I ran my hand along the doorframe and located the lightpad about halfway up. I tapped it twice, and my hideout was illuminated. My breath caught in my throat.
The bin was lined to the teeth with row after row of shiny black assault weapons. The kind you use in the military.
The kind of military that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore.
I stepped away from the door and touched the nearest gun, barely resting my fingers on the barrel, and let out a low whistle. There was enough here to arm a hundred soldiers.
The kind of soldiers that weren’t supposed to exist anymore.
Apparently not everyone had bought into the brave new ideals for society under the Treaty of Phoenix, because whoever owned this crate meant business.
Suddenly, it was all too much.
Earth was gone. Everything I’d ever known no longer existed. West and my father wanted nothing to do with me, and I was wanted for my mother’s murder. A sharp coldness sliced through my chest. I was frozen for a second, then gasping for air. My mother. She’d given me her pass. After I’d given her a lifetime of sleepless nights and the kind of heartache that makes a person stop smiling at the dinner table.
I sank to the ground in front of the door and closed my eyes. A moment later, I sat back up and tapped off the light. I couldn’t afford to waste it, or to give away my position.
I was cold, sore, and unbelievably hungry, but for some reason, I didn’t move. I just stared into the darkness, vaguely aware that time was passing.
Years ago, on my first night in lockup, I had cried and cried. The next day, I told myself that I could no longer think the Thought that had made me so weak. I had made my choices, and I could no longer give it purchase in my mind. But now, the Thought crept back in, stronger than ever, until it would not be denied: I want my mom.
And I thought that maybe I’d been wrong, years before, when I decided that things were better for her when I was in juvy. Maybe she’d missed me.
I missed her.
After what must have been hours, I moved to brush the hair out of my face. I had forgotten about the handcuffs, and they jerked into my wrist and scraped across the bruise on my cheek. The pain helped bring me back to myself.
I tapped the light on, and the guns glinted into view once again. I could hear no noises outside the bin, so I relaxed a little and tried to collect my thoughts.
Someone was planning to raise an army. Or already had.
Armies meant a lot of things. Power, control. Worst of all, war.
Under the Treaty of Phoenix, weapons were banned. Even officers of the peace could carry nothing stronger than a stunner. There was never supposed to be war again. With only half a million survivors, humanity couldn’t afford to keep killing its own. We were supposed to terraform and colonize a new planet, and we needed to get there intact.
I needed to leave here. I needed food. I shoved my fist into the seal.
Nothing happened.
Great. The lock mechanism was on the outside, of course. You wouldn’t smuggle a cache of illegal arms onto a space ship, then leave it lying around unprotected, so I couldn’t say I was surprised.
The walls were lined with assault rifles. I didn’t recognize the weapons that filled the center aisles. They were some kind of aerodynamic rockets about the length of my arm, but there was nothing resembling a launcher anywhere in sight. The middle of the bin held an enormous black box labeled “North America/Sector 7/Cargo Level/Bin 54/Produce.” I smirked. Like this was really full of apples. Or spinach. I tried as hard as I could to wedge the lid off, but it was too heavy. It was likely just another bunch of weapons, anyway.
What I really needed was a weapon I could conceal, like a sidearm. Obviously, I couldn’t run around with a rifle that wasn’t even supposed to exist. Surely whoever was running this operation hadn’t planned to put the soldiers within rifle’s range of their targets, and not equip them with handguns for when the targets got closer. I kept searching.
I trotted up one aisle and down the other, until I got to the next-to-last row.
“Bingo,” I said out loud.
The last row was full of handguns. They were slightly different than the ones I was used to seeing. I guessed military-grade weapons were slightly different from street weapons, but they’d have a fair bit in common. I lifted the nearest one from its hanger pins and turned it over in my hand. Its clip was already in place.
I tapped the lights off inside the bin again, so that once I blasted the seal off the door I wouldn’t be smack in the middle of the only lit area of a dark cargo hold and surrounded by contraband. I cocked the gun easily and used my other hand to guide the barrel to the locked seal, but something made me pause before pulling the trigger.
I had done it. I had made it out of prison and all the way to the OPT. Heck, I’d made it to the Ark, and if I kept it up, I could maybe, just maybe, live long enough to land on Eirenea. There was no reason to believe I couldn’t. And assuming I could make my way to the residential quarters and find some way to blend in, no one here would ever know about my past. I was standing at the edge of a new life.
Except, nothing was new. I was born into a world wracked by bloodshed, and even after everyone else had made nice, I’d been in jail, where we’d had our own brand of war to wage. So you couldn’t blame me if I had a low tolerance for helplessness, a condition that, in my experience, tended to present itself primarily to idiots who hadn’t thought they’d need a weapon.
I tested the waistband of my pants. The steel of the gun was cold against my stomach, but the sensation didn’t last. It warmed to my body soon enough.
I pulled the gun out again, weighing it. If I made it through this, I owed my life to my mother, twice over, and to Meghan, and even Isaiah. And they were all dead.
Suddenly, the gun felt heavy in my hand.
I looked around blindly. Though I couldn’t see them, I was surrounded by instruments of death. In my new life, there was a war coming. In all our lives: our rebirth as a species would be marked with conflict. I would have to pick a side. I had always thought the world was full of those who were weak, and those who avoided weakness by any means possible. The ones who came out on top, and the suckers who never knew what hit them.
But maybe there was another possibility, one I hadn’t considered before. Maybe I could be strong without hurting anyone else. I took a step back, keeping the gun aimed at the same spot, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet exploded from the gun. I was more prepared for the kick than the sound, which echoed through the enclosed space of the bin. I winced, then frowned. The seal remained intact.
I leaned in closer and fiddled with the mechanism. I must have missed my mark, probably because of the handcuffs. I engaged the safety and flipped the gun around, unwilling to risk the attention another gunshot could draw, then brought the butt down on the seal. It took a few blows, but the lock slowly gave way.
I laid the gun underneath the row of rifles and slipped out into the darkness.
Thirteen
The hallway ahead of me was about the last thing I expected. Gone were the steel-gray walls, the perfunctory stretch of dark carpet underfoot. This corridor was decorated with cloth wallpaper, like some sort of stateroom. Delicate chandeliers hung from the ceiling at regular intervals, and a thick, intricately patterned rug stretched as far as I could see.
I’d climbed enough stairs to know that gravity was much less oppressive on this level, which seemed to add to its opulence. I spared another moment to take it all in, then pressed forward. My first order of business was to find food.
The door to the stairwell locked shut behind me, but several of the doors on this level were open. I walked as casually as I could manage with my hands cuffed in front of me. At least if you saw me from behind, you wouldn’t know anything was off.
About halfway down the length of the hallway, I found a sort of commissary. No one was there, and I wondered whether they were on break, or if this part of the Ar
k hadn’t begun operations yet. Maybe they planned to staff it with people who’d come in on the final OPTs.
Either way, someone had already taken the time to stock it with food, so I helped myself. There was a row of chips, and I tore into the first bag I came to, happily munching away while I looked for more food. I had just spotted a loaf of sliced bread and a basket of red and green apples when a small voice stopped me cold.
“Woah. How many ration cards does your pass hold? Better be at least four.”
I whirled around to see a young girl in a blue uniform with a matching apron. She couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. I managed a smile.
“Sorry. I was just about to—” I broke off and cringed as she noticed my handcuffs. Her narrow eyes widened.
“You, you’re the—” she said. Her glance darted toward the counter.
This was where the gun would have come in handy. Wave it around, and people usually did what you said. Instead, I’d have to use my winning personality to keep her from pressing whatever alarm button she was inching toward. I held my cuffed hands up, as if to say that I wasn’t trying to hide anything from her. “Wait! Please. Don’t do that.”
The girl looked from me to the counter one last time, then broke into a sprint. Great.
The alarm went off about the time I reached the hallway, sans chips. It occurred to me that if everyone believed that no guns existed anymore, criminals were going to have a harder go of things.
I rounded the first turn, heading away from the stairwell. By now, it would be swarming with officers. If I could get to the far side of this level, I could maybe find another staircase and get sufficiently lost again. Sure enough, a big sliding panel at the end of the hallway came into view when I’d gone about fifty more feet. That had to lead to a staircase. It was still at least two hundred feet away.
Several doors hissed shut as I hustled past, but a few people left their doors open. I shot a quick look through each open door, and the rooms I saw were all the same. Dark carpets, nice desks, bookshelves. People in black uniforms, which I hadn’t seen before. I guess not everyone on the Ark wore blue, after all. Some even ducked out of their offices to get a good look, and at least two popped open com pads and started barking out my description and location to whoever was on the other end of the line.
I had nearly reached the sliding panel when it hit me.
No one was chasing me. Their faces were calm, if curious. Everyone already knew what I had just figured out: there was no way I was getting out of this one. I slapped the button next to the sliding panel as hard as I could, but the door didn’t budge. Of course. It was locked. I had nowhere to go.
One by one, the faces in the hall disappeared behind office doors, which slid shut and softly clicked into place. I pressed the button again and again, but it was no use. I was a rat at the end of a maze.
A voice came over the loudspeaker, male this time. “Stay where you are. You are under arrest. Citizens, remain behind locked doors. You are not in danger. The suspect will be apprehended shortly.”
My breath came harder. There was no way they’d let me escape again.
The cops swarmed in from the turn in the hallway. They were dressed in blue, and they carried long black weapons. I was surprised they’d bring their guns out into the open, but then the tip of one of the weapons buzzed, and a white bolt of electricity leapt out. It was a stunner, not a gun. And it was going to hurt.
I backed into the wall nearest me and slid to the ground, forcing myself to keep breathing. They were a hundred yards away, then fifty. I raised my hands to show I wasn’t going to resist, but the look in their eyes told me it wouldn’t make any difference.
“Don’t move,” said the nearest one. He was totally composed, almost relaxed. The tip of the stunner let out another crack, and I pressed my lips together to keep from screaming.
At that moment, a sucking swish sounded behind me, followed by a deep voice in mid-conversation. “—tell me what needs to happen. I’m going to personally oversee—” The owner of the voice strode through the huge door panel at my side, stopping short when he saw the small army of cops who were trying to arrest me. He, too, was dressed in an all-black uniform. His face was unforgettable: steel blue eyes and immaculately clean-shaven skin, framed by a shock of silver hair. He was easily fifty or sixty years old—well over the forty-year age limit for passage on the Ark.
But all I could think about was the panel. It was open, and the only thing between me and the next hallway was the man in black.
In the split second it took for his eyes to move from the cops to the ground at his feet where I sat, I rolled past him and into the next hallway. I was running before I even stood up.
Behind me, he barked out orders: all the usual “Get her”s and “Move it”s that you’d expect. I knew better than to look back. I was small but fast, and this new hallway had myriad turns and corners. It was also much darker, lit only by chandeliers every five or ten yards. Each twist of the corridor was marked by a new design of wallpaper: red damasks and antique silver patterns raced past in a blur. It was as though an old-timey dining room, like the ones with china and stuff that you see in movies, had been stretched out into a labyrinth. If I could get enough space between me and the cops, I might never feel the stunner on my back. I shuddered mid-stride and tried to keep my path as erratic as possible.
Another, louder alarm sounded seconds later. I began pressing the buttons next to the doors, but nothing opened. Soon, I knew, whatever personnel was in the area would start to pop out of the rooms to see what was going on. Then they’d report on my location, and I’d be back in the frying pan quick enough.
I heard a group of voices behind me, including the silver-haired man, and I allowed myself a quick glance backward. There was no one in sight yet, but they were getting close.
I had just turned forward again when my body slammed into a solid mass of muscle and black cotton. Strong arms wrapped around me, gripping me by the shoulders, and this time, I couldn’t stop the scream that followed.
Fourteen
“Shut up! Seriously.” His tone was urgent and low.
Where had I heard that voice before? It didn’t matter. What mattered was getting away. Surviving. I had to think fast.
My assailant had pinned me against his chest, facing him. My head reached the level of his shoulders, and one hand was still cuffed. I clenched my hands together into a big fist and slammed them up into his groin as hard as I could.
“Unphh… what the—” His grip on my shoulders vanished as he jerked back, giving me a face full of his short blond hair. I used that opportunity to bring my double-fist down onto his neck, just above the right shoulder.
“Wait! Don’t,” he grunted. I didn’t stick around to hear the rest of his protests. The cops were closing in, their rapid footsteps muffled by the thick carpet in the area.
I took two more corners at lightning speed and came upon a room with a wide-open door. A quick glance inside told me that it was unoccupied, or that the owner was in the bathroom at the far back. Either way, it was good enough.
I darted in, hitting the button to close the door with my elbow while scanning every inch for a good hiding place.
Wait, no. For a weapon. First things first.
The room was beautiful, but not as ornate as the hallway décor had suggested. There was a kitchenette to my right, a black leather sofa to my left, and behind those, a yellow desk and a huge unmade bed. There were clothes lying on the ground: sneakers, jeans, dirty boxer-briefs, and of course, a few rumpled uniforms. The walls were painted steel blue, but covered with tons of neatly framed photographs depicting everyday scenes of life on Earth: a flock of gulls on the beach at sunset, a bird’s eye view of a traffic jam at night, a forest at first light. There was an entire area of one wall devoted to flowers, which shared a border with a mural of people’s faces.
It was a shrine to what we had lost.
I breathed slowly, trying to take everythin
g in, but caught myself soon enough. It wouldn’t be long before the cops swept the whole wing, going door-to-door. I couldn’t go down without a fight, so I tore my attention from the scenes on the walls and continued my hunt for a weapon. The desk was completely bare, so I ran to the kitchen. There were a few packed boxes, but the drawers were still empty. No knives.
Time was running out. I’d bought myself a few minutes by closing the door. The soldiers would have no way of knowing it had been open moments earlier and had probably run past. But when they didn’t find me, they’d have to conduct a thorough search. I’d need to be well out of sight by then, and preferably armed with something other than my wits. I glanced around, but my choices were distressingly limited. The closet, the bathroom, or under the bed.
My first instinct, the bed, was blocked by a long black case. I had seen cases like this when Kip and I had run the occasional job-for-hire on behalf of a mid-level criminal. Someone way up the food chain from us, for example. People like that had their everyday guns, and then they had the special stuff, which they kept in cases like these.
I had hit the jackpot.
I eased the latches off the case as quickly as possible and lifted the lid.
Then I frowned. Nestled in black foam was a long, shiny wooden tube, which tapered at one end and opened out on the other. It was scored every few inches with silver clasps. Or maybe they were buttons.
This wasn’t a carefully packaged weapon. It was some kind of musical instrument. I groaned, but lifted it out of the foam anyway. At least I could use it as a club.
The door panel swished open behind me. My stomach dropped.
I threw myself behind the wardrobe, nearly tripping over a wad of t-shirts in the process.
The panel sucked closed. So the owner of the room was here, not the cops.
“Hey. I know you’re back there. I just saw you.”
The Ark Page 10
