Grabbing a few bandages, med glue, and some painkiller tablets, I studied the surrounding area through the windows. More buildings, all faded red brick, extended in all directions. I didn’t have time to check all of them. The nano gel was going to wear off some time and Holland was going to figure out what was happening soon enough.
My EarCom crackled. “. . . power.” It was Melisa’s voice.
“Melisa! I didn’t get that,” I said. I stuffed the medical gear into pockets in the body armor shirt.
“Nik,” Melisa said. “We’re low on power. Have to land.”
“I found my parents. They’re all coming your way.”
Holland was controlling all of this. He had to have some kind of headquarters, some place like Prime One that had security systems and a lot of power running through it.
“Great!” The EarCom crackled and I missed the next thing she said.
“Can’t hear what you’re saying,” I said. I tried to figure out what do next. Running through the cluster of buildings waving a keeper around was going to get me killed. I needed to use my disguise while it lasted. I needed a clone. If we didn’t stop Holland now, we might not get another chance.
“EarComs are losing power too,” Melisa said. “Meet us now.”
“Nope, we’re not done.” I peeked out the door, then darted across the street and between two houses. No clones in sight. I saw movement through a window. That might be a clone.
More crackling in my ear. “. . . we can’t help . . .”
“Get everyone to safety. Steal a pod.” I rounded a corner and found a wide doorway with a moving conveyor belt leading through one side of it. Memories of the Dumps in New Frisko flashed through my mind. My back twinged in remembered pain.
My EarCom fuzzed and went silent. I was on my own.
I stole another look around the corner. The wide door and conveyor belt led to a deep room with machinery in it. It looked like a Holland clone was in there. I held still and listened. The hum of the conveyor belt and some regular thumping in the building it came from were all I heard.
I let my keeper drop to hang behind my back and, ignoring the aches all over my body, walked into the deep room. I did my best to walk heavily and force a blank look on my face. Come on, nano gel, do your stuff.
Dry, lung-cooking heat filled the room. The conveyor belt led into the mouth of a complicated-looking machine. I hadn’t seen it before, but there was a long, wide line of dirt on the belt. The machine appeared to be eating the dirt. I’d seen something like this before. It was a refinery, extracting minerals and other useful materials from the dirt. But this machine was far more complex than the refineries I’d seen in the Enjineering Dome. Heat poured off the machine in waves.
The Holland clone stood at the inside of an elbow formed by a bend in the machine. Three more conveyor belts fed out of the far end, threading through a series of holes in the building’s walls. One of the conveyor belts held small, flat, shiny pieces of what looked like steel.
The place was a factory. Holland had to be using machines like this to keep the Ranjers supplied with bullets and other ammunition. The Holland clone’s attention turned to me, but it didn’t register anything. My disguise must still be working. It had to be unbelievably uncomfortable standing right next to the refinery like that, but it just stood there expressionless, its hand on the machine next to a flat control panel.
It wore plain gray pants and shirt. I needed those clothes. Even though it was just a clone, I couldn’t just kill the thing. I needed to tie it up or restrain it somehow.
Nope. That was going to take too long. I thumbed my ammunition drum to rubber bullets and peppered the clone. It reeled backward, slammed into the machine, and fell limply to the floor.
I dragged the clone behind the refinery and put its clothes on over mine. As I left the building, I stopped and turned back to the machine. It gave off enough heat to cook a deer. I dropped a bunch of big rocks on the conveyor belt that led into it, then smashed the glass control panel with the butt of my keeper. Even if I don’t find you, you’re going to remember I was here.
As I walked away, loud noises followed me out. The machine didn’t like the rocks I’d sent into its innards. I’d gone twenty paces when a loud bang sounded from the building. I smiled.
I passed a couple rows of houses, my keeper hanging behind my back. Most of the houses had some kind of machinery in them and hums and rattles filled the air. The deeper I got into the cluster of buildings, the more Holland clones appeared. They walked with a heavy shuffle, manning the machines and carrying a variety of materials between buildings. Three clones worked with a machine that spat out cases the size of half a keeper. I angled closer. The cases held bullets. I took in all of the buildings, and the scope of the operation staggered me. He had at least one huge building full of pods across the way, and here he had countless machines making metal and bullets. This was how he kept his Ranjers outfitted so they could murder for him.
I wanted to set off a huge bomb, blow the whole thing up. Leave a smoking crater behind that we would all eventually forget.
But first I had to find him. I tried to walk almost exactly like the clones, but faster. I curved around buildings, looking in all directions. I came to a wide street with two long buildings on one end of it, maybe thirty meters away. The buildings were all white metal, glowing brightly in the afternoon sun. There were a few smaller houses down the street, all made of red stone. The big buildings looked out of place, like they hadn’t been there as long as the rest.
I clone-walked toward the white metal buildings. Each had a wide door in the middle, and as I drew closer, I saw that they were connected by a low hallway. As I kept doing the weird, fast shuffle-walk, I tried to estimate how long the nano gel had been injected into my face. An hour? More? It felt like I’d been running around Holland’s base for days, but it couldn’t have been much more than a couple of hours.
The left building’s door was closed, but the wide door of the building on the right gaped in front of me. Something, clones probably, moved around in the slightly dimmer interior light. I itched to have my keeper in my hand. Remembering back to the first building I’d run through, with all the pods, I wished I’d grabbed handfuls of grenades and a few extra ammunition drums.
Wishing wasn’t going to make explosives appear in my hands. And the projector bomb and knife tucked in the pouch at my back weren’t going to make a difference in a building this size. My heart felt like a rock dancing in my chest and clogging my throat. I forced my doubts away as I entered the building, doing my best impersonation of a Holland clone that had a purpose but wasn’t in a huge hurry.
What was with these things anyway? Four of them stood around a room that appeared to take up the entire building. They were obviously clones, but they acted like robots, as if they were programmed and couldn’t really think for themselves. But that one in New Frisko had been a clone too—and it acted differently, holding conversations with me and running the entire city. Maybe there were different kinds of clones. It didn’t make much sense.
I’d be sure to ask Holland about it when I had my keeper pointed at his face.
My eyes adjusted to the lower light inside the building. A row of semitransparent, pod-shaped things lined the entire back wall of the building. Monitor stands stood between the pod things, flashing multicolored lights and beeping softly. A faint sour smell filled my nostrils. I took in the row of pod things. There had to be at least fifty of them. I’d seen these before—in that secret room under Prime One.
I shuffled up to a transparent lid of one of the pod things. Clone makers? Something that looked a little like Holland’s slack face greeted me, its eyes closed. It had no hair and most of its body was covered by a gelatinous-looking blue liquid. This was definitely a clone maker. Holland was making an army of himself. What else were you going to do when you were the worst person in history?
The Holland clones moved around the room, oblivious to the explosions t
hat had gone off not that far from here. They had to be programmed in some way. Flesh robots. I shuffled through the room toward a door that looked like it led to the hallway connecting the two buildings.
“Bed twelve’s temperature is anomalous by point five degrees.” It was Holland’s voice. The nearest clone swept its dull gaze across me. “Adjust for optimal maturation.” It wanted me to do something.
I ignored it. The door I wanted to get through didn’t open when I stepped in front of it. There was a square sensor plate on the wall next to the door. A faint hand outline appeared on it as I moved closer to the door.
Great. My hand wasn’t going to do this. I turned. The Holland clone had followed me.
“Hi,” I said. I shot it with electrodes. It twitched and jerked. I cut the current and grabbed the clone, yanking it against the door. “I need a hand.” I pressed the still jittering clone’s hand against the sensor plate. A cold blue light appeared on the sensor, warming to red, then the door slid open with a sigh.
I dropped the unconscious clone and ran inside. It was a sterilization room. Bright light exploded from every direction, bathing me in ultraviolet rays and cleaning all the germs off me. What was in the next room that needed people to be sterilized?
Blinking away purple dots, I got to the far door. It swished open and I ran in.
I stopped cold, a bolt of terror pinning me to the ground.
At least a hundred Ranjers filled the room.
Chapter 47
Okay, so the Ranjers were all lying on hard plastic beds, with wires attached to their heads and bodies. The wires came out of runners in the ceiling, all of which led to the strangest machine I’d ever seen. Shiny as a mirror, it was completely smooth—it had no edges except for, I assumed, at the bottom, where it sat on the ground. It was basically a massive, shiny cylinder with a rounded top. The wires protruding from the top of the gleaming chrome thing made it look like a metal head with thick black hairs sticking up out of it. Thousands of thick black hairs. The machine gave off a low, bone-vibrating hum.
The Ranjers looked like they were sleeping; they hadn’t moved since I’d run in. But their eyes were open and vibrating. Actually vibrating, their pupils zipping back and forth faster than I could follow. They all wore uniforms, without boots or helmet, and the wires were attached directly to the uniform. Some of the Ranjers had their mouths open; others looked like they were clenching their jaws tightly enough to crack teeth. They weren’t clones; they all looked different. They looked like they could have come from New Frisko.
In fact that woman over there looked—
Bug me. That was Brenda. She had been in a group of Pushers that had disappeared after the escape from New Frisko. They’d reported being under attack, and we’d never found them. We’d assumed they were all dead.
Two beds over lay Mike. Tavis, a tall, dark guy who had been Mike’s best friend, lay in the bed next him. They had been in Brenda’s group.
My stomach turned over. I had to fight to keep from throwing up. These were Pushers. Why hadn’t we recognized Ranjers we’d seen before?
I knew the answer before the question finished forming in my brain. Holland was taking people from everywhere, probably all three cities, maybe even Wanderers. Somehow he was turning them into Ranjers.
And we’d been fighting the Ranjers, killing them when we had to. We’d been fighting our own people.
What was Holland doing to them? How was he—
A scream shredded the room. I flinched and ducked. A female Ranjer—no, just a woman, not a Ranjer—was writhing on her hard plastic bed, her mouth so far open I could practically see her lungs. Her scream burrowed into my ears, grabbing my brain and shaking it.
I ran to her side as her scream reached a crescendo, her back arching impossibly high. She slammed down to the bed, going completely limp. Her face went slack. The wires attached to her skull, face, and body armor looked like alien tentacles sucking the life from her.
She wasn’t breathing. Her eyes stared blankly upward.
She was dead.
I reached for her. I’d seen Kristin do something to one of the Pushers whose heart had stopped. I put my hands in the middle of the woman’s chest and pushed down. Was this right? I leaned over her and pumped at a regular pace.
“Come on.”
I watched her face. Nothing. I stared around at all the other people Holland was destroying, keeping up the steady rhythm. Kristin had said this could start the heart again. I felt for the woman’s pulse.
“Come on!”
There was nothing. She was gone. I couldn’t do anything.
I ran to Brenda. Another scream ripped through the room. It was a man, twenty meters away. His back arched.
What was Holland doing to them? I sprinted to the machine. The shining cylinder was almost two meters in diameter and its skin was completely unbroken. I brushed my fingers across it, and a readout appeared right where my fingers had touched. It had a bunch of numbers at the top and showed the outline of a person, arms and legs spread. A computer-generated image of a brain rotated next to it.
Multiple areas of the body and brain lit up in sequence. I looked at Brenda, then back to the readout. The spots on the figure were in the exact same places as where the wires connected to the body armor. This thing was doing something to the people Holland was turning into Ranjers. But what could he be doing that would make them fight for him?
I tapped the brain image. It expanded to fill the entire readout, parts of it still lighting up. One of the areas that lit up the most was a long, curving section in the middle. I tapped that spot. The winking light stopped. I tapped the other lit up areas as fast as I could. They all went out.
Another blood-boiling howl stabbed my ears. I spun and ran to the man. He didn’t writhe like the others had. He screamed once, then went limp. He was still breathing, but his eyes stared at nothing. I shook him.
“Hey, wake up.” He didn’t respond. “Wake up.”
I slapped his face. He didn’t react. Had I done this?
No, Holland had. I darted back to the machine and ran both hands down it. Tons of readouts appeared. I tapped the body shape of one of them. It expanded. I tapped the chest near where a light held steady. The area expanded and information scrolled down the left side of the screen. Some of the words looked like muscle names.
I stumbled back, the sick feeling returning to my stomach. This machine was screwing with people’s brains and bodies. Holland was somehow turning normal people into murderers. But not flesh robots like the clones. We’d heard Ranjers speak and they worked on their own.
They were still people, but warped completely by Holland. And we had been fighting them all this time.
I needed grenades. A lot of them. This machine needed to be a smoking pile of melted garbage. But maybe it wasn’t too late for Brenda, Mike, Tavis, and the others.
Holland. It was time to find him.
Chapter 48
I crossed the room, fighting the need to pour every bullet I had into the shining machine destroying all these people. Holland had to be controlling all of this from somewhere. I had to go find him, blow open whatever dark hole he was cowering in, and make him shut this machine down.
Or—I stopped. Or I could make him come find me. These two buildings were where he built his army. If they were under attack, would he appear, try to stop it?
Only one way to find out. The wide door I’d seen from the outside was mechanical and judging by my location, I was looking at its other side. I found the control panel and hit a button. Nothing happened. Which made sense, since Holland was trying to keep this room uncontaminated. Did that mean I was trapped?
I ran back to the hallway door. It opened as I approached. So I could go to the clone room, but to get back in here I would need a clone hand again.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I ran through the hallway. Momentary heat from the bright sanitizing light warmed my skin, then I was back with the clones.
Would Ho
lland come running if I started messing with his clone operation? Worth a try. I ran to the first clone pod, activating the smooth glass control panel. Temperature and biological monitoring readouts filled the screen. I tapped the temperature. A meter appeared. I dragged the meter up, setting it to heat the interior of the pod to forty degrees. I moved to the next and did the same. By the time I was at my third one, the first pod beeped loudly and all four Holland clones in the room had converged on it, talking in flat voices about a temperature anomaly. I remembered the clone I had electrocuted earlier. It must have recovered by now. Which one was it?
I dragged the temperature meter up on my fourth pod, then slammed the butt of my keeper on the tough glass screen. The screen cracked. I shouted with the next one, putting everything I had into it. The cracks spiderwebbed, bits of glass dropping to the floor. I ran to the next clone pod and did the same thing. Within minutes, panicked-sounding beeping filled the room. This was fun.
I kept going, watching the wide door for any new arrivals. Nobody. It had only been a few minutes, so I continued. I raised my keeper to shatter another control screen.
“Having fun, Nik?”
Every hair on my body stood straight up. Cold tingles poured down my back. I spun, bringing my keeper up. Holland stood just inside the door from the sanitizing hallway. How did he—?
I’d missed something. He must have some kind of control area in the Ranjer room.
I glared at humanity’s murderer. “A lot, actually.”
“You’ve made quite a mess.” He looked just like the Prime Administrator had, except his hair was different and he was a little shorter. His voice was unmistakable though. Soft and oily. I wanted to shoot him now, end this whole thing.
“Thank me later.” I charged him.
Push (Beat series Book 2) Page 28