Rebellion

by K A Riley

  “You’ve been looking for me,” he says again. “Which is convenient. I’ve been looking for you.”

  “You killed him!” I shout, leaping to my feet.

  “Casualty of war,” Ekker says without taking a step back. “It’s what you have to expect when—”

  I’m in no mood to listen to his explanations. I lunge at him, lashing out with a straight right fist to his face, but he intercepts my punch, redirecting my energy just past him. I stagger a bit, but I regain my balance and take another swing at him with my left. He redirects this blow as well and guides me with his hand into the alley wall. Gasping for breath, my face hits the wall, but I’m able to absorb most of the impact with my shoulder. Half-stunned, I whip around, charging furiously at Ekker with a flurry of leg-kicks. He flicks away my attack, but he’s left himself open on his right side. I step into him and thrust a heel strike up toward his chin. It turns out he baited me into a trap. What I thought was a weakness, turns out to be a deception, luring me into overcommitting. Ekker moves his head less than an inch to the side, and my heel-of-the-hand strike zips harmlessly past his face, but now I’m exposed, and Ekker takes full advantage.

  Locking one fist into his open palm, he swings his elbow into my ribcage. A thunderclap of pain wracks my body, and my breath whooshes out of me all at once. I stumble backward, trying desperately to keep my balance. There’s a flash of white, a dizzying swirl of Ekker’s smiling face, the mystery woman in red, Brohn lying lifeless at my feet, and then there’s the ground, rushing up at me, and everything goes black.

  14

  Wednesday

  When I open my eyes, Brohn and I are in a bubble. And not a metaphorical one. This is an actual clear sphere, and we’re suspended, dangling and weightless, in the middle of it.

  From within the sphere in the middle of a nearly all-white room. I call over to Brohn, but he doesn’t answer. We’re face to face, and I call out to him again, my voice cracking and tears welling up in my eyes as I beg him to say something, to say anything, to be okay. But his head and limbs sag down lifelessly, his once-strong shoulders hanging low, his chin against his unmoving chest. The front of his shirt is stained nearly black with his blood. Drops of that blood have pooled at the bottom of his shirt with dark red streaks staining the belt-line of his pants.

  I cry out Brohn’s name, over and over. My voice bounces around in this strange transparent orb and comes back to my ears in a dying echo. I stretch out to try to touch him, but he’s out of arm’s reach.

  Looking around me and at my own long, distorted reflection in the curved glass, I twist and turn, but I can’t move much. I may not be tied up, but I’m clearly a captive. I’m able to move my arms and legs, and I thrash for a second, whipping around to see what’s behind me. But I can’t turn my body more than a few degrees either way. It’s like I’m treading water in mid-air and about to drown in the frustration at being so unshackled and yet so immobilized.

  Continuing to strain against the invisible force holding me in place, I investigate the room as best I can. There’s not much to it. There’s an array of thermal sensors and molecular identifiers up near the ceiling. The pin-hole portals in the corners are probably surveillance cameras. Otherwise, the room is a near complete sterile white. The only thing standing out is the red outline of an input panel on the wall next to the faint seam of an automatic door. The floor below the orb is one black square pad surrounded by an empty expanse of glistening white tiles. Even the ceiling with no vents, pipes, or access ports, is a smooth, hopeless white.

  Looking back across at Brohn, tears of sorrow mix with my tears of anger, and my body shakes violently. In the dark, early hours of this very morning, Brohn and I shared a moment alone. Less than an hour ago, we shared the day with new friends and walked around and felt nearly normal. Now, with one wrong turn down one wrong road, everything we’ve been working toward and fighting for is over. Facing Brohn’s dead body, I’m helpless in this infuriating torture chamber as we float gently in the air like two slowly-dancing astronauts in space.

  My despair is crushing, pressing down on me like a solid weight I can no longer bear. I whisper Brohn’s name across the space between us, praying for some sign of life, but I know now—even with him right across from me—I’m all alone. I don’t know if this is what Render feared. Is this the death he warned me about? Was I wrong not to take the warning more seriously? Should I have been more cautious? Maybe I should have advised Wisp that going out on this recruiting mission might not be the best idea. And now, it’s too late, and I have no one to blame but myself. I got caught up in the fantasy of freedom, imagining that Brohn and I could lead normal lives—just two teenagers skipping school to enjoy a sunny afternoon running into friends at random and having a coffee while we’re all out on the town. I shouldn’t have been so careless. Shouldn’t have ever let my guard down. I don’t know what might have happened between me and Brohn. I don’t know if my abilities as an Emergent would have been too much for either of us to handle and we’d wind up going our separate ways, drift apart. I don’t know if our Conspiracy would have survived or if Brohn and I might have splintered off to try to make our own life with each other. I don’t know if we would have been together forever, carried out this rebellion, and lived happily ever after. So many things I wonder about now, so many things I don’t and will probably never know.

  But I do know one thing: when I get out of here—and I will get out of here—I’m going to kill General Ekker.

  The fury rises in my gut until I feel like I’m going to be ripped apart down the middle by an explosion of pure, white-hot anger. The cords of tendons in my neck tighten. My teeth clench. My fists ball up, and a knot of pure, apocalyptic outrage seethes like a coiled snake behind my eyes.

  I try thrashing around again, but it’s useless, and now the pain in my side from where Ekker hit me has turned into an excruciating throb to match the pulsing ache in the side of my head from when I must have hit the ground.

  Suddenly, just past Brohn’s body, the door whooshes open, and General Ekker himself—decked out in his red and white camo jacket and blue pants—strides in. His thick-soled black boots pound like thunderclaps on the white tiled floor. As he comes toward me, I get a quick glimpse of the hallway outside before the door closes behind him. I recognize it from my recon mission with Render. We’re in the basement level of the barracks in the Armory. The good news is at least I know where I am in the world. The bad news is, I’m still a prisoner, Brohn is gone, and I can’t do anything about any of it.

  Ekker says something I can’t hear into a comm-link behind his ear before stepping over to stand just to the right side of me.

  “Nice to see you awake, Kress.” Now that he’s closer, his voice is surprisingly audible through the clear surface of this spherical prison cell.

  Turning my head toward him, I growl like a caged animal, which I guess I kind of am. I don’t care, though. I’ve got a rush of adrenalin surging through me, and I try to thrust myself at him, but I can’t escape from whatever force is holding me here, suspended and helpless.

  Ekker walks in a slow, methodical circle around the sphere. With my body immobilized, I’m not able to turn around, but I follow him as far as I can with my head and my eyes before he’s behind me, and I lose sight of him. I whip my head around as he finishes his circuit and stops just to my right again, so I have to look partway over my shoulder to see him.

  “Questions?” he asks.

  A snarl forming at the corner of my mouth, I stare at him, willing him to drop dead on the spot.

  “No? That’s okay. You’re in what’s technically called a Mag-Grav Suspension Cell. We call it the ‘Marble.’”

  I stare some more, this time hoping he’ll be dumb enough to let me out of here—even if it’s just long enough to take another shot at him. I don’t even care if he knocks me out again. I just need him to know I’m not going to give up. Ever.

  “You’re suspended by a carefully calibrated g
ravity field. The room doubles as a kind of Faraday Cage, so don’t imagine anyone is out there tracking you through any type of electromagnetic means.”

  I glare daggers at him.

  “I’m General Ekker. Although I get the feeling you already knew that.”

  When I still don’t respond, he looks a little uncomfortable but then smiles. “Not much of a talker? That’s okay. I get it. This is all really strange and scary. You’ve been trained to handle anything, and yet, here you are, Kress.”

  When I look surprised that he knows my name, he pauses and scans the ceiling before turning his attention back at me. “I’ve known you for a long time. Since you were a little girl living back East with your mother and father…”

  “My mother and father? How do you know my mother and father?”

  Ekker waves away my question like it’s nothing more than an annoying gnat buzzing around his head. “It used to be a big world out there, Kress. A big world run by a small man. Krug is dedicated to recreating it in his image. He wants a world, like him, filled with anger and fear, plagued by insecurity, divided, and small. I was one of the ones assigned to help make that happen. And you were my key to success. I’m not sure if you know this, but I was part of a team that ran the Recruiters. I even consulted on the design and program of the very Processor you got to know so well. I once worked for Hiller. Now, I’m in charge of San Francisco. I used to be one of the Deenays,” he says, running his hands along the sleeves of his red and white jacket. “Don’t let this obnoxious military costume of mine fool you. I spent half my life in a lab.”

  “Let me guess,” I say with a sneer. “You were a rat.”

  “Cute.”

  “And now you’re one of Krug’s stooges,” I hiss. “A cold-blooded killer.”

  Ekker chuckles. “Granted. I’m cold-blooded. And I’m a killer. But Krug? He only thinks I work for him. In reality, he’s nothing more than a convenient means to an end.”

  “What end?”

  “The Emergents, naturally. You’re why Krug is coming here, and you’re why I intend to get what I need from you before he gets here and ruins what could be the best gift nature has ever bestowed upon humanity.”

  “You talk like you’re the good guy here,” I snap, feeling far braver than I probably should considering the circumstances. “But you’re a liar. And you’re just as evil and power-hungry as Krug.”

  Ekker shakes his head like I’ve offended him. “Krug only knows one thing: head down and full-speed ahead to get what he wants. And he’s good at that, I’ll grant you. The best. But he’s a wrecking-ball. He’s a baby. And you don’t negotiate with a wrecking-ball or with a baby. No. You have to be more clever. Survive and stay one step ahead. Let them whip themselves around and wear themselves out doing their damage. Only then can you step in and take control.”

  I try to even my breathing out, slow my pulse so my anger and fear don’t overwhelm me into senselessness or more mistakes. “I have an idea,” I say to Ekker, tears soaking my cheeks as I look from him to Brohn’s lifeless body. “You could just leave us alone.”

  Ekker says, “Hm” and glances up toward the ceiling like he’s actually contemplating this possibility. Then he shakes his head and says, “No. I don’t think so. Kress, do you know how many people like you there are out there?”

  When I don’t answer, he says, “Not many. A couple dozen or so, tops.” Ekker laughs like we’re sharing a joke. “In the entire world. We’ve identified a few in Spain. One in Sardinia. A few in places like Ankara and Beijing. And, of course, a few more like you here in other cities and mountain towns across the country, others who just didn’t quite reach their potential. Many more who died along the way.”

  “Were killed, you mean.”

  Ekker pauses before going on. “The point is, you’re rare. And like all rare things, you’re coveted. You see, humans have gone around making enemies of each other since time began. But those enemies were all fabricated. Illusions.”

  “Like the Eastern Order.”

  “Yes. Like the Eastern Order. But do you know what the real enemy has been all this time? No? I’ll tell you. It’s stasis. It’s immobility. We’re hard-wired to move, grow, change, adapt, overcome. You know it as evolution. I call it survival. Look at the Modifieds. Not content with being human, they bought into the idea of the post-human.”

  “That’s not the same,” I say. “Krug used them.”

  Ekker runs a hand through his thick waves of blondish-brown hair. “No. He used their fears and insecurities, their desires, and their dreams for his own benefit. The Modifieds are simply victims of their own overwhelming drive to evolve. It’s a drive we all share. They just took the wrong path to get to the right place. You, Kress, you and your friends…you’re the right path. And I plan on following you all the way to the very immortality Krug so desperately craves.”

  “Then you’re just another Krug.”

  “No. Krug would’ve tortured you first and then killed you whether he got what he wanted or not. I’ll only kill you if I can’t figure out how to use you.”

  “How comforting.”

  “Relax. If things go as planned, it won’t ever come to that. Krug gets here in two days. You and I will be gone long before that along with the rest of your Emergent crew. I was hoping to gather you up all at once, but whoever is hiding you has done a good job of keeping you off the grid. So you’ll just have to double as my prize and, forgive me, but also serve as a bit of bait.”

  I glare at Ekker through the tops of my eyes, hoping to stare a few more flaming daggers into his smug face. But he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s as casual and composed as if we were chatting over afternoon tea.

  “It’s not what you think, Kress. I’m not some cartoon super villain who’s sitting around twisting his moustache and plotting the end of the world. In fact, it’s the opposite. With your help, I’ll be plotting the beginning of a new world. A better world.” Ekker runs a finger along his upper lip. “And, as you can see, I don’t even have a moustache.”

  He probably thinks his toothy smile is charming, but I feel like throwing up right before I drive the heel of my combat boot smack into his arrogant face.

  “You think I’m going to cooperate with you?” I growl. Then, through a wave of choked tears I can’t hold back, I shout, “You killed Brohn!” I’m trembling with rage, and my throat feels like sandpaper on fire.

  Squinting, Ekker seems confused for a second before a glinting look of realization illuminates his eyes. “Oh. I didn’t kill him, Kress. I just shot him. It was only ten or twelve armor-piercing bullets to the chest. One of the most lethal projectiles in our military arsenal. Nothing a tough guy like Brohn can’t handle.”

  “You murdering piece of shi—"

  My fury gives way to startled relief at the gasp I hear across from me. It’s Brohn. He’s lifting his head up and choking himself into consciousness like an exhausted deep-sea swimmer finally coming up for air.

  “What the—?”

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” Ekker says as he heads toward the door, an annoying sparkle of amusement in his eye. “I get the feeling you two kids have a lot to talk about.”

  15

  “Brohn?”

  With a groan, Brohn lifts his head. He looks across at me, then turns his attention to his blood-stained chest.

  “You’re okay!” I squeal.

  Brohn looks up at me again and forces a frail smile. “I’m alive. I think. But I wouldn’t call what I’m feeling ‘okay.’”

  “But...you got, you know…shot.”

  “Oh. That would explain the blood. And the pain.”

  “It hurts?”

  Brohn moans, “Uh-huh. A lot, now that you mention it.”

  At the moment, I’m too immersed in a combination of laughing and crying to sympathize. “Forget that,” I yelp. “You’re alive!”

  Brohn wriggles his fingers and then lifts his hands, turning them back and forth in front of his face like he�
��s inspecting them. “I’m alive. Not sure how.” He slips a hand under his shirt and skims his fingers across his chest. “Great,” he says. “I’m dented.”

  “What?”

  Brohn pulls up his shirt to reveal a cluster of shallow, red-rimmed pits in his muscular abs and pecs. “I’m dented. I’ve got dents in my chest. I feel like a golf ball.” He withdraws his hand and inspects his fingertips. “Blood. But I don’t think there are any actual wounds.”

  “How is that—?”

  “I think they healed. How long have I been out?” Brohn takes a good look around: at me, at the empty white room, at the transparent globe we’re floating in. “How long have we been in…this thing?”

  “It’s some kind of grav-cell. They call it ‘the Marble.’ And we haven’t been in here long enough for you to heal from a dozen bullet wounds to the chest.”

  “Did you…were you conscious this whole time?”

  “No,” I admit. “But it doesn’t feel like it could be more than a couple of hours or so since Ekker cornered us in that alley. The blood on your shirt doesn’t even look like it’s all the way dry yet.”

  “Then we have a mystery on our hands.”

  “More than one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ekker was in here.”

  “The Patriot general who shot me?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Frowning, Brohn rubs a hand across his chest. “Remind me to have a chat with him about that sometime.”

  “He’s going to take us somewhere. Do something to us. I’m not sure what. But it doesn’t sound like it’s for our own good.”

  Brohn looks around. “We’re floating.”

  “It’s some kind of gravitational cocoon.”

  Brohn kicks his legs back and forth a little. “Neat,” he says, his amused grin dropping quickly into an irritated frown. “But kind of awful at the same time.”