The Other Tree (34 page)

“Pick up the helmet,” said Docker.

He nodded towards the headgear, which lay on the ground beside two SinaCorp backpacks. Chris picked up the helmet, with its tinted faceplate and cool, synthetic surface.

“Find out what’s on the other side of that room,” said Docker. “If you’re not back in five minutes, I shoot one of them. If you’re not back in ten, I shoot the other. Then, I come in after you. Your time starts now.”

Docker pressed a button on his watch, which gave a soft beep.

Chris’s gaze jumped to Luke and Emir, sitting silently facing the wall, probably rueing the day they’d met her. There were so many things that needed to be made right, so many things to make up for.

Launching into a sprint, Chris hurtled towards the glowing archway. As she pulled on the stuffy helmet, she wished she’d spent more time studying the riddles.

“Flaming swords,” muttered Chris. “Humility, weakness…”

As the archway loomed towards her, Chris took a deep breath, and kept on running.

Please don’t let there be pits of lava
.

She burst into the blazing room, and the force of the heat slammed into her like a runaway bus. Even through the suit, she could feel her skin smarting at the rising temperature, the spinning tongues of fire whipping at her like fire hoses. Her eyes watered from the glare, as dozens of fiery plumes swirled and ribboned around her on their iron carousels. The cavern was a churning wash of curling flames and liquid shadows, with great wheels of fire spinning through the darkness. She could almost imagine shapes moving around her, illuminated for only a moment at the edge of her vision before plunging back into shadow, bringing to mind the Book of Daniel, and the Biblical angel stalking the furnace.

Chris stumbled across a floor of red hot pebbles, her boots starting to smoke as she ran. She tried to ignore the heat prickling through the soles as she saw the hazy form of a wall rising beyond the rippling fire. Skidding against the pressure of the fiery jets, Chris approached it. In the pulsing light, it looked about ten metres wide, and in the middle stood a set of heavy double doors, rough cut from red sandstone.

She slowed as she neared, trying to detect any obvious traps such as pits of spikes or spear holes in the side walls. Her eyes strained in the strobing firelight, and she could just make out an emblem carved into each side wall, as through forming an invisible sensor beam just before the doors. Chris looked at the door, only metres ahead, then squinted through the blurry faceplate at the emblems on the walls.

If they did form some kind of trigger mechanism, Chris hoped it was some primitive version of the auto-sensing doors which opened on approach. Given more time, she probably could have come up with an elaborate experiment to test various hypotheses, but the seconds were ticking down to that first, irretrievable shot. She walked forward.

Nothing happened, aside from her feet becoming steadily hotter. With the archway directly in front of her, she could see a stylised flame etched on each stone door, wavering in the heat.

Chris pressed her palms to the doorway, glancing around for signs of swinging blades, falling cages, or sly trapdoors. The only threats seemed to be burning to death, asphyxiation, and drowning in her own sweat. She took a breath and leaned against the doors as hard as she could, grinding her soles into the burning pebbles. It had the same effect as pushing on an uncooperative beached whale, and she briefly wondered whether this was some cruel decoy door.

Chris pushed and pounded helplessly at the sandstone, pressing the carved motifs, kicking at the rock and leaving streaks of molten rubber. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do. Time was running out, but time was always running out. Mountains rose and oceans boiled, nations were razed, history was written and forgotten, and life just dribbled away through the generations. Brief moments after your eyes first opened, they were closed again forever.

She sank to her knees. Her feet burned, her shoulder stung, her hip ached, and she was utterly exhausted. She had let everyone down, and now here she was, at last, in her own rather literal hell, alone and helpless.

Chris stared at the umber stone in front of her, the two carved flames flaring side by side, reaching towards each other.

No one should die alone
.

* * *

Docker stood casually alert, his feet planted at shoulder width, one gun aimed at Emir and Luke, the other resting at his side.

“Docker, you don’t have to—” began Emir.

“Emir, my intention is for all of us to get out of here alive,” said Docker. “If you keep talking, that’s not going to happen.”

Luke glanced subtly between Docker and Emir, suddenly glad he’d never had any alpha male aspirations. There was a sudden soft
bip
from Docker’s wrist, and to Luke and Emir, the noise was like the falling of a guillotine blade. There was the briefest pause, almost like the hush of a light going out, and Docker aimed the gun at Luke.

The trigger stopped at halfway as the sound of rattling echoed down the hall. Docker raised the other gun, smoothly tracking the smoking figure as it scrambled towards them down the earthen hallway. Chris pulled off her helmet as she ran, and they could see she was limping on both legs, or somehow trying to. They also noticed that her boots gave off an acrid, oily vapour reminiscent of car tyres being incinerated. Chris took in the scene as she staggered towards them, stopping only when Docker tightened his finger on the gun aimed at her.

“You were…” Chris panted. “I was only gone for…”

Docker watched Chris carefully as she gasped for air, doubled over and spattering sweat onto the ground.

“Can I just ask why you were going to shoot me first?” asked Luke.

Docker ignored the question.

“Report,” said Docker.

“Can’t do it alone,” wheezed Chris. “Door at the end needs at least two, I mean, probably four people to open.”

Docker’s gaze scraped over Chris so hard she almost expected it to draw blood.

“Really,” said Docker. “Two, I mean, four people?”

“There are two insignia on the side walls, ten metres apart,” said Chris. “I think they need to be pushed at the same time to unlock the door—like the vaults that need two keys to turn simultaneously. And the doors are really heavy.”

Docker considered the information, and you could almost see the stream of algorithms behind his eyes.

“It’s the second gate,” continued Chris, flashing a weak smile at Luke. “Having the humility to accept your own weakness, to accept that you need help. The Sumerian hero Gilgamesh had the wild man Enkidu. Adam had Eve, and Lilith, and according to the Apocrypha this other chick who ended messily. But the recurring theme, the lesson, is that people aren’t meant to be alone.”

Another antagonist might have pulled out an air violin, or made some derisive comment about clichéd sentimentality. Docker, however, was occupied planning his next fifteen moves, similar to the way a grandmaster might study a half-played chessboard and finish the game without lifting a piece.

Docker’s calculations fell into an acceptable configuration, and he deftly swung his backpack over one shoulder.

“Arlin, go back to the archway,” said Docker.

Chris wanted to argue. She wanted to dig in her heels and say “Make me,” while possibly making an offensive gesture. But that would have ended with two fresh corpses bleeding onto her molten shoes. When Docker had said “No hesitation, no questions,” he’d meant it. She could tell by the way he moved, with such economy and such control, that he didn’t waste time making threats. There was something about him that reminded her of a half-starved cheetah on the savannah, where every wasted movement brought you closer to death.

Chris glanced at Emir and Luke, who watched her with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity—Emir more apprehension, Luke more curiosity. She tried to give them an encouraging smile as she walked back towards the blazing archway, soon losing sight of them amongst the pillars and shadows.

Docker paused in front of Luke and Emir, his helmet under his arm.

“Move from this spot, and she dies,” said Docker.

“Plan on coming back for us?” asked Emir bitterly. “Like Roman, and Bale, and Lien?”

Docker looked down at Emir, his expression impassive.

“Don’t compare yourself to them. They knew what it meant to make a hard choice and live with it. Everything has consequences, Emir, and just because you keep running doesn’t mean they won’t catch up.”

Emir glowered at him, while Luke’s gaze crawled over Docker like a swarm of army ants. With a final, measured look around the hall, Docker strode into the shadows, towards the soft roar of the furnace.

Chris stood by the glowing archway, holding the faintly smoking helmet in her hands, an eclectic parade of thoughts dancing through her head. Docker emerged from the darkness, alone, and stood beside Chris, the two of them framed in the marble archway against a backdrop of spinning fire.

With a practised movement, Docker unzipped a panel at his hip and holstered one of his guns. He smoothly slid the remaining gun into a holster on his calf, before securely sealing his suit over it. Chris quickly recalculated her odds of defeating him without guns in the equation. Docker looked at Chris coolly.

“I could still break your neck,” he said. “And your legs, and your arms, and your fingers.”

There was a slight pause.

“Believe me, I don’t want to,” said Docker.

“Then don’t,” said Chris, staring deep into Docker’s eyes. “I know I’ve been kind of rude to you, but we’re not that different. We both want similar things in life, we both want to get through this, and it’s your choice how that happens. If you let us, we could all do this together, and I’ll help you freely. Or you could force me every step of the way, always looking over your shoulder. Docker, do you really want to live your life down the barrel of a gun?”

Chris looked into Docker’s eyes, and it was like staring into an abyss, and at the very bottom of the pit lay the shadow of a shape, screaming.

“Your mother said the exact same thing,” said Docker.

A hairline crack formed on Chris’s heart.

“Put on your helmet,” said Docker.

“Wait,” said Chris, her voice hoarse. “You knew my mother?”

Something sank slowly in Docker’s eyes, like the ghost of a drowning man.

“I knew this would come up,” he said with irritation, but there was a note in his voice that seemed to draw on something deep, something old, something buried.

Docker had no reason to continue the conversation. He had no reason not to just shove Chris into the flames, helmet or no. He had no need to explain himself, and he was well aware of the hazards of making long expository speeches while standing in front of an open furnace. He had terminated team members for lesser transgressions—their contracts, that is. But somehow, that face looking up at him,
her
face…

Eyes full of fear, full of pride, glistening under desert skies…

“Your mother was the researcher on Eden One,” said Docker. “I was tactical support.”

“Everyone on that mission died,” said Chris. “Oh…”

Somehow it shouldn’t have surprised her. Evil corporations covered things up all the time, but Chris had never questioned that the climbing accident story was a cover-up for faulty equipment. The exposé journalists had published photographs of frayed ropes and twisted hooks and everything. There had been no reason to believe there was more to it, until clues of her mother’s strange behaviour had emerged. And by then, Chris had been too caught up in her own crusade to evaluate the new, larger picture.

“She found the last clue about the key,” said Chris. “She knew something was wrong and she defected.”

“She betrayed the team,” said Docker, his voice hard. “She took something that wasn’t hers and ran.”

Chris’s heart cracked wider, and frail, dark things began to claw their way out. She held Docker’s gaze so tightly that her eyes ached.

“Did SinaCorp have her killed?” asked Chris.

The desert spun away from him, circles of light and endless sand. He tried to think of nothing as they drove—as
he
drove—and she sat beside him, talking softly. Her hands were clenched so tightly on her knees, and still she spoke until he told her to stop. They sat in silence as the wasteland stretched around them, and he wanted to keep driving, to keep going into the emptiness forever
.

“Yes,” said Docker. “I accepted the assignment, no questions, no hesitation, to save someone I… Someone else.”

They stood on the dusty plain, the heavens clear and bright above them. Their breath wisped away in pale vapour, and she looked at him with such pleading, such dread, such hope. He couldn’t stand the hope in her eyes, believing in him, believing in the goodness of humanity. There was no such thing—just this. He had been through this so many times in his head, and it was a simple motion—raise, aim, pull. Finished. In his head, it had already happened. Anyway, he barely knew her. Who was she, compared to—

Raise. Aim
.

Chris could feel the world falling away, crumbling into sudden dust around her. A hollow, despairing anger began to fill her.

“I couldn’t do it,” said Docker. “But it didn’t matter.”

He never heard the sniper shot. Just saw the look on her face as she fell, as he caught her, as her blood began to stain his clothes. She tried to say something as he held her, as he waited for that second shot meant for him. He never heard the words, just saw the expression in her eyes, still that damned look of hope, even as she faded
.

They had made him bury her, out there under the desert sky
.

“If you don’t finish the job, someone else will,” said Docker. “And you’re not the only one who suffers.”

They still paid him half, lined up another mission almost straight away. Nothing sank in until he got home
.

There had been an accident
.

SinaCorp sent their condolences
.

“You get the job done,” said Docker. “And if you’re lucky, you go home.”