by Simone Pond
“What are you thinking about, Lou?”
“My mommy,” she whispered.
Grace thought about her mom for a quick flash. She’d be so proud of Grace handling the situation.
“Plan B. I’m cutting this thing off of you. We don’t have a lot of time, so as soon as it’s off, run as fast as you can. Okay?”
Louisa squinted her eyes. “Okay.”
Grace used the scalpel and began cutting through the leather shoulder straps. The ticking grew louder by the second. After she finished with the straps, she still had to cut through the one around the girl’s chest. Less than a minute. Her heartbeat was competing with the ticking clock. Finally, it was free.
“You ready?” Grace gently lifted the metal box up and Louisa rolled away. “Run!”
Louisa ran through the front of the cabin. Grace stood up and made her way through the back into the woods, away from the others. She looked down just as the timer had run out. She clutched the metal box and dove to the ground—the explosion ripped through her chest, blasting chunks of her body through the trees . . .
Grace shot up in her chair, clutching her heart. She remained there with her eyes closed until her adrenaline slowed down and she could take in a full breath. Not the ending she had in mind, but at least she had saved the little girl and her team. She hoped her bravery would count for something.
Missakian came up out of the virtual. “Tough call, Strader.”
“Ha! I knew you’d spray chunks.” Blythe sat up in her chair, laughing.
She didn’t care what these two knuckleheads thought; she wanted to hear what Lucas had to say. He opened his eyes and sat up, not saying a word.
Grace couldn’t wait another second. “So, how’d I do, sir?”
“You did okay,” he said casually.
“That’s it?” Grace was hoping for a more enthusiastic response.
“I’m sure it might have helped your scores, but . . .”
“But still wasn’t good enough for you.”
Grace stood up and stomped toward the door, hoping to escape before Lucas saw her tears of embarrassment. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back into the room. Missakian and Blythe quickly exited the Delta training room before it got too heated. The door slid shut, sealing Grace and Lucas into a cocoon of awkward silence. He was still holding onto her arm, his fingers digging into her bicep. Her face caught on fire and hot tears filled her eyes, but she was too unraveled to care. He released her arm and took a moment to calm down.
“I’m just trying to do the right thing,” she said, rubbing her arm.
“You’ve got a bad attitude. Totally incapable of being part of a team.”
“I just saved my team.”
“No, you got yourself killed. How is that saving the team?” Lucas shook his head.
“What do you have against me?”
“You have it all wrong, Grace.”
That was the first time he had called her Grace all week. The way he said her name revealed his truth—he may have said he wanted to keep it professional, but everything about the way he was looking at her wasn’t. He had been bluffing. But why? To keep her in check? To play the team leader role without his feelings getting in the way? It was time to recalibrate the scales. She faced her opponent, looking for the weakness. She remembered his right ankle and walked over to him, stepping in close and forcing him to the right. She blocked his foot, tripping him, and he stumbled backward a bit.
“What are you doing? This isn’t a match, Grace.”
“If anyone has it all wrong, it’s you.” She pressed him against the wall. “Sir,” she added sarcastically.
He grabbed her shoulders and stared into her eyes. Without another word, he pulled her toward him and kissed her, long and hard. Their bodies locked against each other like two magnets. The temperature rose. Grace thought her heart would rip through her chest and splatter all over him. She lost her breath and gravity all at once. The room was silent except for the sound of their breathing. Finally, she pried herself away. He reached out to pull her back over, but she edged backward to the door, smiling. She saluted him and left the Delta training room. It wasn’t the win she was looking for, but it would do.
*
When Grace got back to her room, she decided to contact her father. It had been a week since she had talked with her mentor, and she needed some advice and, more importantly, some encouragement. Every soldier needed a little reassurance from time to time.
Her father’s hologram appeared and Grace sat down on the bed, resisting the urge to hug his image. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“How do you know something’s wrong?”
“You’re my daughter. I know you like I know myself. And your bottom lip pouts when you’re not happy.”
“I’m kinda messing things up. SAR is tough.”
“I’ve never seen you back down from anything before. What’s really going on? Is it your mother?”
“No, she’s staying out of my hair. I’m just afraid I can’t do it.”
“You already are doing it.”
Grace smiled. He was right, as usual.
“I’d come up and see you at the end of the month, but I have to go to the East Regional Council. The New District has been getting some threats from one of the nearby regions. Similar to what happened in the southwest. We’re trying to head it off before it gets out of hand.”
“Could there be a potential war?”
“Always a possibility. I’ll be going out there with a few combat units.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Nothing for you to worry about.”
“What if I need you?”
“The only thing you need is your focus and confidence. You can do anything, Grace.”
“Thanks, Dad. I won’t let you down.”
“How about you don’t let yourself down?”
“Yes, sir.” She saluted her father with a wink, and they signed off.
13
Since Ava was banned from the lab, she’d try another approach to her research. She picked up one of Lillian’s journals that she had packed for her stay at the academy and thumbed through the pages. She kept thinking about the intensity of her experience in the mainframe and her ability to interact with Lillian and the others. The whole thing was mind-blowing. And she couldn’t get the sound of baby Phoenix’s cry out of her head. She needed to know what was happening. She had read Phoenix’s story years ago, and it was time to revisit it more carefully. There might be something in those pages that could explain the current situation inside the mainframe.
Lillian Strader
Volume II—The Story of Sarah & Phoenix
The year that followed after William Morray, Zach Roldan, Drusilla Phelps, Sarah Broad, Samuel Merkin, and Daniel West helped Aaron and our men take down the Santa Barbara plantation and free our people was a time of rebirth and renewal. But we knew the elites would soon reestablish control, so Aaron and his father, John, began building an army to protect our camp to ward off potential attacks. I focused on organizing and structuring our new community. It didn’t take long before we were a solid front and a fully-functioning society. By that time, Sarah had returned to the village with her and William’s newborn son, Phoenix. She reported that William had successfully killed his father, and the final stages of the Repatterning had come to an end. But it wasn’t over—the elites were still in control. William had tried taking them down and lost. The group of men still held all the power, and they would continue with their plans to rebuild the world as they saw fit. Sarah told us that to keep William out of their way and ensure that their New Agenda would come to fruition, they used Phoenix as leverage. William became obsessed with plotting and planning how to destroy the elites—he said there was no way he’d let those evil pigs near his son. Sarah watched on as William progressively went mad. He worked with John Dickson to upgrade the microchip his father’s team had implanted in his brain, and he began to change. He became less interested in prot
ecting the people the Repatterning had left behind and more intent on gaining all of the power and control.
Sarah knew that William adored Phoenix and would do anything to protect him, but it was clear that William was heading in a bad direction. She grew increasingly concerned and she knew that staying in the Bel-Air home was too dangerous, so she made contact with Aaron to arrange for transportation to our village in Ojai. Before she left, Sarah had promised Dickson that she’d keep him informed about Phoenix, as long as he kept William away from the village. Our camp wasn’t exactly a safe haven—there were stragglers and roving lunatics left over from the brutal fires of the Repatterning, running amuck doing whatever they could to survive—but Sarah knew it was safer than being with William Morray and John Dickson.
After a few months, Sarah received communication from Dickson informing her that William had been shot by one of the elites and while his body had died, his consciousness was still intact. William’s consciousness would be relocated to the Los Angeles City Center, where Dickson could continue working on the upload technology in an effort to restore William to full capacity. Communication between the two grew sporadic and eventually stopped.
Our camp continued to grow, and our army had become indestructible. Word spread throughout the nearby regions, and nobody wanted to challenge what they were calling the Outsiders. Though the Los Angeles City Center loomed in the distance, we felt safe in the arms of our village. Sarah and I often wondered what had happened to William and if he had been uploaded into a new body, but we went on about the business of living.
Phoenix had spoken his first words and taken his first steps, and still no attacks had been waged on the village. It was a time of peace. Phoenix grew from a baby to a young boy, running wildly through the forest, climbing trees, swinging from branches, and building forts. When Aaron and I finally had our own son, the two boys became the best of friends. Yes, it was a time of peace.
But like all things, time changes them.
Around the time Phoenix was eleven years old, Sarah received a transmission from Dickson.
He’s back. And he wants Phoenix.
I tried to comfort Sarah, but she knew her peaceful world would soon come to an end. She had never told Phoenix about his father—she didn’t want him to know anything about the man. She begged Dickson to hold back William—or Chief Morray, as he was now called—because Phoenix wasn’t ready to meet his father yet. Dickson warned that Chief Morray was reestablishing power and starting to develop his defensive arm. Eventually he’d come for Phoenix, and there’d be no stopping him. Aaron and I focused on training each villager in a specific area of defense so we’d be prepared for Morray when the time came. Meanwhile, Sarah retooled the old technology and rebuilt an intricate communications system, giving us the ability to covertly infiltrate the city center’s network.
At the age of fourteen, Phoenix joined our army and became one of our most fearless soldiers. He was way beyond his years. I wasn’t surprised, since he had come from a long line of geniuses—on both sides. There had been no communication with Dickson for years, but Sarah knew Morray would be coming for Phoenix and that he’d probably take out the entire village just to get him back.
Phoenix continued to grow into a brilliant, kind, and loving young man. At sixteen he courted Adrienne, one of the village girls, and just after his eighteenth birthday they married. And then we discovered news of an upcoming reconnaissance mission—Morray was coming for Phoenix.
“Don’t let him take my son!” Sarah cried in my arms.
“We’ll do everything in our power to stop him,” I said. But I didn’t know what Morray had become. I had only known him before his change. He had helped us take down the plantation to free our people. He had stopped his father from destroying the entire world. I didn’t want to believe someone with such good intentions could end up so bad.
“What if we can’t stop this from happening? Phoenix needs to be with Adrienne, she’s pregnant.”
“All of you will leave the village and go north for a little while. Until we’ve contained the situation.”
“You can’t contain Morray, Lillian.”
“At least we can get your family to a safer location.”
But Phoenix, being the brave soldier he was, refused to leave. He wanted to stay back and fight on the front lines with the others, while Sarah would travel north with Adrienne and their unborn child. He promised to come for them after the battle.
On the day Sarah and Adrienne were to leave, Sarah burst into my cabin, crying that she couldn’t find Phoenix to say good-bye.
“Why haven’t you left yet?”
“I sent Adrienne off, but I couldn’t leave without telling Phoenix the truth about his father. I need to find him.”
The troops had been stationed throughout the village and the surrounding perimeter. Before we could get to Phoenix, the village was in a full-blown combat with Morray’s army. We were forced into the bunkers until the explosions and gunshots had stopped and the battle was over. Sarah and I continued our search for Phoenix. In the bloody aftermath, she ran from one body to the next, frantically looking for her son until she finally found him—his face half blown off—cold as a stone. She cradled his body and sobbed. I tried to console her, but it was pointless. Her son was dead.
I looked up to see a strange-looking helicopter lowering into the field. I ordered our soldiers to take aim. They kept their rifles tracked on the man in the black suit who stepped out of the craft, waving a white flag.
“Cease-fire. It’s over!” he yelled as he ran over to Sarah and dropped to his knees. He held Phoenix’s dead body in his arms. “Please tell me it’s not him.” I couldn’t figure out why this stranger cared so much about her son. “Tell me this isn’t Phoenix.” Then I realized who the stranger was.
“This is your fault, William,” she cried.
Morray collapsed over Phoenix and cried until there wasn’t another sob left to expel. “I’m sorry, my son. It was supposed to be a simple mission.” He looked at Sarah and yelled, “What happened? Why did your men attack?”
“They were defending our village. You should never have sent in your people.” She pounded on his chest and bawled. “You killed your own son.”
“No . . . No. Not my son. Not my Phoenix.” He stared off to the sky, frozen.
Unable to withstand another moment, Sarah stood up to leave.
William chased after her, yelling, “This is your fault. If you would have just let me have him, he’d be alive.”
“No, William. This is your doing. You were trying to take back something that no longer belonged to you.”
“I’ll destroy all of you,” he said through gritted teeth.
“No, you won’t. Your blood is in this village.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a grandchild on the way. If you destroy the village, you’ll end your family line.”
“You’re lying!” he shouted.
“Phoenix’s wife is expecting, but she’s far away from here and you’ll never get your hands on her. I’ll make sure of that. Now, leave us be.”
“I’ll outlive you, Sarah. I’ll outlive all of you. And I’ll come back and get what’s mine.”
“I hope with each new body you upload that warped consciousness of yours into that you carry this burden. You’ll never find peace, William. It’s something you can’t control.”
Ava set down the journal and wiped a tear from her cheek. This dreadful event was just one more tragedy to add to Morray’s ongoing list. She knew the story, but the depth of Morray’s pain struck her harder this time around. She knew he had never recovered from the loss of his son over three hundred years earlier. No amount of time would ever ease his guilty conscience. That horrible incident pushed him over the edge, fueling every despicable decision henceforth. Ava surmised Morray wanted to use the mainframe to fix something in the past, but she wasn’t sure how he planned to pull it off.
14
&nb
sp; In preparation for the first major exam, Grace sat in her room, reviewing footage from her drills from the last few weeks. After what she was now calling “the incident” with Lucas in the Delta training room, she had gone back to focusing on what mattered most: graduating from the academy with honors. Overall, her scores were steady with one exception: she hadn’t fully committed to Search & Rescue. She was still struggling to appreciate the finer points of extensive emergency service. And blood. But the main problem was her lack of working with others. In her team drills, she had been overstepping the others trying to prove herself. The clarity cut through like a sword. Burnout usually set in around this time, and there’d be a handful of washouts. Grace was determined not to be one of them. She’d make it to that silly Survivor’s Shuffle if she had to pull an all-nighter.
The door chimed. She thought maybe it was her mother, who she hadn’t seen in weeks. She was taking that boundary thing pretty seriously. But when she opened the door, it was Lucas, looking awkward and smug all at the same time. There hadn’t been any private conversations since “the incident,” and she was surprised to see him.
“Oh, hi.” Grace leaned against the entrance, trying to appear indifferent—though she was anything but that. Her insides felt as if a tornado had busted loose.
“Hmm, I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm,” he said, half smiling.
“I’m studying for exams.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“May I come in?” he asked.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea . . . Sir.”
He grinned and walked into the room.
“Like I said, I’m studying. I plan on going to the gala event. Whatever they call it.” She walked over to the windows, pretending to admire the view. Below, Silicon Valley sparkled like a web of diamonds. Lucas came up behind her and stood close. She turned around, and he moved in closer until her back was pressed up against the windows and she could feel the heat emitting off his body.
