The Salvation State

by Marcus Damanda

  They killed my mom and dad. They’re doing this to me on purpose. I will not play their game. I won’t, I won’t.

  “Shit,” she whispered, and waited, head upturned, for the sky to fall on her.

  She was in the same small swampy clearing where she had slept. Behind her, the lights beckoned her, sang to her. A spreading fog swathed her feet, slithering over the mud and through the brush. It made her thirsty, seeing it, even though she knew the fulfillment of her most immediate wish—water and food—would almost certainly make her sick again.

  Her useless, wobbly legs just didn’t seem to have the energy she needed to go forward or back. She stood, shaking a little, doing nothing. Her ears did not register the near-silent gush of overhead wind that heralded the approach of the collector, or if they did, her brain failed to translate the information. But she did see the ghostly white pillars, all eight of them, flame silently into existence and surround her. When they did, rising like compass points with herself at their center, she beheld their shadowy source directly above her: the air-ski.

  The tentacle spotlights were almost completely still, projecting the pillars in place without moving them. The ski itself hovered and swayed, spraying steam, hissing and breathing, and making no other noise. The figure riding it was impossible to make out as anything other than a silhouette, but Rebecca had no doubt it was the man she and Paula had hidden from in the attic. The one she had kneed in the balls. The one who had shot her.

  Rebecca’s lips curled in a snarl and she shouted, “Go to hell, asshole!”

  “Asshole” she had used before. Now she’d used it twice.

  Something dropped from the air-ski and landed in the fog right in front of her.

  Rebecca stepped back from it, wondering if she could still run. It’ll be gas. It’ll be a bomb. They’ve given up on me.

  Instead, the eight pillars bent inward, even as the tentacles curled like spider legs. Together they focused their lights on where the object had fallen. Together they appeared to be lifting it.

  A human head rose from the fog.

  ****

  Ruth watched Rebecca’s words go out over live television, all across New America. Most of the stations had video delay, sure—but some of the local ones probably didn’t. A few might even decide not to use the delay. Good TV was good TV, after all.

  Alone in her personal tent at the epicenter of the vigil, she replayed the footage again, her mouth half open in silent mortification.

  It had been a gamble, she knew, letting them see Rebecca. But they were all asking for it now. Clamoring for her. Not showing her had become a liability, had besmirched Second Salvations’ credibility and damaged the public trust. Rebecca’s very absence seemed to ask, What are you hiding?

  Ruth had been hoping the appearance of the air-ski would trigger the surrender event. Surely Rebecca had had enough and would welcome rescue with a glad and grateful heart, especially considering her condition.

  Instead, she got, Go to hell, asshole.

  Rebecca got something from the vigil too.

  The singing stopped, replaced by another noise. It began as a timid, uncertain patter, but it quickly spread.

  Applause.

  ****

  The applause didn’t reach Rebecca. The clappers were too far away, and the sound was not transmitted to her location.

  She was alone with the air-ski and the massive hovering head it projected before her. It was the size of the medicine ball in the school gym, bigger than whole people, a translucent spheroid that opened its mouth and spoke.

  “Rebecca, it’s me.”

  The face was Miss Paula’s, easily identified even blown up and without a body. But there was something off about this image—even apart from its magnified holographic enormity. Something was definitely wrong.

  And Rebecca knew it instantly. She just could not specifically tell what the wrongness was. Not at first.

  “Are you a recording, too?” she asked flatly. It’s all fake. Mom, Dad, Caroline, and now Miss Paula. And if they’re fake, the bear was probably fake.

  “No, Rebecca. I’m really talking to you. I can’t see you, but I can hear you.”

  Rebecca studied the image but didn’t speak. She didn’t trust it, didn’t trust anyone anymore, and doubted she ever would again.

  “They want me to tell you to turn yourself in. They want me to promise you food. Medical attention. They say they want to explain what really happened to your parents.”

  Rebecca wondered if it would hurt to go through the pillars projected by the air-ski. She didn’t think so. And beyond them lay the unbroken dark.

  She could end continuation of this torment right now. All she had to do was give up.

  But then she saw it. It wasn’t Miss Paula’s face. Miss Paula didn’t have twin pony tails. She had one that she liked to drape over her shoulder. But this image had two, identical on each side of her head.

  This was half of Miss Paula’s face, projected twice, with one as a mirror image of itself.

  What had happened to the other half?

  “You see it, don’t you?” Miss Paula said.

  Rebecca nodded.

  “They’re going to kill me for this, Rebecca,” she said. Then, with fresh tears, she added, “So you better not give up.”

  “Wait, no—” Rebecca started.

  “Now, go!”

  The image blinked out, cutting off a scream.

  The pillars were gone.

  And again, somehow, Rebecca ran.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Their Own Hands

  Rebecca on the Run: 0:18:45.

  “Is that how it is?” DC muttered under his breath. He had cut the live feed to public television just after Rebecca Riggs had screamed at him, well before projecting Paula Darby’s “message.” Now he killed the lights in the air-ski tentacles and switched on the spike landers. He palmed the console screen to infrared. “Not so fast.”

  Before Rebecca could make it out of the clearing, back to the relative safety of the trees, DC brought the air-ski to ground. Its eight legs gouged mud and dirt, spraying her in more filth as it scuttled over her. DC guided each appendage manually, his eyes never leaving the screen. He stabbed the ground repeatedly, always with a different tentacle, striking progressively closer with each terrible jab of the pitching vehicle.

  Rebecca shrieked, first ducking between the legs of the monstrous metal spider, then darting out ahead of it again.

  Another tentacle shot out, making her change direction again.

  Fsssh—chank.

  She was behind him now. DC guided the spider in a scuttling 180-degree turn and galloped after her. “I could have you any time,” he grumbled, knowing she would not hear him over the noise, not from twenty feet in the air. “Don’t you realize that?”

  Pacing her, he shot out another tentacle, forcing her to jump and roll.

  Fsssh—chank.

  He turned the monster again, laughing. Such fun, terrorizing the little fugitive bitch. Oh, how he wished he was allowed to just take her now, reel her up in two of the tentacle legs…

  This time, however, Rebecca got up and ran for him—straight in his direction. For a moment he had no idea what to make of that. He had no idea what to do. What was she thinking?

  He struck again.

  Fssh—chank.

  She wove between the gap in one pair of legs.

  Fssh—chank.

  And then another.

  He stabbed at her, close enough this time to almost graze her leg, and turned just as she ducked out from under him yet again. Nearly too late, he realized what she had done.

  The spider monster reeled and lurched, nearly throwing him. She’d manipulating him into tangling the vehicle’s legs. For precious seconds, time he would not get back, DC was paralyzed—and, if he didn’t act fast, the whole thing would fall. He was too close to ground for his parachute to soften the blow.

  He saw Rebecca escape into the trees, even as he righted
the situation the only way he could. He disengaged the tentacles, watching them collapse in a sparking helix on the clearing floor. Softly, DC swore.

  He hovered in place and did not pursue her. One flick of a switch reestablished the tracker tag, which he had temporarily shut off to unclutter the air-ski’s monitor screen while Rebecca had been in plain view. He was glad he’d also shut down the video feed in time, before the masses could have seen him outmaneuvered by a teenager—and, more importantly, before they could have seen Paula Darby’s projected “message.” He hadn’t had permission to cut the feed, but he knew Mrs. Black would not hold it against him after learning how completely the willful young prefect had gone off-script.

  He wondered if Barney and Wendy would go too far in response to that. It would not be the first time. DC didn’t want the woman dead. She was officially under arrest. The local magistrate had already scheduled processing for both prefects, and they would be expected in court at nine in the morning.

  Through the headset, he enjoyed total radio silence. Mrs. Black wasn’t second-guessing him, then. That much was good. He was in no mood.

  He had a fleeting thought that, as long as he was giving his own orders, he ought to just land right here and actually bag the runaway once and for all. He hadn’t forgotten his shock coils this time. He definitely wanted to be the one to do it, and it didn’t appear as though Rebecca would meekly surrender herself anytime soon.

  This little PR stunt of Mrs. Black’s was consuming time and resources.

  He turned the air-ski away from his scuttling prey, disgruntled. He hated this kind of “hearts and minds” stuff. The fear of God created far better believers than the love of God. He didn’t give a damn if the television audience was moved. If people were obedient, that was good enough for him.

  He’d never encountered such a rebellious young brat in his career. Clever too. And at only fifteen…

  It was hard not to like her.

  He noted, as he passed over the clustered vigil on the south end of New Sinai, that although the ground cameras panned to him, the kids did not cheer as they had been instructed to do. Nor were they praying. Nor were they singing. They weren’t even holding up their candles. Some pointed at him, but they were as silent as his vehicle. They watched him, collectively mute. In a crowd that size, the effect was disconcerting.

  Better get a handle on them, Mrs. Black. This is not going as planned.

  ****

  Rebecca scrambled deeper into the woods, her heart thudding. Branches slapped at her arms and legs, her body, her face, but she hardly felt them.

  In the dark, she never saw the jutting rock until her bare foot met it. Fresh, crunching agony asserted itself, refusing to be denied as she tumbled forward. Surprise took her breath as she spilled onto her stomach.

  God, why? she thought, spitting blood and dirt. She couldn’t have been so bad as to deserve all this. To be hunted down by the cops, agents of her own church, and just … killed.

  No more than her parents had.

  But there was no denying that man had tried to kill her, not once but twice. Third time was bound to be his charm if she just stayed where she was. She had to keep moving.

  She heaved in breath again, got back to her feet, and tested the sore one for functionality. The air-ski asshole was still out there, and now he’d be madder than ever. She forced thoughts of her parents from her mind. No time.

  The tentacle legs had crashed, but not the air-ski. Rebecca was grateful—both for showing up the cop and for not accidentally killing him. She didn’t want the death of another human being on her conscience, not even his.

  For now she’d walk. Running might get herself killed in the dark. She had to be more careful, at least until the cop landed and pursued her on foot.

  Got him good, though. Take that, officer. Teach you to try to stab me to death with your big, fancy monster-car.

  She smiled in spite of herself.

  ****

  Caroline couldn’t find her sign. Trust in God, Rebecca, it read, big black letters against a white background. She’d laid it down at her feet some minutes ago, at a convenient moment when none of the cameras were pointing in her direction, when the video screens were showing Rebecca in the woods.

  The approaching cop. The bright lights, making Rebecca shield her eyes.

  Go to hell, asshole…

  And then the screens had gone dark, even as the vigil cameras rose up again on cherry-pickers and swivels, refocusing on the crowd and taking in their response.

  Caroline had been the first to clap.

  She’d felt relatively safe doing it, as most of the kids surrounding her were taller than she was, and since she’d kept her hands at waist level, well out of camera view. She didn’t think any of these strangers would rat her out—certainly not Laura, the only kid in her immediate vicinity she actually knew. Caroline had listened to their talk. They’d been made to perform like circus animals. They didn’t appreciate standing outside in the rain for hours and hours. And only a few had gotten to be on camera—the ones who also held the signs. Who was Rebecca Riggs to them? Just another delinquent teenage kid who’d needed to be sent away, same as the rest of them. Same as Caroline. But now they had been forced to play a role in her capture for Second Salvations.

  No. Worse than that. They were being used to break her. They were being turned into instruments of manipulation and torture, used to ruin her in front of the whole wide world.

  Caroline had not expected the applause to spread. But it had, moving and swelling like an airborne virus—or like its cure, flushing the body clean in mere moments. When that had happened, she grew suddenly afraid. She expected some kind of retribution, and she didn’t think it would be long in coming.

  She got on her hands and knees and scrabbled around on the asphalt until, blessedly, she found her sign not three feet away, near the tape line that separated her from the camera crews. Absently kicked there, no doubt, by one of the anonymous boys and girls who stood next to her. Maybe she’d done it herself without knowing.

  She’d had enough of the cameras and TV today, both watching it and being on it. To Caroline, Rebecca was not a symbol. Even though they had only known each other for a week, Rebecca was her friend. The term Mrs. James used was “dorm sister,” but somehow even that familial word held less strength than “friend.”

  She knew Rebecca well enough to understand she had trust issues. She knew another of her so-called “friends” back home had betrayed her, leading to her eventual arrival at DTR. And yet she had been nice to Caroline, had talked with her in the dark while they lay in their separate beds, staring at the ceiling. They’d told each other things. They’d plotted her escapade with Brian together.

  Caroline had seen Brian earlier. He wasn’t one of the sign holders, but he was singing and praying, just like the rest of them. When their eyes had met, he’d looked troubled.

  Well, of course he had.

  Caroline recovered her sign and stood back up with it. When one of the cameras panned to her, she dutifully waved and managed something close to a smile. Everyone was so quiet, though. It was like a cemetery. But she could feel a gathering tension in the silence.

  Where was Miss Marcy?

  She must be at one of the other checkpoints.

  Caroline could not imagine what might be keeping her from this. She’d love this.

  Unlike Miss Paula. When Caroline thought of her—thought of how she and the others in the elevator had restrained Miss Paula, even as the head prefect offered no resistance at all—she wanted to cry again.

  No, you’ve had enough of that today too.

  The streetlights went out. The sound of electronic fizzing and the white glare of blinking strobe lights heralded the resurrection of the theater-sized television screens.

  Caroline could not help herself. Just like everyone else, she looked. She saw herself, blown up and in color, reciting her lines to Mrs. Fisher on News 4.

  Again.

&nb
sp; The people nearest to her weren’t looking at the screens, though. They were looking at her much smaller real self, the one who stood right there among them. Most were silent, but there were a few, far enough away so she could not see, who were booing her.

  I didn’t want to do it, she wanted to say, or to scream. They made me. Can’t you see?

  More than anything, she wanted to run away, like Rebecca, and hide.

  ****

  Rebecca on the Run: 0:19:31.

  All along the perimeter, the massive screens projected the interviews, one after the other, back to the residents of DTR and Prodigal Sons. That footage also went out across the majority of televisions along the mid-Atlantic, where Rebecca’s run was currently getting the most traction. But Mrs. Black wasn’t content with just showing the interviews. After her own interview with Mr. Graham, she had decided to air something considerably more … poignant.

  They showed Rebecca’s accusation, introduced by Deborah Fisher:

  “Second Salvations murdered my parents, and I’m running away.”

  “Those words,” Mrs. Fisher said, wearing her best bright yellow pantsuit with a cross on the collar, and mustering just the right level of gravitas to her voice, “were spoken less than a day ago, and already they’ve played like the proverbial shot heard ’round the world.”

  It was a huge risk, Mrs. Black knew, but as the clip had gone viral, it was high time she and Angel Island took ownership of its context. The actual accusation was not what had captured the imagination of so many godless Internet trolls, thousands of whom had taken to reposting the phrase “This is what the truth is,” as if they knew anything. Nevertheless, she hoped discrediting the accusation would achieve the desired effect.

  “What you’re about to see,” Mrs. Fisher went on, “is what really happened, as captured by camera monitor at the site of the accident. Rebecca Riggs has not seen this footage, and her new guardians at Second Salvations insist that it’s too early for her to do so.”