lights were uniformly energized as far as I could see. That forced me to reconsider where I was. It was one thing to imagine water flooding the cemetery, but no one could have fixed the waterlogged lights I’d seen all along the service level in the Complex.

  It made it easy to run. I didn’t have to strain to see bundles of wires lying on the floor, nor did I have to watch out for hissing steam or electrical sparks—there were none. I was well down the corridor and into the gentle curve of the tunnel above the Outer Ring when I decided to look behind for my pursuit.

  Sure enough, there were wet footprints on the clean concrete below, though they got harder to see the farther I ran.

  The woman was back there in the distance. She didn’t yell. She only ran.

  I was confident I could maintain my pace. Even with all the running and crawling and swimming, I was willing to bet I could hold my own against anyone in a footrace.

  Aren’t you forgetting something?

  I shook my head.

  But after a few minutes, I couldn’t ignore what my subconscious was trying to tell me. I was jogging with two weights on my back.

  The shotgun and my staff bounced as I ran, reminding me of the inconvenient fact they were going to slow me way down. But tossing them wasn’t an option, either.

  I risked a look back to confirm my worst fears. The woman behind me was gaining ground. She wore a dark top and a white skirt, of all things.

  I kept running, thinking only of what would happen if she caught up. I wasn’t convinced I should use my shotgun. Killing her would be easy, but it would get me no closer to finding help on the outside. If this bunker system was the Complex—maybe a part I’d never been in—I’d be killing one of my own people.

  I unwrapped the shotgun from my back and tried to gently toss it to the floor. It clanked and skidded before it stopped along some pipes.

  Yes!

  That freed me up. The staff had some weight to it, but I was used to it. The wind dried my hair and pushed it out behind me as I got a second life. I might even have had a smile on my face.

  A plan began to form. If the layout was the same as home, it should be easy to get lost. As long as I could maintain some space between us.

  For twenty minutes I did. I felt I was getting close to the intersection with the Standing Quarter when the silence was broken.

  “Are you going to run the whole circle?” the woman called from behind. Much closer than I’d imagined.

  I got a look over my shoulder and confirmed she’d been closing the gap. I sped up as much as I could, but my pursuer was in much better shape than I’d anticipated.

  “I’ll stop if you do,” I called back, trying to hide my fatigue.

  I heard her laugh, but she didn’t respond further.

  Less than a minute later I was cramping. The familiar jab in my side had just enough pain to make me notice it. If I didn’t get some water, or rest, soon, I was in real trouble.

  A minute after that I reached the intersection I’d been waiting for. Instead of slowing down, I sped up. It killed me to do it, but I had few options left.

  As I reached the corner I could have kept running straight along the Outer Ring—it continued to curve to the left in an eternal circle—but I turned hard left, into the service area above the quarter-mile long hallway we called the Standing Quarter. I expected to see the rusted equipment and complicated segments the Commander had built up there as part of his challenge course for teenagers.

  There were echoes of the Complex, but I wasn’t home. The machines in the first segment were the same as back home, but these weren’t rusted away, nor were there tables of junk next to them. It was all very well-lit and appeared more or less brand new. In fact, if there weren’t a few pools of water from leaks in the ceiling, I might have said I’d gone back in time to when the Complex was built.

  I reminded myself that would be a fairy tale.

  I got through the first segment and into the second when I found what I’d hoped would be there: a side tunnel I could hide in. I’d seen several of them when I made my way along the same sections back in the Complex.

  Without the shotgun, I was able to be a little quieter than I’d been in the last tunnel, but I couldn’t make myself silent.

  To compensate, I crawled as fast as I could. I’d gotten pretty good at it.

  “Come out,” the woman called in a musical voice.

  I scampered around a corner in the tunnel and was almost able to exhale.

  But I started to fly. It was a feeling I couldn’t figure out at first. The tunnel disappeared and I—

  You’re falling.

  The voice in my head was quite disappointed with me.

  Below me, I had a full second to watch it all in slow motion.

  A rocky portion of the tunnel had broken under my weight, and the pieces fell with me. Below, several terrified young ladies looked up from their seats on a long metal table. It kind of looked like—

  I body slammed smack into the middle of the table. By miracle or science, I don’t know, but the force caused a dozen cafeteria trays to hop up and into the front sides of everyone sitting there.

  I heard screams like they were the ones in agony from the fall.

  Pfft!

  It wasn’t all bad, though. I blacked out.

  Chapter 5

  I woke up looking up at the ceiling of a well-lit, but dull-colored little room. The stone walls were bare and bars blocked one wall. I sat up on my elbow and appreciated my situation. I was in jail. I recognized it for what it was from the time Alex and I—

  “Alex!” I yelled, aware he wasn’t with me.

  “He your boyfriend?” asked a man’s voice, from nearby. He wasn’t unfriendly, but seemed disinterested.

  I focused on where it came from and walked to the front corner of the cell. The stone hallway beyond the bars went left and right, out of view. There were no cells across the hall. The stonework would
fit right in back home. Dull, tired lights hung at intervals from the ceiling out there.

  I couldn’t see around the corner, but he had to be in the room next to mine.

  “Are you there?” I replied softly.

  A pair of hairy hands stuck out so I could see them. I couldn’t see the man attached to them.

  “In the flesh,” he replied. “I’m surprised they brought you here. I heard you messed up a dozen skirts.” He laughed, but he sounded miserable.

  “Sir, you have to tell me what this place is. Am I in the Complex?”

  “The what?” He pulled his hands back inside his cell, though I sensed he was still on the other side of the wall. “My name is Felix, by the way.”

  “Hi, Felix. Nice to meet you. I come from a tunnel system a lot like this one. We call it the Complex. I was wondering—”

  “You come from beyond the rock?”

  “Yes,” I replied with enthusiasm. “I came in through a little drain tunnel, or something. I don’t know. It was filled with plastic bags at the end. And—”

  “Stop right there. You don’t make a lick of sense. Start at the beginning. Who the hell are you?”

  I told him my story. I didn’t hold much back, even though he was nothing more than a couple hands in the next holding pen. Much as I’d felt when talking to those elderly women down below me when I was crawling above the Complex, telling him of my problems seemed to lighten my shoulders. We stood there talking for so long I even told him about Wen and how we’d argued before I came into his bunker.

  “So I really want to get back to them and let them know I’m all right,” I said in a friendly voice.

  “Hmf,” he said. “I can’t help you there. I’m just the town black sheep. Or the town alkie. Kinda like you and that Scotch, eh?”

  He laughed at himself, but I didn’t know what to say.

  Finally, I replied, “Who’s in charge? I have to talk with him.”

  “Ahhh, yeah. That could be a problem. You see, she isn’t a him. She’s a she.”

  “Your leader is a woman?”

  “Isn’t yours? No. You said your, uh, Commander, is a man. Interesting. Maybe you are telling the truth. You don’t sound like you’ve got the Clawhammer Disease.”

  “Claw?” I began.

  “You don’t have it where you’re from? Don’t people sometimes just go insane and bash at the walls until their heads bleed, or until they die? Surely you’ve heard of it?”

  I searched my broken memories. Alex said something about a Split P sickness, but that had to do with memories.

  “Do you have the memory mist here?” I asked, though I realized how stupid it sounded the second after I said it.

  How would he remember it?

  I tapped my head on the bars, forcing myself to think.

  As expected he had no idea what I was talking about.

  “How long have you been underground,” I asked, changing my approach. I’d been shocked to learn I’d been in the Complex for eighty-seven years. I was thinking I’d shock the hell out of him, too.

  “Only the young care about keeping the time. I have no need for it.” His sigh was deep and filled with sadness.

  “But you remember all of it? Can’t you guess?” I said in a squeaky voice. Afraid I’d upset him.

  He chuckled. “Oh no. I don’t remember much of it. Everything is the same, here. Same food. Same walls. Same people. It makes time flow weird. I remember very little of it. Why do you think I’m here?”

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  He seemed to know my dilemma.

  “How old are you? You sound like a kid,” he said, not unkindly.

  “I’m, uh—” I didn’t remember most of my life. I had to take it on faith I’d been alive for eighty-something years, even if I didn’t look it.

  “Let me see your hands,” he said in a pleasant tone.

  I looked at my palms, wondering what would be so interesting to him. Slowly, I put them through the bars of the cell so he could see them on the other side of the wall.

  “You’re one of them,” he said.

  “I am? I mean, what am I?”

  A Sky Dancer!

  “Young,” he said, with a hint of disgust.

  Oh. Thanks for that.

  My whole day had gone disastrously wrong. Now I was getting attitude from a guy already in jail.

  “Is that a problem?” I shot back.

  He laughed without mirth. “Look at mine.” One of his arms stuck way out of his cell so I could see up to his elbow.

  I yanked my hands back so he wouldn’t touch me.

  I replied only after I was out of reach. “Yeah?”

  “How old am I?” he challenged.

  His arm was lean and muscular, covered with a ton of white and black hair, but also kind of worn-looking. The hands were much larger than mine, and carried the same strength I’d once noticed in Alex’s. But they were also callused and swollen, like they’d done years of hard labor. The closest I could compare them to was Mr. Bracken, and if my math was correct he’d have been well over a hundred years old.

  “One hundred and fifty?” I answered, in a voice suggesting it was a wild guess.

  He was silent for a long time. After about a minute he slowly withdrew his hand and arm. “You think I’m that old?”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it.” Why I felt sorry for an empty voice I couldn’t explain. “How old are you?”

  “What year is it?” Felix spoke in an urgent whisper.

  I had to get closer to the wall to hear him. “Year?”

  “Yes, you do know what a year is, don’t you?”

  “I—” I knew the word. I strained to recall the year when I came into the bunker, but that information hid itself from me. Whatever that year was, we were now advanced another eighty-seven.

  That’s it!

  “I don’t know today’s date, but I was told it was eighty-seven years since the world went into their bunkers.” I said it a childish tone, like I was answering a tough question from Mr. B.

  “Aw, man,” said my neighbor. “They don’t keep time here. I had no idea—”

  I began to think I’d been placed in the medical wing, not the prison wing. I swore he was choking up. Crying. He’d gone mental, as Alex would say.

  “Sir. Mister Felix? I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Inwardly I was hoping he’d just leave me alone. I had enough crazy in my life. I needed to get the attention of the authorities to let me out. They had to listen to why I’d come. They had to help.

  I stepped back from our shared wall, intending to go sit down on the clean metal bench along the back.

  “204,” he said with reverence, as if discovering it and testing out the words.

  I returned to the front. “What’s 204? Is that the year?”

  He laughed with difficulty. “No, child. Not the year. That’s my age.”

  I thought about it for several seconds, then let loose with the first thing that came to the front.

  “Wow, you’re old!”

  Felix went completely silent. I knew I'd said the wrong thing, but it just fell out. I didn't really mean anything by it.

  I stood there frozen between apology and regret, but he finally broke the silence. His voice was nearly silent.

  “The young pretend they'll never get old. The old pretend they never got old. I can't fault you for being young and stupid.”

  His sniffles did more to make me realize my mistake than his words.

  2

  It took ten minutes before I didn’t hear him at all. I fought with myself over apologizing to him, but I was unwilling to ignore being called stupid. I'd floundered into a middle ground of indecision, which itself was confusing to me.

  I stood up from my bench and stretched, hoping I could figure him out. But that was forgotten the instant I heard other people. Voices echoed in the hallway, suggesting someone was heading our way.

  I got up to the front of
the cell and leaned as far as I could against the metal to see if I could get a first look at the visitors. I hoped my friend next door would have some advice for what to expect, but he was completely silent.

  The new arrivals took me completely by surprise. There were three women, all very young, draped in sensible leggings down to their black boots, with black long-sleeved work shirts and knee-length white skirts. Their hair was cut short, save one long, thin braid, which they wrapped around their necks several times. In a strange way they reminded me of Loop Trackers—a fancy name for tracking devices which we all were forced to wear back in the Complex.

  I stepped back from the door when they arrived, though I didn’t know for certain they were coming for me.

  It turned out, they weren’t. They stopped in front of Felix’s cell.

  “Acolyte Felix. Report,” said the red-headed middle woman. She didn’t look my way.

  I heard his voice, but it sounded distant. Like he didn’t get close to the women.

  “She’s not from here,” he said.

  “I already know that. The androids followed her in. What else?” Her tone was demanding.

  “I uh, talked to her—” He sniffled one sloppy time. “She said we’ve been in here for eighty seven years.”

  “Blasphemy!” hissed the woman. She glanced alternately at the woman on each side of her. “He speaks lies, my sisters. Ignore this man.”

  They nodded in respect in a way I recognized. I’d done the same many times when I heard the Commander’s name.

  Her glare was powerful. “If you speak that number again, my patience for your existence will end. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I—”

  Felix gasped.

  “What is that?” he shouted, his voice strong. It felt like he’d moved to the front of the cell. I got confirmation when the three women stepped back as one.

  The middle woman pulled my staff off her back and slammed the end onto the ground as she held it in front of her. The blue glow was dull, though it sparked wildly where it impacted. A wave of light rose from the bottom to the top, like a wave of energy.

  “Hey! That’s my staff,” I shouted.