Addison laughed out loud. Default authority figure. Throughout the whole ordeal Judge One had been wearing the equivalent of a default screensaver.
“Mr. Moore, are you able to assist us in a debriefing?”
The Commander’s manner was polite, diplomatic, but no-nonsense. He clearly didn’t want to waste time. Addison glanced at Taka, who nodded encouragingly.
“You want to know what happened?” Addison asked.
“Precisely.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“Your associates have not informed you?”
“We thought it’d be best coming from you,” Taka replied. “The levellers have fed Addison bullshit for so long he doesn’t know fact from fuckery.”
The Commander looked Addison up and down. It was unsettling, being scrutinised by the same face that had tortured him for so long, but the closer he looked the more he saw subtle differences. It was like watching an actor known for playing villains suddenly act against type. Despite having the face of a fanatic, some quirk of manner or expression reassured him the Commander was a friend.
“How much do you know?” the man in black asked.
“Only what they told us,” Addison replied. “That they were levellers, the last people on Earth, officially-sanctioned to seek retroactive justice.”
The commander sighed, shifting his helmet under his arm. “That is partly correct. They were seeking justice, a twisted version of it, and they are amongst the last. But they are not officially-sanctioned and are most certainly not levellers.”
“Then who the hell are they?”
“Zealots, cultists, extremists.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This world is not the world you know,” the Commander replied. “People have been pushed to the brink and many have succumbed to religious hysteria. The majority are harmless, roaming the wastelands proselytising, but this quintet stumbled across something dangerously powerful. They found a way of making their religion a reality.”
“The institute,” Addison said.
“A stroke of unimaginable luck,” the Commander nodded. “Though perhaps, not for you”
“So they don’t run this place?”
“Hardly,” the Commander replied. “The institute is a relic from the False Dawn, the time when we naively thought technology may yet spare us. The real levellers were geneweavers, masters of biology and neurology. To them consciousness was as malleable as clay, and this was the cathedral in which they did their work. They perished decades ago, taking their mysteries with them. Or so we thought.”
“So this place was just... lying here?”
“That the institute still stands is nothing short of miraculous. But even more miraculous is how this quintet managed to get it operational. Our intelligence put them nowhere near this level of sophistication.”
“They weren’t that sophisticated,” Addison said, eyeing the wrecked guillotine. “But it was so... real.”
“This room must have served some arcane purpose,” the Commander replied, glancing around. “Tribunals perhaps, or a forum in which levelling ethics could be debated, but the quintet perverted its original purpose. Armed with a few relics – a pair of retrofitted weather drones, a compulsion pistol, a technical cache to patch into the levelling machinery – it was enough. We only realised they had seized the institute when we picked up its activation signal. By then it was too late, they had sealed the building. We have been trying to gain ingress ever since.”
“The pounding in the walls,” Taka added, standing close to Addison. “That was them.”
“They said it was storms,” Addison breathed, the world shifting under his feet. “The hidden one, Three, they said she was manning weather defences. She was really defending against you, wasn’t she?”
“Quite successfully,” the commander nodded, sounding almost impressed. “We could not find a means of access that would not liquify the entire building. Until today of course.”
Suddenly, Addison was laughing.
“What’s wrong?” Taka frowned.
“Don’t you see?” he cried, so loudly he startled the Commander. “This is brilliant! It was all one big lie! It means we can get the hell out of here!”
“Mr. Moore––” the Commander began.
“No!” Addison interrupted, ecstatic. “I don’t need any more explanation. Time to go! Where do you plan on taking us? I presume there is an evacuation plan? Do you have a base? A big old spaceship in orbit?”
The commander’s expression shifted to something close to embarrassment. Beside him, Thibault looked down at his feet. Hannah coughed nervously.
“What?” Addison demanded, looking from face to face. “What am I missing?”
“Ads,” Taka said, in a small voice. “I don’t think there’s a spaceship.”
“I’m afraid you have misunderstood,” the Commander said, a note of sadness in his voice. “The quintet may have lied to you about themselves, but they didn’t lie about the planet.”
“I don’t understand––”
“In the last few years, the ecological collapse has been all but total. There was once hope of an escape to orbit, but the last storm put paid to that. What ships we had up there fell dark once they were unable to be resupplied from below. And now, down here, the experts are saying the end is imminent.”
“So you’re not here to save us?”
The Commander shook his head.
“We have liberated you, we have not saved you.”
“But your ship. Your marines...?”
“That is our role. To help the needy.”
“But why?” Addison shouted, suddenly furious. “What is the point? Why would you go to all this effort if the world is ending?”
The shouting made a few of the black-suited Samaritans look around. Across the former court Addison caught Five’s eye and the grey-faced man smiled sadly.
“This is our way,” the Commander said simply.
“What way?” Addison snarled. “What stupid fucking reason could there be for rescuing people who are doomed anyway? It’s just so cruel!”
“Easy, Ads,” Taka soothed, patting him on the arm. “Keep listening, there’s more.”
“How can there possibly be more?”
The Commander shifted on his feet.
“Answer me this, Mr. Moore. How would you respond to the end of the world?”
“Not by giving people false fucking hope.”
“Faced with the end of all things,” the Samaritan pressed. “Dwindling resources, ignorance, infighting, what would you do with your final moments? If the world was ending, beyond all hope of salvation, what would you do with the time you had?”
Addison saw where
