Contrition (The Perception Trilogy)

by Strauss, Lee

  My breathing grew heavier as we broached the summit. We paused a few times to drink from our water bottles. The sky sparkled with stars and the almost-full moon reflected off the sand creating an eerie white glow.

  We crouched low when we reached the top, pressing behind the rocky crevices to stay hidden. Beneath us we could easily see the camp. My heart almost stopped.

  Sixty small canvas tents were set up, six rows of ten, with three larger tents off to the side. We could see the soldiers about. The moonlight glinted off their metal cyborg parts and many of them had a single red eye. Like Mara had.

  That many eye accidents? Not likely. Which meant cyborg eyes were becoming standard procedure.

  I supposed once you’ve started cyborging yourself, you’d have a hard time knowing when to stop. Like compulsive tattooing or piercing. Or maybe they were like Liam and Jackson, in pursuit of a Transhuman existence. One day they would be completely mechanical, outliving all their organic parts.

  The thought made me shudder.

  Suddenly the area exploded with light. I ducked and muffled the shriek that wanted to burst through my mouth. A large generator filled the desert with the murmur of a low engine noise, giving energy to the four bright columns of artificial light.

  It was like a school sports day. Ten cyborgs lined up to race against each other. A gunshot went off, and my vision blurred.

  “Oh God,” Noah muttered.

  We could barely make out their individual forms, they were moving so fast.

  I pressed a hand against my chest, holding in my heart. “They could outrun a vehicle.”

  We watched, stunned, as the rest of the cyborgs ran the sprint. Then they set up the pole jump. It was unlike any pole jump I’d ever seen. The cyborgs were clearing unbelievable heights, high as houses. I recalled how Mara had jumped onto tall machinery at the factory, effortlessly like a cat.

  Noah motioned with his head that we should go. I followed his lead, scanning the horizon for any sign that one or more of the cyborgs may have been tasked to scout out the area around the peaks, but I saw no sign of glinting metal or singular red eyes.

  “We have to leave the peaks,” I said once we were half way down the other side.

  “Where would we go?” Noah asked. “And how would we leave without them noticing?”

  “I don’t know.” I wiped the sheen of sweat off my brow. “We have to do something.”

  Chapter 11

  I could smell the smoke before we reached the cave opening and the glow of the fire burning inside brightened the entrance.

  “No!” Noah said. He grabbed a jug of water and tossed it on the flames, then kicked dust from the floor of the cave to make sure it was dead.

  “We’re going to freeze without a fire,” Rebecca whined. “And what’s going to keep the snakes and coyotes out?”

  “We have bigger problems than snakes and coyotes,” I said.

  Noah began to describe the scene we witnessed. “It looks like a training camp, not a mission to sniff out cave-dwelling rebels and fugitives.”

  Jabez huffed. “You can bet that’s next on the agenda, though.”

  Taylor stood near the entrance of the tech cave, arms folded over his chest. “What do you propose we do?”

  “Maybe it’s time to leave?” Mary sat on her mat, resting her back against the wall.

  “Wouldn’t they see us?” Jabez asked.

  “Where would we go?” I added. I knew Tucson and Phoenix were out. The strict population limits wouldn’t allow us to do more than enter and exit, and besides, Noah and I were still being sought.

  “We could go back to Utah,” Hannah said softly. There was a hitch in her voice that belied her pain. Memories of Simon. Homesickness.

  “I think we need to stay put,” Taylor said. “Just wait them out.”

  Noah nodded. “I agree. They didn’t come with a lot of supplies, so they can’t be planning to train for long. As long as we stay under their radar we’ll be okay.”

  “That means we can’t leave this cave,” I said. “Ever. Until they go.”

  “That’s right,” Taylor agreed. “I’m certain they would pick us up with their equipment at some point, even if they aren’t set up to look for us.”

  Rebecca’s eyes darted to the storage crevice. “Do we have enough food?”

  “I hope so,” I said. “We’ll have to ration it.” I suddenly felt dizzy and stretched out flat on my mat.

  Mary stared at the supplies, too. “It’s a good thing we just made a run.”

  “What about heat?” Rebecca asked. She pulled a blanket around her shoulders for effect.

  “We can use the tech generator,” Taylor said, though I could tell by his grimace that he didn’t like the idea of taking his computer energy source away, even for short periods. It was solar powered so he’d have to be really careful the panels didn’t reflect and get noticed by the cyborgs when he recharged them.

  “We need to do a better job hiding the buggy,” Noah said, turning back to the entrance. “If they decide to take a tour around the peaks, they could spot it.”

  Jabez jumped to his feet. “I’ll help.”

  A wash of nausea swathed me and I felt beads of a cold sweat break on my face.

  “Are you okay?” Rebecca asked, her face actually softening with concern.

  “I think so.” I held my stomach tightly. “Just stress.”

  She tilted her head. “I thought GAPs didn’t get sick.”

  “I’m not sick.” This wasn’t sickness. Just a natural reaction to an unusual situation.

  “Well, you don’t look well.”

  I felt the spotlight on me. Hannah, Taylor and Mary were all staring at me now.

  “You do look kind of pale,” Mary said.

  “I’m fine,” I insisted.

  Noah and Jabez re-entered shortly afterward, and I forced myself to sit up. I wasn’t a weakling. Everyone here was under the same stress I was. I had to shake this off.

  “Is it concealed?” I asked.

  “We moved it into a rock crevice, covered it with sage brush and scrubbed out the tracks. I think we’re fine.” Noah settled on the mat and let his head drop into his hands.

  Worry and exhaustion were etched on his face. Mary came up behind him, knelt down and massaged his shoulders. I had to look away.

  The seven of us sat on our mats around the dead fire pit. Taylor had hooked up his generator to a small heater. I was amazed at how fast it worked.

  “If we could afford another generator and a camp stove, we could probably exist out here without making fires,” I said.

  Rebecca’s eyes darted nervously toward the entrance. “There’s still the issue of wild critters.” No one wanted that kind of company.

  “We just have to keep a careful watch,” Jabez said, patting the gun that lay beside him. “Rattlesnake stew, anyone?”

  “I’ve heard that’s pretty tasty,” Noah said.

  “You guys are making me sick,” I said. I wasn’t exactly joking.

  “I know what I saw on our surveillance,” Taylor said. “Tell us exactly what you saw out there.”

  Noah lowered his voice. “Okay, but we should try to keep it quiet. They can’t hear us from the other side of the peaks, but you never know if one of them is scouting.” He recited the cyborg Olympics in detail, instilling the awe and terror he’d wanted them to gain. We all had to take this seriously. “They can jump triple their height and run faster than our buggy,” he explained. Which meant if four of our group abandoned the remaining three, they wouldn’t be able to outrun them.

  “Plus most of them had one red eye,” I added. “They’re equipped with a cyborg camera, so we can assume they have extraordinary seeing abilities.”

  Hannah whimpered, her blue eyes wide with anxiety. Jabez wrapped an arm around her. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Taylor flashed a sharp look of disapproval, catching Hannah’s gaze. She patted Jabez’s leg and shifted over a couple of inches.<
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  “I’m hungry,” Rebecca said, turning to our stockpile. “Cold beans, everyone?”

  My stomach growled and I nodded my head. A year ago, the thought of eating cold beans from a can would’ve been laughable. Now I could hardly wait to dig in.

  Mary helped her hand the cans out, and I passed around the forks. We had one can opener. Jabez cranked the top of his off, and handed the opened can to Hannah first.

  The heater gave off a minimal glow, just enough light that we could see what we were doing. I for one didn’t relish the thought of stabbing myself in the face with a fork.

  There wasn’t much to clean up. The empty cans went into a plastic bin to be rinsed out and dropped off for recycling on the next trip to Tucson. The forks were soaked in water and wiped clean for next time.

  There’d be no trips to the stream. Bathroom runs were taken by twos into the shadows of mountain brush, with each person armed. It didn’t make for the most relaxing or private experience.

  I missed the glow and flicker of a live fire. Even feeding it dried brush and dead cactus was something to do to pass the time.

  We quickly grew restless and irritable.

  “If we had an explosive device,” Jabez mused aloud, “we could sneak up on them, set it off and blow them sky high. Imagine, sixty super-soldiers, poof, in an instant.”

  “Are you advocating mass murder?” Taylor said.

  “Cyborgs aren’t human, so it’s not murder,” Jabez returned.

  “Of course they’re human,” I said. “They have non-organic parts, but the core of them is still organic.”

  He turned to me. “Does consisting of more than fifty percent organic material make one human?”

  “Doesn’t it?” I said.

  “How about just ten percent?” he countered.

  “Being human is more than blood and bones,” Hannah said, surprising us all by her contribution to the discussion. “There’s a matter of heart and soul.”

  Noah nodded. “I agree with Hannah.”

  “Are you trying to say,” Jabez said, “that if a cyborg came snooping around here you’d hesitate before shooting it?”

  Noah shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t hesitate. That’s self-defense. I wouldn’t hesitate if a purely human soldier or civilian threatened this group in any way, either. That doesn’t change my opinion on whether cyborgs are humans or just another kind of machine.”

  “I think they gave up their humanity when they agreed to cyborg implantation,” Mary said. “It’s like the Russians who defected to the US during the cold war. They gave up their rights to anything Russian forever.”

  “But, if you believe that humans are born with a soul,” Noah stated, “that soul remains, no matter to what degree the person mutilates his or her body.”

  It gave me a small amount of pleasure to see Mary and Noah disagreeing on something. “I believe a person is born with a soul, or more like a spirit,” I said. “It’s what gives us our unique personality. I don’t think they go to heaven or hell when they die.”

  Noah stared me down. “So, you think it’s okay to kill them, carte blanche?”

  I shrugged. Truth was, I wasn’t sure what I believed anymore. “Anyway,” I responded, suddenly eager to change the subject, “it’s a moot point. We couldn’t blow them up, even if we had the explosives to do so because we’d give away our cover if we did.”

  A quiet settled in the cave as we each thought about our own perspective. Even though I’d slept at least seven hours during the daylight, I felt fatigued enough to lie down and close my eyes.

  They snapped open moments later. A rattle filled the cave and made my blood ice over.

  “Don’t move,” Noah whispered.

  Chapter 12

  NOAH

  The oxygen in the cave disappeared. Everyone froze in position. The snake’s four-foot long body slithered along the cave wall in our direction, its hiss exploding like fireworks in the confines of the cave. I knew it was after a meal much smaller than any one of us, but, damn, we were in conflict now.

  My gun lay on the mat by my pillow. Never taking my eyes of the snake, I carefully edged my fingers toward it. Once securely in my hand, I aimed the gun at the snake and cocked it. Its rattles went crazy, and one of the girls behind me sniveled.

  I pulled the trigger and the snake dropped to the cave floor like an old rag.

  “Man, I’m glad you’re a good shot,” Jabez said. We all joined him in letting out a long breath.

  “What are we going to do with it now?” Zoe asked. I couldn’t miss the quiver evident in her voice.

  Rebecca scoffed. “Cook it, of course.”

  Zoe waved a hand. “On what fire?”

  Rebecca glanced away sheepishly. “Oh, yeah.”

  I steadied my flashlight on the corpse and then tentatively picked it up under the jaws. It was dry and scaly under my moist skin and heavier than I imagined.

  “Watch it,” Taylor said. “Snake venom is still deadly when the snake is dead.”

  “I’m aware,” I said, dragging it outside.

  “Are we really just going to let it rot out there?” Jabez asked. “Or worse, attract vultures?”

  “I’m open to any ideas,” I said, pausing at the entrance. “I hate to see it go to waste, too. Too bad the heater can’t double as a stove.”

  Taylor shifted. “Maybe it can.” If anyone could makeshift the heater into a stove, Taylor could. He was a freak like that. He disappeared into the tech cave and came out with cords and a couple of gadgets. “This process will suck the energy out of the generator,” he said while fiddling around with the heater, “but I think we agree it’ll be worth it to get real protein.”

  “Are you saying we have to choose food over heat?” Mary asked.

  “Pretty much,” Taylor grunted. “All in favor?”

  My eyes had long adjusted to the dim light given off by the heater. I saw three out of seven hands up, mine included. All guys. Zoe slowly slipped her hand up, too, and I nodded my chin at her, grateful. A guy couldn’t live on one can of beans alone.

  Hannah focused on Jabez’s raised arm and slowly added hers.

  Rebecca sneered. “Sure, Hannah, you have a warm body to snuggle up against.”

  Mary’s eyes darted to mine and then to the floor of the cave. “She’s got a point.”

  Mary was making a point, too. She’d hinted strongly that she’d like to get more physical and more public. I knew it was wrong for me to string her along, but I wasn’t ready to go that far with her yet.

  Taylor smirked. “I’ll snuggle with you, Mary.”

  “Taylor!” Rebecca choked. Her long braid whipped around as she spun to glare at her crush.

  He laughed. “You can snuggle with us, too, Becs if you want.”

  I wanted to smack him for his inappropriate dig. He was just as frustrated with Zoe’s lack of response to him, a situation I was glad of. I knew I couldn’t be with Zoe, but it would kill me to watch her be close to someone else. That was the real reason I held back with Mary. I knew how Zoe felt about me, and it would be unkind to flaunt a romantic relationship in her face.

  Mary folded her arms and threw a fiery glance my way. “Thanks for the offer, Taylor.”

  “We’re going to need water to cook this beast up,” I said, desperate to change the subject. I reached for the bucket. “I’ll go.”

  “It’s pitch black out there,” Zoe said, a look of alarm spreading across her face.

  My body buzzed at her concern for me. “I have a flashlight.”

  “But what if they see you?”

  I patted the gun in my pocket, but it was obvious by the growing frown on her face that the action didn’t comfort her. I shared her worries. I hoped the cyborgs had brought enough water with them, but we couldn’t be sure that they hadn’t identified this water source as well.

  The wind whistled passed the cave entrance and a blast of sand scuttled into the room.

  “A storm?” Zoe sputtered.
/>   “Yeah,” Taylor said. “A storm system was forecast to cross over the south western USA in the early morning.”

  “Great,” Rebecca muttered. “A storm and no heat.”

  “We’ll have hot soup and warm hands,” Jabez said.

  Zoe stood “I’ll go with you.” Her dark locks had grown over the last three months, leaving a sharp line where it met several inches of natural blonde. She tucked it behind her ears, and looked up at me from under long eyelashes, a move that usually got her whatever she wanted from me.

  Not this time. I shook my head sharply. “No.”

  She’d probably take my denial personally, as some kind of sign of devotion to Mary, but the truth was I didn’t want to endanger her again. I shouldn’t have let her come with me to scout the peaks. I’d hate myself forever if something happened to her.

  “Someone should go with you, man,” Jabez said, rising to his feet. “I can do it.”

  “I don’t see how two of us stumbling around in the dark will help.”

  “Okay, dude,” Jabez sat again. “But if you’re not back in ten minutes, I’m coming after you.”

  I conceded. “Make it fifteen.”

  Zoe’s eyes locked with mine. “Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  Storm clouds rolled in, but there was still enough light from the moon reflecting off the earth that I could make my way without turning on my flashlight. The wind whipped up the sand around my legs, and it bit at my bare calves like gnat bites. I picked up my pace.

  The cicadas made enough noise each night to wake the living dead, and even their loud shh was getting drowned out by the wind. I was nervous the cyborg regiment might’ve heard the gun blast when I’d shot the snake, but between the bugs and the wind and their own gun training, I thought we were okay.

  This time.

  I kept close to the mountain edge until I found the rocky path that led to the opening to the underground stream.