Chapter 16: Mark of the Beast by Stephen Simpson
Can I do this? Really go through with it. Lydia
wondered as she put one foot in front of the other.
A deep raspy voice said, “If you turn around now, I can protect you, Lydia.” She flinched. The voice was in her head, but it was also, not in her head. It was omnipresent. She tried to see if Liam and Shaun had also heard the voice, but it was too dark to see their faces. She did not want to ask them if they did. She knew it was not one of them who had said anything, because she would have recognised the voice.
“Close your eyes.”
Lydia felt a soft, whispery feeling on her eyelids, like
spiderwebs brushing against her skin.
“Can I show you all the wonders that await you, if you turn
around now and follow me?”
The yes that escaped her lips was a sigh and it happened
involuntarily, as if she was too tired to fight it.
The images did not appear in her head, they were all around
her, as if she was no longer walking in a dark forest, but through a city where
the streets were paved in gold. Her mum and dad walked beside her, and it was
as if the voice was showing her all the things she yearned for, even things she
never thought she would ever covet, but when she looked at it now, she wanted
it, she wanted it all. Every wish she had ever made was hers to be had. A
warmth filled her from her head down to her toes, and it flowed in equal
measure throughout her body, until she felt warm and content even though she
was standing in the middle of a blizzard.
“Here we are,” Liam whispered.
Her surroundings glitched, and then she was back in the dark
forest. For a moment she felt confused. The things she saw were all the things
she wanted, so she should not be destroying this building, and all the data
stored within its walls. Maybe she should be getting the barcode instead.
Things would never go back to the way it was, she was not naïve enough to think
that they would, but if she got the barcode, she would be a zombie-robot too,
and she would live in blissful ignorance. How could that be bad? Her thoughts
were spinning faster than a ride at a country fair. She would have turned back.
She knew she would have, like she knew her name but there was a feeling. Not a
thought. A feeling. From a place where people said gut feelings came from.
There. Just under her heart. The place where she felt fear, anger, joy, and
sadness. A feeling so strong that it started to glow like an ember. It was not
warm or hot. It was bright. She did not have to close her eyes to feel it. She
did not have to imagine the feeling of connection and belonging. It just was.
The feeling told her to stay, to destroy the data centre before its evil
destroyed everything she believed to be true and just.
Liam’s hand came up, giving Lydia a fright. His fingers
wrapped around her wrist, and he gently pulled her down to the ground beside
him.
“What?” Lydia whispered.
He did not answer but moved his eyes to look at the
building.
She followed his gaze. In front of them there was an open area
with a high chain linked fence that surrounded the enormous property. There
were soldiers walking around the perimeter of the building in pairs of two.
“It’s suicide,” Shaun said softly. “Suicide if we go,
suicide if we don’t.”
Lydia nodded. “Dead or alive, we’re doomed either way, but
I’d rather die knowing I had free will, than be alive and have none.”
Shaun zipped open the duffel bag and pulled out the bolt
cutters. Carefully he snipped the metal wires until there was a big enough hole
for them to crawl through.
Liam crouched down and went through first.
Lydia said to Shaun, “Strange that the fence wasn’t electrified.”
Shaun replied, “Sometimes power and the need to dominate
others go to these people’s heads, and they can’t even imagine that us simple
folk would have the audacity to even consider breaking in. They probably think
the soldiers are enough to keep us riffraff out.”
Once they were through the fence, Shaun pulled the duffel
bag open again. He handed Liam a handgun, who cocked it and checked if it was
loaded. When he was happy with what he saw, he held it in both his hands like
he was some police guy on some TV show.
Shaun held up a handgun for Lydia, but she took a step away
and shook her head. “I’d rather not. Sorry. Besides, I don’t even know how to
use it, and I will probably end up shooting myself.”
For himself, he pulled out an automatic rifle. He pushed his
arm through the straps of the duffel bag and hefted it back onto his shoulder.
“Tell me when you want one, there’s loads to choose from.”
They scuttled forward on their bellies in the dark where the
lights did not reach them, stopping every time they saw soldiers approaching on
the well-lit walkway, awash in a blue hue, around the building.
Lydia tapped Liam on the shoulder and pointed to a set of
double doors at the end of the building, where they were crawling to. The deep
snow on the ground was causing her skin to burn, and she was wondering how one
would get rid of frostbite on a person’s stomach.
She was not a hero. She was not a bad-ass chick running around
with a bow and arrow, and guns, and shooting up stuff. She was just a girl, who
sometimes loved playing computer games, who sometimes liked K-Pop, who watched
Anime and YouTube videos, who read books, who wanted a raccoon for a pet
someday, who sometimes did not care that she was not the ideal weight for her
height, and sometimes she did care.
The closer they got to the building, the more they could
hear the loud popping sounds of shooting, coming from the other side of the
building. It sounded as if there was a war going on. Lydia prayed that her
friends were holding up okay.
They had reached the building, and Shaun held the double
door open so that they could go inside. There was nobody in the long hallway,
and there was an elevator at the end of the hall, and a door that had a plaque
that said: Stairwell. They pushed through the door, and the stairwell was quiet
and narrow.
Slowly they climbed the steps to the next floor.
Lydia was waiting with bated breath for the shriek of alarms,
that would go off at any minute, and the thumping of heavy boots on the
concrete steps, below and above them.
When they reached the first landing, Shaun stepped closer to
the painted door, and pressed his ear against it, holding up his arm to stop Liam
and Lydia from taking another step.
When he heard no sounds other than his own breathing, he
opened the door slowly. Inside there were rows upon rows upon rows of servers.
It looked like something he would have only ever seen in a movie before
Christmas day, when the beginning of the end had started.
Lydia took a step over the threshold, her mouth hanging open
as she looked around her. All these machines represented every living person in
Danglen. There were blue lights, red lights, amber lights, and green lights.
Some flickered fast, and some flickered intermittently.
Liam smiled, when he looked back at her. “If you add some
music, it could be a disco.”
Shaun snorted, as he tried to keep his laugh muted. “Disco?
How old are you?”
Lydia gave Shaun a dirty look. “Leave him alone. I know what
he means, and if you don’t, it doesn’t mean you can laugh at him.”
Liam held Lydia back. “You stand watch. Shaun and I will
place all the bombs.”
“Do you even know how?”
Shaun nodded, still grinning, “Mark showed me on the way
here. It’s kind of scary how easy it is, because all we have to do is push a
button.”
“Well, then I can help,” she insisted.
Liam shook his head. “No. You’re wasting time, Lydia. We
need a look out.”
They walked off together, and Lydia thought it would have
been faster and more efficient if they had divided the bombs between them and
had gone in opposite directions.
For a bit she watched and listened on the landing, keeping
the door open with her foot but then she got bored and leaned against the doorframe
staring as if mesmerized at all the lights within the large room. The floor was
so shiny it looked as if the machines went down into infinity, and when she
looked up, all she could see were pipes for cold water, and pipes for hot
water. There were so many cables, she imagined it could circle Rheta a couple
of times, if laid down end to end.
She presumed the soldiers who guarded and patrolled the
grounds were not allowed to enter the building, and there was probably only a
few technicians or computer programmers about, sitting in an office somewhere.
She was sure the servers did not need constant supervision.
Her thumb came up to her mouth. They were gone for a very
long time, and she was starting to get nervous. It was a big building, she told
herself. It would take at least an hour, if not longer, to walk from one end to
the other.
She heard them before she saw them. Their feet slapped
against the polished floor.
“Run,” Liam yelled.
“The timers on the bombs only go up to fifty-nine minutes.
It’s going to start blowing any second now,” Shaun panted.
As if he predicted it, the concussion of the first blast
slammed into her back like a fist, hurling her down the stairs, and onto the
first-floor landing. The building sounded like it was shrieking, as it was
being ripped wall from wall. There was a booming noise as the cement holding
the building together cracked into a million fractures. The screech of chimney
stacks falling over upon the roof, and the ear shattering sound, as hundreds of
windows exploded, filled her ears.
“Get out! Get out!” Liam screamed, trying to be heard over
the noise.
Lydia jumped up, ignoring the pain in her ankle, and ran through the door labelled stairwell, into the big white hall where they had entered, before the end of the beginning of the end.
A second explosion propelled them out the door. Lydia managed to run a couple of steps when the third blast knocked her down, onto her knees. She stayed on the ground, turning over, and laying in the snow, looking up at the building as it crumpled in onto itself, and she could not help smiling.
Continue reading Chapter 17/17
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