Exo

by Fonda Lee

  Saul’s eyes shifted over. He inclined his head toward Brett and Anya. “Patriots of humanity,” he said, lifting his arms to the expansive cavern, “welcome to the cause.”

  “To the cause!” The underground chamber thundered with the unanimous reply.

  A slow grin of relief crawled across Brett’s bland face—the first strong expression Donovan had ever seen on the man. Anya raised her eyes, overwhelmed, a small smile of disbelief curling the edges of her mouth, as if she were a child surprised to find herself suddenly in a club with adults. Donovan turned his eyes away, a sick feeling unwinding in his stomach.

  “We’ll get you both sorted soon enough,” Saul said. He turned back to Kevin, his frown returning. “Now, you want to explain what possessed you to bring an exo soldier here of all places?”

  “It was a moment of opportunity.” Kevin squared himself to the other man but spoke so everyone could hear him. “The kind of opportunity you don’t pass up, because a higher power is placing it in front of you and telling you to take it.”

  Saul dropped his voice. “You know how I feel about those videos. But at least they’re brief. Holding a prisoner is different—it’s too risky.”

  “This is worth it,” Kevin said. “It’s a game changer, Saul. A blow to the heart of the beast.”

  Saul could not have been old, but his face was lined, his stubbled head deeply furrowed. He looked like a hard man, as solid as the limestone, the kind of man accustomed to giving orders and seeing people die because of them. He regarded Donovan with deep-set eyes. “What’s your name?”

  Donovan lifted his chin. “Donovan Reyes.”

  For a second, the silence was such that Donovan could hear only the low background hum of electric generators. Then murmuring disbelief cascaded through the gathered rebels and rose up the cave walls. “Donovan Reyes!” Kevin repeated loudly, throwing up his arms. “The son of the Prime Liaison. Think about the information he has. Think about what the government would be willing to do to keep him in one piece.”

  Donovan climbed slowly to his feet. The terror of dying had lost some of its power in the last twenty-four hours. Now the idea of being killed seemed less awful than the likely alternative—being used. “They’ll do something, all right,” he said, forcing a confidence he didn’t feel. “They’ll find this place, and they’ll tear it apart.” He spoke to Saul, praying the man would see more sense than Kevin. “If you force my father’s hand, you’re asking for SecPac, maybe even Soldiers, to show up here. All these people will die. You can still offer to return me now, before that happens.”

  “You’re a good talker, zebrahands. Like father, like son,” Kevin sneered. He turned back to Saul. “We keep moving him, cell to cell, camp to camp. I can set up the relay. Keep SecPac guessing as to where he is. Feed them false leads along with our demands. They won’t find him.”

  Saul looked unmoved. “We need Max in on this decision.” He called, “Someone get Max down here.”

  Max? The same Max responsible for the Sapience propaganda that had led Donovan and his patrol team to Sean Corrigan’s house last night? Kevin looked displeased but kept talking. “Things are happening, Saul. I’m on the ground in the Ring Belt more than almost anyone else; I can feel it. This is going to give all the cells the jolt in the arm that they need, ’cause if we can get that one”—he pointed to Donovan—“we can get anyone. We declare an ultimatum. All shrooms and SecPac presence out of major urban areas, starting with Denver, Phoenix, and Seattle—make them free human cities.”

  Despite his situation, Donovan choked on a laugh of derision. “There are hundreds of thousands of marked people in those cities! You really think we’d just pull out and leave them defenseless?” If that was what Sapience was envisioning for starters—millions of unmarked humans in a state of anarchy, taking out their pent-up hostility on those who were in erze, all the best scientists, engineers, and civil servants—they might as well put the end of a rifle in his mouth and shoot him now. His father would never, ever in a million years consider such madness. “What world are you living in?”

  “We would offer amnesty to those who renounced alien allegiance. An act that your kind is incapable of.” Saul motioned forward three of the biggest, meanest-looking armed men. “Lock this shroom pet up. Two guards on him at all times.”

  Donovan glared at the men who stepped forward. “Don’t touch me,” he warned. He was an exo at the humiliating mercy of squishies and rapidly realizing what his duty compelled him to do. Despite what he’d said to Saul, he couldn’t count on being rescued. This underground terrorist bunker was bigger, better equipped, and held more people than he suspected SecPac knew about. Maybe he couldn’t escape, but if he could find a way to get free of his restraints, he would do as much damage to this place as he could. He’d get his hands on a weapon, start a fire, set an explosion—he didn’t know what yet, but one Hardened, trained, and armed soldier-in-erze could cripple a Sapience nerve center. He let his fatal resolve steel him, then took two steps forward on his own—before coming to an abrupt standstill.

  A woman was hurrying desperately through the crowd. People moved out of her way, letting her pass. When she reached the front, her eyes fell on Donovan, and she reeled as if she’d slammed into a wall. She let out a high gasp. The blood drained from her cheeks, as if he were some appalling apparition. “My God,” she whispered.

  Donovan stared at the woman. A sliding sensation began to tilt the solid rock beneath his feet.

  He must be mistaken. It couldn’t be.

  “Max,” Saul said, looking between them, “you know who this is?”

  “Yes.” The woman’s lips moved almost inaudibly. “He’s Donovan Reyes. He’s my son.”

  “Your son?” Saul said the word as if it were foreign.

  Fresh murmurs rose from the few people near enough to hear and cascaded back through the crowd.

  “When I told you I used to be married, I didn’t tell you to whom.” The woman calling herself Max did not take her eyes off Donovan. “Before he was Prime Liaison, Dominick Reyes was my husband. We had a son. I left him behind when he was only … a small boy.” Her voice broke, strangling the words. She came toward Donovan with short, hesitant steps, her raised hands turned upward and reaching slightly forward, as if she were cupping some delicate object in her palms and offering it to him. “Donovan … do you remember me?”

  “Yeah.” Donovan heard his voice come out expressionless from shock. He knew it was her—after three thudding heartbeats of disbelief, he knew for certain—but he didn’t really recognize her, not in the way one recognizes familiar things. It was as if he’d seen the same photograph in profile over and over again, memorizing half a face and now seeing the other half for the first time. The same, but not the same. His feet clenched inside his boots, gripping the ground. His mind scratched feebly for understanding. “You’re Max?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Kevin’s eyes jumped disbelievingly from person to person. “Saul, you going to do something?” he demanded.

  The woman Donovan knew but did not recognize as his mother drew close. She was shorter than him. She had storm-colored eyes and thin skin that showed even the finest lines. He remembered, abruptly, that the constellation of freckles speckling her nose and cheeks used to scrunch up when she smiled at him. She did not smile. She laid the flat of her hand against his cheek and he felt her long fingers tremble. A fist closed in Donovan’s chest.

  “I’ve wanted and feared this day for twelve years,” she whispered.

  “Get away from him, Max,” Saul said.

  She did not move. “Max, now,” Saul said sternly, but she did not seem to hear him. He motioned to the three burly men; two of them clamped their hands on Donovan’s shoulders and pulled him backward, while the third stretched out an arm to keep the woman back. She turned then, wildly. “Don’t hurt him, Saul! He’s my son! My son.” In the profound silence that had gripped all the assembled onlookers, her voice climbed high and u
rgent. Her eyes raced around the circle of watching faces, finding stunned sympathy but no help. With a choked sound, she tried to reach Donovan again, to push past the man who stood in her way. He took hold of her arm, holding her in place.

  Something tore inside Donovan. The sight of her reaching for him as he was pulled away—it stabbed deep. He fought against the arms dragging him back. “Get your hands off me,” he snarled. “Let me go!” He tensed like a bent wire, throwing the surface of his exocel into a landscape of edges, sharp as cut glass.

  The two men on either side released him at once. “My hands!” one of them howled, staring at his lacerated palms. “He cut us!” The crowd broke into shouting, and cursing, and movement. Rocks began flying at Donovan again, and the other man unslung his M4 and swung it like a heavy metal club across Donovan’s back.

  He bit his tongue as he fell. It hurt so badly, a sharper and more concentrated pain than the blow to his body, that he yelped and tears pricked his eyes. He tasted blood in his mouth as he plowed into the ground with his knees and the side of his head. Above the tumult, he heard his mother cry out, as if in pain, something between a curse and a plea, and he heard Saul also, bellowing for order.

  Donovan raised his head and saw Anya. She hadn’t moved. Everyone else was moving and shouting, but she was standing still in the maelstrom. “Get up,” she urged him. He couldn’t hear her, but that was what she said. He tried to push up; two men took hold of his handcuffs behind his back and forced his bound arms upward painfully, so he swore loudly and scrambled to stand before his shoulders came free from their sockets. He tried to turn his head, to look for his mother, but she was gone, swallowed up or borne away by the crowd. The rebels did not touch him again; they drove him through the cavern at the points of their rifles.

  They locked him in a small, dark cell at the end of a long tunnel. The cell had a single cot with a thin mildewed mattress. The frame of the bed was bolted to the stone floor. There was a drain in the corner to piss into. The cell was not designed to hold someone who was armored; a resourceful, determined exo might be able to find and exploit some weakness in the bars, so two guards armed with collapsed stock submachine guns stood some distance away, sharing a smoke and keeping a watch over him.

  Donovan was grateful they had taken off the handcuffs. His wrists had been bound together behind his back for so long that his shoulders and arms had lost all feeling beyond dull heaviness. An hour later, it was still hard to move them. He lay on the bed, groggy from constant hurt and the emotional fallout of the world dropping out from under him. He wondered when his mother—when Max, the Sapience terrorist and propaganda writer—would come to see him. He wanted to see her again. In the dim quiet of the cell, it was hard to believe any of what had happened. He needed to see her again, for confirmation, even though the thought filled him with sickly confusion.

  He shivered in the cold of the cave. Shivering was a bad sign. It meant his exocel was too weak to insulate him properly. He eyed the ugly gray prisoner’s jumpsuit that had been deposited through the bars onto the floor of his cell. His SecPac uniform was destroyed; filthy, damp, punched through by bullets and torn by his own battle armor. He drew it tighter around himself and turned his head away.

  For years, he used to secretly speculate about where his mother might be living, what she might be doing, whether she had another family now, one she loved more. His imaginings, based on how he remembered her—lively and spontaneous if a bit preoccupied and distant—were glazed with nostalgia and bitterness, but often fanciful. She was a vagabond in Asia. She was remarried with four kids. She was dead. It didn’t really matter. His father had never offered anything in the way of information, no matter how insistently Donovan questioned him.

  “But why? Why did she go away? Where did she go?” he’d asked, up until he was in his teens and stopped caring.

  His father’s face would darken. “She wasn’t happy.”

  “What wasn’t she happy with?” Donovan asked, with a child’s terror that the answer was: you.

  “With this life. With me. With all of it.” His father always looked at him then, in a way that made Donovan suspect he was holding back. “She wasn’t from the Round. She didn’t really know what she wanted when she moved here.” Regret and anger traced the furrows of his face. “She shouldn’t have been marked. That was my fault.”

  Donovan was bewildered by this. Plenty of people aspired to what they had: erze status, a good home, a life in the Round—that was why his father had such an important and busy job. Why would his mother want to leave, to leave him for anything else? “But why doesn’t she ever call or visit? Don’t you know where she is?”

  Dominick Reyes had no patience for this descent into petulance and resentment. “No, I do not. And if I did, it wouldn’t matter. We all make our own choices, Donovan, and she chose badly. She chose to leave us.”

  Only she didn’t just leave. She left to join Sapience, to fight an unending war of terror against the zhree-supported government. Against his father, and against SecPac, and by extension, against him too. A nauseating grief filled Donovan’s aching stomach and seeped into his throat. He curled onto his side. Reality was becoming too strange and painful to handle.

  Time passed. He had little sense of how much. Three shifts of guards came and went. They didn’t speak to him. Donovan got colder, and thirstier, and hungrier. “Hey,” he called to the guards. “Aren’t you at least supposed to give me some food and water?” They didn’t answer him. They weren’t the hateful and impulsive rebels who’d been yelling and throwing rocks. These men had the look of hardened revolutionaries. When Donovan cursed them—“Hey, I’m talking to you, you squishy bastards!”—they went on smoking and watching him impassively, as if he were an angry dog flinging itself against its leash, well out of range. Donovan licked his chilled lips. They didn’t treat him as human because to them, he wasn’t.

  He took the gray jumpsuit into a corner and changed into it. It was made of heavy fabric, dry and intact. It made him feel warmer right away. He folded his ruined uniform properly and placed it on the end of the mattress. Doing so made him feel less ashamed about this small initial surrender. He was a prisoner of war now and facing a battle of will against his captors. His two current guards wore thick coats, and as he watched, they pulled on gloves to keep their hands warm. When they breathed, he saw the faint mist hanging in front of their faces. Donovan had heard the hum of generators in the main cavern; there was heat and light in this bunker, but they were depriving him of it.

  He slept in exhaustion-induced fits and spurts that made it even more difficult to judge the passage of time. Each time he awoke, it was in a near panic. It was terrifying to feel his armor deteriorating, to feel the cold reaching his skin and chilling his flesh. Even so, his exocel would pull everything from his body before it failed; he would fall into an anemic coma before hypothermia set in.

  They’re screwing with me. Making me feel as weak as a squishy.

  He was surprised when the slight figure appeared in front of his cell. “Anya?” Relief bubbled up inside him. He went up to the bars and reached his hands through. She was holding a plastic cup of water and an open silver pouch, both of which she placed into his eager grasp. He could smell that the pouch was filled with food, and his insides contracted with need. He had been in here at least a day, though he was only guessing, and the last thing he’d eaten had been the muffin and beef jerky Anya had snuck him the day before that.

  He downed the water, then tipped the pouch to his mouth. It was an MRE in a self-heating package, the sort of thing he’d had to eat during field training. Apparently, Sapience camps stocked them as well. It was lukewarm and stewlike; chicken and beans or something like that. Donovan didn’t care, and he barely tasted it. Anya hadn’t given him a utensil, so he had to squeeze most of it into his mouth. It was gone so fast he wished he had slowed down. He was still ravenously hungry as he looked at the empty pouch, wanting to take it apart and lick the insid
e of the foil but not wanting to stoop to that level under Anya’s watchful gaze. She would probably report everything about his condition and behavior to her superiors.

  She held out her hands and he reluctantly handed the cup and pouch back to her. “I didn’t think I’d see you again,” he said. “I thought you’d be getting the Sapience orientation for new recruits, not feeding prisoners.”

  Anya shrugged. “They figured you wouldn’t try to hurt me,” she said. “And Max didn’t want anyone to hurt you.”

  The thought of his mother trying to protect him made Donovan angry. “Why didn’t she come herself, then?”

  “They won’t let her.”

  “You mean Saul and Kevin.” Donovan gripped the bars. The metal was as cold as ice. “So do you like it so far? Joining up with terrorists, hiding in a cave—this is what you wanted, right?”

  “I have to go,” she said. She turned and began to walk away.

  “Wait,” he said, immediately regretting he’d said anything to make her leave. She was the only one who would speak to him, the only one to bring him food and water, and right now, she was his only connection to the world beyond these bars. “What are they going to do to me?” he called after her, but she was already turning a corner in the tunnel.

  In the damp cold, he began to cough. He had to hold his sides from the pain of it. He coughed up blood; it speckled the sleeve of the mottled gray jumpsuit and the piss-yellow fabric on the cot. He felt light-headed and wheezy. Kevin’s bullets had done a number on him, and frozen and weak as he was, he wasn’t going to get better.

  He thought about his closest erze mates and wondered if he would see any of them again. Jet, of course, whom he’d been Hardened with, marked with, trained with, and loved like a brother. Tamaravick Kohl, with the face of a model and the work ethic of a draft horse, was a bit too serious and grown-up but had a sensitive, considerate side that came out for those she cared about. Leonidas Hsu, sleepy-eyed and soft-spoken, handled combat with ice water in his veins and at all other times carried a sketchbook and drew elaborate pictures of fantasy creatures. Cassidy Spencer, always the first into any room, was sharp-tongued and quick-witted, five foot three but able to deal with anyone—from calming senior citizens to talking down a roomful of men with machine guns. And Thaddeus Lowell, their class captain, an assigned mentor a few years older than they were, was already a lieutenant at the age of twenty-one, a natural leader, bighearted, unflappable, and able to drink anyone under the table and hit a quarter-sized target with an E201 at three hundred meters.