The Rebel

by Gerald Brandt

  I twisted, and the heel scraped my ear. I waited for the next blow. The soldier spasmed, falling to a knee beside me. Above him, Bryson held the shock stick, a look of grim determination on his face.

  Before he could strike again, the soldier lunged, knocking Bryson backward. He grabbed the shock stick and swung with his other hand, hitting Bryson in the temple. Bryson folded in on himself.

  The distraction gave me time. I untangled the cuffs and jumped to my feet, picking up the chair and swinging with everything I had left. A wheel caught the soldier’s face, spinning him around before he crashed into the window.

  He fell, pulling the chair with him. My shoulder tore, pain searing through the muscles as the chair spiraled where my arm was still attached. I collapsed on top of him.

  My shoulder was on fire and blood dripped from the cut on my cheek, but it was over. For now. Adrenaline was the only thing that was keeping me going. It surged through me, pushing me through the pain. I hobbled to Bryson’s still form. He was alive at least.

  It took me a few minutes to search the guards for the key to the cuffs. My hands shook so badly, I didn’t think I was going to be able to unclip it from the loop in his pocket. Still shaking, I freed my one hand and both of my feet. When the last cuff sprang open, I almost cried. Bryson was sitting now, leaning against the wall and staring at the bodies on the floor. I unlocked the cuffs on his ankles and pulled him to his feet with my good arm, and together we left the office.

  We stopped a few meters outside the door, not sure which way to go. Bryson pointed at the smoke-covered ship as the floor lurched under our feet. People screamed and the random movement changed to a steady stream heading to our left. I looked ahead of the mob. Doors swung open as everyone pushed past the security staff manning them. I dragged Bryson behind me as I followed.

  The smoke cloud enveloped us before we reached the exit, smelling strangely sweet. Without letting go of Bryson, I lifted the collar of my shirt, covering my mouth and nose as best I could. We merged with the crowd close to the exit. People bumped into my shoulder and I almost cried out.

  We were practically blind.

  People shrieked and shouted, creating more panic, more of a rush to get somewhere safe. We pushed into the hallway, sandwiched between the mass moving too slow in front of us and the frenzied rush from behind. The floor fell away from our feet again and a sudden hush fell.

  Someone whimpered as I fell, my knees almost buckling as I met the floor moving back up, like jumping in an elevator. I kept my grip on Bryson. There was no way I was letting go. I pulled him along, fighting to get to the emergency stairs leading up to the promenade.

  The stairwell slowed us down even more, and the only thing keeping us moving was the crush of bodies behind us. The smoke was gone here, but I still couldn’t see anything through the flashing red lights and people. I stepped on something soft and looked down. A man had been trampled; the only thing holding his body together was the skin stretched taut over jutting bones. I kept on going.

  We exploded through the door to the promenade, almost pushed to the railing around the central courtyard. I dragged Bryson away from the throng of bodies, away from the shuttle port. We hunkered down by a bench overlooking the trees that still rose majestically toward the ceiling, unconcerned with what was going on around them. I struggled to catch my breath, finally letting go of Bryson’s hand to probe my shoulder.

  “We’ll never get to a shuttle, if they’re still flying,” I said.

  “There’s no place else to go.”

  He was right. We’d left the only other docking bay I knew of on this piece-of-junk city. I scanned the crowd between us and the transports. We had to try. “Okay, ready?” He nodded and we stood, ready to charge through the fray.

  At that exact moment, every drone flying through the promenade fell silent, dropping like bombs into the crowd and down to the lower levels. I crawled under the bench, and Bryson tried to squeeze under with me. I counted to ten after I heard the last impact and crept back out. No more drones flitted through the trees above us. A few people in the crowd were hurt, blood dripping from defensive wounds as they tried to protect themselves from the falling machines.

  “Hey, bitch!”

  The scream rose above the sound of the crazed crowd. People stopped and turned. All but one continued the mad dash to the shuttle port. The scream had come from behind me, but Ms. Peters stood in front. I spun, ignoring her as she was dragged away from us by the mass of panicked flesh.

  Janice drove toward us, a look of pure hatred on her face.

  “This is your fault. All of this.” Her hands waved crazily around her. Blood ran from a gash on her head, partially running into one swollen eye.

  A sense of calm filled me, and my mind processed everything as fast as it could. She’d be blind on that side. My damaged shoulder would be facing her though. I stood my ground. This needed to be taken care of, or we might never make it.

  “Get to the shuttle port.” I didn’t turn to see if Bryson had listened to me, didn’t check if he’d seen Ms. Peters. I wouldn’t give Janice the opportunity to attack me when I was distracted. I was in no condition to fight anyone, but I couldn’t let her know. Taking a few steps back, I put the bench between us. Janice stopped her advance.

  A blur separated from the crowd, charging toward me. I twisted out of the way, losing Janice’s position.

  Ms. Peters ran past me. Shit. She was after Bryson. I followed the motion, hoping I could delay Janice in the press of people. All I saw was a blinding flash of light as something hit my face under my eye, right where the door had sliced me open. The last I saw of Bryson, he was pushed against the railing by a demon in a red business suit.

  A second punch followed the first. I dropped, rolling under the bench and coming out the other side. Janice launched over the top, tackling me on the ground. I jerked her off me, my shoulder screaming in agony, and sprang to my feet. She used the back of the bench to help herself up.

  I took advantage of it, kicking out her supporting arm. She fell on top of the backrest, slowly sliding to the floor. I stopped her descent, pressing her neck against the hard back of the bench, elbowing the base of her skull until she was too hurt to fight back.

  I put all my weight on her head, holding her there until she wasn’t moving any more.

  Where was Bryson? Blood pounded in my ears as I scanned the crowd. He stood by the railing, leaning over it, his feet almost lifted off the floor, fighting being pulled over. Ms. Peters clawed at his arm, one hand twisted in his shirt in a death grip. I fought through the crowd.

  Reaching over the railing, I pried her fingers open. The material tore. She made one last desperate lunge, grabbing Bryson’s hand. He jerked back and her grip slipped, sending her to the floor below. I pulled Bryson from the edge and looked over. She lay awkwardly at the bottom of one of the trees, not moving.

  The crowd surging toward the shuttle port had thinned slightly. I dragged Bryson behind me as I pushed through them, adrenaline driving me through the pain and exhaustion.

  “I . . . I killed her,” was all he said.

  It wasn’t my job to console him.

  When we reached the front of the crowd, he stopped, grabbing the back of my shirt. People in uniform were separating the crowd into manageable groups and loading them onto shuttles.

  “Those are Kadokawa uniforms,” Bryson said.

  sixteen

  SOCAL SAT CITY 2—FRIDAY, JULY 7, 2141 3:06 P.M.

  THE FLOOR of the shuttle port shook and people screamed, surging forward again despite the Kadokawa soldiers. Bryson pulled me farther back. I wanted to grab him, to drag him with me, but my shoulder roared as the joint stretched, bringing tears to my eyes. It was easier to follow him. He let go when he reached the wall.

  “I can’t get on there.”

  “They don’t even know who you are. Look arou
nd you, this place is falling apart.”

  “I . . . I can’t . . . I can’t be someone’s slave anymore.”

  “Then stay here and die. I give up.”

  Bryson grabbed my arm, stopping me from leaving. I screamed in pain. No one noticed or cared.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I—”

  “Shut the fuck up.” My voice was harsh and raspy. “Either follow me, or stay here. Those Kadokawa soldiers are too busy to care about you or me or anybody right now. All they want is to get as many people onto those shuttles as they can.”

  He looked like he was about to fall apart. I stepped in front of him.

  “What if Ailsa’s on one of those shuttles?” I asked. “Do you want me to tell her you were so scared to get on one that you chose to die here? I can do that for you . . . let her know.”

  “You really are a deep-down bitch, aren’t you?”

  I laughed, the reaction surprising me. I had thought those exact words about Dispatch over a year ago. She’d believed she was helping me back then as well. Bryson had to make up his mind. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m not staying here.” I walked back toward the shuttles, cradling my arm. Every step sent shards of pain radiating from my shoulder, and the right side of my face felt paralyzed. He caught up with me as I waited in one of the lines.

  The shuttle in front of us took off and the line almost disintegrated into a riot before everyone noticed another taking its place. I stepped forward when it was my turn, Bryson right behind me.

  We were herded on board and told to sit. I slid over to a seat by the window. Outside, I could see more people streaming toward the shuttles. Would there be time to get them all? Would there be enough shuttles?

  The adrenaline rush left me, filling me with weakness and pain. Nausea creeped into my bones. I pressed my head against the cold viewport and closed my eyes, listening to the sobbing and soft whispers of the other passengers.

  “Where will they take us?” Bryson asked.

  “I dunno,” I mumbled.

  “Do you think we’re going back to one of their Sat Cities?”

  “I dunno. I doubt it.”

  “Back to San Angeles, then?”

  I lifted my head from the cool plastic and looked at him. The man was a mess, even more shaken than when we had fought our way out of the hangar, or when he’d dropped Ms. Peters over the railing. I’d seen him stand up to the challenges we had faced. I knew he had it in him. He just had to hold out a bit longer.

  “Relax,” I said. “The Kadokawa Sat Cities are too small to take all of us, and I doubt they want to shove us all on the other side of the planet from where we live. They’ll put down in San Angeles somewhere.” I truly believed it.

  We left the city when the shuttle was full. Men and women stood in the aisles. Bryson left his seat, offering it to a man with a cane. The man took it without question. I recognized him. He was in the room beside Bryson on C-5. He gave me a tense smile when we left the shuttle port, floating out into space.

  Out the viewport the city looked peaceful, with beacon lights flashing and shuttles drifting away in an orderly fashion. Behind the massive globe of the city floated Earth, the west coast of North America basking in warm sunlight. If I shut out the sounds of the other people, I could almost imagine everything was okay. Maybe it was because I desperately wanted it.

  The shuttle shot upward, though I didn’t feel anything. I realized it wasn’t us that was moving.

  The city dropped in its orbit.

  Flashes of released oxygen, frozen in the coldness of space, exploded from the city in a huge geyser, propelling it closer to Earth.

  The space around SoCal 2 exploded with shuttles launching, abandoning those people left behind to save the ones already on board. The Sat City began to spin.

  Jets fired around its perimeter and the speed of the spin increased. Another chunk of the city on the space side exploded outwards, sending shrapnel deeper into the blackness. The satellite accelerated toward Earth, thrust by the blast. I thought I could almost hear the groan of stressed composite and metal, impossible through the vacuum of space.

  The city went dark, every beacon, every shuttle port at the same time. It looked like it had stopped moving, but I knew once its descent had begun, nothing could prevent it. Not in this condition. The shuttle fired its thrusters, pressing me into my seat, distancing us from the doomed city. The satellite plummeted out of my view, still moving uncontrollably. The cabin filled with silence as the thrusters stopped and we coasted through space.

  We made a slow turn until what was left of the city spread out below me, outlined by the beauty of Earth under it. Another chunk of the satellite blew off, venting more air into deep space, and the city plunged closer to Earth.

  A blinding flash filled my viewport, and SoCal 2 was gone.

  In its place, millions of pieces of debris filled the view. I knew some of them had to be human. The old man beside me leaned closer, peering through the window with me. He brushed my shoulder and I cringed.

  “Sorry, miss,” he said. “I wanted to say thank you. I thought I was going to die in that room.”

  “What happened?” I asked, still staring at the empty space that used to be living, breathing people.

  “A failsafe. One of the cities falling back to Earth would be catastrophic. No one would survive the aftermath. So each city has a failsafe. It’s not connected to the computers, the explosives aren’t even connected to each other. Each one has its own sensors. If the orbit drops below 20,000 kilometers, they blow.”

  I tore my gaze from the explosion and stared at him. “How do you know that?”

  He laughed. “Same way you know how to get your job done, I suppose. You learn.”

  We waited in the cramped shuttle for hours as the space around us slowly cleared of traffic. The old man beside me slept. I stared out the viewport. Those in the aisles eventually found a place to hunker down. The shuttle started its descent. Hopefully heading to San Angeles.

  As we sank into the atmosphere, the ocean came into view, sparkling in a sunset of deep reds and vibrant oranges. Below us, the coast of San Angeles looked the same as it had when I’d left. Chatter among the passengers was more rumor than fact. Stories of SoCal 1 being destroyed, of them not being able to evacuate. A half million lives lost.

  If it was true, we were landing in a world that needed more help than it ever had before.

  LOS ANGELES LEVEL 7—FRIDAY, JULY 7, 2141 7:23 P.M.

  As we were coming down, the pilot announced over the speakers that we were scheduled to land at the San Diego shuttle port. Bryson offered a small smile when he heard that. The smile got bigger when the pilot came back on and said we’d been rerouted and would be landing in Los Angeles instead.

  The sky above the shuttle port was filled with transports marked in the Kadokawa colors. In the distance, I could see even the SoCal Air Base was busy. Our shuttle landed at the end of a runway, settling down and turning off its engines. It looked like we took the last bit of real estate left. We were asked to wait a bit longer as buses came to take the old and those that couldn’t walk to the terminal. The rest of us made our own way across the tarmac. The smell of the ocean and the fresh air cleared my head.

  Inside the terminal there were already aid stations set up, tables with food and water, others where people could check to see if their loved ones had arrived. People were either working or milling around, looking lost and dazed and confused. I was sure some of them hadn’t set foot on Earth in years.

  A woman touched my elbow. She wasn’t wearing a uniform, but below the red cross on her armband was a small Kadokawa logo.

  “Your face. It is bleeding. Come, we can take a look at it,” she said.

  I followed as she led me through the crowds. Bryson stayed right behind us. A corner of the terminal had been cordoned off and separated into a triage ar
ea with small, curtained-off examination rooms. The woman dropped me off and went to find another person that needed help.

  There were no serious injuries. A few broken bones and contusions. Those that made it onto the shuttles were the lucky ones. A nurse cleaned my face and glued the cut together. They put my arm in a sling and recommended I get it X-rayed and taken care off. I told them I would.

  Bryson called his dad. Traffic was so bad, we agreed to meet him outside the shuttle port grounds. I was surprised when Kai and Pat showed up with him. It didn’t take long for the story to come out. SoCal 1 had self-destructed shortly after SoCal 2. They didn’t have the benefit of Kadokawa nearby to send transports.

  Close to half a million people had called SoCal 1 home. Among them were the top brass, the ones that controlled the company. With the loss came the rapid disintegration of SoCal’s control in San Angeles. The Level 6 up-ramps were still being blocked. Doc Searls was able to use his access to bring people up. Level 5 had been reopened almost right away. The soldiers had abandoned their posts, letting the masses back in. Chaos was starting to take hold.

  It was only expected to get worse, and both IBC and Kadokawa had brought in extra forces to help police the situation. Kadokawa had gotten to the southern part of the city, while IBC had taken control of the north. At first, people had called them vultures, going after the carcass. Now, only a few hours after the fall of SoCal, IBC had proven the people right. There had already been arrests and killings.

  Kadokawa had done things differently, and the violent outbreaks seen in San Francisco and San Jose weren’t happening down here.

  We ended up at Doc Searls’ Level 6 offices. He took care of my shoulder and gave me a place to sleep. I tossed and turned most of the night listening to Bryson and his dad talk. Healing the wounds they’d nurtured for so long.

  Sleep finally came, and I didn’t wake up until late the next morning.