Human

by C R MacFarlane

  Grant leaned down, shouting in her face, “Sarrin. Get up!”

  The Speakers were too powerful. They controlled everything — from the drab buildings in their predictable layout, interstellar ships, newsfeeds, medicine…. If she was an enemy, she was an enemy. There was no way to overcome that.

  Medicine?

  Her eyes focussed, past Grant’s shouting face, to the vid-screen plastered on the wall behind him. A smiling news anchor, her smile broad enough Sarrin could tell it had been surgically altered, reported another medical breakthrough, something about children. The screen cut, and it flashed to Halud, sitting calmly surrounded by medical equipment.

  It was a re-run, she had seen it before, picked up on the feed-capture device Kieran had built for her. But she watched her brother, leaning forward.

  Her breathing came easier.

  Halud had tried. He had summoned Courage and tried, he’d not succeeded, not entirely, but he’d gotten her free. Now it was her turn, she owed it to him to try, no matter what.

  “We have to find him,” she whispered.

  Grant glanced behind him so see what she meant. He nodded at her. “You have to get up first.”

  She braced, gritting her teeth against the pain. The monster flared, but for once their goals were the same, and it lifted her to her feet. She looked to the vid-screen. We're coming, Halud.

  THREE

  “SOLDIER, RELEASE ME.” HALUD PRESSED his hands against the clear permaglass, banging it twice. He was in the Speakers’ rehabilitation facility — a little known aspect of the prisons. What the folk did know was that sometimes a person could get confused, could start to doubt the Gods, and they were taken for a special re-education to be shown again the incredible power and goodness of Faith, Prudence, Strength…. Some of these people returned to the folk peacefully, others, they were told, fell so deeply in love with the Gods that they chose to join one of the struggling outer-rim colonies — their inevitable death due to starvation was the Will of the Gods. And the folk rejoiced. Too often, Halud had been the one to bear the news.

  The guard glanced dolefully over his shoulder, giving Halud only the briefest of considerations.

  Halud screamed louder. If he could get the guard to listen to him, he could convince him to release the seal and take Halud to the rebels. Probably even convince the guard to join the cause himself. He’d always had that gift. But the ensign was defactly ignoring him. Still, eventually, he would have to give in. For days, Halud had been banging and shouting at the clear barrier. Someone would hear him. Someone.

  He stopped as the door to the anteroom slipped open, the guard coming to attention as he acknowledged the unannounced visitor.

  Commandant Amelia Mallor strode in, an ostentatious cloak billowing behind her. She wasted no time and stopped directly in front of the ensign. Three words came from her mouth, though Halud didn’t know what they were. And she made a quick hand gesture.

  The soldier nodded and stepped to the control panel quickly.

  The permaglass separated, the smooth door to his cell pulling back.

  “Poet,” she barked.

  Halud gulped.

  “Honourable Hap Lansford has requested your presence.”

  “Hap?” His brow furrowed in surprise. “What does he want with me?” He'd sat in front of the first Speaker often enough, but always as a friend, always on the same side. This new type of meeting, well, nothing good could come of it.

  The commandant’s only reaction was a subtle frown. “My duty is to transport you.”

  He crossed his arms. “Tell the Speaker I refuse.”

  The commandant marched into the cell, taking impossibly quick strides, and latched her hand onto his arm. Just above his elbow, she pinched, and he nearly doubled over. “You will comply with the demands of the Gods.” She pushed him ahead of her, holding him by the elbow, and he was powerless to resist.

  “You don’t have to keep pushing me like that,” Halud said, tugging his arm from the commandant’s grip as they marched through the twisting maze of corridors. “I know where I’m going.”

  She sighed, shoving him, but she did let go of his arm.

  “What did you do with my friends?” he asked, “The rebels I was with?”

  No answer.

  “Even you must be able to see that this is wrong.”

  “Pathetic,” she mumbled.

  “It seems beneath you to be escorting prisoners.”

  Silence, again.

  Pleased, Halud pushed on. “I thought you would have been out hunting in your warship. But maybe you changed your mind.”

  She slammed him into the wall. “Do not play your wily word tricks on me, Poet.” Her voice rose, “I hate Augments, and I would kill every last one if my ship hadn’t been taken. You and your pathetic sister. She stopped me. Somehow. I don’t know how.”

  The quick expression of confusion surprised Halud.

  “Now I’m here, babysitting you, a man whose only strength is his words. Useless. I should be hunting that insidious freightship full of Augments. 005478F is a far more dangerous adversary than any of the others."

  Halud blinked. “The freightship? Sarrin? She’s alive?”

  She pushed away from him, slamming him into the wall, striding away as Halud fought to catch his breath. He glanced at the empty hallway leading back the way they came. If Sarrin and the others were still alive….

  “Don’t think about running,” the commandant’s voice was cold and demanding.

  He followed her, suddenly bolstered. “Hap is wasting his time. I’m not his puppet.”

  “You certainly seem like one.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “What do you care anyhow? I thought you wanted to destroy Augments.”

  “I serve the Gods.”

  “Why?”

  “The Gods look after us. It is because of them that we thrive.”

  “Is this thriving? You want to destroy hundreds of children who have been captured and tortured, lost their parents, and who knows what else. My sister, Sarrin, she couldn't even speak. I’ve seen videos of them electrocuting her until blood poured from her eyes.”

  A hand twitched up to her chest, her five fingers together at the centre. The harshness in her features softened, only for an instant. Then, as though remembering herself, the scowl returned, ten times deeper than it had been. “Silence. Your word games and inflections will not work on me, Poet.”

  But he hadn’t imagined it — the commandant had a heart, a weakness at least. He opened his mouth again, but she clamped her hand down on the nerve running over his elbow. “Do not speak.”

  He couldn’t even if he’d wanted to.

  She pushed him through the familiar halls, the grey-on-grey walls that grew lighter and lighter the higher in the tower they rose until it was nearly white at the upper floor and paintings from the Artist Laureate decorated them.

  Joyce smiled at him from behind her receptionist desk. “Hello, Halud,” she sang sweetly.

  He groaned. Idiot.

  The commandant pushed him up the staircase and into Hap’s office. She pushed him right to the desk at the far end of the room, and forced him to sit in the chair. She released his arm but continued to stand half a step behind him.

  Hap Lansford turned from the window, previously hidden by the overly-large wings of his chair, and placed his interlaced hands not he desk, ready to begin. It occurred to Halud that the man always started their meetings like that, his back turned while Halud entered and then he would spin around dramatically. The Speaker must have spent an awfully long time waiting with the chair turned away from his desk.

  It had always intimidated Halud in the past, but now it just seemed absurd. “You’re a fool, whatever you’re going to ask for,” Halud said before Hap could open his mouth.

  Hap grinned at him. “You don’t know that I’m going to ask for anything.”

  “But you always do,” Halud spat. “I wo
n’t do it. I won’t say whatever you want me to say. I don’t support you and there’s no reason for me to pretend.”

  “Oh, no?” Hap raised a single eyebrow. “I agree.”

  “You — what?”

  Hap laughed. “Certainly not after last time. Although the folk still seemed to follow your words and not your dreaded thoughts. But I can’t take that risk. Instead, I brought you here to tell you what part you are going to play. And then I'll let you sit in the rehabilitation facility with nothing but time to think.”

  Halud’s blood ran cold. “I won’t do anything you ask. You might as well send me to a colony.” But his voice wasn’t as strong as before, wasn’t as sure.

  “My dear Halud. Here’s the beauty of it: you don’t have to do anything.”

  Hap motioned to the commandant behind him, and she turned swiftly, marching from the room. Halud found himself missing her terrifying presence.

  When she had gone, Hap continued, “You did do one thing for me, and I thank you. Hundreds of children have received the Xenoralia nervosa vaccine. You know what that means.”

  Halud shut his eyes.

  “I’m making new soldiers. They will be better, stronger, faster than the last. We made errors with the first generation, but we have learned.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “With who? The Evangecore children? There’s no use for them anymore. They’ll be destroyed.”

  Halud shook his head. “You don’t need to destroy them, just let them go.”

  “I can’t do that. They’re dangerous and unpredictable.” Hap grinned wickedly. “The commandant tells me 005478F is still alive — fastidious, like a parasite — but she won’t be for much longer.”

  Halud closed his eyes, he couldn't let Hap see how pleased the confirmation made him. “She doesn’t want to fight. You know that.”

  Hap shook his head. “No, you know better than that. She is a fighter, a destroyer. She can’t help it. Your sister was almost exactly what we needed. But she’s uncontrollable. And that’s why she needs to be destroyed.”

  “You told me she had already been destroyed on Junk, along with everything else.”

  Hap’s face turned an angry red, and Halud allowed himself a little bit of hope. “I have been informed she is alive. Floating around somewhere in that ridiculously fortunate freightship I gave to Galiant Idim.”

  So she was alive, and they didn’t know where she was. Halud gripped the chair to keep himself from grinning.

  “Unpredictable and completely unaccounted for,” Hap grumbled. “But no matter.” He grinned again wickedly. “This is the part where you come in. You’re here. She will come here to save her darling brother, if I know the subject at all. And then we’ll destroy her.”

  Halud sputtered. “She won’t. She’s not stupid. She’s millions of parsecs away by now.” But his heart crashed around his breathless chest.

  Because Hap was right. She would come for him. And the most selfish part of him wanted her to.

  Hap called out for the commandant.

  Halud would have to do something, find a way to get a message to Sarrin and tell her to run. He would escape, find her so she wouldn’t have to find him. But the commandant was there with an iron grip on him, and he wasn’t going anywhere.

  FOUR

  GAL GRASPED THE FAMILIAR HANDHOLD, pulling himself over the smooth parapet. Aaron was already standing on the rooftop, watching. “Do you think it’s still safe, Gal? We haven’t been here since we were cadets.”

  Gal grunted. “It was the only place I could think of.”

  Aaron walked around, stretching his arms. “Hard to believe it’s still here, after all these years.” He grinned at him. “Hard to believe you’d bring your new lady friend up here, like a teenager.”

  “Quiet, Aaron.”

  The apparition shrugged.

  Gal went to the edge, helping Rayne over the lip. She was flushed, and her arms trembled. Next came the two Augments, Alex and Luca. Followed by Grant. Grant spun around, peering down the wall they had just climbed.

  “Gal, what are we doing here?” Rayne said.

  “We needed somewhere to stay.” He leaned over the parapet; Sarrin was still ten feet below.

  “She’s not going to make it,” Rayne said.

  “She’s a good climber,” said Grant.

  “She needs a hospital.”

  Gal held his breath.

  “I offered to carry her, but she wouldn’t let me,” said Grant.

  Slowly, Sarrin hauled herself over the edge, as they all watched. She rolled over the lip, collapsing onto the con-plas roof, breathing heavily.

  Grant’s Gods-awful suit had finally retracted, and Grant crouched on the ground next to the blistered girl.

  “Don’t,” she croaked, struggling to her knees. A cough caught her, and she kneeled there, hacking, until finally a wad of clotted blood and pink foam splattered over the ground.

  “Galiant,” Rayne said firmly — at least she was talking to him, “she needs a hospital. She’s dying.”

  The girl did look absolutely terrible, but out here at least she had a chance. “We can’t,” he said finally. “You know what will happen to her if we do.” She would be captured. He would be captured.

  “At least take her to the general’s house,” she said. "Let me talk to him, tell him what we know about the Augments."

  Gal ran a hand over his face. He didn’t want her to survive Evangecore and Selousa and Junk only to die on a rooftop, but the general was Hap Lansford’s First General, involved with the Augments in more ways than one.

  Sarrin braced herself on her elbow, half-sitting up. The Augments were tough as nails, that had never been in question, but he’d never seen one look so ragged.

  “Gal, look at that.”

  Gal jerked his head up, eyes following where Aaron’s long arm pointed. Across the chasm of streets and lower buildings, painted against the side of many buildings so that the picture would only be whole when you looked at it from a certain angle, was a symbol.

  Gal stepped to the side to see it more clearly, cold disbelief washing through him. A circle with two parallel chevrons.

  “Someone’s still using the old mark,” Aaron smiled.

  Gal swallowed, nearly choking on his own saliva.

  “We could go there,” said Aaron.

  He turned away.

  “We stay here tonight,” he told the others, giving Rayne a pointed gaze. There was a little cubby, a sort of frame made against the roof access door and the half-wall that ran around the edge, and Gal reached in pulling out a worn blanket. The last time he’d used it, he had been a teenager hoping some girl would give it up. It was where he brought all the girls back then; with the blanket spread out on the roof, they’d lay on it while Gal traced star patterns in the sky. Instead he brought it over to Sarrin, shaking out the dust, and laid it over her.

  “Where did you get that?” Rayne asked.

  He arranged the blanket over the girl, careful not to touch her. He met her wary gaze, hoping to convey how sorry he was he couldn’t do more, that he knew if she died it would be on him.

  She nodded, opening her mouth to speak, but another coughing spell overtook her.

  “We could take her to the rebels,” said Aaron, unasked. “They could get her medical assistance, a doctor. They can help us find someone who won’t go to the UECs.”

  She coughed again and again, the wounds on her face oozing fresh, sticky serum.

  A sinking pit opened in the chasm of his stomach. Was she that ill? Was it worth it? He closed his eyes, the painted symbol with its parallel lines fresh in his mind.

  He opened his mouth to offer, but she spoke first:

  “We need to find Halud.” Her voice was grave and raspy.

  “Sarrin, you need to rest.” Grant crouched down beside her.

  She shook her head. “Where is he? The newsfeed….”

  “It can wait,” said Grant, reaching his
hand out gently.

  She flinched away, tipping over and spilling across the floor.

  “We’ll go tomorrow. When you feel better.”

  “He’s in trouble,” she rasped. “He wasn’t on the feed, that was a recording from weeks ago.”

  “Tomorrow, Sar. You can’t do anything for him tonight. Sleep. Let your body heal.”

  “The general will know where he is,” Rayne said softly.

  Sarrin eyed Rayne, calculating, considering.

  “Absolutely not,” Gal snapped.

  He regretted it instantly when they all turned on him. Rayne put her hand on her hip. “Why not?”

  “We need to find Halud.” Sarrin sat up, coughing.

  Gal closed his eyes and shook his head. It was a fool’s errand. When he opened his eyes, they were still staring at him. He noted a flash of grey demons, seated on the half-wall, just like they were enjoying a show. They clapped at him mirthfully.

  He gestured at Sarrin. “She can’t go anywhere.”

  “If you hadn’t dragged her up on this roof.” Rayne turned, heading for the wall where they had climbed over. “I’ll go. The general can tell me where to find Halud and I can come back with some medicines.”

  “No.”

  She spun angrily.

  He started before she could: “It’s not safe.” He wanted to tell her she could be taken, jailed, tortured, killed, wanted to tell her what he suspected her father had done, but his mouth wouldn’t let him, it just stopped.

  “My father is safe,” she said coldly.

  “You can trust the rebels,” said Aaron.

  Gal whirled around. “No. We can’t trust anyone! We’re in a city full of people who hate us. They don’t give a damn about anything we have to say. And we will not be announcing our arrival to anyone, especially not Hap Lansford’s war general.”

  Rayne stepped back, shocked.

  Sarrin coughed up another glob of blood.

  “No one is safe here. There is no one we can trust.” He turned his voice, for the first time in years, to the tone that made people listen. “Sarrin is going to feel better in the morning. We are all going to sit here, sleep if we can. No one is going to go anywhere. And maybe, we’ll survive a night in the Central City.” He spun away, blindly moving to a section of half-wall on the other side of the roof. He gripped the cool con-plas in his hands, imagining ripping it apart with his bare hands.