by Fonda Lee
“We don’t like disturbances,” said the one with the rifle.
“I’m not here to cause trouble.” Donovan faced them, arms slightly spread in a nonthreatening posture. Stay down, he ordered his own exocel. Stay the hell down. His nodes prickled from the effort of restraint. Were these guys from Sapience? True Sapience? Neighborhood militia? The distinctions were blurry and overlapping these days. Donovan supposed it didn’t really matter, since any one of those groups would likely not hesitate to inflict serious bodily harm upon him.
“Not here to cause trouble?” The rifle holder was lanky, with a stubbled face and a black beanie on his pill-shaped head. “You are trouble. Take off your gloves, boy. No sudden moves or they’ll be your last ones.”
Slowly, Donovan reached his open left hand over to his right and peeled off his gloves, dropping them to the ground. He turned his hands so the backs were visible. “Yeah, I’m a stripe. It’s not a good idea to shoot stripes. It puts you on lists that you don’t want to be on.”
“That used to be true,” said the barrel-chested man on the right, the one with the shotgun. “The rules are changing now and the way we see it, your sort isn’t faring so well. Where’re your pals? Stripes don’t travel alone.”
“They’re around,” Donovan said with feigned unconcern. He jerked his head back toward the locked building behind him. “Are you friends with the people in there? You look like you keep a close eye on the neighborhood.”
“I’m going to be a lot more generous than I need to be and give you ten seconds to get back on your fancy bike and clear out,” said the gangly leader.
“And that’s only because we’d rather save our ammo for the shrooms,” added the one with the pistol, an acne-pocked teenager younger than Donovan.
Donovan looked among the three men. “I came to talk to the people inside that office, and I’m not leaving until I get that chance. I’m not going to fight you, but I’m not leaving either. So take me to someone who’ll listen.”
It was not the response the trio wanted to hear. Donovan stood his ground, barely breathing as the man in the center walked forward, his squinty eyes narrowed to slits below the rim of his beanie.
“Get on your knees,” he ordered. “Keep your hands up.”
Slowly, Donovan knelt. He was suddenly aware of all the people watching. There were perhaps a dozen bystanders with their eyes on the scene, some wisely placing themselves behind cars or corners in case gunfire broke out, others pulling away children or peering from behind windows.
The men came closer, so close that Donovan wondered if he was cooperating with his own public execution. His exocel wasn’t going to endure triple bursts of gunfire at near point-blank range. Still, he kept it lowered, though his back trembled from the strain of doing so. There was a chance these men were affiliated with the Human Action Party, and that after roughing him up somewhat, they would drag him in front of Saul or one of their other superiors.
Donovan kept his eyes on the man in front of him. “Before you decide whether to kill me,” he said in as even a voice as he could manage, “there’s a data storage stick in my right-hand jacket pocket. If you let me take it out and—”
The teenager drew a knife and slashed it across Donovan’s cheek.
Donovan jerked in reflex, his exocel breaking free of his control; the blade scraped harmlessly across panotin. “Like I thought—an exo,” spat the leader. He slammed the butt of his rifle into Donovan’s face.
A white explosion of pain erupted in Donovan’s head. He clutched his face, momentarily blinded, and felt blood running from his nose into his mouth and down his chin. Bleeding was such an infrequent experience for exos that it triggered gut panic—his armor rose instantaneously and the sight of it encasing every inch of his exposed skin sent the three men into a fury.
“Stop that right now or you’re dead!” bellowed the man with the shotgun. All three weapons were inches from Donovan’s head. “I can’t,” he tried to say. The center man hit him with the rifle again, planted a boot in his chest, and kicked him backward. Donovan landed hard and found himself blinking upward dizzily, the barrel of the rifle pointed down into his face.
“Why did you come here?” snarled the gangly leader. “Your kind are in league with the shrooms. Why are there new ones arriving? Before I kill you, I want you to tell me why. Why now? Why the bombings? They’ve finally Hardened enough people that they can do away with the rest of us, is that it?”
Donovan could feel the hard shape of his electripulse pistol sandwiched between the pavement and the small of his back; all this time, he hadn’t made a single move for it and now it was pinned underneath him. He could try to roll to his feet and grab for it, but he would get shot. He supposed there was a chance he could kill all three men before his armor was fatally overwhelmed, but nothing would be solved by it. He’d end up dying from his injuries, though most likely not before other sapes arrived and lynched him.
With every shred of willpower he possessed, Donovan lay still and tried to breathe, to pull his armor back down, to speak calmly around his profusely bleeding nose. “I came here to explain,” he managed to gurgle. “The new shrooms who’ve arrived, the ones who bombed the cities—they’re enemies of the colonists. If they take over, they’ll kill us all—exos included. We’re not working with them, but maybe we can fight them.”
The man’s trigger finger flexed. “I don’t believe you.”
“I do.” The voice made Donovan unwisely jerk his head up. Anya stood framed in the flung-open doorway of the previously locked building behind them. In her haste, she balanced on the balls of her feet, one hand clutching the doorframe, a scowling older woman poised just behind her shoulder.
“Let him up, Carter,” Anya said. “And bring him inside.”
“You stupid stripe.” Anya gave him a handful of ice cubes wrapped in a thin towel. “I’m starting to think you really do have a death wish.”
“I can see why.” Donovan pressed the cold cloth to his face. The bleeding had stopped, and after a good yank, his nose was mostly straight again. His exocel had thickened up around his nose and eyes, so he appeared to be wearing a faint raccoon’s mask. He looked up from the metal folding chair he was sitting in and, despite everything, couldn’t help grinning at Anya. She was wearing cutoff shorts and a frayed yellow T-shirt, and she’d changed her hair color yet again—it was sandy blond now, roughly cropped past her chin. He was surprised and grateful to find that he was glad to see her again after all. The insanity of the past two months had dulled the memory of their awkward parting in the Round, and being in a Sapience hideout with his face bleeding seemed to put them back on more familiar ground.
“I’m serious,” Anya hissed, not smiling back. “A few nights ago, there were two bodies found in the park three blocks from here. A Hardened couple drowned in the pond and no one came forward to say they saw anything. It’s open season on your kind.”
“Well,” Donovan said, sobering at the thought, “you could’ve just let me in the door to begin with.” He looked over at Minh, the owner of the voice he’d heard through the intercom, a leathery-faced woman standing a short distance away with her arms crossed.
Minh glared at him. “These days you keep the doors locked and you don’t open them for anyone you don’t know. Survival 101. We look out for ourselves first. Marked people have been coming here, pounding on the door and asking for help, hoping we’ve got food and supplies and will keep them safe from True Sapience.” Minh snorted. “That’s what I call ironic.”
Ironic? Donovan thought it was horrifying. People with erze markings should always be able to depend on their erze. But the zhree were busy planning their hasty evacuation. Did they even know how many of their humans-in-erze had been locked out of the Round after the Rii attack?
Donovan looked around the large basement-level room. It was, indeed, filled with boxes of emergency supplies—dried and canned food, water, first aid gear, blankets, ammunition, canisters of propan
e. The Human Action Party’s roots in Sapience were never more abundantly clear. These headquarters weren’t so much a political office as a survivalist depot.
Donovan returned his attention to Anya. “So, what are you all doing in here?”
She glanced at the others in the room: a half dozen curious and wary faces including an elderly man, a little girl, and a grimy couple who looked as if they’d just arrived from spending a month in the wilderness, in addition to the three men—Carter, Myles, and Harrison—who’d given Donovan the welcome reception outside. “We’re waiting for word from Saul. When the bombings started, we went to our nearest SRPs. Secure Refuge Points,” she explained. “Here we’ve got supplies and secure communication with Sapience cells, and can send news out to the rest of the HAP membership.”
Carter was still staring at Donovan as if he might take him back outside and shoot him. “Word is that Saul’s been asked to meet privately with the Prime Liaison in a secret bunker somewhere. If he makes it back, he’ll tell us what’s what.”
“When he makes it back,” Anya insisted.
“What if they Harden him and control his brain?” asked the little girl, who was perhaps eight years old. “Then he’ll turn into one of the bad people and bomb us.”
Donovan couldn’t help staring askance at the little girl, who grabbed the elderly man’s hand and hid behind him, peering at Donovan with wide, fearful eyes. Anya said, “Who told you that nonsense, Chloe?”
The elderly man raised a bony finger indignantly. “Now, you don’t know what is and isn’t true. A lot of people are saying that—”
“A lot of people believe whatever crazy thing they hear first, Julian.” Anya pointed at Donovan. “Look, he’s an exo. Let’s ask him. Can you transform into a shroom?”
“No,” Donovan said.
“Did the shrooms activate a computer chip in people’s brains that made sleeper agents in the government set off bombs against the cities?”
Donovan shook his head. “That doesn’t even make sense …”
“Have the shrooms been waiting for a hundred years to harvest our bodies for food?”
“The zhree don’t even eat meat.” Donovan could no longer keep the contemptuous incredulity out of his voice. He knew that Sapience spread wild disinformation about the enemy, but it was still astounding to meet people who believed such things and were using it to interpret the current chaos. What sort of wild conspiracy theories and rumors had taken root since the Rii attack?
Donovan stood up and walked slowly toward the little girl, stopping and crouching down before he got too close, so as not to frighten her. Carter and his friends put their hands on their weapons in warning, but Donovan ignored them. “Chloe,” he said gently, “I’ve been Hardened, and I promise I’m telling you the truth: You can’t Harden a grown-up. You can’t even Harden a big kid, like you. Your friend Saul is safe, and so are you. And even Hardened people don’t turn into bad guys. No one controls our brains.” Well, not in the way you’re thinking, at least.
The girl stared at Donovan, mouth slightly agape in a nervous but tentatively relieved expression. She clung tighter to the gnarled hand in her grip and looked up at the old man, hoping for his confirmation.
“As if he would tell us the truth,” sniffed Julian.
Donovan raised his eyes and stood up. “I risked my life to come here and tell you the truth. We’re all hiding in a basement together right now. I’ve no reason to lie to you.”
Julian’s flabby lips came together tightly around his teeth as he averted his eyes, pulling Chloe closer to him. Donovan turned around to face the rest of the people in the room. He removed the data storage stick from his pocket and handed it to Carter, who accepted it cautiously, as if it might be a live grenade. “That’s raw SecPac security camera footage from inside the Round,” Donovan said. “That’s what we’re up against.”
Minh found a screen to play the files. The sapes gathered around to watch. The concentrated silence that followed was broken only by the occasional gasp or murmur.
“Those shrooms,” Myles muttered, “they’re killing each other.”
“Those huge ones are Rii Hunters,” said Donovan.
“The Rii are real?” muttered Harrison. “They’re not a myth?”
“All the crazy things you sapes believe in, and you think the Rii are a myth.” Donovan would’ve laughed out loud if the images on the screen were any less terrible a reminder of what he and his erze mates had been through. “I’ve seen Hunters up close—closer than I’m standing to you right now. I’ve seen them kill my friends. At the same time as they bombed the cities, they attacked five of the Rounds on Earth. They’re occupying the Towers of Round Three now. The zhree you know, the Mur colonists—they tried to fight at first, but they’ve been ordered by their homeworld to retreat from Earth and hand the planet over to the Rii.”
Anya looked up from the screen and met his gaze. Wariness stretched between them, held rigid in the presence of all these other people, but in her straight expression he saw that she believed him. That was all he could ask for right now. Anya had been to the Towers, had learned that not all zhree were the same, and aliens that, to her, looked nearly identical might have differing motives. Donovan pointed to the Hunter on the screen. “Soon Earth will belong to these monsters. And if you have no lost love for the shrooms you’re already familiar with, just know that these new ones don’t Harden people and they don’t colonize planets. They destroy them.”
There was a collective silence. Feet shifted as uncertain glances were exchanged. “How can we be sure this is real? That you’re telling the truth?” Carter still sounded suspicious and accusing, but he replayed the clips again, his eyes fixed on the screen.
“We can’t be sure,” argued Julian.
“No, you can’t,” Donovan said. “You’re inclined to distrust me and anyone with armor and markings. But my mom was a sape. She gave her life for the cause. I never lied to her, and I never lied to Saul. We’re at the start of a new War Era, so you could make the argument that everyone left on Earth is part of the cause now.” He pulled the data stick from the screen and held it back up to Carter. “Show this to Saul and tell him it’s from me. Let him decide whether to believe it or not.”
Carter eyed Donovan for a long moment. Then he took the device, firmly this time, and closed his hand around it in a fist. “God help us all if you’re right,” he said grudgingly. “Welcome to the cause, zebrahands.”
Minh and the grungy-looking couple, Sam and Tara, made a large pot of bean soup and corn bread that served as dinner for everyone who wished to stay. After quietly eating their meals, Carter, Myles, and Harrison left. Anya explained that they were one of a few Sapience-trained militia teams that patrolled the Buildertown district, distributing emergency supplies, discouraging looting and violence, and maintaining some semblance of order.
Donovan mulled this over as he helped clear away disposable bowls and spoons from the main floor conference room table that now doubled as a cook station and dinner line. The idea of openly armed gangs of Sapience members walking around the neighborhoods of the Ring Belt made him deeply uncomfortable. It was SecPac’s role (and to a lesser extent that of the civilian police) to maintain order and security. Things were truly out of hand if people were relying on terrorists to keep the peace in the streets. But SecPac was overwhelmed. It couldn’t be everywhere at once, not with so many exos dead, injured, or confined to the Round, and those in the Ring Belt dealing with major crises and prioritizing protection of the government and the erze-marked.
Tonight, however, the three men would be doing something other than patrolling. Anya had copied the video files for safekeeping, and Carter had taken the data stick with him. “We’ll take this where it needs to go,” he said. Donovan suspected that by the end of the night, Sapience cells across the country would be able to access and view the footage, in the same way they had once been able to read Max Russell’s latest propaganda or watch Kevin Warde tor
ture exos to death on camera.
All the furniture upstairs was cleared to the sides of the room so everyone had a place to sleep. Donovan’s instinct was to join in and help with the unrolling of mats and the distribution of blankets, but he was well aware that everyone except Anya was visibly uncomfortable around him. No one spoke to him or met his eyes, except for the girl, Chloe, who, like most kids, was curious about armor and could be drawn into watching Donovan show off rock-paper-scissors with his exocel. Julian took the girl by the arm and pulled her away, squinting at Donovan with hostility.
Two more people showed up later in the evening, a pair of travel-worn women who apparently knew whatever Sapience password or signs were required to gain entry because they were admitted by Minh without trouble. They were initially horrified by Donovan’s presence, but Anya calmed them down, gave them some leftover soup and bread, and showed them to two mats on the floor where they would sleep. After that, Donovan sat off to the side, observing the goings-on quietly and staying out of the way. As his eyes followed Anya around the room, he felt a growing sense of melancholy—a sort of odd pride mingled with sadness.
“You can stay as long as you need, but no longer than you need,” Anya said to the two women. “If you’re heading west to join one of the armies, I can give you a list of the other SRPs along the way.” She bit her bottom lip, considering what else she might have neglected to mention. “I think that’s it. We’ve got network access and hot water, but keep your use of either of them down to ten minutes.” The two women thanked her and dropped their bags before stumbling off to wash up and collapse on their mats.
Donovan realized he was finally seeing Anya clearly for what she had become: a young lieutenant of the cause. Their one evening together in the Round had been spent on his turf and his terms, not hers, and he’d been so stunned and excited to reunite with her that he hadn’t really noticed that she’d changed in more ways than the color of her hair. Now he saw that she spoke and held herself more confidently, that people who were older than her seemed to look to her and listen to what she had to say. She’d survived for more than a year as a terrorist operative, learning from the best, first as an apprentice to Kevin and then to Saul. By Sapience standards, she was a veteran.