Exo

by Fonda Lee

  Donovan kept his eyes closed and his body still. His head seemed to be unreasonably heavy, and there was a steady, throbbing pulse behind his eyes. He realized he was in a sitting position, and his chin was slumped forward on his chest.

  The man who had just spoken was nearby, but his voice was moving around. It was a hard, unrelenting voice—a voice that steamrolled over other voices. “Honest to God, I’m surprised the stripes didn’t nab Corrigan earlier. Didn’t I always say he was careless?”

  “You did, Kevin.” Another man’s voice, younger and less assured.

  “Carelessness will get you shot or atomized, sure as hell. Gareth, though, poor bastard.”

  From the way the voices echoed, they must be in a large, empty room.

  The younger man said, “You’re some kind of crazy lucky to have gotten away like that, Anya.”

  “Nerves of steel and a good head on your shoulders, more like,” was Kevin’s reply. “The expression on this one’s face, man, that was sure worth something, wasn’t it?”

  The girl said, quietly, “I think I saw him move just now. Do you think he’s awake?”

  A long pause. Some shuffling sounds.

  A wave of cold water slammed Donovan in the face. He jerked back, gasping, eyes flying open. His exocel rippled reflexively, straining against the steel wire that bound his wrists and ankles to the metal chair. The man standing in front of him tossed the empty tin pail aside. “Now it’s awake.”

  Donovan coughed, sputtering. He was indeed in a large, windowless room, lit by a strip of fluorescent lighting that gave the gray walls and bare concrete floor a sickly yellowish-green hue. The three people in the room stared at him as if they were expecting him to do something—shout, swear, struggle. He blinked dripping water from his eyes and tried hard to gather his muddy, panicked thoughts. He dug his chin into his uniform collar, feeling for—

  “Looking for this?” The man who’d doused him, Kevin, held up the crushed remains of his transmitter and earbud. He tossed the bits of scrap in the direction of the water bucket. “You’re alone, zebrahands. Your pals aren’t coming for you.”

  “Yes they are.” Donovan tried to make his voice come out confident and unafraid. It sounded rough and too fast. He steadied his gaze on Kevin. “You’re making a really big mistake. Let me go now, and you might live when they get here.”

  Kevin walked forward slowly. The man was as wiry as a coyote and had the feral look of one. His jawline was as hard as his voice, and dark with stubble. Curly black hair stuck out from underneath the brim of a denim ball cap. “Look around you,” he said. “You’re not in a position to make threats. That uniform, those stripes on your hands, that alien armor in your body, it doesn’t mean jack in here.”

  Despite himself, Donovan felt fear slime his throat. The man was right.

  “Brett,” said Kevin, “set up the camera.”

  The younger man leapt to obey. He unlatched a big carrying case on the floor and started pulling out pieces of equipment. Though he worked with practiced speed, Brett moved with the twitchy servility of someone who’d been beaten up as a kid one too many times and was always waiting to be jumped. Dark patches of sweat showed in the armpits of his frayed gray T-shirt. In a few minutes, he had a tripod set up. He fiddled with the recording device, then sat back on his haunches and scratched his nose nervously. “Um, it’s out of batteries.”

  “Out of batteries?” Kevin burst out. “Chrissakes, why do I keep you around?”

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m sure I have some more in the van,” Brett said quickly. He gave the other man an apologetic, kicked-dog look and hurried from the room. The door clicked closed behind him.

  Donovan’s fear congealed from amorphous dread into solid terror.

  Sapience distributed a series of videos among its members as propaganda, and to SecPac and the government as intimidation. They called it Alien Dissection, though most of the victims weren’t zhree but exos. The extremists didn’t differentiate; anyone with an exocel was a fair target in their minds. The message in any case was the same: Armor can be beaten. We can kill them. They die just fine.

  Donovan pulled against the loops of wire binding him to the chair. He surged and furrowed his exocel along his wrists, trying to break or cut the steel, but his armor scraped across the flexible metal cables uselessly.

  Kevin made an impatient noise and turned his attention to Anya. He put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed, a little too tight and a little too long, considering that the girl held on to her elbows, not resisting but not returning his embrace. “You’re in now, for sure.” His lips moved near her ear. “I’m going to vouch for you, and when I vouch for someone, they’re in. But you’ve got to want in. Things got scary for you tonight. You still want this?”

  The girl looked up at him. Her fine features were resolute. “Yeah. I do.”

  “You’ve got the nerves for it, that’s for sure, but you’ve got to have the stomach too. You think you have that?” When she nodded, Kevin gave her a pleased shake. “Now, that’s a girl.”

  Brett reappeared, holding up the video recorder in triumph. He attached it to the top of the tripod and swiveled it to point at Donovan. He gave Kevin a thumbs-up. “Showtime,” he said.

  Kevin unzipped his jacket and tossed it aside. The vest he wore underneath had a gruesome pale sheen. It was woven through with panotin—the stuff exocels were made of. Donovan’s guts lurched. The only way to get panotin was off the corpse of a zhree or an exo. The rebels had no qualms about harvesting the technology they despised from the bodies of their enemies and using it for themselves.

  Donovan shuddered. He was going to die, and it was going to take a long time and hurt a lot. Afterward, the terrorists would salvage what panotin they could from his remains and leave the rest for Jet to find. They would send the video of his death to Commander Tate, who would have to break the tragic news to his father.

  His father. His father would be so … disappointed.

  Donovan’s breath rasped in his throat. Where were his fellow officers, his erze mates? When would they rescue him?

  Kevin drew his pistol, ejected the magazine, and slid in a fresh one. “You’re lucky, you know,” he said. He drew back the slide. It released with an ominous click. “You get to redeem yourself to your species. Not every shroom pet gets that chance.” He nodded toward Brett, who pushed a button on the video camera. A red light blinked on.

  “Do you have anything you would like to volunteer?” Kevin asked. He sounded genuinely interested now. Concerned. Acting like a talk show interviewer for the camera. “Any confessions you would like to make? This can be easy. You were born human. You can still prove yourself to be human in the end by helping the cause.”

  Donovan looked at the red light focused on him like a laser sight. He thought about what he wanted to say to anyone who might be forced to watch this—something defiant and dignified—but he didn’t trust his voice not to shake. Instead, he turned an imploring gaze on Brett and Anya. They didn’t seem as pitiless as Kevin. Couldn’t they see this was wrong?

  Brett didn’t look at him. He stood behind the camera, hands stuffed into the pockets of torn jeans, elbows sticking out. He hung on to Kevin’s words with an eager, worshipful attentiveness, nodding whenever the man paused. Anya, though, stared at Donovan steadily, as if he were a strange animal in a cage. She was now sitting on top of the closed video equipment case, her arms resting on her knees. Her lips moved very slightly, as if encouraging him to speak.

  “Nothing to say? Not even your name? All right.” Kevin’s voice shifted from query to demand. “Who led you to Sean Corrigan?”

  That was an easy one to refuse; like hell he was going to give up an innocent little boy. In training, he’d been taught one line to repeat over and over again if he was ever captured. At the time, the possibility of needing it had seemed so remote; it was the sort of thing you figured was there just in case, but you would never have to use, like fire escape ex
it maps and weight limits for skimmercars. The line came back to him now: I’m under orders to provide no information under enemy interrogation. Even an officer’s identity could be used by terrorists to target his family and fellow cooperationists.

  “I asked you a question.” Kevin took a step forward. “Who led you to Corrigan?”

  Donovan said, “You know I’m not going to answer that.”

  Kevin shot him in the chest.

  The impact crushed the breath from his body and detonated a shuddering wave of agony as it rocked through his exocel. His head whiplashed back; for a second everything went blurry.

  Kevin gave him a minute to recover. “Who is your source? We know SecPac has informers. Did one of them give you Corrigan?”

  Donovan panted in time with his throbbing torso. “Go to hell,” he wheezed.

  Through watering eyes, he saw Anya cover her ears. Kevin shot him again, in the stomach. The gunshot reverberated in the closed room, like pain. Donovan barely heard it; the world had gone strangely muted beyond the gong ringing inside his skull. Kevin’s persistent voice sounded as if it were traveling underwater. “What is the code word you use with your informers?”

  Donovan’s mind tried to search for the answer in a treasonous bid for self-preservation. The code changed every two months and was given to patrol teams on a need-to-know basis. Wallaby? Wapiti. He swallowed. There was no moisture in his mouth. His words came out in a groan. “I’m under orders to provide no information under enemy interrogation.”

  The next bullet struck him in the ribs, and he howled. For the first time in his life, Donovan wished he was not an exo. Exos could stay alive long past what a normal human could endure. The remarkable biotechnology that made the zhree so invulnerable was now guaranteeing him a very slow death. The fourth shot slammed into his shoulder. Donovan’s head jerked back. The harsh strip of overhead light danced in his vision. He fought wildly against the restraints, dignity forgotten, cursing Kevin in a string of half-sobbing, inarticulate profanities.

  Kevin came and squatted down next to Donovan’s chair. “The shrooms made your kind so damn hard to kill. I used to hate it. Now I kind of like it.” He draped his long arms over his knees and dangled the gun from his fingertips. “Tell me, what’s the fastest way to kill an exo?” When Donovan didn’t answer, he called across the room. “What do you think, Brett? Anya? What’s the fastest way to kill an exo?”

  “Put a gun in its mouth and pull the trigger,” Brett suggested.

  Kevin stood and pressed the barrel of the pistol to the side of Donovan’s mouth. “What do you think, zebrahands? You want to suck on this and take the easy way out?” He moved the gun upward and fitted it against Donovan’s left eye. “Bullet through the eye works too, doesn’t it?” Donovan squirmed as the metal ground against the socket.

  Kevin moved the gun away. “Well, that’s not how it’s going to go.” He walked over to where a rifle was propped against the wall. He returned with it and crouched back down to Donovan’s level, resting the firearm on its stock and giving it an affectionate pat. “This baby is a real War Era relic. Fires five-point-seven by twenty-eight millimeter, armor-piercing rounds. It’ll punch through just about anything, even panotin. It’s probably been a long time since you’ve seen yourself bleed, hasn’t it? Humans bleed when they’re shot. You curious about what that’s like?”

  Donovan chewed hard on the inside of his cheek. He wondered if he could force himself to drop his armor so the bullets would kill him. He doubted it. It would be like trying to keep his hand unarmored while pressing it to a hot burner. His body would rebel, try to save itself, like it was doing now. His exocel was working frantically, pushing out the flattened bullets, knitting and rebuilding at the site of impact … but slower each time.

  Kevin slung the rifle over his shoulder. He backed up again, moving the pistol in a lazy, indecisive motion, as if considering which part of Donovan to aim for next. “Start saying something useful.”

  I’m under orders to provide no information … He said it silently to himself this time. Exos were nothing if not loyal to their oaths. His armor rippled, trying to anticipate where the next blow would land. He closed his eyes.

  “Stop it.”

  Donovan opened his eyes. Anya was on her feet, her sharp chin jutted forward. As he watched in dim amazement, she stalked in front of Kevin. “Stop shooting him.”

  Kevin’s mouth warped. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “It’s not working.” She perched slightly forward on the balls of her feet, her small hands balled into fists. “And it’s cruel. Plain cruel. He’s just a boy.”

  In spite of everything, Donovan blinked in wonder. He was just a boy? She was just a girl, a squishy girl, standing in the path of a loaded gun. A bullet would kill her—punch right through bones and tissues and organs. Even though she was the reason he was in here, Donovan felt like shouting at her to get out of the way. Kevin was a psychopath, a killer.

  “A boy?” Kevin’s face reddened. “Is that what you think he is? ’Cause he looks like one? Like someone who might smile at you and ask you to the school dance?” He shoved Anya aside and strode over to Donovan, his expression empty of compassion. “He’s nothing of the sort. The shrooms change them when they’re little kids. They start training them as soldiers as soon as they turn twelve. Isn’t that right?”

  “That’s the age that all erze born are marked,” Donovan blurted. “You’re just making it sound—”

  “Is that right or isn’t it?” He dug the gun muzzle into Donovan’s temple. Donovan nodded.

  Anya pushed Kevin’s gun arm down, glaring up at him. “If you’re going to kill him, then kill him. But don’t keep hurting him. We’re supposed to be the good guys here. We’re fighting for humanity, not losing it.”

  “Stop recording this, dammit!” Kevin shouted in Brett’s direction. He grabbed Anya by the arm and dragged her aside. “I’m changing my mind about vouching for you. You said you had the stomach for this, but I should have known better. You think there’s room for nicety in war? You’ve got to be willing to do anything for the cause. Anything.”

  “Not this,” the girl said. She looked birdlike in the shadow of Kevin’s wrath. “Give me the gun. I’ll kill him, if you ask me to. But I don’t want to be a part of this.” She pointed to the video camera.

  A long moment of stalemate stretched between them. Donovan stared, transfixed, knowing he was dead either way but unable to help feeling a stir of conflicted admiration. The girl was fearless, the way she stood staunchly in front of the terrorist sergeant, her small frame tense with determination.

  Kevin flipped the pistol around and offered her the grip. “Do it, then.”

  Anya paled. She pressed her lips together and took the gun.

  Kevin pulled an extra magazine from his back pocket and slapped it into her other hand. “You might need more rounds.” The left side of his mouth tugged up in dark humor.

  A strange fog was descending over Donovan. He felt inexplicably disconnected from what was going on, as if it didn’t concern him anymore. He wondered if he was going into some kind of shock—a combination of adrenaline overload, and his body channeling all physical and mental reserves into his exocel in an ultimately futile bid to keep him alive.

  He watched Anya approach. She really was a fragile-looking thing. Underneath a baggy jacket, she wore a thin, wide-collared black shirt that slipped off one shoulder and exposed her sharp collarbone. The waist of her pants sat low on bony hips beneath a hollowed stomach and small chest. Donovan looked into her eyes; he wanted her to know what she was doing. Strangely, the fact that he was going to die seemed a secondary tragedy.

  Once she pulled the trigger, there would be no turning back. As an exo-killer, there would be no life for her besides a criminal one; no path but Sapience. SecPac took a terrorist off the streets, and another, like Anya, took his place, and so it went on. Donovan managed to work just enough saliva into his mouth to form words
. “Don’t do this, please. You’re not like him. Not yet. You don’t have to choose this.”

  She looked down at the gun in her hand. He saw hesitation and nervousness, but also a deep, resolute rage.

  “My name is Donovan.” His voice was a dry whisper. “I’m seventeen.”

  She lifted the gun with both hands and walked forward until the black hole of the muzzle filled his vision, like a telescope lens into oblivion. It was all he could see. There was nothing else but the gun—the gun, and the drenching fear. Let her hands be steady, he prayed. Let it be over quickly.

  A second passed. An eternity. What is she waiting for?

  “Guys!” said Brett. “Hold up, you might want to see this.”

  “Not now,” Kevin warned.

  “Seriously, Kevin, look at this.” Brett’s voice rose. “That’s him, right? Anya, come and look—you know who he is?”

  Anya lowered the gun. For a moment, she and Donovan stared into each other’s eyes as if they had passed together through some invisible threshold, and the strange face before them was the first sight on the other side. A shadow passed across Anya’s features: relief, or regret.

  Brett was gesturing at the screen he’d just handed to Kevin. “It’s on the news. While you two were arguing, I figured I’d check the news, and what do you know? The stripes are saying he’s missing—presumed dead or captured—and the news is making a big deal out of it.” He pushed aside the dirty-blond hair that kept falling across his eyes and stared at Donovan with a heightened sense of interest. “They’re saying he’s Donovan Reyes. Reyes, as in—”

  “Prime Liaison Reyes,” Anya finished. Her voice fell to a hush. “He’s the son of the Prime Liaison?”

  Kevin’s eyes jumped between the screen and Donovan. “Is this some kind of trick?” he demanded in a murmur, speaking mostly to himself. “Is SecPac screwing with us?”

  “He said his name’s Donovan,” Anya said. “I heard him say it.”

  Donovan felt the air shifting in the room. The three terrorists seemed to sway in a crosswind, as if they had been sailing in one direction, only to have been suddenly buffeted in another. Brett and Anya looked at each other, and then at Kevin, expectantly. “He’s got to be one of the most valuable stripes in the country,” Brett said. “This is good news, right?”