The Shining Wall

by Melissa Ferguson

  ‘And have a bloody shower. You stink like a camel.’ The second goon leaned against the doorframe and put one hand on her hip.

  The red-faced chick pointed a finger in the goon’s face. ‘No, I smell like a human being, like God and Mother Nature intended. All you unholy dipshits’ll be smirking out of your charred corpses when my people come and burn this house of sin to the ground. Ya hear?’

  Uh-oh. A loopy God-bothering Rewilder. The worst kind.

  ‘Righto. Looking forward to it. Keep it up and you’ll get another sedative.’

  The other goon, the guy, turned towards Alida and Alida snapped her eyes shut. ‘I know you’re awake. My name’s Vinod and my partner here’s Kiama. We’re here to help you and ensure your safety. We’ll be back in about fifteen to take you down to breakfast.’

  Alida cracked one eye open and looked into Vinod’s face. He had the longest, darkest eyelashes she’d ever seen on a guy. Her stomach rumbled. Breakfast would be slick. No use starving to death while she figured out how to split and find Graycie and Shuqba.

  The goons left.

  The woman sat on the bed across from her, legs spread wide, giving Alida the up-and-down. ‘Were you abducted too?’

  Zaneela and Jocasta had given her shit-all say in the matter so she reckoned abduction was the right word. She nodded.

  ‘I’m Rhea.’ Rhea began doing push-ups on the floor between the beds.

  ‘Alida.’

  ‘You a Rewilder? A believer?’

  ‘Um …’ Bullshitting had been a survival tactic in the Demi-Settlements, but Alida’s attempts always reeked. She would lose moments of confident credibility wrangling with the flaws and consequences of her lie. Even Graycie was a more convincing bullshitter. Right now, though, Alida needed all the mates she could get. So she gave it a crack. ‘Yep,’ she said, and even to her own ears it sounded like a question.

  Rhea pushed up from the floor and grabbed Alida’s arm.

  ‘Hey.’ Alida pulled back but Rhea was strong. She flipped Alida’s arm over and clocked the credit chip embedded in her wrist.

  ‘Demi-Citizen?’ Rhea raised an eyebrow. ‘You got one of those brainwashing implants too?’

  She’d only mess up more if she tried to back up her first lie. Alida raised an eyebrow and curled up one edge of her mouth as if to say waddayoureckon?

  Rhea got back down on the floor and started on sit-ups. ‘I heard nearly everyone who got those implants was judged as unworthy.’

  ‘What?’

  Rhea tutted. ‘God slayed them is what.’

  Alida swallowed, remembering Zave’s dead body lying on busted tiles.

  ‘You even know where you are now?’

  Alida didn’t bother trying to answer. She’d already clocked Rhea as someone who talked at you, not to you.

  ‘I’ve lived on a neighbouring property for a few years now. The she-demon who owns this place, the SEM leader, used to be a LeaderCorp director. Till they booted her out. Priscilla and all her people survived whatever it was that happened with the implants. Don’t you think that’s a bit fishy?’

  Alida shrugged. She didn’t care why the implants had messed up, and she reckoned it had shit all to do with God or demons. She just wanted to find Graycie.

  ‘Do you even know why you’re here?’ Rhea sat up, draped her arms over her knees and stared at Alida like she actually wanted an answer this time.

  ‘I reckon it’s because they want me to pop out some littlies for them.’

  Rhea’s face crumpled and she blinked like she was trying not to squeeze out any tears. ‘They’ve already stuck things up me like some whore and injected me with their toxic chemicals. All these vampires care about is living for eternity. They don’t care about the next generation. I reckon they wanna make soulless little clones of themselves.’

  Alida rolled her eyes. Typical over-the-top, conspiracy-theory-spouting Rewilder.

  ‘I’m telling you, this place is a hellhole.’

  If Rhea reckoned this was a hellhole the chick had obviously never been chained up beneath the ground by tunnel trolls.

  ‘You look sceptical.’ Rhea shook off the sads and launched into squats, her head bobbing up and down like a demented folk dancer.

  ‘Nah –’

  ‘I can’t be a baby factory for these transhumanist sinners. I just can’t.’ Rhea leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘Will you help me escape?’

  ‘Hell yes.’ Why not? She wanted out of the joint anyway.

  CHAPTER 47

  Along one side of the dining room was a table stacked with fruit, pastries and breakfast cereals. Alida swallowed the saliva pooling in her mouth and headed for the drinks station at the far end. She pressed the button for a caramel mylkshake and sussed out the rest of the room while the machine chugged and hissed. The joint was even shinier than Freel’s museum and the Fairy Godmothers’ apartment in City 1. The chandelier sparkled. The floor was lined with dark wood, and heavy crimson drapes dressed the windows. White cloths covered two large round tables and a smaller table near the door. She felt a bit like some fairytale princess locked up in a fancy tower or a gingerbread house by an evil witch. Fattened up on food and comfort and dreading the day she would be juicy enough to devour.

  The guard named Vinod pointed to one of the large tables. ‘Fill a plate and sit over with Rhea.’

  Alida grabbed a peach, a slice of watermelon and some flakylooking pastry swirled with something brown that she hoped was chocolate. She closed her eyes for a second, breathing in deeply. The smell of so much food was almost enough to calm the squirming in her gut. This place wasn’t all nasty.

  She put her plate down at an empty place at Rhea’s table as the Fairy Godmothers entered the room with a leggy chick in a tightfitting white dress. The chick’s blonde hair shimmered above a flawless plastic face. Alida’s body temperature rose to spontaneous combustion levels and the squirming in her gut ramped up again.

  Zaneela swept over. ‘Alida! Lovely to see you up and about!’ She took her by the shoulder and steered her towards the leggy chick. ‘Priscilla, I’d like you to meet Alida. She’s the guest we were telling you about.’

  Alida took deep breaths and pushed away images of them holding her back when she tried to bust out of the truck, and washing her like she was a dirty rag they could do whatever they fancied with.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ Priscilla held out a hand covered with gold and jewelled trinkets. Bracelets jangled all the way up her arms. Out of habit Alida calculated how much dosh she’d make if she flogged all that stuff in the Demi-Settlements. Enough for rent and fresh grub for at least two years.

  ‘It’s so lucky Zan and Jo happened upon you. I hear the cities are in disarray. Fortunately, SEM implants were unaffected. Congratulations to you.’ Priscilla bent forward and squeezed Alida’s shoulders like she was some littlie. ‘You’ve landed in the right place. We’re the future of our species now.’

  Priscilla could be as sweet as she wanted. Alida was no dimwit. She was only worth whatever value Priscilla could squeeze out of her.

  ‘Good morning.’ A stern-looking plastic-face with slick olive skin came up behind Priscilla.

  ‘Ah, Dr Katzis.’ Priscilla released one of Alida’s shoulders and took Dr Katzis’s hand. ‘Please meet Alida.’

  ‘Hello.’ The doc nodded to her but didn’t offer a handshake. ‘I’ll be overseeing the restoration of your brain implant and also assessing your fertility.’

  ‘Oh.’ This guy didn’t waste any time getting to know a chick before he checked out her fertility. At least he didn’t pretend she was anything more than a cheap womb. She wouldn’t have to fear she’d be manipulated by his kind act and fake concern. She had a shitty habit of fooling herself there was a bit of an angel in even the diciest characters.

  ‘Please enjoy the facilities, Alida. And do let the House Intelligence System know if there’s anything you require.’ Priscilla and the doc turned their backs and headed for the
breakfast buffet.

  Alida took her seat. One of the two guys at the table – the one with shimmering green eyes and ever-changing rainbow-streaked hair – reached across and shook her hand.

  ‘I’m Milton. It’s been quite a week. I’m a tech for SEM. Priscilla graciously welcomed me and my brother Josh after the malfunction made City 1 a biohazard overrun with hostiles and Neos. It was the implants, you know? Blood coming out of every orifice. Truly traumatising,’ he said, as though Alida hadn’t been there and clocked it all for herself.

  Josh lifted his head from his cereal. His look was more lowkey: chestnut curls, deep brown eyes and blushed cheeks.

  ‘Now they’re training us in VR to become killing machines in order to earn our board.’ Josh grimaced and looked back down at his cereal.

  ‘Killing who?’ Alida asked.

  ‘Anyone who could cause a problem for SEM,’ Milton said. ‘Specifically those deranged survivors of the implant malfunction, members of hostile groups.’ He glanced nervously at Rhea. ‘And Neo-Neandertals. You see, they outnumber Sapiens now. Primitive creatures. All brawn and no brains. Priscilla thought it might be prudent to thin the herd.’ Milton put air quotes around thin the herd. ‘It’s been a steep learning curve for both of us, and not where I aspired to be at this stage in my life. Nevertheless, and I don’t mean to brag, we’ve chalked up a respectable number of successes in the simulations.’

  Alida bit into her pastry – it was chocolate! – hoping he’d stop gabbing if she didn’t encourage him. She’d spew if they made her make littlies with this jerk. At least Josh was keeping his mouth shut. Silence was an underrated quality in a sperm donor.

  Rhea leaned forward across the table. ‘Firstly, shut up about hostiles overrunning your precious city; secondly, I’d just like to see you try to kill a hostile Rewilder; and thirdly, don’t complain about hunting Neos. Cleansing the earth of unnatural aberrations is God’s work. I’d rather do that than fill my womb with demons.’

  Milton lifted his hands off the table. ‘No offence meant, Rhea.’

  ‘You know jack shit about anything.’ Rhea turned her chair away from Milton and picked at the white head of a zit on her jawline.

  Alida was chewing over giving these ignorant jerks a piece of her mind when an ear-thumping klaxon filled the house. The sound vibrated through her and spiked her adrenaline with the promise of something, anything, to disrupt Priscilla’s cosy little set-up. Chaos maybe. Rhea dropped her spoon and half rose from her seat. Obviously expecting her Rewilder mates had come to wreak havoc.

  ‘Intruder detected in domeshield quadrant A,’ the House Intelligence System repeated several times.

  The goons ran out of the dining room. Rhea bolted over to the window. Everyone else followed.

  ‘Thank you, HIS. Stand down,’ Priscilla said. The alarm ceased. ‘Please don’t be alarmed. Security will deal with it.’

  Alida poked her head through a gap between Rhea and Milton, holding her nose against Rhea’s powerful stench. Several metres back from the house, where the domeshield intersected with a crushed-rock driveway, four characters stood around an armoured van, the kind that travelled in and out of the gates of City 1 every day. Alida didn’t need an implant zoom function to clock the tattooed scalp of Ganya. And the guy beside her, stretching and shaking out his limbs like they were just having a spell from a leisurely drive, was Freel.

  ‘Aw, hell.’

  The other two characters were goons of the thick-necked, flat-nosed variety Freel seemed to keep around. Ganya and Freel faced off with the domeshield, hands by their sides, chilled and waiting. This wasn’t the disruption Alida was hoping for. Jeez. An earthquake – or a comet, even – would’ve been better.

  Kiama and Vinod stood on the mansion side of the barrier, handguns drawn and gums flapping. Freel’s mouth was moving too and his face got redder and redder. What was he doing here? Things were complicated enough without him strutting around. The guy was a control freak. There was no way he wouldn’t butt heads with Priscilla. If she was enough of a dimwit to let him in.

  Alida pulled her head back from under Rhea’s armpit and slid over to where the Fairy Godmothers and Priscilla were whispering together.

  ‘He’s a criminal,’ Jocasta said.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve told the guards to inform him that our rela-tionship was purely business. He’ll have to weather this apocalypse elsewhere.’

  Freel wasn’t such a bigwig outside the Demi-Settlements after all.

  Priscilla returned to her breakfast. Outside, Freel, Ganya and their goons got back into their van. Alida waited until it had disappeared into the bush before returning to her own breakfast. Freel was gone. But for how long? He was a guy who didn’t like to be told no.

  CHAPTER 48

  Shuqba disposed of the flap of skin in the flames of the camp fire and nano-glued together the edges of the wound where Amud’s clone tattoo had been. The cool numbness of the anaesthetic wipe on the back of her own neck was fading and a dull, thudding pain broke through.

  ‘It’s done. No one will be able to track us now.’

  Amud nodded. He walked away from the fire and sat down under the olive tree that faced the mounded dirt of Ferrassie’s grave.

  Graycie skipped among the fruit trees, chasing birds from their feasts. The child was healthy. Her adoptive parents had sent her for multiple gene therapy treatments. Loads and loads of needles, according to Graycie. Fortunately, there hadn’t been time to repair her implant before the malfunction.

  They’d been at the rendezvous point – the skeleton of a brown brick house in the wilds – for two days. The floor was a rubble of plaster, glass and dirt. The windows were all smashed, their frames warped and twisted with age, and the doors had long ago dropped from rusted hinges. Everything people had built in the wilds was rotten and crumbling and dulled to a uniform grey. The only colour in this abandoned town came from the grasses and weeds growing through the fissures.

  They slept in the van. It was safer and more secure.

  Shuqba packed up the first-aid kit and took it to the van, which was hidden in a thicket of blackberry bushes along the side of the house.

  The roar of a biofuel engine came from the road. Shuqba’s heart galloped. It could be the free-Neos they’d been waiting for, or it could be an enemy. Someone who’d tracked them by their clone tattoos before they’d thought to cut them out and burn them. She eased Officer Noon’s assault rifle out of the van and quietly slid the door closed. She didn’t have time to warn Amud and Graycie; the vehicle had already turned into the driveway, rattling over the corrugations in the dirt. Shuqba raised the rifle and peered through a gap in the bushes.

  A small car coated red with dust pulled up. Two Neos emerged, a male and a female, stretching their arms and cracking their necks. Their coveralls were ragged and faded. They appeared to be unarmed. The female turned away from Shuqba’s hiding place, displaying a puckered scar where her clone tattoo would once have been.

  Shuqba put the rifle back in the van and called out, ‘Amud, they’re here.’

  Amud trudged over and they picked their way through the bushes to the front of the house.

  ‘Crazy, crazy times, huh? I’m Gibraltar.’ The male shook both their hands. ‘This is Chapelle.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’ Chapelle took her turn at shaking their hands. ‘You must be Amud and Ferrassie. I was the one communicating with you on the forum.’

  Amud reddened and blinked frantically.

  ‘Actually … I’m Shuqba. Plans were altered and events occurred after the implant malfunction and, uh … Ferrassie couldn’t make it.’ Shuqba put a hand on Amud’s back.

  ‘Right, right.’ Gibraltar put his fists on his hips. ‘A story for another time.’

  Chapelle tilted her head to look behind Shuqba. Her face paled.

  ‘Shuqba, Shuqba!’ Graycie ran down the hallway through the middle of the house. She grabbed Shuqba by the waist and buried her face in her side.
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  Gibraltar frowned. ‘Um, who’s this?’

  ‘This is Graycie. I’m her guardian … for the time being. Her sister’s alive and we plan to reunite them when I make contact with her. For now, though, Graycie goes where I go.’ She hadn’t even considered the reception a Sapien child would receive at the free-Neo camp. If they wouldn’t accept Graycie at the community Amud would have to go on without her. She and Graycie would find ways to survive until they found Alida. Sooner or later Alida would get access to her MindComm and discover the messages Shuqba had left for her.

  ‘Can you excuse us for a bit?’ Chapelle grabbed Gibraltar by the arm and guided him over to the other side of the car. She pulled an OmniScreen from her pocket and tapped on it.

  ‘Let’s get in the shade, Gray.’ Shuqba led Graycie onto the covered porch and they sat with their backs against the wall. Amud stood beside them, staring into the distance.

  After a short conference with Chapelle, Gibraltar walked around to the cargo compartment of the car and removed buckets and cloth sacks. Chapelle scrunched up the OmniScreen and shoved it in her pocket. They both strode onto the porch.

  ‘So, we can’t get in touch with any of the leaders. We have a no-communications policy within one hundred kilometres of the camp. I hoped one of them might be out and about, but no such luck,’ Chapelle said.

  Gibraltar passed a bucket to Graycie. ‘If you can fill that with blackberries, all the kids at camp will be your best friend.’

  Graycie spat the collar of her pyjamas out of her mouth and skipped down the porch towards the blackberry bushes.

  ‘We take back as much fruit as we can. It’s hard to grow anything where we are, so we rely on supplies from the towns.’

  Shuqba took a sack from Gibraltar’s outstretched hand. ‘So will Graycie’s presence be against protocol?’

  Chapelle shrugged. ‘We’re not sure, but in light of everything that’s happened there’s been a lot of talk about coming out of hiding and aligning ourselves with sympathetic Sapiens.’