Incarnate- Essence

by Thomas Harper

Utah soldiers met us in the road with about twenty vehicles, ten soldiers in EXO:B-039s, weapons ready. When they actually saw what the threat really was, they quickly became more accommodating, bringing the thirteen of us onto a transport truck and supplying blankets and water.

  Everyone had to hand over whatever weapons they had. They forced me to remove the rest of the exoskeleton, wrapping my wounded calf and shoulder up and then lifting me into the truck by hand. Aveena and a couple of the other people who had been using the Kevlar models were also made to remove them.

  None of the soldiers said much to us as the convoy of vehicles made its way into the city. There was more than a little surprise in their expressions.

  “Not what you were expecting?” I asked a soldier sitting at the front of the covered truck bed, talking in Congolese. I adjusted myself on the hard floor, feeling the RFID chip that Álvarez had given me inside my rectum, finding the feeling odd, but not entirely unpleasant.

  The soldier looked to me, but said nothing.

  “They told you we were all armed and dangerous, didn’t they?” I asked, looking around at the other refugees, “what else did they say? That we were an aggressive militia marching on the city?”

  The soldier looked at me strangely, never having heard the language before, but able to understand with his tech.

  “I wouldn’t taunt him too much,” the soldier sitting next to him said, “he just recently found out that you guys killed his friend out in the woods there.” He paused a moment and said, “You may not be an invading militia, but you’re not as innocent as you want us to think, are you?”

  “You invaded us,” Marlina said, slowly turning her head to the soldier, voice uncharacteristically menacing. “The last ten days I’ve watched everyone in my family killed. One by one.” She trembled in fury. “I hope someone kills every one of you people and burns your goddamn homes to the ground, just like you’ve done to us.”

  “You and everyone else in Grand Junction,” the soldier said.

  We made our way down the city roads. Out the back of the transport I could see APC:B-021s and soldiers in EXO:B-039s patrolling. We passed through two checkpoints where lines of people were gathered, being questioned by soldiers. Signs posted at intersections displayed lists of rules too long for me to read as we passed by, but I could clearly make out the picture of a pistol with a red X through it, indicating their no gun policy.

  We finally pulled to a stop in front of a department store, soldiers helping people step down from the transport vehicle. One let me put an arm around his shoulder and lean on him as we walked across the parking lot to the converted department store. When we stepped through the doors, warm air hit me for the first time in almost two weeks. A welcome relief, despite the circumstances.

  “Which one of you was in charge?” an officer – a lieutenant – asked, walking by the self-checkout stations toward us.

  None of us said anything.

  “Sir, this one was wearing one of those BAX exos the forty-eights like to use, sir,” the soldier holding me up said. “None of the others had anything more than Kevlar models, sir.”

  The hard-faced lieutenant turned his attention to me, taking two slow steps toward me.

  He studied me for a few moments before saying, “bring him to the interrogation room. Process the others.”

  “Yes, sir,” the soldier said as he started leading me across the store.

  The shelves and product had all been pushed over to one wall, piled up. The cleared floor had foldout walls setup around various command modules. We walked by a couple I could see into, people in military regalia – mostly Utah, but a few CSA – all of them sitting, staring into ARs.

  The soldier brought me through swinging doors, through a backstock area now filled with military supplies and through another door into what I imagined had once been the break room. He sat me in a chair by a table before leaving, closing the door behind him.

  “You have a plan to escape, don’t you?” Evita asked. “Pretending you can’t speak the language…”

  The door opened in front of me. Another officer – a Colonel – walking in alone, sitting in the chair across from me, all of his movements very deliberate.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Food? Water?” He narrowed his brows, “I imagine you guys must’ve been through hell.”

  I furrowed my brows at him in confusion and said in Congolese, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English.”

  He looked at me in surprise. “Don’t be lyin’ to me, boy. I know I’ve seen your image online before.”

  I sat there uncomfortably, rubbing my injured left shoulder without saying anything. The officer sighed and went to the door.

  “I need some translator tech,” he said through the door to the guard, “and a glass of water.”

  He walked back toward the table, forcing a smile. I forced a weak smile back at him.

  “You know,” the officer pondered, his expression hard, “we’ve been getting reports from the CSA about you people fleeing from Cortez. They were pretty sure you were coming our way, but after you attacked my men on the road and then the storm came, I didn’t think any of you would make it.” He shook his head slowly, “I wouldn’t say this to the CSA, but I’m impressed. I was almost rootin’ for you there…almost.”

  The guard knocked on the door and the officer let him in, taking the tech and glass of water. He set both on the table in front of me and I slowly picked up the tech, putting it in my ear and on my throat before reaching for the glass of water.

  “I am Colonel Jeremy Sandaveldt of the Utah Vanguard Forces,” the officer said, talking subtly slower as if it were necessary for the translator to work, “do you have a name I can call you?”

  “Eshe,” I said before chugging the water. My bionic eye synced up with the tech he provided.

  “Eshe,” he said, “are the people here the only survivors of your retreat?”

  “They’re the only survivors I’m aware of,” I said, bringing the internet display up on my bionic eye. “Your people killed the rest.”

  The colonel didn’t flinch. “Are you a member of the forty-eights terrorist organization?”

  “I am a forty-eight,” I said, using the encryption key to locate Sachi’s mesh network, “terrorist…is debatable.”

  “You and the other forty-eights,” he said, “were you being given safe haven in Cortez by citizens of what is often referred to as The Liberation of Colorado?”

  “I don’t think you understand how things worked in the LoC,” I said, entering the password, “there was no government to provide asylum for-”

  “The locals in Cortez,” the colonel said, “they did nothing to report you to the rightful authorities, such as the CSA regional government or US federal government, or to restrict your movements within the state or Colorado and across state lines. Is this correct?”

  “Under their stateless society,” I said, finding the biometrics for Sachi’s soldiers, “nobody had the authority to do that.”

  The biometrics showed that everyone who had been on the march was disconnected, so there was no information. I found that Markus and most of the people from Sachi’s base were all still alive. I started forming a message for Markus.

  “Did the locals in Cortez have knowledge of your comings and goings?” He asked. “Or of your activities within Colorado or across state lines, such as in Wichita Kansas or Atlanta Georgia?”

  “The people here let you keep your privacy,” I said, “unlike most places.”

  I sent the message telling Markus of survivors and that we meant to take the hyperloop train The Capital.

  “Did you come into the United States across the Mexican Border during an incident colloquially called the Christmas Crossing or Christmas Catastrophe?” he asked.

  “I did,” I said.

  “Who else came with you?” he asked.

  “Don’t you already know all of this?” I asked. “Or hasn’t the CSA filled you in?”

&nbs
p; “I’m asking the-”

  “Why am I even here?” I asked, leaning forward, “shouldn’t you be asking about the inner workings of the forty-eights organization? Or asking why the CSA isn’t occupying Denver right now?”

  The colonel had his jaw tensed. “I don’t think you appreciate the situation you’re in here. In addition to your terrorist activities in and out of Colorado, you’ve killed CSA and Utah soldiers. If you cooperate, the best you can hope for is better treatment.”

  I leaned back and sat quiet for a moment. Then I started laughing. The fact that a mortal was making threats to me was just too funny. Sitting with his well-pressed uniform and all his honors and medals as if he was something important.

  “He’s a collection of dust,” Evita said, “he started as nothing and he’ll end as nothing.”

  “You think you can stop me?” I asked, “I wipe my ass with lives, you cheaply groomed corpse.” I chuckled derisively, “I don’t have to kill you. I just need to wait for you to die.”

  “You talk a big game for someone in your situation,” he said, “I can throw you in with the others to think about that if you won’t cooperate.”

  I said nothing for a moment, looking at him with a subtle smirk. A message from Markus returned to me saying only that they will allow The Capital to return from Grand Junction.

  “I’ll take prison.” I said.

  “So be it,” he said, standing up and walking out of the room.

  I sat for a minute before a group of four soldiers and a medic came marching in. I stood up slowly, holding my arms out. Two grabbed each arm, bringing them above my head and pulling my shirt off. Another grabbed my pants and tore it down while the medic stretched rubber gloves over her hands. I offered no resistance as the two holding my arms bent me over, the gloved medic forcefully probing her fingers into my anus and quickly finding the RFID chip, removing it from me as the fifth soldier grabbed at the tech in my ears and on my neck, tearing them away.

  “Command hasn’t decrypted his communications yet,” the fifth soldier said, taking the tech from the medic. “Not sure if they’ll be able to.”

  “Almost certainly was sent to Denver,” another said as the two holding my arms put my clothes back on.

  “Remove the rest of his tech,” one of them said.

  The soldiers holding my arms turned me around and lifted me up, laying me on my back on the table. Panic swept over me as the medic stretched clean gloves over her hands, standing over me. She pulled speculum and forceps out of a sterile package. I struggled against the soldiers holding me down, squeezing my eyes shut, but the medic pried my right open with her fingers. I thrashed my head about as she tried to put the speculum in.

  “If you don’t let me do this the easy way,” she said, “I’m just going to have to tear it out.”

  I stopped struggling, breathing heavily as she gingerly pried my eye open with the speculum. She then brought the forceps to my face, prongs sliding down the sides of my bionic eye, pain screeching through my face as the ends slid down into my eye socket. She gripped the bionic eye and pulled, my entire face throbbing as she plucked the eye out.

  I shouted out, vision doubling as the bionic dangled from my eye socket. She used a scalpel to sever the connections between the bionic and my optical nerve, my vision going out in my right eye.

  It was forty-five minutes before the medic had patched up the eye socket, leg injury and shoulder injury. The soldiers clamped shackles around my wrists and ankles. The pain in my face from the impromptu surgery had brought about a mild migraine to grip my skull. The soldiers then lead me out of the room and down the hall. I limped on my injured left leg. Most of my weight was being held up by the two soldiers on either side of me. I could see them now talking with their silent communicators. The other exchange was for my benefit, to let me know I hadn’t gotten away with contacting Markus.

  As they marched me down the hall, we came close to the loading docks. Lined up against a wall I saw three rows of five crates containing a shipment of exoskeletons. In the middle of the staging area was an assembled EXO:B-128, hooked up to diagnostic computers. I couldn’t help but keep my eye on the large cylinder protruding from the armor on the right arm. The railgun.

  We turned away before getting into the staging area, going out a door in back of the store. Cold morning air washed over me, probing its way back into my wounds and sore joints. A crude building stood on the pavement behind the store, short and lined with thick doors on the outside.

  The soldiers led me over to one of the doors on the side of the squat structure, nodded to the guards without saying anything. The guards opened one of the cells, dragging me inside and shutting the door before removing the shackles from my wrists and ankles.

  In the cramped cell I found the refugees who had come with me. Their haggard faces were turned lethargically toward me, only mild curiosity in their expressions. I hobbled across the floor, supporting most of my weight on the right leg, looking back and forth at the survivors.

  The smell of sweat and urine clung to stale, cold air. Only coughing and sniffling greeted me as I approached Aveena, Yukiko in her lap as her eyes stared blankly over the child’s head at the door. Akira sat next to her, an oddly serene look on her emaciated face.

  “Your eye…” Aveena said as I leaned against the dingy wall and slid down to sit next to her. “We shouldn’t have surrendered, should we?” Aveena asked.

  “Then we’d just be miserable outside instead of in a cell,” I said.

  “Why are you still even here?” she asked, turning her gaze to me, “couldn’t you just kill yourself and be free from this?”

  “Sachi’s dead,” I said, “if I die too, then neither of us’ll be here to carry things on.”

  “We’re all dead, anyway,” Teagan said from a few people away, “they killed everybody else, why would they keep us alive?”

  Everyone sat quiet after this. As much from not having the energy to argue against this as from not having an argument to make. We sat in the dim, cold cell without a word or movement for quite some time. I could see light through the small opening on the door as the sun lumbered slowly across the sky.

  It was sometime in late afternoon when a commotion started. Guards outside the jail building started shouting in confusion. The refugees in the cell made little indication that they had noticed at first, but when one of the guards came up to the door and looked in at us, we all exchanged glances.

  “Everyone up,” the guard said hurriedly.

  “What’s going on,” someone asked.

  “Shut up,” the guard said, “on your feet.”

  We all started climbing to our feet as he watched impatiently through the opening. Another guard behind him shouted something. I helped Aveena up, having to stand on her one remaining leg and lean against the wall. The guard unlocked the door walked in, all of us staring at him.

  “Where are you taking us?” someone asked.

  The guard said nothing. He raised his rifle and shot a burst into the refugee, sending him reeling back into the wall and sliding down, leaving a streak of blood. The refugees shouted as the guard stepped to the next person and fired, his victim screaming as bullets tore through her. The rest of the refugees scrambled for the door, but more gunfire went off from outside, hitting two people as they tried fleeing.

  The guard looked nauseous as he stepped to Marlina, his hands shaking. He hesitated, caught between duty and human decency. I leapt forward, stumbling on my wounded leg, and fell into him. The rifle fired as he fell back, only hitting the wall next to Marlina.

  I landed on top of him, my legs straddled over his stomach. Another refugee grabbed for the rifle as I clumsily swung my first, my knuckles bouncing off the guard’s nose. He cried out as blood splattered from his nostrils. I wound back and swung again, but he caught my arm. I struggled against him as more refugees joined the fray, prying his arms away from me. I swung again, landing against his jaw with a crack.

  More gun
fire went off outside. Refugees scrambled around the cell, shouting and cursing, not sure what to do. I continued punching the guard, his arms now held down by refugees, Marlina pinning his left. I watched in surprise as she grabbed his pinky finger and snapped it back, breaking the bone, and then did the same with his ring finger. Another refugee had his rifle and was firing wildly out the open cell door.

  But there was more gunfire going on outside. A firefight. I fell away from the guard and hobbled to my feet, limping toward the door as other refugees continued stomping on him. The refugee firing the rifle ran out of ammunition, throwing it to the ground and fleeing out onto the pavement. I stopped in the open doorway, seeing Utah soldiers in EXO:B-039s firing at other soldiers in EXO:B-039s.

  Mutiny? The CSA turning on them?

  And then someone dashed across the pavement from the back door of the store, coming at us. Someone I recognized.

  “You got yourself in a mess, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “Patricia?” I said, “Or is it Christina? Or Marlene?”

  She grinned, “Marlene is fine. Come on, we have to take some supplies.”

  I turned back to the other refugees and signaled them to follow. Most of the gunfire was happening a ways away in the parking lot, but bullets whizzed by between the jail and the back of the store. Marlene grabbed me, allowing me to support my weight on her as she led us across to the store. She had cut off her dreadlocks, head now shaved.

  “How did you…I mean, why did you come?” I asked after we’d entered the store, waiting for the other refugees to hurry over.

  The gunfire had mostly died down. All the lights in the store’s back stock area were out, dimly lit by backups.

  “We’ll talk about that later,” she said, “we need to get these people into exos and get out of here.”

  “This way,” I pointed down the hall to the receiving area.

  Marlene led us all through the dark storage, arriving at the fifteen boxes with exos in them. Two people in fresh B-039s were already there, turning toward us with weapons raised as we approached. They lowered their arms when the saw us, raising their visors. It was Ellen and Corporal Wallace.