by C. A. Gray
“But where will we go?”
“Karen planned for this too,” said Mack, “she’s got another compound mostly ready to go on an island in the Caribbean. We don’t have any Commune contacts there, so she’s having to do a little legwork right now through those we do have via the labyrinth to make sure it’s still secure. But there’s no food there yet and it’s trickier to get supplies, which is why we sent Nilesh and Rick out now.”
“So… we aren’t going to have time to fight against Jaguar, are we?” Julie murmured. “We’ll be too busy running.”
“Liam is going to see his father to try to convince him to dismantle Jaguar—”
“They’re going to kill him!” Julie cut in. I felt a physical throb in my chest as she said it, and bit my lip to keep the sob inside.
Mack sighed. “We sure hope not. Meanwhile, Francis and Larissa are distributing Liam’s bot upgrade right now, and Giovanni is reprogramming Alex—you heard about that too, right?”
“Uh, yeah.” I could almost hear Julie wince.
“It’ll be much easier for them to test their viruses, now that we have Alex—once she’s compliant, I mean. And Rebecca also thinks analyzing her brain will help us have a leg-up on the Silver Six. So chin up; we’re still fighting. All is not lost.”
I heard the footsteps fade away, and knew Mack was on the way to tell whoever else hadn’t already gotten the memo.
I rested my forehead on the bathroom door, eyes closed, tears still leaking passively out of the corners of my eyes. I wasn’t thinking anything in particular—just breathing, despite the oppressive ache in my chest.
Then I realized, I didn’t have time for this. We had less than eight hours. I forced myself to stand up mechanically, and opened the door.
Julie was gone, but the door was open. Across the hall, I could hear voices coming from the direction of my room: Julie’s and Jake’s.
“Thought you could use the help,” she shrugged, and I smiled at them both gratefully. Jake reached out an arm and pulled me in for a hug. I knew from his expression that Julie had told him everything.
“Liam left already. You won’t run into him again,” he told me, which made me bite my lip to keep from crying all over again. Then he murmured into my hair, “He’s a total moron.”
“Not as big a moron as Andy,” Julie retorted. “I can’t believe that little twerp sold us all out.”
“I can,” Jake muttered darkly. “I should have seen it coming.”
“Jake confronted Andy as soon as he heard,” Julie informed me, stroking my back as I released Jake.
“Yeah, and he just got all sullen and Andy-like,” Jake jumped in. “He defended himself and said I was ‘overreacting.’ Can you believe it?”
“Is Becca’s mom gonna leave him here, or what?” Julie asked.
Jake shrugged. “I dunno, I haven’t seen Andy in awhile. He’s probably just off sulking, but maybe they have him tied up or something. I would tie him up, if I were Karen.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. I couldn’t pretend to care what Jake and Julie were saying, even though I knew it was all important—my heart was with Liam, speeding away. We had only hours left, anyway, and I hadn’t helped at all.
“What still needs packing?” I asked, my voice hollow.
Jake looked a little surprised at the abrupt subject change, but said, “The kitchen, I think. That’s what I heard your mom say last.”
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll go do that then.”
Apparently everyone was piling stuff that ought to be packed in the foyer for transport out to the silo and hovercraft, while Giovanni ran loads back and forth. Larissa ran into me in the hallway and gave me a guilty look I didn’t immediately understand, but after she’d hurried away, I put it together: she was the one who had shown Andy how to get on the Commune. Of course—who else would have done it, besides overly trusting Larissa?
I passed Francis in the hallway as I made my way to the kitchen. He appraised me coldly.
“Where have you been?”
“I’m—headed to pack up the kitchen,” I gestured ahead of us, not answering his question. He noticed, of course, and scrutinized me.
“You’ve been off crying, I see, while everyone else does all the work. You’re a complete slave to your emotions,” he pronounced with contempt, shaking his head. “Why Liam’s so crazy about you, I’ll never understand.”
“He’s—not!” I spluttered, suddenly losing it. “He doesn’t love me. He told me so! You were wrong for once, Francis!”
Francis tilted his head to the side, inspecting me like I was some kind of curious specimen. “Oh come on. You can’t really be that dumb.”
I sighed, closing my eyes. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you. Maybe I am a ‘slave to my emotions,’ but your very brain structure makes you incapable of any sort of empathy or compassion. Of the two of us, which one is more damaged?”
Francis spoke as if to a small child. “Cordeaux. If he’d told you he loved you, you would be going to your death, too. Telling you what he did was the only way to keep you safe.” He shook his head at me. “Wow. Anybody home up there?”
I stared at him for a long moment, and he stared back at me, eyes widening in response to my expression as his words dawned on me. If I’d learned anything about Liam in San Jose, it was that his top priority was to keep me safe—to the point of absurdity. He’d say or do anything for that.
Francis was right. I felt the color drain from my cheeks.
“Ohmigosh,” I whispered.
“There she is!”
“How long ago did he leave?” Even as I asked it, I started running for the front door to the compound. “I have to go after him!”
“You won’t catch him, he’s long gone!”
“I have to try—!”
I flung open the door to the compound, and dove into one of the golf carts, jamming my foot into the pedal ignition over and over again. Nothing happened.
“Come on!” I shouted at it, slamming the steering wheel with the palm of my hand as if that would help. Vaguely I registered that Francis had come out after me, but I didn’t care. Everyone else who’d started up one of the golf carts just stepped on the ignition, hadn’t they? Why wasn’t it working?
I was too busy panicking to think straight, and I had no time to lose. I leapt out of the golf cart and started running down the tunnels instead.
Behind me, I heard the roar of the golf cart motor come to life. A few seconds later, Francis pulled up beside me.
“Get in,” he sighed.
I dove into the passenger seat, heart pounding in my throat. Francis stepped on the ignition and took one of the tunnels decisively, flattening me against the seat.
“I thought you said he was long gone!” I panted.
“He left maybe ten minutes ago.”
“That’s not long gone—!” I shouted as we picked up speed. “How do you know which silo he went to?”
“He’d have gone to the one with the remaining car that Nilesh and Rick didn’t take,” Francis shouted back. “He knows we need the hovercraft to get to the new compound.”
We whipped through the tunnels in silence after that for another several minutes. When he came to a stop, I leapt out of the cart and ran for the door that led into the silo, slamming into it with all my weight. I stared for a minute before processing what I saw, and what it meant.
The silo was empty, its front garage door open. I could still see the dust cloud settling, but not the vehicle that had produced it.
We’d just missed him. But he might as well have been gone for hours, for all the good it did me. I had no way of going after him now.
Francis approached behind me, and put a hand on my shoulder. I leaned into him, all my tears already gone. What remained was only desolation. He patted my shoulder awkwardly.
At last I murmured, my voice flat, “Why
did you come after me?”
He shrugged, and I looked up at him. His face was impassive as ever, but—were those actually—tears in his eyes? He blinked rapidly, and whatever I thought I saw vanished.
“You care about Liam too!” I accused, amazed. “Don’t you?”
Francis shrugged, and turned abruptly back to the golf carts. I followed him. As Francis got back into the cart and started it up again, and I climbed back in beside him, he said matter-of-factly, “When he said goodbye, he told me I was… one of his best friends.” After a long pause, Francis added, just barely loud enough that I could hear him over the whipping wind, “Nobody’s ever said that to me before.”
When we reached the compound again, I heard the pounding of footsteps converging around us. Mack reached us first.
“Oh thank God, your mother’s going crazy!” he gasped. “Get back to the carts, now! They’re coming!”
Everyone seemed to swarm from deeper inside the compound like bees flushed out of a hive, carrying this and that. Giovanni carried Alex awkwardly, and Francis ran to help hoist her up.
“…Andy?” I heard Jake call out.
“Andy’s gone, he took a golf cart out to one of the silos where the hovercraft fleet landed!” Mack barked. “We didn’t catch him in time!”
“We really should have tied him up!” Jake cried.
I didn’t have time to assimilate this information before Larissa called, “But Nilesh and Rick are coming back in a few hours…?”
“We’ll have to leave them behind!” Mom shouted.
In the pandemonium, Jake shoved me into the back seat of one of the golf carts. Mack drove the cart I was in, and Mom sat beside him, Hepzibah in her lap. I was sandwiched in the back between Julie and Jake. The wind tunnel effect was too loud for much talking, but all of us were too tense for discussion anyway.
“If they’re waiting at the silo, aren’t we just going straight to them?” Jake shouted up front.
Mack shook his head. “They’re at one of the other silos, not the one where the hovercraft is. Thank God.”
“But the second they see the hovercraft, they’ll come after us. They’ve got the area patrolled,” Mom shouted.
Queenie yipped, whined, and struggled in Julie’s arms, and she clutched her tighter. “How will we get away then?”
Mom glanced over her shoulder at us, her mouth in a thin hard line. “I don’t know.”
“What do you think they’re going to do?” Jake shouted back.
“It depends on how long ago Andy left,” she called, “and how soon they find him. Once they find him, they’ll know our compound was down here somewhere. If they don’t think we’ve already escaped, they’ll drop bombs down all the silo shafts.”
She said it so matter-of-factly. My mouth fell open. “So you mean any minute now…?”
She nodded, her face expressionless. “Yep. If they realize we’re still down here.”
After the initial shock of those words, my mind went into neutral. Perhaps it was a protective mechanism, or maybe it was more like the peace before a storm—but all I heard was the air whipping around us. I felt my body pressed against the faux leather of the seat beneath me, felt Jake’s and Julie’s limbs pressed against mine, and the wisp of Queenie’s fur against my arm. The air in the tunnel felt damp and sticky, and the moisture that accumulated on my skin evaporated as we whipped along, making me shiver. I wasn’t thinking about anything directly, but a sob bubbled up in my throat and nearly choked me. I swallowed it down as Mack jerked to a stop.
“Go go go!” Mom shouted, and we all leapt out of the carts, bounding toward the door that opened into the silo containing the hangar for the hovercraft. The other cart, containing Giovanni, Alex, Dr. Yin, Francis, Larissa, and Val, all piled into the craft first. Mom ushered us in next, and Mack climbed aboard. I followed behind him, and Jake began to climb in behind me. But then Julie shouted, “Queenie!”
We all turned to look: Queenie, unhappy by the cramped quarters in the golf cart, had finally wriggled free, and bolted back toward the open door to the tunnels. Julie ran after her.
“Queenie, come back!”
“Julie, there’s no time!” my mom shouted, “leave her!”
But I knew Julie would never do this, and Jake knew it too. He jumped off the stairs leading up to the hovercraft and bolted after Julie, just as Mack raised the hangar doors. I stared after them, open-mouthed, as Mom shoved me into the hovercraft and climbed in behind me.
Boom.
The first explosion knocked me off my feet and on to the craft floor. Mom wasted no time, climbing up into the cockpit.
“Jake!” I bleated, “Julie!”
Inside the hangar, we couldn’t see the outside landscape that might have shown where the blast had hit or how much damage there was. I could still see the open doorway where they’d both gone, but the hovercraft started moving.
“Wait!” I cried, “Jake and Julie!”
Boom.
This one felt like it hit the craft directly, and threw all of us to the ground. Half the silo ripped away, and I could barely see anything through the windows except for smoke and ash.
“Wait!” I cried again, but my voice died away. A billow of smoke puffed to the side, revealing the entrance from which we had just emerged. It had completely caved in, but I could just make out a leg and an arm peeking out from the rubble. The leg was Julie’s. The arm was Jake’s.
We swept up into the air seconds before the third explosion.
Chapter 34
Mack’s digital voice pumped throughout the hovercraft as our altitude climbed. “Everybody strap in and hold on. This is going to be… a little bumpy.”
I don’t know exactly what happened after that, except that it was about ten times worse than the most intense roller coaster I’d ever ridden. We went straight up. We inverted. Our altitude increased so precipitously that I screamed from the pressure in my eardrums. I heard gunfire that sounded like it was coming from our cockpit. Some of the abrupt maneuvers indicated that we were probably dodging something. I threw up, twice, all over myself. The second time was just dry heaves because I had nothing left in my stomach. I might have blacked out too, I’m not sure.
And then it was over. We were still in the air. I was trembling, all over, wet and sticky with my own vomit. It was probably ten or fifteen minutes before I even had the strength to look around the cabin at everyone else. They looked as dazed and glassy-eyed as I felt; even Francis. Only Alex looked unperturbed, and that was because she was probably still in analysis mode.
It might have been another half an hour before my brain began to work again, but I still felt strangely numb.
Jake and Julie. Dead.
Liam… Liam.
Madeline. Gone forever.
We’re being hunted. We could be shot down at any minute.
All because of Andy.
Andy was only here because of me.
Jake and Julie are dead because of me.
It felt like a bad dream. A very bad dream. The worst of dreams. I couldn’t make myself believe that any of it was real.
I don’t know how long we sat like that, smoothly zipping through the air at last, when I realized we were over the ocean now. Some of the others—Francis and Larissa, I thought—started whispering behind me. Mack emerged from the cockpit, and stood watching me for a moment with a look I could only describe as fatherly. He approached, and crouched down beside me.
“Rebecca.”
I looked at him, but couldn’t muster an expression or even a response.
He reached down a hand. “Come with me.”
I obeyed him, like a child. I unstrapped my seatbelt, and let him lead me by the hand to one of the compartments in the back of the craft— the one where Liam had fought for his life after we fled the first time. Mack crouched down before one of the boxes, tore off the tape, and wordlessly handed me a clean
shirt. I took it, and for a moment didn’t register what I was supposed to do with it. Mack pointed at the adjacent bathroom.
“Put it on.”
I obeyed this too. It was nice to have someone else tell me what to do. Necessary, even.
When I emerged from the bathroom, Mack reached out his hand again. He led me to the next compartment, the one where I had recovered from the surgical removal of my A.E. chip. As soon as I entered it, I let out a little cry.
“Madeline!”
I ran to her, aroused from my stupor, and threw my arms around her cold little neck. She was powered down, so she didn’t respond, but the sight of her burst the seal of my tears. They racked me so hard, my ribs ached.
“But she won’t be the same!” I gasped to Mack, “Liam wiped her clean…”
With a sad smile, Mack pointed at Madeline wordlessly. Perplexed, I turned back to look at my friend, and saw what I’d missed the first time: a note folded around her neck. My name was printed on the front, in Liam’s handwriting.
“I’ll give you some privacy,” Mack murmured, slipping out and closing the door behind him.
Trembling, I sat on the floor beside Madeline, still powered down, and untied the note from around her neck. Mack shut the door behind him. I clutched the note to my chest for a moment, eyes closed. I wasn’t sure I could bear to read it, and yet the anticipation felt like physical oppression.
Finally, I summoned my courage and unfolded the letter.
Rebecca,
You’ll find that Madeline’s functionality is a bit changed: as I write this letter, I am installing a much older operating system on her, and adding in a few morality failsafes—meaning if she deems that your best interests conflict with another person’s rights, she will err on the side of the latter, rather than the former. I am also installing my software upgrade block on her, so that if Jaguar does distribute a creativity upgrade which might put these changes in jeopardy, she won’t be able to access it. But she retains her memory chip, so you will find her personality and her memories with you unchanged. I knew it would be too much to ask you to part with your best friend.