“Anything, Miss Fox,” she replies.
“Jameson is holding a bunch of my friends. I want them found, released, and fed immediately.”
“Of course, ma’am. Anything else?”
“Not right now. I need to rest. But later, I’ll be dismantling an empire and handing this world back to the people,” I say.
I give Kara a tug on the elbow and together we hobble our way over to the hatch leading out of the garbage drone.
The throbbing in my shoulder reminds me of one other thing.
“Actually, maybe get me a medic. My shoulder is killing me.”
“Right away, ma’am,” Libby replies, then talks rapidly into her comms.
Just before we exit I turn back to Libby and say, “I want you to stay close, Libby. I need people I can trust.”
She nods and salutes me.
“Always, ma’am.”
Kara and I exit the drone and into the morning light. I take a deep breath of the crisp morning air and smile, pulling Kara close to me.
We’re free.
BADLANDS
Part 2 of The F T W Series
1 - Echo
My name is Echo Fox... and that’s all I can remember. It’s been five days now since I woke up in bed with no memories except for my name.
When I came to, my father, Jameson, filled in the blanks. I had been injured while providing help to those who choose to live beyond the safety of our world. He says it’s a fault of mine. That I’m always seeing the best in people, even those who don’t deserve it.
He told me I had been in a place called the boneyards when they attacked, handing out food and blankets. I guess that’s true, though I can’t remember any of it. Since then, the most horrific things have plagued my dreams.
But every morning when I wake, they disappear like smoke and I forget the details. I’m left with feelings of dread and loss but I don’t know why.
I haven’t mentioned them to anyone. They fuss over me enough as it is. The doctors who examined me say my memories will return. What they don’t say is how long it’ll take.
My father says in the meantime he is making other arrangements that’ll help me. I’m to meet him soon so I better get dressed.
Opening my walk-in wardrobe I select an appropriate outfit for the day. Everyone who works here at FTW dresses in a similar style to what I have chosen. Well-fitted black pants and a plain white button-up shirt with the FTW logo stitched over the left pocket.
I sit on a stool and pull on my shoes. Out of nowhere I’m hit with nausea as memories of blood-soaked clothing invade my mind. The smell of old rags and dirty boots fills my nostrils, then a metallic smell of blood. An overwhelming sense of fear and panic.
Reality snaps back and I’m back sitting on my stool. I shake my head and the panic fades away. Was it something that happened when I lost my memory? If so, no wonder I can’t remember it. I don’t want to. Something terrible happened to me and I’ve blocked it out.
Trembling, I stand, take a deep breath and hold it. With my eyes closed I try to picture nothing. Just blackness. I release my breath in short puffs and my nerves calm a little. I repeat this a dozen more times and finally I’m relaxed enough.
I straighten my back and spin on my heel. I’m off to meet my father and I can’t let him see that I’m shaken. He’s worried enough about me as it is, so as I walk from my room I’m a picture of confidence.
He told me to meet him in the lab, so I need to take the elevator. I tell the comms on my wrist to summon one, and a moment later a soft chime rings out. As I walk in and the doors close with a sigh behind me I get another flash.
A memory of something terrible happening inside an elevator, but just as quickly it’s gone. By the time the doors open and I step into the lab it’s all but forgotten.
My father is alone in the room, standing by the bench on the other side. His fingers tap and slide across a screen, but he’s too far away for me to see what he’s working on.
When he sees I have arrived, his face lights up with a smile and he waves at me to come over. I’ve been in this room a few times and it’s always been teeming with technicians. The silence is off-putting.
“Echo,” he says as I get closer. “How are you feeling today? Have any memories returned?”
I shake my head.
“No, sir. I’m sorry to say it’s still a complete blank.”
My father has never made a point of me calling him “Sir”, but everyone else around here does so it seems like the right thing to do. He smiled at me the first time I said it so he must approve.
He glowers if people forget when talking to him, but if I forget, which I tend to do quite often, he doesn’t. I guess being his daughter I get some leeway.
“Never mind,” he says, a warm smile on his face. “I’m sure they will. Have you had any dreams? Maybe a clue to who you once were?”
There’s a sharpness to his look I’m not used to seeing. Like he’s trying to read my mind.
“No,” I reply, “well, nothing I can hold on to. My dreams slip away from me by the time I wake up.”
His expression as he looks into my eyes is unreadable. What is he trying to work out? After a few seconds he relaxes and returns to his normal self.
“Well, I’m sure they’ll return when you’re ready. In the meantime I’ve got something that’ll help.”
He turns his attention back to the screen on the bench and taps at a few options. A list appears with each option having a long and complicated description next to it.
“Help how?” I ask.
“I’ve put together a suite of memory implants so you don’t have to learn everything again while you’re waiting for your memories to return.”
He taps a few options on the screen in front of him, then picks up a large metallic ring from the bench and holds it between his palms.
“Memory implants?” I ask.
“Indeed. A lot of what you lost could take years to relearn. This is a shortcut. The mind halo can implant knowledge directly into your brain. If I can’t give you back your life memories, I can at least give you the skills you had before the accident.”
He reaches forward and gently places the mind halo on my head. The metal is cool against my forehead but not uncomfortable.
“Will it hurt?” I ask.
“Not at all, though you might feel a bit dizzy. You may want to sit down. We don’t need another head injury,” my father replies and holds my hand as I take a seat.
Frowning a little, he turns his attention back to the screen and swipes at other menu options.
“Do you think I’ll be anything like I used to be once this is done?”
My father’s attention snaps away from the screen and he looks at me. I could swear there’s a hint of panic in his eyes, but when he smiles it evaporates and he’s his usual composed self.
“In a way, yes,” he says. “Even without your memories I believe what you carry at a genetic level, the tenacity that comes from being a Fox, will work to my... sorry, your advantage. Stick by me and I’ll teach you how to run this world.”
I say nothing in response because the undercurrent in his voice shocks me a little. In the five days I’ve known him since I lost my memories he’s been nothing but nice. His tone suggests he’s somewhat more ruthless than he’s let on.
I guess that makes sense though. When you’re responsible for the most powerful company on the planet, with the lives of billions of people affected by your every decision, ruthlessness must be a virtue.
If he’s planning on molding me into someone more like him, well I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready. I don’t know what my former self was like though.
Am I anything like her? If my memories come back, will I return to being like her again, or will my experiences since then temper my personality into something different? Maybe I’ll just forget these days altogether and go back to like I was.
“Ready to deploy mind augmentation,” the screen in front of my father
announces.
“Ready?” my father asks me.
I nod and say, “Yes.”
With any luck the memory implants might trigger the return of others I have lost.
My fingers grip the armrests on the chair. My scalp tingles, and an ocean of new knowledge floods my mind.
2 - Kara
It’s been almost a week since I last saw Echo. Once the dust had settled after the incident at FTW headquarters, Echo and I along with Stilwell and other senior leaders of the Fox Hunters gathered to discuss what would happen next.
As far as we knew we had destroyed Jameson and his control of the world once and for all. Our assault had demolished his cloning lab, well beyond any hope of repair. We thought we were safe. We were wrong.
Moments after we took our seats, the doors and windows exploded inwards. Those sitting closest to the windows were the unlucky ones.
Thousands of pellets of glass peppered the room, and they took the brunt of them. Our friends from the subway, Ax and Sly, and someone I hadn’t been introduced to, all died before we even knew what was going on.
Their position near the windows was the only thing that saved the rest of us.
Seconds after the explosions, armed security enforcers swung in, smashing their way through the glass and stormed through the doors. My mind still reeled from the explosion so I was only vaguely aware of their shouted commands. Nobody moved. We were all too shocked.
One of the enforcers aimed at the ceiling and let loose a volley of bullets. Some of us ducked and dropped to the floor. Libby, who Echo had employed as her personal security guard, kicked into gear. She pulled her sidearm and aimed at the closest enforcer.
She dropped three of them before they took her out.
After that, everything gets hazy. I remember an ear-piercing explosion and a bright light, then silence. Smoke filled the room, and my limbs wouldn’t move. Echo lay inches from my hands but I couldn’t reach her.
Two enforcers picked her up. One grabbed her under the arms and the other by the feet. I remember them carrying her out of the room. I wanted to shout at them to stop, but my body refused to obey. My eyelids drooped and then I remember nothing but blackness.
I don’t know how long I was out for, but when I came to I was slung over someone’s shoulder. My head pounded and my body ached. My arms swung back and forth rhythmically with the footsteps.
I peeked through one eye and found they were carrying me along a dark corridor. Discretion being the better part of valor, I kept as still as possible until I could work out if they were friend or foe. The soft thumping of footsteps behind me let me know there were only two of them.
“I think she’s waking up. Take a break and we’ll check her vitals,” said whoever was behind me. The voice sounded familiar, but in my groggy state I couldn’t put my finger on who it belonged to.
The person carrying me slowed to a stop, and I was slid gracefully from their shoulder and slumped against a wall. At this point there was no point faking unconsciousness, so I opened my eyes. Jay-Bee smiled a wide goofy grin back at me.
Stilwell appeared by his side a second later and said, “Glad to see you awake again, Kara. We were worried about you.”
All that happened about four or five days ago now. It’s hard keeping track of time when you’re underground with no access to daylight. Since then, we’ve made our way to the western-most edge of the city.
Until now I’d never known there was such a thing. I’d always assumed the cities FTW built spanned the globe, but apparently not. Just along the coastlines.
From what Stilwell has told me there’s a vast tract of dead, scorched earth between the city we’re in now and the one on the opposite coast. Stilwell and the others say we need to get out of the city and lie low. I don’t want to, and for the past however many days it’s been I’ve been stressing how much I need to stay and find Echo.
In the end they told me they wouldn’t force me to come, but if I didn’t they’d leave me here on my own. No backup, no help, nothing. But if I went with them they promised they would do everything in their power to help me.
They’ve been cryptic on the details about how, but I trust Stilwell. If he says they’ll help, then they will.
The last few days have involved a lot of waiting around. We’re in the basement of a building at the edge of the city, waiting. We’re burrowing a new tunnel out of the city and under the wall. I haven’t seen the wall yet, but Jay-Bee says it’s twice as high as the ones surrounding the boneyards.
There aren’t any breaks in its length. No doors or passageways through. The only way for us to get past it is to go under it.
The tunneling is progressing quickly, and Stilwell says he thinks it’ll be ready within the next day or so. Apparently they’re actually re-tunneling. Part of the old tunnel had collapsed, so it was either build a new one or dig out the old one.
The thought of crawling my way through a formerly collapsed tunnel fills me with dread. I’m fine when I know I’ve got a way out, like in the boneyards when we’re crawling through scrap.
But something that’s recently proven unstable leaves me with a tightness in my throat and a fear that grips my soul.
Stilwell isn’t bothered at all, or so he says. When I look I find he has fallen asleep on the ground next to us, so instead I continue my conversation with Jay-Bee about the wall.
“What is its purpose? Are they trying to keep people in or out?” I ask.
Jay-Bee scratches the stubble on his chin before answering me.
“A little of both, I suspect,” he says. “I doubt anyone who lives in the city would want to leave it. As for who they’re keeping out... I’ve heard stories.”
“Stories?” I ask, intrigued. I try to look him in the eyes but he turns away and looks over his shoulder as if checking for eavesdroppers.
Finally he turns back and replies, “I don’t know how true they are, but there are stories of monsters. Men, turned savage by the harsh environment beyond the wall. Killers and cannibals. Like the boneyard rats but worse.”
For the longest time neither of us say a word. I can’t imagine people worse than the rats.
“Do you want to see it?” Jay-Bee asks.
“See what? The cannibals? I want to avoid seeing them for as long as possible, thanks.”
Jay-Bee laughs at me.
“No, I mean the wall. We should have a good view of it from further up. You should get to know the world you’re about to enter. The Badlands beyond the wall aren’t for the weak.”
I punch him in the shoulder.
“Who are you calling weak?”
He rubs the spot where my fist hit him and laughs again.
“Come on,” he says, then stands up. “We’ll have to be quick. We’re supposed to stay in the basement in case there are others around. I don’t know why they worry though, nobody lives this far out.”
He helps me to my feet and we sneak out of the basement, heading for the stairs. Looking up makes me dizzy and the thought of all those stairs isn’t appealing, but I want to see where we’re heading.
I place one foot on the bottom step and together we start our ascent.
It takes longer than I’d thought it would but at last we’re at the top. We’re both out of breath so we take a few minutes to stop and rest. We wheeze and wipe away the sweat from our foreheads. My legs and lungs are aching but I know it’ll be worth it.
Once we’ve rested, we get back to our feet. My muscles scream at me as I do so. Jay-Bee pulls on the door to the stairwell and we shamble into the building. Jay-Bee’s muscles are as tired as mine based on his movements.
“This should be the one,” Jay-Bee says when we reach a door at the end of a corridor. “We’ll have a great view of the wall and beyond from here.”
He pushes a button beside the door and it slides open. On the other side is an empty room. The wall furthest from us is all glass. Sunlight streams through the windows and highlights the motes of dust moving in th
e air.
We make our way towards the windows, almost tip-toeing across the room. When we’re about halfway there, I giggle.
“What’s so funny?” Jay-Bee asks.
“It’s just we’re creeping across an empty room inside an empty building. Who are we being quiet for?”
“Good point,” Jay-Bee says, and together we walk normally the rest of the way.
The view from the window is astonishing. From what Stilwell and Jay-Bee have told me over the last few days about what’s outside I’d thought I’d known what to expect.
The wall surrounding the city is indeed gargantuan. It rises to at least half the height of the building we’re standing in. The wall that surrounded my boneyard is tiny compared to this one.
But it’s what lies beyond is what is truly breathtaking. I’ve never seen anything that looked so... dead. Jay-Bee called it the Badlands, but that’s nowhere near descriptive enough. It’s dry and dusty, and not one building I can see from here is complete.
Every one of them is sun-bleached and collapsed in on itself. Some are only random piles of debris while others still have the rough shape of a building.
Gouges rip open the earth, like a giant or a god has scraped their fingers through the land and torn away great chunks of it. The afternoon sun, low in the sky, throws long shadows and exaggerates the effect.
And it doesn’t stop. From the wall to the horizon, it’s just a dead, arid dust bowl. It’s mesmerizing. Except...
“Are those what I think they are?” I say, pointing to a row of tall pylons. They’re topped with faint, red lights and they extend off into the horizon in both directions following the wall.
“Yep,” Jay-Bee answers. “From what I’m told, FTW dumps unwanted prisoners out in the Badlands. Any they don’t want for their Death Matches. They get the collars which ensure they don’t get back in.”
I rub my neck, thinking back to when Jameson forced Echo and me into a Death Match. We were lucky that day. It was fortunate the Fox Hunters were looking out for us.
Boneyards & Badlands: The Complete FTW Series Page 13
