by Unknown
Ary looked like she was going to lean back and punch him in the face as hard as she could, but Ravi spoke again to interrupt the onslaught.
“No, wait,” he said. “Seriously, you’re not upset with me — you’re upset — your family’s gone, but you’re not mad at me. You’re mad at the System, and the guys who built it. You’re mad that the world doesn’t work the same way anymore, and that you got the short end of the stick when it all went to hell.” He paused, catching her eye, and noticed that she was about to cry. “But you’re upset, and you need me because you need something to focus on.”
She sniffed, wiped away a tear, and knelt down so they were face to face. Ary shook her head. “No, Ravi. You’re wrong about what I need you for. I am upset, and I will make you pay for what you did, but I don’t need you for some ‘catharsis’ or whatever you want to call it. I need you to fix this.”
“Ary, you understand, right? You get that you can’t fix this? It’s permanent. It’s —“
“It’s not!” she screamed. “It’s something you helped along, and it’s something you can reverse.”
Ravi didn’t know what to say. There was going to be no arguing with her, and there was no chance he’d be able to convince her.
He’d made plenty of mistakes, and Ary was right about this one. It was a mistake. It was naive, and Ravi regretted it every day of his life.
But that didn’t mean he could just flip a switch and reverse it. There was no going back now. If the System was as strong as they all thought it was, it would only grow stronger. It wouldn’t just let someone change its programming, and there was no “hack” that could undo it.
Ary didn’t need him to fix anything, she needed someone to blame.
RAND
“MYERS IS GONE.”
THE WORDS stung him, too. Rand couldn’t imagine what Diane must be feeling.
“What do you mean, gone? Jonathan?”
Diane’s voice was rising, even though she was whispering. The frantic sound of her breathless bursts of speech did nothing to calm Rand’s anxiety.
“I told you. He’s gone. Crane told me.”
“I don’t trust —“
“I don’t either, Diane, but it doesn’t matter now. Look where we are.”
He knew he didn’t need to remind her where they were. It was a scene out of an old western movie, the type his grandfather used to be obsessed with. The dusty streets around them were still empty, but this time it was because all of the inhabitants of the city of Relica were gathered in the central square. The Tracer — Lansing’s Tracer — was still parked on the landing pad next to them. Diane and Rand were standing, facing the rising sun, legs and arms bound with thick strands of rope, on a raised wood and cinder block platform, completely encircled by people. The platform was raised about seven feet off the ground — high enough to have a wide view of the square, yet short enough so that they could see the people pressed in close to it.
The people of Relica formed a solid boundary around the platform on all sides, pressed in together between the platform in front of them and the rows of buildings behind them. One of the larger buildings jutted closer to the platform than the others, its roof supports sticking out below the actual roof and reaching down, as if beckoning Rand to reach for it.
The Relics stood still, facing forward, watching the procession. Josiah Crane stood on the platform with Diane and Rand, and turned to address them.
“You have been proven guilty of the murder of three members of the City of Relica, and by the power vested in —“
“What?” Rand yelled.
“Do not interrupt —“
“I didn’t kill anyone!” Rand shouted again. “Are you all going to stand here and take this?”
Diane flashed a glance over at Jonathan. “Rand, stop. It’s —“
“No,” he said. “No, I won’t stop. You people are nuts, you know that?”
Rand paused to breathe, half expecting Crane to lash out and strike him. Instead, Crane cocked his head sideways a bit, then motioned for two men to join him on the platform.
Guards. Why does this place need so many damn guards? He thought. Who are these people, anyway? He knew they were supposed to be Relics, but they seemed so… cold. Distant.
Like Myers.
“Go on, Mr. Rand,” Josiah Crane said. “This is, after all, a trial.”
“A trial? Are you serious? We’re tied up, Crane. We’re standing here on… on this… stoning platform, and you want us to believe that we’re… on trial?” Rand was quickly losing control of his emotion, and he could tell Diane wasn’t going to jump in to help him out.
“Here at Relica, things are a bit different than they are in the rest of the world. It has to be different. The System doesn’t control us, Jonathan. It can’t — you probably noticed it, but we’re off the Grid out here. We have very limited access to electricity, all solar- and wind-based, and none of us use the Current-based transactional and credit systems.”
Josiah Crane turned away from Rand and Diane, facing one section of the crowd.
“It’s a simple life, but it is one that works for our needs. We have come to embrace it.”
“Speaking of — what about your little flying friends? Those seemed pretty advanced to me. The ones that killed Lansing.”
Crane nodded. “Yes, those are prototypes, taken by one of our ex-IA members. He was part of an ARU that was totally deactivated. He was only able to secure three of them, but we were able to rewire their onboard CPUs and repurpose them for our needs.”
“Like killing people.”
Crane waved a hand, dismissing Rand’s statement. “They’re for protection, Rand. And if we had more of —“
“If you had more of them, you’d have already killed the Unders,” Diane said, raising her head.
Both men turned to look at Diane.
“It’s true,” she continued, “isn’t it? You’ve been testing this stuff, and now it’s ready for deployment. The Unders, as you know, will be armed to the teeth, using legal and black market weaponry they can get with localized Current.”
Crane nodded along, smiling. “Yes, exactly. We’re —“
“And you decided to kill one of us to prove yourself.”
Crane’s smile disappeared.
Way to stroke the guy’s ego, Rand thought. You’re going to get us both killed.
“Listen, miss —“
“Do not call me ‘miss,’” Diane shot back. Rand felt a boost of confidence spread through him as he heard the all-too-familiar voice of the woman he knew and loved begin to get angry. Her breathy, hyperventilating tone was all but gone, and he could almost see the rage building in her eyes. “You’re scared of all of this, aren’t you?”
“Scared of the Unders?” he asked. He turned once again to the crowds, laughing along with the first few rows of people. “No, I’m sorry. You’re mistaken. We are most certainly not —“
“No, Crane,” Diane said, her voice lowering. “You’re afraid of losing power. You’re terrified of your own people. These Relics. They’re all your underlings, right?”
Crane studied her face. Rand listened.
“You aren’t sure when it will happen again.”
“When what will happen again?” Crane asked. He stepped forward a step. Rand could tell Crane was beginning to get upset. He tried to remember seeing the man upset, or angry, or even frustrated, but couldn’t. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“When someone will rise up and take your place.”
Crane’s jaw tightened, and he took another step forward toward the two of them. The people in the crowds shifted, a few of them noticeably lifting their eyebrows. Rand saw two of them — men, both physically fit and very tall — glance quickly at one another.
“Crane, it’s obvious. You’re no longer wanted by society, by the System. But you’re a Relic — you all are — because you’re good at something. You were leaders, orators, executives. The best and brightest.
“But you’re just one of them.” Diane nodded out toward the people. “You’re just a face in the crowd, especially to the System. And one of you — one of them — is going to figure that out soon. Someone out there is going figure out that you aren’t any better, any more special, any —“
Crane lurched forward and punched Diane, hard, across the face. Her head snapped sideways as she yelped involuntarily from the surprise of the attack. She fell backwards, losing her balance, but one of the men Crane had invited up to the platform was already behind her. He caught her and lowered her to the wooden floor.
Rand screamed and rushed forward, momentarily forgetting that his feet were bound. He tripped and flew, face-first, onto the platform, landing hard. His nose hit first, and he saw the stars from the impact fill his vision. The temporary shock of blindness receded as quickly as the pain arrived.
Rand blinked a few times and rotated his jaw to assess the damage he’d caused himself, and he felt the warmth of blood rushing out of his nose. He groaned, attempting to sit up and find Crane.
Crane was standing over Diane, who had already recovered. She was squirming under the weight of the guard’s grip, but he kept her immobile as Crane focused on her.
“You’re nothing,” he said. “You and this rat are nothing out here. We were the best the world had to offer, and we still are. You, and him — you’re nothing.”
“You’re the reason the System had to purge our society, Crane.”
“No!” Crane roared. “No, we’re the reason the world hasn’t completely lost its mind!”
Crane’s nostrils were flaring, and Rand could see — even from his location five feet away on the floor of the platform — the glisten of spit at the corner of his lip. The people had pressed in toward the platform when Crane attacked, and now Rand could sense the presence of thousands of sets of eyes on him, as if they were physically touching him, covering his body, face, and hands.
He shuddered. So this is how it all ends. Not stoning, not getting shot, but by a riot of crazed geniuses.
What happened here? He wondered, suddenly. The thought came over him without warning, as thoughts usually did, but it was a heavy question. He hadn’t expected that.
What happened here?
He was suddenly taken in by the thought of it all; how unreal it all was.
These people were leaders once, he thought. They lived, worked, and breathed to make the world — at least their own little world — a better place, and they were good at it.
These people were the best of the best, like Diane had said. Independent, freethinkers. If there was anyone on the planet left wanting to ‘fight the system,’ it would be them.
It didn’t make sense.
Crane was still yelling at Diane — his Diane — and all Rand could think about was the mass of faces pressing down on him. Each of them had a personality, a very specific set of traits that differed with each individual. Each of them was a person.
Was.
That’s it, he thought. They were people, but not anymore.
He remembered the questions the System had asked him years before during his first and only MAA. The Moral Aptitude Analysis was his company’s way of determining if Rand was a good fit at Vericorp or not. MAAs were used for hiring, firing, and even law enforcement, taking the subjectivity out of human-based assessment and putting it into the hands of the ultimate objective judge.
A machine.
He also remembered talking with Myers back in Umutsuz, before Diane and Lansing picked them up. He’d asked if Myers was having any strange dream-like memories, an effect from being scraped Rand had seen mentioned on the Grid.
Then there was the way Myers had acted in the tent when they’d first arrived. One of the men pushed Myers along in front of him, toward the edge of the city, but Myers didn’t fight back. Myers was as docile as a dog on a leash.
He’d lost all of the intensity and drive that made Myers himself.
These people, Rand assumed, were the same. They were empty shells of their previous selves. After their deactivation, the System would have scraped them, kept them hidden away for a certain amount of time, then released them all across the globe devoid of all their memory from the time they’d had their implants installed to now.
But seeing them all here gathered here — the ones that survived the Hunters and Unders and weren’t valuable enough on the Boards to gain enough attention to get themselves killed — there was still something about them that Rand didn’t like.
The System hadn’t just taken their memories. It hadn’t just ripped the personalities out of them, leaving hollow, faceless caricatures.
The System had done something to them.
It had changed them somehow.
Rand looked up to see Crane shouting something at the crowds, his fist held high in the air.
“ — For us! For Relica, and for the future of — “
He couldn’t hear the rest, but he had a feeling he knew what was about to happen.
Crane ended the tirade with a loud shout, and flung his fist downward toward the floor of the platform. The effect was immediate, like an official signaling the start of a race.
But instead of a race, it was a stampede. Hoards of people rushed the platform, yelling and pushing each other forward. Rand struggled to free himself, but the bindings on his wrists were tight enough to cut into the skin. He yanked, but only felt the bonds digging into his arms, drawing blood.
Diane yelled his name, and he turned to look at her.
“Rand!” she said again. He saw her mouth move, but couldn’t hear anything over the din of the crowd.
She wriggled around until her head was closer to Rand, but by then three men had reached the top of the platform and were running toward them. Josiah Crane and his men had disappeared back into the folds of people, and all Rand could see was the beginning of a never-ending line of people crushing themselves onto the stairs and up onto the platform.
He didn’t wonder what they were trying to do. He knew it was either going to be a quick, relatively painless death or a long, tortuous one. He closed his eyes and listened to the pounding of feet as the three men reached them.
The first man reached Diane and grabbed at her feet. He yanked her forward, dragging her torso along the wooden floor. He heard her yelp and scream at him again.
This time, he heard her.
“Rand! Behind you!”
He flipped his head around as another man grabbed at his ankles. Just beyond the edge of the platform, Myers Asher stood staring at Rand. He’d somehow snuck through the crowd unnoticed and found a spot directly behind Diane and Rand. He was holding a knife in his right hand, waiting for Rand to notice him.
Rand’s eyes widened, and Myers lurched forward. The man who held Rand’s feet started pulling, but Rand flopped as hard as he could and shook himself free. He rolled over, coming to a rest at the edge of the platform. Myers reached up and onto the platform and quickly cut the ropes on his hands. He handed the knife to Rand and then started to pull himself up and onto the platform.
Rand understood what to do. He cut the ropes binding his feet and was about to reach out and help Myers, but he noticed two other things in his peripheral vision that needed his immediate attention. First, the man who was dragging Diane, struggling against her kicking and screaming, had almost reached the edge of the platform. Rand did not want to find out what would happen if Diane was thrown off the platform and into the crowd.
Second, the man who Rand had shaken free was coming at him again, and this time he looked — somehow — even more upset. There were a few other men behind him now, and Rand could even see a woman joining the men on the platform.
What is wrong with these people? He wondered. Are they really going to kill us?
It was another question he didn’t want to know the answer to. No time to debate it anyway.
Rand made up his mind — he wasn’t going to be ripped to pieces by a bunch of loonies in the middle of nowhere. He
used all of his strength to roll himself forward, first into a full sitting position and then quickly onto his feet. The attacker had apparently missed the fact that Rand’s hands and feet were now free, and he had certainly not realized that Rand had a knife.
Rand kept his momentum, lunging forward with a powerful stretching of his legs, and aimed for the man’s chest.
The tackle would have been perfect, except that Rand wasn’t interested in tackling him.
He was pissed.
Instead of wrapping his arms around the man’s upper body and using his weight and momentum to take him down, Rand pulled his right hand in slightly just before impact and shoved the knife directly into the man’s sternum.
He caught the back of the man’s head with his left hand and pulled forward as hard as he could. The grunt from the large man told Rand everything he needed to know — he was dead almost immediately after. The man crumpled to the ground, leaving Rand standing on the platform with a knife in his right hand, blood dripping onto the dead man’s body, and panting with the adrenaline and energy surge.
But he wasn’t finished. His eyes narrowed, and whatever of the sarcastic, obnoxious attitude he usually wore was replaced by an absolute and total focus on one thing.
Diane.
He roared, throwing his head back and rushing toward the man — who was still struggling with Diane.
He reached the edge of the platform just as the man was joined by another Relic. They both stopped, alarmed at the rapid sound of the approaching footfalls, and turned to look at Rand.
The first man had no chance — the knife landed just below the neckline in his chest, and he fell sideways and back onto the second man.
Rand held on to the blade, but used his free hand to grab Diane at the elbow and yank her back away from the edge. He quickly cut her feet and was about to start on the ropes binding her hands when he felt her knee in his chest. He rolled sideways, falling away from her.
The pain receded quickly, and he saw what had happened. Diane had pushed him out of the way of an oncoming attacker and kicked with her other foot — hitting the skinny old man in the pelvis. The old man groaned and fell just as Rand returned to her side and began working on the ropes.