Wilders

by Brenda Cooper

  “Come on.” Julianna led them to a door, and then stopped them right in front of it. “Big breath. All together.” She took both Coryn’s and Lou’s hands and inhaled audibly.

  Coryn followed, and they all matched on the exhale. She felt stronger after that, braver.

  Inside, the room was a large rectangle, with two windowed offices on the far side. The walls were a flat neon green, and a black curtain had been pulled partway along the longest wall. Movable tables sat at odd angles to the length of the room and comfortable black rolling chairs were scattered among the tables. One long wall held multiple cameras, some fixed and others mounted on moveable arms. Four of the people who had met them in the tunnels sat around the room in relaxed, watchful stances. Bodyguards?

  A young woman dressed in dark navy blue and wearing her hair up in a tight black bun greeted them with a disingenuous smile as wide as her face. “Julianna. It’s such a pleasure to see you again.”

  “I’ve never met you,” Julianna said, clearly back in her more severe mood. “What have you been telling people about the transportation system?”

  The woman swallowed. “The commercial news is reporting this as a hack or a great failure on the part of the city. Nobody is acting like they know. The conspiracy nuts are out in force as well.”

  Julianna looked grim. “They might be the closest to the truth.”

  The woman sounded defensive. “We’ve been saying we’re working to get our systems back under control. We know that’s true.”

  Julianna’s voice sounded clipped and dismissive. “Please tell the commercial stations we’ll begin streaming in five minutes.”

  “Very well.” She turned and stalked toward one of the offices, which had the words Control Room scrawled on it in artsy letters. Her posture radiated displeasure with Julianna. She opened the door and turned around. “I’m Rachel, by the way. If you need me, just ask.” The door slammed behind her.

  “Why’d you make her mad?” Coryn asked.

  “I shouldn’t have. I’m nervous as hell.”

  Coryn bit her lip. She’d never heard Julianna admit to being worried about anything. “Why?”

  “I always get nervous before a big speech. I used to be brilliant at this, but I might not be anymore.” For just a moment she actually looked vulnerable, and a little shaky.

  Coryn put a hand on Julianna’s arm. “You’ll do great.”

  Julianna’s smile was soft and a little wistful. “I only have a ghost of the power I used to have. I have the power of people’s memory, and that’s short. Half of the city wasn’t born yet when I ran it.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Lou asked her.

  Julianna led them to a long table with four seats on one side. She pushed one of the seats out of the way. “The cameras in here are automatic.”

  “I don’t want to be on television,” Coryn repeated. What if she said something stupid while the whole city listened?

  “What do you want us to say?” Lou asked again.

  Julianna gave them a look that seemed to demand they each take a deep breath. She fiddled with some controls on the table. “Damn it. They’ve changed some things. I’ve got to . . . this one?”

  Coryn watched the cameras move, pointing them out to Lou. She almost jumped as she realized one had focused on her.

  “There!” Julianna said. “I think I’ve got it figured out.”

  Rachel came back into the room, her face ashen and her words clipped. “No one will take our stream of you right now. All the water in the city just went off.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  They all stopped moving when they heard the water was off. Julianna had one hand on the controls but didn’t push any buttons. Lou looked stone-faced. Coryn had no idea what to say. They hadn’t beaten the hackers. They hadn’t even gotten their message out before the water systems went off. After a few breaths, Lou drummed her fingers on the table and a calm settled over Julianna. “Rachel?”

  Rachel stopped in the control room doorway and turned, her face expressionless except for an angry twitch in her jaw. “Turn us on anyway,” Julianna said, using a voice Coryn couldn’t imagine disobeying. “There are auto-feeds, and when a few people realize we’re interesting, more will take us. Some people will want to know what we’ve got to say.”

  Rachel turned. “Do you have real news?”

  Julianna just stared at her. It took about a minute before Rachel stammered, “Okay. Okay. I’ll do it.”

  Julianna’s severe look melted into a brief smile. “Thanks. And please turn on the city dashboard. I’ll want to watch it. Feel free to break in with other news if you get any everyone needs to know. Just give me a flashing warning and I’ll cut over.”

  Rachel nodded. She looked a little better since the tone in Julianna’s voice had softened, but she still didn’t quite smile. “Do you want the dashboard broadcast?”

  “Can I toggle to it?”

  “Top button. The blue one. The red one will blink on when I’m about to override your feed. That’s going to happen. It will only blink for ten seconds, and you can pick your timing within there. Otherwise I’ll just break in.”

  “I know how the room works.” Julianna’s fingers played on top of the buttons without actually pushing anything. “I expect to be joined soon. I’m not sure if he’ll come in person or on a channel. Hopefully in person, but he could have trouble getting here. Please keep a channel open.”

  Who was coming and why wouldn’t Julianna say?

  Rachel disappeared behind her door again, this time closing it quietly.

  A white light came on, and Julianna stared at the central camera. “Hello, Seacouver. Some of you will remember me.” She smiled, a serious but welcoming smile, and let a single breath of time go by. “Let me introduce my friends. I’ll be interviewing them a little later, after I share some news that I know you need to hear. But even before that, I know your water is off. I know who turned your water off. That’s what I’m about to tell you. It’s the same people who turned off the transportation system and who stranded a lot of you in cars and kept you from getting to work, to events, to your kid’s school, and worse. But one thing at a time. Quickly, the two young women with me are Lou and Coryn Williams. They’ve both taught me things I needed to know, and they have information that you want to know.” Again, she paused for a moment.

  Rachel came out with three glasses of water and set them down. Julianna didn’t even glance at her or the water, just at the camera. “First, what we know. The same systems are down throughout the city, and they may be down in Portland Metro as well. Both cities have been under attack by sophisticated hackers. Ecobots were brutally directed at Portland and caused over two hundred and thirty deaths.”

  Coryn gasped. So many. She’d stared at some of that death, on the water with Eloise, at the Camas Gate.

  Julianna gave her a look that reminded her she had a microphone in front of her.

  A sound buzzed and the door opened. Julianna raced to the door and held the thin, bent man who had just entered. It took a moment for Coryn to realize he was the former mayor of Vancouver, Canada, the man who had joined Julianna in creating the country-spanning double city.

  Seeing Jake surprised and pleased her, like seeing an icon, and she realized with a startled little jerk that she had become accustomed to being in Julianna’s presence.

  Jake Erlich looked at least ten years older than Julianna. Maybe more. He had grayed, and his cheeks were wrinkled and stained with dark circles under his eyes. He walked slowly and deliberately as he came over and took the fourth chair.

  Both of their smiles were so genuine Coryn felt awed by the depth of feeling between them and surprised they could sit five feet away from each other. It felt like they should be touching, like the two of them were a single, connected organism. It was a clue to how the Jake and Lake Team had created Seacouver in the first place.

  Julianna gave Jake a tender kiss on his papery cheek, and then she returned her ga
ze directly to the lens, so natural in front of the cameras that she seemed to embrace them, to turn them into an extension of herself.

  Coryn suspected that if she were watching from home she’d feel like Julianna was talking directly to her.

  Julianna spoke clearly, radiating confidence. “Jake and I chose to address you together in this emergency. We no longer run the city. We know that. The people who do are busy working to fix this. In the meantime, Jake and I are going to tell you a story together, and then my friends here will corroborate it. You will be the judge of our truth. While we’re at it, we’ll bring you information about the unfolding crisis as we get it.

  “We will begin with a very brief reminder of the great balance. Humanity is continuing to grow. But we have not outgrown our cradle, and in spite of our active space program, in spite of our string of stations, it’s very likely that we will need the earth for all of our future. We share our home with many beautiful beings, from birds to butterflies to insects. We have already killed over a third of these beings—at the species level—driven them extinct. That’s genocide.”

  Lou nodded. Coryn thought the word might be a little strong. But then she thought of the wolves Lou kept losing over and over.

  “In order to save our civilization and our souls, we enhanced and beautified our cities and began rewilding to preserve the species we had not yet destroyed, and even to return some we had driven to extinction, using DNA and the great genetic arks.”

  Jake leaned into the table, and the camera swiveled to him. “This is the only way to save humanity, and it’s working.”

  Julianna glanced at the bank of screens next to her, where one of the buttons had started blinking. “Let’s take a moment to bring you up to speed on the current news.” She pushed the red button.

  Images of the transportation gridlock showed on the screen, while a woman’s voice spoke: “Many people remain trapped far from their homes. The city of Seacouver assures you work is being done to restore the grid. In the meantime, for those who can make it home on foot, public safety staff and robotic teams have been dispatched to assist along major roadways. Citizens in distress are advised to find the biggest roads that they can.”

  A still image of a simple faucet showed on the screen. “The city’s water system is compromised. Water is not running in many areas. Restoration of water flows is being given the highest priority possible.”

  As the news story continued for thirty more seconds, Julianna drank water from one of the containers they’d filled and put it under the table.

  Lou said, “Who’d have thought you could make an emergency sound boring?”

  Julianna glanced at her wristlet. “City news writers. It’s meant to keep people calm. It’s—” A bell dinged and Julianna looked briefly apologetic as she sat up straight. The moment the recording stopped, she pushed the blue button again and picked the story back up: “We were reviewing the grand bargain made to save the climate. Greed has harmed that work recently, and hatred. So has unfairness, some of it our own fault.”

  She and Jake glanced at each other, and he nodded. “When we set this up we did it well, but we did not do it perfectly. That was human of us. Some of our enemies—the enemies of all of us in the city—are attacking our borders. These people would betray the balance we’ve strived for.”

  Julianna looked grim. “And some of our own people are part of the problem.” She started naming names that Coryn had never heard, and describing crimes of finance. Since she didn’t appear on the monitor that showed what was live, Coryn scrolled through her wristlet for news. Fourteen people had been left dry on a water ride down near the seawall, and rescue crews were trying to reach them. Hospitals had cancelled elective surgeries. Not that the transportation systems outage didn’t self-cancel them anyway. School children sheltered in place.

  She suspected it would get worse fast.

  The doorbell dinged again. A scuffling followed by a light thump drew her attention to the doorway. It took a second to parse what she saw. Two men dressed in black had entered. They stood with their feet apart and braced, pointing weapons at Julianna and Jake.

  Julianna’s bodyguards dived for them.

  Julianna seemed to recognize one of them. She looked directly at him and said, “No. Not—” and then he fired. Her body shivered, and she slumped out of her chair and rolled onto the floor. There had been no noise from the weapon.

  But Coryn screamed.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Everyone in the studio seemed to be moving at once. Two bodyguards had been in mid-leap when the shot hit Julianna. One took part of the shot meant for Jake, but nonetheless fell hard enough on the shooter to knock him to the floor.

  Jake slammed the door closed and pressed the locking mechanism so no one else could get in.

  A bodyguard pushed Coryn down under the table and shielded her, pinning her to the ground. She lost her ability to see anything except one of Julianna’s feet and the bulk of the bodyguard who was on top of Julianna.

  “Lou!” she screamed.

  “Okay!”

  Feet scuffled. People grunted. Various short sentences struck her. “Get her off stage.”

  “Turn off recording.”

  “Is Jake hit?”

  “No.”

  Jake’s voice. “Leave the recording on.”

  “Here’s this one’s gun. It’s a stunner.”

  “She’s breathing.”

  The bodyguard’s weight shifted, lifted some. Not enough for Coryn to move, but it became easier to breathe.

  “Jake’s okay.”

  “Recording on. Get them off the set.”

  “Clear the room.”

  Jake’s voice again. “Leave me and the girls. Guard the door. Whatever you do, keep the stream going out.”

  The bodyguard piled off of her. It turned out to be one of the women, a fairly pretty blonde only a few years older than she was. “Are you all right?”

  “Sure. Is Julianna okay?”

  One of the bodyguards said, “She’s going to sleep for a few hours.”

  Jake leaned over her. “Are you up for a show?”

  What could she say? “How’s Lou?”

  “Who was that?” Lou said. “I’m all right, but who was that?”

  “We’ll find out,” Jake said flatly, his face grim. “We’re still on camera. Can you sit up?”

  “Sure.”

  Lou had managed to scramble to a stand, and Jake bowed and held a chair out to her. When he did the same for Coryn, she got a good look at him. His hands shook, but his face showed only control and determination. He whispered, “Take a deep breath.”

  She nodded and drew in a breath, looking at Lou. Lou nodded, drawing her own breath.

  As she let out her breath, stuttering and too fast, two bodyguards picked Julianna up gently and carried her out, and then came back for the shooters. Everyone acted as if such things were normal.

  Who were these people?

  Nevertheless, she drew another breath, pulling air down as deep as she could and struggling for the calm to hold onto it. As she regained some control, Jake told the audience, “You’ve been introduced to Coryn and Lou Williams. You’ve seen all of us attacked and Julianna stunned. She is safe, but she cannot finish this broadcast, so we will.” He glanced at Coryn. “Please share some of your background.”

  Which, she realized, he didn’t know. She finished letting the last bit of her centering breath out and pretended she was merely talking to Jake and not to cameras anywhere. “This is home. I grew up in a good family, with my sister, Lou—” She nodded at Lou, who gave her a shaky smile in return. “—but in spite of that, our parents committed suicide. They never fit in here.” She couldn’t stop, since she might cry if she did. So she talked faster. “After they died we were sent to an orphanage to finish our education. Lou was already a senior, and as soon as she graduated, she left. Maybe Lou should tell that part of the story.”

  Lou nodded.

  Cor
yn was sweating from the lights and the excitement, and her hands shook whenever she didn’t rest them on the table.

  Lou started out with her voice low. “I had always been interested in the wilding. My mother hated the city, so I hated it.” She glanced at Coryn. “My sister loved it. Maybe she still does. In some ways, I do too. Caring about the wild is loving the city, although the fewer of us who are out there, the better for the land. Julianna was telling you about what she and I discovered, that people—”

  Jake cut her off. “Before you get there, what do you love about the Outside?”

  Lou went with the redirection. “Everything. It’s wild and dangerous and beautiful. You’ve never seen flowers until you’ve seen a field of spring wildflowers after a rain, high up in the hills above the river. At night, the stars spill over the sky and wolves and coyotes howl at the Milky Way, and on a good night they will let you join them, and you can have a sort of conversation.” She was smiling. “You can howl, and they will howl back, and you can answer.” Her face and voice practically glowed, and Coryn felt jealous.

  Jake seemed to feel the same way. “That sounds fabulous. Can you talk about the challenges?”

  “We get less than half of the resources that we’re promised. That means we can’t always be sure all of the animals have enough food or safe places or that new babies are tagged. I found a dead bear cub in the woods last spring. It hadn’t been tagged, and neither had its mother. We didn’t even know they were there! Some idiot shot them both and left them to bleed out.” Her voice shook with anger. “We’ve worked for years to restore grizzlies far enough to create families. That might have been the first cub born in the wild in the Palouse for a hundred years or two hundred. Someone murdered it.”

  The red light had started blinking.

  Lou hadn’t seen it. She kept talking. “The city is supposed to provide protection. It does. It provides us. But there are nowhere near enough of us, and there are outlaws everywhere out there. That’s who’s coming in—”