“The Red Hand, you know, they’re militant terrorists who bomb buildings, bridges, and transports. They make it harder to just live in the Liminal Area because Central assumes we’re all Red Hand terrorists now. Gray-collars breathing down our necks. But,” her arms spread wide, “we don’t like fighting in government-sponsored wars.”
“I see,” I say. I’m not up for a political discussion. Not now. Not today. “I’m not Liberation, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Really? I see you with . . . computers or science? Yeah . . . I can see it. You’re a smarty. Puzzling things out all the time.”
She got me.
I like her. She sizes me up again and says, “You completed basic training?”
I nod. I don’t mention I helped make the curriculum and completed all training for External Hand. Top of my class, but assigned to Internal like an ullu.
“Then maybe you could help us with a project. It’ll be fun, I promise.”
“Sure, but I only have an hour.”
“It won’t take long. Not for someone like you.”
I decide to help her with her project, but I know I don’t belong with them either.
She leads me into a room. On the table are containers, duct tape, metal pipes cut short, plastic tubes, hollowed-out balls, and thin cotton rope. I know what she’s making and move closer to the table after I take stock from afar to make sure nothing’s active.
I lean down and read the containers. “Potassium nitrate, black powder, flash powder, ammonium nitrate, copper plates? Wait, do you have nitro?”
She smiles. “Not here, too volatile. But we can get it. We can get everything. Wanna make some crackers? Light up Central? I figure with your know-how, you can teach us how to make some fun things, so we don’t blow ourselves up trying. You can be our safety expert.”
The sight of their arsenal makes my heart race. I’ve been building explosives, working on a large project in the Narrows. It’s my secret. I’ve spent months collecting materials, and here I walk into the Liminal Area and this girl just opens the door for me. It can’t be a coincidence. But I can’t resist. “I’ll show you one. After that I have to get back.”
“Deal.”
6 //
Riz-Ali
The artificial neural network, Solace, is everything to anyone in Central. The heart of the corporation, she is a fussy machine, and omniscient enough to control the entire South Asian Province’s transmission of information, even in the districts outside the neocity. She was developed by scientists who were chosen by President Ravindra in secret to find a solution to our resource and population problems. They’re heroes here. The quote that’s sculpted in glass when you enter the Solace Corporation dome is: “Without Sacrifice There Will Be No Tomorrow.” My internship specialty? Data. Organizing it, rearranging it, calibrating it. My neural-synch allows me to match Solace’s lowest neural network speed, but barely. The neural-synch is a device that links us directly to Solace. It optimizes us in terms of brain activity speed, RAM, memory capability. Some say the next step in the neural-synch would be to take the leap to connect with a larger cloud beyond what the human brain can possibly ever allow. But I won’t allow it. Ever. I’m defiant. Even though they say it’s just theoretical, I am terrified that truly linking with Solace would then allow it to control me somehow. Or worse, that I would cease to be a human with a consciousness. Some say it could never happen, but anything is possible. The neural-synch is just a device necessary for the Central elite to be able to do the work of ten people each—they’re the chosen. And with a smaller population, we need to be optimized.
But I don’t belong here.
The techs are lined up in small office cubes made of glass on the highest floors of Solace’s dome. One after another, they spread out like glass beads on a very tight chain. I used to think they were like the hexagonal chemical compounds I’d read about in boarding school. But they are truly like cages that don’t have the decency to show their bars.
“Heya, Sumi,” I say to the girl sitting in her workspace as I pass. Suddenly, I feel a vibration across my entire body, like a strange wave of electricity. The THink is working, I hope.
“You’re late again.” She looks worried for me, which makes her even more, I don’t know, pleasing to me. Sumi’s long black hair is tied in a spiral of a braid today. It’s so intricate and beautiful. But words dry up in my mouth.
“Yes, again. I guess. Hey, I like braids . . . never mind.” I say. My face goes volcanic and all moisture in my mouth evaporates. Now or never, dummy. “You going to AllianceCon?” Good one, yaar. Way to sound slick.
“Of course, I’m going,” she says, sort of laughing, loud enough for our co-workers in the surrounding offices to perk up. “Isn’t everyone?”
The silence that stretches between us is as vast and deep as dark matter.
Retreat.
“Okay, maybe I’ll see you there,” I say, and I bump into the glass wall and dump out my work bag. I don’t know why I said that. I’d rather stick an injector in my eyeball than go.
“I bet you have first-class passes, given your mother’s position and all,” Sumi stands up. I want to collapse into a black hole as I stuff my things back into the bag.
“Nah, I mean, I could use hers, but then I’d have to hang with her.”
“She’s brilliant. I love her newest campaign on Solace’s program.” Sumi watches me pack up.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You use her connections for everything else, don’t you? I mean, that’s how you got the tech internship right after you were expelled from boarding school, right?” She speaks so fast that I have a hard time keeping up. She isn’t mean, just hyper-honest. Candor is a side effect of turning up the neural-synch to the highest speed for the workday.
I hear a few snickers. “No, um, well . . . I actually applied like everyone else. Never mind . . .” She’s right. But in my secret defense, I wasn’t really expelled, but moved because my parents were relocated. It was all part of a grand, fabricated narrative that was out of my control. My mother has been on my case ever since, and my father, the fun one, has been MIA. I yell this response in my mind. But my mind is buzzing. I’d better get to the system fast.
“Right, okay. See ya.” And she goes back to her workstation. “What’s up with your skin today? Are you sweating?”
“Oh, excuse me.” I touch my face and I’m slick with sweat, so I hurry to my office. When I’m seated in the console chair, I take a deep breath in and connect a cable to the input in my neural-synch. First vertigo and then it feels like I am falling backwards through space. Just as soon as it begins it stops and I am inside Solace, ready to set up new sequences for her machine-learning training. The world of the computer surrounds my vision like a tunnel of code. I can’t see where I end and it begins.
I type the code and press my hand against the glass reader. The test runs, and the results are normal. When I am sure all systems in Solace are active, I begin. Once I run the Solace maintenance program, she’ll be busy for two minutes. That’s how long I have to complete the task. Find the file in storage and copy it to my drive. If I go over the two minutes, the consequences will be swift: infractions, possible time in containment, maybe even booted from Central if I’m considered a security threat.
“Launch maintenance, Solace.” The countdown begins on my info-screen.
2:00
When she is set to learn, Solace can’t see me. It’s the only time she is blind and I am free from her gaze. My chest tightens, my heart thumps uncontrollably and my vision expands to 365 degrees. My mind has never felt so clear. I know the drug is working. I’m not weighed down by thoughts. I’m free of doubt and processes. I follow circuits, leap over connections, duck through doorways, and enter Solace’s back storage like I’ve trained my whole life for this. My brain and body buzzes with excitement. I could definitely get used to this.
I grab the coordinates to a small data packet from the Red Hand’s u
nderweb hack challenge. The collective said it was somewhere inside Solace’s storage, hadn’t been accessed in decades, and was just a dusty antique. Why do they want this packet? I don’t care. All I care about is connecting with them for the reward when it’s done so I can find out what they know about my uncle and his connection to their Commander. The last challenge they put out on the underweb asked for someone to shave Solace CEO Mr. Gupta’s cat and post a holo-vid to prove it. To my knowledge, no one participated in that challenge. Or at least, no one succeeded. But this little dusty data? No one will notice if I run a duplicate. I search for anything hinting at the name Himalaya.
1:00
The packet proves more difficult to find than I thought, even with THink. Come on, come on.
00:10
I find it in one minute, fifty seconds. Saved and cleaned up my tracks. Thank you, optimization nano-bots.
I descend the spiral layers of Solace Corp, and ride the mechanical bridges down, down and down the dome, until I reach the central entrance to sign out.
“Good day, sir,” the security guard says as he runs the blue light over the chip in my wrist.
“Good day.”
The guard looks at his screen and squints. He types a few notes, and then the glass doors open for me. I pause for a millisecond, but then walk out with the data packet in my neural-synch like nothing at all is the matter.
I did it. The air outside is clear and clean. Too clean. It smells of nonspecific fresh flowers that I can’t place. I rush past the massive fountain park and through the thick forest of rare, floral trees that decorates it. The haze from the pollution past the Ring keeps the sun at bay. But I’m free. No bot, data packet in hand, I’m in control for once.
A wave of heat fills my stomach and my steps stagger, but my legs move in the right direction, away from Solace Corp. Each step brings me closer to a group that can actually help me.
7 //
Ashiva
When I was ten, I used to sit on the metal sea wall and watch the fishing boats bring in their catch from the south, before the red tides, born from the extreme heat, killed the surface sea life. The fisherfolk were thin but strong, and their boats were incredible feats of engineering built from construction scraps and recycled materials. I’d wait on the edge of the port until the last few moments before curfew to try to catch the sun rising above the water. It was usually too hazy to see, but it happened sometimes. And when it did, it lifted my heart.
When I saw the girl wandering slow, like a sleepy fox in the dawn light, near the edge of the deep water three yards from me, I called to her.
“Oye, ladki, careful.” She couldn’t have been older than four, and her bare feet were worn and bloodied from the unkind streets. They had to be damaged, possibly fractured, the way she was limping. The orphan transports overflow with children sitting on the top, hanging on to the sides. There was never enough room for everyone. Many kids died or were injured from falls.
She seemed numb to the world around her, like she was caught in a dream. And for a moment I wondered if she was a ghost or spirit. I realized where that word came from that Uplanders called us: the forgotten. Fisherfolk scurried past, robot maintenance machines buzzed by, rickshaw transports blasted above on the Maglev tracks, but the little girl kept moving toward the water, the world around failing her in every way possible.
An old man who was mending his nets nearby said, “She’s a shell. Empty. Soul has already left the body.” His hands mimicked a butterfly flying in my direction. “It happens to the forgotten.”
Her eyes were lined with charcoal—someone had cared enough to ward off the evil eye and pray for her, but not enough to feed her and give her shelter. Street children didn’t need prayers, we needed rations and love—even if Solace labeled us “close to expiration” and “un-fit.”
I shook my head at the old man. “She’s not dead. Not yet, Uncle.” I pushed myself up to stand. The sunrise was caught behind the haze. It wouldn’t show itself this morning anyway.
The old man waved me off like he might a fly, like I knew nothing, but he was the one who told me the week prior that the world was coming to an end and that the Arabian Sea would swallow the world. Superstitions had no place in the SA anymore, but they still leaked in like viruses. Maybe that was all some had left. Even when all the coastal cities had succumbed to the seas, and the government had used all remaining PAC funds to build the neocity Central on the highest land inland, displacing millions and making everyone except the wealthy a refugee, an exile, people prayed, like it did any good. I never understood it. Gods wouldn’t make this world.
“Girl, you hungry?” I asked. I knew my pockets were empty, but I searched my satchel anyway.
She didn’t respond, but continued to walk toward the sea across a broken concrete jetty that angled down into the water and below its surface. When she reached the water’s edge, she fell to her knees and collapsed hard on the damp, broken slabs. The water and ocean detritus lapped her bloody legs like an apology, like it was trying to wash away the city’s failure. She made a small sigh when I picked her up in my arms, her eyes blinking with saltwater. She weighed so little, maybe ten kilos. She was so fragile. In her, I saw myself. I saw the world and what it thought of us. I saw a chance to protect one precious life.
“Come on, little fox,” I said and carried her easily with my replacement arm. She was still breathing, but barely. I knew Masiji would want to reprimand me for not finishing my errand and bringing home a girl without approval, but she’d never beaten me, so it was worth the risk. Anyway, she put me back together, saved me from the same fate, so why wouldn’t she take in this lost girl?
I look for Taru in the alleyways. She isn’t in our room when I arrive. She isn’t in the central courtyard, the general dormitories, or the play yard near the schoolroom. I check with the entry gate and they said she’d come through, but not where she went. The rooftop of the abandoned building is hotter than hot when I lift myself up and over the ladder, but there she stands with her back to me, watching the sea from the highest point in the Narrows. In front of her are a pile of her important things, things I don’t understand. Bottles, jars, experiments in process, containers of all kinds with powders—elements she calls them. There are even small rockets she’s fashioned from scraps of fabric and metal, connected to computers. Off-market drones she’s programming. Beautiful pieces of artwork that have a dual purpose of entertainment and destruction. She has a gift for chemistry, computers, and science. None of which I understand. She was tutored by every specialist in the Narrows when Masiji saw her potential. Now, she’s a master.
“There you are, sister,” I say.
She shakes her head, back still turned. “You made a promise, Shiv. You said you’d be there with me today. I needed you. They assigned me Internal Hand. What the hell, Ashiva?”
“I’m sorry. Dr. Qasim was late and then I was interrogated by the guardians. Narrowly missed that one, if you ask me.” It’s one thing to lie. It’s another thing to perform the lie. I would have given it all away if I was there when they gave her Internal.
“It’s always something.”
When did she get so grown up? “Taru, look at me,” I say. “It’ll be safer here.”
She turns around and says, “I just want— never mind,” she says.
I try to be what Masiji tells me I need to be. What Zami thinks I’m a failure at. What Taru needs. But it’s so damn stupid that I can’t help myself. I grip the wall and a bit of rock breaks off in my hand.
“What were you thinking?” I don’t yell, but my words are heavy with anger. She looks defeated, but it was dumb. “To get back at me you run with the Liminal daaku? You’re smarter than that.”
She groans and makes to walk away. “Don’t start with me!”
“You know their crew is dangerous. Why’d you go with them today? After all I’ve done to keep you safe.”
Her eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t mean to. I just went on a wal
k. And they’re not so bad . . . and they told me they needed help with fireworks, just to have some fun. For AllianceCon. That they’d sell them. They wanted my guidance. They said I was an expert. I didn’t know . . .”
“Thugs, all of them. They have no allegiances to anyone.”
“I know, I know.” Taru sits on the ground and crosses her arms.
“So, why’d you go? You know the risks.”
Her mouth makes a funny, thin shape, like she’s locking words behind her lips.
I sit down beside her. “Taru . . .”
She doesn’t look at me when she speaks. “You’re a smuggler. You have a job to do. I need to help with the cause too. I thought that if I did this for them, I could build a connection. Use my skills for the Red Hand. Just like you.” She’s holding something in and I’m worried she knows what I’ve done. She can never find out I’ve sabotaged her path. She won’t understand. She continues, “If the Red Hand doesn’t give me the right assignment . . . I just need to feel useful.”
All I can do is hold her, gently, so I do. I wrap my human arm around her small body. She shuffles her replacement feet closer to mine and relaxes. I’m the only one in the world she lets touch her like this.
“Once we go through assignments, we have two jobs: seva and Red Hand. Your work in the nursery is service. We all have to do service here. We run the gates, take turns fixing and running the water machines, you know. And you’ll be an asset in Internal. You’d be an asset anywhere. That’s how you’re helping. You’re going to assist Poonam Auntie. Think of the lives you’ll save here.”
“I know, but I want to do more. I want to go on missions outside of the SA. I want to go to Greenland. Ashiva, I even want to travel to the Space Colony. Something went wrong. I’m the top student. It’s a mistake. I know it.”
Rise of the Red Hand Page 7
