We don’t have time for this kind of infighting, Tania thought. Why did no one else seem to realize that?
Perhaps they could test Gabriel’s threat much sooner. Get it over with, and then move on.
Unless, she realized, he had a lot of immunes with him. She tried to picture this man, wandering the South American continent for five years, fighting off subhumans and wooing every immune he came across. How many could there have been? Darwin had fewer than a dozen. Of course, the city was full of people who had never set foot beyond the aura. It stood to reason there might be a few dozen more hidden within the population, unaware of their special trait. If Gabriel really did have a way to test …
The situation might never get that far, she realized. Gabriel offered a chance to bring people to the ground. She had no idea how big his group was, but it seemed unlikely there were enough immunes on his side to stop a full-blown uprising by her colonists. The prospect of violence chilled her, but not as much as it once had. Submission was worse.
“You said there were two things,” she said, while her mind worked through all the ramifications.
“Yes,” he said, lingering on the s. “I know of one immune among you already. Skyler, I believe he’s called.”
A knot twisted in Tania’s stomach.
“He’s been harassing my people, even murdered a few in cold blood, people who sought only to make contact with him. He must be delivered into my custody and face his crimes. Once he’s paid his dues, he will join us.”
The way he spoke reminded Tania of the stereotypical tough-cop characters in old films. Perhaps this man had been an actor himself, before the fall. “Skyler’s not in the camp?”
She regretted her response as soon she’d voiced the words. From the look on Gabriel’s face, she’d just confirmed something he’d only suspected.
“No,” Gabriel said. “But I’m told you have a strong relationship with him. You will convince him to come back, unarmed. Promise him all is forgiven if he just returns.”
“Except that all is not forgiven, right?”
“He doesn’t need to know that.”
“Skyler will know I’m lying,” she said, unsure if the words themselves were true.
“He’d better not, for your sake. From now on, for every one of my people he so much as wounds, I will take ten of yours and tie them up outside the aura until they go mad or the afflicted come for them. Starting with Karl.”
“I don’t have a way to contact Skyler,” Tania said. “How am I supposed to convince him to come in?”
Gabriel shrugged. “I don’t care if you stand at the edge of your aura and shout his name all day and night: Just make him listen.”
Tania glanced down at the table in front of her and hugged herself below it. “I need some time to think about this,” she said.
“No, no,” Gabriel replied. “Sorry. I said before, these are not requests. I’ve set some of your people down here to work clearing the cable so that you can begin shuttling people down here. Start immediately, and you’d better be among the first arrivals. I want this Skyler fellow in my custody before he can do any more damage to our important work.”
“I understand. It’s just … There’s logistics to—”
“See you in fifteen hours, Tania.”
The screen went blank.
Tania slumped back in her chair and exhaled. An intense pain began to form behind her eyes, and she rubbed the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. “Guys,” she called out, “come in here.”
“This guy sounds mental,” Tim said. “Completely mental.”
Zane shook his head. “Be that as it may, we’re stuck between him or a return to Darwin. Abandon our people on the ground, or bring everyone down there to face this test.”
“The test,” Tania said, “and to hand over Skyler. Don’t forget that.”
“A world of immunes,” Tim muttered, not listening to either of them. “Nice vision, I guess, if you ignore the million or so other people living in the aura’s shadow.”
“Tim,” Tania said.
“I mean it,” he said. “What a bloody prick! He means to turn Belém into a concentration camp and control the rest of the planet with a superior breed of human. Sound familiar to anyone?”
The comment brought silence to the small room, save for the whir of a fan somewhere behind the wall panels.
“Do we all agree,” Tania asked after a moment, “that returning to Darwin is not an option?”
“It’s an option,” Zane said. “Just not the preferable one.”
He and Tania both looked at Tim.
“This Gabriel fellow sounds worse than Blackfield,” the young man said.
“So you’d rather go back?” Tania asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “They both need to be stopped.”
“Suppose we just give him what he wants?” Zane said, his voice not much more than a whisper.
Tania glared at him. “Skyler, you mean. Say his name, Zane.”
Zane spread his hands. “One man, for the safety of the colony.”
“None of us would even be here if not for him.”
“Granted. Don’t get me wrong, I like the man. He’s resourceful, smart. A fighter, and clever as anyone. This Gabriel means to mete out some kind of justice and then have Skyler join his group. If anyone could escape, Skyler could.”
“I can’t just … hand him over. I won’t. What if that justice is something like losing a limb?” she asked. Zane’s mouth clapped shut and he looked away, contemplating her question. She couldn’t believe that he would advocate in favor of going along with Gabriel’s demands. Yet the very fact that he was somehow sobered her. She’d come to trust Zane’s matter-of-fact opinion on things, his ability to divorce emotion from facts. As a scientist she’d prided herself on being able to do just that, too, all her life.
“Tania,” Zane said, an echo of his brother’s tone in his voice. “For all we know, Skyler is in the wrong here. Maybe it was a mistake, or an overreaction. We may never know. But what if he really did kill some of these immunes without cause?”
She started to protest but Zane held up his hand. “Just … listen. Regardless of how things ultimately end up, Gabriel stated plainly that he will punish innocent colonists if Skyler continues to assault these immunes, correct?”
Tania nodded.
“Then realistically we have no choice,” Zane said. “We have to at least go down there and try to defuse this situation. Talk to Skyler, if we can. Come to some kind of agreement. Perhaps if we give Gabriel surplus food or supplies he will let us handle Skyler’s punishment. Confine him to orbit, for example, until things return to normal.”
“You don’t actually believe that.”
“I don’t know what to believe,” Zane said quietly. “All I know is, if we just turn around and go back to Darwin, we’ve given up this chap Skyler and everyone else down there. But if we go, and talk, and cooperate if it makes sense, we may find a solution that benefits everyone. Including, dare I say it, a solution that includes these immunes working with us. Certainly a large group of them would be extraordinarily useful in the coming months.”
Tim, Tania realized, had been shaking his head the entire time Zane spoke. She looked at him, beckoned for him to speak.
“This guy is mental,” he said again, as if that negated everything Zane had said. It well might, Tania thought.
Zane sighed. “That guy has been scrounging out a living for the last five years in this hellish world with no knowledge of the aura in Darwin, no idea that a city full of people still survived. Put yourself in his shoes for a moment. At first he probably thought he was the last man alive. Everyone he knew died or went primal, insane, and psychotic all at once. Five years, surviving, and ultimately finding others like him. Of course they would band together, thinking they’re special. They are special, for God’s sake. I can’t begrudge the man the loss of a few marbles. Not after all that.”
No one spok
e, and Zane went on.
“And then to look up in the sky one day, and see a string of dark shapes moving down from space. He probably thought we were aliens. Still might, quite frankly. The idea of other survivors, large numbers of us, shattered his worldview. It needs time to register. If we talk to him, he’ll come around. I’m sure of it.”
Put that way, Tania found it hard to argue. But Zane’s eagerness to give up Skyler made her see the younger Platz brother in a new light. Neil would never have done that, she thought.
No? Are you sure about that? Neil, at his core, was a businessman. Granted, he protected those he loved, but Skyler? Skyler was a smuggler he’d hired. An asset. Perhaps Neil would have found the terms Gabriel offered acceptable. After all, with the aura towers, Skyler’s immunity was not so valuable—
Stop! Tania screamed inside. She shut her eyes tight and fought to banish such thoughts. No price could be affixed to Skyler, or any person.
Yet Zane was at least half-right; she couldn’t deny that. Without information, without a chance to talk to Gabriel and evaluate his ability to follow through on what he intended to do, she was helpless. She had to go, had to cooperate. Buy time.
“Tim,” she said as she stood. “Get a climber prepped.”
Belém, Brazil
6.MAY.2283
SKYLER TURNED OFF the handheld radio and stared at it.
He wanted to crush it, or dash it against the wall. Both. But all he could do was stare in disbelief. “I understand,” she’d said. “It’s just … There’s logistics—”
Logistics? She understands?
Her situation must be dire if she’d agree to such demands. Of course she hadn’t expressly agreed, but Skyler saw little point in picking apart the semantics. What she had not done was tell Gabriel to rot in hell, that she’d be damned before she subjected her people to his “test,” or give him one of her …
What? What am I?
A tool, Skyler realized. In Darwin, he could walk beyond the aura and few could follow. But now, in Belém, he was a colonist who happened not to need an aura tower in tow when he bumbled around.
“Knock that off,” he hissed to himself.
Tania’s only knowledge of Gabriel came from the silver-tongued words he gave her. She had no idea what lay behind the mask. The prison he’d set up for his unwilling immunes, the forced breeding.
And that nonsense about a test for immunity. If it existed, which he wholly doubted, it went up in the fire, or vanished when the barn exploded. Either way, no such test existed, and so Gabriel’s promise of a civil option was, in reality, utter bollocks.
But at least he offered to let them live on in Belém after his group moved on with their prize immunes in tow. Skyler had needed all his self-control not to laugh at that part.
None of this matters, he decided. Tania had agreed to hand him over, or else she’d lied. She really believed Gabriel’s offer to play nice with those who didn’t pass his test, or she suspected treachery but saw no alternative other than a retreat. The only truth in all of it was that Gabriel needed to be stopped, now.
Skyler stuffed the radio in his pocket, stood, and stretched. His ankles and knees cracked with the effort.
He slung his rifle and climbed down the maintenance ladder that provided roof access to the top of the building. A department store, once. Looted and vandalized almost beyond recognition, but the roof was all that mattered. Two kilometers southeast, the colony was just visible between trees and half-collapsed houses.
Out of habit, Skyler paused when his feet met asphalt. He studied the deserted street for a few seconds, but saw nothing, of course. The subhumans, he knew, were all gathered in the rainforest to the east, around that small Builder ship. He’d said nothing of its existence to anyone yet, despite the burning desire to share the discovery. Such revelations would only confuse the immediate goal.
Across the road Skyler jogged down a steep concrete embankment to a man-made river. With the wet season having passed—which in Belém meant it rained only half as often—the basin was mostly hard-packed mud, with a trickle that ran down the center, looking more like chocolate milk than water.
The others were camped beneath a bridge, their tents just silhouettes in the shadows below the overpass.
Ana and two others were awake. Once closer, Skyler recognized them as Elias and Pablo. The three were huddled together over cups of Skyler’s instant coffee, heated on a small cap-powered stove as a cook fire might draw attention.
Elias was a soft man. Greasy strands of gray-brown hair were drawn across his nearly bald scalp. He’d probably once been as large as Prumble. Skyler guessed the man had lost half his weight or more in the years since SUBS swept across the world, from the slack skin on his upper arms. Months in captivity under Gabriel had taken a toll as well. He talked with nervous anxiety, and Skyler wondered how useful the man would be in a fight.
Pablo, on the other hand, stood tall and lean, corded with muscle. A curly mess of black hair spilled from the top of his head to his shoulders, over skin so tan and rugged it looked like he’d never spent a day indoors in his life, which was true enough. He’d been a farmer in Colombia and continued in that role for years after the disease took his family and everyone else he knew. His land was isolated, and so he had little trouble from subhumans. Then Gabriel’s caravan had come through. Pablo had thanked them for the offer to join up, and asked them to move on. They had, until two men entered his meager home the next night, hog-tied him, and stuffed him into a truck.
Pablo spoke little and seemed perpetually in a dark mood. Skyler had seen him smile only once, a grin that revealed brown, crooked teeth.
“Fifteen hours,” Skyler said as he approached.
Ana raised an eyebrow at him. “Until?”
“Until we raise hell,” Skyler said. “I don’t think they know about the ranch, about all of you. We need to use that to our advantage while we can.”
Davi emerged from his tent at the sound of voices. A moment later, the final two members of the motley group appeared as well. Skyler nodded at both of them.
One was Wilson, a Canadian student who had found himself stranded in Brazil at the peak of the disease. He was gawky and socially inept, spoke too loud, and smiled at everything. Skyler had accepted his offer to come along despite a lengthy diatribe about his lack of skill with a weapon. All he could offer, he said, was a hatred of Gabriel and his inner circle. “What were you studying in Brazil? Medicine? Engineering?” Skyler had asked. Wilson had frowned. “Indigenous tribes of the upper Amazon. Useless, I know.”
Last was Vanessa, a woman in her early thirties. She might have been a model or actress from her startlingly voluptuous body, but she had an imperfect face—a wide mouth that filled with teeth on the rare occasions that she smiled. In reality she’d been a lawyer, and the daughter of a Brazilian senator. She’d been practicing law when SUBS arrived. Her husband died early on, as did one of her children. The other child had survived the infection to become a subhuman, and she’d been forced to kill the girl, a story she’d told in a quiet voice long drained of any emotion. Skyler suspected she’d suffered more than the others while a captive of Gabriel’s. She’d been beautiful once, and though battered and broken from her ordeal she still held an undeniable appeal. Skyler felt like a monster for even harboring such a thought. He could not imagine the horror she’d been through, and she never spoke of it. Her eyes told the story well enough.
“Fifteen hours?” she asked, tying her hair into a bun as Tania often had. Unlike the scientist, Vanessa’s beauty seemed to melt away with the change, as if her chocolate hair somehow hid the worry lines, the bruises, the cracked lips and wide mouth. Give her a Dutch accent, Skyler thought, and a bit of gray in that hair, and she could be my twin sister.
“Yes,” he said to all of them. They gathered about, some standing, some sitting. Skyler gestured toward the Elevator camp. “At that time, some of those stranded in orbit, the leadership I suspect, will be coming d
own the cord to meet with Gabriel. He means to test each of them for the immunity.”
“How do you know this?” Davi asked.
Skyler tapped the handheld. “Overheard them.”
Ana raised a hand and Skyler nodded to her. “What’s this test? And what happens after?”
He sat on an overturned plastic box they’d salvaged as a chair. “Gabriel means to march each of them beyond the aura, see who is affected, and who isn’t.”
A bleak silence settled on the group. Wilson spoke up. “Won’t most of them get infected that way?”
Skyler nodded. “Not as bad as it sounds, though. The initial infection brings on a devastating headache, but if they can get back inside the aura quick enough, the virus goes into stasis, and the headache along with it. They’ll still carry that initial infection, yes, but as long as they remain in the aura, they’ll be fine.”
Davi’s brow wrinkled. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Maybe not,” Skyler said. “We’re assuming Gabriel and his people will let them back inside fast enough. They might suspect a true immune is faking the headache. It wouldn’t be that hard. And some are so overcome by the pain that they collapse, unable to return to safety. Will someone be allowed to help them?”
“Knowing Gabriel,” Pablo muttered, “no.”
This earned frowns from the group.
“I thought not,” Skyler said. “He offered an interesting alternative. Gabriel claims there’s a medical test for the immunity, and that the kits to perform it are at ‘a nearby ranch.’ I assume he means where you all were staying.”
“I never saw anything like that,” Wilson said. The others nodded.
“So I guessed,” Skyler said. “Gabriel probably intends to hold them there, as he held you. I don’t think he knows what happened, that you’re free. That’s good news.”
“Why wait?” Ana asked. “Why not attack now, before the people come down?”
The Exodus Towers: The Dire Earth Cycle: Two Page 19