CHAPTER TWO
Ali looked over from the wall, new hope in her widening eyes. Reeves called, “Who are you? Identify yourselves.”
The door kept shaking and no answer came back from the other side. Reeves clutched his knife handle and called again, “Identify yourself, friend or foe!”
The door stopped shaking, dead silence on the other side. Reeves, Jeanell, and the others approached the door in silent caution, listening for some sign of activity, ready for whatever would burst through that door.
But nothing did.
Jeanell turned to see the other control room door open, completely behind their backs, and in the doorway stood two children of about eight years old, a boy and a girl, definitely siblings and probably twins, staring at them with big, silent eyes. They stepped toward her, four adults entering behind them with more entering behind them. Jeanell screamed, drawing everyone’s attention to the advancing throng.
Reeves lurched to stand against the crowd, but he was overwhelmed by three adult men, pale and balding and scrawny in their rags, but enough to pin the former colonel and take the knife out of his hand.
Ali released a terrified gasp, hopeless and helpless in the corner.
Brad held his hand out, crouched in a cowardly stance as he feigned bravery. “Okay now, everyone, hold on here, just hold on! We didn’t mean to be aggressive about it. Our friend here was just being protective. We’ve got women here, they’re frightened.”
Jeanell wanted to contradict him, to correct his arrogance, but that wasn’t the time. It was coming though.
The children said nothing, and were quickly swept out of the way by a scrawny woman with wincing, yellow eyes and a shrewd chin thrust forward. “Kill ‘em,” she rasped, “we gotta kill ‘em right now!”
Another said, “No, Brooke, we have to take them to Ric.”
“That’s what they want,” the woman called Brooke said. “Why do you think they’re here? No, we have to put ‘em down, right here and now.”
Another man, very muscular with a grim expression, stepped out of the crowd. “No,” the big man said. “They may have information we need. We won’t kill them yet.”
Jeanell’s heart was pounding, her mind swimming in confusion. “What are you people talking about? Information? We… we worked here, is that what you mean?”
Brad said, “Shut up, Jeanell.”
“Don’t you tell me to shut up!”
Reeves repeated, “Shut up, Miss Glenn!”
The big man said to Jeanell, “Jeanell Glenn? And you worked here?”
Jeanell nodded. “Sure, of course. How do you think we got here?”
“Lies,” Brooke said, “Cut the bitch’s tongue out, Lux!”
The big man said, “You don’t give the orders, Brooke.”
Jeanell was astounded, her confused mind repeating the odd turns of phrase, considering the dilapidated state of the people asserting their authority.
Brad said, “Everybody, take it easy—”
But the woman shrilled, “Cut that bitch’s tongue out too!”
The big man said to Jeanell, “You, woman—”
“Woman?” Jeanell looked at them, confusion growing to terror. “I… I don’t understand this. How did you people come to be here? Were you here when the accident happened?”
Lux looked at the smaller man, a thin mustache on his weasely lip. They shared a chuckle. Lux asked her, “Which one?”
Brad said, “Don’t you say another word, Jeanell!”
Jeanell asked, “Why not? We don’t have anything to hide.” Then, to Lux, she said, “Yesterday, or not too soon before. May seventeenth.”
“What year?”
“What do you mean, what year? This year, of course, 2017.”
The spindly Brooke said, “See? They’re spies, planted by the chancellor’s forces! I’ll kill her myself!”
Jeanell repeated, “The chancellor? Who’s that?”
Lux crossed his arms and huffed. “I think it’s time we see Ric.” He turned to the two kids. “Go tell him we’re coming, and we got company.”
Brad asked, “Who’s Ric?”
“You’ll find out.” They dragged Reeves out first, his thick torso writhing among them. Brooke crossed to Ali and rapped a clawed finger around her arm to pull her up. Ali was incapacitated with fear, barely able to gasp when her new captor took her in her bony clutches.
Jeanell said, “Hey, you leave her alone!” Jeanell crossed over to push Brooke away from Ali, but Lux grabbed her. “Let me go, you greasy goon!” He snickered, one massive hand wrapping around each of her upper arms and cranking them back. She tried to stifle her own whimper of pain, clenching her teeth as he wrenched her back.
Brad said to another big fellow grabbing him by the arm, “Take it easy, pal; we’re all on the same side.”
Lux said, “We’ll see about that,” before wrenching Jeanell up off her feet. She kicked out in front of her, feet sliding against the dusty floor as Lux pushed her toward the door. Only moments before, she’d been in despair about ever getting out of that room. Now there was nothing she wanted more than to stay there.
But she had no choice.
They dragged Jeanell and the others out of the control room and down the long hallway. Jeanell had walked up and down the hallway thousands of times, and he couldn’t believe how strikingly different it was; not only was it dusty and dark, poorly lit with a few staggered, sputtering lights. But the paint was peeled and it wreaked of mold and mildew.
How could this have happened in two days, Jeanell had to wonder, her panic growing with her rising heartbeat. What’s going on here?
Office doors punctuated the hallway on the left, the doors open and the offices dark and windowless behind them. Where’s the rest of the research team, the administrators, the guards?
Big Lux squeezed Jeanell’s arms tighter as she tried to pull away from him, yanking her arms of little use against her massive captor. Reeves would have had a much better chance, very nearly breaking free. But he was more interested in seeing this Ric and finding out what was going on. A military man, he wasn’t accustomed to fleeing. But Jeanell grew up a bookworm in Encino, California, a science nerd, a research specialist. She never had much of a reason to flee, but she knew then that she’d spent a lot of her life hiding. It had been a survival tactic, and it had almost worked.
A rat scurried down the hall in the other direction, clinging to the foot of the wall, sending a shiver up Jeanell’s spine. A rat? Down here, in a sealed facility two miles beneath the surface of the earth? Can’t be.
She and Brad exchanged a worried look, and Jeanell made a snap decision. She threw out a long, loud, “Help! Somebody help us! Heeeellllp!”
Lux pulled her arms further back, nearly dislocating the right one from her shoulder. “Shut cher gob, spy! Who do you think is gonna help you here?”
Jeanell opened her mouth to answer with any one of the obvious: police, the security guards, the United States government.
But none of those seemed that obvious anymore.
They dragged Jeanell and the others to the end of the hallway and into one of several large reception areas, located at various points in the complex. Once a clean and posh chamber, it was now a dusty, miserable mess, with chunks of fallen concrete and broken furniture.
“What’s going on here?” Jeanell and the rest turned to see the two kids returning, ever silent, with several other adults. One of them walked ahead of the others, tall, posture straighter than the cringing men and women around him.
Brooke stepped forward, chin thrust as she pointed at Jeanell. “Spies, Ric, spies! We caught ‘em in the old control room.”
Jeanell repeated to herself, The old control room? How old do they think it is?
Brad said, “We’re not spies, we work here! This is my project, for chrissake!”
Ric stepped toward them, looking them over. He was good looking, his face gaunt and chiseled, chestnut hair long, falling over his shoulders. “How’d you get here?”
Brad said, “I just told you, we work here! How’d you get here? And who the hell are you people anyway? Where’s the rest of the staff, the security crew?”
Ric looked him up and down, then threw out a sarcastic chuckle. “The chancellor really is losing it.”
Jeanell asked, “Who’s this chancellor you keep talking about? And tell this gorilla to get his filthy paws off me!”
“And spoil his fun?” Ric stepped casually around the reception area.
Brooke said, “Let him have her!”
Reeves struggled among his own captors. “I’ll kill you all!”
“See,” Brooke said, “spies!”
“Spies,” Jeanell repeated, “chancellor? It’s time you told us what the hell is going on here!”
Ric said, “What happened is that you’ve been captured and now you’re on trial for your lives.”
Ali just stood in silent terror, but Tony finally said, “What are you people, on drugs or something? How’d you even get in here?”
“We live here,” Ric said. “It’s our sanctuary, has been for years.”
Jeanell stood, stunned, no longer able to struggle for her shock. She looked around at the battered facility, more damage than a single explosion could have done. The rat, the mold, the gutted control room; evidence of age, time far beyond the few days they’d all assumed.
Far beyond.
Jeanell knew what had happened; they’d been unconscious for months.
Jeanell asked only, “What month is this?”
Ric answered, “June.”
“June,” Jeanell said. She glanced at Brad, thinking aloud. “But… you didn’t grow a beard in all that time?”
Ric asked, “What are you going on about now?”
Jeanell asked Ric, “How long were we out on the ground like that? Did you keep us drugged up or something? What did you do to us while we were asleep?”
Ric turned to the other, smaller man, balding with a thin mustache. “Geoffrey?”
Geoffrey shook his head. “It’s not true, Ric. I did my rounds there yesterday; the room was empty.”
Lux said, “He’s right, they’re new.”
Jeanell’s blood ran cold as that ugly crew of pale, scraggily men and women glared at her and the others.
Brooke said, “Why are we wasting time? None of this matters; they must be killed and we must do it now! Forget Lux and his fun, we gotta snuff these spies out before the chancellor’s troops arrive.”
Brad rolled his eyes, “Who is this chancellor you’re talking about? He’s in charge here?”
Ric said, “I’m in charge here. The chancellor’s in charge… out there.”
“Out there,” Jeanell repeated. “You mean, on the surface.” Ric nodded, and Jeanell suddenly realized what was really going on. Time had passed, it seemed certain, but a good deal more than a few months. She asked Ric, “What year is this?”
Brooke said, “Don’t try to jerk us around, spy!”
“Tell me,” Jeanell said, her voice rising with anger and fear.
“It’s 2076.” Ric took a step toward her. “Why?”