She jumped to her feet, yelling, ‘No, please! Please, help me.’ She waved her arms above her head so that if the driver glanced in the rear-view mirror they’d clock she wasn’t a drooler. It was hopeless. She was loopy, expecting a Citizen to help her.
Rewilders emerged from the side streets further down the road.
They’d spied the truck and they’d spied Alida. She’d achieved shitall except placing a big neon Here I am sign above her head.
The truck squealed to a stop and reversed. Hell yes. She ran up to the passenger-side door and jumped onto the running board. The tinted glass rolled down and a familiar face appeared.
‘Alida?’
‘Fairy Godmothers?’
Zaneela sat in the passenger seat and Jocasta was driving. There was no sign of the Prince.
‘I thought it was you. Hop in.’ Zaneela unclipped her safety harness and shuffled to the middle of the bench seat.
Alida looked back at the gate. ‘Can you take me into the city? I have to find my little sister. She’s in there somewhere.’
‘Your sister was in the city?’
‘Yep, she got adopted.’
‘You never told me you had a little sister available for adoption.’ Zaneela glared at her. ‘Never mind. She’s dead now anyway. Unless she was running SEM software on her implant she’s definitely dead, and if she’s not dead she’ll be feral. It’s amazing you’ve survived.’
Alida shook her head. Zaneela knew shit-all. Graycie was not dead. ‘I have no clue if her implant was even functioning at all. She could still be alive.’
The Rewilders were close, like mosquitoes swarming towards sweet blood. Their cries filled the air. Dirt marked their faces; blood, brains and vomit wet the ends of their makeshift weapons.
Jocasta clenched her teeth. ‘Leave her, Zan. We need to go.’
‘Come now, Alida. Hop in. We can help you.’
‘Please, just take me back into the city. Just inside the gate. It won’t take long.’
‘We’re going forwards, not backwards.’
‘We need to go now!’ Jocasta said.
Getting into the truck would only take her further from Graycie. The frontrunners of the mob were seconds away, sprinting in their ragged threads. Alida peered down the closest side street thinking she might bolt, but that too was filling with Rewilders.
‘Last chance,’ Zaneela said.
A young chick, a girl really, was the first to reach the truck. She grabbed Alida’s calf. Alida pulled her leg free and kicked the girl in the forehead. She fell back holding her nose. Two others pushed past the girl. Inside the truck the Fairy Godmothers yelled at each other, at Alida, and at the Rewilders closing in. Alida yanked open the door, dived in and slammed it closed behind her just as a Rewilder belted the window with a metal pole.
The locks clicked shut. Zaneela and Jocasta were still yelling. Outside, the mob pulled on the door handles and whacked the armoured panels, their voices one continuous agonised scream. The way she’d imagined hell would sound. Alida put her hands over her ears and pulled her knees up to her chest.
‘Do something,’ Zaneela yelled.
‘I can’t simply run over them.’
‘Use one of the weapons. These trucks are equipped with all sorts of weapons.’
Jocasta flapped her hands, her bracelets jingling softly beneath all the other sound. ‘I can’t –’
‘Here.’ Zaneela leaned over Jocasta and tapped on the dash screen. ‘Let’s try this …’
A buzz filled the cab, followed by a thunderous clap. Rewilders flew backwards, their hair sticking up all over.
‘Now go!’
The truck lurched forward. The Rewilders clambered out of the way. The truck sped up. Alida glanced in the side mirror. A van was emerging from the city gate. Maybe that was Shuqba – and maybe she had Graycie.
‘When we’re free of this mob you can drop me off at the side of the road.’
‘It’s too dangerous – we’ll take you somewhere safe,’ Zaneela said. ‘Somewhere they can fix your brain implant. This whole area will be crawling with disease soon.’
‘But I wanna get out.’ She’d messed up. She should’ve guessed it wasn’t Shuqba in this truck. Shuqba wouldn’t have sped past. She would’ve been searching for her.
‘We should leave her behind,’ Jocasta said.
‘Yep. Do that. Split without me. It’s okay. Really.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re coming with us.’ Zaneela turned to Jocasta. ‘I want to keep her. She could be fertile.’
‘Let me out.’ Alida yanked on the door handle. These jerks were messed up. Why wouldn’t they let her go? Plastic-faces reckoned they could do whatever they fancied with Demis. Just because they’d shelled out for her once didn’t mean they owned her.
The Fairy Godmothers kept gabbing as though Alida weren’t even there.
‘Come now, you’re well aware how important this is to me. We could have our own baby,’ Zaneela said.
‘Fine, we’ll take the Demi.’
Zaneela put a hand on Alida’s arm. ‘Simmer down. You’re going to be part of the new future. A future without LeaderCorp. A future where Neo-Neandertal servants are unnecessary because Sapiens have the technology to enhance themselves and to live extended, productive lives.’
Alida was burning up from her head to her feet. She had to get out. She had to split. Anything but sit in the cab with these loopy jerks. She’d tried asking sweetly and reasoning with them; all she had left was violence. They wouldn’t want the hassle of a violent Demi. She launched at Zaneela, reaching for her hair.
Zaneela batted Alida away with weirdly buff forearms. Some sort of augmentation. Alida was weak and dizzy from her night in chains and her dicky implant. Zaneela held her back with little effort.
‘Help me out, Jo. Do you have something in your bag of tricks?’
The truck stopped. Jocasta rifled around in a bag while Alida and Zaneela grappled. Jocasta put the bag down and sat up. A bright yellow dot sat on the tip of her finger.
‘Something to keep you calm until we arrive at our destination. You’ll be glad in the end. You’re confused right now,’ Zaneela said.
Jocasta touched the sticker to Alida’s neck and Alida felt a tiny pinch. Her whole body went limp and tingly. Zaneela released her and pushed her into the seat. Alida couldn’t move. She almost didn’t care that the truck was taking her somewhere she didn’t want to go. No. She didn’t care at all anymore.
‘You will be part of the glorious future.’ Zaneela winked at her.
At a major intersection at the edge of the Demi-Settlements Jocasta turned left. The truck moved off through the burbs and away from plastic-land. And right then Alida was okay with that.
CHAPTER 45
Shuqba parked the van near Gate 4. The back seats were loaded with nutrition bars and bottles of water from the tearoom of the vehicle depot. Ferrassie’s body was in the cargo compartment. Graycie sat behind the driver’s seat, rubbing her toy panda against her cheek. In the passenger seat Amud stared at the ceiling of the van, his fingernails digging into his blood-caked thighs.
Shuqba entered the unlocked guard booth and brought up the live feed of the zone outside the gate. This was not the time to become careless.
An armoured truck was stopped less than one hundred metres from the wall. A group of around thirty individuals were approaching the truck from further up the road. Shuqba zoomed in. They weren’t wearing the distinctive hub-printed clothing of Demi-Citizens and they held metal bars and lengths of wood in their fists. Rewilders.
To the left of the screen, a Demi-Citizen with orange dreadlocks halfway down his back was staggering out of a shipping container wearing nothing but boxer shorts. One of the Rewilders veered off the road and clubbed him in the ear with a plank of wood. The Demi went down and the assailant stamped on his skull with a heavy-looking boot. Shuqba’s stomach flipped. Alida was out there with these savages. When the androids on the battleme
nts powered down after twelve hours without being reactivated, the Rewilders would swarm the city.
Shuqba zoomed in on the truck. There was someone on the running board on the passenger side, a Demi-Citizen with curly black hair. The Demi turned towards the gate. It was Alida.
Shuqba slammed her palm down to open the gate and ran to the van. She sprang into the driver’s seat and edged the vehicle towards the slowly widening gap.
‘Come on, come on,’ she murmured. Anything could be happening while she had no visual contact with Alida.
The proximity alarm blared from the dashboard as the van scraped against the edges of the gate.
Amud broke his gaze from the ceiling and looked around. ‘What’s the rush?’
They crossed through no-man’s-land and into the Demi-Settlements. Shuqba leaned forward in time to see blue runners withdrawing into the cab of the truck. Alida always printed sky blue runners. She’d told Shuqba she had chosen the colour as a joke because it was nothing like the sky she knew, and then she’d grown fond of the cheery hue. The door of the truck slammed closed as a Rewilder hit it with a steel bar.
The belligerent crowd pelted the truck with rocks, pots, pans and debris torn off nearby shacks, breaking their planks of wood and bending their metal bars against its reinforced panels. Alida was safe in the truck. Shuqba would make contact and they would all be reunited.
Shuqba opened the communications interface on the van’s dash and selected Search for nearby vehicles.
‘There is one active vehicle within a one-kilometre radius,’ the Vehicle Intelligence System said.
The identification plate of the truck flashed up.
‘Hail it please, VIS.’
‘Connecting now.’
‘Why are you contacting that truck?’ asked Amud.
‘I, um …’ Shuqba didn’t want to say anything in front of Graycie. In case it all went wrong. ‘I think they require assistance.’
‘Unfortunately, this vehicle has put a block on communications. Would you like me to increase the search diameter to detect other vehicles?’
‘No, VIS. Thank you. Damn it.’
They had to see the van behind them. They were purposefully declining contact. Shuqba would have to get within visual distance so Alida could identify them. Rewilders swarmed over the truck.
‘They’ve got an armoured truck. Let them fight their own battles,’ Amud said.
A sharp crack sounded and the crowd was thrown from the truck like human shrapnel. The driver must have discharged the electroshock defences. Free of assailants, the truck hurtled away. Stealing Alida away with it.
Shuqba accelerated. The Rewilders regrouped and eyed the van. An easier target than a truck equipped to protect valuable cargo. The crowd converged on them. Shuqba braked heavily. Amud pitched forward and hit his forehead on the windscreen.
‘Just drive through them!’ Amud brushed away fresh blood on his brow ridge.
Assailants banged on the panels of the van and pushed their angry, shouting faces up to the windows. Shuqba refused to make eye contact. She let their words and the thuds and clangs of their weapons tangle together like their matted strands of hair, impossible to pick apart, and concentrated on edging forward through the crowd and after the truck.
Five Rewilders stood at the front of the van, belting the windscreen with the metal bars they’d bent on the truck. The van rocked slightly under the blows. It may not have been equipped with weapons powerful enough to dispel attackers; still, it would take a powerful explosion to pierce its shell.
Graycie whimpered and buried her face in her knees. ‘Alida’s supposed to look after me. Mum told her she had to look after me for always.’
‘Just drive over the fuckers,’ Amud yelled.
Every second they were delayed, Alida was getting further away.
Shuqba pounded on the horn and activated the loudspeaker. ‘Step away from the van. I’m a Security Force Officer and I’ll take defensive action if you do not step away from the van immediately.’ Shuqba pulled Noon’s rifle out from beside her seat and waved it for the assailants to see.
Some of the Rewilders laughed. One of the females near the windscreen spat at her.
‘No one gives a fuck about the Security Force anymore and they know you’re not going to fire that gun inside an armoured van. Just go,’ Amud said.
Shuqba peered at the road ahead. There was no sign of the truck carrying Alida. They’d been so close and she’d failed. The Rewilders had jeopardised her mission.
‘Get us out of here!’ Amud yelled.
Shuqba moved her foot off the brake. These people wouldn’t show her a moment’s mercy. She eased the van steadily forward. Four of the five in front scrambled out of the way. The fifth, a wide-shouldered male, stood his ground, facing down the van. These were the people left to rebuild Sapien society. These angry extremists who believed every other way of life and every other type of human should be destroyed. The Neos left in the city were in for a fight.
The male bounced off the front of the van and the wheels rose and fell over his body. The crowd fell behind as the van picked up speed. The rear camera showed the male they’d run over lying in the road holding a mangled leg.
Shuqba sped to the nearest major intersection and idled there. The route to the right led through industrial complexes towards cities 2 and 3. The route straight ahead went to the medical research centre, the cloning orphanage and the Security Force Academy. The route to the left led to coastal farmland and cities 5 and 6. There was no sign of the truck.
‘Where’s Alida?’ asked Graycie. ‘Are we meeting her soon?’
‘Um …’
Karain would’ve told Shuqba to follow her gut instinct. However, her instincts had never been worth anything. That was why she’d found such comfort in the protocols and regulations of the Security Force. Commander Rayne would tell her to act on the best available intel and adhere to protocol. Now she had no intel and there was no protocol. The truck could’ve gone in any direction.
Alida was lost.
Shuqba clamped the steering wheel tightly. She didn’t want to disappoint Graycie.
‘Damn it,’ she said under her breath.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Amud said. ‘The free-Neos’ meeting spot is out past the cloning orphanage.’
Shuqba turned to Graycie. ‘Alida’s going to meet us later. For now we’re going somewhere we can rest and wait for her.’
Graycie chewed on the collar of her pyjamas and said nothing. Her eyes were red and glassy. Shuqba eased her foot onto the accelerator and drove straight ahead.
CHAPTER 46
The blanket above Alida was smooth and almost weightless. She was in a bed – a proper bed with silvery grey covers – on the bottom tier of a shiny blond-wood bunk. A second bunk stood on the opposite side of the room. The room was as clean and slick as the inside of the LeaderCorp Hub. Pure bright light, untainted by dust particles, slanted in from a single window and made the yellow walls glow. In the distance she could hear birdsong.
She had no clue what had happened to Graycie and she’d lost contact with Shuqba. She searched her vision for the Intelli-Enhance switch. It was still gone. She tried voice commands.
Shit-all.
Alida pushed the blanket back and sat up. She was wearing a white T-shirt and shorts that were as soft as the skin on a Citizen’s hand. She pulled one of her curls straight beneath her nose. It was soft and silky and smelt like strawberries at their sweetest, just before the white fuzzy mould bloomed. The familiar dirt horizons beneath her fingernails had been scrubbed away. Flashes came back to her of her head lolling about in the warm foam of a bath while Zaneela and Jocasta purified her to their liking – as they had when they’d shelled out for her all those weeks ago. Those jerks were obsessed with the Cinderella scenario.
Whatever they had drugged her with had shattered her. Even more than passenger. She got another flash of walking up a spiral staircase, everything around her gold
and white, with a blue-uniformed goon holding her up. She didn’t feel like anyone had touched her. She put her hand into her underpants. There was no slick of jizz or lube, none of the tenderness of forced sex. Maybe they’d just polished her up and put her to bed. It was possible.
She leaned her head out. The bunk above was empty.
The sunlight was brighter than any she’d ever seen through the smog over the Demi-Settlements. She walked over to the window.
Three large greenhouses with semicircular frames rose out of the lawn like monstrous earthworms. Massive trees, ten times larger than the fruit trees in the garden market, stood on the other side of the lawn, their leaves thrashing about like green flames. The trees went on and on. Mum had reckoned bush like this still existed, but even when Alida had trekked as far as the outer burbs she’d never clocked anything like it. Birds flitted in and out of the upper branches and soared across a sky as blue as her runners. Graycie would love this. Alida sniffed and teared up. She didn’t care what these plastic-faces wanted or what they did to her. She needed to find Graycie and Shuqba.
The air in front of the bush shimmered and distorted slightly, like the second before fainting. A real domeshield. She’d say it was slick if it wasn’t just another shining wall holding her back. She screwed up her face. It didn’t matter how hard she tried, she just kept losing. She’d worked her butt off to get ahead, but without privilege or clout it was worth shit-all.
The sound of feet came from outside the bedroom door. Alida bolted back to the bed and pulled the blanket up to her nose. Two buff-looking goons in blue uniforms opened the door and pushed a red-faced chick, a little older than Mum, into the room. She had short mousy brown hair and her sun-damaged skin looked grubby against her slick white threads. Definitely not a Citizen.
‘Rest a little,’ one of the goons said. ‘The doc says the hormones might make you woozy.’
The Shining Wall Page 22