“Don’t talk like that. Please, eat. You know how hard it was to get real eggs?”
“When do they want to see me?”
“As soon as you’re able. I suggest you see Ufuk this morning and then speak to them tomorrow. Should I tell them that’s what you will do?”
Jess shook her head. “Why the hell do they even need to—”
“It’s important. There are still rules here.”
“Rules that kill everyone else outside.”
“What do you want me to—”
“Sure.” She pulled the plate of eggs back and took a bite.
“You’ll speak to Ufuk?”
She exhaled and slumped her shoulders before nodding.
“And the Judicial Affairs people?”
“I said yes.”
“Eat.”
She took another forkful of eggs.
“You know you have email?”
“Email?”
He smiled at her confusion. “It’s internal to San EU, of course. Someone uploaded videos from your old YouTube channel. You’re quite the celebrity.” He reached for the tablet device at the corner of the table and handed it to her. “It’s yours. Has your new email account on it, and apps that work in San EU.”
She took it grudgingly. Everything seemed so surreal, so maddeningly normal. Sure, just look at the video on this tablet. A thing she’d done a million times before without thinking about it, but now it felt at odds with the reality of the world—like picking up a goblet from ancient Rome and wondering if it was sacrilege to drink from it.
A knock outside, and Lucca and Raffa’s smiling faces appeared one over the other through the opening of the slightly ajar door.
“Do you mind if I—” She gestured to the bedroom.
“I’ll go join the boys. But don’t take too long. Your breakfast will get cold. Remember how—”
“I know. Real eggs. I just need a minute to myself.”
Giovanni’s tiny nod and smile gave her the space she needed. He collected Hector into his arms while she retreated to her bedroom. She paused, waiting to hear the exterior door shut as Giovanni left, before she turned on the tablet. She took a breath and held it, then clicked the email app. Giovanni had sent her messages containing a list of links, one of them a link to video security camera footage from the Vivas facility.
She played it.
A grainy black-and-white image of herself cowering in the cell. Müller came on screen holding a pistol, followed by Maxim, his Chief of Security. Müller shot Iain Radcliff, the Vivas man. She remembered every cold word even in the absence of the audio track from the cameras. Words that had been caught and then broadcast by Roger’s beacon. She’d refrained from listening to the recording in the days that followed. She couldn’t bring herself to listen to Müller’s calm voice as he pulled the trigger and shot Radcliff, and then turned the gun on her. She wasn’t scared by it, but afraid of the anger she’d feel.
Too tired for it.
It was a chance for humanity to rebuild itself, better and stronger—that was what Müller had said. The justification for his evil. The sick bastard saw the destruction of humanity as an opportunity, or a chance to fix everything that was wrong with the world.
She closed the video.
There were more emails. Dozens of them. She told herself she didn’t have time to read through them all, that she needed to eat, then see Ufuk as soon as possible.
She clicked one.
“You’re amazing,” read the email, from someone called Abbie Barnes. “You have so much courage. Get well soon.”
“You are a tribute to human endurance,” the next email gushed.
Despite the guilt, Jess couldn’t help feeling a twinge of hope. The next email’s title was blank and she clicked it. Her warm tingling drained into a sinking numbness.
“You should be buried with your traitor father,” said the anonymous sender.
She clicked the tablet’s off button and stared at the blank screen. Müller was still a threat, and humanity still stood on the brink of extinction—despite the warm cotton under her ass and impossibly fresh eggs beckoning from the polished table.
She didn’t want to become part of a debate that centered on who should live and who should die. How could that choice possibly be made? Resources should be focused on saving as many as possible, whoever was left, rather than deciding who was worthy of being saved—but then this was making a decision in itself. She left the tablet on the bed, changed from her pajamas into jeans and a sweater, and made sure to eat every scrap of her egg and toast before leaving.
In a quiet corner of the sprawling Sanctuary Europe complex, sequestered away from prying eyes and built to conceal its true dimensions, Ufuk Erdogmus’s complex of laboratories also contained his personal quarters. Access was through a series of sealed doorways, with coded panels and retinal scans, leading to a passageway that opened into the main atrium.
Birds sang amidst thick palms and massive ferns of vivid green, and beyond the leaves the artificial blue sky projected on Sanctuary’s dome burned with strange iridescence. Insects buzzed through gnarled branches draped with orchids that filled the air with a sweet musk. Not insects, Jess realized on closer inspection, but tiny ornithopter drones. They swarmed toward her, then circled and spread ahead of her. This way, they beckoned. She followed.
Jess had awoken in this over-sized private garden when she’d first arrived in San EU, following her capture by Müller and subsequent rescue by Ufuk. The first thing Ufuk had offered was to create a new robotic prosthetic for her—better than the 3D-printed one he’d hastily had made when she arrived. Robotics was something Ufuk specialized in. She’d returned once to this complex during the past week for detailed scans of her leg’s nerve endings and muscle and bone, and he’d offered some limited insights into his largely automated facilities.
“Today’s the day.” Ufuk stepped through the palms, the smooth brown skin on his face crinkled in a grin. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” She limped forward. The insect-drones scattered back into the foliage.
“It’ll be as easy as riding a bike.”
“I’ve never ridden a robotic bike.”
The billionaire’s perfect teeth flashed as his smiled widened. “Time to learn.”
He led her through the gardens, past a sealed airlock door, and into a laboratory area where a female white-coated technician stood inspecting wall-sized holographic displays of Jess’s mangled leg stump. The technician was busy talking to a life-size image of a man at the side of the screen, but they stopped speaking as soon as Jess arrived.
“One of my companies pioneered robotic prosthetics,” Ufuk started to explain.
“So I heard.”
“I tried to bring a microcosm of my facilities here, like a Noah’s Ark of technology for the future. Maybe the only place left on the planet we can still do this.”
“Lucky me.” Her words were edged with unintentional sarcasm.
Ufuk’s easy smile slid away. “Do you not want this?”
“I just…”
Ufuk waited for her to finish her thought, but broke the silence before it could get awkward. “Guilt is something we all are learning to live with.”
“So I’ll be able to control it by thought?”
“It will take time and practice. The pathways are already there, but you need to re-awaken them. We’ve added some limited sensory feedback, so you’ll also experience some sensation through the prosthetic.”
“So then it’s something else I can hurt.”
This time Ufuk didn’t react to the sarcasm but just waved her forward.
In the time she’d spent with her mysterious rescuer, she’d found him to be a private man who chose his words with care, keeping much of the detail of his facilities out of conversation. Whenever she probed, he’d been politely but deftly evasive.
Ufuk showed her to a small room off the main lab and gestured to a reclined leather chair like one in a
dentist’s office.
The white-coated technician stepped in and offered Jess a smile. “Would you mind changing into this gown?” She indicated a partitioned changing room.
Jess stepped out of her jeans and into the blue gown. She returned to sit in the chair. From a box, the woman took out a wired stump socket. She removed Jess’s plastic prosthetic and attached the wired socket, then turned to inspect a wall of holographic displays that glowed to life.
Ufuk presented Jess with the new robotic leg they were going to install. “We engineered a protective outer layer to function in much the same way as the skin does,” he said. “It protects the interior robotics from external erosion and the invasion of moisture or tiny particles that might affect the mechanics. There is a cosmetic element to it too, of course.” He handed it to her.
“I expected it to be heavier.”
“Lightweight, strong and durable. Resistant to extreme cold. Instead of the usual polyurethane, we developed a material that flows the impact pressure across the whole of the limb.”
The technician frowned. “We need to run through final calibrations.” She removed the socket and gently pushed the old prosthetic back on, then asked to take the robotic leg from Jess. “Won’t take more than an hour.”
“Want to come back?” Ufuk asked.
“It occurred to me that you’ve never shown me around this place.”
“Would you like the grand tour?”
“As grand as you can make it.”
After she got back into her jeans, they exited the lab back out into the gardens. Although the dense thicket of palms and ferns with the blue sky high above gave the impression of a large expanse, the extent of Ufuk’s private area wasn’t more than a square eighty feet to each side. At the edges of the garden, a cubed structure of tiny apartments with balconies rose five stories.
“Anyone who works on my staff has living quarters here,” Ufuk explained. “No one is required to remain all the time—there are communal areas and leisure facilities across San EU—but everyone has their allocated quarters, and of course is tracked.”
“Even you?”
“Especially me. Most of the research teams report directly to me. Intellectual resources are just as scarce as food and water now.”
“Reminds me of Petra,” Jess said.
“Carved into rock, you mean?”
Doomed, was her first thought, but instead she replied: “There’s only one way in or out. You trying to stay hidden?”
“No hiding here.” Ufuk pointed at the iridescent blue sky. “Big Brother is always watching.”
“But you designed this place, right? Secret back doors and all? Must have taken a long time. Decades?” How long had this guy been working on this? She wanted to know with whom she was dealing.
“Most of the tunnels were already here, and Müller was the driving force behind it. I was just invited to help.”
“Seems like an awfully nice set of quarters for the help.”
“I also financed it.”
“So the rich get saved.”
Ufuk exhaled loudly enough to make sure Jess could hear. “This place is an Ark for humanity.”
Jess pulled away from him. “You’ve said that twice already.” She couldn’t resist. “So do you imagine yourself more as Noah or God? At least Noah tried to warn everyone else about the flood.”
“You’re right.” The billionaire shrugged slightly. “The rich and powerful were saved while we offered up extinction to the masses without warning. But there were rules to be allowed in here. If I’d said anything, I would have probably been killed—or at very least, excluded.”
“Self-interest makes for easy rationalizations.” The man’s seeming indifference to the mass murder of hundreds of millions brought a prickling chill to the nape of Jess’s neck.
“It does indeed.” Ufuk wiped his chin with one hand. “But I also brought some very bright intellectual minds with me. I and…I have a…” He seemed about to add something but turned away. “We have to get back.”
“You and Müller seem like you were awfully chummy,” Jess said, resisting his pull on her arm. “Before this, I mean.”
“A necessary evil.”
“Seems there’s a lot of that going around.”
“I’m the one who saved you, and got him arrested.”
“You might excuse me for feeling like I’m a pawn.”
“I’m sorry for what happened to your family. I had nothing to—”
“The prosecutor has asked me to come in. To make a statement.”
Ufuk rocked back on his heels. “Michel Durand, yes. I know him. He worked as an Examining Justice at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.”
“An Examining Justice?” Jess snorted. “The goddamn world is disintegrating, and you’re telling me we’re going to trial? This is beyond insane. What other evidence do they need? They have Müller on video, admitting everything.”
“This is no joke. Müller is one of the most powerful people in Sanctuary.”
“This is rigged, right? Just a waste of time? Forget this fancy new leg, what I really need is a gun. Why am I bothering—”
“This needs to be done the right way, Jessica.”
“Have they asked you to make a statement?” she asked.
“My position is different from yours. I imagine they will want to gather as much evidence as possible before speaking to me.”
Jess paused before asking her next question: “Is he still in custody?”
“As far as I know. You must listen to me. Everything you do and say is recorded.”
“Even here?”
“Here I can usually block outsiders, but one never knows. Müller is clever, and a senior member of the Administrative Council. They must make a determination before he can be charged, should the Examining Justice give such a recommendation in the first place. We need to follow protocol.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Don’t underestimate Müller.”
“Trust me, I’m not.”
“Whatever you say to Durand, you will make enemies one way or the other. You’ve become a celebrity down here, with all the good and bad that comes along with it.”
“Didn’t they watch the video?” Jess repeated sullenly, feeling the numb fear returning. “What about my father’s laptop? You said Müller wanted it for all my dad’s correspondence; that it could prove he was lying.”
“Durand has it, and it does.”
“What about my father’s data? Did you calculate Saturn’s orbit? Roger said he’d seen post-collapse simulations—”
“It’ll be a spectacular sight in eighteen months, if the clouds clear enough to see Saturn brush past us. It will pass at least a million kilometers away—but the encounter will bring a lot of other problems we’re still working to understand.” Ufuk produced a memory key from his pocket. “Another reason I asked you here. To give you this.”
He pressed it into Jess’s hand.
She stared at it. The scratched and beaten memory key that Roger had transferred her father’s astronomical maps into. All the desperation to save her father’s data, the lives of her parents sacrificed. All for nothing—but the man before her seemed genuine enough.
“I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me, Ufuk, really I am, so I hate to say this—but you’re a part of what happened. You’re also responsible.”
“This place,” Ufuk gestured around him, “carries the same insecurity and greed that underpinned the world before Nomad. I’m trying to do my best.”
“For who exactly?”
“Everyone has an agenda here, Jessica. No one is what they seem.”
“And that would include you?”
“You don’t trust me—don’t trust anyone, and I can understand that—but you will need friends in the coming days and weeks.” Ufuk’s voice was slow and measured, but a friendly grin still dimpled his cheeks. “I suggest you don’t isolate yourself.”
Jess co
nsidered this for a few seconds before asking: “Did you find Massarra?”
The man shook his head, again slow and measured. “I imagine she’s hiding.”
“She seemed awfully intent on getting here. What information do you have on her?”
“You telling us about her was the first time I’d heard of her—although we knew of the Levantines. She’s connected to some dangerous terrorists.”
“Dangerous is a relative term these days,” Jess said. “We need to find her, bring her to Sanctuary. She’s not an enemy.”
“Talk like that isn’t going to help you here.” Ufuk drew in a deep breath. “I suggest you keep this between us—but I’ll do my best to locate her. Now, let’s finish getting you a new leg, shall we?”
Chapter 2
Northern Italy
How in Allah’s name had she let Ufuk Erdogmus convince her into this?
Massarra pulled the blanket as tightly around her as she could manage with her hands bound by rope and numbed by cold. At night they tied her up. At least they had some sense to realize how dangerous she could be, but that was about as far as Massarra’s opinion of her captors’ abilities stretched.
It was dark; almost pitch black except for the flickering light of the fire sputtering in the hearth of the old farmhouse. She was huddled together with five others to share their warmth, blankets and everything else they could carry piled on top of them, but she was the only one tied up. The pervasive stench of sulfur still permeated everything, but cowering under these blankets, the human odor of sweat and fear overcame it.
Wind whistled in through the boarded-up windows despite their best attempts to seal them, and the fire provided scant warmth against the biting cold. During the dark days it never even heated up past freezing anymore—maybe not even to ten below Celsius today—but at nights the cold was a terror. At least twenty below freezing, maybe more, and this was just the start of December, as best as she could estimate.
How much colder would it get?
Ten feet in front of her, the old man Salman grunted as he lifted another scrap of a smashed table and heaved it into the fire. With a grimy hand, he tested his cleft lip. Even in the dim light it looked raw and swollen, maybe infected. He lifted the wool hat from his head to smooth back his stringy gray hair. “Tell me again why you are convinced we should continue north?”
Resistance (Nomad Book 3) Page 2
