by M. G. Herron
“How can I thank you?”
“Rest. Get better.” She gave him a smile that didn’t make it to her eyes, then left the room with a pointed look at Po.
CHAPTER 31
LIKE A MOUNTAIN OF SAND
Po and Ari talked for another minute, and then she left the room with an excuse about how she needed to dry her hair.
It wasn’t so easy now to summon Kai’s face to mind, but the feeling of guilt was still tangible. Ari felt he could almost turn it in his hands. But the sun shining through the windows gave the ocean-themed room a calming, golden ambience. The room and the quiet relaxed him. His focus wavered and he drifted off.
He imagined his guilt like a mountain of sand on the shore of a beach. Ari kept digging his hands into the hillside until the walls collapsed and buried his hard work. No matter how carefully or how fast he tunneled, the roof kept caving in.
The sand worked against him. Always loose. Constantly sifting through his fingers. It barred him from piercing through to the heart of it. Like his memories. Always falling down but never showing the whole picture.
Filled with determination, he dug two hands into the sandy hill again. Another, smaller pair of hands joined him this time. He looked over and saw Po kneeling next to him. They rubbed their sandy shoulders together as they dug a hole as wide as the both of them. When sand began to sift out of the walls, Ari stood to fill the tunnel and used his back and shoulders to support the structure. Po kept digging, and with her help they got deeper into the structure than Ari had been able to reach alone. Another foot. Three feet more, Ari bracing the roof on his back the whole way, inching forward with Po. Eventually, they breached the wall, revealing a moonlit room. They entered the center of the sand mountain together.
On the far wall, a tiny rectangle of light was set into the curved wall at Ari’s eye level where the moonlight filtered in. He went toward it and as he approached he saw vertical slashes breaking up the light. He walked closer and the vertical slashes became steel bars. The tiny prison window looked across a wide, muddy river. On the other side, electrical lines coming from both directions met at a gated complex with a stone building flanked by a half dozen smoke stacks—a power plant.
Po came up behind him and took his hand. Then she slapped a pair of steel restraints on him. One cuff went around Ari’s wrist. The other clicked around the bar in the window. Po backed out through the opening they’d dug together and lowered herself into a chair, watching him as she had in the guestroom. Vertical bars dropped into place between them. She sat in the chair and said, Ari.
“Ari.”
The moonlight trembled.
“Ari, wake up!”
Ari opened his good eye. Po had two hands on his shoulders and she was shaking him, her fingers hard and frantic.
“What?”
“A police car just parked out front. I think my aunt called the cops.”
Ari bucked out of bed. His clothes had been washed and lay folded on the striped recliner. He yanked them on, then found his sneakers and jumped into those too. Night had fallen while he slept.
The doorknob rattled.
Po picked a black backpack up off the floor and shoved it into his arms.
“I packed the bag while she was on the phone. Your medicine is in here, and what I could take from the kitchen.” Her eyes were wide and frightened.
“It’s not your fault,” he said.
“I tried to tell her it wasn’t true. You saved my life, Ari.”
“I’m afraid I’m not who you think I am.”
“Yes, you are. You’re a good person.”
Her aunt called through the door: “Po! I can hear you in there. Open this door.”
“Find me again,” Po whispered.
Ari shook his head.
“Yes,” Po said. Ari was startled by the ferocity in her voice. “Promise me you’ll find me again!”
“Okay. Yes, I will.”
What if he had killed that boy? Would she feel the same way about him if she knew that?
“Promise,” she said.
“I promise,” Ari said, to put her mind at ease if nothing else.
Her fingers relaxed where they had been squeezing his arm. Ari couldn’t help but do the same. She pulled him close and kissed him so quickly he didn’t have time to move his lips to reciprocate. Then Po was pushing him toward the open window. He glanced out. The slanting roof of the back porch ended eight feet above the sun-burnt grass.
Keys rattled beyond the door. The floor creaked as the weight of several people shifted on the other side.
“Go,” she mouthed as she hid next to the wall beside the door, and pulled a baseball bat out from under the bed. Ari shouldered the backpack and pulled the straps at his waist to cinch it tight.
The door shook in its frame as a heavy object rammed into it from the other side. At the next bash, the frame splintered near the doorknob and cast shards of wood into the room.
Ari jumped onto the roof as Po caught the leather tops of the first pair of boots to enter the room with her bat. A uniformed police officer tripped and tumbled to the floor. Two more men in blue jumped over him and raced to the window.
Ari was already falling through the air. He landed in the dead grass, bending his knees to soften the force of the fall. Another cop in uniform came around into the narrow side yard and rushed him. Ari stood, opened his hips and used the man’s momentum to thrust him into the cement foundation of the house. The officer’s head connected with an audible knock, and went limp.
Ari sprinted through the front yard, across the street, and scrambled easily over the fence of a house on the other side.
CHAPTER 32
ON HIS OWN
Ari managed to get away from the cop cars circling Rose Petal by cutting through the housing development, doubling back, and then working north along the river bed. Autonomous drones circled overhead and he avoided them by hiding under shrub brush for agonizingly long stretches of time, until their sounds faded away. After a couple miles, he found an overpass and used it cross the river, so that he would be hidden from the drones. He held the backpack over his head to keep it dry while he side-paddled to the opposite shore.
By the time he got to the other side he was exhausted. The adrenaline and fear had faded. He rested for a minute against a pylon supporting the overpass and wrung water from his clothes, but he dare not wait too long. If he was right about being a rebel and the cops caught him and figured that out, he was as good as dead.
The darkness was his best cover, and now that he’d made some distance and the drones had vanished from the sky, Ari decided to brave the streets. Sticking to the shadows and going in zigzags to avoid intersections with traffic lights, he forced himself to plod on. Generally speaking, he tried to keep heading southeast toward the downtown core indicated by the crowd of skyscrapers a few miles distant. If he made it back to the protests, he would blend in and become anonymous among the crowd. They had some food there, too. In his current condition, wet from swimming and filthy from hiding in the dirt, he could likely also blend into a crowd of homeless without much effort, if the need arose.
Or he could look for an abandoned building and hunker down, try to figure his next move.
He passed through a middle class housing suburb where sunbursts decorated the street signs, and then into a crowded, run-down labor district where big metal-walled hangars held factories that churned and chugged continually even after the sun fell. His clothes dried, though his shirt remained soaked through where the backpack rubbed against his lower back, and on his chest where sweat ran down his neck and into the cloth of his t-shirt.
Ari kept plodding along. His legs ached, and went numb eventually. Had he and Po really made it this far? The last few miles of their journey was all muddled together in his head. But Kai’s face, the blond man with the four circuit boards, and the sight of the power plant from his dream were crystal clear.
After night fell, he crossed into the poorest dis
trict he’d seen yet.
Ari commanded his legs to stop moving and slowed down. His body was buzzing with energy from hours of movement. He had the strong sense of floating as he adjusted to the new pace. He didn’t recognize the names of any streets, but there was another image laid upon that reality, the faintest sense of déjà vu.
When a patrol of soldiers turned into the main thoroughfare, Ari calmly stepped into a wide alley and hid out of sight behind a dumpster and several cans of rancid garbage. Black plastic bags spilled out of the cans and leaned against the wall. Near where Ari squatted on the floor of the alley, several manholes had been placed, sealed and moved over the years. He counted at least two manholes with removable covers, perhaps an entrance for city service workers.
Thoughts of Po replayed in his head while he waited for the patrol to move on. She wasn’t really into him, was she? Not only was she several years younger than him, but they hadn’t known each other for that long. Yes, they’d helped to keep each other safe while they were crossing the city, and yes, Ari had grown to care for her in the time they’d spent together. The set of traumatic experiences they shared would be enough to bring any two people close. He tried to tell himself that that’s all it was—the heat of violence bringing people together, coupled with a purely physical attraction.
A physical attraction on his side, at least. He found it hard to believe that any woman would be attracted to his scarred face now. He was a breathing scarecrow. The reality of his disfigurement stared out of each dirty window he passed. He wished he had the presence of mind in the hurried escape to grab one of the bandannas Po had found before. Ari pawed through the backpack.
No bandanna, but he did find the RNSCR meds. He clicked a black vial into the slot on the side of the jet injector.
Even if, for some crazy reason unbeknownst to him, his looks didn’t turn Po away, Ari knew she would never be able to love him. An image of Kai rose in his mind’s eye—round-cheeked, brown-eyed, intensely surprised. The musky scent of guilt returned. Whose guilt he smelled, Ari couldn’t be certain, but did it matter? He’d worked with the rebels. He’d seen a boy lying on the street with his neck cocked at a weird angle. What other crimes had Ari committed that he simply couldn’t recall?
He put the barrel of the jet injector against the inside of his left bicep and pulled the trigger. A bit of compressed air hissed out of the gun. He closed his good eye and waited for a new memory to come to him, but there was only the sound of his breathing. The echoes of the soldiers boots faded from his hearing. Ari picked up his pack and continued his trek.
When—not if, but when—Ari did recover the rest of his missing memories, he didn’t want Po anywhere near him. He had a feeling that she wouldn’t like that Ari. He wasn’t even sure if he liked that Ari. Better that he was on his own.
Ari gazed down the next streets he passed. These had no signs or names. The sidewalks ended abruptly and the pavement was pockmarked with potholes. He was still a mile or two from the crowd of skyscrapers brushing shoulders in the downtown core. Instead of the proud, hard edges of the stone buildings, these shanty homes and drab, colorless project apartments seemed to be falling to pieces. It seemed like the roof had caved in of every fifth building in a row.
People loitered in the streets. Some wandered with an apparent lack of purpose. A dozen motley figures huddled around a barrel fire. Their dirty faces were lit by the sooty flames. They carried their belongings on their backs, or piled on a cart nearby.
Ari picked up his pace. As he jogged past, begging hands reached out, their frail forearms sickly thin, their ashen cheekbones gaunt with hunger and loss.
He finally had to take a left turn to realign himself toward the skyscrapers. His shoes stuck to the pavement and he came to an abrupt halt.
“God damn it.”
A helicopter drone inched around the corner at the far end of the street. Firelight glittered off the underside of its whirling propellers twenty feet overhead. It emitted a faint hum, and the sight of it sent the ambling squatters scurrying into the shadows. A young woman came out of a nearby building with an armful of broken planks—were they using the frames of the fallen houses as firewood? She dropped the wood and carried her two young children back inside, one on each hip, and slammed the door behind her.
In a minute, the people had their families tucked into or stowed behind the questionable safety of the crumbling buildings and gathering of shanties.
In the same time, Ari had calmly turned the corner, and once out of the line of sight of the drone, broken into a sprint in the direction he’d just come.
His sneakers slapped the pavement. He cursed himself for being so distracted by thoughts of Po and the squalor of the city that he hadn’t come up with a backup plan, or picked out a hiding spot yet in case he was spotted.
He ran so hard that the backpack shook viciously, slapping against his elbows as he thrust his arms up and down. He tried to be careful not to shatter the vials of nanobot injections, but slowing down was not an option.
Ahead of him, another drone came over the roof of an brick apartment complex and veered down toward him. The dotted red line of an ID scanner swept over the ground—once the drones recognized him, the cop cars would come barreling in on his position.
If they can’t ID me, they’ll alert the cops, or even shoot on sight.
The alley in which he had hidden from the patrol of soldiers was thirty yards ahead of him. He doubled his efforts and squeezed every last bit of speed out of his tired legs, bracing himself against the wall as he careened into the alley.
He tried four manhole covers before one came loose.
The buzz of the drone entered the alley behind him.
Ari lowered himself back into the underground through the rancid scent of garbage and into the awful choke of mold and decay. His feet swung through the air for a sphincter-clenching moment until he kicked into the rung of a ladder. He found his footing.
The dotted red line of the ID scanner swept toward him, the propeller blades of the drone buzzing in his ears. Ari pulled the heavy steel disk of the manhole cover back. The red laser skimmed the metal and swept over his arm before the steel clanged into place. The jerking motion caused his foot to slip from the damp rung of the ladder. Ari fell, windmilling his arms in shadowless darkness.
CHAPTER 33
SUBTERRANEAN HIDEOUT
Ari’s side smacked hard into rough-surfaced stone. He heaved himself up, gasping. Half in pain, half-choking from the scent of rot that clogged the pipe, he dragged himself away, moving deeper into the darkness.
Moving down into the belly of the system.
He grumbled and cursed his way through the impossibly dark pipe. He knew the drones would continue to circle this area, so he had at least a mile or two to make before he could consider resurfacing.
Ari didn’t think he was the type of man who talked to God, but as he moved he prayed he would see the sun again. He pressed his hands against the walls to keep from sliding as he went deeper and deeper. In many places the stone was spongy and soft from years of perpetual damp. Mold had grown through the cracks, taken over the cement, and finally become the cement.
The old pipe eventually leveled out. A hundred yards ahead, a light shone through a spot where the roof had caved in. Ari climbed through a pile of rubble, up into a much taller, round-walled tunnel. He came out near a rusty pair of rails that curved along the length of this new tunnel. A complex tangle of wires set into the wall, followed the rail as it leaned to the right. Orange-yellow emergency lights glowed dimly. Self-contained and battery-powered, they were placed every thirty yards on the floor next to the rail.
Like it had when he’d first entered the poor part of the city, the faint pull of memory, familiar but distant, caused him to pause and reflect.
A heightened stillness came over his body. His tense, pent-up nerves leaked out through his fingertips. For the first time since he escaped from Felix Hull’s subterranean hideout, Ari felt cal
m. Ironic that he was only able to attain this calm feeling when he was forced to retreat back underground. But even that had a sort of cosmic balance to it.
He turned right, then left, uncertain which way would lead him back to their hideout. How would he find them at all?
He thought the crowd of skyscrapers was to the right, so he began to walk along the rail in that direction.
A crazy idea occurred to him. A suicidal idea.
This train tunnel reminded him of Felix and Dr. Neru. His only chance to find out the truth of what had really happened—why he’d betrayed the rebels to help Ming—was to return to the source. A suicide mission to be sure, but his only chance.
He allowed himself a harsh bark of laughter, a single guffaw that echoed off the round walls.
He told himself to forget all about Po. Which was for the best, really. He had only known her a few days, but he was damned sure she wouldn’t like where he was headed.
Ari walked to one side of the rail, glad to be able to stretch his legs and wipe the muck from his clothes.
The train tunnel itself was an arm span and a half wide, and three times his height tall. Where he walked to the left of the rail, if he reached out he could just brush his fingertips against the electrical wires set into the wall.
Not that he wanted to. The wires themselves were randomly rusted, frayed, broken, slashed, or graffitied. The rail was dead. It was incredible that the batteries powering the emergency lights still had some juice left in them. No train had made a journey along these tracks for years—decades, perhaps. Were parts of this system still used? He didn’t know. He hadn’t spotted any subway lines when he’d been downtown with Po, or in his chase. But he hadn’t been looking. If they were still in use, it would be surprising that anyone would have let this place fall into such a state of disrepair.
He passed through an equally abandoned-looking subway platform. There was a stairway leading up. A dozen square columns supported the higher ceiling. The columns were plated with cracked tile mosaics in floral patterns of red and orange and green. He checked the stairs, and found the metal exit doors welded shut.