The early morning haze was beginning to fade, slowly, and the remnants of life that should’ve been there before were finally starting to line the streets. But even still, despite the days break they all got to share in, a quiet few grumbled and moaned about being awake so early. The silence that was once there was now filled with the lethargic scraping of boots on cold ground.
It had took Sam and Flick exactly twenty minutes to reach the elevator that Flick was so accustomed to. With ten minutes spent ducking and weaving between the early morning shoppers, and the other ten spent ogling at middle class store windows, containing wondrous contraptions the pair had never seen. It was a rare moment in Flick’s life to be up this early without having to work, seeing the clockwork of the pillar he lived in tick so painfully slow and sluggish. But for some strange reason seeing the world, his world, this sleepy relaxed him deeply, for once it appeared innocent instead of overbearing.
It was only Sam’s beckoning of him that made him realise the task that was laid before them. If he was caught doing this, by literally anyone, then his job was as good as gone. Despite this, something inside of Flick didn’t care about the repercussions, what that something was he didn’t quite know, but he was confident that it was the thing that kept pulling him to take down SMILE with Sam. There was one feeling he did know very well in that moment though.
Fear. Although again, he had no idea what for, just a weird feeling in the pits of stomach that told him something was wrong.
Once Flick was done admiring the fading stillness of morning, he centred himself on the elevator by Sam’s side. Then, picking up a loose piece of debris nearby his feet, he reeled back and launched it towards the control panel for the elevator.
He missed completely.
After three or four more attempts the big mechanical red button that operated the elevator clicked into place and after a few moments of silence, the platform began to shake itself to life yet again, slowly descending to the lockers below.
“Jesus, these things have worn down” Sam said, looking to her feet and noticing the violently vibrating ground beneath her, “they used to be silent you know.”
The words had somewhat put Flick off, seeing how they meant that the elevator was in much worse condition than he had initially believed,
“O-oh really?” he touched the back of his neck nervously, “Well you kinda get used to them after a while,”
Flick paused for a moment, listening to the turning gears of the elevator, “Gimme your hand for a sec, I think were nearing our stop,”
Without warning he grabbed her hand firmly and waited, not thinking much of the action itself nor its implications. Flick, of course, knew of the elevators tendency to jolt suddenly whenever it stopped, and didn’t hesitate to grab her in case she couldn’t keep balance. Being able to adjust for the air-time that the elevator provided was something only gained through experience, any guest or newbie was expected to be held in some way, it was only natural. However Sam, not being aware of this, was reasonably taken aback, mistaking Flick’s caution as haphazard affection.
“W-what?!” she swiped her hands away to Flick’s surprise and dismay.
Just as she did so the elevator, as expected, halted and immediately flung the two of them up into the air, some couple feet off the ground. Flick had no trouble landing, the experience of falling over repeatedly during his first months as a cutter made his senses sharp, or at least worn enough to know how he should drop properly.
On the other hand though, he knew that Sam didn’t stand a chance. If the elevator used to be silent back in her time it was definitely not supposed to jut into place whenever it stopped, there was no way Sam could know that. Flick’s head snapped towards her the second he had the opportunity to, hoping that whatever damage she sustained was simple and as far from broken bones and concussions as possible.
Surprisingly however, Sam didn’t seem injured at all. In fact, she was stood as though nothing had happened, despite the shocked and embarrassed expression that stretched across her face.
Sam sighed shakily, “Okay, my bad, I didn’t know the elevator would do that.” She ended with a slight reassuring chuckle, meant more to calm herself than Flick.
Sam stood breathing for a while, gathering herself as best as she could before finally remembering what she just did, “I am so sorry for swatting you away like that Flick, I thought you were… you know?”
“Nah don’t worry about it, I probably should’ve told you before we got on honestly” he chuckled, there was a clear nervous disposition in his voice as he talked. “I’m surprised you didn’t fall though; most people do the first time around.”
“Honestly me too, these elevators were definitely not designed to do that when we originally made them.” She replied, watching the ground beneath her with amusement. “With a stop like that I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing dropped!”
She laughed at the thought, but when she saw Flick’s terrified glances at the floor below him she quickly realised, it wasn’t as much of a hypothetical as she first assumed.
Changing the topic, Sam looked forward to the rows of numbers in front of her, “O-Okayyy so the lockers are just here right?”
As she moved off of the elevator to the lockers, she left Flick behind, who was still staring in disbelief at how Sam managed to keep her balance. In spite of his definite worry about the platform falling, there was something else on Flick’s mind that was creeping up on his conscious more and more. Before Sam started speaking he noticed something odd, even more odd than her eyes changing colour at random a few moments before. Just after the initial vibration of the elevator stopping had stilled, he distinctly saw her skin move. Not like in the usual goose-bump inducing way that a person’s skin would have done upon a sudden stop or fall, but her skin rippled.
In a fraction of a second he swore that he could see Sam’s skin ripple slightly, like the surface of water, the ripples even bounced off of each other in small echoes like they would’ve in a disturbed, still pond. Flick came to two conclusions pretty quickly, either A: something was definitely wrong with Sam, or B: he was paying a little too much attention to the way Sam’s body looked. He spent the next few moments in thought, about how a person’s eyes can change in different lit angles, and how skin had the tendency to wobble and stretch whenever it was shaken up too much. As Flick pondered, he slowly began to realise which option he was falling into, and in a clumsy, embarrassed manner, chased after Sam in an attempt to rid himself of the blush swelling up in his cheeks.
He hopped over the railings but found she was nowhere in sight, scanning past each segment of organised rows there wasn’t even a trace of her presence, not even a door left open. Flick didn’t think to check in the supply closet, which to him was obviously not anywhere close to the lockers, until he heard a crash from somewhere deep inside. He peered in carefully, finally spotting Sam hunched over a box of scrap metal, clawing through it like a child’s toy box.
Before he could say anything she was already dragging the box back onto the platform, flinging it perfectly into the centre as if it was a puck on a shuffleboard. Eventually, after dusting off her hands, she turned back to finally speak.
“Perfect!” she said,
Flick looked at the box puzzledly, “So… What’s with the box?”
Sam squinted at him with a hint of confusion, “How else am I supposed to make a gun if I don’t have the materials for one?”
Flick gasped, “Oh by Gaia you were serious.”
He simply stood, in disbelief, running his hands through his hair, “I’m gonna get in so much trouble… oh shit…”
“That’s what you’re worried will get you in trouble? Did you forget we’re illegally traversing outside the pillar?” Without hesitating, or even waiting for Flick to calm down, she continued “And yes, I was serious. I don’t want either of us getting hurt or anything, and I don’t see you…”
Sam struggled to find the word, “…Carrying! If only one of us is to have a weapon then its gonna be me, and its gonna be this gun,”
Despite the fear of losing his job quickly dawning on Flick, he did see how important self-defence would be this time, one wrong move and both of them could easily be killed. It only takes one small cut on a ladybird’s thin surface and the vacuum of earth’s atmosphere would almost instantly kill them. He couldn’t quite remember how a vacuum killed a person, but he had a general idea that it was probably somewhere on the top ten list of worst ways to go, and wasn’t keen on finding out where it placed.
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Sam turned back to her box of miscellaneous parts with a mischievous grin “Okay, okay… Flick, could you get the remaining things we need please? oh and an extra helmet, thanks,”
Flick reluctantly followed Sam’s orders, gathering the usual equipment he needed for work shifts, including his bomber jacket that was so helpfully returned to its locker. After he was situated first, with each little detail accounted for, he scoured for some leftover gloves, a spare ladybird, and a couple helmets that were strewn about. Once the supplies were dropped back off onto the centre, he noticed something that might’ve slipped her mind.
“Uhm,” he started, “You know you’re probably going to need something warmer to wear, right?”
Noticing she was still in the rags she acquired from the rubble of yesterday’s bombing, Sam gasped,
“Oh right! Wow, I completely forgot I still had this on,” she pulled at a loose shred of cloth that lazily hung from her sleeve, “I guess I just didn’t realise how cold it was,”
She darted for a nearby closet again, to rummage for warmer clothing.
She yelled back as she bobbed from box to box, “While I’m changing, could you grab a cutter please? Thanks!”
Doing as he was told, Flick quickly ran to grab his cutter from the locker, getting back well before Sam was ready to go. With the spare time he had, Flick gently pressed the ladybird underneath his shirt to equip his final, thin membrane of protection. As he did so Sam finally returned.
She wore a full-length nylon trench coat, almost entirely black on the outside with sparse patches of white on its inverse. Her sleeves were rolled up to just below her elbow, pinned in place by a hair clip, and the collar of the old coat was propped up like a vampires, flashing the distinct, contrasting inner white material. That was instantly the most eye-catching part of her whole outfit, the one Flick took note of most.
Other than that, she wore a matching black cargo pants and tank top set, that was probably one size too big by the way its excess was tucked hastily anywhere it could fit. For clothes she scavenged out of a closet, Flick couldn’t help but like the way the outfit looked, and he could tell Sam thought the same way.
She hopped over the railing and restarted the elevator, making her way back to the box in the centre. With a scrutinising eye she analysed the contents that Flick brought, and noticed something strange that caught her eye more than anything else.
“Flick, what is that?,”
She pointed towards one of the three helmets that looked different from the other two. The usual design was a tilted, upside-down bowl-like design that looked as though it was sculpted roughly into the shape of a head, one made of black tinted glass. like a motorbike helmet, with only the back end of the skull and jaw being covered in reinforced layers of carbon.
But this one was strangely different, instead of the aerodynamic and, for lack of a better word in her mind, simple design of the other two, this one looked to be in reference of a Jackal or something similar. With the glass portion of the mask angling itself downwards like a snout, and more carbon around the jaw that almost made it look like a set of teeth. It even had long, sharp ear like devices that swivelled around on joints where the ears would be, its overall presence was much more demanding and important than the rest.
Flick spoke nonchalantly, “Oh, that’s just a spare squadron leader helmet I found, that works right?”
Sam watched the locker rooms ascend higher and higher away from them “… Whatever, it’ll have to do.” She said reluctantly, “I needed the spare helmet for the extra parts, for the gun, but I’m not even going to try and fuck with something I don’t know.
Sam picked up the strange helmet and turned it in her hands, “I’ll just wear the weird dog one and use the other one for things I need,”
“So how’re you gonna make a gun out of all of this exactly?” Flick inquired, “I don’t see any gunpowder or anything”
“That’s why we have the helmet Flick,” she twirled it around her finger as if it was a lanyard or necklace “All I need is the air compressor inside, and I’m pretty sure I can make it explode with enough force to shoot something”
Flick simply smiled and nodded, hoping that whatever Sam said was at the very least plausible. He sat cross legged, hands pinning his shins to the floor, watching Sam pick at the helmet and overflowing box for parts.
Something started itching it at him, something very familiar. Boredom. The elevator’s slow descent was already painful enough on workdays, but watching someone quietly clink metal together was especially taxing on Flick’s patience. Surprisingly, Sam too seemed visibly bored sifting through the box with no entertainment. He tapped his legs rhythmically, watching the walls shift upwards as they descended, looking for anything to keep his attention. Suddenly, Flick remembered the music player, stuffed in the pocket of his jacket, and took it out.
He debated throwing the headphones on as quickly as possible, but at the last second remembered the bored look on Sam’s face.
He slid the music player over to her, “Listen to some music if you want, whatever you’re doing looks really boring so it might help”
She hesitated for a moment, looking at Flick to make sure it really was okay to use it. Once he nodded, she hastily put the headphones on and zoned out to the electric noise they produced. A lot of it Sam didn’t recognise, music that sounded more like random instruments thrown together with little to no care for order. But occasionally, beyond the strange new world stuff she couldn’t bring herself to like, she managed to find songs from her age, things that should’ve been over two thousand years old by this point. They weren’t her favourite bands or preferred genres, but simply having songs that she remembered hearing in the backgrounds of movies and in the cornered speakers of shops, vague and fleeting memories, it was enough to put her at peace.
She didn’t explicitly thank him for the gift, but the soft smile that grew on her face was enough to tell Flick how she felt.
After another gruelling half hour the two finally reached the bottom, where the main gate was. Sam had organised all of the pieces she needed and neatly stuffed the leftovers back into the box, shoving it into a corner she was positive no one would see. Curiously, the gun looked as if it hadn’t even been started yet, which somewhat confused Flick.
“Hey,” He tapped Sam’s shoulder, “We’re seriously not gonna have enough time to sit here and make it y’know”
“Yeah I know,” she replied, “I couldn’t even if I wanted to, I need the cold temperature of the vacuum to control the heat.” Seeing how much more confused Flick looked to be at hearing this, she continued to explain further “…If I use the cutter on the spare parts here they’ll just melt under the heat”
“Oh! right that makes sense! How’re you gonna put the pieces together though?”
Flick made his way to the main gate, fastening his helmet in place and switching the LED display on once more, giddy that he could use it without judgment this time.
He continued sometime after, “Because were definitely not going to be able to walk the whole way to the rubble,”
She looked at him curiously, “Rubble?”
Flick froze in place, suddenly realising that he hadn’t told Sam anything about his plan, “It’s just a suspicion really, when I was fighting that SMILE bomber earlier,
“I noticed something weird…” he continued, “They escaped outside the pillar, they couldn’t have had a bike or something, other pillars would’ve noticed it. And they DEFINITELY couldn’t have gone to another pillar on foot, its suicide!
“So I came to only one conclusion, if SMILE has a base its out in the snow somewhere then the ruins would probably be a good start, right?”
Sam thought for a moment, then nodded and returned to conversation topic prior, “That’s fine then, I can probably make the gun on the back on of one of those bike things”
He raised his eyebrow slightly at how casually she had said that, “You do realise that they go really fast right? Like, really really fast,”
Dismissing his worry, she fastened her helmet and gloves calmly, “I’ll be fine, you just worry about not crashing us”
She clicked her ladybird on her chest, just below her collar bone, and joined Flick at the gigantic door that almost seemed to pulse with an energetic hum. Flick gestured towards the door’s keypad, hoping that Sam knew how to get it to open the door for them. She sighed and made her way to the panel, peeling off the metal rim to reveal the wiring she had to inevitably mess with.
As she did so, Flick wandered into the shadows away from the gate and towards a leftover geo bike, most likely left there by staff for the morning recon around the pillar before work would start. He had never rode one before, nor had he ever wondered about how to. In his elusive daydreams he only pictured himself mid-ride, with a false wind at his back, and never once considered the arduous task that starting a geo bike might have entailed.
In the shadow of the corner where it stood, the bike almost looked menacing. Its once cool grey pipes that wrapped around its body now looked like shimmering vines. He was no stranger to growl of its engine or the sharpness of its face, almost finding those features comforting at work, but in this moment he felt like he was on the receiving end of a predators deadly gaze. Nevertheless he ran his hand along its surface to find an ample grip and pulled it gently to the gate.
By the time he returned the door was screaming, its snug metallic plates scraping past each other revealing the airlock that they hid. The moment both Sam and him had stepped foot into the somewhat small space, the gate crashed shut behind them and the air vanished so violently that it shook both of their cores in place. The timer had started. Three hours left.
* * *
The knocking on the door was obnoxiously loud and lasted for far too long. Simon was still catching up with his doting teacher over a warm cup of watered-down coffee, that satisfied his caffeine fix about as much as breathing did, when the knocking finally disturbed him. Having to tear his attention away from a much-needed rest inside nostalgia lane, he wasn’t exactly beaming ear to ear when he eventually did go to answer it call. But the expression of annoyance on his face quickly changed, once he heard what the person waiting there bluntly told him. In fact, his face was practically flickering between every negative feeling he could describe. First bewilderment, then a brief spell of pensive thought, followed immediately by the most sincere and honest depiction of dread that the human face could possibly create. For the rest of that evening he would have to bury himself in notes and research, whatever was happening he needed to stop it. And for that he needed Sam, desperately.
The timer was ticking. Just Three hours remained.
