“You’re insane.” Even though I’m stating the obvious, the Defier beside me hits my jaw with the butt of his beamer. He’s sick and it’s a weak blow, but it hurts nonetheless. I run my tongue around my teeth. All there.
“I have vision and resolve,” Idris says. “If that looks like insanity, then so be it. I’m in good company—Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Newton, Galileo, Premier Iceneder—”
“Who formed the government you’re trying to obliterate,” Wyck puts in.
“It was necessary for its time,” Idris says, “but the Prags’ time is past.” Suddenly losing patience, he jerks his chin. “Upstairs.”
My guard jerks on my arm. Before I can take more than a step, a huge whoompf sounds and the ground rumbles. We look around and I can see Idris and his followers are as confused as I am. Another whoompf, closer this time, and the walls and ceiling shudder, sifting debris onto us.
I realize what’s happening just as Fiere yells, “We’re under attack!”
I don’t know what kind of weapon the IPF is using, but the third hit slams half of us to the ground. I take advantage of the confusion to grab Wyck’s arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
He shakes me off. “We can’t let them take back the dome. I’ve got to stay and fight. Idris might be off his rocker, but the Defiance . . . we’re fighting for the right cause, for freedom and choice. You go. Take Fiere. Go to the High Command. Atlanta, 4143 Wisteria Way. You’ll have to wing it from there. Code phrase was ‘Now is the winter of our discontent.’ It won’t be that anymore, but it might keep them from killing you on sight. Go!”
I’m torn. Fiere has taken down the guard holding onto her and appropriated his beamer. Idris, Rhedyn, Faruq, and several more Defiers are charging for the stairs, apparently not trusting the elevator. Wyck is on their heels. I start toward Fiere when another bomb—I assume it’s a bomb of some kind—lands. The lights go out and a heavy twilight settles on the cavernous room. Metal shelves wrench and twist with a noise that feels like agony, and a cascade of sparks fractures the darkness.
“Oh, my God,” a woman’s voice says, half-prayer, half-exclamation.
The world explodes.
I don’t know what blows up first, but the armory becomes a hell of detonating mines and grenades, spears of metal slicing every which-way, flames and screams. I drop flat on the floor. “Fiere!” I scream as loudly as I can. “Wyck!” The cacophony eats my words.
No answer. I don’t know where Fiere or Wyck is, don’t know if they made it out, or if they’re trapped down here with me. I push them out of my mind. I have to save myself. I slither along the rough concrete, pulling myself forward with my palms. I’m disoriented in the dark, unsure if I’m headed toward the stairs or deeper into the room. The din beats at me. I need to get my bearings. Something whizzes over my head, close enough to riffle my hair, and impacts, showering concrete fragments over me. I briefly cover my head with my hands, then start toward the impact. It has to be a wall. I can follow the wall to a door.
Keeping my arm a foot off the floor, I stretch it out and hit something. Concrete. A wall. I’m as relieved as if I’ve found a signpost in a maze. Keeping my hand against the wall, I stay low and debate following it to my left or right. Taking into account where I was when the attack started, and the direction I think I’ve moved since then, I begin creeping to the left, right hand against the wall, toward what I hope is the stairs. From out of nowhere, I think of Dr. Ronan and hope he got away from the Kube without being intercepted by the IPF soldiers who must have been in place since sunrise, at least.
The hand that has been sliding along the wall suddenly touches air. I feel like my lifeline’s been snatched away. Fighting panic, I bring my hand back until it’s touching wall again. Then, I slide it slowly forward. My fingers encounter gouges and crumbled concrete, not the smooth jamb of a door. Hugging the wall, I stick my arm into the crevasse as far as it will go and feel nothing. Damn. I inch forward, needing to get past the gap and find the wall on the other side. I nudge up against something warm. I shrink back instinctively, but realize what it must be. A body—living or dead.
I pat with both my hands, saying, “Are you okay?” It’s so loud, I can’t hear my own voice. There’s no answer, but my questing hands tangle with fingers. They’re clammy and too cool. I follow them upward, past the wrist and elbow to the shoulder. Sliding my hand up the shoulder’s slope, I encounter stickiness. Blood. Too much blood. I jerk my hand back. He—she—whoever it is is dead. I have to clamber over the cooling body to stay close to the wall and I do so, every inch of me cringing away from the tepid flesh beneath me. Two feet beyond the body, my hand finds the wall again.
The explosions are fewer now, most of the weapons that were going to ignite having done so, and I risk rising to my hands and knees to go faster. The relative quiet is a physical relief. Flames gutter in the room’s center, animating hulking shadows that confuse me further. I’m grateful for the cold concrete scraping my knees, knowing it is helping keep the fire contained. I no longer hear shrieks or voices and wonder if I’m the only one left down here. The only one alive, at any rate. Another blast rattles the building and a portion of the wall on the far side caves in with a sound like the world breaking open, raining concrete and mortar onto whatever’s below. A second later the dust cloud hits me and I choke and cough.
I need to move even faster—the next blast could make this room my tomb. Coughing, eyes watering, I push to my feet and walk as fast as I can, hand glued to the wall, tripping over twisted shelving, weapons, chunks of concrete, and who knows what else. Something slices into my left calf but I can’t take time to look at it even though I feel the blood oozing over my ankle and it burns like a thousand bee stings. It feels like I’ve traveled miles by the time a different feeling in the air alerts me. My hand slides across a door jamb. The stairwell. I pause a moment in thankfulness, before stumbling through the doorway.
A munition explodes behind me, lighting the stairs until I turn. Once past the first landing, it’s pitch dark. I climb by instinct, tripping once on another body. As I near the main level, the bzzt of beamers and crr-ack of bullets from older weapons blends with yelling and a high-pitched scream that goes on for long seconds before suddenly cutting off. I think I hear Idris yelling at someone to “circle around behind.” It’s less dark here with moonlight sifting through the atrium glass. No, the glass is on the floor, a glittering collection of shards glinting in the moonlight that streams through the yawning hole. Muzzle flashes and beams briefly illuminate pockets of the scene, as well. I get an impression of movement to my left, and a lurching shadow resolves into a Defier and an IPF soldier locked together in hand-to-hand combat. I can’t tell which is which.
I want to pitch in, but I’ve got a mission. Nothing is more important than getting to the High Command before Idris’s bombs go off. Nothing. Hunkered low, I leave the relative safety of the stairwell and run as fast as I can, boots crunching and slipping on the inch-deep layer of glass beneath my feet. I slam into the far wall and hug it until I reach a back hallway that leads to the kitchen. There’s an exit from the kitchen. Breathing heavily, I peer around the kitchen door. The room appears to be empty. The fighting is all behind me. I slip into the kitchen, and the stainless steel and tiled space feels like a refuge.
The adrenaline that got me out of the armory is leaching out of me and I’m suddenly conscious of great weariness pressing down on me. It’s like someone cranked gravity up by fifty percent and my limbs are weighted. My injuries come into greater focus; a sledge hammer is slamming into my left temple, my chest aches every time I take a breath, and the cut on my calf is a silver line of pain licking down to my ankle. It’s still bleeding. The blood loss is draining my energy. I need to bind it. I know my way around the kitchen, and I yank a towel from a stove door handle. Propping my foot on the counter, I pull up my jumpsuit leg and wrap the towel around the cut, tying it firmly in front. I undoubtedly need stitches, but this will have
to do for now.
I make my way toward the rear exit, but then backtrack for food, a knife, more towels, and matches. I’m about to make my way cross-country again; I’d be foolish not to take five minutes to grab what supplies are available. I’m stuffing the last vegeprote bar that will fit into my pockets when I sense movement near the door I came in. I immediately drop to my haunches, half-hidden behind a counter. I squint, trying to make out who it is. Friend or foe? The newcomer moves almost silently; only the faint tinkle as he grazes the serving utensils hanging from hooks near the stove gives away his location.
I’m debating whether or not I’m better off staying still (although I’m too out in the open to qualify as “hidden”), trying to sneak away, or attacking, when the figure whispers, “Everly?”
I can’t tell who the whisper belongs to, or even whether it’s from a man or woman, but the IPF attackers wouldn’t know my name, and Idris and his cohorts are too busy defending the compound to track me down, so I rise slowly. A slim figure with short dark hair has her back to me. Relief slides through me like sunlight.
Despite the still dire circumstances, I can’t help grinning. “Fiere.”
She whips around. “You are hard to catch up with,” she says in a low voice, crossing the room, and clasping my shoulders tightly. “I’m lucky a flare exploded just as you found the stairs, or I wouldn’t have known which way you went.”
“Wyck?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Unknown.”
I lick my lips. “I’m going to the High Command.”
“I figured. Let’s get out of here.”
I am incredibly grateful not to be embarking on the trip by myself. “Grab some food and a knife,” I say, helping her dig vegeprote bars out of the bin. She’s got a beamer, but it won’t hurt to have an extra knife on hand.
When her pockets are stuffed, we slip out the door and head away from the sounds of combat. From the stars, I can tell we’re moving north; the loudest fighting is to the south and west. We hurry toward the fence, using sheds and outbuildings as cover. Fiere takes the lead—-she’s better at this stuff than I am. I see no one. A whiff of excrement tells me we’re near the underground tank which treats the Kube’s sewage and that it’s been breached.
“Foul,” Fiere says with a disgusted sound.
Breathing shallowly through my mouth, I jog past it at Fiere’s side, but halt when I spy a shape I recognize. It’s the solar-powered cart the sanitation crew uses to haul the chemicals that go into the sewage treatment facility from the storage shed to the portal. Transportation!
I tug at her sleeve, and point. We run to the cart and unhitch the trailer. “What the hell is TPC Sawgrass?” Fiere mutters, reading the faded lettering on the cart’s side.
I ignore her, getting in behind the steering wheel. “Please start, please start, please start,” I say under my breath. My finger stabs the ignition button. The cart purrs to life. Fiere jumps in and I point it toward the gate and depress the accelerator. It trundles forward. It’s slower than an ACV, but faster than we can go on foot. The gate has been blasted open, so exiting is not a problem. I stop outside the gate, knowing I’ve got a minefield to navigate.
“I think I can remember the mine map,” Fiere says, a trace of doubt in her voice.
It doesn’t matter. We’re dead if we stay here and only maybe-dead if we go on.
Then I make out the craters and bodies strewn across the turf in front of me, and realize the mines have been triggered. Most of them anyway. Enough, I hope. Fiere sees what I’ve seen and chops her hand forward.
Steering the cart as close as I can to the craters, I move from one to another like I’m doing a connect-the-dots drawing. Every muscle is tense; I’m half-expecting to be blown up with every foot we travel. Finally, we reach the far side of the mine field and the concealment of a gentle rise with a belt of kudzu-draped dead trees. I risk a look back. Flames gout from the tower where my living quarters were when I lived here. Moonlight slicks the dome; it looks intact so far. IPF tracked vehicles and ACVs chug across the courtyard. One of them explodes, sending a ball of fire a hundred feet into the air. The smell of gasoline and charred flesh drifts to me. Figures run to and fro. A standoff weapon whoompfs from farther away than I can see, and I realize it’s a percussion weapon when a section of the atrium wall crumbles even though I didn’t see a projectile of any kind. I’m watching my childhood, the home of all my memories, disintegrate.
The destruction and killing make grief and anger swell in me, like magma forced to the surface by the earth’s molten core. Searing. Suddenly, I’m howling, shrieking wordlessly, scraping my throat raw with sound. Making such a racket is beyond foolish, but I can’t help it.
Fiere leans practically into my lap and slaps me. It’s an open handed blow across my cheek and it shuts me up. I can’t afford this. Can’t afford to lose it. Saben needs me. Thinking about Saben brings clarity. Fiere’s hand is poised, ready to slap me again. I nod to thank her and let her know I’m okay, draw in a long, deep breath, and propel the cart deeper into the woods.
PART TWO
Chapter Fourteen
It’s not until we’re within spitting distance of Atlanta the next night that Fiere broaches the topic that’s been simmering between us since we abandoned the cart as not agile enough, trudged miles through dead woods and swamp, and fetched up outside a train depot nearly twenty-four hours after we left the compound. It was dusk. A clump of six or eight people waited to board the express train at a manufacturing plant where it was offloading raw materials. I wished Halla and Wyck and I had known more about the trains when we ran away, and how boarding at sidings where the trains take on supplies or load cargo is so much easier than trying to slip past guards at a major depot like in Jacksonville. How different our lives might have been if Wyck hadn’t had to kill the IPF soldier in the swamp, and we hadn’t been captured by the bounty hunters who wanted to sell Halla’s baby.
It took Fiere fewer than ten minutes to lure the depot guard outside with a promise of sex in exchange for travel documents. I’d offered, but it was clear by the way his eyes tracked her from the moment we came in that he found her more attractive. A short, fiftyish man with thin hair and a potbelly, he followed Fiere into a small maintenance shack that reeked of creosote. She waited until his uniform pants were around his ankles before giving the pre-arranged signal. I swooped in and held the beamer on him while Fiere explained what we wanted. He resisted giving us train cards at first, but gave in when Fiere held her knife to his private parts. He handed us two of the ticket cards from a slim box hooked to his belt and we stamped them with the mag-coder he said was in his trouser pocket. We trussed him up and gagged him and left him in the shack.
“He’ll sound the alarm,” I said as we raced to board the train before it departed. All the other passengers were already on board.
“This train doesn’t stop until Atlanta, and we’re not going to be on it when it gets to the station,” she said. She lunged for a railing on the passenger cabin as the train chugged away, and reached down a hand to pull me up. Hopefully, the near darkness kept anyone from observing our unorthodox boarding method. Holding our ticket cards against the reader opened the door and we were inside, breathless but triumphant.
Jumping off the train before it reached Atlanta proper had been no picnic, but we waited until it slowed for a curve before leaping into the darkness. I tucked and rolled like I did to take a fall during training, but hitting the ground still whacked the air out of me. I rolled down a slight incline and come to rest against a former telephone pole, lopped off three-quarters of the way up by storms or rot. My legs cracked against the pole and the pain in my calf crunched down on every nerve ending in my body. I lay still for a long minute, wondering if I’d ever breathe again. The full moon glowed above the pole, like a lollipop on a stick from my perspective beneath it. When the waves of pain subsided a bit, I found Fiere massaging an ankle fifty yards away. A curious child’s face, backli
t by the train’s lights, pressed to a window in the last car as it drew away from us. I waved, not sure if he’d see me in the dark, but he beamed and waved back. I hoped he wouldn’t mention our odd departure from the train to anyone. In case he did, though, we hobbled away as soon as we got our breath back, losing ourselves in a warren of dilapidated and collapsing warehouses that lined the railroad tracks.
Now, sitting on a splintered wood floor in a long, narrow building that used to store spices if the smell is anything to go by, Fiere asks me the question. “Is it true?”
I know immediately what she means, but I put off answering long enough to swallow the last bite of the vegeprote bar which is our dinner, and take a swallow of water. She has rolled up the leg of my blood-soaked jumpsuit and is poking at the inflamed and bleeding cut on my calf. She doesn’t look up, so I can’t read her face.
“Yes.” The word ends with a hiss as she draws the edges of the wound together.
“I need to seal this up,” she says. “Surgical sealant would work better, but I’m fresh out. It’s going to hurt.”
I nod, but she doesn’t see me. She has opened the front of her jumpsuit and is busy stripping some of the sealant off the closure with a knife. “I’ve got to heat it.” She glances at me, assessing my fortitude, I imagine. “Explain.”
Watching her light a small fire using the kitchen matches and scraps of paper she collects from corners of the large room and wood splinters, I tell her about discovering that Minister Emilia Alden was my mother and my conversation with her. “I came back to the Chattanooga Belle knowing Alexander was my father and Idris was my brother,” I say as Fiere blows on the tiny campfire to fan the flames. “But I didn’t know how—or if—to tell them or anyone.”
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