Escape (Alliance Book 1)

by Inna Hardison

  She'd never gotten to so much as climb a tree before, and now they were climbing over things all the time, branches ripping holes in her clothes and slashing her skin. And the bugs, the bloody bugs, that was the worst thing of all. There never were any bugs at the compound, save for an occasional caterpillar or a butterfly in the garden. But these bugs were different, a million different kinds of bugs with their different noises. And the itching from the ones that bit, as if they deliberately starved themselves until they got here, and the bugs were making up for lost time. She hated the bugs.

  Laurel didn't seem to mind any of it, not the bug bites and the occasional freezing rain that they didn't have any place to hide from, nor eating nothing but tasteless slave bars, the only thing they still had left. Or maybe she did mind, but she didn't talk to her about it or about much of anything lately. She seemed entirely unlike Laurel she'd grown up with, and she didn't know if she liked this new Laurel yet.

  They had at least a week-long walk to the closest city, one where nobody would know any of them, far enough from the compound, and from Waller. They needed to find a place to replenish their supplies at least, and the city, any city, seemed the only place that one could do that sort of thing in.

  But it wasn't just that she was always hungry, and bug-bitten, and tired that was getting to her. It was that she felt like a complete idiot. Her implanted knowledge had almost zero biology in it. She had no idea about these plants, or mushrooms or even bugs. She didn't even have names for them. Riley tried to help her, give her the names for things she didn't know, but she was still angry at him.

  She couldn't help being angry at him. And he let her be by walking with Ella, finding water with Ella, making fire with Ella. Even skinning that squirrel he shot with Ella. She couldn't eat it when they cooked it that night. Couldn't bring herself to do it. Not even after Laurel told her how good it tasted, and how it was already dead, and something about protein that she needed. She didn't care. She wasn't going to eat anything that she watched get shot and skinned like that.

  She caught herself in the face on one of the branches, and it tore a small gash in her cheek. She could feel a trickle of blood running down her face. She stopped and crouched against the trunk of a tree, wiping at the slash with water and putting HealX on it, when she saw a ridiculously long, ropy thing with patterns all over it, sliding across the ground towards her. It had a triangular face and two beady eyes, and it seemed dangerous. Then she remembered what it was, a serpent, from the old books in the library.

  This thing was definitely a serpent, only she couldn't remember what it could do to her. She held her breath, forgetting that she had the stun gun on her, and froze. And then it stopped moving, just like that, and just lay there. She saw Riley put away his stun gun as he ran to her, pulling her up and wrapping her in his arms, asking her something, rapid-fire, un-Riley-like, but she didn't know what he was asking. She just knew that it wasn't coming at her anymore, the serpent thing, and she felt safe for the first time since they ran.

  "It's a snake, Ams. That's what we call them anyway. They can kill you, this kind at least. If you see one like that again, please shoot it, or yell for help or something. They're poisonous, Ams, and there is nothing Ella has on her that could fix it." He was still holding her and still breathing hard. He was worried. Worried about her. Nobody but Laurel, and later, Drake, ever worried about her before. This, the worrying, it felt right. So she let him hold her like this for a while, until Laurel and Ella got there, looking at them, and at the serpent snake thing, and she could read the fear in their eyes, and she didn't feel so safe anymore.

  They made it as far as they were going to today, which wasn't as far as they wanted to, but this little clearing might be the last one they find until the sun sets, so she knew they had to stop. And it was a little bit her fault, because of the serpent and the time it cost them.

  She could smell the fire starting. She was getting used to this smell now. The bugs would move away from the smoke too, and she could take a nap on the grass by the burning branches and try not to think of what it would be like when they finally make it to the city.

  She'd never seen one, except for the pictures of the old ones in those books she used to flip through, but she couldn't imagine anything looking like that anymore. Buildings with pretty red roofs and windows that had paintings right on them. She didn't understand why someone would paint these intricate pictures on the windows, if windows were there to let in light and to see out of.

  And bridges, the few that she saw in the books looked like someone took the time to weave all the support cables in that way by hand, just to make them pretty, and she didn't know anyone who'd think of doing something like that.

  Nothing in the compound, except for the old library, struck her as beautiful, not even the lawn or the garden. It was all too flat, too symmetrical, as if whoever did it was in a hurry just to get it done. That was the thing about the old stuff, she thought. It didn't look like anybody did anything in a hurry. It was as if nobody worried about wasting time, as if they had more of it back then, enough time to paint on windows, and make pretty bridges.

  Riley crouched in front of her, looking at her face, reading her, "Hungry, Ams?" He's been calling her that ever since that night they left the compound. She never asked him if he had a nickname, but she didn't think he did.

  She shook her head, "Not hungry, not yet." But she was hungry. She just didn't want another one of those bars. She didn't think she could ever want one of those again.

  He seemed to understand, "We're making stew, Ams, and no, we didn't kill any squirrels today. But we did catch us a snake. You can eat them. They are not bad at all. Plus, it sort of tried to eat you earlier." He smiled a little at that. She could probably count the number of times she had seen him smile on one hand, and most of those were for-Ella smiles. She nodded then, to the snake stew, leaned back and closed her eyes.

  She couldn't get past what he had told her, about her memory being right. She always felt that it was. It seemed more real that all the other memories she had, the implant memories. This one was like her memory of all things Laurel, the ones she actually made in her own head by seeing, and hearing, and being. The other ones never felt like that to her. It was like the part of her that knew everything she knew wasn't really hers at all. She always felt a little uneasy when she remembered things just as she needed them, only she always knew that it wasn't really a memory, not a real one. It felt as if there was a whole other person someplace in there that didn't belong to her.

  And it bothered her more than a little that her implant didn't know anything about these woods, the bugs, the serpent snake. It's as if whoever put that thing together never expected her to walk through anything that wasn't completely walled-in, completely safe. Maybe that was it. Maybe they didn't. She wondered if Laurel ever felt like that about the things she knew and didn't know, but she didn't want to ask her. She didn't want Laurel to think about these things yet, if ever. Anything that referred to their life at the Compound seemed to make her sad lately, and she didn't want to do that to her.

  She knew why it was bothering her so much now, about the memory and things she knew and didn't know, but she couldn't really talk to him about it. It was too embarrassing, and he'd know that she cared about how he saw her. She couldn't even admit any of those things to herself, the coward that she was, she thought, sitting up. She had to ask him, had to make herself, if only so she'd stop driving herself insane.

  She found him by a small stream of water, washing his shirt in it. He wrung it out and flattened it on a rock to dry, and she watched him lean in and wash his face and his chest. The scars on his back were almost completely healed now, but she knew they'd always be there. That there was no fixing that. He didn't seem to mind it anymore when someone saw his back. It didn't scare him like it used to.

  "Can I ask you something?" She hoped it sounded flat. He walked over to her with a nod and sat down on a rock at her feet. She plopped down
next to him, "If I could find where that implant in me is, and we could find a way of taking it out, will all the things that I think I know just be gone, or are they already in me? Basically, am I an idiot without that thing in me?" She looked down, embarrassed.

  "I don't know, Ams. I don't know anything about how these things work... I don't think you would be an idiot without that thing, but I don't know what you might lose or what else might happen if we took it out. Maybe Ella knows something about them. I'll talk to her, okay?" He got up.

  No, it wasn't okay, none of this was okay. But she just nodded at him, hiding the not okay-ness of it by not looking at him. She couldn't really explain it to him after all. Everything he knew was his. How do you tell someone like him what it's like for all the stuff you know to not really be yours? What it feels like to never quite know if it's you doing the thinking or this thing in your head. To never feel like you have any questions for long enough to need to think about any of them, because they get answered before you can think, before you can ask. That's really the thing, the not having questions about anything, except for the things that the implant couldn't know about, Riley things, and Drake things, and Laurel things.

  "So when you said okay, it meant definitely not okay." He sat on the rock below her, looking at her, not smiling now, "Whatever it is, Ams, you really can tell me. I never thought about you as someone with an implant anyway, so I'm sorry if I don't have any answers. I just don't know what about it upsets you like this. But I wish you'd trust me enough to tell me..."

  And then she knew, knew what she felt like, and how to tell him, because her bloody implant had it in her all along, "I am a lab rat, Riley. I'm a bloody lab rat. An experiment. A drone. And even if I'm not exactly those things, I feel like I am. And I don't know how to be okay with that," she looked at him, to make sure he understood now.

  He was looking down, "I'm sorry, Ams. Sorry for being so stupid and not seeing this. I should have, but I... It's just... When I was growing up, we all knew that you had these implants. We didn't know what they put in them, we just knew that you had them, and that you didn't need to go to school and learn things the way we did. So my whole childhood I kind of thought of your kind as drones, we all did. But that morning you found me, and didn't shoot me, couldn't shoot me, and you asking me all those things after, the human things, it didn't add up. I knew you weren't a drone then, and that whatever or whoever you were I liked you, Ams, even back then. I never thought of your implant again, until now. But I know you are not a drone, and I know Laurel is not a drone. And all the dates, and numbers, and words that this thing gives you doesn't change any of it. It doesn't change you... It can't get to the places that make you you."

  She hoped he was right. Hoped that whatever these things were, they couldn't get to the places that made her her. But it was the other thing he said that was roaming around in her head now, waiting for her to make sense of it, needing her to know for sure, "Is that why you were going to make me come with you?"

  He blanched and nodded, not looking at her. Still ashamed then, she thought.

  "I think it's the worst bad thing I ever did, Ams," and he stood up, keeping his eyes down. She smiled at him, couldn't help it. She could deal with anyone who didn't do anything worse than that.

  "Come on, serpent stew should be ready," and she took his hand, because now she felt she could, and she laughed, for the first time in what seemed way too long. She laughed as the image of a serpent trying to eat a rat and instead getting shot and made into stew popped into her head, and she knew that her implant couldn't do that.

  It didn't do jokes, or pictures. And it didn't do this boy liking her. This she could hold on to.

  Silent City

  Laurel, April 25, 2236 Just Outside of Reston

  They weren't supposed to come up on any city so soon, and yet, there were definitely buildings ahead of them. They all stared at them, surprised, but happy, too. They could all use a decent meal, if nothing else. She thought they'd see lights and smoke maybe, from people cooking, and hear noises, the many noises one should hear coming from a city. But there was nothing. Nothing at all, just the dark looming shapes of buildings, some looking impossibly tall to her, going all the way up into the sky, higher even than that it seemed, as the tops of them disappeared into the evening, like ghosts. There were no lights and no sounds anywhere, as if this entire place was asleep or deserted. But a whole city couldn't possibly be any of those things. So it wasn't adding up for her again. There was no Reston in her memories, none that she could access anyway, and Ams didn't recognize the name either. The sign that read, "Welcome to Reston" hanging crookedly off the pole on the side of the road was the only reason they knew where they were. Even Riley didn't seem to have ever heard of this place, and he'd been to more places than any of them.

  She walked back to the camp, as quietly as she could manage with just her small ray illuminating the ground in front of her. Ella was making supper from the very last bits of some furry four-legged animal they shot yesterday, one Riley called a rabbit. It looked too sweet and soft for her to want to see it killed and skinned and then roasted on the fire, but she was always hungry now, they all were, and short of eating bugs, there was nothing else for them to eat safely. She didn't remember thinking that way about the squirrel for some reason.

  The rabbit's smell reached her now, making her stomach growl and she walked over to where Ams and Riley were sitting by the fire, talking. They did that a lot now. She didn't know what to make of it, all their talking, but Ams seemed almost happy now, happier than she was before the talking started, when she was still angry at the boy. And Riley, too, seemed different, lighter somehow, not quite so adult-like.

  She sat down next to Ams, knowing she had to tell them what she saw or rather didn't see, "I think that city is dead, guys. It just doesn't make any kind of sense for it to be so quiet in there, and so dark. There would have been something. A flier light, a stream of smoke, something making some kind of noise. I waited for almost an hour, and nothing. I don't think we'll find anything there." Riley was watching her intently now. She knew he was the only one here who would know what it meant for this city to be like that, and she wished he'd just tell them, so her and Ams didn't feel so scared about what they'd find there. But Ams didn't look scared, just a little sad.

  "Where do you think everyone who lived there went? What happened to them? Why would anyone pack up and leave the place they're from, all at the same time like that? It doesn't make sense, Laurel, it just doesn't. Maybe they are all asleep and nobody wants to waste resources on keeping the lights on at night. Or maybe they turn the lights off to keep the bugs away. I don't know, but there is no way this whole city is just sitting there like that empty." She was looking at her in her old Ams way.

  "There is. There is a way this city could be dead. One way, but I didn't think they still did that sort of thing," Riley said very quietly. He sounded sad now, his adult-sad, the sort of sad where he was usually blaming himself for one thing or another. He got up, "Let's eat. We can talk about the other things after dinner. I need some time to think, figure out how to explain it."

  The rabbit was great, just not enough of it left to not still be hungry for any of them. She went to rinse their knives and bowls in a tiny stream, the only one they found here. She knew she needed to go back, but the way Riley was talking, she didn't want to know what that thing was that could make everyone leave the place they are from. She didn't care. If it was dangerous and they couldn't go to this place, they would just have to stick it out through the woods until they find another city. She was okay with living on squirrels and even rabbits for another week if that's what it took. The sadness that the thing that happened sounded full of from Riley's voice - she didn't think she was okay with knowing that, with making that a part of her memory.

  "You are hiding. I'm not sure from what yet, but you are." Ams was collecting the dishes from the bank, and watching her, "Remember how you'd always make me do all those
crazy things we weren't allowed to do, and you didn't seem to care if we got caught? I want that Laurel back. I miss her. I'm serious. You don't seem to be happy you're here and not at the compound somehow. It's like you changed your mind about this whole running away thing about half way through, but didn't bother to tell anybody." That hurt, that last bit.

  She knew Ams was right though. She wasn't feeling so carefree and brave lately. She didn't like this Laurel anymore than Ams did, but that's just how it was now for her. Maybe she'd be as brave as Ams seemed to have gotten if she always had someone like Riley at her side to talk her out of her fears, to shoot her snakes for her, to make sure she was all right. Maybe that's what it was then. She didn't have a Riley and she barely had Ams anymore, and Ella didn't really talk to anybody much, even though she always had that pad of hers around her neck, so she could if she wanted to...

  Ams was still standing there waiting for her to either get up or say something. So she got up and walked silently back to the camp, back to where Riley was going to put something sad and ugly into her memory, and she had to let him.

  He was pacing by the fire, even strides, hands behind his back like he used to have them all the time at the compound. He pointed to a log he pushed by the fire for them all to fit comfortably on. Ella was already sitting there, looking through the flames, hands worrying a loose thread in her shirt. She walked over and sat next to her. She didn't feel like sitting next to Ams after the stream.

  "Ella knows most of this, or at least knows what I know. We don't know how much of it is true, we just know that that's what we've been told in Waller, and then I heard similar stories in other cities while looking for El. I can't tell you how any of it started or why, and I don't know if it matters, but basically, the only way a whole city can disappear like that, die like that, is if the Alliance wanted it to..." He took a deep breath and started pacing again, in front of the log.