Brandon took some deep breaths, nodding. “I’ll be fine. It’s just nerves.”
A guard was waiting there to unlock the gates, glancing at them curiously. She was probably wondering why an agent was taking a human outside, but she said nothing, just opened the gate and then closed and locked it after them. “There are still some stray Ghal in the area,” she said in English. “Be careful.”
“We will,” Kala replied. “Thank you.”
Brandon followed her across Geary Boulevard, which had been cleared of derelict cars by the agents. They quickly left it behind as they worked their way through a grid of smaller streets, avoiding the larger ones. Her drones, he now knew, allowed her to travel northwest almost as the crow flies, helping her find ways across seemingly impenetrable city blocks. Brandon walked along behind her quietly, knowing she was busy checking her drones both for the route and for any possible trouble along the way.
They came to the only other major street on their route, Divisadero, which ran north and south. Its wide expanse was littered with cars, many with corpses inside. It was eerily silent. Brandon tried not to look or breathe through his nose as they threaded their way through them. After crossing, they plunged back into the maze of smaller streets, working their way up toward the Presidio.
Kala stopped abruptly and grabbed Brandon’s arm. “What is it?” he asked.
“Ghal. Come,” she said and pulled him into a cross street. They crouched behind a delivery truck sitting on its axles and waited, Kala gripping her mallet hard enough to whiten her knuckles.
Brandon couldn’t resist poking his head out to get a look as the Ghal shuffled past. There were two of them. Their clothing was filthy and in shreds; they must get pretty cold at night. They were thin and seemed to be covered with sores. Their slack, empty faces stared straight ahead; a string of drool dangled from the bottom lip of the nearest one.
Kala yanked him back. “Careful,” she breathed. “They are more dangerous than they look.”
He thought they looked more pathetic than anything, but kept his mouth shut.
“All right, they are gone—come.”
He followed her out and they resumed the slow, halting journey to Balboa, the gated community where Brandon had been raised. It was one of several in the Presidio, which, like the Golden Gate, had been turned into a walled, guarded community for the wealthy and elite of SanFran. Or it had been; as they approached the southeast corner of the old park from Presidio Ave, they saw that the electronic gate in the high wall had been torn off its hinges. There was no sign of a guard.
They went in and Kala began threading her way through the trees and bushes of the parkland that surrounded the scattered gated communities. Cutting across the small roads that interconnected them, she headed northwest toward Balboa.
Brandon followed slowly, struck by his memories of leaving this place. It felt like it was a hundred years ago instead of only one.
The night he’d run away was the last time he’d seen his family. He couldn’t take any more of his father’s shit, so he’d rushed out of the house and run down the road, burning with anger. He didn’t much care if he ever saw his father again, or Colin, that toady. His half-brother was already a lieutenant in the HSDF and had even gotten himself chipped voluntarily. Probably just dying for a chance to beat up on unarmed people. But Brandon’s heart ached at the thought of never seeing his mother again, even if she hadn’t stuck up for him against Roger very well. So maybe she was weak, but she loved him. And his soft-spoken sister, Serena—she’d been on his side too. She was the brains of the family, always with a NetGlass perched on her pretty face, studying physics, chemistry and engineering. He realized now how helpless they would be in the face of all of this.
Kala halted and glanced back at him questioningly. He looked past her and nodded; they had arrived at Balboa. He remembered encountering the guard at this electronic gate the night he ran away. She had scanned his chip and checked her NetGlass for his ID, then waved him through, appearing to buy his story about going out for a walk, even though he was still in his military school uniform. His father must have known the minute he’d left Balboa, but hadn’t sent the authorities after him right away. Probably wanted him to be on his own for a few days to teach him a lesson. That would be just like Roger, Brandon thought bitterly. What had they thought when he never came back?
He followed Kala past the unmanned guard booth and they walked down the charming, curved streets of Balboa. Except they didn’t look so charming now. Windows were broken, cars wrecked. Detritus lay everywhere. Doors yawned open into dark interiors. Decomposing bodies lay in yards and driveways.
Kala looked at him. “A large number of Ghal came this way from the city center last week,” she said in a low voice. “It looks like they may have come through here.”
Brandon’s heart sank. As if the virus wasn’t bad enough, they’d had to face this, too?
He saw his house on up ahead on the right and stopped in his tracks, suddenly unable to go on. Kala looked at him and then took his arm, leading him to a spot behind a shed in someone’s yard. It was well protected by overgrown hedges.
“Stay here until I return,” she whispered. “Do not move.”
He nodded and hunkered down behind the hedge, watching through the foliage as she walked away. Quiet descended and he had a strange sensation of being the only living person in a dead neighborhood, a dead city a dead world.
Chapter 15
KALA TOOK A DEEP breath and approached Brandon’s house. Her drones had informed her that there was hardly anyone left in this community—the few people who remained were holed up very well. Her drones had also sensed, but she had kept it to herself, that there were three living creatures in this house, lying close together and not moving. They were humans; one was an epsilon. Her heart had lurched as soon as she learned this from her drones. No, she thought. I can’t do it. Not to his family.
Like most homes in this city, the house was of a pale pastel color, tall and narrow, and nestled very closely with its neighbors. The doors and windows on the ground floor had been boarded up securely; it looked like the Ghal hadn’t gotten in here.
Kala climbed to the roof of the small portico and climbed carefully around to a second-floor window, balancing on ledges. She kicked in the glass of a bedroom window and climbed through. After checking the rooms for corpses and finding none, she followed her drones up carpeted stairs to a door that led to a half-sized third level above the garage. It was locked.
She stood still and listened. Faint rasping breaths came from inside.
Kala reared back and with a powerful kick of her leg, broke the door down. Three people lay on blankets on the floor, a middle-aged woman and two younger people, a male and a female. The young woman was the epsilon. They were too sick to even look up. Kala could see that they were dying.
Despair welled up inside her. There was no hope for these humans. She wouldn’t get away with bringing another epsilon to the Guardian refuge, let alone two more sick non-beta humans. The epsilon would be destroyed and the other two would be denied food and medical care, as they were not betas. Believing they were destined to die, the agents would probably euthanize them to save them any further suffering. All of this might endanger Jennie and her baby, and could very well lead to their being discovered as epsilons.
No matter how you looked at it, these three were going to die. It would be an act of mercy to put an end to them here and now. She couldn’t see any other choice.
She stood and waited while her attack drones quietly terminated them. When it was done, her stomach lurched, and she staggered down the hall into a bathroom. The water had obviously stopped running some time ago, and the toilet was a stinking mess. She leaned over the bathtub and vomited.
Feeling hollow, she stood and wiped her face, but the tears kept coming. She checked on Brandon with her drones; he was fine. She went to the bedrooms and ripped sheets from the beds in which to wrap the bodies. When that was don
e, she went downstairs, pried the boards off the back door, and left the house.
She found Brandon where she had left him, and told him that his family had died of the virus. He was still for a moment, white-faced and in shock; then he jumped up and charged toward the house. She ran after him and grabbed him, holding him back.
“Please—you do not want to remember them this way. I have wrapped them in sheets; what should we do?”
He crumpled to the ground, sobbing. She squatted next to him helplessly, rubbing his back. When he could finally speak, he asked her if they could bury them in back of the house. She nodded, straightened and went back in to get the bodies.
Brandon rose unsteadily and went into a small shed in the backyard for a shovel.
It began to rain, a steady gray downpour.
When the job was done, they walked back to the refuge, wet, filthy and dispirited. Brandon stumbled along in a daze, wiping rain and tears from his face.
They had to take cover again to avoid some Ghal, and stood close together in a recessed overhang. The rain thrummed on the rooftops and pavement around them.
Brandon said, “My father might still be alive.”
“Yes, he might. You said he was a military officer; most likely he was called away on duty early in the crisis.”
He nodded, but said nothing more. They came out after the Ghal had passed and walked home in silence.
It was summertime and the rain wasn’t terribly cold, but Kala felt a coldness and a silence growing within her. It had been there, a gnawing little kernel, ever since the X-crisis began. It seemed to grow more every day, until she felt like she was carrying around a stone in her gut. The only thing that could relieve it temporarily was a long, tight hug from one of her bondmates. She couldn’t wait to get back to them. She reached out with her drones and connected with Crisfer, about to tell him they were on their way back.
She stopped. Something was wrong at the refuge. Crisfer was in a state of near-panic, and Liet was terrified.
Xin attack, Araka informed her calmly. It just happened. Best get back there, dearest.
She ran, at the same time reaching for more information with her drones. The Xin was in the beta wing, which meant it was probably Antar—the agent who’d been standing Guardian for her. Jennie and the baby! She ran faster.
Brandon quickly fell behind, and she turned and ran back, grabbed his arm and dragged him along behind her, forcing him to run faster. Before the refuge was even in sight, she had called ahead via the Dronet, and the guard had rushed out and was already holding the gate open for her. She left Brandon to the care of the guard and sprinted around to the back of the building.
Kala burst through the back door. The refuge was in a state of pandemonium. Screams, shouts and snarls came from upstairs. She pelted up the stairs, gripping her mallet, and ran to the beta wing, pulling up short in the doorway to the common room.
Crisfer and Adira stood facing the Xin who used to be Antar. Both agents held lengths of heavy pipe. Whenever the Xin tried to charge them or get out of the room, they kept him back with the pipes. Behind the Xin, two beta humans lay dead on the floor.
Rage flooded Kala, mixed with relief that Brandon and Jennie weren’t the victims. She waited for the Xin to charge again and while he was busy trying to get past the other agents’ defenses, she slipped around behind him, raised her mallet and brought it down as hard as she could on his head. He crumpled to the floor, but her blow hadn’t been completely true. He was still moving. To Kala's surprise, Crisfer stepped up and smashed the Xin a few times with his pipe, making sure he was dead.
The three blood-spattered agents lowered their weapons. Adira gave Kala a nod and a smile of gratitude.
“Hasn’t it happened before now?” Kala asked.
“Yes, before you guys got here,” Adira said. “We’re supposed to be using the net system like at the research center. I see that we’ve been slipping in our watchfulness, though.”
Kala dropped her mallet and started toward Crisfer for that long hug she’d been waiting for. But then she saw his face and stopped. His lips were pressed together, face hard. Before she could ask him what was wrong, he gave his head a little shake, spun around and stormed out of the room. Kala glanced at Adira; she looked baffled.
Kala decided to have a talk with him later. It was probably just the intense stress they were all under.
She thought about what had just happened, how different things were now. These agents were no longer the defenseless Unathi she had known. They hadn’t attacked the Xin directly, but they had taken steps to defend themselves and the others in the refuge. And Crisfer—well, he had done something antithetical to his nature when he had stepped in to finish off that Xin.
We are changing, Kala thought. This mission is changing us.
Liet’s Journal
SanFran Guardian Refuge
June 21, 2079
What can I say? I’m just not cut out for this. I knew I shouldn’t have come. Of course, the mission is proceeding with or without me. The long bridge to Oakland Mega has been cleared of wrecked cars, and they are continuing their relentless hunt for betas over there now. The death toll from the virus has peaked, so some of the agents have switched to full-time epsilon-hunting and terminating. They’ve formed a special team just for that, calling themselves the Hunters.
No one seems to expect me to go on another expedition, and I haven’t volunteered. I just can’t go through that again. I have let everyone down, just as I always feared. I didn’t go over the wall, didn’t do my fair share.
Funny, but as it turns out, it wasn’t killing humans that got to me. It was being under attack. Never knowing when a bullet was going to hit me, or a firebomb or something. That horrible human male jumping down on me from the wall, trying to kill me. I freeze up just thinking about it.
Now that I’m back to some sort of functioning state, I’ve been spending my time trying to help out any way I can around here. I cook, clean, do repairs around the building and I’m learning to fix ground cars. Now that’s a skill I never thought I’d have.
At night, I escape to the humans’ library and read their paper books, many of which seem to be about human women who want to marry a wealthy man. They’re a bit dumb I guess, but they serve as an escape from this horror that my life has become. And I can be by myself there.
So I clean, I fix cars, I read, and I wait for something, I don’t know what.
I feel like I’ve changed, like I’m not me anymore. My heart used to be full, but now there’s nothing there. I’m slowly coming undone. And I can’t shake the feeling that something even more terrible is going to happen to me. It’s like a storm gathering in the distance. Maybe it’s my own end, but that wouldn’t be different from anyone else here. What really worries me is when—and how?
Chapter 16
THE DAYS GREW HOT and humid as July approached. Kala spent her time with the refuge’s beta humans, teaching them how to grow food, make clothing, and every other skill she could think of that would help them survive. As her first expedition blurred into memory, she felt better, but she was frustrated because Liet refused to come and spend time with her on the beta wing. The three bondmates still got together when they could, but it wasn’t the same as in the old days. Liet was distant, and Crisfer seemed to be under a strain. It was making him snappish, which was very much unlike him.
“Your shoulders are completely in knots,” Kala remarked one evening as she was giving him a back massage. Rami wasn’t around; he and Crisfer didn’t seem to spend much time together anymore.
“Yeah,” Crisfer sighed. He lay prone on his bed, shirtless, while Kala worked on him. “It’s a bit tougher than I expected working with the Hunters. I guess I’ll get used to it, though.”
Kala’s hands stopped moving. “You’re with the Hunters? You didn’t tell me.”
He turned his head. “I just did. Today was my first day.”
“Oh, I see.” She resumed rubbing, but wa
sn’t concentrating on the task. She was struggling with the idea that Crisfer was killing epsilon humans full-time.
He rolled over abruptly and propped himself on his elbows. “What’s wrong, Kala? You seem disturbed or upset or something.”
“I’m fine, it’s just I never imagined you as a—”
“As a what? A killer? Is that what you think I am?” His voice was sharp, and Kala flinched. He moved to stand, and she scrambled up to give him some room.
Liet watched as Crisfer paced back and forth, only her dark eyes moving.
“You know, Kala, this mission we’re on is tough. We’ve known that since the beginning, but we came anyway, because it had to be done. We couldn’t just blow it off because it’s hard, not if it means the end of humanity itself. But we can’t all duck out of the not-so-nice parts of it.” He glanced at Liet, who hung her head. He went to her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Oh, hey, I didn’t mean you, sweetness. Not all of us have what it takes to do the job; that’s perfectly understandable.” He turned and looked at Kala again. “But when someone does have what it takes and chooses not to do it—chooses to leave it to others—that’s what really gets me.” He snatched his shirt off the bed and strode out of the room.
Kala stood where she was, frozen. Pain from his harsh words reverberated through her. She realized her mouth had fallen open, and closed it. After a moment she walked over and sat down next to Liet. “Is that how you feel as well?” she whispered, finding it difficult to force out the words.
Without raising her head, Liet hunched her shoulders in a long shrug. “I’m hardly one to judge, am I?”
Kala put her arm around her, more for her own comfort than Liet’s. She rested her face in Liet’s neck, breathing in her scent. Crisfer’s words kept ringing in her ears over and over. She had never heard him speak that way to anyone until now, let alone to her. She tried to suppress a sob, but the muscles in her belly jerked.
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