He jumped through the barrier, hardly feeling the buzz, and scanned the horizon for an instant. Yes, the rebel base was a small blue lump in the distance.
Far in the distance.
There was no way he could run all the way back there. It would have been impossible for a healthy man.
But he couldn’t think about that. He just had to run. He altered his course just slightly and stopped zig-zagging. The devices couldn’t be detonated through the field. But as soon as they came through after him, he’d have to start again, and that would make the distance three times as long.
It was hopeless.
Footsteps thundered behind him. He didn’t dare look back to see how many. He just ran, trying to use the length of his legs to the best advantage.
An engine revved to life in the distance and his accelerating heartbeat jumped. The jeeps. Of course. He was a fool!
He would have to stop zig-zagging. It might endanger the rebel’s chances—but how much more would they be endangered with him dead or held hostage? Straightening his course, he ran in a line towards the growing blue lump. His heart pounded, and a drop of sweat stung his eye. The sounds of the chase grew louder. By now they must have realized he had no Implant—
A shot sounded from behind him, and a blast of energy whizzed past his ear. He jumped, and stumbled, but forced himself to keep up his pace.
He was tired—so, so tired.
A cramp tightened in his calf, causing him to stumble again. He caught his balance and limped forward. It was impossible. The pounding of shoes and the rustle of voices and the whir of the jeep filled his ears—
He took another limping step forward and the ground wasn’t there. He fell forward, his gut protesting at the sudden fall, and he landed chest first on the hard ground several feet below. Air evacuated from his lungs and he gasped, trying to breathe.
It was dark. He kept gasping, searching for air.
He rolled onto his back and stared up through a large hole at the morning sky. Dirt drizzled down around him, and he blinked.
Finally, he sucked in a breath.
Footsteps thundered overhead, and he saw a single man look down into the hole. “Hey!” the man yelled, and jumped down beside him, landing inches away.
Gordon pressed his feet to the ground and scooted backwards, recklessly, knowing it was useless.
A shot fired. The man froze, swayed as blood trickled from his chest, and dropped to the ground.
Someone thrust a pistol into Gordon’s hand and knelt behind him. A musty scent filled his nostrils, and he yelped as something pricked his neck. A substance burned into his veins.
“It serves you right,” Doc’s voice hissed in his ear. Then the needle was yanked away and Doc’s big, calloused hand pushed him to the ground.
Stiffness spread down over his body. He couldn’t move. Muscles wouldn’t obey. His eyes drooped closed as Doc dragged him back a couple feet and dropped him again as boots began pounding heavily down into the hole.
“What’s the explanation, Doc?” he heard Dagny Dalton ask, as his consciousness faded.
“He’s dead,” Doc answered. He kept on talking, but Gordon couldn’t understand him. He couldn’t move—or think—
*****
Drifting into consciousness, he became aware he was lying on the hard cot in the medical tent again. The muffled voices and footsteps outside blended into a subdued hum of activity, and the thick heat pressed down on him. For a moment he feared he couldn’t move, but he tried wiggling his fingers and they obeyed. Stiffly, but they moved.
“How long is he going to be out?” he heard Neil ask.
Gordon could almost hear Doc shrugging. “It usually wears off in about twenty minutes. His system must be a little too weak.”
“And that doesn’t disturb you at all?” Neil asked. “You know what happens to all of us, and especially you, if he doesn’t recover.”
“What?” Gordon asked, forcing his eyes open. The word came out as two syllables, weak and hoarse.
Neil covered the distance to the bed in two steps. “How are you feeling?”
“Exhausted.”
“That’s to be expected,” Doc said. “Did you really think you were going to run all the way here in your condition?”
Gordon tightened his lips. “Would you prefer for me to stay there?”
“I’d prefer for you not to have gone there in the first place.”
“Look,” Gordon said, raising himself on both elbows, “I just risked my life to get back here and help you. I’d think you could show a little gratitude.”
“And I just risked mine saving your hide. Can you feel your toes?”
The sudden change of subject grated on his weary nerves, but he kept quiet and tried to wiggle his toes. He found that he couldn’t, though the effort brought tingling.
“A little. But they won’t move.”
Grunting, Doc rolled a cigarette. “It’ll be all right. I’ve never lost a patient to a neural paralyzer yet.”
“A what?”
Neil sighed and pulled a chair close to the cot. “Listen Gordon, I hate to agree with Doc, but… how can we trust you now?”
“I don’t know,” Gordon said, “maybe by the fact that I just risked my life so that I could come here and risk it again for you.”
Doc almost smiled. He turned to Neil as he lit his cigarette and flicked the match away, but he didn’t say anything.
Gordon coughed.
“You’ll get used to it.”
He blinked. “Get used to what?”
“The smoke.”
Gordon stared for a second, then turned back to Neil. “Look… I’m sorry. I really am.”
Neil sighed, smiled, and relaxed his shoulders just slightly, which didn’t make the air of tension disappear. “I believe you. But just what was the thought, running away like that?”
Gordon cracked his knuckles and cleared his throat. “It’s… I didn’t want to do it. I thought…” He cleared his throat again, feeling Doc’s hazel eyes boring through him. “I just wanted to get back home. I didn’t want to do it, because I thought I’d just make things… worse.”
“If it makes you feel any better, things couldn’t get much worse,” Neil said. “I hope you’ve changed your mind?”
The serious gaze of the blue eyes burned Gordon’s chest unbearably, and he looked down. “Yes.” He glanced up again to see Neil nodding.
“Good.”
Doc’s sharp voice cut into the moment. “What changed your mind?”
Gordon shut his eyes tightly. “I saw Amy’s baby there.”
When he opened his eyes again, Neil’s were on fire with fury.
“That was fast,” Doc commented.
Neil jumped up and whirled to face him. “Does nothing affect you?”
“Nothing I’m aware of.”
The two men stared straight at each other, Doc coolly smoking, Neil trembling with anger. Then Neil shoved Doc aside and stomped out of the tent.
For several awkward seconds there was silence, then Doc spoke, his voice hard with a hundred unspoken threats. “I’m keeping my eye on you, boy. I hope you’re happy—you know our secret is out now? The rats know you don’t have an Implant.”
Gordon fell back on the bed. “I’m not happy, if that makes you happy.” He tried not to remember the sleeping form of the baby in the man’s arms.
Doc just pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and stared at Gordon until he was forced to drop his gaze to the floor.
“Let me know when the paresis is gone,” Doc said, and left.
Chapter Four
It was about two hours before the effects of the drug wore off entirely and Doc certified him to get up. Neil was busy, he informed, and he’d be showing Gordon around.
The tone told him Doc didn’t like the arrangement any better than he did, but they began.
“Medical section,” Doc grunted when they were out of the tent. He gestured backwards, and Gordon looked back and c
ounted six tents, in various stages of threadbareness, but all clean and sturdy.
“Are you the only doctor?” he asked, surveying them.
“I am now.”
Gordon didn’t want to know what the “now” meant, so he just nodded and turned forward again. Buildings stretched before him and on both sides, some only one story, some ten, a few in good condition, but most of them dilapidated.
“How did all this happen?” he asked, looking around.
“Neil and the other unImplanted used to hide out in downtown. A few Implanted, too—sometimes all the metal and technology would interfere with the signals. But it became a war zone… there were a lot of bombings, and we smoked everyone out.”
Gordon jerked his head up to look at Doc. “‘We’?”
Doc shrugged, and started walking forward. “Old habit. Six months ago they got Neil—not without a fight, of course. They got him Implanted, he got away with their force-field plans.”
“Old habit?”
“Shut up,” was Doc’s only reply.
Gordon looked up towards the thin, sparkling blue dome. “How does it work?”
“I don’t know. I’m not an engineer, I’m a doctor.”
Gordon walked alongside him. “I mean, what does it shield the base from? People can just walk through. What does it stop?”
Doc nodded, and dug in his pocket for tobacco and paper. “Like we told you, it deflects any kind of electronic signal, so detonators don’t work. Here.” He pinched the cigarette together and handed it to Gordon.
Gordon took it between his finger and thumb in disgust. “I don’t want this.”
“I know that. Just hold it until I get a light.”
Gordon’s impulse was to drop it on the ground and smash it into the dirt, but he had a definite feeling such an action would not be well received. “As a doctor, you should know the dangers of smoking.”
Doc just took his cigarette back. He lit it and went on talking. “Bullets and bombs don’t work either. Impact won’t get anything through. Just light pressure.”
“Then why doesn’t somebody just bring a bomb in?”
Doc snorted. “We rigged it so nobody but us can get through. We…”
“Yes, I know,” Gordon interrupted, waving smoke away from his face. “I mean why doesn’t somebody just gently push some dynamite or something through without coming in?”
Doc jerked towards him. “Whose side are you on?”
“I was just wondering. I mean, how do you expect to destroy them, if there’s no way for them to destroy you? It sounds like a stymie to me.”
Doc sighed as if explaining to a child. “You think we wouldn’t know it if someone set off an explosive inside? We can track those things.”
“You didn’t track me when I left.”
The minute the last syllable left his lips, he wished he could pull the words back in. Doc turned and stared at him, expression blank.
“You don’t have any technology in your body, stupid. We can track unusual heat signatures, technologies, but we had no reason until now to track unImplanted walking bodies. The only way I found you was that we were able to find the group chasing you and I opened part of the underground tunnel system so I could make them think you were dead.”
He knew he should leave the topic alone, but he couldn’t help asking, “Wasn’t that a little risky? I mean… don’t you want the tunnels to be a secret?”
Doc glared at him. “Yes. But what else were we supposed to do?”
Gordon kept silent then.
A few more steps brought them to a blue building, six stories high, fairly intact except for several broken windows covered over with duct tape, canvas, and cardboard. Doc stopped in front of it.
“This is the computer center. Two more buildings behind it. Want to have a look?”
Gordon coughed at the smoke blown his way, then shook his head. “I’m not a real computer guy, thanks.”
Doc nodded. “That’s where they do things with computers.” He strode off, and Gordon trotted to keep up with him.
“Wait… what kind of things?”
“Mostly monitoring. They can tell us if there are any breaches, they keep track of rations and keep records on other resources, and they sort out any information we receive from outside.”
They walked awhile more and came to a huge, faded green circus tent covering several blocks.
“The kitchen and mess,” Doc explained, pulling open the flap so Gordon could see inside. Mismatched metal, plastic, and wooden tables and chairs sprawled along the ground by the hundreds, and far in the back a long stretch of canvas cut the mess hall off from what Gordon assumed was the kitchen. It was mostly empty now, but workers in muted clothes worked at a few of the tables, wiping them with ragged cloths.
“This is where you’ll be eating now,” Doc explained. “No more breakfast in bed for you.”
Gordon’s stomach growled as he watched more young people emerge from the back carrying plates of widely varying shapes and colors. No one’s clothes matched, none of them were ironed, but they were all clean. The men had varying amounts of facial hair. Among the women he didn’t see a hint of lipstick or mascara, and most of them had their hair pulled back hastily, for comfort and practicality rather than beauty.
They all remained fixated on their jobs, not sparing a glance for him or Doc.
He wondered how many of them knew who he was, why he was there, or that he didn’t have an Implant.
Surely if they knew there was something interesting about him, they would be more—well, interested.
And what about Doc? They were clearly so familiar with him that he didn’t merit even a sidelong glance of worry. How many of them knew his story, whatever it was?
“How do you get food?” he asked. “Won’t people get killed if they leave?”
Doc dropped the tent flap. “There are plenty of people who won’t take the risks we do, but they’re sympathetic enough to get supplies to us from time to time.” He shrugged. “Odd assortment sometimes, but we take what we can get.”
He led the way into a narrow alley between two buildings. There was concrete here, but it was cracked and pieces lay around the path, inviting pedestrians to stumble. As Gordon picked his way among them, an obvious thought struck him.
“Doc… why can’t you remove the Implants?”
Doc shook his head vehemently and furrowed his thick brows. “They detonate the instant they’re exposed to open air, killing both the patient and the surgeon. We—tried that.”
So that was what had happened to any other doctors. Gordon watched carefully for any trace of emotion other than that one little pause, but saw none.
Doc led him into a dirty, two-story building he identified as the lab. It looked intact from outside, but inside there were patches where the sheetrock had worn away, revealing uninsulated metal studs.
They walked through a white hallway into a white room lined with desks and laboratory equipment. Here, half a dozen scientists worked, sitting and standing at built-in desks with mismatched chairs, each working on a different project.
Neil was there, bending carefully over a small mass of wires, diodes, chips, and components Gordon couldn’t identify.
Without turning toward the newcomers, Neil asked “Tour finished?”
“Yes,” Doc said. “Firing sequence?”
Neil shook his head, his tongue sticking out between his lips just slightly as he positioned a wire. “Detonator.”
“Ah.”
The door to the lab opened again, and a young rebel with blond hair stuck his head in. “Doc, a man is outside on the south end asking for you. Says he’s injured and he wants help getting fixed up enough to go home.”
“Let him rot,” Doc muttered, reaching for his old brown and blue jacket, which lay on a chair next to Neil.
A shiver of horror ran through Gordon at the words, but Neil didn’t react. Doc followed the rebel out without any further comment.
“It’
s one of the Academy goons,” Neil explained, still not taking his eyes off his work. “They have to check in with him for information because of his ‘mission’ here.”
Gordon looked back towards the door, which was just closing. “How do you know? And… who is Doc, anyway?”
Neil chuckled. “It happens all the time. As for who Doc is… I don’t think anybody really knows completely. Don’t you remember what he said when you asked his name?”
“That’s not easy to forget,” Gordon said dryly, sitting in a nearby chair and leaning one elbow on the rough wooden desk. “But… I don’t understand. Which side is he on?”
“Honestly?” Neil paused just long enough to glance at Gordon before looking back at the device. “Sometimes I’m not quite sure. He’s one of the highest ranking members of the Academy government, and yet when they sent him here as a spy a few months ago… he just… I mean, he was a spy. He’s supposed to infiltrate us by pretending to be friendly to the cause. But it’s like… without ever really explaining, he transitioned into actually helping us. I don’t know how, exactly. Or why.”
“And you trust him?”
Neil sighed, and straightened up. He rested his hands on his sides and arched his back, stretching the kinks out, then reached for a red kerchief that matched the one around his neck. “I don’t know. Sometimes. Maybe.”
Gordon noted beads of sweat on his forehead, though it was fairly cool in the room.
“What are you working on?” he asked, nodding at the mess of wires and tiny parts.
“A rigged detonator. Don’t worry, you’ll get the full explanation when it’s time. But no sense in listening to techno-babble on an empty stomach now, is there?”
Gordon grinned, hopped down from the chair, and followed Neil out the door towards the mess hall.
The room had filled with a colorful but faded array of rebels. The hum of conversation had grown with the crowd, now louder and more relaxed than what he’d heard in the pathways or from inside the medical tent, and again, none of them took any notice of him beyond a polite nod.
It was a little warm for stew, but Gordon didn’t complain when a steaming bowl of it was served to him. Not that he’d be rude enough to complain about food someone gave him anyway, but he figured it was a safe bet this would be the best way to serve so many people with the weird mishmash of food Doc said they got. It was logical to stuff it all in a pot with some broth and spices.
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