by S J Taylor
It was like he didn’t even see my gun.
“The Restored Society,” he said to me, “was interested in Refuge, certainly, but even more interested in something else, they were. Imagine, if you will, how they reacted to finding out you were here.”
He told them. He told the Enforcers where to find me.
Of course he did.
“Let me go,” I said again, more forcefully, pointing the gun up until the target dot hummed red against his forehead.
“Will you shoot me, Era Rae?” His smile widened until he showed teeth. “Will you prove them right? Are you the dangerous killer they told me you were?”
Anger burned fierce in me. I wasn’t a killer. I’ve only done what I needed to survive. Sure, First Marshall Blake was dead and I nearly killed Verne, but I did not enjoy hurting people…
Only, a part of me did. Whatever part of me the Restored Society had created in their labs liked what I could do. My increased strength, snap-quick reflexes, the fighting machine I’d found hiding underneath the plain face of little Era Rae. That part enjoyed hurting, even killing.
That’s not who I was.
I told myself again, trying to burn the words into my soul.
That…
…is not…
…who…
…I am!
Elder Tray kept talking, when all I wanted him to do was shut up and let me think. “I wasn’t sure what to do with you, when you first arrived in our village. A former Colony member, running away from the Restored Society? What trouble would you bring us? Then I knew. The answer came to me. I will return the property of the Restored Society to the Enforcers already at my door.”
“Let me go,” I hissed.
“The Restored Society has promised to take you back in with open arms. They will forgive everything you have done. Generous, is what they are.”
“Let me go!”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Belong to them, you do. They own you. If turning you over means my people will be free, and me lifted up to the position of Venerate, then so be it!”
“You stupehead!” I swore at him. “The Enforcers won’t leave you alone. They won’t let you keep living this way! This village of yours, all of this?” I gestured with one hand all around us, meaning all of Refuge, all of its people, everything. “All of this is against their rule of law! They are coming here, right now. Let. Me. Go!”
He lifted one eyebrow, and I had the strongest urge to plant my fist in his face. “The Enforcers will prepare us for the Restored Society. They will help us create a great society. Better than this backward life of living in huts and dirt. I want more! There will be a great delivery of my people when I rule. The Restored Society has promised me so! As for you…” He took another step toward me, pulling an Enforcer-issued stun pistol from the floppy arm of his robe. “I wouldn’t want to be in your boots, when the Enforcers get here.”
The world stopped turning. I could see everything around me, clearly, like it had all frozen in place in one breath.
My body and mind went into their state of calm, and I let the rifle slip from my hands to the wooden planks of the barn floor.
“That’s a good girl,” I heard him coo. “Now, if you please—”
My right hand struck out like a coiled snake and my fingertips jabbed into his throat. I felt the cartilage around the larynx crunch. Tray stumbled back, his empty hand at his throat, the hand with the stun pistol pulling the trigger.
He missed.
Twisting my shoulder into his chest I brought my arm down on his wrist, and the other up from under his elbow. The joint let out a loud crack and bent backward, his arm snapped in two. The pistol tumbled to the floor, clattering over next to my rifle.
Screaming in a high-pitched, keening wail, Tray fell to his knees, wheezing, crying, gagging on his own words.
Spinning back around I brought my elbow in at his face and broke his nose.
His eyes rolled up into his head as he toppled down, laying on his side, twitching.
For too long I stood over him, watching him breathe, watching him bleed. I’d hurt him, a lot. Sure there had been no other way, because I had to get out of here, and I had to warn the village, and there had just been no other way.
I didn’t enjoy this. I did not.
Picking up the rifle, and the stun gun, I left Tray where he was. A single tear fell down my cheek as I opened the door, and left.
Chapter 4 - Flight
Era Rae’s journal, Entry #3016
Is Saskia still alive?
That’s the question that haunts me now.
It was Verne I saw in the basecamp outside of Refuge. Not any of the other 26ers. Not Saskia. After she shot First Marshall Blake to save my life, what did they do to her?
That’s the murder that the Restored Society is blaming me for. That’s what they told Elder Tray. A little girl lost, a genetically modified experiment that went wrong and killed its creator. If they believed that, and truly blame me, then they would have let Saskia live. If she’s alive, I can still find her. I can still save her.
The girl I fell in love with.
Jadran wonders why I won’t open up to him. He wonders why I keep him at arm’s length even when he’s so obviously trying to stir up feelings between us. I just don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for that. Not just because of what happened to me at Colony 41.
There’s also the Enforcers and the Restored Society hunting me.
Not to mention Laria, because I know there was something going on between her and Jadran. At least, for her there was.
Then, there’s Jadran’s own secrets…
When I stepped out of the barn, Laria was standing there.
She saw me, holding a rifle and a stun pistol, and looked behind me. She didn’t see Tray.
Before I could even draw a breath, she screamed.
I figure this is exactly what stun pistols are meant for.
So I’ll apologize to her later. Right now, I’m a little busy carrying her limp form on my back with my sack of supplies and my weapons, too. There’s only one place in the village I know I can go, and that’s where I brought her.
Imagine Jadran’s surprise when I got his door open and stumbled inside.
“I don’t have time to explain,” I told him, setting Laria down on the couch with its overstuffed goose feather pillows. What setting had the pistol been on? “She’ll be awake again in a few minutes. I think. That doesn’t matter right now. Listen, I—”
“Doesn’t matter?” he darted to Laria’s side, holding up her hand in his, watching for the rise and fall of her chest. “How can you say that? How could you do this?”
“Listen to me!” I shouted the words at him. I was out of options, and I was the only one in this whole village who seemed to care that we were all about to be overrun with Enforcers. “I don’t know where else to turn. You have to help, because there isn’t any more time!”
With short sentences and a lot of cursing I explained to him everything that I’d seen. The columns of Enforcers. The HoverHawks. The Third Marshall talking about another target beyond Refuge. Tray, and his stupeheaded plan to become leader of Refuge by turning me in and giving the village to the Restored Society.
“I couldn’t make him see what he’d done,” I ended, out of breath, checking the open front door every few seconds, certain that I would see a gray-suited shock trooper rushing through and blasting anything that moved. “He kept me from getting this message to the Venerate and now it’s too late and I just don’t know what to do!”
“It seems to me, you have done more than enough.” His eyes were on Laria as he said it, and his voice was thick. With practiced moves he brought his hands up behind his head and tied his hair into its little tail. “You really left Tray in the barn?”
“He’ll live. Until the Enforcers get here. If you want to save Laria then we need to go, right now. How far away are these caves your people have?”
He shook his head, sighing heavily as he
stood up to face me. “Too far, Era Rae. Even if we convinced everyone to leave we would never make it there before the Restored Society caught up with us.”
I stood there, wanting him to be wrong, wanting him to tell me there was still a way. He was right, though. I knew he was right. I knew it the moment I stepped foot in that Enforcer’s camp. This whole plan to save the village by getting them out ahead of the waves of Restored Society soldiers coming this way had been impossible, right from the start. That bastard Tray had just gotten everyone in Refuge killed, and he did it with a smile on his face.
Well. At least he’d been smiling before I got done with him.
Hefting my rifle up to my shoulder, I steeled myself. I wouldn’t accept there was nothing I could do. I wasn’t just going to roll over and let them take me. “I’m open to suggestions,” I told Jadran.
He came over to me then, standing very close, looking down at me with emotions swirling in his eyes. He was close enough to touch me, close enough to reach out his hand and…
…take the stun pistol from my fingers.
“We have to stop them,” he told me, his voice low, almost intimate.
I swallowed. There had been a whole scene playing out in my head about what he was going to do. Where his hand was going to go. I liked the image in my head. I, kind of, wanted to see how it would have felt to be held in strong arms and have someone tell me it was going to be all right.
Instead Jadran hefted the stun pistol and looked it over for a few seconds before expertly spinning the cylinder to a stronger setting and then locking the emitter to a narrow beam. Good for close quarter fighting. I would have done the same.
But how did Jadran know to do it?
I remembered the journal with his own handwriting and the detailed diagram of the MAR. I remembered him saying he knew about Enforcer tactics. Now this.
Oh, Hellfire.
“You were raised in a Colony.” He didn’t answer. Instead he looked right through me, to somewhere in his past. “You were, weren’t you? Answer me! You’ve been telling me day after day to let my secrets go and here you are… Answer me!”
His gaze focused on me again. The lines around his eyes deepened. “Yes. I told you I left here when I was young. I would have told the rest to you. Eventually. You were the only one who can understand what I went through, before coming back here. When I left Refuge, I went to Colony 16.”
That took me a moment. “Colony 16? You went to… they were wiped out!”
“Yes,” he nodded. “I feel confident that you know why.”
Yes, I did.
“You had a disease sweep through the Colony.” That was how First Marshall Avin Blake had put it. “The disease of free thinking. People began to question the lies the Restored Society told.”
“Yes. And the Restored Society treated it like any other disease. Into quarantine, everyone went. Then the sick were cremated. Alive.”
I let that sink in. Avin Blake had told me it was people like me who destroyed Colony 16. I guess, in his twisted brain, that was true. In reality it had been the Restored Society themselves who destroyed 16. All because they couldn’t control the people there? Yes. I could believe that. With everything I knew now about the Restored Society it was easy to picture them destroying one of their own Colonies.
Everyone who is different is the enemy.
How do you fight thinking like that?
“You escaped,” I pointed out. “Others must have?”
He spread his hands wide, bouncing the stun pistol in his palm. “I don’t know. When I went there, it was before the Event. In those days the Restored Society welcomed people into their fold. All the recruits they could find, is what they wanted. It was only after the world burned that we saw the Colonies for what they really were.”
“Which was what?”
“Breeding grounds, for the new generation. Enclaves where Humanity would start again, made over in the image of the Restored Society.”
“Why?” It was all I could think to say. “Why would they bomb the entire planet? Why kill everything with nuclear fire? Just to start over?”
“The nature of everything evil, is to destroy. First, evil destroys what it hates. Then, it destroys everything around itself. Last of all, it will destroy itself.”
“But not before everything else has been wiped off the face of the Earth,” I guessed.
“Exactly so. Make no mistake,” he said to me, sadness in his eyes. “Evil, is what the Restored Society is. I do know this. Whatever they missed with their fire, they are working to eradicate now.”
“Like this village.” On the couch, Laria stirred, groaning and curling into a ball. “If we’re going to fight the Enforcers we need to go right now. We’ll need a plan.”
It was only the two of us, me and Jadran, against an entire army. It was suicide. Jadran was right, though. There was no more time to run. If we could just get into a tactical position with clear lines of fire then maybe…
From outside, over the village, I heard the silent thrum of antigrav engines.
The HoverHawks.
Voices rose in alarm. Calls for the Elders.
The sound of dozens of feet marching together as one.
The Enforcers were here.
“Let’s go,” I said, hefting the rifle into a combat grip, stock firmly against my shoulder, safety off, level across my chest.
Jadran took the time to bend down on one knee next to Laria on the couch and tell her that she was all right, to just stay here, she was safe here.
A metal cylinder arced in through the front door, smoking from both ends.
Without thinking I lunged one full step to my right and caught the flash-bang grenade out of the air. My momentum carried me through another spinning step and then I was tossing the thing back out through the door where it burst in a blaze of light and smoke. When it did, I saw the silhouettes of three women and one man in combat gear. Four Enforcers. They cried out in surprise, raising their arms up to block the flare from the sensitive imaging arrays in their visors.
Door-to-door neutralization. The Enforcers’ standard procedure.
They just weren’t expecting anyone to fight back.
Two of them burst through at the same time, MARs firing blindly. Wild shots or not, one of the discharges caught me against my right arm as I was aiming my rifle and shoved me backward up against the shelves, knocking over books and keepsakes alike while I struggled to keep my footing and bring my weapon around again.
Jadran fired once, twice, and I saw the first of the Enforcer’s drop, electric energy playing all over him like liquid lightning.
A stun pistol, on high setting, is a formidable weapon.
The Enforcer who had nearly dropped me turned and shot at Jadran, but he neatly executed a drop and roll that took him away from the path of the shots and at the same time, took him away from the couch to keep Laria out of harm’s way.
Yes. He was definitely Academy trained.
I knew my secrets. I wondered what other ones Jadran might still have.
The other two Enforcers made their entrance now. I fired with my weapon, the rifle’s rapport a loud boom in this small space compared to the soft PHUF of the MAR or the silent whoosh of the stun pistol’s discharge. The next Enforcer through the door—the man—took a ballistic round in his chest that exploded on impact and blew him backward in a crumpled heap to the ground outside.
Dead, possibly.
Two attackers left standing.
More than a hundred others outside.
Laria screamed from the couch, throwing her hands up over her head and curling up like a child and if I could have reached her in that moment to slap her across her face I would have. I tried to save these people. I told them what would happen, tried to make them understand, and at every turn they blocked me and distrusted me and treated me like I was the enemy. What was happening now was their own fault.
I glanced one more time at the girl on the couch. Laria might be close
to my own age, but she hadn’t been made to grow up as fast like I did. Here in this idyllic little village on the edges of a crumbling world, she had nothing to fear. Until now.
I felt something strange well up in me. Pity, I realized. I pitied her.
Two hard strikes to my shoulders and then a downward blow disarmed me. My rifle clattered away across the floor. The Enforcer had closed the distance on me as I turned my attention to Laria. In a fight you never lose your focus. You can’t afford to. That was one of the first things they taught us at the Academy. That’s what I had forgotten, just now.
I didn’t plan on living to regret it.
The Enforcer was about my height, in her full battle gear, her helmet’s visor reflecting the surprise on my face. Her right hand had ahold of my arm and her left fist was coming in at my head when I finally sprang back into the moment. Blocking her strike I let my body’s own reflexes take over and I was suddenly twisting into her and knocking my elbow into the side of her head, knocking her off balance, then twisting her up and over—
No. The Enforcer countered me by planting her feet and then I was the one off balance and down to my knees with my arm twisted behind my back. I couldn’t move without getting my shoulder popped from its socket. I was caught.
She set her hold on me until I cried out in pain. It was the same shoulder that had been bruised up when I first arrived. It still wasn’t completely healed.
Above me, I heard her speaking into her helmet com. “Target Era Rae located. Currently restrained. Two Enforcers down. Requesting assistance at my location.”
Hellfire. That would bring every Enforcer in the village here.
I felt more than saw her reach for a tool on her belt. From the corner of my eye I could see it. A neuroblocker. If she injected me with that I’d be defenseless.
Completely, entirely, defenseless.
The calm was already on me. What came over me next was an absolute cold. In its steely embrace, I acted.
Rotating my body counterclockwise pulled me out of her hold but just like I knew it would, my shoulder locked and then strained and then broke.