Future Reborn Box Set

by Daniel Pierce

  “He did fine. Jack, did you need this?” Aristine asked, handing me a flexible tablet from the Chain. I felt my face go slack, then nodded. I had an ugly job to do, and the only way to handle it was quick and decisive.

  I took the tablet without a word, and waved at Breslin to sit. The chair creaked under his bulk, and I handed him the tablet, which flared to life at his touch. It was a black screen, but there was sound.

  “Where’s Jossi?” I asked him.

  “Don’t know. Thought she was taking the kids gathering. Her pack is gone, but the kids are still running around. Why?” he asked.

  “Listen to that tablet. It probably isn’t going to be easy to hear, but you need to know, okay?” I said.

  “Okay,” he answered. Worry colored his voice as we settled in to listen to a conversation taking place a long way off. At the Chain, I’d asked Aristine to borrow some of her tiny listening devices she’d salted through the forest. I had her put two of them in Jossi’s travel pack, betting that our victory over Wetterick would close the door on her days as a frustrated spy.

  Unfortunately, I was right.

  A man’s voice came out of the tablet, and we all leaned closer to listen.

  “How do I know you’re loyal to us? You left, when we needed you as an asset—”

  “I didn’t leave. I was driven out, had my position in a favored family taken away. You threatened to marry me off to that wheezing gasbag from the west. I gave up everything, you prick. I made clothes like some commoner, my hands stained and bleeding from cheap dyes and dull needles, just to learn a trade. I ran away because you couldn’t guarantee my safety, not after you fucked up a simple plan that would have seen me installed on the council. Some fucking brother you are. I let that pig Breslin roll on top of me for years, spitting out brats in hopes that one day I would die in childbirth so I didn’t have to smell the stink of him and his simple life for one more second. And you think to question my loyalty, when you couldn’t even control Wetterick? How fast did The Outpost fall? An hour? Did you have time to dispatch your people, or were they drunk and whoring away the night as usual?” Jossi’s voice was shrill, filled with hate, and far different from the woman I had met. This was the real person at her core, and I watched Breslin’s hands begin to shake as he understood that his whole life had been a lie.

  Andi put her arm around him, and then Silk did too. He lowered his head, and I saw fat tears spill down the planes of his face. His pain was a knife in the air, and I felt my stomach clench as I watched a good man reduced to ashes by the words of a liar.

  In that moment, I made my decision, and the pain in my body began to lessen because I knew I was right. The city of Kassos would fall, and when it did, Jossi would die.

  And Breslin would be rewarded when the time was right.

  Epilogue

  It was one month to the day since my return that I stood in front of the Chain’s main entrance, now open to visitors and marked by a clear path. My foot was functional, if not whole, the small new toes looking like awkward pink sausages as my ‘bots forced new growth at an unnatural rate. My arm healed faster, and I worked day and night to regain my body and endurance. So much was happening at The Oasis that sleep seemed like a distant memory.

  With the fall of Wetterick, we gained The Outpost and more than a thousand people. Some people fled to Kassos, fearful of me and Aristine, and they would live with their choices. Work on The Outpost and Oasis leapt forward, as Breslin completed a simple road between them and new, robust crews began work on connecting the Chain with everyone else. We were reclaiming the land, and people could see results. It was a time of achievement, hard work, and joy.

  Except for Breslin.

  He still had his children, but there was a shadow over the man, and I reached back into my memories, deciding to try one last thing to help him heal.

  His first half hour inside E1 was like watching a kid go into a carnival for the first time, but we had more important things to do than count trees and marvel at the fish ponds. When we arrived at our location, I put my hand up on his shoulder, smiling.

  “What you are about to see is one of the most amazing sights on the planet,” I told him.

  “What is it?” he asked, more than a little awe in his voice.

  We turned the corner and stood in front of The Stump, filled with laughing people and more than half of them beautiful women, who all turned to look at the big man with gleaming lust and curiosity.

  “Friend, this is a pub, and these are women. Tonight, you may call me by one of the most important jobs known to humanity,” I said.

  Yulin stepped forward, a beer in hand and a smile on her face. “We’ve been waiting. Come on in, got people for you to meet, Breslin. Tonight you drink, eat, and be merry.”

  “I can do that,” he mumbled as the wave of sound crashed over us. “What was the job called? The one you’re doing tonight?” he asked.

  I clapped him on the back, taking a beer from Aristine, who licked her lips and smiled at me with promise. “Tonight, you can call me your wingman.”

  Future Retold

  Book 4 in the Future Reborn Series

  1

  “Listen. There it is again,” I said, straining to hear the soft noise adrift on the breeze. It was coming from the southwest, barely audible but there. It repeated, then again, and then stopped.

  “It’s—animal?” Mira said, uncertain. Night was coming on, the sun well past the horizon and only a dim smudge still lighting the western Empty. Her dark blonde hair was up, under a helmet, green eyes narrowed in concentration with her lips parted. A spray of freckles was barely visible in the low light, and she wore dark armor suited for fast desert travel and fighting. We’d been out for less than a day, scouting satellite data that showed three possible springs, all of which would provide water for new forest, new houses, and new places to live. With the Free Oasis now nearing two thousand people, we were staying ahead of the curve, staking claim to lands that had been rendered useless by howling desert winds for nearly twenty centuries.

  “Definitely animal, but there’s something off. We’re going in.” I moved off, leaving the truck where it was and unshouldering my rifle as Mira did the same in complete silence. She was born to the Empty, and it suited her, so when she moved, it was with the noise of a wraith and the profile of a breeze. In seconds we crested a small rise, only to hear the noise again, this time louder and more insistent.

  I peered over the dune between some scrub, rifle forward and ready.

  A hundred meters away, something struggled in a pit, throwing mud up in desperate fury, its hooting calls now obvious.

  “Ogre. Young,” Mira said.

  “Trouble, too.” The ogre, nearly two meters long and covered in downy striped fur, was not alone. Three creatures circled the pit, hissing and lashing their long tails. “Fucking lizards. Again.”

  “Horns?” Mira asked.

  “Can’t tell—yeah. Horns. More of those venomous ones, whatever the hell they are.” We’d seen more lizards as we worked our way south, and the endless variety of their form and function still left me in awe of just how dangerous the world really was. We’d killed a dozen lizards of up to eight meters in length, with fangs, horns, claws, and sometimes all three with spitting glands thrown in for good measure. These three were dusky in color, with rust red striping and fangs that looked like daggers. They were sizing the ogre up, but since the pit was deep and muddy, they were at risk of getting in and not being able to get out once they had their kill. It was a predator’s dilemma, but I decided to help them along.

  My rifle cracked, sending a round through the eye of the nearest lizard, who had the good sense to quiver once and die, its belly flat on the sand as one leg gave a spasmodic kick, digging a trench in the damp sand of the pit wall.

  “I think we found our spring,” Mira said.

  “And more.” The other two lizards turned to identify the threat, their stubby legs whirling them impossibly fast as they
bared their bone white palates toward us. Mira’s shot split the head of the second lizard, the round exiting its skull in a spectacular shower of brains that soaked the sand for a meter behind it. I followed with my second shot, opting for the center of the throat on the last beast, visible to me thanks to its roar of challenge.

  “Good dino,” I said as the round severed its spinal column, turning it off like a switch. The ogre, not entirely sure about what was happening, proceeded to begin hooting again in a frenzy, running up the pit walls halfway only to fall back in exhaustion, its fur caked with mud, chest heaving, and eyes rolling wild as it peeked over the rim to look in our direction.

  “How will we get him out?” Mira asked, as we both stood and began walking slowly toward the pit. I didn’t see any other threats, but the smell of lizard blood would bring predators as quickly as if we’d rung a dinner bell.

  “Let’s see if he can understand us, or if he’s feral,” I said. Ogres had been human at one point, but the virus that broke the world also shattered them. Some were capable of limited speech, while others were in a mute state, able only to eat and follow their own kind in a sort of loose herd.

  “Hey, big boy. You tired?” I asked when we approached the pit, using my gentlest voice. The ogre regarded me with some degree of intelligence, and I patted the air with my hands. Mira smiled, crouching at the incline where the thick mud began. The ogre looked at me, then her, and then gave a cautious grunt, sniffing the air as the hair on his crest settled closer to his broad skull.

  “Try your hand?” Mira said.

  “Can’t hurt.” I braced my feet and extended my right hand, open and palm up. The ogre shied away, then sniffed the air, looked at my face, and edged closer, fearful but obeying some hopeful instinct that we were friends, not foe.

  “That’s it,” Mira said, smiling more. The ogre began to reach toward me, his enormous hand scarred and calloused despite his young age. The Empty was a bitch of place to live, and being an ogre was no different than any other beast, even if he had some intelligence to spare.

  The ogre hooted softly, then edged closer, his chest against the slick mud of the pit wall. I heard the slosh of water beneath him, and knew he’d fallen in trying to get a drink.

  “It’s okay. Give me your hand,” I said, twitching my fingers in his direction. He put two fingers in my palm, then four, and then, when I smiled, he wrapped his huge hand around my wrist and uttered a soft call of uncertainty. “I’m going to pull you out. You climb, okay?” I said, knowing he might not understand my words, but my tone and motion would speak volumes. I put both hands around his, and began to edge back, smiling all the while.

  One of the lizards belched and shuddered in death, and the ogre freaked, hauling me up and over in a graceless arc to land face first in the slimy mud at the bottom of the pit. Before I could do more than sputter and spit foul mud, he howled in alarm and leapt up the side of the pit like I was trying to skin him for a rug, spraying even more mud in my face and knocking Mira down with a shout of alarm as he tripped, rolled, and ran shrieking into the gloom, farting and sneezing from fear until he was out of sight.

  After a long moment, Mira looked over at me, her teeth brilliant in the low light. “That went very well.”

  “Up yours, woman. Help me out of this toilet,” I said, though it wasn’t true. The water was sweet and clear in the middle, not fouled at all. It would do nicely for a communal spring.

  “Not with that attitude,” she said, brushing dirt from her armor with a sly grin.

  I sighed, bending my legs deeply and jumping two meters to land at the edge of the incline. I toppled forward, taking Mira to the ground with me. She wrinkled her nose but didn’t pull away. “You’re filthy.”

  “My mind, or my clothes?” I asked her with my best leer.

  “Both, but your clothes concern me the most. Let’s call our position in and make camp, if you feel like getting clean? And dirty?” she said with a look that answered my hopes.

  “Thought you’d never ask.” I touched the radio locket around my neck and began speaking. “Andi, we’re holing up. Found the first spring. It’s legit.”

  “I have you on the map. I’ll drop a pin. Overnighting there?” Andi asked, her voice small but clear.

  “Done for now. We’re bringing back a lot of lizard hides, I can tell you that,” I said.

  “Good. Shoot as many of the sonovabitches as you can. The ranchers lost a bull today, they think it was a lizard. A big one,” Andi said with some heat.

  “Have them pen the herd. We can hunt it when we get in,” I told her.

  “Sounds good. Be safe. Oasis out.”

  The locket fell silent, and I looked to find Mira already peeling the hide from one lizard with short, economical strokes of her razor-sharp blade. I followed suit after firing a lantern, the globe of light casting a yellow pall over the dead reptiles. “We’re going to have company soon enough because of all this meat.”

  “We’ll sleep up top. There’s enough to go around,” I said, and she nodded. In an hour, we had three huge skins, a good sweat going, and reason to hang the portable shower on the truck. Stripping down under the stars, we washed together, the water warm as a bath from being in the truck’s reserve tank. When we were clean, we climbed on top of the truck roof, spreading the inflatable bed and a sheet. It was a warm night, but not hot, and there was no moon. The Milky Way blazed to life above us, stars of every possible color hanging like distant jewels. She got close as we ate and drank, speaking of our plans as the night grew deep and silent.

  “We have to fence that pit in the morning,” I said. “I don’t want another ogre falling in and dying because I was too lazy to build a barrier.”

  Mira shifted to regard me in the darkness. “You sound guilty. He was thirsty, you know. You didn’t push him in.”

  I was quiet for a long time, listening to her breath. When I answered, it was as a man who knew life before and after the virus. “We did this to them, and it’s up to us to clean it up. If I can save one from dying in a muddy hole, then it’s worth doing.”

  I felt her nod, and then in a soft voice, she murmured, “That’s one of the reasons I’m here. You fix things that are broken.”

  Above us, the stars watched, and the world said nothing, and then we slept.

  2

  We drove away with a sense of satisfaction, a rough wooden fence made of dead trees surrounding the spring. It was crude but would work until crews returned in a few days to stone the walls and install a pumping system for the new location. I steered southwest at an easy fifteen klicks, slow enough to see hazards but fast enough to eat up the distance until our next target, which had us both buzzing with excitement. The Empty was a brutal place, but like many deserts, there was water—if you knew where to look. The addition of Andi and then the Eden Chain gave us access to data that opened the earth’s secrets to us. No longer would we ride blind, hoping for a livable place and settling for scrub, dunes, and bleached bones.

  “How sharp is the contrast?” I asked Mira, who was looking at the map data on a tablet computer. The screen display showed an augmented topo map, the lines crowding together at the base of a ravine to the point that they were a single, curving mark.

  “Sharp. I’ve never seen anything like this before,” she said.

  “I have. I think Aristine put us on more than just a spring. I think that’s a waterfall, and it’s coming out of an undercliff.”

  “A what?” she asked.

  “Under a ledge. I think it’s a hillside spring, but in rock and then it falls to that oblong pool. Looks deep, too,” I said, thinking of a swim, as long as there weren’t crocodiles with tentacles or whatever the hell else The Empty felt like throwing at us. “Rare.”

  “Sounds like it. Never even knew such a thing was possible,” Mira said softly.

  “In this landscape, nothing surprises me. Not even a sideways spring and a hidden pool. We might even have it to ourselves, since it looks like it’s h
ard for animals to approach, at least until the stream has gone about fifty meters or so,” I said, glancing at the map.

  “In that case, you go in first and tell me if it’s safe. I’ll watch for, um, aerial predators,” she said. Her wicked grin faded when we came around a broken hill. “Is that it? The lower edges of the stream bed?” Ahead, there were hints of green among stones of every color, gleaming even at a distance of a klick.

  “I’d say those pretty rocks are tumbled by the water, and we found the washout. We’ll drive to the high point and walk down. Gives us a shooting platform in case we have company.”

  “Sounds good,” Mira said.

  In moments, the truck sat silent and we were hiking down to the water, a quiet rush beneath us. Sparkling spray went high in the air, and I could taste wind drops on my tongue. “It’s here all right.”

  “I don’t see any predators. Not even—oh, birds. There they are,” she said, pointing. There were rangy, gnarled trees, low and green with leaves, overhanging the upper lip of the cliff. A flock of birds that resembled parrots with white beaks sat in the branches, chittering together in low tones like they were a group of librarians. They watched us but made no move to leave, having staked out some prime real estate and in no mood to go.

  “Can’t say I blame you. I wouldn’t leave either,” I said, nodding to the flock, who responded with a blizzard of clicks from beaks that looked like they could crack walnuts.

  “Okay, we’re here, but how do we mark the source?” Mira asked. The stream was an easy climb, having carved through solid rock, leaving a smooth channel with sloping sides. There was some sandy grit, but none of the tree limbs or torn cacti I’d come to expect in water sources out in The Empty.

  “I have a different question. Why doesn’t anyone live here?” I said. There was water, shade, shelter, and a defensible position. For a settlement, it was perfect, and that meant it should have people—or at the very least, a herd of animals who had claimed it. I saw nothing of the sort, and it made me nervous. I checked my weapons and stalked forward, while Mira had her rifle at the ready two steps to my right.