The sounds are sickening. I pull the children close to my chest and pray to all the gods for mercy as I stumble down the broken trail.
“Move faster, Taru,” Mrs. Zinaat’s voice is out of breath.
My foot isn’t agreeing, so I stumble. Masiji has begged me to come in for a tune up in her workshop.
The second mecha solider and an armored transport crush over the broken gate. The voices of guardians giving and receiving orders through their loudspeakers fill the air. “LINE THEM UP. TEST THEM HERE. THE REPLACEMENTS ONLY.”
“Where is the GHO? Planet Watch?” Someone screams.
Then we all see the holo-screen play above the Narrows. The voice of a polite and calm President Ravindra blares over the bloody chaos below. I can’t help but stop to see it, if only for a second. They call them C.O.R.E. To keep the peace. This is not peace, it’s hell.
But before long, the guardians are pulling people from their shanties and lining them up in front of the burning buildings.
The catacombs are a natural cave-like structure built under the Narrows. It was a city once, from long before. It sunk into the sea, and then they built another city above it. But then the water was redirected by the sea wall, and now it’s safe from flooding. We drop the children down, one by one, onto the narrow rocky stairwell. We push them back and back and back inside. We prepped the catacombs with the basic survival materials: lanterns, tins of rations, tins of water. I am last to go inside. That’s when I hear the metal monster crunch up the side of the trail towards us.
What would Ashiva do? I have to run. I can’t just sit and be useless anymore. I have to lead it away. This is my chance to do something.
“Taru, no!” Mrs. Zinaat yells as I hand the babies to another child and step outside the catacombs. The camouflaged metal sheet is heavy as I drag it in front of the entryway into the catacombs. It’s stuck. It doesn’t close all the way. The large opening is big enough for them to be found under a search light. No, no, no. They can’t find them. No. A search light picks up on me and there’s a rush of wind in my face.
BOOM.
The ground shakes. A sonic boom vibrates the world around me and shakes my brain in my skull. My nose bleeds. But I move. Go.
My body carries me back down the hill. Back into the Narrows. Let them follow me. Follow me away from the children. Toward the burning buildings, and danger. The C.O.R.E soldier hunts me with its metal robotic steps crushing the rocks and earth below.
“Stop! Compliance is required.” The guardian’s voice projects from its speaker.
The dim light and sonic blasts are disorienting, and the broken concrete in the path ahead is a surprise. I fall and a rusty spear of rebar slices my arm. The C.O.R.E lifts me by my injured limb and drops me in front of another guardian. Its grip is inhuman, and it feels like my bones are going to give way and shatter all over again. Every inch of my body cries. I’m screaming. I know only because my throat is on fire.
Something pushes me from behind. A guardian shoves me into a line. “Stay here, replacement scum.”
All feeling leaves my body. I want to cry for the wound on my arm, for the fear in my heart, but I am still, frozen, like an animal waiting to die. And I can’t do anything to wake up from the nightmare. All of our training and we are no match for the mecha. I want to find an electro-pulse rifle or an explosive, anything, to gather our forces together, to fight, but there’s no way. They hit us with such surprise that no one had a chance to organize. Instead, my eyes scan the world around me, burning like a warzone, children screaming, our city crumbling. UAVs hovering everywhere with their stupid blinking lights and idiot words for us. I scream in my mind. I’m thankful the children will be safe with the Mistress, but I wish I could have taken more people to the catacombs.
The line is filled with children, from toddlers to teens. They’re familiar to me from langar, from training, or just the line at the chug-chug. We cry in each other’s arms. Some look for their family in other lines, others tremble uncontrollably. I gather the smallest ones together and say, “It’ll be okay, we’ll get through this together.”
“Silence,” says a guardian with a baton in his hand.
A boy says, “We don’t have to take this. They have no right.”
“Hush, bhai,” I pull him close, but he tears away from my hand.
“No, it’s not right,” he says and takes off running. The guardians yell a warning, but he doesn’t listen. Finally, a C.O.R.E follows him and stops him cold with a baton to the back. He lays flat and doesn’t move again. Ever.
I cover the children’s eyes and try to distract them as the line moves. Our turn comes to check in, and the guardians demand our arms. They extract serum, blood. Then they shove us into a dark transport vehicle where they tell us to strip our clothes. My clothes are everything I have. Masiji taught me how to sew them properly. I run my fingers over the shells that Ashiva showed me how to fashion into buttons. I fold my clothes carefully and put them in a pile at my feet. Ashiva’s voice is in my head: Take something, anything, a pod, a weapon. The ration pods fit neatly under my armpits.
They burn our things and say it’s for vermin infestation and Z Fever contamination.
A guardian gives us each a basic tunic and I carefully move the ration pods in the pockets. I’ll keep them as long as I can. The other children need help changing.
We are organized by size and age, and replacement type. Then they force us into small air transports. We sit on one bench with a bar across our laps to keep us in place. A few minutes later, about twenty adults file in, all wearing similar tunics. They sit on the bench across from us with the same restraints. Some are familiar.
“Taru, thank god.” Masiji’s voice is hoarse. Her face is battle-scarred from what I assume is a recent beating. “This is not how it’s supposed to happen.”
I’ve never seen Masiji so afraid.
“What happened? What do we do?” Tears come quickly. Her presence gives me permission to be weak because she is always so strong.
“Sh, sh, bachcha. There’s nothing we can do now. By international laws, they can’t kill us. Relocate, yes, they can do that. Torment us, but not—”
“They said there’s a disease here . . .”
“No, Taru dear,” Masiji says. “I don’t think it’s here. They are liars.”
Once the transport is full, the doors close, and we rise into the sky and fly. We don’t know anything yet, so I try my best to listen to what Masiji says and not worry. But it is impossible. Instead, I try to find peace inside myself, in a place they cannot reach me.
I’ve never flown before.
I wish there were windows, so I can see Central.
I bet it’s beautiful from above.
And our home is a burning scar at the edge of the sea.
13 //
Riz-Ali
The room they keep me in is windowless and damp. An old control room or off-grid storage facility. Which grid, I can’t tell from where I am sitting. I count the cracks on the concrete floor instead: forty-seven. I press my neural-synch futilely, knowing there’s nothing I can do externally. The one time I need Solace to see me, it can’t. The buzzing in my mind grows louder and louder, and I cover my ears and try to snuff it out. When that doesn’t work, I hit my temple. Anything to shut off the sound. They stripped me of my gear. Even though the thought kills me, I should have taken the injector of medicine like Mother said. A sickness is creeping across my brain, side effects from the THink nano-optimization drug, compounded with my lack of compatibility with the neural-synch. I’ve pushed it too far this time and I might not come back from possible neurological damage.
The vent at the bottom of the door lets in a centimeter-wide scar of light, allowing me a glimpse of the space. The room they tossed me in isn’t bigger than a closet, with metal walls, and an ancient computer control panel of some kind that has large buttons and a strange screen. An early computer, perhaps? Once the government updated the city’s sewer systems
decades earlier, the old defunct machines and systems went by the wayside. The air is humid, thick. The smell is oceanic with a touch of metal, tinny, and sharp. I try to steady my breathing and heartbeat, so I can listen closely: Water is rushing through pipes. Pipes, damp, old machines . . .
Suddenly, it becomes clear. I might be sitting inside an abandoned sewage control center, at end of the line in no-man’s land. No one would ever find me here even if they knew where to look.
The door opens with a crash, and three individuals clamor into my room. The girl who followed me in the Liminal Area, a young boy with wounds on his scalp, and an older boy who has a scar from his lip to his chin. All of them can use a day at the genetic edit spa. I’d pay for their treatments and put it on my mother’s tab to trade for my freedom.
“I need water,” I say, though they all ignore my words and look right through me.
The girl who followed me speaks to the older boy with the lip scar, “We found him crawling around the Liminal Area. We weren’t sure about his intentions, but he’s not street enough to be a member of the Lords of Shadow. So, we ran him against records, and he’s listed as a missing person. There was his precious mug, a perfect, white-suited Solace techie. I couldn’t get more info because it was only surface bits. But he’s probably important, or wanted for something or else they wouldn’t have reported him missing after only what, a day? Looking at him I wouldn’t think he had crime in him, eh?”
The young boy says, “His return will pay big, yes? Buy us a favor with the boss, Jai?”
“You’ll get his thanks, don’t you worry,” says the oldest boy.
“Just keep your gang off our backs for as long as you can. We don’t have a leader for a reason,” the girl says. “And I don’t like you.” My, she has bite.
The oldest laughs. “I’ll take it from here, Ravni. Not that I won’t miss your company.”
“It’s mutual.” Then she turns to me and says, “Water?” In her hand is a small aluminum cup. There’s small debris floating, like fish, in the water.
“Um that water is . . .”
“Not good enough for you? Oh, right, it could kill you since you don’t have the antibodies. There’s no quick fix for infected water other than not drinking it.” She takes a swig and wipes her face with the back of her hand, smiling with full teeth. “Or growing up slowly, building your immunity to it.”
“Killing me is that funny?” I ask.
“No, just, you’re, well, so weak, and perfect.” Her hair is cut short and her big eyes sit deep in her face, like the weight of it all is carried inside.
The boys around her laugh as they back out the room. “Check out behanji. She’s into him.”
“Chup, murkh. Never seen an Uplander up close,” she says to the boys. When she turns to me, her eyes cut me like glass. “See you round.” She winks.
“Wait! What’s going on? You can’t just hold me without reason.” I almost say, You can’t hold the Minister of Communications’ son because she’s a frightening person who’ll as soon as disappear your lot than talk to you, but I stop myself. If they know, I’ll only be worth more. Better to be an unnamed wanted loser than someone of consequence.
“Come along then, get up,” is all the scarred-chin boy says. He sounds, well, strangely put-out.
I push back as far away from him as I can go, unsure that my legs can hold my weight after sitting so long in the dark. How long has it been? Hours? Days? It feels like forever. Without my ability to connect to Solace through these massive walls, I might as well not exist in space or time.
He takes a step closer. “What? Don’t they make Uplanders with legs that work anymore? Or do you need an upgrade?” All three kids laugh like I am a toy, an anomaly, a joke.
“This is a violation of my rights,” I say, shielding my eyes from the bright light that pours around his form, showing that he’s a thug, a goonda.
“Oh, my apologies, sir, would you like some water with sliced mango and ice? This isn’t a vacation colony, white suit. Get up.” He kicks me with his boot.
My legs are weak, and he laughs when I slip.
“Yeah, don’t care, techie boy. Walk,” he says.
He holds me up by my shoulders to the one luminescent bulb dangling from the tunnel, peering at me like a curious scientist. With the close-up of his face, it’s clear he is just a street thug: dirty, angry, possibly insane. But I envy his conviction. I assume he hates me for my money and the life I live. But he can sign up for the Solace Corp program scholarship. It chooses the fittest few to join the ranks in the Upland every year. He might make the cut, with a few edits. Maybe.
He pushes something sharp into the small of my back, so I move forward. “Where are we going?” I ask.
“You just don’t worry about that, thik hai?” He tosses a heavy fabric hood over my face. It smells old, unwashed. And just like that, I am blind. “Walk.”
I have no choice but to walk to wherever this goonda wants me to go.
“You sure you’ve got a neural-synch? Isn’t that supposed to make you smarter, or, what do the holo-ads say, ‘optimize your future’?”
“Yes, obviously.”
“Well, then, if you’re so smart, how did you end up here? I bet if you actually ran the stats, they’d come up flat in our favor of finding you.”
“Yes, statically.”
“Then, a girl. You got yourself a Downlander girlfriend? What a scandal!”
“No, not even close, Jai.”
“On a first-name basis?”
“I was, well, doing some underweb work.”
His laugh is real. He even holds the side of the tunnel to support himself. “That’s the best one I’ve heard in ages. Working on the underweb. You’ve got stones, ya do.”
“It’s true. I’m a freelancer.”
“Whatever makes you feel better about yourself, uppy scum.” He pushes me down the tunnel ahead of him. “Now, get on. And one more lie and I’ll have to take out that tongue of yours.”
14 //
Ashiva
I was an animal fighting to survive when I woke from my first replacement surgery. I was five. I didn’t know where I was. I struggled and scratched and hissed at the wires and tubes. Masiji had to sedate me. When I finally came to, she laughed and called me a chrome tiger. Disoriented, I couldn’t feel my body, but she said I was filled with a raging fire to live. Not everyone makes it through the surgery. Many bodies reject the replacement or can’t synch with the plexus. I’m lucky Masiji nearly finished installation of the plexus before the raid. My replacement is functional, but needs a final tuning.
I’ve made up stories about my replacement arm. One of my favorites is that I was a small child on the migrant train, one of the falling-kids sitting atop the train. That when I crashed to the ground, the train wheels took my arm off, clean. Another story I told nosy people was that a guardian tried to take me and my mother, and his electro-pulse baton melted my arm away. We all make up stories because none of us really know the truth. The Children of Without have been injured by this world, by disease and war, and terrible tests. They are not less for their injuries; they are beautiful just as they are. Some require lifesaving surgery, while others don’t want replacements. No one is made to feel less. But I need to join the Liberation Hand and so I augment my body to fight. The truth is my replacement took care of the wounded arm I had at birth, Masiji said. She told me she found me on the streets, arm shattered, born of a mother who had Z Fever and died. Sick mothers once gave birth to sick children. And sickness wasn’t allowed in the protection of Central’s Ring. Back then, the Fever was contained. They stopped in-utero transmission with medication. Now, the disease doesn’t transfer to the child, but it causes other systems to fail. Genetic mutations, injuries, brittle bones, poor weight, all the things Central doesn’t want in their optimized population.
When I left the Narrows and ran into the tunnels, leaving Taru and everything I knew behind, it took everything inside me to keep runn
ing away. To know that Masiji was taken, beaten. To not know where Taru and Zami are. And the children . . . my blood turns to an impossible fire. But I can’t do anything. Not yet. Not until I make my way to the outer region. I keep going.
Fighting tears, I run harder, faster. My home is gone; I imagine what the C.O.R.E soldiers will do to the area, to the children. I need to find the Red Hand leaders. There’s a protocol that I don’t know for dire circumstances like this. If they are alive, they’ll know what to do, where to go, and how to reconnect with each other. The protocol is above my rank. Masiji’s reminder plays in my head: “Red Hand needs to continue. Go find the Lal Hath originators.” But how? So many inside the Narrows are gone. The image of the mechas standing guard, their jet-black armored bodies creaking dangerously, like they can crush us without even flinching, snuffs out any fight I have. For now.
The crazy thing about heat is how slowly it kills. First, you get dehydrated and dizzy. Then, thoughts become muddy, meaningless and thick in your mind. Soon you get a headache and a horrific stomachache. Then suddenly, some just die. Without my mask and the cover of the structures in the Narrows, I’ll be dead in a day. When I stop sweating, I’ll be in trouble. I make it to the edge of the Narrows and up against the Liminal Area. They’ll have trouble finding anyone here; it’s a maze and full of goondas. I force open the first door with my fist. The abandoned building is dark, quiet, and if I’m still, it’s cooler than outside.
But I’m not alone.
A few junkies and a couple Liminal goondas strung out on designer drugs they can’t afford take the first floor, so I go down into the basement. They don’t even seem threatened by me, they’re so glitched. Enviable carelessness.
Rise of the Red Hand Page 12
