Bud rose and padded to the door, pausing only to grab a set of Jamie's clothes in his mouth. The security card he'd swiped earlier was still in the pocket of Jamie’s jacket, which the cadet had thrown over a chair before going to bed. Bud grabbed that as well and stowed it safely hidden in his collar. Better safe than sorry.
The nighttime lighting seemed even dimmer this evening, and Bud had to fight down a floating sense of dread in his burbling stomach. Cysniffers didn’t eat real food, so he’d had nothing at the officers’ dinner.
Focus. You can be as baz as Laz with appletinis when it comes to food. Besides, the plan was straightforward. Gain access to the secured area of the hidden corridor, disguise the AMEN operative as a cadet, and walk out. It would be easy. Sure.
Approaching the section of wall concealing the hidden corridor, Bud froze. Two guards stood at attention, their cysniffers alert beside them. Bud restrained a growl. There hadn’t been any there the night prior. Had he done something to arouse suspicion? Or worse, had Laz—
Holy black holes! He hadn't checked on Laz since the previous night. His owner had taught another class today and been unsupervised for over twenty-four hours. Even if he hadn’t given away the whole mission by now, he’d certainly done something foolish by this point to arouse suspicion. Bud was so lost in his worries that he almost missed the soft footsteps behind him.
"What are you doing?" Jamie's voice was low, but it might as well have been a shout in the quiet hallway. If not for the cysniffer subroutines he’d installed, Bud would have jumped six feet in the air and yelped.
Instead, he turned slowly, taking care to keep his racing heart from the tone of voice translated by his LANG processor. "Couldn't sleep is all."
Jamie's eyes narrowed, frowning at the bundle in Bud's mouth. "So you went on a walk with a set of my clothes? And... what is that?" He reached down, plucking the security card from where it was partially visible in Bud's collar.
Bud couldn't help the low growl that escaped him. This was not how things were supposed to go.
Jamie's face fell, disappointment evident in his voice. "So this is why you were so eager to help me win the training exercise earlier?"
"Not the only reason," Bud replied, knowing how weak it sounded.
Jamie scoffed, then glanced around the corner at the guards. "What are you trying to do?"
Bud hesitated. How much could he safely reveal? "Best if you don't know," he finally said.
For a long moment, Jamie said nothing, his expression unreadable. Then, "Would it create problems for that punk who insulted my mother at dinner?"
Bud couldn't help the doggy grin that spread across his face. "It sure would."
A spark in Jamie's eyes. "I think I know how to create a distraction for you. Come on."
Bud followed Jamie through the Academy's winding corridors, curiosity and caution warring within him. They stopped at one of the classrooms, and Jamie headed straight for a locked cabinet. With a few deft movements, he had it open, revealing the canister of synfuel from the earlier training exercise.
"Perfect," Jamie murmured, grabbing the container.
Bud was tempted to ask Jamie what he was doing, but kept silent as hey made their way back toward the cadet living quarters. Jamie crouched down by one of the doors, carefully opening the synfuel container. The pungent odor filled the air as he spilled a generous amount beneath the door.
"Now we wait," Jamie whispered, leading Bud a short distance away.
It didn't take long. Within moments, they heard the unmistakable sound of a cysniffer raising an alarm. More alerts quickly followed as other units picked up the scent.
As they hurried away from the growing commotion, Bud couldn't help but ask, "Whose room was that?"
Jamie's grin was positively wicked. "The cadet who pushed me during the training exercise."
Bud woofed along with Jamie’s chuckles as they made their way back to the concealed corridor. The guards were gone.
Without hesitation, Bud activated the hidden mechanism with the code he’d copied from the keycard, revealing the secret passageway. He glanced back at Jamie, expecting shock or confusion. Instead, he saw only determination in the cadet's eyes.
"Well," Jamie said, his voice steady, "are we going in or not?"
"You shouldn't come with me," Bud said, his voice low and urgent. But Jamie was already stepping into the hidden corridor, leaving Bud no choice but to follow. As the wall slid shut behind them, he couldn't shake the feeling that everything was about to change. For better or worse, Jamie was now fully involved in their mission.
As before, the passageway was a stark contrast to the polished halls of the Academy. Dim, flickering lights cast eerie shadows on the walls, which seemed to close in around them. Bud still hadn’t worked out why the FOG was using such arcane illumination here. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and something else—something metallic and vaguely organic that nettled Bud's sensors. Their footsteps echoed in the oppressive silence, each sound a potential betrayal.
As they moved deeper into the corridor, Bud's determination warred with a growing sense of unease. The weight of their mission pressed down on him, each step bringing them closer to answers—and to danger.
Jamie's voice cut through the silence. "What's behind all these doors?"
Bud was mildly surprised Jamie didn’t already know, but then again, why would the FOG share the existence of its illicit experiments with trainees?
"You'll see," Bud replied, tone grim.
They reached the end of the corridor, and Bud led Jamie into the observation room across from the larger locked door. The walls lined with screens displayed the horrors that lay behind the locked doors. Each cyborg was still strapped to a chair, faces twisted in agony that Bud could feel in his bones despite the lack of audio.
Jamie's reaction was visceral. His eyes widened in wonder at first, taking in the array of technology. But as he began to process what he was seeing, alarm crept into his expression, followed swiftly by anger.
"Are those what I think they are?" Jamie's voice was barely above a whisper.
Bud nodded solemnly. "Yes."
Jamie's fists clenched at his sides. "But I thought all cyborgs were decommissioned when they're captured. What are they doing with them here?"
Bud didn't answer. He wanted to know that answer as much as Jamie, though he had his suspicions. Instead, he approached the two screens set apart from the others. One still showed the large locked door, while the other remained blank save for the word "SECURED" in glowing green script. He tried accessing it with the codes he’d swiped from the keycard earlier.
DENIED.
Bud growled, stomach churning. Either the codes were regularly altered or something had occurred to cause FOG to heighten its security.
"Bring the keycard over."
Jamie complied, though his eyes kept darting back to the other screens, horror and disbelief warring on his face.
Bud took the card in his teeth and carefully inserted it into a slot beneath the secured screen. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, slowly, an image began to materialize. At first glance, it didn't look much different from the other chambers they'd seen. But as the picture cleared, subtle differences became apparent. The room was larger, with more sophisticated equipment lining the walls. In the center sat a single chair occupied by a figure with dark hair, their back to the camera.
"Who is that?" Jamie whispered.
Bud's circuits hummed with anticipation. "That," he said, "is who we came here to find. Come on."
He led Jamie back across the hall to the larger locked door. Bud's jaw trembled slightly as he held the keycard up to the scanner. It beeped softly, and with a hiss of hydraulics, the door slid open.
As they entered the room, Bud moved cautiously, his sensors on high alert for any additional security measures. Jamie, less wary, approached the nearest computer screen, his brow furrowing as he read the display.
"AMEN?" Jamie asked, confusion evident in his voice. "What's that?"
Bud, preoccupied with his scans, barely registered the question. "Hmm? Don't worry about that."
Jamie continued to skim the screen, brow furrowing. “The information is all fragmented, like it was in complete sentences but all shaken up in a hadron collider. Lot of stuff about the Purge.” His lips tightened at that. “Androids. Stolen supplies. Alert level high.” At this point he was just muttering to himself, but suddenly he turned, exclaiming, “Is this about the resistance the officers were talking about at dinner?”
Bud didn't answer, his focus now on the occupied chair at the room's center. The figure was hooked up to several devices, one connected to a cyborg data port behind the left ear, just like the one Laz had. Clear tubing pumped a mix of chemicals through an IV into the cyborg’s body. As Bud began assessing how to disconnect and revive the chair's occupant, he finally caught sight of her face. He jumped back in surprise, a jolt of recognition surging through his circuits.
His reaction alarmed Jamie, who turned to ask what was wrong. But before he could speak, footsteps sounded out in the hallway.
Instinct took over, and Bud dove beneath a gap between the chair and platform upon which it was positioned. Bud nestled in among a bunch of wires, reflexively setting his stealth protocols to maximum, lowering his body temperature and deactivating non-essential processes in his neural net. He was about to bark a warning to Jamie when the door opened. Trip entered, flanked by four guards.
"Cadet Wells?” He sounded disappointed. “What do you think you're doing?"
Jamie remained silent, his face a mask of defiance.
The specialist’s eyes narrowed as he took in the scene - the keycard in Jamie's hand, the pile of clothes slung over his shoulder, the screen he'd been reading moments before. A cruel smile spread across Trip’s face.
"So you're a sympathizer, eh? Just like your cyborg-loving mother?"
Jamie's fists clenched at his sides. "I'm a traitor? What's all that over in that other room, then?" He motioned at the screens. "And here? That's a cyborg. They're all cyborgs!"
Trip's smile widened, a terrible gleam in his eyes. "Where is that defective cysniffer of yours?"
Jamie's silence was answer enough. Trip nodded to one of the guards, who stepped forward and backhanded Jamie across the face before delivering a brutal punch to his stomach. Scarlet dribbled from Jamie’s mouth as he dropped to one knee.
“Take him away.”
Two more guards grabbed Jamie under the arms, dragging him from the room. It took every ounce of restraint Bud possessed not to rush out from beneath the torture chair and rip out the nearest soldier’s throat. But he didn’t move, not even as Jamie struggled and one of the guards again planted a fist in his gut. Try as he might, Bud couldn’t ignore the look in Jamie’s eyes as he was pulled away.
Trip remained, scanning the room with devious eyes. He took half a step further in, attention centering on the cyborg restrained in the chair. Bud’s circuits thrummed with tension. The specialist was all alone. Maybe if he was quick, he could attack and reconceal himself before being discovered. But then, sounds of struggle echoed from down the hall. Trip cursed under his breath and hurried out.
Bud whined, but didn’t move. His programming screamed at him to protect, to fight. But the rational part of his mind—the part that understood the broader mission, the lives at stake—kept him rooted in place.
As the sounds of struggle faded, Bud was left with nothing but the soft hum of machinery and the weight of his own guilt. He hated himself for letting Jamie take the fall, for staying hidden while the young cadet was brutalized and dragged away. The image of Jamie's defiant face, the sound of fists meeting flesh, played on repeat in Bud's mind.
But the mission. The resistance. The questions to which he could only obtain answers if he succeeded. Bud had to believe that by completing his task, he could somehow make this right. That Jamie's sacrifice—unknowing and unwilling as it was—would not be in vain.
Minutes stretched into what felt like hours as Bud waited, every sound from the corridor sending a jolt of fear through his systems. Finally, when he was as certain as he could be that the coast was clear, he emerged from his hiding spot.
Bud took one last look at the figure in the chair—the dark-haired woman whose identity had shocked him so thoroughly. There was no time now to process what her presence here meant, or how it would complicate things. He had to move.
With a heavy heart and racing mind, Bud slipped out of the observation room and back into the hidden corridor. The oppressive atmosphere seemed even more suffocating now, the shadows deeper, the air thick with the weight of consequence.
As he hurried back to the Academy proper, Bud's thoughts were a chaotic swirl. He had to find a way to complete the mission, to get the information to Patricia. But how? The Academy would be on even higher alert now. There’s no way he’d just be able to walk the AMEN operative out the front door. And Trip had specifically asked Jamie about him. Did that mean he realized who—and what—Bud was? Or had it just been a standard question, thinking the rogue cadet had been using FOG property to aid in his snooping? Either way, Bud was a target now. And that, he realized, meant Laz, too, was in unimaginable peril.
Bud rushed the rest of the way down the passage and finally emerged from the hidden corridor. The familiar sights and sounds of the Academy felt surreal, almost mocking in their normalcy. Didn’t they all realize, or at least suspect, what dark secrets were lurking just out of sight?
But there was no time for that now. He’d failed Jamie, but he couldn’t let Laz down. Rushing past the cadets’ quarters, Bud’s heart raced with terror for his owner, mind racing with half-formed plans.
Click here for the next chapter!
Are you enjoying Bud's adventures? Then please consider buying the author a coffee to support his continued writing pursuits!
Don't miss the next chapter: sign up for the author's newsletter for regular updates!
Note: I wrote this story with the assistance of AI. To read about my process, see the following post:
buymeacoffee.com/dtkane/mars-174-years-after-earth-destruction
