by K A Riley
“We’ll be fine,” Kella assures me. “War’s men have a lot to do, but Mayla and the Unkindness are recruiting help from the local security agencies who’ve come over to our side.”
Granden taps the comm-link on his ear and gives an all-clear confirmation before turning his attention back to us. Frowning, he steeples his fingers under his chin. “I still can’t believe how many of them either deserted or pushed back against us after we took down Krug.”
Wisp scrunches the sleeves of her green military jacket up to her elbows. “I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. Krug didn’t invent fear or ignorance. Those have been around forever.”
“But he did invent an enemy,” Brohn reminds her. “The Eastern Order.”
“And he invented the Hypnagogics,” Rain adds. “At least his scientists did.”
“Those aren’t Hypnagogics out there,” Granden says through a slow, even drawl. “Those are Typics, just regular people who are scared about the future and terrified that freedom and equality for everyone represents a threat to their chance at supremacy.”
“Which it does,” Rain hisses through a stern grimace.
Granden is both a mediator and a peacemaker, and I can tell from the acid in Rain’s voice that she doesn’t have a lot of patience for either right now.
Brohn’s jaw clenches, but he lets his fists uncoil as his eyes sweep around the table. “Listen. Krug may not have caused fear. But he fanned its flames. And he invented us. The Emergents. At the very least, he discovered us and tried to use us. We didn’t ask to be what we are. And we sure didn’t ask to be guinea pigs in some wingnut’s attempt to control human evolution. But as long as we’re here and as long as we are what we are, we’re going to need to keep fighting.”
“Whether there’s an official war or not,” Kella agrees, with a firm nod.
Granden seems to consider this for a second, and he opens his mouth but doesn’t actually respond.
“I guess wars don’t end just because one side won,” I say almost absently under my breath and to no one in particular.
Cardyn glances at me and then over at the holo-displays at the station Granden and Wisp were just monitoring. “If this is ‘victory,’ I’m happy to leave it behind. I’d say we’ve lost enough for one lifetime.”
He pushes himself up and stomps over to the wall where he leans in rigid defiance, his hands plunged into his pockets, his eyes compressed into angry slits.
Brohn, Rain, Cardyn, and I are supposed to leave in a few hours, deployed overseas to London, England on a mission we didn’t ask for and aren’t looking forward to, especially after all we’ve been through to get to the finish line. But we know the mission is important to Granden, which means it’s important to everyone looking to crawl out from under the long shadow of Krug’s decades of oppression.
I know Cardyn is upset about this latest bout of terrorism. We all are. But that’s not where his churning darkness is coming from. And it’s not the source of Brohn’s frustration, Rain’s steely determination, or my anxiety.
Honestly, it all comes down to Manthy, our shy, enigmatic friend, who also happened to be a technopath with the ability to synch her mind to various forms of digital technology left in the wasteland our nation had become.
She died getting us to where we are.
Losing anyone is painful.
Except for Granden, the rest of us in this room are all orphans. We stayed alive in the blasted-out remnants of the Valta, the small mountain town we once called home, until the Recruiters came to take us away on the day we turned seventeen. After we escaped from the Processor, we went on the run and eventually made our way back to the Valta where we saw the ashes and the charred, skeletal remains of the bodies of everyone we left behind.
Cardyn’s right. We’ve had a first-hand look at loss.
But losing Manthy…it’s like we’ve all lost the most important part of ourselves.
I haven’t told the others yet, but that’s why, despite our specific mission to track down Emergents in Europe, I’m going there with a secret, very different mission in mind.
I’m going over there to find a way to bring Manthy back.
3
Plane
The next day, on our way out of the Capitol Building, we pass by one of the clean-up crews. Brohn gives them a grateful nod and tells them we appreciate their efforts.
The team—mostly civilians along with a few of the younger Insubordinates—mumble a shy chorus of “Thanks yous,” staring at us as we pass but then averting their eyes.
It’s become kind of the standard reaction.
Rain’s theory, after all that’s happened in the past two weeks, is that the people around here are starting to come to terms with the reality of Emergents. But they still don’t know if we’re saviors, heroes, ghosts, living myths, or manufactured evolutionary weapons, who may one day decide to turn our abilities against them in our own quest for power.
“It’s just hero-worship,” I assure her as we plod down the marble steps with Granden and Kella up ahead and Render gliding and banking over a long line of nearby treetops.
“Heroes shouldn’t be worshipped,” Rain responds flatly. Then adds, after a pause, “Maybe emulated.”
“I guess,” I mumble back, still trying to get my head around the idea of not knowing if I’m perceived as the best or the worst thing in the world.
Honestly, I feel somewhere in between. But I know I don’t have any control over how I’m viewed by others. Unfortunately, it’s mostly been other people who’ve wound up holding the power to define us. It’s been true for me and my Conspiracy, and it’s probably true for most people in the world.
Until yesterday’s attack by the Devoteds, it was a power I thought for sure we were about to take back. Now, I’m not so sure.
Having a quick glance at Brohn, Cardyn, Rain, and Kella, I hope we keep getting better at defining ourselves for ourselves.
Passing two more clean-up crews, Granden takes us down the street, away from the Capitol Building, along one of the gray-treaded moving sidewalks, and over to the Old Post Office Building.
From there, he takes us on a glass elevator to the top of the ten-story atrium. After that, it’s a trudging hike up the long set of carpeted stairs through the clock tower leading to the roof. At the top of the stairs, Granden holds the door open, and we step into the glass-walled Control Station before passing through the next door and out into the breezy, open air.
It’s pretty much the last place any of us wants to be. It was right here, not more than fifty feet from the heli-barge we’re about to board, that Manthy was shot dead by President Krug.
Our heads down, the seven of us start piling onto the floating, flat-bottomed aircraft.
Swooping out of the sky, Render alights on my outstretched arm and accompanies me to my seat. He leans in and croaks his appreciation as I give the back of his head a quick tickle-scratch.
With a breathy exhalation, the mag-locks release on the heli-barge, and it glides out over the city toward the airfield and to the military cargo plane Granden assures us, over the lulling hum of the barge’s magnetic boosters, will take us on our next mission.
I notice he didn’t add, “safely.”
Thankfully, the trip from the rooftop to the airfield is only about fifteen minutes. And it’s a good thing, too. That’s fifteen minutes of tense silence I hope I never experience again.
Brohn and I have had a minor telepathic connection in the past. I’ve been wanting and waiting for it to return, but it seems to have a mind of its own. Either way, none of us needs mental telepathy to know we’re all fixated on that spot on the rooftop back there where we lost our best friend.
I try to keep my thoughts focused on what’s coming up, but it’s hard. Even in death, Manthy has a powerful gravitational pull, and I can’t seem to stop thinking about her.
It’s like I can hear some airy remnant of her voice or feel the feathery residue of her soul lurking around in the recesses of
my mind.
Render makes a clucking sound from the back of his throat. That usually means he agrees with me about something, although right now, I’m not sure what.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to figure it out.
Gliding to a sloping crawl, the heli-barge sets down at a desolate airfield, which looks more like the brutal aftermath of a bar fight between a junkyard and a graveyard.
The Main Dispatch Center we land outside of is a cube of grime-crusted glass, broken brick, and exposed shafts of rusted steel with a conning tower and a mesh sensor array rising up next to it.
The airfield, itself, is a mess of wingless airplane hulls and scattered gas-jeeps, half of them tipped on their sides and barely visible among the grove of thorny weeds and brambles that have sprung up from the cracked pavement across the blistered tarmac.
“I can’t believe Krug would use this as his airport,” Cardyn says, his nose pinched between his thumb and forefinger, his face contorted into an exaggerated grimace of disgust.
“He didn’t,” Granden explains, pointing off into the distance. “His airport is west of here. It’s still under presidential security restrictions. There’s nothing in the rule book that says winning a war means smooth sailing from that moment on.”
“You still can’t get into it?” I ask.
“No. It’ll take a few more weeks before we can override the hundreds of digital and mechanical lock-out systems he had installed.”
“He sounds paranoid.”
“A key trait in every dictator,” Brohn points out.
“And if they weren’t paranoid before they got power,” Kella agrees, “they definitely get that way from trying to keep it.”
Rain mutters her own agreement followed by a deep sigh. “I guess we better get going. Granden?”
Granden strides forward over the brownish-gray vines and into the waves of heat undulating above the ground. The air is dry and stagnant. The weeds crunch like eggshells under our boots as we walk.
“Your pilots are already on board,” Wisp tells us. “Rebekah Bezra, Lieutenant Junior Grade and Lieutenant Commander Carl Fredericks.”
Cardyn leans in next to Kella, his mouth right next to her ear. “Please tell me they’re the best pilots we have.”
“They are.”
“Great!”
“Of course, they’re also the only pilots we have.”
“Not so great.”
I smile to myself. It’s nice to see Cardyn returning to his old goofy self. Even if just a little. I get why he’s been so moody lately. But seeing him like that has been making me feel like Manthy wasn’t the only we lost that day.
Cardyn catches me looking at him and asks what I’m smiling about. I reach over to give his hand a squeeze. “I’ve just missed you is all.”
He tucks his chin into his chest and blushes but doesn’t get a chance to say anything as Wisp bolts between us.
Even though she’s the smallest of us, she jogs forward, quickly taking the lead with Render launching himself from my shoulder and soaring ahead to join her.
“Come on, slowpokes,” she calls back.
The bulky, leprous-looking plane she guides us to has seen better days. In fact, I’d say all of its days have been better.
Spackled over in patches of thick, gray dust, it sits on the buckled runway among the drifts of ash and burnt foliage like a rusted, camouflaged-colored, and very decayed beached whale.
We all huddle together in the relatively cool shade under the plane.
Introducing us to the rickety aircraft, Granden slaps his hand to the tarnished landing gear. “She’s a converted Boeing C-17 Globemaster Transport. One-hundred-seventy feet of med-evac and cargo-carrying power.”
He says it like we should be impressed, but I’m busy scanning the warped landing gear and trying to figure out how many minutes it’ll be before the whole plane collapses in on itself. And on us.
We’re supposed to leave on this clunker in twenty minutes, but I’m thinking there’s no way in the world I’m getting on it.
Cardyn echoes my reluctance out loud. “I’m pretty sure that rock over there has a better chance of flying than this thing does.”
“Or Kress,” Brohn teases, his fingers giving my elbow a little squeeze. “At least we know she can get off the ground.”
“Knock it off,” I blush. “I only kind of floated a couple of times. I can’t fly.”
“Yet,” Rain says, walking past me without waiting for my reply.
4
Send-off
In the shadow of the plane’s scaly, gun-metal gray, and bloated body, our group’s laughter over the absurd possibility of me actually flying is interrupted by a storm of heavy footsteps, accompanied by a sea of voices rolling in from behind us.
Out of instinct, we all whip around, ready to shift into full fight mode.
Fortunately, this time, it’s not necessary.
The crowd of beaming, familiar faces, led by War and Mayla, is all friendlies.
War, broad across as a barn door, comes to a grumbling stop right in front of me. He thrusts out a meaty hand, which I reach out to shake. My whole hand disappears in his.
“We came to see you off!” he beams. The rivulets of sweat meandering through the creases in his bald head give him the appearance of a glacial man-mountain who is slowly melting before our eyes.
The Survivalists, the Unkindness, the Insubordinates, and the few remaining Modifieds—our brothers and sisters and fellow veterans from the war—swarm past him like a burbling river around a boulder. They practically fall over each other, pitching forward to shake our hands, clap us on the back, wish us luck, and thank us for what we’re about to do.
Mayla eases Olivia forward in her mag-chair. Despite having lost most of her community of the Unkindness back in Chicago, Mayla manages to have a glow of positive energy around her. It’s an aura I swear I can almost see and can definitely feel.
“I’m sorry we can’t stay together longer,” she says, her eyes wet but with a broad, toothy smile spread across her face. Her hair is tied back in a complex, ribbon-filled braid that swings nearly down to her heels. “This is ended, but it’s not over. You and your Conspiracy still have lives to save and a world to set right.”
“No pressure!” I laugh as we lean in for a tight hug.
With the characteristic metallic buzz skittering through her voice, Olivia tells us from her mag-chair how much she’s going to miss us and how sure she is we’ll be successful in our mission. “There’s a magic about you,” she says, her voice whirring with static. “And I don’t mean as Emergents. The magic’s in your hearts. Empathy. That’s the superpower that will help you to succeed.”
From the tight circle he’s making over our heads, Render lets out a series of happy, guttural barks before gliding down and perching on the edge of the plane’s wing.
“Where’s Terk?” Rain stands on her tiptoes to peer out over the assembled crowd of our friends and fellow warriors.
“You don’t think he—?” Cardyn starts to ask, but Brohn cuts him off with a venomous glare.
“He’s fine,” Brohn growls. “Just because he’s a little late seeing us off doesn’t mean he’s…”
Now it’s Brohn who doesn’t know how to finish, but I know what we’re all thinking: Even though he’s our age, Terk doesn’t have long to live. We’ve spent the last two weeks chatting nervously around him, always wondering if each new day could be his last.
Thanks to Krug and the mind-bending, techno-genetic experiments his people put us through in the Processor when we were Seventeens, Terk was terribly maimed and now has one arm and a good chunk of the left side of his body replaced by a hodgepodge of pistons, camshafts, and exposed webs of micro-circuitry.
Basically, they turned him into a utility weapon and put him back together just to see how useful he could be to them and how long it would take for him to fall apart when he wasn’t.
“I’m a victim of planned obsolescence,�
�� he joked to us a few days ago, his voice faltering, eyes rheumy with exhaustion. “Built to fail.”
It was funny and true, but none of us laughed.
Being an Emergent gave him the raw physical strength to handle what they did to him, but there’s a big difference between being a cyber-enhanced Emergent and being indestructible.
Based on what Caldwell, lead caretaker for the Modifieds, told us before, Terk’s running on some seriously borrowed time.
In fact, it’s Caldwell—short, round, and red-faced—who now pushes his way through the crowd. He’s sweating and panting like he just finished back-to-back iron-man triathlons. I’m impressed he’s here at all. Me and Brohn and the rest of my Conspiracy—we’re used to intense physical exertion. But Caldwell has spent his adult life buried in cramped tech centers and subterranean labs, looking after Modifieds who aren’t able to look after themselves.
He’s dressed in poorly-fitting camo-fatigues, and I almost don’t recognize him without his signature white lab coat.
“Where’ve you been?” Brohn asks.
Caldwell holds his fingers up in a “V” shape. “Well, while you were all working to save millions of lives, I was working on saving two.”
“Two?”
“Kind of.”
Behind Caldwell, the murmuring crowd parts way again for the nearly seven-foot tall figure we’ve been so anxious to see.
“Terk!”
Rain beams and throws her arms around his waist.
“You’re half right,” Terk says, patting her back with his human hand while a cryptic smile plays on his lips and a self-satisfied glimmer sparkles in his eyes.
Caldwell takes his glasses off, puffs on the lenses, and starts wiping them on his wrinkled, military-issue t-shirt. “Remember how I told you Terk was re-built by the Deenays with limited life?”
“Of course,” Rain says. “But you said he only had a couple of weeks. Tops. And that was, um…two weeks ago.”