But, much to his relief, she said simply, “Fair enough. You’ve got your reasons; we had ours.”
She glanced sidelong at him.
“It’s clear you’re not from Flint, though,” she said.
David looked down at himself, suddenly self-conscious of his khakis and navy blue polo. He did indeed look terribly out of place in this sleek, high-tech tramcar with this woman, who wore a sort of jumpsuit with a Mandarin collar, the color of stone.
“Listen,” she said gently, “I really don’t mean you any harm. We didn’t want to implicate anyone in this mission but ourselves. And I fully understand the Bereft who don’t want to be associated with the Rebellion—I understand your position. I’m not against you.”
David was so bewildered that he forgot to be cautious. “What is it that you keep calling me?” He blurted. “Bereft? I’m not—I don’t know what I look like, but I’m not sad or grieving or anything.”
She blinked at him.
“You . . . you don’t know what I mean by ‘Bereft,’” she said with wonder. “You’re from one of the settlements outside Flint, aren’t you?”
Out of the blue, David remembered a tip he’d picked up from a TV drama about CIA agents working undercover: if you need to obscure your identity, tell as much of the truth as possible. That way you’ll be less likely to get tripped up in the layers of your lie.
“I’m from Muskegon,” David said. Sure, he’d lived in Flint for three decades, but it was the truth that he was, originally, from Muskegon.
“Muskegon?” the woman said, her voice filled with delight. “I’ve never heard of Muskegon. That means there are settlements out there that we don’t even have on record!”
David took mental note of this. Muskegon was a small city, but everyone in the Michigan he knew would at least have heard of it. So this was a world where Flint existed . . . but Muskegon did not. Why? What had happened to Muskegon?
“And—” David hesitated only a split second. He was beginning to gain confidence, and he was starting to trust this woman that she did, indeed, mean him no harm. “And who are these Bereft that you keep mentioning?”
The woman looked at him wide-eyed. “You really don’t know, do you? Muskegon must be completely technologically isolated . . . like the old settlements, just after the war.” She was thinking out loud, speaking more to herself than to David, and that was fine with him, since he had no idea what she was talking about.
Then she said, louder, to David, “The Bereft are what we call anyone who is not an Immortal.”
“An Immortal?” David thought with a surge of terror. “There are people in this world who don’t die?”
The woman was watching him with both amazement and kindness. “You don’t know any Immortals? What kind of place is Muskegon?”
“It’s . . .” David tried to find a way to recover. “It’s very isolated. We don’t—get a lot of news from Flint.”
“I see,” the woman said. “My fellow commanders are going to be fascinated to hear this. How many of you are there in Muskegon?”
David froze. Last time he’d cared to check, Muskegon had a population of close to forty thousand people, but something told him not to say this. If he was supposed to be from some kind of small, isolated settlement, what would be more believable? A few thousand? A few hundred?
“Never mind,” the woman said, misinterpreting his floundering as wariness. “Of course you don’t know whether to trust me. You can rest assured that we mean no harm against your people—but I won’t ask you for any details about your settlement. It seems, though, that you haven’t heard much about what’s happening in Flint. Let me try to catch you up.”
David nodded slowly, trying to look as casual as he could. He wanted nothing more than for her to catch him up.
“After the Great Genetic War ended,” the woman said, “for a period of about fifty years or so—as I’m sure you know—between about 2220 and 2270, the few survivors began to find each other and band together and reestablish communities. I imagine this is how your settlement called Muskegon formed, and it’s certainly how Flint reformed.”
David clenched his jaw. He was trying to keep his face neutral and impassive even as his heart lurched in his chest. She had said, “between 2220 and 2270.” He was in the future.
“I suppose you’d have no way of knowing this if your community hasn’t recovered communications technology,” the woman continued, oblivious to David’s shock, “but the area that used to be called Michigan is one of the few places on Ethos where there was a large concentration of survivors of the Great Genetic War. Because of a convergence of factors—the Great Lakes made the region less vulnerable to attack, the cooler climate guarded against some of the insect-born biological weapons . . .” She trailed off.
David tried desperately to keep up with her. Had she said Ethos? Was that what this country was called? Or this planet? She kept saying “the Great Genetic War.” From what David could gather, there had been some kind of devastating conflict some time before 2220. It sounded as if most of the world’s population had been wiped out. But how? What did she mean by genetic war?
“Many of the world’s survivors gathered in Flint. Another large group assembled not far away at all, in Detroit. We know that there is a third large gathering quite far south of here, in a place called Atlanta. Between us there are just vast expanses of nothingness—devastated lands, unpopulated.
“Across the Great Waters,” she continued, “we’ve heard that there are a handful more cities that reformed—Toulouse, St. Petersburg, Guangzhou. Other than these large gatherings of survivors, we have heard that there are isolated communities that have managed to band together throughout Ethos. Thirty or forty people here, perhaps a few hundred there. But we haven’t been able to be in touch with most of them, since only the cities managed to recover communications technology. That’s why I’m so pleased to meet you. You’re like an emissary from another world.”
“You have no idea,” David thought to himself. He remained silent, only nodding slightly to encourage her to go on.
“The rest I’m sure you know,” the woman said, “although it sounds as if we don’t have the same words for the same ideas. The result of the many mutations that were let loose during the war is that now we humans are divided into two categories—we call those of us who don’t age the Immortals, and those who do, the Bereft. I am, obviously, a Bereft.” She tapped the silver streak of hair at her temple wryly. “And, clearly, so are you.”
David nodded again, as if it weren’t news to him at all that there were people in the world who stayed forever young.
“The trouble is that there’s unrest in Flint. And, we’ve heard, in the other major city centers as well. The Immortals consider the Bereft inferior. We’re kept isolated in the Bereft quadrant; the jobs we can hold are limited; we have to have special permits to build homes or start businesses. Even to get married. The Immortals withhold medical treatment from us because they don’t want to interfere with our ‘natural’ lifespans. They have cures to diseases that they do not share with us, and we die of those illnesses. So we’ve started a resistance movement.”
The woman turned to him and grinned. “The mission you found yourself in the middle of was a successful one—we gained access to Flint’s secure banking network and downloaded information from Flint Central Hospital’s account. This will help us infiltrate the hospital system—and possibly get access to some of the medical knowledge they’ve withheld.”
She paused. David must not have looked sufficiently impressed, because she continued, adamantly, “Ours is a peaceful resistance. Our methods are non-violent—but they are effective. What we gained today was worth the sacrifices we made. The lives of my fallen colleagues will save the lives of many more Bereft.”
Her expression darkened for only a moment. When she saw David watching her intently, she said, almost brusquely, “We knew what we were risking.”
Through the fog of his confusio
n and trepidation, it struck David as if for the first time that he had witnessed three deaths up there. Three bizarre, horrifying deaths.
“If I hadn’t slowed you down—” David began, his voice low, but the woman cut him off with a wave of her hand.
“We knew what we were risking,” she repeated firmly. “And we were all under agreement that the lives of any bystanders—and even any Immortals—were our responsibility during the mission. We’re well trained; we could have taken out several officers and certainly that Dactyl—” she pronounced this word with a hint of contempt “—had we chosen to return fire. But we made a strict covenant to remain non-violent.”
David nodded, deciding not to press the issue. Something about the contrast between this woman’s gentle tone and commanding manner put him at ease. He was beginning to feel as if he’d lucked into her very capable stewardship through an otherwise treacherous, violent world. As long as he remained ignorant of the VR function that was keeping him in the game, he resolved, he would trust her.
“I’m—” David faltered, feeling suddenly awkward. He was flooded with a sense of relief that she had not only found him, but had saved him. “My name is David, by the way.”
“Nev,” she replied simply, turning to him with a warm smile.
At just that moment, David felt the tramcar begin to decelerate. The walls of the tunnel came into sharper focus around him as the car slowed. He could see that the tunnel ahead opened into a much larger, brighter chamber.
As the tramcar approached the mouth of this new chamber, a blaring alarm filled David’s ears. It sounded like a foghorn bleating short blasts over and over again, reverberating inside David’s skull. An instant later, the tramcar glided to a gentle stop inside the larger chamber, which David could see now had a high ceiling and was filled with rushing people, all of them, men and women, dressed in the same kind of gray jumpsuit that Nev wore. Orange lights ringed the perimeter of the chamber on all sides and they were flashing in time with the alarm.
“What’s happening?” David asked, turning to Nev for some kind of confirmation or reassurance. But her brow was deeply furrowed and she remained silent.
A man rushed to the tramcar, and its outer shell split open as before. He seemed stunned to see David, then immediately shook off his surprise and turned to Nev.
“Where are the others?” He asked without any greeting.
“Toggled,” she replied. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, the man’s expression softening into the same mixture of resignation and respect that Nev had worn when she spoke of her colleagues.
“They served well,” he said. And then, the moment passed. “And who’s this?” He asked, looking to David.
“David,” Nev replied. “He’s from an outlying settlement. He got caught up as we were escaping, and since we’d triggered security and the police were chasing us, I had no choice but to bring him into the fold. He’s a Bereft, obviously. It’s our fault he’s in danger; he’s our responsibility.”
The man looked wordlessly at Nev, his gaze focused and purposeful. He was clearly assessing her judgment. After a few seconds, he nodded curtly.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll allow it. But he’s your charge—and you might regret it.” At this, he looked outward toward the flashing lights and rushing people that surrounded them, acknowledging the commotion for the first time.
“What is it?” Nev asked, her expression suddenly tightening. “I assumed the alarm was just to signal that our mission had been detected—is there something else?”
The man met her gaze again. “You were tracked,” he said. There was no accusation in his voice, just a simple acknowledgment of the reality. “They must have seen you—or him—” he nodded at David “—dive into the Church Street manhole. They tracked you here above ground, and just a few minutes ago we saw them on the security monitors breaching the north entrance to the bunker. They’ve breached the south tunnel, too. I’ve lost communication with the foreguard—I have to guess they’re all dead. But just before we were cut off, I got a report that there are at least fifty Immortal officers infiltrating from the north. Possibly a hundred from the south. We can’t hold them.”
“What does this mean?” David asked Nev, his fear making him forget himself.
She was silent and tightlipped, looking at the man. He was clearly her superior, and she seemed to be waiting for his command.
“Get to the rear hall,” he said simply. “We’re instituting Protocol 9.”
Nev nodded once, and before David could wonder what Protocol 9 meant, she had seized his wrist again and they were running, dodging through the mass of men and women that filled the chamber on either side of the tramcar tracks.
David was terrified again—and his mad sprint from the bank only a short time before had taken its toll. He wasn’t particularly fit or even physically adroit. He stumbled along behind Nev, knocking shoulders with the rushing people around him, even as Nev dodged effortlessly through the crowd.
“What’s going on?” He gasped.
Nev called over her shoulder. “This is the Rebellion’s main headquarters—the bunker. We Bereft Rebels live and organize here. And we’ve been found out.”
“Are we going to be killed?” David asked desperately, tripping heavily as he tried to keep up with her. He noticed vaguely that all the people around him were at least forty years old. There were many graying heads, and yet everyone seemed to be moving with ease and physical skill. They all seemed to have a designated role in whatever was coming.
“Doubtful,” Nev replied. “But it’s not going to be good. We have a protocol for this, but we can’t hold back that many Immortal officers—and it’s not worth it anyway, now that they know where we are. They’ll only send more.”
Suddenly, she dodged left and pulled David sharply into a narrow passage off the main chamber. There were no people here, and she picked up speed as their path cleared, fairly dragging David along behind her.
“We’ll hold them off long enough to secure our intelligence caches, and then we’ll surrender,” she said.
A din rose in David’s ears. It was the popping of gunfire and shouts.
“It’s coming from the north entrance,” Nev called back to him. “They’re inside the bunker.”
David flinched involuntarily. Nev tightened her grip on his arm and again veered off into a side corridor, jerking him along with her. He tried to match her speed, but he was feeble in comparison. The lights in the ceiling above them began to flicker.
“The power’s already affected,” Nev said. The shouts around them seemed to be getting closer, and all of a sudden, Nev came to a stop and flattened herself against the wall. She looked backward toward the corridor from which they’d just come. David took his cue from her and pressed himself against the wall.
A blur of rushing bodies passed across the mouth of the corridor where David and Nev had been only a few seconds before. They did not stop.
“Immortal Police,” Nev breathed to David. She held still for a few more seconds, until their tramping footsteps could be heard receding, then she took off again, moving more slowly and deliberately.
“Where are we going?” David asked her, but she cut her eyes back at him as if to say, “Keep quiet.” David obeyed.
A few steps later and the narrow corridor they were in opened into a large, metal-walled room. There were people everywhere, all in the gray jumpsuits that David now understood to be the uniform of the Bereft Rebels. They were absolutely silent, clearly seeking to stave off discovery for as long as possible.
As soon as David and Nev arrived in the room, the Bereft parted to let them pass. As Nev pulled him to the back of the room, David could see that his khakis and polo were getting some bewildered glances, but Nev seemed to hold a position of respect or authority here; her presence alongside him was enough to earn him a pass.
Nev pushed him against the back wall and signaled for him not to move. David was happy to oblige; he’d never run mo
re in the span of a few hours in his life. His heart was clamoring in his chest, and his polo was soaked through with sweat.
He looked around him, trying to understand, despite Nev’s silence, what was going on. Whatever this Protocol 9 was, it clearly had been rehearsed to perfection. The room they occupied appeared to be some kind of shelter; its walls were lined with a heavy, steel-gray metal, and it was completely devoid of furniture. Everyone moved wordlessly around David, their actions coordinated and efficient.
Formations of armed Bereft Rebels were gathering around the room’s entryways: the one David and Nev had just come through, at the front of the room, and two more, in the center of each of the side walls. Those nearest the entryways knelt and held their guns at the ready. David could see that they were the same style of weapon the police had used.
The remaining Rebels—those not guarding the entries—assembled into neat rows. Some were armed with the same machine-gun-style weapons, while others held small, oblong canisters that David guessed might be a kind of tear gas. Or perhaps even grenades? And some had no weaponry at all, but nevertheless took on strong stances, their feet wide, their knees bent, crouching and ready to spring.
The shouts, gunfire, and footsteps that had a moment ago seemed distant and muffled began to rise, and David realized with panic that the sound was coming from all three corridors that led into this shelter. And then, a loud explosion sounded from somewhere to David’s right. He felt it more than heard it. The ground underneath him trembled, and even the fortified walls of the shelter seemed to reverberate with the force of the explosion. David felt as if his teeth were dancing in his skull, and an instant later, his ears filled with a high-pitched ringing. He couldn’t tell if it was an actual sound coming from somewhere in the bunker, or tinnitus coming from within his own head.
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