The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel

by Joanne Macgregor

  “Ah, here we go. Less freedom and more crackdowns,” says Quinn.

  “You don’t think this is real?” Bruce challenges.

  “Oh, I’m sure the attack is real enough. But they’re only letting us see it so we’ll accept what’s coming next.”

  What’s coming next is that Orlando and its surrounding areas have gone into lockdown until further notice, and the nationwide state of emergency has been extended “indefinitely”.

  “That means the media censorship continues,” says Sofia.

  But the changes are more sweeping than restrictions on the media. New regulations mandate that anyone out on the streets, at any time and in any state, needs to carry their social security card with them as proof of identity.

  “I can’t believe this,” says Neil. “It’s totalitarianism.”

  It is now compulsory for non-US citizens to be listed on the Alien Persons Register and to wear their alien ID cards at all times for rapid identification. The screen shows a smiling dark-skinned couple modeling examples of the laminated photo identification cards — photographs of their own faces set on a blank flag against a neon orange square. She wears hers on a lanyard around her neck; his is pinned to his shirt.

  “Jaysus, it’s like the Nazis with the Jews,” says Quinn, sounding appalled.

  Nighttime travel permits, Hawke announces, will henceforth be subject to even more stringent qualifying criteria, and the nationwide curfew has been moved up to eight pm. Anyone can be stopped and searched at any time, as can any private dwelling or business premises, with fewer requirements for suspected cause.

  Basically, if I understand it correctly, anyplace can be entered and searched, and anyone can be taken in for questioning for no reason other than that the cops, the military, or Hawke’s own guard don’t like the look of you.

  “Your government and fellow citizens expect your full support in abiding by these new measures. We cannot protect you from the dangers that threaten us all without your cooperation. Help us to help you,” Hawke says, and never has his toothy smile seemed so smarmy to me. “And remember, if you see something, say something.”

  The PSA ends with the familiar SEE-SAY jingle, while a message scrolls along the bottom of our screen, advising responsible citizens to tune in to the official information channel for more news on the attack and an updated list of America’s most wanted.

  Cameron snags the remote and switches over to the channel. The screen flashes photographs and identikit sketches of alleged terrorists and suspected dissidents.

  It’s not long before my own face appears on the screen. It’s the photo of me that was on my ASTA ID, looking all fresh-faced and eager, but Roth and Leya must have told them about my changed appearance, because they’ve photoshopped short brown hair with red tips onto the image. They call me an extremely dangerous killer and kidnapper, and I am, they insist, responsible for a series of attacks on government sites and military installations. They actually show a map with red dots pulsing over Chicago, Atlanta and San Diego.

  “You sure do get around,” Quinn says, ruffling my hair.

  Residents of the Southern Sector are urged to be on the lookout for me, and as an incentive, there’s a $250,000 reward offered for information leading to my arrest.

  So much for going for a run on the streets tomorrow.

  I am presumed, the announcer continues, to be associating with other known rebel insurgents and plotting the downfall of the government. Quinn’s face appears, as does Connor’s and Zonia’s, but there are no images of Neil. Evyan curses when she’s listed. If it wasn’t for the name beneath the photograph, I’d never have recognized her. The girl on the screen looks no older than fourteen.

  “Where did they get that picture?” I ask.

  “My juvie records. They must have fingerprinted that damn wrench.” She blows her nose and stares glumly at the screen.

  “Look, Mom, I’m on T.V.!” says Bruce, not sounding too thrilled about it, when his and Cameron’s photos appear.

  He snatches the remote and kills the T.V., and for a while we all sit in a silence broken only by the sound of Bruce cracking his knuckles, absorbing the news and its implications.

  I’m trapped. Again. Confined in a house that is smaller than the forest camp that was smaller than the ASTA compound. Every move I make seems to take me further away from the freedom I so crave.

  We’re all trapped in this house, in this life, not so much by the SEE-SAY alerts and securodrones, but by the government’s crazy rules and regulations. We’ll never be truly free until the plague is conquered, and I don’t think we’ll conquer the plague until we’re free to think and move and speak and challenge. And to do that, I’ll most certainly need to leave this house.

  Neil says he’s got to get back to deciphering code, and Evyan says she’s turning in early, but I need to make a plan to dye my hair. Again. Plus I need a new hoodie — I had to toss the one we used to staunch Robin’s shoulder wound.

  “Beth, if I place an order for drone delivery nearby, will you fetch it for me?”

  She nods.

  “Anyone else want to add anything to my order?”

  “Me, but I need to check some details with Robin first,” Bruce says, sounding grim. “I’ll place my own order.”

  He gets up from the couch and heads down the hall.

  “Don’t forget our training session in the morning,” I call after him.

  “I’ll be there, Blue,” he calls back.

  Beside me, Quinn gives a soft sigh.

  Chapter 16

  Cop out

  October 11

  The next morning, still stiff and sore from the previous day’s exercise, I put myself through the same rigorous training schedule, and when Bruce hoists me up to the monkey bars, I manage to get across four bars before dropping to the ground.

  My annoyance and disappointment must show on my face, because Cameron says gently, “Takes time.”

  “I want to do this three times a day, every day,” I tell them. “You boys up for that?”

  “Sure, but haven’t you got anything else to do?” Bruce says. “Don’t you have a conspiracy to uncover or a rebellion to lead or something?”

  “No, I have nothing better to do. I can’t help the geniuses break that code. And as for leading a rebellion? Don’t make me laugh. I have no idea where to start, even,” I say, shivering. The fall air is cool once I stop exercising. “Besides, every time I do something, someone gets hurt.”

  Bruce snorts. “That’s a chicken-shit cop-out. Hell, Blue, there’s no guarantee that if you do nothing people still won’t get hurt. Today, a rat or a cat that we haven’t shot will probably bite somebody in this very city, and they’ll die.”

  “I don’t want the responsibility for making any more decisions that go FUBAR, okay?” I collect the dumbbells and start toward the house.

  “Not making a decision is a decision,” Cameron says from behind me.

  “Yeah, thank you, Yoda,” I snap back, irritated. But it’s food for thought.

  I remember Leya saying something similar — that bad things happen when good people do nothing. Right now, I just don’t want the bad things to be my fault.

  Back in the house, Beth is handing out parcels. I don’t know what Bruce ordered, but his package is way bigger than mine.

  I go upstairs and dye my hair. Jinxy James, dangerous dissident and armed rebel, is now a platinum blonde. I examine myself in the mirror. I look younger again, a little more like myself, except for a new hardness around the eyes and mouth. At least I look nothing like the girl in the most-wanted image. Quinn, meanwhile, is growing a beard to help change the look of his face. He volunteered to go blond, too, but my revolted reaction was enough to squash that idea.

  After a midday training session with Bruce and Cameron in which I forbid them to give me any more unwanted advice or character critiques, I go check on the eggheads.

  “There’s good news and bad news,” Robin says.

&nb
sp; “Let me have the bad news first,” I say.

  “It looks like they detected my intrusion into The Game, because that back door that I set up? It’s been shut down. And RATs are out of the question, too.”

  “Rats?” I have a sudden image of us sending rodents to go destroy The Game with their sharp teeth.

  “Random Access Tools.”

  “Robin, please speak a language I can understand.”

  “Bottom line is: no more remote access to The Game.”

  “Great. That’s just awesome. And the good news?”

  “We’re making progress!” Robin says, his face shining with excitement. “We’re working on the substrata of code that was added more recently, and finding out some crazy stuff. Sofia and Quinn are helping me make sense of all the acronyms and recurring patterns.”

  “Anything I’d understand?”

  “Not yet,” Robin says.

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  Robin merely laughs at that, but Quinn says, “How about I take you through what we’re doing while we get some lunch?”

  In the kitchen, I make sandwiches with bread fresh from Neil’s bread-maker while Quinn tries to explain some of what he, Neil, Sofia and Robin are attempting to do. I understand only a fraction of it — it’s filled with obscure terms like sniffing and fuzzing, rootkits and stringboxes — and don’t like the feeling of being completely useless.

  “I thought a sandbox was something kids used to play in.” Back when kids still used to play outside.

  Quinn tries to simplify it for me, and he looks so keen for me to get it that I nod and say, “Right,” “okay,” and “sure,” every so often.

  I’m loading the dishes into the washer when a series of soft thuds completely distracts me.

  “What’s that?” I ask, immediately on the alert.

  Quinn shrugs. “It’s coming from outside.”

  Peering out of the window, I see Bruce and Cameron in the backyard, shooting at makeshift paper targets pinned to trees.

  “What are you doing?” I ask them when I get outside. And when I catch a glimpse of the unfamiliar attachments mounted on the end of both Bruce’s submachine gun and Cameron’s handgun — the Sig Sauer P220 Scorpion that was Sarge’s — I add, “And what are those?”

  “New suppressors,” Bruce says.

  They don’t look like any suppressors I’ve ever seen, let alone used.

  “Cool, aren’t they?” Bruce grins.

  Cameron takes a bead on the target, which is about fifteen meters away, and fires off three shots, hitting the dead center in a tight cluster. The report of his pistol is surprisingly soft.

  “Next-generation sound-suppressing technology. Muffles up to ninety percent of the sound,” Bruce explains.

  “Where did you get them?” I’m equal parts amazed and worried.

  “Off the dark web. Robin told me you can get anything you like there, and he was right.”

  I need to have a talk with my brother.

  “I could’ve ordered a fully equipped tank if I had the money,” Bruce continues, “but I just got these beauties and some more ammo for all of us. Here, have a go.”

  I take his weapon and fire off several shots in quick succession. My aim is off, but that’s probably due to the fact that I haven’t done target practice for ages, rather than due to the new equipment. The sound-suppression is fantastic — no report echoes among the trees.

  “Did you get one for me?” I ask, eager to find out what my rifle will sound like.

  “Of course. I always take care of you, Blue, you know that,” Bruce says.

  Unfortunately, he says it just as Quinn arrives at my side. The hostility in the glare Quinn gives Bruce is almost tangible.

  “I need to go help Robin. Join us?” Quinn says, putting an arm around my waist and giving me a little squeeze.

  “I would if there was anything at all I could contribute. But I’m worse than useless at that stuff,” I apologize.

  “Right. See you later?”

  “Definitely.”

  I give him a quick kiss on the lips and wait until he’s disappeared indoors before following to retrieve my rifle from the closet in the girls’ room upstairs. Back in the yard, I insist that we practice deeper in the woods.

  “If Neil sees us, he’ll give us hell for shooting his trees,” I say, pulling down the targets.

  Cameron’s knowing look tells me he, at least, knows that I’m actually trying to hide my shooting from Quinn, not Neil. It’s silly, I know. And Quinn probably guesses that the boys and I aren’t disappearing into the woods for a picnic, but I don’t like to shoot under his disapproving stare.

  I feel like piggy-in-the-middle of our band of rebels. I sincerely hope that Quinn’s more intellectual and peace-loving approach will win out, because in my heart I don’t like violence either. But I’ve seen enough of both our enemies to know that some insurance is probably a good idea.

  I spend that afternoon and the next few days shooting and exercising. It doesn’t take me long to get my shooter’s eye back in, and I rapidly grow very fond of Leya’s Ruger 9mm semi-automatic. It’s lightweight and compact, so it suits my smaller hands. I like the light, crisp trigger, and it’s as accurate as any sidearm could be. I’m never without it now.

  My physical fitness comes harder, but despite my aching arms, I can cross seven monkey bars by the end of the second day. And a full five days after I started my training schedule, I finally make it. I’m proudly swinging to the last bar on the ladder bridge when Quinn tells me that they’ve figured out at least one part of the monkey-puzzle of code that Robin downloaded.

  “And you’ll never believe what it is,” he says.

  Chapter 17

  Figuring it out

  October 14

  “We’ve got them! We’ve caught them with their hand in the cookie jar — just wait until the world finds out about this,” Robin announces.

  With the exception of Neil, who is busy in the basement, we’re all crowded together in the living area, even Robin (who has been given permission by Beth to get out of bed) and Sofia, who sits beside him on a wide sofa, a laptop perched on her knees. Quinn’s face is bright with excitement at their discovery. Robin grins like an alligator who’s just snapped its jaws around a juicy turtle.

  “Finds out about what?” I ask.

  “Okay, so there were three parts of the code architecture we downloaded that puzzled us,” Robin says. “One part is seriously encrypted, and we haven’t made much headway with that yet. We cracked the most recent addition, and Neil’s now working on the third part, which looks very similar to the one we figured out. He says he’s this close to cracking it.” Robin holds his thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart.

  “But the part you guys already figured out?” I ask.

  “It’s advertising!” Robin says.

  “Huh? What is?” Evyan is clearly as confused as I am.

  “The Game – it’s riddled with advertising. They must be making megabucks in revenue.”

  “I’ve been playing The Game for years and I don’t remember any in-game advertising,” Evyan says, looking at Robin skeptically.

  “It’s subliminal,” Quinn says.

  “Sub-what now?” says Bruce.

  “Subliminal. ‘Sub’ — meaning below. And ‘liminal’ — relating to the threshold of sensory perception.”

  “Yeah, still going to need a translation, Paddy,” Bruce says.

  “Fine, I’ll see if I can make it simple enough for even your mother’s son to grasp,” Quinn replies acidly, and launches into a detailed explanation.

  If I understand correctly, subliminal messages are stimuli that a person isn’t aware they’ve been exposed to, like an image flashed so briefly that you don’t know you’ve seen it, or sounds transmitted below or above a person’s normal range of hearing.

  Normally, an image flashed for mere milliseconds wouldn’t have much effect on the person seeing it, if they only saw it once or t
wice. But kids play The Game for hours at a stretch, and often every day, meaning that they’re exposed to a message thousands of times in a gaming session, every gaming session, day after day, which will influence what they think, believe and do.

  “And you won’t know you’ve been influenced, because it’s happening at a subconscious level,” Quinn says. “You might be focused on one task, say playing a computer game, but subconsciously you’re still absorbing other details like colors, patterns, music.”

  Bruce still looks unconvinced, but I think I get it.

  “You know how when you’re setting up a shot,” I tell him, “and you’re all focused on the target, but at some level your brain is busy registering the wind speed, temperature and elevation? And you factor that all in, even if you’ve only got seconds to take the shot. You can be aware of things that you’re not consciously focused on.”

  “So what’s in The Game?” Cameron asks.

  “Yeah, what exactly have they been pumping into our brains?” Bruce demands.

  “Loads,” says Robin. “There are messages laced into the music, and logos hidden in the graphics of scenery and objects, but mostly they’ve been flashing very simple images of products or company logos. Advertisements.”

  “They’ve been messing with our heads, man!” Bruce says, rubbing a hand over his buzz-cut hair and looking majorly pissed. “My little cousin is only six — she plays the cartoon edition. You think this crap is in that version, too?”

  “Oh yeah, no doubt with ads for kiddie products. Come see, I’ve isolated some screenshots,” Robin says.

  We gather behind the sofa while Sofia clicks through a series of images on the laptop. I may not have been an intel cadet, but even I immediately spot a pattern.

  “Most of the ads in The Game are for The Game?” I say, pointing at one of the screenshots with the PlayState logo and the text: Play The Game.