They approached the hills at a steady pace. She wondered if the Outlanders regarded this place as a city. There was no protection. No wall. There were no guards present, though she could see oncoming headlights. Looking ahead, she wondered why Mainland hadn’t wiped the Outlanders off the face of the earth long ago.
The convoy of trucks loaded with armed soldiers came to a gradual halt when the group of vehicles in front of them came closer. Nolan turned in his seat to face Hazel and Des.
“Just stay in here for now.”
“What’s happening?” Hazel asked.
“I have to explain this,” he said, nodding at Des. “I don’t think they’re going to be happy he’s here.”
Gus and Nolan opened their doors and stepped out to meet the others, then slammed the doors closed.
“I wonder why he’s being intercepted?” Des said.
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t he supposed to be important? Why wouldn’t he be allowed in automatically?”
Hazel shook her head. “Maybe they’re just verifying he is who he claims before they let him in.”
Des held up a finger and turned his head.
“You can pick up what they’re saying?”
“Better than that,” he answered with a smile.
Des opened his mouth a little wider and Hazel instantly heard the sound of muffled footsteps, then voices. She could hear the voices outside from the distance, but almost simultaneously she could hear it through Des’ speaker. He kept the volume down to avoid suspicion, but she could hear them perfectly.
She leaned in closer to Des and stared out the window to see the backs of Gus and Nolan meeting with a much taller man who had a thick, gray beard.
“Lester,” Nolan said, nodding.
“Nolan.” Lester’s voice was deep and gravelly. The way he stood over the others, his hands deep in his coat pockets to block the cool, morning air made him seem powerful. The way Nolan had acted when getting out of the truck made it seem like the man wouldn’t be too happy about him bringing the extra cargo. “You make it through all right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Had a few close calls.”
“What about the files?”
“I’ve got them.”
“Good. We can take them back to headquarters and get everything sorted out.”
“Hang on, about that.”
Lester’s eyes narrowed.
“What’s wrong? You said you had the files.”
“And a little more,” Nolan said. “Hazel Hawthorn is in the truck.”
Lester turned his head to look toward her. She ducked instinctively though he probably couldn’t see her anyway because of the headlights. She wasn’t sure why she ducked either.
Stupid.
“You brought her here? Why?”
“She’s just as much of an outlaw as me now. Besides, I think she can help us further.”
Lester shook his head. “I don’t like it. You were just supposed to use her to get to the mainframe.”
“Well, Lester, there’s more to it than that. Besides, I’m the one that chose her, remember? I had my own reasons.”
“I don’t care about your reasons. You need to run these things by me.”
“Well, there’s more,” Nolan said.
Lester chewed the inside of his cheek, waiting.
“You saw my capture on the television?”
“I did.”
“The robot that caught me…”
“Prototype D, yes.”
“He’s here. In the truck. With Hazel.”
Lester swore and immediately pulled a pistol from his belt.
Nolan quickly put his arms up. “Wait, wait, wait.”
Lester stopped in his tracks.
“First of all, if you go at it with that, it’s going to destroy you. Second, we have to keep it alive.”
“Why?”
“Because my files are stored in its memory.”
Lester looked at Nolan with wide eyes and his mouth hanging open. “Are you serious?”
“I am. We have to keep them both safe or the information is gone.”
“Bring them out,” Lester said.
“Why?”
“Just do it. I want to talk to them.”
Nolan sighed and motioned for Gus to go back to the truck. Des and Hazel both sat up straight and Des switched off the microphone. The robot looked at Hazel with an assuring nod. “I’m not going to let them hurt you. And they won’t try anything with me.”
“We can’t trust them.”
“I know. But they won’t do anything to jeopardize their chances of keeping the files.”
Hazel nodded, still feeling uneasy about being where she was. As Gus approached, she had the strongest desire to be back home in her bed—back before she had ever decided to go to the university. Back before they had chosen her. At this point she wished she had refused them or at least studied something different.
Gus opened the door gently on Hazel’s side. His eyes darted to the robot on the other side and he held up a steady hand. “Don’t get crazy or anything, but the boss wants to see you both.”
“Which one is the boss?” Hazel asked.
“Lester,” Gus said. “He’s the head honcho. The guy all of us have to answer to. What he tells us, we do.”
“What if he tells you to kill us?” Hazel asked.
Gus smiled. “Then I suppose your robot friend here will have to show what he’s made of. He ain’t gonna kill you. Not unless you cross him or betray him. Just play nice and everything will be all right.”
Hazel looked at Des who offered no emotion. He studied Gus, then looked through the windshield at Lester and Nolan. Without saying a word, he reached for the door, opened it, and stepped out onto his one leg as he held tightly to his broken one. Hazel looked up at Gus and shook her head as she, too, got out of the truck. The Outland breeze hit her and it felt colder than she had expected.
Neither Nolan nor Lester looked at her as she got out, rather their stares were fixed on Des. All of the twenty or so men had their guns fixed on him as he jumped steadily, one foot at a time, in front of Hazel toward the group. When he got about fifteen feet away, Lester spoke up.
“That’s far enough,” he said.
Des stopped short.
Lester still held his pistol firmly even though he’d been told it was useless. It had taken a robot with about twice as much power as Des to break his leg. But it would take a bit more than what these men had with them to take Des down.
“The plan was never for you to step foot inside our caverns,” Lester said. His eyes finally fell on Hazel. “Do you know how to extract the information from him? We’ve got equipment.”
“Actually, she’s got a hard drive on her,” Nolan offered.
Lester smiled and shrugged. “All the better. We can get this over with right here.”
“We’re not going to do that,” Hazel said.
Lester frowned. “You think you have a choice?”
“I have leverage. All you’re asking me to do is get rid of any leverage I have. I’m not going to do that.”
“And what if I shot you, right here?”
Des spoke next as he hopped in front of Hazel. He held his broken leg firmly in his hand like a club. “Then I’ll beat you and your men over the head with my broken leg until you stop breathing.” He looked down at Lester’s gun. “And you won’t get the files you need.”
“What assurance do I have that you’ll give us the files at all?”
Hazel stepped out from behind Des. “We have no place to go. We can’t go back. All we can do is seek shelter with you, the Outlanders. You are our only hope of survival. We want to make a trade.”
“A trade?”
“That’s right.” She couldn’t believe these words were coming out of her mouth. “We will give you the files in exchange for a place among your people.” She would have never thought she would try to barter her way into becoming an Outlander, yet here she was
, speaking to their leader.
“Our people are dying,” Lester said. “You want to join a dying people?”
“Seems like you have a good plan to turn that around.”
“We have a lot of work to do before we get there.”
“Des and I can help. We know how things work in Mainland.”
“We know how things work in Mainland too,” Lester said as he glanced at Nolan. “Recruiting more Mainlanders to our team isn’t the answer. The answer is in the files.”
“And what do you hope to do with those files?”
“Show them to my people,” Lester said. “There is a growing number of them who don’t believe that our cause is just or important. Many think I’m a liar who only fights because I’m hungry for war. But they don’t know what we know.”
“And you don’t know what I know,” Des said. “These files have been playing over and over in my mind. The more I think, the more I see what has happened in the past. The more I know that the Mainlanders have dealt you a terrible hand.” He looked at Nolan. “You have done a great thing by gathering this information. But it’s not enough that you show it to your people to rally them together. This information needs to be shown to the Mainlanders. If people knew what I have seen, what Nolan has seen, then they would revolt. The Outlanders would be welcomed with open arms.”
Hazel stared up at Des as he spoke, wishing she had seen the things that he had seen because she still wasn’t entirely convinced that the Mainland government had a full-on plan to destroy the Outlanders. She still hadn’t seen proof of the nuclear weapon they supposedly had stored away in secret. Just conversations.
Lester shook his head. “Eventually, that is part of the plan. But we’re not there yet.”
“I’m not going to pretend I have all the answers you’re looking for,” Hazel said, “but you don’t get one of us without the other.”
Lester lifted an eyebrow at this. “You wouldn’t leave a machine behind?”
“Des is no machine,” Hazel said, her face getting hot. “He’s a person.”
“He is gears and wires made by man.”
“Maybe, but so are we,” Hazel said. “We’re just made differently. But to answer your question, no I wouldn’t leave him behind. And he won’t leave me behind either.”
Lester holstered his gun and crossed his arms, raising a hand to tug at the sides of his beard. “You realize that your friend, Des, is the very thing we’re trying to stop. If word gets out that we let one of these things loose within the town they’d hang me.”
“I suppose you have to weigh what is more important,” Hazel said, her eyes fixed and her jaw tight.
Lester continued to stroke his beard as he now stared at the ground. To Hazel, he seemed to be weighing the options in his mind, though she didn’t feel like they had actually given him any.
“You can take my word as you want,” Des said, “but I assure you, I’m not here to cause trouble.”
“And why are you here?” Lester asked.
Des pointed at Nolan. “Because I have his files.”
“Yes, I know that, but why do you want to be here?”
“I have quickly become a fugitive in the place I was made. I was created with the purpose to destroy you, but that is not integrated into my programming.”
“Not that you know of,” Lester said.
“It isn’t,” Hazel said. “I was in complete control of his programming. I didn’t create his body but I created him. He was a blank slate. No prejudices were programmed.”
Nolan took a couple of steps forward and turned around to face Lester. Hazel craned her neck to listen, though it didn’t seem he tried to lower his voice.
“We didn’t really have a choice in this,” he said.
“If you would have done your job right, we would.” Lester sounded cold as he spoke, dismissive.
“You know what we have to do.”
Lester kicked at the dirt and continued to stroke and tug at his beard. Nolan stepped away and looked at Hazel. Lester stood in front of them for a long time. The silence was uncomfortable, especially with all the guns pointed at them. Hazel was tired of him taking his sweet time to decide what they already knew would happen. There was no alternative.
“Put them in my truck,” Lester said. “We’ll need to keep this quiet.”
33
The house felt quiet now that everyone was gone. Even Gizmo made little noise. John had no news of his daughter and he realized that he might never have news of her. In fact, if he did hear anything about her, it would probably mean she’d been caught or killed by the Mainland soldiers.
John hadn’t been able to sleep since they left, his thoughts running wild and going in too many directions. He knew it was only a matter of time before someone came to him looking for Hazel. He would be questioned. He would deny knowing anything. More than likely, they would leave him alone. John had enough of a history with the military that he was still respected, though he wasn’t sure that would matter in this case.
He tried to push the recordings from his mind, though he knew it was folly to do so. Pushing it further from his mind meant denying what his daughter believed in. It meant choosing sides. But John didn’t want to be on a side. He didn’t want any of this.
John allowed his thoughts to wander until the slightest noise outside his house snapped him to attention. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Perhaps the noise reminded him of an old jet engine, though this was much smaller but still powerful. The sound grew louder and louder until it stopped abruptly.
John stood from his chair and fumbled toward the window on the other side of the room. His fingers ran across the bottom of the sill until he found the latch to open it. He had locked everything since the others left. The cool morning air hit his chest as it blew into the house like a welcomed guest. But the next sound he heard was jarring and as unwelcoming as any intruder.
From the cracked asphalt street no more than a block away, he heard the sounds of unnatural footsteps that grew louder and louder with each reverberating stomp. Metal against rock, there was no mistaking it. His practiced ears were keener than they had ever been since they had replaced his eyes.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Each step seemed deliberate as though the walker intended to announce his arrival to any and every person within a mile. What made John’s heart race was the fact that every step came closer to him than the last. For the next several seconds, John stood at the window, waiting, listening, wondering what on earth the thing could be. When he realized that it was making its way to his house, he abruptly, and perhaps too loudly, shut the window and turned toward Gizmo.
“Stay quiet,” John ordered with a harsh whisper.
“Gladly,” Gizmo said with too much cheer.
“Shut up!” John snapped.
All John could hear now was Gizmo’s gears as he tried to maneuver around the room—his destination and purpose for doing so known only to him.
The pumping of John’s beating heart threatened to overtake his eardrums as the blood flowed rapidly through his veins. For a moment he thought this had happened. The footsteps no longer broke the silence of the night and he wondered if the being had stopped or had decided to go in a different direction. He felt silly standing in the middle of his living room, fearful that something was after him. As the silence continued, he cursed at himself for being so paranoid and felt his way to his chair. He knew he wasn’t crazy. He had heard it. Had his feeling of fear been misplaced? Possibly. More than likely, even. What was becoming of him? It would have taken a lot more to frighten him back in the day. Was he losing his composure as his days of darkness grew longer?
Whatever composure he had left fled from him when he heard the footsteps again, this time on his front porch. His hands clenched the arms of his chair. He could hear Gizmo stop suddenly as he too must have heard the noise. Metal rapping against wood produced a knock at the door loud enough to shake objects on a nearby table.
; “Shall I answer it?” Gizmo asked in a hushed voice.
If the little robot was capable of anything but joy, John would have thought he detected nervousness or concern from his voice. He wondered if he was simply projecting his own fears onto Gizmo.
“No,” John whispered. “Stay quiet, no matter what.”
“I can hear what you’re saying,” a muffled voice from the other side of the door called out. “I can hear you breathing.”
John instinctively held his breath even though it was too late. The object on the porch had the movement of a machine but the voice of a man. John immediately knew it was a robot. A surge of thoughts pushed through John’s brain as he tried to make some sense of why it would be at his doorstep, but nothing solid came to mind.
“There really is an easy way and a hard way for you,” the robot said. “Neither way is hard for me. Open the door.”
John grimaced as he considered the robot’s words. He didn’t want to give in so easily, but there really was no choice. Whatever this robot wanted, it was going to get it, but it didn’t give John the chance to stand from his chair and work his way to the door. Instead, John heard a loud clank followed by cracking wood. The doorknob fell to the floor and John felt the same chilly breeze he’d let in through the window.
“Hello, John,” the robot said. “Long time no see. I guess in your case that works in multiple ways.”
John remained fixed to the chair as if he’d been sewn into the fabric. He didn’t recognize the voice, so the fact that it called him by name was confusing. John tried to judge the size and weight of the robot by the vibrations throughout the house as the robot entered, and all he could surmise was that it was giant. Gizmo confirmed this with a happy greeting.
Prototype D (Prototype D Series Book 1) Page 26