by Makansi, K.
“Where’s Soren?” I demand. “I’m not giving you any information until I know at least that.”
Philip seems to consider this question, deciding whether or not to answer me. “Soren is currently meeting with General Aulion.”
I shudder, imagining the pain and horror Soren’s in, being locked up in a room alone with that man.
“Classic ‘divide and conquer,’ then?” I say, working up a grin, trying to put on a brave face. This is what Soren would do if he were in my place. Be as bold and uncooperative as possible. I shrug and look around, pretending to examine my surroundings. “Well, at least it’s a change of pace.”
Philip glares at me. “Now is not the time for attitude, Remy.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Why don’t you let me know when would be a better time, when you can fit ‘attitude’ in on your calendar? I’ll have my people contact your people,” I growl back. He holds my gaze and for a second looks like he might let a trace of anger show on his face. But after a few seconds, something in his face softens and melts. He sighs and stares up at the ceiling.
“I know you’re in pain. I know you despise me right now, that you think I’m the bad guy. But whatever you think of me, I really do only want the best for you. I don’t want you to suffer any longer. Talk to me. I just want to help you. When you help me, I can give you everything you need.”
My stomach is empty and my body feels like it might start to devour itself soon. The hunger is already making me lightheaded and dizzy, and I struggle to prevent my thoughts from tripping over themselves. I need food. Something, anything. I let my face crumple. I can play-act at regret and sadness too, Philip. I look down at my hands.
“I’m really hungry,” I say softly. “They haven’t fed us since we got in here.” I peek up through my eyelashes and see Philip lean forward eagerly as I start to give in. How could I have ever thought he was genuine and kind?
“We can feed you, Remy,” he says. “The information we need is simple. Names and places. Just answer my questions.”
“What do you want to know?” I ask, praying that Soren isn’t going to give us up either. But I know he’s not. Aulion and a few puny hours without food won’t break him. Philip’s mouth twitches upward in one corner, and he glances briefly behind me, presumably at the guards, who I assume are still in the room.
“What’s the name of the person you call the Director?” Philip asks.
“I don’t know his name. I’ve only ever heard his voice.” The Director is a woman. Her quarters are down the hall from mine. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to bring up tears of regret. My “betrayal” has to feel real.
“Where is your base? Where are you located?”
“Just feed me, please, Philip, I’m starving,” I sob. It’s a good one, almost genuine. “I can’t betray my friends!”
“Then I can’t help you, Remy.” He looks at me with tragedy written all over his face. “Think of the lives you’ll save by helping us. We’re either going to kill them when we find them without your help, or we’ll offer them a deal, a surrender, amnesty maybe, if you help us.” He suddenly reaches out his hand across the desk, as though offering to comfort me. Like Vale, at the mission site, reaching out his hand, offering to take me to a safe place, to help me. There might still be hope for Vale. The way he looked when I told him about Tai—his shock, his panic, the way he stared at me as though he might dare to believe me—but there’s no hope for Philip. I stare at his outstretched hand across the table. “You didn’t make the choice to leave, Remy. Remember that. Your parents made that choice. Now you can make a different choice.”
I drop my head and try to fight off the tears. He’s making it so easy for me to maintain the act. “Okay, okay,” I manage. “We work out of an abandoned industrial area.”
“What’s the name of it?” Philip continues, his voice calm, insistent, encouraging.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m not an idiot, Remy.”
“Hartford,” I gasp, staring fixedly at my knees, looking as embarrassed and contrite as possible. Truth is, Hartford is a ruins. We tried to scavenge there, but the place had been blown to smithereens.
“Hartford,” he repeats, again looking over my shoulder. “Why Hartford?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t pick the base.”
“But there had to be a reason … what did they manufacture there?”
Hartford, Hartford … what do I know about Hartford? We tried to scavenge there once, but it was useless, an abandoned, overgrown mess. But the Director said that they used to be known for … what? “Fuel cells. Those old-fashioned fuel cells.”
“Ah, that’s right. If I remember correctly, Hartford’s on a river. Out in the Wilds. Can you show me on the map where it is?” He points at one of the maps, a rough sketch of what the Wilds to the south of the Sector look like. Their maps aren’t very good, I notice. We have better ones. I can throw them off. I nod. One of the guards releases my cuffs behind me and I stand up, then collapse back into my chair. The guard starts to help me, but then Philip abruptly stands up and darts around the desk, putting his hands under my arms to help me. His touch is abhorrent. An enormous shudder runs up my spine, and I desperately hope he’ll think it’s because of the hunger and not my revulsion at the fact that his skin is touching mine. I want to be sick, to throw up everything left in my body all over him. Instead I offer him a weak smile.
He helps me limp over to the wall where the map is displayed. I scan it quickly and find the location where I seem to remember Hartford actually is. I hope I’m right. I point and look at him nervously, my lip trembling. He smiles magnanimously at me.
“Thank you, Remy.” He helps me back to my seat, and I cringe with relief when he lets me go.
“Are your parents with you?”
“No.”
“Where are they? They’re the ones who betrayed the Sector. They’re the ones we want. If you help us find them, I’ll personally make sure they’re treated well.”
Over my dead body. At least this question I can answer honestly. “I don’t know. They’ve never told me.”
“What do they do?”
“Set up communications systems for other bases.” They pose as modern-day troubadours, an itinerate healer and a musician who travel to the Farms and factory towns offering alternative medicine and nutrition information and evangelizing for the Resistance. Their job is incredibly dangerous, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to lead Philip anywhere near them.
“Where are the other bases?” His expression is blank.
“I don’t know. We’re not allowed to know where the other bases are specifically for this reason.” I wipe the tears from my eyes. Of course I know where the other bases are, but they’re much smaller than mine, well hidden, and I’m pretty sure there’s no way in hell the Sector has gotten wind of their locations.
“Do you know where Dr. James Rhinehouse is?”
“I know what base he works at….” I sniffle.
“Which one?” He leans forward, betraying his eagerness.
“Base Five. I don’t know where it is.” Shit. That was stupid. I wish I’d come up with a cleverer name. In reality, the bases are named after some of the greatest battles or strongholds of ancient resistance fighters—Normandy, Antietam, Yorktown, Bannockburn, Teutoburg, and our main base, Thermopylae.
“What does Rhinehouse do for the Resistance?”
“I don’t know. The Director doesn’t tell me anything,” I whisper. At least that part is true. For once, I thank the stars that I’m low in the pecking order. “I’ve never met him. All I know is where he’s stationed.”
Philip sits back in his chair. Does he know I’m lying? I try to read his face but his expression is emotionless. I know they could use the truth serum and lie detector machines, but Philip obviously wants me to come over to his side of my own accord. Before we left for the mission, Rhinehouse gave us truth serum antidotes in case we were captured. Standard procedure for all ri
sky raids. They biodegrade after a few days, though, so if we’re stuck here and they shoot us up with the serum, we could be in trouble.
“Why don’t you tell us what were you after at the Carbon Seed Bank?” Is this a question about the DNA? I wonder. Do they know about what I said this morning? Does Philip know about the DNA, too?
“Why don’t you give me something to eat?” I say, avoiding the question. “I’ve answered your questions. Please,” I put on my most pitiful stare, appealing desperately to whatever traces of kindness might linger within his perverted being. “I’m starving.”
“You can eat when you’ve answered all my questions, Remy. What were you looking for at the Seed Bank?” My mind races. What can I tell him? I don’t want to tell him anything that resembles the truth. What else are they well known for having at Carbon that I can pretend we were looking for?
“Technology,” I whisper. It’s the best I can do. “Charge multipliers, faster cloning devices, more efficient DNA sequencers, proton couplers.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you lying to me, Remy?” He asks. I stare at him. Was it really that obvious? Or is he playing with me?
“I’m not,” I say determinedly. He leans back, studies me, and I think back to everything I was ever taught about lying. Hold his gaze. Relax. Don’t fidget. Believe the lie. I believe it. My life and the lives of all my friends depend on it. Finally, he sighs and waves at one of the guards.
“Remy, Vale has done his homework. We know for a fact that Dr. Rhinehouse works with you at the base you call Thermopylae, that Hartford is nothing but a shell, and that your parents do not in fact set up communications networks. We know that Thermopylae is located in the middle of an old world city, not some abandoned industrial scrap. And we know that the Director is, in fact, a woman.”
I keep a straight face, but my heart might very well be bleeding out my toes right now.
He looks at me again, sadly. “I really thought better of you, Remy. I thought you would be able to recognize truth when you saw it. I thought you would be willing to help your parents and your friends escape a devastating fate.”
Suddenly one of the guards is at my side. I start in surprise, but then he quickly lashes each of my wrists to the armchair. The second guard pulls my shirt apart at the collarbone and slaps on a few charge multipliers. He looks down at me and makes eye contact for a second, but then I realize what he’s doing and he averts his eyes and turns away.
“No—what, you can’t, this is—” I start to fight, throwing myself back and forth, wriggling fiercely, but my hands are bound, and now my feet, too, to the chair.
“You’re obviously not willing to help yourself, so I’m going to provide another incentive. Remember, this was your choice.”
“Philip, no—this is torture, this is—” I cry out but he pays me no heed.
“Just answer the questions, Remy, and this will all be over,” Philip says to me in a reassuring, almost comforting tone.
“Fuck you,” I spit. “This is insane.” Pain lances through my back, shoulders, temples, a vicious throng of spasms, ripping my muscles to shreds. I cry out, but it’s over in a heartbeat. I gasp for breath and fall limply back against chair, panting.
Then again, it rips through me like shards of glass, and my muscles torque uncontrollably, twisting and curling viciously around my bones. The pain blinds me, deafens me, to everything but the screams echoing in my ears and the blood pounding through my skull.
It seems to last an eternity, this time, but then it’s gone. Just an echo resounding over and over again through my body. Philip nods at the guards, who start to strip off the charge magnifiers.
“Does Vale know you’re doing this?” I sputter, gulping air like a drowning victim. Philip regards me thoughtfully.
“Yes,” he says after a moment. “He’s the one who authorized it.”
“You’re lying.” He cocks an eyebrow at me, and I conjure up an enormous quantity of saliva and spit it across the desk in a move that would have impressed Eli.
He doesn’t even flinch. “No, I’m not. But I’m sure Vale will be thrilled to hear that you thought so highly of him.”
“So you admit that what you’re doing is despicable.”
“Remy, I am willing to do whatever is necessary to keep my people safe. After years of experience, I’ve realized that sometimes that means doing things that I don’t like or enjoy. This is one of those times. I regret that you’ve put yourself in this position, but I’ve offered you a way out and you’ve refused. Now, I’m going to send you back to your cell, and you and I will try again in a few more hours. And,” he gives me a slight, conciliatory smile, “when you give us what we want, I’ll personally hand you a bucket of fresh figs, just like I used to.” He stands, waves to one of the guards, and walks out of the room as a hand from behind me presses a cloth back over my nose and mouth. In a second I’m euphoric again, wobbly, giggling like a happy little child, all the pain forgotten.
Ten minutes later, I’m tied to the pole again, back to back with Soren, who looks awful. The euphoria has already faded and the pain and trauma have returned tenfold.
“Did they shock you, too?” Soren asks hoarsely when the guards have left. Not that it matters. The red lights of the corner cameras are still winking at us.
“Yeah,” I mutter. “What happened to your voice?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he whispers, barely audibly. I suspect his encounter with Aulion went about ten times worse than mine with Philip. I change the subject.
“Did they ask you about the you-know-what?” A shudder runs through my spine as the memory of my revelation returns, and I try to quell it. I lean my head back against the pole and close my eyes.
“No,” he says. “You?”
“No. Maybe they don’t know what I was talking about. Maybe they thought I was just a crazy person on drugs.” Normally I would expect a scoffing noise from Soren right about now, but either he’s too tired to bother or he actually thinks I might be right.
“Either way,” he sighs. “Get some rest. I’m sure they’ll be back for more later.”
I nod in agreement and let the sweet memory of electric shocks, starvation, and Philip’s promise of figs lull me to sleep.
18 - VALE
Fall 91, Sector Annum 105, 02h03
Gregorian Calendar: December 20
The silence is stifling. It’s just after 02h00 and I’ve spent the last six hours looking through research documents, genetic codes, compiled programs, and more, trying to find out what was so important about the DNA that my mother was willing to kill for it. I now know Aran Hawthorne’s biography better than he did. I’ve looked through every detail of his life story, searching for clues as to why he took such an interest in the DNA and how he found it. What was so valuable that my mother was willing to have a man killed to keep it under her control? I’ve found nothing. I’m exhausted, and I know it’s time to go. Demeter wipes clean any trace of our activity on my mother’s computer, and I log off and shut everything down.
I slip my pack over my shoulders, my grappling hook and military-grade rope still safely inside. Thankfully, there won’t be any dashing heroics tonight. Just as well—I don’t think I can take any more surprises. I make my way back down through my mother’s private meeting rooms toward the door to the main hallway, hoping that I can take the service elevator down, slip out into the alley and make it safely and unobtrusively back to Assembly Hall, where my Sarus is waiting.
I open the door and start to step into the hall. Then I get the surprise of my life: Someone in a sleek, tailored tunic is standing with her back to me, long brown hair washing over her shoulders.
It’s my mother.
Every muscle in my body is frozen, except my heart which slams against my ribcage like a piston. What is she doing here? She was supposed to be at a seed bank, hours away!
“I am at your service, Madam.” The man’s voice
is familiar, but I can barely hear it. It’s low and muffled, and he must be standing around the corner because I can’t see him from my vantage point. My brain is screaming at me to move, to shut the door and find some other way out—or somewhere to hide—but I can’t. My curiosity has me pinned to the spot, waiting, listening.
“Of course you know about the two members of the Resistance my son brought back from the raid.” Her voice is urgent and demanding, not at all the calm confidence I am used to hearing from her. Remy and Soren. She’s talking about Remy and Soren. “The surveillance camera in their holding cell showed us clear evidence that they are in possession of dangerous information. If what I fear is true, and this information were to be used by the Resistance, our food supplies could be contaminated, our way of life destroyed. They must not be allowed to share that information with anyone—ever. Do I make myself clear?”
He says something I can’t make out, and I have to stop myself from opening the door wider.
My mother’s back straightens, and she rolls forward on her the balls of her feet as if she’s about to launch. She is obviously not in a pleasant mood. “Disappearing them into the Wilds is not good enough.” Her voice is harsh.
“With all due respect…” the voice trails off.
“No!” She is angry now. “I need a permanent solution. They are dangerous and must be eliminated. Now, this morning. Before my son has an opportunity to see them again.”
She’s asking him to kill Remy and Soren.
“Move, Vale, move!” comes Demeter’s urging in my ear. Is she frantic? I think so. That probably means I should be frantic, too. Hell, if a computer is … but I have to hear, I can’t leave yet.
“Yes, Madam. I will remove them within the hour.” Whose voice is that?
“Make it look like suicide. I’ll tell Aulion that I want to see them in the OAC interrogation room at 05h00. His guards will discover them.”