Shutdown

by Heather Anastasiu

  Every so often Adrien checked his arm panel and told me to aim left or right, but other than that, we stayed silent. The amount of concentration necessary to keep us in the air and keep my allergens at bay at the same time became quickly tiresome, but I managed to keep us going for several hours before finally dropping us back to the ground.

  “I need a break,” I said to Adrien. I was tired. The passage between trees had been so narrow at times that we were both covered in scrapes and stray brown needles. I’d had my eyes closed to stay better focused on what I felt with my telek, but now that I opened them, I saw it was almost dark. I leaned my back against a tree and stretched my neck.

  The forest at twilight was full of unfamiliar sounds. You’d think being out here all alone in the middle of nowhere, it would be quiet. Instead it was loud, but not like noises I was used to—the groan of steel settling or the steady mechanic whir of machines. No, the noise around us now didn’t seem to come from any one place. Insead it came from everywhere, from the wind in the trees, to the scratch of rustling bushes, to the weird high-pitched clicking noise that had to be some kind of animal or insect.

  Then I frowned. Wait, it was nighttime, that meant …

  “Oh no, we haven’t put on the coolant harnesses.” I looked up as if I could sense the Infrared Satellite Cams overhead. They switched from normal Sat Cams to IR Cams at night.

  Adrien waved a hand dismissively from where he walked nearby, stretching his legs. “We’re safe from IR cameras as long as we’re under the trees. They cover our heat signature. Besides, there are enough things living in this forest that even if they catch a glimpse of us, they’ll just think we’re a deer or a bear or something.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. Then I frowned, “Wait, did you just say there are bears out here?”

  Adrien ignored my question and looked up, even though any vision of the darkening sky was encumbered by the treetops. A breeze blew in that twisted and shook the leaves on all sides. I closed my eyes for a moment, enjoying the cool breeze. I’d felt hot and sticky all day, but now that the sun was going down, it was cooling off rapidly.

  I touched my forearm panel for light and watched Adrien gazing up at the sky. He was so tall and skinny, you’d almost mistake his shadow for just another trunk.

  The trees were taller here than they’d been when we left the mountain tunnel. I’d followed the direction Adrien had pointed out as closely as I could, but I’d had to divert my path so often to avoid low-lying branches, I couldn’t be sure if we’d continued going north like we were supposed to.

  Adrien took a few steps forward and broke off a bit of bark. “Coniferous.” He sniffed it. “Pine trees. When I was a kid, Sophia and I used to move through the forests around here if a situation got too hot in Sector Six.” He dropped down and rubbed a small shrub plant between his fingers. “She always knew which foods were good to eat and which weren’t.”

  I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like his voice got quieter when he mentioned his mother. The scene I’d been trying to keep at bay suddenly resurfaced—her shoving Adrien through the door. She’d had no thought for herself. When I’d first met her, I couldn’t understand her animosity toward me. She had visions like Adrien used to, but, unlike his, hers only happened every few years and were vague and sometimes unintelligible. But she’d known I was trouble the first moment she met me. She told me she’d foreseen that I would do harm to her son. Why hadn’t I listened?

  I went over and put a hand on Adrien’s shoulder, guilt weighing heavily. “I’m so sorry about what happened to her.”

  He didn’t respond, just stared blankly ahead like he couldn’t hear me. Or was pretending he couldn’t. I could never tell what was going on in his head anymore. I used to be able to read him so easily before he was taken by the Chancellor.

  I shook my head and sat down. Several of the needle-leaves poked me, but with a few readjustments, I could sit comfortably. I would get Adrien to safety, that was all that mattered now.

  “Let’s check the map,” I said.

  He nodded and touched his arm panel, pulling up the section of map that showed both southern Sector Six and northern Sector Five. He settled himself beside me, his forearm glowing in the dim evening light.

  “So are we somewhere around here?” I pointed at the bottom of the small screen embedded in his arm.

  He leaned his head closer and nodded. Even though we’d been close all day, him holding on to me as we flew, I hadn’t allowed myself to focus on it. But now with him crouched beside me, his face only a half foot from mine as he leaned in to see the map, my heartbeat started to quicken.

  I couldn’t stop staring at him as his eyes searched the map. His eyes had changed colors while he’d been captured. The bright blue-green had become a translucent gray. Now they were strange, even eerie to look at, but still beautiful in their own way.

  “You should get the blanket out of your pack too, and have something to eat,” I said, a lump forming in my throat. How could a person be so close, and yet so far away?

  He nodded and opened his pack. First he pulled out a small lamp and set it up between us. I blinked at the brightness of the lamp after getting so used to the darkness. It created a small penumbra of light in the circle between several tall trees where we’d settled.

  “How much farther till we hit the border fence?”

  “Half a day, maybe more.”

  I dragged the blanket out of my own pack and wrapped it closer around myself, wishing I was comforted. My teeth chattered.

  Adrien frowned, looking down at his pack. “Aren’t there supposed to be twenty protein bars per pack?”

  I nodded. He laid the bars in an orderly line, then looked back up at me. “I only count nine.”

  “That can’t be right.” I emptied my own pack on the ground, sorting through the contents. I only counted seven bars.

  “Shunt,” I swore loudly. “It must have been the refugees. We caught them breaking into the pantry last week. They must have realized the escape pods would have rations too. Idiots!” I kicked at the empty pack. “Didn’t they realize they might have to survive on these packs one day?”

  “When you’re living life on the run, you tend to just worry about today, not tomorrow. Besides,” Adrien said, his voice calm and reasonable, “if we ration ourselves, we should be able to survive on two bars a day. Even if it takes us three days to get to the Rendezvous site, we’ll be fine.”

  I tried to let go of my frustration as I looked through the rest of the contents to see if they’d stolen anything else. The heat lamp, blankets, extra change of clothes, and the coolant harnesses were still there, at least. I turned on the small lamp so I could see better in the darkness.

  “They took the external tablet and the small laser weapon too.” I tossed over the rest of the objects. “Even the water bottles!” I sat back, suddenly feeling inordinately thirsty now that I knew there was no water.

  “My pack’s got one bottle, at least,” he said. “We can share it till we find some more fresh water. There are streams all over these mountains.” He took a quick drink and then handed the bottle to me. I tried not to sip too much, but ended up taking out a quarter of the bottle anyway. I replaced the cap and handed it back to him.

  “At least the info chips were stored in a side pocket,” he said. “They must not have seen them. And we’ve got the arm panels, so we don’t need the external tablet to use them.”

  His confidence and calm about everything did make me feel better. He’d done this kind of thing all his life. We’d made it out of the mountain and gotten far enough away that we were safe. The rest of the pods were probably already at the rendezvous site by now.

  But then I thought about all those who hadn’t been able to make it out of the Foundation. I remembered the screams as the lights flickered. What had happened once the Regulators had reached the main level? Did they take everyone prisoner, or had they just opened fire on the crowd? And then there was my brother. What
was the Chancellor doing to him? Did she have him under her compulsion, or something worse? I rubbed my temple as if I could erase the images that had suddenly popped up in my head. There was nothing I could do about it right now. Not till we met up with the others.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” I finally said. “A few hours would do us both good.”

  But then I looked back at the contents of the pack and my heart sank. No, surely they wouldn’t have …

  My hands became more frantic as I lifted every object and tossed it aside.

  No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening.

  It wasn’t there. Every pack was supposed to include a biosuit for me and two oxygen reserves. But they were gone.

  “Is there a biosuit in your pack?” I asked, standing up and running over to Adrien’s pack. I unceremoniously dumped it all out and began sorting through items, but his was the same. No suit.

  “Why the hell would they take my biosuits?” I shouted, throwing the empty pack to the ground as hard as I could.

  Adrien looked down at the strewn contents in dismay. “Reg armadas use chemical weapons sometimes. Suits like that are valuable, either to use themselves or to sell on the black market.” He flipped over a few more objects from his pack. “Whoever took it probably didn’t think it’d do any harm because there were suits in every other pack. So if they took a few things here and there, maybe they thought it wouldn’t be missed.”

  I had another thought. “At least we still have the epi infusers,” I said, trying to reassure myself. Then at least I could revive myself if I started having an allergy attack, and it would afford me twelve hours of safe breathing time. “Each pod should have two of them in the med kit.” I searched through the supplies. “Where is the med kit?”

  “Here,” Adrien pulled out the small metal box from where he’d stowed it in a side pocket of his pack. He clicked it open and then his eyes widened. He turned the box toward me. The two epi injections that should have been stowed in little latches on the lid were gone.

  “Medicines are also big sellers on the black market,” he said quietly.

  All of a sudden, I felt like laughing hysterically. Of course they were.

  I sat back on my heels and rubbed my eyes, conscious of how tired I already was. I’d barely slept at all last night. We had prepped three redundancies with every pod in consideration of my condition—one collapsible med container, a biosuit in every pack, and epi infusions in the med kit. And yet here I was, without any of them. Everything had been so hectic in the tunnel, I hadn’t even bothered with the med container since I’d been confident that there would be a suit in my pack. Stupid. I should have known something was wrong when I first saw that the packs were unsecured.

  “Look, we’ll get to the safe house in a few more days,” he said. “They’ll have all the medicines we need…” Then his eyes narrowed. “Oh,” he finally said, my predicament apparently sinking in.

  “Yeah. Oh. The second I fall asleep and stop controlling my allergies, I’ll go into anaphylactic shock.” I looked up at him. “I’ll die within minutes.”

  Chapter 11

  I SWALLOWED HARD AT THE thought, trying not to wallow in the memories of how it felt for my throat to close up and to gasp for breaths that wouldn’t come. Even though we’d stopped in an area where the needle-carpeted ground was clear, the thick tree trunks surrounding us seemed to suddenly close in. I doubled my grip on my mast cells and took several long, deep breaths to calm myself down. It helped, sort of.

  Adrien frowned, still crouched by his pack. “Your allergens do make you a liability.”

  “A liability…” I repeated slowly, feeling punched in the gut. I looked to see if he was joking, but no, his face was intent and serious.

  “Why are you even bothering to stay with me if you feel that way?”

  He stared at me a moment, as if genuinely considering the question. “Instinct, I guess,” he finally said, sitting down by the mess I’d made. He sifted through the objects I’d tossed and began to align them in orderly rows. “I care about your survival.”

  “You do?” I asked hesitantly. Was this a sign that Adrien was finally starting to be himself again? Now that I thought about it, he’d been far more communicative ever since we’d left the Foundation. Maybe this last regrowth session had finally done it.

  “Your assets make you valuable in spite of your liabilities. I have a far better chance of surviving if you do.” He nodded to himself, as if pleased with his reasoning.

  I stood up, suddenly furious. “You say that like I’m just … a thing or a tool or something. Like when I start to become more of a liability than an asset you’ll leave me behind.”

  “I’m only being logical.” He examined the food bars from the overturned pack, picking up each one and examining the label. “Survival instincts,” he said, like he was the Professor leading a lesson. “We all have assets and liabilities—it’s why people have been working together in tribes and communities since the beginning of history. One person with a particular strength can make up for another who’s weak in that area and vice versa.”

  He finally found the protein bar he wanted and unwrapped it, taking a big bite and staring thoughtfully into the distance before continuing. “Your assets in this particular situation, for instance, are that you can fly and protect us from anything that attacks. Your liabilities are that you are physically weak and now might die because of your allergies.”

  “Thanks, I wasn’t aware enough of my deficiencies.” I tried not to show him how much his words hurt, but my sarcasm was lost on him.

  “I’m happy to help,” he said.

  “So what are your liabilities and assets then?” I shot back.

  He chewed on his protein bar. “That’s fair to ask. Well,” he leaned back against a tree trunk, “I’m very smart. I’ve survived in woods like these before, and if we run out of rations, I’ll be able to provide food for myself.”

  “Just yourself?” I asked.

  “And those in my group or tribe.” He inclined his head toward me. “As long as they have assets to trade.”

  I rolled my eyes, trying to ignore how much it stung to hear him say these things. “Of course, only then. What else do you have to offer?”

  “I’m good in a fight. There’s a firearm tucked away in my rations pack. I’m a better shot than you. And I’m a good techer.” His face darkened for a moment. “Or at least I will be again, once the doctor’s poisons get out of my system. Besides, in the wilderness, two are always better than one.”

  “So what if my allergies become too much of a liability? Then you’d just pack up your things, and, well…” I paused as I tried to wrap my head around his way of thinking, “I guess you’d take my things too at that point and leave me to die?”

  He blinked a few times, a slight frown on his face. “I guess there wouldn’t be any logical reason for me to stay…” He looked conflicted, and for a moment I hoped he’d realized the absurdity of what he was saying. But then he continued, “I guess … hypothetically, yes.”

  “Oh, really?” I scoffed. “Gonna dump me off the first cliffside you see, then?”

  He shook his head. “Of course not. Haven’t you been listening? Your assets are valuable to me. As long as there continues to be an even exchange, we should both be able to make it to the rendezvous site just fine.”

  I’d been trying to harden myself against his demeanor, to pretend the things he was saying didn’t hurt. But suddenly I tired of the effort. I rubbed my eyes, then looked up at the tree branches that made a dense ceiling overhead.

  “You called it poison. Is that what you really think of Jilia’s treatments?”

  He nodded. “They made me sick, and I could never do any intricate coding work afterwards.” I remembered he spent a lot of time in the Security Hub where he liked to work on multiple consoles. At least he had before Jilia had upped his meds so he was getting injections every day.

  “We were only trying to help you. Your
mother and I—” I stopped again at the mention of his mom. The image of the closing blast door flashed in my mind. “I’m sorry. You know, she might have found another way out. Or they could be holding her for questioning. That’s probably what they are doing—”

  Something sparked in his eyes, but it wasn’t sorrow or grief. He jumped to his feet. “That is exactly why I don’t want any more of the poisons. You say you were trying to heal me but all you wanted was to make me weak.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “You all delude yourselves constantly, but I’m the one who’s broken and sick? You can’t even tell the truth when it’s obvious to both of us. Sophia is dead. You know it and I know it. I don’t have to hide behind pretty delusions. It’s all lies, all of you trying to shape the world the way you want it to be, instead of seeing it like it really is. And you treat me the same way.”

  “What do you mean? We all just want you to get better—”

  “No.” He held up a finger sharply, advancing toward me. “That’s another lie. You want me to be him.”

  “What?” I put my hands on my waist. “We want you to be you.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “You want me to be him. Sophia wanted me to be him too,” he said, seeming agitated. He spun and walked away from me. He cast a long dark shadow as he passed in front of the lamp. “She barely knew me. It was him she wanted. All of you are the same, trying to pressure me into pretending to be someone I’m not.”

  He turned again to look at me. “I may have his face, but I’m not him. None of you are willing to see it. Not you, not the doctor, and most of all, not the woman who called herself my mother. You kept dunking me in that shunting chamber for weeks at a time, hoping I’d turn back into him, when I’m perfectly healthy as I am.”

  “How can you say that?” Angry heat rose in my cheeks. “Your mother sacrificed herself for you because she loved you. If you can’t see that, then you obviously are still broken. You’re cold and emotionless. You’re not a whole human being.”