The Traveler

“This was my choice, Gabriel. I didn’t protect your brother when I was in Los Angeles. Now I have another chance.” She avoided his eyes and tried to sound reassuring. “We’re making an emotional decision. Not a logical one. Perhaps they won’t anticipate this.”

They reached the administration center on the other side of the quadrangle and Dr. Richardson’s ID card allowed them to go up a staircase to the lobby. Maya used the card to open the elevator and they went to the fourth floor. Both of them walked down a carpeted hallway, looking inside empty offices and conference rooms.

Maya felt odd holding a shotgun while she stared at a coffee machine and filing cabinets, a screensaver on a computer that showed angels drifting across a blue sky. She remembered her job back at the design firm in London. She had spent hours sitting in a white cubicle with a postcard of a tropical island taped to the wall. Every day at four o’clock a plump Bengali lady came around pushing a tea cart. Now that life seemed as distant as another realm.

She grabbed a wastebasket from one of the offices and they got back into the elevator. When they reached the third floor, she left the basket wedged between the elevator doors. Slowly, they began to walk down the hallway. Maya made Gabriel stay six feet behind her as she opened each new door.

The lighting panels set in the ceiling left a particular kind of shadow on the floor. At the end of the hallway, one of the shadows looked slightly darker. It could be anything, Maya thought. Maybe a dead lightbulb. As she took a step closer, the shadow began to move.

Maya turned to Gabriel and tapped a finger to her mouth. Be quiet. She pointed to a private office and motioned for him to hide behind the desk. When she returned to the corner, she looked down the hallway. Someone had left a janitor’s cart near one of the offices, but the janitor had disappeared.

She reached the end of the hallway, moved a few inches around the corner, and then jerked back when three men fired their handguns at her. Bullets cracked through the walls and made a splintery hole in an office door.

Holding the shotgun, Maya ran back down the hallway and fired at the sprinkler head in the middle of the ceiling. The fixture was split open and a fire alarm began ringing. One of the Tabula peered around the corner and fired wildly in her direction. The wall beside her seemed to explode and chunks of plaster were scattered across the carpet. When Maya fired back, the man retreated around the corner.

Water sprayed from the shattered sprinkler head as she stood in the hallway. When most people were in a dangerous situation, their vision became restricted, as if they were peering down a tunnel. Look around you, Maya told herself and glanced up at the ceiling. She raised her shotgun and fired twice at an overhead lighting panel above the janitor’s cart. The plastic grate disintegrated and a hole appeared in the plaster.

Maya slid the shotgun beneath her belt and climbed onto the janitor’s cart. She reached through the hole and grabbed the water pipe. With one quick kick, she shoved the cart down the hall and pulled herself up into the hollow ceiling. All she could hear was the fire alarm and the water squirting out of the sprinkler head. Maya removed the shotgun from her belt. She wrapped her legs around the pipe and hung upside down like a spider.

“Get ready,” a voice said. “Now!” The Tabula stepped into the hallway and fired their guns. The alarm stopped ringing a few seconds later and suddenly it was very quiet.

“Where’d she go?” a voice asked.

“Don’t know.”

“Be careful,” the third voice said. “She could be in one of the rooms.”

Maya peered down through the hole in the ceiling and watched one, two, three Tabula mercs pass beneath her, carrying their handguns.

“Prichett here,” said the third voice. It sounded like he was talking into a radio or a cell phone. “We saw her on the third floor, but she got away. Yes, sir. We’re checking each-”

Holding on to the water pipe with her legs, Maya swung through the jagged hole. Now she was upside down, her black hair dangling above the floor. She saw the backs of the three Tabula and fired at the first man.

The recoil from the shotgun snapped her backward and she somersaulted through the air, landing on her feet in the middle of the hallway. Water sprayed from the sprinkler head, but she ignored it and shot the second man as he was turning. The third man was still holding his cell phone as shotgun pellets punched through his chest. He hit the wall and slid to the floor.

The sprinkler stopped spraying water and she stood alone looking down at the three bodies. It was too dangerous to remain in this building. They had to get back to the tunnels. Once again, she saw the shadows change on the wall and then an unarmed man appeared at the end of the hallway. Even without the family resemblance, Maya knew that it was the second Traveler. She lowered her shotgun.