“Sure. And I’m doing it the best I can. When I say we’re running low, you send out teams to collect perishable goods. And why? Because it makes a statement to SoCal, not because it’s what we can use to feed people for more than a week.”
Jack sighed and leaned back in his chair. His whole body looked exhausted. “I didn’t want to be here, you know?”
“What?”
“All of this,” he waved his hands around the room. “I didn’t want it. I enjoyed my job. Talking to informants, coordinating medical care, talking about plans with Kai so I could write a report and make myself look good. I wasn’t cut out to lead. This was supposed to be temporary, and now they can’t afford to send someone else. They’re as fucked up as we are.”
“So? It’s time to step up. Work with what you’ve been handed. You can start by coming with me to see what everyone else is putting up with. These people are your responsibility now.”
Jack’s posture changed, and he looked nervous and uncomfortable. “I read your reports.”
“That’s obviously not working.”
He spread his hands on the table, eyeing the upside down plate. “What is it that you want from me?”
“Come to the Chinatown kitchens with me. Today. Now. You’ve seen what we feed our people. Come and see what we feed them.” She stood and waited by the door.
“I have a meeting right away—”
“Fuck the meeting. You’ve been in here so long that everything has been relegated to a report or a column on a spreadsheet. Come with me and really remember why we’re doing this.”
“I know why we’re doing this.”
“Do you?” Pat opened the door. Outside stood one of the guards. Behind him was Jack’s dinner guest.
“That’s her. Arrest her!”
The guard moved forward.
Pat had enough. She ignored Jack and stared into the guard’s eyes. “If you touch me, you’ll wake up in the hospital next week.”
The guard hesitated before moving to reach for her again.
“It’s okay,” Jack stood behind her in the doorway. “Pat and I are . . . are going out. Get a security team ready.”
“Alone,” Pat said.
“I can’t. It’s . . . Look what happened to my predecessors . . .” He stopped, looking at the faces staring back at him from the doorway. Suddenly slouching, he sighed and nodded. “I’m going to the Chinatown street kitchen.”
The guard followed them to the double doors and went back to his position. Pat had already forgotten about the crony as they left the building.
LOS ANGELES LEVEL 3—TUESDAY, JULY 4, 2141 3:43 P.M.
I took the risk of peeking over my shoulder. Behind us, the soldiers had regrouped their lines and were slowly advancing on the people still trapped in front of them. I looked forward in time to see the man in front of me falter and trip. Jumping over him, my foot caught his raised arm. I lost my balance, careening until my legs could catch up with my body. The people behind me drove me forward until the man was out of sight.
SoCal wasn’t stupid. They would know that some people could make it past the soldiers. That left two possible situations. One, they didn’t care. They would catch more the next time they tried. Or two, and more likely, they had soldiers waiting at the bottom of the ramp.
All the ramps had access panels to the inter-level equipment, similar to the one in the parking garage Ian had pulled me into when he had rescued me from Quincy. Ian had a key to open his door. I didn’t have anything.
The group was thinner by the walls, with most of the people who made it through choosing to clump in the middle of the ramp. Typical crowd mentality, and something SoCal would be expecting. I started edging toward the wall, fighting against the steady pressure of bodies trying to merge with the crowd. By the time I’d reached it, the bottom of the ramp was in sight.
Below the point where the wall turned into a barrier, another row of soldiers stood across the entire ramp. Behind them were a collection of panel trucks, the doors open, ready to accept the captives. The sight of them almost made me stop.
The barrier here was fifteen meters above the ground. They started it about five meters below the level of the ceiling—no point in giving anyone easy access to that—but high enough so if I decided to take that route, I’d be badly hurt when I hit the bottom. I didn’t know if they’d come and collect me from the floor, or let me lie there until some locals found me.
The thought of lying under a Level 2 down-ramp, too hurt to move, filled me with as much dread as being caught by SoCal. At least they would want to keep me alive. I couldn’t say the same for the people who lived here. Both my son and I would live if I chose SoCal. There really wasn’t much of a decision to make, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.
I stopped, my back pressed to the wall, and pulled out my comm unit. First things first, I had to make sure my tracker was set to something valid. It wasn’t. I’d programmed the comm unit to change the tracker ID every five minutes, so I couldn’t be traced. That was usually safer than programming to no ID. I changed back to my Kris Merrill ID and quickly switched to sending a text message. I typed in a single word, attached my coordinates, and sent it off to Pat.
Drafted.
Then I dropped the phone and smashed it with the heel of my shoe, scattering the pieces over the road. Standard procedure. Don’t let SoCal know I can change my ID. If they found out, my life expectancy dropped. A lot. The way I saw it, I still had a chance to get away, but it was slim. ACE had drilled into me to always be prepared, and that’s what the text to Pat was all about.
Following protocol, even if it was ACE protocol, helped calm me down. I slowed my breathing and watched the flow of the group ahead of me.
The people had thinned. Some, like me, had stopped on the ramp, watching as the soldiers below corralled anyone who was the right age. Old people and young kids were separated, the kids moved to another group of SoCal soldiers, the old ones let go. From farther up the ramp, I could hear more people approaching.
It was now or never.
I slid along the barrier, my shoulders slumped and my feet dragging in the grit left behind from crumbling walls and passing vehicles. This is where my height helped, and my posture made me seem even smaller and weaker. I could almost see the soldier in front of me relax as I got closer. I didn’t think I’d be mistaken for being too young, but I could be overlooked as too weak.
When I was two feet away from the line, I exploded outwards, kicking forward with the heel of my foot into the soldier’s knee. She fell, collapsing forward onto her hands. She didn’t even have time to scream from the pain. Her knee would never be the same. She’d probably get a desk job. I leaped over her crumpled form.
I was midair when something slammed into my back. Air exploded from my lungs.
I fell on top of the woman, and the world disappeared.
LOS ANGELES LEVEL 2—TUESDAY, JULY 4, 2141 3:27 P.M.
The food lines were still going strong, even this late in the afternoon. Pat and Jack weren’t close yet, and they could already hear the noise from all the people. Hundreds of quiet conversations echoed between the buildings and the ceiling. At every sharp noise, Jack twitched and looked like he wanted to run for cover.
He had been slowing down the closer they had gotten to the food tables, and stopped a few feet away. His head swiveled, and Pat could see his eyes darting from face to face, never quite stopping to focus on the details, but taking it all in. A scowl replaced the look of fear on his face.
“Christ! I’ve read the numbers on how many people we feed, but seeing it is completely different.”
Pat stayed silent.
“With this many people, we need more security details. If a fight broke out, it could turn into a complete riot. We need a team of people to manage and liaison with the workers here. I’ll order—”
/> “No. Stop.” Pat’s voice was sharp. “We don’t need security teams, or people with guns, or managers. Don’t you see that would only raise the level of tension? Bringing in guards or soldiers would guarantee a riot instead of prevent one. Look at these people. For some, this may be their only meal today. The water they take home with them will have to last until they can come back. Do you see any shoving or pushing in line? Do you see any anger at all? Look over there.” Pat pointed about midway down the line on the right. “That man let a family of four get in front of him. This time of day, there’s a really good chance he gave up his meal so those kids could eat. And if that’s the case, there’s an even better chance the mother and father will split their meals with him and their kids.”
“You mean . . . we can’t feed them all?”
“No, we can’t. Even your numbers should have shown you that. Some of the reason we can’t feed them all is because we still get our three meals a day. Half the people in our building don’t even know this exists, but isn’t this what we are supposed to be fighting for?”
Jack nodded.
“This isn’t just happening here. The entire city is like this. Between the fucking drafts and the rationing by SoCal, we are dying. It may not seem like it to us, but why don’t you go and ask them? How many buildings like ours do the insurgents have? How many people are getting all the food and water they need while these people starve?”
“So, what’s your plan?” He kept staring at the family of four as though they had torn out his heart and were holding it on display.
“The first is to cut our rations and bring the surplus here, to the kitchens. That will extend our ability to feed everyone. The second is to get more food. Something less perishable, something that will last if SoCal decides to let us all just fucking die. Don’t you see? We’re replaceable. As far as they’re concerned, we breed like vermin, and in another couple of generations, everyone will forget what SoCal did to us. They’ll find someone else to blame, so if there is another corporate war, if this one doesn’t kill us all, they’ll have more people to recruit or draft.”
“And where do we get more food?”
This was where she could get in trouble. She drew in a deep breath. “I don’t know. You keep me in the kitchens and storage areas, I don’t get access to the information I need to come up with a plan.”
Jack nodded again. “I can’t tell you what will happen at the other insurgent compounds, but we start rationing tomorrow. We’ll keep to three meals a day, but make the portions smaller. It’s the best I can do. I’ll pass the word up the line to see what the other cells are doing. Maybe they can help. I’ll get you access so you can find another source of food.”
Pat grinned, barely able to get the words out. He was giving her more than she’d hoped for. “Thank you.” The comm unit in her pocket vibrated. She pulled it out, expecting to see another message from the head cook. Instead the display showed Kris’s name. Pat opened the message and shuffled back a few steps.
“What’s wrong?”
“Kris has been drafted.” She was getting lightheaded and leaned against Jack’s outstretched arm for support.
“Are you sure? Call her back.”
Pat’s hands went cold and she almost dropped the comm unit. “There’s no point. ACE training says she should reset her tracker ID to its default and destroy the phone in order to limit SoCal’s knowledge on our ability to change the tracker.”
“She didn’t finish training. Maybe she—”
“She finished, out here on the streets. Kris is smart and she knows what would happen if they found out she could change her ID.”
“Do we know where she is?”
Pat reread the message. It contained the coordinates of Kris’s location. “Level 2 down-ramp, north of Chinatown. She’s close!”
Jack grabbed his own comm unit and created a link. Pat heard him order a team out to the site. Her numb brain made the words sound a million kilometers away. She fought the pull of memories, trying to root herself into the present.
“We’re preparing a team. If we can get her out, we will. If we can’t, we’ll do whatever we need to make sure she doesn’t talk.”
Pat nodded and turned away, leaving Jack at the tables. The threat in his words reverberated in her ears. Would he think the same way if he knew Kris was pregnant? She closed her eyes and breathed deep, forcing her brain to function normally, to not be pulled back into the war in her head. Fighting the urge to take out Jack where he stood. When she opened her eyes, he was standing in front of her, concern written all over his face. She didn’t believe it for a second.
“You okay?”
She nodded again, wondering how the bastard could even ask her that question. “Yeah.” Another deep breath. “Yeah. We can’t coordinate the team from here. Come on let’s go.” She’d have to find a way to be in charge of the team to make sure Jack wasn’t able to follow through on his threat.
He started jogging back to the insurgents’ building. Pat grabbed his arm, holding him back.
“You have hundreds of people behind you living in fear. Don’t push them to the edge of panic. They’ve all seen you here. They may not know who you are, but they look at the way you dress, how the people serving the food treat you. If you run, they’ll panic.” Just saying the words helped calm Pat. She wanted to bolt to the insurgents’ building, get in with the crew going out to the coordinates. But she fought against the urge.
Instead she just walked, as if the only person she really cared about wasn’t about to become a foot soldier in a war she despised.
She punched in Kai’s number on her comm unit.
five
SOCAL SAT CITY 2—TUESDAY, JULY 4, 2141 9:05 P.M.
BRYSON SLUMPED BEHIND his vid screen, his head resting in his hands as he rocked back and forth. The other people in the lab had been escorted out hours ago, leaving him alone to figure out where things were going wrong. The quiet seeped into his bones, and he shivered.
The copied memory chip was essentially empty—one of the reasons Ms. Peters and her group couldn’t decrypt the damn thing. There wasn’t anything to decrypt. It was pretty much random gibberish except for the message from ACE, and one other thing. There was a single packet that looked different than the rest, at least to his algorithms. He doubted anyone else would have been able to see the difference. After a few hours of poking around and tearing it apart, the only conclusion he could come to was the packet contained a virus. A mean one that had already been deployed.
His first reaction had been to unplug his computer, but at that point it was probably already too late. The chances the virus had escaped onto the lab network were near enough to one hundred percent that it was guaranteed. The good news was that the chance of it having left the lab was significantly less. The lab’s network was pretty much isolated from the rest of the city. But not completely. He knew his data was backed up every night, and that Ms. Peters could see anything on his computer at any time. That implied some sort of connectivity. He didn’t have access to any of that, and couldn’t trace it.
If the virus was as dangerous as it seemed, it would find those holes.
He’d thought about contacting Ms. Peters again. She obviously hadn’t been watching him in real time when the virus unpacked itself, or she would have been down here long before now. Unless the damn thing had taken care of that as well. Or maybe she had no clue what she was looking at. He didn’t even pick up the comm unit, mostly out of spite. If they thought they could kidnap him and force him to work without any repercussions, who was he to try and stop a virus from infiltrating SoCal’s systems? With the protections they would have in place, it wouldn’t live long anyway. Maybe some of the information it would grab would tell people he was up here. A prisoner. Maybe they would come and get him. It only made sense that they had to be ACE, and ACE had some people who could come and help. Didn’t the
y?
He studied the chip sitting on the stainless steel countertop. It seemed simple enough, an unlabeled blue square that looked almost like the one he had dumped the quantum drive information onto. There wasn’t anything special about it. Strange how something so small might be the only way someone on the outside would know where he was.
He kept staring at the chip. Blue on top of silver. Something in his brain niggled. Blue on top of silver. Color. Frequencies. Quanta. The thought snapped into place and his fingers raced over the keyboard in front of him, the virus forgotten. A detailed three-dimensional image of Meridian’s quantum ship popped up on the screen, and he zoomed in. The outer shell, or shield, of the habitable area contained hundreds of millions of quantum wells and transmitters. The wells converted and stored ultraviolet photons for later use. The frequency of ultraviolet light fell between 130 and 140 nanometers. The problem was, the frequency was wrong. Using the 100–120 spectrum was what they needed. The different range prevented the quantum eddies from penetrating into the living space of the vessel. How the hell had he forgotten that? Coupled with the engine design fix he’d done on Kadokawa, that had solved the protection issue.
He moved the formulas into the proper part of the spectrum and started more tests. It would take some time for the simulation to find the exact frequency, but he expected positive results by the morning.
He stared at the screen, watching the simulation run through its steps, everything else pushed aside in the thrill of discovery.
LOS ANGELES LEVEL 3—TUESDAY, JULY 4, 2141 4:02 P.M.
Two people stood on either side of me, supporting most of my weight as we waited in line among the others captured in the sweep. The one on my left was so tall he had to crouch so he didn’t lift me off the ground. As soon as the line moved, he let me go and I almost dropped. The woman on the right grunted and took most of my weight. I struggled to get my feet under me.
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