“What do you want?”
“What did you think could get me to work with you?” Rush would have to dive soon if he wanted to make it beyond the base’s walls, but he had to know what Warren thought could sway his allegiance. With each second, though, the remaining path of escape seemed too easy as to not be a trap.
“Right. I tried to kill you, threatened your wife, made you a slave. Dust to dust. You killed me. I get it. We’re no bud to bud, but who else do you have? You want to save your cheating wife? I can do that. She’s surrounded and losing power by the second. Want more than her safety? I can remove the nanobots from her blood. You, too, if you like. Give you a normal life anywhere you want inside our country. Help me take down my father and I’ll give you a leadership position in our new world.”
So, replace one tyrant with another. He’d take his chances. Warren’s M-MANs couldn’t have covered the whole base by now. It was good to hear he had a way of cleansing the nanos from his system. When he swayed the leverage back in his favor that would be near the top of his demands.
“Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
Rush harnessed his EM into the center of his body, dropped to a fast squat, and pushed his power through his heels into the floor. The ground opened up and swallowed him whole.
8 - Star
“Do you remember Fisher’s death?”
Of course I do, Star thought back to the rude voice in the dark.
Memory took her back to the shiver of terror she awoke to as Rush screamed her name the night her son died.
Still mostly drunk from her night out with Oya, she woke to the head pounding, stomach curdling need to vomit and drink a full bottle of Tower Spring.
“No!” Rush’s voice broke into a wail. Something was terribly wrong.
His sobs drove tent stakes into her heart with each stumbling step she took toward the curtain hanging between their room and the main section of their shanty.
The eastern quarter of their home had collapsed under sandspill.
The area where Fisher slept.
Star lost feeling in her legs and collapsed.
Rush clawed frantically at the sand wall as more spilled in from the hole in their ceiling. He turned to ran to the chest behind her, mouth moving but without producing sound. She should get up. Force a miracle. Jump into the sand and get her son. It was too late. The weight alone would have crushed his tiny body. If it happened fifteen seconds ago it would have been too late. Maybe she was just justifying the fear that kept her from lifting the world off her shoulders.
Rush jumped over her, having changed from his robe to a dive suit. The hum of its power source droned in and out between Star’s sobs. Rush dove in. He exited in a backward slide with their boy clutched to his chest.
Rush spit sand. “No. No. No…” he mumbled, turning their son over. He pumped palm to chest. “Please, no. Fish. Please.”
Star’s throat ached as she tried to push weight from her lungs. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Fatigue pressed her down. Her eyes became dry rocks torched by the sun. Time slowed with each pump on their son’s precious, unresponsive chest.
Star sucked in a ragged, howling breath, as though hoping it would transfer into her son’s lungs. It did not. Rush stopped pumping, staring at Fish’s limp form. Star’s heart pumped a beat she wished could end her as well. Instead, time passed with the carving of a blade’s tip on her soul, opening her up to a world she didn’t want and couldn’t escape.
The slow glare Rush lifted her way severed the last strands of hope. He would not help her. If he could, his stare promised to make life worse. He clutched her son against his chest and sloshed through the sand flooded in their doorway.
The voice spoke again from the shadows. “So without Rush to help you through that time, whom did you have?”
Star thought of Justice Stone standing over her, the soft glow of morning lighting his coat and badge. He knelt down as soon as he saw her open eyes, slid his hands under her head and leg and lifted her up. New sobs opened up from within. Another round of pain.
“I’m so sorry, Star.”
She tried to ask if Fish was still alive, but again her voice failed her. If Colorado wanted to perform a miracle, he could do it without her request spoken. If Colorado were anything more than stars in the sky.
But he wasn’t.
And she was left to cry on the man she didn’t marry, thinking with every whimper and breath of his leather that maybe she’d chosen the wrong one. Maybe choice was an illusion imagined by fools.
9 – Nedzad
The black gloss of M-MANs spread closer to Nedzad’s feet. In the opposite direction, the computer screen’s light cast over what looked like a hole in the floor. He cupped the thumb drive and the apple and jumped. Hands planted at his sides, he passed through into a dark room. His foot hit something hard, twisting his ankle as he fell. His side hit the ground hard and he lost his grip on the apple and thumb drive. He swept his hands out until he brushed the thumb drive, scooped it up, and spread a wider net. He rolled the apple with his wrist, reached back to catch it, and stood. His left ankle barked at the bearing of weight.
Great.
He stretched up on his calf and rotated the ankle in circles, feeling pops and a pull on the sore tendon.
He bumped the same object he’d fallen off. The flat surface and height indicated a table. He backed up and reached around the wall until he found a door handle. Outside, the darkness continued unabated.
Above, tinkling metal pursued.
He pushed the door shut behind him and staggered on against the pain in his ankle, a new nuisance to go with the gripping soreness in his side and shoulder where Rush had shot him with the DL. Add to all that, he was going the wrong way. LL5 was the lowest level. They didn’t keep suits down this far. The armory on LL3 and lockers in the Depository were the closest in this section.
But he wasn’t going that way without a bounty of weapons. He turned right and hobbled with his hands outstretched.
His shoulder didn’t take the uplifted posture for long, and he resorted to a kind of midfieldman cradling a skinball, bouncing from wall to wall as though they were his blockers, until he found the stairwell at the far west end. Parched and dripping sweat, he pulled open the door to the generator-lit stairwell from single lights per floor. Seeing light and knowing the surface was free from M-MANs allowed him to enjoy a single relaxed breath. Then it was back to movement, his body protesting as he scaled the first of many steps.
His stomach cramped at the food he’d eaten, and his throat was parched, but he made it up the five stories to the main level and turned the handle on the door atop the stairs leading north. The hallway outside crossed left and right, with right heading north. A sign on the ceiling read A Way. He could take that over to 9th Crossing and get his next suit from Armory D. His ankle burned but he pushed on.
He made it to the door to the locker room he’d entered with Rush not long ago. He didn’t want to chance using his old password in case Star or Rush had locked him out, and then would identify where he was, so he used one of the five he created. The door unlocked and he went in.
He gathered a new suit from the locker beside where he’d taken the last one and took it to the computer desk overlooking the open room viewable by the thick window. He stuck his thumb drive in the computer’s USB port and started it up. The system hummed and he checked his ankle. It was a little swollen but he’d gone on with worse. He put his suit on and sat before the computer. In the cove between the desk and the wall to his right was a cabinet. He opened it and found bottled water and MRE’s. He took a bottle and twisted it open while the screen displayed the computer desktop. The image on the screen was a picture of an American flag jostled by the wind at the top of its pole. The base he was in now sat in the backdrop, uncovered by sand. White clouds caressed the blue sky above the building and mountains beyond. That’s what he was here for, to protect the information within Fort Pope so that his country could ris
e again to such beauty.
No, that’s what you tell yourself so Jules’ brother doesn’t rise from the grave to eat your soul.
Either way, it sounded like a good idea. All he’d cared about for so long was Jules, but now she was dead. In her wake, shame and her letter implored him to fight for her memory and what she’d died for.
The spinning circle cursor was taking forever to quit thinking.
He looked at the flag on the screen. Unlike the suits Jules’ brother and friends had, and Rush and the Springstonites, the suit he’d put on had a patch on the right sleeve. This was what their diving ability was meant to be, a power given to unite and defend those who called this land home.
Home.
The loss of his parents before he had but a small handful of memories of them, as well as the way he and Jules always kept on the move, gave little more meaning to the word home than the place where he wrestled for sleep. He’d come this far hoping to find Jules waiting for him. With a place they could finally rest and make their own.
A tear broke through his defenses.
He didn’t want to start from scratch. As much as it hurt to live as the murderer of his wife’s brother, at least he had a reason for breathing. Now that the woman he woke to comfort and protect was dead—proclaiming his life’s work a failure—was he supposed to take the same kind of motivation from protecting a home that had done nothing but punish and attempt to end his life since it began?
The cursor turned from circle to arrowhead.
Funny that the people who conquered this land used a symbol of their victim’s tool for fighting as their instrument for continued dominance.
Focus.
Okay, first, perimeter check. He clicked subdirectories and opened folders until a box opened on the screen listing all the locked doors. A few were ones he’d had Avery cut open with the sunbolt.
The door he’d entered Fort Pope showed as open. He clicked on the recent activity. The top line read 4/12/2251 00:14 MF LAB S CPU 01 unlock Visitor Entry Exterior. The line below read 4/11/2251 00:07 MF LAB S CPU 03 lock Visitor Entry Exterior.
That was his command.
Which meant if his CPU was 03, then two to his left, the one that had unlocked the Employee SW Entrance Exterior door…
Dixon.
The younger sand diver. The one who’d watched him when the boy didn’t think he noticed. Nedzad had just thought him curious.
It was much worse.
He was the scorpion waiting in the toes of their boot.
10 - Cool (1:11 am, Saturday, April 12th)
Cool watched the red glow from Dixon’s dive light shake up and down the concrete hall. Anything to take focus from the barbwire sensation wrapping around his thighs and lower back; every step forward, every twist dug their blades deeper into muscle. Fear of metallic, grown-from-the-ground, canines forming behind him and lunging to clamp razors into his calves kept him running far past when he would have given up. Strangely, his head felt good. As though being fed by cool sunshine and the whisperings of a quiet morning before the sun’s oppression turned them into moving bags of sweat.
Since leaving Rush behind at the wall between Denver Ave and Fort Pope, they’d seen a Jeep, which Dixon tried and said was dead. We’d need a battery, he’d said. He’d also found a map, but had kept it, which was fine since he was the one with the light.
They’d traveled through a maze of turns and Cool wondered, even as he ran, whether Dixon had missed a turn and sent them on a trip back to Fort Pope. Or worse, (worse?), into an endless connection of tunnels that never reached the surface, water, or food.
Dixon said these tunnels were built soon after their planet was nearly destroyed, according to a book he found on a scavenge. He said he didn’t think anyone lived or walked down here, and hadn’t for a long time. They hadn’t seen anyone yet, but that didn’t stop Cool from thinking every corner hid the first of many walking corpses rumors foretold.
Cool didn’t have a watch, but Dixon mentioned their trek passing five hours some time ago.
His brother, Jeff’s heavy steps dragged to a halt behind him. “I can’t.”
Cool slowed and looked back at his bent-over brother hidden in the shadowy depth. The red light illumined his sweat-damp, curly hair. Jeff gripped his left arm at the elbow and moaned.
Mom knelt over him, rubbing his back. She looked up, spotted Cool watching, then gazed past him. “Hold up!”
The dim light reflecting on the ceiling lost its shake, then brightened as it focused their way. Cool turned around to see Dixon facing them.
Dixon lifted a canteen to his mouth as he walked toward them. He gasped and wiped his mouth. “We’re only a few hours away.”
A few hours? Cool’s confidence fell to the ground. His body was sure to follow—surely within the hour, more likely less—and Viky would have to carry him, much to his shame. Their friendship had grown in the red-bled darkness of these halls, so he figured she would, but he didn’t want her to. She had to be tired, too.
Dixon handed the canteen to his young wife, Carroll, who’d also befriended Viky, as evidenced by the matching buzz cuts and sweat darkened tank tops from their haul at Fort Pope. Back when they’d all filled their canteens, after Rush collapsed the roof and before the M-MANs turned the rubble into animated hands. Since then, Cool had barely taken ten cap-fulls, which made him resent Dixon wiping excess from his chin.
“All the more reason to give Jeff a break,” Cool’s mom said. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
“My arm. My head. My chest. It hurts.”
Cool was tired of his brother’s whining. Kid acted like he was half Cool’s age with all the complaining. Yes, Jeff had had his arm stuck in a wall crawling with M-MANs, but Rush had saved him. His suit’s power had done exactly that, both on Jeff and himself. If Rush had thought the M-MANs could come back, he wouldn’t have let Cool and everyone go.
Right?
“Let me see.” Dixon stopped in front of Jeff and gently nudged him to stand straight. When he did, Dixon gently pushed up Jeff’s sleeve. He lifted his visor and shined the red light on Jeff’s arm from elbow to the tips of his fingers, over several gashes. He pressed Jeff’s fingers back, then bent his wrist down.
Jeff moaned.
“It’s okay,” Dixon said. “Rush’s EM field used to free Jeff has left some burns in the cuts. These wounds need cleaned, but you’ll be fine until we get a chance to settle in.”
“Where are we going to settle in?” Mom asked. “I feel lost as a thrown rat.”
“Our goal will be to get a handle on the hospital. Use the pellets I found, and begin the first non-governor run hospital in our lifetimes.”
“Soon to be the newest governor run hospital,” Viky said.
Dixon’s light caught all the tiny hairs of her buzz cut on the front half of her head. And the curl in her bicep as she snapped off a bite of jerky. She was strong on the outside, but he could tell it was more a shell to protect her than it was an image of her heart. She was as good as they came, as evidenced by how she stayed at the rear with him, asking about his life before the explosion.
“I have a plan to keep him and his brigands out,” Dixon said. “We won’t be opening up for business tomorrow or anything.”
“Pretty sure it’s already tomorrow,” Cool said. “Can’t we sleep and continue after?” His exhaustion might have lapped his fear of what might come out from the dark when he closed his eyes.
Dixon shook his head. “Sorry. Once we get there, I promise.”
“What about his chest,” Mom interrupted. “His head?”
No matter that Jeff complained about his head every day of his life, their mom always treated him as though hearing it for the first time. Cool loved her for that, but maybe resented that her care for Jeff always stole from care for him.
Dixon lowered his visor over his eyes and clicked off his dive light. Pitch black enveloped the tunnel save for the bulbs burned into Cool’s vision. After a few seconds,
when Cool’s heartbeat seemed to have fallen down a hole, Dixon said, “I don’t see anything worth worrying about.” He clicked his dive light back on and looked Jeff in the eye. “You drinking your water?”
Jeff reached for the canteen clipped to his combat vest.
Dixon beat him to it, tapping the heavier weight than Cool had in his. “What are you waiting for? This is all yours.” He took it off the clip and unscrewed the cap. “Drink.”
Jeff never did like to drink water. Guy was weird.
But he obeyed. Dixon was about six years older and one of the most respected sand divers in Springston. Easily Rush’s best student. Cool would have obeyed, too.
“A little more.” Dixon tipped back the canteen when Jeff had tried lowering it from his mouth. Jeff choked. “Okay, that’s enough.” Dixon took the canteen and screwed it closed. “Back on the hump.”
He took the rolled up map out of a front zipper on his suit.
“Can I see?” Cool moved to fit between Viky and Dixon before she closed the gap. She bumped his shoulder but backed off, twisting a small smile down at him as she found a way for both of them to see.
Dixon pointed over the center of the map. “We’re here. The hospital is there. Like I said, we can make it in a few hours if we keep a good pace and stay hydrated.” He directed that last comment over his shoulder at Jeff who was half as excited about the jerky in his mouth as Cool was to have to walk for a few more hours.
Colorado, don’t let him start jogging again.
11 - Star
Star sat in the corner room of Oya’s tower apartment, Rush’s blue dive suit draped over her lap and a needle and thread ready for her to cut the next loop. The window across the room overlooked Springston’s southern sprawl, where workers poured cement into metal-net frames to solidify walls for new levels atop smaller towers.
There’s a man with his priorities straight, she thought, watching them sweat and pour precious water so they could avoid the poverty of Shantytown’s stacked turtle style of housing. If Rush weren’t more focused on diving than providing for his family, maybe he could have bought them a place higher than Avery’s, and farther north. The school offered to pay him enough.
Scavenger: A.I.: (Sand Divers, Book Two) Page 4