by J. Kowallis
“Ransley, I . . .”
“I’m tired. Good night.”
She’s confused. I can see that, but I don’t care. I can’t talk about it anymore. All the talk, all the speculating, and all the worry about expanding my skill isn’t going to get Roydon out any faster, and only God knows what he’s going through.
―REGGIE―
I cup my hands around my mouth, blowing moist hot air into them. For a moment, the tissue freezing to my bones feels thawed, and then the humidity of my breath makes it ice over. The early glow of the sun peeks over the horizon. I must have been asleep for only a couple hours before Nate woke me up.
“What’s she like?” he whispers while unzipping his pack.
Ransley’s still sleeping soundly on the other side of the tree. I tried to talk to her once more last night, but she wouldn’t respond. “I think she’s overwhelmed and worried. So, difficult, I suppose.”
“Difficult’s putting it nicely.” He sits next to me.
“Nate, we terrified her.”
“Right, tell that to my knee.” He shakes his head. “I told you not to call her by her name. You did the same thing to me and damn-near made me shit myself.”
I smirk. “What about the city?”
“It’s not pretty. The walls are caked with rust, and the smell coming out of that city is ripe. I mean, the technology matches Public One, but the lifestyle?” Nate shakes his head and hands me a ration breakfast bar.
“Do you think the cloakers will work?”
“Oh, yeah.” Nate sidles up next to me and takes my free hand in his. The touch sends a jolt through me. Olivia’s face materializes in my mind, and I yank my hand away. I can’t erase her face no matter how hard I try. She was alive only weeks ago. We found her. Then Lobb killed her.
Nate sighs, but says nothing. “It’s no different than Public One,” he continues. “The only problem is, we have nowhere to stay once inside. We either need to go right for Roy, or attempt to feel around.”
I close my eyes and push my vision forward. A pinch behind my eyes, a tunneling of images.
Loud clinking of steel rings in my ears as we walk down the unfinished streets of The Public. Steam hisses from pipes in the walls. Security cameras are everywhere—not like Public One—these people don’t trust their own citizens.
I jump forward farther. The images accelerate.
I’m wearing a Public Four uniform. It’s similar to Public One’s, yet still unique. It’s black, the material is thicker and the collars form differently around the neckline than the others. Nate’s on his knees, attempting to dismantle the door pad of a home. A voice shouts from behind and I turn around. Guards surround the street and Nate, Ransley, and I all raise our arms in the air. Without warning, a power shot goes off, piercing Ransley in the shoulder, knocking her back. Nate and I reach out to catch her and he’s knocked to the left with a shot to his side.
Seeing him hit makes my stomach flip. A knot twists in my chest and I swallow. No. No, that won’t work.
The images spin backwards and I’m focusing on the sounds, the smells, and the thick steam. A grate scrapes against the steel sides when Nate pulls it back. Still wearing Public uniforms. I look up at the building in front of us. It’s the tallest in the city. Lights run up the sides, blinking in the early morning light. With the grate is fully open, Ransley climbs in and I immediately follow. Nate closes the grate behind and we crawl through the large round fluorescent-lit duct.
Forward.
Roy’s patiently sitting in an aluminum chair below us. A woman screams somewhere and then I hear a blast. So much chaos, I can’t quite tell which images to hold onto. The images change. We’re in a home. Safe. We’re all alive. But no Roy. Me. Nate. Ransley. And another face I’ve never seen. It’s a woman. We need her.
I take a deep breath, pulling myself out of the vision. Nate’s motionless, staring at me.
“What did you see?” he asks, calmly.
“Doesn’t matter what we do. Neither option is easy, and one is completely out of the question.” I glance behind to Ransley. “We’ll let her think we’re going to save Roy.”
“Let her think?”
I shake my head and turn to him. “We won’t get Roy out. But there’s a woman inside, working for the public. She’s the target.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“We need her, Nate. I don’t know why, but we do.”
He looks at me like I’m crazy, but nods. “Fine. We’ll do it. But we need to go soon.” With a glance behind him, he sighs. “I don’t want to wake her up.”
I can’t help but smile. “Afraid of a woman?”
Nate frowns. “That’s not a woman, that’s a damn harpy.”
I let out a light chuckle. “I’ll get her.”
I push myself off the ground and brush the dirt and forest floor off my clothes. The wool blanket wrapped around me drops to the ground. The air engulfs my skin and I slip on my thick gloves quickly.
I walk around, my hand balancing me by leaning on the trunk of the tree before I squat next to Ransley’s body. Her head’s tucked inside her thick hooded sweatshirt and tied shut. A small but pointed nose sticks out, pale white in the early morning darkness.
“Ransley,” I say softly, gently shaking her shoulder.
She moans and tucks deeper.
“Ransley, we have to leave if we’re going to make it to Roy in time.”
She rolls over to look at me and I see her eye peek out at me from the loophole in her hood. “How?” she mumbles. “How are we going to get in? Even . . .” a shiver runs over her, “. . . even though it’s dark they’ll still see us.”
“Trust me, they won’t.” I grin at her and rub her arm before standing up and walking back to Nate. The rustling of her clothes and snapping of brush beneath her tells me she’s hurrying to stand up.
Nate throws a cloaker at me and I hold it up in front of Ransley after she stumbles up to me. Her short hair sticks to one side of her head, a little shimmery with sweat. A red web of lines from the fabric pressed against her face are drawn into her skin, separate from the scar on her face.
“This is a cloaker. You wear it around the back of your head like this.” I loop it around both ears and it hugs my head securely.
“It interrupts any technology within fifty yards,” Nate cuts in. “U.S. military grade. When we first found these, the distance only reached ten meters, but I’ve done a little work on ‘em over the last couple months.” Nate lifts his pack onto his shoulders. “Nothing will be able to detect us. Security cameras, heat sensors, weight triggers . . .”
“Invisible?” she raises an eyebrow.
Nate and I smirk. “Yeah. Pretty much,” he answers.
“Not bad, Rambo.”
I don’t get her reference, but the corner of Nate’s lip draws up in a hard smile-like curve. “Never got that one before.”
“No? It suits you.” She yawns.
“How do you know Rambo? That’s my grandpa’s generation.” He grunts.
Ransley rubs her arms in the cold. “Papá used to have an old copy of the movie. His favorite. Until the player broke. I figured he was an overly testosterone-fueled maniac. You’re kinda the same way.”
“Excuse me?” he looks offended.
“What? The Harpy? You can call me names but you’re off limits?” She glares at him.
I reach over and pull a ration breakfast bar out of Nate’s back pocket along with the last cloaker and toss both to Ransley. “Shut up. Both of you. Ransley, we won’t be able to eat again ‘til we’re inside The Public, so eat it now.”
She looks at me with wide eyes, fingering the package like it’s delicate china. “Where did you get these?”
“Just eat it. We don’t have time right now to explain.”
Ransley rips into the package, exposing the top of the bar and takes a large bite. She moans with satisfaction and chews quickly. “Oh my . . .” she mumbles through her mouthful.
I pull my own pack onto my shoulders and Nate slips his cloaker over his ears. It doesn’t take Ransley long to get her things and grab her own small backpack. The sun is starting to peer over the crown of the horizon. Even my heart starts to pound a little harder. If we don’t make it inside The Public before daybreak, guards won’t need technology to spot us. Nate can sense our shortened time and starts walking down the hill without a word.
Ransley’s still trying to finish off her breakfast, enjoying every bite, but moving like lightning to follow Nate. I trail behind her, jumping over dark rocks. Branches break off dead trees to allow us through, instead of snapping back to whip us. The air escaping from my mouth forms into white clouds the harder I breathe. I’m starting to sweat underneath my layers of clothing. The sweat chills my skin, and I can’t tell if I’m getting hotter or colder.
We jog closer to the city. The walls loom above us, looking down, threatening. I notice the gate a hundred yards in front of us is not like Public One. It’s not welcoming. It’s not waiting for wanderers to come through. Haunting green laser lights stream from one side of the gate to the other in haphazard patterns.
Ransley comes to an abrupt stop behind Nate. He’s holding his hand up to show us something.
“What is it?” I whisper.
“Watch this.” He leans down to pick up a rock and throws it toward the gate. It sizzles. A puff of dirty black smoke rises, and even from here, I can see two halves of the rock tumble to the ground with a thud next to a few other shards. Obviously Nate did this a few times last night.
“How are we supposed to get through that?” Ransley turns on me, frowning.
I look to Nate. “Will they work?”
He replies with a raised eyebrow. “Let’s go find out.”
Nate jogs down the hill again, maneuvering around boulders and trees, dips in the soil. I can tell Ransley is hesitant, so I go ahead of her, giving her a quick smile before heading down. Granted, Nate has been a little overconfident recently, but he knows this equipment better than I do. All I can do is hope we can make it through without being diced into pieces.
We get closer to the gates and Nate starts to walk slower, measuring the distance between where we are and when the cloakers should cause the gates to quit functioning. It should only be a few more feet. With each step I take, my breath becomes shallower, my heart beats faster. I glance around, watching the steam of the city rise up above the walls, and the lights twinkling in the early dawn. A few more steps and we should be in range.
With a snap and a crackling fizz from the walls, the green lasers die, powering down with the power of the cloakers. We only have a few moments to comprehend what had happened when Nate starts running. I take off after him and watch behind me for Ransley. She’s still standing, watching the gate, her eyes wide. Nate whistles loudly in front of me, and I realize he’s trying to get Ransley to move. She jumps at the sound and immediately her feet pound the ground. We run farther into the city, and don’t stop until we round a corner and duck between two rusted dirt-caked buildings. The good thing is most of these buildings have few windows. And there’s a good chance no one saw us run through.
“All right, turn your cloakers off. We’re out of range.” Nate begins to unwrap his device, but I reach out and stop him.
“No. This isn’t Public One. They’re not so . . . trusting.” I point up toward the nearest building and show him the camera. Its shining glass lens peeks out from underneath a bright blue light.
I glance around the corner again, looking for faces or bodies. No one’s out yet. “We’ll need uniforms.”
“Uniforms?” Ransley asks. “What are we doing?”
Nate makes a face. “Aw, shit. They have those here too?”
“What do we need uniforms for?” Ransley prods me again.
I lean against the wall and frown at Nate, signaling him to keep his pouting to himself. “Public One citizens were required to wear white uniforms. Very sleek, very . . .”
“. . . restrictive and damn uncomfortable.”
I shake my head and glare at Nate again. “. . . unifying. Public Four has their own version. It’s black with an outer jacket. The shape’s slightly different. But overall, it’s similar to Public One’s. If we want to blend in, we have to look like everyone else. We’re going for Roy, so we need to look like the rest of them.”
Nate makes a disgusted face and Ransley lifts her eyebrow. “Weren’t you in the military? Shouldn’t you be used to uniforms?”
His face darkens. “Only uniforms I’m proud to represent, Harpy. Now, where do we need to go?” Nate asks me.
I close my eyes, focus my concentration and allow my mind to surge forward. After going through every choice and scenario possible, I open my eyes, exhausted. “There’s a laundry facility about five blocks from here. The owner arrives in a half hour. We need to get over there now before the first transport comes down in ten minutes.”
Ransley jumps around the corner and I follow her, Nate behind me.
“This way.” I hurry in front and follow my vision—twisting around the correct turns, watching for the right signs and indications. It takes us the entire ten minutes to find the building and pull between it and its neighbor. Nate comes in behind us when the glow of transporter beams begin to travel down the street we recently pulled off. Sitting in the shadows, I watch the vehicle go by, oblivious to our existence.
“Now we wait?” Ransley asks.
I close my eyes and sigh, nodding. During the next twenty minutes, multiple transports roam the street, back and forth in front of the store. We have a small window of time to get into the building without being seen.
“So you’re a street fighter?” Nate asks Ransley.
She nods. “Yeah. I was thirteen when I had my first comp fight.”
My eyebrows jump.
“That young?” Nate’s voice is a little hoarse.
Ransley nods again. “We needed the money. I lost a lot at first. Because I was young, I bounced back pretty fast.”
“Lost? As in . . .”
“Got my head kicked in? Knocked out? Internal bleeding? Broken bones? Yeah.”
After a few moments, I realize I’m frowning at her. I stretch my eyebrows upward and look out to the street again, studying the shadows. When they match up to my premonition, I whisper, “It’s time. Follow me, and stay close.”
I pull up from my seat on the ground and dash around the corner. The shop owner is just walking through the door.
I reach forward to keep it from closing and focus my concentration through the malfunctioned chip in my head, causing the owner’s body to stiffen. He cries out without turning around and falls to the floor face down, every muscle in his body contracting in pain.
Nate drops his jacket over the man’s head to keep him from seeing us. “I know how you feel, man.”
I jump over the counter to sift through the bags of uniforms ready to be picked up by customers. Luckily, the bags are organized by size and gender, as well as name.
I pull a uniform off the shelves with Nate’s measurements and throw it across the room. I take a quick glance at Ransley, sizing her up. She’s not much different than I am. Tall, probably five-eight, small bust line, narrowed hips. There’s only one uniform with those similar dimensions so I toss it to her, opting for a slightly smaller size over the next option—a uniform three sizes too big. It only takes us a few moments to slip into our new clothes and shove the old ones back into the bags we’re carrying. I hop over the counter and pull the black uniform jacket over my arms and shoulders. The jumpsuit neckline won’t quite close all the way. My fingers keep pulling on the fabric above my breasts, trying to get it to close. I feel like I’m going to suffocate.
“First chance we get, I’m ditching this one. I can barely move,” I mumble, grabbing my bag. I look up at Nate and his eyes zero in on my chest, his mouth parted. My skin flushes and I look away.
“Keep staring, Rambo. Maybe they’ll turn into cupcakes,” Rans
ley says, her voice dry.
Nate’s eyes widen. His gaze lifts from my chest up to my face, then over to Ransley. “You wanna die today, Harpy?”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“Reggie, permission to hit a woman? Please?”
“Denied. Now, shut up! Both of you will work together without any more bullcrap. Do you understand?” I pull the front door open, holding it for the other them, avoiding Nate’s eyes.
“If I have to,” Ransley mumbles at the same time Nate responds with an apathetic, “Sure.”
Ransley exits first and Nate waits until we’re out of eyesight before taking the jacket off the shop owner’s head and dashing out of the laundry.
“The shop guy is going to talk,” Ransley says in a low voice.
I look at Ransley over my shoulder. “Yes, he will.”
Pressing further down the streets, through the mire of the city, we arrive at one of the tallest buildings for miles. It must stretch toward the sky for nearly thirteen thousand feet. Its shape is not unlike an elongated egg, but formed like four fingers shooting out of the ground, joining at the tip. Hollow dark space resides in the center, ending at a concrete courtyard on the ground. Lights travel up the side of the building, following the tendril sections to the tip where one solid light glows. It makes me feel uneasy.
“This way.” I lead Nate and Ransley to a dark corner of the building and point out the vent system I’d seen in my vision. “Here. We go through here.”
Without question, Nate kneels on the ground and pulls a utility belt from his pack. After attaching it around his waist, he pulls an old crowbar from his pack. The bolts on the vent break with the right force and he pulls it away. “Reggie, you first,” he grunts, and sets the vent on the ground.
“What about our packs?” Ransley asks.
Nate yanks his pack off his shoulder and tosses it into a nearby bush. I throw mine to him after putting on my own belt and hand another to Ransley before I duck inside the well-polished vent system. As my knees and hands move along the round vents, the echo travels up and down the tunnels. Ransley crawls behind me, followed by Nate.
