Kiera bowed her head, sniveling and crying as two plastic hands grasped her, one around each bicep. She struggled to look back at Pet as a pair of robots walked her up the stairs. They climbed several flights before entering a hallway with two rows of silver spheres embedded in the ceiling, likely laser turrets. A heavy door at the other end opened to a room with a security desk and two more people in uniform. The androids forced her onward, past another intersection and down a hallway to a room with three desks and a group of security officers and robots, all of whom stared at her in silence. Her captors dragged her over to a set of large sliding doors that opened to a city street.
Three tiny cars with flashing police lights sat out front. The robots escorted her to one. Overcome with dread, she doubled over and threw up, hanging on their grip. Both robots waited for her to stop puking before packing her into the rear seat. She trembled, watching Pash and Ford each loaded into a different car. One live officer got in to drive, a robot taking the passenger seat.
She shied away from the window during a short ride to an elevator that fit the whole car. Neither the cop nor the robot said a word, the rattling of her handcuffs as she shivered and the soft hum of the car’s electronics the only sounds. The image of Pet careening out of the air kept replaying in her head, as painful as witnessing Legacy’s last stand. Worry about her parents got her heaving again. She coughed and sputtered, but nothing came out of her mouth.
The elevator opened minutes later, and the cop drove out onto another street. She didn’t bother looking up, instead staring at her knees. Eventually, the car stopped. Kiera glanced out the window at the wall of a building bearing giant lettering ‘Security Outpost 28.’ Both cop and robot got out and walked around to the left rear door. She sat frozen in terror when he opened it, unable to process the sounds coming out of his mouth as words. He grasped her arm and hauled her out of the car, much to her surprise, not viciously.
Again, the robot grabbed her right bicep, and the two walked her in past a door, a desk, another door, and a hallway. They stopped in a small room with a shelf, an overhead light, and some locker cabinets. A woman with brown skin and short, black hair looked up, saw her, and stared for a moment in astounded shock. Her confusion lasted only seconds.
The female cop read something on her desktop screen, and muttered, “Is he kidding?”
She got up, approached, and patted Kiera down, squeezing her legs, waist, and gripping her body up under her armpits. After, she went over to fetch something from one of the lockers and walked up behind her.
The woman took a knee and grabbed her leg, lifting her foot off the ground. When her sneaker came off, Kiera looked down. The female officer removed Kiera’s other shoe, then secured a second pair of handcuffs around her ankles, the metal cold against her skin above the low socks.
“W-what’s that for?” asked Kiera, still unable to stop shaking.
“To stop you from running off,” said the male officer. “You’re evidently a maximum flight risk.”
She swallowed. “I mean… why are you taking my shoes?”
The woman emitted a sigh. “So you don’t try and hurt yourself with them.”
Kiera’s stare called the woman a monster.
Both live cops took hold of her arms. She could barely take a step with her ankles connected by such a short chain, and shuffled, grimacing as the metal pinched. They tolerated the pace for only a moment before lifting her off the ground and carrying her into a hallway full of small, armored doors.
“Ow,” she whined. “It’s not my fault I’m slow.” She kicked her legs back and forth. “You shouldn’t have put these on me if you wanted me to walk.”
They set her down by a small, heavy door near the end. Cold floor chilled her socks in seconds, seeping into the sweaty fabric. After the man hit a button to open the door, a hand at her back nudged her forward into a cell. A cot took up the whole left side of the room from wall to wall. A square vent hatch near the floor straight ahead looked like it could survive a direct hit from a rocket launcher. The far right corner had a combination sink/toilet sitting below a small shelf at the level of a man’s head.
She whimpered. “Please don’t.”
The door slid closed behind her with a metal scrape.
Kiera tugged at her hands, still locked behind her. “Hey! What are you doing? You’re supposed to take these off once I’m in jail.”
One set of footsteps squeaked off down the hall.
“You haven’t been arrested,” said the woman, sounding almost regretful. “You’ve been abducted.”
“Please help me,” wailed Kiera.
The woman sighed and lingered a moment outside the door before walking away.
Kiera stood there, staring at her socks, listening to chain rattle behind her. She grabbed the ring around her left wrist, pulling and twisting at her hand. When that didn’t work, she shuffled over to the cot, flopped down, and tried to force her hands around her rear end. Too tight, the steel dug into her skin. She wriggled and struggled for a little while before giving up due to pain.
Anger came out of nowhere.
She kicked her legs to sit up and screamed at the door. “You can’t treat me like this! I have right―” Kiera blinked. No… I don’t… America’s gone. I… don’t have any rights. She shrank into a ball. “I’m in deep crap.”
For a while, she stared at the floor, fidgeting at her restraints. She couldn’t reach to wipe the tears from her face or the snot bubble from her nose. When the tickle got to be too much, she wiped her nose off on her knee.
The room had no clock or anything close to a window. Maybe the glaring overhead lights would turn off at night. She scooted back into the corner, sitting on the cot. Despair, anger, and fear traded places, and at one point, she wound up laughing. Sliding out of a vent into the desert with no food or clothes seemed far less scary than her present situation. Out there, she didn’t have anyone actively trying to kill her… and burn away all traces she ever existed.
She tucked tighter into the corner, lost to uncontrollable shaking and panic.
“Mommy,” shouted Kiera. “Daddy!” She broke down, crying out again and again for her parents until her throat hurt.
But no one answered.
41
Lesser Evils
Kiera huddled in a ball, staring down hatefully at the restraints on her ankles after crying herself out to blah silence. Her thoughts drifted from the bloody floor in the tank room to how happy she’d been when Dad gave her the poncho. That had felt like her welcome to the family, the first act of her parents providing for her. Remembering the joy she felt at the dress made her super homesick for her ramshackle little bedroom.
That the security people had taken her poncho away from her felt the same as if they’d magically stolen the happiness that came along with her finding a family. Growling, she tugged at her wrists while shouting at the walls, calling everyone here awful. When her energy ran out, she shivered at the memory of Mala jumping in the path of a stunner heading for her face. A random thought of Legacy got her crying in silence again. The man had walked for days knowing he most likely marched to his death. He died to help her, and she’d messed up, wasted it, gotten caught.
They’d even killed Pet.
Growling, she squirmed around trying to get a hand up to wipe her tears, but couldn’t reach. Failing that, she flopped flat on the bed and dragged her face back and forth over the blanket. Wanting to sob over a little electronic box made no sense, but she couldn’t help it. Pet had been real to her.
Footsteps approached outside her cell. She flipped over onto her back and scooted against the wall, pushing at the bed with her heels, trying to become part of the wall. The door slid open, revealing the same two cops who’d put her in there.
Wild-eyed, she screamed, “No! Go away! Please don’t kill me!”
They both spoke, but her panicking brain rejected their words as meaningless warbles. When they walked into the cell, she thrashed and screame
d, expecting to be dragged off to her death. The woman wouldn’t look her in the eye. The male officer held her down against the cot, grabbed her cheek and forced her to make eye contact.
“Calm down, kid. You’re not going to be hurt. It’s an interview.”
Panting and covered in sweat, Kiera lay there shaking, gazing up at this ‘police officer.’ His expression held sympathy and regret, but also resignation. The woman peeked at her but turned away, staring at the floor.
“Really.” He let go and pulled her seated. “Just talking. No need to be frightened.”
The female officer fidgeted at her belt.
Kiera tried to give her a pleading stare, but the woman kept dodging eye contact.
They took her by the arms again, lifting her into the air so her toes dragged along the floor. The thin socks didn’t do much for warmth. She coughed and shivered as they carried her past other cells, around a corner, and down another hall to a room at the end.
The male officer knocked.
“Enter,” said Anton.
Kiera gurgled. She convulsed but had nothing in her to throw up.
The officer thumped his fist on a panel and the door slid open. A plain steel bench inside against the left wall had two eyebolts sticking up from it. To the right, Administrator Anton Sokolov stood behind a simple metal desk, upon which sat one terminal screen―and an inactive Pet.
Kiera went wide-eyed, staring at her friend. She might not be dead! Whimpering, she struggled. “Pet… Please can I have her back?”
The cops ushered her over to the bench and pushed her to sit, one standing on either side of her.
“Thank you. You may wait outside,” said Anton.
“Are you sure, sir?” asked the male officer. “Perhaps we shouldn’t leave you alone with such a dangerous prisoner? Full shackles may not be enough to keep you safe. We should probably lock her down to the bench for your protection. Maybe put a mask on her so she can’t bite you?”
Anton frowned.
“Pet,” whispered Kiera, “are you okay?”
Her friend didn’t move.
The officers exchanged a glance, seeming reluctant to walk off. When Anton cleared his throat, they shuffled out and closed the door. Their evident concern for her made her feel a little better… for a few seconds.
Why don’t they wanna leave me alone with him? She gulped.
Anton stood with one arm tucked behind his back, other hand poking the keyboard, reading something on the holographic screen. She grabbed the cuff around her right wrist, trying to squeeze her hand past the metal, but it hurt too much.
“Miss Quinn,” said Anton over a long sigh. After a melodramatic pause, he looked up with a pleasant smile. “I must say I am not sure how it is you are alive. I admit that when we found your tank and saw the failure status, I felt no small amount of sorrow believing you dead. So young…” He shook his head again. “The files mentioned Theresa had a daughter, but did not reveal your age. I thought it tragic.”
Kiera shivered, mostly due to the cold steel floor and bench. Words didn’t want to squeeze past the giant lump in her throat.
“I cannot allow you to assist the terrorists in destroying the entire world.” He paced back and forth behind the desk. “Though I am relieved to find you are alive.”
“I don’t want to destroy anything!” shouted Kiera. “I just wanna go home with my parents… even if it’s tribal. I don’t care!”
Anton’s expression hardened. He swiped Pet from the desk and hurled it against the wall, shattering the cube into fragments.
Kiera screamed. When her lungs ran out of air, she lapsed into heavy sobs. The door slid open; the male officer peered in at them, but backed out again. Anton waited, tapping his finger on the desk.
Eventually, she collected herself enough to speak, though her voice warped with sorrow. “Why? Why did you kill her?”
“Now that I have your attention.” Anton leaned his weight on his knuckles, making the desk creak. “You are too dangerous to let out of my sight. I do pity you though. How awful it must be to wake one day in a world so much like a nightmare to you.”
Kiera stared at the scattered electronic bits on the ground, and wept. Tears she couldn’t reach to wipe gathered on her chin, dripping onto her legs. She murmured, “You didn’t need to kill her.”
“Hmph.” He poked the keyboard.
The holographic screen rotated to face her side of the room and expanded to the size of a modest television. Video, likely from a helmet-mounted camera, showed someone walking into a chamber full of cryogenic tanks. Milky white haze surrounded the bodies within, a sign the ooze remained frozen solid. Police robots filed in behind the person wearing the camera. Two other men in blue suits and helmets went from station to station, working at the controls of each tank. The camera panned left and zeroed in on the last tank in the row, the only one showing red lights instead of green. The person wearing the camera walked down the line, knocking over a privacy screen separating the last three tanks from the rest, and approached the red-lit control panel.
Quinn, Kiera, A.
Sex: F DOB: 9 NOV 2022
Ingress Age: 11 Chrono Age: 70
System malfunction. Cryonic process failure.
Subject deceased.
The view leaned forward. Beyond the white pearlescent haze of frozen gel, Kiera’s pallid face stared back at the camera, surrounded by a darkish cloud of billowing red hair. Staring at herself on the screen, eyes closed, mouth and nose covered by black plastic, chilled her worse than the goo had. Obviously, she hadn’t really been dead, but she certainly looked like it.
A breathy sigh came from the video.
“Now that’s a shame,” said a static-laced version of Anton’s voice. “Poor kid.”
“All set, sir.” A man walked up to him.
Anton faced the next tank. The gel had gone clear, revealing a woman in her later thirties with short black hair and only a facemask on. When the upper half of the tank rose open, two robots reached in and grasped her by the arms. Buzzing and beeping alarms came from the terminal. Needles tore from the woman’s arms and legs, spewing blood. The robots dropped her face down on the floor and shot her over and over again with lasers. Her mother had never even opened her eyes.
Kiera screamed and looked away.
“Pause,” said Anton.
She huddled against the wall. Anton walked around the desk and sat beside her on the bench. Two uncomfortably warm hands, soft, smooth, and coated in sweat, gripped her by the jaw and back of the head, forcing her to face the monitor. The man smelled like a leather jacket wrapped around pumpkin spice candles. Kiera tried to curl up so she couldn’t see the display, but his grip tightened, holding her head upright.
“Don’t close your eyes, dear. I’d much rather not become angry with you.”
She struggled, cuffs on her hands and feet clicking.
“Play,” said Anton.
From the second tank, the robots extracted her biological father, also limp and wearing only a breathing mask. Kiera sobbed, unable to look away due to Anton’s delicate hands keeping her in place. She squirmed and twisted, desperate not to watch what she knew was coming. Anton held her tighter, keeping her face pointed at the screen while the robots shot her father full of holes as he lay on the floor. Once the rapid buzzing of lasers ceased, Anton let go.
Kiera recoiled from him and dry heaved until she choked. “You’re awful. Why did you make me watch that?”
“Stop playback.” Anton stood and walked around behind the desk. Bits of Pet crunched under his shoes.
She flinched with every crack and scrape.
“They were only first for being all the way at the end of the row. Nothing personal. That facility held the entire executive board. Fools. They would’ve trusted the machines they never bothered to remain awake to oversee. But, I suppose it’s their own fault for being elitist. If they hadn’t set their system to thaw them out after our little bubble formed, I wouldn’t have ha
d the chance to delay them.” He chuckled. “I bet they never saw that coming.”
She scowled at him. “You’re lucky I can’t move.”
“Oh, perhaps I should have the security officers tether you to the bench for my protection.” He smirked at her.
Snarling, Kiera leapt to her feet, but lost her balance and fell over sideways, banging her elbow on the floor. “You’re lying. The Refuge has existed for a long time.”
“Just because I was not the administrator at the time does not mean I lacked forethought. Once I delayed their awakening, I had all the time I needed.”
Kiera rolled around to sit up. She grabbed the bench behind her back and hauled herself onto it, still glaring. Never had she hated another human being so much.
“The entire system is flawed. Citadels are not going to heal the planet, Kiera. They’re going to incinerate it. Activating the machines will cause a cataclysm. On the off chance they do not trigger thousands of nuclear detonations, they will malfunction. The current processing will shut down, bringing the clouds down on our heads.”
“You’re lying,” mumbled Kiera, no emotion in her voice. She felt like a wrung-out dishtowel. “You like being king and having power.”
“I truly hope that you are young enough that you will come to understand in time.” Anton sighed. “The idea of harming a child is so distasteful.”
Kiera lifted her head, staring at him past a wall of hair. “Would you have killed me if I didn’t look dead in the tank?”
“I…” Anton glanced away and down. “Might have brought you here. I doubt you knew of the override before being exposed to those terrorists. You could have enjoyed a pleasant life had you been ignorant of the danger you presented.”
She lifted her legs to wipe tears and snot off her face with her knees. “You would’ve had your robots kill me when you didn’t watch.”
Citadel: The Concordant Sequence Page 37