by A. L. Davroe
I hand him my light-stick and examine around the edge of the blockade with my fingers. It’s a combination of dry, brittle plastic, broken chunks of cement, various twists of steel poles, and corrugated metal like the walls of the Disfavored shanties I used to see from my vantage point in Dad’s workroom back in Evanescence.
“I think we might have found the entry point.” I pull at a few rocks and they tumble to our feet in a cloud of dust.
“Careful,” Bastian warns, coughing a bit. “You don’t want to cause a cave-in.”
Squinting against the dirt, I nod and prod a little more gingerly. “It’s warm,” I say, putting my hand against the largest piece of corrugated board. “Is it hot outside?”
“Yeah. It’s a desert.”
I pull an old brick free and am rewarded with a small black hole beyond. I lean against the blockage, trying to see in the darkness on the other side. “I can’t—” I say as I step on one of the metal pieces at my knee level, but “see” is drowned out by an awful creaking noise and then my shriek as my high-heeled shoe slips, knocking me forward, and the whole of the blockage caves outward.
I tumble headlong, rolling and thumping with bricks and dust and clanging metal down a long, sharp decline. And continue to roll even after the incline stops until I slam against something tall and hard. I lay there half buried under rubble, dazed, ears ringing, and wincing, certain I’ve just broken every bone in my body.
Eventually, I chance a stinging breath. I’m rewarded with a mouthful of acrid, metallic air that smells like the breath of the dragon I fought in Nexis and tastes even worse, I’m sure. Sickened, I cough and retch, and it sends knifing pain on top of all the other aches that are settling into my bruising body.
Bastian yells above me. “Ella! Ella!” I hear him clambering down after me and a moment later, a few more rocks and bits of trash come tumbling down to add insult to my injury.
He lifts a piece of plastic off of me and I’m suddenly assaulted with dull light. I close my eyes against it. “Ella?”
“Tell me I’m not paralyzed,” I whimper. All I can feel is pain and I don’t know how far it extends.
I sense him crouch beside me. His hands rove my body.
“Ow,” I yelp, eyes flying back open. “Ouch, ouch, stop.” I sit upright, shove him away. “Stop it!”
He sits back, lets out a breath. “I think you’re okay.” He reaches into his coat pocket and draws out a handkerchief. “Just some bumps and scrapes.” He presses it against my head, apparently staunching blood.
Lifting my hands, I examine myself. Hands and elbows are scratched and bleeding, my clothes are filthy and torn. Reaching up, I take over holding the handkerchief and offer the bloody palm of my other hand. “Help me stand.”
He hauls me to my feet and I totter there, lightheaded. “Something’s wrong with my leg.” Slowly, I move to take a step and immediately regret it. Cursing, I pull at the lengths of the dress wrapped around my legs until they come free and then I tug them up. “Don’t look away. Tell me how bad it is.” Between the glaring yellow-white light and my dizziness, I can’t seem to focus.
Bastian squats down, and stares at my leg. “This is highly indecent. What if someone should come by and see me with my head up your dress?”
I roll my eyes. “I could care less about decency right now. Can I walk?”
“You’ve got a decent burn here, but I’m assuming you’re aware of that already. Looks like…” His voice trails off as he leans closer and prods my prosthetic with his fingers. “I’m not an Engineer by any stretch, but this looks like a structural injury of some kind. Something’s broken. I have no idea what it is nor the first thing to fix it.”
“Damn it.” Straightening in annoyance, I drop my dress so that it falls over his head. “Where are we?” I ask, squinting around, as he makes a hasty backpedal to escape the skirts.
He stands, gains his bearings.
We’re in some sort of field filled with what looks like scrap and refuse. Far to either side are scattered shanties—the concrete, plastic, wood, brick, and metal homes of the Disfavored. They stretch in a long diagonal that starts at the very edge of the yellow, rocky Waste in front of us and builds all the way back and behind us until it rests against the dark, impenetrable belt of the dome.
For a long moment, I just stare at the massive wall that is Evanescence. I can’t see the top, only the high black wall that must be twenty stories high, and the very edge of the blue nano-glass dome. The rest is shrouded in ominous yellow-gray smog, smoke that rises from the city around me, and a strange, ever-lasting lightning storm that seems to be brewing overhead.
Eventually, I am able to turn away and examine the Outer Block: Kairos. The shanties to either side of us are more spread out along the city limits—the part closest to The Waste. As Kairos nears the wall of Evanescence, the number of shanties gradually grows until they’re stacked one on another and another, leaving just enough room for rickety swinging bridges; narrow throughways; distribution tracks from above; and black, trash-strewn alleys. Occasionally, there is a break where rutted main roads cut through, but even here, the shanties are starting to stretch over the roads, blocking out the dim, bilious light.
There’s a deep hum in the air, something that seems to vibrate my bones. A whump, whump, whumping.
“We’re in a dump field,” Bastian says.
I turn to him, take in his tense shoulders, stiff posture, and balled fists. “Dump field?”
He jerks his head toward Evanescence. “It’s our trash heap. Things come down from inside, the Disfavored comb through it and take what they can.”
I look at what I’m standing on. Plastic frames for 3D printouts, android parts, discarded Primpers, muddied shreds of last year’s fashions, worn-through shoes, bags, broken bits of costume jewelry, large chunks of industrial materials, containers for food, supplements and fuel, the stripped bodies of pods. Anything that would have been sucked down the disposal units is here. We’re standing on a mountain of it.
“It’s a lot.”
“Imagine if the Disfavored didn’t pick through it at all. The dumps come pretty regularly. Now that the city is dead? Give it a week, they’ll have picked this and every one like it to the sludge.”
“There are more?”
“There are at least four that I know of.”
“I thought all our waste went to the incinerators.”
“Only bio-matter. It’s the most hygienic way to dispose of it. But everything else comes here—keeps the air pollution down.”
I look one way and then the other. Out in The Waste, there is nothing but brown and yellow rock, and dirt with the occasional hump of some long-lost relic of America-past, rusting and useless in the nothing between us and the top of tiny blue marble that I know to be Cadence in the distance. “How far does the Outer Block extend?”
Bastian toes some of the trash. “It’s built entirely around Evanescence in a giant ring. Quaint little suburbs.” His voice is acid.
“But why so close? Why not spread out more? There’s so much empty land that way.”
“Access to resources,” he says simply. “There’s no water out there. No food, no aid from the dome. The cannibals live out there. The closer to them, the more likely you’ll get snatched in a night raid. Plus, the farther you get from the dome, the weaker the nano-net. Scratch lung is enough to make people put up with living on top of each other, filth or no.” He gestures to the tumble of buildings closest to the dome.
“Nano-net?”
He points above our heads. “That cloud, it’s made up of nanites. We have hundreds of thousands of nests stationed on the dome. They’re constantly patrolling, constantly taking out the leftover airborne biohazards from the last war.”
“But we’ve been vaccinated against that. Why keep the nets operational? Not that I’m complaining, seeing how it protects all these people.”
“Vaccines are only as good as the virus they match. Add the radiation floa
ting around out here to a bunch of biological agents and you have a melting pot of mutation. It’s possible some strain we’ve never encountered could get through. That’s why travel outside of the dome is—or was—strictly controlled. Only sanctioned personnel were allowed out here. And only Dolls and adoptees were allowed in. And only after strict quarantine in both cases.”
I nod.
“While I don’t mind playing twenty questions, we’re exposed out here and I don’t relish being chanced upon.”
“Are we not in a good section of town?”
He rolls his eyes. “This is Kairos, Ella. There’s no good part of town. It’s dog eat dog, kill or be killed. I’m not chancing that while you’re injured.”
Swallowing, I glance around uneasily. There are bodies moving in the city to either side of us, but there are large swaths of trash between them and us, and we’re reasonably well hidden by the refuse stacked all around us. “You’re right. We should get back and find Violet and Quentin. Maybe he can help my leg.”
“You can barely walk. How do you expect to get back?”
He has a point. “I could find a walking stick maybe.” Though, walking on my leg at all would mean possibly damaging it more. That would be foolish. Desperate, I examine the rubble around us. “What if I just waited until you came back? I’m sure Quentin could fix my leg if he were here.” I hope.
Bastian’s face folds into a grimace. “I don’t like that idea.”
“You have a better one?”
“No,” he admits. “But there’s likely to be a waste retrieval unit combing through at any minute. It’s scavenge early or get nothing at all here.”
“Well then, you better—” But my words are cut off as a strange phfting, sizzling noise fries the air around us. There’s a massive flash of light from the sky, which instantly blinds us, and the ground rumbles hard enough to knock me onto my butt. Blinking hard, I try to focus.
“What was that?” I ask, staring up at the sky. Something about it has subtly changed, but I can’t put my finger on it.
Bastian frowns, examines the world around us. “I don’t know.”
I hear metallic scratching and a few moments later something comes flying from above. It clips the side of the dome wall, tailspins, and hits the ground with a clang. Another joins it just after. Then another.
“Those are falling from the top of Evanescence.”
“It’s the repair units,” Bastian breathes. “Without those, any damage to the nano-glass will mean instant ruin to the inside.”
“That’s how Adagio lost her blue color,” I whisper. I realize now that the subtle difference in the sky is that there is no longer lightning. The cloud looks lower, less active. And it seems like ash is falling. “The nanites,” I whisper and then in dread, “Bastian, the net is failing.”
“What?” he gasps, following my gaze. “It can’t be!”
But it is.
“That’s impossible. For something like the net and the repair units to go down…”
Stomach sinking, I lower my chin. “Something is very wrong in Evanescence.”
He looks back at me.
Something like this? It could only mean a dome security failure. A big one. Like, way bigger than what the Tricksters originally intended with their small power outage to allow some Disfavored rebels into the city via one door that Guster manually opened. Is this some kind of piggyback program? Something else Uncle Simon planted? Something someone else planted?
“If the main gate opens,” Bastian hedges.
“Go get the others,” I demand. “Now.”
Not needing to be told twice, Bastian turns and runs back up the hill of trash. Rubble and plastic bits tumble down in his wake. A moment later, he ducks back into the cranny we came from.
I look back up at the sky. If the main gate opens, the androids will come out. And if they come out, everyone in Kairos is dead. I lift my hand and hold it there. While I can’t see individual nanites, I can see a thick blanket of them, and within a few minutes, my hand is covered in a thin gray film. I can hear the people in Kairos making exclamations, screaming. People begin running back and forth, back and forth. Frantic, blind panic.
The nano-net is failing. Without it, the people here are at the mercy of the biospores that nearly destroyed civilization just a few hundred years ago. I lower my hand, let the nanites fall to the ground. Already, there is an ashy layer of them over the field. I’ve been vaccinated against the diseases of the past. But these people? They haven’t. Even if the main gates don’t open and let the androids out, these people are dead.
I turn, examine the field around me. Not far off is a stripped pod, topless in the fashion of just a few months ago. I grab a nearby piece of corrugated board and hobble toward it. As I cover the pod, which is basically what the archives foretold as a “hover-car,” I try to puzzle through what’s happening around me.
Is what’s happening to dome security because of the Anansi Virus? Some third layer of protocol within the virus? Layer one: create the blackout to allow the rebels in. Layer two: disable the G-Chips so that the city would go haywire. Layer three: completely disable the dome.
But why? If these system failures are part of the virus, then what’s the point? What was Uncle Simon trying to do? More disturbing, if they aren’t part of the virus, then what is happening inside of my city? I climb into the pod, shut the door, and ponder as the last vestiges of my technological world literally fall down around me. Nanites pile up on the windows of the pod, covering it. This reminds me of the story of Pompeii I read about in Dad’s files. I just hope that living people rise out of this ash.
chapter twelve
Post-American Date: 7/5/232
Longitudinal Timestamp: 8:05 p.m.
Location: Kairos
“Elle,” Gus whispers. “Ella, wake up.” He puts a hand on my hip, brushes my hair to the side with the other, and the gesture sends hot tingles across my skin.
Moaning, I curl into a tighter ball. “I’m tired.”
“I know. Me, too.”
Something in the vulnerability of his words strikes me wrong, disjoints my perceptions. “Quentin,” I breathe. It’s an accusation, a realization, and a gasp all at once.
His fingers twitch on my hip, draw away. “Yeah. It’s me.”
Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I sit up and lean against the pod’s interior. A quick examination of the surrounding area tells me that we’re alone and I’m still in the pod that I covered earlier. “What time is it?”
Quentin scoffs. “You’re joking, right?”
Right. No sun, no G-Chips, no way to tell time. Besides, what does it matter anymore? “Is-is something wrong?”
He cocks his head. The circles under his eyes are darker than on the boy I once had committed to memory. But then, this man and that boy aren’t really the same. Just like I’m not the same Ella, Gus isn’t the same Guster, and Delia isn’t the same best friend. This man has no luminescent skin or fiber-optic inlays, he has no sentient starlight hair, and no diamond facet eyes. This is an abnormally pretty man, marred by lost sleep and grief, with white hair, amber eyes, and a strange patchwork of delicate trails under his skin. “I don’t think so.”
“Then”—I rub my eyes and stifle a yawn—“why’d you wake me up?”
“Oh, I don’t know, ’cause you’re passed out, alone, and defenseless on a trash heap in the middle of the Outer Block?” he offers, grinning in sarcasm.
I blush. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
He settles into a sitting position in front of me. “It’s fine, you’ve been out for quite a few hours now. It took me awhile to find you and even then, I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Why did you?”
“You were having a nightmare.”
“Oh.” I look away. “Was I screaming?”
“You weren’t screaming. Not out loud, anyway.”
I squint sideways at him. “Then you just assumed I was having one?”
&nbs
p; He purses his lips. “No. I can just tell.”
Mocking, I lift a brow. “Disgustingly pretty, a Leader, and a psychic? My, your mother sure went the extra mile when she Customized you,” I chide. The expression he gives me makes me automatically regret my sarcasm. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned her.”
He rubs his temple. “It’s okay. Can’t always walk on eggshells, right?”
Feeling like an ass, I lean forward and say, “I’m still sorry.”
He pulls his hand away, forces a tired smile. “I know, Elle.”
Sitting back, I stare at the ash-fall of nanites outside the pod’s open door and let time unwind between us before I manage to find words. “I was dreaming about Meems. It was a good dream. Kind of. Just a normal sort of day. Well, as normal as it got for me after this.” I gesture at my legs.
He nods. “I’m sorry for waking you, then.”
“No. I’m glad you did. I hadn’t wanted to fall asleep anyway. This isn’t the time for it. I was trying to brainstorm, but I guess the last few days are catching up with me.”
His gaze takes on a vacant expression and wanders off, distracted.
“How long has it been since you’ve slept?” I prod, aware that he’s dealing with a lot of stress and grief, and I have no right to feel sorry for myself.
More silence. Finally he pushes a small tool box between us. “I made up an insert for your prosthetic while you were asleep. I’d like to try attaching it if you’ll let me.”
Nodding, I lean back against the pod’s interior. Face hot, I turn away from him and stare at the floor as he scoots closer and his fingers find my ankle. His touch is a soft, slow tease as it glides along the inside of my leg, slipping aside the cuts of my dress to expose my leg to his examination. I hold my breath, rejecting how it makes my body react. I shouldn’t like his touch. I should only like Gus’s touch. His hand lingers on the inside of my thigh for so long I need to turn back and see what’s going on.
He’s just staring at my leg. The prosthetic, the wound, the band where it connects to my stump. I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
