by Ramona Finn
The Empties
By Ramona Finn
The Glitches Series
Book Two
Table of Contents
The Empties
CHAPTER ONE
The hot air hits me in quick blasts that pick up my short hair, tossing it about my neck as I run through the desert. It’s almost enough to cool the sweat that’s collected at the base of my neck and at the points of joining, where the biogear has connected with me. The tiny screen above my left eye flashes in warning, wildly, as though it can somehow be panicked for me as it reports the drones that are so close behind me. I push myself to run faster, the biogear making it just possible. Still, my body burns with the effort and sends signals to my brain, warning me to stop.
I ignore them. They aren’t important.
The urge to glance behind me and confirm what my biogear is already telling me is strong, but I resist the temptation. It is the thought that I am not afraid of the drones, behind me or not Fear doesn’t consume me, because it isn’t there anymore. Now, I am fearless.
The thought makes me swell with pride. There is nothing to fear. Maybe it’s dumb, to think I could be invincible, but I can’t help the surge of adrenaline or the confidence that moves through my veins like blood. I am powerful in ways I have never known before, and it’s this that gives me the strength to surge forward even faster, despite the aching in my legs and the protests of my body.
I can do this, I think, a smile slipping onto my lips, unbidden but not unwelcome.
The canyon I’m passing through narrows into a bottleneck and I feel a moment’s relief swell within me. I’m close. All I have to do is push a little harder and then my back-up will be up ahead.
Studying the screen in front of my left eye, I pick out the drone that is closest. It’s gaining on me faster than the others and, as a result, has pulled away from the pack.
Perfect, I think.
I move fluidly, letting my body and my gear work on their own and with only minimal input from me, until I feel as though I am merely a passenger. I change trajectory so that, instead of going forward towards the narrowing mouth of the valley, I’m aimed at the towering valley walls. The wall before me comes up quickly, leaving me very little time to react. In my screen, I see that the one dot far ahead of the others has shifted its course, too, to follow my lead. I grin at the sight.
This course is working perfectly.
Pushing myself to go even faster, I run until there are only seconds, moments, before my body collides with the wall at full running force. Behind me, I can sense the drone moving in, thinking it has me cornered. But it doesn’t.
Thanks to my biogear and my cleverness, I’m faster than the drone. At the very last minute, I put my feet up high until they find purchase on the canyon wall. Tiny bland rocks tumble out from beneath my feet as I push off of the wall and into the air. Below me, I see the drone as it barrels towards where I was only moments ago, but it’s not quick enough to correct for my sudden shift. It collides with the wall, smashing itself into tiny pieces and bits that I promise myself I’ll come back for later.
I gracefully twirl and tumble back down to the earth, landing in a low crouch that faces the remaining drones. They haven’t slowed or hesitated, but I don’t worry about it. I’ve still got enough distance between us that I’m safe enough, and all I have to do is reach the end of the canyon.
Getting fully to my feet, I swirl around and begin running again. My limbs and muscles are sore from how hard I’ve been pushing them. They’ll repair and grow stronger. Until then, my biogear will compensate for any lingering weakness on my human body’s part.
As I run, I see the mouth of the canyon up ahead. The end is in sight and, with it, my back-up. Not so long ago, I wouldn’t have been comfortable with so many Rogues here. How would I trust them? I didn’t even know them. But they are what will make my plan work now. Still, if it weren’t for Wolf, they wouldn’t be here now.
“You don’t have to do this on your own, Lib. You have a family now,” he tells me, staring down with deep, dark eyes that remind me of twin pools of night, urging me to fall into them.
It’s a strange feeling I have, inclining me towards Wolf. A pull that draws me in to him, that brings me closer when sometimes I think it might be wiser to keep a distance between us. But I like the feeling, and I don’t fight it.
When he suggests things to me like this, between just the two of us, I cannot ignore the wisdom of his words. They make perfect sense... everything he says seems to make perfect sense when it’s only the two of us.
But when the moment breaks and I’m here, running from the horde of drones trailing me, that feeling that all of this makes perfect sense drifts away. And then I wonder if I’m doing the right thing, if these choices are correct. My instincts say to go on alone, and to handle this as only Lib instead of as Lib of the Tracker Clan. But Wolf insists, and I can’t seem to deny him.
I only wish—
—My boots echo on the cool, tiled floor. They’re silvery, not quite white but not a flat gray. Mother gave them to me as a present, something to wear within my little slice of the world. I don’t think they’re necessary since I never go outside, and often I don’t wear them. But I do today.
Ahead of me, the corridor is long and straight, the walls narrowing up ahead into what appears to be a bottleneck, though it’s really only an illusion. The walls are perfectly even and parallel with one another. Just as the floors and ceilings are. Everything in the Norm is like this. Perfect, because that is what Mother does.
Still, the optical illusion doesn’t fade and I run with renewed vigor to reach the end of the bottleneck. There will be a door there, a door with the promise of—
—But it’s the desert floor my boots dig into as I continue to run. I look down just to make sure, because the hallway has been so real. I feel something like panic slide into my stomach as I see a pair of silver boots overlaying my dingy, worn through brown ones. As I kick up dust and dirt, I can still hear the echoes of that tiled hallway, and even see the outline of blue beneath my boots—a strange projection laid on top of the desert.
When I look up again, I see the canyon walls, but also the walls of that hallway. A hallway that’s intimately familiar, and which I’ve been to before. I recognize it instantly and without hesitation: the City Hall in the Norm.
Cold washes over me, despite my exertion and the desert heat. I feel my limbs shake. And it’s not from running.
When the door up ahead—a door where there should be no door—begins to open, with bright, white light beginning to pour out from its edges, I blanch. My heart pounds wildly in my chest, panic overtaking me. I feel the urge both to stop, and dig my heels into the sand—or the tile?—and to run faster, to reach that door and whatever’s behind it.
My indecisiveness is my downfall. My feet can’t decide what to do and I end up taking a mis-step. I tumble over my own boots, crashing down to the desert floor . A floor that a second ago was tiled and cold.
My senses are in overload, as I seem to exist in two spaces at once. One is the canyon, with the drones coming closer and closer, the heat bearing down on me, and the dust clogging my throat and nose and grating against my open eyes. The other is a cool, blue hallway with tiled flooring and a door of light at the end of the tunnel. It’s familiar in a way that my old memories are, and yet different—more intense, more visceral. In this moment, it feels like the realest space, between the two. Unmistakably real, in fact... almost as though the canyon could be nothing more than my imagination.
And yet, I hear the whirring sound of the drones approaching, slicing through the air towards me. Rocks tumble down
from the sides of the canyon.
I cough against the dirt and dust that stirs in the air, blinking through the cloud, and that’s when I see them. Dark blue high heeled shoes that are approaching me. They click down and I connect the sound to them. I can’t see the rest of the woman, though I can guess who it is.
“Lib,” she says to me.
I look up towards her, but before I can see her face it begins to fade. Reaching for her is useless, she’s already fading, fading, gone. I roll over just in time to see a Rogue by the name of Lizzie launching herself through the air above the length of my body. She collides squarely with a drone that’s gotten too close to me—nearly close enough to get its sharp claws and pincers into me, in fact. The lasers affixed to them are used sparingly out here in the Outside. With no direct link to the AI, they use too much power and can result in malfunctioning drones. It’s this risk alone that puts us in a position to be able to fight against them, taking them down and prying them open for their parts.
Even so, if not for Lizzie, I would have been lost to one.
I blink until the images of the hallway finally vanish and I’m cemented to the here and now. As I slam back into the real world fully, the heat and the desert swamping me all of a sudden, I realize the full extent of the scene and what’s happened. Lizzie isn’t the only one to have jumped into the fray.
It was our plan all along and, for a moment, I think it’s working perfectly. Lizzie is smashing a rock into the outside shell of the drone she protected me from, bringing up flashes and sparks as she pulls the walls open to reveal complex wiring and a motherboard that runs the entire thing. I think that this is how all the Rogues are handling things. That the drones don’t stand a chance. But then I look beyond Lizzie.
I see Bird crying out as the drone that she’s been tackling decides to risk the use of its laser. The intense beam sears through Bird’s skin, putting a hole in her upper arm that’s cauterized immediately upon its opening, thanks to the laser’s heat. She screams so loudly that it echoes through the canyon, almost making it feel as though the air is shaking with the sound.
Past her, I see two Rogues trying to double-team a drone. It’s working until a second and third drone come up behind them, spitting out a flashfire of sparks that coalesce into a beam which tears straight through the female Rogue. She doesn’t even have time to cry out before she collapses to the ground. Her companion drops to her side, shaking her limp body in an effort to wake her up, but I know without being next to her that she’s already dead.
A drone’s needle-like hands have worked their way out of its hard outer shell and pierced the soft flesh of his neck. He cries out, then he slumps. When the needle is removed, he falls next to his companion.
It takes me this long to return to myself fully. To realize that I’m just lying here watching as the horror unfolds. And there are too many drones still operational, Rogues having fallen injured and dead around them.
I curse—a habit I’m picking up from Wolf—and push myself up even though it seems impossibly hard in the moment. I don’t know why it’s so hard, so terrible, but my legs and arms ache so badly that I worry I’ve permanently damaged them. That’s when I realize that my biogear has temporarily gone down, even as it begins to boot itself back up and I feel my legs starting to work properly again.
I race into the fray, throwing myself at the three drones which have killed two of my clan members. My heel connects with one of them, sending it spiraling out to crash against the canyon wall. It shatters itself upon the hard rock and I move on to the next one, which has whirled around to face me. It pulls out another spindling arm, reaching it towards me with its needles out, ready to poison and pinch me until I die. But I’m too fast. My gear has rebooted and is running at full function now—meaning that I’m much, much faster than this drone. The Rogues on the ground weren’t wearing biogear, though, and there’s a twinge of anger in me that comes with that knowledge.
We could have prevented this. We could have changed it.
There isn’t any time to dwell on the thought, though. The drone is coming at me quickly.
I dodge to my right, ducking down as I do so and planting my hands on the hot, dry desert sand. Using my arms for balance, I throw my legs up and catch the drone squarely in its center, thankfully avoiding most of the deadly spindling arms. Only two needles set up like claws scrape around my leg, cutting through the worn fabric of my canvas pants to reach the skin beneath. The screen above my eye registers that there’s blood, but I barely even feel it. I can’t be bothered with things like that right now.
The drone goes flying thanks to my kick, but I don’t hear a crash or collision unfortunately, and that tells me that it’s likely still intact. I try to search for it, but a third drone is already headed my way. I roll up to my feet again, turning to face it as it approaches me before dodging heavily left when it swipes at me, but apparently it’s grown tired of our games because, just as it swipes out to my right with its spindling arms, a laser shoots out from its right side.
The sensors of my biogear catch it before my poor human body is able to and the gear sends commands for me to react accordingly. I can’t do much in mid-air, though, and the laser makes contact with my middle, slicing through the very outer edge easily, as though I’m a doll carved from butter. The stinging pain is intense, shooting through me like fire as I slam down to the hard, compacted dirt floor. A cloud of dust goes up in my wake, obscuring me just enough that the second laser misses me, at least. The miss gives me just enough time to pull out the long, wicked looking dagger that once belonged to Raj, and to drive it home into the center of the drone. It sparks and flickers and then crashes to the ground in a heap of metallic clutter.
I take a moment to breathe, but it’s a precious moment. I don’t realize it, but the second drone has come back towards me, intent on finishing what it started earlier. I whirl around, still on the ground, just in time to see a bright light appear on its hard shell, telling me that it’s about to fire its laser. I brace myself, because that’s all I have time for, but the shot never comes. From the left, a silver beam shoots through the air and pierces the outside of the drone, sending it back through the air before finally embedding it into the rock face. I look to my left to see a small, female Rogue, Urchin, who gives me a nod and a grin. Her hair is in mottled ringlets, the ends tied together with twine and a blue ribbon that she must have gotten from Bird.
I nod to her in thanks, and then roll to my feet to assess our situation. The screen in front of my eye flashes green, telling me that things are clear. The drones have been dispatched, their remains now littering the canyon floor. My plan has worked—but there were consequences.
I count the death toll at three. Injuries are more, but at least those who are counted as injured are alive. A cold weight settles within my chest even as I try to shake it off.
Three are dead, and four injured, but seven of us walk away alive, I think to myself, my brain working hard to reason through this. Maybe it’s wrong, but I take some small amount of relief in knowing that the majority of us will walk away from this.
CHAPTER TWO
The ATVs have had ample time to fully charge and we have a lighter load than expected. Because we have fewer people, I think grimly. With effort, I shove the thought aside. It doesn’t do any good to think heavily on the dead. They’re gone; the group remains. I have to think of the whole and make sure it survives. That’s what matters now.
When we arrive in the tunnels, everyone is exhausted. I see some of them amble uncertainly along unfamiliar paths and frown a little. I remind myself that it’s only that they are unfamiliar with the new layout, not that they are permanently damaged. The tunnels have been moved, just in case the AI managed to get more from me than I think she did that day in the control room. We can’t risk her knowing the exact location of the Rogues, so we agreed that moving was the best option. It’s been a lot of work, of course. It’s taken weeks, and the tunnels are still under construc
tion, but the new location has made everyone feel a little more secure. Right now, that makes all of the work worth it.
I tell everyone injured to head to Croc to get looked at. I’ve glanced over their injuries to make sure that none are fatal; I don’t think they are—though, even with my biogear, I’m not as good as Croc when it comes to that. Most of the injured listen easily, trusting my judgement. They aren’t in high spirits, and I can’t blame them. Mourning is part of their culture, and part of what they are, but I have to choose not to adopt the practice.
I cannot mourn. I have to focus.
As I turn away from the group, I begin to haul our goods towards the Tech Room where we can start disassembling them and creating biogear from the remains of the drones. I don’t get far before I hear Bird’s now familiar voice.
“Just like that?” she demands of me.
I blink in surprise and I turn around to look at her. My head tilts in confusion. “What do you mean?” I ask, genuinely uncertain. We’ve just come into the main hall, the room that’s the largest of those within the tunnels. It may be a new location, but the layout of the whole place is more or less the same. With a few additions.
She’s cradling one arm against her chest, it being the one that was injured in the fight. It’s oozing puss and some blood, though the heat of the lasers closed most of the open wounds almost as soon as they were created. That doesn’t make the hole look any prettier, of course. It matches the one at my side, though I don’t point this out. She doesn’t like it when I remind her that I can be injured just like the other Rogues. She doesn’t like it when I point out any similarities between myself and her, in fact.
“What do you think I mean?” she demands angrily. She gestures with her good hand towards the heavy bag that’s slung over my shoulder. “You got what you wanted and to hell with the rest of us?”