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by S. B. Divya

  She was halfway across a fallen tree over a raging stream when the leg exos stopped working. Marmeg was stuck like a horse rider in a glitched fantasy game, both legs completely immobile. She tried to warm up the pistons with her mobile hand, but that had no effect.

  No way could she remove her exoskeletons while perched ten feet above frigid, frothing water. Instead she scooted, a painstaking few inches at a time, until she was on the other side. There, she swung one leg over the top and landed on her knees in a soggy clump of ferns.

  “Are you testing me?” Marmeg said out loud.

  Her mother’s God might or might not have been listening, but she was tired of being alone. And just plain tired. The cuff showed the time as five-thirty and her mileage at twenty-nine—less than four miles per hour and well under the four-point-two record, but not bad, either. Where was everyone else, she wondered, and how were they faring in this weather?

  The background image on her cuff switched to a picture of her brothers. Seeing their faces made tears sting the backs of her eyes.

  “Want to go home,” she whispered to the cuff.

  Off-grid as she was, nobody would be listening.

  “I’m cold. One of my chips is fried. Ice is falling from the sky. Forecast said rain. This isn’t rain! Okay, God? You got that? Want me to fail? Teaching me a lesson, like Ma always said you would? Well, screw you! I’m not a quitter.”

  The words were a small comfort against the constant patter and crunch of frozen droplets making their way through the trees. Marmeg repeated the last few words like a chant while unscrewing and removing the leg braces. After they were off, it occurred to her to check the embedded chips in her legs.

  All four were toast.

  Marmeg’s scream ripped through the silence and faded into the gentle chatter of precipitation. She kicked viciously at one of the exos. It flew into the muddy, half-frozen stream bank. Her mind reeled. How could five of her embedded chips choose this day, this race, to stop working?

  Virus, whispered a voice in the back of her brain.

  The chips had programmable boot codes, ones that Marmeg could access using the near-field emitter from her screen. The last time she’d been up close with other people was back at the race start. Someone must have planted the virus with a built-in delay, like a ticking time bomb.

  She tested the core chip, the one lodged in her brain stem, and almost cried with relief when it responded correctly. She wiped its memory and reloaded clean code from her screen. That one, at least, wouldn’t fall victim to the virus. She did the same for her left arm.

  What next? The sun wouldn’t set for three hours, but it was getting close to the mountain peaks in the west. The sky was dark with clouds, and the air wasn’t getting any warmer. She was facing down a long, cold night with ordinary legs, no heat, and no shelter.

  Bail out, she thought. It’s over. You can’t win this. You’ll be lucky not to freeze to death.

  Then she remembered the spare chips, the last-minute gift from T’shawn, that she’d tucked into her gear bag.

  “Crazy talk,” Marmeg whispered.

  But her left hand moved, took the small blade from the broken-up multi-tool, sliced through the right sleeve. She wouldn’t attempt surgery with only one arm. With both arms free and mobile, she rummaged inside the pack until she found the box.

  Four clear capsules nestled in dark gray foam. Inside them, tiny wafers of silicon and gold gleamed in the half-light of late afternoon. Delicate threads of wire lay coiled beside each capsule, the ends surrounded by a protective sheath.

  Marmeg had been awake for the original surgeries. T’shawn had held her hand. They’d watched in fascination as Marmeg’s leg was numbed; as the surgeon sliced into the flesh of her calf; as he pulled up a quarter-inch flap of bloody skin and muscle. Then he’d tucked a capsule into the incision, threading the lead wires into the muscle fibers, and stitched it up neatly.

  Marmeg rolled up one pant leg and traced the old scar with an icy finger. The stim pills ran through her veins, but they wouldn’t help much with this. She gritted her teeth, took a deep breath, and pushed the short, dull knife into the scar.

  An agonized groan turned into a sob. Blood welled and fell onto the spring green leaves of the fern below like crimson rain. With a trembling hand, Marmeg reached into the cut. She whimpered as she felt for the capsule. When she touched something hard and slippery, she grabbed and yanked. The leads pulled free of the muscle. Adrenaline and endorphins surged. Her heart raced.

  The sudden wrench of her stomach caught Marmeg by surprise. She bent over to the side and managed not to throw up on herself. Then, taking a few shaky breaths, she carefully removed a new capsule, unwound the leads, and pushed it into her leg. She shoved the leads apart as best as she could, and then stopped. There was nothing to suture with, not that she even knew how.

  Frustration and despair took over like fog filling a valley. Her heart hammered. Think, you stupid, lousy brain! You wanted to do this race. You thought you could take these people, but you’re useless! Just another crapshoot filcher who doesn’t know a damn thing about being an embed.

  Glue.

  She had glue in the pack.

  Marmeg found the small tube of industrial-strength fixative. Don’t glue your fingers to your leg. She sobbed and laughed. She stanched as much blood as she could with the ruined sleeve and then squeezed glue along the outer part of the incision. She pressed down with one hand while wrapping the useless, ripped fabric around her leg like a bandage. With a shaky sigh of disbelief, she sat back and stared at her handiwork.

  “Not bad, but what’ll you use to tie off the other three?” a deep voice said from behind.

  Marmeg screamed, leapt up, and then cried out from the pain in her calf. In the shadows of the trees stood a tall, wiry man with a face from a nightmare: dark, dirt-streaked skin, wild hair to his shoulders, features hidden behind a coarse beard. Marmeg’s tiny blade was lying on the ground. It might as well have been on the moon.

  “What—who are you?”

  “Let’s save the introductions for later. Right now, we need to get you warm and clean that wound up before you contract a raging infection.”

  The words took a minute to penetrate the fear pounding through her head.

  “Why?”

  He raised a bristly eyebrow. “Why what?”

  “Why help me?”

  “Don’t trust me, eh? Well, that’s not a bad instinct for a kid like you in a place like this. Too bad you didn’t think of it earlier when you were with the other racer. Now come on. Save your questions for when we’re inside. I swear I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The man grabbed Marmeg’s muddy exos and the rest of her gear, including the bloodied blade, and shoved it all into her pack. He pulled the bag onto his back with a grunt.

  “What the hell is in here? Weighs as much as a small person.”

  “Gear.”

  He snorted, then tried to put an arm around Marmeg. She instinctively twisted away and shoved, but she was the one who lost her balance and fell on the ground. He looked at her with a bemused expression.

  “Fine. You go ahead and walk on your own.”

  He moved away, threading a path between the plants and trees. Marmeg limped after him.

  * * *

  A short but painful walk brought them to a log cabin. The low building nestled under the trees next to a lush, green meadow. The mountain man pushed open a wooden door. Marmeg followed him into a one-room cabin. A cot, a table, and a tree stump stool made up the furnishings. A locked metal chest was tucked under the table. Across from the door, in the corner, stood an oblong black thing, about the size of a large pot, with a metal tube leading out of it and through the roof. Dim light filtered in through a dirty window.

  The man busied himself with the black device, pushing small pieces of wood in through a door in its front. Then he grabbed a box, took out a toothpick-looking thing, and struck it against the side. The toothpick lit up, and
he tossed it in with the wood. As Marmeg watched in fascination, the smaller pieces caught fire, and soon everything started to burn.

  The man noticed her fixed gaze. “It’s a wood-burning stove.”

  “Not legit.”

  “That’s true. It’s illegal in California to burn anything that smokes, but it’s the only way to survive out here.”

  “You Mountain Mike?”

  His eyes twinkled. “Is that what they’re calling us?”

  Marmeg caught the plural. “Who else?”

  “We’re a network. Now, enough standing around. You’d better lie on the bed while I look at that hack job you did on your leg.”

  The stove warmed the cabin. Marmeg sank onto the cot, wary but glad of the comfort. The mattress had lumps and smelled moldy, but it was better than a bed of pine needles. Pain wrenched at her leg as she swung it onto the pallet.

  Mike, or whoever he was, had removed a plastic box with basic medical supplies from the metal trunk. He placed the stool next to the bed, sat, and cut away her makeshift bandage. His face twisted into a grimace as he examined the wound.

  “I can’t do much, but I’ll disinfect the outside and cover it with sterile gauze. You’ll have to get it looked at tomorrow after you’re back in civilization. What I can do,” he said, glancing briefly at her before looking back at the leg, “is help you with the other calf chip. I’ve got rubbing alcohol to clean off that knife blade some, and I can make a better incision than you can. Will you let me?”

  Marmeg winced as he applied the ointment. If he’d wanted to hurt her or kill her, he could’ve done so by now, and she could use the help. Then again, nothing in life was free.

  “Why? What you want of me?”

  “Your word that when you win this race, you’ll help our movement.”

  “Help how?”

  “You give us half your prize money.”

  “Half! If I don’t?”

  “We’ll provide evidence to Minerva of this encounter—that you took help from me—and they’ll disqualify you and take their money back.”

  “If I don’t place?”

  “You will. You might even come in first. The people we help always end up in the top three.”

  Marmeg frowned. “All cheats? Every year?”

  “The last four years. That’s when we first got the idea. I suppose it’s cheating, but it’s a win-win situation the way I see it. We choose someone who deserves a little help, like you, and we get to keep doing our work.”

  That explained the dark horse winners.

  “Look around, kid! Nature isn’t static, and it’s always full of surprises. Take this cold front right now. Everyone comes into these races believing they just have to be strong and fast, that studying images of the terrain and digital maps is enough to know what they’re going to get. It rarely is. You know that already from that glacier you and the other fellow had to climb.”

  “You were there? Thought I saw someone.”

  Mike nodded. “You did, but it wasn’t me. We’ve been watching from the start. That’s how we know who to pick. We have to be careful, choose someone who could plausibly win. Now let’s get back to the question at hand: do you want my help with that other calf? Do you want to win this race?”

  Marmeg looked down at her cuff and her brothers’ goofy smiles. She didn’t have to tell them the whole story, but she did have to come home with some money. It was that or call her mother to come bail her out. That was the worst possibility Marmeg could imagine.

  Amihan would never forgive Marmeg for the enormous sin of spending her money on gear and race fees. She would call it gambling. And she would be convinced that God was punishing Marmeg for partaking of such an evil pastime. She might be right, considering that Marmeg would be back to club security and nothing more if she didn’t place. Winning by any means, even for half the prize money, would be better than that.

  “Do it.”

  Mike handed her a few white pills. “These won’t help with the pain now, but they will later.”

  He went back to the trunk and pulled out a dark-brown glass bottle. He worked the cork out and handed Marmeg the bottle. She washed the pills down in one swallow, glad that Jeffy had given her opportunities to drink cheap booze. At least she didn’t make a fool of herself by choking on whatever this was. It burned the back of her throat. A pleasant, tingling warmth soon spread through her body. She leaned her head back against the rough wood and closed her eyes.

  “You go ahead and scream if you need to. Nobody’s around to hear it.”

  That sounded like a line in a bad horror vid. Marmeg chuckled, but she kept her eyes closed. The sounds of gear clinking played counterpoint to the pops and crackles from the wood stove. The scent of smoke filled the air. Marmeg sank into a stupor.

  A sensation of cold and wet against her leg snapped her eyes open. Mike rubbed an alcohol pad against the old incision on her other calf.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “As ever.”

  Marmeg lay on her side and clenched her hands around the edge of the mattress. Mike sliced into her flesh, a quick, sure cut. She gritted her teeth against the pain; no screaming, not this time. She was breathing fast and harsh by the time he dug in with a pair of tweezers and extracted the bad chip. While he disinfected the replacement, she took a deep, steadying breath and reached for the brown glass bottle. She gulped three times.

  “You better put that down before I finish this.”

  He was much more deft with the capsule placement than she had been. She was surprised that he knew what to do. Unlike her field surgery, he took the time to close the wound neatly, wiping it clean before applying the glue. The result was a red, ragged mess, but it looked better than her other leg.

  “I’m not going near the quad chips and your femoral artery.” He handed Marmeg her screen. “Your turn.”

  She pulled up the control software and reprogrammed the new capsules. She had splurged for a brain-stem chip as her only legit surgery, using the programming contest money she had ferreted away from her mother. One of its benefits was that her muscles adapted more quickly to program changes. Another was that new chips would integrate faster with her physiology. The pain, however, was something she would have to ignore for the next twelve hours.

  Marmeg hissed as she limped to the table where her gear pack lay open. She gritted her teeth, pulled the calf exos on, and went through a basic test sequence: walk, run in place, jump, balance on one foot. The incisions twinged but the pain intensity decreased with every flexion and extension of her muscles.

  As a final exercise, Marmeg jumped from the floor onto the table, landing on it in a crouch and poised for her next motion. Mountain Mike leaned against the door, his arms crossed across his narrow chest, his expression inscrutable under the facial hair. His eyes followed her movements.

  Marmeg leapt lightly off the table and repacked. She left the two quadriceps exos out. They wouldn’t be worth much on the open market. She’d have plenty of time to replace them once she was done with this race, though she wouldn’t have much money, not after she shared with the Mikes. That meant no license for Felix.

  “What’ll you do with your half?” she said, stowing the last of the gear.

  “We use it to keep up the knowledge of how to live with the land. When catastrophe strikes, which it inevitably will, what are you embeds going to do? Your gear makes you dependent on technology. Same with everyone who never leaves the city. Without electricity and clean water and food delivered to you, you’ll be lost. You’ll need people like us to show you how to survive. Someone has to keep the old skills alive.”

  Mike was busy at the stove, poking inside with a metal rod and splashing water into it from a bucket that Marmeg hadn’t noticed before. The flames died down into glowing bits of wood and burnt black sections. He closed the stove door.

  “We also use the money to maintain these cabins, pay for our phones, and supplement our food. This land can provide a lot, but we get hun
gry for cake and beer sometimes, too.” He grinned. His teeth were yellow but straight. “Let’s go.”

  Marmeg followed him out of the cabin. Cold air struck her bare face. The sun had passed behind the western peaks, and icy rain had turned into flakes of snow. Marmeg’s breath puffed out like a friendly ghost. She flicked on her cuff and checked their path. It wasn’t taking them back to her original route.

  “Where we heading?”

  “Didn’t you wonder how a bunch of survivalists like us could help you embeds win a race?”

  “Wondered, yeah.”

  “We’ve made tunnels under the ridges and built shortcuts through some of the passes as well. They’re hidden from the satellites by plant cover. Nature does most of the work for us.”

  Marmeg’s conscience pricked her. Cheats were not looked on favorably in her neighborhood, and Jeffy was especially contemptuous of people who didn’t play fair. She hated the idea of lying to him. He’d supported her when she started fixing up embed gear. He’d slipped her money, shielded her from their mother’s ire. Without him, she wouldn’t be at this race today. She didn’t want to let him down, but if she didn’t place somewhere in the top five, she would disappoint everyone, especially herself.

  Far behind them, thunder rumbled. They climbed up through the trees. The wind blew harder as the vegetation thinned out.

  “I’m going to give you a new route,” Mike said.

  He stopped at the base of a large slab of rock that rose like a wall. Marmeg craned her neck, following the vertical expanse until it vanished into the clouds. A snowflake landed in her slack-jawed mouth, a tiny crystal of cold that dissolved on her hot tongue.

  Mike pulled an old-style handheld from his back pocket. Marmeg flicked on her cuff and allowed him to send her a file. It was a map overlay, much like the one she had made, but with a far more direct route.

  “’Nuf miles?”

  “It’ll be enough. Just don’t hug the next racer you come across.”