Back to Gatefold
Issue #1 by D. Golightly
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“AWAKENINGS”
Darkness.
The black void stretching from one eye to the next was all he could see. He didn’t know if his eyes were closed, if the room he's in had lights, or if he's simply blind. He reached a hand up to his face and gently touched his fingers to his eyelids, but pulled them back when the rough glove stretched over his hand scraped his cheek. He didn't know he was wearing gloves and he placed the same hand on his chest, feeling the thick mesh shirt he wore as if for the first time.
Of course, for him, it was the first time.
He stumbled off of the table he lay on, hitting the floor hard. His sense of balance was thrown off in the darkness and he's forced to use the table as leverage to stand. His legs were wobbly but he managed to stand up. He still couldn't see anything but he did somehow sense his surroundings. He felt the heavy clothing he's draped in again, wondering how he got dressed in the first place.
Initial panic was on the cusp of his mind, but he held it at bay, deciding that the situation should first be assessed before something so trite can be acknowledged. His face was thick with facial hair but without a light source he could’t even find out what he looked like. The room didn't see fit to help him and if there is anyone watching they must be experiencing some kind of sick joy from leaving him to himself.
But who was he? He didn't know. He couldn't know. He was aware of that much, at least. He tried to recall any worthwhile information to his immediate memory but only blurred images answered his summons.
Priorities. He wasn't going to discover an answer to his own mystery if he stood alone in the dark. He needed to see, and for that, he would have to explore the room.
The gloves covering his hands were almost molded between his fingers, but they were surprisingly light and flexible. He felt along the table's edge with one hand while the other searched the open air in front of him blindly. He waved left to right, top to bottom as he walked the perimeter of the table. The boots on his feet clinked on the smooth floor softly as he walked carefully.
When he reached the other side of the table, which seemed to be nearly as long as he was tall, his swinging hand finally slapped into a hanging cable. He clutched it, thankful to have contact with something, and traced it away from the table. He followed it closely like a lifeline, tracing his gloved hands over it slowly and purposefully. The cable was thick, nearly an inch in diameter, and long, stretching for several strides until he reached the wall.
As the cable swung up toward the ceiling he let go of it and placed both hands on the bare wall. Even through the gloves he felt that the wall was cool to the touch, making him wonder if he was below ground level since there didn't seem to be windows either. Feeling along to one side of the wall, he finally found a counter with what felt like several books on top of it. Feeling further, his hand traced a group of switches and he flicked the first one up.
Blinding light sliced into his eyes, making him cringe back and hold his hand over his face. The light pierced him sharply and it almost felt like his eyes were on fire. Tears formed and dribbled down into his mustache and beard. He blinked several times before the burning faded and he saw the black gloves covering his hands. The palms were smooth while the backs were rough and gritty like sandpaper. He pulled his hands away and blinked several more times as his eyes adjusted to the light.
The room looked like a tornado had blown through it, tossing its content into the air in a random shuffle and letting them lay back down haphazardly. A pile of rubble from what seemed to be the only exit closed off the relatively small room and most of the walls were cracked and warped. A single overturned chair lay a few feet from him and in front of the counter he leaned on for support. A thick layer of dust coated the entire room, including the knocked over shelves and crates.
More surprising than the condition of the room was its apparent purpose. The "table" he found himself on in the exact center of the closed-off room was in fact a raised platform with manacles for arms and legs. It looked more like a torture device than anything else. The cable he had traced away from the slab connected into an overhanging device that had a huge needle extended out pointing to where his head would have been.
A quick flash of memory overtook his consciousness and the room dissolved away before his very eyes, replaced by the huge needle over his own head. He tried to pull away but his neck, arms, and legs were all held in place, restricting him. The needle came closer despite his protests until it finally jabbed into his open eye, poking through his cornea and pushing back into his brain.
The images melted away and he found himself back in the decimated room once more, now sitting on the floor and pushed back against the wall. Tears streamed freely down his face again but he wiped them away and tried to stand back up. He was breathing hard, taking in gulping breathes of air. Whatever he had just relived, he wasn't sure he wanted to know anything more about it.
After taking a few more moments to calm himself, he righted the fallen chair and sat down at the counter, looking at the cracked display screen that stared at him like a curious animal. The keyboard sitting there beckoning him used to be white, but whatever had taken its toll on the room had apparently done the same with the equipment. Several keys were missing and the white had been replaced with a gray brown color.
What had he been a part of? He hoped that the computer was still operational enough to give him some form of answer. He powered the machine up and was surprised to see that electricity was still available. Given the cosmetic look of the chamber he hadn't figured that relying on finding power would be suitable.
The screen, though extremely dim, did fade into a soft blue light. A prompt blinked on the screen for him to enter a command just before the crack in the casing distorted the display. Though weak, the computer's operation systems were apparently online. The bearded man began to type, hoping to stumble across something by accident. He entered random commands that he had no idea what they did, wondering if he should spend his time looking for a way out of the room instead.
After entering "system diagnostic" at the prompt, the screen finally began to respond with some sort of information. Rows and columns of numbers began to scroll over the blue screen, slowly building a table of data that meant nothing to him. After a full thirty seconds of waiting, the numbers dissipated into words, the first of which that caught his eye was "tachyon."
Another flash of insight and a splitting headache caused him to scream in surprise and pain, as another buried memory came to the forefront of his mind. He stood in a field, surrounded by tall green grass. He wore no clothing and the only sound he heard was the rustling of the grass from the wind.
Then he heard something move, something in the grass behind him. He whipped around, unable to control his own movements in the memory, and saw someone move swiftly from behind. A woman, also naked, hoisted a large spear over her head and aimed it at his chest. He caught the spear with his left hand, grasping it tightly by the shaft just below the tip. He yanked it down and toward him, throwing the naked woman off balance. When she was pulled close enough, he pulled back his free hand and backslapped her, sending her sprawling to the ground.
He gasped for air as the memory faded and he saw himself back in the destroyed room. He was alone again, but the memory was so intense that he could have sworn that he had just been in that breezy field instead of the suffocating room. Who was that woman? Why were they fighting? Was he…training?
Sitting up, the bearded man realized that he was on the floor again, having spilled out of his chair. The computer whirred and the soft blue light behind the cracked screen died away, taking its precious information with it. He yelled something unintelligible and jumped up, smacking the side of the monitor, but it was all for naught.
He cleared off the computer table with one sweep of his bulky arm, smashing the already fragile monitor once it hit the hard floor. He screamed, his frustration getting the better of him. Where were the answers? They had to be somewhere.
The rest of the room was covered in scattered debris from the apparent cave-in of the ceiling. Bits of brick and concrete covered nearly every surface. To one side of the room there looked to have been a small fire where most of the equipment was plugged in. Beside that was a single filing cabinet that appeared to have been melted into the floor.
Walking over the chunks of concrete was easy for him, as his body had quickly readjusted to moving again. His muscles were sore from lying still for so long, but he had no greater strain getting to the metal slag that used to be a cabinet than a child would.
He kicked the melted metal and sighed. Any files that may have been inside were surely now destroyed and useless to him, rendered into ash from the extreme temperatures. He bent down and picked at the blackened husk, scraping away some of the soot near the top right corner where an identification plate had been. Luckily, it was the kind that had been stamped into the metal instead of just a piece of paper wedged under a bracket. Little bit by little bit he scraped away at the black dirt until he saw a distinct impression.
“Zero?” he pondered aloud. The common numeral was all he saw; an upright oval with a slash through it denoting it as a digit instead of a letter. “Useless. All useless!”
He flipped what was left of the cabinet over on its side, leaving the now cooled and flat bottom sticking up in the air. He breathed heavily again, trying to regain his composure. He knew that freaking out wouldn’t help anything. He had to keep his wits about him if he was going to figure anything out. Throwing a temper tantrum wouldn’t solve his problem.
And just what were his problems? He had no clue as to his identity and he was stuck in this abysmal room. While he couldn’t solve the foremost, he could certainly now do his best to solve the latter.
The rubble that had crashed down and piled in the sole doorway looked to be fairly stuck in place. He sidestepped what was left of the cabinet and kicked at one of the lower pieces of concrete that was wedged at the bottom of the pile. It didn’t budge, nor did it yield to him a means of escape.
The room was roughly fifteen feet high, and the doorway extended up to at least ten. Every inch of that ten feet was filled with stone and brick, which also had to be a few feet thick. The bearded man sighed, realizing that even though he had all the time in the world, it was still going to be a long process.
For hours he moved the rubble piece by piece. Starting at the top, he picked away at the pile and scattered the concrete chunks randomly behind him. Despite his depressing situation, he found the work simple. The monotony of the same motion over and over, while getting a chance to stretch his muscles, helped to relax his mind. He soon fell into a rhythm and allowed his thoughts to wander.
All he could come up with were questions. Every time he tried to answer one of those questions, two more popped up in its place like the hydra of legend. Until he got out of this room, it was fruitless and frustrating.
Who was he?
Why did he know what a computer was but couldn’t remember his name?
Who was that woman?
Where was he?
Finally able to squeeze through the opening he had made in the doorway, he clawed away at the stray rubble near the ceiling. He lay in his makeshift mine tunnel, carefully removing chunks of smashed concrete out of the way. Every time a piece would slip from his grasp, he would scream and let his frustration overwhelm him.
Finally, as if some laughable watching god from on high decided that enough was enough, he was able to push a chunk of concrete through to the other side. Laughing the sort of unintelligible excitement of a child, the bearded man punched through again and again until he had widened the hole and could wiggle through.
He fell head first through the new opening at the end of his manmade tunnel, sliding on his stomach down a slope of gravel and debris. The hallway he was in was barely lit except for a burning red eye looking down at him from a few feet off the ground.
“Hello,” the eye said. “I was hoping that there had been a survivor. I have not been authorized to do much of anything and have grown rather bored.”
The bearded man jumped to attention, apprehensive about this strange floating robot. It was no larger than his head, with a camera lens at the center of its spherical mass. The lens was lit up with a bright red light that cast an eerie glow over the hallway. Small hisses of steam pushed out of the silver and tarnished casing of the small, hovering robot as it moved in circles around him, watching and apparently appraising.
“What are you?”
“What?” the eye asked. “I believe you do mean to say ‘who’ and not ‘what.’ Never ‘what.’ Remember that I am just as easily emotionally scarred as you are, even given my appearance.”
“Oh. Uh…sorry?”
“My handle is Homo sapien Encounters Relations Benefactor, designated HERB for short. My purpose is to provide necessary assistance to the guests of this facility. Are you a guest?”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
The red lit blinked. “This facility is privy to undertaking large groups of observers from around the world, mostly of military origin. Were you not assigned a HERB guide upon entering this facility?”
“You’re a tour guide?”
“That is an essential function of my programming. This facility is rather large in comparison to others of its like. Please, are you a guest?”
“Listen, I just woke up—”
“Oh!” the HERB robot exclaimed. “You are the Failsafe! Why did you not bring this to my attention sooner?”
The spherical robot spun in midair and took off down the hallway, leaving the bearded man behind in bafflement. “Wait!” the bearded man called after the robot, but it was useless.
Trotting off down the hallway, hopping over several stacks of rubble along the way, he raced off after the HERB. It’s bobbing red light proved an easy target to follow, although once he rounded the corner at the end of the hallway, he watched as the robot floated inside a small tube that seemed to be specially designed for it. The tube, which was clear at first and then fashioned out of some opaque material, led into the wall and ran up the side of the hallway. The robot disappeared, red light and all, inside the tube without a word.
The bearded man stood, wondering if he should try knocking on the tube. Just as he raised his hand, he heard a section of the wall begin to move beside him.
A large door built into the wall began to slide open. “Please, come this way!” he heard the HERB’s voice say from somewhere in the complex. “As the Failsafe, protocol says that you must arm yourself before undertaking your mission!”
The door opened but there was nothing but darkness inside. He heard large clunks! at the far end of the room that seemed to echo for a few seconds. In the distance, if he squinted, he could make out a pair of tiny white lights. More noises sounded, this time closer, and then more. Soon, the dots of light had multiplied into rows and rows of white flood lights, each illuminating a section of a massive room.
By the time the lights above he stood in front of flashed on, the entire massive warehouse-sized room had been revealed to him. “Holy shit,” was all he could say.
Alongside one wall was a row of armored vehicles that looked like they carried enough artillery to squash a small nation. On the opposite wall was another row of vehicles, although these ones were more sleek and looked more suitable for speed instead of offense. Between the rows of impressive machinery were several metal cubicles; the closest one to him looked to be filled with several gray crates that were all marked “CX-91: FLAMMABLE.”
He stepped closer and to the side, seeing what was in the second metal cubicle. Hanging on racks like a closet in the house of an obsessive compulsive were several dozen black uniforms just like the one he was wearing. He touched a hand absentmindedly to his chest and felt the rough material on his skin, as well as the slick glove that covered his hand.
Among the garments, and missing from what he had woken up with, was a hood and googles. He picked them up, trying to wonder what he was caught in the middle of or who else had designated him as this “Failsafe.”
“What is this place?” he asked.
The HERB robot zoomed down from the center of the ceiling where the tube he had disappeared into let out. “There is no time, Failsafe! As Agent Zero you alone are now responsible for carrying out the prime directive. Please, abscond from this facility and carry out your orders. This equipment is for your benefit.”
“But, I don’t have a fucking clue what the fuck is going on!”
The robot tilted to one side as if thinking. “Were you not programmed to awaken once the other protocols had proven unresponsive?”
“What protocols? What are you talking about?”
BOOM!
The room suddenly shook intensely, nearly knocking the bearded man over. The lights overhead flickered and the HERB robot looked to the ceiling, then back down again.
“The aggressors above have recognized the energy signature of my activating this facility. They will continue to bombard us unless you proceed with your assignment, Agent Zero.”
“Wait…all the destruction I’ve been seeing around here…the guys that did it are still around?”
“Of course!” the HERB unit said with irritation. “They are still causing the destruction, awaiting your arrival. I believe the recent pause in attack was because they were discouraged after having gone so long without response. Please, you must hurry!”
The hovering robot sped behind him and pushed him with its body toward the third cubicle, where an assortment of rifles was waiting. He grabbed one without thinking, his hands moving in practiced precision even though he had never seen the weapon before. He looked to the side and saw a handgun, which he picked up and slapped to his left thigh. Amazingly, it stuck there, using the material of his uniform to keep it in place.
The robot ushered him again, pushing him with tiny little hisses of steam, back into the corner of the large room. A door slid open, revealing an elevator car. The HERB robot shoved him in and closed the door behind him without another word.
“What…oh, great.”
The car began to move. After a few seconds it was obvious that the car was gaining an impressive amount of momentum. He fingered the rifle in his hand, which was strangely configured, although it fit in with the futuristic design of the rest of the complex. Above the door he had been pushed through he saw a green gauge that was slowly going up.
“How far down was I?” he wondered aloud. “It would have taken me months to get to the surface on my own.”
He glanced at the googles and hood in his other hand and decided to slip it over his head. Maybe he needed to hide his identity from the people that were apparently looking for him.
The car began to slow down as the green gauge filled. Finally, it stopped, although his heart was still racing. The doors opened, giving him his first look at the war torn landscape above the facility he had awoken in.
He was in the middle of what used to be a city, except the paved streets looked to have been blasted apart by mortar shells. The buildings all had holes punched into them by stray fire. There were a few cars on the side of the road, although they looked like that had been stacked on top of each other as a manner of cover from assault.
His head perked up when he heard a whistling noise coming from above, which was increasing in volume very quickly. He dove out of the elevator and rolled behind what appeared to have been a mail box.
KRADOOM!
The elevator car, which had sprung up inside a small shack along the street, was blown to smithereens from the guided missile that had just been shot into it. He gripped his rifle tightly to his chest and swore at the fact that his one ride back to safety had just been blown up.
And what made matters worse was he heard that distinct whistling sound overhead once more…
TO BE CONTINUED...
Author’s Note:
I originally wrote this issue for a defunct fanfic site called Epic, that was headed up by Tom Mosely and Brent Lambert. It was supposed to be an AoA-style site, and unfortunately, the site never launched. I wrote two full issues of this AGENT ZERO series, and several other authors had submitted stories as well. After a long fanfic hiatus, I’ve decided to finish AGENT ZERO off as a miniseries for M2K’s Alternate Branch. It’s fun getting back into this old title and I hope you enjoy it!
Darkness.
The black void stretching from one eye to the next was all he could see. He didn’t know if his eyes were closed, if the room he's in had lights, or if he's simply blind. He reached a hand up to his face and gently touched his fingers to his eyelids, but pulled them back when the rough glove stretched over his hand scraped his cheek. He didn't know he was wearing gloves and he placed the same hand on his chest, feeling the thick mesh shirt he wore as if for the first time.
Of course, for him, it was the first time.
He stumbled off of the table he lay on, hitting the floor hard. His sense of balance was thrown off in the darkness and he's forced to use the table as leverage to stand. His legs were wobbly but he managed to stand up. He still couldn't see anything but he did somehow sense his surroundings. He felt the heavy clothing he's draped in again, wondering how he got dressed in the first place.
Initial panic was on the cusp of his mind, but he held it at bay, deciding that the situation should first be assessed before something so trite can be acknowledged. His face was thick with facial hair but without a light source he could’t even find out what he looked like. The room didn't see fit to help him and if there is anyone watching they must be experiencing some kind of sick joy from leaving him to himself.
But who was he? He didn't know. He couldn't know. He was aware of that much, at least. He tried to recall any worthwhile information to his immediate memory but only blurred images answered his summons.
Priorities. He wasn't going to discover an answer to his own mystery if he stood alone in the dark. He needed to see, and for that, he would have to explore the room.
The gloves covering his hands were almost molded between his fingers, but they were surprisingly light and flexible. He felt along the table's edge with one hand while the other searched the open air in front of him blindly. He waved left to right, top to bottom as he walked the perimeter of the table. The boots on his feet clinked on the smooth floor softly as he walked carefully.
When he reached the other side of the table, which seemed to be nearly as long as he was tall, his swinging hand finally slapped into a hanging cable. He clutched it, thankful to have contact with something, and traced it away from the table. He followed it closely like a lifeline, tracing his gloved hands over it slowly and purposefully. The cable was thick, nearly an inch in diameter, and long, stretching for several strides until he reached the wall.
As the cable swung up toward the ceiling he let go of it and placed both hands on the bare wall. Even through the gloves he felt that the wall was cool to the touch, making him wonder if he was below ground level since there didn't seem to be windows either. Feeling along to one side of the wall, he finally found a counter with what felt like several books on top of it. Feeling further, his hand traced a group of switches and he flicked the first one up.
Blinding light sliced into his eyes, making him cringe back and hold his hand over his face. The light pierced him sharply and it almost felt like his eyes were on fire. Tears formed and dribbled down into his mustache and beard. He blinked several times before the burning faded and he saw the black gloves covering his hands. The palms were smooth while the backs were rough and gritty like sandpaper. He pulled his hands away and blinked several more times as his eyes adjusted to the light.
The room looked like a tornado had blown through it, tossing its content into the air in a random shuffle and letting them lay back down haphazardly. A pile of rubble from what seemed to be the only exit closed off the relatively small room and most of the walls were cracked and warped. A single overturned chair lay a few feet from him and in front of the counter he leaned on for support. A thick layer of dust coated the entire room, including the knocked over shelves and crates.
More surprising than the condition of the room was its apparent purpose. The "table" he found himself on in the exact center of the closed-off room was in fact a raised platform with manacles for arms and legs. It looked more like a torture device than anything else. The cable he had traced away from the slab connected into an overhanging device that had a huge needle extended out pointing to where his head would have been.
A quick flash of memory overtook his consciousness and the room dissolved away before his very eyes, replaced by the huge needle over his own head. He tried to pull away but his neck, arms, and legs were all held in place, restricting him. The needle came closer despite his protests until it finally jabbed into his open eye, poking through his cornea and pushing back into his brain.
The images melted away and he found himself back in the decimated room once more, now sitting on the floor and pushed back against the wall. Tears streamed freely down his face again but he wiped them away and tried to stand back up. He was breathing hard, taking in gulping breathes of air. Whatever he had just relived, he wasn't sure he wanted to know anything more about it.
After taking a few more moments to calm himself, he righted the fallen chair and sat down at the counter, looking at the cracked display screen that stared at him like a curious animal. The keyboard sitting there beckoning him used to be white, but whatever had taken its toll on the room had apparently done the same with the equipment. Several keys were missing and the white had been replaced with a gray brown color.
What had he been a part of? He hoped that the computer was still operational enough to give him some form of answer. He powered the machine up and was surprised to see that electricity was still available. Given the cosmetic look of the chamber he hadn't figured that relying on finding power would be suitable.
The screen, though extremely dim, did fade into a soft blue light. A prompt blinked on the screen for him to enter a command just before the crack in the casing distorted the display. Though weak, the computer's operation systems were apparently online. The bearded man began to type, hoping to stumble across something by accident. He entered random commands that he had no idea what they did, wondering if he should spend his time looking for a way out of the room instead.
After entering "system diagnostic" at the prompt, the screen finally began to respond with some sort of information. Rows and columns of numbers began to scroll over the blue screen, slowly building a table of data that meant nothing to him. After a full thirty seconds of waiting, the numbers dissipated into words, the first of which that caught his eye was "tachyon."
Another flash of insight and a splitting headache caused him to scream in surprise and pain, as another buried memory came to the forefront of his mind. He stood in a field, surrounded by tall green grass. He wore no clothing and the only sound he heard was the rustling of the grass from the wind.
Then he heard something move, something in the grass behind him. He whipped around, unable to control his own movements in the memory, and saw someone move swiftly from behind. A woman, also naked, hoisted a large spear over her head and aimed it at his chest. He caught the spear with his left hand, grasping it tightly by the shaft just below the tip. He yanked it down and toward him, throwing the naked woman off balance. When she was pulled close enough, he pulled back his free hand and backslapped her, sending her sprawling to the ground.
He gasped for air as the memory faded and he saw himself back in the destroyed room. He was alone again, but the memory was so intense that he could have sworn that he had just been in that breezy field instead of the suffocating room. Who was that woman? Why were they fighting? Was he…training?
Sitting up, the bearded man realized that he was on the floor again, having spilled out of his chair. The computer whirred and the soft blue light behind the cracked screen died away, taking its precious information with it. He yelled something unintelligible and jumped up, smacking the side of the monitor, but it was all for naught.
He cleared off the computer table with one sweep of his bulky arm, smashing the already fragile monitor once it hit the hard floor. He screamed, his frustration getting the better of him. Where were the answers? They had to be somewhere.
The rest of the room was covered in scattered debris from the apparent cave-in of the ceiling. Bits of brick and concrete covered nearly every surface. To one side of the room there looked to have been a small fire where most of the equipment was plugged in. Beside that was a single filing cabinet that appeared to have been melted into the floor.
Walking over the chunks of concrete was easy for him, as his body had quickly readjusted to moving again. His muscles were sore from lying still for so long, but he had no greater strain getting to the metal slag that used to be a cabinet than a child would.
He kicked the melted metal and sighed. Any files that may have been inside were surely now destroyed and useless to him, rendered into ash from the extreme temperatures. He bent down and picked at the blackened husk, scraping away some of the soot near the top right corner where an identification plate had been. Luckily, it was the kind that had been stamped into the metal instead of just a piece of paper wedged under a bracket. Little bit by little bit he scraped away at the black dirt until he saw a distinct impression.
“Zero?” he pondered aloud. The common numeral was all he saw; an upright oval with a slash through it denoting it as a digit instead of a letter. “Useless. All useless!”
He flipped what was left of the cabinet over on its side, leaving the now cooled and flat bottom sticking up in the air. He breathed heavily again, trying to regain his composure. He knew that freaking out wouldn’t help anything. He had to keep his wits about him if he was going to figure anything out. Throwing a temper tantrum wouldn’t solve his problem.
And just what were his problems? He had no clue as to his identity and he was stuck in this abysmal room. While he couldn’t solve the foremost, he could certainly now do his best to solve the latter.
The rubble that had crashed down and piled in the sole doorway looked to be fairly stuck in place. He sidestepped what was left of the cabinet and kicked at one of the lower pieces of concrete that was wedged at the bottom of the pile. It didn’t budge, nor did it yield to him a means of escape.
The room was roughly fifteen feet high, and the doorway extended up to at least ten. Every inch of that ten feet was filled with stone and brick, which also had to be a few feet thick. The bearded man sighed, realizing that even though he had all the time in the world, it was still going to be a long process.
For hours he moved the rubble piece by piece. Starting at the top, he picked away at the pile and scattered the concrete chunks randomly behind him. Despite his depressing situation, he found the work simple. The monotony of the same motion over and over, while getting a chance to stretch his muscles, helped to relax his mind. He soon fell into a rhythm and allowed his thoughts to wander.
All he could come up with were questions. Every time he tried to answer one of those questions, two more popped up in its place like the hydra of legend. Until he got out of this room, it was fruitless and frustrating.
Who was he?
Why did he know what a computer was but couldn’t remember his name?
Who was that woman?
Where was he?
Finally able to squeeze through the opening he had made in the doorway, he clawed away at the stray rubble near the ceiling. He lay in his makeshift mine tunnel, carefully removing chunks of smashed concrete out of the way. Every time a piece would slip from his grasp, he would scream and let his frustration overwhelm him.
Finally, as if some laughable watching god from on high decided that enough was enough, he was able to push a chunk of concrete through to the other side. Laughing the sort of unintelligible excitement of a child, the bearded man punched through again and again until he had widened the hole and could wiggle through.
He fell head first through the new opening at the end of his manmade tunnel, sliding on his stomach down a slope of gravel and debris. The hallway he was in was barely lit except for a burning red eye looking down at him from a few feet off the ground.
“Hello,” the eye said. “I was hoping that there had been a survivor. I have not been authorized to do much of anything and have grown rather bored.”
The bearded man jumped to attention, apprehensive about this strange floating robot. It was no larger than his head, with a camera lens at the center of its spherical mass. The lens was lit up with a bright red light that cast an eerie glow over the hallway. Small hisses of steam pushed out of the silver and tarnished casing of the small, hovering robot as it moved in circles around him, watching and apparently appraising.
“What are you?”
“What?” the eye asked. “I believe you do mean to say ‘who’ and not ‘what.’ Never ‘what.’ Remember that I am just as easily emotionally scarred as you are, even given my appearance.”
“Oh. Uh…sorry?”
“My handle is Homo sapien Encounters Relations Benefactor, designated HERB for short. My purpose is to provide necessary assistance to the guests of this facility. Are you a guest?”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
The red lit blinked. “This facility is privy to undertaking large groups of observers from around the world, mostly of military origin. Were you not assigned a HERB guide upon entering this facility?”
“You’re a tour guide?”
“That is an essential function of my programming. This facility is rather large in comparison to others of its like. Please, are you a guest?”
“Listen, I just woke up—”
“Oh!” the HERB robot exclaimed. “You are the Failsafe! Why did you not bring this to my attention sooner?”
The spherical robot spun in midair and took off down the hallway, leaving the bearded man behind in bafflement. “Wait!” the bearded man called after the robot, but it was useless.
Trotting off down the hallway, hopping over several stacks of rubble along the way, he raced off after the HERB. It’s bobbing red light proved an easy target to follow, although once he rounded the corner at the end of the hallway, he watched as the robot floated inside a small tube that seemed to be specially designed for it. The tube, which was clear at first and then fashioned out of some opaque material, led into the wall and ran up the side of the hallway. The robot disappeared, red light and all, inside the tube without a word.
The bearded man stood, wondering if he should try knocking on the tube. Just as he raised his hand, he heard a section of the wall begin to move beside him.
A large door built into the wall began to slide open. “Please, come this way!” he heard the HERB’s voice say from somewhere in the complex. “As the Failsafe, protocol says that you must arm yourself before undertaking your mission!”
The door opened but there was nothing but darkness inside. He heard large clunks! at the far end of the room that seemed to echo for a few seconds. In the distance, if he squinted, he could make out a pair of tiny white lights. More noises sounded, this time closer, and then more. Soon, the dots of light had multiplied into rows and rows of white flood lights, each illuminating a section of a massive room.
By the time the lights above he stood in front of flashed on, the entire massive warehouse-sized room had been revealed to him. “Holy shit,” was all he could say.
Alongside one wall was a row of armored vehicles that looked like they carried enough artillery to squash a small nation. On the opposite wall was another row of vehicles, although these ones were more sleek and looked more suitable for speed instead of offense. Between the rows of impressive machinery were several metal cubicles; the closest one to him looked to be filled with several gray crates that were all marked “CX-91: FLAMMABLE.”
He stepped closer and to the side, seeing what was in the second metal cubicle. Hanging on racks like a closet in the house of an obsessive compulsive were several dozen black uniforms just like the one he was wearing. He touched a hand absentmindedly to his chest and felt the rough material on his skin, as well as the slick glove that covered his hand.
Among the garments, and missing from what he had woken up with, was a hood and googles. He picked them up, trying to wonder what he was caught in the middle of or who else had designated him as this “Failsafe.”
“What is this place?” he asked.
The HERB robot zoomed down from the center of the ceiling where the tube he had disappeared into let out. “There is no time, Failsafe! As Agent Zero you alone are now responsible for carrying out the prime directive. Please, abscond from this facility and carry out your orders. This equipment is for your benefit.”
“But, I don’t have a fucking clue what the fuck is going on!”
The robot tilted to one side as if thinking. “Were you not programmed to awaken once the other protocols had proven unresponsive?”
“What protocols? What are you talking about?”
BOOM!
The room suddenly shook intensely, nearly knocking the bearded man over. The lights overhead flickered and the HERB robot looked to the ceiling, then back down again.
“The aggressors above have recognized the energy signature of my activating this facility. They will continue to bombard us unless you proceed with your assignment, Agent Zero.”
“Wait…all the destruction I’ve been seeing around here…the guys that did it are still around?”
“Of course!” the HERB unit said with irritation. “They are still causing the destruction, awaiting your arrival. I believe the recent pause in attack was because they were discouraged after having gone so long without response. Please, you must hurry!”
The hovering robot sped behind him and pushed him with its body toward the third cubicle, where an assortment of rifles was waiting. He grabbed one without thinking, his hands moving in practiced precision even though he had never seen the weapon before. He looked to the side and saw a handgun, which he picked up and slapped to his left thigh. Amazingly, it stuck there, using the material of his uniform to keep it in place.
The robot ushered him again, pushing him with tiny little hisses of steam, back into the corner of the large room. A door slid open, revealing an elevator car. The HERB robot shoved him in and closed the door behind him without another word.
“What…oh, great.”
The car began to move. After a few seconds it was obvious that the car was gaining an impressive amount of momentum. He fingered the rifle in his hand, which was strangely configured, although it fit in with the futuristic design of the rest of the complex. Above the door he had been pushed through he saw a green gauge that was slowly going up.
“How far down was I?” he wondered aloud. “It would have taken me months to get to the surface on my own.”
He glanced at the googles and hood in his other hand and decided to slip it over his head. Maybe he needed to hide his identity from the people that were apparently looking for him.
The car began to slow down as the green gauge filled. Finally, it stopped, although his heart was still racing. The doors opened, giving him his first look at the war torn landscape above the facility he had awoken in.
He was in the middle of what used to be a city, except the paved streets looked to have been blasted apart by mortar shells. The buildings all had holes punched into them by stray fire. There were a few cars on the side of the road, although they looked like that had been stacked on top of each other as a manner of cover from assault.
His head perked up when he heard a whistling noise coming from above, which was increasing in volume very quickly. He dove out of the elevator and rolled behind what appeared to have been a mail box.
KRADOOM!
The elevator car, which had sprung up inside a small shack along the street, was blown to smithereens from the guided missile that had just been shot into it. He gripped his rifle tightly to his chest and swore at the fact that his one ride back to safety had just been blown up.
And what made matters worse was he heard that distinct whistling sound overhead once more…
TO BE CONTINUED...
Author’s Note:
I originally wrote this issue for a defunct fanfic site called Epic, that was headed up by Tom Mosely and Brent Lambert. It was supposed to be an AoA-style site, and unfortunately, the site never launched. I wrote two full issues of this AGENT ZERO series, and several other authors had submitted stories as well. After a long fanfic hiatus, I’ve decided to finish AGENT ZERO off as a miniseries for M2K’s Alternate Branch. It’s fun getting back into this old title and I hope you enjoy it!