Lyra
I sat back against the wall of the tunnel as Ian tried to get the hatch back into place. The wall was comfortably curved, and this close to an exit, the metal was cool. I suddenly caught myself falling asleep, and pinched myself to stay awake.
"What time do you think it is?" I asked.
"No idea," Ian said, pulling the hatch shut. "Your HUD might tell you."
I swiveled the small screen into place in front of my eye, and checked the default display. I groaned.
"0500 hours," I said. "We've been running around and hiding for almost twenty-four hours."
"We'll be out of here soon," Ian said, as the hatch finally latched into place. "Then it'll be a leisurely hike to the coast and a beachfront motel room, and we'll reach our parents and they'll be okay and they'll take us home, and we'll release all the information we have on this place, and send a copy to the president and he'll shut it down and it'll all just be a bad memory."
"... Do you believe our parents are still alive?" I asked.
He sighed, and buried his face in his hands.
"I don't know. Let's just do what we need to do and get out of here."
"Right." I sat up straight. "We should find a computer. We can get some floorplans for this place, get into their systems and see how we can do some damage."
"One more thing," he said. "I don't think they erased our memories or somehow induced amnesia. I think we still have our memories, but we just can't get to them. I want to find a way to shut down these chips they put in us."
"You think the chips are keeping our memories from coming back?" I asked. "That doesn't make sense. You already burned out your chip... or the 'ghosts' did anyway."
"I only destroyed part of it. There's something still working back there," he said, pointing to the nape of his neck. "I can sense it."
I sighed. "So we also have to find a way to shut down the chips. Ian, we're not going to have a lot of time to do all this. They'll detect us the second we break into one of those computers."
"Could you live without knowing what's really been happening? Without any memories of your life, or your family?"
"I guess not," I admitted.
"Then we do it."
We made good time getting back to the "spiderweb"-- that was the closest thing I could liken the huge cone-like structure to-- using the video playbacks on our HUDs to guide us. When we got to the hatch, Ian opened it just enough for him to peer out.
"All clear."
We crawled out into the chamber, staying low against the outer wall, safe within the shadows. Using the binoculars, I spotted a computer terminal about a quarter of the way around the top tier from where we were, and we headed for it. As we approached the doors to the elevator we had used before, there suddenly came the sound of gears shifting and the elevator descending. The doors slid open, and I heard activity within. We were caught.
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Ian
To the left was the open pit, and to the right, a solid wall. The hatch was too far behind us to get to in time, and before us were the open elevator doors. There was only one way to go.
"Lyra," I whispered. "Stay absolutely still."
I grabbed her hand and we levitated high above the circular tier, into the shadows of the domed ceiling. Below, four jet black hunter-killers and two guard bots rolled out onto the steel floor. They split up and went in opposite directions, two hunter-killers and one guard in each group, and rolled away.
"Nice work," Lyra said when they were far enough away. "We can stay up here and fly straight to the terminal. We'll be completely unnoticed, and we won't have to walk."
I involuntarily looked down. Below were several hundred feet of steel and titanium catwalks and bridges, electrical conduits, and, at the very bottom, a large room entirely encased in glass.
"Maybe it would be safer to just walk."
"What, afraid of heights?" she asked with a smirk.
"No, just afraid of falling from them," I said. "I don't know how long I can hold us up." I closed my eyes tightly and slowly let the ghost energy dissapate, and we descended. I didn't open my eyes until both my feet were firmly on the floor. "Better safe than sorry."
"If you say so," she said.
Weak, bruised, and loaded down with heavy supplies, it took twenty minutes to reach the computer terminal just a mile and a half or so from where we had started. As we got closer, I saw how Lyra had spotted it: the station was gigantic, even by the standards of people two hundred years ago. Whereas a PC, LCD screen, and Grid setup could all fold up to a few square inches, the semi-circular metal computer bank, set along the edge of a large balcony protruding form the main walkway, was fifty feet long. Cameras set along the top were pointed down at the area, some 350 feet below, where robots worked to crank out the next batch of soldiers. Each camera corresponded to a monitor, and at each monitor were a keyboard and chair. The computers seemed to be in a sleep mode, their blank screens casting a faint glow in the darkness of the pit. The station was deserted, so we walked right in and I sat in a chair near the center of the crescent, so that I would be hidden from the view of anyone else in the area by the two ends of the computer bank. I pressed a button and the glow from the monitor slowly grew as the computer woke up. As I waited for something to happen, I heard a hydraulic hissing noise coming from behind me. I spun the chair around and stood.
A section of the outer wall had slid away. A man walked out, clad in the same drab green armored uniform I had seen on the other human guards, sipping a cup of coffee. He saw us, and instantly dropped the mug and raised his gun.
"What are you doing here?" he asked angrily and suspiciously. "Wait a minute, you're the two trying to escape."
"We--" Lyra started.
"Shut up! Get away from there." He motioned away from the computer bank with the barrel of his rifle.
We moved away, and he edged towards the control panel. His free hand reached for the alarm button.
"Wait! You don't want to do that," Lyra warned.
"Are you going to stop me?" he leered.
"No,
he is," she said, gesturing towards me. "Do something," she whispered to me.
"What am I supposed to do? I can't attack him."
She sighed exaperatedly. "Fine, just do something so I have a chance to get to him."
"What's going on?" the guard demanded.
I threw my hand out, fingers splayed, and focused on his gun. It wrenched itself out of his hand and skittered across the floor to my feet. He took a running step toward me, but his next step was in the air as I levitated him up off his feet. He kept trying to run, flailing around in the air. A panicked look was on his face.
"Thanks," Lyra said.
She ran straight at the soldier as if she were going to ram him back into the computer bank. At the last second she leapt into the air, planting her hands on his shoulders and flipping over him. Then, launching herself from the top of the metal protrusion, she tackled him from behind, crashing straight into the small of his back.
The force carried them both forward out of the area affected by the power radiating from my hand, and Lyra crashed to the floor atop the hapless guard. She grabbed his arms and pinned them behind his back, but he was too strong. Twisting and jerking, he bucked her off and straight into the wall. Her back made a dent in the metal wall as she collided with it, then sank to the floor.
"Lyra!"
"Get him," she wheezed.
The soldier was already getting up. I ran at him, hoping I could get in a hit before he recovered, but it was too late. Just as I reached him, he stood up straight. He caught my foot as I kicked at his midsection, and twisted my leg with such force that I was spun into the air before crashing painfully into the steel grate of the floor. He placed one boot firmly against the side of my head, and I could feel the metal bands pressing deep into my cheek. Just when I thought my head would implode, I heard a shout, and the pressure was suddenly gone.
Looking up, I saw the guard reeling away, his hands over the back of his head. Now it was Lyra standing over me, clutching the guard's gun like a stave. She helped me up, and I quickly prepared myself for another attack.
The guard brought his hands away, covered in his own blood. The sight seemed to enrage him. He rushed at us, fists clenched and raised. Before either of us could do anything, he drove his left fist into my stomach, then, as I was doubled over, caught me squarely in the jaw with a powerful hook. I felt my head snap back and to the side, and I stumbled back, unable to stand. I slumped against the wall. My vision blurred, and I could barely make out what was happening.
The guard tried to wrestle his gun away from Lyra. She fought fiercely, but he was too strong. He was slowly forcing her back towards the far end of the balcony, where instead of a large wall of steel separating the catwalk from the deep pit, there was only a railing a few feet high. I tried to call out to her, but all the air had been forced out of my lungs by the punch to my stomach. As I watched, horrified, he pushed her back against the rail. Only then did she realize the danger, but it was too late. She tore the butt of the weapon out of his grasp and desperately smashed it against the side of his face, but the move was not enough to force him back. With a final push, he sent her teetering back over the railing.
"No!" I stood and ran staggeringly, hoping I could catch her foot. The guard, swaying from the last blow, collapsed on the floor, and Lyra, her arms windmilling helplessly, tipped over backwards and fell.
"NO--!" I tripped over the guard's unconscious body, and my forehead banged the railing on the way down. My senses dulled. All I could feel was pain. That, and a sense of failure. I had been just a few seconds too late. My eyes stared down through the grated floor. I watched as my tears and blood, and the blood of the guard, worked their ways down throught the holes and dripped into the darkness below. Then I heard Lyra shout.
I must be hallucinating, I thought. I just lay there, not wanting to move, not caring if I was found.
I heard the sound again, closer, it seemed. I looked up, not knowing what to expect. Lyra hung there, as if suspended by invisible wires. She was real. But how could that be?
She looked as scared as I felt.
"Lyra? What's going on?"
"I have no idea."
"You're floating! Maybe... maybe you destroyed the control chip."
"How?" she asked. "I didn't do anything."
"All it took for me was a surge of anger. I guess for you, it was a surge of fear. You willed something to happen so much that the chip couldn't supress the 'ghosts', and it burned out."
"Well, that's fine but... how do I get down? This is getting tiring..."
As if her words had made it happen, she suddenly dropped out of the air. She grabbed the railing with both hands.
"Lyra! Hold on, I've got you!"
I braced my feet against two poles supporting the railing, grabbed her by the wrists, and pulled her up onto the catwalk.
"Are you okay? How bad did he hurt you? I didn't grab you too hard, did I?"
"I'm fine, Mom," she said sarcastically, shaking me off.
"I guess so," I said, scowling unintentionally.
"Sorry. I'm okay. Th-thank you."
We bound and gagged the guard with rope from the packs in case he woke up, and then I went back to the computer to find a way to shut down the facility, and restore our memories. It asked for user identification, and did a retinal scan and fingerprint verification, for which we used the unconscious soldier. We entered a code that we found on an ID card in his pocket, and when it asked for voice verification, I shook him lightly to wake him up.
"Huh? Wh--what?"
A monotone human voice came from the speakers. "Voice verification complete. Identity confirmed. Thank you."
The soldier groaned and fainted again.
Finally a startup screen appeared. I opened a file called "Subject Records", and found the words Subject 290 and Subject 291, with our names under them.
"At least she didn't lie about our names," Lyra remarked.
There were files on both of us, but we were too short on time to read them. Lyra saved the files both to her wrist computer and to a disc, and then I found what I had been looking for: there was a checkbox by each name that said, "Deactivate control chip. Note: chip cannot be reactivated."
I looked at Lyra. She nodded solemnly. I checked both boxes, then hit "Execute". A message came up saying, "Control chips succesfully deactivated," and my memories began to flood back.
Sigh.
It is done. If anyone is still reading, I will try to turn these out faster from now on. I am a big perfectionist, and I have to make sure that everything is just the way I want it before posting. I'm taking this a lot more seriously than the fics I've done before, because it has a lot more meaning. Or at least it will. Hopefully, if you compare this with earlier works, you will already find more meaning in this than in those old ones. If not, it's just me. I mean, someone else might find a different kind of meaning, or maybe it won't mean anything to them at all, but... it is meaningful to me. So. There you are.