by A. L. Davroe
“I’m going to be sick.” Delia pulls away and begins heaving over the side of the truck, leaving a trail of her own foulness to add to the abomination.
The truck continues on, holo- and nano-glass cracking and snapping under its tires. As we draw farther in, we start to pass Disfavored. Shuffling and lost in the streets like they don’t quite know what to do with themselves. Many of them wear the opulent Designer clothes and jewelry of the Aristocrats they displaced. Some still wear their bloodstained clothing. None of them seem to know what to do with themselves, so while some continue on with destruction and devastation, some scream and twirl about as if drunk and at a party, others sit on benches, walk in and out of shops, and stare at displays as if they’re trying to act like an Aristocrat. All the windows are broken. None of the doors are open. Pods stand immobile in the streets and on the hover-ways.
We head toward the Central Block, where the towering white buildings of Bella Adona, Central Staffing, and the People’s Tower stand. Now there are only two towers. The People’s Tower is nothing but a mess of rubble. The hover station has come down, collided with the tower, it seems.
We stop at the base of Bella Adona and as the truck backs into the sheltering alcove of a service bay, I stare up at her opposing frame. Just days ago I was here, staring at her with a mind full of possibility, and now there is only dread. Where once I was enamored at the idea of reuniting with my lover and my best friend, now I’m terrified of what might have become of Quent while Delia quietly shakes and sobs beside me. The rock girl has cracked and her true feelings are spilling out like magma.
The truck bumps against the back of the bay and the engine cuts off.
“Best unload, I suppose,” Sid quietly says. He unlaces the torn canvas backing, as if we couldn’t all just climb through the giant hole in it, and steps out onto the bay.
Ready to stand, I grasp the end of the seat, but then realize, once again, I can’t. My crutches are gone, most likely had slid out of the truck during the attack. “I, uh, I’m gonna need some help.”
“Right.” Sid comes to my rescue, lifting me to the edge of the truck bed then sliding me into his arms once he’s dismounted. We wait on the sparkling street for the others to get out. Delia, Cam, Stormy, the two rebels who were with us. Everyone is still clutching their weapons, so I do the same, holding it at ready, even though I’m out of ammo. Perhaps we can deter someone from messing with us.
I hear a door open and close and then feet on the sidewalk. I crane, looking to see who it is. And then my stomach drops. “Clairen?” I breathe.
She lifts her hand to run it through her hair, but then stops and pulls it away with a wince when she finds the source of all the blood that has matted her hair and run down her face and neck. She looks like she showered in it.
“I-I thought you were with the others? With Gus?” Delia says, stepping forward.
Clairen looks down, licks her lips. “I was. Until I wasn’t.”
“What happened?” I demand. “Where’s Quent?”
“I-I don’t know,” she admits. “My objective was to head back to base and get you all to safety once we realized what was happening.” She lets out a long breath and rubs her palms on her thighs.
“But… But… You just abandoned them?”
Clairen’s brows knit. “I—”
“Coward!” Delia yells, running at her. One of the other rebels steps between them, grabs her wrists to detain her. “Let me go. I’m gonna kill her!”
“Delia, don’t,” Cam says, voice tired. “She was only following orders. Just like Sid and me. Our goal was to get you two to safety. That’s what we did.”
Sid says, “If Clairen hadn’t come back to warn us, we’d probably all be dead. It’s clear Taurus was planning to attack us while the bulk of our defense was away. Perhaps they even walked into a trap.”
I close my eyes, rest my head against his neck. I suddenly feel very tired. Weak. My head is pounding. “So, no one got out? None of the other Aristocrats were freed?”
“I don’t know,” Clairen says, voice tired. She drops her gun on the ground, sits down on the steps, and stares down Citizen’s Way. “When it was clear we were driving into the midst of an attack heading your way, we all got separated. I brought who I could of my unit back, we held them off as long as we could to get you four secured. Somehow, Taurus knew about our base. I’m sure Faulk told him about that, too,” she mutters darkly. “He came to look for his daughter, as promised.”
“Well.” I lift a hand and indicate the quiet girl standing on the loading dock. “Obviously they’re not going to find her.”
“He’ll regroup,” Stormy says, voice quiet. “Come looking.” Her eyes examine her feet and she sounds almost upset about it. “You should have let him have me.”
“Maybe we should have,” Delia mutters. “At least Ella wouldn’t have lost her other leg.”
Stormy’s eyes come up and her mouth opens, but she looks at me and whatever syllable she’s about to utter dies on her lips and she avoids my eyes. She suddenly looks like she’s in pain.
“I’m sorry to keep you from your father, Stormy,” I say. “We made a deal and you held true to your end of the bargain. You gave us good information. I just need to keep you a little longer. You’re the only bargaining chip we have. If something happens, if our efforts to rescue the Aristocrats are thwarted and more people taken captive? We’ll have to use you in negotiations and damn the consequences once your father has you back.”
She nods. “I understand. I would have done the same thing in your shoes.”
I smile. “You are in my shoes. Well, one at least.”
And just like that, she starts crying and as she cries, she yells at me. “I can’t believe you! I-I didn’t know you were going to give me your leg. Just that you were going to give me a leg. And now-and now you don’t have any legs! And you saved me back there. Risked your life. Why would you do that?”
Smiling, I try to talk gently to her. “You would have died otherwise.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t want you to die. You’ve got a lot of living to do. Especially now. You’ve got that new leg, you can stand up. Some practice, and you’ll be running around and it will be like you were never missing one at all. That kind of gift is valuable. I expect you to make good use of it, not throw your life away.”
Her tears are huge and her face contorted with so much emotion that everything’s twitching. “I-I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Ugh, just stop sniveling. Say sorry and thank you,” Delia answers. “And let’s get back to more important matters. Like, what we’re going to do when Taurus does decide to look for Stormy again.”
“We’ll do as Ella suggested, use Stormy as a bargaining chip,” Clairen reasons.
“Keeping Stormy will be pointless unless we can prevent him from getting into Evanescence,” Sid says.
I nod. “Once he’s in the city, it will be almost impossible to eject him and because he has the Aristocrats, he’ll take over and there will be no point in keeping her.”
“This is all supposing the Aristocrats are still under his control,” Delia says, crossing her arms. “I’m preferring the option that Gus and the others actually managed to free them.”
“If they did, then we’ll know it shortly,” I say, hoping beyond hope that when it comes time to log on, I see all the avatars we’ve prepared for. “So long as everyone sticks to the plan.”
“That doesn’t answer the problem of my father,” Stormy says, stepping forward.
“If everyone is logged in, and I can convince them to help me, then we should be able to shut the gates and keep him out. I’ll send you out after everything is all squared.”
Stormy stakes her head. “He won’t give up. He knows now that most of the Aristocrats are dead, that this city is ripe for the taking and nearly defenseless. All your droids are smashed. What are you going to use to defend yourselves?”
“Then we’ll
just keep you here as assurance he won’t hurt us,” one of the Disfavored says.
She shakes her head. “That won’t stop him. He’s gotten it into his head that he’s going to own this dome. Once he gets an idea, he doesn’t stop until he’s achieved it. Even if it involves me coming to harm.” Her hand absently grabs at her thigh and it tugs my heart. I know that phantom gesture all too well. “He gets what he wants. Always. And he wants this city.”
A small seed of an idea takes root in my mind, but I don’t humor it. I have too much to do. “He can’t have it. Sid, get us into Bella Adona.”
“With what? Open sesame?”
His comment almost makes me giggle, because I remember a very similar line in a similar situation in Nexis. “Can’t you short circuit the door like you did in the aerovator?”
“That requires electricity, remember?”
Right. I’d forgotten about that. “We need another way.”
Everyone thinks for a moment. “When all else fails,” Cam says quietly. “Physical force.”
“We don’t want to use explosives. It could damage the dome,” Clairen reminds.
“Not what I was thinking.” Cam holds up his hand. “Toss me the keys.”
She looks put off by the idea, but she does as she’s asked. Cam gets into the truck, starts it, pulls out, and disappears around the side of the building. We’re all in the process of gravitating after him when we hear tires squeal and then a sudden crashing.
Sid picks up his pace, comes around the corner, and stops short. Cam has driven headlong into the main doors of Bella Adona. And now they’re sitting wide open.
I hear Clairen say, “My truck!”
Sid mutters, “He’s off his gourd. Beau’s death pushed him off the edge.”
I beam. “I think this is therapeutic for him.”
He begins carrying me toward the doors. “If he’s even still alive to benefit from the therapy.”
Cam appears the next moment, grinning like an idiot. “That was deceivingly fun.”
“I’m going to kill you!” Clairen screams at him as she bends, picks up an abandoned Clara Silvertree handbag, and throws it at his head.
He ducks behind a column just in time.
“Uh, guys?” Delia says.
Cam appears again, blows raspberries at her.
“Guys!” Delia growls again.
I glance at her, so does everyone else.
She gestures toward the bodies appearing in the shadows of the buildings around us. “You’re attracting attention,” she mutters. “And if you haven’t forgotten, some of us aren’t so safe here.”
I gulp. Standing among the Disfavored who are with us, she sticks out like a florescent-pink elephant in a herd of zebra. I’m sure Sid and Cam do as well. “Get inside, all of you.”
No one has to be told a second time. Once we’re in, the Disfavored close the doors behind us. “We can’t lock it.”
Clairen gives Cam an accusing glare. “’Cause someone broke the lock.”
“I got this,” Stormy says, lunging forward and plucking the keys out of his hand. Everyone is a little too stunned by her sudden leap to action to run after her, until she’s already in the truck and starting it. “You gonna get out of the way or what?” she demands through the busted out driver’s side window.
Nervously, Sid and the others shuffle out of the way. Stormy expertly backs the truck right up against the closed doors. She shuts off the truck, gingerly gets out, and tosses the keys back to Clairen. “There. That ought to hold ’em.”
“But,” Clairen breathes. “You just helped us.”
Stormy shrugs and walks by her. “Needed to be done.” She stops when she realizes no one is following. “Uh, what now?”
I grin at her. Perhaps it’s a mad grin, perhaps I’ve gone completely off my rocker at the thought of losing Quent and Gus and Bastian and Sadie and failing all the other people who are counting on me. Or, perhaps I’m only just starting to fight for them. “We’re going to get the Main Frame back online.”
chapter twenty-nine
Post-American Date: 7/10/232
Longitudinal Timestamp: 10:06 a.m.
Location: Dome 5: Evanescence
The halls of Bella Adona are silent and still. The air feels stale and I can smell the death high above us, even from this distance. I glance around in the darkness.
“I can’t see anything,” Delia whispers.
“Here,” Cam says. A light-stick flashes on, bathing us in eerie green light.
Delia gasps, grabbing my arm. I turn my head and find half a dozen bodies littering the floor.
“Are they…?” she whispers.
“Droids,” I say, keeping my voice low, even though there’s nothing these dead machines can do to me now. They look like wilted flowers, or perhaps like the people in Sleeping Beauty’s kingdom after her fairies put everyone under a spell. Guns in their hands, mechanical faces blank. Security droids don’t look like normal androids, they don’t have anthropomorphic chasises to make them seem like humans. They look like Meems did after she gave up her skin to give me new legs.
“It’s so sad,” I reflect. At my companions’ disgruntled faces, I add, “That this happened at all. That they rebelled against us. Killed us.”
Sid says, “It’s possible their rebellion was part of the virus, right? I mean, I can’t imagine the entire population of robots trying to kill us. There must have been one happy android.”
I think of Meems and how she’d reacted when I finally found her dying on the floor of my father’s workroom. The normal Meems would never have wanted to hurt me. But if a virus had made her go rogue… Had she wanted to kill me? I couldn’t tell, she was so badly broken. Would she have, if she’d been able? “I don’t think so,” I say, but not wanting to deal with the repercussions of such a debate, I change the subject. “Cam, which way to the Main Frame?”
He gestures down the hall. “This way.”
Their footsteps echo as we step around downed machines and pass under a magnificent golden arch held high by ornate white pillars. Their boots squeak on the tile floors, the noise grating against my spine.
“Do you honestly think we can do this?” Delia asks.
I shrug. “We have to try, right?”
She looks away, focusing on the dark hall in front of us. “Do we? We don’t owe these people anything.”
“You’re wrong,” I say. “As a human being, you owe it to every other human—and the world—to be the best you can be. We have the potential to be great.” I take a moment, try to collect my thoughts. “What if we’d taken all this technology, all this intelligence, and actually put it toward something good? Rebuilding the world, feeding the hungry, curing true ills, educating others so they could continue on with the cause?”
She gives me a sidelong glance then lowers her voice so the Disfavored, who have fallen behind us in their fascination with the downed droids, can’t hear. “You realize that’s an absolute farce of an ideal to work toward, don’t you? Humans are evil, destructive creatures. We’ll always only care about ourselves and what’s best for us.”
“We don’t all have to be. Some of us can fight that programming, can’t we?”
She doesn’t respond, and we continue on in silence.
When we get to the first closed door, Sid looks to Cam and asks, “You think the truck will fit down this hall?”
Cam chuckles. “I have a better idea.” He kneels down, digs in his pack, and comes up with a light-stick. He snaps it on, pulls the power plate off the wall, and starts tinkering with wires.
Sid adjusts me as he watches. Feeling bad about him having to carry me, I say, “You can put me down and rest if you want to.”
“Nah, I’m fine. You don’t weigh much.”
“Right. You’re only like half a person at this point,” Cam says, as he twists some wires together.
“Gee thanks,” I mutter.
“She’s more of a man than you’ll ever be, that’s for s
ure,” Stormy says, coming up behind him. “What are you doing anyway?”
“You’ll see, pipsqueak.”
“Hey, I’m not a—” The door suddenly slides open with a pneumatic hiss.
I drop my jaw. “How did you…?”
He holds up the light-stick, which he’s plugged the wires into. “I saw Gus do this with your flex-bracelet so Delia could read it. I’d forgotten about batteries. Useful little buggers.”
Stormy slaps him on the back. “Nice job, Sell-Skin.”
He gives her a withering glare. “Are you trying to get me to gag you? Because I’m sorely tempted.”
“Play nice,” Clairen warns. “We need the brat alive.”
“I’m right here, you know.”
“Oh, how could we not,” Delia mutters.
I whisper to Sid, “What’s a Sell-Skin?”
“It’s what the Disfavored call Dolls.”
“Oh…”
Cam hot-wires door after door after door. Doors we’d never have been able to pass through if the G-Chips in our frontal lobes were still connected to the Main Frame and the city was still online. Even if we’d somehow gotten through the doors, the city’s security programming would have zapped our minds, would have sent droids after us, would have alerted someone to our intent. Now, we move unchallenged. All of us are on edge, waiting for something to spring out and challenge us.
And then we’re there.
A vast cylindrical room that goes up and up and up. A narrow walkway stretches out into the center, over more length of cylinder that goes down and down and leads to a single workstation.
It’s like the final room I came to in the Central Dominion. The final level of my game in Nexis, the place where I cracked Dad’s final code and planted the Anansi Virus.
At the workstation, there is one holo-screen lit, black with a single line across the center. I can’t see what it says from here.
