by K. Makansi
I swallow.
“I couldn’t sleep. I hadn’t talked to Remy—you know, alone—since the night after Brinn died. I wanted to—” I trail off and a hush settles over everyone as Gabriel and Rhinehouse round the corner.
Gabriel stops. “She’s gone, isn’t she?” he asks, his voice quiet. I lower my eyes. I don’t want to be the one to say it out loud, to say it to the man who’s already lost half his family: yes, your daughter is gone.
But as I drop my eyes I notice a scrap of paper in his hand. He gives it to Eli, apparently unable to read the words aloud himself. His lower lip trembles, his jaw clenching and unclenching as Eli starts.
“Dad, it’s time for your little bird to fly the coop. I’m going to continue the mission to the Farms you and Mom were on, and Bear is coming with me. It’s clear the battles to be fought here are not mine, and that there are other things in my future. I wish you could have come with me, but this is my mission now, my calling. I’ll keep a low profile and stay out of trouble. I will send word as soon as possible. I love you.
- Your Little Bird.”
Eli’s hand drops as he finishes reading, staring at the floor. A heavy pause hangs in the air.
Alongside the fear crawling up my spine is a swelling of pride at her resolve to take control of her own destiny. I’m envious. One thing Soren said is true; I am a pawn. I was a pawn in my parents’ game when they installed me in the position of head of the Seed Bank Protection Project. Now the Director is using me for her own ends.
I’m going after them, I think and when Eli looks up at me, I realize I’ve said it out loud.
And then Gabriel’s knees give way, he sinks in front of me. Eli catches the older man in his arms, hugging him as tenderly as any son would. I only now realize how fully they see each other as family. The acknowledgment that Remy is gone washes over both of them like a tide. Then Eli looks up at me.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Neither of you are authorized to leave this outpost until I give the command,” the Director snaps, but she might as well be speaking from another world.
“If you’re going, I’m damn well going, too,” Soren growls.
“None of you are going anywhere!” the Director shouts. The three of us fall silent. Gabriel straightens up, away from Eli’s protective embrace. He looks at the Director, pleading and desperate.
“Please,” he says, his voice hoarse and broken, nothing like the booming, charismatic oratory of the Poet Laureate I remember from Sector broadcasts years ago. “Cillian. Let them go. Let them bring her back. I can’t lose her, too.”
She watches him for several minutes, surveying him and Eli together. Finally she speaks.
“The three of you take one other person.” She nods at Kenzie. “You’ll lead a second team of four. Pick your team. Split up to cover more ground. Find them and bring them back.”
“What if they’ve taken a hovercar?” I ask.
The Director turns to Zoe. “Go check Camera Two.” As Zoe runs off, the Director turns to Gabriel. “If she’s taken one of the hovercars, it’s going to be a lot harder to track her down, and she’ll have had time to put a lot of distance between us. You have to be prepared for that.” Then she locks her gaze on me. “You’ve got seventy-two hours. The Flora mission can’t wait.”
Eli, Soren, and I survey each other warily. Distrust in Soren’s eyes, hesitant cooperation in Eli’s.
“Understood,” I say.
“Good.”
Moments later, I’m sitting in my hammock, lacing up my boots, wondering who Eli will have picked as our fourth team member. I hear a sound at the door and look up to see him walking in.
“Just to be clear,” he says, his voice low as he grabs his own boots, “we’re ignoring the Director’s orders and going out together. We’re not splitting up.”
“Soren agree to this?”
“Yeah. And we’re taking the airship.”
“But the Director hasn’t given us—”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what the Director says,” Eli growls, and I am vividly reminded of what Eli’s problem with authority was like even before Tai died and he went a little crazy.
“Oh,” Eli says, glancing at me as though his outburst had never happened. “And Miah and Firestone are tag teaming as pilots. I want my—our—whole team together on this. Remy’s too important to us—to all of us.” He looks at me pointedly as he emphasizes the word.
I stand, pulling on my jacket. I stare down at him, both admiring and critical of his protectiveness towards his surrogate sister.
“Have you thought about the fact that maybe she left to get away from everyone telling her what to do? ” I pause, trying to let my words sink in. “That she might not want any of us to come after her?”
“I have thought about that,” Eli responds, not looking up from his boots. “But guess what? Sometimes we don’t get what we want.”
11 - REMY
Spring 4, Sector Annum 106, 07h51
Gregorian Calendar: March 23
The skyline of another old city emerges in the creeping sunlight. The map says this one is Syracuse, a town once known for its ROR industry: robotic organism replication. Bacteria, viruses, parasites, parasitoids—Syracuse built an industry around churning out these artificial microorganisms for medicinal and technological purposes. It’s a technology that’s been mostly lost to us, and robotic organisms represent a level of complexity OAC scientists haven’t been able to replicate.
As I drive, I take in the contour lines, shadows, and negative space fading into points against the horizon. Morning sun dapples early spring growth in a light shimmer. The chaos of reclaimed nature against the ruins of human structures. Every time I come into a new landscape, my hand itches to draw it.
“Are we there yet?” Bear yawns next to me, not a little bit of whining in his voice. I laugh.
“Are you trying to sound like a child?”
“Hey, I’m tired. You were the one who dragged me out of bed at that forsaken hour of the morning.”
He’s right. I woke up him up this morning at 1:45 AM, just as we had planned. I hadn’t slept a lick all night, kept on edge by wild images running through my head, the excitement, and anxiety, of a mission I finally believe in. A mission that feels my own. A mission I am going to tackle without Eli, Jahnu, Kenzie, and Soren by my side.
The night after the Director announced that Vale was going to lead the mission to Seed Bank Flora, I approached Bear with an alternate proposal.
“We need to start a revolution,” I told him. “It’s time to get the Farm and factory workers involved.” Bear just stared at me blankly for a minute, while I cornered him in a darkened hallway as far away from any meeting room as I could get.
“Tu parles du quoi?” he demanded, as usual sinking back into Old French when he’s on edge. I couldn’t translate directly, but I got the gist of it. What the hell are you talking about?
“We need to go to the Farms. We have to talk to the people directly—we have to take this battle to them. There’s no point waging the Director’s ‘slow but steady’ war when the Sector could find out where we are at any time and drop the entire Black Ops squadron on us. We’ll be dead in our sleep. You and me, Bear—if we go together, with your connections on the Farms and my art, we can take the revolution to them.”
They dont want a revolution.” He almost laughed. “They’re perfectly happy to keep doing what they’re doing. Not many people think to ask questions. Not many can. You believe we can walk in there and change their minds when they don’t even know their own minds?”
“If anyone can do it, it’s you and me. Think about it. At your Farm, the people will know you, they’ll listen to you. They’ll remember Sam. They’ll remember what the Sector did to him. How the Bosses forced him into the silos for asking too many questions. They know that can happen to anyone. They’ll listen to us when they know what the danger is.”
Bear shook his head, staring at the
floor, refusing to meet my eyes.
“I don’t know, Remy. I don’t think it’s that easy. We can’t just walk in there and tell them to think something different and expect them to listen.” He took a deep breath. “It took Sam almost two years after your sister died to convince me to listen to him. You think they’re going to believe us because we have good stories and pretty pictures?”
I knew then that he’d been watching me draw, that he’d seen the drawings I’d been working on in the last few weeks. A portrait of Tai done entirely out of tiny flowers; a poem my father wrote where the verses were growing up out of the ground like seedlings; and the most violent, a man biting into a skull like an apple, red blood dripping down his chin instead of juice, the skull illustrated using the elegant twisting double helix of DNA.
“I don’t know if they’ll listen to us,” I said quietly. “But if they do, we’ve got a hell of a better shot at changing things than if we don’t go at all.”
He thought about that for a second, staring down at me hesitantly.
“I don’t know, Remy,” he said, finally.
I sighed.
“Just think about it. Okay? Just think about it.”
He nodded and slipped away, while I paced back and forth in the now-empty hall and wondered how in the hell I would be able to carry on my mother’s mission without his help, without his insight and experience at the Farms.
What’s left for me here? I asked myself over and over again. I’m a good shot and a fast runner, but that’s it. LOTUS is Eli’s project. The Seed Bank mission is now Vale’s. What can I offer that no one else can?
The answer always comes back to my parents’ mission to the Farms. Carry the message of the Resistance, spread awareness, help where possible. Spread the message to the people through your art, my father said. What can I offer the Resistance? Over and over again, I came back to that one thing: I can be the messenger.
Just when I’d given up hope, Bear approached me and told me he was reconsidering. I was ecstatic. But he still wasn’t an easy convert.
“You think it’s going to be easy, Remy, but it’s not,” he warned. “You’re going to have to be patient. We’re not just going to walk in there, show them your drawings, and make them think differently about things they’ve been taught since they were enfants. That’s not gonna happen.”
I nodded, but I felt nothing but excitement roiling inside.
“We’ll be patient, Bear. As patient as we can.”
He shook his head. “I want to do this with you, but I don’t think you have any idea what we’re going to be walking into.”
“I’ll have you to help me navigate the Farm culture.”
“And you’ll listen to me? Go slow when I say?” I nod, and he shakes his head like he doesn’t believe me, but then a smile tugs at his lips. “So who else is coming?”
“No one,” I said. “Just us.”
“What?” he asked. “Why not?”
I shrugged, looking off at the wall behind us. How to explain? How to tell him that this is something I can’t do with Eli, Soren, Vale, or my father watching over my shoulder? How to tell him that this is something I have to do for my mother’s sake, for Tai’s sake, for myself? How to tell him that this has to be my mission, unswayed by any of my friends and family, however close they may be?
“They have their own goals and their own tasks,” I said, finally. “They have their projects. But you and I—we can be a part of their projects, or we can create our own, and have a chance at making real progress.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“You still want to do it?”
“Yes,” he said. “I thought about it last night. I think you’re right. Someone has to tell them the truth. And it might as well be us. No one else in the Resistance is making an effort to include them.”
I smiled as he looked down at me, his body still slightly too big for him, uncertain but eager.
“So,” he asked, energy seeping into his voice, “when do we leave?”
“As soon as we’re ready. We’ve got a lot of packing and planning to do and we have to do it without drawing attention. If they know what we’re up to, they’ll stop us.”
And so, two weeks later, we find ourselves out in the middle of the Wilds again, this time far better equipped than we were when we were tromping in the cold weeks ago. Spring shows its face in blooming daffodils and green-tipped grass as we pass through this crumbling ruin of a forgotten city. We’re headed toward Round Barn where Bear’s from, and this is the quickest route accessible in the hovercar we borrowed—okay, stole—from Normandy. It’s decrepit and tops out at sixty kilometers per hour, but at least it’s got decent cloaking, so we’re hoping we won’t run into the same disaster we did with our hovercar outside of our safehouse. So we drive through these overgrown streets, lined with sky-high trees growing where the city once sprouted. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. The city is now reborn, verdant with second-growth forest, populated with buzzing insects, scurrying squirrels, and singing birds. Out of the ruins, new life is born.
Bear nods off in the seat next to me. I pull out my grandfather’s compass, click the tiny button and the burnished gold opens in my hand. I check our direction and confirm that we are heading northeast, and then I click the compass open and closed again several times, relishing the pressure against my fingers and palm. It’s comforting to have it with me, like a protective talisman. It feels as though a piece of each member of my family is tied up somehow into the little spinning needle, as though the compass holds fragments of their lost souls. I run my fingers along my grandfather’s initials engraved at the bottom. If I follow the compass, I might one day find him, my mom, and Tai.
I pocket it and turn my attention back to the map, returning my focus to the drive. I wish this hovercar had a programmable route I could punch in like we used to do in Okaria. Then I could curl up and sleep. But there are no comprehensive 3-D map systems out here, no nav drones, no remote air traffic control to make sure I get safely from place to place. I can’t deny that I miss that security and comfort. But the skies of Okaria weren’t the only thing being controlled and manipulated. Our bodies and identities were, too.
As tired as I am, the slow pace of the drive is calming, freeing even. Whatever is over the next hill, beyond the next bend in the road, is a revelation. Best of all, there are no more underground tunnels. I remember lying on the couch in the Chancellor’s mansion as Vale told me about reading a book from the Old World. He said people used to drive their old-fashioned wheeled cars—with a steering wheel, how primitive—from one side of the American continent to the other, just to feel the “freedom of the open road.” That’s how I feel now, winding through this abandoned city, free, finally, of the expectations of those back at base. The freedom to reclaim my destiny, just as nature is reclaiming this city.
Three hours later, we’re deep in the Wilds, following the barest remnants of an old highway as we arc down around the southern border of the Sector. My v-scroll map tells me we’re almost there. Bear is stirring awake as I struggle to keep from nodding off myself.
“You okay, Remy?” Bear asks, rubbing his eyes. “You want me to drive for a while?” He’s been asking me that since we first started even though he’s never driven a hovercar, I’m reluctant to let him behind the gauges.
“It’s okay. We’re almost there. You can help me look for a good campsite. Keep your eyes out.”
“I don’t know how you’re not tired.”
“I am tired. I just want to get out, set up camp, and get my sleep horizontally.”
“Remember we’ll be in more danger the closer we get to the Farm, right?” he points out. “Security at Round Barn—” he means Farm Ten, but they’ve all got idyllic, agrarian nicknames “—was lax when I left. But who knows now. Might be drones and Boss men around the perimeter. Won’t be safer there than it is here.”
May be more dangerous, but at least I won’t be in danger of getting run off the road by a
n inexperienced driver,” I tease.
“How hard can it be?” he asks, gesturing to the control board. “There’s three dials and a steerstick. Farm equipment’s more complicated than that.”
“It takes practice to keep the hovers balanced over rough ground so you don’t veer off into a tree.” I change the subject. “Let’s go over the security again.”
He shrugs, his face clouded, as though facing an unhappy memory.
“It’s not as tight as at other Farms, from what we ever heard. There’s a fence and a few gates big enough for hovercars and trucks, but none of it’s real well maintained, and the fences aren’t hard to climb or dig under. Aside from what I mentioned before, drones patrol the perimeter and Bosses keeping watch on the inside. Heard a story from a transfer that they got high fences and guard towers at Two Lakes, by Okaria proper. Said it was for the wild animals. Sam couldn’t figure how they’d have dangerous animals so close to the city and none near Round Barn.”
Suddenly I’m not even tired. Imagining what Round Barn will be like captivates me. When I was younger, we toured of a few of the Farms after my father was named Poet Laureate. He did poetry readings and sometimes he’d show off my artwork. The workers seemed to like seeing me at his side. The Sector always brags about how it supports the arts as well as the sciences. They like to promote the idea that anyone from the Farms could become like any of us in the capital, could rise up and become a celebrated artist. Of course, what none of the laborers on the Farms knew was that they were being fed chemicals designed to suppress their creative abilities, their spatial imaging, their imaginations. If my father had been born on a Farm, he would never have had a chance at becoming a famous poet.
When I visited, the Farms seemed like havens of tranquility where everyone was fed plenty and clothed well. It was an egalitarian dream. Peaceful, happy people glad to be doing their part to keep the Sector strong. Maybe they were that way once, naturally, of their own accord. But what I didn’t realize, until my family joined the Resistance, is however idyllic it was in the past, now the workers don’t have a choice now. They can’t even think about doing anything any differently. And if a glimmer of individual thought shines through, like it did with Sam, that’s easily taken care of.
