The Aegis Solution (10 page)

As Elias followed them, he decided to engage in small talk. "She seems very nice."

Johnson nodded. "She is. She's a good manager for us."

They led him down one of the curving hallways perpendicular to the first corridor. He was now
traveling on one of the concentric circles right outside the hub of Aegis.

"Do you both like it here?"

"It's fine," Rogan answered.

"Yeah, I do," Johnson said.

Neither of their responses indicated any interest in continuing the conversation, and Elias was
certain he knew why. His suspicions were quickly confirmed when they reached another blockade in
the hallway. He saw that this one had a steel plate barred to the center.

Apparently, this border to Walden was not as elaborate as the first Elias had seen and included no
cameras on the other side, as Johnson hurriedly peeked through three different peepholes, making
certain there was no one lurking. After he gave an "all clear" sign to Rogan, the other man lifted the
heavy bar from the steel door.

"Where are we going?" Elias asked innocently.

Rogan leaned the bar against the wall and turned to his visitor. "I'm afraid we are escorting you out
of Walden."

"Out?" Elias exclaimed, mustering some degree of shock in his voice. "But why?"

"The Manager decided."

"Come on, now. I like it here. Oh, it's because I'm an accountant, isn't it?"

Rogan simply shrugged and said, "It's up to the Manager. That's all we know."

With that, he gripped the handle on the door and swung it open. Johnson stepped through and
checked the hallway more thoroughly. He turned back to Elias. "You have a clear route. It looks okay
out here. Follow this hallway to the next main corridor, then turn left. You'll find another group there."

"Another group! But I don't…."

Rogan held up his hand to stop Elias. "Look, Mr. Charon. It's nothing personal, all right? Just
please don't argue."

Elias decided he had played out his act as far as it should go.

"All right."

He stepped through the opening and paused. Johnson rejoined Rogan on the Walden side of the
opening, and they promptly closed the door. The sound of the bar being dropped back into place
punctuated the finality of the decision.

Charon began his walk down this hallway, mentally adding the new facts he had gained from his
interlude with the people of Walden to his picture of Aegis. His pistol still in his right pocket, he carried
the suitcase with his left hand and kept a closer vigil on his surroundings. He did not want to be
blindsided again, knowing that he could not count on the fleeting apparition to rescue him a second
time.

As he slowly proceeded, his mind composed a narrative of his findings thus far. He had suspected
that Aegis would, in some ways, become a microcosm of society. That was obvious and inevitable. But
which society was the question. Would it be a mini-version of the society he had just left? Or something
else? An answer was beginning to formulate in his mind, but he knew he needed more information
before a final conclusion could be gleaned.

Approaching the first "spoke" corridor since departing Walden, Elias slowed his pace. Determined
to avoid another ambush at this intersection, he quietly placed his suitcase on the floor several yards
back and drew his pistol, flipping the safety to the off position. He bent his arm, holding his gun at
shoulder height and pointed toward the ceiling, and then moved forward while hugging close to the
wall. When he arrived at the corner, he took the next step rapidly, half spinning into a shooter's stance
and quickly sweeping the corridor for threats from either direction. It was empty.

Retrieving his suitcase, Elias followed the instruction provided by Rogan and took the route to the
left. He was, once again, impressed with the size and scope of Aegis. As he traveled the corridor,
proceeding cautiously and stopping to repeat his method of entering each intersection, almost an hour
transpired before he encountered anything but emptiness.

Ahead of him was another barrier across the wide corridor, yet this one was different from what
he had encountered at Walden. It was also made with concrete blocks, but instead of there being a solid
floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall blockade, there was a full-height wall in front, which began at the right
side of the corridor and stopped approximately five feet short of the opposite side. Only a few feet
behind it was another wall, attached to the left side of the corridor and disappearing behind the first.

Another difference was that this front barrier also had several narrow slots integrated into the
masonry, the purpose obvious as he heard a voice ring out from behind the wall. "STOP WHERE
YOU ARE!"

Elias froze.

"PUT DOWN THE SUITCASE AND RAISE YOUR HANDS."

Complying, Elias asked in a voice deliberately shaky, "What do you want?"

Ignoring his question, the man behind the wall authoritatively shouted, "MOVE AWAY FROM
THE SUITCASE AND LIE FACEDOWN ON THE FLOOR."

Elias crab-walked two steps to the right and dropped slowly to his knees while keeping his hands
raised. Then, slowly, he lowered his arms, and placing his palms on the floor, lay facedown down and
said nothing. As soon as he was down, he heard two sets of footsteps approach. Judging by the sound,
one of the two stopped several feet away, no doubt positioning himself to guard the other. Elias
assumed they were armed.

He heard the other guard circle around and approach from behind, reaching down to begin
searching him, and finding the Beretta almost immediately. After taking it from Elias' pocket, he
resumed the frisk until satisfied that there was nothing else of concern on the newcomer's person.

"All right. Stand up."

Despite his excellent physical condition, Elias rose from his lying position with feigned difficulty,
including grunts and groans as he lifted himself. The two men, dressed in green cargo pants, black
T-shirts, high-laced boots, and sporting an assortment of tattoos on their arms and necks, both carried
Glocks holstered on their hips. Elias guessed they were in their mid-twenties. One of the two was
pointing a 12 gauge shotgun at him while the other was down on one knee, rummaging through the
contents of his suitcase.

As Elias stood, automatically raising his arms above his head without being told, he looked more
closely at the tattoos on his guard and said, "So, 4-1 or 1st Cav?"

The guard grinned instantly. "Yeah, 1st Cav. Are you infantry?"

"Doc Charon. I was in the 4-1."

"Medical Corps, huh? Afghanistan?"

"Iraq and mostly Germany."

"Attached to which unit?"

"I was with the Big Red One."

The smile broadened. "Pussies. You ‘prolly' spent all your time treating STIs."

Before Elias could reply, the second man flipped the suitcase closed and rose, nodding at his
partner, who lowered the shotgun and took three steps forward, extending his hand.

"I'm Sweezea. This is Crabill."

Elias shook Sweezea's hand, then Crabill's.

After removing the clip from the Beretta and checking to make certain the chamber was empty,
Crabill handed Elias his pistol and said, "Welcome to Madison." He turned over the clip to his partner.

"Madison?"

"As in James."

They turned and walked toward the entrance to the barrier. Elias asked, "Madison, Walden. Do the
punks by the entrance have a name for their territory?"

Sweezea laughed. "Yeah, ZooCity. You had the pleasure of making their acquaintance?"

The three men turned to the right as they passed behind the first wall, and Elias saw another man
stationed there. He had been watching through one of the view slots and held an AK-47 at the ready,
in case his two partners needed help.

"This is Hutson," said Sweezea.

The third man turned to face Elias and, dropping his rifle down to the rest position, stuck out his
hand. As he did, Elias read aloud the tattoo on his forearm, "Screaming Eagles."

"Yes, sir."

"Don't ‘sir' me. I worked for a livin'. Just a medical corpsman. Charon."

As Elias said this, he noticed the firmness of the grip intensify slightly and the handshake itself
become more enthusiastic.

"Good to meet you, Doc."

Hutson resumed his vigil at the slot as the two others led Elias behind him and around the first
switchback. The corridor barrier was a series of offset walls with five-foot openings at alternating ends.
When they came to the final offset wall, Elias saw that this walkway was shorter than the others, and
built into the end of the aisle was another block wall, also with gun slots facing them. He could see the
barrel of what he deduced was an automatic rifle of some type projecting through one of the slots and,
at the moment, trained directly on the center of Elias' chest.

"Nice defensive setup," he complimented.

"It works," Sweezea acknowledged. "So how'd you snake past the ZooCity denizens?"

Elias shrugged to communicate that it was no big deal. "A little difference in orientation. They
seemed to think that sidearms are for pointing at people. I was always taught that guns were only good
for one thing."

Both Crabill and Sweezea were amused by his comment, and Crabill added a facetious "Bang,
bang."

"So there's a body back there?"

"Two."

"Cool!"

They cleared the defensive maze and entered the wide corridor.

"I'm going to stay on post," Crabill advised.

Sweezea nodded. Crabill held out his right hand to Elias and said, "See you around, Doc." Elias
once again shook his hand.

As the two of them set off down the corridor, Sweezea asked, "You mentioned Walden. You met
those guys, too?"

Elias kept pace next to his escort as he answered, "I did."

"Man, you get around! Why are you at Madison? From what I hear about that bunch, they would've
snatched you like you were the last whore in town."

"My choice. The second I walked in, I realized that I'd have to leave my testicles at the door if I was
gonna live there."

His companion laughed again. "Boy, you nailed that, all right. Still, I can't believe they didn't give
you the full-court press to stick around."

"I didn't tell them I was a doc."

"What'd you tell them you did?"

"Accountant."

"Good call."

"Yeah, I figured that out pretty quickly. So where are we going?"

"To meet the Chief."

As they walked, Elias noticed that the environment behind their entrance was, once again, different.
ZooCity had been a chaotic mess. Walden had appeared neat in comparison, but had a casual, worn look
and feel. Madison, by contrast, was spotlessly clean. Where there had been no placards of any kind in
Walden, Madison had an abundance of crisp signage everywhere he looked, mostly filled with
indecipherable abbreviations and directional arrows. There were also lines painted on the floor, each
a different color. Elias determined that the color of the lines corresponded to the font color on
individual signs. As they reached each minor intersection of hallways, some of the colored lines
continued straight, while others turned to the right or left. This place, he thought to himself, was set up
by someone with a bad case of OCD. The overall feel created was one of regimentation and structure.

As the two of them walked, they passed a man in his late fifties or early sixties, down on one knee,
with a drop cloth spread out over a four-by-four area, a bucket of white paint on the cloth, and a
paintbrush in his hand as he touched up a small section of wall adjacent to a door. Mounted on the door
was a handmade wooden sign, engraved with the legend, "Chief of Staff – Milton Pierce." Sweezea
stepped over the drop cloth and knocked twice. A male voice immediately responded, "Come in."

With a slight jerk of his head, Sweezea indicated to Elias that he was to follow, and opened the
door, entering. With everything he had seen so far, Elias expected his escort to come to attention and
salute the man inside; however, other than a subtle stiffening of his posture, Sweezea acted as if he were
bringing a new hire in to meet his civilian boss.

"Sir, this is Doc Charon. He's a newbie."

The man behind the desk was in his forties. He wore a long-sleeved, white shirt, which was crisp
and well starched, and he was clean shaven, with hair that was long for a military cut but short for a
civilian. Elias decided this compromise was deliberate and contrived to convey a specific message that
the man was neither.

"Charon," the man greeted him, standing and extending his hand. "I'm Milton Pierce."

They shook hands, and Elias probed, "Pierce?"

A smile crinkled the corners of the Chief of Staff's eyes. "I see you've met my sister."

"Mildred Pierce is your sister?"

"Yes, she is." He turned and said, "Thank you, Sweezea. You may return to your post."