The Mystery Man’s identity is revealed – but he doesn’t last much longer after that due to a certain someone’s surprise appearance…

Word Count: 46,342

“I’m not so sure I can. From what I’ve heard, The Collective is nothing but a facade – a battery masquerading as a shelter.”

“That’s what you’ve been told. But how do you know at your sources were telling you the truth? I have ultimate knowledge, the collective wealth of thousands – millions – of people. And our knowledge would tend to disagree with yours.” He held out his hand to me. “Now, I think you have something that belongs to me. I’d like it if you returned that which is not yours to hold.”

Looking at his outstretched hand, I knew I had to return the gun. But I didn’t want to – I had more questions, and the gun was my only way of getting them answered. It was a the only leverage I had in this situation; that and my stolen map of rasase injections. I took the gun and slapped it against his hand, hard enough that it hurt him. He wasn’t able to grip it fast enough; I kept the gun. It was then that I noticed the gun had a small engraving on its barrel. Out of the corner of my eye I attempted to read it. I could make out a name, and what appeared to be an address.

I knew, in that moment, where the gun was from, and why it was so valuable to this man. “Why do you want this gun so badly?” I asked him. Taken aback, he gasped, then smiled before taking one step closer to me.

“If you must know, that gun is an heirloom of mine.”

“I don’t believe that load of shit. There hasn’t ever been a gun like this.”

“And just what knowledge do you have of guns to make that claim?”

“Plenty, I’d say, given the marking on its barrel.” I held up the side of the barrel with the inscription to him, and he silently read it. He took a step back in astonishment. “So, what planet is it from?” I said to his gaping mouth.

He clenched his jaw and stepped toward me, balling one fist. That step became a pace, and then a charge – he came at me, full force, in attempt to steal his gun back and send me to oblivion.

I stood firm, planted.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

Somehow, he’d found a way to escape. Adam Curie stumbled about the room in pain, using the strength of his fetch to destroy whatever equipment he could so that those monsters couldn’t tie him down again. He kicked machines over, killing several scientists – probably sending them back to the collective – then continued his rampage throughout the rest of the room.

“You… all of you!” he shouted, unsure of what to think or say. All that existed was blind rage – all that time, wasted! Torsten was probably far ahead of him by now, probably already had found the information they were looking for! Curie was useless – utterly useless to let himself get captured by these crones!

But what could he do? With his freedom restored, he began to break down that which had contained him. As he destroyed the innards of the lab, he knocked over a container, spilling it’s contents all about the floor. Green, ellipsoidal shapes rolled about the ground, intermingling with the broken equipment and limp bodies.

Curie picked one up, sniffed it. It was an explosive, no doubt. He likened it to a grenade, but had never seen a grenade like this before – except on Earth, perhaps. The primitive inhabitants of Earth had fought using weapons like this, back when they’d first embarked there. But why were these weapons here, at Cydia’s core?

More lab workers were coming at him. He did the only thing he could think to do – armed the grenade and threw it across the room. The ensuing explosion blew out his hearing, and there was more screaming. “Shit,” Curie thought, “I hope nobody heard that.”

But who was he kidding? He picked himself up and ran out of the lab as fast as he could, knowing that he was being followed, and not knowing where the endless hallways of the Renaissance facilities would lead him.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

I don’t know how it happened, but it did. Standing still, I suppose that’s never a strategy that works out well when something strong is charging at you. I thought my strength would be able to withstand this mystery man’s assault for his gun, but as soon Asa he hit me I toppled over like the last tree on Cydia.

But be fire I could hit the ground, something incredible occurred. All at once I heard more noise, a loud bang, and then I saw the well-coifed man’s face go blank. Whatever had been operating inside him simply ceased functioning. His jaw simply hung open in shock. We landed together on the ground, his body over mine, his fetch’s oil-based blood dripping all over my clothes. I lifted him up off of me, and saw a bullet wound square between his eyes. I put him face up on the mirrored tile floor, then picked myself up, wiping my hands on my pants.

“Vince! What the hell are you doing?” I heard behind me.

I recognized that voice. But it couldn’t have been who I thought it was.
But it was.

I turned around to see Maiya greeting me with a stern look. Unsure what to say, my jaw simply hung like that of Mystery Man’s, open and stupefied. Part of me refused to accept that Maiya was going to be my savior once again – I thought I’d grown a little since we’d met. Perhaps it was the innate connection I felt between us that had drawn her here.

“Knowing you, I figured you’d have gotten yourself into a messy situation like this,” she said arrogantly. “It sure didn’t take you long. You haven’t even been down here a week.”

My jaw still hung low. She had sent us down here explicitly because she couldn’t go – so why was she in front of me? Was it a hallucination, a bad dream? Was I imagining that Maiya had come to my rescue? Perhaps I saw her because, deep down, I wanted her to rescue me, to help me save this pitiful world.

No. Regrettably, she was the real thing.

“Why are you here?” For the first time, I fumed with anger at her. I had tolerated her killing innocent men she considered threats, had scoffed when she’d ripped me firm my own physical body – but this was too much. “You’re never content to leave a man to his work, are you?” I asked. “I don’t understand your business down here. It’s dangerous.”

“I can tell,” she said, smirking at me. “I was called down to look over the results of some tests I had been running on fetch organ stability. You’d be surprised how many issues can arise when creating artificial tissue.”

“And you just stumbled upon me?” I asked, wondering if she’d turn around and run back to the surface anytime soon, and knowing that she was probably here to stay after having found me.

“Not exactly; the call was urgent and short-notice, and I had no plans to come down after you and risk getting killed. The people down here already hate me enough – I don’t need to be showing my face to them.” I wondered why they hated her, thinking back to the scientist I’d dealt with not long ago, who had mentioned Maiya’s name. She noticed my pondering. “Don’t ask; it’s nothing you need to worry yourself about. You probably shouldn’t be around me down here. And you shouldn’t be messing with people like him,” she said.

I still had no idea who this man was. When I asked, Maiya told me that his name was Marshall Vosler, president and CEO of Inland corporation, and Secretary of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy under Cydia’s Department of Agriculture. This meant that the heir to the slate mines was the very same person that was attempting to undo them. It sounded like a bad dream, an ironic twist of fate that this man was given the position and control he had. My best guess was that nobody had noticed, in large part due to his convincing smile and pleasant appearance that gave off an air of confidence and respectability.

In other words, nobody saw it coming, and anyone who did was obviously one of Vosler’s supporters. Maiya explained that when she found out she began distancing herself from the Renaissance facilities and the slate mines, instead opting to work above ground in the Central Square research labs developing enhanced fetches for general public consumption. And now here we were, standing by Vosler’s bloody fetch.

“I’ve been wanting to do that to this man for a long time now. I hope he never leaves The Collective. Speaking of which… what have you found, Vince?”

I fiddled with some glass panels, a difficult task while I was holding the gun.

“Put that piece of junk down, Vince.”

“It seemed pretty important to Marshall, though,” I said.

“I doubt it. It looks like a piece of junk to me. Just throw it on the ground; you’ve still got that Mu Gun I gave to you, anyway. Now, hurry up, before someone comes looking for Vosler. We need to get out of here.”

I tossed the gun aside and began flipping through my files until I found the map of the Taconic Rasase injection sites. Pulling it out, I turned the glass screen around and displayed its contents to Maiya, who looked at the globe with great fascination, grabbing it and turning it to examine all of the pockets of red material marked upon and within it. I saw her eyes light up, and her face contract with anger. She clearly didn’t know what to make of the globe.

“So, what do these red blotches mean, anyhow?”

“The terminal in that room,” I said, pointing into the computer-filled room I had come out of, “says it’s a compound called Taconic Rasase, meant for dissolving and breaking down Taconic Slate. I believe that whoever ordered that the injections be planted – Vosler, no doubt – wants to hurt Cydia’s structure. Beyond that, I’m not sure. These injections are directly responsible for the destabilization down in the mines, which has reached insufferable levels of intolerance…”

Maiya simply looked at me, silent, then back at globe. She spun it around once more, admiring all of the injection sites. “Well, this isn’t what I expected from Vosler, that’s for sure. Though, from the looks of it, we don’t have time to discuss motives – there’s more going on here; if someone was to inject the entire planet with a destabilizing agent, they must have a goal in mind.”

Suddenly, Maiya and I pieced together the evidence: From the Inland building above ground to the Renaissance facilities down below, Cydians were being forcibly placed into fetches by the thousands. Who knew how many had lost their original bodies by now? And Cydia was running low on natural resources regardless; slate was quickly running out, and our civilization didn’t know how to survive without it. A simpler way to deal with the desire for more Taconic Slate would be…

“…to eliminate the need entirely,” Maiya said. “You don’t need Taconic Slate if you’re a massless consciousness in a spaceless void.” She froze, unable to think clearly about it. “All this time, he’s been planning to get everyone into The Collective… it was never a temporary storage solution. It wasn’t even a battery. I mean, for now it might be, but… not soon. Not if this globe is showing the right injection locations.”

“Maiya, we need to do something about these injections before they crumble the mines entirely. Maiya?” I looked at her; she was sweating, staring straight ahead, could barely move. Clearly this was information she had never been privy too – she thought she’d had it all figured out long ago. She thought the energy solution was the extension of the malice involved with The Collective. Now that she knew what was really happening to her planet – and by her own hands – I could tell she couldn’t take it anymore.

Her tolerance had been pushed to its limit. Before now, she had been content working on the fringes of this operation, rather than being directly involved. I could see in her eyes that it was not only her intent to distance herself entirely from fetches and The Collective, but ultimately to destroy the operation completely. Beneath her sorrowful eyes was the clenched jaw of vengeance. For misleading her, Marshall Vosler would pay the ultimate price.

“Let’s go find The Collective,” she said at once. With a hefty stride, she began moving down the hallway, turning a corner and leaving my sight for a moment. Like a fool, I ran after her.