Ethos

by Aaron Dworkin

  More likely was that whoever had entered the loft was an agent of the Immortal Council. If somehow David and Nev’s marriage had been detected, it was only a matter of time before they were both captured and arraigned by the Immortal Council.

  Just as David was beginning to relax, thinking that they had both imagined the sound, there was a creaking on the stairs leading up to the bedroom. Nev sucked her breath in sharply. David’s arm closed around her waist.

  Very softly, Nev breathed, “David. I have to tell you something.”

  David could hear his own blood pulsing in his ears. He was straining to listen for any more sounds emanating from the stairwell just outside the door. What on earth could Nev possibly have to tell him in this moment? His only priority was to listen and remain still.

  But Nev pressed on, undaunted. “I should have told you the moment I suspected, but I wasn’t sure. And I’m Bereft and forty-two years old, so I thought maybe I was wrong. I didn’t want to get your hopes up, so I waited several months, until I was sure. Three months, actually.”

  “Nev,” David cut in, whispering through tight lips. “What is it?” “I’m pregnant.”

  David felt as if the floor under his feet had suddenly tilted and lurched. He tightened his grip around Nev’s waist. Under any other circumstances, he would have felt nothing but joy to learn that his new, beloved wife was expecting their child. And yet, here they were, huddled in the dark, awaiting what could very well be arrest or worse.

  Just as David was thinking this, there was a second, unmistakable creaking on the stairs. David and Nev locked eyes, hearts lurching.

  And then, someone began to pound on the bedroom door.

  “Come out with your hands up!” came a shout through the door. “You will be toggled on sight if you resist.”

  In an instant, without even pausing to think, David pulled Nev to the window at the back of the room.

  “Go,” he whispered. “Get to Malcolm. He will get you out of the city. I’ll distract them while you get away.”

  “I’m not leaving without you,” Nev said, her eyes defiant, though her voice betrayed her with a slight quiver.

  “Nev, you have to,” David said. “We’ve compromised the Immortal bloodline. Who knows what they’ll try to do to us? You have to protect our child.”

  David could see in Nev’s eyes that she wanted desperately to argue—and yet she knew he was right.

  There was another shout through the door. “Come out immediately with hands raised or you will be toggled!”

  Again, David moved without thinking. He threw open the window and held Nev’s hand tightly as he helped her onto the fire escape. He could only trust that her many years of working as a commander for the Bereft Rebellion would serve her well as she escaped under cover of darkness.

  She hesitated for only a split second in the window, her eyes trained on David and her face tight with pain.

  David forced himself to give her a nonchalant, breezy grin.

  “See you soon,” he mouthed.

  She ducked away, melting into the shadows.

  David turned from the window, preparing to comply with the shouted instructions through the door, but just as he did, there was a heavy thud and the sound of wood splintering. Nev’s small loft in the Bereft Quadrant was barely modernized, so this was a wooden, inward-opening door rather than one of the heat-activated sliding doors found in most Immortal buildings.

  As the wood of the door cracked away from the deadbolt, it collapsed inward on its hinges to reveal six or perhaps seven officers in black fatigues, helmets, and goggles, their biotogglers raised. These were clearly not the usual city patrols, but elite officers from the corps assigned specifically to the Immortal Council.

  The instant the door caved in, David’s hands shot up reflexively overhead.

  Three officers surrounded David, shouting at him to get on the floor, while the remaining officers began to sweep the room. David knelt and then lowered himself onto his stomach as an officer roughly pulled his wrists behind his back and began to lock them together with a pair of glowing light-wave cuffs.

  It was all David could do to will himself to remain face down. He had an overwhelming urge to crane his neck to make sure that Nev was safely clear of the window, but he knew any movement on his part might tip them off to her presence. He had no idea why he was being arrested, but he felt certain that if the Immortal Council Police were after him, they probably wanted Nev too.

  He strained for any sign of her, even her footsteps disappearing on the pavement outside, but it was no use—the officers were upending the room in their sweep, knocking over the bedside tables, pulling drawers out of the dresser and overturning them, and it was impossible for David to hear anything but their clamor.

  Finally, an officer yanked at David’s cuffed forearms, forcing him to his feet.

  “Up! Up!” he shouted gruffly.

  “What am I being arrested for?” David asked, once he had found his footing.

  The moment the question left his lips, one of the officers slammed the butt of his biotoggler into David’s right cheek, forcing his head sharply to the left. Pain shot through David’s consciousness and his vision wobbled and blurred. His eyes immediately began to water, so that even when he was able to bring his head forward again, he could not see any of the black-clad figures around him clearly.

  “You don’t ask questions. We ask questions,” shouted the same gruff voice as before.

  David thought, with a surge of ill-timed mirth, that even if he wanted to ask any further questions, he certainly couldn’t now. His cheek was throbbing with every beat of his pulse, and he felt certain that the bone had cracked.

  Someone pushed him from behind and he lurched forward. With several sets of hands roughly guiding him, he began to follow the officers down the stairs and out of the loft.

  It was still dark outside when they reached the street, where four unmarked gliders were parked across the lanes and half on the curb. Blue and red lights flashed from the dome of one of the gliders, but the other three bore no indication that they were police vehicles.

  The metallic sidewalk was slick with rain as David stepped out of the building onto its surface, and for one precarious moment he thought he might lose his footing. He was forced to lean back awkwardly against the officer who had cuffed him, but the moment he did, he was roughly pushed forward again. He took two stumbling steps before another officer seized him and shoved him bodily into the back of one of the waiting gliders. Unable to catch himself because his hands were bound, David half-fell, half-rolled into the seat.

  A moment later, the glider was careening through the streets of the former Flint, now dubbed Ethos City. David slid around on the bench-like seat in the back of the vehicle as the police officer behind the navigation console swerved around other gliders and barely decelerated for turns. David had no idea what time it was, but it was still dark, the occasional cone-shaped, softly glowing streetlight illuminating sheets of rain.

  David thought for a moment of Malcolm. Did he know that the Immortal Council had sent its police corps after David and Nev? Surely not, or he might have been able to intervene somehow. He hoped against hope that Nev would be able somehow to get past the tight security at City Hall to reach Malcolm in the western wing. From there, Malcolm could help her flee the city—perhaps even get her as far as the Settlement he had discovered in the northern lands. There, well beyond the reach of the Immortal Council, she would be safe. And then David could do his best to fight whatever charges were being brought against him. Surely it would only be a matter of time before the tide of anti-Bereft sentiment in the city passed, and the Immortal Council found better things to do than criminalize its citizens’ relationships.

  As David was trying to reassure himself, the glider pulled up along a squat, windowless building. He had not been able to make out enough of the darkened, rain-soaked city to watch where they were going. But he was quite certain now that they were nowhere near
City Hall.

  The glider’s outer dome split and opened like beetle wings, and two officers pulled David from the vehicle and through a set of heavy metal doors at the back of the building. They dragged him to a folding chair in the middle of a large, open space, shoved him into it, and began to bind his already cuffed wrists to the back of the chair.

  David looked around blearily. He was in some kind of cinderblock warehouse. The room was large and open, with a high ceiling and no interior walls. A few naked cylindrical fluorescent lights flickered from the ceiling thirty feet overhead. As David’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, he made out a group of black-robed figures standing in a semicircle before him.

  At their center was Councilor Kinnion.

  His face was expressionless, but David felt certain that a kind of wild glee was playing at the corners of his eyes.

  Councilor Kinnion was flanked by Councilor Kashay and nine other high-ranking members of the Ethos Immortal Council, some from Flint and some from Detroit. Every last one of them was watching David with the same mixture of maliciousness and triumph as Councilor Kinnion.

  “You may not be familiar with our cohort,” Councilor Kinnion said without preamble. “We are the Security and Intelligence Committee of the Immortal Council. We operate covertly, so that we might remain independent of and uninfluenced by the executive branch and Chancellor Malcolm’s administration. So much the better now, since it appears his administration is corrupted.”

  David forced himself to meet Councilor Kinnion’s gaze unblinkingly. The idea that there was an arm of the Immortal Council unknown to Malcolm was disquieting to say the least—but unsettling David clearly was Kinnion’s aim, and David didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of succeeding.

  “Our intelligence operatives have uncovered incontrovertible proof of your violation of the laws against intergenetic marriage. The charge is serious. Your actions threaten the very fabric of our civilization.”

  Councilor Kashay interjected, “There is significant evidence that once tainted with Bereft genes, the Immortal bloodline at large is jeopardized. We rely on our shared evolution to maintain the strength of Immortal physiology, and once this strength is undermined, there is no telling how far the consequences will go. Your decision to mingle with the Bereft puts the entire Immortal race in danger.”

  David resisted the urge to scoff. “What are you basing this on?” He asked, forcing his voice to remain steady despite the fury welling in his throat.

  Councilor Kinnion’s voice boomed out, echoing in the empty expanse of the warehouse. “You are not here to interrogate us,” he said. “We have evidence that you have married Commander Nev of the Bereft. The prospect of Bereft-Immortal offspring is far too dangerous to the Ethosian civilization to be permitted. This Committee is fully within its rights to take immediate action to block this threat.”

  “Block this threat?” David repeated, incredulous.

  “We have voted unanimously to nullify your potential for destructive behavior,” Kinnion said cryptically. “We act with the full authority of the Immortal Council and in keeping with the powers granted us by the Ethosian Constitution.”

  David’s mind was racing. Nullify? What could Kinnion be referring to?

  “I have the right to a trial,” David said finally, grasping at straws.

  Kinnion let out a sharp sound that was more bark than laugh. “The Committee has already reached its unanimous conclusion, based on irrefutable evidence. You are guilty as charged, as is Commander Nev. She will suffer the same fate as you upon her inevitable capture.”

  David lurched forward, pulling futilely against his restraints. “I won’t let you hurt her!” He cried, his voice breaking as he strained against the cuffs.

  Kinnion’s upper lip curled in a snarl. “I’m afraid you won’t have much say over the matter, once we’re finished with you,” he said.

  For the first time, it occurred to David to be afraid. He had been so focused on what Kinnion had said about Nev that he hadn’t fully registered its implications for himself. “She will suffer the same fate as you,” Kinnion had said. What fate?

  Now Councilor Kashay stepped forward and began to read formally from a tablet. “Commander David,” she said, “the Security and Intelligence Committee of the Ethos Immortal Council hereby finds you guilty of the charge of deliberate and premeditated subterfuge against Immortal physiology. In marrying a Bereft against the laws of the Immortal Council, you have created an existential threat to the civilization of Ethos. Intermarriage and interbreeding compromise the genetic line that gives rise to immortality. A single individual born under these blighted circumstances could have unpredictable and exponential ramifications throughout Ethosian genealogy. The very survival of Immortals is jeopardized by your actions.

  “As such,” she continued, her voice low and grave, “we must act immediately to mitigate the danger you have already set in motion. We hereby decree that your genome must be rendered null and void, incapable of reproducing itself. We sentence you to immediate genetic stasis.”

  David stared at Councilor Kashay, unable to follow what she was saying. He had thought that he was now truly a citizen of Ethos, familiar with all of its ways. But he had never before heard the phrase “genetic stasis,” from Malcolm or anyone else. Perhaps even Malcolm himself had never heard it.

  David felt hands behind him working to unbind him from the chair. Two officers seized him by the elbows, hoisting him to his feet. This broke the temporary spell of speechlessness that had come over him.

  “Genetic stasis?” He called out. “What does that mean? What are you going to do?”

  The officers were dragging him toward a far corner of the warehouse, where David saw for the first time an enormous metal box, soldered at the corners. The members of the Committee were following solemnly, almost in lock step, behind David and the officers, even as David thrashed against their grip, trying uselessly to free himself.

  “What is genetic stasis?” he repeated, his cries falling on deaf ears.

  Two more police officers were waiting on either side of the box. As David and his captors approached, one of the officers released a latch, and the top of the box swung open, coffin-like. The two officers who were holding David suddenly lifted him bodily off his feet and threw him into the gaping maw of the box. An instant later, the lid snapped closed overhead, and David was enclosed in darkness.

  This was the DNA Lock—an instrument so deadly that its use was reserved for only the highest crimes against Immortality. It was employed so rarely that its very existence was largely unknown to the general population of Ethos, including Malcolm himself. Its function was to freeze DNA expression in its tracks, so that the affected body immediately ceased all cellular and protein replication. Once inside the Lock, a convict would be subjected to a high-frequency laser passing slowly over every inch of his or her body. As it traveled, this beam effectively petrified all DNA present in the organism, rendering it incapable of replication.

  The result was suspension of all genetic activity in the host body—the de facto death of all tissues in the person, and the impossibility of any of said person’s genes ever expressing themselves again. The DNA Lock was not precisely a death penalty; it was an interruption of the genetic line of the convicted. This technicality was what allowed the Security and Intelligence Committee to circumvent the constitutional ban on the death penalty in Ethos.

  David thrashed about within the DNA Lock, though his hands were still bound behind him by the light wave cuffs. He was on his back inside the metal chamber, lying heavily on his own bound wrists, but he barely registered the pain of his position. He rolled from side to side, kicking and kneeing the inside of the DNA Lock’s lid, oblivious to the bruises he was causing on his own skin. He shouted until his throat was hoarse. He had no idea what this metal coffin would do, but he certainly knew that nothing good was about to happen.

  Almost blind with rage and panic, he found himself shouting Nev’s name ov
er and over.

  Outside the box, the Committee members gathered in a tight circle, their black robes skimming the concrete warehouse floor.

  “For the good of the republic,” Councilor Kinnion intoned.

  “For the good of the republic,” the others repeated in chant-like unison.

  Then Councilor Kinnion typed a security code into a touchscreen at the head of the DNA Lock. He placed his forefinger against a fingerprint scanner, then leaned forward for the final security measure, allowing the DNA Lock’s sensor to scan his iris.

  The sensor emitted a low series of beeps, then a digital voice asked, almost pleasantly, “Initiate DNA nullification?”

  “Initiate,” Kinnion confirmed.

  The DNA Lock shuddered slightly, and then began to whirr as it ignited the high frequency laser and, very slowly, began to scan David’s body.

  The Immortal Councilors stood still in their circle.

  Suddenly, an explosion reverberated through the far wall of the warehouse. Fifteen feet of the cinder block wall collapsed inward into a heap of rubble, revealing Malcolm, Councilor Floyd, and a phalanx of warriors from the Ethosian army standing in the rainy street outside. Malcolm was holding a still-smoking vintage grenade launcher from the pre-Genetic War era.

  The moment Malcolm and his entourage became visible through the settling dust, the Immortal Council Police Corps officers who had captured David dropped into defensive positions, biotogglers raised and trained on Malcolm and Councilor Floyd.

  The army warriors responded instantly, closing ranks in front of their chancellor and commander in chief. But Malcolm did not want their protection. He placed a hand on the shoulder of the soldier who had taken up position directly in front of him and gently drew the young man aside. Then he stepped forward, the heavy grenade launcher still in his hands, but lowered and unthreatening.

  “Officers,” he said, ignoring the Immortal Councilors for the time being and addressing instead the police officers throughout the warehouse. His commanding bass voice rang out over the whirring of the DNA Lock. “I understand that you are under orders from the Immortal Council. But do not forget that the Immortal Council ultimately answers to me. I am your commanding officer, not Councilor Kinnion. If you raise a weapon against me, you are in violation of your oath of duty, and you expose yourself to charges of treason—not to mention dishonoring the proud tradition of the Immortal Council Police Corps.”