by Nirina Stone
The water is cold, but it’s also painful. It’s painful on my skin, and painful in my nose. I’m suddenly back in the water on the hunt and I’m convinced I’m drowning. Wait, could I still be in the water?
I’m sputtering and spitting and shaking, when I finally realize there’s no more water. Blair stands two feet away from me, his right hand around a thick green hose that’s now streaming water into the grass. His left hand hovers over a small silver button on the top of a rod in the ground.
“There,” he says. “If I’m to be your wake-up alarm, that’s how you get woken. Understood?”
What the hell? Who does he think he is? I’m freezing, I’m still tired, and now I’m furious. Why is he here, in my home, spraying me like some dangerous animal?
I don’t make a sound, I get up to charge at him—I stay low and run straight into his waist with my shoulder. I bring him down to the ground, then I’m pummelling his face with all my might.
He yells out and throws me off him as easily as he dragged me into the yard.
I slip backwards and fall back on my butt, into a slick circle of mud. Great. I stay put and glare up at him, still intent on hurting him back the moment he thinks he’s safe.
But instead of speaking, he pushes the button to turn the water back on and he’s spraying me again until my screams are cut off into gargles and choking coughs. He wants to kill me this way—he means to drown me! In my own backyard!
He finally drops the hose and plops himself on one of our chairs. “Come at me again, and the hose stays on the rest of the day.”
He watches me carefully, that glimmer back in his eye. “What the hell is wrong with you? It’s a good thing you’re a Mason, or I’d have you in a cell so fast.”
Ha! Like he could just throw me in a cell for no good reason. “For what?”
“For wasting my time,” he says. “Oh that’s not good enough for you? Then, officially, for—pissing me off. And if you think your mother or Leader Strohm will give me trouble for that, I’ll tell them you physically attacked a commander.”
That would be cause enough, I guess. Still—who is he to threaten me?
“I’m not afraid of you or your cells,” I say. I’ve been in one. It’s not that bad. It wasn’t great, but at least it was quiet. It was small.
“Is that what you like to tell yourself?” he says.
I want to tell him to go away, to leave me alone, to shove the hose elsewhere. Somewhere specific that he won’t like.
Instead I say, “Why are you here, Blair?”
“Your mother asked me to check in on you. I sent someone the last couple of days, and they said you didn’t open the door. So—here I am, making sure you’re not dead.”
“I’m alive,” I reply.
He raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that? Because you look and smell an awful lot like death.”
Ugh. “What do you want?”
“I want my people in Haven to pull their own weight. You’re a liability right now. I don’t—I don’t know what this is—but you need to go sort it out. We can’t have a Legacy sleeping all day.”
He’s got a point, of course. People will arrive from Apex, soon. Many of them will be ex-Prospo, and all of them will watch our actions closely. They can’t see one of the Legacies weak like this. Unable to stay awake. Unable to work. Unable to do anything. I have to get my act together. I have to go see a doctor.
Blair doesn’t leave until I’m showered, dressed, and back on the Iliad to see a doctor. I don’t bother telling him to go away any more. I would have crawled back in bed the moment he turned away.
The doctor’s name is Andrew Johns. I don’t recognize him or his name. He tells me he was on another Soren ship for a while.
I now know there are four more Soren ships out on the great oceans, floating through the world, looking for land and resources for us.
The doctor has me sit in front of him. The office is tiny. My nausea is back. When he asks if I’m alright, I say, “Why can’t you be based in Haven? Why are you on the Iliad?”
Though the ship’s docked, I can feel the ground unsteady beneath me. I gulp and think other thoughts.
He chuckles. “Land is—it makes me uncomfortable. I was born on a ship and lived my entire life on ships. I’m a water animal, what can I say?”
I watch him carefully. How bizarre. A human being that doesn’t feel right on land. The Sorens still surprise me.
Then I remember that Strohm was also born on a boat. I wonder how he’s going, living in Prospo City—or what is now called Liberty—several minutes away from the nearest ship. I wonder if that’s why he’s been more sullen lately.
Then I realize that Doctor Johns is speaking to me and I haven’t heard a single word he’s said.
He chuckles again. “Have you had a difficult time focusing, Mason?” he asks.
I nod, yes. It’s disconcerting, to say the least. I don’t feel like myself at all.
“Alright,” he says. “Let’s do a thorough exam. Let’s see what’s going on.”
After he checks me, he sits back and watches my eyes for a moment. “Tell me when your lack of focus started,” he says.
I try to rewind my thoughts but tell him I really can’t remember.
“We will need to boost your nanites, I think,” he mutters.
All people of Apex are born with nanites in our bodies. They help us heal fast, they prevent diseases, and they’ve extended our lifespans far beyond what the ancients could ever imagine.
Before we brought down P-City, the only people who had access to boosters were the Prospo. The rest of us could still die of diseases our nanites couldn’t catch in time without them.
Now, boosters are available to everyone.
When I ask the doctor why my nanites need any boosting, he says, “I’m seeing something like this happen with some other people in Haven. I wonder—” He peers at my eyes again. “I don’t know. I have to run some tests.”
He has a syringebot take four vials of blood from my arm, then he has the bot inject me with nanoboosters. “It will help you out of this—this slump, for lack of a better word. I suggest you stay outdoors as much as possible. Enjoy the sun. Take more walks.”
“What’s wrong with me?” I ask.
“Nothing permanent,” he says. “You have a mild case of a sickness we haven’t seen since the days of the ancients. We call it a malaise, of sorts. I’ll run tests to make sure it’s not much more than that.” Then he sends me on my way and gets on the MirrorComm.
A malaise? Well at least it doesn’t sound too serious.
I haven’t been on the Iliad in a few days. For a moment, I think of finding a MirrorComm myself to connect with Strohm, but realize that I’d sooner do anything else right now.
I make my way off the ship as soon as I can, still wondering how some Sorens would prefer living on water rather than land.
Hoping not to bump into Commander Blair again, I jog past the homes and climb up, up, up into the forested hill behind our houses. The boosters are working well because I had no interest in climbing before receiving them.
I haven’t been into the forest in a while. It gets thicker the farther up the hill I get. I keep moving, intent on stopping only when I reach the absolute top which I reach in forty minutes. It smells sweeter up here, fresher. I hear a couple of birds shrill in the trees and the rustling of leaves, and that’s all. I find a clear enough hillock that faces our town and sit, watching the world below me.
Haven stretches out ahead, in ten lines of house after house after identical house. They said it was faster to build it that way.
Once Soren families arrive, they will be free to build up or sideways any which way they like. For now, it’s ten rows of the same frame cloned a thousand times.
One of the Constructbots is working now, along the outer perimeter, just within my sight. Its red metal arms move side to side as it builds yet another home.
Just one machine is enough to build entire
houses, using nozzles to layer liquid concrete for the various walls, floors, ceilings, already with tubes and wires set in them. It places all the pieces together like puzzles. Then it seals everything until what looks to be nothing but dirt and mess and rubble turns into a liveable home in no time at all.
Just fifty feet away from the bot, I see a few kids playing, a few people standing and chatting with their neighbours. Otherwise, it’s empty and quiet but for the machines.
I bet it will be surreal when every single house has a family living it. I’m looking forward to that—to the new community I’ve helped build. There’s even a street on the southwest end of town in my name. Well, the Mason name, but still—
I hear a soft rustle behind me and turn around.
There’s no one of course. It was probably just wind. The sun beams through a break in the trees above so I lie back and close my eyes and lift my face up to it. It’s cool up here, but not cold.
Per our books, it used to get much colder this far north—there were days when people would spend months on end mostly indoors because they couldn’t ever leave.
There was snow—a cold precipitation that resembled fluffy cream or heavy clouds, but apparently tasted like freezing water. I close my eyes as I get lost in thoughts of ancient days with snow.
Then I hear a louder rustle, and a definite footstep. I turn again and see a small bush about ten feet away. A portion of it sways.
Hoping it’s not a boar or wolf or any of the other more aggressive animals we’ve chased away, I yell, “Hey! Hey you! Get outta here.”
They told me that loud noises scare away most animals—but I hope it’s not a big one. Or a small fast one with teeth. I yell, “Hey!” again, but the bush stays still. I carefully get up to my feet and stomp my way over to the bush.
That’s when she runs out from behind it and dashes away faster than I can catch her. She’s short, probably four feet tall. At first I think she’s one of the kids playing hooky from school. Despite her speed, I take a good look at her. She has black hair, cut short and sticking up like little spikes every which way.
I would have thought she was a boy but for her face—small, delicate, long lashed. I catch a flash of green eyes, fierce eyes, though they’re big and bright like she’s scared. Her face is brown and dirt-streaked.
More surprising than all that, she’s naked, but for a small pair of dirty green shorts.
I’m suddenly certain she’s not one of us, and the realization hits me hard. We’re supposed to be the only people here.
I break into a run, but she’s far too fast for me. How can someone run up a hill that fast? I try to keep up, but she rounds a corner and is gone—not so much as another rustle or step astray. I stop in a clearing, huffing and wheezing.
All the sleeping certainly didn’t do my legs or my lungs any favours. I look left and right, but it’s like she never was. Where did she come from? Mother tells me there was no one here when they first arrived.
If there’s another community somewhere, surely Mother’s people would have seen them?
And how did the girl disappear so fast? I stop and lean on my knees, trying to catch my breath. Then I turn around and walk back down the hill.
I make my way to Commander Blair’s home, half-hoping he’s not actually there. I’d much rather avoid his glaring eyes right now, but if there’s another community of people nearby, the commander needs to know about it.
He opens the door wide, and eyes me up and down—the same way he did before he tried to drown me with the hose. I try in vain to think of something else than this morning.
“Are you better?” he asks.
I nod and walk through the door into his house. It is an exact replica of mine and Mother’s, with one main difference.
He has transformed the inside to clone his cabin on the Iliad. It’s wide open. He seems to have something against walls because even his wide balcony doors are opened out to his backyard. I can see all corners of his home, barring the bedroom and bathroom. So much wide open space. It feels—lavish.
“So,” he says, “what was wrong with you?”
I look up at him. His eyes burn into mine—is he still angry about my state in the last couple of days?
“Doctor Johns called it a malaise. They’re running blood tests in case it’s something else,” I say. “But the doctor gave me a booster for my nanites.”
“Good,” he says. “Good. At least it doesn’t sound serious.” That was my thought too. “We don’t need our people sleeping all day.” I don’t respond to that. He’s right. “We need everyone working at full capacity here. We can’t have anyone slacking off or not doing as they’re expected. To be a Soren is to work hard, to be part of the capable machine.”
The words are familiar—they were written by his Great Grandmother, Mornie Blair. I still have a copy of her book in my house. According to her, and so, according to the Sorens, each one of us is a part of a large machine. Each part needs to be in good working condition for the larger part to be effective.
If one part fails, the machine will still work, but it won’t be as efficient. It’s something I have a hard time understanding fully. I’ve opened up several machines and have always believed every single piece in them is necessary to keep them working. If any piece is not working at full capacity, well, the machine’s no longer efficient and needs to be tinkered with until it is again.
Good is simply not good enough.
Still, I try to wrap my head around it, to think more like the Sorens do. After all, they are my people now.
Before I reply, there’s a loud knock on his front door. Blair stands to open it wide. It’s one of his men—I think the name is Richards. He says, “You need to come now, Blair. We’ve caught another one in the—” he stops, his eyes on me. I stand and frown in his direction.
Another one? Another what? An animal? It has to be a person, or Richards wouldn’t be reporting it, right? So did they catch the girl I saw? Before I can ask, Blair looks back at me.
“You need to leave, Mason. Intel. I’ll have someone check in on you later.”
He waits until I’m out the door and shuts it resolutely behind me. Did they catch her? Despite my intention to talk to Blair about her, I suddenly remember how the Soren handle their prisoners and shudder.
What are they doing to her? Who is she? What is she if she’s not a Soren? I decide I need to find out, and I need to go see her. I need to learn what’s going on. I don’t know where to start, but decide to get on the Iliad.
I know exactly who to ask—Strohm.
3
The State of Affairs
He pops up on the MirrorComm, as exhausted as the last time I saw him. He tells me he only has five minutes to talk. He’s going to meet with Mother about some intel. Of course.
“Blair’s men caught someone,” I say. “And it sounds like this isn’t the first time. What’s going on?”
I’ve learnt that, with Mother and Strohm, it’s best to ask the questions with authority, like I have a right to know what’s going on. Even though I know that’s further from the truth than I’d like to imagine.
I’m part of the team building our community here in Haven, but I’m still not privy to whatever the military knows.
Strohm’s eyes don’t change. He watches me intently. He sighs and leans forward onto his elbows as if to tell me something important. “I suggest you leave Blair and his men to do what they need to do to keep the community safe.”
That’s it? That’s all he has to say to me? “Strohm,” I say. “I thought this land was empty when we first arrived here. Who are these people?”
“Mason,” he says. He’s using his Interviewer voice.
“Strohm,” I reply, still frowning.
“It was empty,” he says. “It is. These are occasional travellers that pass through. They’re a bit backward. They don’t belong there.”
“Where are they from?” I ask.
He sighs again. Why is it so difficu
lt to answer my questions? “They’re from further North,” he says. “Or possibly East. We can’t be certain.”
“Where are they being held?”
“Mason,” he says again. “You know I can’t tell you that. Let Blair and his men handle this. Let them do their job, what they’re supposed to do.”
“But I—”
“Mason. Why don’t you focus on getting everything ready for the Soren people. They’ll be heading your way soon. Don’t get involved in things that you simply don’t understand.”
I picture the little girl, her scared big green eyes. I wonder if they have her locked up in a cold black room like the one I was in when they first kidnapped me. I wonder if she’s hungry. If she’s cold. I don’t know why, but I don’t want her to be in one of those rooms.
“You’re not letting this go, are you?” he asks. I look up at him and raise an eyebrow. I planned to tell him about the girl, to tell him that I was worried about her. She seemed so little—maybe eight or ten years old. She doesn’t belong in a black cell.
But I decide not to say a word to him.
Eric knows about the people. Eric knows about Blair’s men imprisoning them. He’s obviously not concerned with it, and he’s not about to humour me. So I keep my mouth shut. I will have to find another way to find where they have her.
I sign off with Strohm, annoyed with his cold stare. What happened to the Eric that I grew to like on the Iliad? I have a feeling he’s long gone. I have a feeling this new one, this new Leader Strohm has nothing to do with that man, but I can’t think of that right now. I have to figure out a way to find out where they have her.
I’ll start with the cells on the Iliad—it’s still better protected and better supplied than our community on land. So it’s as good a place as any to start. I head into the bowels of the Iliad, chin up in the air. This plan may not work, but what have I got to lose? I brace myself to bump into one of the security people down here, but there’s no one—not so much as one guard. I walk down the empty hall, my footsteps echoing hollowly on the dark grey walls in the Iliad’s belly.
