by Eliza Green
The thought had crossed his mind, but they didn’t have the time. ‘Rest is all we can offer them right now. We need to know how to command the technology. I won’t put them in that room without controls in place.’
‘You did with me.’
‘That was an emergency. We had to.’
June nodded. ‘You need me to help with the search?’
‘No. You and Alex should stay here, look after the child.’
‘I’ll stay with her,’ said Vanessa.
‘I’ll leave a few soldiers with you. Hopefully the search won’t take long.’
He ushered everyone else out of the room and back to the main area beyond the shimmering wall.
Waving at the entrance, he asked his ex-guard, ‘How long will it stay open?’
He shrugged as if he didn’t want to answer. ‘As long as it likes.’
Dom glanced at the Copy’s wrist. ‘Does your chip open it?’
‘You know it does.’
‘Well, how about I cut off your hand and give it to my men?’
The Copy’s eyes widened a little. ‘They c-can open it from the inside.’
‘Good. You three stay here,’ he said to the rebel soldiers. He pushed the prisoner towards the stairs. ‘You’re coming with us.’
Jacob announced that he and Carissa would head to the workshop. ‘We should get her files so we have something to compare the data to.’
Dom nodded and three soldiers plus Thomas went with them. Thomas took the bag containing the maps with him.
That left Sheila, Imogen, Charlie, Anya, Jerome and the remaining half dozen soldiers to search the medical facility. The rest—Kaylie’s team—were collecting their dead. He’d told her team they would help after they’d done a sweep of the city, but Kaylie’s team didn’t want to wait. Right now, the wolves were protecting them. Soon, the remainder of Kaylie’s team would take half the trucks and bury their fallen close to home. He didn’t know if they would return; they didn’t answer to him.
For now, checking for Copies had to be everyone else’s priority. They did a sweep of the floors together, starting in the lobby. At least his captive guard was useful for opening the doors that weren’t accessible to just anyone.
Dom swept his Disruptor inside each room, including the guards’ station. There was hardly any technology on that floor, and no way to check if the force field around the city was still down.
They moved to the first floor—the scene of his torture. Without June’s emergency to distract him, his feelings about this place hit him properly. He breathed through his nose to calm down. Anya walked on ahead with Jerome. They checked corridors and any rooms that could only be accessed with the Copy guard’s chip, while the others did their own sweep.
Charlie stayed with him.
‘You okay, son?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, why?’
He concentrated on the next corner he couldn’t see around, gun at the ready.
‘You seem on edge, even though this place looks very much abandoned to me. Why are we wasting time searching it?’
‘I’d rather be overcautious than not. Max taught me that.’ Charlie visibly flinched when he mentioned Max’s name. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s okay. Max was a good leader. He’d be proud of you. We all are.’
Everything on this floor came back clear. The team moved to the second floor, where Anya had been. It was her turn to tense up.
They worked methodically, ignoring any rooms the Copy’s chip couldn’t open. Anya said the rooms couldn’t be opened from the inside anyway.
Sheila led the way to more rooms.
‘Down here,’ she said, stopping outside one. ‘This was my room.’
She opened the door after the soldier unlocked it. A boy of around nineteen was sitting on the edge of the bed. He looked up, shocked to see Sheila.
His face sported a yellowing bruise. Sheila pointed at it. ‘I gave him that, when he got fresh with me.’ She lunged at the boy and grabbed his arm. ‘Looks like you’re coming with us after all.’
The boy protested, but Sheila was too strong for him.
Their checks rounded up more boys than girls. More Breeders he assumed. Like Alex.
Twelve victims. No Copies.
They returned to the third floor an hour later to find Vanessa waiting for them outside the special entrance. ‘The child is almost ready.’
He remembered the strange children he and Anya had seen while in Arcis. They hadn’t cried or interacted. They’d just sat there and coloured, or played alone.
‘When we’re ready to move her, we’ll meet up with Jacob at the workshop,’ he said.
Vanessa pointed to a door that was in the same area. ‘Through here leads to the viewing corridor. Beyond it is a tunnel that will take us to the workshop.’ Dom vaguely remembered this space from the time of their escape.
She looked at the new additions from the second floor. ‘Is this everyone you found?’
Dom nodded. ‘But I expected to find at least one Copy in this place.’
11
Carissa
Walking along the empty streets filled Carissa with fear. She darted her gaze around, watching for any signs of movement. She’d never seen the city so quiet before—not even at night.
Noise comforted her. Silence made her nervous.
The Inventor was walking too slowly—again. But he’d insisted all three of them travel above ground so he could check on the wolves. Carissa saw the pair in the distance near the trucks. Both of them were sitting down. She took their passive state to be a good thing. But still, the walk unnerved her. Thomas walked as slow as the Inventor. She tried to hurry the pair up by running on ahead. But each time she ended up backtracking.
‘I won’t get there any faster, miss. I don’t move as fast as I used to.’
The Inventor had never moved fast. But a knot of worry injected nervous energy into her step.
Her mind flitted between racing ahead or staying with the Inventor and risking them being ambushed. Thomas carried the Atomiser and an Electro Gun. Three soldiers shadowed them. Their presence put her mind at ease a little.
As they neared heart of the city a shiver caught her by surprise. The bright, white exterior of the Learning Centre looked idle. That place had been her sanctuary once.
No more.
She kept her back to the building. If she couldn’t see it, in her mind it didn’t exist.
Carissa eyed the long structure opposite it instead. Broken bricks from its outer wall littered the courtyard in between. They’d seen the damage during the orb’s brief journey home. A digger had ripped through the retractable roof. The steel girders and part of the wall lay in pieces, but the door leading to the stairwell was still intact.
She rushed to the door and opened it a crack.
One of the soldiers barked at her, ‘Wait for me!’
Carissa froze her hand on the handle. The soldier pushed her back and nudged the door open with his gun.
‘Clear,’ he said.
She trotted down the stairs, her anxiety lessening as she returned to the one place the Copies didn’t like to venture.
The workshop looked the same as she remembered it: a counter against one wall with a sink. Spare bellies, legs and tails that used to hang from rafters close to the retractable roof now lay on the floor. A ragged hole in the roof opened out to the sky. The two diggers that were being repaired were missing. This was where she and the Inventor used to hang out. The Inventor had built Rover here.
The old man entered the space, hands on hips. ‘Except for the mess, it looks okay.’ He stepped over broken rafters and spare parts and headed to the counter, where the diagnostic machine had been left. ‘All the equipment is still here. Looks like they only wanted the diggers.’
‘That’s good, right?’ Carissa asked.
Change wasn’t always a positive thing, as she had learned.
He grunted his answer and flicked a switch on the side of the machine. It hum
med into life. The Inventor released a breath.
Sweeping debris off a chair, he pulled it out into a clear space and patted it. ‘Here, please, miss.’
Carissa walked over to it and sat down. She was familiar with this routine having been through it several times before. A smiling Thomas joined them, clearly fascinated by the workshop set up. The soldiers waited by the entrance. Rover’s nose and that of his mate was visible through the sky opening.
She concentrated on the machine with the small, black screen that would reveal the data in her memory banks. ‘I may not have the maps anymore.’
She’d downloaded what she could while out on the battlefield and connected to Quintus. But she had no way to check if the downloads had been successful.
‘The machine will verify that, but I’m confident you have them.’ He turned the machine around so he could see the screen better. He lowered a metal arm with two wings over her head. ‘All documents are stored in your biogel, like an imprint.’
‘But what if the Collective has changed things?’
‘Then you might not have the latest version, that’s all. But we have our own maps.’
Thomas stepped forward and opened the bag Vanessa had brought to the city. He pulled out the rolls of maps and placed them on the counter.
The Inventor positioned the wings over her head. He connected the flexible ends with magnetic tips to Carissa’s two discs.
She felt a buzz inside her head, followed by a ticking sound. The connection tickled her skin; she scratched it.
The Inventor eased her hand away. ‘Careful, miss. I don’t want you to get a shock.’
She placed her hands on her lap and concentrated on the screen while she felt the connection search through her memory banks.
The Inventor frowned at the screen showing her brain’s information. Over one shoulder, Thomas lingered. She saw a list of folders populate the screen, listing all her knowledge. But it didn’t include everything. Some things she’d learned on her own, without Quintus’ guidance or the Collective’s. Things that would only show up if she was in the Great Hall and Quintus was dragging them out of her.
The Inventor perched one fist on his hip and leaned closer to the screen.
He pointed to a folder. ‘That one, miss.’
She recognised the folder that contained the maps of the city, but it was greyed out. Carissa tried her old code by thinking it, but nothing happened.
‘I can’t get into it. My permissions aren’t working,’ she huffed.
This was a mistake. The rebels should never have trusted her to do this.
Thomas looked over Jacob’s shoulder. ‘We can try a dictionary attack.’
‘A what?’
‘We try permutations of numbers in the hopes we hit upon one that works.’ Thomas looked at her. ‘What code were you trying to use?’
She rattled it off. It wasn’t anything special. Just her Copy number—173-C—and a few other identifiers.
‘Wait, no.’ Thomas stroked his chin, looking worried. ‘If the Collective has blocked her from the system, anything she tries with her Copy code could time out. I’m not sure a dictionary attack will work on the active folder.’
‘So what do we do?’ said the Inventor.
‘We should try to access the backup of the folder. Her permissions might not have been altered there.’
Carissa watched Thomas enter a few commands on screen. On occasion, he asked Carissa to open certain files. Some required no pass code—like the files that recorded the times of the Copies’ daily downloads. Other things, like the frequency code for the force field around the city, were locked. Why, when the barrier was currently inactive?
Thomas typed in a few new commands. Bright-green text appeared on screen.
‘All computer systems are the same,’ he explained while typing. ‘If I can find the backup storage, we might be able to grab the last saved copy.’
Jacob frowned over his shoulder. Carissa zoned out while he worked.
Her eyes grazed the room that she’d spent so many hours in, watching the Inventor work. Having seen him in the rebel camp enjoying the freedom he claimed to have lost, she couldn’t picture him working here again. She now saw this place for the prison it was.
‘I have it!’ Thomas said. She snapped her attention back to him. ‘Call out your command to me again.’
Carissa did and he typed it in.
‘It’s not locked,’ he said sounding relieved.
A new document opened on screen. It was a black map with a white outline showing the schematics of the city. She leaned in closer, breaking her connection to the machine. She gasped and checked the screen. But the image remained. It was a general outline of the city above ground that showed its concentric design.
‘You need to go deeper than the surface,’ said Carissa, standing up. ‘You need the maps with the tunnels.’
Thomas opened a second one. It showed the medical facility layout and the library.
Carissa studied the library. This version included the secret room that Canya—Anya’s Copy—had been staying in. The one the Copies hadn’t known about until Carissa told them about it. That meant the Collective had updated the map recently.
She examined the medical facility. The secret tunnel between the workshop and the Nurturing Centre had also been added.
‘These are recent,’ she said.
The Inventor nodded. ‘That’s something, at least. We can use them to find areas that haven’t been catalogued by the Collective.’
Thomas produced a piece of paper and a pencil from the bag. He superimposed the paper over the screen and began sketching.
She watched him work. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Drawing the layout. We can’t take the machine with us.’
The Inventor hurried over to the counter. He opened a drawer and removed several new pieces of paper. One with an image on it floated to the floor. Carissa bent down to pick it up.
She stared at an image of herself. The drawing was done in pencil and was a good likeness.
‘What’s this?’
The Inventor glanced at the page, then at her. ‘I used the spare time to draw.’
‘Me?’
‘Things—people I care about.’
She held the picture to her chest and checked inside the open drawer for more. There was another picture—of Rover. She plucked it out and held it up.
‘You like him,’ she said matter-of-factly.
The Inventor nodded. ‘He saved us.’
‘He’s not like the other wolves.’
‘No, he’s not. He’s like you. All the images I drew are of those who did not fit this place.’
She crumpled the page with her image to her chest. ‘Can I keep it?’
The Inventor smiled. ‘Of course. I meant to give it to you. It’s not perfect, but I thought you might like it.’
Carissa studied the drawing. The lines were sharp and overlapped in places. Her nose was disproportionate to her eyes, which were set a little far apart. Her smile was a little misshapen. The children could draw better.
It was perfect.
‘I’ve got the medical facility layout and the library,’ said Thomas. ‘What’s next?’
Carissa forgot about her drawing for a second. ‘The Learning Centre. Accommodation for the Copies. Check for all the buildings the Copies have—had—access to.’
She returned to her seat and set the picture down on her lap. Thomas had found a map of the Learning Centre.
The Great Hall took up most of the ground floor. There appeared to be a room next to the screens that the Collective often appeared on. She didn’t remember seeing it any time she’d been there.
Thomas sketched the layout and opened the accommodation that she’d lived in after she’d been connected. Copies and humans had lived separately. Newborns in human care were the exception. He then moved on to the school where Carissa had attended lessons.
When he finished, the Inventor switched off
the machine.
She gripped the drawing. ‘Is that it?’
Thomas nodded. ‘That was all that were available in the folder. It should give us something to go on.’
‘I agree,’ said the Inventor.
She looked at him. ‘What now?’
‘We should return to the others, miss.’
Jacob and Thomas rolled the machine back to the counter. Before Carissa left, she snatched up the wonky vision of Rover that Jacob had sketched to take along with her own picture.
12
Anya
Anya looked up to see Jacob, Thomas and Carissa walking past the viewing window. They had used the escape tunnel to return to the Nurturing Centre.
Anya rushed out to meet them, keen to escape the tight space that included a strange child and a cooing June, Vanessa and Alex. Seeing how June’s baby had transformed from a newborn to a three-year-old in a matter of hours unnerved her. Everything reminded her too much of her time in Arcis.
Dom and Charlie went with her. Just beyond the hidden entrance, Dom’s former guard leaned lazily against the wall, surrounded by rebel soldiers. He perked up the second Anya appeared. She rushed past him just as the door to the viewing corridor opened. Jacob stepped through, followed by Thomas and Carissa. Thomas had the backpack containing the maps, plus a few extra sheets of paper in his hand. Carissa was clutching two folded-up pieces of paper. When Anya eyed them, the girl’s eyes widened and she shoved both into the waistband of her trousers.
On a different day Anya might have asked her about it, but her interest lay in what Thomas held. Two things delayed them finding the Beyond: the child in the next room and discovering the coordinates.
At least she had some control over one of those things.
‘What did you find?’ asked Dom.
Jacob’s eyes flicked to the Copy prisoner. He was standing up straighter and appeared to be interested in their progress.
‘You want to have this discussion here?’ the old man asked.
Dom glanced back at his guard. ‘I’m not sure I care anymore. They know we’re here.’
The eight Breeders and four girls they’d rescued from the rooms were sitting in the second area visible from the viewing corridor. They had appeared nervous on the walk back. Four soldiers were keeping an eye on them.