The Third Adventure: Action, That's How! (A Caper in Time Part 2)
by Evan Forman and Michael Robertson - One Chapter a Week Starting 27.11.16
21 HOURS, 39 MINUTES, AND 23 SECONDS
The black van trundled up the
stream of wet mud passing off as a country road. “The Secretary
of State for Energy has today blamed the three-day blackout that
affected Dryadora City and the surrounding area on freak
weather,” said the voice on the radio. “At around 11PM last
Sunday, a short rainstorm fell over Valebar power station. When
lightning struck the building it caused a ‘chain reaction’,
which led to a complete power outage across a thirty mile
radius. The Energy Secretary also expressed his ‘deepest
condolences’ to the fifteen people who died as a result of the
blackout, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the power
outage that affected Dryadora City for a week in the winter of
2174. That’s all from me just now, but I'll be back at 6 with
all the latest headlines. Back to you, Kanan.”
Atair caught sight of his right sideburn in the rear view
mirror, fingering the overgrowth of dark brown hair. “D’you
think I'm going gray, Chel?”
She watched the tadpoles of rainwater slithering down the window
and crashing into each other’s tails. “It’s all we’ve been
talking about for the past three weeks.”
He smirked and laughed through his nose, then his mouth fell
into genuine concern. “No but really.”
“It’s fine, it’ll suit you. You’re ripening.”
His head fell into his hand in despair. “Oh, god.”
Chel cackled as the van slowed to a stop over the rumbling
gravel at the edge of the farm. In the middle of a darkly vast
expanse of wet grass, wire fences, hay bales and cow shit sat
this anonymous metal shed. She had seen a hundred others like it
on various road trips in her life but — she would later think to
herself — never had she bothered to think about what might be
inside.
The shed’s large door slid to one side and out walked a woman
wearing a white coat with ‘OONER BLANK / BLANK OONER’ printed
above the breast pocket and a long plastic glove that covered
the entire length of her arm. She greeted the officers
anxiously. “You’re here about the theft, yes?”
“See, that’s the thing,” replied Atair. “How do you know it’s a
theft? Could just be a disappearance. That’s what we’re here to
find out.”
Chel tried not to screw up her face as the smell of hay flooded
her nostrils and pricked the back of her throat. The woman
laughed a little beneath her anger. “I highly doubt that these
swivel-eyed buggers could figure out which way to run even if
they did escape their pens.” The shed stretched forward just
about as far as Chel could see, and she was flanked on both
sides by chest-high gates separated by rough brick walls. The
compartments were identical: the same cool concrete floor with
the same mound of hay and the same ring with a chain with a
collar with an ape on the end. They didn’t look like people,
Chel thought, they looked like parodies of people. Their skin
was always patchy and discoloured regardless of their breeding
(even the most consistently dark had odd palms and soles), and
their round little faces had none of the aesthetic refinements
of higher evolution; no cheekbones to speak of and the hilarious
circular ears which gave away their origins in the wombs of
gorillas.
Atair was taking notes on a little pad of paper. “So can you
describe what the missing humans looked like? Who do you think
might have taken them? What motivation might they have?”
“Well what the hell do you think they looked like?” snapped the
woman. “They’re humans, they look like humans. As for the
fuckers that stole them, it’ll be breeders. They’ll be looking
to expand their gene pool on the cheap, it’s the season for it.
I’ve found a bloodstain on the fence where they took them, I'll
show you just now.”
“Right. Chel?”
“Mhmm?”
“Get the forensics kit from the van, look for fingerprints on
the handles of doors and gates. Catch up with us at the fence.”
“It’s just out there,” pointed the woman. “Straight across from
the side door, you’ll see us.”
“Sure.” Chel nodded and walked back in the direction of the
large main entrance, likely used for trucks moving the cargo
about. Atair and Ooner’s voices faded outside.
Somebody whispered from the dark. “Shell.”
Chel stopped dead and looked around, there was nobody else in
the building. “Hello?”
“Shell is a nice name.”
“It’s…who’s there?”
A chain rattled in the distance, stirring some of the sleeping
humans. “Here, Shell.”
She crept over to the source of the noise. Assuming she was
talking to an unseen farmer, she was looking over the pens - not
inside - when the chain rattled insistently. Her eyes widened
when she saw him. His head had been shaven some weeks ago, and
his veiny arms clung to the chain which kept him sat at the
other side of the pen. “I see your surprise. They don’t thought
I good breed Elvish, but I do,” he whispered.
Chel heart was racing, and adrenaline coldly sluicing through
her, not sure if she should shout for Atair or kill the thing.
“H-how…can you…”
He grinned with all three of his teeth. “Allow me to say hello
oneself. Your name is Jonathan.”
She swallowed for the first time in minutes. “Hello, Jonathan
Henry. My name’s…Chel.”
“Shell. Good.”
“No, Chel. Emphasis on the ‘ch’.”
“Shhhhhhh-”
“Nevermind. Jonathan Henry…what are you doing here? How can you
speak?”
“Yes!” He flailed his arms in some exaggerated shrugging motion.
“Shell Elvish. Elvish want to slaughter Jonathan… Henross.”
“Yes, Jonathan… Chel Elvish. Listen, do you know anything about
what happened here, last night?”
“Oh!” He slapped his bony hands over his mouth. “Sob Goss knows.
Jonathan sometime call Sob Goss.”
Chel stepped forward, her fists clenched to hide her trembling
hands. “What do you know?”
Jonathan Henry smiled. “Don Goss knows words. Lon Coss knows all
the best words, Shon Ross knows the secret words that get your
tongue eaten! They used to break rocks!” He held up his fists.
“Rob Boss now is too small to break rocks, too small to lay
bricks.” He stood up and pointed at his legs. “Bob Ross now will
go to eat!”
“Jonathan, stay down! You have to stay down!”
Bob Ross stood up and gasped as he stood up over the wall of his
enclosure and down the length of the shed. “Light!” He pointed
ecstatically at the open doors through which sunlight was
starting to reflect off the wet grass outside.
“Yes, Jonathan.” Chel stated flatly, slightly confused. “Light.
Now, why don’t you just sit back-”
“Light’s come back. The light touched Bob Ross once, in the
pit,” said Jonathan. “See around these people?” He pointed at
the neighbouring cages. “Very pale, the light never touch them.
Not ever.”
“Sit down, Jonathan, please, then I can speak to you. You don’t
want to get tased, do you?”
“Taste! Yes! Food’s over here, Bob Ross show you!”
Bob Ross shot over the length of his pen, the end of his chain
tearing from beneath the pile of hay. Chel’s hand grasped the
trigger of her taser gun, her arm whipped back upwards and her
finger pulled back on the trigger. In half a second, the
translucent wire that connected Chel’s gun to its dart was
flailing around as Bob Ross danced. The taser hit the ground and
Bob Ross howled as he fell onto a puddle of his own piss.
Atair and the farmer came running in. He had his gun ready as he
bolted around the corner and landed like a bomb at Chel’s side.
“What the hell happened?!”
Chel stood with her arms dangling at her sides. Her eyes fixed
on the corpse, the corner of her lips that nobody could see
quivered. “He wasn’t chained up right, he just started shouting
about food then he launched at me.”
Ooner, who was considerably smaller than the two police
officers, spoke up. “I don’t know how he…” She opened the gate —
her hand in a shiny plastic glove that covered the whole length
of her arm, like the condom a snake would wear if that were even
remotely how that worked — and inspected the emaciated corpse in
the brown puddle. “The whole ring’s come off, he must’ve
loosened it from the actual ground somehow.” She stood back up
and faced the officers. “I am so, so sorry about this. Is there
anything-”
“No.” said Atair. “I have my leads anyway. Unless there’s
anything else you think I should know…”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll phone you if I remember anything else.”
Chel walked ahead of Atair, looking straight ahead at the light
from the door, down past the dozens of cages with wide eyes that
reflected back at her in the musty dark. She held up her hand,
shielding her eyes from the sun as she made it back to the van.
She tried not to slam the door.
Tried.
Atair got in and started the engine. The farmer stood at the
door and waved limply as the van rumbled backwards over the
gravel, and she’d turned to go back and clean up the mess before
the van had lurched forward down the slope again.
“It’s really bright now,” said Chel, squinting as sunlight
glistened off every puddle.
“You’re not okay so I'm not going to ask,” said Atair. “I will
say that it was you or him, and the world is better off with it
not being you. Anyway, it’s an animal.”
“It spoke.”
“So do parrots. It’s just repeating the few Elvish words its
brain can hold. Don’t lose sleep over it, lass.”
“Suppose you’re right,” she muttered, compulsively scratching at
the soft bit between the bones where her thumb and pointer
finger connected to the flesh of her left hand.
Atair glanced over at her. “My sunglasses are in the glove
compartment, if you’d like.”
“Cheers.” She put them on and tried to put Bob Ross the human
male with the big eyes and the shaved head and the skinny arms
who worked in a quarry before he got too old or weak for
physical labour but not too old or weak to work the chain out of
the floor and who noticed the sunlight and decided to get food
before you shot him exactly in the heart with a taser and killed
him out of her mind. She turned on the radio, which blabbered
pleasing distraction for the rest of the journey, until John
Boss stopped outside the DTV broadcasting station and they put
on their black visors.
“It’s the 18th day of the Suffocation and you’re listening to
Channel 1. The Prime Minister is scheduled to make his address
outside the Dryadoran amphitheatre shortly.”
Chel strode through the herds of nervous office workers,
secretly actually quite impressed at this towering brutalist
machine where they made The Stars Are Out Tonight,
Addicted to Glamour, and Celebrity Speedeating,
but deathly serious as she and her entourage of shadows were
guided around various curves and corners by the little archivist
who had been called up to the reception when they arrived
unannounced. The archivist didn’t make any small talk as she
nervously led them to the basement. Confiscations happened from
time to time, some old footage was 'requested' for 'specialist
study offsite' and was never seen again. By anyone. This was
serious though, they usually didn’t send four armed officers to
collect a canister of film. And it WAS just the one, she
thought, by now the producers knew that any news reports showing
even a still from the film would be contaminated, and thusly
“relevant to the investigation”.
“If you’ll just take a seat here,” said the archivist when she
closed the viewing room door behind them, “I'll have the film
ready for you in a second.”
“Thanks.” Chel smiled as she sat down at the flimsy-looking faux
wood table. Through the fat rectangular window in the door, the
others standing around the room could see into the archive, a
vast tunnel filled with rows of huge gray boxes which formed the
clusters of shelves. The archivist was alone, John Boss the 34th
watched through his visor as she pottered down the imposingly
long corridor, to a tiny phone mounted at the bottom of a
vertical expanse of concrete wall.
“The fuck is she phoning?” whispered Boss 41.
“Stay calm, maybe she’s got to get approval from someone…” the
syllable dragged and deflated in Chel’s mouth “…or something.”
“‘Something’? As in she’s phoning the demon who runs TV?”
whispered Lockswell.
“No as in just… ending a sentence with no actual end.”
John Boss the 41st crept over to the exit door and gently tried
the handle. “It’s locked.”
“What?” Chel shot around.
“It’s just a little knob below the handle, nothing that could
actually stop us if we wanted to leave.”
Lockswell put his hand on his gun. “Do we want to leave?”
John Boss folded her arms and paced around the room for a
moment. She pulled out her radio. “Täikur, what are they saying
on the comms?”
From his nest of wires and consoles Täikur responded over the
radio. “Nothing but preparations for the speech. Dhubagèl
arrived there a few minutes ago. Is everything okay?”
“She’s supposed to be coming back with the tape!” She shouted
under her breath. “She’s phoning someone and she’s looking over
at us and this was not part of the plan! I did not plot around
this speccy goblin bitch- sorry-” she glanced at Chel “-if you
hear a single word, call me.” She ended the call before he could
respond.
Lockswell had been the most relaxed of the group. “Look at her,
what’s she doing now?”
John strode towards the window and looked out at the archivist,
who was now looking visibly scared even from all the way over.
John calmly opened the door and leaned out. “Excuse me-”
The archivist screamed. John Boss the 41st threw open the door
and started gliding towards her and coldly, calmly stated: “Why
are you screaming, ma’am?”
“IT’S YOU!” She cried, the phone dangling pathetically beside
her as she fell to the floor. “YOU KILLED THOSE OFFICERS AT THE
HOSPITAL, DIDN’T YOU?! THE POLICE…” she gagged, then curled up
and hid behind her arms.
“Look at me.” said John.
“W-whyyy?” she whined.
“Look. At. Me.”
The archivist weakly pulled her head up and saw her contorted,
terrified face reflected in the visor. The person behind it
spoke without inflection. “‘The police’, what?”
“They told us one of their own betrayed them. They told us you
might come here.”
John spoke softly, applying a layer of compassion to her voice.
“I’m not the person who shot up that hospital.”
The archivist saw the doubt on her own face in the black glass.
She stabilised ever so slightly. “You’re not? Tell me you’re
not.”
“We all look the same in this uniform, how would you know? I’m
not the person who shot up that hospital.”
The archivist adjusted her glasses and breathed deeply, holding
for four seconds, and repeat. At this point John flipped up her
visor, and the woman tried to burrow into the wall behind her as
she screamed in horror.
John Boss smiled with sadistic glee. “She, on the other hand,
is.” She then stepped away to reveal Chel Hagar, who was stood
still behind her.
“No no no no NO NO NOOO!” the archivist compressed herself into
a ball as Chel approached.
Chel stepped forward and very calmly stated, “Miss, I don’t want
to hurt you.”
“You’re lying!” she whinged. “You’re a monster!”
“Monster?” John Boss bit her lip in anticipation. “Chel, you
hear that? You’re a monster now.” She crept towards Chel, her
feet gliding across the ground as she stopped at her side.
“Embrace it, sweetness. Now’s your chance.” John took the gun
from Chel’s belt and placed it in her hand, closing her fingers
around its cool handle. “Look how she quivers at the sight of
you. How long have you played at being civil? Bask in the terror
of the society that hates you.” She took Chel’s arm by the
shoulder and lifted it to aim at the archivist. “Bang.” She
grinned and stepped back. Through glasses wet with tears the
archivist looked up at Chel and waited to die.
“Your life depends on your answer to this question,” said Chel.
She wiped away a mixture of tears and snot with her sleeve and
opened her eyes properly.
“Is this building surrounded by police officers, and are they
coming for us right now?”
“Yes,” said the man on the phone.
Chel grabbed the archivist by the back of the neck, like a cat,
hauled her up onto her feet and pressed the gun to her head.
With her other hand she picked up the phone and looked into the
security camera in the centre of the roof. “Hello. How can I
help?”
The voice replied. "Give it up. We have this place surrounded!"
"And I have a hostage." Chel pushed the gun into her temple
until her desperate cry could be heard on the other end of the
phone.
The large double doors at the end of the room burst open. Police
officers charged in and backed Chel, the archivist, Lockswell,
and John Bosses 35 and 41 back against the wall. "Yeah…after
everything you've put us through, we really couldn't give less
of a shit about one life," explained the man on the phone.
Chel tightened her grip on the gun as she stared down a dozen
barrels. "I WILL shoot her!"
On the top floor of the building, the police officer stood
staring at Chel through the security camera while talking to her
on the phone. "No need." He removed the radio from his belt and
raised it to his mouth. "Fire."
One of the police officers surrounding the Red Hand shot the
archivist between the eyes.
"Oh, well." John Boss the 41st shot the security camera. The
room erupted.
The air became thick with lead. Police officers fired. Everyone
dived behind two conveniently placed barriers at either side of
the aisle. Chel landed in a combat roll and straightened into a
kneeled firing position, years of training expressed in a single
movement.
Boss 41 nodded to Lockswell who removed a flash grenade from his
belt and threw it backwards over his shoulder.
With a cry of "GRENADE!" from a nameless voice, an explosion
sent every loose object smashing and shattering against the
walls. In the confusion, the Red Hand burst from their hiding
place and leapt over the table, guns firing.
Officer 1 threw a punch at John Boss the 41st, who caught their
fist and twisted it behind their back. She fired two shots in
the faces of advancing officers 2 and 3. Twirling her pistol
around until she was holding it by the barrel, she swung it like
a club into Officer 1's shoulder, breaking his arm. She threw
the pistol into the air and used the full force of her body to
smash Officer 1's head into the desk, leaving a bloody dent in
the wood. She spun, caught the pistol, and tore bullet holes
through Officer 4 and 5.
Catching the vibrant red colour out of the corner of his eye,
John Boss the 34th turned to see his descendant reach back into
a sheath hidden in her vest and and pull out the scimitar of
Doom Pirate Nazir Al-Zahabi.
With a smile, she looked at Officers 6, 7, and 8. "Looks like
things are…hotting up."
As if on cue, the red blade of the scimitar burst into flames,
as if the blade had been covered in fuel. Charging forward, Boss
41 effortlessly cleaved through her opponents.
Boss 34 punched Officer 9 full force in the face, knocking him
into a coma, elbowed Officer 10 who was facing down Lockswell
behind him. Officer 11 pumped a shotgun on the other side of the
room. Taking a running start, Boss 34 - surrounded by film grain
like the burning celluloid action / adventure programs burning
and melting on the shelves around him - performed an immaculate
power slide across the smooth floor, grabbed the end of the
shotgun, and pointed the end of it downwards. No-longer braced
safely against Officer 11's shoulder, the recoil sent the back
of the shotgun punching backwards into his face, breaking his
jaw. Boss 34 pulled the shotgun away from Officer 11 and whacked
him in the face with it like swinging a bat.
Eventually, Boss 34 had fought his way to the centre of the room
where he stood back-to-back with Boss 41. "Out of curiosity, how
did you do that thing where you set your scimitar on fire?"
"Oh, it's quite simple," Boss 41 explained while casually ending
Officer 12 and 13. "It’s been augmented with some kind of
voice-recognition technology that listens for fire-based puns.
It’s so dumb but it’s so good.”
"Huh," said Boss 34 as he uppercutted Officer 14 into the air.
"Good to know…"
Mo Lockswell smacked Officer 15's machine gun to the left so
that when he pulled the trigger half a second later he missed
and riddled 16 with holes. Lockswell headbutted 15, breaking his
nose and knocking him unconscious. Finally free of the fight, he
charged into the archivist's office and started scanning the
labels of the grey boxes for the film canister they needed. He
saw a tray of films that hadn’t been stored yet. He looked
through the boxes dated 17/09/14, as a bullet smashed the
window, and found two films labelled “ARENA TAPES”. Now, thought
Lockswell, as the door was ripped open by a police officer who
was ripped open by John Boss the 41st’s scimitar: there was a
score of arena fights earlier in the day and then there was the
big primetime event later on. So one of these was definitely the
tapes with the robot fight on it, and one of the officers who’d
just throw a grenade towards the office was definitely running
away as John Boss the 34th has batted it back at him with the
butt of a gun. As he heard the assorted chunks of that officer
slapping against the ground like heavy, meaty rain, he decided
that since people read from left to right, and thusly imagine
chronological time as something that goes from left to right
(ask anyone to draw you a timeline of events on a piece of
paper), of the identically-labelled canisters the one that had
been rightmost on the trolley would be the one with the robot.
Lockswell nodded satisfactorily, his clean-freak lizard brain
fully sated, and turned back towards the chaos outside.
Chel stood by the office door, picking off Officers 17 and 18 as
19 ran screaming through the room after being set on fire by
Boss 41's scimitar. In the centre of the room, 20 threw a punch
at Boss 34 who blocked and punched back at ten times the force.
Hearing a cry behind him, he ducked as Boss 41 swung her flaming
scimitar over his head, beheading Officer 21. Recoiling her
sword arm, she raised her gun arm and shot 22 and 23.
"I've got it!" shouted Lockswell.
"Okay! Everyone: to the control room." John Boss the 41st carved
her way through 24, 25, 26, and 27, on her way across the room
to the lift.
From down the hall, a fresh wave of heavily-armed troops charged
into the building, pushing the Red Hand backwards. Chel backed
into the lift just as Boss 41 shut the doors and they started to
ascend.
The metal box they and their weapons had squeezed into carried
them away from the sounds of gunfire and bellowed commands,
immersing them in the sounds of casual, easy listening music.
"Oh, I know this one!" said Boss 34, nodding towards Chel, who
wearily told him to fuck off with her eyes.
The doors opened with a ding. Checking left, checking right,
they made their way down the corridors which now seemed far too
quiet.
"STOP THEM!" The 28th dead guard shouted. They couldn't pinpoint
where the voice was coming from and they didn't dare stop to
check. They just followed close behind Boss 41 as she lead them
deeper into the TV centre.
She turned a corner and immediately un-turned it as Number 29
unloaded their bullets down the corridor at her. The un-turned
corner shed chunks of plaster and flecks of wallpaper as bullets
tore through it. Boss 41 could hear footsteps advancing towards
the corner, but stayed motionless, counting off the bullets the
footsteps were firing, until she head the click of an empty gun.
On cue she emerged and ran 29 through with her flaming scimitar.
At the end of the corridor they found the control room and piled
in. Boss 34 and Chel set about barricading the door behind them
with filing cabinets and an old water cooler.
"Well, we're in. Probably not getting out." said Chel. "How are
doing for time?"
The control room was a large but narrow space with dim lights
and dozens of monitors. Lockswell approached the controls and
starting loading in the film, looking at the large digital clock
above the array of screens that read 1:17pm. "Aerin should have
the signal jammer installed, we'll be ready to go in just a
minute!"
"Did you know, in the remote nation of Binaria in the Erehwon
islands, a minute lasts exactly eleven seconds?" Asked Boss 41,
hearing more footsteps approaching.
After a failed attempt to push the door open, the officer's
outside started to ram their way through.
"Got it!" shouted Lockswell. "We're ready to broadcast in
three…"
A heavy force collided with the door, splintering it in the
middle.
"Two!"
The barricaded filing cabinets fell away as armed guards stormed
the small control room.
"ONE!"