City of Light

by J J Hane

  I crossed my arms, striking a defiant pose. “No.”

  She arched a single eyebrow at me, the corners of her mouth twitching in an amused grin. “No?”

  “No.” I took a deep breath. “I’m going with you.”

  “You what?”

  “I’m going with you,” I insisted. “I’ve never seen anything beyond that line of trees there. I want to know what it’s like outside the city.”

  Serenity stared at me for a few seconds. To my surprise, she threw back her head and broke into a fit of laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said between laughs. “You wouldn’t make it more than an hour without your tech.”

  “That’s why I’m going with you. You’ll keep me safe until we get to wherever your people are, ah… staying.”

  “Not a chance, city boy. If I bring you along, the Martyrion Security Force will come looking for you. We’d be lucky if they didn’t just burn our whole village.”

  “They wouldn’t do that,” I replied defensively. Then I thought about it. Serenity had just escaped from under guard in the medical center. If security thought she had abducted me… That could be both dangerous and deeply humiliating. Abishai would never let me live it down.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said. “Because the Martyrion is full of kind, generous people who would never hurt the poor, stupid tribes.”

  “Okay, okay, I get it. I can’t come with you: fine. But I’ll make you a deal. I’ve always wanted to see what the rest of the world is like. Take the medicine. I’ll go back and pretend like nothing’s happened. Tomorrow is our day off. I won’t have class or work duties. I’ll bring you more medicine, here, tomorrow morning, if you will promise to show me your tribe.”

  Serenity shook her head in disbelief. “You’re a strange one, Raphael.”

  I held out the pills to her. “Well?”

  She glanced toward the line of trees, chewing her lip. Finally, she snatched the offered medication from my hand. “Yeah, fine. I’ll meet you back here. Just get out of here before they decide to kill us.”

  “They’re not going to kill us,” I assured her. At least, they wouldn’t kill me. I was not as confident that they would not kill her if they thought she was posing a threat to anyone in the city, myself included. All the same, I hopped back to the pilot station and brought the hoversled back to life.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Serenity.”

  She gave a single nod, then dashed across the no-man’s land to disappear into the trees. I watched her go, trying to imagine what it must be like to live in fear of the city I called home. What would it be like to be afraid of the City of Light? I doubted I would be seeing her again, despite our deal. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, I couldn’t quite decide.

  Chapter 5

  I had already missed my first class of the day by the time I reached the school building. It was situated roughly equidistant to the Martyrion Tower in the city center and the walls on the outskirts. A little taller than the surrounding white concrete buildings, my school had many more windows than any neighboring structures. It was supposed to let more natural light in to help improve the learning experience. I’m not sure how much good that actually did, given that much of the school year took place during autumn and winter.

  Slipping in through the front doors, I hurried to my locker where I kept my school tablet, then on to my next class, my footsteps echoing down the empty halls. Programming was a required course for every citizen of the Martyrion, despite the fact that only a small percentage of people actually had to use it. I was decent at it, though nowhere near as good as Abishai.

  I paused at the heavy wooden door into the classroom. The Martyrion devoted a huge portion of its resources to education, which included, for some reason, using real wood in the construction of the school buildings.

  I wondered if Serenity had ever helped cut down or transport trees as part of the trade relationship between the city and the tribes. I debated going back out and just sort of hiding from everyone so that I could think.

  Just when I had decided to turn around to leave, I saw my teacher, Mr. Holt, waving at me through the little window in the door. With a resigned sigh, I slipped in as quietly as I could.

  “Glad you could join us, Raphael,” my teacher said. Mr. Holt was the sort of teacher who could say something like that while still sounding genuine.

  I mumbled an apology, taking my usual seat in the middle of the classroom. There were twenty other students in the class, most of them ignoring my entrance. Abishai gave me a quizzical look. I shook my head, taking my seat silently.

  Mr. Holt was a fairly-average looking man. A little short, a little rounded, a little gray in his otherwise dark hair: there wasn’t much remarkable about him. As usual, his clothes were the only thing that stood out about him: just a little too formal for a classroom setting, perfectly pressed and immaculately maintained. His outfit probably cost more than all of my clothes combined, which made sense. In addition to teaching programming to students, he was also one of the top programmers in the entire city.

  “As I was saying,” Mr. Holt began. “Programming is a language as personal and unique as any other. Just as we all have our own little eccentricities in our verbiage, so do we have little tics and preferences in our work with computers. Understanding how to create new programs, or to repair old ones, is critical to the survival of society. Not just our city here, but all of the human race relies on our ability to create and maintain the systems that keep the Martyrion fully operational.”

  “What do the savages have to do with it?” The question came from a girl sitting two rows behind me.

  Mr. Holt gave her a gently reproving shake of his head. “I would prefer if you use the term ‘tribes’ or ‘outlanders’ when referring to our neighbors, Rhoda. Your question is a valid one. Who can answer her? Yes, Dominic?”

  A boy sitting ahead of me had his hand in the air. When Mr. Holt called on him, he straightened as if he was giving a speech. “The tribes are the remnants of the old civilizations that have collapsed since the wars. It is our job in the Martyrion to guard the knowledge of humanity until others can prove themselves worthy of it.”

  Mr. Holt smiled. “I see you’ve been paying attention in history class.”

  “What if they don’t survive that long?” I wondered aloud.

  “What do you mean, Raphael?”

  “Well, they’re kind of in a bad situation. What if they die out before the Council decides it’s time to share our technology with them?”

  Ab snorted. “What do you mean, ‘if’?”

  “Raphael has a good point,” Mr. Holt replied. “It certainly is a possibility. We all hold a bit of the Old World culture and customs. The Martyrion holds most of the good things that came out of hundreds of years of technological and societal advancement. The tribes carry with them the legacy of the culture that nearly destroyed the world. Not just civilization, but the world itself.”

  “But how do you know that they only have the worst parts of the Old World?” I pressed.

  Mr. Holt looked a little surprised by that. “Their constant violence, of course. If they had held onto even the shreds of civilization, they wouldn’t be at each other’s throats, not to mention the numerous attempts that have been made in the past to attack the city or its emissaries.”

  Ab looked down at his desk, his shoulders tense. I knew he was thinking about his father, lost to the violence of the tribes.

  “We can always hope that the tribes will eventually work out some degree of peace,” Mr. Holt continued, his tone gentler this time. “For now, it is the Martyrion alone that holds the keys to saving the world. Those keys are bound up in lines of code, by the way, which brings us back to the lesson…”

  #

  “Where were you this morning?” Ab asked excitedly. We were getting lunch at the school cafeteria. After Serenity left, I had taken the hoversled back to its place and hurried to class.

  As was often the cas
e, Abishai did not give me time to answer his question. “Did you hear about the savage? Apparently, she broke the window in her room in the medcenter and escaped this morning! Security is everywhere. They think she might still be in the city somewhere.”

  “Oh?”

  “Rumor has it that they’ve been ordered to shoot on sight,” he said with a conspiratorial wink. His tone the impression that he would prefer that to be the way this story ended.

  “Oh.”

  “I bet the whole reason she came here was to steal from us,” he continued, unconcerned by my lack of response. “They can’t fight their way past our defenses, so she probably got sent to sneak in and take stuff. Medical supplies, weapons, soap: who knows?”

  We had taken our food from the serving counter to a nearby table. “They don’t have access to the kinds of medicine we do,” I pointed out. “Maybe they need it.”

  “Whose fault is that?” Abishai speared his food with his fork. “We try trading with them, don’t we? But they’re all so… so… Violent, I guess. They don’t want our medicine; they want our weapons.”

  “Didn’t you just say that she was here to steal medicine?” I prompted, immediately regretting it. I had to be careful, or I might accidentally let too much information slip.

  Abishai waved his hand philosophically, dropping food on the table as he did. “I suppose that they would need to be healthy to try to kill people. They can kill each other just fine as it is, but they won’t want to be choking on their own phlegm when they attack the next Martyrion convoy.”

  I didn’t say anything to that. He would never admit it, but I knew that the death of his father all those years ago still hurt him. When we were still little kids, I could remember finding him on his birthday, sobbing in a closet. The pain, and the anger at those he blamed for it, had not faded with time.

  “Well?” Abishai asked, looking expectantly at me with that expression people get when they’ve asked a question that they know you weren’t listening to. I had stopped paying attention for minute.

  “Um. What?”

  Ab rolled his eyes. “Where were you this morning?”

  Abishai and I had been friends since childhood. For that reason, although it hurt to do it, I decided to lie to him. “I was tired after last night,” I told him, not making eye contact. “I overslept.”

  Evidently, he took my avoidance of his gaze as embarrassment, as he barked a laugh. “You’re such a kid sometimes,” he laughed, thumping his fist against my shoulder. “A little life-threatening situation, and suddenly its nap time.”

  I mumbled something noncommittal, letting him carry on with his teasing. He wore himself out after a minute or two, redirecting his focus more intently on his plate of food. Finishing quickly, he looked despondently at his empty plate. I finished mine more slowly, not having to fake the yawns that kept coming.

  “What happened to your face?” Abishai asked.

  I shifted uncomfortably. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve got a big bruise.”

  “Oh. Must’ve happened last night.”

  “Detective Peregrine, at it again,” he replied, sarcasm thick in his voice. “Hey, at least you have a battle-scar to show for defeating the savages.”

  “Don’t call them that,” I muttered.

  He ignored me. “Just think, Raph: all I have to show is a cool story about how I saved your life by stunning a rabid savage. At least you get to show off how she beat you up.”

  My head snapped up. “What? She didn’t beat me up. I haven’t even seen her since then.”

  Abishai held up his hands. “I didn’t say you did. You probably busted your face while you were trying to carry the little lady. I’ll tell everyone she punched you, if it makes you feel better.”

  Smooth, Raphael. Abishai had no way of knowing what happened, but if I kept acting jumpy, he’d figure it out eventually. Not only that, he was going to go spreading a rumor, which also happened to be true, that Serenity had punched me.

  I sighed. Apparently, I am not particularly adept at making myself look good, even when I’m not telling the truth.

  #

  After lunch, Abishai and I had gone our separate ways to perform our menial tasks. He was working with the mechanics on the hoversleds, while I was back out in the fields. This time, I had almost more to think about than I could handle.

  While working, I thought about the hostility between the tribes and the Martyrion. Everyone in the city just accepted me as one of their own, just another citizen with all the rights and responsibilities as them. The only people who brought up the fact that I was, technically speaking, originally from the tribes were some of the other students who like to tease me for it. I had been saved by one man’s generosity. Without him, I would have died from expose as a baby. There was a feeling in the center of my chest that I couldn’t ignore: I needed to help the people of the tribes where I could. Even though I was a citizen of the Martyrion, I was also, in some distant way, an outlander, too.

  That brought my thoughts to the medicine. I wasn’t harming anyone by stealing the pills, not really. The city had far more than enough to take care of every single citizen for years, and they could make more at any time. While the tribes could never produce something so complex, for us, creating this life-improving medicine was simple and common. I was unsure of how much trouble I could get into for doing this. Probably a lot. But how could I not help Serenity?

  If I’m being honest, the big moral questions receded from my mind when I thought about her. I tried to tell myself that my concern was for a person in need, someone who had come to me for help. Her intense eyes, her strength, her general attractiveness? That had nothing to do with it, thank you very much.

  That night, my new plot of field half-finished, I headed back early. I was counting on a little bit of leniency from Ms. Baumgardner because of the attack the previous night. Abishai would have expected to meet me at the gates, or maybe even come out to meet me again, which was something I definitely was not looking forward to. It isn’t that I really wanted to avoid my best friend, but I didn’t want him to worry about what I was getting into.

  Once I put my tiller back, I wandered the streets of the city for a couple of hours, letting my thoughts drift as I kept an eye out for Abishai. A couple of times, I ran into people I knew, others who were my age. We exchanged polite conversation without getting personal or anything. Not having many friends was paying off. No one seemed to be aware of my involvement in bringing Serenity in or, more importantly, helping her escape.

  When night fell, I went back to the medical center where Serenity had been treated. Instead of going in through the front entrance, I went around the back, finding the room where the girl had escaped from. Moving as stealthily as possible, I snuck up to the window, peeking in with quick glances. Empty.

  I produced the short, heavy knife I occasionally used for work in the fields. The thick blade tapered to nearly razor-sharpness while still being strong enough to avoid breaking against all but the hardest surfaces. Without taking time to think about the stupidity of my decision, I jammed the blade between the window and its frame, hoping that maintenance crews had not had time to fix the broken latch yet. When I twisted the blade, the window popped open. Prying it out just far enough to slip through, I climbed into the silent medical room.

  The nurses had already cleaned the room, changed the bedding, and prepared it for the next visitor. Not that patients were common in Martyrion. I tiptoed across the sterile floor to the heavy door on the other side. Carefully inching it open, I pressed my cheek to its cool surface, looking down the hall with just one eye. No one seemed to be around, so I slipped out the door, following my previous path to the storage room. This time, I had brought a small bag with which to carry the medicine. I hurriedly scooped boxes into it, cautiously exited the room, and went back out the way I came. A couple of people saw me, but no one gave me a second look.

  Out in the cooling night air, I took a deep breath
, my heart beating fast from the excitement. Stealing seemed to be getting easier. Now all that I needed was for Serenity to actually meet me in the morning.

  #

  That night, my dreams were filled with images of being pulled out of my bed by security for stealing medicine, alternating with flashes of being chased through the dark forest by angry outlanders with guns. It was not a restful evening.

  I woke early in the morning, dressed, and got a quick breakfast. For once, I was early enough to avoid seeing my foster parents, who were still sleeping just down the hall. Just as I was about to leave, I remembered to brush my teeth. For some reason, the thought of meeting Serenity with my morning breath was seriously unsettling. I was very thorough with the toothpaste before grabbing my bag. To the collection of stolen pills, I added a few meal bars, a bottle of water, and a spare jacket to hide the meds. I put my knife in my pocket, remembering how Serenity had greeted me in the alley. Finally, I slung the bag over my shoulder, heading out to the western fields.

  It was easy enough to get outside without arousing suspicion. As I didn’t need to smuggle a human being, all I had to do was walk out the open door I had used the previous day. Security was dedicated to keeping the hostile tribes out, not keep citizens in. After all, no one was stupid enough to wander into the territory of the tribes.

  Despite being peaceful so early in the morning, the walk to the edge of the blasted land separating civilization from savagery had my heart beating much faster than normal. I was anxious to find out whether or not my second bout of thievery actually served a point.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long. After less than twenty minutes of staring into the trees, a small, human-shaped shadow coalesced at the edge of the buffer zone. Serenity was clothed in the same outfit as yesterday: all dark browns and greens, made from material that, while probably uncomfortable, was also sturdier than my own clothing. She cast a pointed glance up at the sky, where the Archangel system hovered beyond sight hundreds of miles above us.