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

by Joanne Macgregor

“She never was a rebel, that’s for certain,” Connor says.

  “Connor!” Quinn stands up suddenly, fists clenched, looking ready to hit his brother.

  “Well, the rebellion’s all yours now, Comrade Connor. I quit.” I spin around and leave the room, chin held high.

  But just a few paces outside, I slump against the wall, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes to force back the tears that threaten. I hate fighting with Quinn. Especially when I agree with him. Because he’s right — about the warmongers and profiteers — I know that. And he’s right about me, too. I never was a killer. I never wanted to hurt or shoot a living creature. I just happened to be stupendously good at it. And it was my ticket out of the claustrophobia and endless boredom of home.

  But the thing is, I’m right, too. Freedom isn’t a place, it’s a state of being. We’ll never be free as long as the plague thrives, and I don’t know how to fight it any other way than with my gun and my sharp eye and my steady hands.

  Raised voices from the room yank me out of my miserable thoughts.

  “What do you mean by that?” Quinn is saying.

  “I mean, that’s her decided then. What’s our next step, d’ya think? Where should we go from here?”

  “Our? We? We — who?” Quinn says.

  “You and me, obviously. And Neil and Evyan if they’re willing to recommit to the rebellion. We’ll find another rebel pod and keep fighting!”

  I take a step closer to the doorway, needing with every fiber of my being to hear Quinn’s response.

  “There’s something you don’t seem to understand, Connor. Jinxy and me — we’re one. We’re like this,” I hear Quinn say, and I can imagine him holding up fingers twisted together. “And I’m not going to leave her to go swanning about with you and your rebels. Especially not when I can see how hard she’s hurting.”

  Connor must snort or pull a face at that, because Quinn continues, “She is. She puts on a tough act, but the pain is almost crushing her, I can tell.”

  He knows me so well. He sees right through to the real, damaged me inside.

  “Crushing? Are you yanking my chain, boyo? The only crushing going on with her is the rekindling of her affections for that brute, Bruce. Evyan’s told me all about them.”

  “That’s rubbish. You’re talking bollocks, now. The only thing between them is friendship.”

  “Are you so certain?” Connor’s voice is taunting.

  “Yeah, I’m absolutely sure,” Quinn says firmly.

  You tell him, Quinn.

  “I don’t trust her — never have. And he’s a total cúl tóna.”

  Cool toner? What’s that?

  “I trust her. And she trusts him. And that’s good enough for me. I’m lucky to have her. And Bruce isn’t a dickhead. He’s strong, loyal, brave, and he can protect her better than I ever could. What makes me such a catch?”

  “Now you’re the one who’s talking bollocks.”

  Finally, I agree with Connor on something.

  “Look, they called you because they thought I might die from that knock on my noggin. And you came because you care. And I appreciate that, I really do. But as you can see, I’m good and getting better. So you’re free to go, now.”

  “Are you sending me away, Quinn? Are you choosing her — that fecking little gun-toting blonde — over me? Over family?” Connor’s voice is full of shocked disbelief.

  My heart is pounding so hard I want to tell it to hush. Quinn’s next words will be do-or-die for our relationship. Everything is on the line.

  “Yes,” I hear him say. “I choose Jinxy.”

  My heart swells with love and hope. He chooses me. Me. He doesn’t agree with everything I believe, he doesn’t approve of everything I do, but he chooses me. I have never loved him more than I do at this moment.

  I punch the air in victory, trying to make no noise because Quinn is speaking again.

  “The question is, what do you choose, Connor? Because you can either accept her as a permanent, as a beloved part of my life, and treat her with respect, or you can bugger off and do whatever makes your rebel heart happy somewhere else.”

  Connor bursts out of the room and clocks me standing in the hall. With a furious glare at me, he storms off. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, I think, giving his departing back a grin and a cheerful waggle of my fingers. Then I go back to the man I love. I am permanent and beloved in his life.

  And he is in mine.

  Chapter 31

  From the inside out

  October 24

  This morning, most of the kids in the shelter are in the games room, playing at the computers and chattering excitedly about the Go!Game, because today PlayState announced the nationwide release that will be happening in one week’s time. No less a personage than Alex Hawke, president of the Southern Sector, will be visiting PlayState on Halloween to launch the release.

  There are amazing trailers on the web and in The Game of what the new version will look like. They show kids in their houses hunting repbots in closets and drawers, finding and capturing tiny spy drones hiding in robes hanging behind bedroom doors or inside microwaves, shooting Alien Axis Army soldiers breaking into houses via windows and decon units. Honestly, it looks awesome. Come Halloween, every kid in the country is going to be addicted within minutes, even without any subliminal messages.

  This Halloween, get ready to fight real monsters! The advertisements chime.

  Robin is gearing up to do just that. He’s been working day and night, along with his secret team of virtually connected hackers, to create the perfect takedown of The Game. He says their plan, which they’re calling Operation Black Hat, is to upload malware into PlayState’s main centralized servers, implanting it into the new version of The Game.

  It’s six days since Tallulah left, eight days since she was bitten. The average number of days from infection to death is thirteen. By now her skin will be covered with a rash of bleeding spots, her eyes will be red, perhaps already bleeding, she’ll be drifting in and out of consciousness, making sense in neither state. She’ll have started the rocking or head-banging, and might already be coughing up great clots of black blood and hemorrhaging from her every orifice. That’s if she’s still alive. She may be one of victims who goes quickly.

  Or they may have euthanized her already.

  And here at the shelter, her precious lambs are excitedly playing games, counting the days until they can immerse themselves in more virtual reality, and thinking up costumes they can wear for in-house trick or treating.

  Quinn beckons me from the doorway. In the week since Connor left, Quinn has recovered well. He swears he’s feeling fine, apart from the headaches which come when he gets tired.

  “Neil’s calling a meeting of all of us. And now would be a good time while they” — Quinn tilts his head toward the kids clustered around screens — “are distracted.”

  “Has he found out something?”

  “Yeah, and Beth says it’s big.”

  I fetch Robin and Sofia, and we join the others in the kitchen, who’re sitting around the big wooden table in the center and leaning against walls and the huge refrigerator. Evyan perches on the counter opposite me, kicking her black-booted feet against the cupboard beneath in a random, irritating rhythm. Neil confirms that everyone is present and closes the door to the hall.

  “You’re all very young,” he says, earning an eye-roll from Evyan. “Too young, some of you, to remember the way the world used to work for teenagers.”

  “Dude, I remember fine — I was already fourteen when the plague started,” Bruce says.

  “And that’s about the time you would have started thinking about what career you wanted to pursue when you left school.”

  “I was going to run a hunting-supplies store with my uncle up in Montana.”

  “Figures,” Evyan says.

  “What were you going to be when you were big, Goth-girl? A car thief? Cat burglar?”

  “I planned to
become a mechanic, for your information.”

  “Oo-ooh, a grease monkey,” Bruce mocks. “What were you going to do, bro?” He elbows Cameron.

  “Maybe cattle ranching.”

  “Aren’t we getting off track here?” Quinn asks.

  “Not really,” says Neil. “Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do when you left school?”

  “I thought … well, when I was younger, before the plague, I figured I might like to study architecture,” Quinn says.

  “I never knew that,” I tell him.

  “I guess it’s not something we talk about,” Quinn replies.

  “Exactly!” Neil points a finger at him. “Jinxy, Robin — you’re the youngest here. What were your career plans?”

  Robin and I exchange glances, shrugging at the same moment in exactly the same way.

  “Don’t know, never really thought about it,” Robin says.

  “We were only twelve years old when the plague started and everything changed,” I add. “And after I started playing The Game, that’s all I really wanted to do.”

  “And that, in a nutshell, is what I’ve figured out from the code I’ve analyzed,” Neil says, sitting back in his chair, slapping his hands on his thighs and looking smug.

  There’s a moment’s confused silence, then Bruce says, “Dude, you’re going to have to connect the dots here. I dunno what you’re trying to say.”

  “Let me try to explain,” Beth says, with an exasperated glance at her brother. “When teens hit fourteen or fifteen, schools generally kicked into gear with career guidance — they’d organize career exhibitions, guest speakers, maybe even psychometric testing and college visits. Teens could do specialized programs during their summer vacations — space camp or theater school or robotics retreats. At some schools, kids had to do community service hours at different places — hospitals, animal shelters, garden centers — or do job shadowing.”

  “I got to do that once,” Sofia says, smiling wryly. “I went to a hospital and shadowed a gastric surgeon. Ran out of the operating theater and hurled up and down the length of the hall. Crossed that one off the list pretty quick.”

  “I thought it might be cool to be a butcher — got a job at World of Meats one summer. But no way, man, it was disgusting! And the smell.” Bruce shudders.

  “Nobody cares,” Evyan says, drumming her heels on the cupboard.

  I care. I’m fascinated to hear what everyone planned on doing when they grew up. If there hadn’t been a war on, if I hadn’t been channeled into ASTA via The Game, what would I have wanted to do with my life? I can’t think of a single thing. I realize how few careers I truly know about, and I’m struck again by how much we’ve missed out on.

  “Beth?” Quinn prompts, interrupting a burgeoning squabble between Bruce and Evyan.

  “The point is, kids learned what they liked and didn’t like doing by being out in the world, trying different things, being exposed to a wide range of work,” Beth says.

  Neil gets up, and while he fills the kettle and rummages through the cupboards, his sister continues her explanation.

  “Adolescence is a time of exploring and forming one’s identity, including work identity. What would usually happen is you’d find several fields you were interested in or had an aptitude for. You’d go off to college, take some courses, maybe drop a few as you discovered that wasn’t your thing, and sign up for something else. You had freedom to explore and choose, to try and fail, to become anything you wanted.” Beth says. “But the plague changed all that. Suddenly kids were trapped inside their houses. When you weren’t doing schoolwork, you were playing that wretched game. You were insulated from the world, and your range of choices shrank radically.”

  Neil, who is sniffing at a box of herb tea, says, “The Game helped distract you from the reality that you were essentially trapped. You were lost in other, fantasy worlds inside your heads and machines. But it wasn’t reality.”

  Insulated. Trapped. Lost. The words capture the essence of my life.

  “With virtual reality, it was almost as good as real life,” Sofia says. “And probably more fun.”

  She sounds a little wistful. She was in the games room, too, this morning, looking over the shoulder of a girl lost in The Game, pointing out clues on the screen.

  “And that’s where the real danger lies,” Beth says, startling me when she slaps a hand on the table to emphasize her point. “At its deepest levels, the human brain doesn’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s sufficiently vividly imagined.”

  “Come again?” Quinn is fully alert now. I can almost hear the wheels of his brain turning.

  “When you watch a movie, and the killer yanks back the shower curtain and stabs the heroine, don’t you get a fright? Jump in your seat and gasp?”

  “Or scream?” Evyan suggests, almost smiling.

  “Always suspected you’d be a screamer, E.” Bruce laughs.

  Evyan kicks him hard in the leg, and he hops on the spot, rubbing his thigh and grumbling about how nobody has a sense of humor anymore.

  Speaking louder, Beth says, “You react that way because you’re so absorbed, that it’s as if it’s real at some level, and you’re involved. Consciously, of course, you know it’s not happening to you, that it’s not even really happening at all — the blood is fake, the knife is plastic, the killer’s an actor. But it feels real. Now multiply that effect when you’re in a virtual reality environment, and you are the person running, searching, coding, shooting. As far as your brain is concerned, it’s real.”

  “And the big problem with that is …?” Robin asks.

  Pouring boiling water into a chipped mug, Neil says, “Neurological molding.”

  Beside me, Quinn gasps. He’s understood something I haven’t yet.

  Chapter 32

  Come out fighting

  “The brain is made up of cells called neurons, millions of them,” Beth says, “and what determines your intelligence, your talent and skill in certain areas — music or verbal ability or coding, for example —”

  “Or the fine-motor control required for accurate sharpshooting?” Quinn says.

  “Yes, or that.” Beth nods and smiles at him. She can tell he’s got it. “It depends on the number and strength of connections between neurons. And that’s a product of both nature and nurture. The genetics you’re born with, and the stimulation you’re exposed to — what you learn, do, and practice in your formative years. And how intensively.”

  “And just think about what The Game exposes you to,” Neil adds, dunking a tea bag in his mug.

  “So we learn and practice certain skills in the virtual reality programs. And we get better at them, and ASTA selects the best and trains them to be even better?” Robin says. “But we always knew that. That’s nothing new.”

  “What you didn’t know is that the Game tests you the first few times you play, guiding you through different roles, all the while assessing your inherent aptitude for different functions,” Neil replies.

  I have only the vaguest recollection of playing as anything other than a sniper, but I do remember that Robin tried a bunch of different roles.

  “And then it channels you into the one you’re best at, and increasingly you play, and learn, only that role. Nothing else.”

  True. Once I started sniping, I never tried anything else.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder why you never got bored playing only one role? Why you never even thought of playing The Game as a different specialist?” Beth asks.

  Now that she mentions it, no, I never did.

  “Weird,” says Cameron, frowning.

  “Right?” adds Bruce.

  “Bitter,” says Neil, puckering his face at the taste of his tea and stirring in a heaped spoon of sugar.

  “You teens, who are so quickly and easily bored with everything else, get sucked right in and don’t stop, don’t change course. And, of course, you’re too busy playing to take a good hard look at what’s ha
ppening to your rights, to question the laws the government is passing.” Beth gets up and pours herself a glass of water at the sink, turns to face us again. “And parents don’t complain, because the kids are occupied, safe at home, not even tempted to go outside, and not whining about how bored they are. It’s a win-win.”

  “And the biggest winners are A Play Test and their government allies, because — and this is the crux of what I found out — all the while, your brains are being hardwired by the smart program,” Neil says.

  “The program which subliminally gets you to grow increasingly addicted to it, don’t forget,” Beth adds.

  “And you’re funneled through a carefully plotted succession of neurocognitive enhancement exercises aimed at developing synaptic webs and neural pathways, which in turn mitigate your behavior and deterministically select your future paths,” says Neil.

  “Huh?” Bruce grunts, looking at Beth for a translation.

  She bites her lip, clearly thinking of a way to explain this simply. “Back at the house, I saw you guys exercising in the yard.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “Imagine if you only worked the muscles of one leg. Or even of only one calf,” Beth suggests. “Imagine how big that muscle would grow, how powerful it would become.”

  Bruce smiles and nods slowly, slitting his eyes and casting a sideways glance at Evyan. I’ll bet he’s thinking how far he could kick her with such a leg.

  “And the rest of your muscles, that you never used, would shrink and weaken to the point where you wouldn’t be able to lift something heavy with your arm, or do a sit-up, even if you wanted to?”

  “And so?” says Bruce.

  “Well, The Game is like neuro-gym. That’s what was happening to your brains,” Beth says, waving a finger around the room at all of us. “What is happening to the brains of hundreds of thousands of kids who happened to show an aptitude for one of only a handful of valuable skills.”

  “The rest they didn’t seem to care about — except, of course, as easily programmed consumers and voters,” Neil says, sipping on his tea.