Song of the Badlands

by Joshua Guess

  “Yeah, I imagine that would do it,” Parker said.

  Eventually he would have to tell her what Bowers had passed on to him; that repercussions against the Movement and anyone associated with them were brewing. That a fight was on its way whether they wanted it or not.

  That any of them might end up the star of live video serving as a precautionary tale for an entire nation.

  10

  Beck woke up in darkness. Not the gloom of predawn or even the barely-lit dimness of her personal quarters, which would have slowly risen to full illumination as the BIM—Brain Interface Monitor—implanted in her head told the sensors in her room she was awake.

  This darkness was total.

  “Lights,” she said. The voice command was not answered. There wasn’t so much as an acknowledgment by the computer, and the lack of any response at all triggered the fine machinery of her mind to activate.

  Possibilities. What were they?

  The computer was broken. That was unlikely. The Collapse taught many lessons, and when it came to technology, the first was to build robustness into its DNA. The most disposable device made in the Protectorate had enough redundancy and shielding to work after gamma ray bombardment.

  The computer could be turned off. She discounted this immediately. Months of careful programming with her superuser access to the entire Mesh and every integrated Deathwatch network made her voice print universally recognizable. Any integrated computer system would have a constant supply of power even if turned off—unless that supply was physically sliced. While technically possible, Beck could not imagine a circumstance in which the system would be disabled in that way to isolate her. It would be far easier to kill her than to hack through stone walls to access power lines.

  The third possibility took longer to formulate. She recognized the glacial pace of her thoughts only then. The first two were products solely of her area of expertise. Machines and code were so deeply ingrained in her thought processes that nothing short of head trauma could stop her assessing them as possibilities.

  It took her nearly thirty seconds to conclude that the third of her three bad hands was that there was no computer interface in the room at all. Longer still to realize she wasn’t sure where she was. Her muzziness was mostly external, and as it wore off she recognized the subtle differences in this space from the quarters she woke up in every morning.

  The air was warmer. Beck was cold natured and kept her room at a comfortable sixty-seven degrees Fahrenheit. There was no gentle hiss of air being exchanged. The cot she woke up from was hard and flat, a far cry from the polyfoam mattress she was used to. She stood and found a floor made of raw stone, gritty and without the thick carpet surrounding her own bed.

  All of these facts swirled around the central reality she had awakened to and gave her understanding a new dimension. It was dark. Completely.

  Alone in a small room, judging by the rapid echo of her own raspy breath, and cut off from any light. She knew this. It was part of the training she and her cohort had gone through. What was it?

  She wracked her brain trying to remember, the realization only coming once she began to relax and turn her mind from it. That was a trick Beck’s mother, herself a mechanical engineer, taught her to use at a young age. Distract yourself with errata and watch in wonder as your subconscious provided the answer.

  Lightless cells were a distinct feature of Deathwatch holding areas. Not in the general sense, as in the place the Deathwatch kept all its prisoners. No, this was far worse.

  Only criminal members of the Deathwatch itself were held in total darkness.

  “Guess that other shoe was getting pretty heavy,” she muttered to the empty room.

  She shuffled around the space, hands extended. She found the toilet easily enough, the only other feature aside from the bed. It sat at the end of the ledge the cot was bolted to, making efficient use of the tiny space. She didn’t have to feel along the walls or measure her steps to know its dimensions. Eight feet long, five feet wide. Standard cell.

  Shit. She was definitely a prisoner.

  “How did I get here?” she asked the room in a perfectly conversational tone. And where was she? There were drugs available to the Watch for their exclusive use, from mood stabilizers to pacification weapons to quell large-scale riots. She knew them by name and ID tag number thanks to the months of tinkering with her suit to create new weapons and delivery systems for them.

  The rapidly evaporating haze told her she’d probably been dosed with Slumber, a gaseous sedative designed to put Fade B victims rapidly to sleep before euthanasia. Slumber also played hell with memory, which explained why Beck was unable to recall anything past dinner the night before.

  Well, she hoped it was the night before. There was no way to tell how long she’d been here.

  She relieved herself and sat back on the bed, folding her knees into lotus position and closing her eyes. This was purely a psychological concern, a way to force her brain into the first steps of the sort of calm she needed to attain.

  And she certainly needed the calm that came with using the meditative focus taught by the Watch, because Beck was angry. More furious than she had ever been in her life. Unless she’d gotten blackout drunk and killed someone, this had to be the Cabal making their move. This was her reward for taking apart the apparatus allowing them to maintain power at the expense of thousands of citizens’ lives.

  Criminal Deathwatch agents were kept in absolute darkness for one simple, practical reason. Even without armor, people like Beck were incredibly dangerous people. Between the workout regiments turning even someone with her slight build into a top-tier athlete and daily practice in how to fight and kill, a rogue agent could cut a path to freedom through normal people with their bare hands.

  She had always considered that precaution a silly one, along with the rest she knew would be prepared for her. Now that she was on the other side of that particular equation, they made perfect sense. Something alien and irrational brewed inside her, a recklessness beyond anything she had ever felt in her life. The injustice of it all made fighting back, even trying to escape, seem worth any cost.

  And so she forced herself to calm. The inky blackness was a passive containment measure, and it was the only one she’d face. Every other method would be far more…aggressive.

  Though her training was months behind her, Beck was remarkably clear on what would happen when the door finally opened. And it would have to open soon, one way or another. She was starving, and since there hadn’t yet been a trial, they would feed her. Regulations were regulations, and no sham tribunal would dare go against them.

  She knew the protocol about handling prisoners like her because she’d spent a few nights having trouble falling asleep thinking about them. Criminal agents were themselves considered weapons, the precautions designed accordingly.

  Beck made sure to keep her bladder empty. She didn’t want to be hauled in for judgment after pissing herself. The bottles of water stacked on the back of her toilet were running low, however, and if she wasn’t taken soon, the—

  Light flooded the cell with no warning. She went from pitch black to twenty thousand lumens instantly. There was only so much mental preparation one could make for something like that. It was a tactic that always worked because no one was psychologically or physically capable of being ready for it. Eyes accustomed to darkness would sense the flare of light as pain and no amount of self-control could stop the reflexive closing of the eyes and flinching away which followed.

  That was, of course, when the Sentinels hit her with stun darts.

  Beck was in the process of being dragged off when her central nervous system rebooted. Her first instinct was vindictiveness—she wanted to shout override commands at the armored figures hauling her along the dimly lit corridor. They were both enormous figures, even considering the armor. The men inside had to be of a size with Wojcik.

  It took all her willpower to stop the words from forming. That, and the
fact that her mouth wasn’t yet fully in sync with her brain. Only slightly behind this in importance was that her access was, or at least should be, a secret the enemy was not privy to. It was an ace she had to keep hidden at all costs.

  The Sentinels dragging her along did so as gently as possible. There were numerous rules governing the treatment of prisoners, and the armored fingers held her firmly but without much pain. It was unlikely she would even bruise.

  She was deposited in a small room with recessed lighting. A table with two chairs, one occupied, rested in the middle. A meal sat in front of the empty chair. Bowers sat in the other.

  “Sir,” Beck said.

  “Park,” Bowers replied, gesturing for her to sit. “Eat. Keep your strength up.”

  Beck did as she was told without hesitation or wariness. While she didn’t believe Bowers was behind her captivity, neither did she fully discount the possibility. If he was, she suspected he had a good reason. The man was ruthless in achieving his goals, sometimes to a fault, but he was also compellingly honest about his reasoning. It was a trait Beck respected more than any other in him, that unflinching self-honesty.

  “Are we safe to talk?” Beck asked as she powered through the plate of food.

  Bowers nodded once. “Yes. There is no monitoring in this room.”

  “I’d ask you what happened to me, but that seems obvious,” Beck said. “So I guess the question should be why. We know why, don’t we?”

  Bowers, his usual haughty serenity cracking at the edges, nodded. “The Cabal.”

  Beck couldn’t help cracking a smile. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you call them that. What are the specific charges? What’s the justification?”

  “You already know,” Bowers said. “False arrest leading to the death of citizens. That much should not surprise you.”

  Beck shrugged. “The charges don’t. I’m just wondering how they targeted me.”

  “They didn’t,” Bowers said. “I’m afraid I had to make an executive decision.”

  The words sent a chill through Beck. She understood at once; there was little room for interpretation. Beck surprised herself not by feeling betrayed or hurt, simply surprised. “You gave me to them. As a…what, political maneuver?”

  “Yes and no,” Bowers said. “The long version would take more time than we have. The short of it goes like this: my choice was between offering up a sacrifice or letting them root through the entire Deathwatch with a free hand. I maneuvered circumstances in such a way that execution is off the table.”

  She studied Bowers for a little while after he fell silent, clearly waiting for whatever furious response she’d give. The Beck who had raged at the universe for taking her family was a person many iterations gone in the constant stream of small changes that made up the litany of Becks she had grown into and out of. Parts of her were still there, but time and experience tempered those impulsive reactions with a need to observe and understand.

  “You picked me for a specific reason,” she finally said. “You’re talking as if the tribunal is a foregone conclusion, and for the charges the only other sentence beside death is exile.”

  Bowers slowly nodded. “That’s correct.”

  “Exiles are sent through the doors of their home Rez,” Beck said in a robotic voice reminiscent of the way her armor—which she might never see again—modulated her tone. “In the case of Watchmen, they are exiled from the Rez they’re assigned to at the moment of sentencing.”

  “In your case, Rez Brighton,” Bowers agreed. “Which gives us…options.”

  At a moment when Beck needed something to fill the gaping void within her where her family once dwelt, the Deathwatch and Movement appeared. She didn’t care that they took advantage of her need—because nothing short of a higher cause could have saved her life. She knew that now.

  And besides, the Watch had given her more than she ever dreamed. Not just a purpose, but experiences. Chances to hone her skills and learn new ones, to push herself faster and further than any other path would have allowed. The Watch asked much, and she had given it.

  Now was the time to decide if she would give that last little bit.

  “I’m listening, sir,” Beck said.

  11

  The meeting with Bowers lasted nearly an hour. Beck left it with a pair of warring emotions raging through her, torn between frustration at what came next and no small amount of satisfaction that Bowers saw her as capable enough to survive whatever the badlands had to throw at her. She could have chosen to believe he considered her disposable, but the forthrightness with which he explained the situation and context disarmed her.

  She was Deathwatch, and she would do her duty no matter what form it took. She did give him a message to pass on to the team, however. Just in case she wildly overestimated her own abilities and the outside world chewed her up.

  The trial wouldn’t be for another day or so, but Beck had barely been back in her cell for a few minutes when another pair of Sentinels—possibly the same ones—hauled her back out. This time she was restrained and blindfolded. No chances taken.

  She was deposited in a chair in what revealed itself to be an interrogation room when the blindfold was pulled away. The Sentinels locked her cuffs to the table and left her alone.

  Time passed, though how much she had no way to measure. When the door finally opened, the smell of citrus wafted in along with the man who entered.

  He sat across from her, the hard angles of his features far younger than she expected from someone so powerful. She had always thought so when looking at his face, and it was one every person in the Protectorate knew well.

  “Protector Keene,” Beck said evenly. “Wish I could say it’s a surprise to see you.”

  Jason Keene frowned. The leader of her entire civilization, a man handed power approaching absolute, was not accustomed to being spoken to glibly. Her research on Keene was exhaustively thorough even if no amount of digging showed the barest hint that he was part of the Cabal.

  Beck persisted in her surveillance of the man from a distance solely from instinct. Bowers had vouched for Gloria Chen, the head of civilian Science division. Though Science was where Fade B was produced and secretly transported to be used against unwitting civilians, Bowers was adamant the woman had nothing to do with it.

  Beck’s research and Chen’s own behavior supported the claim. In the aftermath of the raid against members of the Cabal, Chen had taken to cleaning her own house with a fervor approaching obsession. Once Beck worked from the first principle that Chen was innocent, she had to ask herself who else could have turned whole chunks of not only her division, but people in every division of the civilian government and the Deathwatch itself.

  The logical answer sat right in front of her. Proof or not, reason said that the Protector had to be the head of the snake. The use of Fade B to control the populace, the fear it incited, far predated his term of office, a fact that implied a deeper and darker truth about the Protectorate than Beck wanted to believe.

  Generations of work had gone into it, and from the very top.

  “Seems you’ve gotten yourself in a bit of trouble,” Keene said with the barest smirk. “Your Commander is serving you up to keep himself in power.”

  Beck didn’t let her eye twitch at him, but it was a close thing. It surprised her that someone with his level of power and prestige could be so obvious and petty. His attempt at getting under her skin itself didn’t bother her in the least—only his blunt delivery. Beck had long lived with the reality that anyone capable of climbing the political ladder was going to be deeply flawed bordering on actually evil. She just expected them to be better at hiding. This was sloppy work.

  Deciding to play the game, she shrugged. “He’s more important than I am. I’m just a green Sentinel.”

  “Oh, you’re more than that,” Keene said, leaning forward. “I’ve looked at your history. Your service record. Your education. You’re a brilliant young woman. You could have tested out
and gotten a job in Science, Deathwatch or civilian. A few years of classes would have put you in the upper echelon of engineers. Yet you let Bowers turn you into a weapon. I wonder why that is?”

  Beck met his gaze. “The mission was always more important than what I wanted to do with my life, Protector. Still is.”

  Keene shook his head. “Really? From what I understand, you grew close with Eshton Brogan, the man who put your family to sleep and burned them to death. Did you just not care about them? Was it a relief when Fade B made sure they would die? Maybe you should be thanking me.”

  Beck responded to the carefully delivered words by laughing in his face, rich and deep. Keene flinched at the sudden guffaws, leaning away from her with the instinctive reaction of someone who is constantly afraid of being hurt. “What’s so funny?”

  “You, Protector,” Beck said, wishing she could wipe the tears from her eyes. “How on earth did you ever get the job? You’re really bad at this. You think you can upset me enough that I’ll try to attack you, right? Maybe I’ll flip this table on top of you and try to kill you with it? Please. I had impulsive violence beaten out of me in training. This is just sad.”

  Keene’s face fell into cold fury. Beck saw it coming but thanks to the cuffs could do nothing to stop it. His fist drove into her face one, two, three times in rapid succession. The kinds of punches you’d expect from a man who never had to fight for his life.

  Her lip split nicely on the second hit, and when he straightened Beck chuckled again. “Bitch, my little brother hits harder than that, and he’s dead.”

  Whatever Keene’s intention with the meeting might have been—and Beck was not sure it was a justification for killing her from her initiating an attack—was forever lost when he stormed out of the room.

  A wave of satisfaction rolled through her when he left. Not just getting the better of him, though that part was surprisingly easy and a lot of fun. Well worth the pain. No, she felt a deep sense of accomplishment because despite her circumstances, the exchange actually gave her new intelligence. Whether or not she would have the chance to report it remained to be seen.