by G. P. Ching
I’m relieved when he moves on to the next section, but end up just as horrified. These are weapons created to bleed or de-limb your enemy, curved blades and scythes. “Aim for the arteries,” he says, demonstrating in the air at the sides of his throat and in front of his inner thigh. “A wrist is easier to sever with this than a shoulder.”
I try to block the images that come to mind. Rotating one of the weapons in my hand, I cannot fathom using it.
“With the axes, I recommend you aim for the skull. If they dodge, chances are you’ll hit something on the follow-through.”
I nod.
“These here, the blunt objects, they’re for breaking bones.” He twirls a staff in his hands. “You might not see your enemy bleed with these, but if you use them correctly, the injury will be on the inside.”
“Oh.” My eyes burn with the desire to cry.
He hands me a dagger and lifts a staff from the rack.
“Attack me,” he says.
“You can’t be serious.” I scoff. “I can’t stab you.”
He jabs the staff in my direction, and I notice he is glowing. The slight blue aura is barely perceptible in the light. Narrowing my eyes, I stab experimentally at his midsection.
“Ah!” He slaps my hand away with the staff, but not before the tip of the knife bounces off like he’s made of stone.
“I suggest you spark out or you are going to get the bruising of your life.”
I fold my hands to my heart, then snap them straight. My skin glows to life.
David bows his head slightly, raises his staff, and attacks.
David’s electrokinesis is not as strong as mine. We have to stop weapons training, not because either of us is tired, but because a sore has bloomed over the left side of his upper lip. He hobbles over to his zippered black bag against the wall and pulls out another syringe, this one filled with blue fluid. He pulls up the leg of his shorts and plunges the needle into his thigh.
“Do you want me to juice you?” I ask, holding out my hand.
He locks eyes with me as he returns the needle to the bag in silent warning, and I stop talking.
“Hey, you need to tell me more about the symbol,” I say to break the awkward silence.
He smiles and takes a seat on the floor by the emblem. “Last time I told you how the laurel wreath represented Next Generation Agriculture. There was another company interested in saving the world.” He raises his eyebrows when he says the last, almost like it’s tongue-in-cheek, although I do not pick up the same inflection in his voice.
He points to the lightning bolt. “Nucore Energy was a power company with roots in fossil fuels. They’d invested heavily to reinvent themselves to be an alternative energy company. When the global crisis came and fossil fuels were outlawed, Nucore stood to profit from the shift to sustainable energy. Only, nuclear energy was proving to be the more promising short-term solution, despite its risks.”
“Like the meltdown.”
“Exactly.”
“Nucore joined forces with NGA. Their goal was to clean up the planet.”
“And to profit from it,” I mumble under my breath. David smiles but says nothing.
For a moment, I am mesmerized by the healing of the sore on David’s face. It stitches itself up until the skin is a fresh pink. He catches me staring and I look away, toward the emblem, embarrassed.
“What does the hammer represent?” I ask absently.
David frowns. “That’s a lesson for another day.”
David retrieves me from my room at sunrise day after day. I’m expected to have eaten breakfast and am made to if I haven’t. Almost every day, David has to give me a shot of painkiller to keep me going. My muscles throb without it, and there is not a place on my body that doesn’t hurt. I lose track of time. What day is it? How long have I been here? I have no idea.
I learn how to use every weapon in the training room’s arsenal and spend hours practicing martial arts techniques. We train until dinner, stopping only when David insists I eat and drink. He never holds back or pulls a punch. Even trying to shield myself, he lands enough thwacks and slams to leave me black and blue. I have a cut under my right eye from losing my concentration and a bandage over my lower abdomen I can’t remember putting there. Lapses in memory are becoming my forte. I can’t decide if it’s the painkillers or the way David gets me in the zone when we fight.
Although I repeatedly ask for him, I never see Korwin. Nor do Maxwell or Natasha make an appearance. I begin to wonder if they are even alive anymore. But I hold to the promise that if I work hard, if I earn the Green Republic’s trust, I’ll get more privileges, more freedoms, and perhaps the privilege to see Korwin.
“Lydia,” my father says that night, staring at me over a roast beef that appeared in our irradiator moments ago. It smells great but it tastes like a kitchen sponge. The potatoes and asparagus aren’t any better. “You can’t keep doing this. I don’t even know how you’re still standing. You’re a walking bruise.”
“Not walking, limping,” Jeremiah says. “She hasn’t walked straight for over a week.”
“A week?” I say. “It hasn’t been that long.”
Jeremiah scoffs. “It’s been almost three.”
“Three weeks?” I laugh. “Not possible.”
Jeremiah glances at my father and then back at me. “You’ve been distracted.” He lifts one brow and leans toward me as he says it. He pulls a square of paper from his pocket. “I’ve made an x on the back of this every time we’ve slept.”
There are twenty-four X’s on the paper. I have vague memories of sitting at this table, eating with them, but it’s all a blur. Pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes, I try to see it clearly, behind the kicking, stabbing, and fighting that plays over and over in my head. “What’s wrong with me?”
“We don’t know,” my father says.
“They haven’t given you a day off since we got here,” Jeremiah continues.
I stare at my hands for a moment, memories flashing in front of me. I’ve fired a gun. Several different guns, on a firing range deep within this building, but I only remember it as if it were a dream. My body shakes. I look at the place on my shoulder where David has injected me every morning. My arm is covered in needle pricks in various stages of healing. My other shoulder too. I squirm in my chair. There was more than painkiller in that syringe. What has David done to me?
“They don’t let us out of here, Lydia. Ever,” Jeremiah says. “We don’t know what they do to you when you leave. This is the clearest you’ve been in days.”
“Korwin?” I say.
They both shake their heads. My father takes my hand. His eyes flick to the lamp above the table, where we all know the Greens keep a monitor. “A Green stopped up here today to tell us that Willow’s Province could not find our records. We told them we have no explanation, but Jeremiah and I thought you should know.”
I widen my eyes in alarm. The Green Republic is going to want answers. They will demand to know where Lydia Lane has been these last seventeen years and how I was hidden from detection. The Green Republic’s kindness is limited and conditional. If I don’t give them answers, who will they hurt to make me?
For some reason, Natasha comes to mind, and I see David’s face saying, “She’s not well. She can’t join us today.” He’s said that every day. Every day for what I now know is three weeks.
If they’re holding Natasha the way I think they’re holding Korwin, David and I might have more in common than Operation Source Code. There’s no way they’re keeping Korwin comfortable in an apartment like my father or Jeremiah. If they were, they would’ve let me see him. No. Likely, they’ve been draining him or torturing him. I don’t believe Natasha has been sick either. Something has to change. Every day I don’t see Korwin is potentially a day the Green Republic draw him closer to death. I’m running out of time, and I can’t afford to lose another day.
28
“I’m fine,” I tell David when he com
es to my door the next morning. It’s a lie. I can hardly hold my head up. Every part of me aches.
“This will make it easier,” he says through thin lips. He moves the syringe toward my shoulder.
I grab his wrist before he can inject me and without thinking, draw his energy in. It’s not purposeful, more like my body is thirsty and he’s a bottle of water. The blue juice flows up my arm, and I watch my bruised skin heal as it goes. I take more and more until David crumples into the doorframe with a groan.
I release his wrist. I feel renewed. He’s covered in sores.
“Come on,” I say. I return the syringe to his bag and grab him under the elbow, forcing him into the hall. He goes, hugging the wall just as he always does. Silent. This time, he doesn’t hesitate before popping the Biolock. He stops just inside the door.
“Are you crazy?” He props himself against the wall and digs through his bag for another syringe and a vial of blue liquid.
“What have you been giving me every morning?”
He injects himself with the solution. “Painkillers.”
I hold out my hand, threatening to touch him again. To drain him. He pulls away. “Also, a supplement to help you retain what you learn.”
“Why do I feel like I’ve lost track of time?”
“That’s how it works. You experience things using the part of your brain associated with long-term memory. What I’ve taught you this week will be second nature to you. You will never forget it.”
“Is this some kind of Green Republic torture? Did Konrad put you up to drugging me?”
“Konrad doesn’t know. As far as he’s concerned, there was nothing but painkiller in that vial.”
“Then why?” I step closer to him. He’s still recovering, the sore on his arm slowly crusting over. He leans his head against the wall.
“We’re running out of time.” He meets my eyes. “The things we love most will be used against us.”
Korwin. “What do I need to do?” I ask.
“We’ve got to go. This stairwell is the only place in the complex not monitored, but they’ll know something’s wrong if we are not in the training center in five minutes.” He gathers his things and starts jogging down the steps.
“David, what can I do to help Korwin?” I ask, falling into step beside him.
“First, if you believe in God, start praying that Konrad misses the part where you drew energy from me through touch.”
“Why?”
“They don’t know you can do that. The participants in Operation Source Code couldn’t juice each other. We could draw from things, but not from people and certainly not into people.”
Oh, so that was why he’d changed the subject in the training room when I asked if I could juice him.
“Second, I have no idea how you can help Korwin. I don’t even know how you can help yourself. But you’re strong and you’re smart.” He pauses on the second floor and points toward the outer wall of the stairwell. “Beyond that wall is freedom.”
What?
He opens the door and leads the way into the training center, where he promptly stashes his bag against the wall. I can tell he’s still dragging from being drained and the sprint down the stairs has left him breathless.
“Tell me about the last part of the Green Republic’s emblem,” I say. “I won’t practice if you don’t.”
Relief washes across his features before being hidden away. “Okay. I guess I owe you that much. You’ve worked hard these last weeks.” He sits next to the symbol and motions for me to sit across from him.
“The hammer,” I say, reminding him where we left off.
“Right. Frankly, I’m surprised you’ve waited this long to ask about the hammer. It’s the most important part of the origination history of the Green Republic. The hammer represents the Evergreen political party and its army. As the environment became more toxic, the oceans swelled and flooded the coasts and nontoxic fresh water became harder to come by. An international political party rose up from grass roots efforts to combat the environmental damage. They called themselves the Evergreen Party. They won elections to the north and south, across the oceans, and with each win they built a militia focused on the enforcement of sustainable living.”
I laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Don’t you find it humorous that it took men and women trained in doling out death to force the populace to think about life?”
A small smile spreads his lips. “Certainly, ironic.”
“So, the Evergreen Party militia joined forces with NGA and Nucore to form the Green Republic?”
“Correct. After the tragedy in the Outlands, most people were begging for a savior to clean up the mess, and the Green Republic was ready and willing. With an army supplied by the Evergreen Party, financing supplied by Nucore, and NGA withholding food from the enemy, the Great Rebellion was won, and since then our air is clean, the oceans are healthy, and we have very little waste. It’s utopia.”
I force myself to smile and nod. Utopia for some maybe. No freedom. No autonomy.
David’s face sobers. “Those who refused to accept the Green Republic’s way of life were sentenced to die and imprisoned within a concrete wall next to the failed reactor.” He shakes his head. “The radiation levels were high enough, most are presumed dead. Those who remain live like wild animals.”
I almost laugh at the ridiculousness of his last sentence. But then his words fester like a wound. I clear my throat. “I’d heard that the people behind the wall were a religious group.” I swallow hard. Is David warning me about Hemlock Hollow or simply telling me a story? What will the Green Republic do to us if they find out we’re not dead or wild animals?
He shakes his head as he gets to his feet. “Most were, but let’s just say they had one hell of a bump in membership after the war. Well, until the radiation killed them off.”
I chew my lip. If what he says is true, my Amish community is a mixed group of those descended in the faith and rebels escaping the revolution. I’m not sure why this bothers me. After all, everyone worships together now. We dress the same. We uphold the same Ordnung. I shake the unexamined feeling off.
“Time to get to work,” David says. He’s looking better; the solution must have worked. “I think you need more target practice.”
I follow him across the room to a door that leads to the shooting range. I’ve been here before. I’ve done this before. Without a word, I grab ear protection from the tray and a handgun from the rack. On autopilot, I approach the booth, assume the stance David has taught me, and proceed to unload the ammunition into a man-shaped target. When I’m finished, I’ve peppered the head and the heart with bullet holes.
Magazine empty, I turn toward David in confusion. He removes his ear protection and motions for me to remove mine. “I told you the supplement would help you remember.”
“Remember? I felt like a machine.” I blink quickly, still in wonder over what I’ve done. Before coming here, I’d only seen pictures of guns. I’d never so much as dreamed of holding one, let alone firing one. I certainly did not expect to be good at it. What else has David and his chemical supplement taught me? I stare at my hands, dumbfounded.
“You are a machine. Electric power and all.” He snorts. “And that brings us to the end of our time together.”
“What?”
“Your training is complete.” His voice breaks. “What you do with it now is up to you.”
“Lydia, I’m very pleased with your performance. Very few initiates pass training in less than a month, even with personal trainers,” Dr. Konrad says. “You will be integrated into the Special Ops team and assigned a mission as soon as possible.”
I sit in Konrad’s office, in the chair across the desk from him. He peruses a stack of papers, my test results, with growing interest.
“Where is Korwin?”
“Safe. Alive. And as long as you face your responsibilities, he will stay that way.
“When ca
n I see him?”
“Soon. First, there’s one more thing I need from you.”
“What?” I ask. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me, without question.”
“Yes, yes. But you, Lydia, hold the key to our future. We need to take Operation Source Code to the next level. The next…generation.”
“Generation?”
He sighs. “Your trainer David is an Alpha, very unstable. You are a Beta, stable and exponentially stronger, and your baby will be the first Gamma. There’s no limit to what we could accomplish with Gamma cells.”
Panic rises in my throat with bile. Gamma cells. Like he’s not talking about a person but biological fuel.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Konrad says over his steepled fingers through that thin excuse for a smile. “You won’t need to carry it. All we need is your cells. A few of yours and a few of Korwin’s. Both second generation. We have technology now that can handle everything else. The procedure is simple.”
I don’t want to believe what I’m hearing. It’s too sinister. What type of monster breeds people like rats? “And what then?” I ask. “Once you have your Gamma, what will happen to the rest of us?”
Konrad shrugs. “As I said before, we’re already planning your first mission and once the baby is born, he or she is going to need a mother and father.”
So that’s it. Two for the price of one. Our forced parenthood will also mean our forced servitude. It is another hook for Konrad to insert into Korwin and me. More leverage to make sure we spend the rest of our lives fighting for the Green Republic. When you make a deal with the devil, he keeps on taking. My father’s comfort for my cooperation. Korwin’s life for one of my cells. Our baby’s life for our ongoing allegiance. When will it stop?
“I think I need to lie down,” I say. My eyelids flutter. I have to grab the desk to steady myself.
“Of course. You’ve had a very full day, and I’m sure you need some time to process all of this. We can perform the procedure tomorrow.”
I swallow repeatedly to keep from vomiting.
Konrad picks up his phone and presses a few buttons. A blond officer who looks too young to wear the uniform enters the small office. “Please escort Lydia to her room.”