Unity

by Jeremy Robinson

  “Vegas!” Twig shouts, and several things happen at once.

  The man on top of Twig overpowers him, plunging a blade into his chest.

  Hutch’s eyes go wide, looking behind me. “Effie!”

  I dodge to the left, in the opposite direction of where Hutch is looking. I feel a sharp pain in my triceps as a blade slides past.

  When I hit the ground, every part of my body screams at me to stay down. If not for the painkillers, I would probably be paralyzed with agony. But inaction will lead to my death, so I roll over—and stop.

  A wooden spear impales Toothless right beside the knife that he stabbed into his chest.

  Hutch is frozen in place, arm outstretched, looking just as stunned as Gwen, feeling just like I did when I killed Mack. None of us are good at this, and by good I mean immune to the psychological effects of taking a life. Apparently we’re all capable of the physical act.

  Toothless topples over on his side and won’t be getting up again.

  “Twig!” Vegas shouts at the now motionless man, blood flowing from his mouth.

  As Twig’s killer rushes Vegas with the other two, I recover the spear from Toothless’s body and turn to help.

  But Vegas is incensed.

  In a rage.

  And the other three men, skilled and ruthless though they might be, don’t stand a chance. They’ve pushed him over the edge, and his attack has no regard for his own safety. In the first second, he kills two of them, but takes a knife to his leg for the effort. With his spear lodged in a dead man’s chest, in one side and out the other, Vegas pulls the knife from his own leg and avenges Twig’s death with three quick stabs.

  I’m not sure how long the fight took. It felt like years, but I think it was closer to fifteen seconds.

  Vegas turns on the two men still standing at the gate. They both drop their weapons. One of them says, “We’re cool, man,” hands raised.

  Vegas points at Twig, dead on the ground. “You could have saved him!”

  With a quick jerk he pulls the spear from the dead man and throws it, killing the unarmed Diablo.

  The second drops to his knees, and I see a Base brand on his hand. He’s shaking. Petrified. I’m not sure a person like this could have done anything to save Twig.

  Vegas recovers his knife from the dead man and stalks toward the cowering Base.

  “Hey!” I shout, standing between them.

  Vegas glares at me. I’m in the way of his revenge. Or is it bloodlust? If it is, I could be in trouble.

  “He’s done,” I say. “You’re better than them.”

  That gets through to him, and he lowers the knife. “Get up, Whitey.”

  Whitey is another nickname that falls into the ironic category, rather than the four letter category, because the man on his knees has dark skin. Given his reluctance to fight, I suspect the name has more to do with his quickness to surrender.

  “Get the others,” Vegas says to the man. “If they’re not here in the next five minutes, they will never be welcome.” He leans in closer, his voice a growl. “I will hunt them down.”

  Whitey seems to nod with every part of his body capable of moving up and down, and then he’s running back out the gate, shouting for his still-hiding companions.

  Motion draws my eyes back into the camp. Freckles and Doli have emerged from hiding. Doli still looks numb. Freckles is guiding her past Quinlan’s limp arm. My eyes track the arm back up to Quinlan’s face, but where I expect to see something bloody and horrible, I just see the robot ninja faceplate.

  “Get away from him!” I shout, stepping toward Doli. “He’s not—”

  Before I can finish, a blade the size of my arm springs from the ExoFrame’s forearm, and with the same speed, it’s thrust into the redhead’s back. As the boy is lifted off the ground by Quinlan, who is now getting back to his robotic feet, Doli looks on with horror.

  Quinlan points the blade at me, letting Freckles slide off and fall to the ground.

  The message is clear. You’re next.

  In the time it takes me to realize he’s moved, Quinlan crosses the distance between us, makes a big metal fist and drives it toward my head.

  28

  “Do you think you will get married?”

  The question is so out of the ordinary that despite hearing every clearly enunciated word, all I can manage in reply is, “What?”

  “Isn’t that what normal girls talk about?” Sig sits on a park bench, sucking on a cherry Ring Pop. I’m seated on the concrete beside her dangling legs, nursing a 7-11 mango Slurpee. From a distance, if my glowering stare could be ignored, we probably do look like two average girls, binging on sugar, talking about boys, and nail polish and cat memes.

  “You want to be normal?” I ask.

  She’s quiet for a moment, and I take it as a ‘yes,’ but then she removes any doubt.

  “It’s just the two of us every day.” She leans forward and makes eye contact. Says, I’m not trying to insult you, with her face, and then, “Don’t you ever feel... I don’t know...lonely?”

  Sig is 100% more friends than I had a year ago, so when it’s just the two of us, I feel like I’m meeting my social quota. But I also go through life with blinders on, working hard to not see or hear how much fun other people are having. Obviously, I can hear and see them, but I long ago decided girls with gaggles of friends were stupid and annoying. I sit alone, eat alone and if anyone asks me if I want to go to the bathroom with them, they’re going to get a fist in the face for it. I project this attitude like plutonium does radiation. ‘Come near me, you’re dead.’ Sig is immune to it, shielded by emotional lead. She hasn’t asked to come to the bathroom with me yet, but this conversation feels like a gateway.

  My hackles raise.

  “No,” she says, before I can grumble, “I don’t want to go buy a Barbie doll—”

  Not what I was going to say, but close enough.

  “—but I’m not going to deny my humanity, either.”

  “Deny your—” I swivel around to look at her. “You’re a kid. Why talk about a husband? If you don’t want Barbie, why dream about Ken?”

  Her eyes tear up. For someone constantly being accused of being robotic by people whose intellects can’t possibly understand the simplest of Sig’s ideas, she is sensitive. Only shows it around me, of course, while I treat the world to my complete lack of anger management.

  “I’m not dreaming about anyone. I was hoping we could have an intelligent conversation about something other than all the people you hate and all the numbers I can count.”

  Ouch.

  For a moment, I want to hit her.

  And then I remember that she’s not like everyone else. She’s my friend. My only friend. And she’s right, sometimes, even when we’re together, it’s lonely.

  “Sorry,” I say, and she flinches with surprise. I’m not an apology slut.

  I pick myself off the cold concrete, a seat I chose because it was hard and uncomfortable—self-inflicted punishment for having a friend. I’ve grown accustomed to misery. To discomfort. Physical and emotional. Angry is my baseline.

  Sitting on the bench beside Sig feels dangerous. Vulnerable. Comfort is a sign of weakness.

  It means I can be hurt.

  She smiles at me. “Was that so hard?”

  I slouch back, sinking into the curved wooden slats, my back thanking me. “You have no idea.”

  She sucks on her ring.

  I slurp until brain freeze sets in. I can’t even drink without inflicting pain on myself. When the daggers are removed from my eyes, I place the drink down, lean my head back and look up at the light green maple leaves above us. It’s a kaleidoscope of overlapping, translucent green. “So. Ken.”

  “Do you know how many people are on the planet right now?” she asks. “Living?”

  “Eight billion,” I say, rounding down.

  “Eight billion, four hundred million, seven hundred fifty-one thousand, three hundred and eighteen, nine
teen, twenty, twenty-one...”

  She rattles off the numbers so fast that she blurs the words together. She’s not just being dramatic, but revealing the actual rate of population growth, and I realize this exponentially growing figure is ticking higher insider her head, all the time.

  “Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four.”

  When she stops to take a breath, I put my hand on her arm. Sometimes it takes physical contact to pull her out of the number stream. “I get it. What’s this have to do with Ken?”

  “In 2050, the human population is going to reach nine billion. In 2100, ten to twelve billion. And then, a large number of them are going to die.”

  “Uhh, okay. Morbid. And what does this have to do with Ken? Also, we’re going to be old ladies, by then.”

  “Old ladies with kids and grandkids,” she says.

  Ahh, there’s Ken. “Speak for yourself, Little Miss Optimism.”

  “I thought I was.” A smile. “Even if all of humanity agreed to become vegetarian and every inch of the 3.5 billion acres of arable land was used for crops, producing 2.5 billion tons of grains per year, ten billion people is the absolute max that the planet can support.”

  “So in seventy-seven years, people will start starving?”

  “People are already starving. Always have been. And that’s assuming the world can convince places like Texas to give up steak. And we destroy forests for farms, and make the vast majority of other species on Earth extinct. And even then, crops will eventually degrade the soil to the point where nothing can grow.”

  “Rabbits on an island,” I say with a nod.

  Leave some horny bunnies on an island without predators, and within a few generations they’ll have multiplied to the point where the limited resources can no longer sustain the population. The island would be stripped bare, and the rabbits—along with everything else competing for the same resources—would die. All of them. But in Sig’s mind, humans are the rabbits and Earth is the island.

  “But before we even get to that tipping point,” she says, “industrialized nations aren’t going to benevolently give up their chicken nuggets.”

  It’s true. I love chicken nuggets.

  “With enough data, I can see the future, Effie. And knowing history like you do, I think you can predict how the human race will react.”

  I take a slow drink of my Slurpee. Doesn’t taste as good now. “People minus food equals war.” It doesn’t take a savant to do that math.

  “Developing nations will be the first to suffer,” she says. “And when industrialized nations fight over a plot of land, we all suffer. The human race, along with our children and grandchildren, will be bombed back to the stone age. Or worse.”

  “Is there a circuitous route back to Ken coming up?” I ask. “Because I think I’d rather talk about Barbie.”

  “That’s the problem,” she says. “Everyone would rather talk about Barbie.”

  “So a husband is an analogy for the future?”

  She groans. “The only way the human race can possibly avoid destroying itself is if people like us come up with a solution.”

  I can honestly say that I had never considered the fate of the human race, a world without chicken nuggets or my role in solving problems bigger than myself. It’s selfish. I’m aware of that. But it’s also how I’ve survived.

  “And it will take generations of people like us to solve the problems we’re facing in the next seventy-five years.”

  “So, wait, you’re saying that talking about future husbands and the children they will provide is really a discussion about our duty to produce genius offspring—”

  “Superior intelligence in your case,” she says with a grin.

  “—whose minds can save humanity from itself?”

  She pops the Ring Pop from her mouth. “Yup.”

  And just like that, Sig has somehow made a case for talking about boys, and husbands, and kids, and their names and our futures, that doesn’t revolt me. We spent the rest of that day talking about our ideal mates. Their IQs. Their professions. Whether they would be good looking, strong and kind in addition to brilliant. What our kids would be like. How they would save the world. How we might, too. And for an afternoon, if you’d walked past that park bench, and heard our conversation, you wouldn’t have seen anything special.

  People say you see your life flash before your eyes in the moment before your death, but I see only that single moment in time.

  That perfect day.

  And then I see Quinlan’s fist, in crystal clear focus, just inches from my head.

  The world turns dark, my eyes squeezing tight. I hope I’ll die fast enough to not feel it.

  And then…

  Clang.

  The sound of a gong welcomes me into the afterlife. I open my eyes and am greeted to eternity by...

  Hutch?

  He’s crouched down beside me, holding that big metal shield, pressed against it, gritting his teeth. A metal bar is wedged between the shield and the ground, absorbing some of Quinlan’s blow, but some of it is buried, meaning some of that energy was transferred into Hutch.

  “Run,” he grunts before falling over.

  29

  When Hutch hits the ground, I do as he asked. I run. Out of fear? Sure. No one wants to be pancaked by a guy in a robot suit. But also because sticking around means making Hutch a target. If there is any chance he’ll survive this now, it’s not hiding beneath that shield with me—it’s far away from me.

  The trouble with the new plan, which really just involves me putting one foot in front of the other a bit faster than usual, is that a jolt of pain radiates from my side with each step. I’ve seen wounded animals run. On TV. Whether they’ve been hit by a vehicle, shot by a hunter or wounded by a predator, they all have the same kind of awkward gait. It doesn’t always slow them down. Not at first. Not until they’re overcome by the wound and drop down dead. But they all look a certain kind of ridiculous. Pitiful.

  And I’m pretty sure that right now, as I look back over my shoulder, legs moving fast and uneven, arms flailing to stay upright, that I look worthy of pity.

  But not to a man like Quinlan.

  His roboticized voice laughs at me. Mocks me.

  Without saying a word, he says, I’m going to catch you and squash you, and all your frantic running is good for, is making me laugh. The real problem with all of that is that he’s not chasing me.

  Because there is no getting away. Even if he stays put long enough to kill the others, even if Vegas manages to put up a fight, he’ll still catch me. And when he does, there won’t be anyone left to fight back or help.

  They need time. To regroup. To escape through the hatch. Whatever. They won’t be able to do any of it if Quinlan sticks around.

  So I appeal to his brutish nature by stopping, turning around and laughing right back at him. “Are you seriously afraid of me?”

  With his attention on me, he doesn’t see Vegas creeping up behind him. But Vegas sees me, and when I give him a subtle shake of my head, he stops. He can’t win that fight. We both know it. Their only hope is that Quinlan doesn’t see through my astonishing ruse.

  I back-pedal, keeping a steady pace, trying to hide my pain.

  “I’m not sure why everyone is so afraid of you. I mean, yeah, the suit is kind of an unfair advantage, but you’re obviously kind of a Nancy without it.” Yeah, I know, calling boys a girl as an insult is kind of an insult to girls everywhere, but here’s the thing: boys still hate it. Especially boys who are men with big muscles, rabid eyes and giant, robot, killing machines under their control.

  I can feel his eyes glaring at me through the single red slit. My own personal Cyclops. If only I were a Greek hero with a giant sharpened stick... Not that a sharp stick is going to stop an ExoFrame. I’m pretty sure even the Cyclops wouldn’t stand a chance.

  When Quinlan bends his legs to leap, I turn and bolt. I hear the whir of his mechanical legs spring out, combined with a familiar hu
m—repulse engines. If that thing has repulse discs in its feet, it can do a lot more than outrun me.

  A shadow slips past me, drawing my eyes up. The ExoFrame sails past overhead. He’s going to land right in front of me and greet me with a hug. Maybe pop my head between his hands.

  I cut hard to the left, heading deeper into the maze of huts.

  I don’t see him land, but I feel the ground shake.

  I turn right, around a hut, hoping to stay out of his line of sight. I can’t fight him or outrun him, but maybe I can hide from him.

  As I peel away from the hut, which is built around the trunk of a tall palm tree, the whole structure explodes. Wooden shrapnel peppers my back. The air fills with wisps of dry leaves. And the palm tree, severed near the base, topples over, crushing a second hut and sending a fresh beam of light down on the ExoFrame’s body.

  I nearly stop to call him an attention hog, but he lifts the palm tree up and hurls it at me. Strong as he is, his aim isn’t great. While I round another hut, the tree punches through it, the top rushing past me. But the rest of the ruined hut pelts me, slapping my abused body. I’m forced to leap over the trunk, which slows me down, but I’ve got a solid lead.

  Then I hear the hum of repulse discs again, and I look up in time to see him punch his way up through the canopy. A third beam of sunlight strikes the forest floor, filled with leafy confetti. He’s coming my way, but I can’t see him now.

  I turn hard right, hoping he won’t guess which direction I’m heading.

  The canopy behind me shatters. Quinlan lands where I had been standing, punching the ground with enough force to stumble me.

  But he’s missed again, and it’s making him angry. He pummels the ground, and for a moment, I imagine what that fist would do to me. It’s not pretty, and it fuels my flight.

  But this time, my maneuvers have brought me to a wall of stone. Rusty debris is piled against the volcanic rock. I see old ExoFrame parts and newer transport parts mixed in with bits of history. Pieces of World War II bunkers. Ladders. Support beams. Assorted chunks of unidentifiable metal. It’s a real mess, and a nightmare for anyone with a fear of tetanus.