“Of course. Everyone knows what you did.”
Kala flushed. Right the Dronet. Everyone in North America probably knew.
Smiling, Wilm picked up her free hand and covered it with his own. “I hope you don’t regret what you did. You saved many lives and I, for one, would like to express my gratitude. You’re a very unusual person, Kala.” His eyes, the same reddish-brown as his hair, glittered with keen interest as they regarded her.
She didn’t know how to respond and just stood there, feeling like an idiot.
Wilm let go of her hand and stepped back, still smiling. “Here come your friends; I’ll leave you to their company. Thank you again for what you’ve done, and for everything you’re about to do. May the Oneness give you peace and guide you to success.” He slipped away just as Crisfer and Liet came charging up.
“Hey, was that—?” Liet asked.
“Yeah, it was Wilm,” Kala said.
“What’d he say?”
“Nothing. Come on, it’s time for class.”
September was drawing to an end when their instructors called the trainees together to show them their new attack drones. Enlarged holos of the two types of drones hung side by side in the air. They both looked like insects with tiny metallic wings. The regular drone, used for scouting and communication, had a bluish tint and a needle-like snout with a blunt tip, for burrowing through the Unathi’s special pores. There was a hollow compartment where their bellies would be, for carrying particles.
The attack drone was larger, with a reddish cast. Its snout was quite sharp, as it would need to pierce the skins of humans, who had no special pores for it to use. Unlike the scouting drone, instead of legs it had tiny, scissor-like blades for cutting. Once inside its human target, Kala learned, it would head straight for the conjunction of the spinal cord with the brain and sever the connection. The target would be instantly and humanely terminated.
Kala felt a splinter of ice lodge in her heart when she heard this. She tried to ignore it and go on with her training, but it stayed.
The agents were assigned their locations early, so their syms could be loaded with geography, dialect and other information particular to their target area. In 2079, ninety percent of the population lived in major urban areas, called megacities, and these were the agents’ initial targets. Once these megas had been swept, the agents would branch out to smaller cities. Kala decided to ask for Chandika—San Diego, she corrected herself. That way, she would at least have some prior knowledge of the geography.
When they ask you if you have a preference, Araka said, say SanFran.
Why there? Kala asked.
In his usual annoying way, he didn’t answer. But when asked where she wanted to go, she went along with her sym’s wishes, not wanting to spoil any possible advantage he might know of but hadn’t bothered to tell her. Crisfer and Liet followed suit, so the trio could stay together.
As the days went on and more people turned, everyone’s stress steadily increased. The scientists and techs worked feverishly to finish final preparations on the time travel device. They looked tired when they came up for meals, and Kala wondered if they were sleeping at all. It was a race for time—they had to get the agents to the past before the staff working on the time travel device turned or were killed.
September turned into October, and suddenly the day of the journey into the past was upon them. It had been seven weeks since the X-crisis began. Kala had barely slept the night before, thinking about the trip. It was hard to believe she was leaving her home, never to see it again. The world she would enter would be barely recognizable. The prospect was sad, scary and thrilling all at once. If it weren’t for Liet and Crisfer going with her, she didn’t think she’d be able to go through with it.
The trio finished breakfast and joined the other agents assigned to SanFran in a final briefing. There were thirty-two of them, including Kala, her two bondmates, and Crisfer’s friend Rami, a soft-spoken fellow with a kind, trusting face. An instructor walked them through the procedure and what they could expect to find when they arrived in 2079. And then it was time to get ready.
First, they donned their armor. This was a one-piece bodysuit made from a light material almost like cloth, but smooth and flexible like plastic. It was breathable and very strong. Built-in temperature and moisture controls helped keep the wearer clean and comfortable.
Over the armor went their clothing: soft boots, leggings, tunics and long hooded jackets. Their packs held only extra clothing and a few personal items. Cases of food, equipment and medicine would be sent along with them. There was no antidote or vaccine for SHAV, but the cases contained supportive treatments that would help the beta humans survive the illness, if they weren’t too far gone.
When they were ready, the new agents were taken down to the lowest level of the center. They entered a large laboratory, in the center of which sat a round chamber made of a thick, transparent material. Surrounding it were the machines that generated the wormhole that would move the inhabitants of the chamber through time. It used the same method of folding space and time that had been intended for faster-than-light travel.
The scientists, technicians and support people were gathered near the machine’s control console. As the new agents passed by on their way to the chamber, each staff member bowed his or her head in respect. Kala caught Wilm’s eye. He looked exhausted, but gave her a warm smile and bowed his head, one hand over his heart.
The agents were given a nutrient drink that would help them recover from the journey faster. They then entered the chamber, standing in a loose cluster around a column in its center. This held the heart of the device, where the wormhole would be born. The cases of equipment and supplies were loaded into the chamber at their feet.
“Here we go,” Rami said, sounding nervous.
Kala’s heart was hammering and her chest felt full, making it hard to breathe until Araka released endorphins and reassured her with soothing words. Taking deep breaths, she linked hands with Crisfer and Liet.
Kala turned her head to look at Wilm; he was standing at the controls, his hands hovering over glowing pads. It must be working, she thought; everything was beginning to blur. Sounds died away. Suddenly, through the growing fog, she thought she saw movement in the lab, people running. A figure sprang at Wilm and brought him down. Icy fear gripped her, and then everything went black.
Chapter 9
SanFran, North America
June 7, 2079
KALA BLINKED. IT WAS dark. Her head throbbed, and a soft, rhythmic roaring filled her ears. She smelled salt and an unfamiliar noxious odor, felt a strong breeze on her cheek, and realized she was outdoors. Stars glowed faintly above. That roaring sound was the sea, restlessly prowling the shore.
The implication of what she had just seen in the lab sank into her, and she shuddered. She might never know what happened to poor Wilm.
Liet, Crisfer, Rami and the other new agents were standing nearby in clusters. They looked around at the sea, the dunes, the night sky, and then each other.
Crisfer grinned at Kala. “We’re in the past,” he said.
She realized that this was indeed the targeted landing area, a strip of empty shore on the Pacific Ocean about five miles south of the Golden Gate Bridge. The peaks of a long chain of sand dunes rose above them; the agents had been deposited along it, scattered into various hollows. The sea had swallowed most of the beach some time ago, and the feet of the dunes disappeared into the surf in some places.
This should be June 2079, she thought. She’d check to see if there was a Dronet established—
Pain knifed through her. She doubled over, holding her stomach, and sank to the ground. Peripherally she saw Crisfer retching. Liet cried out and fell to the sand, as did Rami and the others. Then her vision went dark.
Kala opened her eyes and sat up. The others lay motionless on the sand, still deep in a pseudo-sleep as their syms helped them to recover from the damage they had sustained on the journe
y. The sea was closer, but it didn’t appear the tide ever came up this high.
Araka, are you okay?
Fit as a fiddle, my dear, as the humans used to say. Excuse me—do say. He chuckled.
Kala reached out with her drones to see if they had any company in the immediate area, human or otherwise, and immediately bumped into the drones of some of the local agents.
Greetings and welcome to 2079, hailed one of them. I’m Antar. Our drone watch has been keeping an eye on you, making sure you’re safe. We’re coming to get you; meet us at the road on the other side of the dunes.
Kala’s drones quickly developed a map of the area in her head, with the local Unathi agents shown as a cluster of glowing pinpricks surrounded by vast gulfs of nothingness where, she supposed, existed only humans. She got a fix on the local agents; they were approaching the beach in two ground vehicles. They were almost here.
Kala thanked Antar and stood up. It was about two in the morning, according to the new Hub, which was very basic compared to the one in 2616. There was no moon, but her enhanced eyesight enabled her to see perfectly in the dark. Still feeling slightly ill, she climbed to the top of the nearest dune and looked inland.
There were a few scattered lights that must be the city, but it was mostly dark. The dunes were covered with sea grass and scrub, festooned with litter and cast-off junk. A path led down to a paved road that ran parallel to the sea.
On the other side of the road, residential buildings were crammed together behind a high wall, like cattle in a pen. The unpleasant odor had grown stronger, and Kala realized with dismay that this was actually the smell of the city. It was thick with particulates; she found it hard to breathe the stuff.
There’s an oil shortage crisis going on in this time, Araka informed her. Among many other crises. They weren’t prepared with sufficient alternative energy sources, and so they’ve resorted to burning coal, which is still plentiful. With all the problems they’ve been facing, evidently they haven’t bothered to clean the emissions flowing into the air.
I guess that won’t be a problem for much longer, Kala replied sadly. No doubt, she thought, the environment would begin healing itself from this time forward.
Two vehicles rolled up in the dark, their headlights off; an armored transport and a small bus. Their engines were quiet; Araka told her they probably ran on electric batteries, or perhaps hydrogen fuel.
Kala made her way down to them.
Half a dozen agents climbed out of the vehicles, carrying small devices of some kind in their hands.
Antar, the young man who had greeted them, grinned at her, and she smiled back at him. “You’re up early, aren’t you?” he asked.
The driver of the transport, a woman named Charis, peered around nervously. “Never mind that. Let’s hurry and get loaded up; we don’t want to be discovered by human gangs or Ghal.”
“Ghal?” Kala asked.
“A nasty surprise we found when we got here. I’ll tell you more on the way back.”
Kala led them back over the dunes to where the other newcomers lay in their hollows in the sand, still out. The agents attached a small device to each of them, and one by one they rose into the air until they hovered a few feet from the ground.
Moving efficiently, as if they’d done this many times, the local agents herded them together, connecting them with thin cables, and then pulled the floating raft of unconscious Unathi up and over the sand dunes and down the other side to the road. Once she understood what they were doing, Kala moved quickly to help.
Others pushed a similar raft of heavy supply cases through the air to the waiting vehicles. The agents were loaded into the open back doors of the vehicles, secured into layered hammocks inside, the cases lining the floor underneath.
Once everything was loaded, Charis invited Kala to ride up front in the transport, and she slid in to sit between her and Antar.
On the drive through the dark back to the Guardian refuge the first arrivals had set up, Charis explained that the Ghal were humans infected by the gamma virus strain, ghal being the Unathi word for gamma. Apparently, that strain had been seriously flawed and mutated again, much like the epsilon strain had in 2616.
“It’s very similar to what happened with the Xin,” Charis said. “It changes the humans into something else. These are even worse than the Xin; they seem to be little more than animals. They try to destroy every living thing they find—animal, human or Unathi.”
“And then they eat their kill,” Antar added. “They’re basically cannibals.”
“Can they sense us?” Kala asked.
“No,” Antar replied. “They haven’t got any drones. Those haven’t evolved yet in this time, you see. But don’t try to use your drones against them—just like with the Xin, it doesn’t work. They’re immune somehow. Our defensive martial arts don’t work well on them either. We’ve had to resort to bashing them with pipes and clubs.”
Kala’s heart sank. It was horribly reminiscent of the situation she had just left. She had hesitated before packing her mallet, thinking she would no longer need it; now she was glad she had. This nightmare just kept getting worse.
As they drove east into the city, Kala’s drones sensed many humans, some holed up and others on the move. Her drones read them just as they did the Xin, as some kind of creature or animal.
There was a great outflow from the city, choking the highways as the humans tried in vain to escape the virus. Soldiers, police and emergency personnel rushed around in vehicles. Charis steered clear of all authorities and large groups of people, taking them on a slow, meandering back route through small streets toward the refuge.
The things Kala saw assaulted her senses. The ugliness, the filth! The stink of it assaulted her nostrils. Refuse lay everywhere—cast-off wrappings and junk. It was hard to believe that anyone could live this way. Some areas of shabby tenements were surrounded by barbed wire fencing that faced in. Other areas had been converted into strongholds, with built-up walls and lookout posts. The few shops and eateries she saw had broken windows. As they drew closer to the heart of the city, unlit skyscrapers rose in the darkness, like giants asleep on their feet.
All of this would have been lit up before the oil crisis and the pandemic, Araka remarked. The lights were so bright, you could see the cities from space.
Kala didn’t respond. She was overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all.
The agents’ vehicle traveled silently, with no running lights. Occasionally they passed humans making their way through the streets, alone or in small groups, and they froze like terrified deer and then scurried away into the shadows. Kala was shocked by how small and frail they looked.
At last the agents emerged from the maze of smaller streets onto a wider road, which Araka told her was called Geary, and soon after that, they arrived at the Guardian refuge. An agent had come out and was holding the double set of security gates open for them, and they drove in.
The sprawling building was set far back from the road. It reminded Kala of images of human hospitals she’d seen in history books on the Hub. The outside of it was unlit, but Charis told her the windows had been blacked out from the inside so as not to attract any attention.
“This was what the humans called a nursing home,” Charis said as she drove through the extensive grounds around to the back. “When their parents got too old and needed looking after, they stuck them in places like this.”
The building was three stories high. Kala studied the endless walls of pale brick as they passed. The windows were small and narrow.
“It was mostly empty,” Charis continued. “The patients must have gone home in the early days of the pandemic. We saved the betas, terminated the epsilons, and kept the rest comfortable as they died of the virus. We’ve scavenged food, equipment and vehicles from the city. We’ve even got power from a hydroelectric plant. It was used for schools, hospitals, government buildings—and the rich. Everybody else was on the grid, which is breaking down now
as the humans are falling sick and abandoning the energy plants. Anyway, we sent some of our people out to the dam and found that the plant was still running on its own, but power wasn’t getting all the way to us because of some blown transformers, which we fixed.”
Kala was impressed.
“We haven’t got the beta humans started on growing their own food yet; that’s the next step. We’re all still living on scavenged supplies. Luckily, we found some buildings on the docks that were full of food. We took them from the gangs that were holding them.”
“Oh yeah, and we’re organizing our first big expedition for tomorrow,” Antar put in. “You’re just in time to join in.”
“Have you—uh, terminated any epsilons yet?” Kala asked. “I mean other than the old patients.”
“Some, yes,” Charis replied. “After we took this place over, we used our attack drones to pacify some humans who showed up hoping to loot the place. A few of them were epsilons; those were terminated. The betas are still here. The rest we released back into the city. Since then, we’ve cleaned out all the city blocks around the refuge, and we’ve been working our way outward.”
Antar must have sensed her anxiety, for he patted her arm and said, “Don’t worry, it’s hard at first but you’ll get used to it. All for the cause, right?”
“Here we are,” Charis said as the transport rolled up to the back entrance and stopped, followed by the bus.
Antar opened his door and Kala clambered out after him, following him around to the back, where he threw open the double doors. The sky was just beginning to lighten, the darkness giving way to a dim fog that obscured their surroundings.
A small door in the rear of the building opened, and a group of agents came out and set to work, helping to bring the new agents and the supplies inside. Crisfer smiled groggily at Kala as he was helped out of his hammock.
One of the new agents welcomed them with a smile, introducing herself as Adira. She was a bit older, maybe around twenty-seven or so, and told them she had arrived in the first wave.
The X-Variant (The Guardians Book 1) Page 7
