3030: The Gathering Darkness
an excerpt

When she arrived at Bill’s floor, she peeked her head out of the lift and looked around. No one seemed to be there. She exited the lift and put in an ear bud as she began a transmission to Tricia.

“Where are you?” Tricia whispered.

“I’m back on your floor. Where are you?” Vern also whispered.

“I ducked into Bill’s office. They’re finished here. As soon as they pack up, we’re out of here.” Tricia breathed a sigh of relief at just saying the words.

“Good. I’ll be there in a moment.” She disconnected as she began walking slowly down the hallway. She didn’t have any more cute responses in her bag of tricks if she ran into the Vice Executive again, so if she ran into her all she could do was make sure the others made it out safely.

She turned the corner to the hallway where Bill’s office was located and continued to find only silence and emptiness. She tapped at Bill’s office door lightly and it opened up slightly, revealing Tricia’s stunning eyes.

“It’s me.” Vern looked around the hallway.

“We’re ready.” Tricia looked back into the room. “Come on guys.” She opened the door completely as they all poured into the hallway.

“We need to dump this cart. I have all the relevant equipment here in my bag. The rest can be dumped down an incinerator chute.” Gerard smiled.

“There’s one at the end of the hallway. Tricia, can you help him?” Vern spoke quickly.

After they were out of earshot, Vern looked at Madeline. “We might have a problem. I ran into the Vice Executive on the lift.”

“Did she recognize you?” Madeline’s eyes widened.

“I don’t think so. But she suspected something I think. We can’t all be seen leaving together. I’ll leave with Tricia, and you and Gerard can go after us. You two should be fine taking the front exit; Tricia and I can escape through the emergency exit on the roof. Worst case scenario, someone on a mag-train sees some crazy people on the Legislature Hall roof.” Vern kept an eye on the hallway as she spoke, afraid the Vice Executive would return any moment.

“Sounds good.” Madeline wished she’d had half the training Vern had been through. Perhaps that’s why Vern seemed calm whereas she was about to wet herself.

Before Vern could speak, she heard simultaneous and numerous magnetic clicks all around them. “Oh no. The emergency locks are engaging.”

“They know?” Madeline looked around them for Tricia and Gerard.

“They must. That’s the first stage of a building lock down.” Vern turned and began running toward Tricia and Gerard. “We have to get to the roof, it’s our only way out of this now, for all of us.”

“It’ll be unlocked?” Madeline struggled to keep up with Vern.

“Yes. It’ll be where security enters the building from in less than ten minutes. Possibly less than five if they’re close.” Vern looked back at Madeline with a concerned look.

“We can’t be caught with the information we have on us. It’ll look like we were planting it.” Madeline could feel her throat tightening up as a panic attack started.

“Exactly.” Vern finally caught sight of Tricia and Gerard as the auditory alarms began sounding.

“The roof?” Tricia looked at Vern.

“Right. We can’t take the lift; it’s too far away.” Vern looked around for the stairwell.

“There!” Tricia pointed to a door halfway down the corridor. “Hurry!”

They began their escape as they entered the stairwell and listened. For a moment everything seemed well…then Vern heard it. The sound of silent footsteps descending the stairs barely penetrated her sensitive eardrum. She motioned for them to begin going down. When the others silently objected, she pointed up, shook her head no, and touched her watch to indicate they were too late: the soldiers had already arrived.

Instead of escaping to the roof, Vern had to do the next best thing: get them to a public-friendly floor where they could pose as innocent bystanders that became trapped in the building. Somewhere in that time they’d have to find an incinerator chute to destroy all the evidence they were carrying just in case each person was searched.

As they reached the ground floor, they exited into the grand lobby’s side area and found an incinerator almost immediately. Vern motioned for Madeline and Gerard to dump everything they were carrying as she and Tricia kept a lookout around them.

“How? How did they find out?” Tricia sounded defeated.

“Who knows. It’s possible they have cameras monitoring the corridors we didn’t detect before.” Vern paused when the other two returned.

“Now what?” Madeline spoke as she stared around the lobby.

“Now we step into character.” Vern looked at Tricia and nodded. They both knew exactly how to play the scene out. “Tricia and I will play ourselves. You two are new to the city, which isn’t technically a lie. We’re giving you a city tour today. Got it?” Vern spoke quickly.

“Let’s move.” Tricia took the lead. Her instincts as a trained executive operative pushed the trepidation to the back of her head.

As they reached the main lobby area, they began looking around for someone to take notice. Finally, two security guards approached them.

“I’m sorry, you can’t leave. We’re in lockdown mode right now.” He spoke politely, which gave Vern hope.

“What’s happening?” Gerard spoke before anyone else could. He tried to put on the most innocent face he could muster.

“The Chief Executive has been assassinated.” The soldier’s voice cracked. He coughed to try to mask his raw emotion.

The other soldier picked up where the first left off. “As he said, the Chief Executive was shot a few moments ago as she was making a speech before the Legislature. Everyone in the building has to be interviewed. We can interview you now if you’d like, and you can be on your way.” The soldier tried to soften the blow of hearing about the Radical leader’s demise.

They all stood speechless for a moment. Vern couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She looked at Tricia and opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. How could this have happened? Bill was meeting with Ethan, so he couldn’t have done the job himself. Was this his plan? Assassinate the leader of the Radical Government? Her head began spinning.

“Are you ok Miss?” The second soldier spoke again as he held a hand out to steady her.

“No, I’m not. I need to sit down. Are you saying the Chief Executive has been killed?” Her face drained of all color as she began shaking.

“If you could just answer a few questions, you can be on your way. Could one of you tell me why you were here today?”

Madeline took charge in Vern’s incapacitated state. “Vern and Tricia are former executive operatives, and they were showing my son Gerard and I the place they used to work.” Madeline swallowed hard.

Tricia nodded in affirmation. “We..we..we…”She tried to speak, but only a stutter came out. Her former mentor couldn’t be dead. She looked over to Vern and felt the wail coming. Slowly, but steadily, the low grumble began in her stomach and clawed its way up her throat until it spewed out in a blast of guttural, raw emotion.

“Let’s get you all out of here. I’m terribly sorry you had to be here for this. We’ll need to take retinal scans of each of you to document your presence here today for the official investigation record…but after that you can go.”

They submitted to retinal exams before the guards escorted them to the door. Just as they arrived to the outside of the Legislature Building, Vern’s transmitter lit up with a transmission from Ethan.

“Ethan?” Vern’s voice came out between sobs.

“Are you all okay?” Ethan could tell they’d heard.

“We’re outside the building. How did it happen?” Vern began getting her faculties under control.

“I’m clueless. Bill was in the room the entire time. When the alarms sounded, everyone in the room scattered to find out what was going on.” Ethan paused to collect his thoughts. “What about the evidence?”

“We had it…” Vern suddenly remembered what they’d done to it.

“Had?” He knew he was about to hear bad news.

“We thought the alarms were sounded because of it, so we destroyed the evidence. We threw it down the incinerator chute.” Vern sighed.

“Did any of you get to see what was on his terminal?” Ethan crossed his fingers.

“I did.” Gerard answered.

Everyone looked at him simultaneously.

“It was a lot of stuff about timelines and changes. Some of it was in the past, and some of it in the future.” Gerard looked up as he tried to remember. “The Chief Executive was mentioned too, come to think of it. It didn’t say specifically, but she was in there.”

Ethan knew exactly what it all meant. “Today was the master plan.”

Vern and Tricia spoke simultaneously, “Plan?”

“He sabotaged the two other cities, and now the Chief Executive. It’s all a part of a larger plan. We need to know what else was in that information.” Ethan paused again. “I need to contact Max somehow. He has to know what’s happened here. You all should get back to the residential sector and wait for me.”

“What does this all mean Ethan?” Madeline spoke timidly.

Ethan spoke ominously, “It means that Bill’s grand plan is coming to fruition.”