The Rebel

by Gerald Brandt

  “I . . . I guess. I don’t . . . I trusted him when I was hurt. He asked me to get his son when Kadokawa was looking for him.”

  “So he put your life in danger?”

  “Not on purpose,” I was getting defensive, like this was an inquisition. “He couldn’t have known they would be there.”

  “And where is his son now?”

  I stole a glance at Kai. Had he told the insurgents we were searching for him? Somehow I didn’t think so. “I haven’t seen him since he left Kai’s restaurant.”

  “Just before the building was breached?”

  What the fuck was going on? “I guess.”

  “So you think Doctor Searls and his son had something to do with that?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Hell, I hadn’t even thought it. What was the point of even talking to this jackass? My face flushed warmer. “What the fuck is this?” Jack leaned back in his chair and smiled as Kai reached out and put his hand over mine. I jerked it away.

  “We’re trying to figure out if Doctor Searls can be trusted,” said Jack. “That’s all.”

  “By putting words in my mouth?” I stood up, filled with an anger I didn’t understand. “Fuck you. If you want my opinion, you can just come out and ask for it. If you want to twist what I say to fit your own ideas, you can piss off.” I knew I was overreacting, but now that I was talking, I couldn’t stop myself. Doc Searls had done more for me than most people, and I owed him for that.

  I opened the door, taking one last look around the office. “Pretty fucking corporate of you.” I didn’t look at Pat or Kai, not trusting what my reaction would be. They followed me out.

  “We didn’t think . . .” Pat said.

  I kept walking.

  “We both said Doc Searls should be trusted. I thought you were being brought in to verify.”

  I stopped before reaching the double doors. “I don’t care who that guy is,” I said, jabbing my thumb over my shoulder. “I’ve seen his kind before, and so have both of you. He’s corporate. It’s written all over him. If he’s in charge, if this is what these people are becoming, I’m not sure this is where I belong.”

  “He is not like that,” Kai said. “When you are responsible for a lot of people, you need some structure. Maybe that is why—”

  I turned on him. “Why he’s an ass? Why this part of the building reeks of corporate greed, while the rest of it barely has room for the people living here? I’ve seen him at dinner, sitting at a table at the front, his cronies around him. Can’t you see he’s becoming what we’re all fighting against?”

  “Kris—”

  “No. Something’s not right.” I walked out past the guards. Who needed guards inside the building when we were all supposed to be on the same side? Put them outside, watching over all of us. Kai hustled after me. Why couldn’t he just leave me alone?

  “The thing is, Pat and I are thinking it as well. We do not know what to do about it.” He paused, glancing at the guards across the foyer. “There is something else though.”

  Pat joined us by the door to the parking garage.

  “I managed to decrypt the chip I took from Bryson,” Kai said in a soft voice. “I think we have a bigger issue than just finding him on our hands.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Pat.

  “I know why SoCal wants him so bad. He has designed a ship that can be almost anywhere instantly. The data on the chip called it a quantum jump drive. Meridian, under Jeremy, started building it. Things went wrong and the pilots died on its maiden voyage. When Kadokawa took over Meridian, they continued the work. It looks like Bryson fixed it. Whoever has him now has a weapon more powerful than anything we have seen before. They can destroy whatever corporation they want, take whatever they want.”

  “You mean they can leave San Angeles and be anywhere in the world with no travel time?” I asked.

  “That is the way I understand it.”

  “It would end the war.”

  “It would also create an impossible-to-beat corporation,” Pat said. “One that could do anything. There would be no one to fight them. No one that could.”

  Kai nodded. “Could you imagine what SoCal or IBC would do with it?”

  I already knew what they were doing, and it would only get worse.

  “Have you told Jack or anyone else?” I asked.

  “No. I was not sure who to trust with this, besides you two.”

  “And you think whoever took Bryson is getting him to build one of these things?”

  “I do. We need to find out who it is.”

  I agreed. “Do you have any leads on him?”

  “Not yet. I spoke with Doc Searls. He hasn’t heard back from his sources either. He did say he wanted to see you.”

  My face went cold.

  “He seemed a bit concerned,” Kai said.

  “Did he mention why?”

  “No. He probably wants to follow up on the rib you broke a couple of weeks ago.”

  Relief flooded through me, and I hoped it didn’t show. What was so hard about telling them the truth? I was carrying Ian’s son. I opened my mouth to say the words, and closed it again. You weren’t supposed to tell anyone until three months anyway. Right?

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “He spends most of his time in his offices on Level 5.”

  That sounded like Doc Searls. “I’ll go see him later today,” I said. Which was as good enough a reason to leave here as I had. I didn’t want to stick around all day.

  “You haven’t heard? SoCal is starting to block access to Level 5. They are cutting us off more every day.”

  Shit. Now what was I supposed to do? I turned to leave, already lost in the logistics of getting up there.

  Kai touched my cheek, holding his hand there. I leaned into it.

  “I missed you,” he said.

  I forgot all about Level 5, and the familiar anger returned to burn through me. “Why did you leave? Why not at least tell me where you were going?”

  “I tried. I truly did, but you locked yourself in your shell so tight, I . . . I could not get through.” Tears formed in his eyes and one left a wet track down his wrinkled face.

  “You could have tried harder.” I wanted to say he should have tried harder.

  “I know. I did not know how to deal with your pain.”

  I cupped his hand against my cheek without thinking. The last two weeks had been hard on him. I could see it in his face and the way he moved. Suddenly it was all too much and I let go, pulling away.

  “I . . . I need to go. Will you be here when I get back?”

  Kai dropped his hand and nodded.

  The parking garage door opened easily, and I pushed my way through. I didn’t turn around.

  three

  LOS ANGELES LEVEL 2—TUESDAY, JULY 4, 2141 12:01 P.M.

  JANICE BLINKED in the onslaught of light when she opened her eyes. Her mind wandered, images of Level 2 Chinatown and a tiny girl riding a big motorcycle flitting in her consciousness. It took a few more minutes for her to remember what had happened. Beside her, the incessant beeping of a machine pushed the last remnants of grogginess away. She rolled her head on the pillow, her hand reaching to rub at her eyes. Something tugged, resisting the movement. A tube was stuck in her arm. Suddenly paying more attention, she examined the room. Besides the medical equipment, it was empty except for a single hard-backed chair by the closed door. There were no windows, no other way out.

  She pushed herself upright, the machine beside her picking up its pace. The side of her face was numb, and her left leg ached above the knee. She reached under the covers to feel it, touching bare skin. Her probing fingers barely registered anything but a bit of pressure. Flicking the covers aside revealed a hospital gown in place of her street clothes. She scanned the room again. They were nowhere in sight.
The place smelled and looked like a hospital, but something was off, and she couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

  As the machine settled back down to a steady beat, someone knocked quietly on the door and opened it. Whoever it was didn’t wait for permission to enter. By the clothes the woman was wearing, she was some sort of doctor or nurse. She smiled at Janice, tucking the blankets back into place, and moved to check the bag that fed into her arm.

  “Where am I?” Janice asked.

  The woman didn’t answer.

  “What is this place?”

  This time, she turned and smiled again. “You’ve been in an accident. Someone will be here shortly to answer your questions.” She left, closing the door firmly behind her. Janice didn’t hear a lock click shut.

  She got out of bed, placing her bare feet on the cold tiled floor. A shiver ran up her legs. The tube in her arm tugged as she stood, and she yanked it out, pressing her robe over the hole to help stop the blood flow. Her leg felt strange when she put some weight on it. Though there wasn’t really any pain, there wasn’t too much of anything else either. There was pressure in her calf and hip, but nothing between the two. She limped to the door and tried the handle. It moved.

  Bracing herself against the chair, she pulled it open slowly. Janice peeked through the small crack. A face stared back at her only a few centimeters away. She yelped and let go of the knob. The door clicked shut and she scurried into bed, her gown flapping open behind her. She had barely jerked the covers over her again when the door opened and the face became a man of average height.

  “Sorry for scaring you like that. Bad timing, I’m afraid. I was coming in to introduce myself. My name is John, John Smith.” He grinned as if he saw a look of disbelief cross her face. “Most people don’t believe me when I tell them that. It’s been happening to me my whole life.” He grabbed the chair and dragged it to the bed, spinning it around so the back faced her before sitting down, his arms resting on the back. “You’re probably wondering where you are.” He contemplated the room as if seeing it for the first time. “Most do when they end up here. You got quite lucky. There was damage to your left cheekbone, and you lost a fair amount of skin on your thigh and hip.”

  Janice lifted her hand to her cheek. The skin was smooth, though still a little numb. “So, where am I?”

  “Right!” His face brightened. “You’re in the security wing of Malala Yousafzai Hospital. You were brought here after your high-speed chase through Pasadena. Normally not something that would put you here, but once we found the gun . . .”

  Shit. This was not good. “So you’re a cop?” Her voice sounded hopeful.

  “Oh heavens, no! We wouldn’t relegate a weapons possession incident to the police, especially in these times. No, dear girl, you are in far more trouble than that.”

  “SoCal?” Her whole body went as numb as her cheek.

  “Bingo!” The smile disappeared. “It’s against the law to have a gun in San Angeles. And for the record, no one knows you’re here.”

  Janice shifted on the bed, unconsciously tugging the sheets higher around her neck. This was definitely not a good place to be. The way she figured it, she was either going to walk out of here SoCal property, or she wasn’t going to walk out of here at all. She had no reservations about working for a corporation, and SoCal was the biggest of them. It was what had kept her going for this long.

  “Why don’t you tell me about yourself? You can start with your name.”

  She’d already made her decision. There was only one way she’d get out of this place alive, and that was by answering every question they had. “I’m Janice Robertson. I used to work for Meridian, under Jeremy Adams. When Jeremy left Meridian, before the Kadokawa takeover—”

  “Jeremy Adams was with Meridian before the takeover? Our sources said he was killed in an attack on Level 5.”

  “I don’t know about that. All I know is he was in San Angeles when Kadokawa took over. He wasn’t with Meridian anymore. I followed him when he left. He assigned me to work undercover as an ACE trainee, to keep an eye on someone named Kris Merrill.” She couldn’t keep the venom out of her voice. “Jeremy contacted me a few weeks ago, telling me to coordinate an extraction on the ACE training facility. That wasn’t part of the original plan, I was supposed to be his eyes on the ground. His goal was to capture Kris.”

  John shook his head and asked her to continue.

  “Jeremy wanted Kris bad. I wasn’t told what his beef was, and I didn’t care. It wasn’t my job. I did as he asked and called in the team. The extraction failed, and ACE sent in a transport of their own. Everyone alive was evacuated. My guess is Jeremy had the shuttle taken out. I survived the crash. The only contact I had was ACE. I guess they still thought I was one of their own. They gave me a mission to kill Kris and the cook—”

  “The cook?”

  “As far as I know, we were the only three to survive the crash. The cook, Pat, used to be ACE black ops, but she had mental issues so they made her a cook at the training compound instead. I figured I’d kill Pat and capture Kris for Jeremy. When I did my regular check-in with him, I’d hand her over. It didn’t work out that way.”

  “When was this?”

  “A couple of weeks ago.”

  John’s face lit up as his thoughts lined up and fell into place. “Ah! At the greenhouses in Pasadena? That’s who you were chasing this morning?”

  “Yeah. So now you know all about me. What are you going to do?” She hated herself for the way her voice wavered.

  “What do you think we should do?”

  Now was the time. “I’m a free agent. Jeremy missed his last two check-ins. ACE is gone, not that I would have worked for those losers. I’m good at what I do, and I’m looking for work.”

  “We’ll consider it. Why did Meridian want this Kris Merrill?”

  “I don’t think Meridian did. I think it was all Jeremy.”

  “The question remains the same. Why?”

  “He never said.”

  John switched tracks. “Do you know where Kris is now?”

  “Yeah.”

  He grilled her for another half hour, bouncing the questions between her time at the training camp, her various jobs with Jeremy, and what she had done since the fall of ACE. She answered every question he asked, told him about every mission she did, twenty-one in five years. All of them but the last requiring undercover work. All but the last successful.

  As the door closed behind him, she hoped she’d been able to sell her skills.

  LOS ANGELES LEVEL 2—TUESDAY, JULY 4, 2141 12:29 P.M.

  The bike was almost fully charged. Checking it was a habit I had gotten into when I was still a courier, and a year in the mountains hadn’t changed that. I powered up the ramp out of the inter-level parking. Before I came out of the shadows created by the Level 2 Ambients, I stopped and examined the area. There was no way Janice, or anyone else, would get me by surprise. Not again.

  The plan was to grab a quick bite at the food lines in Chinatown, if there was anything left. I was comfortable there, more than I was with the insurgents. I got the feeling that Jack and his cronies thought they were better than the people they were trying to help. It wasn’t right. If the people were eating three-day-old leftovers and cheap tofu, then so was I. The insurgents had pasta last week. Pasta! Where the hell did they get all the water to cook it, and what did they do with it afterward?

  The tables weren’t balanced, and that wasn’t the right way to start a revolution. Were all the insurgent cells as inept as this one?

  I pulled the bike onto the sidewalk outside of Lee’s Fish Market and thumbed the lock, briefly considering checking to see if the old outlet I used to charge the bike at night was still active. I didn’t. I’d steal power from the corporations when I could, but not from someone that worked for a living.

  The lineups for
food were just beginning to build. Workers were manning more than one station, jumping between them for every person that came up. At that rate, they’d be serving when the Ambients dimmed for the night. Instead of waiting in line, I joined the group handing out the seared tofu. The woman gave me a brief smile and ladled vegetables into a bowl. I added a slab of tofu. The sight of it made my stomach do a flop, but I swallowed and kept things under control. I was used to it by now.

  A family walked to the tables and my partner slammed a heaping spoonful of overcooked celery and carrots onto their plates. The mother winced when her young daughter let a carrot drop to the road. She bent down and picked it up, placing it on her plate and giving her daughter a clean one. When she caught me watching, I could see the embarrassment flicker across her face before it was replaced with steely resolve. The daughter held her plate out to me. A pool of grungy liquid seeped out from under the vegetables and sloshed around the bottom. I gave each of them a slice of tofu, hunting for the biggest piece I could find for their son—he looked almost my age—and the father took an extra second to make eye contact and say thank you as the rest of the family got rice before trundling off to look for a place to sit.

  After a half hour, the faces blurred into a smear of dirt and tears, hope and despair. Some of the hands holding the plates trembled. They probably hadn’t eaten in days. For a while, I told them to eat slow, let their systems get used to food again. I don’t know how many listened. As more people filed past, my moves became increasingly mechanical: wait for a plate, pick up the now-cold tofu, drop it on the plate. I barely noticed the difference between the adults and the kids anymore.

  Someone called my name, the voice sounding like it came from the depths of an elevator shaft echoing through my head more than once before I realized what was happening.

  “K . . . Kris? Kris Ballard?” The voice was quiet, hesitant at first, barely registering through the fog I had settled into and the sound of people milling through the street and sitting at the makeshift tables.

  “Kris?”