When the girls see me, they point and cover their mouths with the edges of their sleeves and distance themselves. It’s my respirator mask dangling unclipped at my chest and the veil that covers half my face that makes them think of disease. They think anyone not perfect is contagious. My mask shows I live down here or in the Narrows. Like poverty is infectious. I kick the wall and choke down my pride.
Finally, a man exits the mediport carrying a large bag. He follows me into the alleyway. He’s so nervous I’m sure he’ll give us both away. When we reach the wall, I put my cyborg hand over his mouth and speak to his panicked eyes.
“You’re late. And obvious. What’d I tell you last time?” I let my hand go.
“Sorry, Ashiva. Z Fever is moving through the city. I’ve been triaging for days.”
“You’re telling me it’s here then? The Fever?”
Dr. Qasim nods. “The GHO is calling it Zephyrus Fever. Z Fever. It’s viral and ugly. We don’t know how it’s spreading, but it is in the SA. The GHO is about to approve initial quarantine protocols here—same ones as in the Americas. Central wants to keep it quiet for now, but they want it dealt with quickly before AllianceCon and their 25th anniversary party. They know we all hear ‘pandemic’ and think about Ebola 4.”
“Oh,” I step back. “That bad?” Ebola 4 killed tens of millions of people globally, two decades ago. The PAC and GHO’s responses were overreactive, but they missed the mark. They didn’t realize it was spreading through contaminated food, so quarantines only kept the disease from spreading locally—but still it carried on the winds of trade across the globe anyway.
“I don’t know, yet. But crowd mentality, you know. I wouldn’t blame people for—”
“Taking to the streets, rioting, joining the Red Hand to resurrect them from the ashes?”
“Achcha . . . we’re working on an inoculation and treatments. But the GHO is reporting new cases in the Americans and Asian Provinces. It’s spreading fast.” He presses the bag to my chest. “Here. Spared from the Arabian Sea,” he says and tucks a scrap of paper in my hand. “Don’t ask for the details and be careful with this one. It’s not—”
“Okay, okay.” I open the top of the bag and shuffle through the valuable vegetables and fruit. Good cover.
“Gentle, please.” He turns to head back to the mediport. “This is the last time. The gray-collars are monitoring my flat, my family. They said they’d take my daughter and wife if I step out of line.”
“Dr. Qasim, remember where you came from.” But even I know. The gray-collar guardians are the ones you have to watch out for. They have a free pass to do anything they want to get what they want.
He puts up his hand, metal fingers glimmer in the dark. “I need no reminder. I am thankful for The Mechanic’s mercy every day. I’ll contact you. But it won’t be for a while. And sorry about this. They said they’d take me to containment for questioning if I didn’t prove useful.”
I roll my eyes as the white-collar starts closing in. “Sorry about what?”
He signals to the guardians on the corner and they storm me.
And he scurries off like a scared mouse. The Internal faction of the Red Hand won’t be able to rely on him much longer. I’ll have to find another doctor on the inside, and it can take months for a smuggler to make a new contact. At least I have this package—every delivery is as important as the last. I take two steps forward and freeze.
“Oye, pickpocket! Identification.” The guardian marches towards me with the confidence that his weaponry instills. A baton, electro-pulse gun and other intimidation devices bounce on the belt that cinches his long, white tunic.
Flit you, Doc. Here we go. I place the bag swiftly in the shadows and make a mental note to add his name to my throttle-list, right under Jai and Khan Zadabhai and the rest of the Lords of Shadow.
“Dhat,” I whisper under my breath. I am no thief. Any jackal can steal a few marks from an Uplander because they always have their head in the clouds. If the Red Hand has a tricky transport, they tell me. What I do takes talent. And real talent gets you to tomorrow.
I bite my tongue and turn my wrist to his scanner to display my books. Essential for everyone in the Red Hand. They’re good. The best. But if he checks them in Central in Solace’s main, he’ll see creases in the tampered data, and I’ll be charged with curfew violation—one transgression that’ll give me a one-way ticket to waste my time in questioning.
I straighten my tunic and feign Uplander boredom. This murkh halfwit is going to make me late.
“You are a long way from home in Strata 12. Let’s see your face, girl.”
“Sure, sahib. Just taking a walk.” I hide my surprise in hearing my Strata. In my next life, maybe. Zami must’ve added that as a hidden message in my fake ID books, my lucky number. I unclip my veil from above my ears and grin. Fake books: two transgressions, one night in basic containment.
He flinches. “Accident?”
“A hungry, wild dog. Er, during a vacation in the East.” I’m not sure what beast caused the scar on my cheek.
“Left you a permanent reminder.” A note of disgust glimmers on in his face. “You’re going to have that edited soon, I suppose.”
“Right away, sahib.” I’ll never have a genetic edit. My scar isn’t terrible, but it makes Uplanders squirm. When I go to clip my veil again, my shoulder whizzes and whines under my black jacket. Stupid moody arm has impeccable timing.
The guardian cocks his head sideways. “Is your replacement registered?”
“Yes, of course, sahib,” I say. My forced smile hurts my dry lips.
I don’t know if he believes me, but he’s just a white-collar, not here to take people in, just a scout, a writer of fines. A pain in my ass.
“Did the doctor give you something?”
My empty hands are clear. “A slim diagnosis, and smashed hope.”
“Why don’t you move along? President Ravindra’s curfew is still in effect.” He looks me up and down. Even with the books it’s obvious I’m not a member of the elite class.
“I’m waiting for a friend. Last I checked that is still a right of the citizens, even in Strata One.”
“If I see you outside in a half-hour, I’ll have to take you to Central main,” he says and moves on to hassle others.
“Okay, sahib. I’ll be only a moment.”
And I slip into the shadow’s shadow. When he’s gone, I lift the bag across my shoulder.
It twitches against my body.
3 //
Ashiva
The bag is heavier than its size. I walk down the narrowing streets through the Liminal Area, the ten broken city blocks between Central’s gates and the entry into the Narrows slum. With its forgotten buildings and anarchists, it’s important to rush through. There’s always a fight to be had here. I move quickly toward the edge of the platform to the Narrow’s entry line. Returning home feels like sinking below the city, between dark, unfinished buildings, ancient structures in ruins, like faint memories still grasping onto life. Bygone buildings the SA keeps promising to fix, to finish. We’re all still grasping. After WWIII, the sea levels rose hundreds of feet and caused the Great Floods which led to a panicked, bloody mass migration inland to the South Asian Province’s center. Cities flooded. Millions drowned.
As I walk toward the line, I pass holo-screens projecting News One and the PAC’s President Liu’s weekly State of the Planetary Union that is more of his heartbreaking dung: “In these impossible circumstances, we will continue to allow each province to decide how to survive, and who will survive. It’s not the PAC that will control the decision. We are giving the decision and power back to the people.” Blah, blah, blah.
Power is never really with the people, is it?
The SA is desperate this year. I can feel it. They’ll do anything to secure funding to build the three remaining neocities, East, West and North. And I mean anything. In our overpopulated SA, President Ravindra decided to use the algorithm Solace
to determine who was genetically the best choice to continue in this new world and live in the first of four planned neocities, Central City One. But really, President Ravindra was just too cowardly to make the choice herself. Let a computer decide. Give the ones deemed “fit” a neural-synch to optimize their brains so the fewer can work harder, better. Distance yourself from the suffering and maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe those deemed unfit by Solace will disappear or jump into the ocean themselves. Yeah, that’ll work out.
After WWIII, when the SA crushed the Red Hand with their mechas during the Last Vidroh, they created the gray-collars and their extensive UAV system to track us. The Red Hand was forced deep underground and separated into Internal, External and Liberation cells. We switched our all-channels comms to closed internal comms. General Shankar’s Liberation Hand detached completely, cut off all communication. They’re the ones who do the hard work of arson, kidnapping, arms smuggling, and political assassinations. We’ve gone quiet, but we’re still here, waiting for the right moment to join our hands. Asleep, but not dead.
I never knew the Red Hand when it was united. All I’ve ever known is Masiji’s Internal Hand and our protection of civilians in the Narrows. I dream of the day when I can become a lieutenant in the Liberation Hand and walk alongside General Shankar. When we can raise our resistance from the ashes and demand equality for all Downlanders. For now, I’m just a trainee. Some day. One day. I hope.
It’s not in human nature to recede and give up. We all fight. Life wants to continue even if Solace says you’re unfit for the future.
I stand shoulder to shoulder with all types of poor slops who’d traded their jobs in maintenance and data centers to maintain the new automated systems. While we are in this together, when they push me, I push back harder, but not at my full strength. If I don’t shove, I’d be trampled. None of us are allowed to live with the Uplanders in Central’s Stratas inside the Ring, not without money and a proper neural-synch, and that’s a Solace test we didn’t pass. We can only visit to work, to be their lowly assistants.
Or work as agents of the Red Hand fighting to undo the system that kills us.
I walk to the booth and hand the gatekeeper the scrap of paper Dr. Qasim gave me. “How’s the night shift, Romil? Catch any smugglers?” Romil is Red Hand, but we never talk about it in public. He lifts his gaze toward me, and it always knocks me off balance. His two bright blue, electrified eyes, backlit and cybernetically enhanced, fit squarely where his flesh-eyes should be. They make his scarred, round face look obsolete somehow. I’ve never asked him, but rumor is he lost them in a chemical fire. But his smile makes him seem kind, to me at least. As the leader of the clandestine spy network of the Internal Hand, he can literally see through walls, though most don’t know about the added upgrades The Mechanic made to his standard ocular replacements.
Romil’s belly shakes when he laughs. “Eh, not yet. Declaring . . . produce? That’s a new one. What happened to metal scraps, cables, or batteries? That would be less . . . er . . . conspicuous.”
Above Romil’s head are holo-screens of the missing. Peeking out from beneath a poster announcing AllianceCon is a black and white image of some poor kid from the Narrows. “Lost,” it reads. “Will pay for return.” There are too many missing and lost to count. And where they are is anyone’s guess. Most kids were abandoned on orphan trains during the Great Migration from coastal areas. When parents couldn’t afford to move their whole family to higher ground, they’d send their children to the cities hoping someone would care for them. Decades later, people still hoped to be reunited. But lately, kids go missing all the time from the Narrows and no one knows why.
I open the top of the bag to show him the tops of wilted greens and vegetables. “For your sick mother.” I wink and slide a vial of medicine under a pile of wilted greens. I know his mother. She trades the best sweets in the undermarket.
As he slides my papers back to me, he winks and says, “Tell your sister hello.”
I nod and lift the paper and whatever he’s put underneath it into my jacket pocket. Cameras all around, better safe than in containment. He turns up the volume on his holo-screen that’s projecting the State of the Planetary Union. I stand back and watch as Romil checks another person’s books. A small crowd gathers alongside me to watch the screen.
President Liu was recently elected by the Provinces to lead the PAC. The Province leaders all look angry even though they are sitting at a half-moon table side-by-side, like they’re best friends. He sits between the leaders of the American Province and Asian Province. That’s no mistake. They wouldn’t enter the room if they had to sit next to one another. Snippets of quotes from the meeting run across the bottom ticker: “Liu says the Planetary Union is strong. Our provinces will work together to redistribute resources equitably across the union.” Another reads “Alliance Conference to determine funding.” Another quote reads: “Trade War Eminent: Rare Earths Declared Protected Commodity.” And: “Stalemate on Neodymium Trade.”
Neodymium. The element inside everything important. From robots to transports to computers, and the turbines that propel the Ring. Even in my replacement’s plexus. The Asian Province has the largest mining operation in the world. But the processing of neodymium pollutes like crazy, so the PAC funds them, but only so they get what they want. It’s all shady. Australian and American Provinces also have mines and are trying to build refineries, but with their limited pollution credits, they’ll never compete. The African Province just announced their new mining operation and all the world leaders are now panicky. This was exactly how WWIII began. A fight for resources. We disarmed each other of war mechas and weapons of mass destruction, but they failed to fix the problem. We have no rare earths to share. It’s only a matter of time before we fight again. And no, the Space Colony will not save us. I flip off the shadow of the Colony’s toroidal rings as they careen across the moon.
The buzz tells me there’s a UAV about ten feet above me. I clip my veil and pull my metal-threaded hood low over my head. Always move the same way, slowly, carefully. Don’t draw attention to yourself. The drones see sudden changes as threats. The UAV flies closer.
“Better move along, Ashiva.” Romil waves me through as he crunches the greens. “And be careful.”
“Thanks.” The crowd dissipates.
The scan clears me from a list of diseases, then I place my hand on a circular pad and tiny sharp needles perforate my skin like ten wasp stings. A pleasant new test for the Fever. I follow the masses to the edge of the encampments, a city outside a city. Clipping my respirator across my face, I look at the gift for my sister, Taru: a few vials of dust of different colors. Chemicals. Stuff only she understands.
As I move quickly through the Liminal Area into the Narrows, I pass familiar faces and tens more strangers. Over a million bodies down here. But I can count on my flesh hand those who know I’m Red Hand. Children play with a small rubber ball. It looks to be made of parts of tires, melted, cut, and stapled together in an awkward circle. They move fast and slow, some limp, some seem to fly. Each has a replacement body part. Either a replaced hand, foot, face, arm, leg or wires embedded in stents and replacement internal organs not visible to the human eye. But I see. I know. A girl steals the ball from a boy, pivots, then kicks it to another girl on her team. I cheer. The lucky ones get replacements. The lucky ones who survived the orphan trains, the floods, nuclear fallout, the Crimson Riots, the explosions from the Last Vidroh, disease, starvation . . . the lucky ones. Those who survived, they are now like potent stars crushed into a tiny speck of power, infinitely stronger. Not physical strength. Remade again with scraps of biotech smuggled by me and my team, the Red Hand runners. We bring the parts to the Commander and she completes their replacement surgery in her laboratory. We might be poor. But we are scientists, engineers, soldiers. The Uplanders closed the gates. But we survive. The boys laugh and cheer as the girl kicks the precious ball hard and far into a makeshift goal between two concrete blo
cks in the distance. For them. It’s all for them.
The Narrows is a shanty city that blooms at the neocity’s edge. Population: one million. The Narrows project was abandoned when Solace Corp decided that automation and construction of the neocity Central would be more efficient for the South Asian Province and so would investing in neural-synchs for Central’s smaller, elite population. They built the Ring that filters the air and installed the neural-synchs linked to Solace to the minds of the genetically clean and wealthy. So out here in the forgotten landscape of the Narrows, some buildings have windows, others don’t. They just left the area unfinished and the Downlanders took them apart, piece by piece, and rebuilt our houses, the undermarket and schools. Reused and remade, our shanty city stands, half-finished skeletons of concrete and metal. We built a latticed canopy that covers the entire length of the Narrows to block the sun, but more so to cover us from the UAV drones. We stay inside, they don’t follow us. Many of us live two lives: one in Central, as their grunts, and one outside in the Narrows, as ourselves. They can take our jobs, our lives, our city, but we continue in spite. Though we don’t have a Ring controlling the climate and cleaning our toxic air, Central installed a sea wall to protect us from the rising water. Another pathetic attempt to show their sympathy through empty, useless actions. All show, all the time. The civilians in the Narrows put their trust in the Red Hand. We are their secret, unofficial protectors—they guard our identities and don’t ask questions. We make sure they’re fed and have replacements. Make sure their children can just be kids sometimes.
And though we rest, the Red Hand never sleeps.
Rise of the Red Hand Page 2
