by K A Riley
“What are you talking about?” Sara teases. “You killed half the Unsettled back there in the desert!”
I tell Sara to stop it, but she brushes me off with a wave of her hand. “I think he may have even made some of their heads explode!”
Now, Libra and Mattea both jump in, telling Sara to shut her trap. She doesn’t look too happy about being confronted or told what to do, but at least she stops talking.
That gives me the time I need to think of a plan. “Mattea and I will go first. We’ll pretend to be lost travelers. People come and go around here all the time, so that’ll be believable. Mattea can use her language skills to deal with anyone suspicious.”
I glance over to Mattea who’s looking at me like I’m crazy. I ask her what’s wrong.
She swallows hard. “It’s just…you’re asking me to use abilities I don’t really know how to control all that well, yet. You saw what happened back there with that girl. I tried to communicate with her, but it didn’t work.”
“Maybe not at first,” I remind her. “But your interrogation went great. We couldn’t have understood a thing that girl was saying without you, and we never would have found this place. And listen, we might not even need for you to do it again. If you and I can at least sneak in close enough to get us some intel…”
“Okay,” Mattea nods. “We can do this.”
We’re just getting ready to put my great plan into action when we hear the sliding click of metal on metal, a sound I’d recognize even without our recent Weapons Training classes.
We whip around to see eight well-dressed men and women in matching black suits with crisp white shirts and starched yellow ties. They’ve got their rifles cocked as they surround us with murder in their eyes.
A million scenarios flash though my mind in a split second. Most of them involve me and my Cohort, heroically and with blinding speed, putting our training into action and taking down our eight assailants.
The scenario that actually happens, though, is a lot different.
Yes. We draw our weapons.
Yes. We leap into combat positions like we’ve been taught.
But that’s about as far as we get.
One of the women in the group sweeps her hand in front of her as if she’s wiping morning dew off a pane of glass, and it’s like the whole world’s dropped out of normal gear and down into neutral.
My body wilts, and my Cohort and I drop to our knees.
Without a word, four of the men in the circle around us fire their weapons.
Each weapon unleashes a hail of tiny barbs that pierce our skin and release an excruciating electric charge that causes our muscles to seize up.
So much for fearless leadership, Branwynne. After all this time and all the faith everyone’s put in you, you should really be better at this.
It’s the very last thing I think before my entire body goes completely slack, my eyes roll back, and unconsciousness washes over me in an endless, suffocating wave.
35
Galaxy Eyes
I’m standing.
No. Not standing.
I’m…floating?
If I’m floating, how come I’m not wet?
I wiggle my fingers and toes. My hands, feet, arms, legs…it feels like they’re attached to my body but a mile away at the same time.
It hurts, but I manage to open my eyes.
Instead of relieved, I’m blinded by a sudden explosion of white light that sears through my brain like an electric current.
Wincing hard, I do my best to blink away the pain. The bright burst clears to reveal three things:
I’m alone.
I’m suspended in some sort of glass bubble.
And there’s someone on the outside looking in.
It’s a man, maybe forty or fifty years old. He’s bald. But not old-man bald. And not bald like War. It’s like he never had any hair on his head in his life. And not just on his head, either. He’s got no eyebrows or eyelashes and no hint of stubble on his sharp, angled jaw.
His broad, powerful shoulders contrast with his lean lower body to give him an overall sculpted, triangular shape.
Under his gold-colored jumpsuit with black trim around the neckline and sleeves, the exposed, gray-veined skin on his face, neck, and hands is stone-white but still tight, almost polished.
Finally. Someone found a way to animate a marble statue and wrap it up in a banana peel.
After a quick scan of the room, I don’t see my Cohort and can’t make out more than shadows, so I swing my eyes back around to his.
At first, I think maybe it’s a trick of the light or a distortion from the curved glass or the aftereffects of getting my sight back so suddenly.
But no. The man’s eyes, like his skin, are white. No irises. No pupils. Just white with tiny specks moving around in dark clusters, like someone sprinkled black pepper over a hard-boiled egg.
Basically, the opposite of mine.
I can’t tell if this man is earthly handsome or alien eerie.
With his hands clasped behind his back, he leans forward and stares through the glass.
“Welcome back. It was a close call between life and death. I’m glad you chose the former.”
His voice—a smooth, even baritone—is nothing like his looks.
I squint away the last bits of pain shooting through my head and try to talk, but nothing comes out.
The man shakes his head and leans even closer to the glass.
“So, it’s true. You have Galaxy Eyes.” He puts a finger to his face and tugs down the lower lid of his own eye. “Takes one to know one, right?”
I know I’m the one being held captive, but I want to interrogate this strange man. I want to ask him a million questions, but I force myself to ignore him while I try to have a look around and assess the place and the situation like I’ve been trained to do.
Focusing past the marble man and his speckled eyes, I take in as much as possible.
I’m in a bubble, and I can’t move. There are panels missing in the white drop-ceiling, and I can make out what I think is a surface of jagged rock. Am I in a cave? There are banks of quantum computer consoles, holo-displays, and input panels running the length of the walls on either side of me. There’s a long table behind the man, and a silver door behind that. Is this a lab? A low-tech Processor of some kind?
Wait…
Galaxy Eyes?
I repeat the words. No sound comes out, but the man, reading my lips, smiles and nods.
Gathering whatever strands of strength I can find, I start to ask him who he is, where my Cohort and Haida Gwaii are, what he’s talking about—the normal questions under the circumstances—but my voice catches in my throat. The room spins, the man pixilates, and a searing forest fire of pain blazes through my head.
I wake up to the same white-eyed, marble-skinned man, still peering intently at me like I’m a cluster of bacterial cultures in a petri dish. He pats the curve of glass between us. Chalky and threaded through with gray veins, his hand looks thick and strong.
“Going to try to stay with us this time?”
I shake the fuzziness from my head.
Did I just faint?
I’m embarrassed when all I can do at first is float here and try not to cry from the seething rage boiling up inside of me.
Take it easy, Branwynne. You’ve been drugged or something. That’s all. When it passes, you’ll be fine. Then, you’ll tear off this guy’s giant marble of a head, gather up your friends, and be back at the Academy before anyone knows you’ve been gone.
“I’m Epic,” the man says and then breaks into a little laugh. “That sounds so…grandiose, doesn’t it? I’m sorry. I don’t mean to imply that I’m some vast, mega-legend. My name is Epic.”
I try to glare at him, but right now, even the act of grinding my teeth and scrunching up my face hurts like hell.
The man spreads his arms wide. “Please believe me. I wish all this weren’t necessary. I really do. But I’m not
the bad guy here. I’m all about bringing people together. It’s time to unite this country like it should have been united all along.”
“And how…,” I stammer, “how are you planning to do that?”
“By picking up where Krug left off and finishing what he started.”
“I don’t…”
“Oh, right. Of course. You’re a Brit, aren’t you? You weren’t here for Krug. Shame. If being a narcissist was a superpower, he’d be Emergent Numero Uno. But he managed to do it all with nothing but good old-fashioned divisiveness, cruelty, and greed. Oh, and with a nice dose of stupidity thrown in for good measure. He managed to spread enough lies, scare enough people, play on enough fears, and keep us all ignorant enough so we wouldn’t notice him dividing us up and gathering up more and more power for himself. All for the glorification of his own short-sighted little pea-brain.”
“Krug’s gone.”
“That he is.” Epic looks sad as he makes finger quotes in the air. “But his legend lives on. What I’m doing here—what we’re doing—is for the benefit of others, not for ourselves. We’re going to usher in a new age of peace, order, and evolution. A new era of connectedness. Darwin introduced the world to natural selection. That’s all this is. Just subsidized.”
“Sub…?”
“You know. Helped along.”
I grind my teeth and glare through the glass. “I know about Krug.”
“Then you know he was a divisive, self-absorbed sociopath.”
“Takes one to know one.” I try to make it sound like a courageously-delivered insult, but it comes out as more of a whining moan.
The corners of Epic’s lips stretch toward his ears in a pair of sharp points. “I’ll assume that’s your attempt to look strong when I know you feel weak, so I’ll let it slide. No. I’m neither self-absorbed nor a sociopath. If anything, I’m absorbed in others and am a philanthropist.” He waves his hand in the general direction of the ceiling. “You see, unlike your friends up there, I don’t want my country back. I want a better country than the one we had before all of this. I want a nation of cooperation, health, and peace. I want a new world to spring from the ashes of the old, a world without hierarchy.”
“But with you still on top, right?”
This time, the smile breaks wide open, and Epic laughs—his boxy white teeth glistening on full display—like I’ve said the funniest thing in the world.
Dabbing the corners of his eyes, he pulls a mag-stool over and plops down in it with one leg crossed over his knee. “You’re clever. I heard that about you. And before you ask, yes, I know about your Academy. I’ve known about it since before you were born. Since Quinn first started planning it.”
“Quinn?”
“Kress’s father.”
Kress’s…father?
“I worked with him. Me. Sadia. Caldwell. A bunch of others. Deenays. En-Gene-eers. The occasional rogue computer hacker or techno-geneticist. We all had the same vision. We just saw it through a very different lens.”
“I don’t…”
“I’m sorry. I’m going pretty fast here, aren’t I? Can’t be helped. There’s a war on the horizon. A war I need to stop. A war I need you to help me stop.”
“You’re the one who’s planning a war.”
“True. But mine is the right war.” He jabs his thumb toward the ceiling. “First, I need to stop the wrong one.”
“All wars are wrong.”
Epic really enjoys that and tilts his head back far enough for me to see the tendons standing out on his neck under his gold jumpsuit as he laughs.
“Is that something they teach you at your Academy? All wars are hardly wrong, Branwynne. And you’re far too old and too experienced with how the world works to believe otherwise. No. The war about to happen up here is just…nonsense. Fighting out of fear and hunger over scraps of land and poisoned rivers. My war will be the one to end all that. My war will liberate the enslaved, strengthen the weak, and topple the tyrants. You see, Krug wanted people like you to enhance his army. I want people like you…No, not people like you. I want you, Branwynne—you, specifically—to help me to enhance the world.”
My mouth is cobweb sticky, but I manage to stay focused enough to keep my tongue and jaw working. “Kress’s father died. A long time ago. She told me so.”
Epic flashes a wide smile, his blanched, cube-shaped teeth standing out against the washed-out blue-grey of his tongue and lips. “Maybe. But she’s not his only kid still hanging around.”
Spinning halfway around on his mag-stool, Epic reaches back and taps a glowing button on a small holo-display above the long table behind him. Nearly instantly, the door whooshes open, and a tall man—thin and with a scraggly beard—steps on slightly wobbly legs into the room. Like Epic, he’s wearing a gold jumpsuit, only his is faded the color of melted wax and is stained with spots of what looks like dirt and oil.
He’s angled, a little grungy, and he’s not alone.
He’s got Haida Gwaii tucked in his folded arms.
It burns my throat to shout, but I do it anyway, screaming out to her and calling her name.
She lifts her head a little, but otherwise, she doesn’t move, and I’m not sure she even recognizes me or knows I’m here.
Gazing fondly at the white raven, the thin man drags a finger along her back as Epic summons him forward.
“Branwynne. I’d like for you to meet someone.”
The man stands next to Epic and offers me a brown-toothed but overall pleasant smile. His voice is soft, but I can’t tell if it’s muffled by the glass or by his tangled, wire brush of a beard.
“I’m Micah,” he says, his eyes glittering with more life than he has in his shabby body. “I’m Kress’s older brother.”
My eyes dart between Epic and the man calling himself Micah.
Nope. Not possible.
“Nice try,” I snarl with a head shake that makes me feel queasy again as the room spins.
Take it easy, Branwynne. It’s not the time for heroics. Yet.
“Kress’s brother died years ago,” I say. “She told me so, herself.”
Epic reaches over to rest a hand on Micah’s shoulder. I can’t tell if it’s a gesture of affection, camaraderie, or if he’s making sure Micah—who’s twitchy-eyed and nervous looking—doesn’t bolt from the room.
“Kress wasn’t lying,” Epic explains. “Not on purpose, anyway. As far as she knows, yes, every member of her family—including her brother—disappeared, died in the Valta, or else perished in the endless drone attacks that turned the rest of the world into the savage nightmare of death and desperation it’s become.”
Standing up from his mag-chair, Epic walks over and fiddles with a small holo-schematic hovering over a slanted console of black glass off to his side.
Micah’s bleary eyes follow him before landing back on me. He absently pets Haida and opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but Epic stops him with a raised hand.
The two men—one fish-belly white, the other lanky and slightly feral—exchange a curious look before Epic swings back around to face me, his palm pressed flat to the glass.
“You’re wondering where your friends are. You want to know why you’re here and what I plan on doing with you.” I open my mouth to answer, but he cuts me off. “Those are reasonable questions, Branwynne. But they’re also beneath you.” Epic turns again to hunch over the console. “You don’t realize how important you are. Did you think you were recruited by accident? Or that you’re just another Emergent, a member of some evolutionary avant-garde destined to live or die fighting an endless army of enemies over abstract, nebulous ideas like freedom and equality?”
Keep talking, you smarmy arse. When I get out of here…
With my head a little clearer now, I get a better look at Haida. She’s quiet and still, practically comatose in Micah’s wiry arms. She’s not fighting or trying to escape, but that could be the result of a million things: fatigue, fear, being drugged, having her connec
tion to me cut off by this gravity-defying bubble-cell I’m in…
But at least she’s alive. Which means there’s hope, and I remember one of the things War taught us back in the Academy:
Don’t give up. Just because something looks dead doesn’t mean it is.
I scan every inch of the two men standing in front of me. I’m taking detailed notes about everything from their eyes to their exposed necks to their beating hearts under their rising and falling chests.
Everything I’m going to hack to pieces once I’m free.
36
Trapped
Epic pauses for a second, and I’m guessing he’s caught me sizing him and Micah up.
He locks his white eyes on my black ones like he’s reading my mind. Who knows? Maybe he is. Or maybe he’s just reading my intentions through my tense jaw, my clenched teeth, or my clamped fists.
After all, I’m not exactly keeping my fury a secret.
Epic grins and drops his eyes, his voice slipping into a casual cadence, like we’re mates or something having a chat over morning tea.
“The bubble you’re in is called a Mag-Grav Suspension Cell. A little something left behind by the Patriot Army when they were garrisoned not too far from here a long time ago. We modified this one a bit. It now emits a mild but effective electromagnetic pulse specifically calibrated to your neuro patterns.”
Epic walks past Micah, dragging a bone-white finger over Haida’s head and back as he passes. “Getting those patterns wasn’t easy. It’s why we needed her. As I’m sure you know, you’re not just you, and your raven isn’t just your raven. You’re a connected unit. We needed her to get to you.”
He paces around the bubble, and, with my body frozen in place, I have to turn my head halfway to either side to keep him in view. “That’s why you keep getting migraines. Every time you try to access the Emergent part of your brain to connect to Haida, you run into the cell’s firewall. It hurts, doesn’t it?”
When I don’t say anything right away—mostly because I’m not sure if he’s waiting for an answer but also partly because I can’t seem to make my jaw work—the door to the room slides open, and a woman walks in.
