It's My Party

Alfredo spoke after a moment. "The center wedge, it's running up and down now. It used to be horizontal."

Uno nodded. All the doors in the home complex were like this, a circular indentation in the doorknobs on both sides of the doors, every door, the ones between the great rooms and even the doors between the corridor and the bedrooms. The wedges inside the indentations looked very much like locks, but none of them moved. Before now, they all seemed frozen in the horizontal position. Uno grabbed the doorknob again and tried to turn it, ignoring the annoying noise. The door would not open.

"Try the wedge," Alfonso suggested.

"You try the wedge," Uno growled back.

"Uh, yeah, sure Uno." The chagrined Alfonso touched the wedge and turned it easily to the horizontal position. As the wedge clicked home, the annoying noise stopped. "What the hell?" he whispered. He tried to move the wedge back but it would not budge. Alfonso then tried turning the doorknob. The door opened smoothly.

The four men peered down the corridor. There where sixteen bedrooms doors, eight on each side of the corridor, plus a final door at the end of the corridor leading to the bathroom. That door looked closed, but horror upon horror, all sixteen bedroom doors were ajar.

"Fucking hell Uno," whispered Alfonso. "We'll have to check them all."

Uno frowned mightily but agreed with Alfonso's assessment. If they traversed the corridor without checking the rooms, they could be shot in the back or attacked from two directions at once. Uno sent Jenaro back down to get Diego's pistol, leaving only one gun to guard the Mall. A minute later Jenaro returned and then they slowly began to clear the corridor, Uno and Alfonso guarding the corridor forward while Jenaro and Alfredo would burst in the bedrooms one at a time and verify they were vacant. It was slow, nerve wracking work to check the closets and under the beds.

Time: 7:46 AM

In the past few minutes, Kiyoko had activated Black Mall's lounge elevator and assigned it a new access code which she then communicated to the Hilton complex through the elevator network. Just as Jenaro and Alfredo burst into their first bedroom eighty meters away, Jada walked out of the elevator carrying the group's fifth pistol.

"Jada!" Brandi exclaimed. "You shouldn't be here!" She paused and asked, "Who's at the sky-bridge?"

Jada shrugged. "Currently nobody, but the place is open and the kayak convoy should be there in five minutes. Brandi, Kiyoko, fantastic work!"

"Thank you," said Kiyoko, "but Brandi's right. Jada, you shouldn't be here."

"My life is not more valuable than either of yours. Brandi, please take Whitney to the sky-bridge and fill in the convoy when they arrive. I'll be the door guard." Jada took Brandi's place by the door leading to the kitchen.

Brandi sighed. "Uh… Okay, you're the boss. Whitney, you're safe! We have a marvelous group of people we're working with. I'll explain later." Brandi walked into the elevator with a wide-eyed Whitney and started to key in the appropriate twenty-character code.

"Wait!" Kiyoko called out to her teammate, and then she walked up to Jada. "I should be the door guard, not you."

Jada shrugged. "I'm in charge."

"Jada, think! It's senseless to risk more than one life here, and I absolutely have to remain to run the next diagnostic and the final transfer. Get the hell out of here!"

They locked eyes, and a second later in objective time Jada sheepishly nodded and then walked briskly to the elevator carriage. A moment later she exited the carriage with Brandi and an absolutely stunned Whitney. Somehow against all reasoning, Whitney found herself on the second floor of a kosher deli. She dimly realized the store's dimensions were that of a store in the underground mall.

Time: 8:01 AM

After a half hour of absolutely uneventful biking, Jada's voice came over the Leophone. "Hello Charles?"

"Hey, how are you doing? Everything okay?"

"Yes. I'll fill you in shortly. I just wanted to tell you, you're passing spiral-mark fifty kilometers right now, 12.4 kilometers to the sky-bridge."

"Ah… Sounds good. Are we still being pursued?"

"Yes. Ricardo is still trying to run you down. He is currently 4.2 kilometers behind you."

"Hmm. He's an amazing guy Jada. He's giving himself a hell of a run and with what he knows, very little chance of success."

"Yes, agreed. He's an incredible runner. He's knocking off a kilometer every three minutes, stable as a bus. Your speed has dropped to 22 kph. Charles?"

"Yeah?"

"You're a great team leader and a great tactician. Not pushing Fatima was exactly the right decision."

"Thanks. I know we've slowed down a bit, but Fatima's biking now with a nice easy rhythm. Another twelve kilometers of this will be no problem. How are the other teams coming?"

Jada gave a small laugh. "The sky-bridge looks like an overcrowded airport right now, with a bunch of planes packed on the tarmac. We have both sides open, the deli and the coin store. Our first priority is to get all the boats unloaded and into the stores by the time you arrive. Bike inside and we'll close up right behind you. Charles?"

"Yeah?"

"When can we expect Ricardo to reach the sky-bridge?"

Charles answered without hesitation. "Not as fast as you're probably afraid of, and I would bet probably not at all. Ricardo likes to pretend he's superman but he's not. My guess is he'll run out of gas after twenty kilometers."

"That's a relief. I should tell you, we sent Kiyoko and Brandi in. Brandi is back and we managed to extract Whitney. Kiyoko's currently holding the lounge and waiting for Mark's group."

"Whoa! Fabulous news! I only hope the compadres don't take out their frustrations on poor Amber."

"Maybe not. There's a development there too. I'll fill you in when you arrive."

Charles could tell by her tone that Jada had a boatful of issues before her. "Yeah, okay. See you soon."

"Right. Jada out."

Time: 8:07 AM

Kiyoko heard the beep of the door between the kitchen and pantry and knew that Uno's team had finally progressed to that point in their reclamation of their lounge. Kiyoko closed the door between the lounge and the kitchen and said, "Interface, seal and execute integrity test on kitchen-lounge door, maximum test duration. Execute now."

The doorknob wedged clicked to vertical and Kiyoko tested the wedge. It would not move. She shuddered in relief and then noted the time on the elevator display.

Maximum testing time was twenty minutes. If Kiyoko were a security officer, she could order the door to lock permanently, but as a janitor her authority was limited to diagnostic testing. She knew her limits. She had almost unlimited authority to unlock doors in her presence, but locking doors was another issue entirely. Trying to run more than one integrity test in the same day in the same complex would be flagged as an abuse of her power. The interface might even overrule her command.

There was nothing to do now but wait. Mark would call her through the network when he was clear of the ivy. They would then see if he had enough time to get here before the door unsealed. Kiyoko took a deep breath, staring at the locked door and trying to keep calm. For Mark's party to get here in time, they needed to call within the next five minutes or so. Toshi just wasn't that fast a runner. This was going to be close.

Chapter 44.

Time: 8:11 AM

Ricardo pulled up from his hard run and stood panting as the stared down the locked corridor. He glanced at his watch and estimated he had run eighteen kilometers in fifty-five minutes. Not his personal best but not bad, especially when he considered he was running with a fairly heavy pistol. But he felt exhausted now, and the last kilometer before he stopped he had been reduced to jogging at half his former speed.

Water, he thought. He had done distance running before, but there had been water tables by the side of the road. He felt very thirsty now, tired and thirsty and hot from running in the dry air of the mall. Yes, it was definitely time to turn around.

Where had that woman gone? Was it someone from their Party? She was just too far away to tell. And why hadn't he found her? He didn't think any woman could have outrun him. Maybe she had a bike or something. Maybe she slipped into a store and locked the door before he could see it. It was hard to guess which scenario was more likely. Fucking hell. Six to seven kilometers of both sides of the Mall had been locked down in just a few hours. One bitch couldn't have done that. It must have been a whole fucking army of bitches. Fucking hell. Uno's group had been made to look like utter fools again. And if there was one thing above all else that Ricardo detested, it was being shown he was on the short end of the stick when it came to brains.

Ricardo swore as he panted and thought about their situation. Uno had turned out to be a real problem. The man just wasn't aggressive enough, and they were acting like a bunch of chumps with him in charge. Uno was a problem, and the problem needed a solution, a permanent solution. Their group needed to be playing more offense, not wasting time holding useless positions. Ricardo paused to consider. If he killed Uno, would the others follow him?

For some reason he could not clearly identify, Ricardo thought Diego might be the only person he'd have a problem with. All the others feared him, and without Uno around Ricardo thought the others would gather and fall in line. Chop the head off the chicken and become the new head, as simple as that. But when? Soon, Ricardo thought, within the next couple of days if possible. They were wasting precious time, beyond what their bank of time could afford, and the most maddening part of it was that nobody seemed to realize it.

Okay, when was settled. Next question, how? The matter called for a certain amount of delicacy. Ricardo smiled for the first time in days. Perhaps a certain amount of artistry as well, something that would really motivate the others to follow him. Hmmm…

Time: 8:12 AM

"Charles?" Jada's voice asked over the Leophone.

"Hi Jada," he answered.

"You were absolutely right. Ricardo has just given up. He's starting to walk back home."

"Marvelous!" Charles then called out to everyone in front of him. "Our pursuit has given up. Five-minute break time!"

Fatima stopped immediately and dismounted and gave her team leader a grinning smile. She then took a long drink from her water bottle and started to stretch her arms and the sides of her hips. The short break was very welcome.

"What's our position?" asked Charles.

Jada replied, "You are at spiral-mark 46.2 kilometers, 8.6 kilometers from the sky-bridge. Right now Ricardo is almost exactly six kilometers behind you and he's hiking in the opposite direction."

Charles nodded. "Then we're home free. Any word on Mark?"

"No, not yet. Kiyoko has her hands full. I'm not going to disturb her, at least for another few minutes."

"Jada, was there something else going on? You made a reference to something a while ago."

"Uh… Oh yes, Amber! Let me fill you in." Jada spent the next minute describing how Amber was hiding out in an Eckhart Pharmacy at spiral-mark 69,360 on the inside arc.

Charles immediately saw the opportunity for an additional rescue. "Jada, we have to go back. Once Ricardo enters Jacob's, we can extract Amber."

Jada felt thunderstruck. "My gosh, yes. Thank you! Are you thinking of all four of you?"

"No, just me and Tom. Emily and Fatima should return to the sky-bridge. But we'll need a side-car. Can you ask for a volunteer, someone's who's up for another sixty or seventy kilometers of biking?"

"Yes, of… One moment, we have contact with Kiyoko. Jada out."

Flashback one minute: Time: 8:13 AM

A welcome voice in the Black Mall lounge came from the elevator's keyboard speakers. "Kiyoko?"

"Yo Mark!" she answered.

What's our time?"

Kiyoko could hear him panting slightly as he ran. "On my mark… Now! Thirteen minutes and forty seconds."

There was a moment's delay, and then a shout. "Yahoo! We're making our first turn now, one segment down, twenty-three to go, 2.3 kilometers. Expect us in twelve minutes, less."

Kiyoko felt such a strong rush of adrenalin she almost felt like crying. "Not even close!"

"Yeah, lots of extra time…"

"Don't bother to talk unless you have to. Just give me a heads up when I should open the door for you. Or if you want, I can call out the time on your turns."

"Yeah, okay, great, that'll help." Mark tried to control his excitement as he ran. Frida was right in front of him, and Toshi as their slowest runner was in the lead. At thirteen minutes and eleven seconds in the countdown, they completed their second hundred-meter segment. At twelve minutes and forty-two seconds, they completed their third segment. Kiyoko bridged Mark's line into the Hilton network and gave their home base the good news.

Mark and Frida shifted their positions slightly as they ran and formed a triangle with Toshi as the forward point. Mark quietly studied Toshi feet as she ran. They were all dressed in simple bathrobes, but had their good boots on. That was essential for their silent journey over the black cobblestones. Mark was carrying the Leophone and their one mushroom lock from Black Mall. Everything else, including their homemade Leophone charger, was still at the bee park.

Well, Mark thought, as least the torturous walk through the killer plants had given them a chance to rest from their run up the long stairs and the dash to the ivy chamber. Toshi looked like she had gotten back the nice kick in her heels as she ran. Mark called "time" as they completed their fourth segment, twelve minutes and twelve seconds. Yep, Toshi was setting a nice steady pace.

Two hundred days, Mark thought. Their time in their strange park with the bees was just over two hundred days of subjective time. Such a strange experience. But it was also a wonderful experience, one that had Mark running now with two dear wives. Jada! He pushed the thought away. Not now, he thought to himself, not now. "Time?" he asked over the Leophone. Eleven minutes and forty-three seconds. "You're doing great Toshi," he called out.

Mark took a moment to glance outside as they ran, trying to remember where the solar cycle was in objective time. It hadn't been a factor in their lives for so long. Perhaps an hour and twenty minutes until sunrise he thought. It was still quite dark outside. He didn't bother to check whether there were clouds or stars above. Eleven minutes and thirteen seconds at the next turn. Way to go Toshi…

Time: 8:20 AM

Uno was fit to be tied. He was standing and fuming silently by the locked kitchen door with his three compadres. Brandi and Kiyoko! They just had to capture them both. Kiyoko could describe the battle Gilberto's party must have had at Rabbies Dram, and Brandi would know the fate of Chico's expedition. Of course, the wayward bitches might need a little persuading before they decided to talk. But Ricardo could help there. Oh yes indeed. The man had truly magical fingers when it came to persuading people to talk.

And both pussies were right on the other side of this fucking door! Uno slammed his hand against it. He decided he somehow could feel the bitches' presence with a certainly. But damn it, how to get through this fucking door?

"I could fire a shot at the lock," Alfonso said doubtfully.

Uno frowned and shook his head. "Remember? We tested. The door is other stuff." In their first week here, they had done numerous experiments, and found almost all the goods in the Mall were Earth stuff, but the materials of the buildings were what they called "other stuff". The difference? Earth stuff could not dent other stuff. Not even the tungsten drills from the hardware stores below could scratch other stuff. It was just one of the rules you had to live by.

And where did that rule leave them now? Alfredo offered a suggestion. "I guess one of us could go outside and try to look through the windows." He paused and then gulped. "The pine park, not the sand park. Jessica saw two pistols. A person would be a sitting duck in the sand park."

"Is that true?" asked Jenaro. "I never knew Brandi was good with a pistol, and I can't imagine Kiyoko knows about firearms. That stupid Jessica! She probably panicked for no reason."

"Hey," said Alfonso, defending his girlfriend. "I'd like to see you stand up with a Bowie knife against two bitches with guns. And Kiyoko, I've seen Jessica's fingers up that cunt's tailpipe searching for contraband." The visions of it came to Alfonso's mind. Jessica's favorite position was to have her victim bend low with her face pressed to a table, standing with legs spread apart while Jessica held the back of the neck down with one hand while exploring the rectal cavity with the other. Alfonso gave a small shudder. Kiyoko was probably madder than a bat out of hell. He was surprised she didn't shoot to kill.

Uno suddenly blinked. Hell, he was surrounded by idiots! "Alfredo! Run outside and up the stairwell! Take the walkway over. Signal to us what's going on! MOVE!!"

Alfredo also blinked. Of course! He'd go back to the circular stairwell, then across the cobblestone walkway to the opposite vertex of their hexagon. There he'd go through a one-way door and take the stairs up and come along the three sides of the hexagon to be in the corridor on the other side of the lounge. Eventually, somebody would have to let him back in, but for now, the views through the windows would be excellent, and he'd be safe. Alfredo turned and ran as fast as he could. He had about five hundred meters to go, including ninety meters through some extremly cold snow.

Time: 8:22:03 AM

With the countdown on the door lock at five minutes, Mark's team started the nineteenth segment. Toshi had eased up just a bit over the last kilometer, adding an extra second and sometimes two on the segment laps, but now they had only six hundred meters to go, jogging the two sides of the last three hexagons between them and the vertex with the elevator. They should be at their destination vertex in three minutes.

Time: 8:24:05 AM

Alfredo reached the second floor of the southwest vertex and began to race along walkways, expecting to be in the corridor near the northeast vertex in less than a minute. Unknown to Alfredo, that 300-meter sprint would have him arrive simultaneously at the elevator vertex with Mark's team. But a ninety-meter dash through bitterly cold snow drifts had really done a number on his feet and ankles. He slowed up a bit from a sprint to a jogging run, thinking that an extra twenty seconds or so wouldn't matter.

Time: 8:24:58 AM

Alfredo turned the corner to jog the last eastern face of the hexagon and gasped in astonishment. Before his eyes a hundred meters down the corridor, he could see the vestibule door swinging open, and incredibly he could also see two, no three people jogging towards the door from the transparent perimeter walkway of the diamond array. Alfredo screamed and charged down the corridor with all the speed he had. The other group had a big lead on him, with perhaps only ten meters to go before reaching the vestibule door. But Alfredo had a gun. He raised it and prepared to fire as soon as his first target exited the other corridor. From the kitchen windows, his teammates gasped at his actions.

Time: 8:25:04 AM

With only a few meters left before the safety of the elevator, Mark cringed in horror at the sight of an enemy combatant charging down the adjacent walkway. And then something extraordinary happened. The world around him seemed to drop into slow-time, even though he was not making eye-contact with anyone. It was a very strange sensation, as if he were moving underwater.