by Ben Oliver
She gestures to Day, who finds a pen. Shion takes the pen and writes on the wall of the house:
I read the note before Shion scribbles it out and wonder if they’ve been thinking the same thing. Has our own government turned on us? I turn to Shion and nod.
“Put this on,” Shion says, taking her hand away from my head and handing me a black sweatband similar to the ones they both wear. I put it on.
“We’ll have to electrocute you before you come into our hiding place,” Day says, smiling.
“Electrocute me?” I repeat. “Why?”
“We’re pretty sure it’ll short-circuit the Panoptic—not completely sure—and it might kill us, but we don’t know who has control of our government, who can hack into the system. We don’t want to make it easier for whoever is attacking us to find us.”
I nod my head. “Great,” I mutter. “Looking forward to it.”
We raid the bedrooms of the big house and put on multiple pairs of socks, vests, T-shirts, underwear, gloves, hats, and jackets until we’re sure we have the right level of protection from the elements but still enough mobility to run from the Smilers.
Shion returns from the garage with three shovels and hands one to me and one to Day.
“Let’s get to it,” she says.
Day opens the front door, and a cascade of powdery white snow pours onto the hardwood floor of the hallway, pushing us back five paces.
“What direction you headed?” Shion asks.
“East,” I say. “Black Road Vertical. You?”
“West.”
“Right,” I say, suddenly sad to be parting ways with the angels who saved my life. “Good luck, okay? I’ll see you soon.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Shion replies as she begins to dig a tunnel into the snow.
Day puts a hand on my shoulder and smiles. “Good luck, Luka.”
I watch as the mother and daughter dig through the thick whiteness until they’re gone, and then I get to work on my own tunnel.
* * *
I dig for hours, several times coming across a half-dead Smiler buried in the snow, teeth still bared in that senseless grin, still blinking, their lips turned blue from the cold, their eyes blood-red from burst veins, their groping fingertips black as they try, with their last reserves of energy, to kill.
I dig around, unable to bring myself to kill them.
I cut through the snow, on and on until I can no longer feel my hands or my feet. I try not to think about Wren, alone and locked in a prison cell, arm severed at the shoulder, infected with whatever chemical our enemies dropped from the sky, sick with drone poison, her mind lost in another world.
It’s too much to hope that she’s still alive, I think, and have to bite down to suppress the pain that comes with the thought. My mind flashes back to my Ebb hallucinations. The revelation that I was never truly in love with Wren. Is that true? I ask myself, and then push the thought down. Now is not the time. I have to focus on my sister, on my father.
Without thinking, my hand rises to my heart. My still-beating heart. And despite the hopelessness I feel, I smile, knowing that Kina is still alive.
I dig my way onward through the wall of white.
An hour or two later, the snow stops falling as suddenly as it began, and the clouds disappear as though blown by a great invisible force. And for some reason, this dramatic change hits me harder than the endless snow. It’s all futile—whoever is attacking us has control of the weather. Why am I even doing this? What do I expect to find if I make it to my old home? My dad and sister waiting patiently for me? Smiling at me and offering me a cup of tea? Hugging me and telling me they figured it all out, they have a cure, and the war is over?
My swelling emotions are cut short by a humming electrical sound. I feel dizzy, and it takes a second to realize that the ground is rumbling beneath my feet. The snow that is piled up either side of me begins to cascade down, and the walls of my tunnel crumble and cave in on me.
There is an explosion of wet snow, and I dive backward as a City Train bursts through one wall of my tunnel, inches in front of me, and then crashes through the next wall in a split second.
I lie watching in disbelief as the train thunders by. “I guess the power is back on,” I say, my voice hollow and monotone, shocked at how close I just came to being obliterated by a speeding train.
A few seconds later, when the train is out of sight, I can hear music from car radios, the whir of electronics, and voices from Barker Projectors across the city. Somehow the sounds of all these electronics without the sounds of humanity make the city feel even more unnerving, like a ghost town.
I get to my feet and continue to dig. It only takes ten more minutes before I stand at the foot of the gargantuan Black Road Vertical. I look up, and the summit appears to come to a pinpoint high up in the clouds. The sheer scale of the building gives me vertigo.
I pull open the front door of the Vertical, having to haul it against the piled-up snow beneath the canopy. I step inside, and I’m hit by a wave of memories. The stone staircases where Molly and I used to play games, using our imaginations to save galaxies, flying spaceships through star systems, fighting off armies of goblins, and holding imaginary concerts where we were the stars.
I breathe a sigh of relief that the power has come back as I press the up button on the wall beside the bank of three elevators. A crunching, grinding sound comes from somewhere far up the elevator shaft, and the light on the up button goes out.
“Of course,” I mutter. “One hundred and seventy-seven floors.”
I stand in the middle of the lobby and look at the abyss of stairs that rises up and up.
I walk over and take the first step on a long journey upward.
* * *
I have to stop several times on my way to the 177th floor, but after what must be a bit more than two hours, I arrive.
The graffiti that used to be here has been covered by new graffiti, new tags, new images, but it’s the same old corridor, same old doors with the same old numbers.
I walk slowly, my legs burning from the climb. I walk past apartment 177/07, where Jax and Janto used to live, past 177/19, where old Mr. Key stayed until he was evicted by the residents who found out he was siphoning extra water from the rain collector. I move on until I reach apartment 177/44, my old house.
I twist the door handle and expect to feel resistance, but the door is unlocked and swings open into the dark apartment with a long, loud creak.
I wait outside in the corridor for a while, staring into my old home. My hands are shaking, and my breathing is unsteady. I never dared to believe I would ever see this place again.
I step inside, and the first thing I recognize is the smell. It’s the smell of home, my home, and it brings with it a million images of my childhood: my parents, my friends, times I laughed, times I cried, arguments, and the desperation of our situation that—even though I was a child—I felt every day.
“Hello,” I call, and feel silly for doing it—what was I expecting, a friendly reply?
I move farther in, past the open bathroom door where our tiny shower takes up one corner, pipes snaking out the window to the rain collector. There’s no one in the bathroom, but the windowsill brings back memories of the time Molly fell and hit her head while we were playing hide-and-seek.
I step back into the short corridor, my heart racing in horrible anticipation of seeing the long-dead carcass of my sister, my dad, or both.
I move into the living room. Nothing has changed in the years I’ve been away—it’s the same cramped room with the same threadbare furniture and stained carpet. There’s no one in here, no one in the adjacent kitchen either.
There are only two rooms left: my parents’ bedroom and the room my sister and I used to share.
I start with my parents’ bedroom, the room in which my mother died, the room the Marshals—paid for by Tyco’s family—burst into before dragging me to the courthouse to be judged and sentenced to death by Happy.
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I open the door and feel the early evening air rushing through the open window, and I see someone sitting on the bed, staring out over the city. I recognize the shape of him straightaway.
“Dad,” I say, my voice cracked and on the verge of breaking.
Slowly, he turns around, and his blinking eyes meet mine. The wide, mad smile on his face doesn’t change as he sees me.
I try to fight against the horror of seeing my dad this way, try to brace myself for the attack, try to move, to slam the door and run, but I’m frozen.
My dad doesn’t move from the bed—instead he slowly turns back to the window and stares out at the destroyed city.
My heart is racing once again, the way it raced when I was climbing all those steps, the way it raced when I first realized that Wren was trying to kill me. Why isn’t he attacking me?
… it took us a while to realize that they don’t kill their own blood. Shion had said that when she still thought I was an Ebb user.
If he won’t attack me because I’m blood-related to him, then surely that means he remembers me on some level? Surely.
“Dad,” I say again, stepping into the room and standing beside the bed. I look into his blinking eyes as I crouch beside him. “It’s me, Luka, your son.”
His eyes seem to look through me, and then they return to the open window. I put my hand on his and feel how cold he is. He must have been sitting here while the snow was falling, the cold air chilling him to the bone. I close the window and wrap the blanket from the bed around him.
I sit down and stare out at the city with him. We watch the moon climb up into the sky for a while. I look over to the bedside table and see the necklace that my mother used to wear; he bought it for her from the Junk Children years and years ago for two Coin.
I feel the tears swimming in my eyes and blink them back.
“Do you remember me?” I ask. “You’re my dad; you raised me. Do you remember?”
“He doesn’t know who you are,” a voice replies from the doorway.
I get to my feet and fall back against the wall.
“Who the hell are you?” I ask, looking around for a weapon to defend myself against the skeletal woman leaning against the doorframe.
“God, Luka, you look worse than I feel.”
I stare at her and see that she’s not a woman—she’s a girl, a few years younger than me. And then I recognize those eyes. She’s grown up, grown up beyond her fourteen years. She looks gaunt, her skin gray, hair lank and overgrown. But those eyes—I’d recognize them anywhere.
“Molly?”
She doesn’t say anything, just walks away, disappearing back into the bedroom that we used to share when we were kids.
I follow her, in utter shock that she’s alive and uninfected.
I open the door to our old room. Molly sits on one of the two twin beds, takes a handful of something out of her pocket, and opens the top drawer of the small chest beside her bed. She puts all but one of the small, clear, plastic strips inside and peels the back off the one in her hand.
I recognize the patch as Ebb and try to get to her before she can stick it to the base of her neck, but I’m too late.
“Molly, wait!” I say, striding across the room to remove the drug from her.
She turns onto her stomach and fights me off as the chemicals seep into her body. When the process is complete, she rolls onto her back and smiles up at me.
“You left me,” she whispers, and then laughs. “You went away. Bye, Luka. Should have been me. Should have been me. I killed the boy.”
“Dammit, Molly,” I say, unable to believe that she has turned herself into a clone. “Why did you do that?”
“I’m going now, Luka. Glad you’re alive, glad you’re free.”
“No!” I shout at her. “No, wake up, you stay awake. Molly, this isn’t you.”
I grab the Ebb strip, rip it off her neck, and throw it to the floor, but she is gone, lost in a world that she is constructing in her own mind, escaped from this desolate place to somewhere better. And for a moment, I can’t blame her, I can’t fault her logic. I look to the drawer where she keeps her stash of Ebb, and I think how easy it would be to disappear with her, to just give up and wait to die in a place more beautiful than this.
I can’t, though; I can’t do it, I can’t quit. Kina’s out there, and Wren and Igby and Pod—if they’re still alive—and my dad is infected, but he’s still my dad, and there might be a cure in the Facility, and Molly is right here in front of me.
I know what I have to do; I have to get Molly to the vault with Day and Shion and the other clones. They can help her. And then I’m going to the Facility—alone if need be—to find a cure for my dad.
I go back to the other room, where my dad still sits motionless, staring out the window. I say goodbye, wrap the blankets tighter around him, and promise I’ll come back for him.
I go to Molly. I rip a strip of material from one of her old dresses and wrap it around her head to hide her Panoptic camera, pick her up off her bed, and carry her out into the corridor.
I make it down the first flight of stairs and stop. The sound of footsteps is reverberating up the old concrete staircase toward us. And another sound, a humming buzz that is changing pitch as it gets closer.
I lean forward to look over the banister and see two people—both dressed in black—standing on drone-risers, gliding rapidly up toward me. Below them, more soldiers, maybe fifty of them, all carrying USW guns or Deleters.
A snarled command echoes up from below. “Inmate 9-70-981 was last seen on floor 177. Units 44 and 45, ascend to 177; the rest of you check each floor and guard all exits. Capture the target alive.”
“As One,” comes the barked reply in unison.
“What the hell?” I whisper to myself as the footsteps grow louder and the drone-risers’ ascending note reaches a crescendo.
I turn and run back the way I came, carrying Molly in my arms and taking the steps two at a time, my legs cramping with the effort, sweat spilling down my temples.
I pass floor 177 and continue up. “What the hell, what the hell, what the fuck!” I ramble as I run.
Put Molly on the roof, I think, hide her behind the rain collector.
I hear the soldiers on the drone-risers stop at the 177th floor and begin kicking doors in, announcing their presence as Tier Three Soldiers, and yelling commands for any inhabitants to lie facedown with your palms on the floor.
I keep moving, my mind firing questions: Who are they? Why are they after me? How do they know I’m here?
I make it to the 200th floor, every muscle in my body screaming at me to quit. I ignore the pain and run to the end of the corridor. The last door on the left is a smaller entrance with a skinny wooden door. I kick it open and ascend the narrow steps to the roof.
The cold air soothes my burning lungs as I carry Molly’s limp body to the rain collector and put her carefully down on the ground; then I run back toward the door. I have to get to my dad before the soldiers do.
I stop before I make it down the narrow staircase.
I can hear them coming, hear their boots against the cheap vinyl floor, hear their yelled commands. They’re getting closer.
I back up and run to Molly, crouching down beside her, waiting and hoping that they won’t come up here. I will my dad to hide, to run, to find a way out.
The wind blows cold and hard this high up. The pipes leading from the rain collector rattle together, and Molly moans in her unconscious state.
And then the soldiers appear. The two who rode drone-risers up to the 177th floor. Their boots crunch on the gravel of the roof as they scan the area.
As their faces turn toward me, I see that the taller one of the two has glowing eyes. Not in the way that all Alts do, but glowing as though there is a tiny but powerful bulb in each eye socket, and here, in the moonlight, they look like car headlights on full beam.
I’ve seen this before, on the first day out of the Loop—the soldi
er who wasn’t carrying a weapon had the same glowing eyes.
“What the fuck?” I whisper, a sliver of steam rising up from my breath.
Headlight-Eyes turns toward me, his movements stiff. I try to duck out of the way, but those lights fall on me.
“Don’t move,” he says, his voice horrifyingly serene.
I stand and move away from Molly, hoping that they somehow won’t notice her.
“All right, all right,” I say, holding my hands up above my head. “Don’t shoot.” But I see that Headlight-Eyes isn’t carrying a gun.
I back up, trying to keep the rain collector between me and the soldier, trying to keep Molly out of their sight, but there’s nowhere else to go as my foot reaches the edge of the building. I turn and look down into the never-ending fall and a sense of vertigo, of recollection and dislocation hit me all at once. The last time I was here, Tyco’s brother was in this exact same spot.
The tall soldier turns stiffly to his partner, the glow from his bizarre eyes temporarily sweeping away from me. He gives him a nod.
“Stay where you are!” the second soldier cries, and I’m almost relieved to hear the panic in his voice—I was becoming unnerved by the calm nature of Headlight-Eyes.
“Don’t shoot,” I say again.
“Oh no, no, no,” he says, letting go of the USW so that it hangs by his side and pulling out a tranquilizer gun. “You weren’t put into the Battery Project for nothing. We’ll be taking you alive, Inmate 9-70-981.”
He lifts the tranquilizer gun higher until it’s aiming right at my chest. I close my eyes and wait for the darkness.
I hear a scream and open my eyes.
I see the soldier with the tranquilizer grabbing for his throat—blood pouring between his fingers as a Smiler silently lets a chunk of flesh fall from his mouth.
The soldier with the glowing eyes watches, an interested expression on his face. He does not move to help or call for backup. He simply watches.
It’s only when the bleeding soldier falls to his knees that I realize the Smiler is my dad.
I open my mouth to say something, to call out to him, but my words are silenced by the high-pitched wail of a USW gun. The dying soldier had managed to get ahold of his weapon and fire one last round.