“Bugs?” Brynn asked, realizing that maybe she did ask too many questions.
She silently wished she were as tech savvy as Ty so that she would understand Rusty better.
“Trackers,” she clarified. “I’m not about to take you to our little headquarters with trackers in your blood. That would be asking for those creepy A.I.s to find us.”
Brynn found herself about to ask yet another set of questions about what an A.I. was and how she would have gotten trackers in her system, when Rusty cut her off, obviously sensing more questions.
“You’re clean, as far as I can tell.”
“Brynn?” Ty shouted from around the corner, running down the alleyway with a worried expression on his heavily made up face. “We got worried when you didn’t show up at the train tunnel so we split up to look for you. What happened?” he asked, glancing over at Rusty curiously.
“I’m Rusty,” Rusty said slowly, as if Ty might not understand her if she spoke too fast.
Brynn wondered if she ever managed to get recruits from Halcyon with how condescending she was to the citizens there.
“I’m Ty,” he responded with a puzzled look in her direction.
“Ty, Rusty is from Panurgic. She knows all about A1 and Rachel,” Brynn explained. Ty looked over at the red haired girl again, this time sizing her up. “She’s here to help us get to Panurgic.”
“Is that a bug finder?” he asked her, nodding towards the device in her hand.
“Oh, a smart one!” she exclaimed, practically beaming at him like he were a caged animal who had managed to do a trick.
“I almost made one of those, but I couldn’t quite get it to work,” he told her.
“They’re pretty tricky,” she said almost modestly.
Almost.
“You’d have to be pretty smart to figure it out.”
“You’d actually have to be a genius, but we won’t get into that,” she responded with a shrug.
“So you’re here to take us to Panurgic?” Ty asked, looking very doubtful that this eccentric flame-haired girl could somehow manage to get them across an ocean safely.
“We really shouldn’t be talking here,” Rusty suddenly said, as if remembering a very important fact. “Let’s go back to your hotel room. I have some information I think you guys might need.”
Chapter 10: Alliance
One thing Brynn was very sure of after spending a few hours in the hotel room with Rusty, was that she liked to eat.
A lot.
For such a skinny girl she had already polished off more food than Brynn would eat in a week, and she didn’t look as if she would be slowing down any time soon. Brynn had made introductions when Amber, Bennett, and Jonah had rejoined the group and Rusty barely stopped eating long enough to say hi between mouthfuls of potatoes and bread. The group had all sat around staring at the redhead in awe as they pretended to eat their own food.
Brynn waited uncomfortably for Rusty to begin explaining her plans to them since she had seemed to be in quite the rush to get off of Halcyon back in the alleyway. Still, she knew better than to ask the girl a question, scared she might send her back into a tirade about how ignorant Halcyonites were and how Brynn was on a need to know basis.
“This is the best part of Halcyon,” Rusty finally said, her mouth full and her voice muffled. She wore a content smile as she washed down the food with a large glass of water, her long lanky frame lounging sideways on an arm chair so that her legs dangled over the arm. “I may have to put up with a lot when I’m here, but the food more than makes up for it.”
“Don’t you have food on wherever you’re from?” Amber asked with her arms crossed over her chest. She and Rusty hadn’t gotten off to the best start since the very first thing Rusty had said to her was, “Oh you’re more like a typical Halcyonite. Dumb as a box of rocks.”
“We trade hours in the factory for food, clothes, water… pretty much everything. And since Rift and the rest of us are so busy building up the rebellion, we can’t work in the factories much. We have people in The Alliance specifically assigned to work to provide food for everyone in the house and trust me, it’s not nearly enough,” she said, stuffing another roll into her mouth.
“You can’t ask your wall screen for more?” Bennett asked, making Brynn want to shoot her a look to silence her.
Bennett hadn’t quite understood the concept that Panurgic was very different than Halcyon and every time she spoke, she only solidified Rusty’s belief that people from Halcyon were too pampered to understand what work was.
“We don’t have wall screens,” Rusty said simply, actually being a lot nicer than Brynn had anticipated until she added, “We can’t all expect to get anything we want without anyone to actually make it. Where do you think the material for all your clothes comes from, Princess?”
“Okay, you don’t need to be rude about it,” Brynn interjected.
She was fine with Rusty saying condescending things to her, but not to her friends who honestly didn’t mean any harm.
“I was just stating a fact,” Rusty said, raising her hands up in surrender.
“Why don’t you tell us how you plan to get us to Panurgic,” Jonah said from the corner of the room.
He hadn’t taken his eyes off Rusty since she had gotten there and Brynn could sense the distrust coming off of him in waves. She had recognized his intelligence right away but it didn’t cause Jonah to warm up to her the way Ty had.
“You need to fuse that blue cord to the red one instead and remove the black chip with that yellow dot on it if you really want to disable any tracking linked to the tablet,” Rusty said to Ty, ignoring Jonah’s statement.
It seemed that the only person who was getting along with Rusty was Ty, who shared a love of technology with her.
“That’s brilliant,” he said in awe, quickly following her directions. “I thought I could just override the tracker by hacking into the system.”
“You can but it’s more effective to remove it all together. Just to be safe,” she said, actually smiling at him and giving Brynn a small pang of unexpected jealousy.
“She’s amazing,” Ty said to Brynn. “How do you know so much about technology if Panurgic is so far behind?”
“We’re not far behind. We just don’t use technology for luxury over there like you guys do. We use it for more industrial purposes, which allows me to modify it for my own uses.”
“I still say you’re brilliant,” he responded once more, giving more body to Rusty’s already inflated image of her intelligence. “How did you get involved with this rebellion?” he asked, and much to Brynn’s surprise, Rusty actually answered his question.
At least she knew for future reference who to use to get information from the cryptic girl.
“Rift is our unofficial leader,” Rusty began, still eating as she spoke but finally slowing down after hours of packing food into her system. “He’s about thirty five-ish now, which is quite a feat for someone on Panurgic. We have a high mortality rate compared to you guys. It’s mostly from all of the factory accidents and bad working conditions.”
Rusty spoke about the death toll on Panurgic so candidly that Brynn had to wonder what kind of life this girl must lead to find the topic so unimportant. It occurred to Brynn that her life really may have been more sheltered than she wanted to admit.
“When Rift was little, his parents died in a factory accident and he went out to live in an old boarding house that the city had abandoned a while ago. He’s pretty good with computers too,” she said before quickly adding, “though not as good as me.”
Amber scoffed from the bed but didn’t say anything.
“While he was at this boarding house he learned how to hack into the city’s computer and he somehow managed to stumble across Rachel’s video transmission.”
“So it’s real then,” Jonah said with a grin, looking over at Brynn with excitement lining his features.
The pieces were beginning to fall into place.
“What did it say?” Brynn asked anxiously.
“I’ll have you watch it once we get to Panurgic, but the gist of it was that Rachel had done three things in her attempt to stop Eris but they were only temporary fixes to a long term bug. Like a patch,” she added to Ty who nodded in understanding. “So the person who found her video transmission would be tasked with using this knowledge and Rachel’s attempt to slow Eris down to stop them all together.”
“Oh good, I’m glad she just left us a little job,” Amber said incredulously, voicing exactly what Brynn was thinking.
“I like a good challenge,” Rusty replied with her wide smile. Amber just rolled her eyes. “Rift has been trying to figure out how to take Eris down ever since he found the video, since these stupid tests are pretty much the reason his parents are dead. So he’s been working on this for a long time; taking in data, building up our armory, finding recruits, pretty much anything he can do to outsmart and outnumber her.”
“Good luck outsmarting her,” Brynn said hopelessly, wondering if this girl really understood what they were up against. “She’s pretty smart.”
“We’re smarter,” Rusty said without a hint of sarcasm.
“Where is Rift finding recruits?” Jonah asked.
“He takes in orphans around Panurgic, which is like taking in airheads on Halcyon: they’re everywhere,” she said dramatically. “Factory accidents, bad working conditions, people trying to escape. There are a lot of deaths once people get old enough to realize they can run away from the cities and be better off. That’s how Rift found me,” she said almost proudly. “My parents died in a factory accident too when I was four, so I tried to run away. Built a little vehicle and everything.”
“When you were four?” Ty asked, his voice a mix between awe and skepticism.
“You have to grow up fast on Panurgic,” she answered in her smoky voice. “Rift saw that I was smart and took me in for the cause. He’s good at finding smart orphans who hate Eris… even if they don’t realize it’s her they hate at first. Once we see the video we all know who’s responsible.”
“So this Rift guy just has a giant house full of smart orphans and no one’s suspicious?” Amber asked, not quite buying the story.
“He got an official job change from Factory Worker to Orphanage Guardian so the paperwork would all check out. Once we get old enough to no longer be ‘orphans’ who need care, he lets us stay there under the title of teacher or caregiver.”
“What exactly does Rachel’s video say?” Brynn asked, knowing full well she was changing the topic a bit, but too curious to care at the moment.
“A lot. You’ll just have to watch it,” Rusty said, placing another empty plate in the already large stack on the side table next to her chair.
“What are the three things she did to slow Eris down?” Brynn asked, not giving up easily.
“The first thing is you, obviously,” Rusty said, pointing to Brynn and smiling. “She snuck her DNA into the human creation bay in the hopes that the person who was made from that sample would possess her knowledge… or at least enough of her knowledge to finish what she started.”
“And the other two things?” Jonah asked, as enthralled with this story as Brynn was.
“The second was the video transmission so that she could build a group of followers who knew the truth and knew that Eris had to be destroyed,” Rusty said, ticking the second thing off on her finger. “And the third was something about home.”
“Something about home?” Brynn asked, wishing Rusty wasn’t so impossible to get information from.
“The video very conveniently cuts out on that part,” Rusty said. “I don’t know if Eris somehow found the video and managed to sabotage it, or it really was bad timing that the video didn’t pick up the last thing.”
“Eris didn’t do it,” Brynn said confidently. “She wants to know what the third thing is just as badly as I do.”
“All I know, is that Rachel said something about the way home,” Rusty said with a shrug, patting her stomach that still didn’t look any bigger than it had when she began her epic feast.
She twisted her long red hair around her finger so that the blonde tips stuck out like a bouquet of fiery flowers.
“The way home,” Brynn repeated, thinking back to her nightmares. “Eris said something about that in one of Rachel’s memories.”
“What did she say?” Jonah asked, walking over to Brynn and placing a hand on her shoulder.
“She asked Rachel if she couldn’t go home. If she had done something to keep them from going home,” she said, trying desperately to remember but finding that her crippling headache instantly came back when she attempted to recall the information.
She placed a hand over her forehead and closed her eyes against the pain, trying not to draw attention to the episode.
Ty shot her a worried look but Rusty looked thrilled with the revelation.
“See? This is exactly why we need you,” she exclaimed happily. “You’ve got insider information that will help us fill in the missing pieces.”
“Glad I can help,” Brynn said, dropping her hand from her head as the pain passed.
“So, shall we go?” Rusty finally said, the grin never leaving her interesting face.
“Go where?” Bennett asked.
“To Panurgic,” she answered with a hint of annoyance.
“You still haven’t told us how you plan to get us there,” Jonah pointed out.
“Are we going through the Worker tunnels?” Ty asked.
“We’re definitely not taking their train unless we want to get killed,” she said.
“Just tell us,” Brynn practically shouted, her temper growing short in the presence of this mysterious and frustrating new player in their game.
“We’ll go under water.”
Chapter 11: Under
The trek to Rusty’s underwater machine took long enough to instill in the group a deep-seated belief that the machine in question, in fact, did not exist. They left Eastern Metropolis the same way they had gone to find the Worker transport tunnel, but continued on far past the rocky cliff that jutted out from the rest of the landscape.
Bennett and Amber were skittish of the trip from the beginning, not having ever been in the ocean like the rest of the group. Even walking along the beach seemed to take all of the courage they possessed and Amber eyed the turbulent salt water suspiciously as if it might suddenly take shape and chase after her.
After the group had been walking for several hours, the novelty of the whole adventure was quickly wearing off.
“Rusty, are we getting close?” Bennett asked from the back of the group, pulling on the straps of her backpack.
They had all taken a few minutes to pack any supplies they might need which, to Bennett, meant more clothes than she could carry. Luckily, seeing her friend’s choice in “supplies” Amber had displayed a rare moment of responsibility by packing more food and supplies than clothes.
“We’re almost there,” the red haired girl called back in her husky voice.
Rusty’s backpack consisted entirely of food and she had explained to the group that it was her responsibility to bring as much food back to Panurgic as she could to ensure that their little band of rebels didn’t starve to death.
“Is it really this far away?” Brynn asked, growing more and more suspicious of Rusty’s true intentions the farther away from the city she took them.
The landscape had already turned from the wide open sandy beach, to a coastline filled with rocky walls and inlets.
Brynn had to admit to herself that she wouldn’t be at all surprised if Rusty wasn’t a genius recruiter from The Alliance at all and was, in fact, just a crazy person who had persuaded a gullible group of people to follow her to their deaths. It was amazing how similar a genius and a psychopath were.
“We’ve been walking for hours.” Brynn stated dryly.
“I had to keep it far from the city so the A.I.s wouldn’t
find it,” she explained, once again using her strange name for the Workers. Brynn opened her mouth to ask Rusty why she used the odd name when she was quickly cut off by Rusty’s proud, “Aha!”
“Is this it?” Ty asked, looking skeptically at what appeared to be nothing more than a pile of seaweed and old foliage hanging on a rocky outcropping.
“Of course not, silly,” Rusty said, ruffling Ty’s hair affectionately before sweeping the green cover from the mouth of a cave majestically. “It’s hiding.”
Brynn and Jonah exchanged wary glances but followed the strange girl dutifully into the dark cave.
“This place looks like a dead end to most people,” she shouted over the sound of rushing water, causing Brynn to wonder if she was mentally stable. “But it actually lets out into a big open cavern with a lake inside.”
“And your machine is in the lake?” Brynn yelled back, finding that her voice was almost completely drowned out by the quickly intensifying volume of the waves crashing against the walls of the rock outside.
“It’s not really a lake,” Rusty called back in her I’m a genius and you aren’t voice. “It’s an air pocket in the rock. The water is part of the ocean and I just drive my beautiful Bucket right under the rock.”
“She calls the machine The Bucket?” Brynn heard Bennett whisper behind her back.
“Doesn’t inspire much confidence,” Amber agreed as the sound of the waves began to fade the deeper they walked into the dark, wet, stone passageway.
Eventually the group was engulfed in complete silence as Rusty pulled a flashlight from her backpack and shone it around the large empty cavern she had described to them. The ceiling of the cave was high though the walls seemed narrow and quickly made Brynn feel claustrophobic. A steady dripping was the only sound to be heard in the peaceful yet eerie space.
“Where is it?” Ty asked, obviously excited by the prospect of such advanced technology.
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