The Collector (26 page)

All eyes are on Neil, the pressure shrinking him into his chair. Neil knows he is backed against the wall. And when in a do-or-die scenario, life versus death, humans are no better than animals, desperate and willing to do anything to survive. Neil’s eyes narrow as he makes his choice.

“It’s not my name on the assignment,” he coldly says as he points to the screen, calling attention to the section that indicates SUBMITTED BY: RAYMOND ROSSIO AND GARRISON TREPP. “It’s yours,” he says.

Garrison’s mouth drops as Neil’s words seal their fate.

“Get them out of my sight,” Mazer orders.

Slayter smashes Raymond in the kidney before dragging both Collectors out of the room. Neil’s eyes break away, unable to watch more of his colleagues bound and tied because of him.

“Let this be a reminder of the ramifications of breaking your oath,” Mazer announces to the remaining Collectors in the room. “Now we have a volunteer in Breach of Contract. That’s going to affect everyone’s year-end bonus.” The Collectors groan until Mazer sets his sight directly on Neil. “Neil, I’m tired of hearing your name involved in controversy. I’m assigning this to you and Slayter. See that it goes smoothly and you may just clear these accusations. Otherwise you’ll be joining them.”

Mazer storms out of the conference room. Cecil and Dale follow while Neil focuses on the bold words dominating Inna’s profile:

BREACH OF CONTACT

He thumbs the 4-stripe arm badge on his shoulder out of habit. If only he had some way to alert Inna they were coming.

In less than half an hour, Slayter throws the utility truck in park outside the antique shop. Neil does his best to beat Slayter to the porch, but Slayter’s long stride keeps him one step ahead.

Inna sways in the rocking chair while sewing a stuffed doll’s arm when she hears the door burst open downstairs, kicked in, the force ripping the bell off.

Slayter lumbers in. He pushes over the restocked display cases and scours the shop, no care regarding his path of destruction.

Neil immediately heads up the stairs, but Inna is gone. He notices food cooking on the stove over an open flame, and the rocking chair slowing to a stop.

“Inna?” he whispers, the silence broken up by more sounds of rummaging and shattering glass from downstairs. “Inna?” he asks again as he glances beneath the table and other obvious hiding places, then peers into the bedroom. There’s no sign of movement, except for the white curtain flapping near the open window.

As Neil turns to backtrack, he suddenly collides into Slayter.

“Find anything?” Slayter asks.

“She must’ve went out the window,” Neil lies.

Slayter moves to the window and glances out. His eyes narrow. It’s too far of a drop. Immediately he whirls around and flips the bed frame, the nightstand, and all other furniture in the vicinity – a man on a destructive rampage.

“What are you doing?” Neil shouts.

“We’ve seen every trick in the book,” Slayter growls in frustration. “You can’t tell me she got away. She’s here and we know it. I will find her.” He turns his attention to the ravaged bedroom and taunts, “You hear that? I will find you.”

Simultaneously through a vertical slit at about knee level, Inna watches Neil and Slayter from afar, witnessing Neil trying to draw Slayter away.

“There’s a junkyard around back. She could be anywhere out there,” he says.

Slayter storms back into the main room. He knocks over the cot and more shelving before spotting a vertical slit in the storage cabinet beneath the stove. Neil sees this, realizing it is Inna’s hiding spot. He steps in front to block Slayter. “We can come back later,” he offers.

Slayter pushes Neil aside, eyes locked on the cabinet. Inna cowers into the darkness as Slayter marches directly towards her, the cabinet doors whipping open and light flooding in.

“Neil!” Inna shrieks as Slayter drags her out of the compartment. A look of recognition overtakes Slayter’s face.

“I’ve never seen her before,” Neil defends.

Slayter shoves Inna towards Neil. He catches her.

“Bind her hands,” Slayter orders, but Neil doesn’t move. “Are you with us or against us?” Slayter challenges.

“Turn around…,” Neil tells Inna. She doesn’t cooperate, so Neil turns her by force.

“I guess I can’t blame you,” Inna concedes. “I made my choice. You made yours.”

Slayter tastes the mush cooking on the stove. “I don’t know what’s been going on here, but it’s no loss. Rats wouldn’t eat this.”

“It was my grandma’s recipe!”

“Let’s hope it dies with you then,” Slayter quips.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Neil says as he binds Inna’s hands behind her back. Her brow furrows when he purposefully leaves one of them free. They share a look before he nods, on her side. “The Agency thanks you for your sacrifice.”

Neil leads Inna away, but just as they pass the stove Inna grabs the pot with her unbound hand and hits Slayter with the scalding mush. He roars and backhands her away, his eyes narrowing and blackening much like they did when Paiton tried to fight back. This time, however, as he stalks forwards and reaches out to grab his prey, Neil intervenes and suddenly cracks him with his baton.

Slayter stumbles backwards unfazed, absorbing half a dozen more of Neil’s blows before he whips Neil into the stove. The impact scatters embers from the flame against the wall and to the floor.

“So this is what it’s come to?” Slayter asks. “You could’ve been like me.”

The two men lock in a grapple, not noticing the curtain catching fire, or the floorboards. The flame spreads and quickly engulfs the rotted wooden objects in its path.

Inna bats at the fire, but it’s too late. Seeing Slayter on top of Neil, she smashes a chair across his back, giving Neil just enough time to spring to his feet. He takes Inna’s hand and sprints towards the stairs.

“My shop,” she reaches back. Neil almost has to drag her down the steps, leaving Slayter surrounded by the growing wall of flames.

Neil shoves Inna inside the passenger door of the utility truck, then hops in the driver’s seat, but the ignition’s empty.

“Dammit,” he hisses.

They have no other choice but to flee on foot until Neil suddenly stops. He backtracks to unlatch the utility truck’s rear doors, revealing Raymond and Garrison still alive on the benches. With a two-fingered salute, Neil releases them before he turns to escape with Inna.

Flames spread to the shop’s exterior, while upstairs Inna’s photo of the angel statue at her grandma’s wedding withers in the fire. Suddenly Slayter’s boot crushes it. The beast is on the move.

Mazer thumbs the broken pocket watch out on the balcony overlooking Downtown. He turns it over to reveal an inscription: TO THE FATHER I NEVER HAD.

Disappointed and betrayed, he dials his PDA. “I treated you like a son,” he speaks into the phone. His eyes find the haunting child statue eerily reaching out.

Neil listens to the message while riding a SectorLink tram. He sits back-to-back with Inna at the end of a row.

“Do you really think something’s better than what you had here?” Mazer’s voicemail continues. “We’re trying to make this city better. You’ve forgotten so much. I told you not to put me in this position. The Agency thanks you for your service.
I
thank you for your service. But you’ve left me with no other choice.”

Neil hangs up as the message ends, then searches the database for his own profile. BREACH OF CONTRACT is now written in red, until it is suddenly replaced by an error message: NETWORK ERROR. UNAUTHORIZED USER. He pockets the deactivated device. He is officially no longer a Collector.

“Whatever happens, I don’t regret the choice I made,” he reassures Inna. He reaches around to take her hand. She squeezes tighter.

A Woman Passenger across from them notices their moment. “I’ve never seen a Collector with a partner before,” she says. She suddenly leans forward grinning, “Everyone deserves love.”

Inna smiles, until the tram suddenly grinds to a halt and two SectorLink SEOs board through the sliding doors. The pre-recorded security message blares over the SectorLink P.A. system, “Random identification check in progress. Please remain seated.” The announcement repeats every few seconds.

In the opposite direction, two more SectorLink SEOs board. Each group initiates their sweep, checking IDs and verifying identities against the database.

Inna looks to Neil as the sweep boxes them in.

“We’ll say I’m on assignment and you’re my volunteer,” he plans.

“Won’t they check you anyway?”

Neil’s face confirms she’s right. That’s protocol. “We need a diversion,” he says, grasping to come up with any sort of plan.

Just then, he spots a man in his thirties with his back facing him in an adjacent row. Neil readies his shock baton as he inches closer. Inna quietly protests, but the security sweep already reaches the Woman Passenger across from her.

Neil aims the baton’s electrodes at the man’s neck, about to zap him when he suddenly notices a little girl hanging on the man’s leg and playing – it’s her father. Neil’s taken aback. He looks to Inna as the second pair of officers reaches her.

“Papers?” one SectorLink SEO asks.

Inna pretends to search her pockets. The SectorLink SEO leans in to take her blood sample while Neil finds the next closest person, an Older Gentleman in his fifties.

“Excuse me, sir. How’s your health?” Neil asks.

The Older Gentleman notices Neil’s black combat uniform and immediately goes on the defensive. “Would you folks just leave me alone already? My health is fine and I’m not selling my life to you.”

He turns around in a huff, but Neil secretly zaps him with the baton. The Older Gentleman convulses to the ground.

“Officers, this man needs help!” Neil shouts. The SectorLink SEOs break away from Inna to tend to the man.

“He was just sitting here and all of a sudden started convulsing,” Neil lies.

“It felt like a shock…,” the Older Gentleman describes, still disoriented.

“Sir, it’s okay. Just breathe,” one SectorLink SEO instructs. “You were probably having a heart attack.”

“I thought I was healthy.”

“I’ll find a med kit,” Neil chimes in. He backtracks, then grabs Inna and they slip away through the sliding doors with the officers distracted.

Neil and Inna rush across the elevated SectorLink station platform and race towards the stairs.

Soon they reach the water’s edge at the west bank and stop to catch their breath. Dead carp corpses litter the shore, while the back half of a small fishing boat is submerged underwater – the same boat Wade hoped to use to travel to the reactor out in the bay.

The processing facility taunts them across the way on the opposite bank. Inna finds a rock and throws it at the factory, not even close. She growls as she does it again. She grabs another and wades into the water before throwing it, mentally losing it as she belts out screams of frustration. Neil goes in after her as she sinks further.

“Stop. Inna, stop.”

“I hate them,” she says as she shouts at the facility. “I hate you!” She chucks another stone, in past her waist.

“Get out of the water,” Neil demands.

She goes under just as Neil catches up and grabs her. “Let me go,” she shouts. “At least let me die on my own terms.”

Their bodies splash violently as Neil wrestles her back to the shore before falling to the dirt, his arms wrapped around her to restrain her in place.

“You can’t keep hurting people to protect us,” she says out of breath. “That’s not how things work.”

“It’s how we’re built,” Neil counters. Inna squirms, but he pulls her closer. “When you see a volunteer carted away there’s a part of you thanking God it’s them and not you. It’s either them or us.”

“So why us?” Inna cries. “Why do I deserve to live?”

“I’m not going to lose you,” Neil says as he brushes her wet hair from her face.

She breaks into tears. “We’re prisoners in our own city.”

Something comes over Neil upon hearing her words. An idea. “You’re right,” he admits. “We need to leave. We have to get outside the Wall.”

Inna laughs at how ridiculous that sounds. “Nobody leaves.”

“You don’t work as a Collector without learning a few tricks,” Neil claims. “That loophole at the tunnels...that was just the first.”

She wrenches her head back, curious.

“There is a way,” he reveals. “And unless we hide the rest of our lives, it’s our only chance to be together.”

Neil allows his words to percolate before he reveals his do-or-die plan, a last-ditch effort.

“It’s called a transfusion,” he says, then follows it up with the ultimate question. “Will you come with me?”

******

Monsters

There was another monster sighting out in the Bay today. Do you think it’s real? Of course the person didn’t get a good look because he was standing on the bank, but he swears it had tentacles and even wings! I think the drought is taking its toll on this guy, unless…do you think the leaking Reactor has anything to do with this?

-Quado

21

Q
uado sleeps nestled in the corner of the Public Access TV Station Control Room. No mattress. No padding. Just her satchel used as a pillow and a jacket draped over her as a blanket.

Three small sacks of rocks dangle in midair beside the makeshift bed, each connected to the ceiling by thin rope, which continues to extend in multiple directions outside the control room door and into the corridor. Each sack has a handwritten label taped beneath it on the wall: FRONT, BACK, and ROOF.

With the darkness comes complete silence, until suddenly one of the sacks crashes to the floor as one of the ropes gives out. The noise jolts Quado awake, immediately springing upright to inspect the wall and learning the fallen sack belongs to the one labeled as BACK. She pokes her head out into the corridor and listens for any sounds of movement, then collects her things as she readies to make an escape. After being blindsided in the studio before, she rigged the contraption of rocks as a crude alarm system, and with one of the sacks having fallen, she knows someone is here.