"You have no idea, Elite."
Silence hung between us, and then I quietly said, "I'm not sure I can claim that title anymore."
He sat very still for a very long time and then lifted intense blue eyes to my face.
"Do you need anything from your home?" he asked. "Because I know this really decent cat-burglar who could probably get it for you."
I smiled for the first time since we'd left Wáikěiton for good.
The smile fell when I realised how difficult getting into my apartment would now be. My Shiloh would lock down if Wang Chao tried to gain access. That was something at least. The unit inoperable afterwards. But I was sure they'd eventually pull her apart and find all my secrets.
For now though, Parnell was off limits.
"I can't go back. You don't know him."
"I heard his threats."
Wang Chao hadn't actually made any, but the hint of what he meant was in the tone, the well chosen words. Trent had seen through him, which would make this evening go better if I could appeal to his softer side.
Hopefully he had one.
"What I meant, though," he said after a lengthy pause. "Was is there anything of significance left in your home. Something... important, say?"
I looked him steadily in the eyes well aware that even if he had a softer side it was hidden behind his desire to get that file full of Sat-Loc codes. It shouldn't have mattered. It served a purpose. He'd take me in just for that file alone. I didn't need him to want to help me. I just needed him to offer me a safe place to stay.
The reasons behind it were irrelevant.
"It's securely tucked away," I replied, forcing myself not to reach for my breast and lead him right to it.
I wondered if he'd have an opportunity to stumble upon it in due course. The idea held appeal, even if him getting distracted by the thumb-drive would be the height of rejection in the throes of a passionate embrace.
The image, for some reason, made me smile.
"Now why have you got that damn sexy look on your face, Selena?"
"Lena," I corrected. "My friends call me Lena."
"Lena," he repeated slowly, as though savouring the name. "Why didn't I think of calling you that? It suits you. That or Zebra."
A burst of laughter left me. Then his fingers picked up a few strands of my hair and my breath caught. He studied them, running the white and black stripes through his hand, then leaned forward and inhaled deeply.
"What shampoo is that?" he asked in a low voice.
"Lily of the Valley," I whispered.
His eyes came up to my face, froze there for such a long moment I thought he was about to kiss me.
But then he said, "You've made yourself distinctive. Although still appropriate, your hair is a statement that must have come to Overseer attention. Why?"
Disappointment thrummed through me, but I pushed it deep inside.
"General Chew-wen," I offered, making Trent frown. "He gave me a choice of colours when my father died. I'd tried every shade in a pitiful attempt to rebel right up until then," - Trent stilled at my words, but I kept going - "and he took it upon himself as my guardian to instil some model behaviour into me."
"What colours did the good General choose?"
"He told me, 'White and black, Selena. You pick.' So I did."
Trent chuckled. "You picked both."
"He hadn't specified one or the other, just white and black."
"And he let you?"
"He'd spoken in front of the entire Overseer council at a party he was holding at his home. They called him out when he tried to get me to change it again later."
"They stood behind you?" Trent asked, surprised.
"They stood behind model behaviour," I corrected and he nodded understanding.
"You don't go back on your word," he murmured.
"Exactly. Elite must rise above mistakes. Even if the mistakes are made by themselves."
"Do you believe that?"
"My father didn't."
"He didn't?" His voice had changed. Hardened. I wondered why.
"He believed in Wánměi," I said. "He believed we were a great nation influenced by too much peer pressure from the outside world. He believed we could become greater still, if we held to certain values and refrained from polluting our bodies through overindulgence. He did not believe that some of us were better than others. He believed we were all Elite, living in a society that could provide everything we needed, but kept us safe."
"He was wrong," Trent said harshly, standing from the seat and walking towards the doors as the train began to slow down.
I watched his rigid back, the muscles tense across his shoulders. His reflection in the glass showed a man angry with the world. Or just the part of the world Wánměi existed in.
"Do you think we are destined to become like our parents?" I asked from my still sitting position as the train came to a stop and Shiloh did her thing.
He turned to look at me, puzzlement on his face.
"You think you're not like him, Lena?" he asked, and the sound of my name, the one I heard most often spoken, did unbidden things to my insides.
"I loved him. I miss him," I said. "But I crave to know if there is more than the Wánměi he helped to create." The words came from out of nowhere. I hadn't consciously thought them before, let alone said them aloud.
They resonated with conviction I did not know I had.
They sounded too loud in the moment; a suspended segment of time as the entire world held its collective breath.
He stood there for too long. I expected the doors to swish closed on him at any second, but they somehow remained stationary. Then he lifted his hand and held it out.
"Come on, little zebra," he said, eyes holding mine fast. "You've just performed treason on a Rap-Trans train, it might be wise to run in the wilds for a while in case Cardinals suddenly appear."
I glanced around the Elite carriage and shook my head in disgust. Several cameras were aimed directly at me. They could have been in that position all along. Or they could have changed when they heard me say treasonous things about Wánměi. There was absolutely no excuse for my loose tongue. I was better than this.
I rose and moved quickly through the doors, grasping Trent's still outstretched hand. His free one was placing something in his ear; a communication device that I was sure was off-grid.
"Si," he said softly, pulling me further through the busy station and towards the escalators. "Can you find us? We're at Rahroh Tohah."
He stopped abruptly and turned around, pulling me hard behind him. In the background I heard the distinct synchronised thump-thump of multiple drone boots on the tiled floors. There could be only one reason why they were in formation and heading down the escalators to this platform. But so soon?
We began to run. Dodging commuters, jumping over bench seats, making shocked Citizens cry out in alarm. Colours flashed past in their mixture of Citizen and the occasional Elite clothing. The sound of the Rap-Trans train starting up again unaffected by the commotion on the platform rumbled through the air. Heat from outside the station battled the air-con units, making sweat bead on my brow and the smell of perspiration en masse reach my nose.
I slammed into a large man, rebounded off a diminutive woman, making her shopping bags spill and scatter the contents across the platform, and still Trent held fast to my hand, dragging me towards the only other exit on the platform.
It shouldn't have surprised me when I saw them at the top of the next set of stairs leading out. Drones could respond quickly and as some were already here, why not more? But still, there were so many. I hadn't thought much about it, but it was obvious their ranks had swollen recently. Instead of the odd two drone unit, we were faced with at least twelve. I couldn't help wondering why they were even at Rahroh Tohah, of all places; just what did the Overseers expected to happen in Wánměi suburbia?
We skidded to a stop at the base of the stairs, red laser dots immediately moving over our chest
s from the sPol above. The entire station fell momentarily silent at the ominous sight.
"Halt, Citizens!" one demanded, breaking through the tense air.
Instinct made us pause, but the sound of thumping boots behind us kicked the urge to flee into overdrive. I scanned the area, trying to locate a door leading to a supply closet or maintenance tunnel, but none existed. Panic began to well deep inside. I could scale tall buildings, hang off sky-rise ledges, break through high security electronic defences.
But I couldn't get us off this platform.
Rap-Trans commuters were huddling as far away from us as possible, their eyes large, their faces anything but complacent. Some averted their gaze and pretended to be watching their vid-screens avidly. Others were trying to hide their fear, showing instead anger at the disruption and our obvious non-model behaviour, making them brave enough to shake fingers at us and breach the silence to shout in various languages for us to obey. To submit.
I looked toward Trent, whose face was stoic and hard. His fingers tightened on my hand, a signal I took to mean defeat. We were hemmed in, trapped by armed drones, about to be arrested and probably wiped.
For the first time in my life I questioned our existence. Lately my world view had been changing. But right there on that platform, society represented in the mixture of rage and angst and confusion on the faces of the commuters, and our imminent death coming ever closer in a synchronised wave, I wondered what it was all for.
Wánměi and the Elite. Citizens who coasted through life drugged by the Overseers. Cardinals who obeyed their commands and killed on order. Why?
So we could avoid overindulgence. So we could live model lives.
Why?
"Fuck," Trent muttered, sweat glistening down the side of his neck. I watched numbly as a droplet ran under his t-shirt collar, his jaw tight, a muscle flexing along the sharp edge. "Well, this has been fun, Elite," he said with mock humour, in what I was beginning to see was his way of coping in a heightened emotional event.
I glanced back at the closest drone, his arm up already to iRec, and felt a strange kind of inevitable calm. This was it. This was what my hobbies had led me to.
It was a shame I was taking a somewhat innocent man down with me, and all because I took a file with Sat-Loc codes from a prominent Elite on the payroll of General Chew-wen.
"What are the codes for?" I asked.
"You want to know that now?" Trent shot back incredulously.
"I'd like to know why I'm about to wiped."
"Such an optimist," he supplied, his hand coming up to scratch at his ear.
Or adjust the earpiece he'd put in earlier.
"Tell you what," he said, looking around the platform, gauging the distance between us and the approaching drones.
He started to push me closer to the railway tracks, but why I didn't know. They were cut off by a glass security wall and electronically controlled doors which I couldn't bypass in the three seconds it would take the nearest drone to reach us if he suddenly rushed. The trains had been stopped too, so no quick escape onto one of them would be forthcoming either.
"Show me where you hid it," Trent added. "And I'll tell you what they do."
I laughed, quite inappropriately for our situation, and he raised an eyebrow at me, an incongruous smirk on his lips.
Just as the doors closest to us swished open for no reason at all.
"Jump!" was all he said, before he pushed me through the opening, following behind as gunfire rang out over our heads.
Chapter 20
It Was Probably A Little Scary
Lena
I landed almost on top of the live third rail, the hum of 750 volts of electricity making me yelp. In the next instant I was hauled to my feet by Trent, and we were off running again.
My ankle throbbed and I prayed I didn't twist it on the uneven railroad ties. But soon ignored the ache as I heard the drones land on the loose gravel behind us. Their boots thudded loudly against each railway sleeper. They wouldn't tire. They wouldn't misjudge their step. Unless something unexpected happened, they wouldn't trip and fall.
But we could.
My heart pounded inside my chest, blood pumped through my body as my arms swung in unison with each step. I could hear Trent's harsh breaths, mingling with the sounds of Wánměi on the other side of the glass security wall. Behind it, below the raised track, the city continued on oblivious. Up ahead the screen stopped, making the above ground railway exposed to the elements. It was raining again, which I knew would mean the ties would become slippery, and if we miss-stepped and landed on a dormant metal track, then we'd definitely lose our footing.
I only wished the drones would, but their pacing was too perfect. There was no chance of them slipping and the rain would barely impact on their progression at all. Visibility would decrease for the Cardinal operator, but not enough to give us an advantage.
We came out into the open, immediately getting soaked by the downpour. Lightning flashed in the distance, heralding an afternoon thunderstorm. I glanced over the side of the track and took in the twenty foot drop. There was no way we could jump and for the next hundred metres there was only a grassy park and spindly trees to stop our fall. We needed a building, an awning, something to make the plummet less lethal. But there was nothing for a hundred metres it seemed.
I was starting to get quite puffed and with the exhaustion came mistakes. I tripped, saw the ground rush up towards me, felt the graze of the gravel even before I'd hit it, and was sure my body was magnetised to that blasted live rail. Then a hard arm wrapped around my body, hauling me up before I hit dirt. I gulped in air, feeling winded by Trent's action but grateful all the same time.
We wouldn't be able to outrun them. The knowledge was right there in the front of my mind as breaths sawed in and out, and my ankle throbbed to the same beat as my pulse, and sweat mixed with rainwater and drowned out the rest of the world, bringing my focus down to just this. Survival. Running for our lives. The futility of our efforts, but the frantic, desperate desire to keep trying.
Neither of us urged the other on. We didn't need to. We were both giving it our all, and we both knew it was useless. I fumbled in my little handbag, which was slung across my shoulders and body, for a weapon, determined I would not go down without a fight. There was no point conforming now. We may not have been iRec'd successfully yet, but we'd ignored commands to comply. In the sPol drones' eyes, who continued to doggedly pursue us, we were already guilty.
And the only sentence for our transgressions was either arrest or immediate wipe.
My fingers found my disconnected cellphone in one pocket next to my PDA, and a small Swiss Army knife I used to pry open keypad casings and such in another, which would be useless against metallic bodied drones. Then they moved on to the other side of the bag and located my decoder sitting snugly in place. Beside it, in its own compartment, was my wallet. For a second I thought it sat alone in its hiding spot. Then my trembling fingers wrapped around my laser pointer and pulled the device out.
I looked at it, as I continued to sprint down the track, then glanced up and noticed we'd made it to the other side of the park. Buildings rose on one side, the busy main road in Rahroh Tohah on the other, rows of cars moving at a sedate pace drove along it unaware of what was transpiring above their heads.
I looked left. I looked right. I saw our opportunity, but knew we'd never make it. The footsteps of the thundering drones sounded right behind my ears. My thumb rubbed over the laser pointer, and then depressed the button to make it light. I glanced over my shoulder, my speed slowing compared to Trent's, and aimed.
It was impossible to get a straight line to the drone's camera lens. I was moving, it was moving. My hand shook with the incredible amount of stress. I bit my lip, kept waving the pointer over my shoulder and hoped luck would prevail.
It didn't, but when I looked ahead and saw Trent had already made it to the closest awning and had realised I'd fallen behind, I thought that
was probably as good as our fortunes would get.
"Jump!" I yelled, fully prepared to sacrifice myself for his sake.
My hand went to my bra, feeling the outline of the thumb-drive and I wondered if I could extricate it and throw it to him in the small amount of time we had left. Too many variables. Too easily it would fall over the side of the tracks. And throwing away the one thing that had caused this entire disaster seemed like an enormous waste.
I lowered my hand, still flashing my pointer over my shoulder blindly and watched as Trent steadied himself, widening his stance, lifting two hands up and then fired.
I couldn't see what he held. I expected it to be a small pistol of some description, but the sound of a bullet being shot didn't follow.
Just the red glow of a laser pointer as he aimed at the closest drone to my back.
I made his side as I heard the unmistakable sound of a drone losing his footing and going down hard. Followed by the crash of several drones behind him being caught off guard and following in his path.
"Go!" he yelled beside me, nodding towards the awning of a building to the side.
The drop was longer than I had anticipated and slightly further away than it had initially appeared. More footsteps sounded out as the drones behind those original ones to fall managed to pass the obstacle and kept on coming. I knew I didn't have time to think about it, I just had to commit.
I took a step back, sucked in a deep breath and then threw myself over the side of the railway track, falling, falling, falling through the rain and heated air. The surface was wet, of course. The awning angling down. I hadn't thought about that. I'd prepared myself for that first impact, but not for the subsequent loss of balance and inexorable slide down the metal siding and onto the concrete pathway below.
Agony burst through my ankle and there was no way to stop the scream that erupted from within. I was sure it had been broken. I blinked through the white hot spots of pain before my eyes and tried to see if a bone was protruding from the skin. My vision blurred evermore quickly, making the last thing I saw, as I narrowed my eyes at my throbbing leg, two scuffed looking booted feet.
Elite (Citizen Saga, Book 1) Page 13
