by A. L. Davroe
I look back to Mac, still cross-armed, still looking like a bull ready to charge. I search for the best way to frame things for a man like Mac. He seems straightforward and to the point. Simple, but not stupid, someone who likes a clean deal. “Do you question what I’m capable of?” I ask him.
The stoic expression on Mac’s face slackens and his eyes tighten in distrust. “If everything that I’ve been told is true, then I think you’re capable of quite a bit, Miss Drexel.”
“You’d agree that I’m the one who, above everyone else in the entirety of my city, was the one who hacked into the Main Frame.”
“With help, yes.”
“With help. They laid the path, I unlocked the doors. I made the final plant. In the end, it was my straw that”—I touch my lip in mock thought—“what did Dad call it? ‘Broke the camel’s back’ I think.”
“What are you getting at?”
“What I’m getting at, sir, is that I have a set of skills that you need. I’d be willing to sell them to you at a price.”
Mac’s face turns a little red and he turns to Zane. “What’s she all about?”
“Ella thinks she might be able to reboot the city.”
Mac’s thick brows rise and he examines me over a bulbous nose that looks to have been broken once or twice in his life. “You’re trying to make a deal with me, I see.”
I nod. “If I can start the city again, then you’ll have access to all the resources you need.”
“That’s a big if.”
“Seems that everything that has happened up until this point was a lot of plans hinging on ‘ifs.’ What’s one more?”
His arms slacken, and he puts them in his pockets. “What’s to keep me from compelling you?”
“What could possibly compel me? Everything I love is dead. The people I care about are down in that tunnel, and you’d have to feed them to keep them alive to blackmail me, so you might as well just make the deal and make it easier on your guards.”
“There’s other ways to compel people.”
“You mean do what my uncle did? Take away my legs, imprison me, isolate me, starve me to the point of insanity? None of that got me to plant that virus for him. What did plant that virus was a simple deal. Just like this one. I got what I wanted, and he got what he wanted. You catch more flies with honey,” I say, smiling sweetly. “That’s another one of my father’s.”
Mac scowls at me.
I shrug. “I can’t guarantee anything, but I’m your best hope for even getting into the Main Frame, let alone rebooting the entirety of Evanescence. And all I’m asking for is some supplies for a few measly Aristocrats.”
Mac stares at me. His face is stoic again—poker face. Another thing Dad would have said, now that all his little sayings are on my mind. I resist the urge to touch his chip. This moment is too tense to even move.
We’re still for such a long moment, him staring at me, me staring at him in some sort of silent contest, that I wonder if I’ve miscalculated his personality and I’ve overplayed my hand. But then, suddenly, he bursts out laughing and his hand comes flying up to smack me hard on the arm.
Unnerved, I glance at Clairen over his shoulder. Her smile touches her eyes and they don’t seem unkind.
“You drive a hard bargain,” Mac is saying. “I’m starting to really gain some respect for you Aristocrats.”
I draw a breath. “You’ll do it, then.”
“Sure, sure.” His arm comes out and his hand splays across my shoulders. He guides me as he begins to walk. “I’ll even send them along with a little guard. As a mark of good faith. Wouldn’t want anyone saying I threatened The Savior with physical violence or any such nonsense.”
“No,” Zane mutters as he walks at my shoulder. “Wouldn’t want that.”
“Blowhard,” Clairen adds from his other side.
If Mac hears, he doesn’t indicate. “As long as everyone understands that they go and you stay.”
“Stay?” I ask.
“Sure,” Mac says. “At least until we’re up and ready. Maybe you’ll leave then. Maybe you’ll stay. Who knows if we’re going to continue needing you to update and maintain the system.”
I swallow. What have I gotten myself into? At least everyone is safe.
“Claire,” Mac says. “Be a button. Run down to supply and make up a few care packages for Miss Drexel for”—he looks down at me—“how many was it?”
“Thirty, roughly.”
“We’ll call it an even forty.”
“But,” Clairen argues, “supply is Dolman’s job.”
“Not anymore it’s not. It’s yours now. Along with your other duties.”
“But—”
“No buts, Claire. Argue some more and I’ll start feeling super generous and have you make up sixty,” he warns.
She closes her mouth.
“That’s what I thought. Next time you get the urge to get saucy and call me names, have the decency to say them to my face. A cuff to the ear hurts less than being overworked and hungry. I thought you learned that when you were ten.”
Clairen growls under her breath, but she just says “Yes, Mac” and walks away.
When she’s gone, Zane says, “Whew, you’re a mean son of a bitch.”
Mac’s hand leaves my shoulder and the next thing I hear is a meaty fist hitting Zane’s bony shoulder.
“Ow!”
“You’re part of the family now, kid, rules apply to you, too.”
Zane’s voice suddenly becomes bright and he’s grinning like an idiot. “Oh, I’m so very pleased.” He turns to me, expression and tone becoming stone sober. “Aren’t you excited to become a part of this, Ella? Can’t you just feel the love?”
I dart an uneasy glance at Mac, who is grinning and shaking his head. “You’re a goddamned idiot.”
“I know,” Zane says. “That’s why I fit in so well.”
He doesn’t get smacked for that.
PART FOUR:
Ella Learns What it Means to Be Chased
chapter fifteen
Post-American Date: 7/7/232
Longitudinal Timestamp: 2:46 p.m.
Location: Disfavored Tunnel System
As we walk through the tunnels I see evidence of the Disfavored who have been here in the past. Lost items—a shoe, a cap. Bits of trash, smudges of ash. Even some dried out and vulgar bits of human excrement. I keep pace with Faulk and Aaron. They’re in easy conversation, Aaron often grinning at something Faulk says, but I can’t hear them at this distance. Quentin walks beside me, brooding.
I speak, because the silence between us is getting to be too much. “You’re quiet.”
He smiles. “I’m thinking that I don’t like the idea of leaving you behind.”
“You think they’ll hurt me?”
He scoffs. “No, you’re probably the safest you’ll ever be with the Disfavored. They don’t see you as one of the Aristocrats, Miss Savior,” he teases, pressing against me.
Looking away, I draw a deep breath and let it out slowly. My chest feels so tight. So much anxiety. “I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“Being this Savior I’ve been painted to be. Having that responsibility. What if I can’t undo this virus? What if I can’t get the city back online, and all these people are let down because of me?”
“If anyone can, it’s you.”
I touch the chips in the breast pocket of the new clothes that Clairen provided to me before we left. They’re scratchy and threadbare, but they’re clean. Despite a bath and clean clothes, I still feel dirty. Like ten pounds of something inexplicable and disagreeable is weighing me down. “That’s an awful lot of expectation.”
“Seems to me that you were born under a cloud of expectation. From day one, your mother had plans for you to carry out this crazy scheme. And ever since then, more and more people have gotten involved, ushered you down this path.”
“You and me both,” I note, not ignoring the path he’s been shepherded
down.
“Yeah. But at least I sort of knew what was happening. Granted, nothing has gone according to plan thus far. The only thing that was supposed to happen when you planted the Anansi Virus was a short power outage. Just enough time for some Disfavored rebels to infiltrate the city and storm Bella Adona. The only Aristocrat who was supposed to die was my father—everyone knows that Aristocrats are cowards and wouldn’t fight a group of armed Disfavored. The rebels figured they’d probably lose a few to the security droids, but they signed on aware of that. The benefits of putting a Disfavored sympathizer like my mother into the Presidential seat far outweighed the cost. It was going to be the dawn of a new age. An age where Disfavored and Aristocrat might walk hand in hand. That’s what I was told was going to happen. That’s what Zane thought was going to happen. That’s what Mom and the Disfavored rebels thought was going to happen. But…”
“But Uncle Simon altered the virus.”
He nods.
“I have a lot of trouble believing anyone intended to kill all those Aristocrats. I can’t believe he made the city turn on us. I can’t believe he’d turn off the nano-net. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Zealots only ever make sense to themselves.”
I don’t answer. It’s clear Quentin believes Uncle Simon is entirely responsible for what happened after the virus was planted. I don’t blame him—if not Uncle Simon, then who? Still, I’m not convinced. I want to believe in a person I’ve loved my whole life.
Quentin swings the light-stick back and forth, back and forth, examining the tunnel. Aaron and Faulk turn left up ahead. Finally, I say, “At least now everything is out in the open and we’re making our own decisions.”
“I don’t feel like that,” he says.
I pause, mid-step. “You don’t?”
“No, I don’t.” Turning away, he continues walking and I follow. “I don’t want to bring these Aristocrats to Cadence, because if I leave with them, I’ll get sucked into maintaining those people for the rest of my life. That’s what I was born into, but it’s not what I want.”
“I don’t want to stay here with the Disfavored, because then I can’t be with the people I know and love. And if I stay and you all go, then I’ll never see any of you again. I’ll be stuck with strangers and I’ll get sucked into what I was born into, and it’s not what I want, either. But,” I reason, “it’s what I have to do. To resolve what I stepped into blindly, I have to walk into something else with my eyes wide open. It’s the only way.”
“I don’t like it. There’s got to be another way.”
Suddenly, I realize where we are—back in the cave with the big pool. We weave in between columns and jutting rock, drawing closer to the far side of the pool, where a weak bit of light-stick glow is emanating. I notice an abandoned shoe and a lost scratch-pad. Something about it seems very wrong.
“Quent?” I whisper, suddenly feeling like whispering might be a necessity.
“I see it,” he murmurs.
Faulk and Aaron must, too, because their guns are drawn and they’re prowling forward, using the columns as cover, their lanterns splitting apart and throwing lurking shadows in their wake. As they disappear ahead of us, Quent crouches and picks up the scratch-pad, thumbs through it. I crouch beside him, looking over his shoulder and squinting at the fading backlight of the pad. Soon there will be no power to it at all.
Drawings. Dozens of them. Of Aristocrats, of Disfavored. Of Zane and Clairen and Mac. “This is Angelique’s,” Quent says, reaching forward to pick up the stylus. “She doesn’t go anywhere without this.” He slides the stylus home and powers it off.
My stomach sinks. This silver shoe… This is Veronica’s shoe. At least, it’s a shoe that my Designer brain tells me would perfectly match the powder-blue gown Carsai’s crony had been wearing. Those perfect crisscross bands would have accentuated the fiber-optic pattern on the bodice.
“Something’s happened. Something’s wrong,” I breathe, sudden panic climbing up my ribs. It’s like my muscles are being drawn tight, like a slingshot about to be fired. I get to my feet. “I need to find them.”
“I don’t think we’re going to like what we find, Elle,” Quentin says, lifting his finger from the band of the shoe. “There’s blood.”
Scowling, I round on him. “All the more reason to look for them.”
Quentin takes a long breath, lets it out. “Can we talk about this for a minute?”
“No. I can’t believe sitting and talking is even an option for you.” I throw my bag down at his feet. “Sit here, then. I’m going to look for the others.”
As I stalk away and the rocks close behind me, my light-stick is my only solace, strong and purple in the black. I feel desperate and confused and frustrated, like when Dad handed me a new puzzle to unravel. I’d spend days in a haze of lost thoughts until I came to the abrupt solution. I wish I could come to the solution now.
And just like that I do. I trip over it, landing with an oomph that scrapes the palms of my hands and leaves my knees smarting. Blinking stars out of my eyes, I kick my feet free of what feels like an abandoned bit of cloth. I reach out and find the cloth sticking out from around the corner of a stone column is the synthetic fabric of an Aristocrat’s gown. Squinting, I lift my light-stick and a pair of legs appears in the glow. One foot is bloody and missing a shoe. Heart in my throat, I inch around the column.
It’s an Aristocrat, for certain. Only Aristocrats are so Custom pale—all the better for Mods and Alts to stand out. As I draw closer, I see the pale blue of her ball gown, the brown-red stain of blood in her white hair.
“Veronica,” I whisper.
Shaking, I bend down, hoping against hope that she’s just injured and still alive, but as I close my hand on her cold white skin, I know better. Still, I turn her over. Her stiff body makes an awful crackling noise. She folds over, her hair falls away from her face, and I’m confronted with the streams of blood down her pale, Custom face, her glassy blank eyes, her wide-open mouth. Her eyes are accusing. Her mouth is screaming at me.
Something inside of me breaks. I see images I don’t want to see again. Hear words I don’t want to hear again.
Meems’s twitching body and halting words as she died in my hands.
Screaming Aristocrats falling from windows.
Androids ripping at President Cyr’s stomach.
The sounds of a gunshot, and the blood and brain of my uncle’s head spattering against the perfect white of Lady Cyr’s dress.
Opus’s crisped and blackened body, the sizzling noise and the scent of it.
Nadine’s open eyes turning on me in Nexis, her lifeless foot hitting a door, and her voice echoing in my mind. “You led us here to die.”
Over and over and over again.
Clutching myself, I tumble back on my butt. Everything inside of me freezes solid. Cold, cold, more cold. I can’t breathe. There’s weight on my chest that I can’t see. Something inside my mind tells me to back away, turn away from what my eyes are seeing, as if doing so could erase the image before me, could stop what’s flashing through my brain.
But hasty backpedaling, turning on my hands and knees and crawling away…it doesn’t make what I saw disappear. It haunts me, follows after me like it’s burned into my mind, like it’s grabbing at my heels. So I stumble to my feet and try to escape from it.
It comes at me, closing in around me, drowning me. Some dark foreboding thing that, if it catches me, will swallow me whole. I hasten my steps until I’m running as if the speed could cause it to lose pace.
Still, it pursues.
So I run faster, tripping over my feet, feeling my way along the corridor. I slam into Quent, who must have come in search of me.
“Whoa,” he breathes, grabbing at me. He’s trying to make me go still, but that will only make the image catch up to me faster. So I fight him. I shove at him and squirm out of his grasp and duck under his arms.
“Elle!” he hisses after me.
&nbs
p; I don’t respond. Don’t look back, don’t stop.
He calls again, closer this time. Is he chasing me? I go faster, my lungs burn. I begin hurtling downed bodies and scattered packs, refusing to see their dead and accusing eyes as well. There is no logic, there is no reason. Only flight.
A hole appears, abrupt and maw-like. I pivot hard, take a turn. Left or right, I don’t know. I run down a broken path, half falling, half skittering, still running. My legs are shaking and feel dangerously close to losing their ability to keep pace with my racing mind. And just as I’m thinking it, just as reason is starting to return, just as I realize the only thing chasing me are the ghosts in my head and I need to stop before I hurt myself, my injured leg buckles and I stumble. As I topple, I lose my balance. I throw out my hands and my light-stick slips from my grasp. It flies out…into nothing. My momentum carries me after it. I endeavor to stop, skidding against loose shards and scree, but I’m already going over. And then I’m falling.
I whirl forward, put my arms out and scream.
The darkness eats me down and then I hit. Hard. A wall of shock, cold suffocation pressing in on all sides. It takes me a long moment to realize I’ve fallen into water and another moment after that to realize I’m choking on it.
I struggle to find which way is up, to get to the air. But the shock and the cold seem like they’ve taken something from me, stolen my senses. The last thing I notice is warmth, hands. Someone touching me. And then nothing.
Someone is kissing me…oddly… And then I’m coughing, spitting up water from lungs that are on fire. Someone sits me up, doubles me over so I can gulp huge mouthfuls of air and choke up the rest of what’s in my lungs. They pat my back, urging the awful stuff up. Eventually I subside to shakes and gasps and then I start crying because I almost died and everything hurts.
They pull me close. He pulls me close, because even though it’s pitch dark, I sense the maleness of his rocking body and the low baritone of his “shhhh, shhhh” in my hair. And when he says, “It’s okay, I’ve got you. You’re okay,” It’s a male I know well.