by E. R. Jess
There wasn’t a space in between shots in the Free City. There was no time for the echo of one blast of gunfire before the next. That morning, the Free City was a place to be if you liked a fight. If you liked to see it and feel it. The chaos of war spread out over hundreds of city blocks. Rocks and bottles and microwave guns and explosive pistol rounds. Battles overlapping battles. Strategies and random skirmishes clashing and exploding like matter hitting anti-matter. Hope and reason colliding. Science and religion head to head. Bullets made to explode beneath the skin. Street maps with battle-lines scribbled from left to right and spidering throughout the alleyways. Tanks at the doors of homes. And they had guns that could take you apart in a few painful moments.
Alessa looked to Kagan as if to ask if he was alright.
He didn’t know. Kagan sat closer to her on their rust-painted floor. He lifted her chin and kissed her gently. He was trembling and kissing her.
“This happens,” Alessa whispered and gave a glance above them.
“This happens to us,” he voiced.
“But this time. This time there was someone looking for us.”
Kagan spoke into her neck, “For some of us.”
“When you took me out of there, when you hit the warning system and we ran, you told me to ask you later. When I asked how everyone was going to get out of there you said, ask me later.” She was fighting sleepless tears.
“Yes. Yes, I think you should ask me later.” Kagan was thinner than usual, more pale, more hard-faced. He was like that ever since he woke up from surgery. He pressed a finger to her already silent lips.
“I can handle it.” she persisted.
No you cannot, he didn’t say.
“Kagan, you have changed so much. You would never hide things from me.” And she was right, Kagan wasn’t hiding anything. Something else was.
“Alessa, there are so many years that I forgot. Years that a new clarity is just now bringing back. Dusty photos beneath a microscope revealing things that I would have never seen without help. It's not that I simply remembered, I now understand who I am and who I was. Who is important to me.” He was looking deep into her eyes.
“I need to know what happened back there. They are my people.”
Kagan moved his mouth, but nothing came out.
“How did you know? How did you expect to get everyone out safely?”
“Alessa. I knew because I was there is all that I can say. I know everyone is safe and hiding because you are with me.”
She pressed her lips together hard and looked around and water filled her eyes. She felt at her neck-planted bar code and pulled herself up.
Kagan sat back against a pipe. He was thinking and processing. He had had a permanent link to the UCG for weeks. And just when he thought he could try writing a program, a simple one, like one to navigate around, he saw them coming. A wave, a wall of intelligences crashing down through the city streets in his direction. So he warned his friends. He was almost sure that they would get escape, but it would be close. So the medical program in his body that was curing him offered some help in the form of a lie.
The Antikythera program manufactured the news that Alessa and Kagan were dead. The program suggested that if Alessa were dead, Jenna would be stronger, would be unstoppable. The program helped him along, holding his had while he wrote a simple program; evidence of their deaths. Kagan took a chance. And the program was getting smarter. Kagan and the Antikythera fed her the information and she accepted it as fact.
Kagan inhaled deeply, “Jenna has this place in her mind, it's a small house. A small house with a white picket fence. A safe place she goes. I didn't know what else to do. I kicked down that fence. And I broke her home apart. She has this place in her mind, you see, where she goes when she feels angry. I took it from her.”
Alessa turned her head and said, “What do you mean 'in her mind'? Where's Jenna? Kagan, what did you do?”
Kagan looked Alessa in the eyes. He cut the emotion from his face like a switch. “I took away her sanity. And she saved us all.”
Alessa knew what it meant. And she hit him, hard. And she hit him again. She left the room without a word.
Jenna escaped the assault and caught up with the UA-X at an arranged meeting point. When Alessa came out to greet her, Jenna tried not to react. She simply said, Darek's dead, and walked by her. Jenna was confused, but not too shocked. UPC was as disingenuous as it was incompetent, they may have found someone else's body and falsely identified it.
Alessa called to her, but Jenna kept walking. Jenna decided to keep the details of the attack to herself. She glanced at Kagan and her thoughts reeled. She realized what had happened, that his Antikythera program had hacked into her mind. She was used to stop the onslaught of UA soldiers. And she didn't know if she should have thanked him or feared him. She kept that to herself as well.
Kagan watched Alessa walk by, but said nothing. The Antikythera program had other priorities for his attention besides guilt or remorse. It was silently shoring up his reflexes and his stamina. The program knew what they all knew; there was a fight coming.
Kagan took Eight's arm. He held it tighter than he intended, as his body was still getting used to his minds commands. “Eight,” he said, “We have to get into Alessa's mind. No more caution.”
Eight sighed sharply and shook his head. “That's not necessary, there's nothing in there to help us.”
“Ask her.”
Eight took his arm back forcefully. He said, “No, then of course she'll go through with it. Do you know what she did to get you back on your feet? It's too big a sacrifice for nothing.”
“Then send her back to the Outernet,” Kagan said.
Eight put his hand out. “Look, I'll give it a shot. But I won't invade her mind.”
Kagan nodded and called for Alessa, who was not in the mood for company.
Eight took his handheld out and extended a clear cable. “Alessa,” he began, “That was too close. We need to know more.”
Alessa rubbed at the data port by her ear. She hesitated, then nodded.
Eight navigated her memory implant with a handheld. He looked through directories left by UPC that were put in all conformed people. It was a simple operating system used to support the upgrading of conformed citizens. Alessa's implant was largely unused, but it still had volumes of information about the City-State. He went to a series of maps. Though out of date, they gave Eight a better idea of what territory was away from the influence of UPC, and which direction they could go to escape it.
Alessa was able to see the files that Eight brought up. The process was disconcerting and invasive, but she stilled herself and stayed strong. Every time Eight pulled up a file, Alessa feared a block of memory would come with it, and she would have to relive the horrors of being conformed.
After an hour, Eight unplugged the handheld and tossed it aside.
Kagan was afraid to ask, “What did you find?”
Alessa looked up at Kagan and put her hand out to him and said simply, “There is nowhere to go.”
Kagan shook his head in disbelief, 'No. No, there's got to be somewhere. There's the Alaskan territories. The fucking Atlantic seabed. They can't own it all.”
Eight cut him off, “There is nowhere left. They have non-stop, dimensional renderings of every hair on Earth. Our only safety was our anonymity. We are now bright red lights visible on the other side of the world, at the very most forty minutes from a strike team, twenty minutes from UPC assassins and a few moments from an orbital platform suppression beam.” Eight carefully removed the cable, “They took our world from us and there is nowhere safe.”
Alessa opened her eyes. She put her hands in her lap. She sighed and inhaled and told them as bluntly as she could, “There is another way. I can remember something. Proxima Centauri. We need a ship.” Alessa said, “We need to get off the planet. There are colonies out there, no UPC, just people.”
Kagan, Eight and Jenna stood together for a long momen
t. Streaks of pale white cut the night up. Thunder rolled. A flare hit a tower nearby. Distant shouts.
“We have to run,” called Makz, who was already grabbing his things.
Kagan inhaled as if he'd forgotten to for a long while. Eight looked at the ground. Alessa stood and looked sternly at Kagan. He pulled his gaze from hers. The woman spoke, “We have to leave this planet. It's a dead world for people like us. We have to. We must try.”
The Pacifist Threat
The city was on fire. Gunfire punctuated the night. Distant shouts. Explosions. Everyone knew what to do. They packed up fast and got back on the road with haste. Vorn watched the chaos behind him in his side mirror as he started up the UA-X. As many people as possible were loaded in and hauled off, the children and elderly among them. Kagan insisted on using his own two feet as the rest of them tagged along behind, moving at a quick walk. An automated drone screamed overhead. Kagan looked at Alessa, her eyes alight with worry. Kagan's eyes showed only stillness, a kind of calm. He took her backpack from her and carried it himself. “I'm fine,” he said in response to the question on her lips, “and we're going to be fine.”
She believed him, but his coldness hit her like a slap.
Makz and Eight took up the rear. Makz felt his trigger finger tingle as Eight turned to him and shook his head. Eight said to him, “You wouldn't do anything but get us killed if you had a gun right now. How many times do I have to remind you that we do not fight?”
“Everybody fights,” Makz said.
Jenna gave Makz a hard glance as she walked nearby.
The ground exploded to the right of the UA-X. Alessa's heart sank to her feet. The vehicle swerved. Vorn turned down an alley, hoping to elude anyone who might have spotted him. Kagan motioned for the walking half of the group to follow him. Everyone complied, quickening to a jog, then a full-on run. He took them down another set of alleys. Shrapnel fell around, embers singed their hair. Glass and rubble was shot from left to right across their path. Kagan kept running through, taking a few twists and turns. A few members of the group took cover behind a dumpster, and Alessa shouted for them to keep moving.
Makz, taking up the rear, ran to them, skidding along the concrete. “Move or die,” he said sternly. He grabbed a pacifist, Jelen, by the arm and flung him to the alley. He held his hand out to Jelen's girlfriend, Aleen. She shook in fear and balled up by the wall.
Kagan looked back. His instincts told him to keep running, that he could lead them out of trouble. He saw who was lagging behind and considered leaving them there. Alessa reached him and said, “What is it?” Light and smoke burst in the air above them.
Kagan didn't answer. He simply looked at Alessa and kept running.
Alessa looked back, she saw Aleen and Jelen in trouble. “Kagan, wait,” she yelled to him.
Makz yelled at the young woman, “You want to die by a dumpster? Get up, you dumb bitch!”
“Makz,” Eight shouted.
“This is a fucking war,” Makz replied and took off.
Eight spat and grabbed Aleen and dragged her out of the corner. Jelen and Eight ran with her down the alley.
Kagan stopped at the dead end. The alley he had taken was blocked by a massive wall that had fallen there due to age. He turned and walked back to the nearest intersection. Everyone else caught up to him there.
Alessa looked up and down the alleys, “Which way?” she asked.
Kagan looked at Makz expectantly. Makz looked back at him sidelong and asked, “What?”
“We have to hold them here,” Kagan said, barely audible over the atmosphere of battle.
“What? No,” Alessa demanded, “We can make it.”
Eight spoke up, “You've been in this position before, Kagan. During the purge you may have been able to hold off soldiers, but that strategy won't work anymore. We have to run. Getting gunned down will not slow them.”
Makz laughed to himself, “He's not planning on sacrificing himself. He wants blood.”
Kagan pointed down another alley. “That's the only way out of here.”
Alessa grabbed his arm and pleaded, “What the hell is going on? You're not fighting anyone.”
Eight took a long look at Kagan. His eyes were steely, vacant. Eight delved his mind quickly. Instead of seeing Kagan's memories, which he knew well, he saw a blank wall. The Antikythera program had blocked him out. Eight left Kagan's mind and turned to Jenna, “What have you done?”
Jenna looked shaken. “What are you talking about?”
Eight took her shoulders. He yelled, “You changed him, you changed the program.”
Jenna's face twisted into anger “You're going to get us killed,” she shouted back.
Makz moved up to Eight and Jenna, but backed off when Eight glanced at him, “I will turn your world into pain if you move another muscle,” Eight warned Makz. He turned his attention back to Jenna. He concentrated on her mind. Eight delved into her, breaking past a layer of mental conditioning that Jenna had prepared against him. Eight sifted through her recent memories, watching her reprogram the Antikythera to damage his ability to control the program instead of fixing it. He watched her manipulate Makz into helping her. Jenna wanted one thing. Jenna, Alessa's clone, was after Alessa's brainstem. Jenna's brainstem was threatened by a lifetime of Pulse use. Jenna was not long for the world.
Jenna spat in his face and struggled out of his grip. She ran down the alley.
“Jenna,” Alessa yelled and began running after her.
“Don't,” Eight said, “She's not your friend.”
Alessa stopped and watched her sister run away.
“Well, you're going that way anyway. Get a move on,” Makz said and stood next to Kagan.
Eight cursed to himself. He gathered up the others and took them down the alley.
Alessa looked into Kagan's eyes. There was nothing there. Eight called to her and she ran with the rest of the pacifists, out of sight.
There was a stillness. The gunfire ceased, the wind died down. Kagan knelt to the ground. He picked up a length of rebar. Makz looked at him. “Kagan, I would have gone through with it, you know. I would have killed you,” Makz said as he found a lead pipe.
Kagan felt the weight of the iron rebar. He hefted it, hit his palm with it. He looked down the alley they had come from. “You should join them,” he said.
“We both know that there is no point. Here, there, pick a place to die,” Makz said matter-of-factually.
Kagan looked at Makz. “I have,” he replied, “It's far from here. In a far better place.”
Five soldiers came walking down the alley. Colonel Morgan's team. All except Morgan had their guns aimed squarely at Kagan and Makz. They walked up to within speaking distance. Morgan said, “You're out late, gentlemen.”
Makz laughed through his nose. Kagan stared at Colonel Morgan.
Morgan's men lined up on either side of him, keeping their rifles leveled. “I was ordered to take you in and get you cleaned up for your big day. Soon, you'll be getting fat from our food, will be warm beneath our clothing,” Morgan said.
Makz lowered his pipe and stood up straighter. He said mockingly, “Well shit, that don't sound bad. Might be worth it to be a drooling automaton.”
“You'd be surprised,” Morgan said. “Gentlemen, if you don't put up a fight, I'll have to come up with a decent excuse to beat you within inches of your lives.”
“I know how to stop you,” Kagan said forcefully, his voice echoing in the alleyway.
Colonel Morgan walked up closer. He removed his AR helmet and addressed Kagan, “Then do it.”
Sergeant Dien, his wire, tapped into the UCG and began hacking into Makz's implant. He wasn't able to log on to Kagan's, but he didn't know why.
Makz felt a tingle in his head and smiled. “Really?” he asked, “You have us where you want us, just be men about it.” Jenna had protected his implant against other wires weeks before.
“You heard the man,” Morgan said, and made a blade mot
ion with his hand. First Sergeant Cavel was the first to fire, then the rest. Sedation needles flew down the alley.
Makz dove forward and rolled behind a pile of stacked pavement chunks. He had a few needles in his shoulder.
Kagan ran toward Morgan and his team. He was able to avoid the barrage of needles. The program anticipated the needles trajectories and helped him move his body accordingly. Kagan wasn't punctured by a single needle, and he closed the distance between himself and Morgan incredibly fast. Morgan was left with little time to throw his arm up to deflect Kagan's rebar coming down on him. The bar hit Morgan hard. Kagan swung again. The program pumped adrenaline into his muscles, it dilated his pupils and electrified his synapses beyond normal human ability. The Antikythera program made him into a weapon. The second blow caught Morgan in his ribs, the third across the side of his head. Major Kellen pulled out his pistol and fired a round at Kagan at short range. Kagan spun on his heels and batted the bullet out of the air with his rebar club. Cavel tried to hit Kagan in the forehead with his rifle butt, but Kagan shifted out of the way in time to parry the blow down into Morgan's knee. Sergeant Dien managed to deliver an upper cut into Kagan's midsection, and then Morgan struck Kagan across the face with an armored fist. Kagan slumped to ground and was pounced on by Morgan's men.
Makz threw his pipe into Morgan's bare throat, leaving him clawing for breath. Makz then sent his elbow into Dien's face plate, shattering it and effectively blinding him while he had his helmet on. Kagan swept the legs out from under Morgan's two other men. He got to his feet and put his knee squarely in Kellen's belly, doubling him over. Kagan spun around and head-butted Cavel two, then three times, until Cavel stumbled back.
Kellen pulled himself to his knees and swung his gun around at Makz. Makz dove toward him, pulled the gun out of his hand and fell to the ground due to the momentum he had built up. He reoriented himself quickly and fired a shot back at Kellen. Kagan pushed Makz's arm in the air, sending the shot wild. Makz gave him a quick look of confusion before being slammed in the face by the helmet Dien had just removed. Morgan tackled Kagan to the ground. Colonel Morgan began whaling away on Kagan's face with his fists. Kagan didn't react. He simply took a few blows then grabbed Morgan's wrist and spun the Colonel off of him. Kagan then rolled over and grabbed one of their needleguns. He fired a quick burst at all five of the men, avoiding Makz by millimeters. One of the men grunted and went down like a sack. One by one, the others followed suit. Morgan pulled himself onto one knee. Being the most implanted of his men, the sedation needles were not having much effect. Makz stood over the Colonel. Kagan got up and stood over him as well.