Gen One

by Amy Bartelloni

  He held a hand out to her. “I wasn’t planning on bringing you tonight. In fact, I wasn’t planning on coming at all, or ever involving you in this, really.”

  “What are you talking about?” She stepped back, and bumped into the table. A stray screw rolled off the side and fell with a clink.

  “The Human Coalition.” He smiled. One of the first genuine emotions she’d seen on him all day. “It’s real. And it’s here.”

  “Zane, you can’t!” She couldn’t back up farther because of the table, and because it was so dark she’d get lost finding the door. Also, because Authority bots were looking for them. She knew going down was the only way forward. In her heart, she’d known since her father died that it would come to this. That it was already coming to this. But fear took over. The bots had no mercy. They were smart, sleek, and superior in every way.

  “If they find us…” she started. She took one step forward. The stairs were still dark, but a light shined from below, illuminating damp walls that turned to stone further down.

  “They won’t.” He took her hand.

  She grasped his, firmly this time. “They found you already,” she retorted. He took a step down the steps, walking sideways to hold on to her.

  “That was a series of errors which won’t be repeated,” he told her. “Watch your step.” Thor jumped down each step and scurried ahead of them. The staircase ended about twenty feet down and opened into a brightly lit room. Inside, the murmur of low voices rose and fell. Delilah lost her courage and hid behind Zane.

  Zane paused in the doorway, and someone greeted him by name. Delilah glimpsed the corner of a wide, stone room, lit by lights strung along the ceiling, giving the room a warm, yellow hue.

  Zane greeted them, then turned back to Delilah. “I should have told you about this a long time ago.” He paused and waved off another greeting to focus on her. “Just don’t freak out, okay? I know this is a lot, and I should have warned you.” He pulled her hand so she stumbled down a step, close to him. She could see around him, where a group of people stood around a round table, talking among themselves and giving Zane and Delilah curious looks, but the intensity of Zane’s gaze stole her attention.

  “When have I ever freaked out?” she asked him. She tried to push him out of the way, but the staircase was too narrow, and he didn’t move.

  He looked down. “I wanted to protect you from this.” He took a breath. “But I guess that’s not possible anymore.”

  For the first time since she’d stepped in there, Delilah felt a chill. It’s true; the world they lived in wasn’t perfect. She wouldn’t have accepted bot rule if she had a choice, but she always thought she didn’t. The bots were capable of crushing them, but for the most part, they left humans alone unless they were breaking the rules. And this counted as breaking the rules. They were crossing a line, and there was no going back. Zane was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

  “Okay.” She squeezed his hand. “I’ll give it a chance.” He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. “And keep an open mind. I promise.”

  He swallowed his words, whatever they were going to be, and took her hand to his lips and kissed it lightly. He righted the ring on her finger where it had twisted. The jewel shined in the soft light. She’d forgotten she had it on.

  He dropped her hand, clicked the flashlight off, and stepped into the room, while Delilah followed.

  While her eyes adjusted to the low light, Delilah noticed the smell of the room changed from upstairs. Instead of a metallic, oily odor, the basement smelled like something more primal. Damp and earthy. A primitive cave that brought to mind escape tunnels, and secret rooms. She blinked and took in the scene in front of her.

  Zane hovered by her side while she took in the stone walls of the room, wires hanging between each lamp about ten feet apart. The entire room was about twenty-five feet by twenty-five feet, about the size of two of the larger stalls in the Banks, only more rustic. An oval table took up most of the middle, with papers and 3D maps strewn around. Delilah recognized a map of the city that one man shifted around. Another holodisplay showed the Banks, in real time, she assumed. They zoomed in on the Authority bots scanning people over the bridge. The process had slowed, and there was a long line.

  “You’re connected to their systems?” she breathed, taking a step over to the table and putting both hands on its rough wood. She watched the holodisplay as an Authority bot took an old man’s papers. The camera showed enough detail to see his hand trembling slightly. Delilah shrank back from the bot’s red-eyed stare, even though it couldn’t see her.

  A tall woman addressed her, coming around the table with a short, slim girl by her side. “We’ve kind of piggybacked their signal. It was Brute’s idea. Genius, really.” The woman was someone she would have passed by in the Banks and not thought anything of. Long dark hair mixed with gray braided down her back, with a tan shirt and a long, brown jacket. She’d blend in anywhere, but perhaps that was the point.

  “General.” Zane pushed Delilah forward as he addressed the woman. “This is Delilah. The one I told you about.”

  Delilah looked over her shoulder and narrowed her eyes at Zane. “You’ve been talking about me?” she asked.

  The General laughed, a light sound ill-fitted for the room and the danger they were in. “We’ve been asking him to recruit you, and he was…” she paused, “hesitant.”

  “I told you—” he began, under his breath.

  “I know.” Delilah blew a curl off her face, barely hiding the anger in her voice. “For my safety.”

  “It’s no joke,” the General interrupted. Her face softened. “I’m General Ikumo, but you can call me Smoke.” She gestured to the girl aside her. “And this is Shu.”

  “Code names?” Delilah asked.

  Smoke gave a half shrug. “Of a sort. Unfortunately, we’re not much of an organized group, though thanks to Brute and Zane, we have a head up on technology.”

  Brute raised a finger in the air to own the compliment, Delilah guessed. He was sitting around the map of the Banks, five or six people huddled around him. He owned the name, with his wide shoulders and shaved head. His brown shirt was a size too small, showing off the muscles on his arms. He could be a bodyguard, Delilah thought, or…

  She gasped, and Zane laughed. “I told you she was smart,” he said.

  She looked from Brute to Zane. “One of Rank’s men?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. This meeting became more and more dangerous by the second. She wanted to turn and run… but at the same time, she was intrigued. Maybe someone here had information about her father’s accident.

  “One of our men,” Smoke corrected, taking her by the shoulder and steering her in Brute’s direction as Shu blended in with the others. Several groups had low side conversations. No one cared much for the new girl, except to give her the once over. There must have been twenty people in the room, Delilah calculated, but no one familiar. She tried to catch Zane’s eye, but he was huddled in conversation with three people, watching her over someone’s shoulder. He gave her a hopeful smile which she couldn’t return. This was madness.

  “Brute,” Smoke introduced. “This,” she paused, “is Delilah.”

  Delilah held out her hand as Brute shut the map off and the display fell in on itself. “No code name,” Delilah said as she forced a smile.

  Brute took her hand in his and dwarfed it in a shake. “Well, most of us come to our code names naturally. I’m known as Brute in Rank’s organization, too.”

  “Yeah, his real name is Luke.” Someone walked by and smacked him on the shoulder. Brute made a face of fake indignation, and Delilah started to like him.

  “Luke Baker, actually.” He turned back to Delilah. “So, yeah, code names don’t go far. At least not yet.”

  Smoke walked away, and Delilah watched her approach Zane’s group. They all made room for h
er in the circle and quieted down so she could speak. “What about her?” Delilah pulled out a chair next to Brute.

  He shook his head and swept papers from the table in front of her. “The General? No one really knows. She’s not from this city, and she lost her family. She said it’s a sad story and won’t talk about it. We all have sad stories, you know?” He ran a hand over his chin, where there was a day’s worth of stubble. Delilah noticed the bags under his eyes, too.

  “So you work for Rank days, and…”

  “And here nights. Most nights. Sometimes I sleep.”

  He watched her reaction and mirrored her smile. His tough exterior revealed a much softer, funnier person than Delilah expected. She touched the papers in front of her and moved them around. They were specs, mostly. One looked like the plans for Thor, still squeaking around their feet.

  “Some of the guys like to mess around with electronics.” Brute sat back in his seat. “Make bots that are off the grid. The upstairs warehouse was abandoned, so we took it over, but the real work is down here.”

  “I have a first Gen,” Delilah admitted. She squinted at the diagram, but couldn’t make too much out of it. Cogs, gears, wires.

  Brute whistled low. “Hard to get your hands on those, now,” he said. “Authority doesn’t like bots running around that aren’t under their control.”

  “Zane found her, fixed her up.” Delilah put down the paper and shuffled another one around. “And I don’t really own her. She lives with me, but she has freedom to come and go. Come to think of it, I’m not sure what she does a lot of the time. Learn, I guess. She’s kind of like a child, with emotions and humans. I think she’s scared of us.”

  “Well, she should be scared of the Authority.” Brute leaned in to the table and took a paper and handed her the spec for a human. One part, anyway. A hand.

  “Humans have such complicated systems.” He turned the paper up and around to the light. “When bots are built to mimic them, unless they’re attached to the Authority system to tell them what to think and do, they’re a lot like children.”

  Delilah watched him stare at the paper. “You’ve built human models?” she asked, with a shiver.

  “Nah.” He dropped the paper. “But the little things, like Thor here, can be helpful. Gathering info. Surveillance.”

  “And the Authority doesn’t know you’re doing this?”

  “They’ve captured a couple.” He shrugged. “But all their info is wiped. They’re set to self-destruct at capture, so it should appear it was just someone playing around.”

  “Which is still a crime,” Delilah interjected.

  Brute lost the smile. “But should it be?” He leaned forward on the table. “That’s why we’re here. Seriously, engineering is a crime? Delilah, curiosity is human nature. Without it we’re caged.”

  Smoke finished her conversation and approached him from the back, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Metaphorical cages,” she said in a low voice, “but cages still. And the cages are more literal in the city.” Delilah caught the implication and opened her mouth, but Smoke cut her off. “The Human Coalition, such as it is, fights for our freedom from the bots. We’re a loosely knit group for now, for obvious reasons, but our objective is to wrestle control from the bots. We’re going to take our resources back and we want you to fight with us.”

  Zane approached from her other side, followed by a short, blonde girl with a long braid, not more than fourteen. The girl eyed Delilah, but she looked nice enough. “She’ll need some time to think about it,” he said. “Delilah, this is Sunny. She’s going to bring you home.”

  “Home?” Delilah asked. Her head spun. How could she go home after this?

  “You need to work tomorrow.” He knelt next to her. “In fact, you need to work in only a few hours. If you’re missing, it will be suspicious.”

  “Yes, we could use someone on the transport ships you clean to give us intel,” Smoke interrupted. She ignored the look Zane gave her as he stood up. Around them, people started to clean up the room. Brute had placed most of the papers in a backpack he put over his shoulder and under his jacket.

  “Zane filled us in about you,” Smoke said. “But he hesitated to bring you in. The organization is dangerous, make no doubt about it, but it’s a cause we all believe in strongly.” Zane started to talk but she cut him off. “Do you know what they do there? On those transport ships that you clean?” Her voice was not unkind, but Delilah swallowed.

  “They transport supplies?” Delilah answered. At least that was the official answer. She’d never questioned it, but night after night she cleaned off blood and other stains from the floor of those boats. They were transporting more than supplies, and she knew it.

  “Transporting supplies.” Smoke laughed. “Of a sort, I suppose. Those are the ships they use to transport the political prisoners to Authority City, but we don’t know where they dock when they get there. It would help a great deal if you get us information from inside.” She tipped her head.

  “Dee, you don’t have to—” Zane started. Delilah held her hand up.

  “Maybe, but how do I find you? I assume this,” she swept her hand around, “isn’t your permanent location?”

  “This is only one of our safe houses, for occasional meetings and refuge. It’s helpful to have a base in the industrial zone, for supplies and hacking purposes. We don’t even use the upstairs often, only when we know the coast is clear,” Smoke explained. “Hiding in their den is one thing, but doing it too often would get us caught.” Delilah was amazed at the speed with which the room was cleaned up. All the papers and electronics were gone, only the lanterns remained.

  “We’ll contact you through Zane. We’ve been looking for a symbol. One that could hide us in plain sight. One that could be seen in the Banks, and recognized.”

  She caught Zane’s eye and Zane broke out into a smile. He took Delilah’s hand, and held it up. The ring twinkled.

  “Your ring,” he said. “I knew it would be useful.” Smoke considered it.

  “A star. It’s perfect.” She held up Delilah’s hand. “From now on, look for this symbol.”

  Smoke dropped her hand and fell back into conversation with Brute about escape routes. Delilah rubbed her palm where Zane had touched it. “And you?” she asked. His cheeks were flushed, she wasn’t sure if it was from the warm air or the cause. He’d always been a fighter, but this…

  “They have ways to get me home, Dee, or at least someplace safe, for now.” He took a step away from Sunny and pulled Delilah into a hug. “I’ll see you after your shift tomorrow, and we can talk.”

  Delilah’s voice was muffled by his shoulder when she answered, and she was glad the soft fabric hid the emotion. “And what then? You’ll hide all day? Your whole life?”

  He rested his chin on her head. “The Human Coalition has ways to make people disappear. Other cities. Other identities.”

  Delilah pushed back to look at him. “Zane, no,” she said, but it was clear he was in big trouble with the Authority. The kind of trouble you don’t come back from.

  He took a step back and opened his arms wide to gesture to the almost empty room around them. “Or, we fight.”

  The corner of her lip pulled up. “We?” she asked.

  He nodded. “It’s always been we.”

  Sunny stepped between them. She was so tiny Delilah saw right over her head to Zane. “Okay, lovebirds. Time to get out of here.” Delilah raised an eyebrow but Sunny only smiled in return. “I’ll be getting you back through one of our super-secret Human Coalition routes.” She pulled a small, hand-sized blaster out of her jacket pocket and handed it to Zane. “Try not to have to use this,” she commented.

  Brute cut in. “She means by boat.”

  “You have boats?” Delilah asked. They were rare and monitored. The Authority liked all traffic to go over the bridge so it
could be controlled.

  “Yeah, but they’re a hike, so let’s get to it.”

  Delilah followed Sunny away from Zane, who smiled amusingly. She took in the room as the lights shut off. The energy was contagious, and for the first time, she started to wonder what a life without Authority control would be like. It had always been there, the curiosity, like a flame in her heart fanned occasionally by Zane. Twenty people in a room couldn’t do much, but what if there were more?

  “Remember, leave in shifts,” Smoke instructed. Sunny went first to the stairway and clicked a flashlight on up the staircase. Brute followed, and then Zane. The little mouse ran up Zane’s pant leg. He laughed and shrugged it off.

  “Not this time, buddy,” Zane told him. “I can’t risk it.”

  Brute opened his bag. “Put him here. I’ll take care of the little guy.”

  Delilah looked with an amused expression from Brute to Zane.

  “What?” Brute zipped his bag and looked up.

  “Nothing.” She shook her head and turned to follow Sunny up the stairs. “It’s all very parental of you, is all.”

  She took the first step. “Well, we are a parental group,” Zane responded. She was almost comfortable when Sunny opened the door and led them back in the warehouse, but as it turns out, she should have been on guard.

  Sunny turned back and put a finger to her lips to shush them as they squeezed up the stairs. Behind Delilah, Brute grumbled something about nothing being on the scans. Presumably, they could see the room, but Sunny proceeded with caution. Not a bad trait under the circumstances, Delilah thought, tightening the tie in her hair. This group could use more caution. She didn’t doubt they were passionate about taking down the bots. Hell, Delilah could get behind their cause if it wasn’t impossible to win. They needed to proceed carefully. And skulking around an industrial basement, even if it was the middle of the night, wasn’t very careful.