***
The day after encountering the being called Max, Charlotte drove the short distance from her apartment, hoping desperately that she was not too late, that they hadn’t revoked her access. The man had not given her much information, and as she turned onto the road that led to the facility, she felt as though she was flying blind. She approached slowly at twenty miles per hour.
Giant fir trees lined the street, and the sky was a bluish grey. The window was open an inch, and clear, damp air came through. She breathed in the moisture and the smell of pine. She placed a hand on her chest as she approached the grounds. She couldn’t help but take notice of the gloomy sky.
About two hundred feet ahead of her, she could see two black cars parked on either side of the road. This was new, and she immediately took strong hold of the panic that threatened to rise in her at this unexpected sight. Four men in black suits stood around the cars. She slowed further as one of them approached her vehicle. She stopped in front of the man who walked towards her. She rolled down her window, smiling.
“Name?” he asked curtly.
“Charlotte Jenkins.”
He paused for a moment as he looked at the transparent tablet in his hand. “ID number, please.”
“47856452.” She saw her picture appear on the device from underneath its glass surface.
“Go ahead, ma’am. Have a good day.”
“Thank you, sir, you too.” She waited for him to walk away, then drove slowly through the gap between the cars. When they were a hundred feet behind her, she accelerated and approached the remaining five hundred or so metres without hesitating. Lucas had not taken her name off the employee list yet. That meant she could still get inside the main gate. She knew why this had happened. He had his own disadvantages that were now paying off; terminating her employment so quickly would have required explanation to the committee, and he would need time to fabricate his story.
She felt a rush of excitement and elation at the thought that she was going to make it back inside to help. This was quickly followed by a stark fear: she was not getting off the hook. She was going through with it after all. She took a hand off the steering wheel as she approached the main gate and felt the cool metallic surface of the Taser in her pocket.
Jane was drifting in and out of sleep when she heard her name once again called from the speaker system embedded in the ceiling.
“Jane Connor, please report to the testing room.”
It was Lucas. Her door slid open, and she got up and placed her feet on the floor. Pavlovian, she thought vaguely as she rubbed her eyes and stood up. She left her room and slowly traced the path to the front corridor, her feet drifting behind her. Lucas was waiting for her at the end. She stopped as she turned the corner to face him. She glared at him as the tiredness suddenly evaporated from her body.
After a moment she began to move again. She didn’t take her eyes off him as she approached the end of the corridor. He turned around slowly, opened the door, and, for the last time, they stepped into the cold, concrete corridor and then the stark white room that Jane had become so familiar with.
As Charlotte walked through the front entrance of the facility, she felt surprise at having made it past the more extensive, secondary layer of security. She smiled at Wayne, the guard who often worked the front desk, and his expression betrayed what she was fearing: foreknowledge. She tried to ignore him as he rose from his chair and walked straight towards the entrance that led to the employee area.
“Miss Jenkins,” she heard him call in an authoritative tone.
She stopped, turned around and looked at him. “Wayne?” she replied.
“I spoke to Lucas yesterday. He said you resigned your post here and that I wasn’t to allow you any further access.”
This caught her off guard, and her eyes jerked to her left for a moment. Then she smiled back at him. “Yes, I know. I did. Sorry, Wayne; I forgot something. I’ll just be five minutes.” She gave him her best smile, but didn’t turn, somehow knowing that she wasn’t going to make it back in without a confrontation.
He looked at his monitors, then back at her, his expression unchanged. She was suddenly very aware of the blank wall behind her and the equipment she knew was housed there.
“Why are you carrying a weapon, Miss Jenkins?” he asked, his face revealing his confusion. He had nothing but trust for her, and this was an advantage that bought her the three vital seconds of hesitation she needed.
She rapidly pulled the Taser from her pocket. Wayne was slow and reached for his weapon too late. She was aiming hers straight at him before he had his unholstered.
“Put your weapon on the floor and kick it aside, Wayne. I’m not going to tell you twice. You know a shot from this thing will put you out for a good three hours.” Her voice was cold as steel, her stance rock solid. A new energy that she never suspected she possessed flowed through her now. Her expression was blank and serious as she aimed the weapon at him. The training she had reluctantly undergone came to the forefront of her mind as though she were reading it straight out of a manual in front of her.
Wayne glared at her from dark eyes as he placed the weapon on the floor and kicked it to his side. Charlotte crossed the ten-foot distance and picked up the weapon, not taking her eyes off him.
“Do I still have access to the employee area?”
He looked down briefly at the bank of monitors below him and gruffly replied, “Yes.”
“Good. Get down on the floor and don’t move.”
He did what she asked, and the indignance on his face didn’t bother her in the slightest. She backed away from the desk and walked towards the entrance. She reached her hand behind her and swiped her wrist over the security device, hearing the lock open with a hiss. The door slid open and she stepped through. Her body was filling with adrenaline and her heart began to pound, but the employee area was exactly the same as it always was any day she entered it. People stood around banks of monitors in a room to her right, and people occupied several offices to her left. She had some time to consider her options.
She looked at the weapon she had taken from Wayne, then deposited it in the trashcan in the corner to her left. It landed in the empty metal box with a clank and caused a few people to look up in her direction. She thought fast and smiled at them; they returned to what they were doing. She still had her own Taser concealed behind her back, and as she walked down the corridor, she placed it back in her pocket. She made her way through the overdone, lavish surroundings. She had reached the door leading to the control room when the instinct to glance behind her took hold.
Charlotte turned and looked around. There was nobody to take notice of what she was doing. She reached up her wrist to the scanning device, still looking at the hallway, and the door opened behind her. Then somebody did appear in the hallway: a man named Marc Thomas. He was part of the task force that captured rogue ethereals. She could see his lips moving and heard the distant tones of his voice as he spoke to someone. Then he turned towards her. Their eyes met, and he reached for his weapon. Charlotte stepped back through the doorframe. It slid closed in front of her before he had a chance to aim his weapon.
She stepped back from the door, pulled the Taser from her pocket, and aimed it at the security device. She fired two shots straight into it. The rapid bolts of blue energy melted into its frame. Then it erupted into a shower of sparks. The room was momentarily illuminated by a blinding flash of light, and she ducked to avoid the molten, glimmering embers. Chris jumped out of his chair and yelled. Charlotte glanced back tentatively at the security panel and saw that it was a smouldering mess of melted wires—the door was sealed shut.
She turned around quickly, raised the Taser and pointed it at Chris. She felt disgust as she did this; he wasn’t a bad guy. Probably attracted by the money, he had simply been drawn into a situation he hadn’t considered the implications of. And he was young—young enough to not have developed the full array of skills necessary to navigate nuanced
ethical problems. He was frozen now, with his hands held up in the air and his mouth gaping open. There was a loud banging and muffled shouting coming from the other side of the door. Charlotte ignored it.