We race down an old highway that seems to go nowhere. Abandoned farmlands stretch for miles on all sides. Where does this woman think she’s going? There’s no way she can get away.
“Evan,” Jeremin says calmly. “I’m going to initiate the split sequence. I’ll pass her and cut her off. Then you can come up from behind her. We’ll trap her in, she won’t be able to get away.”
“Shouldn’t Perry take the controls?”
“Stop questioning me, Sparks.”
Jeremin flips a switch and the Wasp divides in two. Jeremin speeds forward just like he said he would. He passes her on the shoulder; then slams on the brakes and skids sideways blocking her path. She has no choice but to hit the brakes too. I come up behind her and block her in. We’ve got her. I jump out with my rifle in hand and run up to the car.
“Don’t move!” I yell.
She locks herself in and grabs hold of her son tightly. I can see wires sticking out of the kid’s forehead and blood pouring from the wound. She reaches for the glove compartment and takes out a small handgun and points it at me.
“Now hold on there, lady,” Jeremin says as he saunters up to the vehicle. “Don’t do anything stupid.” He then slowly and deliberately knocks on the window with his middle knuckle. “Give us the kid, lady or he’ll die.” His voice is cold and disturbing.
“Stay away from me!” she screams, pointing the gun at Jeremin, then at me and then back at Jeremin.
“That pistol ain’t gonna do shit,” Jeremim chuckles. “So you might as well hand the boy over to us.”
“Not in a million years! You’ll turn him into a monster!”
“But he’ll be alive,” Jeremin replies “He’s about to die from a botched surgery. Is that what you want?”
“Oh God,” she sobs.
“God’s not going to help you,” Jeremin mocks. “Look around. I don’t see him, do you?”
She would normally be a pleasant looking woman, but not having the L-Chip has made her face old. The stress of life has made her hard and wrinkled. Her clothes are… well, they’re covered in blood, the dark colored scarf wrapped around her head has become undone and her dark hair is beginning to show through. The boy continues to shriek out in pain as he tries to stop the bleeding himself. He presses against the wound on his forehead, but the blood continues to flow. Shit, he’s gonna die. Why doesn’t Perry step in and help? He’s the medic, why is he so lazy?
“Commander!” I shout. “I can break the window and get the kid.”
Jeremin flips up his visor and shoots me a look. I think he wants me to shut up.
“But he’s going to die,” I plead.
“You want to help the kid?” he says, taking a step back from the car. “Then go ahead, Evan, do your thing.” He motions with his hand nonchalantly for me to move closer to the vehicle. I waver for a second, knowing that this is some kind of test. Does he really want me to do something? “What are you waiting for, choirboy? Go ahead!”
Different scenarios go racing through my mind. Do I help the kid and get punished later? Or do I do nothing and watch the kid bleed to death? Are these the kinds of things Youth Patrollers do on their missions? This can’t be normal. It just can’t be. “Oh, what the hell!” I take the butt of my rifle and smash the passenger window; I reach for the handle and unlock the door. The woman fires her weapon but the bullet misses me. I snatch the gun from her hand and throw it away. I go for the kid, but she puts up a fight. She hits me repeatedly. I smack her across the face with the back of my hand. She falls backwards, letting go of her son. I grab the boy and run over to the medic and place the kid at Perry’s feet, but he does nothing to help. I look over at Jeremin, hoping he’d give the order for Perry to fix him. But Jeremin isn’t even looking in our direction. Instead, he’s dragging the mother out of the car by her legs. The kid sees this and tries to get up, but I hold him down. He cries out for his mom. He wails with a blood-curdling scream. He goes on and on.
“Make him stop!” I yell out, grabbing Perry by his shoulders. “Fix the fuckin’ kid!”
Perry leans over the dying boy and examines him like he’s nothing more than a spot on a new pair of shoes.
“Don’t touch him yet, Perry,” Jeremin orders.
I spin around to look at the Commander. I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
“Let my son go!” the lady screams in a panic. “Let him go!”
She attempts to stand, but Jeremin forces her down using the heel of his boot. “Don’t you dare get up!” he orders.
“Please, let me have my son back.”
“But if I give him back to you, he’ll die,” Jeremin teases. “He needs medical attention.”
“I know that,” the mother responds. “But I’d rather he die in my arms, than live with you forever.”
“I tell you what, lady,” Jeremin reacts pompously. “We’ll fix him up, take out his L-Chip, and return him to you. How does that sound?”
“Sounds too good to be true.” she says shrewdly.
Jeremin smirks. “You’re a One-Wayer, aren’t you?” he asks. “You believe there is but one God, right?”
“What do you want from me?” she moans.
“If you show a little bit of tolerance to other religions, you’ll get your boy back.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Not much, just admit that Allah isn’t the only God and that Mohammed might not have been his prophet.”
“I could never do that,” she scoffs.
“All right then, you’re boy will die.”
“Stop fuckin’ around, Commander!” I yell out frantically. “We have the boy now, just let her go!”
Jeremin stops and slowly turns to look at me. I instinctively take a step back. He motions for me to come over to him. I reluctantly obey his order. He motions again for me to step even closer. I do. He gestures with his hand for me to flip up my visor. I do that too. He then rears back and punches me in the face. Things go dark. I stagger and end up on my back. I roll over to try to get up but my head keeps spinning, my stomach feels weird.
Jeremin calmly walks from me and goes back to the woman. “One way? No way. That’s all you have to say, lady,” Jeremin tells her.
“Go away,” she answers, averting her eyes.
“C’mon, don’t you want your boy to live? He’s losing consciousness. Say it!”
“There is but one God and his name is Allah and Mohammad is his prophet,” she whispers.
“That’s not it,” Jeremin says, shaking his head. “What’s more important? Your faith, or your boy’s life?”
She takes a deep breath. “One way? No way,” she quickly responds.
“No, no, no. Say it like you mean it.” Jeremin pulls out a device from his belt. “You know what this is?”
She doesn’t answer.
“It’s a portable truth monitor.”
“One way? No way,” she utters the phrase in the same way, quickly and unemotionally.
“Nope,” Jeremin says, keeping an eye on the devise. “You didn’t pass, I’m sorry. Your boy’s going to die.”
“Don’t do this to me,” she wails,
“Do this to you?” Jeremin answers slyly, “You’re the one killing your son, not us.”
She closes her eyes, and once again takes a deep breath. “One way? No way. One way? No way. One way? No way,” she recites the phrase more convincingly.
Jeremin looks at the truth monitor. He continues to shake his head. “Nope, still not passing.
What is Jeremin doing? We’ve got to fix the boy. Why is he playing games with her? What’s he doing? I know I’m not supposed to feel sorry for the lady, but how can you not. Look at her. Maybe I can convince her that God doesn’t exist. If I do that, she’ll pass this test. I get up from the ground and come over to the woman and kneel down next to her.
“Is God so callous he doesn’t hear your pleas?” I say to the woman.
She looks at me oddly.
“God doesn’t h
ear because God doesn’t exist,” I continue. “If he did, would he really allow your son to die this way?”
“One way? No way. One way? No way,” she starts to chant more emphatically.
“Almost there,” Jeremin announces.
“If there was a God who was so loving, wouldn’t he step in to save your boy’s life? Doesn’t that sound logical? Look around lady. God’s not here, but we are. Youth Patrol is here. We can save your boy’s life. God can’t, because God doesn’t exist.
“One way? No way! One way? No way!” she repeats slowly and deliberately.
Jeremin begins to grin, “Hey hey, look at that. You passed. Congratulations lady, you don’t believe in God anymore. Way to go.” He holds up the truth monitor for her see, but she curls up in a ball and still remains on the asphalt. She’s crushed, she can’t even cry anymore. I lean down to comfort her. I reach out to put my hand on her shoulder.
“I wouldn’t do that, Evan,” Jeremin says quickly, “It’s against her religion for a man to touch her.”
I pull my hand back.
“But then again. She doesn’t believe in God anymore, so go ahead. Touch her all you want. Fuck her for all I care.”
I turn around to see if the boy is still alive, and to my surprise, there he is, all fixed up. Perry cauterized the boy’s forehead and attached the wires back inside his head. Perry must have worked on him while we were trying to convince the lady to denounce her faith.
“Your son’s okay,” Jeremin says, looking down at the woman. “He’s all right. We saved your son. Not Jesus or Mohamed or whoever the fuck you worship.” Jeremin looks over at me, and smiles. “We make a pretty good team. I wasn’t expecting the good Youth Patroller, bad Youth Patroller thing. But you played it perfectly.” He pats me on the back. I know he’s only mocking me, so I don’t say a thing.
The woman tries to find her dignity. She somehow gets to her feet. “Can I have my son back?” the woman says resolutely.
“Sure,” Jeremin says cheerfully. “Oh wait, do you have a proper permit for operating that vehicle?”
She closes her eyes.
Jeremin cocks his head in a patronizing way. “How about that firearm?” he says cruelly. “You gotta permit for that?”
Her head drops low.
“I’m sorry lady, rules are rules. We follow the law and you don’t. I’ll tell you what though, we’ll take care of your boy, and you’ll wait in jail for your day in court. How does that sound?”
“You were never going to give me my boy, were you?” she says.
“You broke the rules, ma’am. And now you have to pay the consequences.”
“You’re Satan.”
“Satan? Do you believe in the devil again? Do you believe in Allah and Mohammad too? Is that what you believe now?”
She hesitates.
“C’mon lady, you believe in Allah. You believe in the five tenants of the faith, right?
She seems to gain courage as Jeremin continues to berate her. “I do, I do believe in Allah!” she shouts in defiance. “Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar. God is great, God is great.”
Jeremin smirks. “I’m so glad you said that.” Jeremin lifts up his rifle and shoots her. She falls to the ground.
“What the fuck!” I yell as I run over to her. Then, for some reason, I take off my helmet; maybe out of respect, I don’t know. But when she sees me, fear grips her. She recognizes me.
“Adnan Asif,” she whispers with contempt.
She knows my name, the name I had before I became a Youth Nationer.
“You’re The Boy Who Changed Everything. It’s all your fault, it’s all your fault.”
“What’s my fault?” I ask desperately. “Tell me, what’s my fault?”
Her eyes close. She’s dead.
I rise up furiously and turn to Jeremin “You killed her!” I shout.
He looks at me and laughs. “Didn’t you hear her? She yelled out Allahu Akbar. Isn’t that what they say before they blow themselves up? I killed her out of self defense.”
“This isn’t some game! We broke her, she didn’t believe!”
“Come on Sparks, your not going to fall for that? She always believed. She just said ‘one way, no way’ to save her son.”
“Why break her if you’re just going to kill her?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?” he smirks. “Killing religious fanatics is fun. Watching them suffer is a blast. Now, I’ll kill a non-One-Wayer if I have to, but I don’t like doing it. It makes me feel uneasy, almost like I’m doing something immoral. So, in her case, I had to make sure she was a religious fanatic again. I had to make sure she believed in God. And once she did, I could kill her with a clear conscience. Am I making sense?”
I nod.
A school bus comes driving up the road. What’s it doing all the way out here? It pulls up, but there are no kids on it; it’s empty. The doors open, and the bus driver steps out along with two of his very surly looking bodyguards.
“Someone called,” the driver says, slurring his words.
Who called them? I wonder. Perry? I guess it was Perry.
The bus driver and his bodyguards walk over to the kid, but before they take him away, Perry tweaks the boy’s L-Chip one more time. He’s now half dazed, almost comatose. He’s not crying, or screaming. He just stares off into nothingness. He walks on the bus, finds a seat and he’s driven away.
“Shouldn’t one of us go with him?” I ask.
“Don’t need to, he’s not going to the concert,” Jeremin explains. “He’s one of us now.”
“Then he’s going to Santa Verde?”
“Not yet. They’re taking him to a secret location while the rest of his family is incarcerated. Once they’re found guilty, they’ll take him to Santa Verde. It’s all a formality; we’ve got to make it look legal.
“A secret location? What are you talking about, Commander?”
“Yeah, the conditioning center, don’t you remember? We all stayed in one before arriving at Santa Verde?”
“I didn’t go to one, my situation was a little different.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot. You were The Boy Who Changed Everything, I remember.” Jeremin smirks as he lights up the incinerator on his rifle.
CHAPTER 12
After the lady’s ashes blow away, we head back to camp. Jeremin is at the controls of course, and this time Perry sits in the passenger seat. I ride in the back. Perry has totally tweaked out my L-Chip all kinds of crazy ways, so I’m feeling kind of numb right now. I killed someone today, and I hardly care. I saw a woman beg for her child’s life, and I don’t care about that either. I don’t care; I just don’t care. I’m like Jeremin. I’m stone cold. I’m a rock. Then, I feel a twinge, a tiny little twinge deep inside, way way down inside. It’s nothing; I can handle this. But… I can feel it grow, getting bigger and bigger. And aw shit, who am I foolin’? I can’t deal with this guilt. How do Jeremin and Perry do it? How can they do this without getting tweaked? I want to talk to them about it, but I know what they’ll say. They’ll tell me, you’ve got to love hurting them. You’ve got to love hurting religious fanatics.’
We skim across the road, softly bobbing up and down. The rhythm makes me sleepy. My eyelids droop. I shake my head to stay awake, but I’m failing. I mustn’t fall asleep. Not here, not now. Perry has got to tweak me again. My mind drifts. I think about the Arab lady and what she told me. She knew who I was. She said it was my fault. What was my fault? What was she talking about?
We come up over a hill, and I see our base camp. The hologram protective barrier surrounding the facility, gives off a nice warm amber glow. It’s a comfort to see it. We arrive at the entrance; the Youth Patrollers standing guard wave us through.
Youth Nation Crewmembers are busy erecting the circular outdoor arena for the concert tonight. The 3D replicator is working hard, producing scaffolding and building supplies. By the look of things, they’re on schedule.
Buses continually pour into the encampme
nt, dropping off the kids at the makeshift arcade where holographic games and videos await. The kids rush in eager to play while they wait for the concert later tonight.
We drive up to where the Youth Patrol Shuttles are parked and come to a stop. “Evan!” Jeremin says, looking over his shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Of course I am,” I say energetically, trying to mask my exhaustion, but I don’t think Jeremin’s buying it.
“Well,” he says. “I’d like to tell you that your day’s done, but it’s not. We’re on ‘standby’ tonight.”
“That’s great, I’m good to go.”
Jeremin looks at me funny. He knows I’m lying. He opens the doors and we step out. The medic walks over to me and totally invades my space. Perry attaches the tweaker device onto my L-Chip without even asking me. A floating hologram of my vital signs appears. He starts moving things around with his finger, and right away I don’t feel numb anymore. That little twinge of guilt is now a full-blown anxiety attack. What the hell did he do to me?
“He’s now normal, Commander,” Perry mumbles as he detaches the devise.
Jeremin comes over and looks into my eyes. He has this quizzical look on his face, like he doesn’t think I’m going to make it. He wants to say something to me, but we’re interrupted when we hear a vehicle coming our way. We turn around.
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