Even if they could get access, unless they could get Kris outside the base, they didn’t have a hope.
“We have lost her,” Kai said. “We both know the base is only a temporary stop. They will fly her out to the SoCal training camps and brainwash her into being whatever they want.”
“She’s smarter than that. She won’t fall for it.”
“She did at the compound.”
Pat stayed quiet. She had believed in ACE for so long that she was still uncomfortable when someone said negative things about it. She’d been brainwashed along with the rest of them during basic training, and her years of work had added to the loyalty. That was why she still wanted to defend them, even after she knew what they had become. Was it bad that all she really wanted right now was to go back to being a camp cook?
She nodded in response to Kai’s statement.
“The insurgents have people in SoCal. No one in the military, but once she comes out of training, we should be able to find her,” he said.
“And what will we be able to do then? What if they send her to Mars, or up to one of the Sat Cities? How do we get her back? Will she want to come back? What about Jack? He doesn’t trust her now. It’ll be worse if we can get her.”
Kai shrugged.
The man sometimes infuriated her. He was sitting here as calm as could be while all she could feel were her insides being torn to shreds. The sense of helplessness reminded her too much of her time in France when she had been a prisoner. She jumped to her feet, pushing the plastic chair away from the table. Her body couldn’t take being stationary anymore, she had to move, had to do something.
Kai reached a hand up and placed it on her arm. “We have no choice but to wait.”
“I can’t wait. It’s not how I was designed. We have to get up to Level 7 tonight and find a way to get her out of there.”
“You want to sneak into Level 7, break into a military base of one of the largest corporations in the world while they are on war standing, scour the place until you find where they are keeping Kris, and get back out again? Do you know how impossible that is?”
Kai’s words were a knife in her heart. Of course she knew it was impossible. She collapsed back in her chair and placed her head in her hands. For the first time in years, the tears that flowed down her face weren’t from reliving memories of the past, but from what was happening in the present.
“Come. We are both exhausted. Tomorrow, our minds will be fresh and perhaps we will figure something out. We will talk with Doc Searls, and have more ideas to work with.” He stood and waited.
She knew he was right. There was nothing they could do. Even if they slept for weeks, nothing could be done until she came out of basic training. Then, if they got her, they could begin the process of bringing back the real Kris. The one who had been there before SoCal changed her. They would change her. No one was strong enough to resist what they could do. ACE had managed to bring Pat back from the edge of insanity. If they could fix her, there would be a way to fix what was left of Kris. There had to be.
She rose from her chair, bracing her hand on the back to help lift her, and dragged herself to the door. Kai put his arm around her, preparing for the slow climb up to her room.
LOS ANGELES LEVEL 7—WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 2141 3:28 A.M.
The door to the room opened and light flooded the center aisle between the beds. I had only been half-asleep, and the noise of the lock opening pulled me wide awake. I lay as still as I could.
Two soldiers entered the room and I saw the shadow of a third still in the hall. Through my eyelashes, I watched as the soldiers pulled shock sticks from their belts. When they started yelling and banging on the sides of the bed frames, I almost jumped. Forcing myself to stay still, I watched as they repeated the procedure down the entire room. No one moved. No one woke up.
When they reached the end, the tips of their shock sticks came to life, glowing in the dim light. As they walked back, they pressed the sticks into the mattresses of every sleeping person.
“Looks like they’re out.”
“We’re not done yet.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve done this with every batch. You want to know how many I’ve found? None. I think the whole spy thing is a load of crap. They just don’t want us to sleep on our shift. This is your first night, you’ll figure it out.”
“Shut up and keep going.”
Two beds away from me, someone made a sound when they touched the mattress.
“Well, what do we have here? Someone that isn’t asleep when he’s supposed to be.”
The soldier pulled a man from the lower bunk. It was one of the guys that had stayed up talking when the lights were turned out.
“Spy crap, eh? You think this guy didn’t drink the water because he wasn’t thirsty?”
The man swung, connecting with the soldier’s jaw and dropping him on the spot. The second soldier didn’t hesitate, clubbing the man with the shock stick. The third soldier stayed at the doorway. By the time the man was down, the first soldier was back on his feet. He hoofed the man in the chest, pulling his foot back for another kick.
“Stop.” The voice from the door was calm. The soldier stopped. “Check the other beds and let’s get him out of here.”
The soldiers continued their search. My bed was next. I tensed, exhaling all the air in my lungs and waited. The shock stick touched my mattress.
All I felt was a slight tingle.
The soldiers grabbed the man on the floor and dragged him out, leaving the door unlocked behind them. I guess there was no need when everyone was drugged.
I sucked in a long slow breath. What had just happened? I waited, listening to the sounds of sleeping people. When I was sure no one else was faking it, I hung my feet over the edge and dropped to the floor.
The first thing I did was check the man’s bed. He hadn’t placed one of the blankets under him, choosing to stay warm and to sleep directly on the mattress. I ran my hand over top, feeling a metal lining under the thin material. It wasn’t much, but it would pass the shock from the stick to whomever was lying on it.
I crept to the door. I couldn’t hear a thing. We were the last room in the hallway, so it stood to reason that we would be the last room searched. I pulled open the door and waited.
Nothing happened.
That huge door they brought us in through couldn’t be the only way in or out of this place. My guess was they used it as a psychological tool to keep us in line. There had to be another way. I walked down the hallway in my bare feet, hugging the wall. Each door’s keypad was green. Unlocked. Did that mean they’d be coming back?
I went down the first hallway I found that I didn’t recognize. It ended in a single door. Another electronic lock glowed red. Through the small window, I watched as soldiers threw a man into a room. They came back my way.
The sound of my feet slapping the floor bounced down the hallway as I tried to find a place to hide. I rounded the corner barely ahead of the door opening.
“Okay. Let’s collect the doc and get these guys ready for tomorrow.”
I ran back to the room on tiptoe, closing the door behind me and climbing back into bed.
It took them another half hour to get back to my room. The soldiers were more relaxed, standing by the door as the doctor went to the first bed across from me and injected something into the man sleeping there. He moved to the next bunk.
“How long you been working here?” a soldier asked.
“Four weeks. I’ve got two more before my next rotation. Where were you before you came here?”
“Protection detail on Level 1. We watched over the food trucks being loaded at the ports and covered them on the way up here.”
“Level 1? Must have been a crap job.”
“Nah, it wasn’t bad. You’re not on Level 1 for too long. The ports are way better than
anything else down there, just like a base up here really. On the way back, you’re riding in the trucks. Used to be better though. There would be three of us in a truck. Now with everyone going off to fight, we don’t have the manpower anymore. Now it’s the driver and a couple of mannequins to make it look like we have a full complement. Makes the trip pretty boring.”
“Sounds like a stupid idea to me.”
“Nah. They’re not that smart on the lower levels. Besides, we were augmented with extra drones. They flew above the Ambients where no one could see them.”
“I thought that was impossible.”
“Just shows what you know. Won’t last long anyhow, they’re moving to transports to fly everything up. Less risky.”
I tuned them out when the doctor reached me. I didn’t want anything to do with his injection, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it, unless I was willing to get beaten up and thrown in a cell like the guy. I didn’t flinch when the needle went in.
This time when the soldiers left, they locked the door.
LOS ANGELES LEVEL 7—WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 2141 6:00 A.M.
I spent the rest of the night tossing and turning in the narrow bed, fading between sleep and a half-awake state where my brain churned at light speed, fed by my subconscious to create vivid dreams of blood and dead soldiers. Whatever I’d been injected with was making me go into overdrive. My best guess was it was an antidote to whatever they tried to make us drink last night.
The sound of an electric buzz and a lock chunking back dragged me from the latest vision of a loud boisterous man having his face peeled off in a single jelly-like piece while he begged for mercy.
The lights came on and half the people in the dorm groaned.
“Everybody up.” It was the man that had yelled at us the night before, still loud and commanding. “You have ten minutes to get ready. Your beds will be made and you will be standing at the end of it when I get back. Is that understood?”
Everybody responded in unison. “Yes, sir!” I lay on my bed with my mouth shut.
Once we were locked in, people began to stand, shuffling off to the business end of the room. I followed.
Everyone milled around for a few seconds, not quite sure what to do, before one woman walked up, pulled down her pants, and sat on a toilet. She didn’t make eye contact with anyone. Soon there were lines as everyone waited their turn.
I went to the sinks between the beds and the toilets and turned the tap. Fresh water flowed cool and clear. It was more of a catalyst to the people in the room than the exposed toilets had been. Those near the end of the lines followed me, running their fingers through the cool liquid, cupping their hands and drinking as much as they could hold, until some of them threw up. I restrained myself, taking only what I thought I needed. SoCal would steal from the lower levels to make sure we had enough.
I wasn’t worried about being drugged this time. They’d want us on our feet so we’d be easier to move.
When I was done, one of the toilets was empty. I went as quickly as I could, staring at my knees the whole time.
We were all back in the main room by the time the door buzzed again. Every one of us made our beds, some too scared not to, others doing what they were told, already resigned to their fate. I made mine because it was the best way to stay under the radar, inconspicuous as I tried to figure out how to get out of this mess, or at the very least, how to get through it in one piece.
Habit almost made me make the bed the way I had been taught at the ACE compound, but after watching some of the others, I realized I couldn’t do that. Some pulled their blankets up, placing the pillow on top of it. Others at least tucked the blanket in at the bottom. Very few tucked it in all the way around. No one made neat, square hospital corners. I discreetly pulled my blankets apart again, making sure to be messy.
At the sound of the door opening, we all scrambled to stand at the ends of our beds. A woman stood in the doorway, one I hadn’t seen before. Her uniform looked like it had been starched that morning. She didn’t even bother to walk in the room.
“You will now have breakfast,” she said, her voice projected to the back wall. “We will give you twenty minutes to get your food, eat it, and return your tray to containers at the front of the mess hall. After that, you will line up single file with the rest of your group. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Follow me.”
We walked back down the hallway I’d snuck through last night, except this time each of the doors was open. As we left the barracks area, the smell of bacon wafted through the air. Despite myself, my stomach grumbled in response. The insurgents had fed us, but bacon hadn’t been on the menu. Maybe we could have eggs and toast!
The mess hall reminded me of the one in the insurgents’ building, except for the lack of chairs. Each table had a built-in bench on either side, permanently attached. Another group of draftees was finishing up at the food line as we walked in.
Everyone was talking, some to the people at the table they were at, others to tables across the way, comparing notes on how they had gotten here and what had been done to them. I grabbed a tray and a plate, waiting my turn in line. The place was packed. There were more men and women here than had been picked up with me. Lots more. I figured there were at least five hundred, all of them sitting twenty to a table, just like us. I ignored them and started examining the food in front of me.
It looked and smelled really good. There were scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes with syrup, fresh fruits, and fried potatoes. More food than I or anyone else in the room had seen in a long time. People loaded up their plates and were given plastic spoons. I moved some bacon and eggs and a couple of pancakes onto my plate. At the end of the food line was coffee. I filled two cups and balanced them on my tray before sitting at a long table with the rest of my group.
As we were eating, soldiers walked the room, one per aisle, and two extra at each wall. Their guns were holstered and a clip held them in place. If I’d tried to get to one, I’d have to undo the clip before pulling the weapon out. By that time, any of the other soldiers would have had time to put a bullet in my back. I’d have to wait.
When we were done and our trays returned to the bins at the front, we all went back to our tables and waited. The woman who had led us here stood at the front.
“Line up.”
Each of the soldiers monitoring the room stood at the back wall. Behind the woman, by the doors we walked in through, was the man that ordered us around last night. Each table was led out one at a time.
When it was our turn, we followed the woman again. One of the soldiers at the back wall came after us. The woman led us down yet another hall that ended at a single door and made us stand up against the wall. The first person was let through the door while the rest of us waited. When they came out, the next one went in. The woman on my left leaned to whisper in my ear.
“What do you think they’re doing in there?”
“Maybe the doctor they told us about last—”
The soldier who had followed us jumped in front of me. “No talking.”
He leaned in closer, trying to threaten me by being taller. I smiled and looked away. After a while, he just left.
I waited for my turn, walking through the door without really knowing what to expect.
The inside was a regular office with a single small desk and an examination table. The man behind the desk pointed to an empty chair and read from a pad.
“Kris Merrill?” He sounded bored.
“Yes.”
“You’re seventeen?”
“Yes.”
“According to your chart, your birthday is in two months, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
He put the pad down and leaned on the desk. “Too young to be in the military, I’m surprised they kept you. They must have figured you were
close enough that it didn’t matter.” He paused. “Did you know you were pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell anyone when they picked you up?”
I snorted. “Have you ever been through a draft? They don’t give you much time for talking.”
He stared at me before responding. “I guess not. I’d kick you out of here on your age alone, though I’m not sure they would let me. They don’t have a choice about your pregnancy.”
Tears welled up in my eyes and I slumped back in the chair. I hadn’t realized how much getting out of here meant to me, until there was a chance it could happen.
“Now how about you get up on the table and we check on you and the baby? I’m guessing you don’t have a doctor, most from the lower levels don’t.” His voice had switched to all professional.
I kept my mouth shut and wiped the tears away.
SOCAL SAT CITY 2—WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 2141 9:00 A.M.
Last night’s simulation runs had all worked perfectly, narrowing the critical band down to a few nanometers. The results were even better than they had been last time he’d run them on Kadokawa. Bryson rubbed the sleep from his eyes and let out a huge yawn. He had finished testing around one in the morning, and when he was finally escorted back to his quarters and crawled into bed, sleep became an evasive beast, constantly shifting and moving, forcing him to chase after it. It had taken him at least a couple of hours of tossing and turning before he fell into a sleep filled with equations and test results.
He had woken up exhausted and on the edge of burnout. His alarm went off at the same time it always did, and he’d forced himself out of bed and into a warm shower. It didn’t help. He was on his second cup of tea when the alarm went off again. It was time to go to work.
The atmosphere in the lab was as quiet as it ever was. No one knew about the test results, how the world was about to change. Hopefully for the better, but he was too jaded to believe that for even a minute. Not this time. He sat in his chair and stared at the blank screen before calling over one of the other physicists in the room. His interactions with everyone here had shown her to be the quickest study, the one he could rely on to double-check everything, and do it right.
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