Click.

Jo inclined her head against the pillow and slightly opened one of her eyes just in time to see the door slide across the floorboards. No sound accompanied its movement and she couldn’t remember if she had left it open when she fell asleep. Sighing, she turned over and let her eyes clamp shut.

Sleep again.

Cah-click.

The door slid another fraction of an inch and creaked as if propelled by a silent breeze. But the compound had no windows. Odd. She propped her head against the headboard and raised herself up with her arms until she was sitting. Breathless pause. The floor creaked outside the door and she heard muffled whispers. Not this again.

A gloved hand appeared behind the door, blindly seeking the hidden latch. She sat, transfixed by its movements, stalking silently like a spider seeks its prey.

“Hey! Fuck your mother! What the fuck are you doing?” she cried. The hand slipped behind the door in a flash and was replaced by a foot bursting through the flimsy wood. Right behind the foot, three masked men flew in through the splintered frame. One jumped on the bed, smothering her under his massive stomach. The other two (she thought, for she could only hear what they were doing, her ears being pressed into the core of the mattress by the immense weight of the behemoth on top of her) tore open her drawers and engaged in an old-fashioned ransacking of the entire room. Ah, bloody hell. The next thing she knew, Fat Harry had removed himself from his position as blanket and she was able to jump up just in time to watch them through the window, sprinting down the middle of the street, carrying off the last of the boxes from under her bed.

She sat down again, stunned. That made four raids on the compound this week alone. She caught a glimpse of one of their shoes before they disappeared around a corner. Brown leather with dark laces and an argyle sock underneath. Fucking Lawyers.

Groaning, she stood and stretched her arms over her head. She was only 27 and in good health, but in recent years had begun to feel like her body was aging faster than it should. Sporadic pains shot up her legs and she couldn’t shake a stiff feeling along her spine even after yoga and frequent massages. She pulled her brown hair up into a pile on her head and changed out of her pajamas into a bathrobe. Despite the quick raid only seconds before, her head was remarkably clear and for the first time in days she felt ready to start working again. After all, there was nothing she could do about what had happened. The head of the Lawyers was in with security executives across the city and clearly had access to even the most restricted areas. And those boxes, whatever they contained, had nothing to do with her.

Glancing at the clock, she groaned again, louder, and walked in the direction of the bathroom. She heard a mechanical ‘click’ as a series of overhead water jets opened up, anticipating her presence, and began to flood the room with a misty spray. As the mirror fogged over, faint strains of Vivaldi crept into the air. “Not bad,” she thought. “Not bad at all.” Three weeks and the place still hadn’t failed to impress. With every new development, every mechanized butler cleaning the room, every robotic maintenance worker who showed up unannounced (the door that had been broken in had already been replaced, quickly and silently, by one such technician) led her to believe that there was more to the compound than she had originally anticipated.

The water showered over her shoulders as she stepped into the stall, and individual jets sprayed massaging streams down her back. What a way to start the day. Things were indeed growing complicated in the city. The Lawyers had been roaming the neighborhood for the last month in packs like the one that had so pleasantly visited her room that morning, searching out the last of the Educated that remained in hiding. They stole storage boxes from offices, raided convenience stores, and hoarded the last of the remaining newspapers, always trying to locate whoever they could find and take them in.

They were trying to organize all the different groups of the city together, but clearly she was not a target. They hadn’t even paused to check who she was before smothering her and having their way with her room. That was good. She remained sufficiently undercover. As the leading agent in the nation’s security association, she had access to most of the government’s holdings but, like all operatives, was given only limited intelligence regarding missions and the current state of the nation.

She did know this: any attempt to organize the factions would fail. Everything was a huge mess. Entire sections of the city were annihilated, burned to the ground by the police and then flooded by the fire department to prevent them from being reestablished. If the Authorities had their way, the whole place would disappear under water, a lost Atlantis that no one would remember. She often wondered if that might be the only solution left. (Pessimistic, yes, but one in such a hopeless situation is often forced to evaluate life according to an outlook based on degrees of certainty that death is near at hand. If it is, one has few available choices. Just, as they say, go with it.)

Refreshed after the shower, she walked back into her room to quickly dress and exit through the now-fixed door to the street. Falling in step with the throng, she made her way north towards the park at the center of the city. It was the first time she had been in public in a few days and the sight of empty buildings and smoldering ruins where cars had once stood left her unsettled. The promising feeling she had only minutes before was slowly ebbing away.

Jo wanted nothing to do with the Lawyers. The fact that they had breached the security at the compound was particularly troubling because it meant that they now had access to the highest levels of government. Every member of the Educated that they found was converted and, after a hurried administration of the bar exam, put into immediate service. The men who entered her room, she knew, might once have been librarians or professors.

Once she reached the city’s center, she crossed over the street and halted at a green park bench bordering a majestic fountain at the center of the square. “Where is he?” she wondered impatiently. With all the things that had already happened that day, she didn’t wish for any new crises. A small man in a tattered gray suit appeared from the crowd and moved slowly towards her, weaving through the quickly moving pedestrians. He approached her warily as she stood and took a step towards him.

“Are you…Jo?”

“Yes, of course. Do you have them?”

He produced a thin gray envelope from the folds of his jacket and held it out. She reached out to grab it, but he did not immediately let go.

“How do I know it’s you?” he asked in a timid voice.

“What? How the fuck do I know it’s you?” she replied. She pulled the envelope out of his hand and brushed past him. The Messengers were getting sloppy, she thought. They were always different and none were told any details. It was supposed to keep from them asking questions, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. She was beginning to wish herself back in bed.

Walking swiftly down the sidewalk, she passed numbers of well-dressed men and women and wondered if they were the next targets for the Lawyers. No one knew when they would strike and she hoped she would be able to decode their messages before the next attack. The raids they carried out were insignificant in the grand scheme of the city, but the government was actively trying to combat the acts of terrorism carried out in the city’s lower region. The envelope she had just been given held a communication between the head of the Lawyers and the Chief of Police. They had forged an alliance weeks before and communicated through written word because every digital connection was monitored by the Government. She hoped it would reveal the date of the next attack and allow the agency to capture key members of both groups.

She ducked into an unmarked alley and followed it for a few minutes before arriving at a white door built into the brick. Once inside, she followed a white stairway up three flights and turned down an adjacent hallway that opened to the municipal library, a wide expanse of gray marble flooring bordered by white walls. No books were present, but a number of small desks were scattered at intervals along the perimeter. Finding the first open one, she pulled out the envelope and tore it open. A gold sheet of paper fell onto the desk before her. It was blank. Startled, she turned it over. Blank again. What was this?

A hand caressed her shoulder and she spun around to find the fat man who had broken into her room that morning standing behind her. He smiled and motioned for her to be silent as he guided her up from the chair and walked casually toward the door. Her training taught her to remain calm in unexpected situations such as this, and she weighed her options carefully. This man was clearly involved with the Lawyers, but he hadn’t made any attempts to harm her yet. Oddly, she did not feel threatened by him. She could either go after him and see what he knew about the blank communication or report back to the supervisors with no results. She followed him through the door.

He exited the room through the door she had used and proceeded down the stairs to the street. She continued to follow him as he wove a convoluted path through back alleys and one-way streets. He kept a brisk pace and did not turn to address her until he stopped before a narrow building with walls of black steel and gold tinted windows. He quickly ascended the three steps to its door and produced a golden key from a chain under his shirt.

“Wondering why you’re here, eh, Jo?” he asked quietly. His voice was strangely pleasant for a man of his appearance. She still did not feel threatened by him, despite her better judgment. He slid the key into an ornate lock above the door handle and it slid open with a sharp hissing sound.

“No,” she lied.

He laughed. “Of course not. You’ve got it all figured out, right?” He motioned her to follow him up into a wide lobby identical to the room in which he had found her. Every detail matched perfectly, even the location of the desk at which she had sat. “Well, maybe you did. Until now. Come on.”

He led her across the floor and into a hallway at the other side. Here, he produced the same golden key and unlocked a second door, this one brown and simple. She nearly fainted. The room was an exact replica of her own room at the compound, complete with her clothes strewn across the floor and the bed sheets rumpled as she had left them that same morning. Across the room, she could see a bathroom identical to her own.

“What...what is this?” she managed to say before two other figures stepped out of the bathroom and moved towards her. They were the other men who broke into her room.

“Why, I thought you’d never ask. We’ve been watching you for weeks.” He replaced the key under his shirt and took a step towards her. “That raid this morning was only to check if you had left the city. We thought you might be getting suspicious, but judging from your surprise… I suppose not.”

She could not breathe. The two men who had appeared from the bathroom edged their way toward her. “But…who are you? Are you Lawyers?”

He laughed and looked down at the floor, pulling his hands behind his back. “No, my dear, I should say not. You work for the government, yes? It’s fine, you can admit it. We already know.

“But…who are you, then?” Her mind reeled. Everything she had previously known was in tatters. A new world of possibility opened up before her. What was this room, her room, doing here? How was this possible?”

“I will explain…in time. For now, you need only know that we are a group called the Keys. We are not what you expect.”

To be continued...