Exo

by Fonda Lee

  It took over three hours to drive into Rapid City. The evening quickly turned into full dark, and twice they had to backtrack to detour around areas made impassable by fallen trees and rocks, very likely the result of yesterday’s air strikes. The roads were narrow and winding, and Kevin drove with the headlights dimmed, so the going was slow. They didn’t want to attract any attention from the sky, he explained, nor meet a deer through the windshield. The man was a jackal, but he was careful. You didn’t live long as a Sapience operative if you weren’t careful. Every once in a while, he looked back at them in the rearview mirror. From the way he was sitting, he must be packing in a shoulder holster. Donovan glimpsed the shape of another, larger firearm on the floor under Anya’s feet.

  “You awake back there, Brett?”

  “Sure am, Kevin.”

  “Keep it that way.”

  Max was gazing out the window as the forest crawled past. The inside of the van was so silent the hum of the road was like a distant surf, carrying them slowly through waves of dark and rocky landscape. Donovan shifted, surreptitiously testing the handcuffs and wondering, now that he was feeling better, if he could get free of them if he had to. Earlier in the day, he’d run his exocel through its paces. It was still worrisomely weak in spots, but his control was fast and flawless. If anything went wrong on this trip, at least he wouldn’t be helpless. Brett breathed loudly behind him, his pistol resting on his knee.

  They made much faster progress once the hills were behind them; the van was trundling down flat roads. Max put a hand on his arm. “Can you see it?”

  Donovan followed her gaze. “See what?” he asked. They had reached the outskirts of Rapid City. It looked far older than the Ring Belt; many of the shadowy buildings that filed past with increasing regularity were old concrete-and-steel structures, though some were modern, rounded, and shimmering with imported metal weave. Streetlights pulsed by. There were many other vehicles on the road now, cheap petroleum ground cars chugging along in the right lane as expensive skimmercars shot past them. The green lights of a transport ship blinked across the night sky, perhaps carrying seeds or wood to distant planets.

  “Everywhere you look, we’re becoming like them,” Max said. “Buildings, cars, even human bodies … it’s all becoming more alien. After the War Era, we fell off our own path, we stopped being inventive and started striving only for what they dangled in front of us.” Her whitish reflection in the window glass was somber and ghostly. “Do you want to know what first brought me over to Sapience?”

  He did, but he didn’t say anything. He let her continue. She said, “It was a little girl. She was about a year old, the same age you were at the time, waiting by one of the entrances to the Round with her unmarked young mother. The mother had brought the girl to be adopted by a couple inside the Round. Whatever the woman’s reasons for giving up her child, she must have thought her daughter would have a better life being erze marked, maybe even being changed into an exo. That toddler didn’t understand, she just cried and cried as her mother walked away.” She closed her eyes for a moment, as if the memory were from yesterday instead of sixteen years ago. “Tell me, Donovan … do you know how the Liaison Office—your father’s people—how they approve applicants for erze status?”

  Did he know? He could probably recite the criteria in his sleep. “There are a lot of factors,” he said. “Mental and physical health, intelligence, obedience to the law, learned skills, psychological profile …”

  “The zhree choose the healthiest, brightest, most obedient humans as their aides,” his mother said. “They offer more comfortable, peaceful, prosperous lives, working for the good of the Commonwealth. They harness our work for their own purposes, and they Harden our children. The luckiest of us are second-class citizens on our own planet, but we feel grateful and entitled, because we enjoy it at the expense of those who are lower. We are being remade into a servant species, and your father’s co-operationist government is helping to make it happen. That night I wrote an angry letter about that little girl, and I published it under a fake name, and that’s how it began.”

  Donovan shifted in his seat. This was the side of his mother he’d never seen. This was Max, the ideologue, who made all of society sound like an evil conspiracy. Of course there was disparity. Yes, there were cities that badly needed modernizing, and the erze system was far from perfect, but there were good things too: enduring peace between nations and species, exocels, cheap and clean energy, interstellar trade, longer and healthier lives … “Haven’t you read history?” he said. “We humans weren’t exactly doing such a great job for ourselves before the Landing. There were all sorts of awful things going on. You can’t say everything’s worse now because of the zhree.”

  “Sure you can,” Kevin cut in. “Whatever problems we had before, they were our problems. Now there’s only one problem. They’re it.” He turned the wheel and drove into a near-empty parking lot. He stopped the van but left the engine running. On the other side of the lot, a pickup truck was parked by itself. It flashed its headlights: once, twice.

  “Okay.” Kevin nodded to Anya. “You know what to do.”

  The girl opened the passenger-side door and hopped out. She zipped up her jacket, closed the door, and began walking across the asphalt, toward the pickup truck.

  “What’s she doing?” Donovan felt a throb of anxiety, watching her stride away by herself.

  Kevin peered through the windshield, forearms leaned over the steering wheel. One hand moved to his vest, feeling for the weapon concealed underneath. “Meeting our contacts. The guys in Rapid City know me, but they’re still real careful. SecPac spies got to their cell last year; they lost a bunch of good people.” He slid Donovan an accusing glare from the corner of his eye, as if he’d had something to do with it.

  The door of the pickup truck opened. The figure of a large man in a leather jacket stepped out. Donovan’s anxiety sharpened. The man met Anya partway across the parking lot. Donovan could see them speaking to each other. Were they exchanging secret codes? Asking questions only the other person was supposed to know the answer to? Donovan pressed a hand to the glass. Anya looked like a child next to the hulking figure. “Why is she the one who goes?”

  Kevin scowled. “The most junior operative always goes.”

  “She knows what she’s doing,” Max said. “She has to earn her way up in Sapience. We all did.”

  Anya turned and came back to the van. Donovan released a silent breath of relief.

  “We’re good,” she said, climbing back into the passenger seat. “They’ll take us to the doctor now.”

  Kevin grunted in satisfaction and pulled the van forward. The pickup truck’s lights came on. It drove out of the parking lot, and Kevin followed. A hint of tense anticipation pervaded the inside of the vehicle. Kevin had his eyes fixed on the pickup’s taillights, both his hands on the wheel. The illuminated bumper stickers included the old United States flag, a stylized bald eagle, Give War a Chance, and Proud to Be an Extremist.

  “Who is this doctor?” Donovan asked. “Why are you going to see him?”

  “Dr. Nakada is a scientist who does research for us,” Max said.

  “A Sapience scientist?” It was bizarre to think of cave-dwelling insurgents having scientists.

  “He’s a patriot,” Max said. “I think he might be able to help us. To help you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The pickup truck turned and slowed to a stop behind a square, gray brick building. Kevin parked the van behind the other vehicle and turned off the engine. He waited a second, then opened the door. The rest of them followed, stepping out to meet the two men who’d emerged from the cab of the truck. The big man who’d met Anya introduced himself as Dixon and his shorter companion as Reed. Donovan doubted those were their real names, but he filed them carefully in his memory, along with the men’s appearances. Dixon was soft-spoken, had a trim black beard, and a scar over his left eyebrow. Reed would be easy to remember: H
e had round glasses, red hair, and a gap between his front teeth.

  “Warde, you’re still alive and kicking?” Reed exclaimed. The two men shook hands, then embraced. “You’ve got more lives than the devil’s cat. Planning to quit while you’re ahead?”

  “Never.” Kevin grinned. “Saul sends his best.”

  “Which one of you is Max?” Dixon asked.

  “I am.” Donovan’s mother stepped forward. “Thank you for meeting us on short notice. How’s Widget?”

  “Still got all her atoms,” Reed said cheerily. A ripple of chuckles. Sapience humor, apparently.

  Reed’s eyes fell on Donovan, then traveled down to his bound, striped hands. “Jesus.” He took an involuntary step backward. “You weren’t kidding. An armored stripe. Jesus.” He looked at them and shook his head. “You’ve got stones, I’ll give you that.”

  “He’s not a threat to us,” Max said. “He hasn’t hurt anyone.”

  “Why’s he in handcuffs, then?” said Dixon. “The only exo you can trust is a dead one.”

  “This is a special case,” Max insisted. “The doctor is always asking to see a live exo. Well, we brought him one.”

  Donovan frowned, an alarm bell pinging in his mind. What was that supposed to mean?

  Dixon and Reed exchanged a doubtful glance. “True enough,” Reed said. “Widget must trust you something fierce to agree to this, but all right. I sure hope you know what you’re doing. Let’s go see the doctor.” He fished a key from his pocket and unlocked the back door. It opened onto a concrete stairwell stretching up to the unlit floors above and down to a single closed basement door. “Knock at the bottom. He knows you’re coming. We’ll stay up here and call down if there’s any sign of trouble.”

  “You stay up here too,” Kevin said to Brett and Anya.

  “Hey, come on now, Kevin, can’t we see what’s going on down there?” Brett said.

  “No.” Kevin wound a hand behind Anya’s neck and gave it an overly long squeeze. “We won’t be long.”

  Max led the way down to the unmarked basement door. Donovan followed her, Kevin behind him. As he descended, apprehension wormed up Donovan’s throat. He had a bad feeling about what was going on here. Max knocked and waited. A shadow fell across the sliver of light emanating from beneath the closed door—someone examining the visitors through the peephole. Bolts were drawn back, and the door opened.

  “Quickly,” said the man on the other side. The three of them filed through. Dr. Nakada closed and locked the door behind them.

  They were inside a cluttered, half-lit laboratory. Donovan ran his eyes over labeled drawers, an examining table, rows of microscopes on counters, and shelves of jars filled with things he didn’t want to examine too closely. Were they … sweet erze … body parts? With panotin still on them? And was that a … miniature Hardening tank? The color of the viscous liquid inside was wrong, almost orange, but the attached tubes and instruments made him stare in queasy recollection.

  This was definitely not right.

  “Kevin,” said the doctor, by way of greeting. “Max.”

  “Good to see you, Eugene,” Max said. She put a hand lightly on the small of Donovan’s back. “This is Donovan. He’s … my son.”

  Eugene Nakada was probably not old, just prematurely aged. His hair was jet black, but it receded in a dramatic widow’s peak. The smooth skin of his curious face appeared pallid under the fluorescent lights illuminating one side of the basement. The doctor focused on Donovan with unsettling interest and shuffled forward with his hands in his pockets. “A living exo! I take it your exocel is undamaged and healthy? What year were you Hardened?” When Donovan told him, he nodded enthusiastically. “Eighth-generation technology. Fantastic.” He added, “You must excuse my exuberance. I don’t usually meet exos who can answer my questions.”

  A scrabbling sound erupted from the corner. Two rhesus monkeys were scrambling back and forth in a large cage. Donovan did a double take; there was something strange about the monkeys. They were armored. Except their armor was wrong—insofar as monkey exos could be right at all. Their exocels were incomplete, deformed. They couldn’t possibly be functional. They covered some parts of their bodies and not others, thicker in places, creating a grotesque patchwork of panotin and fur. The effect was revolting, like looking at an animal with human skin partially grafted over it.

  Donovan’s stomach lurched, and he took a hasty step back. His eyes jerked away from the sight of the monkeys and landed back on the jars of body parts. The sickening realization hit him. “This is where you bring them. The exos that you kill.” He stared at Kevin in horror. “You give them to this mad scientist to dissect and study so he can perform crazy experiments.”

  “Donovan.” Max’s voice was sharp. “Just listen first.”

  “They’re not crazy experiments,” said Dr. Nakada with a defensive sniff. “And I wasn’t always a ‘mad’ scientist.” He took his hands from his pockets and turned them over. At Donovan’s stunned expression, he smiled wryly. “Yes, I still have them. They’re faded, I know—haven’t been renewed in years. But SecPac hasn’t caught me yet, so they were never stripped off. Truth be told, I don’t care to part with my Scientist markings. I worked hard enough for them, back in the day.”

  “You were a scientist-in-erze,” said Donovan. “And now you work for Sapience?”

  “The research I do now is the most important and fascinating work I’ve ever done. There are hundreds of thousands of exos around the world, yet we humans still know so little about how Hardening actually works.” A shadow descended over his face. “And why it sometimes doesn’t.”

  It took Donovan a second to understand. “Who was it?” he asked.

  “My daughter.” Dr. Nakada’s unblinking stare made Donovan wonder if the man was hating him at that moment—hating him for being one of the survivors. “She was a beautiful little girl. I knew the odds, but my wife was an exo; I assumed our daughter would be fine. That the risks would be less for us. Not a very scientific assumption to make.” He turned away and began rummaging distractedly in a nearby counter drawer. “After we lost her, I couldn’t stop thinking about how ignorant I was. How ignorant we all are. The zhree have humans-in-erze working all over the world, in dozens of capacities, but exocel technology is still their secret.”

  “I know my own exocel,” Donovan said.

  “How to use it,” the doctor agreed. “The more interesting question is: How to defeat it?” He took a small item from the drawer and held it up. Donovan had one second to notice it was a small bottle with a spray nozzle before the doctor thrust it toward him and sprayed a fine mist into his face.

  “The hell—” Donovan jerked his head back, armoring instantly out of reflex. Then, in one terrible moment, his exocel dropped. One instant it was there, in another, it was gone, his conscious connection severed as abruptly as if a limb had been chopped off.

  Donovan’s heart seemed to stop. One second passed. Two. Three.

  Oh my God.

  His armor sprang alive again. It poured violently across his skin, like water bursting through a dam. Donovan reeled with relief and fury, straining the short length of chain between his handcuffs. “What did you do to me?” he nearly screamed. For a few awful seconds, he’d been reduced to the helplessness of a five-year-old, unable to control his newly Hardened body. All the doctor had done was spray something in his face. How could his armor be disabled by something so mundane?

  Kevin whooped. “Did you just do what I think you did?” he demanded. “Did you just turn off his armor?”

  Max snatched the small bottle from Dr. Nakada, studying it covetously. “Can you make it last longer?”

  Donovan choked back burning nausea. How could she be happy to see him defenseless and humiliated? Losing control of one’s exocel was like losing control of one’s bowels. Something that happened to the very young and the very old, the diseased and the disabled, and occasionally, to the very, very inebriated. He considered grabbi
ng the bottle and crushing it in his hand, though no doubt it wasn’t the only sample. Instead, he lunged for Nakada and closed his bound hands over the front of the man’s shirt, yanking him forward. “You are an erze traitor,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Kevin had the barrel of his gun up against Donovan’s ribs in a second. “Watch it.”

  Max grabbed Donovan’s tense, armored forearm. “Let him go, Donovan. He didn’t hurt you.”

  “I’m giving you two seconds, zebrahands,” Kevin hissed.

  Donovan let go slowly, his shoulders still trembling with rage. “What is that stuff?”

  Dr. Nakada smoothed the front of his rumpled shirt with a faint air of satisfaction. “Have you ever needed surgery?”

  Donovan shook his head. “A friend of mine once did.” Jet had had his appendix taken out when he was fourteen.

  “How does a surgeon operate on an exo?”

  “Exos don’t go to the hospital. There are zhree Nurses in the Towers who treat us.” He remembered visiting Jet after his surgery and asking him how they did it. “They put you so far under even your exocel conks out.”

  “Not precisely,” said Nakada. “They do anesthetize you, but they also use a drug that blocks the neurotransmitters controlling exocel activation. I synthesized the compound in soluble form but haven’t had a chance to test it until now.” He tapped his chin. “Unfortunately, as you can see, inhaling the dilute solution produces only a temporary effect.”

  “Would it work on a shroom?” Kevin asked.

  “No,” said Donovan. “The zhree don’t breathe the way we do.”

  “He is correct,” Nakada said. “They filter and take in oxygen through the surface of their bodies. Sprayed particles would be too large to affect them. Furthermore, I am not even certain the neurotransmitter blockers used on human exos would work on a different species.” He spread his hands. “As I said, we simply don’t know how zhree Scientists developed human exocels, and how different they are from what the zhree themselves have.”