“Yes,” I replied, “they look almost as worried about someone coming down from Colorado as they are about someone coming up from Mexico.”
A moment of quiet before she spoke again, “something dangerous in Colorado?”
“Yes,” I said, “unwanted ideas.”
After another fifteen minutes I spotted a large wooden sign off the side of the road with words hand-painted onto it: ‘THIS AREA UNDER PROTECTION OF LoC SECURITY’ along with the Colorado flag and a large padlock scrawled across it.
“I’m guessing that’s why there are no more drone patrols,” Laura said over the radio.
I hadn’t been paying attention, but after she mentioned it, it did dawn on me that I hadn’t seen a surveillance drone or UAV for quite some time. It didn’t take long after that before another blockade became visible in front of us.
“We should be near Colorado,” Akira said over the radio, a hint of anxiety in her voice, “maybe we can go around this place?”
“I don’t think we can without backtracking quite a ways,” I said, “and I think we’ve already been spotted,” I added, seeing a group of people walk out onto the road in front of us. They were heavily armed, two in exoskeleton suits.
Akira slowed down, forcing me to slow behind her. One of the people shouted something I couldn’t make out. An unsuited man approached with a nonchalant gait, assault rifle slung over his back.
“You folks coming up from Albuquerque?” I heard him ask her as she rolled the window down.
“She, uh, doesn’t speak English,” I hollered ahead, rolling down my own window.
“That so?” he asked, glancing at her a moment before walking back toward me. He had an armband with the same Colorado flag and padlock symbol embroidered into it. “No tech, either, I reckon?”
“If it’s not too much bother, we have injured,” I said, signaling to Darren, “and…and we have children in the back who need medical attention. We’re looking for a hospital.”
The man didn’t seem too surprised by my declaration, squinting his eyes at me.
“I take it you folks are comin’ up from the recent border skirmish then,” he said, more statement than question.
I hesitated, not knowing how much to tip my hand before he started pointing the gun rather than just letting it hang.
“We are.”
He continued looking in the cab for several moments, eyes darting between Liana, Darren, and myself before signaling for his people to step back.
“Welcome to the town of Cortez,” he said, the grim look on his face not matching the hospitality in his voice, “in the Liberation of Colorado. I’m Colonel Aaron Reynolds of the LoC Security firm. I figured you might end up comin’ our way.”
Strange lights flashed, moving and dancing across the rafters and walls. Some appeared dimly red or purple, others not making any light at all.
At least not that I can see now.
The kids dancing to the curious music perceived an assortment of colors with gene doped photoreceptor cells that respond to a broader range of light frequencies.
It only took a thought and suddenly every surface plumed into panoply of color, almost disorienting. It was like taking a hallucinogen, some of the colors having no name I was aware of. Colors are generated in the brain as a way for people to understand electromagnetic radiation of different wavelengths, but the range my right eye could process had expanded. My right eye had been permanently damaged, now replaced with a bionic I could adjust to detect frequencies outside the visible range. It took some time to get used to all the features.
I narrowed back to the usual visible spectrum. A graphic display told me the range of wavelengths being detected was between 450 nanometers and 750 nanometers.
I watched as the light flashed across Laura’s face. Her behavior was pretty much the way I remembered, but our experience at the border made her look older than her seventeen years amongst the living.
Not being able to sleep accelerates the aging process.
Akira underwent the most drastic change. When I’d first met her in Japan, she had been careful, but also headstrong. She had wanted to be the next Shirou, and she had the confidence to match. But now, all that turned to caution. Even when we’d finally been able to find help.
“His leg hasn’t been healing right,” Doctor Amanda Taylor, who had patched Masaru, had told us when she came into the waiting room. A white lab coat was draped over her small frame, an armband with a large gold anarchy symbol and beneath it the words ‘No Masters’ embroidered onto it wrapped around her upper arm. The other arm had stitched into the lab coat the same Colorado flag and padlock symbol seen on Colonel Reynolds armband and on the front doors of the hospital. She had thick gray hair pulled back into a pony tail, skin wrinkling around the eyes and corners of her mouth. My damaged right eye had been getting worse, but I easily noticed a holstered pistol on her side beneath the lab coat, alongside medical instruments.
The small Cortez hospital hummed with activity. More doctors and nurses were called in to examine the children we’d rescued. Some of the doctors shot us dirty looks, possibly thinking we were traffickers, but Doctor Taylor seemed grateful that we’d helped get the children out of their prison.
“We’ve spent a lot of time in cramped quarters,” Akira told her. Yukiko stood by her side, hand clasped tightly in her mother’s. Akira and Laura had been supplied earpieces to translate for them.
“It probably wouldn’t have been an issue if forty-eights didn’t heal so fast,” she said.
“So, everyone is aware of who we are?” I asked.
“It’s started to spread all over the news feeds,” a man’s voice said. Colonel Aaron Reynolds strode into the waiting room, assault rifle still slung over his back. As Colonel, he oversaw security operations for LoC Security clients, including the hospital. They were checking to see if weapons or drugs had been surgically hidden inside any of the children. Reynolds’ expression didn’t betray whether they had or not. “The southeast is very upset that terrorists were allowed through. They blame Benecorp for not helping enough with border security. Benecorp blames them for hamstringing their efforts.”
“So, are we your prisoners?” I asked.
“You’ve done nothin’ to warrant punishment,” he said, “it ain’t our border you destroyed. Hell, I’m glad to have all them folks preoccupied with each other for a bit.”
“And the kids?” Akira asked.
All Colonel Reynolds did was shake his head.
Doctor Taylor spoke up, “a couple of the boys had 3D printed pistol components sewn in their abdomens. Few others ingredients for makin’ Shift. By the looksa that necrosis round the incisions…I figure the contraband’s been there a while. It’ll take some time to fish it out. All the kids are pretty malnourished. Dehydrated. Most look like they got parasites of some kind. Seven of ‘em are…well, they’re going through Shift withdrawal with, uh, varying severity.” Doctor Taylor sighed, shaking her head. “And, uh, it ain’t exactly clear how many yet, but…it seems some of ‘em were…were doped. With…with genes that stop bone growth and prevent puberty onset. I’ve read reportsa this in the medical literature. It keeps…it keeps sex slaves lookin’ like children. But we got lotsa tests to run still.”
Her expression was neutral, but I could see in Doctor Taylor’s eyes how much the suffering of the children pained her.
“And the trafficker?” Akira asked coldly, her face twisted in disgust at the news.
“Stabilized,” Taylor said, “We can fit ‘em with a prosthetic, but I’m guessin’ he don’t hold much crypto.”
“At this point you can do whatever you want with him,” Akira said in a low voice, not taking her eyes off her daughter.
“I’m not sure how we can pay for any of this,” I said, rubbing my itchy right eye.
“I still have access to the accounts we were using in Mexico,” Akira said, “I just need access to the right tech.”
Colonel Reynolds exchanged a g
lance with Doctor Taylor. She gave us a forced smile and then walked out of the waiting room back into the hall. Reynolds paced to the middle of the room in his nonchalant gait, surveying all of us.
“You folks haven’t technically done nothin’ illegal by our standards,” he said, “we follow very simple laws here. You don’t mess with folk’s property and you don’t break a contract. That wall you smashed up weren’t anyone’s property here. The Shift you been smugglin’ about the states ain’t considered a crime here. And-”
“We weren’t smuggling Shift,” I said, “That’s a lie.”
“Be that as it may,” Colonel Reynolds continued, “you got a lotta folks riled up and a lotta money that some big wigs gonna be wantin’ back. We don’t have any laws against you bein’ in the Liberation of Colorado, but I estimate some folks will need time to warm up to ya. My advice is heed the property markers if ya don’t want trouble.”
“So, the hospital’s not going to take our money?” Akira asked, looking up from Yukiko.
“I doubt Doctor Taylor’ll leave them children untreated,” he said, walking toward the exit, “and nobody’s gonna ask where yer money came from.”
“Here’s our special guests,” Aveena said, following us through the door.
A boy in his late teens or early twenties shut it behind her, muffling the bizarre music. He wore a low-cut tank top exposing much of his tanned skin. Beneath his flesh I could discern a network of faint vessels dispersing out across his chest, shoulders, and arms. They contained bioluminescent bacteria, but were currently not glowing. From up close I could see a thick, translucent fluid seeping out his skin from them.
The dividing bacteria would need to be released over time or they’ll build up.
He approached Laura and me, eyeing us with double pupils. The same blue armband as Aveena’s, with its gold double helix symbol, adorned his bare arm. His vitals displayed on my bionic eye – facial temperature of 38.1° Celsius, skin conductance hovering around 50 microsiemens, an average of 0.25 mg/sec•cm² of perspiration, O2 saturation 97.6%, and several other parameters I didn’t understand. It was too distracting, so I turned off the display.
“Just the two of ‘em?” he asked, “where’s the Japanese woman? The leader?”
Aveena’s eyes widened. “They said that-”
“She can hear you,” I said, pointing to my throat.
“No, she can’t,” a woman said, standing up from a couch on the other side of the room, “in this room, all tech is silenced.”
A large, blue shawl, embroidered with the gold double-helix symbol, draped wide over her body, tumbling down to the floor. Atop the strange garb sat an unnatural visage. She had pupils split in two hiding in a sea of blackened sclera beneath pierced eyebrows, a ring stuck through her septum, tongue forked, teeth pointed. Bony protrusions jutted from her forehead like tiny horns, ears pointed and filled with rings and studs, dark skin swirled with faint bioluminescent vessels. Her hands coming out from under the fabric were long with an extra joint in the fingers.
She looks like a demon.
“I take it you’re Salia?” I asked.
“I am,” she said, striding gracefully forward, getting between Kantor and Aveena. She had a light accent that might be Hispanic, but different than I’d ever heard, possibly due to tongue and teeth modifications. “This is Kantor,” she laid one of her strange hands affectionately on his shoulder, “And you’ve met Aveena,” she laid her other hand on the girl’s shoulder, “we’ve heard so much about you forty-eights. I’m a little disappointed. I was expecting some amazing GD for such hated terrorists and Shift peddlers.”
“Ours has been much more…practical than decorative,” I said.
“I can understand,” she said with a feigned pout, lips concealing the sharpened teeth lining her gums, “but it’s just so…boring.”
“We’ve heard a bit about you, too.”
“That’s tragic,” she said, removing her hands off the other two transgenics, “I try very hard to make sure only people I trust know who I am. But I suppose right now you have more to be worried about from me than I from you.”
“You mean like why you cut us off from talking with our people?” I asked.
Salia smiled, looking more like a snarl with her sharp teeth, “it’s not just you. We can never be too careful. I have the room surrounded by a Faraday cage. You’re still going to want to wash before going back to wherever you’re hiding out.”
“Wash?” Laura asked, lifting her gaze from its normally downward direction, “I shower once a week, whether I need it or not.”
“Not that kind of washing,” Salia explained, “Both Benecorp and the Christian States of America use microdrones. I’m sure the People’s Republic of America does, too, but I’ve not had much experience with them. Either way, these annoying little things are about the size of a house fly. There is a chance you have one hiding on you right now,” she smiled again. “Don’t worry. We have facilities to find and remove them.”
Laura exchanged a glance with me, hair draping down her forehead, but said nothing.
“They must not have that kind of stuff in Mexico,” Kantor said, a nervous expression on his face.
Salia gave us a sour look, “your people have made quite a mess in Mexico, if even half of what the propaganda says is true.”
“It wasn’t a well thought out plan,” I said, trying not to let on that there had been a split in our group.
I don’t need to make us seem even more untrustworthy.
“But, we’re not here to talk about Mexico, are we?” Salia said with another snarling smile, “we’re here for business, are we not?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Do you have it here?” Salia said, her amiable demeanor replaced with anticipation.
“Not with us,” I said, “my people have it.”
“That doesn’t do me much good,” she said, turning and walking back to the couch, “I’d appreciate running it through some tests in my lab.”
“You can take a sample,” Laura said, “both of us have it.”
Salia turned back around, but didn’t sit on the couch. She considered this for a moment.
“I would have liked to see the chromosome constructs without genes inserted…but I suppose that will do,” she said.
“Where is your lab?” I asked.
“Come,” she smiled, leading us to the side of the room.
Kantor and Aveena both moved an empty bookshelf out of the way, revealing a door. Salia opened it and walked through, holding it so Laura and I could follow. Inside we found a rather dingy laboratory with a few centrifuges, PCR thermocyclers, incubators, microscopes, purification columns and gel apparatuses, shelves filled with reagents and glassware, and pretty much everything a do-it-yourself lab requires.
And in a far corner sat a man zip tied to a chair, unconscious.
“What’s going on here?” I asked, pausing in the doorway, alarmed.
“Oh, him?” Salia asked, amiability returning, “that was supposed to be a present for you. To show our good faith.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“He’s an Anonymous Knight,” Aveena said, disgusted, animated face twisted into a scowl, “that hacker group that hates transgenics.”
“Yes,” Salis aid, “we know they’ve been after you. And the goddess knows they’ve been bothering us for some time. I thought your leader would want to question him.”
I approached the man – the kid – finding him unharmed. Sweat gleaned on his face and bare chest, clothes roughed up, wrists raw where the zip ties held him to the chair, but there were no major injuries. Scrawny shoulders rose and fell with shallow breaths. Strands of long, curly dark hair tumbled down his face, a trickle of drool forming in the corner of his mouth.
“Lucky sleeping bastard,” Laura mumbled.
“Where’d you find him?” I asked. “And how did you get him here?”
“We found him in our club a couple days
ago,” Salia said, tossing a plastic mask onto the lab bench. It looked like the visor to a knight’s helm. “That’s what all these Anonymous Knight fanboys wear,” she added, slipping rubber gloves onto her long fingers and grabbing a package of sterile needles, “I have him sedated, but I can give him something that’ll wake him up if you want. But first, I’d like some samples.”
“Just when I got all of my blood back again,” Laura sighed, holding her arm out.
Both of us allowed Salia to take samples of our blood. Her strange, claw-like fingers deftly handled the needle, the other hand gently wrapping completely around my thin forearm as she drew from a vein in the crook of my elbow.
She’s more vampiric than I thought.
As I watched the syringe fill, I couldn’t help but think about how much information was sitting inside that small vial. There was no telling how much she might find out about my life given the blood sample and the right hackers. It’d be possible for her to find out what Benecorp knew about me if she wanted to take that risk…
“And now the fun part,” Salia said, dumping her gloves into a dusty biohazard container, “I’m going to enjoy this just as much as you,” she grinned, grabbing a small syringe of adrenaline.
Laura eyed the adrenaline syringes and then looked to me. Even in her tired expression, I could just about hear her telling me not to even think about trying to kill myself again.
Salia stuck the tiny needle in the man’s leg with much less care than she’d demonstrated while taking our samples. He awoke with a start, eyes wide, looking around the room in a panic.
“Wh-what the fuck is g-going on?” he asked, panting, “who-who are you?”
“What’s going on here is that we found you snooping around my club,” Salia said, “which I will not tolerate.
“I w-wasn’t snooping around any-”
“And we know who you are, Knight.”
“What are you talking about?” he pleaded, “Knight? What does that even mean?”
“You tried to kill us!” Aveena accused, taking a step toward him.
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