Her voice quakes, “What are you going to do with me?”
“Information. You sent the comms; you know my mother better than anyone in the world. What’s the next campaign? Truth time.”
She inspects her silicone cast and presses her hands to her midsection. I imagine the bruises were black on her stomach. “I am just an assistant.”
“Don’t lie. Not to me, Geena. I know you too well. Even from here I can do much worse to you and your family than my mother can. Sunil, right? We’re already tracking him. He’s at school now. Our best is already on the job.” I point to Saachi, who’s running a trace. I’d never hurt a child, but I’m betting she thinks the Red Hand is as bad as Central.
“Okay, please don’t hurt him. What do you want?” she asks.
“You tell me everything you know, and we’re done.”
“I can go?”
“No, I’d like to keep you here to heal and for insurance. But after that, you’re free to go.”
Her eyes flash around the dark room. “You won’t hurt me?
“Why would I have them fix you just to hurt you?”
“Where will I go?”
“That is up to you. I wouldn’t head into Central, though. Mum’s got a temper and all.”
“Have it your way, but Sunil stays safe. Promise me that and I’ll tell you everything.”
37 //
Ashiva
The history I grew up reciting and the story Geena tells Synch are both suspicious. Lies, big enough to build nations on the broken backs of its people. Complete with great heroes, villains and disease, wars, economies, and hope and hopelessness. Winners and losers. They say we were on the brink of extinction. The nuclear bombs that went off around the world in Central Asia, the Middle East, and America killed millions. That if we continued to fight, the world would face annihilation. That’s when the Provinces established the PAC, gave them control of the World Bank and control over all the Provinces’ money. That’s why they agreed to the New Treaty. The PAC has all the marks in the world. The decisions our leaders make determine our fates. And they know it. They are all power-hungry bastards, with dreams of writing their own stories in which they are the heroes.
But the thing is, you can’t just make yourself a hero. You also can’t help being one if you are unlucky enough to have that dumb courage inside you.
And I’m not saying Central’s Ring and Solace, and the big plan to save at least a few didn’t begin with grand ideas. They very well could have. They had to make tough decisions about who could live in the new world. But power contaminates the weak-minded and power-hungry; like a bit of metal left out in the sea air, rust consumes them until, one day, they’re devoured and fall to dust.
I watch the interrogation on a screen from the other room, with Zami and Saachi. Synch is careful to keep his back to the camera, not that anyone would recognize him now. We’ll run a vocal distortion on him when we edit.
Geena says, “President Ravindra was demanding. She was going to get rid of the entire comms team. She was upset about the SA Province’s position in the global marketplace. The East Asian Province is completely decimating us. Not to mention the European Province.”
Synch shifts in his seat. “So, we launched the neural-synch. It makes one human brain work at nearly on par with AI. Faster, better, blah, blah, blah. Everyone knows how it goes. Tell me something new.”
“The SA hasn’t been awarded funds from the PAC for years, and without it, the SA will have to let go of their neocity plans. The rest of the cities are on hold. They will have essentially failed. If Central can’t sustain itself, we’ll all perish.” Geena asks for more water. When she is through stalling, she begins, “The neural-synch made us competitive, yes. The best of us were optimized. But the PAC is set to cut funding to the SA. AllianceCon is our last shot. Then Z Fever came through. The Narrows provided an opportunity to test our C.O.R.E mecha-suits before AllianceCon and clean up so that we look good. Two in one.”
“I can imagine this is hard for you.” Synch gestures with his hands.
“Hard? What do you know of hard? I was a Downlander. I grew up in the Narrows, but worked in Central as a maid for one of your mother’s friends. She wanted someone she could trust on her team. She thought she was hiring a student in me. Someone she could mold, teach, a loyal student. But she gave me work. And I never had to go back to the Narrows, to beg for food, to wonder if I would get caught by a gang and throttled to death.”
“That’s an easy choice.”
“But every day, I saw what was happening. What they were doing. By the time I put the pieces together, it was too late . . .”
“Too late for what?”
“I can’t . . .”
Synch takes her water cup and throws it against the wall. “Did I mention you’re already dead in Central? It would be so easy to just—”
“Central destroyed all of the sea walls. The Narrows will be under water within thirty-six hours.”
“What about the people?”
“They removed many, but their fate will not be better. Central needed bodies to host the vaccine. For the Z Fever. It came from geese, from the Arctic. They unearthed an old bacterium from the melted permafrost. The birds carried it here when we accidentally brought them here as entertainment for Central’s ponds. They’re spreading it everywhere. No one in Central is immune because of the genetics used to refine the population of Central. Some oversight in Solace. But . . .”
“The Downlanders are immune.” Synch’s voice rises at the end of his sentence. “So, cull the population under the guise of disease, then cover their homes in a natural disaster?”
“Solace sees the Narrows as a drain on progress. They couldn’t just go in there and kill off the population. Natural disasters are expected now, since the Great Floods.”
I can’t hold myself back any longer and storm the room. I rush past Synch and pick Geena up by her shirt, holding her close to my face. “And you just stood by and watched the extermination of thousands? Your hands are covered in their blood. You think you’re better than us? Than us? You disgust me.”
My body shakes with fire and I want to throw her against the wall, and lose myself in the anger forever.
But I can’t let them win.
So I let her go.
She falls into the chair like a rag doll.
“But why is the Fever only killing Uplanders?”
“We don’t know. They think Solace targeted people with certain T-cells. T-cells that are actually necessary for fighting off this disease. The theory is that Solace removed so-called defects from the human DNA that were actually helpful aspects of our immune system.”
“You’re no better than his mother,” I say. “And I hope she finds you and kills you.”
Geena’s face is fear and desperation, and looks like some cornered rodent about to be taken out by an exterminator-bot. She is fear itself.
“I know I’m not. But once I was inside, I had no choice. She tracked every millimeter of my movement through the neural-synch. Riza, you must know what I’m saying. She took Sunil from me.”
I look to Saachi. She shakes her head, signaling she’s deactivated Geena’s neural-synch with a blocker.
Hers is a familiar predicament. Most who continue to work in Central after the divide had hopes of being welcomed into Central permanently. Most hold positions that robots couldn’t or were still too expensive for, like masseuses, care-givers, and assistants. But there are some bots that can do their work too. It’s only a matter of time before all the jobs are lost to machines. Machines don’t eat and they don’t have feelings.
“It’s strange.” Geena’s voice cracks. “I didn’t realize how loud my mind was with the neural-synch. It’s deactivated now, right? I can hear my own thoughts.”
“What do you mean?” I ask and sit down.
“It was like a fly was in my brain, and when I’d daydream or get off task, it would buzz and redirect me. Day and night.” She exhal
es heavily.
“It was doing more than keeping track of your physical whereabouts. It was keeping track of your thoughts, you believe?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore. But, maybe.”
“Was the neural-synch controlling you?”
She replies with a nod, “Yes, I think so.”
I smile.
I turn to the camera in the corner of the room. “You got all that, Zami?”
His voice calls from the other room, “Yes, recorded and optimized for delivery across all comms.”
Geena speaks up, “What? I didn’t mean . . .”
“You see, we’ve needed evidence the neural-synch is tampering with human thought. That’s against the PAC’s New Treaty laws. The creators of Solace will be tried and convicted of war crimes.”
“While I sympathize with your cause, there’s no way they’ll let you get that far. I envy your idealism. Don’t you think that they have people on the court too?”
She is right. We need more evidence. Concrete evidence that can’t be denied. We’d have to take it beyond the SA. They could bury the government with intel and keep them tied up in the courts forever. We need to get to the GHO and other groups who are neutral.
“Huh.” I swallow my pride. “What would you do?”
She looks puzzled when I cut her wrist bindings. Synch, Zami, and Saachi sit down beside me. Together, we are the Red Hand, in our strange glory.
Synch speaks first. “Geena, you have a chance to do something good for once. With your help, we could actually turn things around. We could stop the drowning of thousands and the murder of more.”
Saachi clears her throat and speaks gently, “It’s not a matter of sides. It’s a matter of humanity. Ask yourself: Where will it end? If Solace is allowed to decide the fate of millions, how will you feel if you stand by and watch them die, knowing you could have stopped it? That you could have changed the path of our Province?”
We are still with the weight of her words. Saachi’s right. It isn’t about winning, not even about saving Masiji and Taru, though that is reason enough for me. This is one of those moments historians analyze after the fact. They’ll question why no one did anything. Why no one saw the inevitable outcome of such reliance on technology and devaluation of human life.
“The only way to prove that Solace has illegal control over the population of Central’s minds is to prove the connection, that Solace is broken. And show the world what they’re doing in the dark off-site,” I say. “It’s the only way.”
Synch says, “But how will we get inside? No one will just open the door and let us in. Not then and not now, especially with the new security. And who would go?”
“More like, how will you get there? You said it was in the middle of the Arabian Ocean? You’ll need an air transport,” Saachi says.
“Or we could hitch a ride,” I say.
“What’re you thinking?” Zami asks.
“We could do something that gets us noticed and get our own one-way ticket. We’d have to keep it contained, but big enough for a felony. Some of us will have to be outside to manage things and assist if anything goes south. With AllianceCon going on, they’ll hush it up quick.”
Saachi says, “You’re the obvious choice. And Synch, in case you need a human shield to hide behind.”
“Hey!” he says.
“Saachi’s right, though,” I say. “Not the shield part. But you’re an insider; you know the elite Stratas better than any of us.”
It has to be Synch and me.
I must be honest. “But is he ready?”
Saachi says, “Yes, he is. I’ve done everything I can to speed up the healing process. He’s nearly at eighty-five percent, I’d say. The rest will come in time, as his body catches up.”
“I’m ready,” Synch says. “It’s as much my fight as yours, Ashiva.”
“Let’s put the call-out for willing bodies on the External Hand network. We will need all the help we can get.” I give in. “Saachi, can you send a coded message to the all-comms? We need all bodies, all volunteers, and everyone around the world to rise up now.”
“I’m going to need to bury it in something only they’ll know, or else we might get pinged like the last comms. But yeah, it can be done. What do you want it to say?”
My heart feels sick with this responsibility, but I shake it off. They need a message, so let’s give them a message. “The time we’ve all been waiting for is now. We need to reunite or risk certain death. We are calling on all recruits, lieutenants, civilians, and otherwise, to take up arms, connect with your local leaders. We are coming and will not stop until we see justice.”
Saachi says, “Got it. Hey, wait a second. There’s something here . . . check it.
Zami and I peer at the flashing message. A forward to the Lal Hath from the underweb.
LOMRI: We are alive. In containment. HELP. Waiting for orders.
38 //
Kid Synch
For our plan to work, we’ll need to cause a massive disruption in Central. And for that we’ll need a C.O.R.E mecha-suit and an explosive. Do something Central can’t ignore. Something that would be impossible to explain away in a comms and would disrupt AllianceCon. We’ll have to commit a top-level felony in order to be sent to containment. We will take the opportunity to mess with Solace. If we’re lucky, we could take out the cooling system for Solace’s storage and cause some embarrassment during AllianceCon. Without the cooling, it’ll only be a matter of time before the storage will collapse under the weight of the heat that’s killing most of the population and cause an embarrassing media blackout during the height of AllianceCon, not to mention ruin the SA’s chances of winning PAC funding. Ashiva’s underweb plea succeeded in connecting with a couple of people eager to get to work.
Ashiva and I hide behind a broken wall just outside the Narrows and scope out the area below.
“We’ve got ten minutes, then we roll.”
I nod. “Good thing I know the suits,” I say to her and a nervous laugh escapes my mouth.
She raises her eyebrows. “Right. And good thing I have an explosive.” She had to retrieve a device from just outside the Narrows, hidden in a lower level of some old, empty building. She said her sister Taru made it. Said it would do the trick.
“I know, I know. It’s partially my design. At least if I hadn’t continued Uncle’s work . . .”
I feel her hand on my arm. “It’s not your fault. People should be allowed to make things without having their creations turned into weapons. Don’t forget that.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ll find the truth. After all this. I’ll help you.”
I can’t contain myself. I reach my hand out to touch hers and say, “Really, I don’t deserve all the help you’ve given me. You could have just left me for dead, twice.”
“You were angry. I know what that’s like.”
“But you always know what to do. The right thing to do,” I say. “I’m lucky I picked up the challenge that day. My friends tried to talk me out of it.”
“Really? You feel lucky? After all that’s happened?”
I think about all that we’ve been through. “Yeah, I do.”
She leans in close to me and presses her lips against mine, gently. I’ve never felt something like this before. It’s perfect. Her face is centimeters from mine when she asks, “Was that . . . all right?”
I just nod, like an idiot. “Oh, yeah. Totally.” I feel my face get hot and red.
She giggles. It’s a strange sound. So light and cheerful, and gorgeous, amongst the din of the broken city’s rubble we are surrounded by.
“Wait, you have friends?” Her gaze is too serious not to laugh.
“Yeah, I know. Surprising,” I say.
There’s one C.O.R.E soldier at the entrance station on the edge of the Narrows and Liminal Area. The guardians can only wear the suit for a short time, a couple of hours or so, before they have to charge up again. I know that bec
ause I built them to be light in combat, on the underweb in a reality simulation—light means no bulky battery pack to weigh them down.
I use Ashiva’s infrared binoculars to view the dock. “Charging stations.” I point past the guard. “Crap.”
“What? Let me see.” Ashiva takes the binoculars from me.
“They have at least twenty of them. They could control every few blocks of the city with a guard at each crossing point.”
“They’re preparing for war,” she says.
“After the sea takes the Narrows, people who get out will be homeless, and move into the undermarket and Liminal Area, or try to make it to the Northern District. Maybe they will work together and against Central. Maybe not. Either way, it’ll be a bloody mess.”
A terrible feeling of pride comes over me when I see how much Mother has followed my design plans. But then it’s crushed by the obvious knowledge that they will be used to kill innocent people. The one good thing I manage to do in my life, my mother takes from me and uses against me? I don’t know.
Suddenly, I feel a strange sensation in my mind, a sort of buzzing. I’ve been blocked from Solace, but still have basic network capabilities through the neural-synch. The call is from a secure private line.
“Father?” I ask. Ashiva looks at me startled and I put up my finger to wait.
“There you are, puttar.” His voice is static. “I’ve missed you, my boy.”
“Do you know what’s happened? Did you know mother tried to erase me?”
“I’m sorry, Riza. I wish I was there to help you in person. I’m on the Space Colony. I don’t have much time. I needed to know you were okay.”
“I am, so far. It’s been . . . a lot going on.”
Ashiva looks at me like I’m an alien.
“Son, I need to see you more often. I’m sorry for being out of touch. Now you have the coordinates to be able to contact me directly on the Colony. It’s secure. They aren’t fond of us calling out. So, please just contact me directly, okay?”
Rise of the Red Hand Page 25
