by J. R. Harber
She nodded, not looking reassured.
“We’ll figure something out there,” he pressed. “I promise.” He gave her what he hoped was an encouraging smile, and she returned it weakly.
“I’m going to hold you to that,” she said lightly.
“Me too.” Asa met her eyes, and she looked back at him.
“You have the Chancellor’s eyes,” she said at last, and he grinned.
“I know, right? I just hope he doesn’t want them back!”
She stared at him blankly for a moment, then burst into laughter. She covered her face with her hands, but her shoulders still shook with it. Asa put a hand on her arm, and she turned to him and pulled him to her. He put his arms around her, holding her as she laughed or cried—he couldn’t tell exactly which. The corner of the table was jamming into his side, but he didn’t care. For a moment, he didn’t care that they were on the run, their position hopeless. All that mattered was that she was in his arms.
After a while, Eve straightened, moving away from Asa and wiping her eyes. “Thanks,” she said quietly.
“Yeah, I mean, of course,” he said, feeling awkward. She turned to look out the window, and he remembered what had been tugging at the back of his mind. “Who’s David?” he asked, and she turned back. She looked at him appraisingly for a moment. “You may as well tell me,” Asa said gently. “I mean … we’re in this together.”
She gave him a wry smile. “I guess we are.”
Eve reached under her seat for the backpack she carried and set it down on the table with a clunk but did not open it.
“David is Daniel’s grandfather,” she said. “He was one of the Founders.” Asa’s eyes widened. “I think he can help us,” Eve went on.
Asa stared at her. “One of the Founders?” he repeated.
He has to be dead, Asa thought, feeling even more off-balance than before. Eve, by contrast, was beginning to seem calm.
“David can help,” she repeated. She leaned forward, lowering her voice. “He was … well, all the tech we have—government tech, innovative tech—it all stems from the work he did. When Daniel stopped Saul’s termination, it was possible only because of David.”
“How?”
Eve started to unzip the backpack, then stopped. “I’ll show you later,” she said. “David had a way into the Network—like a secret passage or something. Daniel knew how to use it. But I don’t even understand it.”
“So, you can’t wipe our records clean,” Asa said, suddenly deflated. He had not realized how much he had fixed his hopes on her unexplained confidence until now.
“I can’t, no.”
“Then what are we doing?” He spoke more loudly than he meant to, then lowered his voice. “Eve, I thought you had a plan.”
“I do. Kind of.” She sighed. “Look, I know it’s a long shot, but if we can get to Sanctuary, David will help us. I’ve brought Daniel’s laptop.”
“Laptop?”
“It’s a kind of computer. Technology from the old civ.”
“Oh.” Asa seized again on the vital detail she seemed to be ignoring. “But, Eve, if he was one of the Founders, he can’t possibly still be alive.”
Eve smiled, a spark in her eyes. “Asa, you’ve heard the rumors about Sanctuary, right? That they’ve managed to slow the aging process?”
“Sure, but not that much!”
“He’d be one hundred and fifty, maybe one sixty. It’s not impossible.”
Asa opened his mouth to object, but Eve leaned closer to him, whispering, “You know what they say about the Chancellor.” Her lips brushed against his ear.
She drew back, and Asa swallowed, then nodded.
“Yeah,” he said.
“He’s barely aged in decades.”
“It’s just the luck of good genetics.”
“That’s what they say. I think the State’s biotech is better than anyone admits. And I think if anyone is getting the best of it, it would be one of the Founders.”
Asa slowly shook his head. “I don’t believe it. If that were true, it would be available to everyone.”
“Maybe. I know Daniel thought it was true.”
“So, you just believed everything he said?” Asa was growing irritated. Eve stared at him without hostility, and he looked down at the table. “That came out wrong,” he said. “Did Daniel think his grandfather was still alive?”
“He never said so. But he got information sometimes, messages through the computer.” She pulled the bag on the table closer to her. “I know only one person contacted him that way—I was the only one who even knew he had it, besides whoever that contact was.”
“And you think the contact was David, the grandfather?”
“Who else could it be?” She looked at him nervously, and Asa realized she was waiting for him to answer.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “It makes sense, I guess. But how does this help us? Can you contact him with that thing?”
Eve shook her head. “I can’t even turn it on. We have to get to David.”
“David’s in Sanctuary?”
“He’s definitely over sixty,” she reasoned. “Where else would he be?”
Asa looked at her dubiously. “So, if we can get from here to Sanctuary, there might be someone who might be alive, who might be able to help us?”
“If he’s willing to,” Eve said. “I’ve never met him. I don’t know if he’d even know who I am.”
“Solid plan.”
“Can you think of a better one?”
Asa sighed. “No.”
Eve turned away to look out the window again. After a moment, she pulled the backpack off the table and onto her lap. She hugged it to her chest, resting her chin on top of it, and Asa looked away, not sure what to say or do.
He didn’t have to endure the silence for long. Only a few minutes had passed when the screens at the front of the compartment lit up. Asa glanced at Eve. She looked lost in thought, her eyes fixed on nothing, holding the backpack as if it were a child’s stuffed toy. Quietly, Asa got up and walked to the seats by the screen to watch.
This time it was not the Chancellor’s face that appeared but a stark cityscape: low gray concrete buildings, unpainted and dreary. The streets were narrow and empty. The words “The Challenge” appeared, transposed over the image, then faded away as a piercing whistle sounded.
“The morning call to duty has just sounded for the citizens of Work,” the narrator intoned in his dry, familiar voice, and Asa settled back in his seat to watch the broadcast. “This day begins like every other day, as the workers leave their quarters and go to their designated task zones.” As he spoke, people began to file out of the nearly identical drab buildings, filling the streets. The camera focused in on one, then another, then pulled out to the crowd again. Asa watched with a grim fascination.
He had always liked the Work broadcasts—the repetitious banality of the transported criminals’ lives was almost unfathomable. How can they live like that? he always thought.
But that was the point of the program, of course: both entertainment and warning. He had grown up watching it: the people—dressed in shabbier clothes than anyone at home, all in the same dull gray—getting up each morning, going to their task zones to do the labor of the State, then going home again to cramped apartments, knowing the next day would only bring more of the same.
Their constrained lives were their own fault, Asa had been taught, although no one had told him so in quite those words. These people had broken their Social Contracts; they could not be relied upon to be productive members of their communities, contributing to the greater good willingly, and so they had to be forced to do so. It was in Work that everything from solar cars to shoes to water filters were manufactured. Work was necessary; their labor was not a punishment. Work gave purpose to those few people who, thanks to inferior genetics or poor choices, could not uphold their Social Contracts. Work was their second chance at being part of the State.
Now Asa watched the b
roadcast with growing anxiety, searching the faces of each worker the camera focused on. What did you do wrong? he wanted to ask. How do you survive each day?
Every once in a while, glimpses of happiness appeared: workers smiling to greet each other, sometimes even laughter at a joke. Some workers cohabitated as couples, others by themselves. They had time in the evenings to socialize or relax, but this was merely surviving, not really the same thing as living.
The broadcast was leading up to a special event, something Asa might have eagerly awaited at home, but now he felt the blood drain from his face as the narrator announced it: “Caleb and John were neighbors for three years without incident when an argument over a noise complaint finally boiled over. We hear first from Caleb.”
“He just wouldn’t stop playing that horrible thing,” Caleb told the camera. “He’d sing along. I’m an understanding man, to a point. I didn’t care that he’s the worst musician I’ve ever heard, but I’m talking about all hours of the night. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since the day he got here!”
“Now we turn to John for his perspective,” the narrator intoned.
“I’ve played the electric lute since I was three years old, and I’m not going to stop on account of him,” John snarled. “He’s had it out for me ever since I got assigned to these quarters—he was hoping for a transfer, but he didn’t get it, did he?”
“Resolution,” said the narrator, “has been attempted and has failed. Caleb and John’s dispute will end in a few minutes’ time, when we go live to see the final verdict.”
Asa looked back at Eve, who was still gazing blankly out the window. He watched the screen as the narrator recounted more details of the dispute, tuning out the information. I can’t end up there. I can’t end up there, he thought, repeating the words in his head like a mantra.
Suddenly the screen brightened as the picture switched to the bleak town square of the zone; it was the live verdict. Asa stood to watch, adrenaline rushing through him as if he were the one standing on the concrete. Caleb and John stood back to back at the center of the square, almost touching. Around them a crowd was gathered, murmuring agitatedly to one another. Some looked excited, others angry or afraid.
A woman in a long gray dress stepped into the open space, and silence fell. She walked toward the two men, her shoes making a harsh clacking noise against the hard concrete. When she reached them, she said something quietly to them both, then pressed an object into each of their hands. She walked back to the crowd and disappeared into it, and then it began. John and Caleb spun to face each other. They circled a little, both looking for an opening, their postures crouched and tense. Caleb grinned and tossed his knife from hand to hand; John flinched, and Caleb attacked.
The fight didn’t last long. They wrestled on the ground, John making a few shallow cuts to Caleb’s forearm as the larger man pinned him to the ground. Caleb hesitated for a moment. He looked to the side at someone in the crowd, then he took a deep breath and slashed his knife across John’s throat. John’s eyes went wide; his mouth opened and shut without sound as blood gushed from his neck, pouring out so fast it seemed unreal.
Caleb didn’t move away from him, keeping his hand on John’s shoulder as his body convulsed. Then the flow of blood came to a stop, and his face took on the stillness of death. Caleb put a hand over John’s face and closed his eyes, leaving streaks of blood on his cheeks. Then he stood. There was no cheering from the crowd; Caleb did not look triumphant, only exhausted.
“And it’s a clear verdict!” the narrator announced enthusiastically as music began to play in the background.
Asa couldn’t move. He’d watched dozens of these duels—they were just something that happened in Work, a part of the world the workers had created for themselves by breaking their Social Contracts—but he had never studied the faces of the workers who were fighting. Then again, he had never imagined himself as one of them.
I can’t go there, he thought.
The broadcast ended; the screen went dark. Asa looked over his shoulder at Eve. She was still lost in her own little world.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AFTER LOSING SIGHT OF THEM, GABRIEL punched the button hard in aggravation, relinquishing control of the drone and sending it back to its watch station. He sat back and closed his eyes, suddenly feeling a decade older. He could feel Joan behind him wavering uncertainly. “What is it?” he asked, hearing the strain in his own voice.
“I’ve … never seen anyone die before,” she said.
Her voice sounded small and unlike her. He rubbed his temples, trying to banish the image of Eve clinging, anguished, to the corpse.
Naomi. The moment when your life slipped away. Her skin had turned to wax, and it was as if his insides had been scraped out; he was so hollow it hurt to breathe. Gabriel pressed his hand against his chest, seized again by the raw, aching emptiness.
“Are you okay?” Joan asked, sounding more like herself.
Gabriel ground his teeth, forcing himself back into the present moment. “Fine. Get a passenger drone. We’re going after them.”
“We don’t know where they’re going. We can’t requisition a drone.”
“They’ll go to Rosewood,” he said.
“How do you know that?”
Gabriel stood and turned to face her. “Asa Isaac Rosewood had never left Rosewood before he came to Horizon. He just committed murder. I don’t know why he did it, but I know he’s going to head straight for the only safe place he knows.”
“What about Eve?” Joan asked. “Why would she go with him? Everyone she knows is here.”
Gabriel smiled wryly, and she looked away. “With Daniel dead, ‘everyone she knows’ wants to get their hands on her and shake her until she gives up all his secrets. And when she has, they’ll make sure she can’t tell anyone else.”
“Oh.” Joan looked at him wearily. “I’ll go start the authorizations for a passenger drone.”
“Good, call me when you have it.” Gabriel sat back down and pulled his chair up to the controls.
“Door open,” Joan said, then hesitated on the threshold. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
Gabriel pressed a few buttons, and the still image of Daniel on the ledge appeared on the screen, bigger than life. “I’m going to watch a murder.”
Joan left without a reply, and Gabriel leaned forward, scrutinizing the picture from top to bottom.
“Replay Mu 248, beginning at 5:37 AM,” he said.
Three life signs appeared in the blue rendering of Daniel’s apartment, two to the far side of the apartment and the other moving around restlessly in the bedroom. They had spent hours positioned like this. Presumably the pair were Daniel and the girl, Eve, and the third was Asa, but what was he doing there?
Gabriel had gone over every word of their records, scrutinizing all three for connections. Daniel and Eve had been tied together for years, first through her brother, Saul, then through their relationship. None of it was news.
As for Asa the Indestructible, he appeared to be … exactly what he appeared to be.
He had never gotten into any trouble, besides the famous encounter with the river. If he had ever met Daniel or Eve before the evening of the fight, the connection was completely hidden. To hide something like that would require erasing drone feeds, scrambling phone communication, and a network of people willing to keep secrets. It would take someone like, well, Daniel. But after hours of searching, Gabriel couldn’t come up with a single reason Daniel would want to do that.
Unless … some kind of research, maybe—into the Bug? Samples of his blood must have been taken to Medical Research when it happened …
Onscreen, the two people in the living room moved to the bedroom, joining the third at the far end of the room, their red life signs grouped tightly together. Gabriel had ordered the drone to zoom in, but it didn’t help—the three bodies were still an overlapping red mass, and he couldn’t tell what was happening.
Some
thing was different with the wall … It was at this point that he thought to switch to image-capture.
The screen went blank, then snapped back with the image: a floor-to-ceiling window had opened in the wall, and Daniel was on the edge, his eyes wild. Before Gabriel could react, Daniel lurched forward and fell, disappearing from the picture. The drone stayed steady on the window, where Asa Isaac Rosewood stood, white-faced, in the gap where Daniel had been.
Eve rushed forward, screaming something, and Asa caught her around the waist, pulling her back from the edge. They were still for a moment, then the wall slid shut, and breaking dawn blazed over the surface of the building.
“Stop. Replay Mu-248, same selection.” Gabriel paced back and forth as the drone feed played again. He wanted to see Daniel’s final moments from every angle.
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS ALMOST MIDDAY BY THE TIME THE train pulled into the rail station at Rosewood. When the autom announced the stop, Asa stood wearily, grabbing the two bags he had been carrying. Eve was holding hers in her lap, resting her chin on top, still staring bleakly out the window.
“Eve,” Asa said gently. “We’re here.”
“I know,” she said.
The doors opened with a hiss, and she got up slowly, as if it were a struggle. Asa held out a hand, but she didn’t seem to see it. She followed him out onto the platform and hoisted her bag onto her back. “Let’s go,” she said shortly. Asa nodded, and they left the station.
“We should go through the forest,” he said. “We’ll be seen on the road. Come on.”
He caught Eve’s hand and hurried across the street into the woods, pulling her with him into the cover of trees. Suddenly she stopped dead, dropping his hand.
Asa turned back in alarm. “What is it?” Eve was looking up, and he tried to follow her gaze. “Eve, tell me! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She gave him a quick smile, then turned in a slow circle. “I’ve just never seen anything like this before.”
Asa laughed. “Really? But those microclimates in the plaza …”
Eve shook her head. “These trees are so much bigger.”
