by Amy Johnson
“Zwei, please don’t play with the humans,” Eins says as he waves her over toward us. She tugs at Cyrus’s hair before joining us, lowering herself to the ground in front of me. “Tell Subject 23 more about how we helped her escape.”
“Your sweet little exhibit mate called the cybernetics into his cell a few nights ago and asked to see us. He said he wanted to help us. I didn’t know he was so smart, but he drew up the plan himself, down to the moment when we would arrive and take you back home with us. I mixed together some chemicals from the Assembly building,” Zwei says, twirling a strand of platinum blonde hair around her finger. “That ashy powder that turned your wrist and face into the surface of the moon? That was all me!”
My heart drops into my stomach as the full weight of Knox’s betrayal hits me.
He wasn’t playing their game. He created it.
“Bring him in,” Eins says, followed by another long statement in a foreign language. Two Artificials stomp out of the room, scattering dirt and gravel in their path. I trail after them with eyes brimmed in angry tears.
They return a moment later with Knox and shove him to the ground in front of the five Elders. Thick rope holds his hands behind his back. The sport jacket is gone, revealing the ragged, too-big shirt beneath. Blood stains the tan fabric, and rips and tears expose the skin underneath.
“Tell her what you betrayed her for, 3,” Eins says, kicking Knox in the stomach. The boy’s body arches as he’s flipped onto his back. Knox shakes his head. “You’re really going to refuse? You’re dumber than I thought.”
Eins snaps his fingers, and Zwei points her gun toward the Luddites, firing without even looking. Her eyes meet mine even as my people begin to cry in fear.
“Knox! Do what they say!” I scream, fighting the urge to cover my ears.
Every scream of the Luddites flows through my body like lightning and burns my muscles. Every inch of me shakes as the ice sears me.
“Listen to the girl,” Eins says. “What’s the price for your help, 3?”
“I will become like you,” Knox says, laying flat against the ground and staring up at Eins. His chest rises in rapid succession, and rage pours out of every orifice. He glares at the machine overhead. “She wasn’t supposed to be harmed. It was part of the deal, Eins.”
Eins laughs before shrugging.
“I haven’t been human in a very long time,” he purrs, giving Knox a toothy smile, “so don’t expect me to act like one.”
Eins kicks Knox again--this time in the ribs--turning the boy over onto his side as he spits blood onto the floor.
I want to feel bad for him. From my experience, the Idyllic possess a strength unrivaled by the cybers and Artificials. Every kick must feel like he’s being pummeled by elephants. It’s unfair, considering he helped them, but I can’t force myself to feel pity.
He deserves much worse.
In one swift movement, Eins picks Knox up by the hands, setting him on his feet. The boy sways and stumbles against the iron hold. His skin pales; sweat drips from his chin, combining with the blood that stains his lips. The two liquids mark the front of his shirt.
Knox’s eyes find me, and I hold his gaze for a minute.
I wish I could feel nothing.
I wish I had never met him.
I wish those endless eyes would stop searching through my soul, plucking out the strands of love that make up my being.
I wish I didn’t care about him.
But, I do, and those thoughts stampede across my skin and destroy my willpower.
I turn my head away from him as Eins begins to pull him out of the room.
“Zwei, I’m going to escort Subject 3 to the holding cells. It’s up to you who you kill and who you harvest. Don’t be generous,” Eins says, and he disappears down the right tunnel. Zwei squeals, clapping her hands together in excitement.
“He never lets me make my own decisions,” she whispers to me, standing back up. “Now, let’s see. I assume these five are important.” Her voice trails off as she walks up to the line of Elders.
Four out of five are over the age of twenty-five. Their bodies are past the prime age for harvesting and breeding. I brace myself for the words that are about to come.
“Artificials, do retinal scanners for age,” she says. “Anyone over the age of twenty-five should be killed and used for spare parts.”
The Artificials move quickly, leaning down to come face to face with each Elder. My stomach rolls over as the two to Emory’s right are shot on the spot. Their bodies sag forward as the life flees from them. Zwei pushes Emory’s head back with a careful hand, allowing the machines to scan her.
The old woman glares at the machine, all but snarling at her through the wrinkled skin of her lips. Her head wound continues to bleed, making it look as though half of her face is melting away.
“This won’t stop us,” Emory whispers in a voice that’s strong despite its low volume. “In the end, we will win.”
The Artificial emits a series of long clicks, lifting his gun and pressing it to her temple. Zwei leans down into her ear and smiles at her.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she hisses, smile never fading. My blood freezes. “I will personally destroy every last one of you.”
Zwei doesn’t move as the Artificial lets his bullet fly, and blood splatters across her porcelain skin. She raises a hand to her face and smears the droplets of Emory’s blood down the side of her cheek. With a shrug, she moves to the next Elder, and the process is repeated.
In horror, I watch her grip the sides of Cyrus’ face.
He’s the perfect age. She won’t shoot him.
The Artificial scans him, even as he fights uselessly against Zwei’s hold. It says something to Zwei, and her eyes go wide.
“You’re only twenty?” she asks, craning Cyrus’ neck to look at her. “That’s good. I would hate to waste that beautiful face. You would be perfect for breeding. The machines will definitely want to research those body modifications. Let’s save you.”
The machines scan the paralyzed bodies next, killing over half of them and leaving the rest. By the time they turn to the awake Luddites, the blood runs like water across the floor. It pools under me, mixing with my tears and sweat. With some quick mental math, I estimate that out of the thirty-seven bodies that lay there before, only ten remain.
With every gunshot, my body shakes.
I watch them murder ten of the seventeen remaining Luddites.
That leaves us with a population of twenty-one, including Knox who should have never been counted in the first place.
As the remaining humans are herded out of the Underground, flanked by the swarm of Artificials, I search through the crowd for familiar faces.
Mason, the guard who I asked to alert the council.
Azura, heavy with child.
Rhyan, whose face wears the blood of everyone he’s ever known.
Naming them off proves easier than thinking about the other thirty-nine that are dead.
I did this.
I brought him here.
Zwei jerks me to my feet last and presses a hand to the small of my back and my pistol to the base of my neck.
“Let’s go, 23,” she sings, walking me out of the meeting place.
I glance over my shoulder as we walk through the tunnels and search once again for Linux.
What appears behind me surprises me.
Linux stands in the mouth of the tunnel, one hand braced against the wall and the other hanging limp at his side. He stares at me with his mouth open. The electric rod extends from his grip, its light long gone out. My best friend is nothing more than a shadow.
I fight the building urge to scream back at him, because that would only bode ill for the both of us. Now, it’s up to him. He has to make it through this.
I pray that he has a plan as I turn back around and stare at the concrete under my feet. It turns into seamless sidewalks as I’m pushed through the prismatic crowds of cybers like a p
arade float.
Chapter 15: Desperate
Linux
I stare at the screen of my main computer. My broken glasses rest on the end of my nose, forcing me to wrinkle it just to see out of them. A thin layer of dust shrouds my vision, but I’m too busy to lift up my hand and brush it away.
My shirt would only make the glass dirtier, though, considering I haven’t gotten up off of my crate but a few times in almost twelve hours.
I glance over at the broken clock to which I’ve rigged a battery.
It runs five minutes fast. According to the makeshift pencil hands, I took a bathroom break approximately three hours ago, after I woke Eden up.
Maybe it’s time for a stretch break.
I rub at the stubble on my face that I’ve been letting grow.
Sighing, I stretch my arms above my head. The joints twist and separate, allowing the pressure to release and air between them to escape. I lower my arms to my back and stretch it out as well. It’s not healthy; I know that. Yet, the blissful relaxation that follows the hazardous habit is well worth it.
My eyes fall back on the green screen in front of me.
It makes no sense.
I studied the programming of cybernetics for years on the street using ancient stolen computers and burned-out computer chips. I memorized the commands, the shortcuts, and the symbols. I understand their written language as if it is my native language. Give me a few years, and I’ll have their spoken language memorized too.
The words on the screen, though, are nothing I’ve ever seen before.
Once I broke through the first few layers of code, which was easy enough, and found the center, everything changed.
This isn’t English, and it isn’t the familiar code of the machines.
Someone convoluted the comments throughout. That prevents me from reaching write access.
It looks like it might be German, but I can’t tell.
I run my hands through my shaggy hair and let a groan slip out of my mouth.
Of course, I saw this on the first cybernetic chip I broke through a few weeks ago before Eden was taken, but I had hoped it was just an error due to the fact that chip was absolutely fried.
My shoulders slump forward and I rest my hand in my chin.
Does Eden have a German to English book? I’ve never looked through her leaning stack. It’s worth a shot, though.
I rise up from my stool, wincing as my nerves regain function. The paresthesia kicks in and makes me fumble around the room for my paralyzer stick. Even with Eden back, it’s not safe to wander the tunnels alone.
Not to mention, there’s the strange boy she brought home--the one who acts and looks eerily like a cybernetic.
Still, if she says he’s real, I believe her with all of my being. Eden would never lie. She’s not capable of it.
I slip through the tunnels with ease now that I’ve had to wander through them alone for so long. The symbols come back to mind just like the numbers from my screens. It’s strange to me how fast you learn things when you’re forced to, when you have nothing else to think about, or when you’re trying to distract yourself.
Maybe I can learn German super fast.
As I slip through the doorway into the sleeping area, I realize how quiet everything is. After Eden came back, the noise returned, from the quiet whispers of conversation to the laughter between couples. Yet, at this moment, a dead silence spreads over everything like a thick blanket.
I walk over to Eden’s bed and dig through for a German-English dictionary, which I find crammed in between a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, volume two, and an American Atlas. At least Eden had some method to her madness. German-English isn’t the only dictionary she has collected. An English-French volume rests at the top of her pile, dog-eared and worn at the binding.
If I had time, I would read through it, but I have better things to do, so I stand back up and move towards the entrance again.
A scream cuts through the room, and I freeze. A thousand different causes go through my mind, and my focus on the book is lost.
“Linux!”
My senses return as I look at the boy standing in the doorway.
“Mason, what’s going on?” I ask as I rush towards him, stumbling over blankets and pillows along the way.
“We’re under attack. Eden sent me to warn the elders.”
My breath leaves my lungs in one short burst. Fire burns through my lungs as the fear squeezes them together. My heart pounds in my ears, and I clench my hand tight around the handle of my weapon.
“You should go back to your room,” he says breathlessly. “You can’t fight Artificials. Go hide.”
With that advice, he runs off toward the meeting place.
His words settle on my shoulders like weights.
You can’t fight Artificials.
Memories rush back to me and slam full-force into the pit of my stomach.
You’re useless.
You’re too weak.
You’ll just get in our way.
For two years, I’ve been shoved in a corner and told to be quiet. I’ve been held down and sheltered. The worst part is that I’ve let them do it.
Fear rules my life.
I cling to the slimy wall and take greedy gulps of stagnant air. The smell of gunpowder floats around me and the hums of paralyzers graze my ears. Footsteps shake the ground under me.
I can’t keep being afraid.
What would Eden do?
She would remind me that everyone has their own strengths.
A memory resurfaces, and I dig my fingers into the wall to balance myself.
✽✽✽
“What are you doing?”
Eden looks up at the sound of my voice. She scrunches up her nose and points a finger at the broken-down machine sitting in front of her.
“I’m trying to figure out how to fix this computer,” she says as she rubs her temples. The pressure distracts her from confusion and claustrophobia. I’ve known her for a few months, and every little quirk she possesses stands out in my mind. I watch the ways her lips move while she reads, how she drifts into her own world in the garden, and how she chews on her lip when she slips into deep thinking.
“Can I look at it?” I ask, sliding one of the crates up to sit beside her.
“By all means. I’m not getting anywhere.”
I push her hand out of the way and inspect the mechanics she had been fiddling with. My parents, who I barely remembered, had loved taking apart any service machines they could get their hands on. Too afraid to confront the other sentient machines, they became experts in the art of informatics and construction.
I never picked up the trait.
Yet, looking at the multi-colored hard drive--the soft greens and dust-covered golds--everything rushes back to me. I lift a wire and move it to the other side, connecting it to a severed one by twisting it carefully.
“Have you attached it to a power source?” I ask Eden while I lean forward and shift around more parts.
“Yeah, but the stupid thing shocked me. So, I unplugged it.”
“Plug it back in,” I say, scooting away from the computer.
She moves to do as I say. The overhead lights waver for a second, and then everything returns to normal. The machine lets out a crescendoing ring and the screen lights up in a shade of white so bright neither of us have ever seen anything like it.
“You made that look easy,” Eden says, stunned.
I glance over at her. A proud smile paints itself over her face and lifts the edges of her electric blue eyes, the ones that I imagine are the color of oceans.
“Now, watch this,” I say, intent on impressing her further.
I lean forward and type in the code I know will grant me the proper access into the inner code of the old computer. Eden watches as I type, little gasps of breath leaving her mouth every time I type in a different command.
“It’s like a different language. I have no idea what any of it means
,” she whispers as she leans forward with her elbows on her knees. “Is this English?”
I nod and sit back.
“That’s amazing, Linux,” she says, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “I think we found what you’re good at. Now, you can stop letting Mason and Rhyan get to you. I told you that we would find your strengths.”
I had known I wanted to be wherever she went when I saw her in that alley, but I had never felt at home with the Luddites until that moment. I felt proud and confident. I felt important.
✽✽✽
I was capable once. I can be that way again.
There’s no option other than fighting, even though I feel fear knotting itself together in my stomach. With a swallow, I close my eyes and will the anxiety to go away.
Resolve paints itself over my panic, and I head out into the hallways, drawing my paralyzer out.
I step over bodies of Artificials as I walk, but none of them move. Two of them wear the mark of bullets--burn marks on their foam covering. The person who shot these knew exactly where to aim, and they fired with intense precision.
I bet it was Eden.
As I come around the corner to the meeting place, the screams drift toward me. They bounce along the halls and become echoes as I inch closer. Two voices rise above the rest. They are high pitched and lack accents.
“Knox! Do what they say!”
The snakes take over my stomach once again at the sound of Eden’s voice.
This can’t be happening.
Not again.
Wisdom prevents me from rushing into the room swinging. If I go in, they’ll kill me without blinking. My hands shake, and I feel my fear turning into rage.
A few minutes later, the room goes quiet. I hear several more gunshots and then a female voice speaks up.
“Let’s go, 23.”
I take a few steps back into the shadows.
The Artificials emerge with Eden in tow. I recognize the tall blonde from the alleyway: Zwei. Was her partner Eins with her? Where is Knox?
As they drag Eden out, she turns and looks at me. At least, I think her blue eyes see me. Her mouth opens, but she shuts it just as fast.
