by K. C. Finn
The memory of that brief moment, looking out into a dark world, rattles back to the front of my mind. I was twelve years old, and a voice spoke to me from above. A Highlander who was prowling those woods, in a time when Bhadrak had only just started scavenging in Dad’s place. We almost lost him in the woods, when the tracker he was wearing turned him into a target as the System hacked our feed. I wanted to go out there, looking for him, but all I could do was prop a manhole open and hope that he would be directed to it. He was, and we got him home safe that time to the Underground.
The Highlander who spoke, who never gave my position away. His voice echoes all around my brain now. I hear Malcolm speaking those words of comfort. Was it him? Was it him helping me and my brother, all those years ago in the southern woods? Or is it just my brain now, wishing it to be him after all this time, creating some new memory in place of the ones I can no longer have? I feel it rising again, that enraged, manic energy that keeps bursting from me in waves, the stress, shock or trauma. Whatever it is, it’s fighting to come out again, and I have no idea what it’s going to do each time it does.
“Excuse me,” I say. “I need a moment to prepare what I’m going to say to Briggs.”
I’m shaking inside, but even my father doesn’t rush to my aid, so I know I must be holding the feelings in well enough. I reach the outer corridor of the offices, glancing to and fro between other glass doorways. Apryl isn’t at her station now – she must be waiting for me in Briggs’s office – but there are others there monitoring the news feed and the cameras for her. In another room, clerical workers are tied to chairs, but they seem reasonably relaxed and in conversation with one another. The only room that’s empty is a small office with a huge, comfortable chair on wheels, and a wide desk that is, unusually, made of wood.
The surface appeals. I rush into the room and rip the blind down over the glass panel in the door, then turn on the desk. It feels like all the air in my body is rushing up my throat, and I clench my fists hard as I lay into the desk for three punches. My knuckles split on the right side as it takes the last punch, and the sharp, wet ache makes me stop. It’s enough. The air goes back down, and my heartbeat steadies in my head. Thoughts are no longer rushing, and I have a strange moment of peace as I watch a thin strand of blood trickle from my hand and drip onto the carpeted floor.
It’s a luxury, carpet. There are not many places in the Legion that have it, and it makes me look around the room in more detail. The furnishings are old fashioned and comfortable in this small but plush office, with its privacy blind and soft chair that could almost be made of real leather. I need something to bind my hand, and in the top drawer of the desk there are a few neck ties in various shades of blue. I grab one and wrap it tight over the split knuckle, watching the faint red ooze soak in and through, layer by layer.
There’s a photograph on the desk, of three people looking happy in their lab coats. There are two young men, who have wide smiles, and a woman looking a little more coy. They are all holding certificates in their hands. I recognise the one on the far right, despite the lack of a beard and the fact that he still has two legs in the photograph. This must be Dr Bartlett’s office. It isn’t the youth of him that surprises me, but the sight of who he is with in the picture. The woman is Sheila, younger and brighter than today by all accounts.
And the man could be Stirling.
If it wasn’t for the age of the photo, I’d have thought it was Stirling looking back at me from the picture. I lift it in my throbbing hand, examining the figure in the middle more closely. He is broader than Stirling on second inspection, with hair of the same violently red shade but less of a pale complexion. His eyes are a little darker, more green than ocean blue. And he’s clinging to Sheila and Bartlett like they mean everything in the world to him. It must be Stirling’s father, the rebel who died in the fire strike in the Highlands eight years ago.
I take the picture from the frame and stuff it into my pocket. Maybe Stirling would like to see it, when I next have time to talk to him. When I emerge from the office, the contents of my previous meeting are standing in the corridor, watching me. Dad casts his eyes to my bound hand, but nobody says anything. I point a thumb back over my shoulder at the office.
“Kip, has Apryl done anything in here yet? This is Bartlett’s computer. There’s bound to be good intel between him and Briggs whilst he’s been running the Legion.”
“I’ll make a note,” the Westie replies. “Do you want an escort down to Briggs?”
I watch the three of them for a careful moment. Andrew towers behind Kip and Dad, the only one of them not still training his gaze on my hand.
“Just you,” I tell Kip. “You two had better get planning on how to start this tunnel.”
“Sir, yes Sir,” Andrew replies, marching off.
Dad looks between the team leader and me, but he follows without another word. It feels good to have him listen and not intervene for a change. I clench my fist, then examine the wound under the tie. The split is drying up a bit, so I pull it all back taut and start the short walk to Briggs’s office.
“You had a good think in there, eh?”
I keep my eyes on the corridor ahead, fixed on the top of the stairs.
“Don’t you start.”
“I’m not.” Kip holds up his hands. “It’s not easy being Malcolm’s Chosen One. I wouldn’t have taken the gig if you’d paid me. I’m just saying, if you need a second. If you need an hour, a day, we can spare it. We’re stuck here now until the tunnel’s complete.”
I shake my head. “I want to see Briggs before I think about any of that. It’s no use digging our way out if we don’t know where the hell we’re going when we escape. I’ve done that before, and I ended up in this place.”
We descend the stairs, the metal rattling under our boots. The last time I was on this spiral staircase for any great length of time, it was to half-carry Stirling’s bludgeoned body back to our tower so he could dress the wounds Briggs gave him. Back then, it was one of the worst things I’d ever seen in my life. Briggs was one of the most frightening creatures I could ever have imagined. The stuff of nightmares. Now, his augmented body has made my nightmares worse, and made them real.
The door to the office is ajar, a single rebel soldier standing guard outside it. This one is equipped with Kip’s tranquilliser gun. I watch as the Westie takes it from the guard for a moment, checking the cartridges carefully, then replacing it in the other soldier’s hands. They exchange a nod. The door opens a little more, and Apryl sticks her head out. She sees Kip first, smiling. His jaw is tight, but he returns the smile, flashing her a wink.
“All present and correct, ma’am,” the Westie says, nodding at her, then at me.
“You gonna stick around to watch Briggs blow a fuse?” Apryl asks him.
Kip looks at me, and I shake my head.
“I need you to go looking for whatever we can use to dig.”
“Yes, boss.” Kip nods.
He skips away at a quick march, and Apryl watches him go with that look in her eyes. At least they haven’t lost each other yet. That sparks some small remainder of hope in the far reaches of my heart.
“Dig?” she asks, her voice suddenly quieter than before.
“How else do we get out of this siege without fighting or starving?” I reply.
She nods, then her eyes flash back into the room behind her. Something crashes inside, then there’s a grunt. An almighty roar rumbles out of the room, and the soldier with the tranquilliser gun tightens his grip.
“You ready?”
I swallow at the hard notch in my throat.
“As I’ll ever be, I guess.”
Ten
“I demand that you take this goddamned bag off my head!”
Briggs is a sight for sore eyes. His face is covered with a cloth sack, though his lips are moving under it where he keeps catching the cloth against his mouth. The rest of him is spread-eagled in an ugly display of limbs, like he’s
a tent that’s been pitched in a hurry. His massive legs are laid out behind him, bound with our thick straps and every kind of weight imaginable, then his middle is raised on his own footstool, the legs of which have buckled under his new, even greater weight. His arms are pitched down too, though the weights here are easier for him to move. He demonstrates that by rattling his chains and straps, the weights making that thunderous noise on the floorboards again.
“Goddamit reject, I know you’re there! I heard you talking.”
“Her name is Apryl, you ignorant fool,” I say, stepping forwards.
Briggs’s hulking shoulders tense up. He lifts his bagged head, rotating his neck a little.
“I know you, Bullet Girl.”
“I know you do,” I answer. “And I know you, Augustus Briggs. You went in for this willingly? The body of steel treatment?”
“Did I hell,” he says. “The riot you started in Sunlight saw me trampled. But Caitlynne is a gracious woman. Kind.”
I fold my arms. “If you say so.”
Briggs pants heavily under the bag, and I find myself stepping closer. Apryl returns to the SC’s desk, where she has her computer set up, and I trace my feet along a line of cable the she has patched into Briggs’s nearest arm. It’s his right, the shiny panels opened up to reveal all sorts of mechanics and circuitry. The wires are crudely patched, and they spark whenever the hulking SC moves. This close, I can still smell the humanity of him, the musk of his skin. The scent of an animal kept in chains. I reach for the bag, ripping it off.
“So you still need oxygen, then?” I ask as Briggs gasps in the fresh air.
He turns his grey eyes on me, and I see no tell-tale light within them. No flash of red to indicate any augmentation in his vision. His bald head, however, has been replaced with a dome of shining metal. This close, I’m inclined to think it’s titanium rather than steel. I reach for it, knocking it with my wrecked knuckles. Briggs growls.
“You toy with me all you want, little girl. I’ll rip you in two when I get out of these bonds.”
I crouch beside Briggs’s head, pointing a finger. “If you get out of these bonds.”
He bites forward into the air, teeth gnashing like a mad beast. I don’t let him knock me off balance, even when he rumbles again and shakes the very floor beneath my haunches. I look right into his eyes, right beyond them, wondering if there’s enough of a connection between him and the System to get what we need. I look to Apryl, but she’s not glancing my way. Her eyes are squarely fixed on her screens, studying patterns that swing her pupils back and forth.
“Would you like to know a secret, Senior Commander?”
Teasing him is the most fun I’ve had in weeks. Not since Malcolm’s birthday have I felt even a glimmer of this kind of joy, the bubbling of mischief in my heart. Briggs grits his teeth, and they’re all filled in with metal now. He must have got them knocked out in the riot on Execution Day. I’d have liked to knock them myself, one by one.
“Spill,” he grunts.
I get as close to his ear as I dare, mindful of those chomping teeth.
“Malcolm Stryker is alive and well,” I whisper.
Apryl can’t hear what I’ve said, but she speaks just as Briggs roars again.
“Impossible!”
I have to wait for him to stop rattling and raving before I can meet Apryl’s eye.
“What was that?” I ask her.
“I got a spike,” she says. “Outgoing transmission of data.”
I lean in close to Briggs again, pursing my lips.
“Malcolm Stryker,” I repeat.
“Bingo,” Apryl says.
I take a step back, then pace before the caged monster. Apryl holds up a finger, though she is silent, and then begins to scribble things down on a pad of scrap paper.
“What the hell are you children playing at?” Briggs demands. “I don’t believe you. If Stryker’s alive, let him come to gloat. Let him take another step towards his war by ending my life… if he can find an artery left to sever.”
“He doesn’t want you dead,” I reply, still watching Apryl.
If Prudell’s media want to tell people that Malcolm’s in this building, then why shouldn’t I confuse their intel by confirming it? Plus, I have to stall for whatever Apryl’s doing, her manicured hands moving deftly with her pen.
“He’s given you to me for now. A present.”
I grin, down into Briggs’s angry face. Goddie was right. It is fun to torment him, after all the towering and glowering he did to us. After all the kids he knowingly sent into Prudell’s suicide missions. Those kids he trained for that very purpose.
“You’ll die for this.” Briggs spits, a globule landing on my boot. “All of you.”
I take the tip of the boot and carefully rub it back against his chin. He snaps for my foot and rattles and roars again, and this time his hand comes loose on the left side. His arm is still secured, thank goodness, but his wrist has lifted off the ground and is moving freely, its fingers clawing for purchase on the polished wooden floor.
Apryl is with me at last. Her message is a few lines long, and then there’s a huge list of random words underneath it:
I think there are certain words that trigger information to be transferred to the System. It means they’re not watching all the time. The link opened with ‘Malcolm Stryker’. Try these on him too, I want to check them out.
She returns to her desk, waving another paper at me. An identical copy of the same list, no doubt. Apryl’s eyes are on the screen, her pen ready, and I thumb down my list, ready to begin. Briggs’s hand is still twitching, grasping now like it wants to take the pen from Apryl’s hands, but it can’t do us any harm. I clear my throat, a fingertip on the list to make sure I don’t miss a single word.
“Stirling Douglas.”
Apryl makes a mark on her page, but she doesn’t look at me. She rolls her hand, so I go back to the list and rattle them off faster than before.
“Highlanders. Highland. Rebels. Commander. General. Legion. Prudell. Governor. Caitlynne. Tactical. Mission. Subterfuge. Spy. Operation. Squadron.”
Her list goes on, scores of scrawled words, and all the while Briggs keeps interrupting.
“What is this, some kind of lame brainwashing you kids came up with?”
We ignore him, ploughing through the list no matter how he rattles and rails.
“Reject? Reject! You will hear me when I speak!”
As I come to the end of the words, I find a few inventive ones, the ones that Apryl clearly had as afterthoughts.
“Bullet Girl. Raja.”
At the list’s end, Briggs is foaming at the mouth from being ignored. I step up, replacing the bag on his head as he thrashes around. He tries to slam me with his new domed head, but his short, thick neck is still biologically his own, so he’s soon shouting into cloth again. At my foot, his hand is still moving, still shaped like it wants to hold a pen. Even when Briggs becomes still, his grumbling reduced to low, internal rage, that hand keeps moving.
“Come see this.”
We stand at the computer together, Apryl holding up her list. It’s now more marked and scrawled than ever, some words blacked out and others circled. I study it over, but I always have one eye on Briggs, laid out not so far from us. Apryl looks at him too, then nods at me. She opens a document on her screen, typing so I can read it:
These are the words that trigger the System to transmit information from Briggs’s augmentations. Microphones and cameras inside his circuits? I can take him apart a little more to find out.
I nod, patting her shoulder. A genuine grin breaks my dry lips. We’re getting somewhere, just as Malcolm wanted. Apryl keeps typing.
I want to run more words by him too, systematically. A whole dictionary’s worth. Once we know what sets the Reborn off recording, we can develop a code. A way to speak to them without the System’s ears listening in too.
My grin widens. I mouth a word, one that’s circled on Apryl’s p
aper.
“Stirling?”
She nods at me furiously. We can talk to him. Bring him back into the plans like he wants. Make it safe for him to be included without giving us away. Apryl types again, her fingers fast and precise.
It’s gonna take a few days, but I suppose if we’re digging out, I have plenty of time. There’s one thing though. All this time that Briggs has been transmitting words, I’ve had data received too. Look at the pink line on the top graph. Something’s coming in, even now, but Briggs is keeping it to himself.
Apryl points to help me out, and I watch the steady crackle of a thin, pink line on one of her graphs. It’s been up there for a while, just as she says, constantly broadcasting something to Briggs. I rub my chin, then my eyes. We’re missing something.
I look Briggs over from the desk, leaning to see the whole of him. He’s silent now, but I’m certain by his attitude that he’s far from overtaken by any inner programming. His mind is his own, just as Apryl said. No chance of a spoken message getting through that thick skull. But his body belongs to the System, and it’s doing things that perhaps Briggs himself doesn’t even know about.
“Apryl… His hand,” I stammer.
It’s still moving. The shape of fingers trying to grab a pen. It’s been moving this whole time, with every word I read since I woke Briggs up with the mention of Malcolm’s name. Maybe even moving the same amount of time as that pink line on the graph.
“Briggs?” I begin.
He snarls under the mask, his words low and flat. “Oh good. You’re still here.”
“Are you right handed, or left?” I ask.
“Right,” he answers. “I was raised properly.”
I hadn’t expected his honesty, but maybe there’s something to be said for putting the big man in chains. Perhaps he just can’t help his sense of pomp, because Briggs destroys diversity wherever he goes. We’re all the same in his army, and if we’re not we’re left out for the wolves.
