by Julian North
“Impossible! You can’t transmit the codes to the control visers that way. The amount of information is too great.”
I pulled away from her, my tone ice. “I’m not the technical expert, but I’ve been told it can transmit a single command, and it will only work once. But that’s enough, isn’t it?”
Virginia gasped, the horrible truth sinking in. “I underestimated you. A girl from Bronx City rises to power. Who are you really?”
“I am what comes next.” My voice trembled. It was Kristolan speaking. “I will make a new world, a better one.”
It had never occurred to someone like Nythan that I might use his creation to reprogram the interface for my own use. The single command I forced into Virginia’s mind could be used to turn control of her interface over to me. Kristolan imagined the possibilities, dangling the vision in my head: the country brought back together, the highborn humbled. There could be real equality, she told me. Put an end to chipping in Korea, she promised. I drank that sweet dream. Ice surged through me, and I didn’t want it to stop. I wanted it to grow.
Something alien came into Virginia’s eyes as she gazed at me, something that had no place there: fear. I recognized it, and it made me smile. I heard a laugh, ugly and maniacal. It took me a moment to realize that the sound had come from my lips.
“Landrew Foster-Rose-Hart underestimated the power of his mutation, it seems. People once tormented me because I was different, but you are his greatest abomination. Ansel wanted to destroy me. But she created something worse than me: you.” Virginia choked out the last with something like satisfaction.
Her words were like being slapped. Is that who I was?
“I’m not like you.” I said it aloud, but the words were half-hearted.
Virginia’s dry, nearly mad laugh echoed. “Everyone is me, or they would be if they had the chance.”
Kristolan thought the same.
Do what you must do, she urged. Only with the power can we remake the world. Otherwise the highborn will snatch it away from you.
Power.
Kristolan hungered for it. Virginia hungered for it. President Ryan-Hayes had hungered for it. Yet it was Rudolph Banks who understood it best. His words echoed in my memory: power’s like shit for a hog.
I grinned, and Virginia’s eyes narrowed.
“What the hell are you waiting for, girl?”
The part of me that was Kristolan screamed, the sound echoing in my head with such intensity my hands flew to my ears. Her memories flooded into my mind, along with her desires. There was such pain—of a mother taken, a father who had betrayed her, a man who intended to enslave her for her power. She had lived a lonely life. Power is the only way you will be safe, she told me.
Yet Kristolan’s were not the only memories that lingered inside me. Alexander was there as well, and he remembered a gentler Kristolan, the sister who had protected a young boy from their father’s rage. Alexander, who had overcome the machinations of his father as well as his sister. Instead, he honored his mother, who had urged him to make himself and the world better. He was a highborn boy who had grown up to love the likes of me. He had never said it, but our minds had been joined, and I knew it. And I remembered the bonds of blood that made me who I was: my sister Kortilla, my brother, and Nythan. A vision of my mother’s face flashed before me, melting away to become Kortilla—the little girl with the huge heart, who had taken me in all those years ago. And Rhett, who had died for me. Make this place better, did not mean make myself into Virginia Timber-Night or Kristolan Foster-Rose-Hart.
Blood takes care of blood. I would never forget that.
I flicked my viser; the interface activated as it confirmed Virginia Timber-Night’s genetic identity. Enough time had passed for the control viser on her arm to establish the neural connection it needed to function. I activated the device. Virginia screamed, a dreadful sound of despair as her will was ripped from her by a machine of her own creation. The noise echoed in the enclosed space, sending a chill through my bones. My jaw clenched. I was doing a horrible thing, whatever my motivations. Necessity was a poor excuse for enslaving another person. I just had to decide what to order her to do.
I flicked my viser again. Virginia’s lips moved beneath me as her virtual self issued the single command forced upon her by the control viser: shut down. The access code was given, then the drones made their last transmission, ordering the control visers to cease operation.
There was no change in the safe room. The world around me paid no attention to what I had done, the temptation I had conquered. But if the command Virginia issued did what we expected, the men and women who had come under the sway of Virginia and her control visers would no longer have their will overridden. I pulled the interface and the viser off Virginia and released her. She didn’t move. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t blink. Her breath was shallow and labored; she was like Alexander had been while he had the chip on him. The dozens of others whom Virginia had controlled were likely the same. I hoped Nythan’s process would be able to restore them, as he had Alexander, but even Nythan was uncertain of that.
I uploaded the recording I had made of Virginia explaining what she had done to her own people with the visers on a special channel that Ansel had provided. The transmission would be intercepted, but it didn’t matter. The more who knew, the better. California would use its networks to spread the message all over the country. Those who had once supported Virginia’s cause would abandon her in droves. Not everyone, perhaps, but enough that the South and California would change the tide of the civil war.
I stood, taking a last look at Virginia Timber-Night as she lay on the cold stone floor, gazing into oblivion.
“Justice.”
Chapter 33
A single guard had been posted outside the safe room. He was shocked when the door opened and a girl he had never seen before appeared. I think he had been looking at his viser, at the message California was transmitting to every communication device. He snapped back to attention when he saw me.
“The president is sick,” I told him. “Look.”
His instinct was too powerful--he looked inside the room. I could’ve used a knife to kill him. That would’ve been the safer thing to do. It’s what Kristolan would’ve done. Instead, I pushed him into the room, pulled the door shut, and ran. I was fast enough that I was able to reach the stairs before he could reopen the door and shoot me in the back.
The guests huddled together under tables and behind overturned pieces of furniture, while security forces kept vigil at the perimeter. Armed men were clustering around the western entrance to the house, where the canopy had been erected for the party. Rocket fire continued, and smoke was everywhere, rising into the twilight of a deep cobalt sky.
A voice was shouting over the din, “We’re getting reports they are landing troops. Everyone be ready.”
The crowd gasped. My transmission had been the signal for Ansel to land her extraction team. So far, Ansel was keeping her word. They were supposed to feign an assault on the house, while I was to proceed to the estate’s private track for pick-up by a stealth razorFish. I had no intention of doing that.
It was easy to slip into the kitchen, into the servants’ wing. Explosions and weapon fire exploded from the other side of the house. Ansel’s attack had begun in earnest. A wave of mostly harmless missiles landed on and around the house. I ran, not for my pick-up location, but toward the beach.
A force blast whipped past as I sprinted away from the house. It had been fired from behind me. I dove for the ground. Another blast followed. There shouldn’t be any Californian soldiers in the direction I was headed, which meant that someone in the house was firing at me. The smoke must be causing them trouble, because I was still alive. I kept low, crawling as fast as I could. The water was less than fifteen yards away.
Arm over arm I slid away from the house. An aircraft rocketed over the estate at high speed, rattling the ground. The roar of v-copter engines thundered to the
west. The Californians wouldn’t be able to stay on the ground much longer—they were outnumbered and far from home.
I reached the sand and pulled myself into a crouch, waiting for another force blast. Nothing happened. I sprinted to my left, following the contours of the beach away from the house and the battle. There was an ancient lighthouse further down the beach. I headed toward it, my strides long and quick. Cold ocean air whipped up the sand, spraying crystals into my face and eyes. It reminded me of my first day at Tuck, when Alexander had beaten me in front of the whole school. I pushed myself harder, faster, smiling at what had once been a painful memory. It seemed a million years ago, even though it had only been a few months.
I reached the water’s edge, sucking for air. I forced myself to step into the shallow waves, the freezing water seeping into my shoes and crawling up my legs.
“I thought you couldn’t swim.”
I spun around to face the source of the familiar voice. It was Jenn Ansel, a force pistol in her hand.
“I was worried when you didn’t show up at the pick-up location.”
Her face was grim. She didn’t look like a woman who had just pulled off the most successful covert operation in history. “I didn’t expect the director herself to get involved in an extraction operation.”
“I can’t let you go, Daniela. I’m sorry. You are too dangerous.”
Anger surged through me. “I just saved your damn state. Maybe this whole country. You’re welcome.”
An ominous gust of wind whipped through the air between us. I took a step deeper into the water, and Ansel followed. “What you have done is… amazing, Daniela. You are probably the only person in the world who could’ve pulled this off, and that’s the problem: you are like her. You are just like Virginia.”
Ansel was more right than she knew. Virginia had recognized herself within me. I could’ve become her, or worse. But I hadn’t. I had won. The power was right there, but I had refused it. Kristolan had been silenced, at least for now.
“You’re wrong. I’m not like her, because I choose not to be.”
Ansel shook her head. She came closer. Even in the fading light, I could see that the anguish on her face was genuine. “I’m sorry. I can’t take that chance, not again. I had a chance to stop Virginia years ago. I had a gun on her, but I didn’t shoot. I’m grateful for what you have done, but I can’t make the same mistake again. It is necessary.”
I smiled at her choice of words. I had already done what was necessary today. I wanted no more of it.
I held a hand over my head. Ansel watched, puzzled.
“Hold your fire, Alexander. We’re still talking.”
For a moment Ansel thought it was a trick, but then she saw the figure behind me, the man with a gun who had emerged out of the ocean while we had been speaking.
“If I were her, if I were Virginia, I would’ve let Alexander kill you. I am not her, nor am I Kristolan Foster-Rose-Hart. I am a girl who lost her father, then her mother, but found a new family. I had to earn the people who I call my blood, and they had to earn me. I am a girl from Bronx City. No matter what they did to my genes, that’s who I will always be.”
“There isn’t any place for you here, Daniela. You think the Orderists are just going to let you go? You think because they’ve lost a few battles, they are going to change?”
I stepped toward Ansel. “You think I did all this just to let the highborn go back to ruling us?”
“Who else?”
“The first day I met Rudolph Banks, he told me he’d done plenty he wasn’t proud of. He’s tried to make amends. He’s seen what power did to his friends, and he’s learned. He’ll make a good president, he’ll help the country get back on its feet.” If he can forgive me for killing his nephew. If he survives when he finds out that Rhett is dead.
Ansel scoffed. “I always liked Rudolph, but the highborn won’t accept him, the army—”
“They’ve got the friggin’ Waste. Tens of thousands of them, maybe millions in California by now. Nythan’s got the cure—well, almost. He and all his data are already in Atlanta with Rudolph. Dimitri’s computer systems have been wiped by Nythan. The people in the inner cities, the millions who rose up today in Bronx City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and everywhere else—they’ve got California guns now, and they’ll support him if he supports them and gives them back their rights, which he has promised. He’s got Jalen Aris-Putch with him as well. Rudolph is willing to choose Frost-Bell as his vice president to appease the North and the highborn. If you want to make a difference, support him—get California to back him. You’ve got the dirt on all of them. Help him and Nythan cure the Waste and destroy every possible trace of trilling and control visers.”
Ansel looked away for a moment as she considered. “It’s a fine dream, but the genie can’t be put back in the bottle.”
“Maybe not, but we can try. I know you have agents in Korea. Try to cut this evil off at the source. Make it your life’s work if you have to.”
Ansel lowered the force pistol. “And you?”
“You are right, there is no place in the country for someone like me. People will either fear me or seek to use me. You are correct that I’m dangerous, but I intend to make sure I will never be a threat to the people here. I’m going to wade into that ocean and disappear. But you tell them—tell your governor, the highborn, anyone else out there—this: I’ll be watching.”
I turned and did just what I promised: I waded into the freezing waves as night fell, disappearing into the darkness.
Chapter 34
Alexander had to help me get out to the submarine. The Gaia was waiting for us thirty yards from shore, which was the closest it could get to the Long Island coast. It was the coldest I’d ever been in my life. Once on board we vanished into the ocean’s depths. After I had gotten warm and changed into dry clothes, I promised myself that I was going to learn to swim one day, just not during winter.
We headed to the South. I contacted Rudolph on a secure channel to arrange a meeting. Nythan confirmed he had made it safely out of California. Ansel was still pissed at being outplayed, but I was confident she’d smooth things over with Dimitri and the Cali government. She had gotten what she wanted most—Virginia was gone. My plan had worked. Except for Rhett.
It would take a full day to reach Savannah at the Gaia’s top speed. We watched the net feeds as we sailed, seeing and hearing about the uprisings in the vast ghettos of the country. The Authority retreated almost everywhere. It seemed that the black boots were far less courageous without the advantage of superior weaponry. I heard people screaming Nui Cohete more times than I could count.
Alexander didn’t seem to have any problem with my elevation to icon. There was no mocking, no chagrin. I found it terrifying. “We better get your old face back, or these people are going to be very disappointed,” was all he said.
I winced, knowing that the opposite was true. “That face is too dangerous, as is the one I have now. I’ll need a completely new one.”
According to the reports we got from the net, and from Jalen himself, the North’s attack on Atlanta had stalled, then collapsed completely when California landed its special forces behind the lines of the increasingly leaderless Northern soldiers. People were still dying, though—I hadn’t stopped that. Not yet.
After hours of netcasts my head ached so badly I could barely keep my thoughts straight. Eventually, I managed to sleep.
I awoke as we surfaced just outside the port. I dragged myself to the front of the Gaia, seating myself next to Alexander in the cockpit as we sailed toward land. The stately elegance of Savannah’s old waterfront beckoned seductively in front of us. The sun was fading on the western horizon as clouds moved in from the north. It looked quiet, peaceful. For a brief moment, I forgot why we had come and just saw the beauty. Then the world returned to me. I dreaded going ashore.
“I could go with you,” Alexander offered.
“It was my decision.”
“Rhett came because of me. He followed me. And I left him to die. I will speak to Rudolph.”
We waited for the dead of night before Alexander brought the Gaia into a slip along Savannah’s old quay. I stepped ashore into a gusty Southern night. There was not a soul anywhere to be seen. Even the wind was absent. I waited till I saw a vehicle’s headlights flash along the waterfront. I walked toward it. The front passenger side door opened, and I got in. The car was parked under an old-fashioned electric street light that provided just enough glow for me to see Rudolph Banks’s face behind the vehicle’s steering wheel. He was an old man, so it was not surprising that he looked it. But this was the first time I’d seen him appear tired.
“Good of you to come,” he said, his voice ragged.
“I’m so sorry.” I hated myself for those words. They were like giving sand to the desert.
“You killed Virginia, at least.”
“I think Ansel or one of her people pulled the trigger. She was all but there when I left her. The rest was a mercy.”
Rudolph was quiet. I heard a soft roll of thunder in the distance. “I had three wives, no kids. I sort of stole Rhett away from his mom.”
“I guess I did that too.”
“Naw… he wanted to go with you. He…” Rudolph pressed his lips together. “Doesn’t matter now.”
I had trouble swallowing. I sucked in an uncomfortable breath. “I told him I’d make something better out of this place.”
“Is that why you wanted to meet with me? To keep your promise to him?”