Nick and Cass—he had to get back to warn them. Suddenly he was struck by a thought that cut through his panic. The bot had found him, but Nick and Cass were hopefully still safe, and here he was, leading the bot right to them. He shifted course, diving off to the south. He’d lead it away from his brother and sister first, and then if he could lose the bot, he’d find his way back to them.
Kevin was flying, ducking under branches and jumping over roots and rocks. He took a quick glance behind him and saw nothing and felt a sliver of hope, and then he ran past a tree and a gray arm shot out and Kevin slammed into it face-first, not having enough time to get his hands up. It was like running into a wall. He heard a crack—his nose—and he flew backward, slamming onto the ground. The wind was knocked out of him, and he couldn’t breathe, and the world was bright white, and then it slowly leeched back to green and brown and blue again. His nose throbbed and he could feel something running down his face—blood?
He struggled to sit up, groaning, but then a gray arm pushed down on his chest and the bot face loomed above his. Close up, the patchwork face was a hideous mask of gray plastic and some sort of brown leather. The brown spots were literally sewn on; he could see the black-threaded needlework. The dead, lidless green eyes stared down at him. He struggled to move, but he was still dazed from his collision and the bot was too strong.
“Let me up!” he yelled, and the blood from his broken nose ran down into his mouth. He tasted the bitter iron tang and had to cough and spit to keep from choking.
“Please keep your voice down,” said a staccato female voice that came from the bot, although the lips didn’t move. “There are hostile robotic humanoids and hovercraft nearby. We apologize for the injury. The violence was regrettable but necessary. You must come with us, for your safety.”
Hostile robots nearby? thought Kevin. Chasing him through the woods and breaking his nose didn’t qualify as hostile? “Rust yourself,” said Kevin. He began struggling to rise again.
A second bot face leaned over him, into his field of vision. “There is no time,” said the second bot, with a male voice. “Again, we regret and apologize for the necessary violence.” Kevin wondered why the bots were behaving this way, and then the bot reached down and pinched a spot hard on Kevin’s neck just above his left shoulder. Kevin felt a burst of pain that began at the pinch and bloomed across his chest, up to his head, and then all was black.
CHAPTER 3
CASS WAS DIGGING THROUGH HER BACKPACK FOR ANY SCRAPS OF FOOD for breakfast—even though she knew there’d be nothing to find—when she heard the faint scream, far off in the direction Kevin had gone. She stood, spun toward Nick. Nick stood rigid, facing the direction of the noise. He looked at Cass. “Kevin,” he said. “Come on.” He ran into the forest.
“Rust,” said Cass, lightheaded and cottonmouthed with adrenaline and fear. She dropped her pack and took off after Nick. She quickly caught up to him and then dashed into the lead.
“Wait!” said Nick, but Cass ignored him, continuing to pull ahead. At full speed, nobody—at least nobody from their Freepost—could keep up with Cass in the woods. The trees and underbrush barely even touched her as she dashed through the forest. It had to be nothing, she told herself. Probably wasn’t even him. Or maybe he just fell into a cold stream getting the water, the idiot. But she knew that even Kevin wasn’t stupid enough to scream unless he was in real danger.
She wasn’t even sure where she was going, but she pushed herself to move even faster, leaving Nick farther behind. Her little brother was in trouble.
Cass ducked under a chest-high branch and then she saw, in her peripheral vision, a glimpse of something gray in the distance to the southwest. A person? A bot? She adjusted her course, heading straight toward what she had seen.
There was a flash of movement from a tree to her right, and then a crackle and a burst of light, and the world exploded.
All was quiet and calm.
The sky was blue through the green trees.
Cass lay on the ground, looking up, her vision slowly curling back into focus. A lone white cloud hung motionless in the sky. A beautiful day, thought Cass. But wait . . . what . . . why . . . She fought to pull her thoughts together. There had been a loud noise. Her ears were still ringing. And a flash of light. An explosion, she thought calmly. She knew she should be moving, not just lying on the ground staring at the sky like she was taking a nap at a kidbon. Her mother would tell her, with a smile, to get up and do something productive. Her brothers would tease her for tripping. Her father would help her up and brush the dirt off her.
She felt a wetness on her belly and back—she must have landed in a puddle. Well, she had found that water source that Kevin had been looking for, at least. Cass reached down and felt her shirt. Soaked. It began to hurt to breathe . . . She found she could barely suck in air, like she was trying to breathe through a straw. She held her hand up to her face. It was bright red.
Red? Red water? Cass felt dizzy and confused. She fought for another breath, trying to fill her lungs, but only managing a shallow gasp. Blood? She tried to sit up, but found that she couldn’t move her torso or her arms. She managed to lift her head for a moment to look down toward her toes. Yes, there was blood. Lots of blood. A tree branch jutted out of her right side, above her belly. A flash of white bone was visible up at her right ribcage.
She still felt so strangely calm. She must have landed funny when she got lased, she thought dispassionately. Somehow managed to get a branch stuck through her. Punctured a lung, judging by where it was, and how it was so hard to breathe . . . Cass reached down again, felt her wet ribcage, touched the stick jutting out of her—could she pull it out? Should she try?—and then without warning a wall of pain rolled over her and she cried out. She wanted to scream, the pain was so horrible—a burning, like someone was holding a torch against her ribs and wouldn’t take it away—but she could barely draw a breath, and all that came out of her mouth was a choked sob.
“Help me,” she whispered. Her vision was tunneling—the blue sky was growing dark at the edges, and she fought to remain conscious, to push back the blackness. She was Cass. She was on the forest floor. She was badly hurt.
“Nick,” she said. “Mom.” But nobody came. She was alone. The black edges pushed inward again, and she couldn’t stop it, and then the pain began to fade, to wash into the grass, to flow away from her body. She realized, calm again, comfortable almost, that she was going to die.
CHAPTER 4
CASS DASHED PAST NICK, AND HE CALLED AFTER HER TO SLOW DOWN, but she ignored him. He tried to push himself to move even faster, but there was no way he could keep up with Cass, even if he weren’t injured.
Nick could still hear Kevin’s scream echoing in his head. It had been Kevin, as much as he tried to convince himself that it had been something else, a bird maybe. No, it was his brother, in trouble. In trouble because Nick had let him wander off on his own when they were only a few hours from the City. With bots and armed men and who knew what else in the woods. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Nick pushed aside branches, ducking and leaping as best he could.
And then he saw the flash from the south, heard the crackling boom, found himself on the ground with the wind knocked out of him. He struggled to breathe, to pull his scrambled thoughts together. Explosion. Bots. Must be bots. Kevin. Cass. Were they okay?
Nick lifted his head and saw Cass ten feet in front of him, lying motionless on her back. There was smoke rising from her body, and a stick jutted out of her shirt. Nick began to crawl toward her, still too dazed to stand. He was confused. The stick . . . How could the stick be jutting out of her shirt? He reached her, and touched the stick, and saw the pool of blood. Cass had her eyes closed and she was so pale and her breaths came fast and shallow, like a dog panting, and Nick felt a rush of horror.
“Cass!” he hissed. “Cass, open your eyes!” Nick could see her eyes darting back and forth under her shut eyelids. He was afraid to touch
her—he didn’t want to jostle the stick, the stick that surely had pierced her lung, that was causing all the blood—how could she still be alive, with all that blood on the grass? He began to cry. “Cass!” he said again, but she didn’t respond. His sister was dying. Bots were nearby. He got up on his hands and feet and tried to slip his hands under Cass to pick her up, but as he jostled her she moaned and cried out weakly without opening her eyes. Nick pulled his hands away. He stared at his palms. They were slick with blood. Cass was going to bleed to death in just a few minutes. Cass was going to die, right here, while he watched.
The bots. Nick realized, with a wave of dizzy nausea, what he had to do. The bots were Cass’s only chance. He bent down and touched his forehead to Cass’s cheek, then whispered in her ear. “Don’t die,” he said, his voice choking. “Stay alive, and I’ll come for you, I promise.”
Nick ran to a nearby bush and dove under it, burrowing in as deep as he could, ignoring the cuts and scrapes on his arms and cheeks. He turned and peered out, barely able to see Cass through the crisscross of the bush’s brambles. “Come on,” he whispered. “Come get her, you bastards.”
A few more silent moments passed, and Nick could barely stand watching Cass just lie there, breathing raggedly, bleeding. He was about to crawl back out, to be with her—he couldn’t just let her die all alone—and then he heard a whirring hum, and a small sphere bot, a scout, appeared from the south and hovered over Cass. It ran a red light up and down the length of Cass’s body as it bobbed up and down gently in the air. It then began to float toward Nick’s hiding spot. No, thought Nick. Not me. Take care of Cass. I still need to find Kevin. . . .
The scout stopped a few feet from the bush, hesitated, and then floated back to Cass. A Petey appeared, pushing noisily through the trees. It bent down over Cass. Nick held his breath. This was it. The Petey reached down toward Cass with one of its massive arms, and a brief burst of bright yellow light covered the stick jutting out of Cass’s chest. The stick quickly burned away, crisping to black flakes. Cass groaned. The Petey rolled Cass onto her side and held her there with one arm while it repeated the cauterizing burst on her back. Cass groaned again when he set her back down. The scout bot bobbed lower, hovering just above Cass’s head. A thin black tube extended out from the sphere, touched Cass’s neck for a moment, and then retracted into the bot. Cass shuddered and arched her back, then lay back down, and her panting ragged breath slowed and deepened. The Petey slipped its hands under Cass, and with surprising gentleness, picked her up. It carried her away to the south, her head and legs dangling. The scout sphere followed.
Nick watched them go, tears streaming down his face, hugging himself tightly so he wouldn’t make a sound as he cried.
CHAPTER 5
KEVIN WOKE SLOWLY, DISORIENTED, WITH A HORRIBLE HEADACHE. HAD he fallen asleep? He realized he was lying awkwardly on his back. The sky and trees above him were moving, and he was cradled in someone’s pale, hairless arms. He turned his head, feeling a sharp pain on the left side of his neck, and saw what was carrying him.
It all rushed back to him—the patch-faced bots, his capture, his broken nose, which began to throb brutally as soon as he remembered it. He started to thrash in the bot’s arms, trying to break away.
The bot tightened its grip, becoming painful on his ribs, and stopped walking. It looked down at Kevin with its emotionless face. “Please do not struggle.” It was the one with the female voice.
Kevin stopped moving, barely able to control his anger. “Let me go,” he said between clenched teeth.
“We are sorry,” said the bot, “but we cannot do that.”
“I’m not going back to the City,” said Kevin. “I’m not being re-educated.” He meant it—he’d do whatever he had to. He wasn’t going to have his memories destroyed.
The bot stared at Kevin quietly for a moment. “We are not taking you to any City. We are not hostile.”
“So breaking my nose and knocking me out aren’t hostile?” Kevin began to struggle again. “Let me go!”
The bot tightened its grip further, compressing Kevin’s ribs painfully and making it hard to breathe. “We repeat, we regret the necessary violence. Hostile robotic humanoids were in the vicinity. It was imperative that we intervened.” The bot began walking again, although awkwardly, since Kevin continued to fight. After a few moments the bot stopped again. The second bot stepped into Kevin’s field of vision.
“We should not linger,” said the second bot, with a male voice.
“Agreed,” said the female-voiced bot. “It is regrettable, but perhaps we should render the human unconscious again.”
“No!” said Kevin. He stopped moving. “Just let me down. I’ll go with you.”
Kevin was surprised when the bot set him down on his feet.
“Do not try to escape,” said the male bot. “Now that we have intervened, we must bring you to the Island.”
“The island?” said Kevin.
“You will be afforded the Island’s protection.”
“I don’t want any protection,” said Kevin. “Go rust yourselves.”
“If you try to escape, we will take all necessary measures to subdue you again,” said the male bot. “Walk now, or be carried.”
“I’ll walk,” said Kevin. He’d have a better chance of escaping if he was on his feet.
The male robot began walking, and the other bot nudged Kevin forward, so he followed. They hiked, Kevin sandwiched between the two bots. Kevin took stock. He was lost; he didn’t know how long he had been unconscious or which direction these strange bots had taken him. His brother and sister were probably looking for them, if they weren’t captured themselves. He could run, but in what direction? And what if the bots had some sort of lases? Even if they didn’t, they were probably just as fast as him, if not faster.
For now, it seemed, the smartest thing to do was cooperate and wait for a better time to bolt, and find Nick and Cass.
Kevin studied his captors as they walked. They seemed similar to the Lecturers that Nick had described—slender, with long arms and necks, and those dead green eyes. Their skin, though, set them apart from any City bots he had seen or heard about. The patchwork seemed like a mix of organic and synthetic—almost as if the bots had run out of their neo-plastic and needed to finish the job with cured leather. Like patching a pair of pants, but with flesh instead of cloth. It was horrible.
They continued for about a half hour through the thin forest, occasionally breaking out of the tree cover onto cracked roadways lined by pre-Rev structures. The bots hurried through these developed areas, leading Kevin quickly back into the cover of the trees.
Kevin was feeling steadily more dizzy and weak. His broken nose was throbbing with each heartbeat. The bots kept their steady, relentless pace. Finally Kevin stumbled, his vision tunneling, then just stopped and sat down. “Water,” he said.
“We are nearly there,” said the female bot.
The male bot turned around and pointed at Kevin. “Stand. Walk.”
“No and no,” said Kevin. “You broke my nose and probably gave me brain damage with that knockout pinch you used on me and I need some water before I pass out again. I don’t run on an electro-magnetic power core.”
The male bot walked toward Kevin. “We are five hundred meters from the Island. There is abundant clean water inside the Wall perimeter. You will walk.”
“You will kiss my fleshy human butt,” said Kevin, angrily wiping a line of sweat off his face. The back of his hand grazed his broken nose, and he sucked in a gasp and gritted his teeth from the sudden sharp pain. The bot raised its arm and reached for Kevin. Kevin flinched, scrambling to his feet, and the female bot slid between Kevin and the male bot. “No,” it said. “We do not want to cause any permanent damage.” The male bot said nothing, but lowered its arm.
The female bot turned to Kevin. “Come,” it said. “We have nearly arrived. You do not want to be rendered unconscious again.”
Kevin s
hrugged, trying to look unconcerned, although his heart was in his throat. “Fine,” he said. “Just keep your boyfriend away from me.”
The bot said nothing, just staring at Kevin with its lidless eyes, and he imagined it was trying to process the concept of having a boyfriend. Good. Maybe I’ll blow one of your nanocircuits, he thought. The bot turned away. They began walking again.
A few minutes later, the trees opened up into a small clearing, and the bots stopped.
“I need water,” said Kevin.
“We have arrived at the Island,” said the male bot. “Wait. The Wall cloak is being tested and will power down momentarily.”
“Well, wonderful,” said Kevin. “Nice grass. Very impress—” He cut himself off as the air in front of him shimmered and the clearing and trees began to warp and twist like a kaleidoscope. “What . . .” he said. The clearing faded as it twisted, then went black, and then, as if a lightstick had been flicked, Kevin was staring at the Island.
A moment ago Kevin had been looking at grass and trees in a small clearing in the woods. And now . . . a wall loomed, twenty feet high and stretching a hundred yards to the left and right. It was timber, stacked horizontally, but every twenty yards or so, lodged into the wood, rose a vertical metal pylon. And when Kevin looked more closely, he could see rubberized conduction lines running between the pylons, tucked into the caulked gaps between the logs.
Directly in front of them was an arched opening in the wall. Four figures stood shoulder to shoulder in the archway, blocking Kevin’s view of what lay inside the wall. Two of the figures were human—a large, bulky man, and a tall, thin woman. The woman was holding a burst rifle, pointed down at the dirt, her finger off the trigger but resting nearby. The other two were bots, identical to Kevin’s captors except with individual patterns of patchwork on their skins.
Fugitive X Page 2
