The Dark Intercept

by Julia Keller

  “We’re all living dangerously.”

  She had no reply to that.

  By now they had learned to feel their way in the darkness. Most of them—there were nineteen in all—operated in the darkness better than they did in the light, because they’d trained and honed their senses to do so. Light was a distraction. In its absence, they had cultivated other senses, other ways of seeing. It made them stronger, more resourceful.

  The air was stippled with tense expectation. For a moment or so the only sounds were the communal ones of their overlapping breathing. Some of the breathing was loud and had a regular rhythm. The rest was sporadic, with fear woven into it. One person coughed. There was a nervous shuffling of feet. The heel of a shoe scraped the floor with a quick rasp. In the solid darkness, even the most ordinary sound stood out.

  The latecomer lifted her sack and shook it briskly. The objects inside it clacked and rattled against one another. It was a signal for the ritual to begin. She called out a name and the summoned person reached out a hand, the palm open and slightly curved. The woman placed the wrist console in her or his hand—a hand she couldn’t see, but somehow sensed the location of—and then went on to the next name, the next curved palm. Burner consoles were switched out every other day, to reduce the chance that they’d be traced.

  “Status reports,” said the man who had accosted the late-arriving woman. Authority rang in his voice. “Supply officer, you can start us out.”

  “Stockpiles are low. We need an infusion.”

  “Noted,” the man in charge replied. “Research and development,” he said, addressing someone else in the circle. They knew he’d shifted his head because the direction of his voice changed.

  “Doing our best.” The woman’s voice was apologetic. “We’ve been hit by a few snags lately. Setbacks. It’s tricky—you know that. We’re only protected for a short period of time, and if we miscalculate, if we’re off by even the tiniest fraction, they’ll be onto us. Crowley’s no fool. We’re working in borrowed labs with substandard equipment. The conditions are primitive.” She wanted to end on a more upbeat note. “But we’re hanging in there. We’ve just got to be patient.”

  “Patient?” The word came out as a roar, not a word, from the leader. “Patient? Do you understand what the stakes are? Do you have the slightest clue what we’re up against?”

  No one answered, because of course they did. They were risking their lives by even showing up here. They were glad to have this outpost, grateful for the cover it provided, but they were also fully aware that one misstep, one careless gesture, one light left on at the wrong moment could bring them all down.

  “Patient,” the leader repeated. He’d settled down, but barely. “Don’t talk to me about being patient. The odds against us are staggering. We have no weapons. We have no power. We’re running out of raw materials. We don’t know from day to day—we don’t know from hour to hour—if we’re about to be exposed. We could be raided at any second. Or tomorrow. Or next week. If they find out who we are, we’re doomed.”

  He brought his rant to a dead stop. He settled himself. These people looked up to him. They trusted him. They needed his skills, his heart. Not his wrath. And besides, it was never a good idea to let your emotions control you. Why do the Intercept’s work?

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll take care of replenishing the stock.” His voice softened, but only marginally. “I don’t mean to be hard on you. But we’re so close now. We can’t back down. We’ve got to keep pushing forward.”

  “What if we don’t want to?” The voice belonged to a man directly across the circle from him. The voice sounded tired and sour and belligerent. Fed up.

  “What are you talking about?” the leader asked.

  “I’m talking about shutting this down. Going back to our lives.”

  “No.” The leader was moving around the room now, behind the standing people, so that his message would encircle them, rally them, lift them up. “We’ve got to keep going. Keep fighting. Because everything we believe in is at stake. Our freedom. The freedom of our loved ones. Everything. We can’t stop now.”

  “We’re losing.” The man’s voice was flat, absolute.

  “We are not losing.” The leader was adamant. “We’ve had some setbacks, that’s all. We expected that.”

  “Yeah? Really? Well, I don’t see any progress. All I see is danger. They know about us now. They may not know who we are, specifically—but they know we’re out here. The rumors are everywhere. They know what we’re trying to do. They know the special power we’ve discovered. So they’re on the lookout. They’re pissed at these little stunts we’ve been pulling and they’re ready for us. Sooner or later, you’re going to get caught, and when you do—”

  “No. That won’t happen. And you know why.”

  “We can’t go on like this.”

  “We can—and we will.” The leader took a deep breath. It was time. He couldn’t lose them. So he had no choice. “I didn’t want to talk about this yet. It’s not a fully formed plan. But it’s close.”

  “What are you talking about?” The skeptical man was still skeptical. But there was an edge of interest in his voice. He couldn’t help himself. He was curious.

  “Something big,” the leader declared. “It’s going to change everything. It’s almost time.”

  The others absorbed the information in silence. But he knew they were listening. They always listened to him. He had seen far more than the rest of them had seen. Suffered more. He wasn’t one to bluff. He didn’t make false promises. He didn’t exaggerate. He chose his words very carefully. They knew that.

  If he used a word like big, he did it on purpose.

  It could mean only one thing.

  “The endgame,” a woman stated. There was awe in her voice, and fear, too. The leader was actually glad to hear that pinch of fear. Fear kept them sharp. Alert.

  He felt a quick, hot surge of affection for these people. In the darkness he couldn’t see their faces, but he knew what those faces looked like, and the memory moved him. He cared deeply for these men and women, no matter how rough his manner. He knew what they sacrificed to join him, to be here, reviewing strategy, planning their missions, fanning out across the six cities of New Earth to do what he asked them to do. Lying to their families—because their families would’ve tried to talk them out of it.

  People who love you, he told them, always want you to be safe. But sometimes safety is the most dangerous thing of all.

  “Yes,” the leader said. “You could think of it as the endgame. We’ve been hiding in the shadows too long. So it’s almost time. Just a few more details to nail down—and then we strike.”

  He could sense their excitement. They were with him. Even the man who’d challenged him—he was generally always the one who challenged him, because he was young and hungry—was with him again. The leader could pick out the sound of the challenger’s breathing from the breathing that emanated from the rest of them. The leader’s hearing was that acute. And the challenger’s breathing was quicker now, eager with anticipation. He was back on board.

  The leader thrust out his right hand into the middle of the circle. The others sensed it rather than saw it. Person by person, they thrust out their right hands, too, one hand placed atop another, until there was a stack of hands rising up and up and up, a living tower.

  “Rebels of Light,” the leader said.

  “Rebels of Light,” the others murmured in unison back to him.

  He gave them their instructions, the maneuvers that would initiate the final fury, and then he dismissed them. No one said “Good luck” to anyone else. Luck had no part in this.

  They left one by one, first pausing at the door to check out the wet silver street, their eyes moving quickly in all directions. Their senses were sharp. Then they flattened themselves against the sides of the buildings as they threaded out across the calm nocturnal landscape of New Earth.

  7

  The Very Bad Det
ective Strikes Again

  Three days later, Violet sat cross-legged on the low stone wall outside Protocol Hall. It was just before noon. The air was sweet and bright; the sky was dotted with tiny clouds arranged with careful randomness across the surpassingly beautiful blue. The sparkling glass tip of Protocol Hall reached eagerly into that sky.

  Violet still had an hour before her shift started. Her bag was on the ground beside her. Nestled in her joined-up palms was a cup of hot black coffee.

  She was here early because of her new plan.

  The plan pleased her. It also made her very nervous.

  If it worked, she’d finally have the answers she craved about Danny. If it didn’t work—well, then it was on to Option Number Three.

  Danny might be in trouble. Wait: He already was in trouble. But he might be in even bigger trouble than just putting up with a stern talking-to by the boss, if Violet’s latest theory was right. She had to get to the bottom of her new suspicion.

  Following him the other day had been a really dumb idea.

  So she’d decided to come at the problem from another angle. Rez had taught her that. It was the way he worked with computers. “If you can’t solve something head-on,” he advised her, “try the side door. If that doesn’t work, try the back door. If that doesn’t work, try a window. If that doesn’t work, climb up on the roof and bust out the skylight.”

  Violet was in a skylight-busting mood these days, for sure.

  She looked down into her cup, at the oily black coffee. It seemed to move, ever so slightly. The quiver was a result of the vibration transferred up from the ground as, just below the surface, the Intercept went about its endless collection and storage.

  The coffee was way too hot to drink. That didn’t matter. She had no intention of drinking it. She didn’t like the taste of coffee. But it was an essential part of her plan.

  She’d bought it at the small red cart outside Protocol Hall. Nobody knew the name of the man who worked there, but she could tell from his soiled, too-big clothes and from the way he stooped and hunched that Coffee Cart Guy was a new immigrant from Old Earth. He had passed her the cup with a trembling hand and taken her money and then instantly ducked his head, avoiding her eyes. He clasped his hands in front of his gray tunic and held very still, as if awaiting her permission to go on to the next customer. He acted the same way—cowering and cringing—with everybody.

  Violet hated that. Why did he treat her like she was a princess or something? Why did he have to act all weird and deferential? She was a person, just like he was. But Coffee Cart Guy’s behavior was typical of most new people from Old Earth. They were nervous all the time.

  Maybe, Violet thought, they were afraid of being sent back. Or maybe it was because of the bad memories they carried, as surely as if they stored them in the inner folds of their dirty tunics. They’d seen things in person—terrible things, unbearable things—that Violet had seen only on a screen. From a safe distance. In a nice comfortable workstation on New Earth.

  Maybe if you carried bad memories around long enough, they started to change how you walked, how you talked. How you thought.

  The plaza was crowded, like always. A few minutes after Violet sat down with her coffee cup, she saw a friend named Sara Verity moving through the big glass doors. They slid shut behind her.

  Sara was interning in transport logistics. She was short, round, and rumpled. She wore rectangular black glasses and had energetic-looking red hair that always reminded Violet of a series of exclamation points.

  “Anything yet?” Sara said.

  Violet knew what she meant, because she’d heard the question from just about everybody lately: Did you have your intervention?

  “Nope.”

  “I bet the waiting is the toughest part. That’s what they say, anyway.” Sara’s plaid bag was slung across her shoulder, leaving her hands free. With her right one, she absentmindedly stroked the tiny scar in the crook of her left elbow.

  “Want to sit down?” Violet asked. She followed up the invitation with a silent burst of internal passion: Please say no, please please. Her desperation had nothing to do with not liking Sara. It came from the fact that she planned to meet Danny here before her shift started—and in order for her scheme to work, she needed to be alone with him. Violet wanted to be polite to her friend—but she fervently hoped that Sara would turn her down.

  Sara shook her head. “Sorry. Can’t. I’ve got to get going. But thanks. Maybe I’ll see you later.”

  “Sure.”

  Sara waved and moved on, merging with the people on the plaza.

  Violet watched the crowd for another few minutes. She shifted the position of her hands around the cup. Doubts had begun to slide into her thoughts, slowly at first but faster now, the longer she waited. Maybe she should just give up. Abandon her plan. Stop asking questions. Forget about trying to find out why Danny kept breaking the rules. Honor his request to be patient. And just trust him.

  It would be so much easier that way.

  She was about half a second from canceling the whole thing—she could dump out the coffee and tell Danny she didn’t actually have time for a walk today before work—when he showed up.

  Violet’s heart did that funny lurching thing it always did when she saw him. She’d worn long sleeves today. No worries over the tiny blue flash.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” he said. He took the spot next to her on the low wall.

  Danny didn’t have his uniform on because he wasn’t working today. He wore the clothes he’d brought from Old Earth: a faded brown work shirt and brown pants. Neither were quite right for him. The shirt was too big and the pants were too short. There was a time, when she’d first met him, that Violet almost said something to him about his Old Earth clothes. She’d seriously considered pointing out that he could fit in better—blend in—if he dressed like the people of New Earth.

  Then the truth had struck her: Danny didn’t want to fit in. He didn’t want to blend in. Not at first, anyway. He and his brother were refugees, new immigrants, but they weren’t ashamed of it—not in the way that Coffee Cart Guy was. They never shuffled their feet or hung their heads. They spoke up when they wanted to. They didn’t care who knew they were from Old Earth. In fact, they seemed proud of it.

  “Glad you called,” Danny said. “I thought you were still mad at me.”

  “I am.”

  “But you said you wanted to get together.”

  “Well,” she said, “maybe I’m mad—and I want to get together. They’re not mutually exclusive, Mayhew.”

  He laughed. “You’re complicated. Guess I’ll never figure you out.”

  She lifted her coffee cup. “You want this? I haven’t had a drop.”

  He looked puzzled. “Why’d you buy it? You hate coffee. You’re a tea girl.”

  “It’s all they had. And I like having something hot to wrap my hands around.” She blushed. She hadn’t meant to sound flirty—in fact she had an excellent reason for buying hot coffee on a warm day, one that she would never disclose to Danny—but the moment the words were out of her mouth, she realized they sounded like a dirty joke.

  “This is New Earth. It’s eighty-two degrees.”

  “Like you said—I’m complicated.” She handed him the cup. She moved too fast, spilling a small drop on his sleeve. “Sorry,” she said, dabbing at the fabric.

  “No problem.”

  “Come on,” Violet said. “I’ve got to get some exercise before my shift.” She picked up her bag, flung the strap over her shoulder, and rose.

  “Sounds good.” He stood up, too, finishing the cup in two long swallows.

  “Wow,” Violet said. “That was, like, really hot coffee. How’d you drink it like that?”

  “It’s just a matter of ignoring the shreds of melted flesh hanging from the roof of your mouth.”

  She grinned. These were the moments she loved: just spending time with Danny. Enjoying the bright simple pleasure o
f his company and feeling that he was enjoying her company as well. No emotional baggage. No mysteries. Only the soul-deep satisfaction of being in the presence of someone you really liked.

  Sometimes she wondered why it couldn’t be like this all the time: Hanging out. Talking and laughing. Kidding around. Being serious and then not being serious. Discussing the stars and the planets and the books they were reading and too-hot coffee.

  But deep inside, she knew why.

  Because he was Danny Mayhew.

  Because he was Kendall Mayhew’s brother, and because Kendall Mayhew had invented the Intercept.

  Because she was Violet Crowley, and because her father was Ogden Crowley, president of New Earth. Both she and Danny were tangled up in all kinds of things that had nothing to do with them—not really—and yet they couldn’t break free of those things. They couldn’t not be part of their families. They couldn’t be anybody else other than who they were.

  And because Danny wouldn’t stop going down to Old Earth.

  And because Violet had to find out why.

  * * *

  “So—no intervention yet,” he said. “Must be pretty nerve-racking.”

  “Yeah. Maybe that’s why I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”

  “Makes sense.”

  They had paused in front of the Cab, one of Violet’s favorite buildings. It was composed of a cluster of giant white pipes of varying heights that were punctured by small octagonal windows. The pipes jutted up so high that each time she leaned her head back to see just how tall they actually were, she got a neck-ache.

  “Cab” stood for Central Administration Building. Like a lot of acronyms, though, it had long ago broken free of the dry dock of its original meaning and now was known exclusively by its shorthand initials. It was the Cab. Nobody called it the “Central Administration Building” anymore. If somebody did, other people would stare, wondering what they were talking about.

  On the walk here, Violet and Danny had discussed everything from the novel she had taken from her father’s bookshelf and started reading—it was about five centuries old and the title was the main guy’s name, David Copperfield, and it was okay, she said, but way too long—to Danny’s description of the new fitness regulations Callahan had put in place a few weeks ago. The chief thought her officers were getting fat and sloppy, he explained. The Intercept was doing their work for them. They were slacking off. “But it’s not really like that,” he added. “I mean, we still have to go and secure the scene, you know? Make sure the perp’s in cuffs and the victims are safe. It’s not like we can just sit in front of a screen all day.” A sheepish smile. “No offense to you guys in Protocol Hall.”