But it is the final pages that turn her heart to ice.
All functioning societies need order. It was disorder that destroyed the old world; a lack of discipline, of attention, of rigid enforcement. Order cannot coexist with ambiguity. Ambiguity creates distractions, blurs the lines between what should be done and what must be done. Clear lines create clear expectations—leaving no room for uncertainty, no wriggle-room for disobedience. Removing the ambiguity from the rules allows for one kind of certainty, but removing it from the citizen—from their mind, their identity, their path in life—creates the best kind of certainty.
As a Premie, she and the other Elementals (all of us, or just Earths?), had been taught that the Orthodoxy—the guiding principles and rules of life in Otpor—had been borne from the inherent and innate divisions within Elementals. The Cooperative hadn’t created these divisions, merely developed the technology that made it easier to clearly identify them and ordered society to maximize the benefits.
All her life she had been conditioned to believe that truth. To believe that Orthodoxy was right thought and right action. That it was natural and inevitable. Her lot in life wasn’t something imposed, it was just the outcome of a particular genetic mix. It wasn’t a hard-luck story, it was just the optimal environment in which she was created to live.
And yet, all her life she had chafed against it. As if the Nursery had got it wrong—as if the machines hadn’t been calibrated right, the Technicians not as observant as they needed to be to the true nature of her identity. She had cried the night after her assignment ceremony, had locked herself away in an abandoned apartment in a rundown block of Precinct 20 and railed against the destiny that had seen her assigned to the Cleaning Corp.
And yet, she had accepted it. Like she had accepted Jandah and his aggressive ways. Hating it, but never really questioning it.
Until now.
If the words in this book were as ancient as they appeared. If their organic script on organic paper really did come from a time when the Orthodoxy was just being crafted . . .
Then it has all been a lie. Our natures are not inherent or innate. They are manipulated for the benefit of those who gain power from an obedient, unambiguous, citizenry. Unorthodoxy is not wrong thought or wrong action. It is just free thought and free action.
Chapter 10
Lira’s legs feel heavy as they plod down the stairs of her old apartment block. Strange how just a few months ago her life had been consumed by dreaming about the same sixth-floor apartment she now is happy to escape from.
The sound of giggling gives her pause as she approaches the landing to the third floor. The door to her old apartment is open and a full-hipped brunette stands on the threshold, laughing and leaning in to Jandah. Her husband has his hands full, in her hair, on her hips.
She waits for the fire in her belly to erupt, for the rage to hit, for the adrenaline to push her to inevitable conflict. She waits to feel the familiar craving for violence, if only just to kickstart the familiar screaming match.
But it never comes. She breaks out of her inertia and continues down the staircase, past Jandah and his new lover, through the building’s exit, and out into the streets of Otpor.
Seeking Yvgeny is her only move, but she doesn’t know whether it is to sell her new-found wares or share her confusion and disquiet.
The sky above is a dark brown, like old blood, announcing dusk and the coming chill of night. The weight of the book is a heavy reminder and a quiet comfort. She wonders if her Water partner in crime will feel the same way.
Probably not. It’s not like he has been disadvantaged by his lot in life. And, yet, she has seen in him the same frustration she carries—the want of something more. Of something better. Perhaps he will feel the same way after all.
Her feet quicken as she gets closer to the maze of alleys, laneways, and arcades in Precinct 5. She knows Yvgeny will not be waiting for her in their usual rendezvous point, but she knows there is still time to find him scoring similar deals in similar hideaways.
The anticipation of seeing him again is eating at her nerves. Why is she so nervous?
Entering the maze, she is surprised to see a crowd of Elementals ahead. With the tech markets long finished and no drinking dens or izakaya nearby—not that Water Elementals were known for their social drinking—the streets should be quiet, if not empty. Pushing past the Elementals at the crowd’s edges, she cranes her neck to see what has captured their attention.
In the shadows of the arcade, Yvgeny is struggling against the grasp of a broad-shouldered Peacekeeper. It is all for naught; with a quick flash of his wrist, the Peacekeeper plunges a restraint syringe into Yvgeny’s neck, silencing his resistance.
Lira’s heart sinks to her belly, not at the sight of him slumping unconscious to the dirty street but at the bounty the second Peacekeeper holds in her grasp. Three next-gen screens and a red-bound book. The book she had given him a fortnight ago, the one he had been so sure he could sell to a romantic Air Elemental.
Yvgeny, what have you done?
“This is a Code 315 Detention,” the female Peacekeeper yells, her voice echoing in the cramped environment. “No one is to leave until processed. If you comply, this detention will not be recorded in your file. If you do not comply, you will be restrained and charged with a Code 310D offense.”
The Water Elementals around Lira shuffle into position, waiting obediently for the Peacekeepers to move through the crowd, scanning wristplates. Lira, her heart now hammering in her chest, takes a step backward. The Water behind her, an older male in a cheap kydex suit, grunts at the intrusion and frowns at her, but doesn’t raise the alarm.
All it will take is one civic-minded Water seeking to minimize their inconvenience by alerting the Peacekeepers to her retreat . . .
Fingers tingling with the heavy rush of adrenaline, she pushes aside the logic that tells her turning her back will only draw suspicion and pivots. She squirms through the crowd, avoiding sudden movements and choosing the more submissive looking Elementals to push past.
Any moment she will hear the Peacekeeper’s voice again, calling her to stop, threatening detention . . .
Only when she has crossed the Syn River and her feet clatter down the stairs to the Sully-Morland subworm station does she exhale deeply and stop looking over her shoulder.
The next subworm that rattles to a stop at the platform is mostly empty, the Earth carriage accommodating three other Elementals, all sitting alone and all asleep. Lira ignores them, resting her head against the cool glass of the window and letting the deep rumbling and rhythmic flash of fluorescent lights bring her heart-rate back to normal.
When the metallic worm finally pulls into the platform at Vincennes, she still feels unsettled, but no longer panicked.
Exiting the subworm, she lets her feet beat out a steady rhythm, maintaining the meditative white noise of the subworm that had allowed her to calm her thoughts earlier.
She needs a plan. It is delusional to think that Yvgeny will protect her in the interrogations he will face from Fire Truthseekers. The realization stings and she scowls. Her mind has seemed . . . splintered? . . . Ever since her injury. Something in that injury—or the way it was fixed—has changed the way her brain works. Has made it more pliable, less predictable.
Less Earth-like.
The shocking conclusion sends her stumbling. Her knees crash into bitumen, her hands scraping along its rough surface in a futile attempt to protect her from further pain.
Laughter, loud and insulting, echoes around her.
“Lose your feet, dirt-dweller?” a deep male voice calls to her.
“And your lollies,” a second, deeper voice calls.
Crap. She glances up, not at the advancing Elementals, but at the objects that have spilled from her satchel. The next-gen glass screen she had intended to give to Yvgeny and the blue-bound book.
Crap, crap, crap. Her hands, grazed and stinging, reach desperately for the incriminatin
g objects. She glances over her shoulder, her panic levels ratcheting higher when she sees the dark kevlar uniform of Peacekeepers.
There is nothing for it—either she stays and lets them find her with the contraband, sealing her to the same fate as Yvgeny, but without someone else’s name to throw out to break her fall. Or she runs.
The Edges aren’t far—less than two blocks away—and perhaps her assailants will see some sport in letting her get a headstart before they bring down their claws.
Part II
Kane
Chapter 11
The sound of thudding floods Kane’s ears, but he is no longer sure whether it is from the adrenaline in his blood, the pounding of his feet against the cracked bitumen of the road, or the dense beat of his fracturing mind.
Ahead, the Earth—unusually fast for one of their Element—darts about in the shadows, maintaining her pace as she heads for the Edges. Kane and his Peacekeeping partner, Aura, let their target enter the kilometer-wide border area. It will be easier to find and detain her without the usual obstacles of random Elementals and degrading architecture.
Aura flashes her hand code—I’ll go around. You continue on.
Nodding his agreement, Kane accelerates after the Earth. The pursuit has gone on for far too long already.
He had convinced Aura to go slower in the beginning—rationalizing that it was better to follow to see if the target went somewhere else, implicated someone else. But it was all a ruse—the only option he had to hide the hesitancy in his body and disobedience in his mind.
The cooling air of Otpor’s dusk grows chilly as he enters the Edges. Separating the city from the Wasteland, the space in the north is forever shadowed by the Border Wall. In the dark and the cold, the hum of the air recyclers sounds like a thousand synthflies swarming around a carcass.
The thought pulls him up—it is too poetic, too introspective for a Fire Elemental. He should not have these chaotic, irrelevant, unnecessary thoughts distracting him.
It’s just the residual pain. Just the recovery process. Nothing to worry about, nothing to fixate on.
He clenches his fists and pushes his legs to move faster, letting the pain and exertion push everything but the chase from his mind.
A week after his fall from a cancer-ridden apartment building in Precinct 11 and there was no physical reminder left of the damage. His grade three laceration to his thigh and broken ulna had been corrected within hours by Biomechanic Specialists, but the four minutes his brain had suffered without oxygen had left behind an echo that no surgeon could fix. He had been cleared of hypoxia, the brain damage that usually accompanied major head injuries, and returned to normal duties within hours of his release from the Infirmary. But the echo had remained.
Even in the dark shadows, the erratic movements of the Earth are easy to follow. Kane is gaining ground, chasing her through the maze of recyclers and water substations. In a matter of moments he will be in a position to strike, his body thrumming with adrenaline in anticipation of the contact. Three steps, two, one. He plants his right foot heavy, letting the impact pull his body into a low lunge. And, yet, his focus is distracted, something pulling at his gaze as it seems to fall from his target’s hands.
“Now, Kane!” Aura’s voice ricochets off the concrete around him, sharpening his focus and sending him launching at the target.
The impact is lighter than he expects and the fall to the ground slower. His arms wrapped around the target, Kane feels the breath knocked out of her as they land. This close, he sees her eyes widen, and her mouth work to suck in breaths her lungs won’t accept. In one fluid movement, he pulls the syringe from his belt and slides the needle into her neck, pushing the restraint fluid along her veins. Her eyes flutter and close, her chest relaxing into shallow and slow breaths.
Restraining perpetrators was usually a victory, but the relief in his core tells him what he already knows. This was a mercy.
“Nice restraint,” Aura says, her voice too loud in the sudden stillness that floods the Edges. “I had my doubts that you’d recovered from that head injury. Thought it would make you slow or clumsy.”
No. Just distracted. And weak. The admission cuts deep—another condemnation. Fire Elementals are not bred to feel complex emotions. Are not bred to be self-deprecating, or introspective, or distracted. Are not bred to be anything other but an effective weapon aimed at anything Unorthodox.
He should be more like Aura. She has wasted no time in downloading the offense code to the target’s wristplate. Finishing up, she rolls the body over to check for contraband. The motionless body falls heavily again as it flops over and Kane fights the urge to wince.
I shouldn’t care about this. About her.
“Got it,” Aura says, holding up a slightly battered glass screen. “Patch the call.”
Grateful to look away, Kane unravels the lifeline wrapped around his own wristplate and plugs it into his ear. He taps out the number for Peacekeeper reports and waits for the call to connect. The glow of his wristplate screen lights up the metallic links of the lifeline. He bends and twists it about his fingers, watching as the links flash in and out of the green light, imagining the data shuttling from his nerve endings to the wristplate and up the braided cord.
“Number and report,” the monotone voice intones.
“PK111615. Stolen glass screen recovered.”
Even as he says it, he remembers the unknown object that was discarded just moments before the restraint. No point mentioning it; without finding it on the Earth, it will be impossible to pin it to her. Probably just dex—the drug of choice for Earth Elementals. No doubt the impact of it hitting the ground has split whatever protective covering it started with, scattering its contents and merging them with the sand that forever drifts in from the Wasteland beyond.
“Detainers will attend in fifteen minutes.”
The call disconnects and Kane wraps the lifeline around his wristplate cuff, the magnetic cord snapping back into place.
“How long?” Aura asks, drawing his gaze back to the scene at hand. His patrol partner stands with agitated feet, shifting her glance from Kane to the motionless Earth, to the shadows that surround them.
“Fifteen.”
Aura groans, kicking at random pieces of stone and concrete. Kane knows this frustration well, or at least knew it. Waiting should be the worst form of punishment for a Peacekeeper, and yet the uneasy weight in his core has less to do with the inevitable boredom and more to do with not knowing what tangents his mind will follow without the thrill of the chase to distract it.
“Go, Aura,” he says with a calm confidence he does not feel. “I can wait for the Forensics alone.”
She smiles her gratitude, no doubt thinking he offers her a small mercy rather than a reprieve for himself.
“Find me at the Wild Rover after shift changeover,” she calls, already striding away. “First shout is on me.”
And then she is gone, leaving Kane alone in the Edges save for a restrained Earth Elemental and his own splintered thoughts.
Chapter 12
The Earth wakes earlier than she should, coming to with a thrashing and a hoarse cry of pain. Kane’s hand reaches for another restraint syringe, pinning her arms to the ground before she can use them to push herself up.
With the diode on his wristplate activated, the panic on the Elemental’s face is rendered in sharp contrasts of light and shadow. Her wild eyes seek desperately to focus, and when they do, they stare into his.
“Mercy Peacekeeper,” she rasps, holding his gaze even as the syringe inches closer to her neck. “Please, Peacekeeper. Mercy. Mercy.”
“It is for the Tribunal to show mercy, not Peacekeepers,” he says, his hand pausing nonetheless.
“We can all show mercy,” she says, her voice now trembling—with fear, with cold, or with chemical after-effects?
“How much did you take?” he asks, shining the diode directly into her eyes, looking for the telltale signs of dex intoxicat
ion. It would explain why she is so panicked and why the restraint serum failed before the expected twenty minutes had expired.
She shakes her head, the panic still there.
“The dex,” he says, raising his voice. “The dex you stole. How much did you take before throwing it away.”
“I didn’t steal any dex,” she says, her voice shaking harder now, the words coming out in short, sharp bursts.
“What was it then? Ampho? Nallan?” All synthetic amphetamines, all widely distributed and highly addictive.
“Is that what they told you?” She tries to push against the weight that still pins her to the ground, but he does not yield. Frustrated, she grits her teeth, but does not cry out or spit or anything else that would cause him to plunge the needle into her neck.
“I found something,” she murmurs, hesitantly. “I found the truth.”
“There is no truth in dex, grunt,” Kane says, using the common insult Fire Elementals throw at Earths. “Just bad dreams, scabby arms, and a faster synth toxin build up.”
“It’s all a lie,” she says, not desperate or panicked anymore. “This is not the life we were meant to have.”
The lights of the advancing detention van cast a harsh red glow against the concrete and sand. This will go better for everyone if the perpetrator is unconscious. He slides the fine needle into her jugular and injects the restraint serum, waiting until her eyes shut and her breathing grows shallow before looking up to where the van is weaving amongst the recyclers.
Shivering against the oncoming chill of the mid-night hours, Kane stands to address the lead Detainer. The transfer protocol is simple: just a few questions to validate identities and confirm details.
“And there was no other contraband found in possession?” The lead Detainer asks, bending down to rifle through pockets and folds.
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