by Rayya Deeb
Dom and I settled into a much-needed shared silence, lulled by the transitory effect of the cool, hollow tunnel vibrations. Neither of us spoke a word on the five-minute ride to the other end. I tried to process what had just happened and pondered what was to come. It hit me at every angle: external and internal, emotional, physiological and psychological.
We emerged into a gray rainbow stone landscape. Brooklyn, New York. Despite the absence of color, I started to feel revitalized. Manhattan might have had a glorious past, but now it just could not deliver the way it had in its heyday. Now the inimitable New York City energy had taken up residence in its boroughs.
We drove alongside an illuminated wall of speckled gray granite into which was smoothly etched the emblem of a robed young woman carrying a small bundle of sticks and the saying, "Eendraght Maeckt Maght". Above it, the American flag majestically flapped in the salient fall winds. "In unity there is strength," Dom enunciated in a tone just above a whisper. I wondered how many languages he could speak.
And then, without hesitation, he reached over and rested his hand on my thigh. A tingling sensation spread up and down my leg but I hoped it wasn't obvious. There was still some unresolved stuff with the whole McKayla-at-the-party thing, and I still didn’t really know how he felt. The very thought of it stuck a fork in the tingle, which was good, I guess, because I needed to keep focused on my plan of action. I couldn't let this gaga-eyed side of me fog up the clear line I'd concocted to get us where we needed to go.
"We should be able to make it to Seneca by sunrise if we drive through the night."
"Seneca? That's your plan? To take us into the eye of the storm?" Dom was eons from sold. He pulled his hand back to his lap, and that mellowness he had acquired in the tunnel vanished just like that.
"I know it sounds crazy, but it's the only way."
"It doesn't sound crazy. It is crazy. We can't."
"We have no other choice. We can't hide. S.O.I.L. will find us. Now that you’re with me and you know as much as I do, we need to get back inside Seneca City."
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dom bite into the side of his lip.
"Let's hear it."
This was big, coming from Dom. He always followed his own plans, and nobody else's. It felt good that he would consider my plan.
"But, I'm only listening on one condition."
"What's that?"
"I drive."
So much for Dom feeling comfortable with me driving.
"Don't take it personally. I hate being in a car. If I'm not driving, I'll have even more anxiety on top of the anxiety I already have."
We pulled over and swiftly executed a Chinese fire drill.
Dom meticulously positioned his seat and mirrors for the long journey ahead. The immediate plan was to continue down through Brooklyn, across Staten Island and head south on one of the most traveled interstates in the United States– 95.
I pulled my flexer out. "Okay, first things first, I need to flex Ellen Malone. She's the only one I can trust–"
"Wait!"
Dom threw his right hand across me, knocking my flexer against the window.
I gasped. “What the–!”
"I'm sorry."
I didn't know what to say. I fished in the side door pocket where my flexer had landed.
"I'm sorry, Doro, that was a defense reflex. I didn't mean to scare you, but we can't trust Ellen Malone."
All along, Ellen had been nothing but good to me. She had earned my trust and I felt genuinely connected to her. She’d shown time and again that she cared for, and wanted the best for me. And from our conversations at Ty's sushi spot, it seemed Dom and Ty were on the same page with me on this.
"That night. The party..." Dom's voice started to shake, "I was invited to a party at Brittany Gilroy's place in Georgetown by this girl, McKayla Gordon."
My skin crawled. Sickness brewed in my gut, but I sucked it up and waited. I was glad he was opening up. The mystery of that night had plagued me since it went down. I wanted him to tell me everything, no matter how much it was going to hurt. He had no idea that I’d been there, that I had seen him... that I knew McKayla Gordon and couldn't stand her, even more so after I saw her clawing at him that night.
"We have session together and she's always real flirty."
My stomach turned with disgust, my temperature began to rise. I had to get these boots off or they would trap the heat inside and, next thing you know, I'd be all red and sweaty. Not good. I pried them off.
"I mean, I try to be nice about it, but that girl is persistent, let me tell you. I've known her since I came to Seneca and she's never let up. She even forced her way into being my lab partner in session."
"Obnoxious." I had to let that one slip.
"Pretty much. I honestly had zero interest in hanging out with her, but after the week I’d had, I thought getting to the Aboves would be a great escape from it all. I could have cared less about some party, I just wanted to breathe real air, you know? It's just so suffocating down there sometimes. As incredible as it is, I still can't wrap my head around spending forever there."
"I'm right there with you."
"Well, McKayla was the means to getting me to the Aboves, so I took her up on it. That turned out to be a terrible decision."
Relief flooded over me and I let forgiveness move in. I’d let what I’d seen that night at the party drive me crazy when I hadn't even heard the truth from Dom himself. My life experiences had conditioned me to brace for the worse as a defense mechanism. Maybe it was time I reprogrammed myself like I'd reprogrammed the nanobots. I made a silent vow to give people the benefit of the doubt, and have faith in possibilities.
"I was in a pretty desolate area of Japan when the whole Mojo Stick movement hit the big cities. I came straight to Seneca from jail in Japan so I was never around it. I’d never gotten into them in Seneca, and when I saw people doing them at the party and I thought to myself, "There is no way." I never even want to get drunk or anything like that because I just don't like the idea of not knowing what's going on around me. Turns out, I didn't have a choice. I felt a prick that instantly numbed my arm and that was it."
"Are you serious? Someone drugged you?!" Even though it completely sucked for him, I have to admit that I was relieved he hadn't made a choice to get Mojo'd out with McKayla. Part of me felt guilty for feeling that way, but I couldn't help it.
"Yep."
"I can't even imagine. Who was it, McKayla?"
"Thing is, I don't even know."
"That is so random."
"Something tells me it wasn't all that random considering whose house we were at."
"Brittany Gilroy?"
"Brittany Gilroy's dad used to be U.S. senator who’s now the Seneca Northwestern hemisphere ambassador to the Southwestern hemisphere. There are all sorts of crazy rumors about what’s going on down there."
"Hmm. Okay. I still don't get why someone there would drug you with a Mojo Stick."
"You just never know the tricks these people have up their sleeves to keep everyone from asking too many difficult questions. All I know is that Mojo Stick prick ended with me being banished to the Aboves."
"Hmm, right."
I let it sink in. He still didn’t know how spot on his suspicions were. It looked to me that he’d been labeled a troublemaker and set up with the Mojo Stick injection to get him out of Seneca.
"I'm not gonna lie, I felt insanely phenomenal at that party..."
And I'm not gonna lie, even though I felt horrible for Dom, my curiosity was piqued.
"I was flying. I melted into the air and rode the vibrations like I was on a magic carpet made of silk."
"I still don't see how Ellen connects to all of this."
"For a while I didn't have a worry in the world. It was amazing for all of an hour, two, shoot, I have no idea how long. But then a wave of chaos hit the party. I didn't know what was going on, I couldn't even move my mouth to form words. I seriously lost my
mind, Doro. The last thing I can remember, was being rushed by McKayla into a flighter that was piloted by someone from S.O.I.L... and Ellen Malone was riding shotgun."
My stomach lurched. Ellen must have known Dom wasn’t in the flighter crash if she’d seen him that night after it happened. She definitely knew something about his disappearance, and she would have known it when we went to dinner in the restaurant sector during lockdown. Dom didn't know that they had pinned the flighter crash on him. In fact, he didn't even know about the crash at all. I couldn't bring myself to tell him. It would destroy him. I needed him to maintain any iota of optimism that he still had about Seneca.
"We’ll get to the bottom of it." I tried to come across as resolved, but even I could hear the tremble in my voice.
I kept talking. “That's why I need your trust"
Dom took a breath. "Alright, boss... lay it on me."
I turned to face Dom as he drove. "Spinal flexer implants. You and me."
"No thanks."
"I've coded our flexer chips for connection to the entire Seneca network. If we become one unit with our computers, and our computers have the information that can reach every Senecan on the planet..."
Dom's posture tensed as he leaned towards the wheel, chewing on the inside of his bottom lip.
"You know how dangerous spinal flexer injections are?"
"I do."
"There's a reason they're illegal."
"I think we're past what's legal and what's illegal at this point."
"True."
Dom sat back and so did I. A spinal flexer injection wasn't something you did off the cuff. It was dangerous physically and the implications of it were far-reaching. I could see his mind sorting through all the logical scenarios, and saw the easing of his neck as he came to the same conclusion I had. "My family friend has a self-sustained farm outside Charlottesville. Completely off the grid. About two hours by car to Claytor Lake. If we can go see her, I think she'll be able to help us."
"Can we trust her?"
"Absolutely. Anika Clark, she saved my grandmother's life. Thirty years ago when the government started regulating the flex medical movement and renegade doctors started going underground, this woman was one of the first. She used cellular reprogramming and ancient Chinese medicine to cure my grandmother’s breast cancer. And my grandmother is still alive at a hundred and one."
"Incredible."
"It is. My family is super tied into the whole hack doc community."
"So, does this mean you're with me?"
Next thing I knew, we were cruising down the highway, under the night sky, psyching ourselves up for the mission of our lives.
43
THE EASTERN SEABOARD had taken a beating over the past several decades, and until now I’d only witnessed it via the news. The most recent tropical storm, Hurricane Molly, had left the majority of the coastline from Maryland down through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, in a state of emergency. This was the biggest storm on record since these parts had been settled.
The absence of moonlight made it harder to see the scenery along the highway, but I didn't mind, because it was such a nice contrast to the urine-colored blaze that had replaced LA's night sky so many years before. As the morning light began its slow fade-in, the weather-battered land became more and more evident. An overturned water tower nestled, abandoned, in a bed of weeds. A massive uprooted oak tree had taken out half of a gas station.
Only those places rich in private financial reserves had enough resources to repair the damage in the affected areas. And those communities were few and far between. The government had nothing to give and nobody to borrow from. And now I knew that the resources that could have saved these areas were being channeled into Seneca instead. My Country, 'Tis of Thee' was being left in the dust. It was depressing, really, but I tamed my emotion, and recognized that the cyclical nature of empires, and even species, were amply illustrated by the history of the rest of the world. Now it was America’s turn.
After Maryland, we crossed through a cool, cobalt Washington, D.C., in its wee hours, and then on to Northern Virginia. We traveled against the flow of the morning commuters ascending from the exurbs in sync with the rising sun. Below a golden tree-tufted horizon, prisms of amber morning light bounced between the stream of flighters in the air and the cars moving slowly on the roads beneath them; the two socioeconomic groups were connected whether they liked it or not. Dom and I were starving now, our stomachs running on empty.
We pit-stopped at a gas station in Front Royal, Virginia to use the bathroom and grab a snack. This was a town stuck in the past. Strips of one-and two-story red brick office buildings and warehouses, dormant apple orchards and sprawling horse farms. Four lane roads. Old time yellow traffic lights on posts. Ironic as it is, Front Royal is Virginia's main Smart Road hub. Football-field size solar awnings covered the communication towers and generators that powered the automated vehicles.
At a classic, "you pump, you pay," gas station Dom and I agreed to take turns waiting at the car to keep a lookout, just in case. Dom awkwardly danced his way inside, trying to withstand the pressure of a near-bursting bladder.
He came back, relieved. My turn. I thought nobody was in the gas station except the cashier but then I saw some old lady in the aisle reading the label on a pack of vita-melts. Ancient country music was playing. Patsy Cline. A muted monitor with the news was on behind the FlexPay hub. Local weather report– 30 degrees.
I hit the bathroom. As I headed back out, I looked straight at the cashier. There was just something about him. The guy was about fifty years old with thick gray hair, weathered reddish-brown skin, shielded by a layer of red-gray stubble. A toothpick dangled from his mouth. A dark blue and white striped button-up, sleeves rolled above his leathery elbows, this was a man who had clearly worked his whole life to provide for someone, somewhere, who loved him, like I loved my dad. There was a sparkle in his eye as he smiled and nodded at me. I grinned back.
Then, behind him on a screen, something snagged my attention. Side-by-side pictures of Dom and me, captioned with, "Runaway teenagers in extreme danger. Please report to authorities." I froze, tried to keep from choking and jetted out to the car, not giving a second glance at the cashier I left in my dust.
44
"GUN IT!" I was panting, but he was right there with me and didn’t ask a thing until we’d peeled out of the station.
"What is it?!"
The Prius took off up the circular highway entrance ramp.
"The search– it's gone full force."
"How?"
Before I had the chance to answer, an ominous buzz rained down on us. Through the rear windshield we saw a swarm of twelve football-size helicopter drones headed straight for us. We hit the friction of the shoulder.
Dom whipped his head back around, gripped the wheel and swerved off the shoulder back onto black, nearly nailing a freight truck as we merged onto the highway. My head spun between hanging on as we wove in and out of traffic and tracking the swarm of drones that was closing in behind us.
Panic alarms were going off in my head, but at the same time I focused on my conscious agenda. I could run codes to change any quantum computing system in the world, and this was the time I needed to make it happen.
Game time.
"Gun it! I'll get us connected to these suckers."
"Doro–"
"Just drive, Dom, I got this!"
And he did, as I huddled over my flexer and locked into the zone. I smashed through screen after screen, feverishly drilling code into the communication-crowded airwaves, determined to access the network those drones were on. They had multi-layered shields on them, but I just kept pounding, trying every access code I could. Pain radiated up my forearm. I shook my right hand to ward off the burning onset of Carpal Tunnel.
Dom careened through cars and trucks doing about fifty now with the drones right behind us. Dizziness set in as my eyes went from the road to my flexer.
>
"Ughh." I squeezed the bridge of my nose.
"What, what?!"
"I'm just a little car sick."
Dom gave me a look that might have been comical if the whole situation hadn’t been so crazy. He yanked the wheel to squeeze between two cars to the clear lane on the far right.
Pop! "Ahhh!" Dom shouted as one of our rear tires was shot out and we skidded back across two lanes. A horn blared as the truck it was attached to swerved to miss us. Dom tugged at the wheel as he gunned it. Sixty miles per hour and climbing, the awol tire's metal rim grinding into the asphalt.
The drones flew out in front of us. A red beam shot down on each of our faces. Dom tried to swerve out of the beam, but it was locked on us. I didn't take focus off my flexer, "Just a few more–"
"We don't have a few more!" Dom yelled.
Sparks spewed up from the tire rim.
Boom! I was in the drone network. "Got it!" I’d cracked their code, and reprogrammed them to take command from my flexer.
Pop! Another tire blew– the front left. The car screeched back across the highway and rammed the rail on the inner shoulder. Dom yanked the steering wheel the other way and the car fishtailed, flipped up onto its driver's side, slid about ten yards, then slammed down, landing on its roof and skidding about thirty yards more before coming to a stop, upside down in a ditch.
My hair swept the car’s ceiling as I twisted my head to get my bearings. I peered in Dom's direction. He’d been super jostled by the impact, and had been knocked out but was coming to. "Dom! Dom, come on, we gotta get out of here!"
I scanned for an exit plan. The roof was flattened halfway, the windows all smashed. Dom's side was covered in blood, his head severely gashed by broken glass. Two cars of concerned witnesses pulled over to the shoulder and stopped above the concrete ditch we were in. I held my flexer to my mouth. "Activate sunglass flexer mode." My flexer blinked three times and morphed into black shades, I put them on, undid my seatbelt and tumbled out with a thud. It knocked the wind out of me, but I powered through it. Gasping for breath, I got up on my knees and picked broken glass out of my bloody palms.