“The music can be totally disorienting if you haven’t had the genes that let you like hear a broader spectrum of sound,” Aveena, the alias of the girl leading us through the club, explained.
Bioluminescence on her tan skin seemed to involuntarily dance across her scantily clad body with the music even as she walked. She wore a small leather jacket that only went half way down her torso over a tank top, a blue armband embroidered with a gold double-helix around her right arm, and shorts so short they barely covered anything. Gelled pink spikes from her Mohawk matched the color of her irises. Her ears were elongated into elven form, allowing her to pierce them with an array of rings, studs, and jewels. Further piercings on the right side of her nose, one in her left eyebrow, and two on each side of her bottom lip completed the flamboyant ensemble. Although I could imagine there were unseen piercings on other parts of her body as well.
“That’s for damn sure,” I muttered.
Laura gave me a wry smile. Her face was thin, only gradually recovering the scant fullness it once possessed prior to the border crossing. She had cut her hair, removing the red tips, but leaving it longer toward the front so that it seemed to drape over her face as she gazed drowsily at the ground. The time spent in the sun had provided some color, but even that had fallen short of covering the pallor of her skin. Yet I could visibly see that her misery was replaced with something akin to hope.
“I’m sure Salia will sell you some,” Aveena said, “It’s pretty much standard stuff for us.”
“That may be necessary,” Akira said over our earpieces, “if we need to gain trust. Plus, I’d like to see what kinds of proximal enhancers they’re using.”
Even after three weeks, the escape from Mexico continued to take a toll on us all, especially Akira. She had driven as fast as she could back to the trafficker’s house. Liana had tended to Yukiko with all the care I had imagined she would, but that did little to appease Akira.
“You just left her with this stranger?” Akira had scolded me after taking her daughter back from Liana.
Akira, Laura, and I had stood in the house, Liana nearby with a worried expression, unable to understand what Akira was saying. Yukiko’s grimace, being held in her mother’s desperate embrace, made clear Akira’s state of mind.
“We didn’t have much choice,” I said, “we had to act fast.”
“What if this woman had run away with her?” Akira asked, voice wavering, “We’d never find her!”
I opened my mouth to say something more, but Akira’s condition brooked no argument. She kept her eyes on me for a few moments before storming out of the house, muttering something I couldn’t hear.
“She’s angry at me?” Liana asked from where she had shrunk back against the wall to guard against Akira’s fury.
I turned to her and forced a reassuring smile, “no. She’s angry at me. But I think she’s just stressed out. She’s smart. She’ll understand in time. Thank you for watching Yukiko, though.”
A strange mixture of pride and shame came over her face, “I’ve taken care of the children coming through here for a very long time,” Liana said, getting back down on the floor to continue scrubbing blood out of the carpet, “they come and go so quickly. People in suits come and buy them. Mostly foreigners.” She shook her head. “It was worse than before…”
“Before?”
“Before,” she said, “When the cartel sold the children. When the cartel was breaking up, la policia started doing it. From the wall. New bosses and new customers. A lot more foreigners.”
Visiting diplomats, perhaps…but why?
“Were you kidnapped by the border guards?” I asked.
She paused, keeping her eyes down on the carpet for a few moments before scrubbing again. “I wanted to keep the children from seeing the blood,” she said, “and I wanted to give them food and clean clothes. But there are so many of them.”
“We’ll figure something out,” I assured her.
But I hadn’t any ideas of what to do with them at the time. Fortunately, as I’d expected, Akira eventually calmed down after about half an hour, seeming comforted with the idea of having a task.
“We need to take care of those bodies,” I said, “Laura and I have already grabbed a bunch of their tech, in case there’s something useful in it. We don’t have any DNase enzyme solutions, so we need to burn this house down with the bodies in it to remove our DNA. And quickly, because once the border guards get things under control down at the wall, they’re going to start rounding up everyone they can find.”
“What about the children?” Masaru rasped as he laid on the ground, taking sips from a glass of water, “And Darren? And Liana?”
I signaled over my shoulder to the moving vans, “there are two transport vehicles here,” looking to Akira, “if you can strip any unnecessary tech from them so they can’t be tracked, we can transport the children somewhere safe. Once I have the house ready to burn, we’ll load the kids up and head north. Then we can figure out what to do with them,” I paused a moment and then said, “I have Laura applying some first aid to Darren.” Akira’s face twisted into a scowl at mention of his name, but she said nothing
Everyone went about their respective tasks. Akira did what she could to remove tech from the transport trucks, although most of it was old – the traffickers wanting to avoid detection themselves – and therefore off the grid. Liana herded the children outside, divvying the trafficker’s remaining food up between the thirty-one of them. Masaru lay on the ground waiting, holding Yukiko, Darren a few yards away, covered in sweat, delirious, and looking like he might go into shock. Laura joined me in readying the house to burn down and moving the bodies to the upstairs.
“I can’t believe we made it across the border,” I said as Laura helped me drag the last body up the stairs, her scrawny arms having more strength than I would have guessed. But not too much more.
“Yeah, it was heroic,” she said, her expressionless tone always sounding like it contained just a hint of sarcasm.
“No, I mean, I literally don’t believe it,” I said, “I don’t believe that we made it across on our own.”
She raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
“Those people coming through,” I said, “they had weapons. Explosives. Even exoskeleton suits.”
“Hm.”
“Likely supplied by the Brazilian military,” I said, “and that…voice. The one that helped us.”
“You think that was Brazilian, too?”
“No,” I said, “but maybe someone who knew about the armed rebels.” I shook my head. “I have no idea. All of it just seems too…convenient.”
After getting the body up the last few stairs and setting it down next to the others, Laura leaned over, looking at something. “What are these?” she asked, pointing at a lump on the forearm of the corpse.
I leaned in to look at it more closely, “tech embedded under their skin,” I said, touching it lightly, “RFID chips.”
“Think it could be useful?” Laura asked.
“I don’t know. Might be.”
Laura walked to the other end of the room, picked up a razor she had been using to scrape dangling flesh from Darren’s severed arm, and walked back over. She sliced open the arm of the fat corpse that had once been her prospective buyer and tore the small chip out. We went through all the traffickers as well, removing their chips.
“Want to take the one off of Darren, too?” Laura asked.
“Maybe we can do him the courtesy of waiting until he dies,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” she shrugged.
Within another hour we started off again, Akira driving one truck with Masaru, Laura and Yukiko in the cab, and me driving the other with Liana and Darren in the cab, both filled with children in the back. My swollen right eye throbbed, vision somewhat blurred, but the roads were empty enough that driving wasn’t too much trouble.
As we took off, I watched flames engulf the lone farmhouse in my rearview mirror. It
s old wood burned rapidly, flames spreading out onto the drought-dried bushes around it. Nothing subtle about it, and would attract attention, but it was better than if someone found out that forty-eights had been there.
I kept in occasional contact with Laura in the other truck through an old walkie-talkie system mounted to the dashboard. We continued driving northwest for almost five hours. Every town along the way stood largely empty and quiet, people having moved into cities built up by Benecorp or fleeing to the CSA or PRA regions. Abandoned houses and stores had windows smashed in, anything of value looted. Most of Texas was ravaged by the draught, little left except dying trees and bushes dotting the landscape. The temperature, even in late December, climbed to eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit.
We stopped in Fort Stockton along the way, finding a gas station with enough to refill our van’s old gas-powered motors. While refueling, we discovered leftover food inside the store.
“Looks like it was only recently abandon,” I said, grabbing candy bars and chips from the shelves and stuffing them into a plastic bag.
“Or maybe they’re just out for a while,” Laura replied, picking up a 3D printed shotgun from behind the counter, “looks pretty new.”
Laura and I quickly gathered as many supplies as we could, distributing it to the hungry kids in the vans and then taking off.
There were still people in the town, but they avoided us as much as we avoided them. After several more hours driving, seeing only self-driven trucks on the road, we found ourselves in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Carlsbad had been built up by Benecorp, mostly for potash mining and production of depleted uranium weapons.
“Benecorp has done well for itself,” Laura said over the radio as we made our way through the city.
“I don’t suppose they’ll be too welcoming,” I said.
Benecorp owned practically the entire city. Emblazoned on just about every surface was the Benecorp logo. Most cars were self-driven, manufactured by a company bought out by Benecorp. All the factories, along with a row of four new thirty-story buildings, were owned by Benecorp, built by Benecorp contractors, and used by Benecorp-owned businesses. The other buildings were either leased to other businesses by Benecorp or abandoned altogether. Benecorp owned the water desalination plant, power plant, water treatment plant, prison, fire department, hospital, local news, grocery stores, and just about everything else in sight.
Navigating the roads proved difficult. Streets owned by Benecorp were gated, only accessible to those with a subscription barcode on their license plate. The public roads we took, circumventing most of the city limits, were in such disrepair they were practically gravel. Just about every sign damaged or missing without anyone to maintain upkeep. I could just imagine the children in the back bouncing on the hard truck bed. It wasn’t difficult to conclude that most of the remaining people in the city worked for Benecorp or at least had some connection to it.
“Are our trucks going to raise suspicions?” Laura asked over the walkie-talkie.
I said nothing for a few moments before raising my walkie-talkie. “I’m sure they know we’re here, but we’re not in the city limits.”
“They won’t come out after us?” Laura asked.
“I don’t know,” I said into the walkie-talkie, “I really don’t know what Benecorp sees as their jurisdiction or how jealously the guard it. But the state of this disrepair tells me that Benecorp doesn’t much concern themselves with things going on out here.”
It was about as much assurance as I could give. Fortunately, it proved accurate, and we were able to leave Carlsbad behind uninterrupted. I could only imagine that Benecorp might have bothered us if they knew who we were, but it was likely that trucks transporting people from south of the border wasn’t entirely uncommon on these roads.
A money-making venture like this right on the backdoor of the megacorporation, they were almost certainly were getting a cut, Evita said.
“Maybe some of their biggest customers, too,” I muttered, seeing Liana glance at me a moment before going back to reluctantly mopping sweat from Darren’s pale forehead.
We continued on northwest, heading toward Colorado. Self-driving semi trucks dotted the highway, usually carrying two or three trailers, but none altered course in response to our presence. Following the road, about a hundred meters to the west, two large tubes rose twenty feet in the air. They had entered Carlsbad from the east, likely from Dallas, and continued out of the city going northwest. Occasionally something glided through one the tubes at high speeds – a train containing ten to fifteen cars – going the same direction as us in the right tube and the opposite in the left. Likely some kind of high-speed transport going to Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
We drove almost nonstop for over a day, passing through cropland composed mostly of corn or wheat with center pivot irrigation apparatuses spraying desalinated water over the fields. All the crops were genetically modified, each corn stalk having dozens of bulges where oversized corn husks resided, the leaves now colored a dark green, almost black.
From what I had read online, the color change was due to an engineered version of the photosystem complexes, along with a faster Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase enzyme. These modified proteins were able to utilize two orders of magnitude more photons for photosynthesis and fix carbon three orders of magnitude faster, and with much better fidelity, than natural RuBisCO. This allowed the plants to grow at almost six times the speed as normal plants as well as producing much higher caloric content with each harvest.
We also passed through several largely deserted towns. It was easy to tell which buildings remained occupied by stragglers, being relatively more well-kept than the abandon buildings. Only once did anyone stop us, asking if we had any food we were willing to trade. I made sure to give up some of what we took in hopes that they wouldn’t report us, but it didn’t look like the people living in the ruins were eager to deal with the Benecorp government.
After a while, the roads finally smoothed out in the area around Santa Fe. We made our way around the city, giving it wide berth. Once again, the Benecorp label plastered over everything. The outside of the town looked more like a military base when we got close enough, with armored personnel carriers parked around the gated border.
Akira stopped the van in front of me. I pulled up next to her. The sun was setting, desert growing dark. I immediately saw why she stopped. The highway going north was barricaded. After a few moments, Akira’s voice came over the walkie-talkie.
“Which way?”
“We’ll go west,” I said.
“Follow the tubes?”
“Yes,” I said, “they probably go towards Albuquerque, but we’ll turn off before then.”
She turned the van around and we continued southwest, following the transport tubes toward Albuquerque. Between the cities the roads were better kept, with many more self-driving semi trucks filling them, but it still appeared uninhabited. Most people got around using the high-speed tunnels.
At Bernalillo, we turned back in a northwest direction. The town was more populated than most we had seen so far, but it had only minimal Benecorp presence.
Continuing on into the night, we passed through more genetically modified crops. Drowsiness crept in, the scenery becoming hypnotic. I thought I might fall asleep just as we came upon Farmington. There was an even larger military presence, this time carrying the marks of the CSA military. Before we could turn around, two APC:B-021s were already heading toward us.
“What now?” Laura asked over the radio as I pulled to a stop in front of Akira.
“I don’t know,” I said, “let me talk to them.”
The vehicles approached, one stopping in front of me, the other pulling up to the driver’s side. The driver, a man in desert military fatigues, signaled for me to roll my window down. I obliged.
“What’s your purpose here?” he asked.
“Just passing through,” I said, trying to sound casual.
“Do you
have clearance?”
“Clearance?”
“The area north of here is off limits for anyone living under the southwest regional government,” he said, “as per section 108 of the Memphis agreement.”
“Our cargo isn’t really on the books,” I said, “it’s a shipment from…from Langtry.”
“Langtry…” he said.
I immediately knew I’d made a mistake in saying that. They almost certainly knew of the breech there.
“Here,” Darren said, hiding his missing hand and reaching the other one over me, “we have clearance.”
The soldier looked at Darren skeptically for a moment, back to me, and then back to him. He brought out his console, scanned it across Darrens RFID chip, and then waited. I glanced at Darren, seeing sweat beading up on his face, jaw clenched as he struggled to maintain composure.
“This is a bit outta your way, isn’t it?” the soldier asked.
“There was a bit of an incident at the wall,” I said, “we got rerouted.”
The soldier looked to me again, eyes furrowed. He seemed to want to ask more questions, but I imagine his orders were not to ask about the unmarked vehicles that came north from the wall. Finally, after some internal debate, the soldier took half a step back and waved us through.
As I drove forward, Darren sank back down with an exhausted sigh, closing his eyes. I looked in the rearview mirror, seeing the soldier watch after us for some time before getting back in his APC:B-021.
We made our way through Farmington, the entire city bustling with military vehicles, soldiers walking every which way, and occasionally a drone flying overhead. We all remained silent, the soldiers pretending not to notice us as we passed through. When we finally got to the other end, being waved through a gate in a barrier facing north, I exhaled as if I had been holding my breath through the entire city.
We continued north. The land was even more barren than south of the blockade, with no more sprawling fields of corn and grain. It was a no-man’s land. We continued on for forty-five minutes before my radio crackled again.
“It looked like they were getting ready to be attacked,” Laura said.
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