by K A Riley
“Wisp says it’s okay,” Brohn tells me as he sits down on the edge of my bed. “She says you and Render already got us more intel than she and Granden know what to do with. She says thanks to you, we know more about the Patriot Army and their facilities than they do!”
“And you?” I ask. “How’s life after death?”
Brohn shrugs again. “I’m not traumatized if that’s what you mean. My chest is still a little numb, but otherwise—”
“Otherwise, our friend here is totally bullet-proof,” Cardyn gushes. He leans over my bed to give Brohn a big hug around his neck, which Brohn gags at before pushing Cardyn away.
“Now, if only I was Cardyn-proof,” Brohn grumbles, rubbing his neck where our enthusiastic friend nearly choked him out.
“They know?” I ask.
“Unfortunately.”
Rain gives Brohn a pretend scowl, crosses her arms, and stomps her foot. “’Unfortunately?’ We’ve known each other all these years, and it never occurred to you to mention that you were indestructible?”
“I’m hardly indestructible,” Brohn objects as Rain tries to contain the grin pulling at the corners of her mouth. “Getting shot like that hurt like hell. Besides, I didn’t know for sure myself until Ekker shot me point-blank in the chest and knocked me out cold. Not exactly the most pleasant way to go about learning something new about yourself.”
“I didn’t get a chance to ask before,” I say, looking over to Rain. “How’d you all find us anyway? Olivia?”
Rain squints and gives the tiniest shake of her head. “We didn’t know you were missing at first. Wisp discovered the comm-link was down. She and Granden were trying to get it back up so they could reach you. And Olivia can’t access most of the Patriot security protocols anyway.”
“So how—?”
“A bunch of us heard you in our heads.” Cardyn nods at this bit of information and taps his fingertip to his temple while offering up a wry smile as Rain continues to explain. “Wisp thought she was imagining it. Cardyn here thought maybe he was going crazy.”
“Not a long trip,” Brohn quips.
Cardyn says, “Hey!” and Brohn offers up an exaggerated apology before Rain goes on.
“Manthy was the one who figured out what was happening. She said this telempathy thing you have is…well, it’s growing.”
“She called it a spider web,” Cardyn adds.
“Right,” Rain says. “‘Intricate, delicate, powerful, and a great conveyor of information to and from its source.’ Those are her words, not mine. I’m not sure how it happened, but I don’t think we found you at all. I think maybe somehow you reached out and found us.”
Cardyn makes a creepy, wriggly spider-like motion with his fingers. “We were just responding to vibrations from your web.”
Rain gives him a sisterly whack with the back of her hand. “Get serious. This could have turned out a lot worse.”
“What about this stuff?” I ask, running my finger along the cold metallic plates and filaments covering much of Render’s body. “He won’t be able to fly.”
“The body armor is super-lightweight,” Rain explains. “It’s a synth-titanium, carbon, and polished glass alloy with a specially-enhanced tungsten polymer. Light as a spider web. Similar to the material viz-screens and holo-displays are coated with. Only Caldwell says it’s even better.”
“His own invention,” Cardyn adds.
Rain nods her agreement as she continues to pet Render, who coos appreciatively. “It won’t stop bullets or anything like Brohn here, but, in time, he might be able to fly in it. As for the rest, like Cardyn says, Manthy’s been kind of tight-lipped about how the new tech will work with the stuff he already had.”
“So, they turned him into a Modified,” I point out.
“I suppose so,” Rain says slowly. “But as Olivia will be the first to tell you, being a Modified isn’t always a curse. And it doesn’t mean Render’s life is lost. Being a Modified is just another way of being in the world.”
“Why don’t you try connecting with him?” Brohn suggests.
I tell Brohn that he read my mind. Placing Render gently at the foot of the bed, I sit up all the way, kick my covers off, and swing my feet down to the floor. Brohn stands up first, and, with a grunt, I follow. I roll up my sleeves and say, “Okay. Let’s give it a try,” as I swipe my tattoos to initiate the connection. It’s hard at first, like Render is sleeping or resisting me. After a few seconds, though, the connection engages, and our minds and perceptions intertwine.
The pain that rips through me is so intense it almost feels like pleasure. But it’s not. A bolt of lightning burrows into my neck just below my skull and shoots down my back and into both legs. I gasp and start to fall over, but Brohn catches me. He says, “Whoa” as I fall into his arms, grateful he’s so strong.
Cardyn and Rain rush to my side as well. It takes me a second, but I’m able to keep my balance and work through the blurry haze that’s flooded the room as the pain passes and settles into a kind of dull ache I can feel in my bones.
“Are you okay?” Cardyn asks.
I tell him I am as he and Brohn guide me back down to my bed next to Render, who’s sitting there as warm and still as a loaf of black bread. When I put my arm around him, he offers a whimpering kraa of gratitude.
Over in the doorway to the bathroom, Manthy is looking on, but when she sees me catching a glimpse of her, she quickly averts her eyes.
Brohn puts a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Cardyn and I are about to meet Granden upstairs to conduct another round of training. We don’t have much time left, and we need to be sure everyone knows the plan and how to play their part. We’re going to conduct a few practice runs, take them through a few more simulations, give them some last-minute target practice. Besides, not all of us can afford to lie around all day, you know. Are you ready to go?”
“I’m not sure I can do this,” I tell the others. “I’m glad Render’s going to be okay, but without him…”
“You’re not without him,” Brohn says. “You’re with him.”
“According to Manthy,” Cardyn adds, “you might even be more with him than before.”
I look over to Manthy, who has now walked back into our main sleeping area and is easing herself into her bed. She moans with the effort, and I know how much doing what she did for Render must have exhausted her. “Manthy,” I call over to her. “Is that true?”
She gives me a dismissive shrug before turning her back to us and curling herself into a ball under the white sheet and green army blanket covering her bed.
“What’s wrong?” Brohn asks me. “And don’t say it’s just Render. I can tell you’re worried about more than him. Is it the mission coming up?”
I tell him, “Kind of” and slump forward, my arms dangling loosely over my knees. “I don’t know. I mean, you nearly got killed. I thought you were killed. Then Render gets shot and nearly killed. There’s no telling what would’ve happened to you and me if the others hadn’t broken us out of there. And here we are, happy and treating this situation like it’s normal while we’re talking about preparing a bunch of kids to take on an army.”
“It’s just a little army,” Cardyn reassures me.
“Thanks. That’s helpful.”
“I know what Kress means,” Rain says. “We’re about to do something that’s equal parts brave, important, and stupid. We’re only seventeen years old. A lot of the Insubordinates are our age or even younger.”
“Well,” Brohn says in what’s turning into his trademark baritone drawl. “We can give up, or we can grow up.”
“We’ve never given up before,” Cardyn reminds us. He drops down to his knees with his elbows on my bed and reaches over to give Render’s head a gentle pat. “Even when we probably should have.”
I tell Cardyn “Thanks,” and then I thank the others as well. “Seriously. I can’t imagine a better family to have. Or a better bunch of warriors to fight alongside of.”
/> With Manthy still curled up under her bedding, the others join me in a deep group hug at the edge of my bed.
The camaraderie of the moment is destroyed, however, as Wisp bursts into the room with Granden hot on her heels.
Startled, we all look up to see her looking frantic and anxious.
“Render’s okay,” Brohn tells her.
“Glad to hear it,” she calls out, “but we can’t celebrate just yet.”
“What is it?”
“Right after she finished helping with Render, Olivia tapped into an unscrambled communiqué over an unsecured network. It’s Ekker. He tracked us down. And he’s on his way here.”
19
“On his way here?” Brohn echoes his little sister. “But how did he find us?”
“We can figure that out another time. Right now, we’re going on Full Eclipse!”
“Full Eclipse?”
“Lockdown. Concealment Mode. Total camouflage. Come on!”
Beckoning frantically, Wisp and Granden cry out for us to follow them from our dorm room out into the hall, which we do in a rush with even Manthy flinging off her sheets and sprinting along.
I scoop Render up from my bed and cradle him in my arms baby-style and try not to jostle him too much as I run. I wince, and in a flash, even without being connected through the tech in my arms, I’m feeling his pain and his fear through our telempathic link. I don’t know if he’s sensing my own distress, reacting to Wisp’s and Granden’s feverish anxiety, or if his heightened senses have alerted him to something else entirely, but he’s overwhelmed by his near-death experience and by the life-saving surgery he just went through.
“Take it easy,” I whisper down to him as we burst into the hallway. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Wisp and Granden bolt down the hall, banging on each dorm room door along the way. Wisp slaps her hand against an input panel on the wall between two of the rooms toward the middle of the hall, and the purplish ceiling lights turn into a silently strobing red.
“Everyone follow us downstairs to the Intel Room!” Wisp and Granden cry out as the Insubordinates bound out of their rooms, stumbling over each other like puppies in a panic.
With us right behind them and with the confused Insubordinates right behind us, Wisp and Granden race one flight down on thundering feet to the fourth floor and straight to Olivia’s Intel Room, where Wisp pauses at the door to usher all of us in.
Once inside, Rain looks baffled and doesn’t answer when Cardyn, shuffling around on nervous feet, keeps asking her what’s happening. Likewise, the Insubordinates are abuzz with questions, none of which gets answered, and Brohn and I have to explain that we’re as in the dark as they are.
With more than fifty us now crammed into the Intel Room, Granden sprints over to an input panel on the far wall near where Olivia still sits at her console, somehow relaxed and unshaken amid the chaos of the moment. Granden’s fingers are a flurry on the scrolling red holo-code projected from the panel into the air just in front of it.
“Full Eclipse!” he barks out to Olivia over the buzz and hum of the rest of us who are milling around, shoulder to shoulder, scared and very much on edge.
Olivia says, “Initiated,” and, immediately, a square of light appears toward the bottom of the wall behind her. Before our eyes, a panel slides open to reveal a small, square-shaped crawlspace, not more than four feet high and four feet across.
Wisp leaps up onto the black glass conference table in the middle of the room, cups her hands on either side of her mouth, and shouts for everyone to follow Granden into the low, dark duct. “We’re about to be raided,” she cries. “Ekker and the Patriot Army are on their way here right now!”
“How’d they find us?” one of the Insubordinates calls out.
“We don’t know. And we don’t have time to find out or to get out of the Style.”
“Then what—?”
“We have passageways in this building,” Wisp says pointing to the small opening behind Olivia. “Granden will lead you to our Safe Rooms!”
“In there?” Cardyn asks, coming to a complete stop even as the Insubordinates surge past him on Wisp’s orders and begin to duck one at a time into the shadowy crawlspace. “We’re supposed to go in there? It looks like a hot air vent to Hell.”
“Just go!” Wisp barks.
Thinning out from a crunched-together herd to a single-file line, the Insubordinates continue to follow Granden and each other into the opening.
With Render in one hand and with Brohn holding my other hand, I start to head toward the opening along with Manthy, Cardyn, and Rain but Wisp stops Manthy with a hand on her upper arm.
“I may need you here,” she says to Manthy. “For help with surveillance.”
Manthy pauses for a second then shakes her head and starts to follow the jostling, stooped-down line of Insubordinates.
“Please?” Wisp calls to her, and Manthy stops in her tracks. “We’ll be safe here. But we need to see what’s happening outside, and our surveillance systems keep going on and off-line.”
Manthy looks from Wisp to me and back before finally saying, “Okay. But I want Kress to stay with me.”
Wisp hesitates but finally agrees.
“And I need Brohn with me,” I say.
“And if Ekker’s really coming here, I’ve got a score to settle with him,” Brohn snarls.
“We’re not going in there without them,” Rain insists as she gestures over to where the last of the Insubordinates are disappearing into the opening. “We’ve been split apart too much lately, and we don’t work without each other.”
“Plus, it looks really scary,” Cardyn quips.
Wisp frowns and insists there won’t be room for all of us in the Intel Room after it’s converted.
“Not enough space?” I ask, looking around at the large room, now liberated from the throng of the nearly fifty people who were just in here.
“Converted?” Rain asks.
“I’ll show you.” As the doorway to the small portal zips seamlessly shut, Wisp bounds over to the end of the table where Olivia has her monitoring station. With Olivia’s help, she activates a series of high-tech security protocols as a detailed holo-schematic of the Style materializes in shimmering red and yellow above the black mirrored table.
“This isn’t just any old building,” Wisp tells me. “We’ve had it outfitted with some special tricks in case we ever get discovered and can’t get everyone out in time. Top-secret. Even the Insubordinates don’t know about it. Although they’re about to find out. We’re all going for a little ride.”
As she’s talking, the floating image of the Style begins to shift and transform before our eyes. We all look around as we pick up a sound coming from behind the walls and seemingly from within the ceilings and floors, themselves. It’s a hum of gears and machinery in motion. The sound is powerful but smooth, and I imagine a benevolent giant breathing evenly in his sleep behind the walls. It reminds me of the Agora in the middle of the Processor and the way Granden and Trench used to reconfigure the huge field into battlefield simulations, war games obstacles, firing ranges, martial arts combat facilities, or whatever was needed for our training at any given time.
Wisp explains to us how Olivia controls some impressive tech buried in the walls of the old building. “She’s integrated into this place like any system. Plumbing. Electrical. Communication. Cybernetic. But she’s a lot more important and much easier to talk to than any of those.”
“I’m more than just a pretty face,” Olivia jokes, her slender tendrils dancing along her monitors and slipping into the three spheres floating around her head.
Olivia explains that she’s hiding our heat signatures and activating ambient noise dampeners while reconfiguring the interior of the very building itself to conceal certain rooms.
We’re all riveted to the glowing red and yellow image above the reflective black glass, and I’m vaguely aware I have my mouth hanging open. I’ve never seen
anything like this. The transformation is miraculous. On the detailed schematic, walls drop down, floors slide over, whole rooms rotate and realign, and the collection of cube-shaped rooms making up the interior of the building turns and shuffles and reconfigures. The outside of the building is still the same boxy, five-story rectangle. But inside, the rooms, hallways, and stairways, have all been changed and shifted around.
Here in the Intel Room, walls descend around Olivia’s monitors and the glass table, and the ceiling drops down to just above our heads to form a smaller room, a closet really, with the seven of us, plus Render, packed in tight, our bodies pressed against the edges of the oval table.
Instinctively and with my stomach in a knot, I reach out for Brohn’s arm as the room trembles and begins to slide sideways and then down. Brohn puts his hand on mine as Cardyn and Rain grab onto each other and onto the edge of the table.
“Where are the others in all this?” I ask, my attention still focused on the shifting image of the Style while I concentrate on not throwing up.
Wisp points to three cube-shaped rooms currently on the move. “Those are the three Safe Rooms. They’re locked, stocked, and shielded from scans.”
One of the rooms is shifting from the third floor up to the fifth. Another is sliding down to the second floor. The third room does a zig-zag before settling between another room and an exterior wall on the first floor. As each room moves, it’s replaced by an identical but completely empty one.
More than just cleaned and cleared out, Olivia has reconfigured the entire building like a giant version of the sliding transfer-conversion puzzle I used to play with in my dad’s lab when I was little. Only that puzzle turned from a boat into a robot and into a dragon from its original shape, which my dad explained was a “sixty-two-faced truncated icosidodecahedron.” The Style has turned into an empty version of itself. There are rooms where none were before, and other rooms are being flipped around and hidden from view throughout the bowels of the building.
Wisp points at the schematic as the building completes its final transformation. “Everyone’s divided up among these three rooms. The Modifieds. The Insubordinates. Everyone. They’re Safe Rooms. Like panic rooms. Like us, Granden and the others will be tucked away behind empty dummy rooms and concealed from scanners while we monitor the situation from here.”
