I might have laughed.
Delighted in the destruction.
Unfortunately, for now, all I could do was follow the gentle arc of the wall until it would lead me to its gate. I lost track of how long I walked. The sun was threatening to say goodbye for the day, shining its last rays as it winked at the moon to take over.
And then it happened.
The gate.
I heard the chatter of the men guarding the only gate before I saw it. It had been so long since I heard voices that I thought they might only be inside my head. There were more steps for me to take before I saw the gap in the wall and heavy steel door trying to fill it.
Guards were posted on either side, in a box of their own where they could hide between bulletproof glass and shatterproof metal. Their eyes were watching, half asleep. I guessed not much happened at the gate to the city.
The guards made me think of Reece and how it wasn’t that long ago since he was wearing the same uniform and patrolling the city for people like me. He was always working for the Resistance, but he had acted just like those men.
My heart ached to see him again.
I already knew what the other side of the gate looked like. There were more troopers and guards, at least three times as many. They wouldn’t be sleepy, they would always be alert for anyone that strayed too close to the only way out of Aria.
The hours I had spent watching from the other side was finding itself useful now, full of information that filled my imagination and painted a complete picture of what I was up against.
I hoped Rocky would understand why I had to return. I didn’t know what had become of him, and it was highly likely they had killed him by now, but I still needed him to know why I hadn’t continued to run so I could come back to Aria.
He would be so angry with me.
I would never have an opportunity to explain.
Maybe that was truly why I had to return to the city that hated me so much. President Stone had taken everything away from me, everything that meant something to me. Running away wouldn’t avenge them, it wouldn’t bring any kind of justice toward those that were defining the word ‘evil’. Even if it cost me my life, I would make sure they knew what they had done.
To me.
To Rocky.
To every clone that had died in the name of their Maker.
I pressed myself into the foliage of the forest edge, the thicket fence open now. A road led away from the gate, cutting a path through the trees with its tar and asphalt. The forest seemed to allow it, bending to the road’s will and growing around the tar.
Sitting on the leaf-strewn ground, I pulled my legs up to my chest and hugged them against me. All I could do now was watch the gate and make my plan for how I would get through it.
Sleep was calling to me, reminding my tired body how far I had walked since sunrise. I was certain the guards could not see me from their watching box so I laid down and curled up into a ball. Before I knew it, I was asleep.
My dreams were too tired to make an appearance.
I would have slept for a week straight if it wasn’t for the loud rattle of a truck waking me. The forest around me was still a shade of midnight blue as it fought to hang on to the night. The horizon was orange, telling me it was nearly morning.
Crouching on my knees, I wiped the sleep from my eyes and blinked the truck into clearer view. It was unmarked, but old. The walls and undercarriage held more rust than metal. If they were to remove the brown stains the entire thing would fall apart.
The guards emerged from their boxes to speak with the driver – male, graying hair, more weight around his stomach than was healthy. They had a conversation that was all frowns and formality, no jovial laughter or smiles in sight. I was too far away to hear what they were saying, I could only pick up the murmur of their chatter.
One of the guards spoke into his communicator, holding it halfway up to his ear to listen for the response. He nodded after a few moments. Once. Twice. Three times before he conveyed it to the others.
The driver of the truck climbed back into the vehicle, making it sag under his considerable weight. He couldn’t be from Aria. The genes of citizens were so manipulated that they didn’t get fat. Obesity was something people read about in books.
I’d never seen someone from the outside before.
Would they all be overweight?
The truck rumbled back to life as the troopers stomped back into their booths. Steel clanked on steel as the door was pulled open from the top. Giant wheels pulled it upwards, allowing the truck admittance and a glimpse into the city for me.
One second after it was through, the gate started to close again, leaving no chance for someone to slip through quickly – in or out. The guards went back to their routine of staring out into the forest and waiting for their shift to end.
Nobody had checked the vehicle.
They had not searched it at all.
Which meant anything could have been in the back and they would never have known about it.
It was my way in.
If the guards were in the habit of allowing in any truck that dared to rock up at their gate, then all I had to do was make sure I was part of the cargo. Getting out on the other side would have to be a chance I would place in the hands of luck.
But where did the truck come from?
I started walking again, shadowing the road while sticking to the shadows of the forest. It was straight and long, stretching out before me into infinity.
All I needed to do was get inside the truck before it left for Aria, hide in the back and hope for equally slack guards at the gate. No matter how many times I told myself it was easy, a small voice in the back of my head told me it wasn’t.
The truck could have come from anywhere.
It may have come a very long way.
Sneaking into the back was probably very difficult.
Someone might check the contents.
The guards might inspect the vehicle.
The list of things that could go wrong also stretched into infinity. At least I would have a long time to consider all the possibilities before I had to do anything about it.
The road never ended.
Chapter 4: Reece
“Do you really think she’s out there?” Rocky asked quietly. It was dark, all the shadows splayed over his face and cut straight lines through his features.
I shrugged.
I didn’t know.
The wall standing across the road was taller than anyone could see over. It was made out of concrete and was as strong as Stone’s will to keep us all inside it.
Rocky and I had been staring at it for hours, watching the guards as they stood sentry and followed protocol. Any citizen of Aria that strayed too close to the gate was quickly and loudly warned away.
Older children liked to test the guards’ boundaries. They would purposefully walk up to the gate like they were lost and see how close they could get. Extra points were given for anyone that could lay a hand on the gate to touch it.
On the few times I had assisted the guards in watching the fence as a trooper, I always let the little ones get close enough to touch it. The look of triumph in their eyes was worth it. It was a triumph they would boast about for years afterwards.
There were no kids around now. Barely any adults, either. It was just the two of us and the guards standing watch. Everyone else was probably safely tucked into their beds and oblivious to the tragedies surrounding them.
“She has to have gotten out, right?” Rocky asked again. He kept asking questions I didn’t know the answers to. Each one was more desperate than the last, his sad eyes matching his mournful tone of voice.
“If they took the tunnel and it led them outside, then there is a good chance she’s out there somewhere,” I replied, letting my stagnant, logical voice answer the question.
I didn’t want to admit to Wren’s best friend how much I feared for her safety. How every time I thought of her beautiful, sad smile
that my chest started hurting and I didn’t know if it would ever be able to stop.
I hadn’t told him I loved her.
I suspected he did too.
Our feelings were unspoken, leaving nothing but the desperate questions and all their impossible answers.
“We should go through the gate,” Rocky said, his jaw gritted in determination as the thought processed in his head.
“And then what? Run for the rest of our lives?”
He shrugged one shoulder belligerently. “Better than staying here, isn’t it? Won’t matter if we’re with Wren.”
“We need to take down Stone.”
“Stone isn’t my problem.”
I huffed, frustrated that the clone wasn’t seeing the bigger picture. It was no use running away from everything, it would only continue on like it had always been. Clones would be made, clones would be treated like trash, and then clones would be killed. In the meantime, the poorer humans of Aria would remain hungry and live in poverty.
While the rich got richer.
And Stone swam in diamonds.
She ate the tears of her citizens for breakfast.
Wren wouldn’t want us to just run away from the problems. I knew deep in my heart that if she was there with us she would tell me to stay and fight. She would say we could rest afterwards, once the war was won.
Rocky was having a difficult time believing that.
“Just think for a minute,” I insisted. “Say we got out and then found Wren. What would she think of us if we told her we ran away from the war? That we’d let others fight while we fled? Huh? Do you think she’d like that?”
I didn’t intend to sound as harsh as I did, but there didn’t seem to be any other way to get inside Rocky’s head. Everything else I told him went in one ear and out the other.
He was silent for a dozen beats before gathering his thoughts together. “She would understand.”
“And then she’d tell us to get back in and take down Stone. Wren has more reasons than any of us to hate her. She wouldn’t be able to live knowing nothing had changed in Aria.”
Rocky’s silence told me he agreed with me, he just didn’t want to say the words. We were fighting the war against Stone and her government for Wren and everyone like her. Running away would never be an option. I could never look her in the eyes again.
Staring at the gate wasn’t going to fix anything. I told Rocky as much before he finally agreed to leave and return to the Resistance. We were staying with the rest of the group, this time in an office building that looked like an ordinary business. A group of lawyers worked from the front, the Resistance lived in the back.
A hidden doorway down a side alley was our access into and out of the building. We snuck in, making sure the heavy door locked firmly behind us.
It was noisy inside. The brick walls of the building were hiding the voices of the hundreds hiding behind them. The clipped voices of the scared, frustrated, and tired assaulted my ears, making me yearn for the quiet solitude of my old room. Dwyer used to snore, but he was otherwise quiet.
Joseph was standing in the area referred to as the command center. It was little more than a small desk with people squished around it, all making sure their voices were heard amongst the others.
I joined the crush of people, Rocky not far behind me. He might have claimed to be singular in his thoughts, but I knew there was more lingering behind his kind face. He wanted justice as much as the rest of us, he just didn’t want to admit to wanting anything other than to find Wren.
George was at Joseph’s side, talking animatedly with both hands flying around in front of him. “Laboratory Charlie has been identified as having the lowest of security. We can get in there and take it down, just like we did with Foxtrot.”
Murmurs of agreement rushed through the others. None of them were there when Foxtrot fell. It had been an accident, we had only meant to blow up a small portion of the building. Due to the amount of explosives planted in the structure, the whole thing exploded.
George was calling it intentional, that was interesting. He obviously liked to play with the truth. Joseph was still behind him, taking it all in without offering his opinion. He knew the truth and I was waiting for him to step in and remind George that it wasn’t so easy. We couldn’t just throw a match at a lab and it would come tumbling down.
When no-one opposed him, George continued. “I’m looking for volunteers to join the group. We’ll run surveillance for a few shifts before throwing everything we have at them. They won’t know what’s hit them.”
“What about the security fences?” I asked as all the heads turned toward me. “Unless the explosives are covertly planted inside the building, we won’t be able to get close enough to touch the walls of the lab.”
George’s face started to turn red. He wasn’t used to people opposing him and we’d encountered each other before. “We have a plan, we’ll drive through the fences. You’ve done it before, you know it will work.”
He was right. But when I did it I was driving a truck belonging to the troopers. It was made out of reinforced steel and was bulletproof.
I was also trying to get out, not in.
Running for your life tended to make the impossible possible.
“We don’t have vehicles capable of getting through those fences,” I pointed out. We barely had ordinary cars in the Resistance’s vehicle pool, let alone something as sturdy as a trooper transporter.
“We still have the vehicle you stole.”
“You kept that?”
George nodded smugly. “Yeah. Did you really think we’d give it back?” He snorted with laughter that nobody else echoed. Now wasn’t a time for joking.
“It’s probably damaged.”
“We’ve done a full check on it. That puppy is ready and raring to go.”
My eyes found Joseph’s in the huddle as he gave me an unreadable expression. The fact he wasn’t participating in the discussion spoke volumes. Did he disagree with George and his charging-bull tactics? Or was he staying quiet because he had so much faith in his member that he didn’t feel the need to get involved in his big moment?
I didn’t know.
Which troubled me.
Joseph had proven to me that he was there for the right reasons. George and the others with high positions in the organization had not. Our cause wasn’t about racking up a body count, it was about disabling the government and President Stone so the city could have the freedom it deserved.
Our cause was to ban cloning and set all existing ones free.
Like Wren.
And Rocky.
And the thousands of others in Aria.
I needed to speak with Joseph, there was no point in arguing with George in front of everyone. He liked to think he was important and wouldn’t listen to a word I said. Joseph was the voice of reason, someone who would carefully consider my concerns.
When Joseph was staring my way, I nodded to the side of the group, hoping he would pick up on my informal request for a discussion. He nodded back and started moving through the people. I did the same.
We stepped to the side, just out of hearing range from the others. “He’s going to get everyone killed,” I started.
“Taking down the labs has always been part of our strategy,” Joseph replied calmly. “You know that. It will be cutting off the head of the snake. If Stone has no labs, she cannot make any more clones.”
“The head of the snake is Stone. We need to take her down and all the labs will fold like a house of cards.”
“I think we need to take several lines of approach in order for us to achieve our objectives.” Joseph’s old eyes were watery but strong. He wasn’t going to give in to my argument without more convincing.
Instead of trying to fight George’s plan, I had one of my own. “I think we need to take down Stone and to do that we need information. We need proof of her corruption, something we can take to the people and convince them not to follow her anymore.”
>
“A smoking gun.”
“Exactly.”
I had his interest now as Joseph leaned in closer, his white eyebrows lifted to the ceiling. “And how do you propose we get this information? If it exists at all, that is.”
“We need to break into her records,” I said simply. If only the actual act was just as easy. “If Xander Brown is a clone like we suspect, there has to be proof somewhere. His Maker’s death would be recorded somewhere. And someone must have made the order for his clone. Brown would have been only a child at the time, he wouldn’t have had the money or the authority to procure a clone. If we know who was involved, we’ll know where to target further.”
Joseph nodded along as I spoke, proving he was listening to every word I said and was taking it seriously. That’s all I wanted, someone to listen to me with a voice of reason.
He ran his tongue over his bottom lip. “Are you volunteering to search for this information?”
“I am.”
“Noble. But unnecessary. We should try to procure this information electronically before we go bursting into Stone’s private records. I’ll have our computer experts try to break down Stone’s electronic defenses.”
“And if they get nowhere, I’ll go in.”
The others had all gone quiet while we had been speaking. Looking around now, George was finished with his speech and was rounding people up to join him in destroying Laboratory Charlie.
Good luck to them.
Joseph gestured for everyone to come closer to him. They shuffled in and waited expectantly. The best way any of us knew to cope with the state of things was to stay busy. Having something to do was the only way to keep the mind occupied and not worry about being hunted and killed. The leader of the Resistance kept us busy with tasks.
“Our intel tells us that our targets regularly frequent a café near the houses of parliament. According to our source, every one of them will be going for their weekly luncheon at noon today. I am looking for volunteers to visit the café and obtain the DNA from each of our targets,” he said to the eager faces.
One Spark of Hope Page 3