by Ryan, Matt
Poly felt the blood leaving her face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought it might freak you out.”
Yeah, she would’ve freaked out, but nothing would have stopped her from following through with it. Her mind ran through what she said again. “Did I say we’re having a walkout tomorrow?”
Julie nodded her head.
“Good, we might be able to use those crowds to get out of here.”
LUCAS LAID ON THE STIFF rows of his bamboo bed and listened to Hank’s deep breathing. He awoke an hour ago, mulling over Hank’s worries about the day going bad. The same feeling welled in him.
“Hank,” he called.
The big guy snorted and shifted to his side on the floor next to Lucas.
“Hank.” He slapped him in the shoulder.
“What?” Hank sat up quickly, looking around.
“The aircraft is coming in a couple hours.”
He visibly relaxed and sighed. “Yeah, so?”
“Aren’t you worried about today?”
“Yeah.” Hank eyed Lucas. “You scared?”
“Nah. It’s just, I thought you were.”
“Me? No way.”
Lucas took a deep breath. How could he put it without sounding like a wimp? “Okay, I’m not scared, but maybe a little . . . interested in what we’re doing today.”
“Remember last year, the night before senior ditch day?”
Lucas chuckled. “Yeah.”
“You and Joey were able to carry two outhouses onto the roof above the front doors of the school, while I stacked all the trashcans in the school in the girl’s locker room.”
“Remember Julie and Samantha placed cooking grease on all the locker knobs?” Lucas asked.
Hank laughed. “Yes, I’ll never forget everyone using their shirts and stuff to turn locks.”
Lucas spirits lifted, maybe it would be like their school prank night, harmless fun at the expense of others.
Hank’s face turned from smiling to serious. “Well, it’s not going to be anything like that.”
With his spirits deflated, Lucas waited for Hank’s expression to change, but it didn’t. “You think it’s going to be that bad?”
“I really don’t know, but something tells me it’s not going to go as planned. Or at least, not our plan.”
Lucas picked at the edge of the bamboo bed, finding a sliver to pull loose. He stared Hank in the eyes. “No matter what happens, we stick together.” Lucas extended his hand to Hank.
“We’ve got each other’s back, always.” Hank shook his hand.
Two hours later, Lucas stood on the same beach they landed on the day before. To his left were all the mutants, laughing and pushing each other around. They covered most of the available sandy real estate between the jungle and the beach. Some had painted their faces in various colors. The few young women had their hair done exactly like Poly’s. Many of the men held large bags, draped over their shoulders. Kris, smiling and shirtless, walked to Lucas and Hank.
“You two ready?” he asked.
Lucas wasn’t sure how to respond. “Yeah, I guess. What exactly are you planning on doing?”
Kris smirked. “Just going to have some fun.”
After the ditch day prank they played on the school, they were forced to clean everything up. It seemed to take ten times longer to put every trashcan back, while the janitor sneered at them. That was simple fun, with simple consequences.
“Let’s make sure no one gets hurt,” Hank said.
“Of course,” Kris responded and walked back into the crowd of mutants.
Turning to Hank, Lucas followed his eyes to the horizon. A black aircraft, barely off the ocean water, skimmed toward them. Mists of ocean water swirled around it as it approached. Sand blew around everyone as it landed. The black steel door opened and a ramp slid down to the beach. A man stood at the top of the ramp and waved for everyone to board.
Cheers spread through the crowd of mutants as they ran toward the aircraft. Lucas and Hank waited their turn, near the back of the line to board. Lucas stared at the man greeting each passenger as they passed by him. He started up the ramp and the man locked eyes with him before looking at the next passenger entering the craft.
The engines hummed and the ramp vibrated as Lucas stood next in line to enter the craft. The man placed a hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “Welcome aboard.”
Lucas thought he recognized him, but shrugged it off and entered. Hank stumbled in behind him. The smell of sweat and fifty people in a confined space filled the cargo section of the craft. The mutants filled it with conversations and laughing about the look on people’s faces when they got there.
The steel door clanked shut, the man that ushered everyone into the craft stood on the elevated platform next to the door. “Everyone hang on, we’ll get this bird going in a minute.” The man yelled and walked to the front of the craft and closed the door to the cockpit area.
“Something doesn’t seem right,” Hank said.
“What?” Lucas felt something wasn’t right but he couldn’t say what, just a gut feeling.
Lucas smelt it first, a hint of bleach, a canister on the wall behind Hank puffed out a small cloud of smoke. He pointed to it and opened his mouth to tell Hank when it burst out smoke like an unhindered fire extinguisher. Within seconds, the cargo area of the craft turned into a white fog, Lucas’s eyes watered and he tried to hold his breath. The immediate screams silenced, followed by thumps, as bodies of people hit the metal floors.
“Son of a—” Hank collapsed to the floor, hitting Lucas’s feet.
He couldn’t hold his breath any longer, his body forced him to inhale. The white smoke went into his lungs with a burning sensation. The room turned black and he lost consciousness before he hit the floor.
“IT CAN’T BE,” HARRIS YELLED at Jack. He brought Jack in for tech support, while he trusted very few, he knew him well enough to know he could trust him.
“We’ve lost all contact, I don’t know what happened,” Jack said.
Harris hit the desk with his fist. “Is Lucas responding to your nudges?”
“No,” Jack said.
Frustration built. At his hands, he’d lost too many. How could he lose anymore? If Almadon was there, she would know how to track what happened.
“Back track the hack,” Harris said. His eye’s bounced around the screens in front of them. His plan unraveled in each of the screens.
“I already did, and they didn’t seem to be trying to hide it, it’s MM and from the complexity of the code, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Marcus doing it himself,” Jack said. “I could get an aircraft ready for you?”
Harris kicked the wall and his chair slid back. “No, I’d be too late. We’ll have to adjust our plan.” What plan? There had to be ways to salvage everything he built up to that point. If Marcus figured out the mutant plan, was he close to figuring out the rest? He still had Poly and Julie, and after last night’s speech MM sent a massive deployment to Sanct, but would it be enough to distract Marcus?
“Send Julie a message about Lucas and Hank. Tell them they’ve been captured.” Harris hated saying the words, but he owed it to them to tell them the truth.
“Sending it now,” Jack typed into the screen.
Harris leaned forward in his chair, seeing the growing frustration on Jack’s face. “What is it?”
Jack turned to face him. “They hacked into her Panavice, they’re blocking me.”
“What?”
“And they sent her a message coded, as if it was from us, saying ‘meet you at gate 16.’”
Marcus had to be involved now. It meant so many things could be horribly wrong. The girls were going to walk into a trap. How did all this happen so fast? He sent the kids into the world and now they were being broken, one at a time.
Closing his mouth, he cleared his throat. He concentrated on an image of Compry, she was his anchor in moments of chaos. With his thoughts under control he came up w
ith a plan. Lucas and Hank were in the hands of MM, but maybe with luck, he might be able to get to Poly and Julie before Marcus did.
“Prepare the ship, we’re going to Sanct.”
POLY’S GLOVED HAND TOUCHED THE door handle. Glancing back at Julie, she took a deep breath and turned it, opening the door to the outside for the first time in nearly a week.
The crowd of people walking by didn’t notice the two girls with large hats and cloth draping over their faces, stepping out of the apartment. Poly extended her hand to Julie and gripped her fingers, merging into the moving horde.
The crowd’s tone rumbled with tension and discord. Her speech had been playing through the night with whatever speakers the outliers could bring out. Now, one hour before the timed rally, the crowds gathered.
A drone zoomed over her head, Poly ducked, even with the fabric draped over her face, she felt vulnerable in the open. She glanced back and spotted her apartment window. She’d spent many hours peering through the crack in the blinds. She’d been afraid of that window, afraid to look through it, afraid of the ridiculous bounty MM put on them, afraid of the city turning on her. But now she was done being afraid. The city had turned, but it was against the real problem, MM. In that, she felt connected to the city. She was part of something bigger.
Julie nudged her with an elbow and pointed to a man they passed standing on a ladder holding a sign. Don’t let them push you down, read over a picture of Poly’s face. She stared at the printed representation of her smoldering expression. Did she look that tough in the broadcast?
The crowd thickened as they got closer to the Center City gates. People bumped into her, but no one gave her a second glance. A man holding a picket with I will see you soon written over a picture of Marcus, chanted it as he walked by. Poly made eye contact with him. Would the man pass up the hundred million for her? She doubted it and kept her hat low as she moved by.
“The gates,” Julie pointed out.
A pair of huge steel doors, large enough for the four lanes of road they blocked, were dead ahead. A large 16 was printed over each of them. From the inside, they had looked beautiful through the limo windows; on the outside, they just looked like a massive barrier. A stage had been erected near the closed gate. Two long banners with Poly’s picture were on display behind the stage.
“Holy shit,” Poly gawked at her ginormous face plastered on stage.
“Looks like you’re a star,” Julie whispered to her.
Confused, Poly stared at the picture and looked around at the people congregating. Glancing back in the direction of the apartment, to the protection of the room, she felt her heart pound in her chest. A drone buzzed over the stage, Poly pulled her hat down further, covering her entire face. She felt exposed, she felt as if eyes were watching her. The drone hummed away.
A group of MM soldiers stood near the stage.
“What’s the plan?” Poly asked.
“He said he would be here,” Julie said. “I’m sure he’s the one who set up this rally to begin with.”
Harris sent them a message early in the morning saying he had found a way for them to get out of the city and to meet him at gate sixteen. Poly scanned the crowd, looking for a familiar face.
“You see him?” Poly asked.
“No.”
Being shorter was not advantageous when looking for someone in a crowd. Poly stood on her tiptoes, but she couldn’t get a good view over the crowd. Growing frustrated, she wondered why Harris chose such a place to meet.
A man dressed in a white T-shirt stepped to the edge of the stage. His shirt had the word Push printed over an arrow, circled with a slash through it. No push down? Oh . . . ‘you can’t push me down.’ He held out his arms in an attempt to silence the crowd and garner their attention. A camera floated nearby. He took off his black sunglasses.
“That’s Jonathan,” Julie whispered.
“Oh yeah, the weird hand-reader guy,” Poly said thumbing the thick calluses on her palm.
Jonathan used his hands to motion the crowd to silence. “We’ve been through hell over the last week.” His voice boomed, amplified by something, but Poly couldn’t see a mic.
“Never has a city been so cut off from the world. At first MM wanted us to turn on one another, search our friend’s homes, look in the alleyways, scour the streets . . . and for what? A young woman and her friend? What did they do, Max? They blew up a museum and you offer a hundred million dollar reward, and shut the city down?”
Jonathan brought out a glass of Orange and held it in front of him. “This is the last of my private reserve of Orange.” He poured it on the stage, the crowd gasped.
“We were given a notice last night.” He paused, letting the glass hit the stage. “We’ve been fed a series of lies from MM, from Max, from Marcus. We have let them. . . .” he pointed to the gate behind him, “take from us—take our very soul. But now we have a voice, a voice who says no. A person who told us to ‘take no more’. Poly. . . .”
The camera projected her image in the air, the same picture as earlier, with her looking into the camera with an expression of indignation. The crowd roared in cheers.
Poly looked to Julie with confusion. How can they see her as some savior? She wanted to rush the stage and tell them no, she wasn’t the one, they should look to Harris or Jonathan.
“And if I may address Poly,” Jonathan continued. “Please contact me, I just went through a divorce and could use another hundred million.”
A few chuckles spread through the crowd.
“But all kidding aside, Poly has given us hope. Hope that there is a permanent solution to Orange. And when her promised shipment of Orange arrives today, I ask everyone to calmly take their share.” Jonathan looked behind him and then back to the crowd, his face suddenly pale.
“Um, that’s it,” Jonathan said and rushed off the stage.
Poly shuddered as Max took the stage, walking past Jonathan. “Thanks for the rousing speech,” Max said. He wore his all black outfit with his R8 on one side of his chest. Travis walked up behind him; his hair was dirty, his face sunken and grim looking.
“While I think it’s great you have a hero to rally behind, it doesn’t change the fact that she is a fugitive of MM. I don’t need to explain a damned thing to any of you.” He pointed to the crowd, his eyes swept by Poly and she lowered her hat.
“We should get out of here,” Julie said.
“No, it’ll just draw more attention.”
A rock flew from the back of the crowd and hit Max, bouncing off his personal shield. He looked at the spot it hit and then back to the crowd. “I see you there, in the blue shirt. Guards.” Three men in black grabbed the man who threw the rock and dragged him from the crowd and into a black van. Poly scanned around and gasped as she noticed they were surrounded by guards. Several black vans were parked in nearby streets. How did she not notice them arriving? There could be a hundred around her. Fear began to set in, she searched for an escape path but, everywhere she looked stood a guard. There was no escape, was it a trap?
It hit her, like a giant weight to the face.
This was a setup. They probably hacked Julie’s Panavice after the broadcast. Poly turned to face Julie. Even through the colored hues of their veils, she saw the same expression on Julie’s face—the look of panic. How would they do it? Quietly grab them? Drag them to the stage like animals and show the city how they controlled everything?
“Anyone else want to take a cheap shot at me?” Max asked.
Poly swallowed and took a deep breath. “I do,” she yelled.
The crowd went silent and turned to face her. As Poly stepped toward the stage, she took off her hat and face-covering. The crowd gasped and the sound of her name traveled through it like a virus. Max’s face didn’t change, he motioned for her to climb on the stage.
“I hoped you would come up here on your own,” Max said. “It would have been messy, otherwise. Bring the other one up here.”
The guard
s already had Julie. “Get your hands off me,” Julie said. They pushed her on the stage. She fell next to Poly. Julie’s hat dangled from her hair as Poly helped her to her feet.
“He had already spotted us,” Poly whispered to Julie as she helped her with her hat. “This way, Harris will know what happened to us, the world will know.”
“I trust you,” Julie said.
Tears welled in Poly’s eyes, as she looked at Julie. She’d never forgive herself for pulling a knife on her. For that brief second, it didn’t feel like they were on a stage, it felt like two best friends about to meet their end together.
“I love you,” Poly said to Julie, squeezing her shoulder.
“I love you too,” she squeaked out.
Feeling a little stronger after the exchange of words, Poly turned to face Max. Would he try to shoot them like in the stadium booth? Glancing at the cameras circling above, she wondered if he would. Would Sanct care? Would anything change? At least Harris would know, and the remaining Preston Six would know.
Taking a deep breath, she felt calm. She was ready.
“Just get it over with,” Poly said, her voice boomed through the crowd. One of the circling cameras must’ve had a mic attached.
Max’s cold face stared at hers. Matching his gaze, she would not blink. The man’s eyes looked weary.
“Just do it. Kill us. Get it over with already.”
The crowd rumbled with anger. Poly glanced over the crowd and was shocked. The sea of people reached as far as she could see, and over them—all the way down the street—her face was being broadcasted against the building walls. Good, let them all see. Guards dressed in black had moved against the stage, several men deep.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Max said. “MM has need of you.”
“You mean Marcus has need of us. What is it, our other friends weren’t enough for him? Why does he need more?” A horrid thought came to Poly that Joey was dead. Had Marcus sucked the life from him?
Max stared at her blankly, not giving away any information.