Or did he?
Turning, I wove my way toward the front of the junkyard, out to where Wraith’s off-roader sat shining in the sunlight. Once there I wasted no time, raising the shotgun and pulling the trigger repeatedly, the rounds punching through metal and rubber, sending up clouds of dust and disintegrating the two front tyres. Then I raised my aim and plastered another round through the windshield for good measure, blowing off one of the side mirrors while I was at it.
That felt good.
“Take that,” I muttered under my breath.
Then I got moving back inside the junkyard, fast.
I heard Wraith curse angrily, and there was the sound of him bashing something angrily.
“You dirty fuck!” he said, and for once that coolness seemed to have evaporated. I’d hit a raw nerve. “Do you know how long it took me–”
I sprang out in front of him as he strode forward, catching him off guard, and as I pulled the trigger I saw his left hand disintegrate, completely blown off, his shotgun falling to the earth. He landed on his back, clutching at his wrist, but even as I levelled the shotgun for the killing blow he lunged to the side, behind a wreck, and the round caught nothing but dirt.
Charging after him, I found him struggling to his feet, his stumpy wrist scraping across junk metal as he tried to right himself.
To see him flounder brought an evil smile to my face.
Our eyes met, and I saw fear lurking there. Fear and desperation.
As I pulled the trigger again, he kicked out viciously, and the shot went harmlessly skyward as I was knocked backward and off balance. From the ground I took another shot at him as he ducked for cover, but the shotgun made a harmless click.
“Shit!” I breathed. Reload.
I could hear Wraith walking more heavily now, grunting in pain. Maimed and without his shotgun, he was a far less intimidating opponent. I felt my confidence rise. I was going to end this. I was going to silence his incessant voice once and for all.
I felt elation coursing through me as I rammed a fistful of shells into the magazine, relishing the thought of pumping them back out into Wraith’s chest.
“Well, you got the jump on me, huh?” Wraith called out, and, gratifyingly, I could hear the pain twist his voice. “Good for you. Good for you.” I heard him slide across another obstacle not far away. “There’s only one problem.” He managed a weak laugh. “I still have a final card to play.”
“Too late, fucker,” I spat. I went after him. “The game’s already over.”
“No,” I heard him grunt. “Afraid not. We’re just about to deal in some new players.”
I glanced above the car wrecks, past the service station, to see more clouds in the distance.
Even at a distance they looked like Marauder rides. Lots of them.
Then, in another direction I saw other vehicles, but these didn’t look the same. I could see at least one Humvee of the kind that came rolling through the city months ago.
Ascension? There was no way to tell from this distance.
I was torn, didn’t know what to do. I was so close to ending this, so close to tracking Wraith down, shoving the barrel of the gun between his lips and pulling the trigger. It would only take me another thirty seconds to do it. Maybe even less.
But to do that I’d likely be giving up my own life. I’d be giving up the lives of Mish, and of Ellinan.
I’d be giving up the life of the unborn child back in the lab.
“Fuck!” I screamed, and now it was my turn to ram my fist into the nearest wreck.
I heard Wraith laugh nearby. “Come find me,” he goaded, his voice cracking. “Come get me.”
I sprinted in the other direction, finding my way back to the children’s hiding place and pulling open the door.
“Out!” I cried. “Go, get on the bike!”
Mish and Ellinan did as instructed, clambering over the seats and then racing out of the shuttle. We ran to the Helios and they climbed on the back. They sat there, perched fearfully and looking from one cluster of vehicles to the next, confused, as I stowed the shotgun and seated myself on the front.
“Grab onto me and don’t let go,” I shouted over my shoulder.
Gunning the Helios, I took us away from our pursuers and south, back toward the city.
We lay in wait on the outskirts of the city for another hour, hidden in the depths of what had once been a university campus. There were many twists and turns here, many buildings, many places to hide. The mossy walls of the buildings were covered in creeping vines, and the grass at our feet was lush. It felt a world away from the wasteland we’d just left.
I decided that under no circumstance would I lead the Marauders directly back to Arsha, or to the lab. I would rather die here on the edge of the city than to have that happen. If they came after us and found us here, they might assume our safe houses were somewhere in the city, but they wouldn’t know exactly where. They might still spend weeks or months searching to find the plantations, and that would give Arsha time to detect them and to take evasive action.
So here we waited, silent and tense, expecting to hear the roar of engines any minute.
“Where are they?” whispered Mish after an hour, still sounding terrified.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe we left in time and they lost us. Or, they had their hands full.”
“What do you mean?” Ellinan said.
“That second group of vehicles didn’t look like Marauders. I think they were part of Ascension.”
“I don’t understand,” Mish said.
“They’re a faction that’s opposing the Marauders, soldiers who are trying to bring order back to the wasteland. They’re one of the reasons the Marauders don’t come here much.”
Mish sat against the concrete retaining wall at our backs and pressed her palms to her eyes. She began to sob again. “I thought we were going to die, Brant. Where did you come from?”
I reached out and pulled her close to me. “It’s okay, Mish. We got lucky. They brought you through my home.” I swept my hand across to the south. “This city is where I live.”
“What did they want with us?” she said.
“They’re nasty people, Mish. I don’t know exactly what they had in store for you, but the bottom line is that you don’t want to end up in their hands.” I patted her shoulder. “It’s okay. I won’t let that happen.”
“Are they coming back?” Ellinan said.
“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure we gave them the slip. But listen – even if they come after us, we have the Helios. It’ll keep us out of their reach. We’re okay now.”
I had my reservations about how much more I was going to get out of the Helios today, since I’d travelled long distances and the cell reserves had plummeted. I kept that information to myself, not wanting to scare the children.
“I want to go somewhere safe,” Mish said miserably. I drew both her and Ellinan closer.
“Just be calm, okay? This is my city and the Marauders won’t get us here. I know it far better than they do. I just want to make sure they aren’t following us.”
We waited another hour, keeping our discussions to quiet whispers, and the children told me about their capture. How the Marauders had fled from the wasteland into their little town of Carthen, seemingly frightened by something on their heels, and bunkered down in a house along the street. They’d stumbled across the children by chance the next day as they prepared to leave, quickly overpowering them and shoving them into the cage.
After leaving Carthen, the Marauders had been attacked by “people in trucks”, Ellinan said – most likely Ascension, I figured – and driven into the city. From there I could piece the rest of the story together.
As their tale concluded, I led the children back to the Helios. It seemed the Marauders weren’t following. Maybe they’d been thwarted by Ascension, or maybe Wraith had just decided to head home to lick his wounds.
I hoped that hole in his arm was hurt
ing him right now. Hurting him like hell.
I had no doubt that, once he’d recovered his strength, Wraith would come back for me. He still didn’t know exactly where I was located, but by now he’d be getting a pretty good idea of the general area. Assuming he could stay clear of Ascension, he’d mount another search.
Loading the kids back onto the Helios, I made my way back across the city at a safer pace, stopping at M-Corp, where I once again hid the cycle a short distance away. I gave the children a very brief overview of what I was doing: about growing plants, about Arsha and the plantations at Somerset and Cider. I didn’t go into great detail about the embryos, or about our attempts to bring humans back into the world. These were ten-year-olds, after all. I wasn’t going to convey the significance or the mechanics of all of that we were trying to accomplish so easily. It was enough for them to know that Arsha and I were trying to bring life back into the world in its many and varied forms.
On level three I gathered what books I could and made some rudimentary sleeping pallets on which the children could rest. I didn’t want them up on level five if I could help it. The lab was not a place in which they should be stomping about, not with the delicate nature of the embryos and the necessity for a clean lab environment. I suggested that they read books to help pass the time and said that I would be down a few times a day to check on them.
“But above all,” I said finally, taking them both by the shoulders, “stay out of sight. Don’t wander off. If there’s trouble, don’t try to fight, just run. Run and hide.”
They nodded and we embraced for what seemed minutes on end. I didn’t try to push them away. It felt good to be accepted. To be appreciated.
Eventually I had to pry myself away. I left them there and returned to the lab two stories above to continue my work.
16
I spent a lot of time just looking at the boy, observing every movement he made. Random motions soon became recognisable as habits – grabbing at his ears, wiggling his toes, moving his lips – and they invariably brought a smile to my face. There was recognition on his part as well, I was sure of it. Whenever I spoke, he seemed to react in one way or another. Sometimes he would start at the sound of my voice, his little shoulders hunching and his arms drifting in to hug his chest, fingers fluttering slightly as they found purchase on his body. Other times he would peel back his eyelids in a languid, unhurried fashion, as if only vaguely curious of what was going on.
When he stared out with those dark eyes it was apparent that he wasn’t seeing anything distinctly. He never focussed on objects or followed my movement across the room, but he was aware of things happening around him. While his sight had not developed, his recognition of sound and vibration evidently allowed him to form some kind of impression of what lay outside his tiny world.
With Arsha and the other infants gone I felt more of an attachment to him with every passing day. He was like my conduit to the future. All of the good things in my life were tied to his wellbeing. They could only be achieved through him. Some part of me knew that I was being melodramatic, but I couldn’t divorce myself from this way of thinking. I couldn’t stand back objectively and see the bigger picture. At this moment, with Ellinan and Mish safely kept a couple of floors below, the most important thing in my world was his safety.
In my life I’d endured my fair share of loss. There had been Zade and Max, and all of those memories of my life as a human. They’d crumbled away like the rest of this decaying planet. As horrible as those losses had been, I’d come to accept them. I’d come to grips with the fact that they were gone forever, and that I would have to continue forward in the world without them. I’d found a way to move on.
Maybe Mish and Ellinan would fill some of that void. I was glad that I had saved them, and thankful that they’d been left unharmed. To know that they were safe was a great comfort in this time of uncertainty. But I knew that looking after the two Wards was not the destiny that had been mapped out for me. I was not here to be the caretaker of other synthetics. I was here to bring humans back into the world. People. That was what drove me, the goal that I sought.
That was why the unborn child in the lab continued to capture my thoughts and my hopes more than anything else.
The alerts on the touch panel were less frequent now. The heart and lungs were doing better, growing stronger. They were still not strong enough for my liking, but enough to allow me a small glimmer of optimism. The diagnosis from the a-womb, however, was dire: its diagnostics advised that corrective surgery would likely be needed immediately upon birth to sustain the life of the ‘sample’ as it was termed. But I wasn’t a surgeon, and I didn’t have specialised gear. This was a lab, not a hospital. In the test environment, the organisms that routinely emerged from the a-wombs were animals, not humans. Failed births were not a big deal. They were examined in order to glean data or to retrieve useful body parts, and then simply discarded. I was treading unfamiliar territory now.
There was no magical machine in the lab that could repair damaged tissue and save the infant’s life, if that was what was required. I could wait with my towels and swaddling and some basic knowledge of resuscitation, but beyond that, all I could do was hope.
When I wasn’t watching over the a-womb I took time to show Mish and Ellinan the rudiments of life at the Somerset Drive plantation. Together we harvested soybeans, and I experimented with my own soy formula blend. I was petrified that the infant wouldn’t take it. How awful would it be to come through everything, through the heartache and uncertainty of gestation, only to have the baby starve to death because it wouldn’t consume the milk I’d created?
One thing at a time, I told myself. Worry about that if and when it happens.
I dropped past Cider and introduced Mish and Ellinan. Arsha was surprised to see them, and while not outwardly hostile, she treated them with the same wariness that she projected toward me. She grilled me on all aspects of my encounter with the Marauders, including their reasons for entering the city and how many were out there. I could tell she was concerned that they were closing in, and I did my best to put her at ease, but with her trust in me shaky at best, she was left visibly unsatisfied.
The infants were doing well, already putting on weight, their cheeks chubby and their skin a warm and healthy hue. Arsha herself looked worn out, her hair straggly and her clothes showing patches of vomit and drool, but she did not ask for help. In fact, she seemed resolute in her decision to keep me away, tolerating our presence for only a few minutes before shooing us out the door. She did not allow any of us to touch or hold them, so we could only admire them from afar.
Not long after, I knew the time had come. In the lab, the a-womb panel indicated that hormone activity had reached the appropriate level to allow the foetus to leave the sac. To my dismay, the boy was still in the breech position, upright, his feet pointing toward the lower extremities of the sac through which he would have to pass.
With as much care as I could manage, I massaged the edges of the sac with my fingers, turning the boy in tiny increments like nudging the second hand of a clock around the dial. It was an awkward process, like trying to manoeuvre something inside a wad of jelly, and it turned out to be a very painstaking task. The boy thrashed briefly at times, as if resenting this intrusion into his world, but with persistence I was able to gradually change his orientation to the desired angle, head down and facing the exit point of the a-womb.
And so I was ready. I made one last check over the data on the touch panel.
Probability of sample failure high. Prep resuscitation equipment.
“Afraid I can’t do that,” I muttered. I leaned down to look at the boy’s face one more time. He was sleeping serenely again inside his softly glowing world, upside down and oblivious to what was about to happen. I almost had the urge to back out of the procedure, to leave him in his comfy and safe home where I could sit and watch for just a little longer. Just another day for us to spend together. Even an hour. A minute.
But I knew I couldn’t do that. I had to push on, even if it meant losing him.
“Make it,” was all I could say.
I tapped the touch panel and started the procedure. The blipping noise began.
The slit opened on the lower portion of the a-womb and the amniotic fluid began to slop out, just as the others had done before it. I ignored the warnings and the alerts that were multiplying on the touch panel. They were irrelevant now. I only had eyes only for the sac, and the tiny infant that was slowly beginning his downward journey into the world.
The sac emptied of liquid and its sides sucked in like a withered prune. The boy began to gravitate toward the opening, his fingers curling up and his body hunching over. He kicked suddenly, viciously, enough to make the sides of the sac shimmer, and he appeared to convulse. I reached out and uselessly held the side of the a-womb, as if that might give him some comfort. He kicked again, then went limp.
There were more alarms flashing on the display, and now the boy’s head penetrated the opening of the sac, fluid dripping from his dark hair, and I wiped and dabbed at it unnecessarily with a towel. Extending outward, the webbing of the a-womb stretched wide, the safety net for the world’s newest arrival. He came slowly, the crown of his head inching outward, then his ears were free, then his entire head. He seemed to pause there as if catching his breath, then continued to strain downward. His shoulders were the next obstacle, and this was the slowest part of all. For a moment I thought he was wedged there, stuck fast, and that I’d have to intervene, but with a slight sucking sound his shoulders edged free of the sac, and he slithered out in a rush as the others had done, lying unmoving on the mesh.
Panicked, I reached forward and cupped one hand under his neck, placing the other under the small of his back. My skin tingled at the sensation of touching him for the first time. For so long there had been a barrier between us, a thin membrane that might as well have been an impenetrable wall. Now all that was removed. There was nothing to stop me feeling the texture of his skin, to feel his weight in my hands. He was warm, so warm. And he was sticky.
The Seeds of New Earth Page 13
