Class Zero

by Y A Marks

  The answer to Dhyla’s question was at the front of my mind before I entered the bathroom, but I needed time to weigh the consequences. I had dreams. Sure, none of them involved saving the human race or anything, just two people, neither of whom had anybody.

  I washed my face and hands and then left the bathroom.

  Dhyla stood when I entered. She moved so slowly that it almost was like she was underwater. Sun Hi rubbed her shoulders and blinked so many times I swore her eyes were about to fall out. They were nervous. I was nervous, but I needed help. Dhyla and Sun Hi were the only people I knew. If they couldn’t help me, who could?

  I sucked my bottom lip and grabbed the straps to my backpack. “Can you help me save Mari and Miko?”

  “Yes, of course,” Dhyla said.

  “Then okay. I’ll join you and get you past the security checkpoints,” I said.

  I wasn’t sure about the decision. My heart ached for Dhyla’s love. I needed it to strengthen me so I could be there for Mari and Miko. My eyes bubbled. I forced back the mental tug-of-war that was mangling my mind and saddening my heart.

  Dhyla smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile. She made a face that I had seen over the years when she wasn’t sure about something.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Again, I was hoping for more from a woman who meant so much to me. It made me wonder if everything she had done so far was just a game. Sure, she said it wasn’t, but how was I supposed to know? I forced the idea to the back of my mind. Just imagining all those days we’d spent together were lies made my bones ache, and I didn’t want to cry again.

  I went back to the futon and pulled the mocha to my lips. The chocolate slid onto my tongue, and I let it roll around while my mind pieced together all the fractured ideas, memories, and situations.

  Dhyla’s hand touched my shoulder, and I turned my gaze in her direction. I can’t be sure what expression she saw on my face, but she immediately pulled her hand away like a child caught with her hand in a cookie jar. She stood and walked out of my vision. I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings. I wanted to call her back over and act like we could still be the same fake mother-daughter team we had been for the last two years. Acting that way now seemed like some obscure dream. After another sip of the mocha, I exhaled a half-dozen times.

  Sun Hi pulled out her PCD and called someone. “Hey, Bae,” she said. “Yeah, I need you to bring home some bread… Oh yeah, I already have some turmeric… Don’t stay too long, or the food will get cold. Thanks, Bae.”

  Her conversation was so odd given the circumstances.

  “What was that all about?” I asked.

  Sun Hi put her PCD into a black case and clicked it shut. “Give me your PCD,” she said.

  Confused, I reached into my backpack and pulled it out. She frowned as soon as she saw the light on the top go from red to green. She turned over the PCD, took the back off, and removed the battery.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She ignored me and turned to Dhyla. “We may have company in a few minutes.” Sun Hi’s eyes rotated toward me. “I didn’t think they’d locate you so quickly.”

  “No more secrets,” I demanded. “What’s going on?”

  “The government tracks and listens though PCDs. Years ago, the government started following people through social media but soon just accessed the PCDs directly. Hence the ‘app craze’.”

  Sun Hi walked over to a black trunk, sitting on the ground near the far wall. She pulled a gun out of the trunk, put it in the back of her pants, and then she grabbed a case about the size of my PCD. She put my PCD into the case before handing me the case and the battery. “You can put the battery back in later.”

  I had never seen Sun Hi act this way. I had always seen her as a half-awake twenty-something who made great coffee and liked boys who had skin that matched the color of coffee. Our small conversations were about yellow flowers, high heels, high fashion, and how she wished she’d gone to graduate school after college. The person before me was serious, focused, and sharp.

  Two more pieces of something came out the box on the floor, and she started assembling them into an arm-length gun. “The case will keep the PCD from sending signals when you don’t want it to.”

  “What was all that about buying bread?” I asked.

  “Code. When we use our PCDs to call each other, we have to talk in code, otherwise the government can key in on certain phrases. Saying things like ‘coming home with bread’ just means you’re heading to a predetermined location. Saying I already have a hard to find item like a spice lets the other person know we’ve found what we’re looking for.”

  “Wha?” My brain swelled with all the new information.

  “We use other codes too, like picking up the dog or taking a long walk home, anything that sounds normal, but means something else. We can’t use the same thing all the time. The government’s algorithms are too smart for that. But we can try to hide. Unfortunately, it looks like the government was tracking your PCD.”

  She opened a drawer and pulled out two pistols.

  “How many guns do you guys have?” It was a stupid question, but it kind of flew out of my mouth.

  “Not many. Mostly e-shocks,” Sun Hi said. “Don’t have the cash for real guns. The one you got is worth its weight in gold.”

  I thought about the Glock I took from the police officer. I hadn’t checked my backpack, but I thought it was still there. I didn’t know if Rylan would have taken it or not. The way Sun Hi spoke, she was sure he would have been honest about it.

  She glanced away for a moment then her eyes found mine. “The e-shocks will take down a human no problem, and four or five shots may slow an android.”

  “Four or five shots?”

  “You have something better?” She glared at me like I was a complete idiot, and I felt like a complete idiot. How was I supposed to know about guns? I barely ate three square meals a day. I couldn’t even fathom anything dealing with a gun.

  “So what do you do about the scrappers?”

  Sun Hi’s eyes sparkled. She stuffed one of the pistols into her boot holster and put a cartridge into the gun she was assembling before.

  “That’s what this is for,” she said, lifting the arm-length gun from the ground.

  She stood, passed Dhyla the other pistol, and walked over to a remote on the table. She clicked the center button, and a hologram of the trailer we were in appeared in the middle of the room. Using the dial on the remote, she widened the view from the trailer to the whole park. Two alpha scrappers flew into the scene. They were gigantic machines that used the same hover-disc technology to fly, but were more like mini fortresses than fighter drones. Their primary purpose was to transport the smaller, normal scrappers over long distances. As soon as I saw the alpha scrappers on the hologram, faint buzzing hummed in the distance.

  “Wow, talk about quick.” Sun Hi stood in amazement. She pressed the remote again, and the hologram blinked away. She glanced at Dhyla, anger at the edges of her voice. “He’s not here, like always. We can’t afford to wait on him.”

  “Rylan’ll be fine. He’ll find us later,” Dhyla said. “Right now, you two have to get out of here.”

  As I watched the new events and hurried movements, my shivers returned. I grounded myself and my fingers curled around my backpack straps. I didn’t think I could do this. We couldn’t run from them. They sliced people up in seconds. Their bullets blasted through walls like tissue paper. This was impossible.

  Sun Hi grabbed a few items and threw them into bags. She guided me away from the door, and Dhyla put a hand on my shoulder. With nimble fingers, Sun Hi put some kind of wire across the front of the doorway and turned a small dial on the right side that the wire was attached to. I had seen enough movies to know what that was. Anyone who opened that door was going to be a very burned and unhappy person.

  Sun Hi zipped by me and headed down the tiny hall that led to the bathroom. She opened the door to the bedroom and gl
anced back. “C’mon.”

  I dashed forward with Dhyla behind me. Everything was happening too fast to fully comprehend. I was still in mild shock over the events from the last twenty-four hours.

  Scores of boxes lingered at the walls of the room. A queen-sized bed made up the center, covered with a flowery, blue comforter. The bed was neat until Sun Hi jumped into the middle, bunching the sheets. I didn’t ask any questions. I just followed her lead. She opened a blackened window over the bed and jumped to the outside. I placed my hands on the window sill and brought my legs around.

  After hitting the ground, I helped Dhyla exit the trailer. We ran up an incline to become level with most of the other trailers. The trailer we were in was slightly buried and had a yellow school bus filled with trash sitting right on top of it. The site was amazing because unless you knew where you were going, someone would just pass by the trailer thinking it was a junk pile.

  Sun Hi grabbed my wrist and started to pull me down the backside of the trailer, away from the park. Dhyla dashed in the other direction toward Perimeter Market and Café Lanta.

  “Where are you—?” I started. Dhyla disappeared behind a wall, and I spun to Sun Hi. “Where is she going? I thought we were going to stick together.”

  “This is safer,” Sun Hi said.

  She led us through the maze of trailers, and I started to get worried that I didn’t know how to use my gun. I might’ve been able to hit something a few feet in front of me, but I could barely get the safety off this morning. How was I ever going to hit one of those speedy scrappers?

  As Sun Hi yanked me along, grabbing and releasing my wrist, I placed my backpack over my chest and began rummaging through it, looking for the gun. Sure enough, it was there, off to the right. Gray-Eyed Fox, er, Rylan, hadn’t stolen it. A wave of relief splashed onto me. Rylan was with Sun Hi and Dhyla, but I still didn’t trust him.

  The buzzing of the scrappers grew stronger, and my blood stilled within me. I didn’t want to have a panic attack right now. I needed to keep it together.

  The white and gray corrugated walls of the trailers blurred as we dashed through the alleyways. Sun Hi stopped when we came to a thirty-yard gap in the buildings and put her hand up. I kneeled down while she peeked around the side.

  “Three scrappers,” she said.

  “What about human cops?” I asked.

  “I see at least two, but there could be more. Some androids may be around, too.”

  I didn’t need androids too. The scrappers and police were enough to take in.

  Sun Hi brought her face close to mine. Her eyes were narrowed. “I need for you to follow my lead. We are going to head through the gap. I’m sure there will be heavy gunfire from here on out. I will get you through this, but you’ve got to do what I tell you when I tell you, all right?”

  My body shook. I couldn’t believe what she was saying. We were about to be put into a gunfight with scrappers who could move like flying cheetahs. We were two dead women.

  She grabbed my face. “Stay here. Count to ten and then run to the far trailer. Don’t stop, no matter what happens. In fact, try not to look. Just run.”

  After she let me go, she cocked her gun, exhaled, and walked around the corner like she was headed to fix another chocolate mocha.

  Thunderous blasts echoed from around the corner mixed with Sun Hi’s voice exclaiming profanities. Quick footsteps panged the side before metal tore. It was so startling that I forgot to start counting. “Uh, seven, six…” I just omitted the first three numbers because I was late starting. By the time I got to one, I still wasn’t sure if it was time.

  I inched forward and peeked around the corner. I didn’t see Sun Hi. A swarm of seven scrappers hovered to the far right and moving closer.

  A shrill “Go!” from Sun Hi got me running. I pulled my arms up to cover my head and hammered my legs into the ground. When I neared the far wall, I couldn’t help but glance back.

  Sun Hi jumped off the trailer I was just hiding behind, did a flip onto one of the scrappers, shot it two times, then took out three more. Her body blurred, and a weird blue light hung in the air behind her.

  I made it to the other side and fell to my knees. A scrapper buzzed around the corner, swaying back and forth in the air as it studied me. I pulled my gun up and fired at it. Sharp red lights dashed through the air around the scrapper. The more I shot at the scrapper, the more I realized it was moving too quickly for me to hit. Every time I had it, it shuffled back the opposite way and the gun blast would miss the scrapper’s hub by inches.

  “Crix! Crix!” I yelled in vain.

  After a few seconds, the scrapper changed weaponry, and two sets of guns spun on each side of its head. It took aim. In a few seconds, I’d be confetti.

  A blue light flashed to my right, and eight holes magically appeared in the scrapper’s shell. One of its hoverpads flew off, and the scrapper spun out of control. It flew fifteen yards away and then tumbled toward me.

  Shocked, my joints locked. I wobbled as the scrapper neared: ten feet, eight, six. Something hit me, and I fumbled forward as the place where I’d been a second ago exploded into a gigantic fireball.

  The red flames licked the side of the wall where I had stood. Shock tightened around my throat and clawed my skin. It took all my energy just to focus.

  “Get up,” a voice called.

  I glanced up, barely able to move. Sun Hi’s face was stone.

  “We need to go,” she said.

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me up.

  We dashed through the park with scrappers zig-zagging through the air. One second, Sun Hi would be next to me. The next, she was gone and a blue glow hovered where she once was. I just kept running and following any orders she told me. “Go left. Wait three seconds. Climb over the car, don’t go around it.” Some of the orders made sense, while others were confusing. I was too terrified to argue. I just did what she said and watched the metal carcasses of the scrappers rain down from the sky.

  We reached the end of the trailer park and dashed down an alley. At the end was a metal storage container about one third the width of a normal-sized one, but there weren’t any exits.

  Frenzied, I glanced over at Sun Hi. “Is this right? Did we go the right way?”

  Without a word, she lifted the bar that locked the door in place, and widened the door to a pitch black interior. I snuck a peek inside before a hard kick slammed into my side. My body tumbled head first into the darkness. The door screeched shut behind me and locked.

  “Sun Hi!” I yelled, banging on the door.

  I frantically yanked off my backpack, looking for my flashlight. Before I could pull it out, the storage container began to sway back and forth. I lost my footing and fell backward before sliding across the floor. With the constant rocking, my stomach pressed into my heart and both of them seemed to dissolve into nothingness. I had the horrid suspicion that something lifted the container—the one I was inside of—off the ground.

  I was trapped. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. I needed a way out. I had to get out.

  Less than a minute later, the container stabilized, and the side opened. Dim light crept inside the container before a blast of white light struck me in my face. My eyes burned in the brightness. My body refused to budge even the slightest bit. Fear kept me petrified.

  Someone moved close to me and a hand extended toward me. Nervous, I grabbed it. I drifted back on shaky legs, and my knees slammed into the hard metal floor. Gray-Eyed Fox stood there with a grin on his face.

  I stood up, half scared and half angry, and walked out of the container past him. At that moment, I recognized I was in some kind of hover-trailer or airplane. I couldn’t tell which. I still didn’t understand any of this. The sight of Gray-Eyed Fox was just making everything worse.

  A hollow noise resonated above me, and I turned around to see Sun Hi descending down a tiny ladder before dropping to the floor.

  “Okay, AJ, let’s push it,” she said.
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  A young bald guy glanced back at her from the controls. After nodding, he spun back around in his seat, and pushed a lever forward. The roar of the engines vibrated throughout the cabin, and I fell back against the storage container.

  Gray-Eyed Fox grabbed my upper arm and braced me as the ship accelerated. The buildings in front of the AJ guy, who in my mind instantly became Mr. Baldy, blurred into a shapeless blob of concrete.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  Gray-Eyed Fox smiled. “Home.”

  CHAPTER 13

  I wasn’t sure how we lost the scrappers, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure how the Escerica Rebels took down two security drones either. Come to think of it, I had no idea how a plane could sneak into Atlanta undetected.

  After traveling for several minutes, we landed in an area I was sure was south of the city. Farms stretched as far as the eye could see. Gigantic machine-like robots sucked up leafy vegetables into their bins.

  Gray-Eyed Fox unbuckled his seatbelt and smiled. After the initial warp-session, when we shot through the air like a missile, Gray-Eyed Fox had guided me to two rows of four seats. Taking the seat near the window, I glanced outside to see where we were going. He took a few steps back across the aisle. As he sat, he widened his arms and his grin. After plopping down on the seat, he leaned back and crossed his legs on the armrest of the seat in front of him.

  “So you made it back?” someone said.

  Vibrations rattled my frame as I turned to see who was talking. Sun Hi glanced up, her black eyeliner drawing out the intensity in her eyes.

  Gray-Eyed Fox’s grin vanished as he faced Sun Hi. “Yeah, I made it. I could have sworn you said the rendezvous was over near Abernathy.”

  “It was, but we changed it to Ashford Center.” She rolled her eyes away and glanced down at her PCD. “I sent you a message.”