The noise slammed my head to the side before the aftershock of inferno heat bellowed down the streets like a wild bushfire. Judging by the massive noise and earthquake, one of the multi-level buildings close by must’ve been hit by a bomb. Over the internal ringing, the cracking of its collapsing walls exploded as a thick storm of shattered brick moved down the streets like a horde. I instinctively protected my face with the gasmask and dropped down into a squat. It took a few minutes for the dust to settle enough to see the wall opposite me. Quickly, I rechecked my phone. According to the GPS, Annie should be just across the road from me. You’re in SO much trouble when I catch you!
I tucked my phone into my pocket when a large hand grabbed my collar. He yanked me into a stand before forcefully pinning me the wall.
“Hiding are we?” He jeered as he reached down to get into my pant pockets. “What have you got in those tight little pants of yours?” Using the butt of my shotgun, I rammed the end behind me, hitting the attacker in the stomach. In the same movement, I spun, hoisting my gun up so I could line up my shot.
“Back off, asshole!”
His twisted thick beard swallowed half of his face as he lurched forward and grabbed onto the barrel of my gun. With just as much ease, he pulled backward, pulling me off balance.
“You haven’t got the balls, little girl.” He held the mouth of the shotgun to his forehead tauntingly. “Go on, shoot, do it or I’m going to eat you up.”
I hesitated, knowing if I killed him, I would be charged for murder and labelled a black listed. There were cameras everywhere and I was in clear view. He laughed, sensing my hesitation.
“You’re right!” I whipped out the small handgun from the back of my pants, cocked the hammer and fired into his foot. The man roared and tipped backward as I swung my gun upwards like a punch, striking and breaking his nose. “But who the hell would want them anyway!”
The ground pulsated with a steady heartbeat, the earth shattering beneath the fighting as I pulled my hood over and ran across the street. I rammed my shoulder through the building’s door before stumbling into the empty foyer of the old theatre. Instinctively, I stilled. The ringing in my ears had gone gentle and as I eased inside the chipped pieces of glass cracked underneath my boots. I pulled my phone out to recheck her location when I heard an unusual sound. I quickly jerked the mask down and turned around toward the noise, trying to catch its location. Wait… I know that sound. I hadn’t heard the ring of a piano for so long I had almost forgotten what it sounded like. I wiped my forehead with the back of my wrist and clicked my jaw to pop the pressure built against my eardrums.
“Annie?” I called. The foyer was left as an empty lot, the furniture long gutted and the frames smashed. The once red carpet had been beaten to brown, the walls deteriorating as the paint peeled and stunk with decay.
The tune from the piano came from my right, behind closed doors. I hoisted my gun up, before checking down on my phone. Annie’s icon was sitting in the next room where the noise was coming from. A jolt of panic fired through me. Annie didn’t know how to play the piano; she’d never even seen one before. It was either she wasn’t alone in there or someone else had Annie’s phone.
My knuckles curled around the shotgun. If that was the case, then I had no idea where Annie was or if she was even alive. I clenched my teeth together and carefully stepped around the scattered glass shards and up to the door. I pressed my back against it, listening for voices, before craning the door back just slightly to peek inside. The room was a large hall leading down to a stage with chairs stacked facing it. Screws bolted the seats into the ground, but the cushions had been scrapped off by looters. I pushed the door back fully at the sight of Annie’s turned back sitting by the piano. My shoulders slumped relieved as I dropped my aim.
“Annie?” I shouted from the back as I marched through the aisle toward her. “Annie? Annie?” Annie snapped her hands back and spun around at my voice.
“Nadia?”
I hoisted myself up onto the stage with one arm, the other holding my shotgun back. “What are doing out here? Weren’t you told to stay at home? That was really dangerous!”
“I was just playing…” Annie gestured back to the piano.
“Don’t you know there’s a sweep happening outside? It’s so dangerous to be walking around out here on your own.” I stormed up to her, and a little too roughly, pulled her up from her seat. “You didn’t even leave me a note. I was really worried about you.” I did a double take between her and the piano. “Wait… was that you who was just playing?”
“Yep, and I’m really good.”
“That’s impossible. You can’t be,” I automatically argued. “You’ve never played the piano in your life.”
Annie wrenched her arm free from my grip before quickly reaching back behind her, striking the keys with her poised right hand. The ring of the piano strings spiralled up the walls and into the roof. Before I could pull her back, Annie turned back around and struck the piano again with her second hand.
She then started to play. It was a fast song as she skimmed her hands along the keys in perfect position. I stumbled onto my back foot. When I looked at her, Annie had her eyes closed and her lower lip softly parted.
In a perfect French accent, Annie tilted her head back. “Je suis rentrée.” She opened her eyes again with a distant look. “Après tant d'années.”
Alarm stirred in me as though Annie held a gun to my head. “What? I don’t understand.” I cleared my throat to hide the frazzled panic swarming inside. “What are you saying?”
“Qu'est ce qu'il m'arrive?” She rolled her eyes upwards. “These images…I’m not who I think I am.”
I crouched down and cupped her hands. I could see the strain of her concentration pull the muscles near her eyes, making her almost look older. Just yesterday, she couldn’t even zip up her own jacket without catching it on her shirt, now she was playing the piano and speaking French.
“You’re still Annie,” I reassured, followed by a small shrug of my shoulder. The words were like bullets on my tongue. I didn’t want to say them. If I did, it felt like I was giving her my consent to change. To become like them. “But you weren’t always Annie.”
“What do you mean?”
I gripped her tighter. “Those dreams you’ve been having, they’re actually memories. You see, Annie, you’ve lived before but as someone else. You’ve actually lived many times and you’re just starting to remember your past lives. It’s called reincarnation; it’s when your soul keeps coming back to earth to live over and over again.” Her eyes glazed over with a distant stare. My little sister was fading to a place I couldn’t follow. “Do you understand?”
Abruptly, she snapped her hands back. “Laisse moi tranquille. Could you not touch me?” I shuffled backward at her sharp tone. Annie rubbed at her temples before pushing past. “I want to go home.”
“Annie…”
“I said I want to go home!”
I stood up as she marched past me before falling into step behind her. “Okay.”
I could see the storm of the madness haunch her shoulders and ran shivers down her spine. Though I had never experienced a memory from a past life, I had witnessed the toll it had taken over all of my friends in school. It was like a poison that shifted through them, killing anything human inside. The detachment would come quickly, as with the others; Annie would have clashing memories that would tear the fabric of her world apart. Roman once explained it to me. It was like having five or six different people living in your head. All of them were you, but they were also not you.
They’d remember bits and pieces during their childhood, but by the age of fifteen, all memories become as real as their present life. Like Annie, their memories don’t start coming back until they are roughly five or six years old. By that age, a new personality had already started to form. New beliefs, new opinions and experiences. Soon, she’d be able to remember everything from five generations ago, and every death to
o.
Cautiously, we tiptoed our way back onto the streets as the heat pushed against me. All that there was left was the disturbed smoke and the distant thump of the earth settling.
The world had turned to waste; immortality was never meant for man and it drove humanity to the edge of destruction. There had been plenty of stories about how the human race would end. Unlike the movies from Hollywood, there was no big bang like a sun exploding; there was no catastrophic moment where our world was flipped upside down like in a nuclear war or zombie virus outbreak. It was gradual, like a seeping virus that withered everything within its path until it ground us down into brittle, hollowed cores. It wasn’t out to destroy our bodies; it destroyed everything we once treasured. Hope, love, compassion, joy… even our mortality. It was all gone. And now it mocked us with a peace we could never achieve, death.
I kept my hand behind me, ensuring Annie was safe before slowly creeping out. The steady thump of the Sweepers had almost gone silent as they walked away further down the block, but it was Annie’s sudden scream that spun me around. A dark shadow stepped up behind us just as a snap of red crossed my vision.
No! Before I had time to jerk my head away, the Sweeper lurched forward and snared me by the shoulder. My body seized underneath its grip as it hoisted me up from the ground.
“Run, Annie! Run!”
Annie squealed and pressed herself up against the building. “Nadia?”
“Just run!” I screamed as the robot reached over and took the shotgun from my hand. It crushed the barrel easily before finding the pistol in my back pocket, where it smashed that one too.
In its inhuman static voice, the machine said, “Corrupted identification code detected. Blacklisted threat. You are under arrest.”
“I’m not one of them!” I screamed as I wrestled underneath its grip. “Let me go. I’m not one of them!”
“Under the law of T199, you are to be detained within prison Alpha until further notice.”
“No! No! Don’t take me there!” I begged breathlessly. “I’m not one of them. I have papers. Just don’t take me there!” The veins in my neck bulged as I screamed. The robot cupped its palm onto the crown of my head before delivering sharp and fast impulses into my nervous system. The jolt cracked against my inner ear and shock waves travelled down my spine, which splintered into tiny, hot aches along my arms and legs. The shock left a tingle in its wake, deadening my senses underneath it. Though I couldn’t feel my limbs, I felt my body shaking violently before everything went black.
CHAPTER FIVE:
A tremor ran through me like a flash of heat. Drawing me out of unconsciousness was the muffled sound of shoes scaping across dirt. I managed to peek through the slit of my eye but the world remained in a fragmented haze. The smell of sweat and blood saturated the air as the sound of dragging grew louder. My neck rolled as I looked down my front to notice I was being pulled across the asphalt. My hoodie was tight around my throat as the Sweeper dragged me behind it. It then lifted me upwards as I was pushed into the back of a vehicle. The chilled touch of the metal walls hit my back that now throbbed with fresh grazes. The Sweeper stepped backward away from the car as the car doors automatically closed. I couldn’t lift my chin or turn my head, the fuzzy tingle that had paralysed me kept me bound to my spot. The car started in a low rev before it took off, jostling me in my seat across the uneven road.
A guard inside the car stepped closer and forced my face upwards by pinching my cheeks. There he placed a mask over my mouth that pumped an odourless gas into my body. The ability to fight wasn’t in me as I unwillingly took the air in, feeling how the gas worked into my blood stream and chilled my throat. He took a sample of blood and close up scans of my face and retinas that were all stored onto his mobile device. As the paralysis worn off, the effect of feeling drunk and drowsy did not. We must’ve been travelling for at least forty-five minutes when the car stilled and the doors automatically opened. The awkward jerks of the Sweeping robots welcomed us. They moved like lumbering giants; their footsteps were loud and so heavy that their entire bodies would stagger off balanced.
It reached into the vehicle and pulled me out first and onto my feet. Behind me, the Sweeper pulled out the other five women and one man, all of whom were watery-eyed and swaying on unsteady feet. They then proceeded to push us into a single-file walk. I tilted my head back and tried my best to blink some focus back into my eyes, but a sheet of fog smeared my vision. Amongst the blurs, there was a large black prison surrounded by high curbed walls and a small army of robots patrolling the perimeter. Led to the front iron gates, I shuffled forward behind the other women. Behind me, I heard the man’s muffled pleas as he was redirected away from us and toward the male prison entrance to the right. I knew once we reached the gates, we would be individually pushed forward into the scanning area. Once scanned, the doors would open and a heavier armoured robot would take us inside into the women’s prison.
Digging my heels into the dirt to stop walking, I was jabbed in the back by the guard behind me. “Mmhhm hmmhmm!” he ordered but I couldn’t understand him.
I turned to speak but my tongue flopped around my mouth like a thick sponge. I had only seen Alpha prison twice in my life. As a student, the teachers brought us here as a scare tactic and the other time, I was caught out past curfew and arrested when the bots couldn’t read my retinas. It wasn’t until two days later that Doctor Phillips managed to track me down and bailed me out, and since then, I never left home without my identity card. Unfortunately, I couldn’t reach my pockets with my wrists bound behind my back to retrieve them.
When I reached the front of the line, I stood by the scanner as it photographed my iris. I sighed, relieved at its distinct rejection bell. The guardsmen took me by the shoulder and turned me away from the gates, allowing the woman behind me to step forward. As I walked away, I heard it ring and the doors opened, leading the woman inside to the awaiting cells.
Yet, as I made my way back to the vehicle, the guardsman turned me sharply to the right. He took me to the second prison’s gates for the convicted men before forcing my chin up toward the scanner. It took a second to read my retinas, before the accepting bell rang and I was shoved forward. Bewildered, I stumbled off balance. Wait, what the hell is happening? Why am I being taken in here? Panicked, I tried to speak but my jaw clicked in muted flaps. I shouldn’t be here. I’m a girl! I’m a girl, you idiots! Whatever strength I had, I forced it into my legs, stamping my feet into the dirt to stop them from pushing me forward but it was useless.
The doors opened up into a metal-cocooned hallway wrapped in thick concrete and steel. The smell and heat lathered my body as distant screams ripped up the hallways like skidding tyres. Beyond various barricades and multiple heavily armoured doors, I was marched into the belly of the prison.
The cells lined up the corridor like standing concreted coffins housing two prisoners inside each room, only allowing enough space for a bunker bed and a steel door with a barred window for them to see out of. My eyes were starting to refocus, sharpening the blur of dotted greys into objects and faces. As I was paraded down the hall, the faceless men jumped to the feet, pressing themselves against the doors as they barked at me like starved rats. My body trembled as my head jerked at their taunts before the guard stopped at an empty cell near the end and unbound my wrists.
An itch rode up my throat as I was shoved inside. I stumbled in and grabbed onto the edge of the bed. “Wait!” I managed through the rasp of my breath, but the door slammed closed and the guard vanished behind the walls. My body flailed underneath the drug as I flung myself against the door and peeked through the bars. All I could make out were smeared faces as my knees buckled and I slumped to the ground. As my eyes felt heavy and darkness pooled around me, the taunting calls felt as close as fingers tightening around my neck.
“Nadia? Nadia?” A warm touch moved over me and I was shaken awake. I slowly sat up and felt my head sway before the realization struck me like a s
lap. Startled, I jerked backward, batting my hands up to hit the man away from me. He grabbed my wrists and stilled my swings.
“Doctor Phillips?” I had to flutter my eyes a couple more times to clear them. Doctor Phillips was in a cold-grey suit that blended well with the stone-concreted walls. His face was paler than usual; his natural yellow tan seemed more sickly and beige.
He eased his arms down and rested them on his bent knees. I took a moment to look around myself. I must’ve fallen asleep on the floor as my neck ached when I moved. As I wiped my wrist across my cheek, I felt a cold trail of drool down my chin.
“How are you?” he asked calmly.
“Is that some sort of joke?” I snapped as I sat myself up against the edge of the bed. “They really aren’t kidding around out there; I’ve never had a Sweeper attack me like that before. They didn’t even give me a chance to show my identity pass. What type of dumbass could mistake me for a boy, anyway?”
He sighed wearily as though the words had troubled him for too long, “You know, if you hadn’t skipped out on our session, again, all of this could’ve been avoided.”
Soulless (The Immortal Gene Trilogy Book 1) Page 4
