The Red Queen (5 page)

Zubren let them draw a sample from his shoulder as he browsed the file. Black lines obscured most of it.

“Hey, how can I learn anything from this?” he protested, shoving the folder back to the field operator.

“You can’t,” he said. “But it makes the blood drawing a little easier.”

“So I’m being kept here until further notice?”

“Once we analyze this we’ll know if you can be released.”

Zubren spent the next few hours trying to piece together everything he could. It wasn’t until Lieutenant Maxforth showed up with two guards that he got any real answers.

Tossing him a military grade uniform, Maxforth and the other field operators stood like sentinels.

“Good to see you awake,” Maxforth said. “Get dressed.”

“What's the rush?”

“We need to sanitize this room for its next guest.”

Zubren started to slip off his medical gown. “And why was I here in the first place?”

Maxforth averted his gaze. “Turns out the Crawlers had an answer to our exosuit army.”

Zubren tossed the medical gown aside and sat there, frozen. This made no sense.

“Gilm and I worked on those things for three months. We tested them against all the Crawlers’ combat capabilities and they passed. How can you tell me the Crawlers had an answer for them?”

The lieutenant threw up his hands. “You think I know?”

He let the words hang in the air. Finally, Zubren zipped up his uniform, grabbed the gown, and gave it to a field operator.

“Can I go?”

Maxforth nodded. A grizzled stubble surrounded his mouth.

“Sir, how long have I been out?”

“Five days. You suffered a severe concussion. Welcome back.”

“Whatever those Crawlers have, Gilm and I can figure out a way past it. We’ve come this far, haven’t we?” Zubren asked, not sure why he was talking with such determination. Maybe because he knew this was what Maxforth wanted to hear. Or maybe they’d doped him up too much.

Maxforth put his hands on his belt and led them into the hall. He blinked as if he’d forgotten where they were.

“When your exosuit died up there, Gilm rushed out in the advanced speed model to save your bacon. But like you, Elton, and Derith, that exposed him to a severe case of radiation.”

“Is he alive?”

His lieutenant grimaced. His uneasy tone told Zubren what was coming. “Our assault on the Haze seems to have changed the spore clouds. They filter sun in a different way now. Certain bacteria that would’ve normally died out are popping up. It isn’t the radiation that’s harmful. It’s the virus these bacteria have created. Gilm was the first victim, but he won’t be the last.”

The words burned like acid on his skin.

“But I didn’t even destroy one Crawler satellite. We couldn’t have changed the spore clouds.”

“I guess it depends on how you word it.”

“You mean the Crawlers responded to us.”

Maxforth nodded grimly and ushered him to move on.

“And why can’t we deploy more suits to the Haze?” Zubren inquired.

“The radiation levels are too strong,” Maxforth said. “We’ll have to redesign the armor. But we’ve already got our plates full with the Crawler virus.”

Zubren glanced inside one glass room and saw masked men placing a body into a black bag.

“Isn’t there anything for me to do?”

“I have a few ideas,” Maxforth said.

* * *

Zubren tried to tell Maxforth that Gilm didn’t believe in the Maester teachings, so they should find a more neutral location for his funeral. But it became clear that Maxforth and Fleet Services weren’t interested in honoring Gilm. They wanted to use his death as a symbol for the Union. So they settled on the Maester Temple at the edge of Oras-C8.

Zubren flexed and unflexed his fingers along the edge of the podium, the sea of attendees calm before him. He estimated at least three hundred, but only a fifth had actually known Gilm. The rest were either Fleet Services stand-ins or members of the media.

“Okay, we’re live,” said a dark-eyed woman next to the camera in front of Zubren. A set of familiar words appeared on a teleprompter.

“Greetings to the people of the Oras Union. Today we’re here to honor the life of a man who did all the Fleet Services asked of him. He was an engineer and a hero,” he said, forcing passion into the words. He’d rehearsed them so many times, they felt empty and meaningless.

“Without him, I’d be dead. He risked everything, gave everything for the people of the Oras Union. All to help end the Crawler War.”

When he reached the end of his speech, the words
WITH EMPHASIS
rolled onto the teleprompter.

He barely mustered up the energy. “I will always think of Gilm for his contributions to the dream of ending the Crawler War. And I hope you will too.”

At a thumbs-up from the woman, he left the podium. As he passed the picture of his friend, a pang of regret stirred up in him. He’d lost many friends in combat, but none of their funerals were dressed up and scripted like this. No one had ever written a speech for him to read in front of thousands of viewers. That’s why it hurt. The insincerity. They were supposed to be mourning the loss of Gilm, not using him as a propaganda tool for resistance against the Crawlers.

Gilm’s father and brother gave eulogies, then Lieutenant Maxforth stepped up to award him a posthumous Medal of Valor for his rescue of Zubren. The funeral ceremony ended with words from a Maester and an eerie hymn by the choir. The hymn echoed across the grounds even as Fleet Services field operators carried Gilm’s casket to his new resting spot. After this, the attendees departed.

“You know, this place could be beautiful if it weren’t a cemetery,” Elaine said, letting Asher down to walk on the grass.

“Well, it won’t be getting any nicer,” Zubren thought out loud. Fleet Services had wrangled together several hundred attendees who didn’t carry the Crawler virus, but already reports were spreading of outbreaks throughout the Western Plains and Alkebulan. Refugee camps had suffered the worst due to their tightly packed living conditions. It would take a few weeks for scientists to develop a vaccine. Zubren doubted that would be the end though.

“Do you want to walk by yourself?” Elaine asked Asher, who seemed intent on escaping her grip.

She released him. Without warning, he raced out, not so much as stumbling across the lawn. A leisurely pace was enough to keep up with him. Zubren wondered if it was strange to enjoy seeing his son walk so well in a cemetery.

Then he noticed the open hole up ahead. In an instant, he swooped in and picked up Asher.

“Now why are you so attracted to danger?” Zubren muttered. It didn’t add up evolutionarily.

Elaine bent over and peered into the hole, shrugging. “He must’ve thought it was Alice’s rabbit hole.”

“Huh?”

“You’ve been away for so long now you’ve forgotten,” she frowned. “We’re on the story of Alice. You know, in
The Fourth Anthology of Fairy Tales
.”

“Oh, that. Right. Is it any good?”

“Find out for yourself.”

That evening, Zubren replaced Elaine in his son’s bedroom, cracking open
The Fourth Anthology of Fairy Tales
.

Asher grasped for the tome. Zubren smiled and pulled his chair closer to the bed.

“You want to look at the pictures? We’ll get to that. Now let’s see. We’re on Chapter 2: The Garden of Live Flowers.”

Alice raced with the Red Queen. But no matter how fast Alice ran, she couldn’t move past the starting line. She needed to run her fastest just to stay in the same place.

Halfway through, Zubren paused to reread a few key parts to himself. With a dry swallow, he realized the fairy tale was getting under his skin.

“What do you say we skip the story tonight?” he said, stowing the tome in his son’s bookshelf. With a kiss good night and a flick of the lights, he ended up in the hall with no immediate destination. He just couldn’t shake the notion of the Red Queen.

Finally, it dawned on him that the Oras Union was in the same situation as Alice in the race with the Red Queen. No matter the extent they developed their weapons and technology, they were, at most, barely keeping up with the Crawlers.

On his living room couch, he pulled up his MobileScreen. While it loaded, he wondered why Agliese had even bothered visiting the Sky Barge Tavern. In terms of his search for the truth, he’d already hit a dead end at the Maester Citadel, hadn’t he? He didn’t need a Fleet Services rep to tell him to give it up. They must’ve been afraid he’d discover another way to solve the mystery.

He scrolled through the MobileScreen programs to a digital history book. He knew all about the specific battles of the past five hundred years, in which humanity valiantly endured onslaught after onslaught of Crawlers, fighting them back enough to survive. But never to win. Many scientists believed that the previous civilizations, the ones that came before the history books, may have suffered the same fate, based on various ruins, like the ones his wife excavated.

A sinister thought crept into his mind. On the surface, history showed that time and time again heroic generals made last stands that allowed humanity to live. Given the advanced technology the Crawlers had demonstrated with the Haze, however, Zubren realized: it wasn’t that humanity had fought back the Crawlers. The Crawlers never pursued total elimination of humanity. Like they were choosing not to finish off Oras.

A sweeping cold washed over him as he fidgeted with the lining of a pillow. Everything about the Crawler War was too artificial. Too perfectly tit for tat. Like a game. It bore all the telltale signs of being orchestrated. Zubren grimaced. Orchestrating an entire war for hundreds of years though? He tried to open to the possibility, but it was outright ludicrous.

Breathing in deeply, he stood up, made motions with his arm to get the blood flowing to his head, and paced around the living room.
Calm down and reconsider,
he told himself. The pressure and his overthinking had deluded him. The last few months had doubtless exacted their toll on him and he was probably just trying to find meaning among meaningless details. As a resolution to Sector 20’s destruction, the failed Haze assault, Gilm’s death. Really, being delusional wasn’t uncommon. As an unconscious defense mechanism, many people tended to believe there was a genuine hope to win the Crawler War. It was just that he’d rejected the natural, logical defense mechanism, so his mind had created this new one.

Either that or he really had stumbled onto a dark truth, a truth so terrible he was subconsciously convincing himself it was a delusion as a defense mechanism. Zubren stared blankly at his TV. Thinking something was a defense mechanism as a defense mechanism. Wrapping his brain around that hurt. It boiled down to what he chose. Was there really a reason behind why they could never defeat the Crawlers or was he losing it?

Throwing into the equation the fact that the Maesters were conscious of a sacred truth in the Book of Makori didn’t help settle him. If he was coming to the final door in this mystery, it must’ve dealt with the truth only Elite Maesters knew.

Zubren's gaze fell to the MobileScreen. There was one unifying thread connecting all of this. Fleet Services. No one knew when the Crawler War started, but for as long as it existed, so did Fleet Services. A coincidence?

Zubren shut off the MobileScreen and walked towards his bedroom. Only he didn’t intend to sleep.

* * *

His watch beeped to two a.m., but the city hummed with the engines of patrol vehicles and field operators. Dark as it was, Zubren stayed behind every fence or wall he could find. He had little doubt the field operators owned night-vision goggles. They would as good as imprison him, pilot or not, for breaking the city curfew. Slinking down the streets, he caught sight of boarded up buildings with red signs warning that the inhabitants carried the Crawler virus.

As a spotlight weaved overhead, Zubren fell against a drop box on the sidewalk. The crowbar he’d packed poked into his back and he cringed in silent pain. Only when the spotlight passed did he look to see the dim outline of an unguarded manhole cover. He pulled around his backpack and fished out the crowbar.

He let the spotlight circle around one more time, then dashed over, slipped the crowbar in, and wrenched the cover free. Time to get down and dirty.

Once he’d reached the sewer below, he flicked on his head-mounted flashlight and checked his map for the route he’d marked. If he followed it, he’d arrive at Site G in an hour. Three times as long as by car, but given the curfew that was impossible.

The ground was composed of wooden planks and metal sheets over a slush of mud and water. Every so often corroded but familiar objects would appear in the cesspool. Wooden chairs. Plastic bottles. Car doors. His wife told him one of her friends had discovered a carved wooden insect that scientists carbon-dated at 3000 years old.

When he heard a skittering sound, he scanned every direction, fearing a Crawler. It was only a pack of blood-eyed rats.

A yellow plastic sheet told him he’d arrived at Site G. He sliced the lining open and proceeded carefully, not knowing how intact the excavations had left this place. As his flashlight met the open space, he registered a vast bottomless pit. A wave of humidity hugged him. The distant drip-drip sound drew his gaze to drops from a water leak disappearing in the darkness.

He found bolts set in the ground on the far side of the ledge, rummaged for his rope, clipped it to the bolt then his belt, and started down the face of the drop. Orange flags were pinned at various intervals going down to mark important finds. That’s when he noticed the holes running along the wall. No, not holes. Windows.

Inside the first rested the decrepit form of a bedroom. His curiosity hit an all-time high, but there were so many windows lower on. Those were bound to contain more interesting finds. Each time his feet hit against the wall, pieces of the brick flaked off. No viable spots to set bolt anchors. Dangling just beneath the last flag, he decided to rappel no further. There was no telling how stable these ruins were after the centuries they’d spent buried. Besides, the stench of trash and human waste burned his eyes and nose.