“Tell me about it.”
“I was telling you about it. You haven’t been listening.”
I smile at this little bit of fire from the woman Evelyn calls the church mouse. I saw it three years ago, when she told me she loved me and I deflected. Quick as it comes, it’s gone.
“I’m a little sick here, in case you didn’t notice.”
“Sorry,” Carina says.
“Why isn’t Evelyn doing this?” She’s the nurse, after all. Carina just scanned people at the gates, letting them into New Manhattan from the transcontinental Hyperloop.
“She’s got a plan,” Carina says in a clandestine whisper. She squeezes the rag a little too hard, and a stream of hot water drips into my eyes. I blink rapidly, too weak to wipe my own face.
“I need to sleep,” I say in a faraway voice. Somewhere, I hear a dog growl. “Fuck you, Ramses.”
“We have to get out of here,” Carina says, and I shiver. Not because I’m cold or sick, but because I realize, in her fearful tone, that there’s someone out there going through the same thing. “Can I show you something?”
“I’m tired.”
“I need to show you, Luke. Down in the lobby. It’s about the—visions.”
Visions. That’s a good euphemism. Ramses barks. “Okay.”
“It’s in the lobby.”
“Carina…”
“I know, I know,” she says. “I promise it’s worth it.”
I look at her. She’s as scared as I am about losing my damn mind.
And about what this place will do to what’s left of our humanity.
So I limp out the door and follow her to the elevator.
“No one else found these?” I say. We’re in a side-room off the lobby, labeled BUSINESS CENTER, which I find amusing. I doubt any business ever took place in here, judging from the pristine gray carpets and untouched workstations.
Carina helps me to the end, where a large pod resides. It resembles an archaic version of the HIVE setup.
“You know the satellite doesn’t work, right?”
She points along the left-hand edge of the pod’s smooth surface. A tiny glass window, about three inches high, runs along the side. I see quarter-sized HoloBands inside.
“Demo units,” Carina says. “It’s for people on the fence about getting a HoloBand.” She slides the glass away. “Was, I guess.”
I look at the pod unit again, and walk around to the back. It has promotional information on the back, along with the Golden Nectar logo. It’s strange that they needed a trial unit when GN had a monopoly on all things tech.
Then again, injecting something into the base of your neck does tend to raise objections.
When I return to the front, Carina is prepping what looks like a long syringe. The stainless steel has a surgical glint.
“What’re you doing,” I say, suddenly wary.
“You need to remember what it was like,” Carina says. “In there.”
“I’m good.”
The golden flecks in her eyes flash hot. “No. You need to remember.”
Before I can react, she sticks me with the needle. There’s a tight feeling at the base of my neck.
“Goddamnit, Carina,” I say. “I don’t want to go back.”
“You have to,” she says, with a quiet strength. Then she pushes me into the pod and shuts the window. “Just settle into the back.”
I begrudgingly have to admit that the interior is comfortable. Golden Nectar did their best to make the HoloBand tech as appealing as possible. I relax into the leather seat, even if I’m skeptical about this serving any purpose. I’m not worried about the NAS tracking the HoloBand’s signal—without satellite coverage, that won’t be an issue. Which is the same reason I’m convinced I’ll see nothing: this isn’t even related to HIVE. It’s like comparing a tricycle to a hover bike. Same basic idea, but not the same tech.
I look out at Carina, who is whispering a silent prayer.
Wires reach out from the chair, snaking into the back of my neck to connect with the trial HoloBand. I hear a scan booting up.
“Welcome, new user,” a friendly female voice announces. “Are you interested in genetically printing your HoloBand, or the featured trial?”
I glare forward at the touchscreen, which encourages me to make a decision. Carina taps on the glass.
“Do the trial and select memory access,” Carina says.
“Nothing’s recorded,” I say.
“It’ll pull fragments and memories from your subconscious.”
“I don’t have amnesia,” I say. The lights blink, trying to force me to choose. “I remember what happened.”
“Not really,” Carina says. “Trust me.”
With a drawn out sigh, I reach forward and select featured trial.
“Excellent choice,” the female voice says. “You have three options. HoloNet access—”
I reach out and tap the memory access button. This should be good.
“One moment, please,” the female voice says. “Would you prefer the memories play on the screen, or for you to have a virtual experience? The HoloBand pod is capable of recreating sensations of weather, touch and smell.”
That’s new. Golden Nectar really pulled out all the stops for these units.
I stare out the tinted glass. My body hurts, and my mind is fuzzy. This is not what I want to be doing. But my caretaker has seen fit to bring me down here.
“What’d Jana think of this?”
“The Rems don’t care about any of this tech,” Carina says. “I don’t think they care what happened to us.”
Just like we don’t really care what Damien Ford did to them. It’s more a matter of can’t care—without the visceral experience of betrayal being your own, it’s impossible to be angry.
“Which option?” I say. “You’re the boss.”
“The virtual experience,” Carina says. “It’s not HIVE, but it’s the closest thing we have.”
As I press the button, I’m thinking about tricycles and hover bikes.
But when I remove my finger from the screen, everything disappears around me.
Rain whips down in sheets from the gray sky. The Space Needle looms outside the car’s tinted windows as we roll down the street.
Evelyn’s driving, her fingers white from gripping the wheel so tightly.
“I can’t believe you lost him,” Evelyn says.
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“I told you not to walk Ramses without a leash,” Evelyn says. “I fucking told you.” The engine revs, and I’m afraid she’ll crash.
“We’ll find him,” I say. “It’ll be okay.”
“It better.”
I don’t like the sound of that. It has shades of sleeping on the couch forever. I press my nose up against the glass, scanning the quiet suburban neighborhood for any sign of a hundred-pound dog. There’s nothing.
“Look, maybe if you slowed down—”
“He went this way, Luke.” Her voice is tight, like she’s about to cry. I fiddle with the radio and she slaps my hand away. “Concentrate.”
“He’ll turn up.”
“You said that already, and yet, here we are.” Evelyn maneuvers the car down a cul-de-sac.
“There,” I say. Up ahead, in someone’s yard. My heart stops beating so damn fast. Crisis averted. Ramses is just rummaging around with a hamburger wrapper.
Evelyn slams on the brakes suddenly and pops out of the car. “Ramses!”
The dog perks his big, dumb ears up and looks for the familiar voice. When he rushes to greet Evelyn, he’s stopped at the edge of the yard. A violent shock rolls through his body, and he whimpers.
I follow her out of the car, wondering what the hell is going on. Ramses wags his tail, but doesn’t try to exit the yard again.
A man comes out of the two-story town home. Something about his appearance reminds me of someone I once knew. The rain drips off his thick glasses. It doesn’t rustle his side part.
&nb
sp; “Shock collar,” he says with an easy smile. “For the dog. So he didn’t run away.”
He walks forward and pats Ramses. The dog whimpers slightly, clearly not a fan of his rescuer.
“Take that thing off my dog,” Evelyn says. I think she’s gonna leap off the sidewalk and strangle this guy, but instead she just stands there coiled like a rattlesnake.
“Of course,” the man says. “Let me speak with your husband for a moment. Luke Stokes, right?”
“How’d you know my name?” I say.
“You’re famous,” he says. There’s a long pause, then he adds, “I’m kidding. The dog’s collar. I was about to call you when you arrived.”
The man takes me by the triceps and leads me down the sidewalk. Evelyn doesn’t follow.
“If you want a reward, I got some money in the car.”
“No, nothing like that, Stokes,” he says like an old friend. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay,” I say, uncomfortable now. “Thanks for saving my dog.”
“You feeling okay, Stokes?”
“Look, man, I don’t know you—”
“Of course,” the man says with an easy smile. He wipes the rain from his glasses. When he looks at me without them, it’s almost like he sees better. “It’s just, a man doesn’t lose his dog without something troubling him.”
“Everything’s fine,” I say. “Look, Mister—”
“Vegas,” the man says. “Kid Vegas.”
“Yeah, whatever,” I say. “I need to go.”
He doesn’t try to stop me as I hurry away. Evelyn’s removed Ramses’ collar and has him in the car. I get in the passenger seat.
“Floor it.”
“That guy creeps me out,” she says.
I don’t answer. Wet dog permeates the air. The man’s eyes follow us all the way up the cul-de-sac. Once we’re out of sight, I shiver.
For some reason, I get the impression that this Vegas fellow has been watching us the whole time.
I come back to reality with a start. My body aches.
“Get me out,” I say, banging against the side of the pod. Carina hurries to lift it up and help me out.
“What’d you see?”
“I saw that son of a bitch Vegas,” I say. “He was watching us the whole time in HIVE.”
“I know.”
I look at Carina as we push through the door out of the business center. “What’d he do to you?”
“Sat in the back of the church,” Carina says. “Asked me about you.”
“We gotta stop the NAS,” I say, leaning against her.
“We have to stop him,” she says. “He did this.”
I think back to the car crash in the jewelry store. A few more steps, a knife to the ribs to finish the job—it would’ve been so easy. Most things, in retrospect, are.
“I told you,” Carina says. “We leave as soon as you’re well. Evelyn has a plan.”
We get to the elevator, and I collapse inside.
Another three days, and I can finally stand.
Carina helps me into my jeans. “I washed your shirt.”
“Thanks,” I say, wincing as I tug it over my head. Every muscle is heavy with the sort of infinite soreness that you’re sure will never disappear. I stifle a small cough. She reaches out to help me with the right sleeve. “I got it.”
“Okay,” Carina says. The apartment door opens, and we both jump slightly. We share a brief understanding glance, how stressful it is to have your senses continually betray you. Evelyn comes inside the loft and hurriedly shuts the door. Frost clings to her golden hair, which is frozen stiff.
“Glad you’re awake,” Evelyn says. “There’s a lot to talk about.”
“Apparently you’ve been busy.”
“Taking up the mantle of a hero is never easy,” Evelyn says.
I smirk and walk towards the kitchen. It takes both hands to get a mug out of the cabinet.
“If you’re making a run for it, I think you’ll have to carry me,” I say.
“She’s digging in, Luke,” Carina says. She shuffles over to help me with the coffee. I give her a small nod of thanks and allow her to pour the cup. “She wants to stay.”
“Ev?”
Evelyn laughs from across the room. “No. Jana Rose. Your new flame.”
I wince and rub my temple. “You guys need to let this shit go. You’re all grown-ups.”
“Believe me, you’re not that much of a catch.” The Zen-ness from the day of the rooftop attack is gone. Whatever’s transpired while I’ve been sick has clearly rattled Evelyn in a way that a series of massive explosions couldn’t.
“Someone just tell me what’s going on.” The cup trembles so much when I try to lift it that I’m afraid I’m going to drop it. So I pretend I’m waiting for it to cool. “Why you two have been making plans and showing me old memories and shit.”
“Jana tortured the survivors,” Evelyn said. “We were there. I had to—I had to…”
Carina leans towards me, her hair brushing against my cheek. “She had to keep them alive long enough to tell Jana everything.”
The coffee doesn’t seem all that appetizing. I lean against the counter and say, “Shit.”
“Yeah, shit,” Evelyn says. “No wonder everyone hates the Rems.”
I do recall that, when I saved Jana from execution, it was her people who had tried to ambush us our party first. Brutality runs deep within their culture. Perhaps the reason they survived this long.
I glance between my two cohorts. They, like me, are apparently hoping there’s another way.
“Did the soldiers say anything?”
Evelyn rubs her hands together and closes her eyes. “A lot of things.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Not really.”
“That wasn’t really a question,” I say.
“Jesus Christ, Luke,” Evelyn says, pushing over a lamp. I feel Carina’s nails dig into my arm—whether it’s from a lack of reverence for the savior, or because Evelyn blowing her stack is rarer than seeing a wooly mammoth is hard to tell. “She dug a man’s eye out with her bare hands.”
She holds two curled fingers out, and then violently yanks them through the air.
“I get the picture,” I say.
“You can’t get it. You weren’t there.”
“Someone’s gotta fill me in on what happened.”
They take turns detailing Jana’s torture tactics and the information derived from her innovative methods. When one gets tired of recounting the relentlessness brutality, the other takes over. It’s hard to tell if the story is long, or simply exhausting, but by the end of their summary, my mind is torn in six different directions.
Ramses sits down and whines in the corner, then disappears into the ether as the story comes to its grim conclusion.
“So that’s why we’re leaving. Tomorrow,” Evelyn says with final emphasis. Carina nods, but doesn’t say anything, like she’s afraid any chance of me loving her will go away if I don’t agree.
“Wonderful. You got a plan?”
Evelyn just says, “Meet us by the vehicles at seven tomorrow morning.”
Then they both leave me alone without explaining further.
It’s a long night. I can only imagine what it’s been like for the two of them. Evelyn saw some savage things as a member of the Ashes of the Fall. Carina, well, probably not. But anything they’d experienced pales in comparison to being complicit with torture.
Not that they had a choice. You want to stay in paradise, you gotta play by the rules.
It went a little something like this: The leaders of the factions—Chancellor Blackstone, President Alfred “Slick” Knute, and Reverend Amelia Daniels—had quickly agreed that the best path to rebuilding was to first put down the Remnants. The first soldier broke quickly, told Jana that the rest of the Remnants—the ones under Mirko’s rule—had been annihilated by the NAS force. Then the NAS had cut through the waystations next, systematically captur
ing them one-by-one.
Sieging the Gunpowder Hills had cost them a couple weeks, but the victory, ultimately, had been absolute. All the Remnants had been put to death.
After learning that, Jana had killed the first man in a fit of rage. His counterpart, however, had not been so fortunate. For over three days he had been kept alive, Evelyn’s nursing skills betraying her horribly. Each time the man appeared ready to die, Jana ordered him revived. Carina was allowed reprieve from this prolonged torture to care for me.
Eventually, however, all the news I couldn’t get from the satellite spilled from this soldier’s lips: how a new NAS Inner Circle had formed, this time with a mission of transparency and trust. Blackstone, Kid Vegas and Olivia were the representatives from the Circle. Other than the leaders from the other two factions, he didn’t know the names of the other members.
The plan to conquer was simple: scrub the Remnants from the Lost Plains by the end of February. Then a push into the Gray Desert, particularly a spot about a hundred miles south of Seattle, near I-5. Details weren’t given to the soldiers about why this location was important.
But a scout party had already been sent to comb through the wreckage. Pain surges through my skull when I consider that Blackstone and Kid might already have the failsafe.
Oh, and about HIVE—the man was kind enough to relay that it was operational, complete with a new offer. Those ineligible for armed service could upload their consciousness into the cloud, freeing them of their earthly shackles. The cost was entirely free, with prime placement in the system given on a first-come, first-serve basis. Response had been overwhelming. Over a quarter of the population had already consigned themselves to a virtual existence.
Well, there was one particularly compelling side note—those who uploaded their consciousness to the HIVE servers were guaranteed to live forever. So long as the servers stay on, they’ll live in complete and ignorant bliss.
I hear Ramses growl somewhere in the room. An image of the Space Needle—first pristine, then cracked—pops across my closed eyes. The NAS probably didn’t explain the side effects. Then again, if you’re never removed from HIVE, maybe these hallucinations don’t affect you.
All the new intel threatens to short-circuit my brain, until I realize it leads to the same conclusion I’ve always had: I need to get to Matt’s failsafe in the ruins of the Gray Desert. A cure for my hallucinations and a bullet in Blackstone’s head wouldn’t be bad bonuses.
Ruins of the Fall (The Remants Trilogy #2) Page 10
