Render

by K A Riley

  Oddly enough, he smells really good. Like flowers or perfume or something. Considering there are open sewers running through the shantytown and heaps of soggy garbage steaming in the sun, any pleasant smell is an equally pleasant surprise.

  When we introduce ourselves, Tread nods knowingly. I can’t speak for the others, but his lack of questions or surprise at seeing us gives me the creeps. I feel like the five of us have somehow become the subject of required reading in a war-torn world where people are resigned to their fate and where gossip is currency.

  I’m not so sure it’s a good thing. The last thing I ever wanted was for San Francisco’s population to anticipate our arrival.

  Tread tells us that the city has become central to a resistance movement. “They call themselves the Insubordinates,” he says.

  “Right. We’ve heard of them,” Rain says, taking the lead for our peculiar encounter with this giant, heavily-sweating man. “Our friend Vail mentioned them.”

  Tread wipes his forehead with a brown cloth, which he then rings out onto the ground in front of us. “They thought they could bring peace by protesting the war. Well, that just put a target on their backs as big around as Yosemite National Park. No one wanted to support a bunch of do-gooders who support the Order.”

  “They don’t sound like they’re supporting the Order. Just opposing the war. Besides, there is no Order—is there?”

  “You say ‘tomato,’ I say ‘traitor.’ No way President Krug was going to let anyone stand between him and his war.”

  “But the war’s a myth. An illusion. Isn’t it?” Rain’s voice is starting to lose a little of its former conviction, as if Tread is making her doubt her own mind.

  “Every war is an illusion,” he replies. “They’re based on what you want versus what you can actually get people to believe. I’d tell you to forget about whatever your mission here is, but I’m guessing you didn’t come all this way to turn around and go back to wherever you came from.”

  “That’d be a good guess,” Cardyn quips.

  “Actually,” Rain says, “where we came from isn’t there anymore.”

  Tread gives her a long look. “You too?”

  Rain nods, and Tread eyes the five of us again. More closely now, like he’s seeing us for the first time. Finally, he wipes his eyes and his chin quivers. “Seems like everyone’s lost someone.”

  “Some of us have lost everyone,” Brohn replies in a tone that hurts my heart. I want to tell him he still has me, but I know perfectly well that I can’t replace any of the family he’s lost.

  Tread makes a sweeping motion with his thick arm and scans the shantytown around us. “I wasn’t born here. Many of us weren’t. We were brought here ‘for our own protection.’ Came from Reno, I’m assuming?”

  I tell him, “Yes.”

  “Reno is just one of what Krug’s people are calling the ‘New Towns.’ More like concentration camps if you ask me. Supposed to be safe havens from the Eastern Order and the war. Pure cat piss. They’re prisons is what they are. And don’t you dare think otherwise. It’s a consolidation of power, a way for Krug to keep millions of us jammed into cities filled with guns and drugs so we’ll kill each other while the Wealthies live it up in the Arcologies and continue to blame us for all the ills of the world. Every corrupt government since the beginning of time swears it’s only burning down the enemy villages in order to save them.”

  “But you’re not the enemy,” Rain protests. “Neither are we. This is our country. Our government. They’re supposed to protect us.”

  Tread smiles at her and shakes his head, which causes several of his chins to wobble. “You have the power to change things, to influence people. To rebel. That makes you the enemy. As for the rest of us, we’re just the innocent civilians caught in the middle. From what I hear, the five of you plan on doing something about that.”

  “Damn right!” Cardyn proclaims.

  Tread smiles his amusement but nods his approval. “Do you know how to get where you’re going next?”

  “Um, not exactly,” I say.

  “We have a general idea,” Rain says, pushing her shoulders back confidently.

  “A general idea will usually end up with you getting yourselves specifically killed. I’ve got an old digi-grid in the back. It’ll smooth the way for you a bit anyway.”

  Tread heaves himself up. He’s so big, it’s like he has to move in shifts. Limping and jiggling away, he disappears into what looks like a small storage room in the back of the shed and begins clanging and rifling around through a bunch of old metal cabinets.

  I pull Brohn aside. “Do you think we can trust him?” I whisper into his ear.

  “Not sure. But I know I can trust you. What do you think?”

  I look up to see him staring deep into my eyes as if he’s trying to read me. The problem is that all I’m thinking about now is how handsome he is. His thick, dark hair and bright blue eyes. The stubble on his jaw. His broad shoulders. And those strong arms that have held me and made me feel safer than I ever have in my life. “Actually, right now, you’re making it pretty hard to focus.”

  He lets out a laugh. “I have faith in you, Kress. You have better instincts than any of us. What does your gut say?”

  “My gut tells me this guy needs to meet Render.”

  I swipe my left index finger along the tattoos on my right wrist. Practically before I’ve finished the action, Render swoops down and alights on the top of the orange tent just next to Tread’s.

  I tap into Render’s mind, and he taps into mine. The feedback loop is sometimes faint, sometimes painful. But this time, it’s clear and calm. He doesn’t seem to fear Tread, which means I don’t have any reason to either. My instincts may be good, but they’re always better when they’re combined with his.

  When I’ve severed the connection, I turn back to Brohn, giving my head a shake to clear out the last bits of leftover sensory overlap. “We’re good,” I say with a hearty thumb’s up. “Render’s not sensing any warning bells or anything.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing your eyes do that,” Brohn says, a funny, crooked smile on his lips.

  Cardyn stands behind me and puts his chin on my shoulder. “Nice work, Snoopy.”

  I elbow him in the stomach.

  Tread returns with his digi-graph, which he sets on the end of the bench before plopping down himself. He flicks his fingers over the silver sphere, and it opens up like a flower. Another flick, and a blue map appears. He points out over the unending field of derelict half-houses, impromptu shelters, and flat expanses of rubble and debris then back to the holo-display floating in the air in front of us.

  “San Francisco is here, just across the Bay. But you won’t be able to get over there. Government sealed it off over a year ago.”

  “Sealed it off? You mean barricaded the whole city?” Rain asks.

  “Like what they did with us,” Cardyn says.

  Tread tilts his head to the side like a dog hearing a noise whose source it can’t quite identify.

  “We’re from a town called the Valta,” Cardyn explains. We were behind a military barricade for most of our lives.”

  Tread shakes his head and lets out a knowing sigh. “Yeah. I’ve heard about the Valta. Well, I’ll give Krug this much: He doesn’t do anything halfway.”

  “Neither do we,” I say. “Now, about getting across this Bay…?”

  Now Tread offers up a full belly-laugh. “You kids are something else, aren’t you?” When none of us says anything, he looks around like he’s making sure no one’s eavesdropping. “Okay. I’ll play along. Seems like the San Fran rebels got in too deep and now they don’t know how to get back out. They figured they’d claim the city and start a revolution. The revolution would spread, and all would be right with the world.”

  “But it didn’t work out that way,” Brohn says.

  “Of course it didn’t. Ideals are great in theory. Having principles, ‘fighting for what’s righ
t,’ answering to a higher calling…That stuff works all the time in the old movies. But have you ever seen an ideal turn an evil man into a kind one? Or a greedy man into a giving one? Ever seen an ideal stop a bullet?”

  “No,” I say. “But we’ve seen what happens when fear stops good people from trying.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Brohn’s getting impatient, or maybe the talk of stopping bullets is agitating him. “The checkpoints,” he growls as he points to the floating blue image of the city. “Can you get us into the city or not? Because if you can, we’ll owe you big. If you can’t, we’ll find someone who can. Then we’ll owe them big.”

  Tread puts up his hands and says, “Whoa” like he’s reining in a horse. “I’m definitely your man. I can get you in. At least, I know someone who can. His name is Kammet. Staff Sergeant Dennis Kammet. He does some work as a transport and supply-chain coordinator, but his main claim to fame is that he’s the sneakiest, cleverest bastard I’ve ever met. He’s in with the Insubordinates right under his commanders’ noses.” He lets out another great big belly laugh and turns his head to the side to spit over the back of his car bench. “Kammet passes intel to the Insubordinates. Lets them know when there’s going to be a raid or increased security at checkpoints when they need to move around in the city. He’ll get you in. What I can’t do is promise you’ll like what you find. Or that you’ll even survive it.”

  He flicks at the image, causing it to rotate lazily in the air. “This is a collection of intel we’ve been gathering for over a year now. It’s not complete, but neither is the government’s San Fran operation. They’ve got D.C. locked up back East. Bunch of New Towns, too. Chicago. Cincinnati. Philadelphia. Charlotte. Atlanta. New Orleans. Everyone packed tighter than a constipated rhino. Out here, they’ve got a lot of guns…but also a lot of flaws in their system and, frankly, some pretty poorly trained soldiers.”

  He points with his thick finger to a bunch of spots on the blue schematic that are lit up red, and others that blink a shimmering fluorescent green.

  “The checkpoints here and here,” he says, “are very strong. Lots of cameras, guards, redundancy security protocols. The works. Here and here, on the other hand…these are new installations. Glitchy operating systems, patchy security, untrained guards. They’re tightening things up, but it’s a slow go. The Insubordinates have kept them occupied and disoriented with their little diversion raids.”

  “And you think we can get in through one of these places?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know what you can do. But you seem to have a pretty good set of survival skills between the five of you. Let’s see what you’ll be looking at.” He presses his fingertips together over one of the green spots on the flickering hologram and flicks them open, causing the area to expand to reveal more detail. The new expanded image floats above the main schematic, and Tread brushes at it to make it turn and spin as he tells us what we’re looking at. “This is updated as of yesterday, so it should be accurate. Two cameras. Both off-line. A searchlight that’s currently being repaired because it’s not very bright. Two guards. Frankly, they’re also not very bright. And a security gate with a high-end motion-detector, a weapons deployment system, and a coded access panel…”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Cardyn whines.

  “…all going in tomorrow,” Tread finishes with a smile.

  “Then this is their weak spot right now?” I ask, kneeling down to get a closer look at the expanded image. The detail is excellent. Though, as Tread warned, it’s patchy with gaps and blacked-out sections in places. But it’s better than what we had before, which was nothing.

  “It’s weak. Maybe not weak enough. But you have one advantage.”

  “Which is?”

  “The checkpoints are designed to keep people on the inside from getting out. They don’t spend a lot of time worrying about anybody from the outside trying to get in. Frankly, who wants to sneak into a lion’s den?”

  “We’re past doing what we want to do,” I say. “We’re ready to do what we need to do. And right now, everything we’ve been through has led us here.”

  “Our lives have been all about questions,” Rain explains. “It’s time we finally got some answers.”

  “I can relate to that,” Tread replies, raising one eyebrow as if he’s impressed. “Okay, you’ll need to go to this four-story building next door to Grace Cathedral.”

  “Are there guards? How do we get in?”

  “No. No guards. Just a solid steel door at the bottom of a small set of concrete steps out back. You’ll need a key to get in. You’ll find it once you’re there.”

  “Once we’re there? What does it look like?”

  “Trust me. You’ll know it when you see it. Now listen, you don’t have a pile of time. I wasn’t kidding about those security installations going in tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, in fact. My buddy Kammet runs one of the shuttle-trucks back and forth across the bridge. I can get you a ride over. Other than that, all I can give you is information. The rest is up to you.”

  “Information is pretty valuable these days,” I say as we get ready to go. “Is there anything we can do for you in return?”

  “Find a way to save this village,” he says. “Find a way to save it without burning it to the ground.”

  22

  Making our way on foot out of the Oakland shantytown, we find the lot with the military supply and transport trucks, just like Tread described. Although we can hear the sound of talking and busyness on the far side of the lot, the side we approach from is unguarded, with only a low metal fence standing in our way.

  “No sense in weighing the pros and cons,” Brohn says as he puts his hands on the top of the fence and vaults over. He lands quietly, and the rest of us quickly follow suit, though no one executes the leap quite so easily as he does.

  With Rain in the lead, we’re hunched over and walking in a brisk single file between two rows of the big blocky vehicles, when an arm appears from the open side of one of the trucks. For the second time today, a hand grabs Rain by the collar, and she’s yanked clean off her feet and into the dark interior of the vehicle. Cardyn, who’s just behind her, shrieks, and the rest of us race over to help.

  The hand and arm, it turns out, belong to Dennis Kammet, the man Tread told us about.

  “Sorry about the dramatic kidnapping,” he says after a quick round of introductions. “But this is your ride, and we’re leaving right now.”

  He lifts a panel up from the truck’s floor by a large steel ring and ushers us down into the small compartment below. He drops the panel back down over us, and we hear him pulling a blanket or some kind of tarp over the top, so that even the thin lines of light around the edges of the panel are blocked out. The five of us find ourselves scrunched together in stifling heat and total darkness.

  “Well,” Cardyn whispers, “at least now the five of us know what a hand feels like inside of an oven mitt.”

  “More like inside an oven,” Manthy mutters.

  The truck lurches into gear and rumbles along a relatively smooth road for about twenty minutes or so before finally slowing to a halt. The thundering clump of Kammet’s boots above us stirs all kinds of dirt loose in the hidden compartment, and we stifle our hacking coughs as best we can. After a moment, Kammet pulls the tarp away and lifts the panel, filling our lives with light and air again. He reaches down to help unwedge us, one at a time, from the tiny space under the floorboards of the truck.

  “Next stop is the San Francisco side,” he says as I gulp a deep breath of relatively fresh air.

  Once we get to the far side of the bridge, Kammet presses a button on the instrument panel in the truck’s cab. When he gives us the go-ahead signal, we leap, one by one, from the slow-moving truck and tumble down a small grassy embankment where we brush off our clothes, get our bearings, and gather our wits.

  “The guards are just over there,” Rain says, pointing toward an outpost. “Ideas?”

  Brohn
turns to me. “Render?”

  “Render.”

  I glide my fingertips along my tattoos and initiate the connection. The five of us crouch down behind some bushes near a clearing at the foot of a small hill. “There’s going to be some noise,” I warn the others.

  We’re barely settled in when, swooping down behind the embankment, Render hits the ground in the middle of the clearing and proceeds to beat his huge wings like he’s trying to take off but can’t. He kicks up an enormous cloud of dust in the process and thrashes around enough to vibrate the ground below our feet. His cries sound eerily human, and I’m proud to see how good he’s getting at mimicry.

  Startled by what sounds very much like a child in distress, one of the guards tells his partner to stay at the post while he goes to investigate.

  “Too bad,” I whisper. “I was hoping they’d both come over.”

  “It’s okay,” Brohn replies under his breath. “It just means we’ll have to divide our attention between the two guards.”

  Rain puts three fingers up and points to a small footpath leading up to the checkpoint. I nod my understanding as she, Cardyn, and Manthy slip away, leaving me and Brohn ducked down behind a small cluster of trees.

  In the clearing, Render is still crying his little heart out and spraying dust and black feathers into the air as he continues to writhe, limp, and roll around on the ground.

  The lone guard clambers over the hill and slides down past the tree-line into the clearing. He looks baffled to discover that the cries he heard are coming from a big black bird who suddenly doesn’t seem all that distressed. Render stops his whirlwind of motion, hops to his feet, and gives the guard what I swear is a mocking “Gotcha!” before flying away into the afternoon sky.

  As the guard raises his head to watch the raven glide out over the treetops, Brohn sprints silently out from our hiding place, his feet barely seeming to touch the ground, and taps the man on the shoulder. The puzzled guard spins around only to be greeted by Brohn’s muscular forearm, which strikes him full-force on the bridge of the nose. The man staggers back and drops to his knees, blood plinking to the dry ground. Before he has a chance to recover or figure out what’s happened to him, I slip around behind him and lock my arms around his neck in a rear choke-hold. He’s already too dazed from Brohn’s blow to offer much resistance. Within two seconds, his head lolls to the side. I release my grip, and he slumps over as gently as a heavily-drugged kitten.