by K A Riley
Granden invites the rest of us to sit as well, which we do, our mouths dribbling with anticipation. It’s only just now occurred to me that the last thing we ate was tofu-stew back at Caramella’s shack in Oakland nearly two days ago. That was right before we snuck into San Francisco and discovered that Brohn’s dead sister Wisp was not only alive but that she had become the small but somehow very powerful and supremely confident leader of an underground resistance movement.
While I’m marveling at this, in front of us, a panel on the top of the table whooshes open, and an oval platter, neatly arranged with seven cups of steaming coffee and seven fat breakfast wraps, rises to the surface. Personally, I’m even more stunned by the tech than I am by the prospect of having a proper meal for a change.
“Pretty impressive,” Cardyn beams.
“Mag-tray delivery system,” Wisp boasts as she joins us at the table. “Thanks to Olivia, we’ve got mag and grav networks threaded through every floor. You wouldn’t know it from the outside, but the whole building is rigged with them. We’ve got better tech here than they have in some of the government buildings downtown. Meals are prepared in our kitchen in the basement. We have three rotating crews down there responsible for shopping, food prep, and delivery. Most days, the Rations Team serves everything up in person like they did back in the old days. They’ve got a delivery coming in right now, so we’re going to rely on automation this time. Chef Angelique oversees it all, and, I have to say, she’s the one keeping us going.”
“If she’s the one responsible for feeding us,” Cardyn gurgles through a voracious mouthful of breakfast wrap which he’s dunked with a barbaric splash into his coffee, “then she’s okay in my book.”
Rain shakes her head and mutters, “Disgusting” under her breath but still loud enough for everyone to hear.
As embarrassing as it is to watch Cardyn eat, he’s right, and I ask Wisp to thank Chef Angelique and her crew on our behalf.
“She’ll be happy to hear that, Kress,” Wisp says kind of sadly. “She used to be head chef and one of the deans at the San Francisco Culinary School before the Patriot Army came in and started taking away everyone’s civil liberties and putting all kinds of restrictions on people’s movements. This city has some real beauty to it. It also has some pretty nasty policies going on at the moment. There’s deportations. Travel bans. Identity sweeps. Resource rationing. Rescinded health care. Slashed local budgets. A lot of defunded schools. All handed down by Krug’s direct order. He’s controlled the flow of information around here for years. At some point, we’ll need to get you out on the streets so you can see it all for yourself. It’s not as dangerous here as you’ll find in some of the other New Towns. People still shop and socialize and live their lives. But that could be changing very quickly.”
“How so?” Rain asks.
Wisp takes a sip of coffee and shrugs. “The city is resisting a push by Krug to return to gas-powered cars instead of the electric and mag-cars and the bicycling initiatives they’ve had in place here for nearly twenty years. He wants to reduce pollution controls like he’s done all across the rest of the country. There are curfews here now. And no gatherings of three or more people allowed in public at any time. All in the name of safety for the citizens. No one likes it, of course. But they’re victims of a slow, imminent death, and when Krug and his army get here in a week, they’ll put the final nails in the people’s coffin.”
“Sounds like he’s trying to gain total control out here like he has everywhere else,” Brohn observes.
But Wisp shakes her head. “His goal isn’t control. It’s chaos. The more mess he makes, the harder it is for anyone to figure out what’s happening, what to do, or how to do it. While we’re reeling, he’s ruling. A few weeks ago, the Patriot Army even tried to close the church Angelique and her family went to. No real reason. Just to see what they could get away with. The town council didn’t allow it, but the whole thing threw a monkey-wrench into her life and drove her to us. Now she’s promised to do whatever she can to help in the cause.”
“She sounds like a great asset to have,” Brohn says, rubbing his hands together in the steam swirling above his coffee cup. “Fighting for equality and human rights is hard enough without having to do it on an empty stomach.”
On the opposite side of the table, Cardyn and Rain raise their coffee mugs in a toast to that.
Although I know we’d love to take our time and enjoy the rich coffee and the savory spinach and tofu-filled wraps, we eat quickly, the urgency and momentum of our mission driving us relentlessly forward.
2
After five minutes that sadly feel like five seconds, Wisp pushes herself to her feet and heads toward the door. With happy stomachs but heavy hearts, we follow her as she leads us down one flight of stairs to the third floor and takes us back into the Intel Room where we parted company just last night.
The large, windowless room is the same odd blend of dark gloom and halo-glow I remember from the night before. Somehow, the reflective surfaces of the dozen viz-screens on the walls and the linked lines of input boards illuminate the place without making it seem any brighter. A bank of spherical glass monitors floats in a semi-circle around a central console where Olivia, the half-human, half-machine Modified we met yesterday, sits in her hovering mag-chair. Thin, multi-colored tendrils ripple and roll from her wrists where her hands used to be. Undulating in wavy bundles like mountain hay in the wind, the vibrant filaments ebb and flow into the hovering spheres and through the various panels of black glass in front of her.
The shock I had from meeting Olivia yesterday has given way to a kind of morbid curiosity this morning. With her legless body apparently connected by a web of fibrous cables to her hovering mag-chair, I wonder how she moves around the building. Or even if she moves around. I’ve only seen her twice now, but both times, she was planted firmly in her chair at the head of this conference table as if this were the only possible place for her to be. She seems so plugged in right now that I can almost imagine her as part of the tech she’s in charge of. The patchwork of fused skin and circuitry making up her face and her hairless head looks like it must hurt. And those odd eyes. Mine are brownish-green flecked with specks of goldish-orange if you look closely enough. But Olivia’s eyes are a whole different level of unusual: They appear gray at first glance, but then, on closer inspection, her irises are revealed to be made up of tiny, alternating black and white squares like you’d find on a chessboard. Although she explained to us how she came to be a Modified, there are still so many questions I’d love to ask: What does it feel like to be so much machine? Is there any point where you stop feeling human? Would you trade the techno-human hybrid you are today to return to the pure flesh-and-blood human you once were?
I don’t ask any of that out loud, of course. And the truth is, I have a lot of the same questions about myself. If what Granden said about me yesterday is true and as I’ve been slowly discovering over time, my psychic link with Render might not even depend on the maze of black circuitry running through my forearms. Which means that my father had another reason for implanting me with what Granden claims is the key to bringing down Krug and the Deenays and all of their plans for control over the future of humanity itself. It’s too much for me to deal with this early in the morning, so I give my head another fog-clearing shake and turn my attention to Olivia, who rotates around in her chair to greet us with a bright smile and that haunting, slightly tinny voice of hers. “Nice to see you up and about. I’m looking forward to working with all of you.”
“Us, too,” Cardyn says, his eyes wide as he sweeps his head around to take in Olivia and all the busyness of this strange room. Olivia’s cluster of tech casts streaks of hazy light on the long oval table of black glass in front of her. The table’s mirrored surface distorts the reflection of everything in the room—including us. Surrounded by her monitors, screens, and spheres, Olivia sits in a cut-out at the head of the table like a CEO presiding over a board meeting. The chairs around the t
able are a mix of old-style office chairs with wheels and silver mag-chairs that hover idly above the floor.
Wisp steps over to Olivia and traces her finger along one of the consoles. “We need to get our friends here up to speed. Can you call up the Armory?”
“Initiated.” Olivia swings back around, and the black table in front of her glows a flickering carroty orange as a detailed 3-D schematic of the city of San Francisco materializes in the air. Although her body doesn’t move, Olivia’s tendrils continue to weave and snake through the air seeking out micro-ports in the viz-screen and along the surface of the shimmering, floating orbs around her head. Granden invites us to gather around as the hovering schematic over the table zooms in to a single spot until a twinkling image of a large building comes into meticulous focus. We all take seats at the table and stare at the imposing structure, which consists of a clunky, four-story rectangular building with octagonal turrets forming its four corners. Its windows are narrow and tall, its entire surface pimpled with dark red brick. Attached is a slightly taller structure with a similar brick façade and a smooth white domed roof arching high into the air like the back of a whale. I’ve never seen a sports stadium in real life, but this is kind of how I imagine they must look. Parts of Olivia’s models are missing with pixilated patches and blacked-out sections giving the whole thing a kind of partial, blasted-out feel that reminds me of the destruction we witnessed in the Valta.
Olivia apologizes for the incomplete images, but Wisp tells her not to worry about it. “You’ve done amazing work getting us this much.”
On the streets around the Armory, a few human figures, fizzling in and out of focus, walk between buildings and along walkways or zip along the city grid on mag-bikes. It’s busy and bustling, even this early in the morning, but there’s something so safe and normal about it that it makes me want to be part of it all.
“This is real time?” I ask.
Without looking at me, Olivia nods her head. “You’re looking at a typical morning in the city of San Francisco.”
“It looks like a pretty normal city, doesn’t it?” Wisp says through clenched teeth. “But what you don’t see from here is the infection of tyranny already in its system.”
Olivia gives a quarter-turn in her mag-chair. “I can tap into some of the existing surveillance systems in the municipal grid. Some, but not all.”
“We have to be careful,” Granden warns. “Wisp’s right. The Patriot Army is in the process of corrupting established security protocols and taking over the city grid. And they’re getting better about securing their own communication and surveillance networks. If they catch Olivia snooping around like this, it won’t take much for them to backtrack along her neural-network path and find their way here.”
“I can cover my tracks,” Olivia says with what sounds like a hint of defensiveness in her hollow, metallic voice. “But not completely,” she admits after a brief pause. “And not for long. For now, I’ll keep giving you what I can.”
Wisp slips past Olivia to join us around the table. She leans forward, her arm extended, and begins to poke at the image with her index finger. The spots on the schematic of the imposing building pulse green where she touches them. “These are the three targets we’ve identified as vital for pulling off this rebellion: the Munitions Depot, the Communications Center, and the Command Headquarters, all located in the San Francisco Armory. The first two targets are important, but it’s the Command Headquarters here on the mezzanine level of the Armory that will be the real key. If we can take all of this, plus their Command Headquarters, we can prevent them from taking total control of the city.”
“Wait,” Rain says, “you’re saying they have their three strategic branches all in one confined location?”
“Yep. For now, anyway. But they’re in the process of fixing things, digging themselves deeper and more permanently into the city and its systems.”
Looking deeply contemplative, Rain presses a finger to her chin. “That’s a point in our favor. A centralized objective with the primary tactical targets in a cluster.”
“This is the Patriot Army we’re talking about,” Wisp says. “They’re armed, not intelligent. Mostly just boys, hardly older than us. They’ve only been here for the past month or so, and even now they’re not really here in an official capacity.”
Rain squints. “What do you mean? They’re here. They’re technically part of the government. How can that not be ‘official’?”
Wisp looks from Rain to Granden who clears his throat and explains. “The San Francisco City Council continues to oppose the presence of the Patriots. Quietly. Local law enforcement has been caught in the middle and won’t move without specific directions from the mayor.”
“And the mayor…?” Rain asks.
“Is just as caught in the middle. His hands are tied. He can’t oppose the presence of the Patriot Army without defying President Krug, and he can’t embrace them without defying the San Francisco City Council or the Chief of Police and his captains.”
“Or many of the residents, for that matter,” Wisp adds. “With everyone in the country afraid of the Eastern Order, Krug has been able to roll through a lot of towns without a lot of resistance. This isn’t one of those towns.”
Granden nods and drums his fingers on the table’s glossy surface. “This city has a long history of following its own path and going against the government’s grain. There are still a lot of people here, young and old, who aren’t planning on sitting still while Krug tries to destroy that history. The Patriot Army is Krug’s personal arsenal of bullies and bodyguards. Make no mistake, they’re violent, well-armed, and extremely dangerous. But they’re also relatively new in town, disorganized, tunnel-visioned, and arrogant.”
Sitting between Brohn and Granden, Wisp stretches her arms out wide. “And that gives them a blind spot about this big.”
Rain leans in to survey the flickering, pixilated image more closely. “Then it’s a blind spot we need to exploit—hard, fast, and with everything we’ve got.”
Standing and walking around the table so she’s right behind me, Wisp puts a hand on my shoulder and looks around the table from Brohn, Granden, and Rain on one side to Cardyn and Manthy on the other. “And that’s exactly where you come in. This is Saturday morning. The attack we’re planning relies on you, and it happens this coming Friday night.”
“Wonderful,” Cardyn says. “I’ve always wanted to know the exact location and day of my death.”
Matching Cardyn’s sarcasm, Brohn does a pretend half-bow in his seat, hailing Cardyn as “The great and inspiring prophet of doom.”
While Cardyn sulks, Manthy stares, and Rain and I laugh, Wisp and Olivia arrange for the schematic of the Armory, flickering in some places and still blacked out in others, to rotate. As we look on, Olivia gives us a bit of the building’s history, its structural specs, and its strengths and weaknesses. “They used to have boxing matches there over a hundred years ago. It hasn’t been used as an armory since 1976. After that, it sat empty for thirty years. The city’s very own white elephant.”
“White elephant?” I ask.
Olivia gives me a resonant, lilting laugh. “A ‘white elephant’ means something that’s outlived its usefulness and is now something no one wants.”
“Sound familiar?” Manthy says to Cardyn who scowls at her in return.
“In this case,” Olivia continues, “the Armory could have been used for housing or offices or retail space, but no one could agree one way or another, so it sat there like an orphan waiting for the right family to come along. Anyway, after that it took a turn as a movie studio for the adult film industry.”
Card’s ears perk up at this. “Really?”
“Yes. Eventually, the town kicked them out. Turns out that for this particular orphan, having no family was better than having the wrong family. But then it sat empty again for nearly a decade until a tech developer swooped in and turned it into a giant science lab, which the town council s
oon discovered was a front for some rather disturbing bio-tech experiments.”
“Let me guess,” I say, “the Modifieds?”
Olivia waggles her polychromatic tendrils in affirmation. “It was set up by Krug to be the western branch of the Deenays’ Modified program they had going on in Washington D.C. and in some of the other cities back east. Most of the Modifieds you met downstairs came out of the program here. We saved as many as we could. Brought them to the Style. The rest…”
Wisp hangs her head, and Granden reaches over to put a hand on her shoulder, but she waves him off. “I’m okay.”
“After that,” Olivia continues, “the Armory got cleared out, so it sat empty yet again until forty-one days ago when Krug’s battalion of Patriots arrived and commandeered it as their personal headquarters. We had eyes inside for less than an hour when they overrode the old security protocols, and we lost that tactical advantage. So we switched to a city-cam patch-in. They found that, and shut it down, too. Then we sent out some Insubordinates on a scouting mission. Some of them never made it back. The few who did reported that the place was too secure to get any useful structural or logistics intel. That’s why so many of the images are incomplete. Our information about the Armory and the other facilities taken over by the Patriots is partial and outdated at best. At worst, it’s just plain wrong. Either way, it’s currently useless and possibly even dangerous.”
“So how are we supposed to get into that?” Card asks, leaning over the table toward the image with his nose practically touching it. The glow from the slowly-rotating hologram highlights his freckles and paints his face a grim yellowish-orange. He waves his hand back and forth through the graphic. “It looks like a flippin’ castle.”
“No castle is impenetrable,” Wisp points out. “And none is indestructible. That’s why you don’t see many of them around anymore. We have a chance to make this one just as obsolete. With the right intel, the right strategy, and with just the right group of rebels, that is.”
