by C. A. Gray
“And my blood’s the wrong type,” Rick added.
My brain spun. Rebecca was shot? I couldn’t process all this—it all started to sound like words without meaning. Just as I felt myself sinking away into oblivion, I heard Rebecca’s voice again, speaking to the others and sounding very far away. “Francis is fading fast. How long before we get back to the compound?”
The compound, I thought. No no no. You can’t take me there! Didn’t they realize that if I had the surgery already, they would have given me a new A.E. chip also? Didn’t they realize the Silver Six would track me, and find the compound, and destroy it?
I had to tell them. I had to warn them…
I managed to make my mouth move, but all that came out was another groan. My tongue felt like a dead fish in my mouth, cold and squishy and useless.
Then everything went silent again.
Chapter 24: Rebecca
“Keep pressure here,” Hepzibah scolded me, taking my own hand and pressing it against the seeping wound of my shoulder. She’d packed the wound with gauze, but still it bled, saturating the dark blue scrub top. I did as she commanded, feeling lightheaded and weak, but mostly numb. Numb emotionally, numb physically. I stroked Liam’s hair and watched him for any change, periodically crawling back over to check on Francis too. He looked dreadful, but still retained his barbed tongue. Madeline, who had been on the hovercraft with Francis and Rick during the escape, stroked my arm sympathetically.
“He will be okay,” she assured me as I hovered over Liam. “I know he will.”
In the past, I might have found this reassuring, but I knew that she was only telling me what she thought I wanted to hear. They were just empty words.
“Liam,” I whispered, my lips inches from his ear. “Liam, if you can hear me—fight. Please, fight. Come back to me.”
When he didn’t stir, I crawled back over to Francis, who was half propped up on the wall of the hovercraft and half on one elbow, shirtless and covered in gauze. He hovered over a netscreen.
“Stop it! You’ll overexert yourself,” I snapped at him, reaching to shut the cover of his netscreen. But he managed to scoot it away from me. I wasn’t very fast at the moment either.
“You’re such… a nag,” he panted. “I’m trying to see… what they did to him.”
“It appears that they infused him with synthetic mitochondria nanobots,” Hepzibah announced.
Francis and I met one another’s eyes—the phrase nagged at me, and I tried to recall why it sounded so familiar, and what the significance was. But Francis looked even more ill than he had before.
“What does that mean?” I demanded. “Why do you look like that?”
Francis panted for a few seconds before he answered me, closing his eyes as if to gather his strength. “That’s… the same surgery that killed Alessandra… the first,” he gasped. “And also… the target of the virus we built against the Silver Six. If he doesn’t die from the nanobots… he will when we… deploy… the virus.”
All I could do was stare at Francis. It was probably good that I was already numb. Madeline patted my arm uselessly. One thought made its way into my brain: I have to tell Mom. I reached for the netscreen again, and while Francis tried to keep it from me, I won this time.
I accessed the Commune, and found Mom’s name. She was online, thankfully.
Me: Mom, it’s Rebecca. We—Rick, Francis, Liam, and I—are heading back to the compound on the hovercraft. We managed to rescue Liam, but we were too late—the surgery already happened. He’s alive for now, but Hepzibah is still trying to stabilize him. Francis and I both got shot. I’m fine, but I think Francis has lost a lot of blood—
I accidentally sent it at this point, before I’d finished the rest of my thought. Mom wrote back while I was still typing. She’d be furious with me later, but one thing was true about Mom: she knew how to prioritize.
Karen: Rebecca! You were shot??? Where? How much blood have you lost?
Me: I’m not the issue, Mom, I’m fine. But Hepzibah won’t let me donate to Francis because I lost enough blood myself that I apparently can’t spare any, which means we’ll need someone else with O negative blood, or else the same type as Francis—Hepzibah says he’s AB positive— to donate some to him when we get to the compound. If nobody has the right type we’ll have to get someone from the Commune to come out—
Karen: I’m O negative as well. I’ll donate. And Liam? What was the surgery?
Me: That’s the other issue. They replaced his mitochondria with synthetic nanobots. Which means the virus we were creating against the Silver Six will kill him too. Dr St. Peters is on his way via Quantum Track with Val and Nilesh. When he arrives, tell him to work with Giovanni and Dr Yin to come up with a different target. Do NOT deploy the virus as is!
Karen: If he had the surgery, they will have given him a new A.E. chip too. You can’t bring him back to our compound until you can disable it, or they’ll find us.
I stared at Mom’s reply.
“What?” Francis croaked.
“He’ll have a new A.E. chip,” I repeated dully. “Liam. They’ll have installed a new one, either before or during the surgery.”
Rick, who had been hovering at the entrance to the cockpit but listening to our conversation, stared at me with widening eyes, and swore. “Which means they’re tracking us right now,” he murmured. “Probably the only reason they haven’t shot us down yet is because they want us to lead them to our compound! Hovercraft!” he commanded. “Reroute course. Fly north!”
“Wait, what?” I panicked, glancing at Francis, and wondering if he would survive a delay.
“Where would you like to go?” asked the tinny voice of the pilot bot, through the hovercraft speakers.
“I don’t know yet,” Rick muttered, glancing at us. “Where to, folks?”
“Hepzibah!” I nearly shouted, “is the new A.E. chip in Liam’s temple?” But I could tell at a glance that it wasn’t, even before Hepzibah said “It is not”—there was no new bandage or fresh wound there.
“It must be on his brainstem, then. Under that bandage on his neck,” Francis murmured.
“Can’t you just disable it like you did Alex’s?” I demanded.
“We could only do that because we could read off the LP address on the VMI image,” was Francis’s tight response. “We have no VMI here, and no printer to build one.”
“So what do we do?” When nobody replied, I remembered Mom. She always had an answer.
Me: The new chip isn’t in his temple, but he has a bandage on his neck. It must be on his brainstem, and we have no VMI to read the number in order to disable it. Now what?
Karen: You’ve got Francis, Liam, Rick, and Hepzibah with you, right?
Me: And Madeline. Yes.
There was a long pause.
Karen: Ask Madeline if she has the ability to jam a GPS signal.
My eyes widened and I turned to my friend. “Madeline! Do you know how to jam a GPS signal?”
Madeline seemed quite pleased to be included, and piped, “I can emit a continuous radio frequency, but I will need to know the frequency required in order to match the signal we are trying to block.”
I typed this back to Mom, who paused for a moment before typing her reply.
Karen: Tell her 1575 megahertz.
I told her this, and Madeline’s eyes went unfocused for a moment. Then she told me, “Emitting a 1575 megahertz frequency now.” I wrote Mom back and told her so.
Me: Is there any way to tell if it’s working?
Karen: Unfortunately, I have no way to check, since we’ve disabled all of our A.E. chips, as well as the one on the hovercraft—
Rebecca: But Madeline still has one! Check the Commune—the LP address listed next to my name from earlier is actually her. That’s how I communicated with her when she was still in Geneva.
There was another long pause.
Karen: Larissa is checking
to see if she can find Madeline’s A.E. chip. A few minutes later: No traces of Madeline currently. Tell her to stop emitting the signal briefly.
“Madeline, can you turn off the signal for a second?” I asked her.
“It is off!” she replied, eager to please.
I told Mom this, and waited.
Karen: We can find her now. Excellent, the jamming frequency works. But this means she’ll have to stay within 5-10 meters of Liam at all times. Also, when he comes to, he’ll know this, but still tell him that he has to stay off of the labyrinth. Anything he does can still be tracked and attributed to him; the Silver Six just won’t be able to find where he is.
Tears sprung to my eyes when I read ‘when he comes to.’ That meant she thought he would.
Karen: Now you need to find a place to drop off Liam and Madeline, somewhere that Madeline can be plugged in so she doesn’t run out of juice.
Me: Why can’t we just come back to the compound now?
Karen: It’s too risky. We can’t have Liam at the compound with a functioning A.E. chip, even if we are jamming the signal. Any slip-up, if he so much as goes to the bathroom while Madeline wanders too far off, and they could find us.
Rebecca: Then we’ll have to find someone on the Commune along the way who has a manufacturing printer so I can make another VMI machine.
There was another long pause. I knew Mom wasn’t going to like this. She wanted me back safe—regardless of what that meant for Liam. But at this point, after everything that had happened, I wasn’t going to just abandon him. Not when I could help. So I was stunned when I read what Mom wrote next.
Karen: I understand. Based on where we just registered Madeline’s A.E. chip, you’re currently flying over a rural part of Kentucky. There’s a Commune family by the name of Henderson, twenty miles outside of the nearest town. Marion Henderson says they do not have a printer, though. We will have to find a way to get one. Navigate to Marion’s A.E. chip—and she sent it over.
I shouted this to Rick, who in turn instructed our pilot bot where to go. I felt the change in acceleration as we rerouted our course and began our descent.
Karen: I told Marion that you and Liam are Mr. and Mrs. Travis Mason. Larissa has just created a bank account under your new name, with enough credit in it to purchase a printer. You will have to be the one to go into town to get it. I assume you have a good disguise?
Me: I have prosthetic theater makeup, yes.
Karen: Okay. Take the netscreen with you, of course, since we’ll have to disable the A.E. chip and figure out how to get you home, as soon as you have the LP address.
I shook my head in wonder. I’d expected a lecture, berating me for disobeying her orders and putting myself in danger, and demanding that I come home right that second, Liam be damned. But she was actually helping me. Francis was in no condition to help, so without Mom’s level-headedness and connections, I don’t know what we would have done. I certainly wasn’t in a position to come up with solutions.
Me: Thank you, Mom. Really.
Karen: You just come back to me, kiddo. Promise me.
Me: I promise.
Even though we both knew it wasn’t a promise that I could keep.
Chapter 25: Rebecca
The hovercraft landed in a clearing in the woods, which turned out to be essentially the driveway to a dilapidated house bearing rain damage and half-finished construction projects around its perimeter. The front yard was filled with various types of junk: rusted farm equipment and pieces of cars from the second age, mostly, as well as sun-faded plastic children’s toys amid overgrown weeds. But smoke puffed invitingly from the chimney, and an older man with a potbelly rushed out of the door to greet us, a young woman in an apron right behind him. The young woman’s eyes went wide.
“Paul Henderson?” Rick called out, approaching the older man on our behalf. They shook hands, and Rick gestured back at the hovercraft. “Thank you so much for your hospitality. We’ve got a stretcher, but I’ll need your help carrying Travis inside. Both of my other companions are also injured.”
“You betcha, you betcha,” Paul blustered, hurrying after Rick and inside the hovercraft. The young woman was right on his heels, and she locked eyes with me, where I hovered over Liam. She was about my age, maybe a bit younger, but looked as if she’d lived a very different sort of life from mine. Everything she wore was homespun, and I doubted if she’d used any makeup or had her hair styled in years. They were the typical rural unemployed: barely making ends meet since the bot takeover. Many of them had gone back to subsistence living, and this family looked like no exception.
“I’m Miriam,” she told me softly, “Paul is my papa. What happened to you?” Her eyes darted from Liam, whom Paul and Rick gently lifted onto the stretcher, then to my shoulder, and then to Francis, who lay motionless against the wall, watching us with strident breathing.
“Long story,” I told her, not sure how much of the truth to share. Surely they knew we were Renegades, but we were using fake names, so we weren’t supposed to tell them everything. Paul gave a mighty grunt when it came time to lift—I doubted he was in the best shape. I looked at Madeline.
“You stay right next to Liam at all times, never more than five meters away, okay?”
“I will!” she promised, and rolled alongside the stretcher, Hepzibah right behind her.
Miriam pointed at Francis, eyes wide.
“We only have one guest room. Is he staying with us too?”
I shook my head. “No. He needs blood. He and Rick will be headed to… a place where they can get some.”
“Your husband doesn’t look so good either,” said Miriam doubtfully, “are you sure he wouldn’t be better off at a hospital? And so might you, for that matter.” She glanced at my shoulder.
We would be, except that they’d kill us on sight, I thought. Aloud, I said, “We have Hepzibah. She’s a neurosurgical bot, but she knows how to be a nurse too. And Madeline: she’s a companion, not a nurse, but she can do what she’s told. Fran—cisco won’t need them, he’ll get to our compound in another hour or so anyway.” At the last second, I changed Francis’s name, not sure if I was supposed to use his real one or not. I noticed that his eyes sparkled at me with the faintest hint of amusement.
“Well, come on, then,” Miriam gestured for me to follow. I started to, but on an impulse, I dashed back to Francis, stooped down, and kissed his clammy cheek.
“Hang on, okay?” I whispered.
“Why Cordeaux, I didn’t know you cared,” he slurred.
I shot him a look meant to be exasperated, but I couldn’t quite manage it through my threatening tears.
“I’m gonna be fine,” he croaked. “If you… need help building the VMI… message me.”
“I’ve done it twice now. I’ve got this,” I assured him, with more confidence than I really felt. “We’ll—see you soon.” I choked out this last bit. What was wrong with me?
“Take care of your ‘husband,’” he teased back weakly, surveying the front yard through the window. “Not exactly… the honeymoon spot… I’d have picked…”
“Shut up, Francis,” I hissed, and followed Miriam out of the hovercraft.
Inside, the house looked very much like the outside: faded and peeling wallpaper that looked like it had been there since the second age, threadbare carpet or warped linoleum marred by stains, and clutter, clutter everywhere. But the house was filled with the joyful sounds of children. A woman with a graying bun and lines on her face met me in the vestibule.
“You must be Tracy!” she gushed, pumping my good hand with a glance at my bandaged opposite shoulder. “I’m Harriet. You’re most welcome, but I’m so sorry for the unfortunate events that have brought you to our humble abode.”
Tracy? Okay, I thought, realizing Mom had never told me what my first name should be. I smiled, though I couldn’t make it reach my eyes.
“Thanks so much. I know having the bots h
ere is a little—unorthodox, but I promise they’re not a threat. They don’t have any of the upgrades on them.”
A look of brief confusion crossed Harriet’s face, as a whining blond toddler boy took her skirt in both fists and wiped his tear-stained face with it. Absently, Harriet hoisted him up to her hip.
“You and your husband will be staying in the room at the far end of the hall on the left,” she told me. “Is there anything I can get for you?”
“Actually, yes,” I said, “do you have any kind of transportation you can lend me, and can you tell me how to get into town?”
“Oh, well, you can borrow Miriam’s bicycle, I’m sure. Town is about a fifteen minute ride, and you’ll see the path marked through the forest. It’s well traveled, you can’t miss it.” Harriet must have seen my face fall, because her own expression faltered. “Will that be all right?”
“I’ll be buying something rather bulky, I’m afraid… any idea how I might be able to transport it back?”
“Well, there is a basket on the front of the bicycle. It expands to about yay big,” she gestured with her hands as she said it, indicating almost her entire arm span in length and depth.
I tried to imagine pedaling with something so large on the front of the bike, hardly able to steer with my bad shoulder, and in my current state of blood loss, but there was nothing for it. I had no time to lose. I gave Harriet a brave smile.
“Sure. That will work. Can you show me?”
I stopped to look at the room Liam and I would be sharing—Paul and Rick had already set him up on his half of the queen bed, and Hepzibah fussed over him with a cold washcloth to try to get his fever down—though without a manufacturing printer, she couldn’t print him any medicine either.
“Can I come with you?” Madeline asked me, her anxious voice surely reflecting my own expression.
“No!” I hissed, “you are not to stray more than five feet from Liam until we can disable his A.E. chip, remember?”
“Oh. Right,” she muttered, chagrined.
I kissed the top of her forehead and added, “I wish you could, though. I’d like the company.” Then I crossed to where Liam lay, still unconscious. I brushed the dark hair off of his clammy forehead, and pressed my lips against his temple.
