Assault or Attrition (8 page)

We continued
touring the complex level by level. The nine above-ground floors
were primarily for living quarters and amenities, each dedicated to
a specific purpose: bedrooms on levels one through three, fitness
on level four, media and communications on level five, kitchens and
dining on level six, and additional storage, equipment and supplies
on levels seven through nine. There were accommodations for five
hundred people – I suppose Frost was expecting a lot of guests in
the future.

We’d
periodically pass by a staff member while on our tour. Men and
women wearing the same navy blue flight suit with white ‘FC’ emblem
on the chest – identical to Chandler’s. They avoided eye contact
for the most part, pretending not to notice us as they went about
their duties, but a few of them shot me a sidelong glance as we
zipped past in our transport. The look was one I was all-too
familiar with: disdain. As a middle-class citizen, I’d experienced
that icy glare more than my share of times while traveling to
Manhattan. Simply walking the streets in a pair of faded jeans and
a comic book t-shirt was enough to draw contemptuous glares from
the elite – the upper-class who had purchased, renovated and
occupied every piece of real estate in the affluent borough. Some
of the nicer-dressed Manhattanites even crossed the street to avoid
me as I approached. It was as if abject poverty was an airborne
disease, and being in close proximity to someone as lowborn as
myself could have infected them.

At least while
I was in The City I knew exactly
why
people hated me. It was
the same reason why they hated every peasant from The Fringe or The
Dark Zone. Here, I wasn’t sure if Cameron Frost’s existing staff
despised me because I was now their boss (which was reason enough,
I suppose) or if it was because the last time they’d seen their
previous employer, it was during Arena Mode...right before I’d
blown a sizable hole in his throat with a modified handgun. From
their perspective, I’d gunned down their former boss in cold blood,
and had looted his bank vault in the wake of his death. This was of
course the entire point of Arena Mode, making it a pretty valid
perspective to have.

I decided then
and there that I’d give each of them a raise whether they deserved
it or not; I could afford it. And then, hopefully, I wouldn’t have
to deal with the discomfort of living with two dozen people who
glared at me like I was the antichrist.

The seven
sub-levels of the fortress were reserved for research, development
and storage. On sub-level five (labelled ‘SL5’ above the elevator
lift) we continued around the perimeter of the massive circular
structure and passed the power core – a thorium reactor that acts
as a generator for the entire fortress.
“The reactor,”
London explained,
“is powered by liquid salt – far more
efficient than uranium reactors of the past. In a stroke of genius,
Mister Frost also began developing a new form of solar power for
the dome, which, in less than eighteen months, will make Fortress
23 completely self-sustaining.”

After more than
an hour navigating through the lower levels of the fortress, it
hadn’t occurred to anyone that the enormous dome that topped the
structure would be part of the tour. We’d spotted it on the flight
in, but through the powerful snow squalls we couldn’t see
inside.

“What’s in the
dome?” Brynja asked.

“I was going to
save it for last,” Chandler replied sheepishly. “It was going to be
the finale. The big...you know, exit. No, that sounded stupid –
finale was better.”

“Can we check
it out now?” I asked. “We can circle back around so you can finish
your tour afterwards, I promise.”

Our guide
reluctantly agreed, even though it was going against the
pre-determined fortress tour schedule. We motored down the long
white hallway and through a set of sliding metal doors onto a steel
platform; it was an oversized elevator reserved for vehicles and
large cargo shipments. The doors slid shut behind us and we sailed
to the rooftop level, opening into bright daylight. The dome that
capped the top floor was completely transparent. The only way we
could detect it’s presence from the inside were the flakes of snow
landing on its surface, melting away once they made contact.

While the
enormity of the dome above was utterly mind-boggling, what
surrounded us was even more incredible. It was a tropical paradise.
Like stepping out of an elevator into a Hawaiian postcard, we were
overwhelmed by the sights and smells of lush palm trees,
pastel-colored flowers and natural rock formations, some with
waterfalls cascading down their sides into shallow inlets. Tropical
birds flew overhead and lizards scattered underfoot. London was
chiming in with facts about terraforming and climate engineering
experiments, but none of us paid any attention – we were
mesmerized.

I smiled,
shaking my head in disbelief. For someone who avoided the outdoors
at all costs, I could definitely get used to this. “This is
incredible,” I whispered, not realizing I was saying the words
aloud.

“Yeah, it’s
nice.” Chandler grumbled, shuffling his feet.

“What’s wrong?”
I asked.

“After seeing
this
,” he said, kicking at a small rock, “you guys aren’t
gonna want to check out the desalinization laboratory on sub-level
six, will you? I mean it’s
exciting
, but, you know...in a
different way.”

After a few
more hours of exploration everyone settled into their rooms on
level two. I made a quick trip to the infirmary to have my wound
tended to, and was greeted by the resident nurse – a tiny,
middle-aged woman with deep creases in her angular face, and a bob
of sandy-brown hair. She was polite (or at least was professional
enough to feign politeness), offering me a firm handshake and a
tight-lipped smile. She quickly instructed me to hop up onto a
gurney where she could inspect the incision below my ribcage, which
was thankfully free from infection and healing nicely.

As she ran some
additional tests I asked her name, and the nurse, oddly, introduced
herself as a number: ‘Twenty-seven’.

“So did your
parents just hate you?” I replied with a grin.

She didn’t
return the smile. ‘Twenty-seven’ explained that her name was
actually Judy, and she’d been an ER nurse in Phoenix for over two
decades. She was laid off due to budget cutbacks, and accepted a
position here in Fortress 23 after being recruited by The Frost
Corporation. The number was how Frost referred to his ‘sub-level’
employees, meaning the staff who worked in the subterranean levels
of the Fortress – the ones he didn’t have to interact with
directly. Frost always liked to associate numbers to faces, which
he felt make them easier to keep track of. It was demeaning, but by
Judy’s rationale, for a six-figure salary with full benefits in
this
economy, he could call her whatever the hell he
wanted.

Judy ran one
additional scan on my abdomen to monitor the internal damage. Like
the external scar, it was healing nicely, although I needed to
avoid strenuous activity for the next several weeks. Popping a
stitch on the incision was one thing – internal bleeding as a
result of pushing myself too hard would require another surgical
procedure. I thanked the nurse, and assured her that if anyone
specialized in taking it easy, it was me.

When my exam
was complete I retired to Cameron Frost’s private quarters, which
were the largest in the fortress. I pulled open the double doors to
reveal my new bedroom: stark-white, ultra-modern, and easily ten
times the size of my former apartment back in The Fringe.
Everything from the carpeting to the linens were pristine, as if
they’d never been touched – it looked more like a high-resolution
photo from a furniture catalog than a room that had actually been
lived in. For all I know Frost had never even slept there. The
floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of the mountain
range to the south, where the dim moonlight bathed the snowy peaks
in a pale blue glow.

“Tinting,” I
said through a drawn-out yawn, and the AI responded by darkening
the windows to an inky black. I fell onto the mattress, too
exhausted to bother pulling back the covers, and stared up at the
ceiling.

My mind raced.
Even after Chandler’s tour and London’s detailed explanations, I
had barely scratched the surface of this massive structure. I’m
sure it would be weeks before I had the chance to inspect every
room. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of toys I had at my
disposal, and couldn’t wait to continue exploring – it had barely
sunk in that all of this was mine. And I was still trying to
process the information about the Kashstarter campaign to finance
my destruction...not to mention the naked dead girl who appeared in
a swirl of blue mist. Even by my standards it had been a pretty
strange day.

But despite the
distractions and shiny objects, I couldn’t get Peyton out of my
mind. I wondered where she was, and what she was thinking. Staring
into the darkness, trying to will myself to sleep, I couldn’t force
her out of my head – and the parting words that spilled from her
lips burned in my mind:
‘I don’t trust you.’
I wasn’t sure
if she planned that particular part of her speech in advance, or if
she knew how painful it would be for me to hear, slicing my insides
like a freshly sharpened scalpel. I was a lot of things (many of
them I wasn’t proud of) but untrustworthy was not one of them. I’d
always been there for Gavin and Peyton – at least I
felt
like I always had been – and they never failed to reciprocate.

When I broke
the news that a tumor was eating away at my brain they never gave
up on me, even after I’d pretty much given up on myself. They
pushed and pushed until I had no choice but to feel like there was
some sense of hope, and some reason to keep on fighting. If Gavin
and Peyton wanted me to live
that
badly, they must have seen
something in me; something that I couldn’t see myself, no matter
how hard I tried. Their faith was what fueled me during the final
stages of The Arena. And it was the thought of losing them had
given me the drive to defeat Cameron Frost.

An agonizing
hour stretched into two. I eventually stopped checking the time,
but at some point before dawn my heavy lids fluttered shut, and I
drifted off thinking that now, I had everything in the world that
I’d ever wanted – except for the only two people I wanted to share
it with.

After a few
hours of dreamless sleep I awoke feeling more exhausted than when
I’d gone to bed.
I sat up and winced, gently rubbing my aching
stomach. Advanced stem cell therapy had greatly accelerated my
healing process, but modern medicine could only do so much.

It was sunrise,
and I thought I’d take the opportunity to explore some of the
fortress in silence before my staff and guests awoke. The nurse had
recommended a little light exercise if I was feeling up for it, and
this was as good a time as any.

During our
guided tour we hadn’t reached the lowest sub-level, so I figured it
would be the best place to start exploring. I took an elevator down
to SL7 and strolled past an endless row of rooms – laboratories,
storage areas, the odd bathroom or maintenance closet – until I
reached a large circular door that resembled a bank vault. The
polished silver door had a touch-screen keypad off to its side,
recessed into an alcove, with two words etched into the steel panel
above it: South Tunnel.

Entering my
ten-digit access code caused the door to swing open with a gentle
hiss, and the long narrow hallway illuminated. It sloped upward,
leveling out after a few hundred meters. I must have walked the
featureless cylindrical tunnel for a solid half-hour before I
reached a second door, which looked identical to the one at the
entrance. There was no keypad, and no voice command would open it.
If someone had been observing me on a security cam, they must have
had a good laugh watching me shout every variation of ‘open up!’ I
could think of to an inanimate object for several minutes.

I turned back,
and had reached the main level hallway when my wrist com signaled
an incoming message. It was Brynja, screaming frantically. “Mox,
you have to come here and see this. It’s amazing!”

Her level of
energy at seven in the morning was baffling. “What, did you find,”
I groaned. “The coffee maker?”

“No, you idiot,
this is
better
than coffee. I’m on the main level in the
lounge. Come quick!” The transmission blipped off before I had a
chance to respond.

I was
skeptical. It seemed unlikely that Brynja had discovered something
more exciting than coffee at this hour. Locating the nearest
elevator, I stepped aboard and shot up to the main observation
floor, which is where I found her: sitting in an oversized circular
room, surrounded by clothing. More coats, sweaters and pants than I
could imagine her ever needing in her lifetime. And shoes – my god,
the shoes; mountains of boots, high-heels, runners, and original
designs that couldn’t possibly have had any practical use. “Where
did all of this crap come from?” I asked, scratching my head.

“This isn’t
crap, you dick – it’s my new wardrobe. I printed it!” She motioned
to the doorway behind her, which lead to what would become my
favorite device in the entire fortress: a next generation 3D
printer.

“You printed
all of this...this morning?”

“No,” she said
with a laugh. “I never slept. I discovered this room last night
after dinner, and I haven’t stopped printing since.” She paused and
looked me up and down, curling her lips into a tiny frown. “You
might want to give this thing a go yourself.”