“We’ll swing past your house on the way out,” Cass said to Farryn. “See if your father is there.”
Farryn nodded. He still looked pale, and his eyes were sunken. They began walking, and Cass noticed that his limp was more pronounced. This had been too much for him, she knew. She felt terribly guilty, but she was also immensely grateful. . . . She was parting with her brothers, for now, but at least she had Farryn with her.
Cass decided to risk scoots, since the fighting seemed to be over. They found three—Cass and Farryn on one, her parents on another, Penny on a third—and headed away from Hightown, toward Farryn’s house.
It was slow going, having to pick their way through the rubble-strewn, chewed-up streets, but it was faster than walking, and Cass knew that Farryn needed the break. And as they moved farther from the center of the City, where the fighting had been less intense, they made better time.
They were only a few blocks from Farryn’s house when Penny hit a pothole and tumbled off her bike. She landed on her left side and tucked into a roll, slamming her back hard against the curb.
Cass skidded to a halt, vaulted off her scoot, and ran to Penny, who was groaning, and pushing herself up onto her hands and knees.
“Penny!” Cass said, bending down and grabbing Penny’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“I think so. . . .” Penny said. She had a cut on her cheek, and Penny touched it, then looked at the blood on her fingertips. “Oh my god,” she said, panic in her voice. “I’m bleeding. . . .”
“You’re okay,” Cass said, cupping Penny’s chin, turning her face to look at the cut. It was a long scratch along her jawline, but it didn’t seem deep. Facial cuts bleed profusely, Sarah had taught Cass. They often look worse than they really are.
Her parents and Farryn were at her side. Her mother crushed Penny in a tight hug. “Penny! Are you okay? Your face . . .”
“Can you stand?” Cass said. “Does anything else hurt?”
Their mother helped Penny to her feet.
“My arm,” Penny said, holding up her left forearm. It was badly scraped, with a gash near the elbow that was dripping blood. “Oh, no . . .”
“We need to get her to a rejuve tank!” said their mother.
Cass felt a flash of anger. There was no time for stupidity. “Let me see,” she said, taking Penny’s wrist. The cut thankfully had missed any major arteries and veins. It was jagged and dirty, but not too deep.
“It’s okay,” Cass said. She looked around, still holding Penny’s wrist. “I need water and a bandage.”
Farryn handed Cass a canteen, then tore off a strip from the bottom of his shirt. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” he said, grinning.
Cass took the strip, shaking her head at Farryn, amused but not wanting to show it. She squirted water over the wound. Penny winced and reflexively tried to pull her arm away, but Cass held her tight. She took another look at the cut—the dirt was off, at least—and then she tied the strip of Farryn’s shirt tight over Penny’s forearm. “We’ll clean that out better as soon as we have the chance. This’ll stop the bleeding.”
They reached Farryn’s house without further incident, Penny switching with Farryn to ride behind Cass. The buildings on the block were all intact, except for a few broken windows. A scout bot lay in the middle of the road, scorched and crushed, a wisp of smoke still rising from it. Across the street a man and woman sat on their sidewalk. The man had his head in his hands, and the woman had her knees drawn up to her chest. Neither one said a word, or even looked at them when they pulled up on their scoots.
“Wait here,” Cass said to her family, leaving them on Farryn’s driveway. Penny stared into the street, at the broken bot, and hugged her mother’s side. Her father ran his hands through his thin hair, and looked off in the distance toward Hightown, as if trying to decide whether he should go back.
The door vid plate wasn’t working, so Farryn knocked hard on the door, then began kicking it. “Dad!” he yelled. There was no answer. He tried the door, and it swung open.
“Should have tried that first,” he said, smiling. But Cass could tell he was nervous; his grin looked forced, like he was trying not to be sick. They entered the house, which was lit in the same murky emergency light as the Hightown apartment. “Dad!” Farryn called, but still got no answer.
They walked into the living room, kicking aside clothing, and dishes, and food packages strewn about the floor, and in the gloom they saw Farryn’s father lying on the couch. He had one leg on the floor. One hand was on his belly, and the other was flung over his head. A large bottle, half-full of a brown liquid, lay on the ground next to him.
“Who’s that?” he said, slurring his words.
“Dad, it’s me. Farryn. We’ve gotta go.”
“Farryn!” His father made a weak effort to sit up, then fell back on the couch. “You’re gone. You went away.”
“I’m back now,” Farryn said. “I came back to get you. We have to go. We have to get out of the City.”
His father didn’t say anything, and Cass wondered if he had fallen asleep, or passed out, but then finally he said quietly, “No.”
“Dad—” began Farryn.
“No!” his father yelled, and he pushed himself awkwardly upright, leaning against the back of the couch. “I’m not going anywhere!”
“We have to go now!” Farryn said. Cass watched him. His hands were clenched into fists, and he was rigid with tension, but she wasn’t sure if he was keeping himself from punching his father, or from bursting into tears.
“I’m already dead, son,” he said. He lay back down and closed his eyes. “You wanna drag around a corpse?”
“Cass,” Farryn said quietly, without looking at her. “Check the bathroom drawers. There should be some antibiotic cream and bandages for Penny.”
Cass hesitated, looking at Farryn, his shoulders slumped, standing over his father. She opened her mouth, then shut it. What could she say? She hurried to the bathroom and rifled through the drawers, finding the antibiotic and bandages, and also grabbing a pair of scissors that might be useful. She returned to the living room, where Farryn still stood over his motionless father.
“Dad,” he said. “Please.”
His father shook his head, eyes still closed, and said nothing.
Farryn stared down at his father. “Dad?” he said quietly.
“No,” his father said.
Farryn unclenched his hands and turned away. “Let’s go,” he said to Cass.
“Farryn,” said Cass, not sure what to say next, but he cut her off anyway.
“Leave him,” Farryn said. “You heard him. We need to go.”
Farryn had a streak of tears running down his cheeks as they left his father on the couch. Cass pretended not to notice.
CHAPTER 26
NICK AND LEXI HIKED NORTH WITH THE REBELS AND A HUNDRED CITY survivors, to the spot where they had gathered before the battle. Back at camp, Nick and Lexi circled around the survivors, who had been organized into two lines. No Cass. No Kevin.
“I should have stopped them,” Nick said.
“They can take care of themselves, Nick,” said Lexi. “It’s not your fault.”
“Yes, it is,” Nick said.
He cut through the survivor lines, planning to do one more circuit of the camp—maybe he had missed them somehow—and then he stopped dead in his tracks in surprise. Sitting on a rock, next to the medic, holding something up to a survivor’s neck, was Doc.
“Doc!” he said. Doc turned, looking around wildly, then saw Nick and Lexi and stood. Surprisingly quick, he crossed the distance between them and crushed Nick and then Lexi in a strong, hairy-armed bear hug.
“You’re alive!” Doc said. “Well done!”
Nick nodded. He was glad to see Doc, but his worry about his siblings was heavy on his mind. “Cass and Kevin . . . have you seen them?”
Doc frowned, and shook his head, “No, sorry,” he said. “But tell me—”
&nb
sp; He was cut off by Grennel, appearing from behind Nick, stepping between them and putting a hand on Doc’s shoulder. Nick was startled; he hadn’t heard the big man coming.
“The chip defusing is your only concern right now, doctor,” Grennel said.
“It’s just Doc,” said Doc.
“Doc,” Grennel repeated. “As I’ve told you, if we get word of any bot reinforcements, then we’ll be leaving behind anyone who hasn’t had their chip destroyed. Get busy.”
“And I’ve told you, we’re going to end up crippling someone, the way we’re doing this.” He pointed at Sarah, who was holding some sort of small device that looked like a wrench with a pyramid-shaped tip up to a survivor’s neck. “It’s barbaric. Some of these chips are too close to the spine. We can only control the radiation so much—”
“There’s no time for any other way,” Grennel said. “Do it, or we leave them behind.”
Nick watched Sarah. She pressed a trigger on the device, and there was a pop, and the survivor, a middle-aged man, staggered forward a step and cried out. The back of his neck was blistered and red. Sarah quickly pressed an auto-injector into the burn, and the man’s shoulders slumped with relief. She turned him around, and looked him in the eyes. The man nodded, then stepped away, and the next person in line stepped forward.
Doc glared at Grennel, then spun his substantial girth and went back to the rock.
Grennel turned to Nick. “Before you ask, yes, your brother is missing. And your sister and Farryn were supposed to stay in the camp, and they’ve disappeared. And we’ve just heard back from Rabbit and Moss—Erica escaped.” Grennel folded his massive forearms over his chest. “Pretty soon nobody’s going to be left. Do you know where any of them are?”
Nick shook his head. Cass and Kevin, gone. And Erica, escaped? What had happened with her?
Grennel lowered his voice. “The General is not happy. I’d avoid her right now, if I were you.” He walked away.
Nick sat down, right there in the middle of all the chaos, and closed his eyes. Kevin! he said loudly, inside his head. Where are you? Cass! Mom! Dad! He strained for a response, for some sort of telepathic sense that they were okay, but of course he felt nothing. They were scattered, who knew where, yet again.
CHAPTER 27
KEVIN’S HEAD HURT, A THROBBING PAIN CENTERED IN THE BACK OF HIS skull that radiated around to his face and down his neck to his shoulders. He groaned and opened his eyes. The gray floor was cold on his left cheek. The floor hummed in his ear and vibrated gently. He pushed himself upright, and he felt a wave of dizziness that made him shut his eyes and brace his hands against the ground to keep from falling over.
The dizziness slowly ebbed and he opened his eyes again, breathing heavily. Where the hell was he? The room was small, a six-foot cube with gray walls, dimly lit by a light source that Kevin couldn’t detect. There was absolutely nothing in the chamber—no furniture, no windows, no doors. It was an empty, sealed box. Empty, except for Kevin.
Kevin struggled to his feet and pushed against a wall. It was solid metal, cold and unyielding. He flung himself to the other wall, pounding on it with his fists, kicking. The walls were closing in . . . the ceiling was pushing down . . . he couldn’t breathe . . . they had buried him alive. “Let me out!” he yelled. “Let me out!”
The floor disappeared, and the room was flooded with natural light. Kevin screamed, and tried to scramble up a wall. Below his feet were wispy clouds, and the green and brown earth, impossibly far down, rolling slowly past.
After the first moment of instinctive panic, thinking he was going to plunge down to his death, he stopped trying to climb the wall. He squatted down and gingerly felt for the floor. It was still there, solid cold metal beneath his feet, thrumming, but it was completely transparent. Or maybe it was a huge vidscreen, he thought, running his hand along the surface, his palm sliding above a wispy cloud. Far below, he could see the snaking blue line of a river, the gray crisscrossing lines of roadways, patches of green and brown and gray. Was this just a vid illusion? Or was he really thousands of feet in the sky?
“I thought you would appreciate the view,” a voice said, originating from somewhere in the ceiling. It was a male voice, but the way the words were overly enunciated, the cadence just monotone enough to seem slightly strange, made Kevin immediately think, Bot.
Kevin pressed his back against a wall, still not comfortable to be standing over the floating sky. “Where are you taking me?” he said, looking up at the ceiling. He was proud of how steady his voice sounded. He certainly didn’t feel very steady.
“Look down,” the voice said. “We will be landing soon.”
The plane—if Kevin really was in a plane, and not just being fooled by a vid—was much lower now, traveling over a gray, four-lane road that cut through an expanse of brown fields and lonely clumps of trees. They were only a few hundred feet off the ground now, traveling slowly, the road rolling quietly past. Was it possible that they had dropped so much altitude, so quickly, and Kevin hadn’t even felt it?
“It is somewhat”—the voice paused—“old-fashioned . . . that our warbirds are equipped with cargo holds that allow for viewing, and contain gravitation countermands that negate any sensation of travel.”
The voice seemed to be waiting for a response, but Kevin didn’t say anything, and after a moment the voice continued. “A design holdover from the days, decades ago, when humans would physically pilot warbirds. It is . . . amusing . . . is it not, that this archaic design was never replaced?”
“No, not particularly,” said Kevin.
“Perhaps not,” said the voice. “Humor is a complicated human trait that is surprisingly elusive. I have yet to devote much time to the subject.”
Kevin didn’t know what to say to that, but then the road below his feet ended, and the warbird came to a hovering halt over a large square plain of dull gray metal. The warbird lowered down, and a crack appeared in the landing field, quickly separating into a gaping hole, the two sides of the field sliding away to reveal a clean white shaft, lit with the harsh artificial glow of strong lightstrips. The floor of the shaft was marked with a red X, and the warbird eased down toward the center of the X, coming to a halt with the intersection of the lines directly below Kevin’s feet.
“Welcome to City 1,” the voice said. “I look forward to meeting you in the flesh.”
The floor darkened, becoming just gray metal again, and then a vertical line appeared in one of the walls. The two sections of the wall separated, with just the slightest hiss of sound. Two bots stood at the top of a ramp that led down ten feet from the cargo hold to the floor of the landing shaft. They were similar to the Island’s bots, but a bit taller, and bulkier, and of course their skin was unbroken white neo-plas, without any cured leather patches.
Kevin retreated to the back of the cargo hold. He had his hands up, raised in fists, which he realized was ridiculous. He dropped his hands, but didn’t move.
“Come with us.” The voice came from the bot on the left, although its mouth slit didn’t move.
“Go rust yourselves,” said Kevin.
“We have been authorized to use force to transport you,” said the other bot. “We will not cause lasting damage, but we will cause pain. Will coercion be required?”
“No,” said Kevin. He didn’t have much choice; he might as well avoid the pain. “No coercion required.”
The bots led him out of the landing shaft, one in front, one behind, and down a long white-tiled corridor. They entered an elevator, rode it for a few seconds, then emerged into another seemingly identical hallway. They led him to a door, and one of the bots pressed its hand against a control plate. The door retracted into the wall.
The old man inside the room, wearing a tan jumpsuit, stood up. Kevin froze, dumbfounded.
“Hello, Kevin,” said Dr. Miles Winston. “I am so, so sorry to see you.”
CHAPTER 28
CASS LAY ON THE GRASS, WIDE AWAKE, WATCHING HER PARENT
S AND Penny sleep. It was a warm night, but the three were huddled together, and as Cass watched them, she realized that Penny may have never slept outdoors in her entire life. Her parents, too—maybe in their lives before the City, before their complete re-education, they had camped—but certainly since becoming Hightowners, they hadn’t slept anywhere but their comfortable apartment.
Cass felt guilty for what they were going to face. Logically she knew it wasn’t her fault—they couldn’t stay in the City, and they couldn’t join Clay—but still, she felt like all the suffering coming their way was indeed because of her, somehow. What was it Clay had said? I’m a leader. I decide. I act. I don’t get distracted by tangential details or collateral damage. Cass wished it were that simple for her.
She lay there, worrying, trying to come up with a plan, and then Farryn began thrashing in his sleep, groaning and muttering. Had his fever come back? Had she pushed him too hard? Cass stood and quietly crossed the few steps between them. She gently felt his forehead—it was cool and dry. She gave a sigh of relief. No fever—just a nightmare.
If she could ever get to sleep, she’d probably be having nightmares, too, after what they had just gone through. She looked down at Farryn. He had to be exhausted, and hurting, but he had kept up as best he could. He was so brave. Would she have been able to keep going, the way he had, if she had lost a leg? She doubted it.
And somehow, for some reason, he was trying to help her, to protect her. She sighed. More responsibility. Farryn would never see it that way, of course, but if she was going to lead him into trouble, and he got hurt even more, or killed, it would be her fault.
Farryn opened his eyes. “Cass?” he said, disoriented.
Embarrassed, Cass quickly stood. “Go back to sleep,” she said.
“What . . .” he said. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” Cass sat down on the ground. Farryn rolled over to face her, and waited.
“I’m thinking,” she said. “And worrying.”
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