Blood Zero Sky

by Gates, J.

  It’s March. I’m sixteen. And I wish I were dead.

  The nurse comes to my bedside with a smile on her face and a tiny, slimy, screeching person in her hands. There’s another woman there, too, holding a large IC and entering data into it through the touch screen.

  I cover my ears to silence the baby’s screams, but I hear the woman’s questions anyway.

  “You want to hold her?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a healthy baby girl. What are you going to name her?”

  It is a girl. My girl. My daughter. Dad was hardly concerned when I told him. N-Ed has wonderful new programs to take care of problems like that, he said.

  “Young lady? What are you going to name her?”

  “Rose.”

  “Rose Fields. That’s nice. I see here that you’ve chosen N-Care for her, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  N-Care, another great perk of being an N-Corp employee—or the daughter of one. The Company will take your child and raise it for you, using the latest scientifically proven methods, for a reasonable monthly fee. Visit the child as often as you want—or, in my case, never.

  It’s a much more cost-effective way to raise children according to all the studies, and parents who don’t have to worry about raising their children are an average of 22 percent more productive in the workplace. But I’m not thinking about efficiency now. Even with all the pain meds, it feels like a bomb went off between my legs.

  “It looks like there’s no father listed—” the woman says, frowning down at the screen of her IC.

  “There is none,” I whisper through my parched, cracked lips.

  The woman’s frown deepens. “We need to put something in the ‘father’ box, Miss Fields.”

  “Make something up,” I say, and I close my eyes, ending the conversation.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to hold little Rose before we turn her over to N-Care?” the nurse’s voice says from the darkness beyond my closed eyelids.

  I don’t answer.

  Before long, I hear the nurse’s footsteps as she walks away, taking the screaming little person with her. And I can finally breathe again.

  ~~~

  A mile beneath the rebel warehouse, I stand in darkness. From the churning shadows all around, the sightless eyes of dead African children stare at me.

  At some point, the quivering light above is rekindled. I realize I have been staring at the knife in my hands for untold minutes, but I cannot find the will to move. Tears pour down my face.

  The only words that reverberate through my brain make no sense to me: I can’t.

  I don’t know what it is I can’t do. Can I not face what I have seen? Can I not stomach the sight? Can I not believe this could really have taken place, that the Company is really responsible? Can I not fathom that my closest friends and family, everyone I know, may have somehow been complicit in making it happen?

  I can’t.

  I can’t leave behind everything I’ve ever known, loved, strived for.

  I can’t.

  I bring the knife to my cheek, shivering at the chill of the steel. The cross under my skin feels burning hot against it. I try to press, but the blade slides harmlessly off my tear-slicked skin.

  I can’t. I can’t.

  I feel my destiny building, hovering over me like a black, thunder-racked storm cloud, ominous, terrifying. In my heart, I know I can’t run from it, but I still crave shelter.

  Then a revelation hits me with all the desperation of a tidal wave: those images might be fake! Those might have been actors, dying on that lonely roadway! The flying triangles might have been toys or computer-generated images instead of real weapons. Anybody who’s ever watched N-News Tonight knows how deceitful unprofitables are! Jimmy Shaw has preached about it countless times. This is just a trick, an elaborate ruse these anarchists are employing to get me to spill Company secrets to them!

  A new wave hits me, this one of anger. I wheel and throw the knife at the door through which McCann exited.

  “You can’t fool me!” I scream. “You damned unprofitables! Anarchists! You can’t fool me!”

  My heart pounds. My hands tremble. Tears mar my sight.

  Two doors. One leads to McCann, to Ethan, to Clair and Michel, to a cause I still don’t fully understand and a life spent in the shadows of want and fear and probably death. The other leads to every dream I’ve ever had, every plan I’ve ever made, every person I’ve ever held dear, every luxury, every comfort the world has to offer, and every hope for a peaceful life.

  Who says the Company made those black metal birds? Maybe it was some insane inventor. Or B&S. Or the anarchists!

  I swallow, catch my breath, dry my face with the palms of my hands, then pull open the heavy, heavy door that leads back to my life. With each minute, with each hurried step I take through these lonely industrial arc tunnels, the thunderheads of my fate seem a little less threatening.

  It’s decided; it’s over. I’m going back to the Company, back to my life.

  I’m going home.

  —Chapter ØØ8—

  Kali’s gonna buy you a mocking bird. . . .

  As a child, I swore I would be a writer. And that’s not even the kicker: of all things, I wanted to write romance books.

  A handsome, young, orphan pirate who was really a prince would fall in love with a powerful, impetuous heroine. After grueling, heart-wrenching tribulations, they would wind up in each other’s arms, drifting into a firework sunset on the crest of the majestic, swelling sea. Nothing in my dreary, schoolwork-and-macaroni life could compare to the vivid fantasy-scapes that lived in my imagination. I was sure that a great love story awaited me, that I would be a worthy and beautiful heroine, that once I found my true love and determined which battles I was destined to fight, my life would at last take on the radiance that lived only in my mind.

  Then, there was Kali.

  All my life, throughout my imaginary wanderings, in every classroom at school, behind every smile I forced onto my face, a shadow had lurked, stalking me. I turned every light on in my mind like a scared child left home alone: I learned to play the piano, studied French, played sports—especially basketball and soccer—and I excelled at N-Academy. But lightbulbs burn out. The sun must set. And then the shadows come out. God, the darkness became ominous, all-consuming. I loved girls. I wanted to taste their lips. And no amount of distraction could keep that truth at bay. Denial was impossible.

  Now, suddenly, there was no sanctuary for me, no future. How could I hope to live a beautiful tale of romance when instead of blushing at the sight of the brave, young pirate, I was reduced to tatters at the thought of kissing the princess? And the Company, the Church, my friends—they gave me no comfort, either. As Reverend Jimmy Shaw said many times, “God blesses the love between man and woman, but the unnatural love between man and man, woman and woman, is against God, science, and Company policy, and earns as its reward an eternal swim in the Lake of Fire.” Hallelujah.

  Here I was, twelve years old and already damned.

  Here I was, lost, alone, empty, with no hope for a future and nothing but hate for the lie of my past. My mother was long gone, and my father seemed entombed in his own ambition, locked in a chamber of anxiety, exhaustion, and endless labor where I might never reach him. There was nobody to turn to, nowhere to run.

  Then came Kali. I was fourteen the summer we met. On break from school, I wandered my father’s house, tired of piano, tired of my N-Ed programs, tired of the magnificent view, tired of my own problems and the sight of my own face. In a rare moment of acumen, Dad noticed how depressed I was and made a few calls. He hired an eighteen-year-old girl to come and watch over me—a poor, low-level tie-man’s daughter. Her name was Cecily. She was a huge bitch. But Kali, her fifteen-year
-old sister . . . Kali was divine.

  ~~~

  “I need to see Blackwell.”

  The hours spent in the long walk back from the industrial arc have done little to untangle the confusion in my mind. A thousand contradictory voices seem to shout each other down inside my skull. But as Jimmy Shaw always says, When in doubt, report it. So here I am.

  The kid behind the desk looks like a thirteen-year-old pumped up on steroids. His body seems far too big for his childish face. His eyes, however, negate any chance that one might mistake his youth for innocence. They narrow, watching me closely.

  I probably look like a maniac to him. My hair is still matted with blood from the jump into the river. My clothes are torn and filthy, and I’m so exhausted I can hardly stay on my feet.

  There’s a familiar beep, and the young squad member looks down at the monitor of his IC, where my identity information will have just popped up. He scans it dubiously.

  “Sorry, Miss,” he begins, “Mr. Blackwell isn’t—”

  I decide to help him out. “Fields. As in Jason Fields. I’m his daughter.”

  The kid’s eyes snap up from the IC instantly and he mutters an apology.

  Two minutes later, I’m pacing in Blackwell’s office. The guy from the front desk mans a computer terminal near the door and Timothy Blackwell, VP of Human Resources, Director of the Security Squad, leans back in his chair, both feet propped up on his desk, hands behind his head, as if I were finding him in a hammock on some tropical island.

  I’m already talking: “There were unprofitables—hundreds of them!”

  “Is that right?” Blackwell says.

  “They tried to get me to join them. They told me horrible lies about the Company!”

  Blackwell sits up, reaches into his desk drawer, and pulls out something long, wrapped in wax paper. “Go on,” he says.

  “They—one of them—said that the tie-men killed in the Headquarters explosion were actually their people, their spies, who had infiltrated the Company.”

  “That’s true,” he says, as he unwraps a fat submarine sandwich.

  I stare at him, baffled. “You know about it?”

  “We know about everything, May. Always,” he says, in a tone drenched with self-satisfaction. He takes a huge bite of the sandwich. I watch the muscles of his jaw flex as he chews. “I’ve been tracking this group of anarchists for years. They’re a particularly malignant bunch, responsible for the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands of squadmen.”

  “Why haven’t we stopped them?”

  He wipes some mayonnaise off his chin with a napkin. “We did,” he says, his dark brown eyes gleaming.

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  “That explosion killed exactly seven people, May. The seven unprofitables who infiltrated the Company. What those anarchists told you was absolutely correct. ”

  “You were behind the explosion,” I say, horrified at the realization.

  Blackwell nods, smiling. “Absolutely.”

  The look of confusion on my face prompts him to continue. “I’m sure you understand, this discussion is completely confidential. We have a very important project taking place right now at the Company. This new initiative hasn’t been rolled out yet, but believe me when I tell you, it’s big. And now that you were kind enough to point out the impending financial loss, the stakes are even higher.”

  “What new initiative?”

  Blackwell swats my question away and takes another bite of sandwich.

  “I’m not authorized to tell you that, May. Suffice to say that these unprofitables were planning to disrupt it, and it was imperative that we disrupt them first.”

  “But the explosion—innocent people could have been hurt.”

  “That was Shaw’s idea,” Blackwell says. “He’s always one for theatrics. An explosion during a board meeting—that’s one good way to keep the public outrage boiling. And a public that’s outraged by the anarchists isn’t likely to join them, is it? Don’t worry. Damage to Company property was minimal. The board room is being repaired as we speak.”

  My head is reeling, and it’s not just from my concussion or the sleep deprivation.

  “It was a localized explosive device, set up near spies’ assigned seats,” Blackwell explains. “It killed them and only them. Of course, one of them changed seats at the last minute and escaped our little trap. . . . ”

  Blackwell nods to the huge young man sitting at the computer in the corner, and he presses something on the touch screen. An imager wall behind Blackwell comes to life, and there’s Clair and me in the stairwell, then Clair on the rooftop, holding her white gun on me.

  “She escaped with your help, I might add,” Blackwell points out as he stuffs the last bite of sandwich in his mouth and licks his fingers. I don’t like his accusatory tone.

  “I don’t know if you noticed,” I snap, “but she had a gun on me. Hey, aren’t you the one in charge of keeping guns out of the Headquarters building?”

  Blackwell chuckles, a low, rumbling sound. He wipes his mouth with the napkin again.

  “That’s not the first time the two of you have been together, May. “Blackwell nods to his lieutenant, and another picture appears on the imager: me, in the shopping plaza. Clair is a few steps behind.

  “She was following me. . . . ” I say.

  The image changes, and there she is on another day, following me. Then on another day. And, of course, in two of the shots I’m wearing pants and a suitcoat.

  Blackwell swivels in his chair and points to the imager, to my pants. “I see a few handbook violations there, Miss Fields. No wonder these anarchists thought you might be a good target to recruit.”

  I do my best to look outraged. “That’s insane. My father made this company.”

  Blackwell leans over his desk. “So you don’t have any sympathy at all for their cause, Miss Fields?”

  “No. Of course not.” And I mean it. But the words come out a whisper.

  Blackwell looks over at the young man in the corner. The lieutenant looks down at the screen in front of him, and then almost imperceptibly shakes his head. Blackwell smiles darkly and looks back at me. What was on that screen? I wonder. But there’s no time to ask.

  “Of course, May. You’re no anarchist sympathizer,” Blackwell says. “But still—I’d be very careful if I were you.”

  For a second, I’m taken aback that he actually has the gall to threaten me; then I’m just furious. His eyes bore into mine. I’ve hated Blackwell for years, but at this moment it’s all I can do to refrain from jumping over the desk and choking him.

  “I should go,” I say, my heart pounding. “I just wanted to make my report.”

  “We appreciate it,” Blackwell says with a smile. “Give my regards to your father.”

  I turn and walk out of that place faster than if it had been on fire.

  Simmering beneath my anger toward Blackwell is something much worse—fear. He has always been an unnerving presence, hovering in the wings during board meetings, accompanying my father on secret business trips. Then, there’s our less than cordial personal history. . . . But today, something about his demeanor is positively terrifying. Perhaps it was the way he looked at the young squad member when I lied to him—the way the kid looked down at the screen then shook his head so slowly—that disturbed me so much. Or maybe deep down, part of me feels guilty for my time with the rebels, for the fact that I don’t quite hate them the way I’m supposed to. Either way, the urge to run from Blackwell is overwhelming—which only probably incriminates me further.

  Now, hustling down the empty night-darkened street, my head throbs. My stomach burns like a furnace. I need to know. I need answers. And there’s only one man in the world who can give them to me.

  ~~~

  In m
y car now, switch from auto-nav mode to manual drive and race between stoplights, watching the streetlights paint themselves across the shiny hood of my N-Jag. This beautiful car accounts for almost a quarter of my debt—and it’s my pride and joy. I long to hear it growl and purr under the pressure of the accelerator like Dad’s Lamborghini did when I was a girl, but the only cars that still sound like that are old collector’s items now, banned from street use. Instead, my ear is met only with the rush of the wind and the almost imperceptible hum of the battery-cell power plant. Not very satisfying. It also breaks down all the time. But what does the Company care? They can crank N-Jags out all day and sell them at a 300 percent profit. It’s not as if you have any other makes of car to choose from.

  At least now, in the middle of the night, I can drive at a decent speed. During the day these streets would be so choked with traffic it would take half an hour to drive ten blocks, but at this late hour everyone is sleeping in preparation for the workday ahead and the roadway is practically deserted.

  I look up, through the moon roof. There are no stars here, only streetlights and illumination from the giant, ad-flashing imager screens lining the roadway.

  At a stoplight, I pull up next to a huge black vehicle with massive chrome wheels. On the door the security squad star is painted. The bass from the SUV’s stereo makes the car seat vibrate under me.

  From every window of the huge vehicle, sharp eyes glare at me from beneath the cocked brims of their HR baseball caps. One squad member spits, and the heavy, mucousy wad lands just short of my open window. The others laugh. I feel a tide of fury rising within me, but before I can act the lights atop the squad truck blink on, the siren wails, and the big, black vehicle lurches through the red light. On the other side of the intersection they shut off their siren again and take off with a screech of tires. The only sound left behind is the echo of their laughter.

  Full of indignant anger, I watch them speed away. When the light turns green, I take off speeding down the street, too, ripping around every corner and squealing off from every stoplight.