The Lucid - Season One: The Beginning Read online

  Contents

  The Lucid - Episode 1

  Copyright

  ONE

  TWO

  Alarms

  THREE

  Pursuit

  FOUR

  FIVE

  Sarah's story

  SIX

  Signs of Life

  SEVEN

  David

  EIGHT

  PREVIEW - Episode 2

  Thanks!

  The Lucid

  Episode One: The Beginning

  By

  Nick Thacker

  & Kevin Tumlinson

  tumthack

  www.tumlinsonthacker.com

  The Lucid: Season One - The Beginning (Episode 1)

  Copyright © 2014 by Nick Thacker & Kevin Tumlinson

  All rights reserved, published by Tumthack Publishing

  The Lucid: Season One - The Beginning (Episode 1)

  FIRST EDITION: October 2014

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permissions, visit the contact form at www.tumlinsonthacker.com .

  ONE

  Adam woke to a pounding in his skull, and his vision took a while to clear. He was laying face down on the hard-packed ground, with bits of dirt and twigs and small stones digging into the skin of his face. He reached up gingerly, touched the back of his head, and winced. His fingers came away coated in blood.

  He rose to his knees, breathing through the nausea of what may have been a concussion. Hospital, he thought. But there was something wrong with that. Some panic within him that made him think that was a bad idea.

  He managed to stumble to his feet, rubbing dirt from his face, when he saw Ethan Greer sprawled on the ground a few feet away. He, too, was face down. He made no effort to move.

  Groggy, still coming to grips with being conscious, Adam stumbled to Ethan’s side. He knelt beside his friend and rolled him over. Ethan’s eyes were glued shut with caked blood. The sight of it, oozing from the wound on Ethan’s forehead, was enough to shock Adam’s memory, to defibrillate it back into a beating, breathing thing. He could remember the past few hours, the attack, the blow to Ethan’s head followed immediately by the one to his own.

  He looked around for his truck and for Ethan’s SUV. Both were gone. The people who had taken them—they were normal.

  Not Suppressed.

  Not the sleepwalkers that were becoming more common, more dangerous. They weren’t being controlled. This fact made them seem all the more horrifying.

  Ethan, Adam thought. He checked his friend’s pulse, but found nothing.

  Dead.

  The thoughts were still coming slowly, painfully. There was still something Adam wasn’t remembering. Bits and pieces floated to the surface, fighting their way through the thickening muck of his mind.

  The vials.

  Adam stumbled again to his feet and looked around the clearing where he and Ethan had arranged to meet—a place that was supposed to be safe. Safe from them.

  He caught sight of the bright blue of the cooler and stumbled to it, opening it with an odd cocktail of hope and dread moving through his veins.

  The vials were inside!

  The others—the ones that were not Suppressed—they must have opened the cooler and saw that there was no food inside, nothing they valued. They had tossed it, and taken the vehicles.

  They’re running, Adam thought. They’re trying to escape.

  Adam took the cooler and walked away, toward the stream where he and Ethan had gone fishing more times than he could count. He ignored Ethan’s body. There would be time to mourn later, surely. Now… now there was no time. Now Adam had to get these vials to the professor. What was his name? Milford? Milton! Professor Milton, in Denver. Ethan was going to take them so Adam could lie low, planning a way to rescue his family, but that option was now gone. Adam would have to take the vials and come back for his family later. It was the only way. There was more at stake here than just his wife and his three kids. Everything. Everyone. It was all at stake.

  Adam rinsed out the cooler and filled it with cool water from the stream. He would avoid any of the treated water from now on. It didn’t seem to affect him, but he couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was cumulative? Maybe he would eventually be one of the Suppressed. But for now he was fine. He was lucid and awake, and he had to get these vials safely to the Professor.

  He rinsed the vials, made sure they were still sealed tight, and let them float in the water inside the cooler. It would keep them at a stable temperature at least. The cooler was insulated, so the cool of the water might stick around for a while. Of course, he planned to drink this water. This might be his only source for a while. He’d have to conserve.

  He knelt by the stream and washed the dirt from his face and hands and rinsed the blood from his hair. He winced as the water touched the wound in his scalp, and his fingers kept pulling away with blood on them. The bleeding was going to keep up for a while. What could he do? He had nothing. Not even an aspirin. It would just have to bleed until it stopped.

  Adam slung the strap of the cooler across his chest, letting it dangle at his side. He toyed with the idea of coating it in mud—if any more of the lucid people came back they might think he had something valuable in the cooler. Which, of course, he did, on more levels than one. But they’d be just as likely to steal a dirty cooler as a clean one. He decided to conserve his energy.

  As he walked out of the clearing he again ignored the body. It wouldn’t do any good to look. It would just make him remember; thinking of his friend laying there dead. Mourn later, if ever.

  Adam hiked through sparse woods and over rough and rocky terrain, moving in the direction he knew would get him to Colorado Springs. He wasn’t far, actually. A few miles, at most. It was grueling and exhausting to hike through this terrain, and despite his decision to conserve the water he found himself sipping more and more often. He was thirsty—which meant he was already dehydrated. It didn’t help that his head was pounding from what was probably a concussion, and he was feeling heat build down the back of his neck, spreading from the head wound which may have become infected.

  Hours went by and Adam stumbled on, stopping to rest for only a few moments here and there. He had to get to the city, to find some transportation and get on the road to Denver. It would be risky, going back there with the UVFs and cameras all on the lookout for him. But he had no choice.

  He couldn’t tell exactly where he was, and was missing the convenience of having GPS on a phone in his pocket, when he heard a high-pitched sound from overhead.

  He moved through the small patch of trees he’d been cutting between, and managed to get into the open. He looked up and saw that an airliner was making an approach for landing. Judging by how close it was, Adam guessed that Colorado Springs was just over that ridge ahead, just out of view. He’d made it!

  Adam raced for the crest as quickly as possible, scrambling up the loose stones and scuffing his fingers a bit as he climbed.

  The sound of the jet was odd and disturbing. It was pitched higher than it should have been. In addition, it sounded like it was moving fast. Judging by its distance from the ground, it had to be landing in a moment, but it was rocketing toward its destination at full tilt.

  Adam pushed himself to make the last bit of the climb to the crest, and stood, panting. He watched the airliner as it dipped toward the city—and he stared in disbelief.

  Smoke rose in columns from nearly every bl
ock of the city’s downtown. From his vantage point he could see multiple fires, blazing through both the new and historic buildings. UVF vehicles were racing the city grid, lights flashing.

  He might have been able to hear their sirens, if not for the screeching of the jet.

  The plane’s engines whined high and loud, and Adam watched in horror as the plane narrowly avoided the two peaks next to the city, and then screamed in tones that echoed through the urban canyons. He briefly lost sight of it as it passed behind one of the peaks. Finally the plane sank low enough that one of its wings collided with a building, slicing through part of it before an explosion erupted outward. Fire engulfed the building and the plane alike, and the aircraft toppled in air until it slammed into yet another building, exploding in a cloud of black and oily smoke mottled by the orange and yellow cannonball of flame.

  Adam sunk to his knees, unable to get his head around what he was seeing.

  My family is down there, he thought. The thought landed dull and flat in his brain and in his chest. His heart was oddly slowed by what he was seeing. All the chaos he’d experienced lately—this was too over the top to completely register.

  He was watching the end of the world.

  His head bounded again, a deep set of thuds that rattled his teeth and his bone.

  Except it wasn’t in his head. Adam turned slowly as a helicopter hovered over the slope he’d climbed before. Three men deseed in military fatigues jumped from the craft, rappelling from ropes until they hit the ground. They quickly raised their guns, aiming directly at Adam.

  What could he do? His family was down in that mess below. They could be dead, for all he knew. He was standing here—injured, dehydrated, and exhausted. It wasn’t like he had the strength to fight back, or even to run. He’d done all the running he could.

  The men encircled him as he continued to kneel, making no attempt to escape. One of the men pulled a pole from a bag carried by another, walked toward Adam, and raised the pole over his head. Its end was sharp and narrow, like a long needle.

  Adam closed his eyes and waited.

  There was a thunk, and Adam opened his eyes to see the pole stuck in the ground like a tent stake. A cube at its top opened in four triangular sections, and a small screen opened and expanded until it formed a parabolic surface. Adam watched as a face appeared on the screen.

  David Prisemen.

  “Adam,” David’s digital image said. “You gave us quite a chase. I see you have the vials with you.”

  Adam looked at the cooler hanging at his side. He glanced back over his shoulder at the armageddon below, and felt a sick clenching in his stomach, followed by an angry resolve. He lifted the strap over his head and held the cooler out in front of him before letting it drop to the ground.

  No one moved to pick it up.

  “S’yours,” Adam slurred. His mouth was dry and his tongue felt swollen. He was too tired to put up a fight here. He was ready to die.

  “Oh, we couldn’t care less about those vials,” David said from onscreen.

  Adam frowned.

  “We’re here for you, Adam.”

  Adam slowly shook his head, as if trying to clear it, trying to figure out what he was hearing. “Me?”

  “You hold the key, Adam. That’s why we’ve been studying you. That’s why we need you. The vials don’t matter to us — they never posed a threat. It was you we wanted.”

  The men reacted then, and Adam suddenly realized they were Suppressed, just like everyone else. They moved on some silent command given by David, though Adam wasn’t sure how he was issuing the orders.

  The man grabbed Adam’s arms, hard, and yanked him to his feet. They pushed him toward the helicopter, still hovering over a stretcher it had lowered to the ground. Two of the guards forced Adam down onto the stretcher and strapped him in place, and all three men hooked into ropes that pulled them upward as the helicopter rose.

  Adam turned his head and saw the chaos in the valley below. The helicopter dipped its nose in that direction and flew straight toward the fire and smoke.

  It was both the end and the beginning.

  TWO

  THREE DAYS EARLIER

  Not enough time. The thought repeated like a double-time mantra in Adam’s brain. They’ll get here before I’m done.

  He reached and slid the metal case open, heard a slight hiss, and felt a tingle of refrigerated air coil up his hands and arms. Wisps of frozen CO2—dry ice—rose in tendrils, escaping into the warmer air outside the refrigerator.

  Adam pulled the goggles over his head as he leaned down and reached into the waist-high container, feeling around. His latex-covered fingers scraped against the cold metal at the bottom of the box.

  I know they’re in here. This is where they keep them. They have to be here!

  The box was empty.

  Adam gritted his teeth and knelt further. He blinked—an involuntary reaction to the smoky white billows of condensation flowing around his goggle lenses.

  Nothing.

  The refrigerated case was completely empty.

  “Shit!” He slammed the lid closed and turned away, pivoting in a full circle, examining every inch of the small laboratory. It was no larger than a walk-in closet, squat and square, and no more than nine feet on each wall.

  Must have been hell to work here every day.

  Adam dared not turn a light on, so he used a combination of ambient light and the display of his phone as he squinted into every corner of the room, until he was satisfied there was nothing he missed.

  The samples weren’t here.

  BRNNNNN! BRNNNNN!

  The piercing wail of an internal security siren blared from hidden speakers throughout the building. Adam’s heart picked up pace, flooding him with adrenaline he wasn’t sure how to use. Fight or flight were both poor choices at the moment. He needed to be calm. He needed his lizard brain—the cold and calculating part of him that could think of a way out of this. The last thing he needed was to make a hasty mistake.

  Adam paced through the lab quickly, checking every niche, every corner he’d already searched. One last attempt to locate them. At this point, the samples would be completely useless if they weren’t on ice, or at least kept in some sort of high-insulating thermal container. One of the insulated carriers would be used to transport the vials from facility to facility. Something small and light, but insulated. Something like …

  A lunchbox.

  His eyes fell on a shelving unit that reached to the ceiling, set against the wall opposite where he was standing. He had searched it before, when he’d first entered the room, but had looked right past the thing that was in plain sight, like missing Waldo in a crowded cartoon ice rink. Adam took two long strides and immediately had his hands on the blue Thermos brand lunchbox. It was a picnic cooler—one with a zippered top and a few pouches of black netting along the outside. He never knew what those were for. Napkins? Condiment packets? Kate had always shoved tiny cylinders of beeswax lip balm in there, and then complained that they were “all melty” from the sun. “In the cooler,” Adam would tell her. “If you put them in the cooler, the heat won’t get to them.”

  He hastily unzipped the top and peered inside.

  Perfect.

  Three glass vials, each capped with a plastic airlock, were wedged into preformed bits of foam that stabilized them, holding them separate from each other to prevent breakage.

  Adam shook his head. Despite the current situation, he couldn’t help but think like a manager, and the state of these vials annoyed him. The technician in charge of transport for these samples had left the job half finished. They’d simply thrown the cooler on a shelf, not taking the time to unlock the storage refrigerator and place the sample tubes inside one at a time. There was nothing on the inventory. No check in time, no initials to show that procedure had been followed. Sloppy work.

  Of course, he could hardly blame them. After the security breach earlier, the facility was on high alert. A building-wi
de announcement had demanded that all exterior doors and contained corridors be locked down. The place had been a madhouse, full of chaotic employees and security personnel, confused about the nature of the breach.

  Adam, however, wasn’t confused—he was the cause. He had actually gone to a great deal of trouble to trigger the lockdown at just the right time, leaving him inside, with unfettered access to this particular lab. It had taken a lot of effort for him to be right here, right now. Alone. Especially since they seemed to be watching him so closely lately.

  Not now, he thought. It's time to get the hell out of here.

  BRNNNNN! The alarm was still screaming as he zipped the cooler shut, satisfied that the contents were intact. He took a deep breath. For this next part he’d need to be calm, unhurried. He’d need to blend.

  He peered out the window of the closet lab’s door. The hallway was deserted. So far no one had entered this particular wing, which was what Adam had counted on. If they were following protocol, they should still be in Sector 4.

  Where things had exploded.

  It had taken a lot of planning and a ridiculous amount of perfect timing to create this window of unguarded time in Sector 1. And, for the most part, the whole thing had gone over without much of a hitch.

  Except for the security alarm.

  Fire alarms, yes. He had prepared for those. The local VPD was probably on its way, with maybe a police escort — who wouldn’t be much more than a curious onlooker. Or maybe one of the automated police units would guide them in. These days it seemed that more and more police offers were useless on their own. The AI was acting as first responder now, and the police seemed pretty sedentary most of the time. All emergency personnel were acting that way.

  Later, after the smoke cleared and things were deemed safe, an arson investigator would be on the scene. It wouldn't take long for them to spot the cause of the explosion. But hiding that wasn’t entirely Adam’s aim. His goal was to get all eyes on Sector 4, to clear a path to Sector 1 so he could work without interruption.