by JL Bryan
“Would you hurry him up?” Lucia snapped. “The police will already know his house has gone funky.”
“Sorry.” Ruppert held his wallet a moment longer, then tossed it up to the top step. His knees felt a little weak.
A patched, rusty station wagon idled in his front driveway. Ruppert couldn’t help wondering how much the neighborhood association would fine him for keeping a car like that in front of his house. The neighbors must have noticed by now. Likely one or another of them would call the police on suspicion.
The Packers fan opened a rear door of the station wagon and lifted out a puffy, hooded coat that reminded Ruppert of a life preserver.
“Put it on,” the Packers fan said.
“Why?”
“You might have a tracker implant, too,” Lucia said. “This blocks the signal until we can check.”
“I don’t think I have a…" Ruppert stopped and considered how much time he’d lost while captured by Terror, the blacked out time he couldn't remember. They might have done anything to him. He slid the coat over his shoulders, buckled it, drew the hood in around his face.
“Good luck,” the Packers fan said. “Thanks, Lucia.” He climbed into the driver’s seat of the old station wagon.
“We’re not going with him?” Ruppert asked.
“We take your car. It’s got hard resale value, even if we have to chop-shop it. I’m driving. Don’t argue.”
Inside the car, she drew a small toolkit from her pocket and used a small flathead screwdriver to pry open his uplink console.
“I disabled that,” he said. He felt odd—he couldn’t remember ever sitting in the passenger seat before. “I disconnected the fuse.”
“Not good enough.” Lucia dug the screwdriver in underneath a circuit panel, then cracked it loose. She lifted it free and threw it out the window onto Ruppert’s lawn. “They install backup batteries now. You have to get rid of the whole thing.”
Lucia stepped on the accelerator, and the Bluehawk launched backwards, crashing through the low cactus hedge banking his driveway. They flew out into the street, and Lucia spun the steering wheel and stomped the brake. The car screeched to a stop just before hitting his neighbor’s mailbox. The stink of roasted rubber poured in through the air conditioner vents.
“This is a nice car,” she said. "Good pick-up."
“Okay…where are we going?”
“The desert.”
As they hurtled towards the neighborhood exit, Ruppert looked back at his retreating house, wondering if he would see it again.
As they drove east into the Mojave desert, the layers of smog gradually peeled away overhead, and Ruppert was stunned at the sight of the great vault of the sky overhead glittering with billions of stars. He had spent so much of his life surrounded by concrete, walls, and security fences that the sky had become a meaningless detail, just a dark brown smudge you might happen to notice high overhead if you happened to look up when you happened to be outside. Here the sky arced from horizon to horizon—and he realized the horizon itself was the truly unfamiliar sight, land reaching out into the night further than he eyes could follow.
He’d spent far too much of his life in enclosed spaces. Even on vacations or the occasional business trip, he and Madeline just rode inside an airplane to a another city or, at best, a walled resort on a U.S.-controlled island. Spending time in the raw wilderness was considered the height of antisocial behavior. Anyone who didn’t care to be crowded in at all times by other humans was deemed suspect.
He looked over at the strange woman driving his car. Lucia had remained quiet except to tell him to keep watch for highway patrols and National Guard, and she cranked up the stereo to the breaking point—Mozart, maybe. He didn’t know classical very well.
He guessed her age at somewhere in her twenties, probably a couple of years younger than Ruppert, about Madeline's age. It was hard for him to tell; her black eyes and long, straight dark hair marked her as a disfavored minority, probably Latino, possibly Native American. He couldn’t help feeling a little uncomfortable about that. What if he inadvertently said something that offended her, and she attacked him? She had a stern, serious look about her, an attitude that spoke of surviving long nights in dark and dangerous slums.
“You do this a lot?” he finally asked.
“What?” She turned down the radio.
“Our friend said you ‘run extractions.’ You do a lot of this?”
“Just something I fell into.” She shrugged, glancing in the rearview. They were alone on the highway. “Do it once, suddenly you’re an expert. People start coming to you for help. It’s sort of self-fulfilling.”
“How did you get involved with them?”
“Who?”
“With this…organization. Is that what it is?”
“Not really. I mean, it’s not like we have a name, or meetings, or, you know, a logo or something. You organize, they infiltrate. They disappear the leaders and turn over your membership list to the Freedom Brigades.”
“And the Brigades really do work for Terror? We always report them as a vigilante group.”
“Bullshit. They're paramilitary, state-sponsored. What planet have you been living on?”
“The one we just left.”
“There’s not an organization,” she said. “Just people you meet. Trying to survive. You learn who to see about fake identicards, who’s good at hacking security networks.”
“Like what you did at my house.”
“And your gate. A friend of mine made this remote for me. It's good for most residential security, for cookie-cutter suburban systems like yours. Some liquor stores, too."
“What do you do when you're not kidnapping journalists?”
“We survive." She looked at him a long moment, then said. "You meet people who are real radical idealists, but they don't agree on ideas. Mostly it’s just people on the run from Terror, or who’ve lost someone in their life to Terror. Terror makes its own enemies. And we help each other get by. Occasionally, like what you’re doing, there's an opportunity to act.”
“It doesn’t sound like much of a revolution.”
“Is that what you expected? Nobody wants to get hung at a football game. Anyway, information is the most powerful weapon. You should know that.”
“Because I work in news?”
“You call that news?”
“I read what they tell me to read.”
“And you’re comfortable with that?”
“It’s not what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be—to do, essentially, the exact opposite of what I’m doing.”
“But you do it anyway.”
“It’s the only work left. The kind of journalism that interested me doesn’t exist anymore. I just took what I could get.”
“Did pretty good for yourself, though. Topline car. House in Bel Air.”
“Actually, Bel Air isn’t as nice as it used to be.”
“Most people in the world live in tin shacks.”
“Yeah…” Ruppert looked out at the dark expanse of the desert, the scrub cactus and occasional angular Joshua trees. He liked driving out here. He wished they never had to stop. “Yeah, I know that, I just forget to think about it. It’s strange how your mind closes off after awhile.”
“I’m sorry to inconvenience you.”
“You hate me already?”
“I’ve hated you since I first saw you on the screen. You’re a liar. You just flood the world with their lies, and you smile while you do it.”
“I don’t write the stories myself. It’s just a job.”
“It’s just a job for the people who do write them,” Lucia said. “It’s just a job for the people who make them up. It’s just a job for the people who set the psy-op policy. It’s a gigantic system that’s nobody fault, because everybody’s just doing their little job.”
“I know, but—”
“No, you don’t! Without your propaganda, people would never accept
any of this.”
“If I didn’t do it, somebody else would.”
“You’re right. I do hate you. I hate all of you up there drinking blood for a living, and then shrug and smile and say it’s not your fault, there’s just so much of that fresh blood to drink and all you take is a sip. Besides, it’s just Latin blood, Asian blood, Arab blood, African blood—it’s not like it’s real people being tortured and murdered to make you rich. Is it?”
Ruppert didn't say anything.
“Do you know how many people your machine has killed just this century?”
“It must be thousands.”
She rolled her eyes. “You are an idiot.”
“I told you I was.”
She whipped her head towards him, her eyes glinting. “You’d better not be doing this to screw us over.”
“I’m not.”
“I’ve killed men bigger and uglier than you."
“I believe it.”
“I’ve thought about cutting your throat before,” she said. “Every time I see your newscast.”
“Who did they take from you?” Ruppert asked.
“What?”
“You said most people lost something to Terror. I lost my friend Sully.”
“Nobody said I lost anybody.”
“So you’re just one of those radical idealists?”
“I don’t like talking to you.” She turned up the stereo and fixed her eyes on the road.
EIGHTEEN
They drove for hours, stopping twice at unmanned fuel pumps and paying with Ruppert’s cash. When they were so deep in the desert he couldn’t see even a tinge of city lights either ahead or behind them, Lucia left the paved road to follow a dust-filled, barely visible track. She turned off the headlights, and the world ahead of them turned solid black.
“What are you doing?” Ruppert asked.
“We don’t want any sky patrols to see us.”
“Okay…but how do you know where you’re going?”
“I’m navigating by the stars,” she said.
Ruppert couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not.
After another half-hour, Lucia steered the car along a tall rock formation tall enough to block out the sky on the driver’s side of the car. She slowed, then turned the car and eased it underneath a jutting overhang.
“We’re going to get stuck under here,” he said.
“Stop complaining.” She let the car coast ahead several yards before stopping. They would be out of view of any satellites or helicopters. “We’re here.”
Ruppert opened the passenger door, but the rock wall of the cavern blocked it halfway. He sucked in his breath and managed to squeeze out of the car. Lucia climbed out on her side and closed the door, and the car’s interior light winked out.
Illumination flared from a small flatlight clipped to Lucia’s belt, throwing a harsh white glare that lent a supernatural look to the cavern, turning the craggy stone walls the color of bone while the cracks and recesses in them remained pitch black.
“This way,” Lucia said. They walked to the front of the car and then continued along the sloping cave floor. He followed her down a side passage as cramped as a chimney and nearly as steep, floored with a slippery layer of loose sand.
The passage twisted another hundred feet underground, then opened into a spacious cavern with a soaring ceiling. Off to his left, the rock floor dropped off into a sheer cliff. On the opposite side of the cavern, the partially-gutted body of an old trailer, or maybe an RV, rested against the wall. The rest of the room was cluttered with shelves and boxes filled with bits of machinery, dusty file folders, and hundreds of books and magazines. Some areas were portioned off behind makeshift curtains.
The center of the cavern looked, oddly, like anybody’s living room. There was a threadbare couch, four or five mismatched chairs, an ancient record player, a writing desk that looked like it had barely survived a house fire. The only light source was a lamp mounted into the desk, which shone on an elderly man who was now standing up to meet them.
He wobbled, then steadied himself on a walking cane. The man’s silver hair was balding at the top but long and shaggy at the sides, and he also had an unkempt beard. Ruppert couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a beard on a white man, or at least an employed one.
“Lucia,” the man said. “It is so good to see you.” He hobbled towards them, keeping his head high and spine straight despite his ungainly walk. Lucia ran towards him and hugged him—Ruppert couldn’t tell if she was excited or just trying to spare him a few steps.
“You don’t have to get up,” she said as she embraced him.
“Having a good reason to stand is worth the trouble of doing so,” the old man said. “I swear, Lucia, if I had my former life back, I would marry you today and take you to Paris tomorrow.”
“No,” Lucia said. “You’d just keep me as a mistress on the side. Until I got too old and ugly.”
“Impossible.”
“It happened to you.”
“I stand humiliated. Who is your friend?”
“He’s not my friend. He’s a propagandist for GlobeNet-L.A. His name’s Daniel Ruppert.”
“Is that right?”
Ruppert took the man’s offered left hand. The old man’s rheumy eyes took him in with a long, searching gaze that was uncomfortably reminiscent of Pastor John’s penetrating stare.
“I’m retired now,” Ruppert said, forcing a smile.
“My name is Dr. John Smith.” The old man returned the smile, and it did not look forced at all. “Not actually, but my given surname is a bit well known, not to mention an object of some shame for me personally, and in any case I’ve abandoned its use.”
“I understand,” Ruppert said. “Um, nice to meet you.”
“This is the man Sullivan recommended?” Dr. Smith asked Lucia, but without taking his eyes off Ruppert.
“That’s him,” Lucia said.
“He appears reliable enough to me.”
“You haven’t watched his newscasts.”
“And thank God for that,” Dr. Smith said. He inspected the coarse, heavy coat Ruppert was wearing. “Do you know where they bugged you?”
“I’m not even sure if they did.”
“Best to be safe, though. Lucia, will you help the gentleman into the exam room, please? And give the lights a few turns.”
“Over here,” Lucia said. She led Ruppert to the old RV against the wall, which they entered through a curtain made of the same material as Ruppert’s coat. The interior was completely lightless. Ruppert heard a ratcheting noise off to his side, and then a pair of surgical lights stuttered to life overhead. Lucia was turning a hand crank mounted into a metal box on one wall of the RV, apparently to generate electricity.
A low steel operating table occupied the center of the RV, banked by mirrors, a few clunky, boxy display screens, and an assortment of medical equipment that might have been salvaged from a hospital sometime in the early 1970s. Scalpels and assorted bottles of fluid were arrayed on the RV’s kitchen counter. The ceiling, walls and floor were all shrouded by more of the heavy material that composed Ruppert’s coat; it looked like burlap bags fixed in place with yards and yards of duct tape.
“What is this?” Ruppert asked.
“Don’t worry,” Lucia said. “You might not be bugged.”
Dr. Smith stepped up into the RV with a cardboard box tucked under one arm. He heaved it onto the table in the RV’s breakfast nook and began digging through the tangled nest of wires and cable inside.
“You can remove your coat,” Dr. Smith said. “We’re safe enough in here.” He fished out an object Ruppert couldn’t identify, a plastic yellow box the size of a deck of playing cards, with metal antennae radiating out at one end.
Ruppert shrugged off the coat, glad to be free of its weight, and tossed it onto one of the booth seats in the breakfast nook.
“Remove your shirt as well,” Dr. Smith said. He lifted out one end of a wire from the bo
x and inserted it into a row of plugs on the side of the crankbox. “Lucia, a few more if you don’t mind.”
Lucia worked the crank, and soon the little yellow box sputtered to life with a series of sharp beeps. Dr. Smith lifted the device and rapped his knuckle a few times against the side.
Ruppert was slowly unbuttoning his shirt, distracted by the squawking device.
“There,” Dr. Smith said. He looked up at Ruppert. “Well, don’t be shy.”
“Sorry.” Ruppert hurried to strip himself to the waist.
“Step closer, if you don’t mind.” Dr. Smith held out the device toward Ruppert, and it began to beep more rapidly. “Oh, yes. Someone in this room is definitely being tracked. Would you turn around?”
Ruppert rotated to show the doctor his back, making very brief and awkward eye contact with Lucia as he turned. The device’s beeping accelerated into one long, piercing note.
“Here it is,” Dr. Smith said. “Right scapula. Perfect. Mr. Ruppert, we’re going to need you to lie face down on the table.”
“For what?” Ruppert said. His eyes darted to the rack of chunky, obsolete surgical instruments on the kitchen counter. They looked clean and bright, but terribly sharp.
“I’ll have to perform some very minor surgery,” Dr. Smith said. Ruppert whirled, half-expecting the old man to be wielding a scalpel at his bare back. Smith gave a warm smile. “You’re lucky it isn’t cranial.”
“You’re going to cut me open?”
“We’ll use a local anesthetic,” Smith said. “Don’t worry, I can enter laparoscopically. You can watch on the screen.”
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Ruppert said.
“It’s a simple procedure,” Smith said.
“You want to wear that coat the rest of your life?” Lucia asked. “There are millions of ex-prisoners who’d cut their own grandmother to get their trackers removed.”
Ruppert looked at the old man. He seemed sane, even kindly. If Terror had implanted a tracking device in his body, Ruppert definitely wanted it out, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to let a bearded old man who lived in a cave perform surgery on his toe, much less an area close to his heart and spine.
