Sak · Maps

Escape 01:06 Reveal:Entrant

01.11.09 14:14
Section: Maps
Filed Under: Copyright - CC, Series

I could tell that I had started to annoy her, but I couldn’t get over the emotional pitches that I’d recently been enduring. And the raiment blew my mind. I circled it several times after she had turned off its camouflage, just studying it. At first I kept asking where it was being controlled from, as though it were a remote vehicle. She assured me that she was inside, but that it wasn’t really prudent for her to dismount at this particular time. Standing at about eight or nine feet, the suit had much of the same form as a biped, except without a head. Instead, an arch that spanned from shoulder to shoulder secured a sphere that spun around, and seemed to contain several lenses. The suit’s right arm seemed like any robotic arm with a hand for grasping and manipulating things. The left arm, however, turned into a slightly bulky cylinder from the elbow joint forward. There were also two small appendages sticking out of the chest of the thing that ended in little spheres. The large, proportionate arms mirrored the actions of the these little arms.

After I’d calmed down a little I sat down and we talked for a few minutes. She explained to me that she was working for some historical organization and was responsible for recording the events of the war. She didn’t seem to know much in regards to how it all started, though I accepted her rationalization readily. It just seemed to make sense to me. For a few seconds I considered turning myself in to The Republic troops, and seeing what might happen. I didn’t know if they’d see me as a combatant, or just some lost civilian, and whether they’d shoot me on sight—for killing one of their own—or simply detain me somewhere with other lost civilians. There was however, a sensation of freedom that I currently held that I knew I’d lose if I even lived long enough for the Reps to take me into custody. So I decided to stick with Samara and see where it might lead.

She had given me a little communication device that wrapped around my ear, with a small microphone that hung half-way down my cheek, and explained to me that we needed to rendezvous with a resupply unit that her people were launching into Lake Washington. I didn’t bother to use the ear-piece for quite a while, though she periodically fed me information through it regarding our status. I spent most of the hike up Phinney Ridge ducking under cover to hide from low flying aircraft that were busily sweeping the area, looking for us. After a little while though, they veered off north, and left the area. Samara informed me that one of the other Watchers was running around north of Greenlake without his camouflage active to try and draw the soldiers away from us. Apparently it was working.

We walked on in silence for some time. Occasionally I could hear her thudding along behind me somewhere, and every once in a while I thought I could make out the raiment when it moved, like some autonomous blob of water. As we descended the ridge, I turned south toward 45th, and took to the neighborhood streets for better cover. After a few blocks I watched a man come running out of a house lugging some sort of electronic equipment, the cord dragging along behind him on the walkway, and set it into a canopy covered truck-bed. Another man soon ran out of the house and joined him, carrying a box. Both men were armed with pistols at their hips, and stopped to talk for a few seconds at the truck while looking up and down the street. As I watched them, a third man suddenly appeared from the same side of the street I was hiding on, and jogged across the street to meet the other two.

“You seeing this?” I whispered into the ear-piece.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Moving day, or looters, do you think?”

“Looks like looters.”

Sure enough, I watched as the other two men ran back into the house, and the third jogged off toward another house and started breaking in. They apparently had a little system where one would run from house to house and report on an inventory of potential valuables, and the other two would handle the loading. I crouched there for a minute or two, watching until all three had disappeared into a house again, and then made a move to the next block over.

Skirting around the thieves, I couldn’t help but think of the blatant disregard that opportunists had for a situation that had apparently displaced otherwise normal people. I struggled with the ethical conundrum for a while, and then saw it mirrored in the old world that I’d come from. I came to the realization that there would always be people who would be looking to take advantage of others for their own personal gain, regardless of the situation. My mood changed to anger and I paused for a minute in the street, and considered going back around the block and taking some action against the looters. After deliberating on that notion, I eventually gave up on it in favor of remaining hidden.

I trudged along quietly for several blocks, confused, angry, depressed, and afraid. After stewing in those emotions for a while, Samara broke the silence by telling me that the resupply unit was probably going to land on the east side of the Union Bay Natural Habitat, near Laurelhurst.

“Okay,” I said, “I’m going to cross I-5 at 50th, which will hopefully be far enough away from the bridge to get by without being noticed.” During our periodic conversations, I thought I’d heard her grunting a little, or even winded at times, breathing heavily as she spoke. “Is that thing difficult to drive?” I asked.

“Not really difficult,” she said. “It’s a lot like a full body bicycle with a fixed gear. It’s powered though, so I can do some things that a human wouldn’t be able to do normally, but there are consequences.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I wasn’t around at the time, but when the Reps were taking Portland, and people were being evacuated from Seattle, Nate apparently tried jumping the canal near the Fremont neighborhood. He made the jump, but ended up fracturing both of his legs, and slipping a disk in the process.”

We started down the slope toward I-5, and I visualized her bounding past me, down the hill and across the overpass; which is exactly what she did. “I’ve got to make this fast, so that they don’t see me,” she said, as a shimmering blur thudded past me. “I’ll meet you on the other side,” and I could hear the thumps of the raiment as it hit the pavement, counting all of four steps down to the overpass, and then four more were all it took her to get across. She disappeared quickly after that and I couldn’t make out where she went.

My only thought in crossing was to try and create as low a silhouette as possible, and hope that the bit of railing would cover me enough in case anyone happened to be looking this way. I paused next to the southbound on-ramp, and then hit the ground running, starting low, and ending up in a sort of squat-shuffle as I worked my way across the bridge. The maneuver was difficult to maintain for that distance, so I stopped half way to rest, and also to have a look around. A little past the 45th overpass, I could see some movement, but it was too difficult to make out until it got closer and I realized that it was a vehicle approaching, driving north in the southbound lanes. I immediately dropped flat onto my stomach; my heart pounding so heavily I thought my weight was going to shove it out my throat. The vehicle roared past beneath me, and continued north. I waited another few seconds, listening, and didn’t even bother to look when I got up and finished the squatted run across the remainder of the overpass, ducking into an alleyway between a house and some tennis courts. I ran for some tree cover next to the playground part of a park, and collapsed to my knees, my legs burning from exhaustion. Some movement next to the tennis court fence startled me, and as I spun around I fell onto my ass, drawing my rifle toward it. A wavy form stepped forward and I heard Samara’s voice in my ear, “It’s me.”

“I need to rest a minute,” I said, and crawled over to some grass to lie down.

The sun breaking through the trees refracted off the moisture in my eyes and created beautiful streaks of light and color. I must have drifted into some sort of a delirium, because in an instant the world was beautiful again, streaming with spectacular rays of life and energy. When I closed my eyes I felt the moisture spreading to the rims of my eyelids and upon opening them again the light amplified, creating a bright, blurry green abstraction. When I sat up I had a lump in my throat that I washed down with the last of my water. I massaged my thighs for a minute, and wiped my eyes, and then got up and started walking again. Samara waited patiently, and then continued to follow along behind me as I made my way through the alley to the edge of the park.

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This is a work of fiction. None of the characters are real, including myself. Any similarities between what is depicted in the story and what exists in the real world are intentional coincidences.

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