The Variables

Next, she walked into one of the bedrooms. The beds had been stripped and the room was bare. She stood for several minutes looking around, and then she turned back to the man.

“Where did they go?” she asked, her voice shaking. “Where did all these people go?”

“Away,” he said. The man looked at the guns raised on him. He kept his hands behind his back.

“Where?” she asked.

“Bitch, can’t you say please?”

She stormed over and without hesitation hit him across the head with her gun. He flinched and then straightened up. A trickle of blood formed at his brow line and he let it drip without wiping it away.

“Please,” Darla spat.

Ryley snorted and rolled his eyes. “To the Islands,” he replied slowly. “I can tell you everything...I can tell you everything I know...but you still won’t find them. Security was relaxed today because we are getting ready to leave this place.” He glanced at the clock still ticking on the small apartment’s microwave oven. “Twenty minutes.”

“What happens in twenty minutes?” Dean asked.

Ryley made a clicking sound. “The end,” he said.

“Where are the Islands?” Darla asked, redirecting the conversation back to Teddy.

“No,” Ryley said simply. She raised her gun again, but he just shook his head. “Kill me. I’m not telling you that.”

“But that’s where my child is? On the Islands?”

“Your child?” Ryley raised his eyebrows and closed his eyes. “Well, doesn’t that just add a new dimension,” he mumbled under his breath.

“What does that mean?” Darla asked. She took a step closer. “What do you know about my boy—”

The walkie-talkie crackled again. A female voice came on this time, “We are missing Private Ryley. Private Ryley, we are ten minutes away from needing you at the starting point for our operation. Please report to the lab.” Then walkie-talkie clicked off. Then it clicked on. “This is Blair,” the voice added.

“Jeez,” the man said, rolling his eyes. He looked up, “You heard her. If I don’t show, they’re going to come looking for me.”

“This place is huge,” Dean said. “Why will they look for you here?”

Private Ryley lunged for Dean’s gun, but Dean stepped back in time and Ryley stumbled forward, landing on the carpet. Darla landed a soft kick to his side; he began to cough. He swore at them and kicked his legs.

“You’ll die here,” he said between gasps. “There’s no way out.”

“Where is everyone else?” Dean asked.

“Up,” was all he replied.

“Is there an elevator override?”

He nodded. “I have keys,” he said. Darla kicked him in the ribs again. She felt inside his jacket pocket and tossed out a key ring with six shiny silver keys.

“Tell me what’s happening. What do you mean we’re going to die here? What’s happening?” Darla yelled and she held the gun to him.

“You’re the type of filth we were sworn to keep out,” Ryley said monotonously. “You don’t deserve to live. And if you somehow make it out of here alive, then you won’t make it anywhere near that boy. Or the Kings. Do you hear me?”

“Private Ryley,” the woman’s voice said again on the walkie. “We don’t want to continue without you, but—”

There was a loud beeping, like a fire drill. It filled the apartment. The lights flickered. The woman’s voice on the other end of the walkie-talkie ceased to broadcast. She had been cut-off midsentence. Darla and Dean looked up, startled by the loud noise.

“All Copia residents please report to The Center for briefing. All Copia residents please report to The Center for a housing briefing.”

“It’s time,” Ryley said. “You’re dead now.” He scrambled up on his feet and attacked Darla, pushed her straight over on to the floor, his hands wrapped around her middle. Darla kept her gun out of reach and attempted to kick him, but her feet missed. Dean looked at them and called out to Darla, but there was no easy shot, they were just a blur of bodies on the ground. He set the walkie-talkie down on the couch and then rushed over to where Darla was losing the fight. With his left hand he tried to yank the man off of Darla, but Ryley was too strong. He had pi

Noticing her bandages, Ryley took her injured hand and crushed it into the floor, banging her wrist and her hand with methodical maliciousness. She shrieked. Then he stopped slamming her hand and he dug his fingers into her wound and blood seeped through the gauze and down her arm. Darla writhed in pain; her hair fell loose from its ponytail and covered her face, long strands caught in her mouth. Darla’s grip loosened on the gun and she lost control and dropped it to the floor where Ryley was quick to snatch it up. He brought the gun up to her temple without hesitation.

“Sorry,” he said, but his tone was fully victorious.

A blast echoed.

Ryley’s body jerked and went limp and fell down onto Darla. She screamed and pushed him off of her, and his body rolled to the carpet. Blood poured out of the wound in the back of his head, creating a pool underneath him. Darla looked down and realized her clothes were covered in speckles of blood. Her hands were covered in blood. She let out a shaky cry and scrambled backward.

Above them, the siren still beeped and beeped and beeped.

Dean stood frozen. His hand still holding the gun where Ryley’s head used to be.

“Oh, Jesus,” Darla said. “Oh...oh...oh...”

“There was no other way,” Dean whispered. He spun to Darla. “There was no other way.” His eyes were wide and wild.

She nodded. “Yeah. No other way. He was going...to kill me...”

“I killed him,” he said.

“Yeah.” She looked away and wiped her hands on her pants. Ryley’s blood smeared across her palms. “Dean, there was no other way. One more second and I would be dead. You did what you had to do...”

“I killed him,” Dean said again and he dropped the gun to the floor and sunk to the carpet, looking at the man’s lifeless body, the blood still spreading outward across the industrial carpet.

“Let’s go,” Darla said and she took back her gun from Ryley’s hand. It was then she noticed she was shaking. She tried to calm herself, but she couldn’t. “Let’s just get out of here.”

“Back up to the surface?” Dean asked.

Darla nodded. “Something bad is going to happen here. Let’s just go. We know the way. Grab his keys and let’s go.”

Reaching down, Dean grabbed the keys. He took the radio, and they started back out down the hall—the incessant beep as the background music to their escape. When they reached the hallway, they opened the door and stumbled forward to the elevators. They pushed the button and waited. It arrived without fanfare.

“Hurry, hurry,” Dean said.

The elevator stopped. The doors opened. It took Dean a second to realize that they had not traveled to the floor they had wanted; they had stopped early. Dean pushed the button again and jiggled Ryley’s override keys, but the elevator didn’t budge. He swore and kicked the side, but still it didn’t move.

“Come on,” Darla said and she tugged Dean’s arm and pulled him off the elevator. They rushed out on to the new floor. It looked exactly like the floor they had just come from, like a carnival fun maze. Grabbing a knob, they ran into a new hallway, and it was also identical to the one below. She stepped backward and spun.

There was a second elevator. She pushed the button, but nothing happened.

“Do they know we’re here? Did they stop the elevators?” Dean asked.

“Let’s hide until we know,” Darla commanded and she raced back down the hallway. Slowing down their pace until they realized that the hallway was a dead-end. Darla turned to walk back toward the elevator.

“What the hell is this place?” Dean called, out of breath.

Darla slid to the floor and tucked her knees up tight.