Resistance: Divided Elements (Book 1)

by Mikhaeyla Kopievsky

  She is no longer looking at a troupe of Air Elemental Dancers. She is looking at the death throes of a Peacekeeper corp.

  Another shout rings out from somewhere in the crowd opposite her. Arms shoot up in the air, hands curled into fists. Again, a distant voice rises above the excited chattering of the crowd. High-pitched and melodic, it carries clearly to Anaiya, a single wail.

  “Resistance!”

  The word sets off a flurry of movement: the troupe spring to their feet, disband and melt into the crowd. Anaiya screams at herself to follow them, any of them, but her feet remain rooted to the spot.

  She closes her eyes, blocking out the sight of the crowd and their reactions. Slowly a smile creeps at the corners of her lips. She lowers her arm and taps the screen of her wristplate to conclude her recording.

  She doesn’t need to follow the Dancers. They are irrelevant. She has caught something much more important. She smiles because she has recognised that voice, that unique, rebellious, Heterodox voice.

  It is Rehhd’s.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE RUN to the Western Cardinal Area and Peacekeepers’ headquarters is a buzz of plans and ideas, opportunities and expectations. Anaiya did not linger at the scene of the performance, her exit assisted by the rapid dissipation of the crowd. She briefly looked around for Seth and Kaide – feeling shades of disappointment, relief and curiosity at finding neither.

  The conflicting emotions fade as she moves further away from the riverside, closer to the Peacekeeper headquarters. Reaching it, Anaiya barely glances at the imposing facade as she strides through the crowded courtyard and into the foyer. Forsaking the lift, she takes the service stairs two at a time, relishing the fever in her legs and her lungs.

  She is early. Her wristplate message to Niamh was sent ten minutes ago, telling him she would be there in twenty. It doesn’t matter; she will use her time alone to collect her thoughts and sharpen her plan of attack into something coherent and failsafe.

  As she advances towards the door of their assigned meeting room, she works over the facts her mission has uncovered.

  She knows that Rehhd is the leader of the Resistance. And that Eamon, Cress and Kaide are involved. Seth, too, possibly – although not as deep. He holds less angst than the others. Is more thoughtful. Less likely to be intimidated or enamoured into staying with a doomed rebellion. Too independent to follow Rehhd’s, or anyone’s, lead. The tension between him and the other three all but confirms his distance from the Resistance’s core.

  She steps into the meeting room with her thoughts full of Seth and it takes a moment for her ears to pick up on the low-pitched, muffled sounds. She pulls her mind from its reverie and looks around. And then she sees Niamh. With Jenna.

  It’s easy to ignore their intimacy, to pass it off as another Fire flirtation. She opens her mouth to announce her news, when Jenna looks up.

  It is not the way her arm drapes languidly over Niamh’s shoulder. Nor is it the way his eyes are clouded with desire. It is her smile. That self-satisfied, smug, arrogant, intimately infuriating smile, that pricks at Anaiya’s neurons.

  She will not share her finding with Jenna.

  “Ani.” Niamh’s voice is deeper and softer than what it was radiating down the silver links of her lifeline. “What have you got?”

  He is so casual. So certain that she will play her usual role of obedient subordinate. The one who always comes second.

  Not this time.

  If nothing, her regular betrayals – by Niamh, by Seth – have taught her to be a little rebellious.

  “There’s been an incident in the Northern Area,” she states perfunctorily. Like a good little Peacekeeper.

  “We’ve heard,” he says, his hand running down Jenna’s back and gripping at the soft convex between her ribs and hip. “Jenna’s Peacekeepers were able to detain some spectators – view the recordings on their wristplates.”

  So, they have some intel.

  “Any identity matches?” she asks casually.

  “No,” he says. “We were hoping you could fill in the blanks.”

  Anaiya feels a small spark of satisfaction seeing Jenna’s face sour at Niamh’s admission, but she resists showing it openly.

  “I retrieved the same intel,” she says instead, the lie sweet on her lips, her wristplate heavy with secrets.

  Niamh nods, as if that is to be expected. “OK,” he says, finally stepping away from Jenna. “We need to identify the Heterodox.”

  He moves to the wallscreen, bringing it to life with a cursory swipe against its surface. The other Peacekeepers, the ones in the initial meeting whose names Anaiya promptly forgot, saunter into the room. Identical in their kevlar and nonchalant expressions, they seem an extension of the Dancers Anaiya had just gazed upon.

  Niamh is speaking, his authoritative voice reverberating against the walls of the small room. He is outlining his plan. Anaiya is not listening. She is developing plans of her own.

  * * *

  SITTING ALONE IN HER APARTMENT, Anaiya plays her wristplate recording over and over again on the small wallscreen. Not the whole recording: the first three viewings had confirmed that there was no way of identifying the street performers.

  “Resistance!”

  The five-second sample runs on an infinite loop. Again and again, Anaiya hears Rehhd’s voice ring out over the crowd. Watches as the crowd startles and the performers disband.

  The forbidden word still sits uneasily with Anaiya, but it no longer causes her body to respond so violently. She lies back on her small bed, closes her eyes and lets the voice bounce around her, forming the soundtrack to her coalescing thoughts.

  * * *

  ENTERING the Lavoir an hour later is like exhaling a deep breath. She immediately acclimatises to the familiar environment, her senses soaking up the cool air and soft light, her mind and body shifting to a calmer mode.

  With each step she makes through the space, her eyes sweep the izakaya crowd, appraising the scene and its players with a cold and calculating eye. She is here for Kaide. Mostly. Other motivations lurk in the deeper recesses of her mind, but she keeps them at bay while her neocortex sifts through more urgent information.

  She spies him at the far end of the bar, running a hand absently over the smooth graphene countertop while holding court with a small group. Scythe leans next to him, while Cressida sits fiddling with her orange tunic on the sole bar stool. Scythe sees her first, elbowing Kaide in the ribs. He pauses mid-sentence to frown at her before following her gaze to Anaiya’s approach.

  At the interruption, the others follow Kaide’s gaze. The unfamiliar Elementals – an older male in his seventh lustrum with sharp features, a female in her fourth lustrum with lazy, drug-hazed eyes, and another fourth-lustrum Trainee still in the grey-tinted threads of his Premie uniform – seem unconcerned with her.

  The others are clearly more moved by her unexpected appearance. Scythe wrinkles her nose as if assaulted by a foul smell. Cress’s fingers lock together in a fierce grip, belying the faint smile that feathers at her lips. And Kaide. Kaide blinks away his obvious surprise and attempts to welcome her with a smile. It ends as a grimace.

  “Anaiya,” he says, his typically deep voice pitching high.

  “Hi,” she says calmly, smiling at him and the others.

  He throws a quick glance at Scythe, who sighs openly and announces too loudly, “I tire of this place; who wants to go to Penultimate?”

  The others nod their general assent and take their leave of Kaide. Cress touches Anaiya’s arm as she passes. “It’s good to see you again, Anaiya.” Her voice is small, and while the words seem genuine, they are cold and empty without the familiar ‘Nisha’.

  Anaiya feels a small twinge grab at her core, a prick in the space between her heart and solar plexus. She nods gently at Cress and pauses in her one-eyed mission to watch her follow the others through the izakaya. For some reason the horror she feels for the Resistance does not extend to this pixie.
>
  “So,” Kaide says, pulling her attention back to him. “How’re things?”

  Anaiya laughs lightly. “Since our very awkward meeting at the riverside?”

  Kaide surprises her by smiling. “Yes,” he says. “Since then.”

  “Where did you and Seth go? I went to look for you after the performance, but it was chaos out there.”

  “We got caught up in the crowd as well,” he replies, the small smile fading to a shadow.

  Anaiya shrugs, nodding her easy acceptance. He could be telling the truth or it could be another deception, but either way she is unconcerned. She is not here looking for intel. “I love this song,” she says, tilting her head towards the ceiling.

  It is a lie, of course. She has never heard the song before. Although listening to it now, she feels her body move imperceptibly to its rhythm and melody. “That one sound,” she says, finding a quirk in the music she can exploit. “It sounds so familiar…”

  Kaide frowns in concentration, lowering his head to eradicate other sensory distractions so that he can focus on the soundwaves.

  “Shame there isn’t a wristplate app that lets you compare sounds and search for matches…” She says it softly, letting it hang between them, waiting for him to hear it, to process it.

  He raises his head and looks at her. “Maybe not a wristplate app…But I do have a prototype sound development device that needs some more beta testing.”

  * * *

  KAIDE LEADS Anaiya through the streets marking the western border of the precinct. The buildings are eclectic, a random mix of high-density residential and Air-dominated commercial. As they pass a six-storey apartment block, coloured baubles hanging from window lintels, shiny curtains rustling in the faint breeze, Anaiya spies a flash of red at the base of the facade. Kaide keeps walking undeterred, but Anaiya looks more closely. It is a remnant of a Heterodox mural, a spot the Special Ops Forensics have missed.

  “So this device,” she starts. “Have you been working on it long?”

  “A few months,” he says. “In between commissions.”

  “It’s a private project?”

  “Of sorts…What sort of jobs are you working on at the moment? Any interesting commissions?”

  The question takes her by surprise. It is a simple question and on any other day, with any other Elemental, she would not have thought twice before doling out her backstory response. But the circumstances are not simple. This is Kaide asking her, smiling at her and helping her out. The same Kaide who for a week has been scowling at her and judging her with a wary eye.

  Anaiya glances at him sideways. Is he playing her? What exactly does he know?

  “I’ve got a small commission for a Water company in the Western Cardinal Area,” she says, testing his reaction. “An advertising piece.”

  Kaide nods his head but doesn’t say anything; either he buys it or he’s waiting for her to say something. It’s a classic interrogation technique used by Truthseekers.

  I wonder how many times he was interrogated before he learned it…

  She lets the silence hang for a little bit.

  OK. I’ll play.

  “It’s pretty average…” she continues, turning to look at him. “Do you ever get the feeling that you lost a part of your…identity after hypoxia? That you’ll never be as good as you used to be?”

  Kaide’s cool demeanour fails, but he recovers quickly. He slows his pace and turns to look at her. “Is that what you think?”

  “Sometimes. Maybe. I don’t know…” And, strangely, she is telling the truth. “What did you do before your hypoxia?”

  “Pretty much the same. I just do it for different customers.”

  He points out a squat, rubber-clad, three-storey building ahead. “That’s my workspace– we’ll grab the prototype and then we can head out to test it.”

  “How exactly does it work?” she asks as they enter the building’s foyer.

  The door slams behind her, and the sudden transition between the afternoon light and windowless interior renders Anaiya blind. Slowly her eyes adjust to the dim lighting, peeling back the darkness to reveal the room’s details.

  And in that moment, she forgets everything. Forgets her question and the fact that she is still waiting for Kaide to answer it. Forgets her suspicion that Kaide is interrogating her. Forgets that Kaide is even there with her.

  In front of her, a mosaic of tiny photovoltaic cells is amassed on the distant wall. Streams of muted light, amplified by convex glass lenses pitting the opposite wall, run in haphazard patterns across the tiles. The pathways of light, created by the movement of the lenses within their sockets, light up the cells they hit, sending them flashing to a new colour and pattern.

  As they walk closer, heading to the nearby stairwell, Anaiya realises that each cell is a glass screen, broadcasting a random selection of static Graphics, music visualisations and digital stories. Each cell fragmenting to a new display with each new hit of sunlight.

  She stops, transfixed – her eyes roaming the cells and delighting when they catch the light triggering a new offering.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Kaide says.

  Anaiya tears her eyes away from the sight before her, looking over to where Kaide has already ascended the first few steps.

  “Very,” she says, looking back one last time before joining him.

  A clattering above warns of someone descending towards them and they move to the far left of the stairwell. An older Elemental, of short stature and dressed in the neutral polyester tones preferred by Water Elementals, brushes past them without greeting.

  Of course.

  The building is a shared workspace for Air and Water Elementals, perfect for collaborations that meld artistic vision with technological advances.

  Which would explain the foyer piece. And the soundmatching prototype.

  Armed with her new understanding, Anaiya peers into the rooms greeting them as they exit the stairwell. Open doors afford glimpses of tricked-up three-dimensional printers, choreography tracking operations, and holographic experiments. Sounds of excited chatter from Air Elementals and sober murmurings of Water Elementals follow her and Kaide as they approach the room at the far end of the hallway.

  Unlike the others, the door to this room is closed, hiding its contents securely away. Anaiya’s eyes scan the adjacent area, seeking the swipe panel out of habit, but finding nothing.

  “Synthflies flutter beyond the Border Wall.”

  Anaiya flicks her head back to Kaide, a frown creasing her brow and question forming at her lips.

  “What did –?”

  She doesn’t get a chance to finish. A loud click sounds and the heavy door swings inwards.

  Kaide strides in and Anaiya mutely follows, turning her head to stare at the interior wall, her eyes finding a familiar electronic gauge lit with the moving line of a sound visualisation.

  “Oooof!” she exclaims, running into the solid, unmoving mass of Kaide’s back. “What the fuck?”

  A deep chuckle erupts in the room.

  “Tch, tch, tch. Language, butterfly.”

  Kaide steps aside. Sitting on a deeply recessed windowsill, feet propped against one side, back resting against the other, is Seth.

  “What are you doing here?” Kaide asks, voicing the same question pinging in Anaiya’s mind.

  “I’m here to see you,” Seth replies before nodding towards Anaiya. “What are you doing here?”

  Anaiya pauses, wary that Seth will see through any attempt to lie. “Kaide’s helping me with a project.”

  “Is he?”

  Kaide grunts as he moves towards a long table pushed up against the adjacent wall. “You asked me to play nice. I’m playing nice.”

  Anaiya raises an eyebrow at Seth who matches her gaze evenly.

  “Here,” Kaide interrupts, handing her a small black box. The glass of its upper face is split in two.

  “Double tap here to record the sound you’re interested in,” he says, tapp
ing on the left-hand segment. The screen comes to life and a soundline appears, undulating to the sound of Kaide scratching his fingernail on a nearby tabletop. A single tap on the line ceases its movement, capturing the wavelength’s unique pattern.

  “And then double tap here to record possible matches,” he says, tapping on the right-hand segment. Again the narrow flatline appears, sparking to life as Kaide rubs his hand along the rough material of his jeans.

  “Merge the two together,” he says, pinching his thumb and index finger across the screen, dragging the two wavelengths together. They shimmer together as one double-line extent across the full screen.

  “Eighty-two per cent,” Kaide says, stating aloud the number that has flashed on the screen.

  Anaiya is silent. Her heartbeat threatens to escape its cage. She fears looking at either Kaide or Seth, certain they will see her unparalleled joy, the culmination of her mission, her impending success.

  She stills her thoughts, willing herself to focus on the one obstacle still in her way. Her hand itches to grab it from him, to secure it in her sweating palms and retreat with it in search of Rehhd.

  How am I going to do this?

  Her original plan had been to break into the workspace with her Peacekeeper access and retrieve the device after everyone had left, but the sound recognition entry has killed that option. Now, her only other alternative seems undone by her own cover story. It would be so simple for Kaide to ask the name of the song Anaiya had chosen at the izakaya, to search out the soundmatches himself. She needs to give him a reason for her to take the device – a chance for her to experiment on her own.

  “Here,” he says holding the device out to her.

  She looks up at him, surprise evident on her face. He takes her hand and deposits the small box in her palm.