Donovan threw himself backward out of the corridor and into the main chamber, barely in time as the gout of fire from the detonating Cerberus Engine washed outward, just inches from his face. He felt the flames burning his face, and knew his eyebrows and facial hair were almost certainly gone, and clutched the package tightly to his chest.
As the Engine blew, the entire vessel shuddered and leaned to port, sending him sliding across the room. Instinctively, he wrapped his body around the package and slammed spine-first into the wall as the floor tilted at a sharp thirty degree angle. A deep sproing noise from outside told him that one of the connective cables had gone.
Scrambling to his feet as the ship righted itself, Donovan launched himself towards the only door out of the room not billowing fire and black smoke-
And almost drove his face into the point of Loki’s sword. His friend stared down at him cruelly, and extended the hand that wasn’t holding the razor-sharp blade.
“Give it to me, Donovan.”
Donovan shook his head, clutching the package so tightly as to make the sharp edge dig into his chest, past the tattered remnants of his shirt. “I can’t. They need this.”
Loki’s face contorted, and Donovan could see the warring emotions behind his eyes. “Don’t make me do this. We can end this together.”
“No we can’t. Not the way you mean. If they don’t get this, more people will die. Do you actually want more ‘accidents’ like Aleiki?”
Loki’s shout of anger was masked by a secondary explosion from the bow of the ship, throwing him forward as Donovan went rocking back again, sending the two of them into a tangle of limbs, Loki’s sword skittering across the hold floor. Loki was reaching for the package, Donovan straining with everything he had to keep him from it.
And there, in the doorway…
No Donovan’s eyes widened. That’s impossible.
And in that instant of shock, Loki wrenched the package from Donovan’s grasp. At the same time, the figure in the doorway raised a very familiar looking gun…
TWO WEEKS EARLIER
"All I'm saying is, we need to talk about our options.” Aleiki followed her older brother down the stairway that led from the living room into the basement. “Without all the roommates, we don’t have enough money left to keep the house for very long. We need to find-”
Loki, her brother, didn’t even turn to look at her. “We’ve been over this. I’m not comfortable bringing outsiders into this place.”
Aleiki scoffed at him. “Well you’ll be a lot less comfortable without a roof over your head. We were barely scraping by once Sami and Dead Man moved out, and now with Donovan and leaving…” She looked around the basement, her workstation. “I’m just saying, this is a nice house. And if you, me, and the others are the only people staying in a ten bedroom house, we won’t be able to afford the mortgage. Icarus doesn’t work, Shmoo’s still on tour, Valdor can’t take legitimate jobs because he doesn’t legally exist, and Asraiah’s disability keeps her from getting a whole lot of good jobs.”
“You think I don’t know all that?” Loki turned to her and practically snarled. Aleiki simply watched as the fight went out of him and his shoulders slumped. “I know. But…” He sighed. “I just don’t want this to turn into a damned boarding house. I miss the family we had, you know?”
Aleiki nodded. “Nothing lasts forever. Life gets in the way sometimes.”
Loki shook his head. “Life didn’t get in the way. Life didn’t kill them. But we know who did, and we can’t do a thing about it.”
“We will.” Aleiki reassured him. “We have to.”
“Maybe.” Loki straightened up, and continued on into the workshop. “But go ahead and look for renters. It’s getting kind of boring around here.”
**********************************************
Two stories up, Valdor, Asraiah, Icarus, and Donovan were playing cards, a game Donovan, Joe and Codie had come up with two years ago, shortly before the siege of the Pancake House. Valdor placed a pair of Jacks on the table, Donovan placed a king and a two, Asraiah two queens, and Icarus an ace and a three. They all nodded, acknowledging Donovan as the winner.
“So you’re really leaving?” Asraiah spoke, bringing voice back to the somber party.
Donovan nodded. “Yeah. I can’t stay here anymore.” He shrugged. “I just…I guess I miss having a normal life.”
Valdor snorted. “Yeah, cause being a rock star is such an average job.”
“I mean, yeah, I’ll miss this place,” Donovan wasn’t entirely sure how to put it. “But I’m sick of watching my friends die.” He started to tick off names on his fingers. “Vasser, Rachel, Joe, Codie, Hood, Sho, Mann, not to mention that Loki and Dead Man have each died once.” He nodded to Asraiah. “And whatever the hell that was with your double from the alternate timeline that died…will die...in the future.”
Asraiah nodded. “It’s been hard. Going to that future, seeing our names on a war memorial…”
“There’s that, too. We all died in that future.” Valdor took a swig from his beer can. “But here we are now, right?”
Icarus chuckled involuntarily. When the other three turned to glare at him, he raised a hand. “I’m sorry. Really, I am. But you people sound crazy! I mean, if I hadn’t been there, seen what I saw, I wouldn’t believe a word of this.”
Asraiah smirked, her eyepatch shifting slightly in her brow. “There’s that. What am I supposed to tell people when they ask me what happened to my eye? ‘Gouged out by spiny monster’ isn’t high on the list of believable excuses.”
********************************************
When a customer enters the Caduceus Candy Corporation, they see first a gigantic building, thirty-five stories tall, and covered in two-way mirrors for windows, making it very difficult to see in. They walk up the marble steps, through unimaginably expensive fifteen foot high mahogany double doors, and into a nearly featureless lobby. Three-hundred year old tapestries adorn the walls every fifty feet or so, depicting, in sharp black and white tones, a series of Grecian mythological scenes rendered in breathtaking detail.
This continues on for sometime, down the five-hundred foot hallway, until the viewer encounters a pair of stained oak desks on either side of the far wall, flanking a set of five elevators. At each desk sits two generic secretarial women, uninteresting and featureless. They are almost always on the phones, or at their computers, though one is not certain why a candy company needs such an extravagant help desk.
This is about the time the average customer notices the armed guards standing in the alcoves behind the tapestries, thick men in expensive suits standing at attention with their black market assault rifles. One also notices that the lobby is nearly silent, completely devoid even of elevator music or the sound of machinery. An eerie silence weighs down on the CCC lobby, and it forms a discomfort that the customer wishes to escape as quickly as possible, and so will hurry onward to the secretaries.
This effect was calculated, a designed simplistic hostility that kept the majority of people who were less than serious out of the higher reaches of the building.
Geed L. Railth was not a customer, but the effect was unmistakable. He'd worked with the Caduceus Candy Corp. for four years, and was pretty sure he'd never get used to it.
As he crossed the lobby, he walked as quickly as possible without seeming suspicious, trying to reach he elevators without having to look at the tapestries. The damned things had always creeped him out.
He reached the elevator, and pressed the down button, sighing with relief as the elevator dinged open and he was greeted by austere, brooding, and slightly mournful muzak. Anything was better than the oppressive silence of the lobby.
His office was at the very bottom of the building, the twenty-third subterranean floor. All in all, the CCC headquarters were fifty-eight stories, but only a little more than half actually rose above the ground. The below-ground levels spread, labyrinthine, into the surrounding city, below the streets and neighboring structures. Geed was lucky to have an office near the elevator, or he'd have had to use one of the golf carts located on the lower floors to get there every day.
The elevator reached his floor, and he emerged into a dark corridor, lit only by halogen bulbs every fifty feet or so, that seemed to extend on forever. The elevator was located in the center of a 'Y' junction of three tunnels that extended similarly. Geed had never been to the end of any of them, but given his company's reputation, and some of he stories he'd heard from other workers, he was glad of that.
Two hundred feet down the left hallway, past half a dozen doors marked with his co-workers' names, he reached his office, and slid his keycard in the slot on the right side of the door, next to the sign that read "Railth, Geed L.: Engineering"
There was a new portfolio on his desk as he entered, probably some design specs and incomplete blueprints of the latest project. No one person was ever permitted to see more than their piece of the designs on CCC projects; all the components were organized after design by the Overseers, but Geed really didn't care. It was his job to convert a massive electric-steam engine to a nuclear power core without making it any bigger or heavier. He'd been working on the math and structure for a few weeks now, running simulations through the computer. A difficult task, to be sure.
He opened the portfolio as he sat in his desk chair, and began to leaf through the files. His eyes widened as he realized he'd been given the wrong file. Metallurgic reports were contained in the file, annotated with notes in red pen that pointed out weak points along a curve, and there was a blueprint for an armor plating across....was that a zeppelin?
He snapped the portfolio shut at once, and pressed the button on the wall that patched him through to the Overseer's office. "Excuse me? Sir?"
"What is it?" The Overseer's gruff voice scratched through the intercom.
"I um...I think I was given the wrong portfolio, sir. This one is marked for Reed, Gary."
The Overseer's voice sharpened. "Am I to understand that you've read this file?"
"No, sir" Geed lied quickly "I just saw the name one the side, and I knew it wasn't mine."
He could practically hear the Overseer nod. "Very well. I'll be down with the correct file shortly. Do not open the file you have now, understood?"
"Yes sir."
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