by Natalie Reid
“She’s a Bandit time-bomb! Dead man walking! That thing in her eye is nothing more than a synthesized version of the Black. It’s only a matter of time before she turns.” The snow crunched as he loomed over her. “If you want to do yourself a favor…” He took the gun from his holster and placed it to her forehead, “…then pull the trigger. Before you do some real damage.”
Jessie tried to calm her breathing, but she couldn’t find the inner strength to tell herself that everything would be alright. Everything would not be alright. Ritter had just told her that if she didn’t kill herself, then she would soon become a murderer. The only hope she could hold onto was that she would be able to save her mom before she turned.
Grabbing the gun in one swift motion, she forced herself onto her feet and charged forward at Ritter. The gun dropped from her hands onto the snow, and her hands reached out to grab Ritter’s jacket. Though she had meant to threaten him, all she ended up doing was holding onto him for support.
“Tell me,” she breathed out, fiercely blinking her eyes to drive away the shadows. “You still tell me where she is.”
“Jessie, it won’t do you any—”
“Tell me!” She twisted his jacket in her hands, her knees beginning to buckle.
“Fine! I lied!” he shouted. “Sarah isn’t being held anywhere!”
“What?” she whispered. Her hands still clung onto him, unwilling to accept defeat.
“You should be happy. You’ll see her soon enough. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
She shook her head and tried to bite back a wave of bile. “She’s—”
“Dead!” he finished for her. “Your mother’s dead!” He grabbed her arms and shoved her away. “The sooner you get that through your head, the better off you’ll be.”
She struggled to keep her footing. The world around her was spinning. Carver and Denneck came up to her, their palms outstretched. She shirked away from them. She didn’t want to be touched. Her mother was dead, and soon Task Force would have the Bandit that they had been warning against all along. There was nothing left to do, no way she could win.
“Jessie?”
Tom placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, and she spun around to face him. The fear she saw in his eyes was enough to break her, yet it also filled her with a resounding purpose. Though she couldn’t get her mom back, couldn’t survive this thing in her eye, she finally had a heading…away. She needed to get away from Tom. If she stayed, if he refused to leave her side when she turned, then she might end up doing the unthinkable. And that was a fate worse than death.
She caught his gaze and slowly whispered out the words, “I’m sorry Tom.”
Realizing what she was about to do, he tried to reach out for her, tried to grab her hand or jacket or anything he could to keep her there for one more moment, but he was not quick enough. Jessie turned from him and ran through the trees, blindly sprinting out of sight, determined never to see the innocent face of the young scientist ever again.
Part Three: Resonance
Chapter 1
Evolution Day
December 22nd, 3033
Jessie shivered as she woke up in the stiff, white chair, feeling sick with fever. At first she couldn’t remember why she felt this way. Perhaps she had caught something from the winter chill or had eaten something too long left out. Then she felt it, that emptiness at her neck. It was like when she lost a tooth and felt the curve in her gums of where it used to be. Only, this was so strange, it was like having a whole mouthful of teeth removed and feeling nothing but air in a space that had been so long occupied.
She gasped and her head shot up, wildly taking in her surroundings. She was at a table in a white room. A man she had never seen before was sitting in front of her. She tried to search around him to the corners of the bright, bare room, yet one fact could not be changed or ignored. Her mother was not there.
Her arms and legs started to shake, her head felt dizzy, and in her mind a voice shouted at her to bring her mother back. Her mother wasn’t just another person. She was something in-extractable, something so vitally important and necessary that her absence felt to Jessie as if someone might as well have scooped her lungs out on a platter and walked off with them.
“Calm down, Jessie,” the man at the table told her. “What you are feeling is a normal reaction to being away from your Protector for the first time. But it is essential we do this now, otherwise you will never be ready to leave her.”
“I just want her back,” she said, close to tears.
“Of course you do. But I need you to be brave because all of us here want to welcome you to society. First we just have to ask you a few questions, do a few simple procedures; almost like playing a game. I promise it will not hurt you in the least.”
Jessie lifted a quivering hand and placed it on her neck. It was met with pink, soft skin.
“My name is Ual,” the man introduced himself. “I want to help you.”
She gulped. She didn’t believe that anyone in this place wanted to help her. She could feel a sense of hostility towards her and her mother. She hadn’t imagined it. This couldn’t be normal, she reasoned. This couldn’t be the procedure for all Potentians that came here to evolve. After they had removed the band from her neck, they had dragged her mother away. When Jessie had tried to run after her, they had jabbed a needle in her neck, sending her to sleep. Her Evolution Day was not supposed to be like this.
“Jessie,” Ual said firmly. He reached out and took one of her hands, resting it on top of his wrist. He had done this in such a way that her fingers were gently pressed into the skin where his veins ran. She could feel the pulse of his heart, and she closed her eyes so she could better concentrate on it.
The trembling in her arms and legs seemed to have subsided a little. She still felt as if she was going to be sick, but she had made a promise to her mother to treat everyone with this heartbeat as special, and she wasn’t going to back down on it the second she couldn’t see her.
She opened her eyes to look at him. “W-what do you need me to do?”
A silent man in a uniform came for Jessie and led her to another room in a different part of the building. The rooms all seemed to look identical, and so did the people they passed. There were so many security measures in place that it took nearly a minute to get from one room to the next. The man that was escorting her needed to punch in a separate key code to open up each of the doors and elevators they passed.
In the first room she was led to, she was seated at a small table and handed a stack of papers and a pen. The papers asked her to answer a whole variety of questions, most of which sounded strange to her. Many of them were pictures that she was allowed to look at for a few seconds and then forced to turn over and list off as many items in the picture that she could remember. Each time she finished with one, the man in the uniform picked it up, went to the door, and handed it to someone that was waiting outside.
Jessie went through dozens of those pictures, going as fast as she could, hoping that by the end of them she would get to see her mother. The largeness of the stack made her yearn for the end that much more, yet in a strange sense, she was glad of the busy work. She realized that, if she was concentrating on what was in the picture, then she wasn’t thinking about missing Sarah. She even began to wonder if these weren’t tests at all, but instead some kindness towards her to help her get through her evolution.
However, when she finished with the stack of papers, she was led to another room equally devoid of her mother. This room was larger and was entirely empty. When she entered, the man in the uniform told her to take off her shoes and socks. The ground under her bare feet felt almost soft like dirt, but it did not move when she scuffed her foot on the ground. In this room the man told her to run to the end of the room and back four times as fast as she could.
Four laps blew by her in a breeze, and soon she was stopping in front of the man, calmly looking up at him and hoping that this would be the last of the t
ests. The man, who was now holding a small computer tablet in his hands, looked down to it and then gave her a smile.
“Not even winded,” he commented. “I know a sergeant who would love to have you.”
“Sorry?” Jessie asked, but the moment for speech was gone.
He led her out of the room, and she wordlessly followed. In this third room, she found Ual waiting for her. He was sitting on a table with a strange machine in front of him. The machine had wires and sensors sticking out of it, and a lady with black hair was testing each of the machine’s buttons.
Jessie stood in the doorway to this room, but didn’t step inside.
“That’s alright Jessie,” Ual said, getting up. “You don’t have to be afraid.”
Jessie spun around and looked up at the man that had been with her for the past few hours. She didn’t even know his name, but she felt the irrational urge to cling to him. “I don’t want to go,” she told him.
“It’s the last test,” he told her, giving her a slight push inside.
Ual took her hand like before, saying, “I made you a promise Jessie, remember? I said nothing would hurt you, and nothing will. This test is easier than the other two. It’s as easy as sitting down. You don’t need to say or do anything.”
She nodded, feeling her legs begin to shake again. Ual led her to a chair, and the lady with black hair began to tape wires to her wrists and on the temples on either side of her head. Though it didn’t hurt, it made Jessie feel anxious. But, as Ual promised, she didn’t have to do anything at all.
All he did was talk, uttering words and sentences, and she just sat there and listened. Some things she understood. He said her name and her mother’s name and the name of the city. But most of what he said seemed strange. At one point he seemed to be reading from a story, one in which the characters and events were a mystery to her. At other times he seemed to be listing off random words; book, song, night, star, coin… the list went on and on, and Jessie felt even more confused with each word. The words began to sound more and more foreign, and she even suspected at one point that they were from a different language.
Then Ual paused for a moment before he began to read from a different list. This one was obviously a list of people’s names. She couldn’t tell for sure, but she thought that all of them were men. She heard his own name in there, but apart from that, she didn’t recognize another person.
When the test was done, the wires were taken from her head. Ual smiled and nodded to her, and she stood up from her chair.
“I get to see my mom now?” she asked him.
“We have to wait for your test results first,” he said, tapping the computer tablet in his hands.
Jessie bit her tongue to keep from shouting out at him, and her hand absentmindedly came up to her neck. When her fingers were met with just skin, she turned and looked around as if she had forgotten something.
“It isn’t there anymore,” he told her. “You’ll get used to it in time.” He glanced down at his tablet, and smiled back at her. “I do have some good news. Your information has been processed, and I can give you your numbers now.”
Her eyes widened. In her strong desire to return back to her mother, she had forgotten all about receiving her numbers. Just a few hours ago, she had been so anxious to see what numbers she would get. She had worried that she might not like the numbers. They were a second name after all, and would follow her the rest of her life. Now, however, the numbers seemed a hollow substitute for getting to see her mom.
“Isn’t that something,” Ual said, looking pleasingly at the screen.
She took a step forward, her curiosity momentarily peeked.
“Welcome to Aero City, Jessie Fifty-Fifty. We’re glad to have you.”
“W-what?” she asked, stunned.
He turned the screen around so she could see, and there was her name with four numbers behind it. Five Zero Five Zero.
“Those are my numbers?” she asked.
“You’re lucky. You have a name that’s easy to remember. Just don’t get into any trouble, otherwise you’ll find it’s more of a curse.”
There was a knock behind her, and Jessie turned to see that the man in uniform was standing in the doorway. He nodded to her to follow him, and she gave a quick glance back to Ual before hurrying back to his side. However, instead of leading her to some place far across the building again, the man just crossed the hallway, punched in a key code for the room’s door, and opened it up for her to step inside.
“You’ll be okay by yourself,” he said, closing the door in her face.
She could hear the sound of his footsteps as he walked away, and she pressed her ear to the door, clinging to the sound. When the noise subsided and she had nothing left to cling to, she began to frantically pace around the room. She had never been alone in her whole life. Not having Sarah was bad enough, but having no one in the room with her felt almost like a violation.
“Hey,” she said, pounding on the door. “Please, somebody come back!” She pounded louder, but no one came. “Mom!” she yelled, hoping that she might be somewhere close by in the building. “Mom!”
Suddenly she got the feeling that Sarah wasn’t coming back. It didn’t matter how many tests she took or how many rooms she was led to; they would never lead her to a room with her mother inside. And this hopeless feeling that began to grab hold of her told her to find someone, anyone so that she wouldn’t be alone. But at the same time, something else inside her mind urged her to get out of this place. If all they were doing was biding time, then that meant that Sarah was no longer here. They wanted Jessie tied to this place so they could have more time to get Sarah away. Though Jessie had no idea why they would want to do this, she felt certain that this was the truth. It was the reason why her mother looked so sad when they took her away. These people here were not good. She needed to get away.
Jessie stopped pounding on the door. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She thought back to her journey up here, remembering each door she was led through and each key-code that went to each door. She pressed her ear to the door for a long time, listening for anyone who might be outside. She heard distant footsteps, but they soon came and went. She waited several more minutes. No sound. It was time to act. It was time to let instinct take over…
Chapter 2
Stagnant Fortunes
Tom stared out the crystalized window of the military training lodge, watching as the wind and snow shook the trees. Outside, the smaller cabins of the training compound were getting lost in the snow drift. Only the main lodge, where they all lived, remained tall amongst the falling storm.
They had been at the hidden military compound for nearly two weeks now. Denneck and Carver left during the day to keep up their duties on the airbase, but that left Ritter, Griffin, Harper, Nel and himself stuck inside the lodge nearly twenty-four hours a day. Carver assigned each of them standing duties, which was another way of saying household chores, but once Tom had finished his, all he could do was stand in front of the window and stare. He had forgotten his glasses inside the house on Aileron. He longed for the program on them that would give him news of the city, would let him know if anyone had spotted Jessie. But he was forbidden to go back and retrieve them.
Many of the conveniences of modern life did not exist in the cabin, which meant a lot of hard work and a lot of going without. For most of them, it was fine. Even Ritter knew the meaning of hard work; but it wasn’t his duties that made him so difficult to be around. It was the constant tension that built up inside of him when Nel refused to look at him or be alone in the same room with him. Every time she ran off in fear, Ritter’s temper was put to the test that much more, and he took it out on those around him.
In the evening when Carver and Denneck returned, all the work had been done and the food prepared, the tension inside the cabin became that even more obvious. Most of all, it was clear to everyone that no one wanted Ritter to be there. Tom didn’t really care one way or the oth
er whether he stayed. It seemed all he cared about these days were the weather conditions.
Though the snows were harsh this day, they had been even harsher the day before, and he couldn’t keep the thought from his mind that, if Jessie was somewhere out there, she might be slowly freezing to death. He wanted desperately to go out and search for her. He had even tried the first week they were here, but his search was futile, and it had nearly given him hypothermia. After Denneck had buried him in a pile of blankets and sat him down in front of a fire, he had made him promise not to go searching for Jessie again. Tom had nodded, but in his heart he knew he wasn’t sincere.
“You keep starin so hard, you might start to see things,” Ritter commented from behind him.
Tom didn’t leave his post, but merely stared harder as the ex-Task Force agent leaned against the window seal to mock him.
“You know, she’s probably dead by now,” Ritter said with a shrug of his shoulder. “Or if she’s not, she’s figuring out a way to get herself killed. Either way, this staring thing isn’t going to help.”
The young scientist shook his head. “She’s not dead.”
“Yeah?” Ritter folded his arms over his chest and settled his back further down the wall. “So what are you expecting to happen once you find her? You’ll, what? Kiss her and she’ll turn back into a human?” He shifted his head right into Tom’s line of vision. “That about right, lover-boy?” He snapped his fingers in front of his eyes. “Hey! Stop obsessing. She’s gone. Get over it!”
Tom allowed his eyes to focus on him. “Is this supposed to help me? Cause it’s really not. If you want to help me, tell me a way I can get in contact with the Resistance.”
“You think they know what happened to her?” He gave an amused chuckle.
Tom shook his head. “It’s the only play I’ve got.”
Ritter regarded him for a moment. “Alright.” He folded his arms over his chest once more. “You want to talk to the Resistance, I can show you how. Just remember, it’s your funeral.”
