“Lay down, please. And I know this might not be possible, but try to relax?”
My body tenses, my arms, neck and legs suddenly fight against the new restraints on the table. I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t want to fight, but my body does anyway. I can’t control myself.
“He’s not compliant. I think it’s the neural-synch, preprogrammed not to self-injure or accept injury without approval, probably a fail-safe. Zami, hand me that box over there.”
“Shit, this goes deep,” Ashiva says.
Inside the silver box is a syringe and a bottle of liquid.
Saachi says, “Just a simple sedative, Riz. Something that will allow your brain activity to continue, but calm your limbs.”
“I . . . can’t . . . stop,” I manage through gritted teeth.
I battle the seizure, but Ashiva holds me down and her strength is that of ten men. Once the sedative is in my bloodstream, I am thankful the spasm ends.
“Okay, Riz, all I can say is that it won’t hurt,” Saachi tries to soothe. “It’s just an update.”
I see the blade in her hand and the bright light backlighting her. Words stick in my throat. I am floating elsewhere from the drugs and I don’t care what they do to me. Something is injected. I let go and close my eyes, happily adrift.
When I land back on the planet, there is a bandage over my thick head. There’s a metallic taste in my mouth, coating my throat.
I groan. Soon, Ashiva appears with a bottle of treated water and lets me have a few sips.
“Thanks.”
Then she holds out two, small, round pills to me. “Take them. They’ll help with the adjustment.”
The pills seem so archaic. All adjustments are done through the system’s regulation of my own adrenal and neurological systems, or through a syringe. But a pill? Won’t it get stuck in my throat? Won’t it take forever to work because of my stomach bile?
“You’ve never taken a pill before, have you?”
I shake my head slowly.
“You just put it on your tongue and take a big mouthful of water, and swallow it down. Don’t worry, you won’t choke.”
She helps me sit up straight and puts the pills in my hand. I do my best, but I choke the first time. The second time, they go down.
“It’ll take ten minutes for them to kick in. We gave you an inject during the procedure to keep your body cool until you heal. How are you feeling?”
“What did you do to me?” My words are razors on my dry throat.
She sits down beside me. “Saachi installed a network blocker in your neural-synch. You’re officially offline even when we move into Central. Solace can’t see or hear you.” Her expression is matter-of-fact.
“That’s what you were doing?”
I’m free. “Can you take this thing out now?” The clip on my chest feels tender and all I want is to remove whatever device Jai stuck to me.
“Yeah, I hate those bugs. So annoying. Useful, but annoying to remove. Ready? One, two—” and a tiny fire hits my chest when she pulls it straight out, microneedles and all. “Done.”
“Ouch.” Blood pools on the bit of flesh the metal device took with it and Ashiva looks at the wound closely, almost like she wasn’t expecting it.
“We have questions for you. We’re not going to hurt you. We actually saved your life, I think.”
“Thank you?” I listen for it, but the buzzing is gone from my brain. All of it. I smile and look around. They’re kids like me. While I was out, they’d felt like gods hovering above me. Helping me. I am in their debt. Especially to the oldest one. This is their lab.
“Okay . . .”
“No, I mean it. Thanks.”
“Well, you can show your thanks by answering some questions before we drop you back in Central. You work for Solace Corp, correct?”
“Who are you?” I look around and see a small handprint on the wall in red paint. It makes sense. The pieces fit together. The Red Hand works with gangs like the Lords of Shadow. They’re supposed to be trained in all aspects of warfare, medicine, computers. They have an army of child soldiers. “I will help, of course. But tell me and don’t lie. Are you the Lal Hath?”
The room quiets. No one answers.
“It’s okay. I . . . I’m obviously not in any position of power.”
“Obviously,” Ashiva says.
“I know. But it matters to me, if you are Red Hand. They’re the reason I got snagged by the daaku, traded to Khan and am now sitting here—not dead—with you all.” The three look at each other. They look somber and confused. So, I keep going. “Just say yes, and I’ll tell you whatever I can.”
The boy and older girl look to Ashiva. She nods quietly. “Yeah, but what do you mean, we’re the reason?”
“I left Central because I had to upload the data packet for the hacking challenge from the Liminal Area, so that I would be undetected by Solace. So much for sneaking around. I think the packet arrived. I’m not sure. I hope it did.”
She laughs. For the first time I see how lovely she looks with her joyful expression.
“Hey, I’m a fair hacker, I can hold my own.”
“No, it’s not that. You’re excellent. You’re Kid Synch? The one and only?”
“What?”
She turns and says to the boy, “Oye, Zami. Let me introduce you to Kid Synch.”
Zami says, “What, Kid Stink in the flesh?”
“I’m serious.” Then she turns to me. “That’s your code name, right?”
I nod.
“Welcome to the Red Hand, yaar. I never thought I’d meet you. Definitely not like this. Sorry about everything before. I thought you were just some dumb uppy.”
She holds out her hand to me and waits for me to shake it. I take it and she shows me her strength in her grip. Her hand’s covered in a glove, but I know it’s a replacement. Her eyes watch me like everything depends on my compliance. Message received.
“Um, nice to meet you,” I say. I’m dizzy. Perhaps the update is making me sleepy. Perhaps it’s because the entire world as I know it changed in under eight hours.
“Whatever,” she says. “Get some sleep. We have lots to do tomorrow.”
24 //
Ashiva
I can’t help but think about the moments that brought us here, to this place in time. To living in a world where children are thrown away for their imperfections, and an algorithm decides who stays and who will be left out of history. Was it when the Red Hand went underground after Central rolled out their new anti-terrorist gray-collars and UAVs? Or was it earlier, with the New Treaty and end of WWIII when the world’s leaders collapsed under the guilt that they nearly destroyed the world with their war mechas and nuclear missiles? Or was it after, when the Narrows was established as the slum for those deemed unfit by Solace, and children like me were raised to be soldiers? Or President Ravindra’s approval of Solace’s roll-out of the neural-synch? Or is it inevitable that power will corrupt so perfectly?
A million of her little cuts ended up bleeding us out.
But how to stop the bloodshed? That is our task. And I can’t do this by myself. If we can’t reconnect with the global Red Hand, there’s no way it will happen. To me, the big problems feel like staring at the sun, wondering how to make it night. All I know is I need to see Taru again, to see Masiji again. And I’ll do anything to get us closer to finding a future in which we belong. Before the rising sea threatens the Narrows, and the Uplanders let us all wash away like another disappeared island in some natural disaster that could have been prevented, broken promises, nightmares they did their best to ignore.
I look for the moon through the one small transom window above the ventilation system in Saachi’s laboratory. I can only see the soft glow of its round, silver surface through the midnight haze. I want to see it completely for once, not covered by the rings of the Alliance Space Colony spinning in its orbit. I heard it was beautiful, inspiring. Masiji told me when we searched for stars at night
that starlight came to us from already-dead stars. Most glimmers of light are long gone, consumed by a supernova or a black hole. A natural death for the brightest celestial bodies. But their influence continues millions of years beyond. Then another cloud parts and an unnaturally white torus ring cuts through the moon’s light. The thing about humans is, we’re in such a hurry to advance that we just keep inventing things until we think we’ve buried our mistakes. But they’re still there, festering.
That’s when it occurs to me: We’re going to have to end this madness somehow, and I doubt I’m the one who will be able to lead them. General Shankar is a firebrand. Masiji is the all- mighty. Me? I’m just a smuggler with a sharp tongue, and there’s no way I can do this. But there’s a fire building inside me. I can’t stand waiting. I need to get to Taru. If she’s dead, or sick or hurt, or sad or alone. It’s my fault, and only I can free her. The nightmare builds around me with each moment filled with stillness.
From my seat on the counter, I watch the boy sleep on the operating table. There’s only a small bandage at his temple, but his flesh isn’t injured. We don’t know what to expect when he comes to. Zami and Saachi are asleep on thick blankets on the ground.
He looks peaceful. My mind recalls how only hours before his face contorted during his seizure. I remember how Saachi opened his neural-synch to fish around for the port where they could install the signal disruptor. I was relieved to see a single drop of his blood. Humanity was still inside him, even if technology had replaced his neural activity. Maybe all isn’t lost after all.
I take off my jacket and roll up my sleeves. I’d injured my replacement arm somehow and ruined the silicone flesh on my wrist that Masiji had wrapped over the metal. I tug at it like a scab, and the skin lifts too easily, like a strange glove, exposing the well-worn metal. I open my hand and close it again, listening to the hum of the gears and joints as they move. Masiji figured out how to deactivate black-market tech, clean them, and use them to build a plexus that synchs our brains to the replacement parts. It works. Now I know how she knew so much about the technology, and what Solace could and couldn’t connect to: She designed it.
In bits and pieces, my memories revise themselves. The history she told me about the Narrows, her ability to fix us, how she was able to know so much about our world and theirs —it’s beginning to make sense now. And yet, I don’t know what to believe.
“Am I still alive?” The boy’s rough voice breaks the silence.
“Yeah, you’re alive. Sorry about all that. We couldn’t have Central and Solace tracking you, or us. It was necessary. Jai’s device would have only worked for a short while.”
He tries to sit up and I help him. I feel his strong body under his T-shirt. The most unusual thing about him is that even after running the tunnels and being captive for days, he smells clean, like he just showered. I wonder if there’s a genetic edit for that.
“You know, I would have come along willingly, I think. But I guess my body wouldn’t have cooperated anyway.”
Saachi joins us and asks him, “How do you feel?”
He turns his head from left to right, stretching. “Okay, I think.”
“Your eyes, can you focus?”
“Focus, squint, the whole thing. But how will we know if it’s blocked?”
Saachi bites her fingernails and says, “I’ve calculated the precise location of the blocker and how it will impact the signal.”
“You don’t know, do you?” I ask.
“It’s impossible to know. His neural-synch went organic. It’s embedded in his brain tissue and nervous system. I didn’t realize the extent of the implant. I’ve done what I can to stop the transmission and pick-up, but we won’t know until we get him inside Central and Solace Corp.”
“Hang on. You want me to go back to Solace for you? If they catch me this time, they’ll put me in containment for treason and theft. And as an enemy of the state, they could kill me.”
“Maybe, but maybe not. Look, you’re not a typical Uplander. My job is to get you back inside without harm. I bet your family is important, right? I bet they made a deal with Solace Corp already.”
The boy hesitates and now I’m sure of it. He has connections. Otherwise why would he have a neural-synch? He shouldn’t have it. It’s incompatible. They cost hundreds of thousands of marks. He comes from money and power. We can use him to find my family.
“I have a job to do and on our way, you’re going to help me out. This will be easy for a hacker like you.”
“I, I don’t know.”
I push. “Where are you going to go? You going to live down in the Liminal Area? Or in the Narrows? Wait, it’s destroyed. You have no choice, yaar. And be thankful. People have died to be in your place.”
“You’re right. All I want is information you might have. I thought if I did the challenge, you and your group of revolutionary fighters could help me find it. I definitely didn’t do the hacking challenge for the digi-pet. It’s cute though.”
A revolutionary fighter? Is that what he thinks of us? “I’m not a fighter. I’m a smuggler. I’m just trying to get my family out of containment. You know about the new Solace campaign, right? Did you hear how they used mechas to clear the Narrows? They killed people, young and old. Trampled them like trash. Took the rest to an off-site location.”
“Mechas? Not war mechas. What do you mean? They were decommissioned. The New Treaty clearly bans WMDs.”
“Ravindra made new mecha-suits. She got around the New Treaty somehow; they’re not WMDs. She calls them C.O.R.E mecha-suits. She said they had to clear the Narrows because of the Fever.”
He paces the room. “Mechas, can’t be. They said it was just civil unrest and the Fever . . .”
“And I’ll do anything to get my family out before they make another announcement that to eradicate Z Fever, they were forced to eliminate the infected. I need to find where they’re holding them. Now. Get the urgency?”
He nods. Something in him changes. He is distracted. “I get it. Help me and I’ll help your cause.”
“You say that word ‘cause’ like it’s an ad campaign, a choice. It’s not. Our lives aren’t something to worry about for a second and then to forget.” I flex my fingers and try to calm myself. I need him to tell us everything he can, and I can’t piss him off. I think of Taru and pray she is still alive, still fighting like I taught her.
Zami says, “Take a seat, Kid. Tell us about this information you’re looking for. If we can help, we will. You have to promise to help us, though. That’s the trade.”
The boy seems to give into gravity and just lets his body fall into the seat. Time is a luxury we don’t have now. We have to move fast.
“I swear. Look, my uncle was a lead robotics engineer for the SA. He built the most beautiful agribots that would have solved so many problems with food production and distribution. He didn’t support Solace; he was an outlier. I was young, but I remember that he was charged with treason for working on war mechas after the New Treaty. There’s no way he did what they said. There was an incident in his laboratory when guardians tried to take him for questioning. He died in an explosion. I just want to know the truth about what happened to him.”
“How could we possibly help?” I ask. “Seems like you have access to better intel inside Solace.”
“In the records he left with me, he said I needed to reach out to the Red Hand Commander. That they’ll tell me what I need to know.”
“Masiji? But why?” He looks earnest enough. But he could be making this whole thing up. On the other hand, he did just go and prove his loyalty to the Red Hand by running a dangerous hack. “What was his name?”
“Kanwar Bhasin.”
I look at Saachi. “Can you check him out? See if there are any notes on the internal system about him?”
She nods and logs onto her computer station.
“Thank you.”
He seems genuine. So strange what people value when they have the space to no
t just worry about their survival.
“That’s odd.” Saachi says. “This list is secure, but I have access because we sometimes use the same pool of external members to run small missions.” She keeps typing. “It looks like your uncle is listed as an operative of the External cell of Red Hand.”
“What?” The boy gasps.
“There’s one more thing. It could be bad record-keeping, but usually the list is current, in case of emergencies or a mission.” Saachi looks at me puzzled and points to a green dot beside his profile. “That little green dot means he’s active.”
25 //
Taru
When I open my eyes, the world around me comes into focus and the nightmare returns. I fell asleep on Jasmine’s shoulder and I jerk upright to move away from her body. She looks like she hasn’t slept at all. Her eyes are red-rimmed and watery. Ashiva’s looked like that after she has nightmares. I’m pretty sure we all have nightmares. Lucky for me, I don’t remember my dreams, even the bad ones.
It’s quiet except for coughing and moaning. Then suddenly a scream cuts through the entire facility.
A blue light flashes a few units down from us.
Jasmine says, “What’s happening?”
“Blue always means death,” I say without thinking. The blue lights on the C.O.R.E, the blue lights on the guardian’s uniforms, the blue lights on Masiji’s surgery table that connects to our heart rate only flashes when someone is at risk, the blue rash of the Fever.
“Someone died?”
I look to see what they are doing as a medical team rushes to the unit. They pull a body from the unit and place it on a cot with wheels. We all watch as they wheel it past us.
A boy, maybe eleven or twelve. He’s banged and bruised. My eyes freeze on his face as he goes by: rash, blue marks, every sign we’ve been warned about, about the Fever. It’s here. If we weren’t sick before, we’ll be sick soon. All of us. They wheel the body through the exit and vanish.
And then it hits me: one way in and out.
I have to get through that door.
Rise of the Red Hand Page 18
