by S J Taylor
Never.
Until now.
He was afraid of me, and what I was about to do.
End him.
My kick missed as my concentration slipped and my calm broke apart into shards that cut deeply into my soul. I had been about to kill these men. Each of them, with a cold and calculating precision.
That was not who I was. I was not the living weapon that the Restored Society had tried to make me.
Except, they were going to kill me.
They were going to kill Jadran.
Control yourself, I thought over my own rapid heartbeat and shaky breaths. Ross held me like a ragdoll while I tried to clear my head. The Freemen were misguided and scared and they just needed to see that me and Jadran weren’t the enemy. Hard to do, if I killed their leader.
Just be yourself, I thought. Be who you are. You are Era Rae.
Take a breath.
You own yourself. You are in control. No one else.
Take a breath.
Right. I am Era Rae.
Breathe.
Be yourself.
In Commander Ross’s hands I dangled a good foot off the floor. He stared at me like I was something he’d never seen before.
Then he smiled.
“Well,” he said. “Looks like you might be useful to us Freemen after all. Welcome, little Miss, to the resistance.”
He set me down gently. Then he turned to his two men, one of them still standing there with his knife up and ready to defend himself, and the other one whimpering in pain on the floor.
“Will you two stupeheads get up?” Ross growled at them. “You’re embarrassing us.”
“Are you all right?”
Jadran and I got the grand tour of New Merica, as the Freemen called their camp, right after Commander Ross decided not to kill us. Don’t get me wrong, I was plenty glad about that, but in the back of my mind I knew the only reason he was letting us stay around was because of the ingrained programming the Restored Society had put into my DNA before I was born. Or maybe after I was born. I didn’t know.
I tried so very, very hard to keep that part of me buried, but more times than not I found I needed it. I needed to be the other part of Era Rae.
I needed to be all of me, is I guess what it came down to. I needed to be the girl who answered to nobody but herself, I needed to be the living weapon that could cut through enemies all alone, and I even needed to be the girl who could admit she was in love with the man walking beside her.
That last bit was still a new feeling for me. Love. I loved Jadran, and every time I let myself say it out loud it made me blush. What were Jadran and I supposed to do, now that we were in love? I’d never experienced real love before. Just recreation with boys back at the Colony. I knew this thing with Jadran went deeper than that. I just didn’t know what to do about it.
I’d been in love once before. I just hadn’t realized it until it was too late. Now I had the real thing standing with me in the middle of New Merica, and we didn’t have time to figure out what it meant.
More time to be with Jadran. Was that asking too much?
“Era Rae?” Jadran said, pressing me for an answer.
So much for more time together.
I blew out a sigh. Was I all right? I knew what he was asking. He was worried about how I felt after my little commando routine in there. “Fine, is what I am,” I teased, mimicking the way he talked. Slow. Deliberate. Honest. He was an amazing man.
And he was mine.
As long as I didn’t screw it up by acting like a mindless killing machine.
Following closely behind our tour guide with me, Jadran regarded me closely, his eyes hidden by shadows in the harsh glow of electric spotlights hung from the sides of buildings. “Not fine, is what you look like.”
I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or poking fun at me in turn. Either way, it made me smile. Nudging him with my shoulder, I made an effort to keep the darker thoughts from showing on my face. “You’ve been here before, right? In New Merica? You said you’d been helping the Freemen.”
He nodded, obviously still studying me for signs I was upset. “I have been here. Many times.”
Our guide stopped in front of the wall of heavy stone blocks and smashed vehicles—cars, Jadran had named them for me. I looked up at the top of the barricade where men and women sighted down weapons scopes into the darkness around us. It was a good sized army, all told. “What do you think their chances are?”
Our Freeman guide, a lanky boy named Cusack maybe five years older than I was, turned around when I asked that question, waiting for the answer.
“Honestly?” Jadran asked me.
I nodded. “No sense in sugar coating it.”
Cusack lifted a hand. “Well, I might like it with some sugar, actually.”
Jadran cleared his throat and took my hands in his. “To be honest, Era Rae, the only safety this camp had came from being hidden from the rest of the world. Hidden from the Restored Society. Now…”
He shook his head.
That was not the news I wanted to hear.
But, hey. I did ask him to be honest.
Across the open space between the wall and the buildings of the camp, I saw a figure come running towards us. She was tall, and her blonde hair streaked out behind her in the night air. Laria had changed clothes into something that almost resembled combat fatigues. Black, blousy pants and a shirt that was somehow tight on her in all the right places. She even had a belt around her waist like the Freemen wore, only I couldn’t help but notice she wasn’t carrying any weapons.
That sounded about right. Laria was a pacifist, like most of the people in her village had been. Jadran had lived that life with them for years, after leaving one of the Colonies where he’d been taught the ways of war.
He was a complicated man. Laria would never understand him the way I did.
Not that it stopped her from trying to worm her way into his life.
She came up to us, completely ignoring me to throw her arms around Jadran’s neck. It broke his hands away from mine. Which I’m pretty sure was her intention.
“Jadran! Oh, Jadran!” Her voice was tight with emotion. “I knew they wouldn’t hurt you. I just knew it!”
Funny, I thought, since she was the one who told the Freemen I was dangerous and started this whole mess in the first place. That little betrayal had nearly gotten both me and Jadran killed. What would they have done with her after that? After all, she’d been travelling with us. I looked her up and down, at the way she made even that uniform look… good, and I knew she would have been fine no matter what happened to me. She would have talked her way into staying with them, somehow.
Just in time for the Enforcers to get here and kill her instead.
I swear I wasn’t trying to smile. It just happened.
Jadran gave me a look, as if he could tell where my thoughts had wandered, and when I shrugged sheepishly he took Laria by her arms and gently pried her away. “Yes. We are both all right,” he said, intentionally including me. “We have to get ready now. The Enforcers will attack soon. Maybe as early as dawn.”
“Sooner,” I said. “They won’t wait. Not after losing one of their HoverHawks and God alone knows how many soldiers by fighting off the Children of the Event. They’ll want to move forward before they lose anyone else.”
Laria turned to me with hatred burning in her eyes, as if I was interrupting whatever moment she imagined she was having with Jadran. She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and then molded her body to his side. “Then we have little time. Jadran, come talk with me. Please?”
No, I wanted to scream at her. There was no way she was going off alone with Jadran… except then I saw the look on his face, and I knew he was going to do exactly that with her. I blinked at them both, at Jadran’s helpless look of apology and Laria’s smug smirk, and I wanted to scream. We were about to be attacked by waves of Enforcers and Laria wanted to have private time with my… my…
The word was like something from a foreign language. It squirmed around when I tried to get a handle on it, and no matter how I tried to make it fit the image I had of Jadran, it wouldn’t. Boyfriend. Was that what Jadran was to me? Was I his girlfriend?
Then why was he going off with Laria?
“I will come back,” Jadran promised me, pushing Laria away to take my hand again, and then kiss my cheek.
The word might be strange to me, but the feelings he created in me weren’t strange at all. Well, alright they were, but only in a good way. I smiled for him as he turned away with Laria, who still stood way too close to him.
Get a grip, I told myself. He’s a big boy.
She’s a big girl, too, another part of my mind whispered.
I growled something under my breath that made Cusack startle and take several steps back from me. Truthfully I’d forgotten he was still there. I shook my head at him and stalked off, making him rush to catch up. I had things to see before the Enforcers got here, and no time to worry about what Laria might be saying to Jadran, or doing with him, or to him—
“Hellfire!” I swore, making Cusack jump.
Was this what love was about? Jealousy, worry, all of these knotted up emotions in my belly? If it was, I wasn’t sure I wanted it.
But then I remembered being held by Jadran while I slept. I remembered feeling safe in his arms, and the kisses we’d shared. That was part of love, too, mixed up into the other emotions roiling through me.
Heh. Guess I had a lot to learn about being just a regular girl.
If I survived the night, I’d ask Jadran to show me.
Chapter 2 - Numbers
Era’s Journal, Entry #3060
The Restored Society trained all of us with heavy weapons by the time we were twelve. I knew how to cycle through a dispersal emitter cannon, I knew how to dismantle and then rebuild everything from a stun pistol to a Magnetic Acoustic Rifle to a HoverHawk mounted missile sling, and I knew how to kill a person using any of seventeen different rifles. In short, I knew my way around weaponry, and had from a very early age.
So it came as a little bit of a surprise when the Freemen had to train me on the weapons they use.
I don’t know where they got these…things from. I asked the lanky Freeman with me—Cusack, his name was—but he didn’t have any idea either. They scrounged everything they had from anywhere they could. I have to believe these guns were what armies used before the Event, when killing was a cheap, bloody thing. They had a few modern energy weapons, like ballistic pulse rifles, but there weren’t many of those. Most of what they had were true antiques that fired bullets.
Bullets? Seriously?
The handguns were simple enough. Aim, pull the trigger, repeat. I’m not sure how they expected to hit much by shooting such tiny projectiles, but all Cusack had to do was show me the basics once. A few practice shots to show Cusack I could hit the target, and they were satisfied I wouldn’t accidentally kill one of them.
Or myself either, I suppose, but I got the feeling the Freemen didn’t much care whether I lived or died.
New Merica was full of activity now. People rushed back and forth, barking orders, carrying supplies, setting up for an attack that was soon to come. It was a surprising sort of organized chaos.
Jadran was still off with Laria. Did I mention that? He’s going to have some explaining to do when he gets back.
There was another thing that surprised me about the camp. They had pets. Dogs. I saw four or five of the things, furry creatures with four legs that stood as tall as my hips. One of them, a gentle beast with white, scruffy fur all over his body and black patches on three paws and the tip of one ear, took a liking to me. I can’t understand why. He just came up and sniffed my hand, and then wouldn’t leave me alone. He followed me around everywhere, like we were the best friends in the world.
I guess it just happens that way sometimes.
Dogs and bullets, and me. We were as ready for the Enforcers as we were ever going to be.
We didn’t have pets back at the Colony. Something like that would never be allowed. Animals were dirty, and dangerous. At least, that’s what our professors at the Academy always told us.
Looking back, I think they just didn’t want us to have friends. Not even the furry, four-legged kind.
Even my friends in my classes were really enemies. Rivals. Obstacles I was expected to work against, not with. Saskia was the one exception that I had. We were real friends. True friends.
More than friends.
As far as everyone else in my class—and the upper classmen too—if I could cut another student down to make myself stand a little higher, then that’s what I was expected to do. The professors graded on ambition, not friendship. Individuality was prized above all. There was no room for friends. A pet would be a friend who was always there for us, and that went against everything the Reformed Society was trying to teach us.
I understand that now, because Lacey has this goofy doggy grin that means she’s my friend, and I’m hers.
Lacey is what I named the dog, with her big ruff of black and white fur. I don’t even know why she started following me around. She just kind of adopted me. Everywhere I went, she padded along by my side, panting and happy. When I scratch into the fur around her neck she makes little whimpering noises like she wants more. I never knew dogs could be like this. She’s… cute. Definitely not anything like the monsters that the Restored Society taught us they were.
“I think she likes you,” Cusack said, amusement dancing in his dull hazel eyes.
“I’ve never seen a dog up close before, okay?” That wasn’t exactly true. The people who raised me had a guard dog, but that thing was mean. It always snarled and bared its teeth whenever anyone, even me, came near. That dog really had been a monster. But it was what the Restored Society had made it. All they knew how to do was make monsters.
Something about that made me remember… the fight back at the JEA tower, when the Freemen had caught me and Jadran and we were fighting our way out against the Children who were trying to kill us.There was something important there. The Restored Society. Making monsters.
The Enforcers marching across the Outlands. Heading toward… something.
Whatever my brain was trying to tell me was lost in translation. I gave Lacey another good rub down, and then stood up, brushing stray white mutt hairs off my clothes. “Cusack, have we heard anything from your scouts?”
He looked at me in that way he had, his narrow hatchet-blade face blank and expressionless.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “You don’t think I’ll figure it out when they start shooting at us? You aren’t keeping any secrets by not telling me if the Enforcers are coming, Cusack. I know they’re coming! I just want to know how close they are.”
He shrugged, the ammunition clips jangling on the bandolier strap he wore across his chest. “All right. Well. We haven’t heard from the scouts, so I guess I don’t have anything to tell you.” He looked up the side of the building we were standing next to. It had scorch marks all up the front of it, black smears against the illumination from the lights on their poles. All the windows on this side of the structure were broken out, leaving gaping holes like open wounds. The top two floors were high enough to see over the wall. “That’s our post. Let’s go.”
Our post. Not that long ago these people had wanted to kill me. Now I have a post for the coming invasion. It was what I wanted, a place for the coming apocalypse, so here I am.
Lacey looked at me with her head twisted to the side and her long tongue lolling out of her mouth. She wanted to come up with me into the building. Kneeling down next to her I scratched into her fur all over, feeling her scrawny ribs in her chest, watching her tail wag faster and faster. “Stay here,” I told her. “I’ll come back for you.”
Then she licked my face.
It was a weird sensation. It was… nice.
“Come on,” Cusack said. “We
have to get into position.”
I left Lacey there, wondering how something as simple as a doggie kiss could make me feel so… well… human.
Cusack took us into the building and up the stairs to the very top floor. Five floors up. The inside looked nothing like the outside. It was sterile and tidy and stocked with bundles of supplies in cubby holes built from mismatched pieces of boards in the hallways. Every room I saw was empty. I followed Cusack to one of those rooms, with two windows facing out in the direction the Enforcers would be coming from. The same direction that Jadran and I had come from just a few short hours ago.
There were heavy rifles, two of them, leaning up against the wall beside the windows. Other bits of equipment were set out for us, too. Digital binoculars. A box of packed metal cylinders that might have been hand grenades. A dozen of them. I figured if the Enforcers got close enough for us to start lobbing explosive devices at them by hand then we’d have already lost.
“Take the window on the right.”
Cusack pointed, as if I couldn’t figure out which of the two windows he meant. “What are we doing?” I asked him. “I wasn’t exactly briefed on this.”
“This is just scoping out the cityscape around the barricade,” he told me as he knelt down by his window—the left one, I thought sarcastically—and shouldered his gun. “We’re supposed to give everyone advanced warning for when the Enforcers come.”
I gaped at him. “You’re kidding, right? Do you understand how many Enforcers are out there? We’ll be able to see them coming long before they get here. Everyone will be able to see them coming. They won’t need a set of binocs for that.”
He shrugged. “This is the assignment. We carry out our orders, if we want to live.”
Oh, I wanted to live, sure enough, but following orders wasn’t going to make that happen. The Freemen were planning on just standing here and waiting for the Enforcers to roll through them. That had all the logic of standing still in the ocean and hoping you wouldn’t drown when the tide rose. Wishing wouldn’t make it so. Following orders wasn’t going to save us.