Defective (Fractured Era Book 1)

by Autumn Kalquist

  Uncle Jay turned off his walkie and tossed Anders his backpack. “Time to go.”

  “Can’t leave yet.” Anders dropped his bag to the floor, then leaned back in his chair and used the box of photos for a footrest. “Remember last month, when I brought you those history books and that really good microbrew? And then I helped you repair the solar array?”

  Uncle Jay scowled again.

  “Before I went home, you promised me you’d show me your broadcast set-up the next time I came over.” Anders grinned and raised his hands. “And look! Here I am.”

  “Did I promise that? Musta been drunk.” Jay sniffed and tapped a gnarled finger on the table. “Go home. And make sure you come up with an alibi that doesn’t include me.”

  “Don’t worry about my dad. I’ll handle him.” Anders leaned forward, dropping his feet to the floor. “Did he even tell you why he banned me from coming here?”

  Uncle Jay let out a loud sigh and perched at the edge of his rolling chair. “I’m not getting stuck between the two of you—”

  “He said I spent too many nights here last month and that it would raise questions. Which is ridiculous, because he’s the only one questioning everything I do. When I calmly suggested that the real problem was that he’s a hypocritical, corrupt traitor… well,” Anders shrugged. “Insta-ban.”

  “You know damn well why we have to be careful.” Uncle Jay scooted his chair toward the table and started fiddling with a frayed cable. “I may not always agree with your dad’s choices, but… he’s just trying to keep you safe.”

  “From becoming an off-gridder? Yeah. Too bad the Coalition isn’t handing out exemptions anymore.”

  “If he had any idea how much you already know about what we do here…” Uncle Jay sighed again. “Your dad cares about—”

  “Himself? Yep.”

  “You. He cares about you. He might wear a Coalition cop uniform, but—”

  “He only plays one in 3D?”

  Jay pressed his lips in a thin line and suddenly seemed fascinated with the cable. “He’s not the enemy, Anders. Whatever you think, he’s kept the Coalition away from us and off this homestead. If he could help other Independents without getting caught… I’m sure he would.”

  Anders took a deep breath and released his grip on the arm rests, trying to exude calm, but it didn’t work. Anders got it, he did. No one in town or on the homestead could ever know Uncle Jay and his brother-in-law still spoke. And as much as Anders hated them working together in secret… it would be worse if the Coalition ever discovered they had a corrupt sheriff on their payroll.

  And that he had helped terrorists.

  Because that’s what Uncle Jay and his tenant families would be called if the Coalition ever discovered one of the weapons caches buried on the property.

  But why couldn’t his uncle ever see that his dad only helped Jay and Anders when he had to in order to cover his own ass and keep his pristine reputation intact? Anders had learned that lesson the hard way when he was twelve and his dad betrayed his trust for the last time. Yeah. Trust is pretty much obliterated when you send my best friend on an all-expenses paid vacation to a fucking Protected camp.

  “You’re right. I’ll try to be more positive.” A new wave of irritation swept through Anders, but he kept his voice light. “My dad sure is generous. I love how he helps me manage my life. How ‘bout you?” Anders cracked a smile. “Is he gonna help you leave the homestead more often, or is he still limiting how much time you show your face outside the gate?”

  Jay picked up an old-fashioned keyboard and studied it intently.

  Anders took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. Yeah. His dad was real helpful.

  Like turning Lex in to Infinitek. Or the time he helped mom get better, instead of just leaving her alone when she needed him the most.

  “Never forget we swim with sharks,” Jay finally replied, his voice firm. “Your father is surrounded by them. He helps the best way he can… He keeps most of them away from us.”

  Anders tried to keep his eyes from rolling into the back of his head.

  “You draw too much attention to yourself,” Jay continued. “When you broke into the holo station, you put us all at risk.”

  “What? No one even remembers that anymore. I was bored. Besides, they should have had better security. All that tech, just left unattended…”

  “Your problem is that you can’t see your problem.” Uncle Jay laid the cable down. “And you never will unless you look.”

  “Thanks, Socrates.” Anders smirked. “But my vision’s perfect. Twenty-twenty last I checked.”

  Uncle Jay looked disappointed as he grabbed a crate and set it on the table.

  “Vision is a tool. Reality is the medium.” Jay leveled an unsettling gaze at Anders that was somehow intense yet distant at the same time. That odd look in his blue eyes was something Anders could never parse, and he braced himself. No other way to prepare for whatever mental crack Jay’s neurons were cooking up right now.

  After a minute, his uncle’s mouth turned up in a slight half-smile.

  Uh-oh.

  Jay spoke slowly. “When does a man with sight go blind, live without fear of dying, seek truth with lies, know everything yet not enough, dream after waking, make progress in his world… but change nothing?”

  Crap. EnigmaticJay philosophy riddle quiz. Anders had to pass it. Quick.

  “Umm. When… uh…”

  Uncle Jay was squinting at Anders with one eye again, and he looked perturbed.

  Wrong Answer. He’d bombed this quiz with an all caps FAIL.

  Jay repeated his riddle, speaking even more slowly.

  Anders wracked his brain for a likely answer, sitting forward and gnawing at his thumb, and discarded a dozen that didn’t fit all the clues.

  “Give up yet?”

  Anders lifted a brow. “Do I look like someone who gives up?”

  Jay crossed his hands behind his back. “A man with sight goes blind, lives without fear of dying, seeks truth with lies, knows everything yet not enough, dreams after waking, makes progress in his world… but changes nothing….” Uncle Jay paused, and when Anders didn’t answer, he finished. “When he confuses reality with what he sees in his VR games.”

  Ouch. Damn. Tell me how you really feel. Anders nodded, his throat tight, and Jay started loading his crate up with the tech from the thrift store.

  Anders ground his teeth. He wanted to forget the riddle, but now it seemed etched into his brain, inconveniently memorized.

  Did Jay seriously think Anders confused real life with a virtual reality game… that he was too blind to see danger and risk in the real world? Anders hated the Coalition, but what was he supposed to do, mope around all day and wait for someone else to give him permission to fight back? Fuck that. It was better to stick it to them every chance he got. And if he could have fun while doing it, even better.

  Anders shrugged it off, literally. Yeah, he played a lot of VR Games. His dad and Uncle Jay probably thought he was addicted. But he wasn’t always playing. Calliope6 had armored up every smart device on the planet to make them harder to hack, but the games had a security weakness: they allowed Anders to add his own game mods—code that was capable of changing the virtual world.

  Code that changed the game.

  Anders had found more than a few ways to create backdoors onto the Coalition-controlled network so he could access things—like the holo station’s level one security system—without his ever-present citizen ID login number getting in the way.

  Was it fun? Sure. Dangerous? Absolutely. But his skills could be useful in the fight against the Coalition. Which is why he wanted to find Haven, so he could be around people who also wanted to bring true freedom and democracy back to the world.

  Uncle Jay had carried the full crate to the door, and he was staring at Anders expectantly, that odd look still in his eyes.

&nbs
p; “Are we going somewhere?” Anders forced himself to give his uncle a playful smile.

  “Well, I am.”

  “You going to add that gear to your broadcast set-up?”

  “Yep.”

  Anders’ pulse picked up. “Gonna show me where it is?”

  “I could show ya, but then I’d have to kill ya, and…” Jay shrugged one shoulder and gave the Coalition logo on his sleeve a sidelong glance. “I’d be real sad if I got blood on my new favorite shirt.” He walked out the door.

  A small shock of electricity coursed through Anders, and he practically leapt out of his chair to follow his uncle outside.

  Jay didn’t say a word as he loaded the crate into the back seat of his car.

  Anders folded his arms across his chest, squinting in the sunlight, trying to stay calm. He couldn’t tell whether EnigmaticJay planned to really show him… or kick him out right now.

  Jay opened the driver’s side door and looked at Anders, his eyes hooded. “Go get your bike.”

  Anders raised a brow.

  “Bring it inside the gate and lock it up again.”

  Anders barely breathed as he brought his bike in.

  His uncle was waiting in the car, and Anders’ chest expanded as he got into the passenger seat.

  “You’re really taking me to see it?” Anders asked.

  “I keep my promises,” Jay said gruffly as he pulled the car onto the dirt path that led deeper into the property.

  Anders searched the homestead when he was younger, looking for the place Jay broadcasted from, but he’d never been able to find it on his own. His uncle had equipment somewhere on his property where he sent his coded messages to Haven. He buried the real messages beneath Independent “news” casts that were part-truth, part-lie. Mostly lies, so the Coalition didn’t get too interested in him. Anders didn’t know anything about the code, who received the reports, or if anyone ever responded or sent Uncle Jay messages. Hopefully he was about to find out.

  He forced himself to stay quiet as his uncle drove down the dirt path, past the barn, past the row of cabins where the tenant families lived. Two women were working outside, and they raised their hands to wave at Jay, but their eyes widened and they quickly turned away from the road the second they saw Anders in the car. They turned right, onto another dirt road that ran alongside the fields, all the way to the woods.

  Anders kept expecting Jay to crack a joke to let him know he’d changed his mind… that after all these years of hiding its location, he’d decided to keep it to himself a little longer. But he didn’t. When they reached the woods that stretched across the rest of the property, Jay pulled to a stop.

  “Anything I tell you about Haven, you keep to yourself. Understand? Your dad doesn’t need to know anything about Haven. He doesn’t want to know.”

  Anders nodded. “I’ve never told him anything.”

  “I know.” Uncle Jay turned off the car. “Your mom was good at that, too.”

  “At what?”

  “Keeping our secrets.” Jay had an impish grin as he opened his car door, letting in the sound of birds chirping. “What you waitin’ for? Grab the gear, son.”

  Anders suppressed his own grin as he twisted in his seat to pull the crate from the back. Sure, he’d planned for this, dreamed of it, worked it out in his head how he could make it happen. But he still couldn’t believe that after all this time, his uncle was really showing him… He wouldn’t believe it until he saw it.

  Jay got out of the car and walked straight into the woods, and Anders felt like his chest was going to explode. He took a deep breath and hurried after him, hauling the crate.

  They followed a barely visible trail through thick brush and trees, walking for at least a half mile before reaching a particularly dense section of the woods. It was hot and humid today, and Anders was glad he’d opted for the nanofabric, because Jay’s shirt was wet with sweat when he finally came to a stop about ten minutes later.

  Jay winked at Anders, then nudged a bush to the side and slipped between it and the trees behind it. Anders held the gear high and mimicked him. After a few more maneuvers like this, he realized why he’d never found this place before.

  A few seconds later, Jay pushed through a final thick patch of foliage, revealing a low wood shack beneath a thick canopy of trees.

  An antenna had been rigged to one of the tallest trees, and a small solar array was set up beside it.

  Anders couldn’t stop himself from grinning as his uncle led him around to the front door. He opened it and flicked on an LED globe just inside to illuminate the windowless shack, and they stepped through the door.

  The small space was dusty and cluttered just like Jay’s office. An old tattered mattress was in one corner of the raised wooden floor, and crates full of random pieces of gear were piled on top of it. And beyond that… his uncle had stacked ancient computer screens across the far wall above a desk, and he had a few PC towers hooked up to it. Cords ran across the floor in bundles, leading to a camera that was set up in front of a low bench.

  His uncle looked at him with that impish grin again. “No one else has been back here since your mother…” He bent down and plugged an extension cord into the wall. All the screens lit up, a wall of blue. “Our parents taught us that a Haven homestead should have at least two family members who know how to get messages to Haven… You ready to be my second?”

  Anders took a deep breath and willed his heart to stop rattling in his chest. “Why now?” he asked, the words slipping out. “Why not before?”

  Uncle Jay paused, averting his eyes. “Your dad and I don’t agree on some things. But I know your mother would have wanted you to at least know this. If things ever go bad for our family, you should know how to send a message ahead. There may come a time one of us will need to use it.”

  “How do the messages work? The path? Where do you go when you leave to get supplies? How do you know for sure the supplies are from Haven?”

  Jay held up a hand. “Don’t be tryin’ to weasel everything outta me at once. We start small… with broadcasts. If I’m going to teach you about Haven, you have to make me a promise—you have to promise that you’ll be patient. That you’ll do exactly what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it.”

  Anders let out a breath and glanced at the screens again, hungry to get started. “I promise.”

  “First lesson, then.” Uncle Jay went over to the wall of screens and pointed to an ancient PC hooked up to a nondescript white box. “This helps me pick up and decode local messages that come through the white space, but we need to repair it. When I get a new message, I either bounce it on ahead, or I append my own and then send it ahead. This is our most important duty—to keep the Path open. I’ve been waiting for messages about the truth behind that quarantine zone… but nothing’s made it out past the Coalition’s jam. We watch, and we wait, and we send ahead information as soon as we receive it. And as long as we keep sending reports on our local area, Haven promises to do their part… to help us if we ever need them.”

  Pretend they’re security guards. Nova kept her eyes closed and inhaled the thick, muggy air in an attempt to ease the tightness in her chest. It didn’t work. On past missions, she’d stolen research in glass and steel buildings while others distracted the security guards. How the hell was she supposed to pretend that these trained Pandemic Control soldiers were glorified mall cops? She pressed her gloved hand hard against her chest, feeling the outline of her star necklace beneath her shirt. But the movement did nothing but make the pain sharper. Like her heart was being squeezed.

  The wind picked up, and the dead crops hiding Nova and her team rustled. It carried a foul odor with it, and she snapped her eyes open. The odd scent was gone. To hell with this wet, rotting field.

  Bas lay on his stomach beside her, his binoculars out. He seemed wound tight but unafraid, of course. Talking about the past was forbidden at Haven, but she’d extracted enough
info about Bas from others to know that he’d been born into this life—his parents had been part of the original Watchtower resistance on the West Coast.

  Rory was on the other side of her—calm—and perfectly still. When he made eye contact with her, she smoothed her expression. Even mousy Lex, who was lying low on the other side of Bas, was keeping it together despite the presence of Coalition soldiers.

  Go fuck yourself, fear. Nova took another shallow breath of the humid air and peered through the crops again at Jeremiah’s last known coordinates. Sunlight dappled the faded red barn a few yards away, and deep grooves marred the soil around it. The tracks led out to a dirt road at the front of the barn, where the Pandemic Control humvee was parked.

  If she listened closely, she could hear the low murmur of conversation coming from in front of the building. There were six soldiers up there guarding some metal crates and the barn—and they’d been there for over an hour.

  “How much longer we gonna hide here?” she whispered to Bas.

  He ignored her question, but his jaw went tight as he ground his teeth again from too many stims.

  “What if Jeremiah’s still in there,” Nova continued, gesturing toward the barn, “and right now he’s telling them everything about Haven?”

  Bas ignored her again, leaning over her to pass Rory the binoculars.

  She widened her eyes at Rory for help, and he furrowed his brow and gave her a barely perceptible shake of his head. It was an all-too-familiar look. Don’t push Bas right now.

  Oh, Bashole was in a mood, huh? Well, maybe she wasn’t in the mood to hide in the bushes when any minute a Coalition soldier might see them and shoot them on sight. Nova flared her nostrils and sank lower to the ground. The wet earth seeped into her already soaked fatigues, and she shivered despite the heat.

  Bas always acted so sure of himself, like he didn’t need to explain his actions to anyone at Haven—not even to Xavier. And he didn’t, because X treated Bas like the goddamned second coming. Maybe it was ’cause they were both so arrogant—neither of them could ever be wrong. Bas hadn’t even gotten a slap on the wrist for screwing up the New York mission so bad they closed the Protected district and relocated everyone to Washington. She shot Lex another dark look. It was her fault. Any hope Nova had of finding her brothers again was crushed when they moved all the Protecteds to the impenetrable Washington camp.