by A I Knowles
A loud clattering approaches, and the man lays me down. It’s only marginally softer than the cot. Once I’m on the gurney, the man looks down at his shirt and sighs, then shakes his head. “You better be glad you’re cute. You just bled all over my favorite shirt.”
Before I can figure out what he meant, the gurney lunges into motion. The man who carried me trots along one side, shading me from the worst of the sun. Someone else is on the other side, but too far back for me to see them. All I can see around us are buildings. There are lots of broken windows and crumbling walls. So, abandoned buildings? Are we in the ruins of a city? How far have we traveled? The sun is still high, so the two legs of the trip combined couldn’t have been more than an hour or two. How fast can hovercars travel?
“Where are we?” Neither the man or the person on my other side seems to hear. I tilt my head to see where we’re going, flinching when my neck throbs. We’re heading for a building in a similar state to the others. Its walls are made of garish red brick, with a double-wide doorway yawning open on the ground level.
The gurney shudders and shakes over every little rock, forcing me to lie back. I grip the sheet in my fists, trying to suppress the whimpers of pain that push against my lips. The man grasps my good shoulder. “Hold on. Almost there.”
Almost where? Where are we? What are they going to do with me?
The sunlight disappears as we pass beneath the doorway and into the building. After the brightness outside, I’m blind in the darkness. The gurney moves for a few more seconds before it slows, reverses, and bumps to a stop as if it hit a wall. The man stands over me and waves at someone. The other man who helped drag the gurney pulls an orange curtain around the bed with a gap just wide enough for a person to walk through, then he disappears through it. A light over the bed makes the space bright enough I can’t see much of what’s going on outside the curtain.
“Kara! Got somebody for you!”
A woman with straight brown hair to her shoulders and a pretty face ducks through the gap. She’s dressed in bright blue-green pants and a shirt, and has some sort of device strung around the back of her neck, like a rope with a blob on one end and something resembling giant clamps on the other. She smiles at me as she comes to stand next to the gurney opposite the man, then I start when she pulls the device off and opens the end, which looks like a clamp, sticking the little knobs on the end into her ears. I flinch and try to pull away when she takes the blob on the other end in her hand and moves as if to place it on me.
“What...what is that?”
Kara chuckles, as does the man. She looks up at him. “Society, then?”
I glance at him as he nods, then he puts his hand on my wrist. “It’s alright. She’s a doctor. She’s just going to make sure you’re okay.”
“What does being a doctor have to do with that...thing?” Some of my energy must have returned, because panic starts rising in my chest again. In my world, doctors are scientists and programmers, not women with no fashion sense who take care of other people. We have Medbots for that.
Kara deftly ducks under the weak wave of my arm and places the end of the device on my chest. I gasp when ice-cold metal touches my skin, and freeze in uncertainty.
After a moment, she straightens and slings the device around her neck again. “Heart sounds good.” She pulls a little stick out of the breast pocket of her shirt, and waves it in my face. It blinds me with a bright pinpoint of white light. “Let me look at your neck, honey.”
Honey. That’s what the voice in my implant called me. But this woman’s voice is different. It’s not the same person. I flinch, and the man whistles quietly, when Kara places warm hands on my head and shoulder and turns my head to the side. “That’s a nasty wound. What happened?”
“My implant exploded.” Kara and the man both go still, and I look between them in alarm. Did I say something wrong? “What?”
Kara’s next words aren’t directed at me, but at the man. “El, does Lily know?”
“I didn’t know myself. We just got word of a Process caravan and we staged a rescue.”
“She has to know.”
El nods. “As soon as she’s patched up, I’ll head to Command.”
I look between them. “What? What’s wrong? Who’s Lily?”
Kara smiles down at me. “Someone who’s been searching for you...for about fourteen years.”
Chapter 6: Rebels
Lily. Lily is my mother’s name. The mother they told me was dead.
I can’t stop glancing between El and Kara, then without warning, my confusion and fatigue converge and I burst into tears. Then I end up clutching the wound on my neck when the motion pulls at the edges. My hands come away bloody, and this only makes the sobs more forceful.
“Honey, you’ve got to be still. Let me put some glue in. Hey. Hey, Alyss.” Kara gently pulls my hands away from my neck.
“I...I want...I want to go home…”
She and El both look at me with pity in their eyes. “You’re never going back there.” El’s words have the opposite effect of what he probably intends, as the idea of never seeing my home again only adds to my distress. I know it was a horrible place to grow up. I know my life was constantly at risk there. But still...it’s the only place I’ve ever known. My room...the corridors...the mess hall...the school room...the exercise yard with the old tree. I’ll never see any of them again. All that’s left ahead of me is a world full of garish colors and loud sounds and more people than my previously-isolated brain can comprehend.
“I’ve had lots of angry ones. Ones determined to get to the Process however possible. I’ve never had one that wanted to go back.”
These words from Kara surprise me enough that I lower my hands. “I don’t want to go to the Process.” I gasp in a deep breath and try to get the heaving of my chest under control. “I’m grateful...I just…”
“It’s a lot. I know.”
“I only found out about the rebels a couple days ago…”
El chuckles. “Then you’ve got a leg up on most of them.”
“They told me my mother...Lily...was dead.”
Kara shook her head. “Honey, not only is she not dead, she’s kinda the whole reason our community even exists.” At my puzzled look, she just shrugs. “But that’s a story for her to tell you, not me.” She looks up at the man across the gurney from her. “I think she’s stable for now, you wanna go let Lily know?”
El nods, and with a quick grin in my direction, takes off through the curtain.
“I...I’m not ready.”
Kara pulls some sort of small tablet from the foot of my bed, and writes on it. It doesn’t appear to have any kind of screen, just some sheets of flimsy paper. “That’s okay. I’ll take a few hours for her to get down here, anyway. In the meantime, how about I dress that wound, and we’ll see about getting you some clean clothes?”
Raising my arm, I see what she’s talking about. My white sleeve is stained with drying blood from my shoulder to where the fabric ends just below my elbow. Somehow there’s even blood crusting into my heavy skirt. My hand and the gurney sheet are also well-covered in the sticky redness. “That would be nice.”
“Great. I’ll be right back.” She disappears through the curtain, then soon returns with a little tray that holds a bunch of unfamiliar--and ominous-looking--instruments. She sets the tray on a little table that stands near the curtain, then wheels the curtain and a stool over next to the bed. “Can you turn your head?”
I obey, fixing my eyes on the folded orange fabric to my left. A cart with a bunch of drawers stands there, as well as a pole with wheels on the bottom and large hooks at the top. To my right, I hear a package rip open, then her fingers gently touch the skin next to the wound. “This may be cold.”
She dabs something damp on my neck, wiping away the accumulated blood. I gasp when some of the liquid seeps into the gash and stings. The sharp scent of antiseptic assails my nose.
“Sorry, hun. It’ll be over i
n a second.” She uses three more of the little wipes before she seems satisfied. Then her hand, which is now gloved in a blue material, enters my field of vision holding a little white tube. “This is just the skin glue. It may sting just a bit going on, but it should help hold things together so you can heal.”
I follow her hand with my eyes as it retreats. “You don’t have a skin regenerator?”
Kara chuckles. “Nope, not here. We’re about a century and a half behind the rest of the city. Be glad we’ve got the glue...it was stitches without analgesic there for a few years.”
My mind burns with questions. I can’t decide which ones to ask first.
“You know, I think you’re the first Society one we’ve brought in here that hasn’t been demanding to go right back in that van. Usually, we have to show them quite a bit of proof before they settle down, and sometimes they just won’t be convinced.”
I wince as she applies some of the glue to my skin and holds the wound closed to let it set. “Lily already told me.”
“Yeah? And you believed her?”
“I...I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe. Something never seemed right...but it’s hard to believe the Society would do such a thing.”
The nozzle of the skin-glue tube leaves my skin, and something clatters on the little table, then Kara’s other hand moves away and I hear the rustle of plastic before she begins working on a spot lower down on my neck. “Hmm. You’re smarter than most, then. Most of these kids never think to question any of it. You are your father’s daughter, for sure.” Her hands freeze, and I turn my head to look at her, but she places a free finger on my cheek to stop me. “No, don’t move.”
Father? “You mean my mother?”
Kara clears her throat. “Yeah. Lily’s a smart woman. Any child of hers was bound to see something wasn’t right.”
She doesn’t offer any more conversation after that, and I stare at the curtain while she finishes her work on my neck, unconvinced her use of the word “father” was an accident and not the wrong word, as che claims.
***
A few hours later, El comes back, this time pushing an odd-looking chair with knee-high wheels on each side. “Come on, lazy, time for a tour.”
I glare at him in protest, as much over being abruptly woken as from the insult. “I’m not lazy, Kara told me to…”
He chuckles, then reaches down on either side of the chair and pushes down two tiny levers. “Nevermind. Forgot you Society kids don’t know what a joke is.” He walks around the chair and helps me sit up. “How are you feeling?”
Gingerly, I turn my head to the side. I can feel the pulling, but the glue holds. My arms and legs seem to be working again. “Better. The headmistress told me I had an infection, but I’ve never heard of an infection that paralyzes.”
El’s smile dims. “It wasn’t. Kara tested your blood and found a paralyzing agent. They did this to you on purpose, Alyss. Probably so they could get you out of the compound and to the processing center before you spilled any of their secrets.”
I frown at him. “I thought the Process isn’t real.”
He bends down and motions for me to put my arm over his shoulders, then supports me over to the chair. Once I’m sitting in it, he takes the blanket from the bed and hands it to me. “It’s not. But the processing center is a real thing.” I look up in curiosity at the dark note that enters his tone. He won’t meet my eyes, but I sense it’s from pain rather than deceit. “It’s just that it’s a place of death...not rebirth.” He kneels in front of the chair to flip down the footrests and help me place my feet on them.
Without quite knowing why, I say: “I’m sorry.”
El looks up, his ice-blue eyes searching mine with an expression of surprise. Then, as if he thinks better of whatever he’s about to say, he shakes his head and tucks the blanket around my feet. I flinch when his fingers brush my skin. Besides when Kara was tending to my wound, I can’t remember the last time I touched another human being. Even when Linea would wind her arm through mine, it was our sleeves that touched, not our arms. This feels...different, as if I’d shuffled across the floor in my socks, then touched exposed metal.
When I flinch, El pulls the blanket back. “Are you injured somewhere else?”
I manage a nervous laugh. “No, no. It’s nothing.”
He props his hands on his knees and pushes himself to his feet, then walks around the chair and reaches down to raise the little levers. “Fine. Just remember, we don’t have implants here...if something’s wrong, you have to tell us.”
As he pulls the chair back and turns it to wheel me out of the protective embrace of the curtain, for a brief moment I flash back to a time and place where my life was so monitored I couldn’t even have a conversation with my friend.
***
I’m sitting on the stone bench with my legs crossed and my sketch pad propped on my knee. The coolness of the bench seeps through the fabric of my skirt, the only thing that makes the lingering summer heat bearable.
A footfall sounds on the concrete and I look up to see Linea walking toward me. Her ruler-straight black hair is cut to just above her shoulders, and there’s a kind of desperate sadness in her dark eyes.
“Hey.”
I smile up at her. “Hey.”
She sits on the bench next to me and folds her arms, then leans her head on my shoulder. When a tear falls to splatter on my sleeve, I tilt my head until it touches hers, until my cheek is on her sleek hair. Her body trembles, and a lump forms in my throat at how hard she’s trying to suppress her emotions. I want to tell her to stop crying, lest a Nandroid comes searching for her to “fix” whatever’s wrong. As if medicines and procedures can fix a teenager’s lonely, broken heart. But I can’t say anything, because they’ll know.
Instead, I go back to work on my sketch. Linea shifts her head, and I know she’s watching me as my pencil sweeps in delicate strokes. Beneath the instrument, the form of a fluffy little bird takes shape. Moments ago, I saw him land on one of the tree’s lower branches, his feathers a blue as intense as the sky above. He was only there for a moment, but it was enough for me to imprint his image in my mind, an image which now takes form under my deft fingers.
“You’re magic, Alyss,” Linea murmurs after a moment.
I lean closer to the page to put the tiniest detail on a feather. “It’s just practice.”
She sits up and sniffles, then shakes her head. “I could practice all day, I’d never be able to do that.” Without warning, she bursts into full-on tears, and I’m so startled I nearly drop my pencil. Setting my drawing aside, I put my arms around her.
“Come on, Linea. You have to stop. Please. They’ll hear you.”
Linea chokes out some whispered response, but it’s overpowered by the noise of the door knob turning, and the thud of Nandroid feet across the concrete.
I watch, with tears gathering in my own eyes, as the Nandroid takes my friend by the arm and pulls her away. Linea doesn’t resist. We both know there’s no point.
The next day at breakfast, a subdued and listless Linea sits across the table, picking at her food. Two white pills in a little plastic cup sit next to her oatmeal bowl.
“Hey. You awake down there?”
I shake off the memory as El wheels me through what I now see to be a large, infirmary-style room. There are multiple spots where curtains create smaller spaces around beds. In the center of the room are two parallel lines of long tables set end-to-end and piled with masses of equipment I don’t recognize. The room seems dim compared to the bright sunlight which spills in through the double doorway at the far end. El is pushing my chair to the left, toward another doorway that leads to an even dimmer corridor.
“Sorry, I’m listening.” Well, I mean to, but I can’t stop trying to take in all that surrounds me. There’s more people--real, fully human people--than I’ve ever seen in my life. Many of them wear the same blue uniform as Kara, while the others are dressed in a clashing mish-mash o
f fabric that seems to have no overarching theme or meaning. Much of the clothing is ragged and threadbare. The ceiling of the room seems to be the underside of a metal roof, and is crossed at many angles by thick metal beams. The walls are made of a gray block that is one of few familiar-seeming sights in this chaotic and noisy world.
We pass into the dark hallway, and the noise fades behind us. I blink rapidly until my eyes adjust to the gloom. The walls are made of the same gray blocks, punctuated by metal doors every few dozen feet. Despite the similar colors, this place looks nothing like the Compound. There, it was all soaring architecture and curves. This place is all squares and rust and musty smells.
It smells like freedom.
As El pushes me down the hallway, he rattles off the names of rooms so quickly I can’t keep up. I’m thankful for the little placards on each door, which state the purpose of the space behind it, even if I don’t understand the meanings of some. There are storerooms, two armories, libraries, dressing rooms, nurseries...the list goes on.
