Reaping

by Makansi, K.

  “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 steal 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 s
plit 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.

  “This city was built on the framework of an old city called Kingston,” Chan-Yu says, narrating as we jog over to the entrance to the sewers. “In this part of Okaria, there are old sewer lines that haven’t been incorporated into the Okarian water filtration and recycling system. They’re not well-mapped. Almost nobody knows they even exist except the engineers who built the new system in the first place. But the Outsiders,” he pauses and bends down to the ground to heave open a trapdoor that looks like something out of a child’s storybook, “use them to get in and out in dire circumstances.”

  He steps onto a ladder and starts to climb down into the black. I pull out the light that attaches to the scope on my Bolt and hook it on. I use it to light my way as I crawl down after Chan-Yu, and Miah brings up the rear.

  “I feel like a frog,” he complains as we crawl into the damp, metallic tunnels.

  At the bottom, I hear Chan-Yu’s boots splash in a puddle of water. When I connect with solid ground, I point the light on the path in front of us. It’s mostly dry, but there are puddles here and there, and the walls are mossy and thick with algae. The tunnels aren’t big, no more than six feet in diameter, and Miah has to duck as we walk to avoid hitting his head.

  “Why isn’t this entire thing flooded?” Miah asks. “We should be drowning right now.”

  “The same water flow system that works to keep the water moving in the Sector sewage system also help to drain the water. In cases of floods, such as during winter or immediately after a heavy rainstorm, water will fill up here. But in normal circumstances, they’re empty.”

  “Better hope it doesn’t start raining, then,” Miah says, a meager attempt at a joke. I glare at him, but he can’t see me in the dark.

  We run in silence after that, jogging after Chan-Yu through the silent tunnels. I think of Soren, Vale, and even Linnea, hoping against hope they’ve escaped the Sector’s notice. We’re only underground for maybe ten minutes, though, before Chan-Yu points to a dead-end and a flood door.

  “If it’s open, we exit there.”

  I pray it’s open.

  Chan-Yu cranks on the strangest opening mechanism I’ve ever seen in my life—a circular door handle, one that twists like an enormous knob as he turns it counterclockwise. I hear some enormous mechanism within the wall click and clank, promising sounds.

  “When I open this door, they’ll be able to track us again if they’ve bugged us in any way. We have to move quickly.”

  I nod, and Miah steels himself for the effort. Running isn’t his forte.

  Chan-Yu pushes the door open with an enormous heave. We’re in another tunnel of some sort, but judging by how much fresher it smells on the other side, this one isn’t underground, or even inside. It smells like summer, and I realize we must have emerged outside.

  “Where are we?” I ask, whispering.

  “At the bottom of the hill by the park,” Chan-Yu responds. I take a moment to stare at him in silent admiration. He must have the entire city map memorized at all elevations. He’s brought us to within a kilometer of the rendezvous point by the river, where there’s supposed to be an emergency hovercar waiting for us. Just in case.

  We emerge in a concrete tunnel built into a hill, which, sure enough, opens right by the park. The clean smell of cut grass in the early summer night fills me with memories, of the countless times I came to this park not as a renegade on the run from soldiers and Watchmen but as a teenager, spending time with my friends and thinking of nothing but how best to enjoy ourselves.

  Crouching by the riverbank, we watch the hovercraft to see if Vale and the others will show up, knowing we can’t wait for long. They’ll find us, sooner or later, the drones or the soldiers or both. A light drizzle sets in, chilling my skin, somehow refreshing me. I close my eyes and let the rainwater drip down my face, wondering if we’ll survive tonight. If we’ll make it out of the city. If everything we’ve ever done has been in vain.

  When I open my eyes, a flash of movement to my right jerks me back to readiness, Bolt up and ready to shoot. But the two figures approaching are wearing hooded, heat-cloaking gear just like us and not soldier’s uniforms. Abandoning caution, I stand up and watch them approach, jogging doggedly down the hill to wh
ere the hovercar is parked, one large figure, one smaller, female. Soren? Linnea? But where’s Vale?

  Sure enough, they come barreling down the hill and Soren pushes his hood off.

  “In the car!” he shouts. “They’re hot on our tail!”

  Without slowing, he hops over and into the open-top hovercar, and Linnea follows suit. Chan-Yu gets in as well, but Miah and I hesitate, glancing at each other. The sound of the river next to us grows to a swell inside my ears and when my voice emerges, it’s so quiet I can barely hear myself.

  “Where’s Vale?”

  “Get in the goddamn car, Remy!” Soren screams at me. I shake my head dully, no, I won’t do that.

  “You left him, didn’t you?” I say. Miah looks at Soren for a half-second and I could swear there are sparks flying between them, the connection of an unspoken message they share.

  Miah tackles me from the side. He’s huge, bigger than Vale, bigger than Eli, almost bigger than Soren, and the weight and size of his body is like being engulfed by a falling building. He grabs my arms and tries to throw me over his shoulder. For a second I don’t fight, not comprehending what’s happening or why. But then I realize:We’re leaving without Vale.

  We’re abandoning him.

  “NO!”

  I scream.

  Miah slaps his hand over my mouth and throws me in the car, but I’m wriggling so frenetically that I don’t land where he wants me to. Instead, I slide off the side, and instantly I roll to the ground on the other side of the car and am sprinting through the grass, back up the hill. Back the way I came.

  For a long time, I know nothing except that I must keep running. I don’t know where he is, I realize. What am I hoping to accomplish? I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t leave him here. I’ve lost too many people I love. My sister, my mother, Eli. I can’t lose him, too.

  So I run. Time slows to a crawl. I run and I run. Back toward El Centro. Back through city blocks and down dark alleys. Soldiers. Running through the streets, just like me. But they don’t care about me, they can’t track me. They’re not looking for me. They’re looking for Vale. I follow them at a jog, keeping my distance, hoping they’ll lead me to him. What are you going to do, Remy? How are you going to help him?