by E. E. Giorgi
The kid doubles over, wheezing. His lungs are just too small for this kind of strain.
“Come on, buddy,” I say, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pushing through the fire doors to the first floor.
We must’ve taken too long in those bathrooms, trying to revive my slowed metabolism. The hallway on the first floor seems bustling with life. I hear the determined steps and voices of a small group of men heading down to the shops and double back. Lukas, his face flushed up to the tip of his ears, catches his breath.
“Hold on,” he wheezes.
“There’s nothing to hold on to,” I say. “We’ve got to run, and fast!”
He leans against the fire door and thumbs through the screen of his data feeder. The device emits a long beep that has me bristle.
“Dude. That beep almost gave us away in the bathrooms upstairs!”
“That’s because I’m trying to do something.”
The voices in the hallway come closer, their steps pressing. I snatch Lukas by his arm and pull him back up the stairs when the internal alarms go off.
“Moderate alert detected on the north wing, floor four,” the computerized voice chimes.
Lukas looks at me and grins broadly. “I may be slow, but I’ve got brains.”
My eyes dart to the stairwell. “Except now they’ll be flooding the stairs.”
He slides his data feeder back to his satchel and pushes the door a notch. The computerized voice seeps through, louder. “Yeah, but they won’t be paying any attention to us.” He cranes his head out then pumps up his thumb. All clear.
We sneak back to the hallway and squeeze behind a pillar, barely in time to spot the earlier clique of men heading back and storming up the stairs.
“Moderate alert,” the voice through the speakers insists. Steps and voices echo through the walls of the Tower while, chins low and head bowed, Lukas and I charge down the hallway and out the main doors.
Outside the air is humid, laden with the faint smell of smoke from the Gaijins’ firewalls. Factory, I tell myself. The sun isn’t up yet, the imminent sunrise announced by a strip of golden pink above the forest.
“Come on, Lukas, move!” I prod, wading through the tall grass toward the stables.
Lukas lags behind. He may have brains, but his body isn’t made for physical endurance. For a brief moment I wonder what we got ourselves into. Four kids, each one of us with our own problems. We’ll never make it on our own, away from the protection of the Tower and our families. And then I think of our Dad, who sacrificed everything and put his life on the line to advocate our cause to the Gaijins.
The whinny of horses chases my thoughts away. Beyond the black contours of the solar panels, I spot the silhouettes of Maha and Taeh galloping toward us.
I beam. “They’re here. Lukas! Come on!”
Lukas looks up at the approaching horses and a geeky, unconvinced stare lingers on his face. Akaela is riding Taeh and carrying Wes behind, his titanium blades wrapped up in blankets she got from the barn so they won’t scrape the horse’s barrel. I grab the reins, lift myself up, and hop on Maha’s back. Without any forewarning, I lean down and pull Lukas up on the saddle. He’s so light I wonder how he hasn’t been blown away by the wind yet.
Lukas wraps his arms around my waist and squeezes me like a little girl. Under different circumstances, I would’ve found it funny.
“What’s up, dude? No confidence in horses?”
“I believe in science,” he says. “And I fear heights.”
Akaela pulls on Taeh’s reins. “The scavenger droids will stir out of their shells as soon as the sun comes out,” my sister tells me.
I nod. “They’re slow this early in the morning. The solar panels embedded on their armor take about half an hour to heat up. We’ve got a good window to surprise them.”
“What if they decide to chase us down the gorge?”
“We’ve got our secret weapon,” I reply, winking.
Under the light from the rising sun, the Tower has turned golden. I whistle Kael’s call and wait for the falcon to reach us, unconcerned by the fact that the bird’s flight might give away our escape route. “Kael will divert the droids should things get iffy,” I say, smiling as soon as I spot the falcon’s black wings high above the ledge of the forty-second floor.
The Tower looms tall and steady against the yellow sky. Nothing gives away its inner turmoil or the chaos that will soon be spreading among the people once they realize what we’ve done.
Maha stomps impatiently, Lukas squeezes me tighter.
“Dude. Gotta breathe.”
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
Akaela clicks her tongue and steers Taeh toward the riverbank. The mesa looms on the other side, while a huge yellow moon sets behind its jagged top. I stare one more time at the Tower, then press my heel against Maha’s stomach and prompt her to a fast gallop.
Today I leave my home, I think, as I ride toward the setting moon. Today I leave my home and my people and start a new life. As my own person, this time.
No rules, no shame, no prohibitions.
Just me.
Chapter Fourteen
Akaela
I barely had time to saddle the horses and pack some water bottles and blankets before taking off with the horses. It’s not going to be an easy journey. It doesn’t matter, really. Going back will be even harder. If we ever go back.
We gallop past the awakening scavenger droids, still too slow to bother chasing us, and the first few miles into the gorge are riddled with euphoria. Even Lukas, who’s been clinging to Athel like a freaked out-chick, gives in to the excitement.
“We made it!” we scream and burst out in giggles. The bulky silhouettes of the droids fade in the distance behind a cloud of dust. The horses trot across the narrow trail inside the gorge, and we tell Athel all about the horrid night spent inside the Kiva Hall. Lukas claims he never was hallucinating because he was perfectly aware that the air had been poisoned. Wes instead wants to convince us that he never left and his chickening out was part of the hallucinations from the poisonous air. Now that the sun is high and Tahari has turned into a bad nightmare to forget, we all laugh at our bravado.
The excitement fades too soon. After the first couple of miles inside the gorge, the horses slow down to a walk. The terrain is too uneven and rocky for them to even attempt a canter. We pass the point where just a few days ago I climbed all the way up to the top of the mesa and then threw myself into the rising winds. I follow the steep incline of rocks with my eyes and remember the excitement I felt the moment I jumped.
I thought I’d get to the other side of the mesa, thought I’d see Dad again.
Now, I’m no longer sure. I squeeze the scrap of metal with Dad’s serial number in my pocket, my heart aching at the thought of where he could be, what he could be enduring at this moment.
We’ll bring you back home, Dad. I promise we will.
Fast-moving clouds roll across the stretch of sky framed by the jagged edge of the gorge and soon cover the sun. Even on a cloudless day, in the harsh and relentless heat, the bottom of the gorge is always cool. Down here, in the deep recesses of the rocky mesa, the air is nippy and humid.
The farther in we get, the greener the steep walls of rock become, covered in moss and different kinds of crawling weeds. Water trickles down from the top and quietly drums on rocks and leaves. Kael tracks us from above, his black wingspan silhouetted against the strip of washed out sky. Strong winds blow up along the edge of the mesa, and from time to time a gust swirls down across the gorge, howling and throwing dust in our eyes.
“The spirits they used to scare us with, when we were little,” Lukas says. “Turns out, it’s just the wind.”
I rub my eyes, tears rolling down my cheeks from the last fistful of dry sand blown into my face. “It sure feels like it has a mind of its own.”
“It’s getting muddy,” Athel notes, a hint of worry in his voice. He places the reins in Lukas’s wary hands and dismounts. Kael
decides it’s his turn to rest and settles on the back of Maha’s saddle.
Moisture soaks the sandy ground of our trail. Tired, the horses slow down as their hooves sink deep into the mud. I follow Athel’s example and dismount too, hoping to alleviate the Taeh’s burden. Wes stares at me quizzically but I tell him to stay, as his titanium blades wouldn’t help him on this kind of terrain.
The kid nods and sighs. “Funny how a cutting edge tool like mine can become a handicap in the wrong setting.”
“We’re all built this way,” Lukas says. Even distressed as he is from the riding, he doesn’t miss a chance to lecture us. “Our implants are both a gift and a curse, just like our genes. They crippled us and yet they saved us from the Plague. It all depends on which way you look at it.”
“I could never see our implants as a curse,” I retort. “None of us would be here today if it weren’t for them.” My leather boots sink in mud up to my ankle. I hold Taeh’s reins and gently guide her along the trail.
“Who knows,” Lukas says. “Maybe, given enough time, we would’ve evolved into a new species.”
Athel snorts. “Hard to evolve into anything when you’ve got dumbasses as leaders.”
A huge rumble makes us freeze in our steps, including the horses. It rocks the sky and makes the ground shake, sending handfuls of pebbles tumbling down the walls of the gorge. Kael freaks out. He spreads his wings, takes off, and perches himself on one of the high branches a few hundred feet ahead of us.
Athel looks up at the sky, now completely blanketed in fat, gray clouds. “The hell was that?”
“Thunder,” Lukas replies, sliding his satchel off his shoulder and fishing out his data feeder. “In fact—”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Wes interjects. “I think I’ve gone my entire life without ever seeing a drop of rain.”
Athel pulls Maha’s reins. “It’s ok. It hasn’t rained in years and it’s not going to happen now. Dry thunderstorms are all we get around here.”
“The lightning is always spectacular to watch,” I say, trying to sound cheerful.
“We do get dry thunderstorms pretty frequently,” Lukas chimes in. He looks comical with his data feeder propped against Maha’s neck, one hand clasped around her mane, and the other desperately trying to type and hold the device at the same time. I don’t know how, but even as scared as he claims he is of heights, he still manages to crunch numbers out of his feeder.
“The weather patterns of the past five years have been pretty stable, with hot dry summers all year long, cooling off at night and then warming up again in the middle of the day. This creates the ideal—”
“Lukas,” Athel snarls. “Your point being?”
Lukas swallows. “We’ve had an average of one hundred and three-point-five dry thunderstorms per year over the past decade. And zero rain.”
“Great. So there you go. All you babies shitting yourselves over some thunder can go back to sleep.”
I scowl at my brother’s language. “Athel!”
“What? We’re not Mayake people anymore. We can do and say whatever we want now.” He stoops down, picks up a muddy rock and tosses it at the high walls looming over us.
“I wasn’t finished,” Lukas objects.
Wes smirks. “Goodness, let him finish!”
“The fact that it never rains where we are doesn’t mean it never rains at all. In fact, eighty-eight percent of dry thunderstorms end up shelling out inches of water up in the mountains.”
“We’re not in the mountains,” Athel retorts.
“No. We’re in a gorge at the foot of the mountains.”
We all fall silent, our thoughts interrupted by the sloshing of our feet and hooves in the mud. The trail gets narrower and clogged with shrubs and dead branches. Maha stops suddenly and bobs her head in distress.
“What is it, Athel?” I ask.
“Rocks,” he grunts. “Hidden in the mud. We’ve got to watch the horses, or else they’ll stumble.”
Lukas closes his data feeder and drops it back inside his satchel. “At this pace we won’t get there before nightfall.”
“That’s perfect,” Athel replies. “You weren’t thinking of breaking into Gaijins’ land in broad daylight, were you?”
Wes shudders, as though the realization hasn’t dawned on him yet. “Speaking of which, you guys have a plan, right?”
“No plan,” Athel replies. “We wing it.”
The sky roars again, fast-moving clouds roll over the gorge. Nobody says anything this time. We plow forward in the mud, Lukas and Wes bobbing their shoulders at the lazy rhythm of the horses’ pace. Taeh gets stuck and I bend down to ease her hoof out of the mud.
Water starts filling the bottom of the gorge. My stomach rumbles with hunger, yet I keep my mouth shut and say nothing. Soon the horses will be hungry too. What are we going to eat when night falls?
I know why Athel snaps so easily at us. He had a plan. Lukas and he had it all worked out. Then I jumped in and ruined it when I decided to wake him from Wela. Once that was done, there was no more time for planning, no more time to get organized. We should’ve brought food with us. Food, and those portable batteries Lukas wanted to build.
I’m so focused on my thoughts that I miss the fact that Athel and Maha have come to a complete stop.
“What—” I protest, and as I look up, I suddenly feel dizzy.
“Sacred Kawa,” Wes mumbles. “What are we going to do now?”
A huge boulder is wedged between the gorge walls, completely blocking the way forward. It sits on top of a huge pile of rocks, probably the result of a recent landslide, as the rocky incline on the right looks scarred and free of vegetation.
Kael comes back, his squawks echoing across the gorge’s narrow walls. He flies above the fallen boulder and lands on a dead tree branch leaning out from the rocks a few feet above our heads.
We all stare dumbfounded at the boulder looming over us. Athel squints and, reading from the inclinometer built into his camera eye, informs us that it’s about ten feet high. It blocks the opening of the gorge completely and then juts forwards like a roof, creating a small niche underneath. The four of us could probably climb over it from the less steep side, but then we’d have to leave the horses behind. And even though Maha and Taeh would know their way back home, I fear they’d stay behind waiting for us instead. As I meet Athel’s gaze, I know his thoughts mirror mine.
He stares at the boulder and scratches his head. “Maybe we can craft a lever to move it?”
Lukas once again retrieves his data feeder and thumbs the screen. “That’s going to be tough,” he says.
I can’t help but wonder what the heck he’s going to squeeze out of his little device. Maybe an estimate on how long ago the landslide happened? Like that’s going to help. My leather boots are soaked, my feet cold. Luckily, neither Athel or I have implants or electronic parts below our knees, but soon the chilliness of the water will bite into our flesh and wear out the horses, too.
Athel drops Maha’s reins and climbs up the pile of rocks obstructing our way. Pebbles skid under his feet, the terrain brittle and unstable.
“Be careful,” I shout. The large boulder juts forward in an awfully precarious way. I walk closer and bend down to check the niche underneath. It’s about four to six feet deep and doesn’t seem to give way to any open passages underneath. Just dirt and solid rock.
“I’m estimating its weight at about half a ton,” Lukas says, now back in his own element.
“And that helps us how?” I snarl.
He looks down at me from Maha’s back and scowls. “Convincing Athel that getting squashed by that thing wouldn’t be a great idea. I’m also estimating that we traveled about ten to twelve miles, so we’re barely over the halfway mark.”
Barely halfway!
I press a button on my forearm and check the timestamp on my retina. We’ve been wading through the gorge all day and, according to Lukas’s calculations, we’re not even close
to the Gaijins’ factory. Soon the sun will be setting. At this pace, we have another day’s journey ahead of us, unless we keep wading all night through the slosh.
Or worse, unless we get stuck in the slosh underneath a half-a-ton boulder.
Athel tries to wedge his foot in a nook but the brittle terrain crumbles down under his weight, making him slide all the way back to the bottom. He jumps back on his feet, his pants torn at the knees.
I heave a sigh. “That’s not going to help. Besides, the horses can’t climb to the other side.” I grasp Maha’s reins and move her and Taeh against the rocks, where the trail slants up and the terrain is drier. Athel and I help Lukas and Wes down from the horses, the operation both pathetic and hilarious at the same time. We all pile up on the ground on top of one another. The ridiculousness of the scene gives us a moment of relief as we all burst in laughter.
It doesn’t last long. Perched on the brittle rocks, our bums wet, we stare at the boulder blocking our way and sigh. The temperature inside the gorge has fallen again, and the humidity raises a wave of goose bumps on my skin. The horses get impatient. They start bickering, prodding at one another with their noses and teeth. I move them farther away from the boys and let them graze at the brush growing along the narrow trail.
“We’re not going back,” Athel says in his usual Athel-determined voice. He gets back to his feet and makes a second attempt to climb the boulder. He tries from the left side this time, where a few shrubs have grown over the landslide and provide a better foothold.
Lukas seems to gain some color back now that his feet are well planted on the ground. He ducks under the boulder and explores the niche underneath it, prodding both the ground and the ceiling with a stick. When he comes out again, he fishes his data feeder out of his satchel and taps the screen.
Wes sits on the ground and unwraps the blankets from around his titanium legs while looking over Lukas’s shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“I’m thinking levers.” He raises his chin to the horses standing by my side. “They could be the pull.”
I shake my head. “Forget it. You’ve got to come up with something smarter than that.”
