Titan's Plague: The Trial by Tom Briggs (story reading .txt) 📕

Joe walked back to where he hit Nancy, and Pati saw blood on the floor. Joe stepped over and wiped it up. “It’s my blood,” he said. “She slashed me with the knife, which is why I punched back.” He finished wiping the blood and returned the towel to the ship.

Pati followed him part of the way into the ship. She removed the glove from the ship’s hatch and tossed it in. Joe walked out after taking one last look at Nancy. The doors activated and he stood there waiting for them to shut. “Did I at least get the alien in her, too?” he asked Pati without turning to face her.

Pati had to think first, and then answered. “No, the alien in Richard came back to haunt me.”

Joe nodded, and Pati heard the ship move away from the dock. He looked down the hall to the spaceport door. “Follow me,” he said.

Pati had planned on getting out that way, and it was good to have a guide who worked in the spaceport and knew every square meter. She followed him to that door, but once they reached it, he turned to the right and tapped the wall. He pushed open a door that had been invisible.

“Where did this come from?” she asked.

Joe didn’t respond. He walked in and stood there, waiting for her to follow. Pati looked back down the hall, seeing the polished white throughout, and nothing left to reveal what had just happened.

“Now,” he said.

She hurried in, and he pushed the door closed. She saw a lever protruding from the center of the door and a handle on the right side. She heard a latch engage, and he turned back to face her.

“This place should be a sanctuary for us for the moment.”

“But, how did you know they possessed her?”

Joe took a deep breath. “Okay, you knew we were having trouble, and I hadn’t been home for a while. Well, it’s because she changed a couple of months ago, and when your alien report came out, it explained why or at least gave me a good idea. I was in the spaceport during your trial.”

“I thought they fired you; that’s what Nancy told me.”

“Suspended for a day. I knew about this tunnel since I help build this courthouse. Working construction was my first job when I arrived from Earth. I saw the drawings and checked it out later on. I think the McLears wanted it added in secret.”

“Kerry McLear was at my trial.”

“He was? Then this might not be a safe place. Let’s get going.”

“Wait, what happened with Nancy in the hallway?”

He stopped, sighed. “When your score was announced, I knew she would be taking you to your ship. You would be alone together, and I thought the alien might reveal herself. I raced to this tunnel, walked through, and placed my handheld on the hallway floor, shutting the door behind me. After she delivered you to the ship, I was waiting in the hallway with my handheld, having recorded your entire conversation.”

“When she told me about Temujin?”

“Yeah, whoever that is? But she exploded like I’d never seen before, and she attacked me with this knife.” Joe pulled the bloodstained knife out of his pocket and held it up to Pati. “I couldn’t believe it, she’d never been violent like that, and when the knife came toward me, I just reacted.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want it to end like this,” he said.

“I know how you feel,” Pati said. The passageway she stood in was a light-brown color with an oak-like wooden finish. Single lights illuminated along the path, and she could see a door at the end, maybe twenty or twenty-five meters away. “Should we keep going?” she asked.

He didn’t reply. He put the knife away and moved. She followed him to a door that had a similar lever and handle attached. Joe tapped a switch next to the door, and the lights went out. Pati saw nothing but darkness.

“I’ve got a hold of the door,” Joe said. “I’m going to crack it and see if anyone's out there.”

“Out where?”

“It opens between the two buildings. It’s a covered space, and you can’t see this door unless you’re standing next to it. I don’t want to take any chances, though.” The door cracked open, and she saw his outline from the light that entered.

“Wait,” Pati said.

He turned to look at her.

“What do we do when we get out there?”

“I guess we find a way to get lost.”

“Where?”

“I think up north, near the old areas of Karakorum. A lot of that area is deserted, and we can plan on how to survive from there. Given what happened in your trial for murder, I expect I’ll get the same treatment for what I did to Nancy if I’m caught.”

They were both fugitives from the law. Fugitives where every person could be monitored and facial recognition cameras were as prevalent as traffic control devices. The only thing they had going for them was a minuscule timeframe before the authorities would notice Nancy was missing. When they went to look for Joe and found him missing as well, the game would be up.

For Pati, all it would take was one person recognizing her.

Joe finished checking outside and opened the door to walk through. Pati followed, and the door shut automatically behind them. What was a secret hallway opening became indistinguishable from the surrounding wall.

They had exited into landscaping and stood on rubble mined from Titan. There was a fake terrace with trees and bushes between them and the south terminus station. The angle of the building made it difficult for those emerging from the spaceport terminal to see them standing there. It wasn’t impossible to see them, just unlikely. And if they ducked, they’d be invisible from the distance.

“We’ll walk from here,” Joe said. “You able to make it to the other end of Karakorum?”

“I’m from Earth, remember,” she said.

“Hopefully, that means yes,” he said. He walked toward the spaceport entrance, then around the landscaping toward the terminus station. People were getting off the train and making their way in, which caused Joe to stop.

He waited for the last person to enter the terminal and then turned to Pati. “Wait here,” he said. He hurried to the terminal entrance and went inside.

“I don’t need this,” she whispered to herself. With him going off on his own, what would happen to her? How long did he expect her to wait?

She had to admit, though; he solved problems two through five for her. She escaped her sentence of a thirty-year voyage back to Earth. And now she stood outside the courthouse, semi-free, determining her next steps for survival. If the options looked bleak, they didn’t look hopeless or impossible.

She waited, maybe ten minutes. Her handheld was left back in the courthouse, so she didn’t really know how long Joe had been gone. If he deserted her, she’d have to survive without the knowledge of how to live in Karakorum without resources. Her situation might still be hopeless and impossible.

And yet, he needed her, too. She was the only witness to Nancy attacking him. If he was caught, he’d need her. Keeping her safe was in his best interest. Did he know it?

Joe marched out of the terminal entrance at a fast step. He carried objects in his arms Pati couldn’t make out. When he got closer, it looked like he carried two hats.

“Here, put this on,” Joe said, handing her a brown cloth hat that she’d seen workers in the spaceport don. It had a wide brim extending around the circumference.

“What for?”

“Fewer people will notice you this way. We’re getting off this moon.”

“I need a hat to leave here?”

“No, we’re going to your apartment to get clothes and personal stuff you can’t live without. We’ll go to my place first and do the same.”

“I don’t think we need to do that. Can’t we just go—”

“I know a guy whose shuttle is leaving in two hours. No more and no less,” Joe said. “The last place we want to be is standing around in the spaceport. There’s no safe place for us, and we might as well keep moving till we come back here.”

“What if we just find a place to hole up that’s safe? Then we’ll come back here in time to leave?”

“I can’t think of one place that we wouldn’t have to travel to. Might as well grab what we need before we leave because I don’t think we’ll be coming back for a while.”

Pati didn’t enjoy hearing the last part of his statement. However, she couldn’t argue with the first, and after putting the hat on followed him past the terminus, and along the roadway that paralleled the rails.