by S J Taylor
Or was I? I just didn’t know anymore.
There was just too much to think about.
After a time, when my breathing had evened out and my eyes had dried, I stood back up. Time to get dressed and join Jadran outside.
In the shadow of the doorway I spotted a figure, a tall and bulky shape…, an Enforcer! Standing in a full gray battle suit, black pads added for extra protection on the chest and shins and forearms. A utility belt was hung with equipment and weapons. The helmet had the standard reflective face shield. I could see the expression on my own face very clearly.
In the Enforcer’s hand, a stun pistol was levelled at me, primed and ready.
I froze in place. They had found me. Here in the middle of nowhere, I’d been found out.
“Wait,” I heard myself saying. “You don’t have to do this. Please. I don’t want to go back!”
The Enforcer, silent and menacing, reached up to unsnap the straps on the gray helmet. When it lifted off, a nightmare met my eyes.
Saskia.
She looked just like I remembered her, the last time I saw her. Her beautiful face had been butchered by burn marks and surgical incisions. Her blonde hair, once so shiny and long, had been buzzed down to her scalp, showing off the scars and open holes left over from the hideous experiments that had turned her into a living automaton.
I loved this woman. With all my heart. Now she was a thing, a creation, a tool at the disposal of the Restored Society. They’d sent Saskia out after me, to hunt me down and return me to the Colony so they could do this same thing to me.
I’d rather die first.
Saskia blinked at me, her lips twisting up. “I do not understand the request. Please advise.”
A burning calm came over me and every muscle in my body tensed.
The stun gun went off, a red beam of energy that cascaded over me and turned my limbs to stone. I couldn’t move.
Saskia reached out her hand and put it around my throat, and I felt her squeezing…
Gasping, I jolted awake, standing up, crying out, reaching out for my best friend, to keep her from hurting me, to save her from herself.
She was gone.
No, not gone. She’d never been here.
It was just a dream. I’d fallen asleep, just for a minute, and the same dream that had broken my sleep since the day I ran away from the Colony found me again.
Just a dream.
A nightmare that I had lived through.
Shaking, I put my hand up to my mouth, and forced myself to calm down. Just a dream. Saskia was still out there. I might still be able to help her. I had to hold onto that hope.
More than that, the Enforcers weren’t here. That had been just my own fears getting the better of me. The village of Refuge was still safe from the dangers that followed after me.
With my hands shaking I got dressed in the shirt that Jadran’s aunt had loaned me. It was big on me, and a little scratchy, but my jumpsuit from the Colony had been torn up in a dozen different places. Couldn’t wear that any more. I cinched the rope on my pants tighter, slipped my feet into the heavy uniform boots that were the only part of my clothing to survive my trip here, and took another deep breath. I had to put the past behind me. If I was going to stay here in Refuge, that is.
Should I stay, or should I leave.
Could the people of the village be right? Maybe it would be best if I left them. If I’m not here, the Enforcers won’t have any reason to come here. Not that the Enforcers need a reason to go anywhere. Their task is to keep law and justice in a chaotic world. They come to impose the rule of law on everyone. Having seen the way the people of Refuge live I know the Enforcers won’t be kind to them. They live their lives how they want. They have their freedom.
The Enforcers aren’t interested in freedom. Only the rule of law.
Which means even if I leave, that won’t be enough to keep Refuge safe.
I could go south, to the coast, to where the Enforcers have their base of operations set up. I could turn myself over to them. Or, I might even be able to fight my way through them. How many could there be? With my skills, I could handle a dozen at a time. With any luck I could use the element of surprise and take out several of them at once, fade back, then come at them from another direction. If I made it hard enough for them they might leave and find another part of the world to harass.
Or they might just come back in even greater numbers.
I sighed, trying to believe that I hadn’t already made my choice.
Walking out of Jadran’s home with my thoughts jumbled up on top of themselves, I took a long look around at the simple ways and humble conditions the villagers lived in. Back in the Academy my professors had taught me right from wrong. Everything I saw now was on the list of things that were wrong in the world, according to the Restored Society.
Their homes were made from wood, cut down and shaped and pieced together in all different ways. People went about their day, talking in small groups or carrying bundles of hay and other stuff in carts down the dirt streets. I saw a woman throwing washwater from a woven basket into the alley between two houses. Everyone I saw was dressed in much the same way, in dull brown cloth or pale white cottons. I knew from wearing these borrowed clothes how uncomfortable they were.
It was all very dirty, and rustic, and against everything I’d been raised to believe in. This was how disease spread. This was how people kept themselves living in ignorance of the truth and the rule of law. It was all wrong. It all needed to be stamped out, before it spread.
The training I’d been given to become an Enforcer was hard to forget.
Yet, the way of life here in Refuge was proof that everything the Academy taught me had been a lie. The people of Refuge didn’t seem to mind the way they lived. They weren’t in danger from it. In fact, they were thriving.
Depending on your definition of thriving.
In the center of the village were several wide plots of ground where the vegetables grew that were the main source of everyone’s food. Corn. Tomatoes. Leaf beans. Something lumpy and brown that might have been radishes. It was hard to say. In the Colonies, food was grown in gleaming hydroponic greenhouses with fluid injections that ensured the highest vitamin content and nearly uniform growth. Food pastes were prepared and created from chemical starter packs. This naturally grown stuff here had been hard to get used to.
Inside a shed I passed by was the carcass of a deer hanging from the rafters, gutted and being cut up for meat. The exposed bones gleamed white as men in red-stained aprons sawed hunks of flesh away from the dead animal. It turned my stomach to even think about it. The vegetables were bad enough.
It really was only a few minutes from Jadran’s house to the village center. I could walk the distance without any pain or shortness of breath. In fact, I’d been able to do that for nearly a full week now. I’d just been trying to make up excuses earlier when I told Jadran I didn’t want to come out today.
After that daydream about Saskia, though, I needed to be with people. Jadran especially.
He was one of the men working the garden plots. Under the hot sun and a cloudless sky he had stripped off his shirt, and sweat glistened on his skin. His muscles rippled along his strong back and arms as he turned the soil between the neat rows of plants with a long-handled spade.
I remember, back in the Colony, when I first noticed how beautiful Saskia was. I remember the feelings that had flushed through me. A rippling sort of tingle, a humming deep within my core. It took me a long time to figure out what those feelings meant.
Now, watching Jadran, I knew exactly what I was feeling.
Maybe there were reasons to leave Refuge that had nothing to do with the Restored Society.
He saw me in that moment, like my thoughts had pulled his attention to me. Pushing back his sweat darkened hair that he had loosened from its usual tail, he shouldered his spade and came over to where I was standing at the edge of the garden.
I made my eyes stay o
n his face. They wanted to look lower, down at his chest and the cut lines of his abdominal muscles, but I wouldn’t let them.
Sure.
“So,” he said to me. “Chose to come outside into the sunlight, did you?”
I showed him a smile. “I didn’t want to fade away completely.”
His brown eyes were thoughtful as his hand reached out for my cheek.
I stepped back from him, and his hand fell.
“Lost between two worlds, you are.” He leaned on his spade and basically dared me to argue with him. “I wish I could help you choose.”
Around us the work of growing food had slowed. I noticed how everyone was watching us, how they pretended to be doing this and that while their focus was really on Jadran and the new girl. I also saw the expressions of hate and distrust that several of them tried to hide. I’d gotten used to it.
“I think your friends have already decided they want me gone.”
He frowned. “They don’t know you like I do.”
“You don’t know me,” I reminded him.
Something happened to him in that moment. It’s hard to describe. It was a subtle shifting of his feet. The way his eyes narrowed just a little bit. Almost like my words had hurt him. “I want to know you better… if only you’d let me. Perhaps, you could get to know me, as well.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about, Jadran. It’s them.”
I nodded to the villagers around us, and especially to a group of three who were showing more interest in me than the rest. I knew one of them by name. Tray. He was one of the Elders of the village. He’d been in to see me in Jadran’s back room a few times. Once with the Healers and the other times for no apparent reason. I could tell he was fishing for something. I was betting that the something he wanted was a reason to declare me a danger and get me kicked out of town.
I sighed. The truth was hard to admit, especially to myself, but really I’d already made up my mind. I couldn’t stay here. I mean, it was peaceful and all, but I was starting to crawl out of my own skin with boredom. The long days laying in that cot and recovering were over, and what did I have to look forward to now? A life as a farmer? Or maybe I could butcher animals and cut their flesh up for meat…
I gagged a little, but then pushed it back down.
There was no way I would ever fit in here. Jadran had to know that. Maybe it was my training in tactics and hand-to-hand combat and survival skills. Maybe it was something the Restored Society programmed into my DNA when they created me. Maybe it was just the young woman in me yearning for a bit more excitement than doing battle with weeds day after day.
There was one more maybe I had to add to that list. Maybe I just wanted revenge on the Restored Society for what they had done to Saskia and what they had tried to do to me.
Revenge for creating me in the first place.
The only question left was how could I explain all of that to Jadran? I figured I owed him that much of an explanation, anyway. “Jadran, I—”
“Help!” a small voice cried out. “Please, help me!”
Every head turned. People close to us who had been so intent on watching me now looked down toward the far end of the village’s main street, where it narrowed into a path through the surrounding forest. A girl had come running out from the trees there. She was young, maybe ten or eleven, and as she got closer I noticed her ripped dress, the bits of grass and leaves caught in her hair, the terror on her face. Something bad had happened.
I looked back along the path the girl had ran from. Into the trees. My senses stretched to see or hear anything, but instinctively I knew.
Something was coming. Something… not good.
The little girl with her brown, stringy hair flying out behind her made it to the garden plots and then collapsed in the dirt. I saw why. A gash in her left leg had stuck her dress to her side where a red stain spread across the fabric. She’d been attacked.
Jadran was the first to reach her. Most of the others shrank back, like they didn’t want the danger to find them, too. They were scared, I knew. I’d seen it enough times in my fellow students, the other 26ers, when we were on the practice field with someone more skilled. The look in the eyes of the villagers now was the same as I’d seen back then on my friends. It was the certainty that you were about to be hurt and there was nothing you could do about it.
But not Jadran. Without hesitating he took the girl in his arms, lifting her up, carrying her carefully. As he did, I saw her whisper something into his ear. Elder Tray was there an instant later, and then a few others. Safety in numbers, I guess.
I heard someone calling for the Healers, and then the rest of the Elders. Noise erupted across the village square as people began talking over each other. Everyone was asking what was going on, what happened, what trouble had the stranger brought to our village now?
That last one was directed at me, of course. I heard it repeated more than once.
As Jadran passed by me with the girl held close to his chest and her arms around his neck, he looked over at me, asking me to follow him with just a glance. I didn’t argue. I’d had enough of the great outdoors for one day.
“Where are you taking her?” Tray demanded, matching Jadran stride for stride.
“Tell the Healers to come to my home,” Jadran replied. “I will watch over Ethyline until they get there.”
Tray scowled, but he moved off into the crowds, apparently to find the Healers.
“Why are we taking her to your house?” I asked in a low voice when we were away from everyone else.
Jadran set his jaw. “Tell her, Ethyline,” he spoke to the little girl. “What you told me, tell her.”
The little girl buried her face in Jadran’s chest.
“It’s all right,” he coaxed. “You can tell her. She has earned my trust.”
Ethyline held on tighter as we reached Jadran’s little house. It was only when we were inside the front door that she dared to look at me.
I knew what she was going to say before she said it. Somehow, I just knew.
“Enforcers,” she told me. “Men and women with their gray suits and their big guns. I don’t know why they wanted to catch me. I didn’t do anything! I was running away from them and I fell and I cut my leg. It hurts, Jadran.”
“I know. The Healers are coming. What else. Tell Era Rae the rest of it.”
The little girl stuffed her face into Jadran’s bare chest, crying. “The flyers,” I heard her mumble. “The flyers saw me.”
Jadran laid her down gently on his own bed, on top of the rough wool blanket. He held the little girl’s hands while he looked up at me.
“That,” he explained, “is why I’m bringing her here. No one else can hear about this until the Elders decide what to do. I’m bringing her to my home so no one panics.”
Chapter 2 - Refuge
Era’s Journal, Entry #2993
They trained us to deal with all sorts of situations in the Academy.
That’s what Enforcers do, after all. They confront the unknown. They deal with problems. They find places like Refuge where chaos and disorder rule, where society has gone off the rails, and they force everyone and everything back into a neat, orderly box.
The rule of law.
At least, that’s what the Academy teaches. Having lived here in Refuge I’m starting to understand that “chaos” can be another word for “life.”
And that’s what the Enforcers are against.
In the pursuit of their ultimate goal—imposing the will of the Restored Society—the Enforcers use several tools and pieces of tech. Stun guns. Wristcoms. MARs. Nerve toxins and laser bombs. Security droids… those are the floating metal robots I like to call Fluffy. All of these things, and the tactical training the Enforcers receive, makes them a nearly unbeatable force.
So what chance did the people of Refuge have without me?
I knew what the flyers were. The ones Ethyline saw. In the Colonies we call them HoverHawks. They get used f
or transport of troops and aerial support during combat situations with an enemy.
From the Colony standpoint, anyone who isn’t “us” is the enemy.
Up until now, the village of Refuge has been ignored by the Restored Society. There are other places, other little huddled masses of humanity that need their attention more. The people here have been safe.
Until now.
Now, I’m here.
The watchful eyes of the Enforcers are turning our way.
I should run.
But if I do, who will protect these people?
Town meetings aren’t all that different here than they were in Colony 41.
Barely an hour after the Elders had spoken with Ethyline, everyone who lived in Refuge was in the main square, standing in the neat, straight rows between the garden plots. I stood very close to Jadran. He had his shirt back on, and over that he wore his red stole. It was a scarf-looking thing that had some special significance in the village. Everyone, man, woman, and child, wore one.
Everyone, that is, except me.
We gathered, and we waited, until the Venerate raised his arms up for quiet and all the whispering voices around us fell silent. I noticed that no one stood too close to me and Jadran.
The Venerate lowered his thin arms back into the wide sleeves of his blue robe. There were four Elders in the village, and the Venerate was the eldest of them all. He was a frail man, and old. Older than I’d ever seen. His face was lined and dry like leather and his hair was gone except for the few pure white strands that blew around in the breeze stirring through the crowd. When he spoke, I saw his teeth were blackened nubs. Still, his voice carried out loud and clear.
“My friends, my family,” he said, turning to look at the people around him. “We have marked the passing of ten years since the Event. This was the single most important moment in history. Everything changed on the day the bombs were dropped. The bombs created by the cult of the Restored Society in their mad desire to remake the world in their image.”