“What was that all about?” I said.
“Do you know how many times I’ve seen a mover grounded and with its engine doors opened?”
“No.”
“Never, and that guy probably hasn’t, either,” he said.
“Great,” I said sarcastically. “We’re sticking out like sore thumbs.”
“Yeah, we need to get back on the road before someone calls in an inoperable mover report and the authorities come.”
“That’s it. We’re screwed. We’ll have to leave it here, walk to Chu-Lung’s, and hope we won’t get stopped by a SEC.” Two people walking in the middle of nowhere and in this heat would look more than suspicious.
Michael brought his hand to his chin. “No. I’m not giving up on this mover, yet. Give me a minute to think this through.” His eyebrows came together and he licked his lips. “This Model Three was manufactured for Region One.”
“So? What does that matter?”
“Movers are designed and developed for the needs of the regions.”
“Why? What would be the point?” I asked and then remembered that in my century, cars in Alaska were equipped with special heaters to keep the block, oil pan, and battery warm. When the temperature dropped below zero, drivers used to literally plug their engines into plug-in stations at schools, stores, or even their homes when they parked in order to guarantee their cars would restart again.
He tapped his finger against his chin and ignored my question. “A car is like the human body. Instead of food, it converts fuel to chemical energy, movement, and heat.” He returned his hands to his hips and continued to study the engine. “The motor, the heart of the mover, is cooled by water like the human body as blood circulates to the skin. Waste products are expelled through a mover’s exhaust, something similar to human respiration.”
Nice analogy, but who cared? We didn’t have time for this. “Michael, give up. We need to go,” I said and pulled our bag of supplied from the mover.
“You said something about an air filter.”
“Yeah,” I said, still stymied by where he was going with all of this.
“Our bronchial tubes are lined with cilia, small hair-like structures. Like an air filter, the mucus in our throat and lungs catches germs, dust, and other unwanted particles, and then the cilia direct the mucus upward where it is expelled from the lungs through sneezing, coughing, or swallowing.”
“So?” I said, a bit irritated.
“So, this sector is known for its extreme heat and dry, dusty air. This mover isn’t designed for those conditions. Like the human body, in order for an engine to run properly, it needs to filter the air that sucked through the mover’s engine. If that system is clogged and prevents clean air from reaching the engine, then the engine won’t start, just like an oxygen-deprived human would die.”
Michael dropped to his knees, rolled onto his back, and scooted under the mover.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
“Looking for some kind of air filter.”
“You’re not going to find it down there,” I said. “It’s got to be under the hood.”
I scanned the strange engine. It was a closed system, its workings concealed by silver canisters and knobby compartments. Nothing looked familiar, and nothing resembled an air filter.
Two movers came down the road. My pulse increased as my anxiety level doubled. If a lifted hood looked suspicious, what about a guy under a car?
“Michael, get up. We’ll just have to ditch the mover and walk.”
He inched out from under the mover, holding something the size and shape of a large eggplant. “Its lung,” he announced.
“How do you know?”
“It has to be.” He held it up to the sun and its internal structures appeared as dark lines and spots. “See those fibers and air sacs? They act as the filter’s cilia and alveoli. I bet this thing is congested.”
Michael twisted the small cap at the filter’s base. Rusty-colored dust sprinkled into his hand, and when he gave it a tap against his knee, a matted clot of debris popped from the filter and dropped to the ground.
“Okay, let’s see if that does the trick,” he said and screwed on the cap. He replaced the filter and when he pushed out from on the mover, he was sporting a confident grin.
“I hope it works,” I said and brushed the dirt from the back of his shirt and the back of his head.
“So do I,” he said and slid into the mover.
I held my breath as he pushed the ignition control. To my surprise, it started immediately, the engine purring softly like it was brand new.
“You did it!” I screamed, jumping into the mover and throwing my body across Michael’s into a big hug. “I wanted to give up. I would have never figured that out.”
“Now we’ll know what to do if that happens again.”
I kissed him gently and then with more vigor as his hands wrapped around me. The sound of our engine was joined by another. “We need to go,” I said through a kiss and opened my eyes to see a mover down the road.
“Yeah, I know,” he said, letting me go.
I unrolled the E-Paper and inspected the map as Michael brought the mover to its mandatory hoverment and we started back up the road.
“It’s a good thing you got the mover running,” I said and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Chu-Lung doesn’t live anywhere near here. He’s lives closer to the GenH3 sub hospital. It would have been a long, miserable walk.”
The two-lane road continued, veering right. I grounded the mover so we could switch places, and within minutes, we enjoyed a good stretch, a hug and kiss, and Michael appreciated a hoverment of five feet from the ground.
With the fuel plant behind us, the Outback became the Outback again. A herd of kangaroos crossed the road beneath the Model Three, unaffected by the colorless gush of the exhaust, and Michael slowed so I could watch a half-dozen emu drinking from a small stream cutting across the red earth.
“You know,” I said, resting my hand on the bulge of gun in my pocket. “Maybe we can force Chu-Lung to tell us everything we need to know about this secret society that they all belong to, and how and when they plan to take over the governments of the regions. I also want to know how Victoria fits into all of this.”
“Maybe they plan to use you and Victoria as a means to gain power?”
The thought sent an empty, sick feeling down my chest and into my stomach. “That’s why we need to find out. For all we know, we’re stepping from one institution of corruption into another. I don’t care what type of force I have to use.”
“Even if you have to leave him shot and unconscious in a bot closet?” Michael joked.
“Yup. Chu-Lung’s going to answer all of our questions. One way or another.”
“You know, I would have done it.” He swallowed.
“Done what?”
“I would have killed Marshall. If he hadn’t shown us his band, he wouldn’t have lived to see tomorrow.”
His tone was so matter-of-fact it gave me goose bumps. He straightened his back, his focus fixed on the road, moisture glistening in his eye.
“No, you wouldn’t have. I know you. You were just doing what you had to do to protect us. You didn’t want to kill him, you just wanted to stop him from turning us in.”
“I don’t think so, Cassie. I saw him, and I wanted to kill him,” he said, turning his head to look at me. “That’s how angry I was. Before I couldn’t have. But after what happened in Tasma, Magnum taking Victoria, and then being locked up at GenH3”—he sighed—“it’s like everything I ever believed in was a sham. The only person I trust in this world is you, and I would do anything—even kill—to protect you, and that doesn’t scare me.”
Michael, the guy who’d balked at the thought of injecting Kale with a sedative so we could take Victoria from her, looked at me now with a hardened gaze, the miseries we’ve suffered having calloused his once passive soul.
His innocence and his gullibility had been
stripped away. Yes, Michael had changed, but for the good. Now he was his own man.
He would kill to protect me. I believed that. I smiled lovingly, and his eyes softened. My chest filled with warmth, and as my insides tingled pleasantly, I realized that I’d finally come to forgive him for keeping information from me in the past. Any pent-up animosity I had toward him had dwindled and dissipated like his clone naïveté. For the first time I realized how much I really cared for him.
“It doesn’t scare you anymore?” I asked as the heat in my chest trickled through the rest of my body, making my deep feelings for him palpable.
“No, not now. At first it did because that wasn’t the ‘me’ I was used to. But now I know I’m the ‘me’ I want to be.”
“I’m the ‘me’ I want to be, too.” I rubbed my hand along his arm. “Neither one of us is the person we used to be. How can we be under these circumstances? We don’t know what’s going to happen to us when we leave here, what’s going to happen in the next week or even the next month. But I can tell you this—when it comes to our fate, I feel more confident entering the unknown with the Michael you are right now than the Michael you were before. We need to be strong, and we need to fight for our rights. If it means taking a life in the process, we will. That’s what we’ve become.”
My chest swelled with a deep breath, and his hand trembled when he took my mine. “You’re right, and I’m okay with that. I’ve come to terms with who I am now. I love you, Cassie. I’d do anything for you.”
“I know,” I said and stared straight ahead. “And I’d do anything for you, too.”
“And I agree when it comes to Chu-Lung.” He gripped the steering wheel hard and diverted his attention to the road. “We’ll make him tell us everything we want to know.”
We didn’t talk about how we’d do it. I had the laser pistol and Michael had a heavy-set of fists. His glare at the road ahead told me he didn’t want to think about it, let alone talk about it, since we both knew it meant using violence against someone who’d personally never hurt either one of us. But that didn’t matter. Chu-Lung probably had information that we needed. If we had to destroy them in order to get Victoria back and live in with the freedom I was accustomed to, we would.
The road split and we turned left. “It should be just up ahead,” I said as I studied the E-Paper. “How’s your knee feeling?”
“Stiff. Doesn’t hurt unless I move it. The ligaments are strained, not ruptured. It’ll heal, and until then, I’ll get by. It’s already better than it was yesterday. How’s your ankle?”
“It’s much better. Hardly hurts anymore.”
I set my hand on the top of his thigh, leaned across the center console, and planted a kiss on his cheek. His cheeks lifted as he smiled, producing tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He was so handsome and still tanned from our hours at sea. He’d kill for me if he had to, and I’d do the same thing for him. No, there was no way I could have left him behind.
A sprinkling of houses with an acre or two of land between them appeared around the bend. From among the cluster of iron-gray homes, one home stood apart with its red Chinese-style roof, which flared up at each corner. Under the setting sun, the curved roof cast arched shadows against the stretch of concrete that led to the road.
“How much do you want to bet Chu-Lung lives in there?” Michael smirked and pointed to the red-roofed home that was not only four times bigger than the others, but dark green in color and with an entrance concealed by a large plumb tree.
“You’re right. That’s it.”
A red Model Three mover was parked in a driveway large enough to accommodate half a dozen cars. Michael steadied our mover next to the red one and lowered the vehicle to the ground.
“That’s weird. There are obscura poles but no obscuras,” observed Michael.
“It doesn’t seem odd to me,” I said, taking off my ball cap and tossing it to the front seat as Michael did the same. “Maybe the presidents and their families don’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else, or maybe his secret friends having something to do with it?”
“Whatever it is, it’s good for us.”
“And look at that,” I said as we approached the front door. Hinged the old-fashioned way and lacquered bright red, like the door to his brother’s presidential office, this one displayed an ornately carved dragon. Unlike Shen-Lung’s, this dragon had a snake-like body and human face. Small flames flickered from its eyes and from its opened mouth, a swirl of wind billowed to join the door’s carved border.
“Like Shen-Lung, Chu-Lung is the name of a Chinese mythical dragon. Chu-Lung literally means ‘torch dragon.’ According to ancient Chinese myths, it created night and day by opening or closing its eyes, and it made the wind by simply breathing,” I whispered.
“Two brothers, two dragons,” Michael whispered back. “Hopefully this brother doesn’t have the heart of an evil dragon. With my modified L-Band, I don’t think he’ll know we’re here. What should we do?”
“We knock,” I said and rapped my knuckles against the door. This archaic concept shocked Michael. He took a step back and raised his eyebrows at me like he thought what I’d done was rude.
But when the door opened and the man on the other side gave a smile, small but as warm as the Outback sun, Michael came back to my side and straightened his shoulders.
“Hello, um, we’re looking for Chu-Lung. Is he here?” I asked
“I’m Chu-Lung,” said the middle-aged man.
I assumed he’d be Chinese, based on his name alone. But Chu-Lung was blond and blue-eyed with pale skin and a tall, muscular frame, unlike Shen who was not only Chinese, but short and wide. Basically Chu looked like an older version of Ian, a grad student who’d worked with my mother and me on a few digs, but less athletic.
“We have some business to discuss with you,” said Michael, his tone professional.
Chu-Lung tilted his head and lifted his eyebrows as his smile twisted into one of apprehension.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Michael and I simultaneously yanked up our sleeves and revealed our secret bands.
“I see,” he said and pulled up his own sleeve to show his. His forehead wrinkled, and he tilted his wrist to the sun. From beneath his red band, the silver edge of an inhibitor caught the light and twinkled. “Come. Come inside. This house and vicinity are ‘free.’”
Chu led us to a large sitting room with a Chinese tapestry on one wall and a collection of paper fans mounted collage-like on the other. A shoji screen semi-divided the room, and as we sat down on the low-profile couch, I noticed each rice-paper panel depicted a mythical Chinese dragon painted in rich tones of red, green, and gold. In the center was the dragon Chu-Lung with closed eyes and the moon rising above it.
A well-groomed Pekingese lay on a red pillow at one end of the couch opposite Michael and me. It raised its head as we entered the room and scooted closer to Chu-Lung when he sat down.
“I just made a fresh pot of tea,” said Chu-Lung as he stroked his tiny dog. The dog’s pink tongue popped from its mustached mouth to lick the top of his hand. A cart with a built-in tea maker and rack of small white cups hovered next to Chu-Lung’s chair.
He set three cups on the center table and filled them to the brim with hot green tea, and gestured for us to each take one. I couldn’t help thinking how misplaced he looked among his Chinese décor.
“Is this about my brother?” asked Chu-Lung, and his hands shook as he brought the cup to his lips.
“Yes, and no,” said Michael.
Chu-Lung’s hand continued to tremble. Tea sloshed over the rim, pooling at the edge of the table and then dripping to the cold floor. The Pekingese leaped from his master and scurried to the ground and lapped up the tea, the ends of its long fur dragging across the small, green puddle.
“You know where he is?”
“No, we don’t.”
“We’re here,” I said, butting into the conversation, “because
you have been ordered to keep us here secretly, under your protection, until you hear otherwise.”
“And what does this arrangement have to do with my brother?”
“Because I’m Cassie Dannacher, and this is Dr. Michael Bennett.”
Chu-Lung refilled his tea cup, took a long drink, and swallowed hard. “Yes, my brother told me you’d been deceived and were no longer in Tasma. But that’s all he knew, and then I lost communication with him.”
“So you don’t know what happened there,” said Michael. Chu cocked his head to one side as did his Pekingese. “Within minutes after arriving at the governor’s mansion in Tasma,” Michael continued, “the Region Three security team assigned to us by your brother killed the prime minister and his cabinet. Cassie and I barely escaped back to Region Three with Victoria.”
Chu put his head in his hands. “My brother had nothing to do with this. I know he didn’t. He’d never agree to a plan involving murder and deception. My brother wanted the Van Winkle Project to succeed on your terms, not theirs. President Gifford resigned because my brother exposed his plot to gain power over Regions Two and Three. But then someone new stepped in, someone with the same drive for control and dominance.”
“Who?” I asked, though I could only assume it was Harrington. I took a slow sip of tea, hoping it would dissolve the rising lump in my throat.
“Who do you think,” he sneered. “Harrington and his cabinet!” Chu-Lung’s face and neck blotched red, and his nostrils flared with each breath as he gave the table a fist hit. “My brother tried to stop him like he did Harrington, and now I don’t know where Shen is. Something terrible has happened to him, I’m sure of it.”
The couch cushion next to me sank as Michael’s body stiffened, and he shook his head with disgust.
When Harrington became the new president of Region One, he fell right into Gifford’s shoes and set his own plot to rule the world into motion. But what about President Tupolev, the president of Region Two? Was he part of Harrington’s plan? Were the two going to rule equally side by side, or did Harrington have a special role reserved for Tupolev, the role of a puppet or the role of an imprisoned or dead president?
Ascendancy Page 14
