New Alcatraz (Book 2): Golden Dawn

by Grant Pies

  “There?” Ransom echoed. “Where is that? Where are you proposing to stay? The place Grandpa claims he went as a little kid? The place Dad ran off to when we were young?”

  “Yes!” Merit answered defiantly. “Wherever that is. Dad thought it existed. He was brave enough to go looking for it.”

  “Brave? Dad wasn’t brave. He was an idiot, Merit,” Ransom said with a loud laugh. He couldn’t believe Merit didn’t realize that. “Dad was a self-centered asshole! He didn’t care about you or me. He didn’t care about Mom. You need to accept that. He isn’t here. You don’t have to keep trying to impress him by finding some place that he couldn’t.”

  Merit just shook his head. Maybe he wasn’t ready to admit his father’s failings just yet, even after all of these years. He stood in the doorway, and neither brother spoke for a full minute.

  “Maybe he didn’t fail,” Merit said. “Maybe he found something out there.”

  “So you would rather believe he was successful and just didn’t care enough to come back for us then?” Ransom laughed. “Cuz those are your only options. He was either a failure on every level and died out in the wasteland, or he was the biggest piece of shit ever, living it up in some cozy underground building right now. Which scenario makes him out to be a better person?”

  “What about Higgs, huh?” Merit countered.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s sick,” Merit said. “It’s something we’ve never seen before. He sweats so much that he soaks through several blankets. He has these coughing fits, and he wakes up not knowing where he is or who he is. It’s bad, Ransom. What if it spreads?” Merit asked. “What if this doesn’t go away like the other sicknesses we’ve seen? There are medicines at this place. They could heal Higgs.”

  “So now you want to save Higgs?” Ransom asked. “Now you want to go to this unknown place, find some unknown medicine, and come back. Just a minute ago you wanted everyone to go there and stay. Which is it, Merit? Why not go on your own? Take a few gullible individuals and march them out in the cold to die.”

  “No one will go if you don’t go with them, Ransom. You know that,” Merit said. He sounded defeated. “You’ve been farther out than anyone else here, and that comforts people. I can’t get a group to go if you’re not in it.”

  “I was stupid enough to go out looking for Dad the morning he left. The only smart thing I did was turn around once his footprints were covered with snow. I have no special knowledge, and you know that.”

  Ransom took his shirt off, flung it onto the ground, and cupped water from a bowl into his hands. He rinsed his forearms off and scrubbed his hands together, rubbing small patches of tree sap on his skin until they were gone.

  “I know that, but everyone else doesn’t. They think you’re being humble, or trying to protect them.”

  Ransom splashed water on his face and scrubbed his short beard with his palms.

  “Well, bring ’em to me, brother. I’ll tell them they’re wrong. I don’t care that much to protect them, and I’ve never been any good at humility.” Ransom rubbed his wet hands in his armpits. “I’m sorry about Higgs, but until whatever he’s got spreads, I’m not gonna panic. If you want to go live underground, then you go out there and do it. I’m staying here.”

  His brother looked away. There was a silence before he nodded at Aurora and opened the door to leave.

  “Okay, Ransom. But if we wait until we have no choice but to venture out there, it will already be too late. You think about that. You might not think Dad was brave, but at least he had foresight.”

  Merit walked out into the cold night air and shut the door behind him.

  CHAPTER 14

  2075

  OUTSIDE FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA

  The train continued beyond Flagstaff, and halted at a small station in the middle of nowhere. The hissing brakes and loud automatic doors jolted me from a shallow sleep. A recorded voice announced that the train was at the end of the line, and all passengers were to exit. I lifted my head from the the small bag I took from my old apartment to see Vesa waiting by the open train doors.

  “C’mon,” she said.

  I stood, stretched, and ran my hands through my hair.

  “Where are we exactly?” I asked and rubbed my eyes.

  The train terminal was like a time capsule untouched by present society. Worn-out advertisement posters for obsolete products hung on the walls. Clusters of trash blew around the scuffed tile floor. Several cracked and broken skylights rested precariously in the high ceiling, letting birds in to make the station their home and cover the floor underneath with droppings.

  “We’re outside Flagstaff. This used to be a busy train terminal, but just about everyone moved away from here toward the city. It’s only a matter of time until they stop train service here entirely.”

  Vesa’s voice echoed around the terminal. Outdated eateries were abandoned. The glass counters that used to hold various food items were empty. The sun dipped below the horizon; soon there would be no light left for me to see the old station. Something about the emptiness made me uneasy. The stillness of the place carried with it the sense of an impending ambush. I reached into my waistband and pulled my pistol out, gripping the handle, but keeping my finger off the trigger.

  “There’s no need for that,” Vesa told me. “There’s no one here, at least no one that would care about you. The further out you get from the city, the less nosy people become. The less they care about what you’re doing, so long as you aren’t a threat to them.”

  Still, I kept the gun down at my side, the barrel pointed at the ground. We walked aimlessly, wandering in different directions, but I kept Vesa in my sights.

  “That may be true. But if you’re right, and the further we get from the cities the more people want to be left alone, how far out from the city do we need to travel before people start to become hostile?” I asked.

  “I haven’t gone far enough out yet to feel like I was in danger. I’ll let you know when I do though,” Vesa replied, but she didn’t look back at me.

  She walked through the rows of seats bolted to the ground. At some point in time, people waited here patiently for the train to come and take them to the city. Beyond the chairs was a wall of glass that looked out over the desert. Towering rock spires jutted up from the ground and glowed orange and red in the fading sunlight. They pointed into the evening sky, as evidence of the earth trying its best to reach beyond itself. To escape its own limitations. In between the hills and plateaus in the distance was a lone paved road twisting through valleys and carving through the open desert plain in front of us.

  Vesa walked through a door in the back corner of the station. I followed her to a short paved area that eventually stopped and abutted the coarse, orange gravel of the desert.

  “I’ve got a feeling this station isn’t our final destination, is it?” I asked, finally placing the gun back in my waistband in preparation for the walk ahead of us.

  I followed Vesa down an old cracked highway. The road zigzagged through kilometers of nothing. The sky over us was a deep blue, or a dark purple. The last remnants of daylight stretched over the horizon. The sky looked like a dark dome over us, and the stars were tiny punctures letting in light. I couldn’t help but reminisce about my time spent in New Alcatraz many years ago.

  My feet shuffled on the desert road rather than lifting up for each step. I knew we weren’t near our final destination because Vesa wandered with little purpose. A gentle breeze blew through the desert and brushed against my skin. Soon we would be exposed to the cold night air, and I once again found myself envious of Vesa’s hooded sweater.

  “So I know we weren’t supposed to ask,” I began. I spoke loudly because she walked far ahead of me. “But the chip.” I paused but Vesa didn’t slow down or look back. “What’s that all about?”

  “Who are you?” was her response. She was looking at me now. I didn’t know how to answer. Such a simple question could result in so many answe
rs.

  “Powell,” I said sarcastically, smirking. “Nice to meet you.”

  Vesa rolled her eyes. Even she must have known how broad her question was. At least my question was a touch more specific.

  “Okay. Powell. What I mean is what makes you ‘you’?” Vesa turned back away from me and kept walking.

  Her feet clapped against the broken pavement. The sun had since disappeared, but its heat still emanated from the ground and filled the night air. In the distance, coyotes howled and cackled, roaming at a distance and probably hoping we were lost or injured. They would wait for us to pass out from dehydration, hoping it would happen before the sun came back up, so they could beat the vultures to our corpses.

  “You,” Vesa said. “Me, you, whoever. What makes us who we are? Is it something outside of us? Like our family?” Vesa waved her arms out around her. Visions of my mom and dad flashed through my brain. Our home in Buford. Ashton, where my parents attempted to take some bit of control back from the government, where my dad sacrificed himself for my mother. And the warehouse in Phoenix, where my mom sacrificed herself for me.

  “I doubt that,” I told her.

  “Okay, then it’s something within us. Our thoughts? Our memories? Our bodies? What do you think?”

  In the distance, a reflection shimmered in the hills, a distinct flash of light. Vesa didn’t react to the light. The bag I carried didn’t have much in it, but it grew heavy on my shoulders and pulled me downward. I reached in and pulled out another orange, digging my fingers into its skin and exposing the bright fruit inside. The sweet scent of the orange lingered around me, filling the air and wafting into my nostrils, dried up from the desert air. Vesa turned and looked at me holding the fruit. I pulled a wedge from the orange and extended it out to her. She slowed her pace, grabbed it from me, and continued to walk beside me.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and threw another wedge of orange in my mouth. The juices burst and filled the dried crevices of my tongue. The oranges Rose grew were illegal, but they were the best I had ever tasted. “Yeah, I guess my thoughts and beliefs make me ‘me’.”

  “This is amazing!” Vesa said through a mouthful of orange. The juice dripped out of her mouth and down her chin. I nodded in agreement and handed her another wedge. “Thanks,” she said.

  Just ahead of us, closer than before, the flashlight blinked again. This time it moved from the hills and was directly in front of us. I popped the last orange wedge in my mouth, and reached back to draw my pistol. My fingers were sticky from the orange, and they clung to the pistol grip.

  “Don’t worry,” Vesa said, and placed a hand gently on my arm that carried the pistol. “He’s a friend.”

  She jogged ahead toward the light and it began to blink rapidly. Eventually, Vesa was far enough away that I only saw her silhouette each time the light flashed around her. I tucked the gun back into my waistband and took off after her. When I reached her, I saw that her friend was a man with a flashlight. Vesa jumped forward and wrapped her arms and legs around him.

  The man had blonde hair down to his chin. He was tanned, and wore a tank top shirt that clung to his muscular, but not bulky, frame. A rifle was slung over his shoulder. The two of them held onto each other for longer than normal. Eventually, Vesa climbed down from him and stood on the hot dry ground. The man’s smile faded once he looked at me. Our eyes met, and he stepped back. Vesa stood between us and I waited for her to introduce me.

  “Finn,” she said. “This is Powell. Powell, Finn.” She motioned back and forth between us. Finn looked me up and down, his face tense. “He helped me get out of the city. I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for him.”

  Finn’s face relaxed only a little. I extended my hand toward him as a sign of goodwill. Slowly, he took it.

  “So you brought him all the way here?” Finn said, still gripping my hand and looking me in the eyes. His grip was firm, and his hands were calloused.

  “He didn’t have a choice but to run once he helped me. I couldn’t just leave him. Not after what he did for me.” Vesa shrugged. Finn dropped my hand and looked over his shoulder as Vesa walked away towards an old beaten down motel. The sign had long since rusted and fallen over. But lights were still lit in several rooms, including the main office.

  “Plus,” Vesa called back as she strode ahead, “I think he could be useful. And I’m pretty sure he knows at least one of us already.”

  CHAPTER 15

  2075

  GRAY MOUNTAIN, ARIZONA

  I ran after Vesa, leaving Finn standing in the middle of the cracked and broken road. She made it to the motel ahead of me. I could see that at one time in its history, the place was painted pink, but now the paint was mostly gone. The exposed wood had crumbled in the dry desert heat, and what was left of the shutters on the windows hung at skewed angles dangling in the breeze. Cracked cement planters overgrown with tall weeds lined the parking lot.

  Another man stood outside one of the rooms holding a loosely-rolled cigarette between his lips, and puffing smoke out the side of his mouth. Hanging loose at his hips was an old leather gun holster, stained and tarnished by years of sweat and abuse. It held a six-shooter pistol. As I ran toward Vesa, the man looked at me and grinned. His hand rested on the gun in his holster.

  “Vesa,” I shouted. “Wait up. Vesa!”

  She never turned around but kept walking toward the main office of the old motel. An unlit neon sign that read “No Vacancy” hung in the window. As I got closer to the buildings, I saw that most of the windows were broken and curtains billowed out through the gaps in the glass, like ghosts trying to escape.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “What do you mean, I know one of you already?”

  She wore a smirk that seemed unnatural, like she hadn’t made that face in a long time.

  “You know, I never finished explaining to you why this chip is important.” She gripped the bag around her chest. “If you think your thoughts or beliefs make you ‘you’, then do you think you could change it? Or extract it?”

  We reached the door to the motel office and went inside. The door was light, probably rotting from the inside out. Inside, the furniture appeared to be from the forties. Fifties at the latest. The entire place smelled burnt, like a candle was blown out just before we came in. A thin woman, bordering on malnourished, with ragged clothes stood at the counter.

  “Are they in the back?” Vesa asked without stopping. The woman nodded.

  I followed Vesa past the front desk and into an office in the back. Weapons of all sorts hung on the walls—rifles, pistols, and shotguns on one wall, and hand grenades and miniature electromagnetic pulse bombs on another. In the corner was a machine gun mounted on a tripod with a string of bullets hanging out of the side of it.

  “If we can isolate what makes us ‘us’ then maybe we could extract it. And if we can extract it, then maybe we can move it,” Vesa said, offering no explanation of the weaponry on the walls. Beyond the makeshift armory, Vesa entered a staircase that zigzagged down a few stories, though not nearly as deep as the many vaults operated by the Ministry of Science.

  “Vesa!” I said and stopped her in the middle of the staircase. “I don’t want a long, drawn out explanation. I don’t want a riddle. I don’t want you to answer my questions with more questions!” My voice echoed. A single door waited for us at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Powell,” Vesa said. Her voice was calm and subdued. Her smirk gone, she looked me straight in the eyes. “I am giving you this explanation because I have been in your shoes. If I answer only the questions you ask, then you will never really know what we are doing here. You will never understand completely why this”—she grabbed the strap of her bag—“is important.”

  “I just…,” I said in a quieter tone to match hers. I leaned against the wall of the stairwell. The events of the last thirty-six hours had caught up to me. “I just want to know what I’ve gotten myself into. I think I’ve earned some answers.” I w
as exhausted. From the running. From the lack of sleep. From the hiding. But mostly from the lack of information. The lack of a plan, or at least one that I knew of, forced my mind to anticipate every possible scenario and outcome. My brain was in a constant holding pattern, waiting for one of the possible outcomes to become a reality.

  Below both of us, the sound of a deadbolt unlatching came from the other side of the door. Vesa looked down the stairs and then back at me.

  “I told you, Powell, this is a processor chip. It belongs in a device that we have been working on for a long time. A device that could change everything. One Wayfield Industries has been trying to build for decades, and they aren’t even close.” The door gradually opened and a figure stood in the doorway. “And this processor is the last piece we need to finish the device.” The person at the bottom of the stairs moved a few steps closer. “As for who I think you may know from our group, I will let you meet him for yourself.”

  A light flicked on in the stairway. Vesa locked her eyes on me, waiting to see my reaction. I looked down the stairs. In the doorway was a person I had not seen in years. It was not actually a person at all. It was an android. Unit 5987D. Or as I knew him, Whitman. The last android I ever represented as a member of the Android Representation Counsel. My final lost case before I was arrested and shipped off to New Alcatraz.

  My legs grew weak, and I slid down the wall. I sat on the stairs and stared at an android that was decommissioned five years ago. An android who I saw underground in New Alcatraz, and whose nanobots I injected into my arm.

  “How?” was all I could force out of my mouth.

  “Hello, Powell,” Whitman said in the same soothing tone that I remembered from his trial. “I am afraid I may have perjured myself during my trial, counselor.”

  CHAPTER 16

  5280

  NEW ALCATRAZ

  The next day, Ransom stood in the open air of the forest. Flakes of snow fluttered down and dusted his shoulders. A stillness sat in the air. His breath billowed out of his mouth. It was colder than usual, he thought to himself, but then he quickly pushed the thought from his mind to stop from sounding like his father. The town was already panicked enough.