Modified- The Complete Manipulated Series

by Harper North

  “And what was the plan?” I ask.

  “Basically, a governmental coup,” Mason explains. “We have—or had, I mean—men and women embedded within the EHC networks on just about every base on the planet. There are hundreds of sympathizers—Century and Tenant class—all throughout the surface cities. We were waiting for the best possible assignments, the ones that gave us the greatest advantage. Now, we’ll have to figure out what our next step will be.”

  I frown. “I’m sorry that we—”

  “No apologies.” He raises up the holodrive. “Besides, I believe I’m the one who owes you a thank you for this. This information could be the tipping point for the rebellion. It will force change.” He moves his attention from me to the captain of the craft. “Take us to camp. We need to regroup and plan our next move.”

  Elias shoots me a reassuring smile. Everyone else seems very excited at the news, but I’m not so sure how I feel. I came to the surface to save a little girl, nothing more. Now it seems I’ve jump-started a revolution.

  CHAPTER 18

  From the cockpit there’s nearly a 360-degree view by way of the monitors and windows. We race through Reso, destined for Mason’s hidden camp in the desert. I have no idea how fast we’re flying, but it’s definitely faster than the hover car could go.

  Reports have been flooding in via the monitors from resistance members within various settlements. Turns out the EHC didn’t like our little display at the operative base. Big surprise. There have already been a number of sweeps in search of potential insurgents.

  Shootings, arrests, and general lunacy have erupted thanks to the EHC’s newfound paranoia. Pretty much every thirty seconds, soldiers enter the cockpit to give Mason a report on the events going on on the ground. I remain in the background, soaking it all in, dizzy with information. Lacy and Sky elbow their way in, both more alert than they were when we boarded.

  “How are we going to fix this?” Lacy shouts, pulling everyone’s attention in her direction. Her eyes have gone wild again, and whatever was driving her near madness has returned. I flash her the eye to shut up, but she’s oblivious.

  “Pardon?” Mason asks.

  “From what I’ve been hearing since we left the base, the EHC has gone completely crazy,” she says, fists clenched. “What do you think will happen to the dwellers?”

  Mason frowns. “I’m not sure yet, Lacy.”

  “Well, how about I tell you?” she says. “Because if they’re firing on their own citizens and making all these crazy arrests like your reports are saying, you best believe they’ll rain hellfire down on our people.”

  Mason lowers his voice. “Lacy—”

  “Don’t Lacy me!” she hisses.

  I grip her by the arm and she yanks away, bearing her teeth at me. She turns on Mason.

  “Dwellers have been known to get shot or beaten just for looking at an op the wrong way. When word spreads to our home about what happened today, they’ll turn those tunnels inside out. Dwellers can’t protect themselves. We don’t have guns. We’re always the first to receive their wrath when things go wrong, and you know it!”

  Mason sighs and locks eyes with her. “Lacy, I agree with what you’re saying. The dwellers are in danger, but so is everyone else. Including us. It is too dangerous to land this craft anywhere near your entry station. Our best bet is to regroup at our camp and move out from there. If we can help them, we will.”

  Lacy’s nostrils flare and she inhales quick breaths. Her aggression seems to intensify with each passing moment she and Mason remain trapped in their stare down. At last she exhales deeply.

  “Fine,” she relents and her eyes soften.

  I inch to her and rest my hand on her shoulder. I don’t dare speak.

  “Um, sir?” One of the men manning the craft beckons to get our attention. “You should see this.”

  “Put it up on the display,” Mason says.

  A holographic image appears at the console. It’s an underground entry station like the one we came from. There are mass numbers of EHC operatives gathering nearby, and they’re all heavily armed. If this is what it’s like at a random entry station, I can only imagine how it is at the one we emerged from. Nero has probably sent twice as many men to our home as these dwellers’.

  Lacy and I exchange glances. Her eyes are pleading, and I know that I can’t stay quiet. There isn’t time. Not with the EHC jumping into action so quickly. It’s true that I’ve never been particularly close with other dwellers apart from Lacy and Drape, but they are my people, and the nearest thing I can claim to be family. The EHC will be rounding people up like cattle sent to slaughter.

  “You’re a coward, Mason,” I say, though I know it’s far from true.

  He turns to me, calm despite the insult. Elias, on the other hand, shoots me a look of shock.

  “What?” Mason asks.

  I shake my head. “I got that data for you from the medical wing. Surely by now they know what was downloaded. I’d bet my life that the ops will start rounding up dwellers with the inactive genetic markers. They’ll kill them all just to keep people from…from having any hope. Now that this information is out, they’ll massacre them.”

  “I know,” Mason says. “But we can’t—”

  “No excuses!” I snap. “We have to act now, and you know it.”

  “Finley, I want to help the dwellers, believe me. But the ops are swarming the underground entry stations. If we go in now, we won’t stand a chance taking them head-on like that.”

  Sky walks toward us from the doorway. He must have been outside. “What if there was another way in?”

  “Another way in?” Mason echoes.

  “Yeah,” Sky says. “There’s an alternate way in besides the station hub.”

  “Not possible.”

  “There’s this underground habitat that people tried to build during the early days of the Flip, but it was abandoned at least forty years ago,” Sky continues. “And it’s no more than a few miles from the Slack’s mining area.”

  “How in the world do you know about this place?” Elias asks.

  “I used to go out scouting. My sister and I lived in the old subway tunnels. I’d go through old sewer and maintenance tunnels as far as I could go, just trying to find somewhere to give my sister and myself a better life, when I came across the abandoned habitat. We came close to living there, but it was poorly protected from the radiation. I’m sure it’s why it was abandoned. There were maps left in the habitat, and based on what I saw, I believe there are tunnels that lead to the surface.”

  “Or,” Mason says, putting the information together, “tunnels that could lead us surface people down?”

  “Exactly.”

  Mason brings his hand to his chin. “Everyone unnecessary for flight, please exit the cockpit. I need a minute.”

  On the way out, Elias grabs my elbow. “Why did you call him that?” he hisses in my ear.

  “A coward?” I shrug.

  “Yes, because my uncle is not a coward.”

  “I knew it would get his attention. Something needed to be done.” Guilt for doing it gnaws at my stomach, but I felt like I had no choice.

  Elias narrows his eyes at me and shakes his head. “I get that, but there are better ways.”

  Suddenly, the ship jerks and pulls to the right. We’re changing course. The doors to the cockpit whoosh open and Mason stands in the entry.

  “Get inside,” he orders, rotating on his heels, not waiting for us. Lacy and Sky follow first, and Elias gestures for me to go ahead of him. Mason walks toward the craft’s captain, and he looks our way. “Come here,” he demands.

  We listen. He means business.

  Lacy smirks. “So what did you decide you’re going to do?”

  Elias throws her a death stare, so I punch her arm. I don’t think Elias will let us verbally abuse his uncle anymore.

  Mason ignores her and looks at Sky. “Can you lead us there?”

  Sky nods. “Yes, sir.”
/>
  I gaze out the forward-facing windows as we approach what looks like an ugly crater in the distance.

  “What the—” Mason says.

  From the looks of the landscape, it had once been a city in the midst of the desert, like Reso. A handful of the surviving buildings near the edge of the crater appear as though they might pre-date the Flip. Tall, and with endless windows, the structures appear to be made mostly of cement. Everything now is made with metal or composites. These building wouldn’t be habitable in the current climate, but the fact that they’re upright is amazing. Tattered and crumbling, but upright. The variety in their designs is the complete opposite to the purely functional ones we saw in Reso. The once beautiful monuments are now a shrine to a past long gone.

  We land alongside the massive crater, and the men at the work stations pull up the 360-degree viewing screens. Something clearly happened here. A bomb, maybe? A small nuclear catastrophe? The way the windows are all blown out on the outer buildings and how the center of the city lacks any structures at all indicates an attack. Either way, the place is a ghost town, full of nothing but dust and crumbly concrete remains. The desert terrain ends abruptly once it reaches the crater, changing from yellowish sand to a hideous gray dust.

  “Okay,” Mason says as the ship powers down. “It’s go time.”

  CHAPTER 19

  We step through the back hatch into the wasteland of the once-substantial metropolis. Again, the heat hits my body and I’m reminded of how the surface differs from below ground in so many ways. We plant ourselves near the craft, gazing at the bombed city. It’s quiet, but menacing in size. Even torn apart, I get a feel for how society prior to the Flip thrived.

  A large container is carried down to the hover craft’s entrance, and Mason opens it up to reveal an assortment of weapons. He gives us all pistols to wear at our sides as well as blasters to carry. Knives are handed out, filling our belts to maximum capacity with weapons, flashlights, and gear. Mason helps himself to a few grenades, not offering us any. I glance at Lacy—probably a smart idea.

  Lacy, Sky, Drape, and I are with Mason. We know the tunnels, so they’ll need us. Elias also volunteered and insisted that he join us, despite Mason’s hesitation. A woman called Knuckles, who seems slightly older than I am, is chosen to assist us. Apparently she’s one of Mason’s former undercover operatives. Then there’s Jase, who’s closer to Mason’s age. Big and sullen, Jase makes me nervous. Since Todd was killed at the base he seems distracted—pacing, muttering to himself. But Mason knows him better than me, so I don’t say anything. Mason chooses three more young fighters to accompany us: twins Oliver and Olivia, and a hulking man they all call Bricks. I can guess why they call him that, since he looks like a ton of them.

  “Sky, you’re leading point on this,” Mason begins. “Can you locate the entrance into the tunnels?”

  “That’s the hope,” Sky replies as he hooks his pistol into his belt. “I’ve done a lot of tracking living in the Slack. It’s how we scavenged for supplies. From what I remember from the maps, we’re searching for a marker called Hope’s Gate.”

  I gaze out over the demolished city. “Not one thing here seems too hopeful to me.”

  The whir of an activating blaster sounds from behind me, and I spin to find Cia gripping one like a miniature soldier. Shouldn’t she be on the ship?

  “Cia, put that down!” Sky snaps, snatching the blaster from her.

  “If I’m coming, then I want a weapon, too,” Cia argues. Her feisty little attitude is evident, so she must be feeling a lot better.

  “You’re only going as far as the Slack, Cia, where I can hide you,” Sky says. “Got it?”

  Cia really should stay. Then again, it’s not as if the hover craft is well hidden. It would be just as dangerous to leave her. There are no guarantees either way, and I’m sure Sky doesn’t want her out of his sight.

  “What if we run into ops?” Cia asks.

  “Fine,” Sky says and hands her a knife. “Keep it sheathed unless you need it.”

  She pouts, but grabs the knife and hooks it into her belt. “That’s so dumb, Sky.”

  I snicker to myself. I like this kid. I glance at Lacy, who’s admiring one of the pistols. “Blasters first, Lacy. Only use the pistol if you absolutely have to.”

  “I'll be careful, Fin,” Lacy says.

  “Are we ready?” Mason yells.

  “Ready,” Elias says on our behalf.

  “You know it,” Knuckles says as she finishes tying up her long braid. The hairstyle and her narrow face make her appear almost snake-like. I wonder how such a petite woman got a nickname like Knuckles.

  Entering the city is like walking into an alien world. Pathways line the buildings and smaller crafts dot everywhere we turn. The vehicles have wheels and don’t appear to have the means to take flight. Each one is different from the last. All the hovercrafts I’ve seen since surfacing have had similar looks to them. Function trumps personality, I guess.

  “There’s no vegetation here,” I comment.

  “Don’t be too surprised,” Olivia says, gripping a handheld device in her hands. “The radiation here is off the charts. Like, this is way more than radiation from the Flip. This place was nuked.”

  “You’d think there wouldn’t be any remains at all, then,” I say.

  Gray dust kicks into the air as we walk. Breathing it in makes my lungs feel heavy. Someone takes my elbow and I turn to find Drape, mouth open. I follow his free hand, pointing the way to a skeletal building. Poised in the doorway is what appears to be a statue of a man covered in black ash.

  “What’s that,” I ask, trying to figure out what the big deal is, and the rest of our group glances in the direction Drape’s finger is shakily pointing.

  Bricks curses under his breath and steps toward it. “This has been waiting here for a hundred years,” he says, reaching for it.

  “Don’t disturb the dead!” Oliver shouts.

  Bricks’ fingers make contact with the black figure, causing it to crumble away into dust.

  The dead?

  Bricks curses again and jumps back from the pile of black ash.

  “What was that?” I ask warily, not really wanting to know the answer.

  “A guy that got nuked a hundred years ago,” Olivia says.

  “Bricks, don’t touch anything!” Mason orders. “You heard Olivia. The radiation here is high.”

  “It’s off the charts,” Olivia repeats. Her device produces a pinging sound. “Sir, we don’t need to be here long. This stuff is dangerous… might even kill us.”

  Sky instinctually turns to Cia.

  “I feel fine, Sky,” she assures him. “I promise to tell you if I start to get sick.”

  “Keep it moving,” Mason says, his blaster trained forward.

  Sky nods and continues leading the way. Despite the damage, I can nearly imagine what this place was like during the twenty-first century; full of people scurrying around doing whatever they did back then, oblivious to what was to come. They probably had no idea how good they had it before it was taken from them.

  I glance at Drape as he adjusts the blaster onto his uninjured shoulder, softly groaning. A knot forms in my gut and I touch his arm.

  “You all right?” I ask.

  “My shoulder still hurts,” he admits. “I was… you know… shot this morning.”

  “I know. Drape, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

  “It’s not your fault,” he assures me.

  “But it is,” I say. “I dragged you and Lacy into this. I made the call to run when they came in on us. It’s entirely my fault.”

  “Well then, I forgive you if you insist on blaming yourself,” he says and winks at me. “Come on, Fin, do you really think I blame you? You’re my best friend.”

  Warmth spreads across my chest and I chuckle. “Well, thank you. You and Lacy are my best friends, too.”

  “Guys!” Sky yells from the front of the line, pointing up at a tall str
ucture.

  “What is it?” Olivia asks.

  “It’s called a billboard,” Mason says. “It was an advertising technique from pre-Flip.”

  The billboard stands ridiculously high, and half of it was blasted away by the explosions. There is an image of ancient luxury homes with the words:

  The New Underground Safe-Haven: Hope’s Ga—

  It cuts off, but based on what information Sky gave us, I’m certain the last bit of that was Hope’s Gate.

  “Looks like we’re getting close,” Oliver says. “Which way?”

  Sky ponders for a moment. “It should be just up ahead. Over that hill.”

  We continue down the cracked road and, as Sky predicted, we spot an enormous, rusted gate. Half of the gate is down, but the main entrance is upright. At the top of the entryway are the words Hope’s Gate.

  “Good job, Sky,” Mason says, and with a kick the twenty-foot-tall gate goes down shrieking, shattering in several pieces as it lands. Across the dusty yard beyond the gate is this enormous run-down building. Intricate and overly ornate, it was probably beautiful once.

  “Looks like it used to be a resort,” Bricks murmurs, then laughs. “Sure didn’t survive the blast, though, now did it?”

  What’s a resort? The question doesn’t matter, so I don’t ask. Everything about this building is quite dangerous. A part of me worries that as soon as we cross the threshold, the remaining walls will tumble down on us, kind of like the nuked person back there.

  “Tread lightly,” Mason warns as we enter.

  Half of the ceiling is gone, allowing in rays of light which catch the dust floating in the air. The enormous lobby had once been well decorated with statues—no, not statues.

  My throat clenches. Those are people like the man we saw. Some of them are huddled together in bunches. Others seem to have been frozen mid-run.

  “Look at this one,” Bricks says, pointing at a charcoal woman standing with her hands on her head.

  “Bricks, I said no touching!” Mason shouts.

  “I’m not!” he says, turning. The back of his blaster hits the woman and she falls apart. This time though, instead of crumbling completely to dust, a few bones fall out and land at Bricks’ feet. He shrieks and cusses again, his words echoing in the room.