by S J Taylor
I saw Cusack swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his scrawny neck. He nodded, his eyes wide, and only then did Jadran back away from the man and stand up. He kissed my forehead, and held me close, and promised to be back soon. “I am going to talk to Commander Ross. I need to make him understand that turning you over will not save this camp.”
I caught the back of his neck, and pulled him in for a real kiss. A deep kiss. One that he’d remember for a long time.
A last kiss.
He smiled at me, oblivious to what I was about to do, and then raced out of the room with the photon emitter in hand.
Counting to twenty, and then thirty, I waited until I knew he was gone. Then I stood up, dropping the rifle back into its prop position against the wall. It would be too heavy for me to carry where I was going.
I gave Cusack a glare that told him to shut up and stay where he was, if he knew what was good for him. Apparently, between Jadran’s threat and my own, he knew exactly what was good for him.
Then I went out into the hallway and slipped past everyone in the building to find my way out. I needed to get to Saskia.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, although I wasn’t sure who those words were for. I loved Jadran. I knew it would devastate him if I went over that wall, but that’s where I was going. Because, I did love him.
But I loved Saskia more.
Part II
Chapter 3 - Hide
Somewhere to be. That was what Third Marshall Amicus had told the Freemen. The Enforcers had somewhere else to be.
I repeated those words in the back of my mind as I snuck out of the Freemen camp. Nice to know I’d been right. The Enforcers had another target. The Freemen would be a warmup, and then the army out there would go on to whatever they were really in the Outlands for.
Something kept nagging at me, just like before. I should know what the Enforcers were after. It was all there, this little voice kept telling me. Why can’t you see it?
Because I didn’t have time to puzzle it out. That was why. I was busy escaping a guarded compound so I could sneak into a group of heavily armed soldiers and find someone I thought was dead so I could try to save her life.
If it wasn’t all so real, I would have laughed.
I found a section of the wall that was less defended than the rest, away from the front of the camp area and the Enforcer army, and snuck my way over. I had one of the Freemen’s guns with me. It was a snub-nosed rifle, loaded with actual bullets. Only fourteen rounds. My machete was at my hip. I didn’t have a chance to grab anything else.
A projectile weapon and a big knife against three columns of Enforcers. What more could a girl ask for?
Maybe a handle on what love really meant. That might be nice.
Enough of that. I knew what I was feeling. That’s why I was risking my own life to get to Saskia, because I knew my own feelings.
Sure.
Darkness covered my movements outside the wall. There were spotlights sweeping along the streets out here, but the Freemen who were manning those spots were being lazy about it. They knew that the danger was on the other side of the compound. They knew where the enemy was.
On my way out of New Merica I faced down the stares of a dozen or more people. I heard them muttering, loud enough that they knew I could hear. They said I should be turned over to the Third Marshall now. Pacify the Enforcers. Let them go on their way. Live to fight again tomorrow.
I hadn’t said anything to those people because I knew better. This camp and everyone in it were dead if they didn’t fight. It wouldn’t matter if they handed me over. It would just mean one less person to hold a gun on their side when the Enforcers came through.
Now, creeping closer to the Enforcers’ encampment, I had to wonder if maybe I wasn’t going to get myself caught and basically hand myself over to them anyway.
Wouldn’t that be a great end to the story of Era Rae?
Back at Colony 41, we’d all been trained in urban stealth. Of course, the simulators didn’t come close to the real thing. The holographic buildings had all looked the same and me and the other kids in my class used to joke around by walking straight through the computer generated obstacles, instead of around them.
But this was real. I was constantly tripping over bits of brick. The gaps between the buildings were dangerous spaces without cover. Every move I made echoed in the dark.
I managed to keep to the shadows, avoiding the lackluster spotlights, edging along the walls of broken buildings and heaps that used to be vehicles. I gripped the gun tighter in my hands, ready to shoot anything that moved. I had my senses stretched thin, listening.
I saw the sentries long before they saw me. Enforcers have standard procedures for every situation. Doesn’t matter if there’s ten of them, or three whole columns like this group here. Their sentries move in the same pattern.
Since I had been training to be an Enforcer myself, I knew the pattern.
Sure enough, there was the first of the sentries. She looked older than me, although it was hard to tell with that helmet of hers. It was in the way she carried herself, the way she held her pulse rifle tight to her chest and ready to use at a moment’s notice. I could tell she’d done this before. This wasn’t some newfer fresh out of the Eccoliculum. She was more than just Academy trained. She had experience.
It didn’t matter. I needed to get past her, past the next two sentries that I knew would cross my path, and then get close enough to the ranks of the Enforcers to find Saskia and somehow, impossibly, get her away from the rest.
As plans went, it basically sounded like a suicide mission.
I’d just have to make it work.
The Enforcer stopped in her tracks with her head cocked to one side, her gray uniform almost black from the back glow of the lights from New Merica. I realized too late what I’d done. The scanners in her helmet would have picked up the muted sounds of my footsteps against the crumbling concrete. She knew someone was here.
Did she know where I was?
With one smooth movement the Enforcer spun around, her left hand pulling out a stiletto from the side of her equipment belt and throwing it at the space between my eyes.
Yes. She definitely knew where I was.
I only had time to twist my body and throw my head back to avoid the bite of the thin blade. Another one followed, and another.
The regular rank and file of the Enforcers didn’t use stilettos. Throwing knives are a very specialized sort of weapon, used exclusively by the Special Enforcement Troops. The SETs were the elite soldiers of the ground troops. They were what every Enforcer wanted to be, before rising up to the rank of Field Sergeant, or higher.
She was definitely not a newfer.
I found myself on the ground. I’d dropped the rifle in my haste to stay alive, and now I had the machete in my hand, wondering if I could throw it with the same accuracy the Enforcer had with her knives.
I rolled out of the way. The ground, the sky, the ground, then my feet were under me again and I was springing up, machete held out point first, aimed for the Enforcer’s heart. Not even her protective clothing would stop a hard thrust from a blade this size.
She swung out with her stun stick and batted aside my strike, bringing her other fist up into my midsection hard enough to double me over. The gauntlet glove she wore felt exactly like what it was: reinforced metal being slammed into my unprotected body. I dropped the machete, and sank down to my knees, gasping for breath.
I heard her sliding her stun stick back into its place on her belt. Then she took ahold of my hair and pulled my head back so I was looking up at her.
“You are the fugitive Era Rae,” I heard her say, her voice distorted through her helmet’s speaker. “Stand down, and you won’t be hurt further.”
I swallowed, and tasted blood in my mouth, and tried to think of some way out of this.
The Enforcer lifted a hand up to the controls on the side of her helmet. She was going to call for assistance. Our fi
ght had been silent, but as soon as she made that radio transmission I’d be swarmed by Enforcers.
That’s when it happened.
I closed my eyes, and let the calm take me.
My eyesight was sharper now, keen enough to pick out details in the dark that I shouldn’t be able to. I saw the angles between me and my captor, saw the mechanics of how she was standing, saw the environment around us, saw everything in the time it took my heart to beat once.
And I reacted.
Like always, I saw my body moving, acting all on its own without me telling it what to do. My hands reached up and grabbed her wrist and I dropped onto my back, pulling her toward me while I spun out both of my feet and kicked her right knee hard enough to hear bone snap. She crumpled, let go of my hair, and screamed.
Or, she started to. Pushing up off the ground in a fluid snap I landed on my feet and knelt down over the Enforcer to chop the side of my bladed hand against her throat, under her helmet, breaking the fragile cartilage there.
She couldn’t scream now. Just choke and gag for breath.
I recoiled, and I blinked, and slowly I came back to myself. What I’d just done… I nearly killed this woman. There should be… something. I should feel upset, at least.
Inside me, I felt nothing. Just like when I’d taken on those two Freemen guards in New Merica.
I had to do this to save Saskia. That’s why it didn’t bother me. That’s why I was okay with letting the calm take me over. That’s what I told myself, over and over.
Until I almost believed it.
The Enforcer’s pulse rifle was still strung around her shoulder. While she grasped at her neck and struggled for breath I worked the buckle of the strap loose and took the gun for myself. Now that I had more than a big knife or a gun that shot little tiny bullets, I felt a lot better.
“Don’t worry,” I said to the Enforcer. “I’m not going to kill you. I don’t need to. I’m just going to use your binders to tie you up here. Someone should find you soon.”
I couldn’t see her expression behind the helmet, and I figured that was probably a good thing.
Binders are always on the back of an Enforcer’s utility belt. Hard plastic straps that tighten down to secure a prisoner. In this case, they’d work just as well to secure an Enforcer and keep her out of the way so I could reach Saskia.
“I’m just going to roll you to your side,” I explained, careful to move the pulse rifle out of the way first. No sense taking chances—
I felt the Enforcer’s fist strike the inside of my elbow before I realized she was even moving. She rolled into me and had me on the ground and everything I tried to do to escape her only got me pinched up tighter. She was still breathing raggedly but it was like she didn’t care. She had me down, and pinned, and her hand was reaching for the stun stick on her belt again and I knew nine different ways that device could kill me up close like this.
And I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t yell for help because that would only bring the Enforcers down on me.
I reached for the calm, cool reserve of power that had saved my life just now. It started to settle over me and then snapped back out of reach like a severed rubber band.
There was nothing I could do. I was helpless.
“Third Marshall… wants you alive…” she wheezed through her helmet. “But… mistakes… happen.”
She charged the stun stick, blue electricity skittering down its metal length to the ball tip, and then she raised it up over my forehead in position for a killing strike.
Nothing I could do.
A low growl was the only warning we had before a small ball of shaggy fur launched itself at the Enforcer, bowling her off of me, clamping its teeth in deep on the arm that held the stun stick. The Enforcer dropped her weapon as she slammed into the ground with the beast on top of her.
My first thought was that one of the Children of the Event had gotten close to the action and now it was attacking us. Then I realized what I was actually seeing.
Lacey, the dog from inside the camp, had followed me. Now she was saving my life.
A dog was saving my life.
If anything that had happened to me since Colony 41 seemed impossible, this was it.
Enforcer battle suits are made from heavy armored material. I doubted my new pet dog was going to be able to chew through that sleeve. She’d caught my attacker off guard but it wouldn’t take long before the Enforcer got her bearings back and turned on Lacey.
The dog had saved me. Now I had to save her.
The stun stick was right by my hand. Snapping it up, I lunged for the Enforcer just as she caught Lacey by her scruff and threw her aside.
As she sat up I jammed the ball tip of the electric weapon down on the side of her helmet.
The technology in the suit soaked up the electric charge from the stun stick and discharged it through her entire body. She spasmed, her back arching and her head grinding itself forcefully into the pavement.
The snap as her spine broke was surprisingly loud.
I counted to ten before I let go of the stun stick. After that, the Enforcer didn’t move again.
Lacey came to me, all prancing paws and wet nose kisses. I hugged her around her neck and held on tight. “You saved my life,” I told her. “I can’t believe it. You actually saved my life.”
She huffed and licked my cheek. Did she understand me? Was that even possible? Lacey was just a dog. A tough dog. A good dog.
A good friend.
“I think I need to change your name,” I said, keeping my voice at a whisper. We were still out where the sentries would be walking their perimeter. “You need a tougher name than Lacey. Like… Hellfire. Yeah. That sounds better. Hellfire. You like that name? Hell—”
“Do not move,” a voice said.
“—fire.” I finished my thought, looking up to find another Enforcer standing there. She had her pulse rifle levelled at me already. Digital readouts flashed silver across her visor.
My dog growled at her.
I lifted my hands up in the air. I was trapped. Even if I let the calm come over me I couldn’t get to the Enforcer in time. Not before she pulled the rifle’s trigger. She stood there, tall and confident, with her long legs, and the way she held her pulse rifle just so—
My breath caught in my chest. Only the best Enforcers were sent out as sentries.
And Saskia was one of the best.
“Get up,” she told me. Her voice was a mix of human and machine, filtered through her helmet speaker. I could still hear my friend in there, just barely, but it was so faint. She was still Saskia. My Saskia. I had to keep reminding myself of that. She was alive now, and she was here.
Now I could keep my promise to save her.
“Target acquired,” she said, to me. “Target, remain still. Target, comply.”
“Saskia.” I waited for her to show some recognition for the sound of her name.
Nothing.
I stood up like she’d ordered me to, slowly, keeping my hands up. I even dared to move a little closer. She hadn’t called for reinforcements. Maybe that was a good sign. “Saskia, it’s me. It’s Era. Do you… do you remember me?”
She moved in on me, her rifle still pointed at my chest.
Then she hesitated.
“Do you remember me?” I asked her, again. I didn’t know… I wasn’t sure how much of her… was still her… “Saskia, do you remember me?”
Another step.
Then she stopped. This time the rifle wavered, and then lowered.
“Saskia?” Hope began to bubble up inside of me.
One of her hands reached up to her chin straps. She undid them, and then lifted her helmet aside.
I saw exactly what I had expected to see.
I wanted to cry. Saskia’s face had been ruined by fire and then crisscrossed by surgical scars that went up and over her scalp and across her cheeks. Her hair was completely shaved down now, leaving behind scabby, bare skin. Wires and
tubes attached from the helmet to mechanical devices that had been implanted in her temples and her skull. Cybernetic devices forced on her by the Reformed Society that were keeping her alive, or enhancing her senses, or connecting her directly to the sensitive equipment of her battle suit. I didn’t know which.
She let the helmet hang down against her chest as she regarded me with dull blue eyes.
Her beauty was gone. The Restored Society had stolen it from her, just like they’d stolen her mind and left behind a husk with the soul of an obedient machine.
Only somewhere in there was my friend. I had to believe that.
My stomach twisted itself into knots. “Oh, Saskia.”
“I do not understand the request,” she said, the words stabbing my heart. “Please advise.”
“Saskia, it’s me.” I put my hands to my chest, like I needed to show her what I meant. “It’s me. Do you remember me? It’s Era Rae.”
Something passed over her face, an expression of some kind. It was hard to tell what it meant against that patchwork of scars. Something made her drop the weapon, though, even if it was still gripped in her hand with her finger still on the trigger.
“I…” Her voice was just as mechanical now without her helmet. “I… remember. Era Rae. I…”
Now the tears came flowing down my face. “Saskia, yes. It’s me. It’s me, Saskia. Please, remember. I love you.”
Those words broke something loose inside of me. Something I had been holding in for a long time. Ever since escaping from Colony 41, anyway. Did Saskia twitch when I said them? I thought I saw just a flicker of response.
Or maybe it was just wishful thinking.
She took a step toward me. “Era Rae…”
We were so close now. “Saskia, it’s me. You know it’s me. Come on, remember!”
Behind us, the dog growled again.
“Era Rae…”
Her eyes focused on me. I mean, really focused on me. She saw me and she knew me for who I was. A little sob of relief escaped me and I dared to step closer. “Saskia.”