by Joshua Guess
Tradition allowed people in Beck’s situation to spend a full day in meditation between the official announcement of the charges and the trial itself. Eshton’s obsession with the law as it had been in the old world, however understandable it might be due to his position in Enforcement, gave him endless tidbits about the way the world had once treated its criminals.
There were no long debates or jail sentences. Criminals were charged and judged after investigations were complete with the shortest possible times in between. The day of reflection was not meant as a comfort to the accused, only a short pause for consideration of their actions.
Beck hated it with much intensity.
A lifetime of having the ability to distract herself at will had not prepared her for the kind of mind-numbing sensory deprivation her cell forced on her. She spent as much of the time as possible thinking through everything that would come next. The worst of it was knowing the trial itself was a sham. She would be found guilty without doubt or question. She was a sacrifice.
As a result, Beck couldn’t distract with thoughts of a defense. It simply was not in her to waste time and energy on hypotheticals with no chance of coming to pass.
Sometimes she sang. Not often because Beck had a uniquely bad singing voice. Her dad used to tell her it was a good thing—no one should be talented in too many areas. It gave you a big head.
A few hours before the big show, a medic in white armor appeared to treat her wounds. Not being able to see their ID tag floating overhead was mildly unnerving.
Then it was time.
She expected to be dragged to whatever courtroom this chapterhouse used, but the hulking pair of Sentinels yanked her along through unfamiliar corridors, some filled with the bustle of the daily grind found in every building like it across the Protectorate. They ended up in the dedicated Loop station below the building.
The trip took so much longer than expected that Beck began to wonder whether she was actually being taken to some remote northern outpost to be killed out of hand. Relief at being wrong was quickly trumped by awe once they finally reached their destination.
Beck knew where they were at once. Only one Rez in the entirety of the Protectorate kept its primary Loop station outside its Deathwatch chapterhouse. Walking up the steps, being manhandled by her guards, she rose to see the only true metropolis in the known world. Only one place had those soaring buildings, those throngs of people.
“Welcome to Manhattan,” one of her guards said, pushing her along. “Only time you’ll ever get to see it.”
Rez Manhattan, built atop the Manhattan safe zone, was utterly gorgeous. There was no other word for it. Far from the fallout sites and the effects of other countless weapons, the island was a rare slice of what the world once looked like. She had seen pictures of the place from when it was part of the greatest city on the planet, all huge buildings reaching for the sun like stone fingers and crowded like impatient children. A century and more had changed all that—the remodeling during the Collapse was extensive enough that even now its fingerprints still lay heavy on the ground.
Central Park had expanded to cover every inch of the place. Oh, she could see the circle of tall buildings the distance serving as the headquarters for the branches of government, with the Spire at its center. At the top of the Spire, the original home of the Deathwatch, sat Bowers’s office. But below? Trees. Grass. Crops. Blooming flowers. Life in such variety and on such a scale that with the far walls distant enough to be invisible, the place could have been plucked from the badlands she had been so jealous of.
Buildings dotted the land at seeming random, lacking the careful layout of the Rezzes which followed. This made the place look deceptively slim on housing, but she knew better. The vast network of tunnels beneath the surface had been expanded and reinforced over years. Most of the population resided in them to this day.
“It’s beautiful,” Beck said, breathing in deep to catch the mélange of fragrances given off by clusters of nearby flowers. She couldn’t have guessed their species if she tried. Too long spent in a backwater Rez with little vegetation beyond crops made those sorts of facts extraneous at best. It was a hole in her knowledge she now regretted. Why not know the name of something so purely good?
“You’ll get to see a lot of it,” guard two said. “We’re walking to the Spire.”
Beck looked up at the blank helmet. “Why? This place is big enough to need ground cars, right?”
Guard one snickered. “Sure it is. But we want you to really get a feel for the atmosphere.”
The words caused Beck to stop and consider what was in front of her. That first impression was so overwhelming, so huge, that she had missed the trees for the forest. The crowd of people near the Loop station exit were anomalies; they didn’t move with the general flow of the other pedestrians. Many angry faces there. No shortage of clenched fists.
“They don’t like it when the Watch kills citizens,” said guard two. “Won’t find anywhere more supportive of us than Manhattan, but that makes them ten times more angry when we fuck up. And right now, you’re the fuck up.”
While she knew the Sentinels wouldn’t let her suffer more than body blows—she had to look good for the recording of the trial—Beck still had to steel herself. Finding her nerve was just as much for the physical assault she was about to experience as it was to handle the harsh reality that no matter what happened, for the rest of her life some portion of the population would see her as a traitor.
“Let’s go,” Beck said, leading the way. Her surprised guards took a few seconds to catch up. She would walk with her head held high, and though she was without the armor so painstakingly worked on with her own two hands, she would endure what came next.
12
“Iceman, you gotta come see it,” said a voice from the door. Even if its sound hadn’t been familiar, Parker would have recognized Sentinel Francis from the use of the nickname. Never mind that Parker had been in stasis, not frozen. No matter how many times he told James Francis this and begged the young man to stop calling him Iceman, Parker was soundly ignored.
“I’d rather not,” Parker said, trying to keep himself buried in work. “Why would I want to watch some trial, anyway? What good could it do me to see strangers ground up by your legal system?”
Francis cleared his throat. “Uh, did no one tell you?”
The sincere horror in the Sentinel’s voice turned Parker’s head. “Tell me what?”
“Beck is one of the people on trial,” Francis explained. “Eshton, too.”
Parker nearly bowled Francis over as he ran for the common room.
The vid showed the courtroom in horrid detail. Parker was vaguely aware of Remy sitting on one of the sofas, anger etched in the lines of her face. He had known a trial was coming, acting as a counter strike from the Cabal, but not who was being charged. From what his guards had told him as Parker sought to understand more about his adopted world, the entire thing would be a farce. A tribunal wouldn’t be publicly aired if there was even a chance for the wrong ending.
And this wasn’t a tribunal. Instead of three Deathwatch Wardens sitting in judgment, a full panel of thirteen filled the screen. The clerk was doing a thorough reading of the charges on the dais in the center of the room.
“It’s bullshit,” Remy said, fire in her eyes as she turned toward Parker. “How many people did Beck save by stopping them? Hell, she could have killed me to get away. She saved my life!”
Parker opened his mouth to point out that Beck had put her in danger in the first place by breaking into the lab she worked in and making her complicit, then snapped his jaws shut. Though he knew there were thin but lingering doubts about her motivations and loyalty, Parker had none. Remy spent all day in the lab with him, and they talked for hours at a time. There was no way anyone could act well enough to fill so many minutes with lies.
The younger woman might be a victim of circumstance, but once she knew the score she was as fiercely defensive of the
Movement as any person with half-decent morals would be. Knowing mass murder was being committed as the cost of maintaining order infuriated her beyond belief. More so than it did Parker, though he came from a far less oppressive culture.
It was because of that oppression that Remy reacted with such fury. The devil’s bargain the people of the Protectorate made with each other was that protecting life and expanding the human race was worth restrictions on everything from privacy to the ability to defend themselves. They weren’t brainwashed into believing this was the way it had always been—their culture was a deliberate choice. A compact.
A promise Remy and the rest of the Movement lived long enough to see broken.
“You’re right,” Parker said, taking a seat next to her. “I had no idea Beck was caught up in this. I worried about Eshton, of course…”
“We didn’t tell you,” a familiar voice said from a dim corner of the crowded room. A solid figure in a black Deathwatch uniform made its way forward.
“Stein,” Parker said, his brow wrinkling. “I thought…don’t you have to be at the trial?”
She shook her head. “No, actually. I’m the only Warden specifically barred from going to it since the two people accused of being the ringleaders behind the ginned-up crimes are both members of my chapterhouse.”
“Why did you keep this from me?” Parker demanded, fully aware of how angry he was and giving precisely zero fucks how the crowd of Deathwatch agents in the room bristled at his tone. Eshton had been the first friend he made, but Beck was a close second. They had corresponded more than spent time together, but every time they were in the same room he felt a little less alone in the world. She was young enough to be his daughter, but with a brain that never failed to remind him why he’d gone into science in the first place.
“Because we wanted you to keep working,” Stein said without a hint of apology in her voice. “You’ll agree that the fate of the human race is more important than worrying over something you have no ability to change, right?”
Parker grimaced. “So instead of letting me worry about my friends and maybe getting distracted, you decided it was best to rip the Band-Aid off quickly. Something like that?”
Stein tilted her head. “I think I understand the phrase well enough, so yes. We wanted to minimize the shock. No use letting you stew over it.”
The logical part of him understood the logic. The longer you had to think about something horrible before it happened, the more powerfully it could affect you. He’d spent months working up the courage to finally step inside the stasis chamber, and worked himself up about it so badly that he almost hadn’t done it.
It was easy to forget how calculated these people could be. They spent decades working toward unearthing his stasis pod. They build an entire Rez nearby and made sure a mine was included in its design specifications, then waited even longer for the mine to grow to a point where the special project ordered by the Deathwatch wouldn’t look suspicious. All to rescue a single man out of time.
A man who had never been frozen, thank you very much.
He wanted to rail against her. Every part of his brain but that coldly empirical corner demanded the fury be let loose, and damn the consequences. Doing so would turn protective custody into true imprisonment. This he understood. Yet it wasn’t what stopped him.
On the vid, a pair of figures moved into view.
It was them.
“Sentinel 6311 and Guard 5110,” intoned the foreman of the panel, an old Warden who looked ancient even by old world standards but still hard as coffin nails. “You have heard the charges against you. You stand accused of Tenet crimes of the highest order. The judgment of your guilt is in the hands of this council, and should you be found guilty, your sentence will be decided by the High Commander.”
Parker watched the faces of the other members of the panel, searching for even a little hope. Some were clearly furious, though whether at the pair before them or because they knew the charges were false was impossible to tell. One Warden, a stout woman in her early fifties, was openly disgusted by the foreman’s words. A probable ally of the Movement, then.
“Yeah, we heard,” Beck said, crossing her arms.
Next to her, Eshton twitched. He didn’t break his parade rest to look at her, but the tension in his frame was clear. His body language screamed for Beck to shut up or at least be respectful, but Parker wanted to reach through the screen and give her a high five.
After all, what did she have to lose? The fix was in and Bowers wouldn’t let her get killed.
“Tread lightly, young woman,” the foreman said while the stout Warden covered a smile with her hand. “We are here to judge your guilt. Respect is due.”
“I’m guilty,” Beck said cheerfully.
Parker expected a gasp from the audience, but only because he forgot where he was. This wasn’t a network TV show. The only people in the room with Beck and Eshton were thirteen Wardens of the Deathwatch. None of them would react in such a way should a swarm of Pales break through the wall and start trying to kill everyone.
“You’re guilty,” the foreman said, as if tasting the words. “You admit to your crimes.”
Beck shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Defending myself wouldn’t do any good. Seven of you is all it takes to decide I did it, and the evidence I can give can’t be broadcast on vid. That’s why this trial is being publicized the way it is. To shut us up. Oh, and also because seven of you are corrupt. You’ve been scared into finding us guilty or were paid off.”
These words did draw a reaction, if a mild one. No one watching could fail to miss the array of faces showing a variety of emotional responses ranging from fury to stunned disbelief.
“Those are serious charges,” the foreman said. “And not likely to do you much good.”
Beck snorted a laugh next to a clearly mortified Eshton. “Are you an idiot or just going deaf in your old age? I just said I’m guilty, even if that statement is more an acceptance I can’t do anything to stop you than an admission of actual wrongdoing. I don’t expect it to help. At all.”
The foreman leaned over the table, fingers laced together. “I admit I’m stumped on what you hope to accomplish, then.”
Beck turned slightly, giving the viewers a quarter-perspective look at her face, just the bare edge of its right side. Enough to see her smile.
“For me? Nothing,” she said. “I suppose once you get tired of hearing me talk, you’ll put on a little show and announce your verdict, happy to have this whole thing done. You’ll put out statements and make assurances that what I’ve said here is nothing but the baseless accusations of a young woman broken by the truth of what she did.”
Beck’s smile faded somewhat. “It’ll work, too. Despite the fact that I don’t look broken—or even worried—some people’s faith in the Watch will be so absolute that they’ll buy what you’re selling them. I’ve made my peace with that.”
And suddenly Parker understood exactly what Beck was doing.
Some people would buy what you’re selling, she had said, all but screaming the unsaid corollary that others would not. Word of Fade B’s origins was kept quiet because the truth would have destabilized Protectorate society to a degree that might have been worse than the disease itself. That was the other edge to the citizens knowing their entire culture was designed from scratch—huge upheavals were a direct broken promise rather than a betrayal of an abstract social contract. It was like breaking a business deal, except the business at hand was your way of life.
The foreman opened his mouth to speak, cold anger written on his face. Beck—astonishingly—put up a hand.
“Before you say anything else, you should know something,” Beck told him, no trace of humor left in her voice. Instead Parker heard the arctic breeze of a person absolute in their certainty—regardless of what that certainty might be about. “It’s not me who should be careful about what I say, foreman. It’s you who should be wondering what will happen next.”
The foreman raised an eyebrow. “Me? Are you foolish enough to believe that you will pose any threat to me after today?”
“Founders, no,” Beck said, letting her hand drop. “I’ve admitted my guilt. I’ll be killed or banished. I’m at peace with that, too. But nothing I’ve said today is a lie. I might be just a Sentinel and a new one at that, but I’m Deathwatch to my bones. I will do whatever it takes to protect as many people as I can. Sadly, you won’t be one of them, if you’re corrupt. Because out there right now are people who know the rot has spread too far. Regular citizens who believe in the same principles as the Watch even if they’ve never worn the armor. They’ll do what it takes to, too. See if they don’t.”
Oh, that was clever. Rather than tossing a torch onto a pile of wood soaked in fuel as the revelations about Fade B would do, Beck was pushing exactly the right buttons. She wasn’t trying to foster a rebellion by appealing to those who felt oppressed—no, this was far more brilliant.
She was trying to fight the Cabal by warning the population about corruption. She was speaking to people like her who truly believed in the value of order even when imperfect.
Though it was a slower way to go, her words were no less a declaration of war.
Part Two: Exile
13
Everything happened pretty fast after the verdict came in. Say this about the Deathwatch court system: it wasted no time.
Within two hours of sentencing, Beck and Eshton were hauled away and stuffed in a Loop car. A trio of armored figures guarded their shackled forms. Once in Brighton they were stripped, given a pack of supplies each, and unceremoniously marched to the gate. The other Watchmen—including a group of five people clustered together watching Beck without looking away—cleared the outside of the wall of all Pales. That was protocol with exiles. You gave them a fighting chance.
