by Hanks, Greg
And what had happened?
I thought back to last night. Were we the only ones running? What if there were others out there, wandering aimlessly through vacant streets? And what if this mysterious note writer was directing all of us to Ellis Island?
I leaned back on my hands and grew tired of the mystery of the secret shooter. The more I tried to solve unanswered questions, the more I found myself further away from the truth. Out of all the skepticism rolling through my skull, only one thing was worth trying to answer.
Bloodface Vectorpus.
We owed him. Technically. And I hated that. Had I known we were going to meet a mentally unstable kid, Neurolics would have been out of the question—no matter how much longer it took to find another place. Bottom line, we had to tell him about Ellis Island. He knew about the soldiers, he knew about the Turnmont, and he knew we were targets. But whatever he thought he was entitled to didn’t satisfy the idea of bringing him along.
I just couldn’t think of any alternatives that included Tara’s support.
I decided to put it off for now. This idyllic moment wasn’t going to last. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind.
A small crunch broke my deliberation and I whirled around.
Another armored soldier stood only a few feet away from me, pointing a pistol at my head. This time, it was a woman. I could see the slender features and tighter fitting gear. She panted heavily, as if she had just finished running a marathon. The drawn out breaths were audible through her mask, lightly garbled by the voice filter.
She hadn’t shot me, though.
I stretched my hands out to plead. Maybe I had a few minutes to coax her into letting me live.
“Wait,” I said. “Just wait for a second. What do you want? Why are you trying to kill us?”
The woman soldier stood firm, still holding the weighted pistol with one hand, finger on the trigger.
“You killed my team,” she spoke, sounding like a deactivating robot.
“They were trying to kill us,” I argued. “Look, we have no idea what is going on. Please, we just want to know.”
“You don’t deserve to know.”
Something was off. The professionalism didn’t exist—this girl was hesitating. She let personal vengeance take the place of dedicated fulfillment.
She took a step forward. My heart groaned within me and my breaths turned into choppy, fearful wisps.
“Please,” I said, “don’t do this.”
Someone whistled from behind the other side of the building and the armored woman turned her head. Before she could register what had happened, something flew toward her. A rabid, mechanical spider latched onto her face and began to scratch her visor with its dagger-like legs. She screamed and stumbled down the stairs, dropping her weapon. The robotic arachnid continued to mutilate her face, finally breaking into her helmet and crawling inside. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the horribly demented sight, watching the woman’s breaths come to a halt.
“Dayum!” shouted a mousy voice from my right. I turned to see Bloodface, hopping out from behind a pillar, admiring his work. He wore a knitted hat that hung over his ears and a small backpack.
“What the hell was that thing?!” I exclaimed, going to see the limp corpse.
“Dat’s one of my spee-bots, what-what!” He followed me up to the body and started rummaging through it.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. An eleven-year-old kid, looting a body like it was the sofa he searched for spare change. Killing someone meant nothing to him. It made me physically sick, and I had to sit down.
“Whoaaaaah!” he said, picking up her pistol. It practically weighed him down, but he managed to hold it up, check the clip, and stash it into his backpack.
“Are you guys out here?” shouted Tara, coming from the other side of the building. Once she saw the body, she rushed over and immediately asked what had happened.
“This Tarmuck tried to off Shinbutt—but Kinny got to her first,” he replied, finishing his plunder.
“Kinny?” she asked, kneeling next to me.
“His spee-bot,” I said. She didn’t appreciate my sarcasm.
“Short for ‘spider-bot.’ That’s twice I’ve saved your ass, Shin!” He picked the green goggles off his neck and straped them onto his eyes, as if it were a “take that” statement.
“Thanks,” I said dully.
Our host explained to us what other uncanny advantages he held over the “Tarmucks.” Over the course of his stay at Neurolics, he had managed to scavenge a plethora of usable machinery and splice a bunch of different materials together to create the lasers we first encountered and things like the spider-bots. Through a mouthful of vulgarity and slang, he told us how he could look at his surroundings and decide within seconds if there was something to craft. No matter how much I wanted to push him away from my life, he was turning out to be a hell of a lot more useful than I ever imagined. Though I still wouldn’t have chosen a “spee-bot” to take care of a metal-head.
“I don’t understand,” I asked, observing the dead robot. “How did you get power to the thing?”
“Well . . .” he started, more interested in a conversation than ever before, “they usually don’t last longer than like ten seconds. I told you, my dad used to work for Gen-Gen, so I took a lot of his things after . . . Man, oh, man, do they get the job done, though!”
“After what?” asked Tara.
“Damn,” he said, ignoring her. “I guess we’ve got to hurry if we’re going to make it to Ellis Island.”
An electric bolt ran down my spine.
“How did you know about that?” I asked. I tried running different solutions through my head.
“I’m the world’s lightest sleeper! You two were basically shouting last night.”
I sighed and rubbed my face.
“So why weren’t you going to tell me, huh?” he asked. “After all the ish I just pulled for you two grob-loads?”
“We were,” I said. “There’s just a lot going on. We wanted to make the right choice.”
I sucked at this. I couldn’t properly convey what I was feeling. I never could, and that made me frustrated.
Tara’s eyebrows creased. “Why do you want to come with us so badly?”
Bloodface puffed some air in protest. “Because, they’ve tried to kill me. And from the looks of it, they’re chasing you two. Am I right? Am I right? Am I right-right-right-right—”
“Yes!” I said, standing. “You’re right!”
I looked up toward the cloudy sky and bit the inside of my cheek. Maybe if I just started accepting all of the insane things that were happening to us, then I wouldn’t be so stressed.
“Mark,” Tara said, “what are we doing? We both know he’s going to come with us. There’s no use trying to find ways around it.”
“You guys need me,” he began. “I can see it now,” he spanned his hands out into the air and imagined a scene. “Tarmucks. Everywhere. Dead! Mmmm, yeah, I can taste it. Plus, we’ll both get answers, eh?” He tapped me with the back of his hand. “It’ll be suh-ick!”
“Once we get there and figure this out,” I said, “you’ve got to promise us you’ll stay at one of those orphanages in downtown. That’s our deal.”
He laughed at me sarcastically, slapping his thigh. “Yeah! And then we’ll all go jump in a toilet and flush ourselves into nonexistence! No way! To hell with that plan! Who made you leader?”
Tara gave me a look of disgust. She knew as well as I that GenoTec might be behind all of this. But I hated being passive. I needed to establish a position.
“I’m serious, dude,” I said, with as much stern authority as I could muster. “We owe you our lives, but you owe us for the information. If we hadn’t come here, you would be stuck, never knowing where these guys were coming from.”
Tara didn’t like my reasoning.
The boy thought for a moment. He pushed his lips in and out of his mouth.
“Okaayyyy . . . deal. Let�
��s shake on it.”
He held out his hand, and for the first time, I thought it actually might work. As I reached out, he quickly hit my groin and jumped away, cackling. He bounced off and said he was going to grab some gear.
I recovered from both my embarrassment and anger, turning to Tara.
“This is your fault,” I said.
She smiled and helped me into a sitting position. She knew I was with her. Even though I hated her for it, she knew I wanted to help her. Perhaps she didn’t like my solutions, but it’s not like I was doing that on purpose.
“One of these days, you’ll thank me,” she replied.
“Don’t suppose he’s got a stash of aspirin in there? Because I’m going to need about two container’s worth.”
She smirked and thanked me. “But we’re not sending him to GenoTec,” she said, “until we know what’s going on.”
I didn’t answer for a while. I figured if I just let things flow through me, maybe I wouldn’t take everything so personally. God, Edge had really ruined me.
“Fair enough.”
She wrapped her arm underneath mine and the pain, anger, and annoyance seemed to wither away. I sighed and let her lean against me as we took this moment for ourselves.
So that was it. Bloodface was coming with us, yet another extremely weird occurrence in the chain of never-ending nightmares. I wondered when things were ever going to calm down. Were we ever going to stop running? Were those metal-heads always going to be two steps behind us?
After sitting on the ledge for long enough, I felt like it was time to get going. We needed all the daylight we could use.
“Should we move the body?” I asked, looking down at the armored woman.
“I suppose we should.”
19
I held the tuna can-sized capsule in my palm. Inside, the brown, gelatinous substance stared back at me, triggering nausea. I wondered if this was going to help or not.
After disposing of the metal-head in the alleyway, we decided to get some “breakfast” before leaving. Our host offered us some of his finest stolen goods: MetaChews. Chemically preserved into a gelatinous goop, MetaChews were designed to give the consumer quick energy for the next few hours. They tasted like downing a bag of gymnast chalk.
“What’s wrong?” asked Bloodface, still wearing his goggles, making his eyes look buggy.
“Nothin’,” I replied, wolfing the whole MetaChew in one gulp. I felt the gelatin turn into coarse powder inside my throat, drying my esophagus.
“Water?” Tara managed to ask. She was close to gagging as she struggled to ingest her “strawberry” flavored helping.
The boy grabbed us a few bottles of water from his corner of boxes. I was beginning to wonder how much stuff this kid had stolen.
“We’re stacked!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got enough stuff to keep us alive for weeks.”
I inwardly smirked at his comment.
“I think we can get there by the afternoon, dude,” I said, disposing of my empty MetaChew in his garbage.
He didn’t care, continuing to prance around the room like a monkey on meth.
“All right,” I announced, grabbing the tan, canvas backpack he had lent me. “We stay on Water Street until we get to Broad. We’ll take that to South Street and stick to the shoreline until we get to the bridge. Pretty simple. If we see anything out of the ordinary—anything at all—”
“We run,” they said simultaneously.
I got their drift and nodded.
Tara donned her new pack and slung her MLM so that it draped across her chest. While Bloodface was packing, I approached her, trying to get a feel for her input.
“You ready to do this?” I asked.
She put her hair into a ponytail and scoffed. “I guess,” she said.
I wanted to run something by her before we left—a thought I had about Slate.
I pulled her into one of the corners. The boy was still busy, collecting spare parts from underneath the couch.
“I can’t stop thinking about Slate,” I started. “He had to have known something was about to happen.”
Tara’s eyes narrowed and she said, “But he was—”
“I know,” I cut in. “He was right there, I know. But, I just can’t stop thinking about what he said to me. What if he was in on it somehow?”
Tara stared at me with her luminous crystal eyes.
Before she could answer, Bloodface interrupted. “He wasn’t.”
Tara and I turned on a dime.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“That Slater guy’s not going to be in on anything.” He was sort of laughing.
“And why’s that?”
“Because,” he stated, “he’s a whole lot of dead right now!”
20
Slate was gone?
“I saw it, Shinbutt,” he said, stuffing a final article into his pack and zipping it up. “On ze news. They’ve been playing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over—”
“Show us,” said Tara.
He nodded and pulled out his calculator-sized device, the same one he had used to trigger the alarm. He touched a few buttons and the Fuse turned on.
“Steven,” said a female blonde reporter. “I am standing outside the Turnmont apartment complex in lower Manhattan, where the mysterious explosion killed fourteen people last night.” The wreckage behind her was bewildering.
“Fourteen?” exclaimed Tara.
“Shh!” snapped Bloodface.
“Of these fourteen casualties,” continued the television, “one of them was Archturus Slate, former CEO of GenoTec. Officials at GenoTec has just confirmed that this was indeed the real body of the acclaimed CEO, leaving only one founding member of GenoTec left alive.”
The program switched back to the two news anchors.
“Thanks, Andrea,” began Steven, a brown-haired, polished man with a gaunt face. “Speaking of founding members of GenoTec, we have footage of today’s press conference with Jonas Repik, former Vice President. Repik was instituted as the new President only hours after the confirmed death of Archturus Slate, receiving a unanimous vote from GenoTec’s Board of Directors. Here is that footage.”
As my mind tried to receive the incoming shock, the screen switched to the press conference, where Jonas Repik sat at a long, wooden table, filled with GenoTec superiors.
“Mr. Repik,” a young man in the front row asked, “what can you tell us about these masked men who were responsible for last night’s attack?”
Repik sat forward, with his greasy, unkempt hair and said in a sneering voice, “There have always been those that would seek to destroy what GenoTec has created. This is just another incident. We assure everyone that we are doing everything we can to apprehend these soldiers.”
Cameras flashed, followed by a deluge of questions. Finally, a moderator pointed to a woman in the third row.
“Mr. Repik, do you have any idea why Slate was at the Turnmont last night?”
The new President paused for a moment. “Archturus Slate was the CEO. He did what he pleased. We have no idea why Slate was at the Turnmont. We’re still trying to figure that out.”
Another person was directed the microphone. It was a plump man, wearing a green sports coat. “Mr. Repik, the people who witnessed this horrible tragedy described these soldiers as wearing high-tech armored suits, with sophisticated weaponry. Do you have any idea how these terrorists acquired such tactical equipment?”
“Unfortunately,” Repik began, “we cannot account for every piece of military equipment left over from the pre-Edge era. However, we have taken steps to find and secure every military installation or warehouse that would house such equipment in the surrounding areas.”
Another question arose from a female journalist, “Mr. Repik, do you believe this event has anything to do with the recent release of Vax to the general public?”
I tuned out the rest of the press conference, feeling overwhelmed and annoyed.
“Slate’s gone,” mumbled Tara.
“Oh, quit cryin’,” the boy chided. “Was he somebody important?”
“He was,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. We should get going.”
Tara gave me a small, surprised look, and I knew why. She was still hovering around our previous conversation. Like me, she wondered why Slate had been at the Turnmont last night. But right now, we didn’t have time to guess. The note telling us to go to Ellis Island was now the only tangible thing we had.
In a few moments, we left the secret room and shattered glass behind us and began our trek to the Community. Tara and I were extra careful on our approach to the street, checking the perimeter with excessive observance. Bloodface brought up the rear of our small party and his backpack bounced with every step he took.
“All right.” I stopped in the street and turned to our little friend. “What’s your real name?”
The boy shot me a frown. “Whadd’ya mean?”
“If you’re coming with us, I’m not calling you that stupid name. And you’re calling us by our real names.”
He let a puff of air escape. “Lame. Why? Don’t you like your new names? Much better than your old ones, that’s for sure . . .”
I held my gaze and pressed, “So what is it?”
He twitched and sighed. “Fine, you weirdos. It’s . . .ugh! . . . Justin.” He rolled his tongue out in disgust.
“Justin? That’s such a cute name!” poked Tara. She waited for his reaction.
“Shut up, Ladynuts.”
She put a hand to her ear and said, “Sorry, I’m a little hard of hearing.”
He snarled and swore at us. “Can we just go?”
I folded my arms. “No, Justin, we can’t. Who’s Ladynuts?”
“All right, all right,” he said harshly. “Ugly-ass Mark and Tara the bitch—”
“Excuse me?” said Tara, stepping forward.
“Nice try,” I said. “But that’s not gonna cut it.”
He dropped his eyelids and spoke in a tiny, alien voice. “Mark and Tara can we please go now?”
“Atta boy,” I said, “now we’re getting somewhere.”
He mumbled to himself for the next few minutes.