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Chapter 21
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“Blaster Poisoning: a common affliction resulting from blaster wounds left untreated for more than a few minutes. Although it was virtually wiped out by the advent of advanced battlefield-medical inoculations, the problem ran rampant in the pre-Radical Government era. It’s been said blaster poisoning was responsible for more deaths than every other method of killing the Central Government’s come up with combined.” Radical Archive – Glossary & FAQ Section
Veronica phased in and out of consciousness, not completely aware of anything outside of the pain in her shoulder and hip. She remembered the stairwell…the footsteps below them and the whispered urging from Chad to keep quiet as he carried her to the twentieth floor. She remembered hearing blaster fire sometime before they entered the elevator shaft, but couldn’t quite place where it was since she kept her eyes closed, hoping for the best. Her most lucid moments seemed to be from inside the elevator shaft itself – warm, dank, and nearly pitch black. “Where are we?” Veronica asked. “Welcome back,” Chad said. “We’re in the shaft.” “How long have we been in here?” “About ten floors,” he said. “How are you feeling?” “I have pain violently ripping through the right half of my body. I’m sweaty. And I’m being hunted down for extermination. You do the math.” “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor in all of this,” Chad said. He struggled to laugh between heaves as he continued his downward climb. “No jokes about my weight either,” she said. “I didn’t say a word.” “You were thinking about it though.” She began to add to that, but stopped as her eyes began rolling back in her head. Her body convulsed, nearly throwing her off Chad’s back. “Hold on there,” he said, “I’m not losing you after all of this.” He wrapped one arm around the ladder bar on the elevator shafts rear wall, grabbed Veronica with his free arm, and held her as tight as he could until the convulsions passed. “Damned blasters,” he said to the darkness in front of him. He knew the wounds were becoming infected, and that he’d need to treat them as soon as they reached the basement level. Veronica regained consciousness again sometime later. When she opened her eyes, all she could see was darkness. “Chad?” she whispered. “I’m here,” he said. “Are you doing any better now?” “My stomach isn’t revolting anymore, if that’s what you mean. And the pain is less. Where are we?” “In one of the rooms along the basement corridor. You passed out in the elevator shaft after having a seizure. I doubled up the effort to get you to safety since you needed antibiotics to stave off infection from those blasts. That incursion kit thankfully had some basic medical supplies in it.” “So we’re safe for now?” she asked. “For the immediate future, yes. They know we’re still in the building though, so they won’t stop looking until they either find us or business begins tomorrow morning.” “So we’re here for the duration then.” “I’m afraid so. You should get some more rest. I’ll keep watch,” Chad said. “Thank you, by the way.” “For what?” “For saving my life.” Chad smiled. “I owed you one anyway.” Veronica rested her head on her left arm, lying on her left side trying to go back to sleep. Nearly the instant she closed her eyes, Veronica drifted into a deep sleep filled with odd dreams. Each one seemed to take her back to the same place: the train yard in Seattle. Something about it kept drawing her attention, like a beacon calling out to her. The most disturbing among them stayed with her even after she woke up in a sweaty panic. In it, she began her daily routine at Blithe Spirit just as she did any other day. She didn’t even realize she was dreaming until she walked out of her suite door and into Todd’s office. There, he was standing facing his back wall, staring at the holo-window. “That’s not real, you know,” she said. Todd turned and looked at her like she’d just laid an egg. “You of all people should know things aren’t always as they appear Miss Quibs.” “You’ve never call me that,” she said. “Aren’t you going to ask me what’s so interesting?” Veronica sighed impatiently and walked over to the window. “What’s so interesting about…” but she stopped mid-sentence as she peered out the window into the Seattle train yard. “It’s wet out there, you should take a jacket,” he said. “Why do I have to go out into the rain?” “You’re the one with the ethical code, not me. Remember? No man left behind…” “Alex,” Veronica said. “But I searched for him for weeks after arriving in New Chicago. I did everything I could!” “Hey, I understand about these things,” he said. The Cheshire grin on his face made Veronica’s stomach do back flips. “I don’t know why I’m even listening to you. You’re just a big faker…an evil one at that!” Veronica suddenly felt like she was eight years old and screaming at a bully. Above them, the Blithe Spirit building alarms began sounding. Sirens dropped down from the ceiling and horns began blowing, indicating a hostile entry into the building. Veronica instinctively began looking for the nearest exit. Seeing the window in front of her, she pushed the shutters open and jumped through, landing in a puddle somewhere in the middle of the Seattle train yard. The same storm from so many dreams past still raged above her, sending a deluge of water across the landscape. People marched back and forth all around her, seemingly oblivious to her sitting on the ground squatting in a mud puddle. In the distance, somewhere behind her, she could her Alex’s voice calling out to her. She could also still hear the Blithe Spirit alarms though, too. She had to make a decision. She could go after Alex, or she could board the train and escape those looking for her. She stood up from the ground, still dripping with water and mud. She peered back into the crowd, holding a hand up above her eyes to shield them from the rain. She couldn’t see Alex anywhere, but she knew he was there. Behind her, the train’s final boarding call whistle sounded. She knew her time was up, and that if she didn’t board now she wouldn’t be able to. She closed her eyes, said goodbye to Alex, and turned to board the train car now immediately behind her. The cold railing felt slippery in her palms as she pulled herself up onto the car one foot at a time. The air felt heavy, thick with precipitation and fear. She needed to dry off before sitting down, so she walked to the end of the car to find the bathroom. Before arriving, she peered into the next car. There, Todd was sitting at his desk – completely integrated with the train car. Intrigued, she pushed her way out the door and stood between the cars staring at him, sitting there talking to someone with her back to Veronica. Without looking, Veronica knew Lorelei was the passenger talking to Todd. As her dream became more lucid, she began recognizing the culmination of former dreams and memories amalgamating. This time, she knew for sure it was Lorelei before seeing her face based solely on her hat: Lorelei was wearing the same back knitted cap she was wearing that night they went on the surveillance mission. How long ago was that? Veronica thought. She pulled the lever to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Simultaneously, the train’s final whistle sounded to alert passengers to take their seats to prepare for the magnetic slingshot release that would send the train hurdling down the track toward New Chicago. Panic set in. Veronica jiggled the handle harder, not afraid of catching the attention of someone in either car. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?” she said as she banged on the door’s thick glass window. She turned around to try the other door she’d come from, but it was now locked as well in preparation for take off. She knew she had to do something, but anxiety and fear began overwhelming her. She turned again to the train car with Todd. Before she could begin banging on the window again, she saw Todd’s face peering out at her. “Todd!” she said. “Open the door!” Todd released the door lock, opened the door, and allowed Veronica entry to the train car. “I see you made your decision,” he said. “Please, have a seat.” “What about…” she stopped asking about Lorelei as she saw the empty seat at Todd’s desk awaiting her. Across the room, sitting in a regular train chair, Lorelei stared out the window at the rain beginning to pour down. “You have a decision to make, Veronica.” Todd sat down at his desk chair and leaned back, kicking out his legs underneath his desk. “We can offer you a life in here that doesn’t exist outside that train car door.” “But Alex is out there,” Veronica said. “You’ve already made that decision. I need you to make this one now.” He leaned forward and began speaking in a whisper. “Join my team.” Veronica looked around the train car for answers. Red plush carpet overlapped with office veneer just as seamlessly as the people from Blithe Spirit and the original train car. Veronica peered over at Lorelei instinctively, feeling the need to protect her from Todd. Lorelei was already staring at her, almost pleadingly. Her eyes begged Veronica to do something… to make a decision. The right decision. A hand touched Veronica’s right hand, pulling her attention forward again toward Todd. “Veronica?” the voice said. Veronica opened her eyes and saw she was still in the basement of the mission building. Her head was in Chad’s lap, propped up on one of his arms, as he held her hand with his free hand. She looked up at him with sleepy eyes. “I let him go,” she said. “You were having a bad dream. You were also talking pretty loud too, so I thought best to wake you up in case they’re on this level.” “I love you,” Veronica said to no one in particular. Chad wasn’t sure whether she was speaking to him or to one of the fading images from her dream. He simply squeezed her hand as a reply. The moment ended abruptly as noise from the hallway interrupted them. Veronica opened her eyes again as Chad gently laid her head down on the ground. She watched as he grabbed his rapid-fire assault blaster and slid behind one of the nearby crates to cover his presence, hoping the soldiers would pass without incident. The cold cement floor reverberated every footstep… every voice from the hallway. Veronica laid on her back, right face to the floor as she watched Chad in action. He focused all of his attention on the door, waiting on the soldiers to come through. “You’ve already made that decision,” Todd’s voice said inside Veronica’s head. She closed her eyes, not wanting to listen to him. “You left him in the train yard.” Veronica slipped back into a dream as consciousness left her. She stared at Todd across the train car, looking out the window at the storm. She approached him, taking position at his left side to look out the adjacent window. “This concussion or hallucination is all your fault,” Veronica said. She knew she was dreaming this time, and tried to control the dream. “I didn’t tell you to enter the building.” “You sent those men though,” Veronica said. “And another thing… why do you keep bringing me back here?” Todd laughed. “This is your head, Veronica. I don’t make you go anywhere.” “You know what I mean. Why do I keep coming back here?” “Perhaps something here is bothering your unconscious mind, and dreaming about it is your mind’s way of sorting it out.” Veronica scrunched her brow. “I know, it’s about Alex.” “Things are seldom that cut and dry,” Todd said. He turned to face Veronica. “I think perhaps you should focus on the here and now for the time being, though.” He faded in front of her eyes, leaving Veronica alone in the train car. She turned back to the window and stared out at the storm pouring buckets of rain down on Seattle. “This one’s next,” a voice said somewhere outside the train car. “Be as quiet as possible,” Chad said from far away. Veronica realized she was somewhere between dreaming and consciousness, and couldn’t force herself to wake up fully. It worried her; she wasn’t accustomed to losing control over simple things like sleep and sitting up straight. The antibiotics had to be either wearing off or just not strong enough; Veronica knew she had a fever. Her hands felt clammy, and she could feel the sweat dripping down from her forehead. She walked across the train car and took a seat at Todd’s desk. Veronica closed her eyes and concentrated on the voices in the real world, trying to will away the dream. “Inspect the room. Too many hiding places here to just do a walk by,” a male voice said. Veronica held her breath. Not a sound, not a whisper. Gunfire. The smell of burned flesh filled the room. Veronica opened her eyes and thankfully saw Chad in front of her instead of the train car. He’d fired on the soldiers before they found him. The only problem now was the inevitable reinforcements that would arrive to find those soldiers. Veronica waited a moment to see if other soldiers appeared from the hallway. When they didn’t, she felt safe in talking in a whisper. “We need to move the bodies out of the open.” “I need to do that; you need to sleep Veronica.” Chad leaned over and felt her forehead. “I also need to get you out of here. You’re getting worse.” “I’ll be fine, just do what needs to be done. I’m sorry, by the way.” “For what?” he asked. “For not finding you sooner… before things got serious between you two.” “You can’t dictate how life will turn out; you can only hope to shape it one moment at a time by making good decisions.” He looked up at the dead soldiers. “I need to go clean up before the next wave arrives. Will you be okay for a minute or two?” “I told you I’ll be fine; now get them out of the open.” Chad ran a hand through Veronica’s sweaty red hair once more before standing up to clean house. “I do too, you know.” He hoped she knew what he was responding to…that her admission wasn’t part of some hallucination. Veronica rubbed her eyes, trying to make sense of everything. She watched as Chad stood and walked over to the bodies. He lifted the first one by the shoulders and began dragging him back toward the back of the room. Before he made it halfway to the crates where Veronica lay hidden, Chad heard something behind him. “Freeze or we’ll shoot,” the voices said. “Drop your weapons.” Chad turned to find a small delegation of CJ Guild soldiers armed to the teeth, all with weapons pointed right at him. He didn’t have a weapon in his hands, so he dropped the dead soldier and held his hands above his head. “Turn around completely, and do it slowly.” They needed to check for weapons. Chad did as instructed, turning clockwise as slowly as he could. When his back was to the soldiers, he silently lipped to Veronica, “hide!” Though he had no voice to emphasize the word of caution, Veronica saw the importance in his wild, wide eyes. He continued turning back toward the soldiers as Veronica frantically looked in all directions for somewhere to hide. With seemingly nowhere to go, Veronica decided the only thing she could do was move behind one of the crates, take position, and fire at the soldiers if she could get a clean shot. She hoped there weren’t too many of them; she wouldn’t be able to take them all out before they got a shot off at Chad. She sat up from the floor slowly, head still pounding. She wiped the sweat from her forehead as she waited on a head rush to pass. Veronica knew she was getting worse for sure now. Her stomach felt like it was turning inside out. Her skin crawled where she had blaster burns. And her skin felt clammy everywhere. She knew the hallucinations wouldn’t be too far off either. Veronica looked around in the dark for the assault blaster, spotting it a few paces away. The cold, hard floor below her seemed to echo the tiniest movements. She eased up onto her hands and knees, being careful to control her breathing. Every movement felt like a fiery, painful eternity. When she finally made it to the blaster, Veronica wasn’t sure she’d even be able to aim and fire it she felt so weak. That wouldn’t matter though. She did manage to make it to the safety of the nearby crates after labored, silent crawling. With the blaster slung over her back to prevent it from dragging along the ground, Veronica summoned the strength to find cover. Before she could pulled the blaster from her shoulder and aim it though, she felt the nausea again. It was the same feeling she had in the elevator shaft just before she lost consciousness. “Oh bugger,” she thought as her eyes began fading to black and her eyes rolled back into the back of her head. |
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The Radical Chronicles is Copyright © 2009 by Tim Peacock.
