Chronicles of the Mask: Episode 4
10 minutes
General Audience
The Castle: Part 1
Shelton sped toward the Brooklyn chapter of LIVES. He was worried. He was still dog tired. In all the excitement of running from the BS Squad, finding the Underground Abattoir, and of his trial, he’d hardly had a chance to recover from using his glandular enhancements. Quid hadn’t told him about the mod’s physical costs. He felt exactly like an ancient rubber band that you find stuffed in the corner of a couch between the cushions and the frame, all dry, and brittle, and ready to snap. But the real trouble had started this morning.
Despite Moseth’s insistence that they begin Operation Nano No-No immediately, Shelton had been unable to keep his eyes open last night, and they’d let him sleep. He dimly recalled being gathered up and led to a cot, and a soft voice telling him to rest, as she covered him in a warm blanket. It was the same masked lady, Ella, who, when he’d first wandered into the underground, had calmed Gage down, and brought him to see Moseth. For just a moment, her voice had seemed familiar, but he was too tired to think about why. As he’d drifted off to sleep, he’d heard her protesting on his behalf to Moseth. Evidently she’d prevailed, because Operation Nano No-No had been pushed to the following afternoon. That would be this afternoon.
The mission was simple enough. Brooklyn’s nano factory was located in Williamsburg, in what used to be called the Brooklyn Flea. Years ago, the place had been leveled and cleared, and turned into a sort of ugly castle. It consisted of five concrete buildings in the brutalist style. Four were tall and narrow, and set on the corners of the square like turrets. The fifth, the nano factory itself, was a huge, perfectly uniform cube that took up almost all the space within the perimeter set by the turrets. Between the turrets ran thick, concrete walls, featureless apart from their serpentine shape, which was something between a wave and a slightly-bent accordion. In front of and surrounding the entire castle was a huge square fence of electrified barb wire. The gap between the wavy wall and the electric fence was constantly patrolled by BSers. That seemed excessive, considering that the nano factory had no entrances above the surface. Even the guards within the gap could only get there by way of the familiar bright pink helicopters, which landed them inside the gap, or by coming up through tunnels that led from the transport track below. All traffic in an out of the nano factory itself went through a single underground supply train that branched off from the subway. But the Abattoir had a way in.
The plan was to get a strike team in BSer attire onto the supply train that went to the nano factory. Getting to the train itself would not be difficult. The train’s path took it through a side tunnel to which the Abattoir, with its command of New York’s subterranean world, had long ago gained access. The tricky bit was getting the supply train to roll to a stop within a narrow, unlit length of track to which the Underground had access. During that stop the team would swiftly board the rear car, take out the BSer garrison within, and replace it with their own strike team. Once inside the building, they’d make their way to the factory proper, and plant charges around the large tanks in which the nanos were actually manufactured, and also inside the secret laboratory where they were monitored and tweaked. That done, the team would reconnoiter at the train, and leave as part of the outgoing shift. At a safe distance, and having raised no alarms, they would blow the lab and vats sky high.
Kiara, a former nano-tech who’d faked her own death in order to join the resistance, and now one of the red-garbed members of Moseth’s inner circle, assured them that, once inside, getting to the vats and lab would not be terribly difficult. BSers patrolled every inch of the nano castle, and it was policy that no incoming guard was considered to have completed his shift until he’d personally hit every check point. This policy was greatly to the strike team’s benefit. It provided each of them a pretext for gaining access to any room within the factory, and this policy gave the technicians, the factory workers, and even the BS Squad troops, a dangerous sense of perfect security. The mere fact that a person was inside the nano factory almost put him above suspicion, for how could anyone get that far without good reason?
Inside the factory, they’d be surrounded by a veritable army of BSers. It was essential that nothing about their entrance or behavior be the least bit notable, for the plan required the team to mill about the place for hours, each setting his or her charges as the opportunity arose during the course of the rounds. Then there was the escape, which also required a peaceful exit. The enemy was not supposed to know he’d been compromised until hours later, when the castle-like factory, nestled behind the safety of its walls, guards, and electrified fences, inexplicably blew up. And that was where Team B came into it.
While the main strike team waited in readiness to board the stopped train, Team B would create a very large distraction. Gage would coordinate a false strike on the Brooklyn Lives building. At a secure, above-ground location, Gage had prepared a shipping crate filled with rifles, grenades, and about five dozen captive Mole People. These hostile wild men, taken over the years during their failed raids, and kept, until now, in the darkness of the Hole, were, at this very moment, partially drugged, and packed as tight as sardines within the large metal crate. When the time came, Gage would drive the crate right onto Tranquility Street, in front of the Lives building, and would pump-in an unpleasant gas to wake up and enrage the already furious, freedom-starved Mole People. Now desperate, angry, and armed to the teeth, the gate of their enclosure would pop-off via small explosives. A few carefully-timed explosions high in the air, and outside LIVES’ windows, would set the tone, and then Gage himself would drive off with the transport truck, sans shipping crate, before abandoning the truck, and slipping down to safety through any of a dozen familiar passages. The Mole People, finding themselves armed, free, and surrounded by the terrified and hostile denizens of the overworld, would likely go ape wild.
Even the spectacle of it alone would be sufficient to trigger a regional emergency. BSers would pour in from all directions. Approved media would descend upon the place like vultures. Most importantly, the nano castle would go on lockdown. And that meant the transport train, according to protocol, would grind to a halt wherever it was, and would remain in that state until the crisis on Tranquility Street had been safely managed. And it was this side mission, and not the infiltration of the castle, that worried Shelton.
While the rest of Team A was thinking of how to perfectly time the train hijacking, take control of the rear car without being noticed, and also what to do if the castle had additional layers of biometric security, Shelton was thinking about Allie. That same, annoying — if rather pretty — office-mate who seemed perpetually to have her skeptical eye on him; that same colleague who’d showed him uncharacteristic kindness when he’d had to go up to see Quid. Maybe she was Karen Stump’s personal stooge, but Shelton couldn’t stand the thought of her getting killed if the Mole People were as destructive and distracting as Team A was hoping they’d be. Even Karen Stump wasn’t such a bad person. Probably. Deep down. Heck, even Quid, when you got past his — Quid’s — demeanor, seemed to be a decent enough…person. It just didn’t feel right.
Shelton was no philosopher. He didn’t have any grand theory. He was usually the last guy in the room to notice glaring details, and to put them together. He was a narrative guy. And, he had to admit, his recent experiences, and his short time among these freedom fighters, had already made him side permanently with the rebels. He liked their story. It was better than the other one. Safety just wasn’t very exciting, when you really got down to it. He was now really and truly on the side of the unmasked, de-nanoed, tree-hugging crunchy people. Yet not so much that he could be comfortable with seeing people he knew become collateral damage. I mean the BSers and the lab techs, sure. To heck with them. But not the LIVES people. Not Allie. He had to get there. To warn her somehow. And to do that, he needed a pretext. A reason that made strategic sense to his fellow insurrectionists. So that morning, around 11:00 a.m., he walked into the planning room, and did what he did best: he pitched baloney.
“There are a couple big problems with the diversion at LIVES,” he’d said.
Gage, naturally, had stiffened, already pre-mad at Shelton’s implied criticism of his own team’s mission, and also annoyed, perhaps, that it was Shelton, and not Gage, whom Moseth had tasked with quickly immobilizing a train car full of BSers.
“Shelton,” Moseth had begun, raising a staying hand. “It’s a little late to change the plan. It’s been in the works for months.”
“Let’s hear him out,” said Ella.
He knew it was her, even though she still wore her red mask, and he looked at her with gratitude.
“But don’t go on and on like you…just be concise,” she said.
He blushed, not realizing that he’d been gabbing all that much since meeting the Abattoir, and he turned to Moseth. “Look, I’m supposed to be a kind of double-agent right?”
Moseth slowly shook his head. “You are the Two, Shelton. Do you doubt it?”
“Oh, not at all,” replied Shelton. He liked that idea. “But since I’m the Two, I need to keep up appearances. I’m supposed to be hunting the Butcher. They’ll be wondering where I am, and what progress I’ve made. What I propose is, I go into the office. Today. While there, I quietly warn them that I’ve got intel that something is up. No real details. I’ll just make them nervous. That way, we can kill two birds with one stone. I can nail down my credibility as Butcher-tracker-downer, which will give me even more pretext for sneaking around, and being the actual Butcher that I’m supposed to be tracking. Second, this will guarantee the appropriate level of panic and alarm when Gage shows up with an army of the Butcher’s angry, hairy, gun-wielding associates. It’s all about narrative, you see. Everything is.”
Gage had looked at him suspiciously, muttering something that included the phrase “double agent, huh?” After giving Gage a sharp, silencing look, Moseth had rubbed his temples, groaned, and looked at Ella. Behind her mask, Shelton had the uncanny sense that she was smiling at him.
“I think that’s a great idea.”
“What!?” whined Gage.
“Then it’s settled,” said Moseth. “But go quickly, and return quickly. You’re the most important part of Team A.”
After allowing himself a small, triumphant half-smile in Gage’s direction, Shelton had departed, running along the passages with the teenager Faro as his guide to the surface.
That had been this morning. Now Shelton was pulling into the parking garage at LIVES, anxious to warn Allie, and still more anxious to return for a late-afternoon factory bombing.
He tapped his feet on the elevator going up. He resisted the temptation to chew his nails. He saw a spider in the hallway, and it took all of his willpower not to use his brain mods to kill it with karate, or to run away with the speed of a cheetah. When he got into the office, he didn’t even bother to stop by his desk. Shelton made a bee-line for Allie’s desk. And she wasn’t there.
While office-mates greeted him like a well-loved celebrity, Shelton ignored them, and studied Allie’s work space. Her chair was pushed all the way in. Her screen was off. Her things were neatly in their places, as if they hadn’t been touched all day. He was puzzling it out, when a familiar, meaty figure filled the space behind him. Shelton turned.
“Karen!” he said, “How nice to see you!”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Is it?” she said.
“Well…sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”
She pursed her lips, clearly skeptical of his professed pleasure at seeing her. “Come see me in my office,” she said.
He was relishing the thought of saying, “No, actually. You see I have top secret Butcher-hunting tasks at the moment. Need-to-know, only. So, sorry, I can’t go to your cramped little office,” but then he thought better of it. Karen would know where Allie was, and she was also the ideal person in whom to confide a secret that you wanted to get out. It was she, after all, who’d incompetently made public the very report that had forced him to invent the Butcher. He smiled, and went with her.
When they entered, she shut the door and invited him to sit.
“So…” she said, letting the word linger. “I see you’re looking for Allie. Does she have something to do with your…your mission?”
Shelton shook his head. “No, actually. In fact, I was coming to see you, and I just noticed that she wasn’t there.”
The lie was obvious, but he didn’t feel remorse.
“Alright, then,” she said, “what did you have to tell me?”
“Well, I just…is Allie sick or something?”
Karen’s laughed sardonically. “She’s alright. She has that thing, you know? She gets…migraines, is it?”
Shelton shook his head.
“Yeah,” continued Stump, crossing large, mottled arms. “She said she might be in later.”
He nodded, feeling concerned. “Later” could be anytime. Like right in the middle of a firefight. And yet he couldn’t tell Karen to tell Allie to stay away. He couldn’t give Karen anything too specific, or he’d risk spoiling Gage’s mission.
“Okay,” he said. “Well here’s what I came to see you about. Karen, there’s reason to believe that the Butcher is planning something big today.”
“There is, huh?” said Karen. “Any details?”
He shook his head. “Nothing I can say in the open. Just…be careful, okay? If Allie comes in, tell her to…just keep your eyes open. Everybody. If something…unexpected comes up, you know, don’t hesitate to send everyone to the shelters right away.”
Karen stared at him for a while, her expression intense but inscrutable.
“Did he…?” she began, then shook her head, as if deciding against the question.
“I don’t want this to be public knowledge,” Shelton quickly added.
“Of course!” said Karen, with the same curious expression. “Well, if that’s all, I suppose you’ll need to be off on your mission. Big day, and all that.”
Shelton froze.
“What do you mean,” he asked, disinterestedly.
She studied him. “Oh, you know. If the Butcher does pull off some kind of stunt, they’ll need your expertise, right?”
He nodded, then stood, feeling uncomfortable. He thought again about going to warn Quid, then decided against it. That was playing with fire. Quid was far too clever.
Shelton let himself out of Karen’s office, passing by Allie’s empty desk as he headed for the office door. When he got to his own desk, he stopped briefly at his computer. Quickly, before anyone could come up to speak with him, Shelton navigated to the company directory. Pulling out his phone, he hastily snapped a photo of Allie’s mobile number. After logging out and shutting down, he darted down the hallway toward the elevators, thinking of how little he’d mind if the maze of cubicles went up in dust and smoke. Provided, of course, that everyone got out.
As the elevator door opened, an androgynous voice said his name. Shelton turned. Quid was standing there. Well, Quid was there, his body moving about, in several different places, each section more or less erect.
“Ooh! What are you up to, I wonder?” said the head-and-torso portion, off to the left.
Shelton, assuming it was the polite thing to do, fixed his gaze on that section of the currently tricameral technician. “Just stopping in,” he said.
“Just stopping in,” repeated Quid. “We thinks you are up to something.”
Shelton scoffed; shrugged his shoulders.
“Anything we should know about?” pressed Quid.
“No, nothing,” lied Shelton. So it was we now.
Quid smiled. “How about those enhancements? Are they helping you in your super-secret mission?”
Shelton nodded. Quid smiled.
“I’ll bet they are,” he said, then added, “It’s nice to be extra, isn’t it Shelton? To have more to you — more of you — than other people know about?”
Shelton rolled the phrase over in his mind. It felt dangerous and sharp from every angle. He certainly didn’t think that Quid was referring to his own present state of relative disassembly. He pushed the lift button again.
“Sorry, Quid,” said Shelton, “but I have something important to do.”
He bowed politely, stepped backward through the doors as they opened again, and kept the smile plastered on his face as he calmly jammed the “Close” button.
After Shelton had disappeared from sight, Quid’s head-and-torso smiled at the closed elevator doors.
“Yes, you certainly do,” Quid mused aloud in the empty hallway. “You truly have your work cut out for you, don’t you, my witless patient? My hapless, naïve experiment. My silly little Butcher.”
TO BE CONTINUED
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