The Earth Dwellers

I wait, like a spider, watching my web for the perfect moment to pounce on my prey.

We pass through a doorway, into a large room, sparkling clean and smelling sterile with antiseptic. “Where is everyone?” the male soldier behind me says.

“At night they’re on call, and since there hasn’t been much action lately…” the senior officer says. “We’ll get her to a bed and then call someone.”

No one’s here. Not a single person except us. This might be my only shot. The doctor will have questions. Hard questions. I have to act now. Now. NOW!

I snap my eyes open and kick my legs back, clamping them to the head of the soldier behind me. Then I whip my ankles forward, pulling him over my head and onto the gurney with me. He cries out as our combined body weight brings the board down on top of the woman soldier, who stumbles.

His head’s in my lap, and I don’t waste any time. Two hard punches to the head and his tongue lolls out, his eyes rolling back in his skull.

The woman scrambles, tries to roll, to kick and fight her way out from underneath us, where her legs are pi

My mind is cycling through my options. If I don’t kill them, it could really come back to bite me. But what if they’re like the sun dwellers, mindless drones operating under a system where the only thing they know is their little world, following orders without question. Do they deserve to die the same way that President Nailin did? The way Lecter does?

Time’s ru

First, I take the backboard and lay it in a stack against the wall, trying to buy time, my mind racing.

I withdraw my knife, approach the woman. Hold it close to her neck. Take a deep breath. Lower it to her right arm, where Tristan sliced me open. Withdraw the blade.

No. She’s the leader of her platoon. People will know who she is. Her soldiers. Her superiors. I’ll be discovered too soon.

I should probably kill them, and I may be making my second mistake, like when I chose not to throw up in the truck, but I can’t. Not with them lying here, defenseless, when all they were trying to do was get me medical attention. I scan the room, locate a locker with a large cross on it. Supplies. Medical supplies. I rush over and thrust it open, quickly reading the labels. I recognize some of them. For pain. For fevers. Ah! Anesthesia. Needles with plungers, full of the stuff. Perfect.

I don’t know where to inject the fluid, so I roll up their sleeves and pick out the largest vein I can find in each of their arms, jam the needles into them, and press down hard on the plungers. Then, for good measure, I give them each a second dose. I hope it won’t kill them, but I need them out as long as possible—it’s a risk I have to take.

Next I rip the sheets off one of the beds and use my knife to methodically cut it into strips. Bind their hands and feet, tie them together. Gag their mouths. Remove their weapons: guns and knives and grenades.

Now where to stash them? There are plenty of closets around, but surely those are used on an almost daily basis. Not a good spot. The other rooms in the hall we came from? Probably used regularly, too, except for maybe…Electrical Room. Unless there’s a problem with the electricity, no one would go in there.

Feet first, I drag the guy to the doorway, peek to my right and then to my left, up and down the hall. Quiet. Empty. I slide him out, across the bare, white tile. There! Electrical Room. I jiggle the handle but it doesn’t open, feels locked. In frustration, I twist it again and shove with my shoulder.

It gives way and I barge through into darkness. Except for…a green, blinking light with shining letters above it: Effective.

We’re in business.

I drag the soldier inside, stop, feel around with my hands. The equipment with the green light has plenty of space behind it. I stuff him back there and return for his superior officer, doing the same with her. When I close the door behind me, I take a deep breath, steady myself against the wall, close my eyes for just a second.

I can do this.

Next step: get a chip. It has to be one from someone who won’t be missed, who won’t be able to rat me out.

I stride off down the hall, as if I belong, stopping only briefly to collect the weapons left behind by the unconscious soldiers.

The medical building is eerie at night, even more so because it’s so brightly lit and yet so empty. Surely there’s illness and accidents in the New City. Surely the residents need medical attention sometimes, even at night. Perhaps this is only for the army, whose actions, according to Wilde, have been confined to searching for the Tri-Tribes. Nothing particularly dangerous. No casualties, no injuries. Thus, an empty army medical ward at night.

I pass through a wide room labeled Eatery. There are long rows of white tables, benches on either side of them, attached with metal piping. I’m partway across when I hear it. Music. Well, sort of. Someone singing, just loud enough for the sound to carry through the unoccupied hallways.

Do I run in the other direction?

It’s a woman’s voice and I need a chip.

I make for the singing, crossing the rest of the cafeteria on tiptoes. Down another passage, the singing getting louder, clearer:

Rest, my darling,

Sleep, my darling,

Dream your cares away,

Do not fuss,

Do not cry,

The night is here to stay.

It’s coming from one of the rooms branching off from the hall I’m now in, but I can’t tell which one, the echoes distorting the direction of the sound.

First room, door closed. Move on.

Next room, open. Peek inside. Empty, except for shelves of supplies. A bucket. A mop. Cleaning liquids.

Third room, also closed. Singing getting louder still:

Travel down roads of gold,

My darling, Charity,

Don’t be scared, for you are bold,

Find your way back to me.

A lullaby. I recognize it. My mother sang it to me when I was little. A moon dweller lullaby. Could this woman be…a moon dweller? Tristan said many moon and star dwellers were tricked into coming above, to be used as the servants of the earth dwellers. To do all the work that the migrant sun dwellers didn’t want to do—that they weren’t used to doing. Cleaning, trash collection and disposal, food preparation…

I peek in the fourth room and she’s there, holding a mop, dabbing it in a water-filled bucket, squeezing it out. Sweeping it back and forth in circles on the floor, until the surface shines under the fluorescent lights. Wearing white linen pants and a white shirt, blond hair spilling down her back. Clearly not a soldier. Her back is to me. A cleaner. A servant. A chip.

Would anyone miss this woman? Maybe, but not the same way they’d miss an officer. Has fate brought me to her to use for my purposes? Do I have it in me to cut her open, to spill her blood, to stain her brilliantly white clothes? My earlier silent promise to myself rattles through my head. Whatever I have to do…

I take a soundless step inside the room and she goes on mopping the floor, whistling now.

My fingers tighten on the knife in my belt, brush against the gun strapped beside it. Hot blood rushes through my veins, my heart pounding.

I take another step, my shadow trailing behind me.

A noise, high-pitched but not overly loud, rings out. Sort of throaty.