by K. Makansi
But I follow Chan-Yu as we jog in parallel alleys, checking every now and then to make sure we’re together. Our new night-vision contacts help us keep track of each other, and we’re connected via a mic system and to Vale in case things go south. If a drone finds one of us, we can easily split up for safety.
I keep my eyes peeled for any signs of Miah, but all I see are empty streets, dark with the faint blue-green tinge of soft biolamps, the rocky hue of storm clouds on a summer’s day. All Okaria sleeps as we are on the hunt.
At an intersection, Chan-Yu beckons me to him. I’m panting lightly, sweating in the summer night. Other than a single drop of sweat beading at his forehead, Chan-Yu shows no sign of exertion.
“There,” he says, pointing at the building. “That’s the girl’s flat.”
“I’ll circle around,” I say. “Wait at the north corner.”
Chan-Yu nods without question and watches me depart. I set off at a crouch, peering around corners, squinting into the darkness for any sign of Miah. But he’ll have heat-cloaking gear on, too, so my contacts won’t help. I look for signs of movement instead, and listen for footsteps on the pavement.
In sight of the back entrance, I kneel at the trunk of an apple tree, fully leafed, perfect for shadow and cover. I watch, waiting to see if anyone approaches.
No one does.
“Shit,” I whisper, more to myself than anything. But Vale’s voice comes back to me, urgently.
“What’s wrong?” he demands.
“I think he’s already in.”
“We wait for him, then,” Chan-Yu’s calm voice interjects. I nod. Of course we can’t go into the building and bust him out. We’d draw far too much attention to ourselves, and he’s already done a good enough job of that himself.
“Okay,” I respond. “We wait.”
And so I sit under the apple tree in silence, waiting, wondering how long it will be before he comes out. Was he able to get in at all? Will he be stupid enough to try to spend the night with her? To wait until dawn before he ventures out again? God, I hope not. And then there’s the other question—Moriana’s been working for Corine Orleán for the last six months. Even though she’s no longer on Corine’s priority research team, she’s still at the OAC. How much has Corine poisoned her? If Miah is able to see Moriana, will she believe anything he says? Will she betray us?
And what will she think about Jahnu?
Tears spring to my eyes unbidden and unwanted at the thought of Jahnu. Thank heavens he’s alive. I squeeze my eyes so tight myriad colors spring up in the blackness. I force myself to open my eyes, to stop thinking about him and the disaster at the Farm so I can focus on the task at hand. Stay alert, I tell myself.
As I have so many times during the past months, I focus on my anger instead of my grief. It’s a distraction. Anger at Miah for doing something completely idiotic. Anger at myself for not paying closer attention. Anger at the Sector for hurting Jahnu, for taking my mother and Tai from me and from the world. It’s like a cleansing fire, and so long as I let it pass through me, with my breath just like Soren taught me, the fire burns right through, leaving me clean and pure.
Or so I think.
The back door slides open from the inside. I tense and push myself to my feet, ready to make a mad dash for him if I need to.
“Someone’s coming out the door,” I whisper into the mic. I watch, waiting to identify the target, but I can’t think who else would be coming out of the back entrance of a residential complex at this time. Sure enough, it’s Miah—his size and stature give him away almost immediately.
“It’s him,” I confirm. “I’m waiting to see what he does.”
It’s strange treat a member of my team like an enemy. But when Miah turns up to the sky and immediately steps back into the building and shuts the door, I realize there might be trouble. A second later when a Bolt thuds into the door, sending sparks flying, I know there most definitely is trouble.
“Bolt fire!” I hiss to Chan-Yu and Vale. “He’s back in the building.”
“I’m coming,” Chan-Yu’s voice echoes impassively in my ear.
“Demeter can’t control that drone,” Vale says, anxiety in his voice. “She says that one is being controlled manually, remotely.”
I nod. Of course. Of course they’d be watching Moriana every hour of every day. Whether to see if she fled like Miah, or to see if he came back for her, she’s a high stakes piece in this game of chess, and the Sector, or, more accurately, Corine, would never let her out of her sight.
A second later, Miah bursts out through the door, sprinting in my direction. I pull my Bolt out, ready to shoot if necessary. I flip my charge setting to DISPERSE and aim, watching him hurtle this way. Blue crackling fire erupts behind him and if it weren’t for the fact that he’s running in zigzags—at least he learned one thing from our tactical drills—he’d surely have been hit by now. But the drone has no idea I’m hiding, lying in wait, and so it’s an easy target for me. I fire, and the drone immediately stops moving forward, all its systems scrambled to hell. Of course, now whoever’s operating the thing remotely will know there’s at least two of us. It’s time to get the hell out of here.
“Drone’s out,” I breathe into the mic.
Miah’s stopped running, looking around for the source of the Bolt that saved him. I jump to my feet, but his eyes are behind me, and I whirl, gun up and at the ready. It’s only Chan-Yu, though. He beckons both of us with him, and Miah and I follow him without question.
“Miah’s with us,” I say, the volatile anger threatening to spill out as we run. What the fuck were you thinking? I want to scream at him. Now is not the time.
Now is definitely not the time, I realize, when we turn out of our alleyway and onto a main street lined with trees, beautiful flowers, and a half-dozen Watchmen with their Bolts pointed at us.
“Watchmen,” I whisper, as everything comes to a slow, gradual halt.
“What?” Vale shouts on the other end.
I see something fly out of Chan-Yu’s hand, and a second later there’s a pop of white light so bright it stabs viciously at my eyes. I throw my arm up for protection, but I can hear the explosion a second later and smell the smoke from the blast.
“Move!” Chan-Yu shouts. I need no urging. I grab Miah’s arm and tug him into a full-on sprint, following Chan-Yu as we turn in the opposite direction. Away from the Watchmen.
“You guys are being tailed by four more drones, manually operated, as well as a host of Watchmen,” Vale says into the mic.
“We know,” I pant.
“Soren, Linnea, and I are packing up. Drones will be here any minute now. I downloaded all the files relating to Eli’s virus and Demeter says they’re tracing our location as we speak. If you can find an airship, nab it. We need a fast exit.”
Damn, but I wish we could call Firestone in.
A flash of energy hums past me and I gasp in horror, but it takes me a half-second to realize the Bolt came from Chan-Yu’s weapon, used to disable a drone ahead of us.
“Dammit,” he swears. I’ve never heard Chan-Yu swear before. The thought whizzes through my head, wholly disconnected from the violence and panic around me. “My charge is broken.” He tosses the now-useless weapon to the side and pulls out a much smaller, old-fashioned gun. It looks like one with actual bullets, like the ones that cut through Jahnu, but I don’t have time to gape or inquire.
“Mic up, Linnea!” a new voice says. It’s Soren.
Suddenly there’s Bolt fire at my back.
“Soldiers!” Miah gasps, glancing around behind us.
Chan-Yu grabs my arm and pulls me in a sharp left to a little alley, only big enough for two people to run abreast. Miah follows, stumbling in his haste to turn. Just as I’m thinking how easy it will be for the soldiers to shoot us in such tight quarters, Chan-Yu veers to the right and we’re suddenly in a covered garage. It’s a hovercar charging station. It’s brimming with cars, and my first thought is, Let’s st
eal one! But Chan-Yu looks at me and shakes his head.
The garage is patrolled by security drones. They’re off the official Watchmen grid, I’m sure, so they won’t have facial recognition programs to identify Sector traitors and renegades like us. But they will shoot us down if we attempt to steal one of the cars, and then immediately report our location to the city grid.
I grit my teeth and pull on Miah’s arm as we follow Chan-Yu cautiously through the garage, keeping our eye on the drones quietly watching overhead. I can’t hear anything outside, which must be a good sign. Chan-Yu leads us up a stairwell, taking them two at a time in quiet, nimble steps. Miah and I follow, trying to make as little noise as possible. On the fourth level, Chan-Yu pulls us into a tiny room, a storage closet, no bigger than a few meters wide. He shuts the door and latches it behind him.
“Do they know where you guys are?” I ask quietly, now that we’ve stopped running. “Vale?”
“Not yet.”
“Shit,” I say, more to myself than anything. “Are you still able to talk to Demeter?”
“Yes. She can watch and tell us what’s going on, but she won’t be able to hijack any of the drones without giving our position away.”
“Okay. Have her tell us when we can get out of this goddamn broom closet,” I mutter, Miah’s loud breathing grates on my ears as if it was ten times louder than normal. I turn to him. “And you have a lot of questions to answer while we’re waiting here.”
Miah sighs, his shoulders deflating.
“It was dumb, okay? But I had to try.”
“What did you hope to accomplish?” I ask, wishing I could shout at him. He shrugs and stares at the ground.
“I just wanted to talk to her. To tell her about Jahnu, to be the one to deliver the news. I love her, Remy. I’ve never stopped thinking about her.” He pauses, his eyes wide and helpless. “She wasn’t even there. Her flat was empty.”
“Is … is that how they found you?” I ask.
“It must be. Her apartment was obviously being watched. But she was gone.”
Just then, after a crackling of static in my headphone, a new voice comes on the line.
“Hello?”
The voice is female, higher-pitched than Linnea’s sultry alto, and quavering. Chan-Yu and I exchange glances, and for the first time in the relatively short span that I’ve known him, there is surprise and concern in his eyes.
“Miah?” the voice asks again. It sounds so familiar….
“Who is that?” I hear Soren demand, his voice rising at the end in fear.
“Is Jeremiah there? Please, I need to talk to Miah,” the voice says.
“Oh no,” Vale says, as I watch Chan-Yu wordlessly remove his headset and pass it over to Miah. I shake my head fervently and mouth the word no over and over again to him, but he does it anyway and I find that I don’t want to stop him.
“Is that…”
Miah’s looking at Chan-Yu and I with wild and confused eyes. He takes the headset and presses it into his ear.
“I think your friend is trying to speak with you,” Chan-Yu says, as calmly as he can.
31 - REMY
Spring 29, Sector Annum 106, 04h30
Gregorian Calendar: April 17
How is Moriana on the line with us? How is this possible? My head swims with panic. I’m staring at Miah, whose mouth is open and his eyes sparkling with tears as it dawns on him exactly what’s happening.
“Moriana, are you with Corine?” Vale asks.
The critical question. Is Moriana acting of her own accord, or is she being watched, with a gun to her head, by Corine and the OAC?
“Vale, is that you?”
Oh god, oh god, oh god, please don’t answer that! Why did he speak in the first place?
“Moriana, I’m here,” Miah says, the words coming out in a rush, quiet and forceful and weighted. I’m sure he’s saying it as much to distract Moriana from Vale as from the fact that he simply can’t help himself. He closes his eyes and the tears spill down his cheeks, beading into droplets on his scruffy beard.
I shake my head at him, mouthing the word no over and over again. Don’t say anything! I put one hand over my mic and cup the other over his.
“Don’t speak to her,” I whisper urgently.
“We need to move,” Chan-Yu says suddenly. “They know where we are.”
I don’t know how he knows this, but I trust him beyond a shadow of a doubt. Chan-Yu opens the door and peers out.
“They’ll follow us wherever we go. We have to keep moving, keep them guessing, can’t let them trap us. If possible, we can try to get to the emergency rendezvous point. Let’s go.”
I nod.
“Miah, please come out!” Moriana’s voice is thick, like she’s crying. “Please come out, they know where you’re hiding and that you’re with Remy, if you don’t come out now they’re going to come in and find you both and kill you.”
Miah’s eyes come up and meet mine, and I realize if she continues to plead with him, we’ll be in danger of losing him.
Without hesitation, I reach up and rip the headset from his ear. Miah tries to grab it from me, but my reflexes are faster than his. I turn away from him and snap it in half, and then grind it beneath my heel to make sure it’s completely, utterly broken.
“You can’t talk to her,” I say to him, as he watches me, aghast. “You’re a liability, and she’s baiting you. We have to get out of here.”
“What if they hurt her?” he growls at me. “If they’re using her as bait, she’s in danger!”
Just at that moment, Moriana’s voice bursts back onto the line:
“They’ll kill me, too, they’re going to destroy everyone, you don’t understand, please just come out.” I watch Miah’s expression. I realize there’s no point in using my headset anymore, either. It’s been compromised, hijacked somehow, and even though it’s my only link to Soren, Vale, and Linnea, it’s not worth it to have it on if Corine is listening into everything we say.
I take it off and break it in half, too. Useless, now. I drop the thing on the floor and nod at Chan-Yu. He turns to lead us out.
Now there’s nothing in my head but silence, and fear begins to overtake me. We’re trapped and split up, separated from half our team and with squadrons of soldiers and dozens of drones on our tail. I can only hope Soren, Linnea, and Vale make it to some kind of vehicle and come pick us up. Of course, they’re probably being followed too.
I follow Chan-Yu as he leads us back up the stairs and into a little hallway. There’s a palm scanner on the door that leads out, but Chan-Yu grabs my weapon from me and bashes the thing in. He uses his gun to shoot the locking mechanism on the palm scanner and then shoves the door open with his shoulder. It swings open to a greenhouse, a beautiful rooftop dome paneled in glass, sticky and sweaty from the humidity.
It’s gorgeous. I take a deep breath of the scented air and wish we could stay. But outside, I’m beginning to hear the sirens that indicate a manhunt, the first of those in the city of Okaria since my sister was killed.
Chan-Yu palms the emergency rooftop exit and the door slides open. The building sirens begin to go off, and I realize it’ll be a matter of minutes before every soldier and Watchman in the city will be at this building. Chan-Yu leads us out onto a narrow ledge. There’s a gap in between this building and the next about a meter and a half wide, and Chan-Yu takes it at an easy jump. My heart pounding, I stare down into the chasm. You can do this, Remy. You’ve done it in drills and you can do it now. Chan-Yu beckons to me from the other side, and I bend my knees and prepare to jump.
Just then, the drone detector on my wrist flares up, and I spin around, Bolt up and ready to fire. I search the air for the robot, and sure enough, the drone’s heat signature is faint but visible about a hundred meters away. It zooms towards us and I flip my Bolt to DISPERSE and aim, waiting for it to come in range. But just as the thing is almost close enough that my shot will have some effect, it stops moving.
“What’s going on?” Miah asks from behind me.
“I have no idea.”
The drone turns around as though we were never there. It buzzes off in a different direction, moving slowly as if it’s reverted back to patrol mode.
“What just happened?” I ask, looking across the chasm to Chan-Yu.
“It seems that someone told it to leave us alone.” he responds. “Beyond that, I don’t know.”
I return my attention to the jump in front of me. I use the fear and energy wound up in my muscles from the near miss with the drone to motivate myself to make the jump. I take two running steps forward and leap, clearing the gap easily and landing rather indelicately on the roof of the neighboring building.
“Come on!” I shout. Miah looks petrified, his face tense and twisted as he contemplates the distance of the jump. But he takes a few steps back, takes a few running strides to get some momentum, and with an enormous yell throws himself across the gap to land on both feet right next to Chan-Yu.
“Fuck. I never, ever want to do that again,” he mutters.
“Let’s go.” Chan-Yu nods at me and turns to lead us across the top of this building and to a new set of stairs. At least this time we’re running down.
By the time we hit the ground floor, the building next door is swarmed with soldiers. We can see the flashing lights from the alarm system through the windows. Outside, the sirens are buzzing. This time, instead of leading us out and onto the street level, Chan-Yu takes us down a floor, into the basement.
“Where are we going?” I ask, trying to keep up as he hurtles down the stairs.
“Storm drains.”
“Great,” Miah mutters behind me, panting.
Chan-Yu enlists Miah’s help to break into the basement door. Inside looks more like something from our old Resistance base than anything I’ve ever seen in the Sector. It’s vast and empty with nothing but pipes hanging overhead, weaving around and through the ceiling, all leading to one corner of the room.
