This Sin Called Hope (New Reality Series, Book Seven) by Anna Mayle

by Anna Mayle

  Jacobi waited silently. Enoch could almost hear his wish for nothing to be wrong.

  Ashes. The tent village outside the Wall was nothing but black and scorched grass, scattered ashes, burnt remains of metal and wood…and bone. Hundreds of skeletal hands reached out for help, empty eye sockets stared at something horrible, locked in its moment. The hacker covered his mouth and sobbed, a keening note of disbelief issued from his chest.

  “Purged, all of them,” Enoch noted.

  Jacobi shook his head. “Purging just means they shoo them into the Waste.”

  “It didn’t use to. Before, during the first plague, to purge a village meant to cage everyone inside of it,” Enoch explained, voice cold with the memories, “and then burn it to the ground.”

  “No.” He was still shaking his head. “Not all those people. They were survivors, they were strong and brave and beautiful people.”

  Enoch didn’t bother mentioning the flaws in Jacobi’s logic. Instead he shifted focus to the northern paths of Man’s Road and its cameras. The road passed through many settlements. He half expected what he would find, but wasn’t quite ready to be proven right. Every settlement he came across was gone. Caged and burned, just like so long ago, to keep plague at bay.

  “Oh my skies,” Jacobi whispered.

  “Plague.” Enoch breathed.

  Then everything around him crumbled and went black.

  Enoch jerked back into awareness with a gasp into his oxygen mask and thrashed a moment in the large underground lake. Any thoughts he might have held onto were pushed aside by the tight pain radiating from every muscle. He kicked free of the weights holding him suspended underwater, and floated to the surface while his body spasmed. His blood felt like it was on fire.

  With a will born of familiarity, Enoch forced himself to swim to the rocky edge and pull himself from the water. The hard ground and gravity intensified the pain but he squared his jaw and removed the tentacle cables of his Network port, breathing tubes and mask and stumbled across the room to the hypodermic he’d left prepped. The walk was agony, but history had taught him that if he left the needle too close, he could reach for it in that first moment of blind searing panic and do more damage than good trying to administer the precise shot.

  Large hands closed over the delicate vial and he lifted it carefully behind his head to the nape of his neck. It was awkward as always, but the thick needle pierced the skin and plunged, deep and clear, through the small opening at the base of his skull. The moment the serum began to envelope that first delicate cerebral layer, Enoch could see without the sides of his vision blurring. As it worked its way throughout the entirety of his brain, the pain sparked and shrank away like a living being fleeing from a predator.

  The empty syringe was laid on the counter again to be sterilized for the next time. He used to cringe at the thought of reusing a needle. That had been a long time ago. Now, he was just grateful to have the three he’d managed to find.

  Finally able to reason beyond pain, help, now, he closed his eyes and forced the images of burnt bodies to the back of his mind. The alarm had been tripped for a reason and the dead wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  A wrought iron ladder took him from the underground chamber to a strong, camouflaged portal and a simpler hatch. He climbed out and took up a wrench that stood a good half his size. It was meant for opening the tightly sealed doors that guarded the filament cables and kept the Network up, but in a pinch, it doubled as a sizable trespasser deterrent.

  With a solid push, the large cement slab slid back into place leaving only the cracked and pieced together work floor of his shop. Assured that his home was well hidden, he zipped up his coveralls, donned gloves and a thick woolen hood and stepped into the unforgiving light of day. Enoch had timed his proximity alarms well, and his guests would be arriving…there they were.

  Vision darkened by his goggles, He could still easily pick out the group of five riders approaching from the north. From the coughing rumble and buzz of their hack jobs cycs he’d bet they were Angels, the mutated outcasts created by the Great War over five hundred years before. Just like him. Speaking of plagues…

  Cycs coughed to a stop a good twenty feet away and waited. It seemed the wrench still worked well. If the wrench itself wasn’t enough, the sheer size he had to put behind it would be. 6’7” if he was barefoot and slouching, his body was thickly muscled from lifting machinery and parts and pushing thick bulkhead style doors. Enoch would have been feared even if he hadn’t been born an Angel. It was the reason he made his home so far out into the Wastes. He usually didn’t have to worry about appearances.

  Obviously tired of waiting for him to make the first move, one of the gang pulled forward. This gave Enoch a good line of sight to the crying child tied behind one of the cycs. She must have been forced to run after them. Her tears left muddy paths down her face. Great. He knew the kid, a female Civ from one of the many tiny settlements throughout the Waste, too poor to buy passage into a Wall. Her people were nearly a full day’s walk away and still the closest to his shop. Their transport was currently in his garage for repair. From the random solar panels and bits and pieces parts tied to Angel and cyc alike, the settlement had been hit hard. I’m probably not getting paid for that transport work. Shit.

  “You have turbines,” the approaching Angel motioned to the field of milling arms behind his building.

  Enoch didn’t respond.

  The Angel didn’t care. “So you have juice.”

  He scoffed, “None you could afford.” Once adrenaline might have coursed through his veins, once he might have been afraid, alone, outnumbered. That had been so long ago he couldn’t remember the feeling. Logic dictated he had nothing to fear from this encounter, and so he didn’t fear. Once that might have scared him.

  “Cycs don’t take much. We can pay,” the drifter insisted.

  Enoch looked back at the girl child. She knew fear. Snot and tears were coating her face, moist and muddy from dust kicked up by the cycs. Humans were vile, greedy leeches sucking up the lifeblood of their world, but this one wasn’t there yet. She wasn’t old enough to be hated, just young enough to be pitied. “A trade then, juice for the kid.”

  Now it was the Angel’s turn to scoff. “Pleasure breeders are worth more than juice for five cycs.”

  The kid looked up in horror and Enoch swore to himself at those huge, pleading optics. “Fine,” he gave in. “I’ll trade the juice and solar equip one cyc with those panels you have there. No more need for future juice.”

  “You’ll fit all of us,” the Angel demanded.

  “One, that’s my last offer,” he warned. “Even with the panels, solar fitting isn’t cheap. There isn’t another juice post for at least two hundred leagues. Not another mechanic who’ll outfit a bunch of Angels in at least double that. With one solar fit cyc you might be able to limp your way to them, with none…A dead pleasure breeder isn’t worth anything.”

  The girl hiccupped and covered her mouth, trembling.

  The Angel’s face contorted in annoyance. He obviously ran through the possibility of a physical fight, but the group of them weren’t rested, they were rough and tired and likely half-dead from exposure and dehydration. They couldn’t take him in that condition and they knew it.

  “Accord,” their leader finally bit out.

  * * * *

  The monitors in the strange net based office showed clear images of the underground, shop and outside, but Jacobi couldn’t manipulate the cameras. It had taken him a solid eighty-six hours to punch through the shop’s defenses and into the public area—the public one! The system was the most complex he’d ever hacked and he didn’t mind saying he was an epic level net crawler.

  He pulled up his own key pad and monitor and tried to piggyback the system, just enough to move a camera, activate audio, or something! It was akin to moving while encased in tar, slow and painful and fully resistant, but he managed to nudge the sound on. It was a serious fail job. Anyon
e would know he was there. He’d left a data trail to himself a mile wide, but Jacobi hadn’t been this challenged in a long time, and the mechanic had other problems to focus on at the present.

  Through the security screens he watched them bargain. Jacobi scanned the Angels, but facial recognition didn’t bring anything up. He wasn’t surprised, Angels generally evaded capture or died in it, records of living and free packs were few and far between, especially packs so close to Nomans. Angels as a rule didn’t travel far from their hives, and the nearest Wall wasn’t near at all, so no reason they would have been noted on the Network.

  “He doesn’t appear to like people, so why interact with them at all?” Jacobi asked himself. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  The mechanic worked with his usual focus, the Angels stood by, silent and menacing. At least, if their host had been someone able to be menaced…Jacobi had begun to wonder whether the stranger could be moved beyond the logical at all.

  Facial recognition pinged, not the grown men, but the child. Zenabine, Cora; Born Sunside, 32 962; Wastrel, she was from a small settlement a few hours away. Their transport was logged as down, it was in a shop for repairs. In this shop, for repairs.

  A business decision then? If their transport is in your hands, perhaps you wish to grow ties, Jacobi mused to himself, but it didn’t make sense either, from what he’d already observed of the man.

  The mechanic’s face showed little hint of emotion during all of it. There were ticks here and there, but nothing nameable. He dealt with them, fixed and juiced their cycs, it took hours. The girl kept crying throughout. Midway through his work, the mechanic stood. He scooped the girl up by the collar amidst protests from the Angels and tossed her onto a pile of rags just inside the door of the garage, out of the sun and away from her captors. “Dehydrate yourself much more and all I’ll have saved is a husk. Now, be quiet and let me work.”

  “There,” he announced some time later as he welded the last bit into place. “It isn’t pretty but it will last. Your business is done here.”

  The group appeared collectively unsure. Jacobi guessed few, if any, spoke to them with such dismissal. In the end, they obeyed, and the mechanic sent them all off with the same calculated, unreal manner he’d used back in the Wall. Dust rose and blurred the view. Something struck Jacobi as out of place in the whole interaction. He set a side program of his own up to run probabilities based on the situation while he watched the mechanic with something like hunger. A strange match for the moment, but he would analyze it later.

  As the dust settled and the screen cleared, the mechanic came back into view, standing over the crying child, still, almost quizzical. Doesn’t he know what to do? Even logic would dictate calming her.

  “Stop crying,” he ordered. “You’re dehydrating yourself.”

  The child cried harder.

  He’s bad at this.

  The mechanic scooped the shaking girl up in thick, muscular arms, ruined the possible comfort by slinging her over his shoulder like a sack full of some burden and walked her further inside the garage. She kicked and screamed and sobbed until he opened the back door of the transport there and tossed her in with a water skin. “Drink that or you’ll pass out. Your settlement is coming for this today anyway.”

  Jacobi couldn’t see her reaction inside the transport, but the screams broke off into silence shattered at random moments by a sharp inhalation or sob.

  The mechanic shut the door and licked dry lips. He pulled the thick goggles off, rubbed a hand over his hairless head in what appeared to be contemplation, and walked to the door and a com box.

  Code entered, while the mechanic waited for the Network connect, Jacobi traced it to the nearby settlement he’d already tagged as the girl’s. They had a transport logged as down in their records, definitely Cora’s people then. He ran through everything he could about them in a few clicks and commands, by the time the connection was made, he knew they were only twenty strong, barely making ends meet, and the child was one of only three children who had survived the last year.

  “Nomans’ Garage: Enoch to Waste Settlement Dira, Message code: Nu Import: 1. Your transport is ready for pick up. You owe for an extra solar rigging, parts and labor. Speed is recommended.” His finger hovered over the button to end the missive, but he finally added, “The child is safe,” before signing off.

  Jacobi smiled to himself. He’s awkward at life; it’s endearing. Enoch was the man’s name then. He would have started a search, but his probabilities program flashed red and gave a loud warning. Those Angels hadn’t been starved, just ragged. They gave in too easily, and there was an 88% chance they were coming back, 75% chance that they had only been a scouting party. Another cloud of dust was barely visible in the telescopic cameras pointing off in the distance confirmed it. The Angels were returning, with the rest of their pack. Enoch’s logic, methodical as it seemed, had been flawed. “Enoch!”

  But the shop’s lights were blinking too. The mechanic pulled the goggles on again and made motions in the air, lines lighting up along the backs of his gloves. Swearing, he pulled the transport open so roughly the door tore from the frame with his force. Enoch flung it aside and lifted the girl out. She began to cry again. Enoch gave her a firm shake, lifted her off her feet and sprinted deeper into his shop. “You cry, they’ll find you, they’ll kill you if you’re lucky, so shut up and listen.”

  Eyes wide and chest heaving, she shook from head to toe but managed to stay quiet somehow.

  “Good. These tool chests are tall and heavy, but the wall behind them is just plaster.” He punched a screwdriver through it, letting in a thin stream of light, then he handed her a thick chisel and hammer. “I’m going to box you in tight, when it’s over if I don’t come to get you, wait one cycle and then punch through the wall with those if you can’t climb out on your own. There’s a box of emergency rations hidden under the third turbine back.”

  The alarm grew more urgent. Jacobi observed Enoch’s jaw tightening. “Repeat that,” the large mechanic ordered the child.

  She was still trembling, the system’s scanners weren’t accessible enough for Jacobi to run a bio but he could guess she was close to passing out. Still she answered him. “Stay q…quiet. O…one c…c…cycle. Th…thir…”

  The alarm screamed and the lights flashed.

  “Third turbine, yes,” Enoch finished for her and pushed the huge metal boxes into place, they looked natural, Jacobi could barely make out that the center one wasn’t simply deeper than the other two.

  The mechanic pulled his hood back on and picked up the wrench. “Enoch! There are eighteen!” Jacobi tried to warn.

  “I know,” he sighed. “Those are my feeds you’re hacking.”

  “But…”

  Enoch glanced up at the camera Jacobi was watching him from and lifted the goggles, his strange eyes flared and glowed in the ambient light, pink, very pale pink. That was their color.

  “Enoch…”

  The glare might have softened a bit, it could have been Jacobi’s imagination, or the color, but those eyes did appear kinder.

  “I’ll deal with you later. Mind the kid.” He replaced the dark goggles and the large man lifted the damaged transport’s door and stalked out to meet the intruders.

  “I can help!” Jacobi tried to insist, but Enoch was outside. “Fail! Epic, flaming fail! Damn it!” He could help, but he needed the damn authorization and access keys! I’m swimming in sludge here! Seriously?

  Setting his focus on nothing but cracking the system wide open, all Jacobi could hope was that he managed to get control of it in time, and that if the big dumb Angel survived long enough to see what Jacobi had done to his safeguards…well, there was a reason for long distant hacking, wasn’t there.

  The roar of engines grew louder.

  Behind the tool chests a nearly inaudible keening escaped the little girl’s throat.

  Skys, I hope I can do this.

  * * * *

  Enoch wa
tched the mass of Cycs approach with dispassionate eyes. He had misjudged the situation before. There was no need to rush into another poor calculation now. There were too many of them for him to beat in close combat. “I have to decrease their numbers as they close,” he said to himself. It wasn’t like he hadn’t dealt with similar situations before.

  There was a set of levers to the side of his building jammed tightly in their places. With a hard tug to the left and down, he wrenched the outermost from its position back. The whir of gears buzzed through the ground beneath his feet and a sharp, thin cable shot up from the sand, caught on the turbine stalks and old sign posts to tighten into place three feet up all around the shop. The riders speeding toward him had no time to turn away. The first of them and some of the slower to react after them were caught. Enoch could make out sprays of red amongst the figures unseated by it. Most would be dead, all would be injured.

  They were the lucky ones.

  A brave five of them hit the sand with their cycs to slide beneath the wire and managed to right themselves after. The rest stopped to cut it. When metal knife touched metal cable though, the would-be insurgent jumped and screamed. His smoking body warned the rest away from the makeshift electric fence.

  The second lever was slid into place and another line rose, closer in. They were watching for this one though. The lead Angel launched himself from his cyc and over the hazard. The others followed.

  Enoch adjusted his hold on the transport door he’d carried out with him. He stepped forward and spun, once, twice, the weight of the large metal disc pulled at his arm, begging to be released. He let it go.

  The three angels who had jumped couldn’t dodge in mid-air. The heavy metal slammed hard into the first’s stomach, sent him back into the second and third and, as luck would have it, pinned them against the wire they’d managed to avoid before. The smell of burnt flesh filled the dry, dead air and Enoch grimaced in spite of himself. “One breeder isn’t worth this,” he tried to reason. None of this made any sense. A pack of Angels as large as the one attacking him shouldn’t be traveling so far south where the pickings were few and far between. Even so, they shouldn’t have been so willing to press into death for a single breeder. “Who is she to you?”