by J B Cantwell
The bullets hitting the ground around me stopped, and I wondered if the shooter had intended to keep me alive.
I pulled out my gun and aimed it at the Champions. They must’ve had full body armor on; they were even wearing masks, and they seemed to be completely immune to the bullets being slung their way. With each hit, their bodies would jerk backward, but they didn’t fall, not a single one of them.
The guards had armor on, too, but their heads weren’t protected, a weakness the Champions were exploiting.
I would be helping the Champions by taking out the guards, but I needed them gone, too. Instead of aiming toward the Champions, I set my sights on the guard booth. There was only one man left there, and he was yelling into a radio, surely reporting what was happening to anyone else who could help.
I took careful aim and pulled the trigger.
He went down, and I turned and crawled across the pavement toward the bay.
My leg dragged behind me, and the pain was suddenly no longer absent. I cried out with every movement, but I didn’t stop. I pushed myself to standing and started hopping closer, closer. Whoever had me in their sights before was either dead or focusing on a bigger threat.
Let him. He doesn’t know. None of them know.
Then I heard it.
“Riley!”
I turned and saw him, Alex, running through the entrance to the compound, a litter of dead bodies around him.
What was he doing?
“Go! Go! Go!”
He was distracting them. He could see something I couldn’t. And now he was pulling their attention away from me and onto himself.
No.
He knelt down and pulled the chest armor off one of the dead guards, strapping it over the front of his body. Several loud pops exploded, and he went down.
No.
I was pulled in two directions, but I had to choose.
I turned and moved as fast as I could toward the bay, toward the destruction of all of this. Alex might be dead back there. But I wasn’t. I was still moving.
My leg hung limp at my side, unable to take any weight at all. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. The power that had propelled me along all this time coursed through me now.
No more starvation. No more surveillance. No more wars. No more lies.
It took everything I had to make it to the waiting truck, but I did it. I pulled out the keys and twisted one into the lock that hung from the steel latch on the back of the truck. I threw off the lock and grabbed onto a handle, sliding the door open and revealing what was inside.
It was all there, and it was just as he’d said. I looked back and saw something I hadn’t expected to see. Jackson, making good on his promise to help us. He must’ve heard somehow about what was going on. I thought of the radio he’d had in his cab. He must’ve picked up the transmission.
The idiot.
He stopped, collecting Alex, who stood up from the blows he’d weathered on his chest plate and climbed inside.
Then they were on me. The truck barreled toward my position. The pain in my leg jabbed at me, and I could feel my thigh numbing as the blood drained away, pooling on the street below.
Come on. Help me.
I leaned back against the opening to the truck when I saw the red dot following Jackson’s chest.
Gone. He would be gone any second.
His chest exploded inside the cab. In the bright lights I could see him slump over the wheel. Alex tried to push him out of the way, frantically grabbing the wheel and turning it away from me. So, instead of certain rescue, I watched as Alex crashed the truck into the bay next to mine. His body collided with the glass and then flew through it, coming to rest on the pavement, leaving a bloody hole in the shattered windshield.
Don’t do it. Stay here. Don’t go.
The tears were no longer of frustration. They were now of loss, because I couldn’t imagine anyone surviving a crash like that. Because I knew that, in the end and no matter the size, Primes were human, too.
My throat was tight, jaw clenched, and I turned back toward the truck. I couldn’t climb in; I could barely stand. There was only one way I’d be able to do the job. I grabbed onto the casing of the device and dragged it down from the cargo hold.
It wasn’t too heavy. Alex had said fifty pounds, but it was less. Still, I buckled under its weight, and it tumbled to the ground along with me as I fell, denting the side of the casing, but seemingly not damaging the unit itself.
I flipped up the code box and entered the numbers, smearing the panel with blood. The readout soon changed from Ready to Armed.
Twice. He had said to enter the code twice.
I punched in the numbers again, and the readout changed.
Press to Detonate.
I looked over at the crashed truck, looked at Alex’s lifeless form on the pavement, and I picked up the plunger. Then, I looked down at my leg, willing myself not to pass out. I pulled on my calf with a scream and untwisted it where the knee had once been.
I was dead. There was no way I could flee.
It didn’t matter. This was it. The end.
I held the plunger in both hands and pushed down hard on the button.
The detonation wasn’t something I felt, exactly; it was more like something I saw. It was like watching a wave of black as the power of the thing spread out all around the compound. The lights flickered, then went out, and soon we were left in total darkness.
I lay back against the truck, no longer caring about my ruined knee. It would be over soon enough. Then, I could join Alex, wherever he was now. Heaven? Hell? Maybe just suspended in the black.
Then I heard him.
“Riley!” he called with a grunt.
I turned and saw as he pulled himself up from the pavement into a crawling position and lurched toward me. Blood was dripping from somewhere underneath his hair.
“Don’t stop! Riley! You can’t give up! It’ll—”
Suddenly all around us, the lights came back on. I stared around, confused.
“It’s the generators, Riley!” he called, just feet from me now. “You have to—”
Then, several loud shots, and the bullets that penetrated his back exited through his chest. He put his hand up, pulled it away and looked surprised by the blood that now slicked his palm.
He seemed to take an eternity to fall. He looked up at me, moved his lips, words I couldn’t understand or read.
Then, he was on the ground, collapsed. Dead.
I looked down at him, then down at myself and at the red dot that was flashing across my chest.
I fell backward. I remembered now. The generators. I would need to detonate it twice. That would kill the rest of it. That would be the end.
I entered in the numbers and watched as the pulse spread out once more.
There was no sigh of relief. No overwhelming feeling of victory. There was only pain. Pain in my knee. Pain in my head. Pain in my heart.
I rolled over and crawled to him, dragging my useless, dead leg behind me.
When I reached him, I lay my head next to where his rested on the ground. So close. I could see the gravel and glass shards that had dug into his skin as he’d been thrown from the truck and landed on the pavement.
I moved closer, placing my lips on his forehead, tasting the sweat and blood as it mingled over his skin.
His eyes fluttered open.
“Riley?”
My heart leapt.
Not dead.
Not yet.
I tilted my head back and looked him in the eye. Those eyes. Those piercing blue eyes that had looked back into mine so many times before.
Alive.
I was the one fading now. My body shivered from the loss of blood, and my eyelids started to flutter.
“Riley,” he said.
I know.
I let my eyes close, but just for a moment, then opened them again. I knew I didn’t have much longer.
“I love you,” I said.
&nbs
p; He nodded.
“Me, too.”
I might’ve tried to kiss him. I might’ve tried to smile. We were victorious. We had accomplished the impossible, the first step in taking down the government and freeing the people.
But I was so, so tired. And so, so cold.
As I began to lose consciousness, I stared up into the sky, the stars shining brightly in the total darkness of the compound.
Something was flickering. It was my eyes.
No.
Wait.
The stars were suddenly harder to see, polluted by light that wasn’t supposed to be there. Light that I, myself had put out. Permanently.
No.
And as my eyes fluttered, the blackness clutching for me in earnest now, I saw the thing that meant more than just death. As I let my eyes close for one last time, I saw the truth. An impossibility. A cruel twist. An end. A final end. For us all.
The lights were back on.
We had failed.
EPISODE 3
Chapter One
Was I dead?
My face was a mask of stinging skin pulled too tight over my bones. Eyes closed. No, not closed. Covered. By what?
I reached up with my arm, and that small movement sent a cascade of pain throughout my body. Eyes. Head. Face. Breasts. Throat. Knee.
My injured knee.
I pulled off one of the coverings from my left eye, and the dim light in the room was fire in my cornea.
I opened my mouth, tried to speak, but my throat was so dry that nothing came out.
I felt around with my hand, blinded by bandages, searching for water.
Nothing.
A tug on my arm. An IV. Soft bedclothes and linens beneath me. And there, a plastic tube. I grabbed on with both hands and followed it to the end, pushing the plunger.
A loud beeping sound emitted from the little device, and I immediately dropped it and covered my ears with my hands.
Moments later, “Look who’s up!” The voice was cheerful, a woman’s. Footsteps. The beeping stopped.
I tried to say the word.
Water.
“Oh, are you thirsty, dear?” she asked.
She was moving the bed somehow, and it vibrated. Soon I was mostly upright.
“I’ll bet you’re parched after all you’ve been through. Here, let me get you something to drink.”
She held onto my hand and placed in it a small plastic cup and straw. Then, she helped me raise it to my mouth.
“We were starting to wonder when we’d be seeing you again,” she said. “You’ve been out for several days.”
What?
I grabbed for one of the eye coverings again.
“Oh, no,” she said, gently taking my hand away. “The light will hurt you, dear. Best wait for Doctor Chambers before you remove your bandages.”
Chambers?
Suddenly, memories flew into my consciousness. Alex. Lights. Gunpowder. Countdown. Pulse. Darkness. Stars. Words. Love. Blackness.
Then light again.
Alex. Surely dead.
“Alex,” I tried to say. The effort burned my throat.
“Best not to try talking yet, love. Your vocal chords haven’t healed.”
My vocal chords?
I opened my mouth again, but nothing came out; just a burning sensation that ran all the way down my throat, stinging even worse than my skin.
I grabbed for one of the eye patches, and this time when her hand caught mine, it was a bit firmer.
“I can see that you’re upset. I will go get Doctor Chambers for you, but you must promise me you won’t remove any of your bandages. Can you do that? It’ll only take a few moments for him to come. Can you wait?”
I whimpered, and in my struggle, the cup dropped from my hands, splashing me.
Swimming. The current of the Hudson. Cold. Shivering.
Tears started to form, but that stung worse than anything else.
Everything. Everything hurt.
Why?
“I’ll go get him now. Can you promise me?”
I nodded my head as the tears filled my eyes.
Footsteps. Quiet doors. Murmurs.
What had happened?
My leg. It had been broken at the knee, twisted around in a grotesque spiral. Why did I still have it at all? The break had surely been enough to warrant an amputation.
Where was I?
I heard the door to the room click quietly shut and footsteps approach my bed. Someone put a hand on my forehead, and I sighed with relief; it seemed to be the only part of my body that wasn’t in pain.
But this was no nurse’s hand. There was only one person it could be.
I reached up and tried to pull off one of my eye bandages again. The other hand caught my wrist and gently returned it to my side.
“Let me get the lights first,” Chambers said.
I heard another quiet click, this one coming from the switch.
“Keep your eyes closed, please. We need you to adjust incrementally.”
He carefully removed the bandage from my left eye. The tears that had been threatening spilled from beneath where the bandage had been.
Next, the right side.
“Why can’t I open my eyes?” I said, my voice a whisper.
“You’ll be able handle more light soon enough. Your eyes are extra sensitive from the surgery. They will, in time, adjust. You can open them now; it’s quite dark in the room.”
I did, squinting at first, remembering the burning sensation from just minutes before. But he was right; the light was dim. I opened them all the way.
But I still couldn’t see. The world was one blurry blob. At first I thought it was the tears, but no. It wasn’t so simple as that.
“What did you do to me?” I asked.
I could just make out his figure beside me.
“We … well … we saved you, I suppose. You and Alex were both taken to the closest hospital, under the guard of the Service. As soon as you were both stable, we smuggled you out. Well, I suppose that ‘stable’ isn’t quite the right word. As soon as you were able to travel, and as soon as we were able to take out the officers guarding you.”
Guarding.
But yes, of course. We must have been arrested for our attempts on the servers. Our failed attempts.
“Champions?” My throat was hurting more than ever, and I reached for the water cup on the small table on casters that sat next to my bed. I couldn’t make it though. Reaching out brought spasms of pain in seemingly every part of my body. He brought the cup to me and put the straw into my mouth.
“Dead, mainly. At least those who were there. I’m sure there is still a faction of them out there, regrouping. There seems to be quite a reserve of people willing to fight for them. Everyone seems to have revenge on their minds, even us Volunteers.”
Us. We. Together. How?
“Why does it hurt?” I asked.
Everything. Everywhere pain.
“I’m going to give you some medicine now. It will make you sleepy, but it will take care of the pain.” He attached a syringe to the IV and pushed the drugs into my veins.
“No,” I whispered. “I want to talk.”
“We will have plenty of time to talk when you’re feeling better. It will only be a handful of days until you’ll be able to move about. If we don’t do a phasing.”
“A phasing?” I croaked. “No. The pain. Please.”
“I want you to think about it,” he said. “It could really speed things up for you.”
I wanted to shake my head, to let him know that I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be made into a freak.
Is that what Alex was now? A freak?
“Where is he?” I asked.
Chambers sighed heavily. He knew exactly whom I was talking about.
“He’s not with us, I’m afraid.”
The room around me started to blur even more than before. Chambers leaned down to put the bandages over my eyes again.
I strugg
led against him, raising my hand to grab onto the gauze before he could place it.
“Dead?”
“I don’t know.”
I wondered what Chambers was doing, if he was smiling or maybe grimacing. He returned his hand, wrinkled and warm, over my forehead once more.
And the room faded to black.
When I woke, the bandages were in place again, and I could hear someone moving around in the room. From behind the gauze I could see that the lights were no longer dimmed. I reached for my left eye and squinted past the edge of the bandage.
Not too much pain. Not too bad.
“Audrey,” the nurse’s voice said. “Are you with me, dear?”
What?
Almost immediately, a straw found its way to my mouth. This time I gulped at it and realized quickly that it was broth, not water. It wasn’t hot, though, I supposed because of my injury.
Injuries.
“The lights,” I said, taking the cup into my own hands and slurping the broth. It wasn’t pleasant on the tongue, but the lukewarm liquid felt good going down. I placed the cup on the bedside tray and reached for my bandages.
“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said.
But I did it anyway, keeping my eyes squinted shut until she finally relented and dimmed the lights for me. Things weren’t quite as blurry as they’d been the last time I’d had them open, and suddenly I realized something I hadn’t noticed before.
I could see her designation.
Marla Metzer
Designation: Green
“Oh, my God.”
Again and again. What would it take for the world out there to realize that I was beyond my lens? That I would die before willingly allowing another chip to be placed?
Too late. Someone had made that decision for me.
My hand shot up to the side of my head. I expected to find a large lump, just another wound opened up from the array of scars I had in that area from so many novice removals.
But I was surprised. The only sign that I’d had a chip placed was a tiny scratch, the hair already having grown over the site. As I felt around, I found that the scalp was now flat, almost as if I’d never had any of my chips removed at all.
New. Clean.
What else had they done?
