“What the hell,” she whispered as she used her thumb and wiped away some of the filth that covered the bone.
The holes were not shallow instead traveling all the way down to where her marrow would have been. David sat in a folding canvas chair, its aluminum framing groaning under the stress of his bulk. He released a noise similar to that of the chair. His gloved hands went up to remove the helmet from his head. His jaw was tight, eyes were blood shot, and it was clear he was holding back an ocean of emotion.
“DNA collection, the hip is a prime spot for marrow extraction," he said, his voice cracking at first. Before she could respond, he continued, “The holes are so precise because they are a part of the same apparatus, located within the left arm of your family’s drones."
She shook her head, almost violently. “No, that's not true. I've seen the production schematics of our units. This doesn't exist within them. We didn't do this."
She stopped, her heart beating faster as she recalled the children living at the base of the tower. Where exactly had her father gotten the genetic material from to create them and why was it she felt a sense of comfort and familiarity around some of them from the moment they first met? She felt hate an confusion boiling up within her. How dare these people accuse her family of such atrocities! She thrust her finger at him. “This is all bullshit. I don't believe a word of it. All of this could be fabricated."
He slowly looked at her and asked, “To what end?”
“To turn me against my family, to use me!”
“So all of this is one elaborate ruse just for you, huh?” he laughed, shaking his head in disgust as he did.
“Why the hell are you so damn emotional right now? Do you think that it will help manipulate me somehow?”
He shook his head again and then his eyes locked, his vision losing focus as he mentally slipped somewhere else. She walked over to him and snapped her fingers in his face. “Hello, I'm talking to you!”
He looked at her and pulled a device from his pocket. She was relatively certain it was what was known as a phone. He motioned toward the entrance of the tent. “My wife and daughter are out there somewhere.”
She stepped back, stunned at the admission. “Found Sharon’s phone here when we came through the first time about ten years back, actually found her mother’s purse first,” he laughed slightly. “That damn thing was so hideous, had turquoise jewelry all over it and beaded tassels connected to the zipper pulls."
“I poked so much fun at her when she bought it.” He shook his head and a sound that could’t decide if it was a laugh or a sob ripped free from his chest, “Hell. I think she kept it just to make a point."
“Found it in a pile of rags.” He looked up at Maria. “I know she's out there somewhere, but there's no way of knowing who's who.”
“Stop,” she whispered, her voice trembling.
“I lie to myself sometimes, tell myself that my little girl made it out and that she just dropped her phone as she escaped your father's machines.”
“Stop,” she said, louder this time, her hands balling into fists.
“I can't do that for my wife though. Sharon was videotaping as his drones stormed the place. She actually recorded one of them snapping her mother’s neck… my wife.” He was shaking at this point, staring at some distant point as if he were actually living the event. “My daughter and I both watched as she died, that was an experience that we shared and your father is responsible for it."
“Shut the fuck up!” she hollered, her face red with rage.
He shot to his feet. His bulk would have intimidated anyone, but she was so immersed in her own guilt and anger that she simply didn't care about the implicit threat that just existed with his presence. “You don't want the believe me, then prove me wrong. Get your ass out there and look. You'll see that this isn't the only body with three precise holes drilled into the hip."
She blew past him, going for the nearest pile of bones. She fell to her knees and began the arduous and emotionally draining task of sorting through the remains. She searched with an intensity she had never experienced before. She absolutely had to prove him wrong or everything she had ever believed about her father, a man she loved and respected beyond words, would have been a lie.
A part of her was horrified at her lack of control and blatant disrespect for the dead, but she had to vindicate her family. She continued to dig through the bones, tossing them to the side as she verified they weren't the type she was looking for. Suddenly she stopped, staring back at her were the empty eye sockets of a skull. Animal teeth and claw marks had damaged its surface and the lower mandible was missing. She moved it aside and unearthed the hip bone it had been sitting within. She flipped the bone in her hand, rubbing off mud and animal feces. Her thumb stopped over three little indentations. They were nearly exactly where they had been on the corpse in the tent, perfectly equidistant from one another.
“No, no, no…” she began to mutter to herself and then frantically searched for another. Hours passed as she found example after example of the precision holes and extraction of genetic material. She lost track of how long, though the sun which had once been low in the east when they arrived was beginning to fade through the wide cracks in the western side of the stadium dome. She sat back on her calves, feet trapped beneath her. Nails cracked and caked with mud and blood from the variety of nicks and cuts she had received in her obsessive search for vindication. Instead the remains of the dead did nothing but signal the death of the trust she had in her father. She must have held hundreds of hip bones in her hands and each time the same distinct three holes were drilled deep into them.
She couldn't move. Her mind raced as she tried to process all of this new information. As the sun light began to die, she hung her head. “You promised to take me home."
“I did," David said. Likely he had been nearby the entire time, watching as her world crumbled around her. Fitting given that this is where his family had suffered a similar fate. No, not similar she corrected herself, her family was still alive.
“I want to go now,” she whispered.
He nodded, his hand rubbing the scruff that had sprung up on his chin. “Your father's enemies are moving. It won't be long until he's dead and the empire is yours. At that point you'll have to decide what type of leader you plan to be."
He knelt next to her, the heat of his breath on her ear. “How you decide will dictate how I and my people will treat you the next time we meet.”
She closed her eyes, not looking forward to her next encounter with her father. He would know instantly that something was wrong. The moment she looked at him she was certain she wouldn't be able to keep the shame from her eyes. How was she going to handle this?
A sharp pain pierced her thoughts, and it took a moment to realize that she had just been shot, once again in the shoulder. She fell forward into the remains of the victims of her father's ambitions. Ice began flowing through her veins, spidering throughout her entire body, and she wondered if this was what it felt like to die. Her eyes focused for a moment and in front of her face were the vacant sockets of another picked clean skull. It stared at her, unblinking and unforgiving. She felt herself start to laugh before she realized she was doing it. It made a perverse sort of sense. Williams and his son never promised to return her alive and of all the places for her family to pay the price for their crimes against billions of people, this place was as fitting as any. So she closed her eyes and let the darkness take her.
10
Her eyes opened. Never in her life had she been so surprised by such a basic function. She reached back to probe her shoulder. Not feeling any gaping holes, she switched to the other. She was alive. They hadn't actually shot her at least they hadn't used a bullet. Instead they must have utilized one of the tranquilizer darts from the weapon they had used to subdue the ferals. She was left with one question, why?
She looked around, taking in her surroundings in the dimly lit room. Absolutely nothing about this p
lace was recognizable. It wasn't even made from the same materials as the stadium. Instead of steel, plastic, and concrete, she was surrounded by wood, rugs, and upholstered chairs. She slowly stood up reaching out to the wall for balance as her aching joints failed to stabilize her. She methodically moved across the room to the nearest window, her hand sliding across the wall the entire time.
She looked out upon, not a city, but forest lit by the morning sun. The mist still clinging to the moss covered ground not having evaporated yet. Where was she at now? Her stomach roared for a good five seconds and in that moment the realization of how thirsty and hungry she was took over. She began searching the space and immediately her eyes fell onto a bag, similar to the one she had last eaten from. Next to it was a backpack, clearly stuffed full of supplies and a single bottle of water with a purification pump next to it. Lying beside the pack was a rusted but functional blade nearly as long as her forearm. It took her a moment to search through all the supplies. As she picked up the backpack to look through it, she realized it had been placed upon a device, a radio. She had her answer to her earlier question.
They had promised to return her to her family. They had never detailed how exactly they would do that. They likely felt this the safest way to carry out their commitment but at the same time decrease their exposure.
Once she satisfied her hunger and thirst, she took a thorough inventory of the pack and her one room sanctuary detailing the supplies she had available. Enough food and water for a week, a battery with mildly corroded connection posts, and the radio which wasn't in working order, but she had taken enough electronics courses to get it operating. She probably wouldn't be able to perform any complex communication with it, however, just broadcasting in general would catch her father’s attention and see her rescued. A question popped into her head. How had Williams known that she had the skills necessary to repair electronics? She filed that away for later dissection.
She began to clean the various components of the radio and stopped. Did she really want to be rescued? After all that she had learned, did she even want to look at the man…or her mother? It wasn't possible that she didn't know. She was every bit as intelligent as her father. If she did go back, what did she have to look forward to? No doubt she would be shipped off to the Hong Kong Spire and married to Chen. Likely that would be even more imperative now that she was missing for, well she wasn't sure how long she had been gone for, likely long enough to destabilize the agreement between their two Spires and move the world closer to war.
She grabbed the blade and walked over to the only door. She wrapped her hand around the handle and pulled but nothing happened. She pushed with the same result. Was the only exit sealed from the outside? She shook her head that made no sense given that the windows were made of glass, and she could easily escape that way. She inspected the door and quickly noticed the knob above the door handle. Taped to the wall, next to the handle, was a single piece of metal, with teeth like bumps cut into it. Key…. It was a key and keys were used to open locks prior to fingerprint and biometric scanners.
She smiled and murmured, “Thanks Toby."
She turned the knob and heard a thunk. She opened the door cautiously and light flooded into the room as if it were an aquarium full of water suddenly freed from its prison. She looked out the doorway but did not exit. When she was comfortable that there were no threats nearby, she took the key from the inside wall and examined the outside of the door. Rusted but still functioning the lock turned with the key inside and she watched as the bolt shot outwards. She quickly moved back inside emptying the bag of everything except two packs of food and water. She took the knife, placed it in the bag, with the handle sticking out the top, and zippered it closed around the grip. Locking the door behind her, she stood in front of the forest staring into its depths.
She had no idea what she was going to do, but a week’s worth of food could be stretched to two and if she could find a source of water, the purification device they left her with would extend her supply of fluids well past when she ran out of food. She wasn't sure what she was doing, but she knew she wanted as much time as possible to figure it out. So she set forth into the forest, looking to get to know her new home.
___
She sat on the steps leading into her home. She smiled at that idea. This place was hers now and nothing would change that. Her eyes stared off into the forest. In the distance, a deer slowly made its way along and her stomach rumbled. She pulled out a few edible berries from her pocket and slowly popped them in her mouth one by one. Two weeks had passed and she had managed to survive on what she could forage as well as small mammals and fish she had managed to catch. Bigger game, like the deer she had been watching for days now, had eluded her hunting ability. She still had a few MREs left but was slowly consuming them to keep her strength up as she honed her skills. What little she had been able to do had allowed her to extend her food supply to this point, but it would not be an option for much longer.
She had found a small town a few kilometers south, located some seeds, and was toying with the idea of experimenting with farming. She would have to clear a space of course, or at the very least fell enough trees to open up the surface to unfettered sunshine. It would be a challenge to cut them down. She could always go back and grab some of the long bundles of rope she had seen there, that might help her to guide where the trees fell. The stumps, however, that would take some forethought. She wouldn't need too much space; after all, it was just her. Just needed access to the sky. She looked up at the vast blue above her home, the only space not obscured by branches and leaves.
It would have been nice to see what she could have done here. To see if she would have had it in her to tame nature. The contrails pointing east, toward her original home, demanded something else from her. They had to be high altitude bombers from the other families and if they had dared to fly over North America her family must be at war. While she was angry with them, she still loved her mother and father and wanted nothing bad to befall them. She looked down at the radio, connected to the battery and the transmit button stuck on. She wasn't sending anything specific, just a signal but that was all that was needed. She looked back up and stared at the sky, fantasizing about her farm. A gust of wind whipped through her hair, and she smirked knowing what came next.
A large grey object plummeted to earth just at the edge of the tree line. When it landed she felt the vibration through the ground and up into her bones. Standing a story tall and weighing a thousand pounds, the Land Dominance Unit extended itself upward and began stalking toward her. She smiled and waved at it, knowing full well that it was transmitting back to the Spire.
“Hi Mom, did you miss me?”
___
She couldn't breathe; the life was literally being crushed from her. “Mom, too tight,” she gasped.
Her mother’s slender arms relaxed, not enough for Maria to break free but just the fraction required to allow for breathing. Her father stood apart from them, the corner of his thumb in his mouth. She had seen him do that from time to time, chewing on his fingers. It was the only outward display he made to show that he was nervous. He noticed that she was watching him and he quickly moved his hand to his side.
“Maria sweetie, I’m so sorry."
Mother’s head snapped toward him, her eyes burrowing a hole straight into his skull. “We never should have let her leave.”
His gaze fell. “I had ten thousand units scouring the forest to find you. I… We never stopped looking."
She nodded her head. “I know Daddy."
He shook his head. “No you don't. When we found the wreckage, we thought that you had died. The only thing that kept us sane was that we didn't find your body."
“What happened Jita?” her mom asked, tears flowing from her eyes.
Seeing the raw emotions on her mother’s face, knowing that both her parents loved her and never gave up looking for her, almost made her reveal the whole ordeal. She wanted to curl up in her
mother's arms, to release the pain caused by the memory of what she had endured at his hands, how every moment she thought about his breath on her she wanted to scrub her skin until it came off. She wanted to tell them about the tragedy of losing Tobor, of being held prisoner for days. She wanted to challenge them both about their knowledge of what brought about the plague that killed billions and the part they played in it. But she knew that if she told her father what she knew, he would be honest with her, and she doubted that she could handle knowing for certain his culpability. So instead of the full truth, she shared the story she had developed while living in the cabin.
“Men attacked me in the forest. They jammed my communications, but I managed to get out of its range long enough for Toby to connect to my contacts. Toby… he… rescued me but as we were getting away in the transport two missiles were launched at us."
She stopped, gathering herself and clearing her throat. “Toby knew we weren't going to make it, so he… forced the system to eject me and took the transport straight up.”
“I watched him die!” Sobs began to break through and her mother's embrace tightened.
“After the pod landed, I ran. I didn't stop until my legs collapsed underneath me.” She wiped her eyes with the side and of her hand.
“When I hit the ground, soil splashed into my eyes and damaged my contacts I laid at the base of a tree, in the dark listening for my attackers. After an hour, I got back up and ran even further."
“Oh my poor baby,” her mom said.
She was about to go into an elaborate explanation of how she survived for so long, why it took so long for her to make contact, but her father interrupted her.
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