Inner City

by Scott Norton Taylor

  Chapter 23

  The door to the cell opened. A slumbering Callen lifted his head to see uniformed guards carrying a beaten and bloodied Ky. They threw him roughly to the ground and quickly backed away, locking the cell door behind them. Callen tried to revive Ky but he was out cold. He was still heavily sedated so all Callen could do was clean his battered body using water from the wash basin.

  Hours passed while Ky slept off the drug. A nurse with a guard as escort entered the cell around the time Callen was expecting a meal.

  “Get on the bed and don’t move,” the guard ordered standing over Callen with a taser, daring him for a reason to use it. Callen moved to the side of the cell and watched the nurse tend Ky’s wounds. She squeezed tubes of synthetic skin on his bleeding abrasions and injected bruises with treatments to aid and speed recovery.

  “All right,” she said to the guard. The nurse backed away from Ky. She looked to Callen warily as she went, expecting a rebellious last stand that never came.

  “Take this,” she said to the guard as she handed over a loaded syringe. She tapped her forearm as a guide.

  “Here,” she directed and then quickly left the cell. The guard placed himself between the door and Ky. He kept a wary eye on Callen as he crouched down, aiming the syringe at Ky’s arm and then stuck it amateurishly into a vein and pressed the syringe to administer the drug. He then bounced to his feet and leapt out of the cell, and frantically locked the door. Callen marvelled at how completely duped the man was about who and what the Outlocked were. His behaviour was like a vet scampering from a ferocious beast that would devour him whole on waking.

  Moments after the door closed Ky’s whole body jerked to life as he took a savage first breath, like a drowning man. He sat up and looked around to get his bearings. He saw Callen, swivelled his head to look at the holding cell and then finally relaxed as he remembered where he was. He ran his hand across his face as the residual pain from his injuries, and the stupor of the drugs came back to him.

  “Water,” he croaked in a hoarse voice. Callen went to the sink and cupped his hands to bring Ky water, leaving a dripping trail behind him. Ky drank, then got up, struggling for balance. He went to the sink where he pressed his lips to the faucet and turned on the water to take large mouthfuls. When he stopped drinking it was only to stand and take in a couple of large breaths before he was back on the tap and drinking again. With his thirst satisfied he turned and looked to Callen.

  “I told them everything,” he said with remorse. “They used something on me.”

  Callen felt sorry for Ky who seemed deeply ashamed at betraying his people. Ky was doing a first-rate job of convincing Callen he felt traitorous for not resisting the city’s techniques to draw information.

  “They already knew everything. They only interrogated you for show. I’m sorry,” Callen said.

  Ky looked shocked that Callen knew this. His command performance, as an uninformed intruder, was supposed to hide from Callen the shocking information he’d uncovered while with the Chairman.

  “Lien and Gerda were here,” Callen added. “They took Eve with them when they left.”

  For the first time, Ky wasn’t feigning surprise, and this helped convince Callen to Ky being an unwitting pawn in this giant conspiracy. Callen filled him in about all he’d recently discovered.

  “It’s a game. The city needs resources and dumping areas for waste; the Outlocked want to be left alone, so they have a deal in place. Gerda’s not the first Chief Elder they’ve dealt with, so they’ve been in contact for at least twenty years. I was some experiment. I have no idea what they thought they’d get from it.”

  Ky looked stunned, still not sure if he believed Callen.

  “You saw Lien and Gerda? Here?” he asked.

  “With the Chairman. Gerda acted like they were old friends. I don’t think Lien knew, not until it was too late. I think he was just as shocked as us when he found out what was going on.”

  Ky weighed up the news – it was a monumental shift in everything he believed.

  “How’s Eve?” Ky asked after a long moment’s thought. Callen paused.

  “She didn’t want me to keep going, but I’ve done something really important here. They want me to tell everyone I made it all up. If I do, they’ll let me go.” He looked more intently to Ky. “I can’t say it. Too many people are ready to believe. People have the right to make their own decisions, to choose their own lives. I’m not going to take that from those brave enough to start asking questions. I don’t care if it destroys the whole city.”

  Callen’s pledge only reinforced Ky’s motivation to carry out what he and the city leaders had conspired to do. He didn’t want anyone from the city to follow in Callen’s footsteps and discover the truth of the Outlocked lands. Ky had no sympathy for city dwellers in search of freedoms denied them. The two sat in silence for a long time.

  “What happens now?” Ky eventually asked.

  “They’ll come and take us. It won’t be long.”

  “Kill us?” Ky questioned. Callen nodded.

  “They call it body donation. It’s heroic, remember? Being killed is a great honour. They need the space. This place is full of space makers arrested for breaking the City’s codes. The ones they can’t re-educate…” He didn’t need to finish, they both knew what came next.

  The night proved a long one. Ky went over and over the plan in his head. He didn’t know when the city guards would come, but he knew he’d be ready. He knew every step needed to deliver Callen to his fate. For now, as Callen slept oblivious to what was in store, Ky waited. He even slept a few hours, making sure he’d be physically ready for the new day.

  Morning came and Ky woke as food on plastic trays appeared through a seamless hole in the wall. The food came in bars that Callen unwrapped. He began to eat. Ky watched and copied. He took a bite of one of the bars and then screwed up his face, coughed up the half swallowed mouthful like he was choking and spat the chewed solid out in three clearing spits.

  “What is that?” he asked with an appalled look on his face, spitting more of the taste from his mouth.

  “Synthetic protein. I don’t know what it is, but the flavour makes it taste like food. This one…” Callen concentrated on what he was chewing. “Is chicken, I think.” He looked at the wrapper to confirm then nodded as he read. “Yep, chicken flavoured. It has all the nutrients you need, and the synthetic fibre keeps you healthy.”

  Ky put his food bar down and clucked his tongue to get rid of the metallic, chemical taste that accompanied the many preservatives and additives always present in city food. Callen understood the dissatisfaction. The Outlocked food had been a revelation to Callen and now the city’s food was equally lacking in every aspect to Ky.

  After the guards tapped on the door to signal they wanted their trays, Ky finally felt like talking about Eve.

  “She only liked you because you were different. It’s just her. One day it’s one thing, then she gets bored and moves on to something new.”

  Callen nodded. They were probably only hours away from the end of their lives. He had no intention of destroying Ky’s vain belief Eve’s rejection of him was some flippant decision.

  “You don’t seem nervous about dying,” Ky questioned.

  “It has a purpose.”

  Ky looked to Callen with a new sense of respect. He didn’t agree with what Callen was trying to do, he didn’t accept he had a right to endanger the Outlocked world for any reason, but as a patriot, he respected his willingness to commit to what he believed.

  A small panel in the door opened at waist level. An electronic voice sounded into the cell from the speaker.

  “Place your hands, behind your backs then place them through the opening.”

  Ky and Callen stood up, turned and backed up to place both hands outside the cell where they were quickly cuffed with electronic cuffs adjusting perfectly to the shape and size of their wrists. The door opened. Six guards took them out of the ce
ll, one each side with a taser chord looped under each arm and another guard following behind them with another taser at the ready.

  Callen and Ky marched down a long white corridor past hundreds of similarly locked cells. It was an overwhelming horizon of white, drab, featureless doors. It was hard to believe each cell held a citizen at odds with the life demanded within the city’s walls.

  The two were escorted to internal lifts and taken down the hundreds of floors that extended deep below ground to a car park. There they were strapped into seats opposite each other, still with guards either side of them. The transporter was driverless and made from sheer plastic with the word ‘Corrections’ down both sides.

  Ky and Callen were silent, trapped in their thoughts. Callen was mentally preparing for the end of his life. Ky was trying to remember everything he’d planned. The transport pod lifted and attached to its magnetic drive. It silently floated, almost unnoticed and began the relentless climb from the deep basement. Minutes later they reached the street level and began to navigate the busy streets. There were no sirens or escorts. Everyone knew what the corrections pod meant. Most people chose to look the other way and ignore the most disagreeable aspect of the city’s judicial and social welfare programs.

  Around a distant corner, the transport pod sparked from underneath. Without windows, Ky and Callen couldn’t see what was happening, but they felt it. The tumbling pod came to rest on its side. Ky was on the low side, lying like an astronaut awaiting takeoff. Callen was high side, his whole body hanging from his restraints. The unrestrained guards lay unconscious in a pile near Ky. One of the guards ended up slumped over Ky’s midsection. Before Callen could get his bearings, Ky used a key to click open the straps holding him. He went to Callen and fumbled to unlock his restraints, momentarily confused by the angle.

  “Hold the other side to the lock and press down hard with your thumb,” Callen issued. Ky followed Callen’s instructions and the straps holding Callen in place snapped open. Callen fell hard, but uninjured. Ky managed to force the jammed door at the rear of the pod with some well-placed kicks. It burst open with a clatter, the bottom half falling hard on the road, the top swinging loose.

  “Come on!” Ky yelled. Callen was in shock as he bolted from his seat and followed Ky onto the street. Around the corner, Ky held up one of the guard’s tasers to the throat of a teenage boy who’d been walking with a friend of similar age. The two teenage boys looked like they were having a stroke from the fright of being threatened so brazenly. The teenager’s outfits were perfect, one had a hooded top, the other wore a cap, but their clothes were a mirror of each other and similar to the passersby in the streets around them. They were perfect for Ky and Callen to blend into the crowd.

  “Your clothes! Give them to us! Now!”

  Both boys began to undress without a word of protest. Others nearby had moved away, but many were already discreetly activating personal communication devices; no doubt calling the police to alert them of the two escaped ‘correction’ donors terrorising innocent citizens.

  Ky and Callen took the clothes and ran. They ran around the corner to a smaller street where they stripped out of their prison uniforms and dressed in the stolen clothes. Then they ran as fast as they could away from the scene of their crime.

  Twenty minutes later, having not let up their running, Callen grabbed Ky and pulled him up.

  “We can’t just keep running. We need a plan.”

  “We need to get to the carriages and then get through your tunnel,” Ky said.

  “Okay, but you follow me. I know the city; you don’t.”

  Ky couldn’t protest. He knew where he needed to go, but he couldn’t tip his hand. He knew the authorities would be going out of their way to avoid them, so he felt allowing Callen to lead their ‘escape’ wouldn’t cause problems.

  A few blocks further Callen stopped. A public service work crew was busy remoulding the side of a composite plastic building. A resin skin covered the original. It was obvious why; the words they lie ate into the white plastic wall from something with corrosive properties. The bold letters had eaten into the plastic and were drawing attention from passersby. Ky dragged Callen forward, but there were his words again, painted across the street like a pedestrian crossing. Once Callen was looking for them they seemed to appear everywhere. No matter how hard the work crews tried, they’d never be able to remove those two words faster than they spread.

  A few streets later a viewer box was similarly marked. It played news from the side of the building where it floated, delivering a flow of regurgitated news and ads for all those passing. The breaking news scroll grabbed Callen’s attention. The headline read: Callen Helfner dead. Callen looked to the words in shock and walked closer to hear the story.

  “A high-ranking official has stated Callen Helfner, the young man responsible for the recent Outlocked hoax, is dead. We’ll try to get confirmation, but that’s the report we’re getting at this time. Repeating - Callen Helfner, dead.” The screen cut to a smiling scientist in a white coat.

  “Chemcor is looking after you. Every chemical we make, every gene we engineer, benefits you.”

  Callen stood in stunned silence.

  “Come on,” Ky urged.

  “I have to go to the university. I’ll meet you at the tunnel,” Callen said.

  “Why? What’s at the university?”

  “That,” Callen said, pointing at the news feed. “If people don’t know they’re lying then everything I’ve done is for nothing. I can prove it this time just by showing up!”

  “They’ll kill you!” Ky said, desperately improvising to get his mission back on track. Callen wasn’t interested in arguing and took off running towards the university. Ky grimaced and followed; he couldn’t afford to let Callen out of his sight. They ran by the multitudes of people animating every inch of the city and all the time Callen kept seeing his battle cry; callously carved, artistically embossed and boldly emblazoned across anything with enough space for two words to fit; they lie appeared again and again. Everywhere the words landed a band of imprisoned workers followed to remove them. It was a futile attempt to rid the city of Callen’s message. It would take a lot more than aesthetic touch ups to remove the idea from people’s minds.