by A I Knowles
“Has there been any word of next steps?”
“No. Nothing.”
El heaves himself up into a crouch, then steadies himself with one hand on the gravel. “I need to find out...find out who made it…”
“What you need to do is rest.” The voice comes from above our heads, and is accompanied by feet crunching on gravel. Kara has returned, and is now flanked by two men in doctors’ uniforms. They walk past us and I turn my head away as they start gathering up the dead woman’s body.
“Did the council members have a chance to head back for the Hill?”
Lily. I go cold. Was it really just that past morning I’d spoken with her? I wait anxiously for Kara to answer.
“I think she and Zhen left before lunch. I don’t know about the others.”
“Where’s David?”
Kara pauses in helping the men wrap the body in its blankets to glare at El. “I’m not telling you, because I don’t need you running off to find him.”
So Lily might be okay. Or she might be dead. Trying to distract myself from that line of thinking, I ask: “Who’s David?”
The woman ignores me as she and her two companions finish wrapping the body and rise to their feet with it held between them. From behind, I hear El’s voice and turn back to face him. “David is my squad leader. If anyone will have a plan, it’ll be him.”
I watch El weave unsteadily in his crouching position. “Kara’s right. You’re in no shape to go running off to fix things.”
With a grunt, El falls back down. “Alyss, war doesn’t wait until people feel better.”
“And what if someone dies because you weren’t strong enough to be on some mission?”
El doesn’t respond, just lays down and rolls over so his back is toward me, then pulls his blanket around his shoulders with a sharp motion that shows his irritation. I watch him until his breathing slows, trying to block out all the sounds of pain and grief around us. Despite it all, my eyelids grow heavy. I lower myself to the uncomfortable gravel. I’m convinced I’ll never get to sleep, but at least I should rest. When daylight comes, or when someone in charge decides we’re needed...well, I can only imagine none of this is going to get any easier for a long time.
Chapter 12: The Repercussions of War
“Teacher?”
“Yes, Alyss?”
I tap my stylus on top of the desk. “I know people in history had all these wars, but why? Why did they build bombs if nobody was threatening them? Why did they go to other countries to attack if nobody was hurting their country?”
Teacher is silent for a moment. “Humans are by nature divisive and selfish. Particularly those in power. They seek to possess that which they don’t have, and conquer that which they don’t own.”
“But the androids don’t need to fight, right?”
“Correct. HAs have no need for food or fossil fuels or any of the other concerns which make humans so desperate to dominate the world. Therefore, there is no need for war.”
I purse my lips as I try to reason this through. “But wouldn’t they still have the same need to possess and conquer or whatever? You said we want what we don’t have, and want to control stuff that isn’t ours. If these aren’t need-based reasons for war, how does being embedded change those tendencies?”
Again, Teacher is silent. I begin to wonder if I’ve said something I shouldn’t. When she finally speaks, I guess my assumption was right because she sounds irritated. “Alyss, many human needs and drives are suppressed during the embedding process. The need for food, for sex, for sleep. The drive for conflict and war is among those.”
Her logic has holes the size of the sky above the exercise yard, but I can sense that any further pushing won’t end well for me. If wars aren’t need-based, removing those needs wouldn’t remove the wars. But I’ve never seen HAs argue or even disagree. They all float around with those sophomoric smiles as if they’re constantly remembering some funny scene that only they can see.
Well, okay. Those smiles tend to disappear when they talk to me. But how is it bad to want information? They talk about how being embedded gives us so much more time to learn and gain knowledge. So why is knowledge before embedding bad, but afterward it’s good? If we have to wait eighteen years for our brains to mature, shouldn’t we do as much as we can to help them grow during that time? Instead, it seems more like watching some old school movie on the wall screen while knowing just millimeters behind it is nothing but concrete and wires.
The questions burn through my mind as the school day passes, but I don’t dare ask again. I watch the old black-and-white war videos in silence, only taking my eyes from the screen to type out notes or answers to Teacher’s questions.
***
I open my eyes to weak daylight. Looking to the right, I can see the tiny circle of the tunnel’s end. So it really was night. The small amount of illumination which reaches us back here is barely enough to drown out the circle of light thrown by the lantern.
The blanket next to me is empty, only the oxygen mask remains. I stretch out my stiff limbs and test each one, then I push myself to my feet, using the wall as support. I gasp when the soles of my feet hit the gravel. Even the bandages aren’t enough to protect the wounds from the sensation of a million tiny sharp rocks.
For a moment, I stand still and try to gather my motivation. Many around me are asleep, though some still groan in pain. This section of the tunnel seems to be set up as a sort of infirmary area. Deeper in the tunnel, I can see bins of supplies stacked four and five tall. It seems the community wasn’t completely unprepared for this sort of event. I don’t know whether to be reassured or saddened by such a fact.
Just as I decide I’ll have to brave the pain, the gravel crunches and Kara walks past me from the deeper section of the tunnel. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I need to find El. I need to help.”
She raises her hand, and I realize she’s holding a pair of flimsy sandals. “Not without these.”
Grateful she isn’t going to try and stop me, I take the sandals and ease them over my sore feet. “Do you know where El is?”
Kara is already turning to walk back toward the bins. She waves a hand in the direction of the tunnel mouth. “He’s up there somewhere. If you see him, tell him I’m not helping carry him back here if he collapses again.”
Her expression is one of such exhaustion that I just nod. She walks away and I set out toward the circle of light. The sandals dull the worst of the pain, but I’m still struggling not to stagger as I walk between the train tracks and the rows of people on either side. Some are laying down, some sit with their backs against the walls, and some are huddled together. I pass people who stare blankly into space, and ones whose faces are streaked with tears and dirt. Babies are curled up in parents’ laps or on their shoulders. They are the most heartbreaking of all. They have no way to understand or process what’s happening...not that the adults seem to be much better.
As I approach the end of the tunnel, I find a flimsy table set up a few dozen feet from the exit. A half-dozen people, including El, are gathered around the papers that are spread on the square surface. El lifts his head and his eyes fix on mine as I approach. I recognize most of these people from the ones who were on the truck when I was rescued. One of the women has an arm in a sling, and a man has a deep gash across one side of his face. Yet another has a bandaged head similar to mine.
A tall, tanned man with broad shoulders stands upright and turns when I come near to the table. “Alyss, I’m David.” He reaches out and offers his hand, which I shake. “El has told us a lot about you.”
I raise an eyebrow at El, trying to figure out what about me was worth telling his friends, but he won’t meet my eyes. “I want to help.”
David nods. His short hair is pitch black, except for where a thin scar starts at his hairline and makes a grey line around the side of his head. Where most of the people in the rebel community are thin and pale, he is dark an
d muscular. He looks like the soldiers I’ve seen on my school videos.
“Come.” David waves his arm, and the group around the table shuffles to make room for me. I step closer to find a map of a building that appears to be the hospital. The paper on top is the basement. David resumes speaking, a task which my arrival had obviously interrupted.
“We can’t know where any survivors may be trapped, but it’s likely they’re either in the basement, the infirmary, or the hall near the broken window.” He looks up, and fixes each one of us with his gaze. “It’s also quite possible there are no survivors. We have to be prepared for the worst.”
“What about the tunnel?” The woman with the sling taps the map and I lean down to look at it more closely. On the wall farthest from the stairwell is a tunnel which looks like it was drawn on with a pencil, and it lacks the clean printed lines of the rest of the map.
“I don’t know. We can hope some either reached the tunnel or the first floor hallway, but we have no way to know. Even if they’re able to get to the Hill, we all know they won’t be safe there.”
“Sorry...but what’s the Hill?”
David shoots a glance between me and El “You didn’t tell her? You were supposed to have explained this to her days ago.”
El winces. “I know. I just couldn’t find the right time…”
“That’s not an excuse and you know it.”
My heart hurts for El as I watch his commander berate him. I can’t imagine what he was supposed to tell me that could be so important to get him this type of treatment.
David raises an arm, which bulges with muscle. He points toward the deeper part of the tunnel. “Go find some meal packs, and while you’re at it, take the girl with you and tell her what you were supposed to. I don’t have time to be answering a million questions.”
El pushes himself up from where he was leaning on the table. He walks around it and waves at me to follow. My confusion only deepens as he leads me along the track, bypassing all the huddled people and the place where the injured lay on their blankets. Sorrow adds to the confusion when I see a little boy lying on a blanket, his leg swathed in blood-soaked bandages. It’s the toddler I carried up the stairs, then lost amongst the crowd. His injuries are much worse than a climb over the glass on the window could explain. He’s either asleep or passed out, and his mother kneels next to him.
Guilt twists my stomach as the woman reaches out and smooths his hair back from his tiny, pale face.
I let this happen. This is my fault.
“Alyss. Hey. Come on.”
I hadn’t realized I’ve stopped walking. El places a hand on my arm, but I can’t stop staring at the limp little boy on the blanket. I turn to look up at him. “El...I dropped him. I dropped him and he got hurt.” The words won’t come out at any more than a whisper.
He moves his hand to my back, and increases the pressure for me to move forward. “Come on. Let’s not talk about this here.”
My throat tight, I follow him farther back to the spot where the rows of bins stand. El pulls something from his pants pocket and clicks a button. A small beam of light reaches out into the gloom. He shines it on the bins, as if searching for a specific one. “Aha.” He hands the flashlight to me and starts pulling bins down to get to the one second from the bottom. It has a label on it which reads “MREs.”
“El…”
“Things happen in war, Alyss. It wasn’t your fault.” He reaches the bin he wants, and picks it up to set it on top of one of the others he’s already moved. He kneels, pulls the lid open, and I shine the flashlight on it as he hunts through the mass of brown packages inside.
“I could have held on tighter.”
He doesn’t look at me, just pulls some of the packages out one at a time to add to a growing pile next to his knee. “Sure. You could have stood on the roof so you could see the drones coming. But you didn’t, because you didn’t know better. How could you?”
“But…” When he looks up and raises an eyebrow at me, I shut my mouth. I walk over to one of the bins he set on the ground and sit on it while still keeping the flashlight trained on the one with the brown packages. “What were you supposed to tell me?”
His hands pause. “The Hill. Do you know what it is?”
“A hill, I assume.”
He grimaces at my lame attempt at humor, then sighs. “It’s a house. A house on top of a hill.”
“What’s so important about a house?”
El sets two more of the food packages on top of the pile, then pulls the lid back onto the bin and snaps it closed. “It’s not the house that’s important, it’s what’s inside.”
“Okay…” I don’t have the patience for this. He obviously doesn’t want to tell me, and I can’t imagine why. I already know the Society is a horrible place and I’m sure the rebels sometimes have to do things they wish they didn’t. What could possibly be making El sit there looking like he thought I might try to attack him?
“The Hill is a house owned by an HA.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. You told me Lily goes there to work.”
He nods. “She does.”
I go cold. “Are you saying…”
“No, of course not. Lily’s as human as we are. The house is owned by a HA who is...sympathetic...to our cause. He gives us a place where Lily and the Council and all the hackers can work on ways to infiltrate the Society and destroy it.”
“How...how is that possible?” The rebels are working with a HA? One of the very machines they’re pouring all their energy into defeating? That makes no sense. HAs are androids. Not humans. And if they have no human elements, they can’t go against their programming...right?
“Honestly? I don’t know. But he supports us, and he allows us to use his his house. That way, the hackers can use the computers and the power without attracting attention. This HA is one of the highest-ranking ones in the whole city, nobody questions him if his power consumption is a little higher than most.”
“I don’t understand.” They’re working with the enemy. They’re working with someone who could destroy the whole operation. What if he’s the one that alerted the Society to our presence? What if…
“Alyss, it wasn’t him.” he’s obviously noticed how I’m winding myself up with questions, because he walks over to me and crouches in front of where I’m sitting.
I don’t know what this emotion is which spreads through me. Is it anger? Fear? Worry? “How? How do you know?”
“We’ve been working with him...well, your mom and the others have been working with him since the HAs were first introduced. Nobody knows why this one, out of all of them, chose to side with humans. He’s gotten all the regular updates. He gets the new models when they come out, so he’s not suspected, even though he hates everything they stand for.”
“But how...why…” No matter how hard I try, the words won’t come out. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He sighs, and his dark eyes are sad. “You’d already gone through so much. Even those of us who have grown up on this side of the Society have a hard time understanding the arrangement. I couldn’t do that to you...not right after you’d just found out the truth.” He reaches out and tries to grasp my hand, but I pull it away.
Tears burn behind my eyes, even though I still don’t know what to call the emotions raging in my head. “Haven’t I told you I’ve had enough lies for one lifetime? That an ugly truth is better than a pretty falsehood? And you knew this, they wanted you to tell me...but you didn’t.”
“Alyss, I’m sorry. I wanted to protect…”
I jump up. “I’ve spent my whole life being lied to and they called it protection!” Rage surges through me as he also stands, and I reach out and push him away. “I didn’t think you would do it too! I thought you were my friend!”
“Alyss...I…”
“No. You sat there and you listened to me talk about truth and lies and you chose to keep lying to me. That’s not what friends do.” Not that I’ve ha
d much experience in friends… “Just...just get the food. Let’s just get this mission, whatever it is, over with. Then you can go back to your life, and I can figure out what to do with mine.”
I steel myself against the heartbroken look in his eyes and walk away. He can’t see the moment when my resolve breaks and I hug myself with my arms as I stumble back toward the tunnel mouth. If I let my tears fall, he has no way to know.
I never could have imagined having relationships was such a complicated and painful thing.
