by Eliza Green
His father looked up. ‘Well, it’s a city rather than a town. It has all the latest technology whereas the towns mostly survive off the land.’
Warren pointed to the computer in his father’s hand. ‘But we have tech here.’
‘These are tech rejects from the big city. Reliable for a time, but ultimately they will break. That’s why we need electronics experts and engineers and code writers in the towns. So we can fix the junk they give us.’
Jean set the food down on the table. ‘Put it away, Philip. Time to eat.’
Philip placed the computer on the table as Jean served up the food. Warren scooted his chair in. ‘So what about the vertical farms? I mean, isn’t that a Praesidium idea? Isn’t that the city passing on their better tech to us?’
His father gave a short laugh. ‘Vertical farms have been around for a long time. In fact, I think it was Hal Trudeau over in Glenvale who came up with the concept. The tech we use to increase the growing time is from Praesidium. But Praesidium introduces new technology to the towns too slowly for it to be effective. I’m certain the city perfected growth acceleration by a factor of three several years ago.’
‘So why wait so long to give it to us?’
‘Because the city wants us to be independent, or at least that’s what it tells us. But I think it’s because it want us to fail.’
‘I don’t think Praesidium is like that Dad. It’s been good to us.’
Warren saw his mother shake her head softly at his father.
Nobody talked much over dinner. Jean cleared the dishes and whispered something to Philip. She gave Warren a soft smile then left the room once the kitchen was back in order. His father went to bed.
She returned a few minutes later and handed Warren some cash. ‘Your father and I need to go out tomorrow, so can you pick up some things while we’re gone? I’ll leave a note on the table for you when you get up. Be sure to check the table when you wake, okay?’
‘Sure,’ said Warren. She kissed him and hurried off to bed.
Warren had found the note his mother had promised to leave. But it wasn’t a shopping list...
The truck travelled along a bumpy section of the road, jolting Warren out of his thoughts. His head banged off the side of the truck and he released a curse. Jerome sat opposite him, fast asleep, with Max on one side and Charlie on the other. Jason was to Warren’s left. Warren shook his head at Jerome’s ability to sleep through most anything. He had always been the first to fall asleep in Arcis.
Warren held on tighter as the road got bumpier.
‘We’re almost there,’ said Max. ‘We need to cross some rough terrain to get to the entrance of the safe haven. The machines have difficulty navigating the valley area.’
Warren could see nothing out of the windowless truck.
The vehicle came to a stop.
‘Okay, everyone out,’ said Max. ‘This is as far as the trucks can go. Grab the bags you brought.’
It was dark when they climbed out. They walked for about a mile along a narrow path and arrived at a large gated compound. Warren waited with his food bag while a blue scanner similar to the one at Glenvale checked the entire group.
Men and women dressed in fatigues and carrying weapons arrived and stood in front of them. One with a handheld computer stepped forward and showed it to Max.
Max’s face darkened. ‘Take the Arcis teens to the holding cells.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Charlie. ‘They’ve already been through enough.’
‘I’m sure.’ Max showed Charlie the computer and Charlie let out a soft curse.
‘How did we miss it?’
‘Probably because the tech was offline,’ said Max.
‘Did the controllers at Arcis know?’
Max turned to the group of Arcis participants and said, ‘One of you is presenting to the scanners as a Praesidium copy. Identify yourself or you all risk being detained indefinitely at this facility.’
Warren looked around at the group of ten. Jerome shrugged at him.
‘Okay, have it your way. You will all be detained for questioning.’
A rebel soldier grabbed Warren’s arm and led him through the gates. He took him to a large building set against a mountainous backdrop. Inside, the soldier dumped him in one of several rooms in a corridor.
‘Wait. Why am I being detained? I’m not a copy. I think I’d know if I were one.’
The soldier closed the door without reply. Warren heard him pacing outside the room. He sat on the bed and leaned forward. Why would the rebels even think there was a copy from Praesidium? What did that even mean? Maybe this was a test, to weed out those disloyal to the cause. He’d failed his parents’ test during their last dinner. They’d painted Praesidium in a bad light and Warren had defended the city. That’s why they had abandoned him.
He leaned his head against the wall.
Had his parents really come through this rebel mountain stronghold? Had they betrayed the rebels here? He was terrified to ask. By revealing who he was, who his parent were, Warren could be walking into a trap. This could be the rebels’ attempts to break him, to trick him into revealing the contents of the note that mentioned the Beyond.
Ω
An hour later, the door opened and Max walked in. From his position on the bed, Warren watched as Max dragged a chair from one corner of the room and sat down in front of him.
‘I’ve chatted with some of the others. Charlie is talking to the rest. You know why you’re here?’
‘Yeah, because you think I’m a copy. You know that’s stupid, right?’
‘I need to know where you came from.’
Warren tensed up, preparing for the questions his parents’ betrayal must have created. But he didn’t see any reason to lie about where he came from.
‘Oakenfield.’
‘What did your parents do there?’
‘My father was a farmer and my mother was a teacher.’ It was the truth as he knew it.
‘And can anyone vouch for that?’
‘No. I mean, anyone who came from Oakenfield can. But I didn’t meet anyone from my town, except for Tahlia.’
‘And is Tahlia here?’
‘No. She’s dead.’
‘So how did you end up in Arcis? What happened to your parents?’
He told Max he’d been in the house alone when the rebels had attacked Oakenfield. When he got sick, people from Praesidium had rescued him. He left out the part about his parents’ abandoning him and that they might have travelled beyond the safe zone.
Max nodded. ‘That seems to fit the general story around here. So what can you tell us about Jerome?’
‘Jerome? He’s a friend. We started in Arcis at the same time. Why?’
‘And he doesn’t have parents, is that right?’
‘He’s an orphan, if that’s what you mean.’ Warren scrubbed his head trying to remember more. ‘Frank, another participant, found Jerome wandering around whatever town he came from. I think Jerome lived with Frank and his uncle before his uncle was killed.’
Warren pulled his legs up to his chest. ‘Why are you keeping me here? Why are you doing this? I’m not a copy. I swear. Please let me out.’
Max stood up. ‘We know you’re not. But we think your friend Jerome might be.’
Ω
Max released Warren a short time later, and one of the soldiers escorted him to the main accommodation area, then left. Warren stayed outside the block for a moment and looked around. From what he could see of the poorly lit compound, the safe haven was larger than Oakenfield. Dim lights stretched into the distance. Looming shadows of the mountain pass on either side watched over the rebel base. Faint outlines of people positioned up high on the mountain on what looked like a road or ledge became clearer the longer he stared at them.
Charlie joined him and pointed up to the mountain ridge. ‘See up there?’ Warren nodded, seeing the glints of light. ‘They’re our spotters. They’re monitoring the area out there and above us, making sure w
e don’t get any nasty surprises. Like orbs.’
‘What about the machines?’
‘They can’t travel past a certain point, way before where the trucks dropped us off. We use anti-magnetic fields. Anything metallic can’t pass though. The trucks are modified with shields. Our driver reported a low level of resistance driving through the field. It was because of Jerome.’
‘What will happen to him?’
Charlie walked on. ‘Come with me.’ Warren hesitated a moment before following him through the compound. ‘This place hid the first band of rebels who separated from the towns.’
Warren’s pulse thundered in his ears. Charlie seemed like a nice old man. He wanted to ask him if his parents were here. But despite Charlie’s friendly disposition, something stopped him.
Charlie continued. ‘This place was designed to be temporary. We had hoped to convince enough of the townspeople to join us here, to make a new life outside of Praesidium’s control. But many didn’t trust our motives, so we fully separated from the towns, made this compound more permanent.’
‘Does everyone from the towns come here first?’
‘Yes, but some move on.’
‘How old are the people who come here?’ Warren waited, nervous to hear Charlie’s reply.
‘Mostly young men and women. An older couple passed through here about six months ago, but they didn’t stay. There were rumours they made it to the Beyond.’
Warren could barely breathe. ‘The Beyond?’
‘The place where many believe is our true origin. We’ve never seen it, or know if it exists.’
‘So how do you know if they made it? The couple, I mean.’
‘Like I said, rumours. Two witnesses swear they saw them pass through. But we haven’t been able to verify the Beyond’s location.’ Charlie watched him. ‘Have you ever heard of such a place?’
Warren shook his head.
‘Were your parents murdered before you became sick, before Praesidium rescued you?’
Warren almost blurted out that he believed his parents were the couple who had passed through and escaped to the Beyond. But Charlie was fishing for something. He could see it in his eyes. Warren wasn’t sure if he could trust him.
He shook his head.
Charlie patted him on the back. ‘It will get easier to talk about. Trust me. Come on. I want to show you the rest of the place.’
The compound was surrounded by a large thick wall with metal gates that were opened manually.
‘We don’t use technology here because the machines can hack into it. The compound is separated into several areas: training room, tech room, kitchen, accommodation. There’s even a barber shop.’
‘A barber shop? Why?’ The only barber shop Warren knew about was in Glenvale.
Charlie laughed. ‘To give us a sense of normality. We do it because it’s a human thing to care about your hair. It gives us our individuality.’ He pointed to Warren’s longish strawberry-blond hair. ‘Who cut yours last?’
‘I did.’
‘Well it looks like you hacked at it with blunt scissors.’
Warren blushed. ‘I did.’
‘I’m a barber by trade, so when you get settled in, I want you to come see me. My shop is just over there.’ He pointed to a street with what looked like a few trading premises.
Some soldiers approached Charlie and greeted him with warm hugs. ‘I’ve been dying for you to get back,’ said a smiling male soldier in his early twenties. ‘My hair’s a total disaster.’
Charlie laughed. ‘Come see me tomorrow and I’ll get it sorted for you.’
The soldier nodded and walked on.
As they continued their tour, Warren thought about one of the questions Arcis had asked him. ‘Is this a safe zone?’
‘Yeah, you could call it that. It’s outside of Praesidium’s range of detection. The mountains block their signals. Plus we have other equipment that prevents them from seeing us.’
‘So what happens now?’
Charlie walked on, hands behind his back. ‘Now we figure out how to get the others back—the ones who made it to the ninth floor and were sent from Arcis to Praesidium.’
Anya, June, Sheila, Dom, Yasmin.
‘And Jerome?’
‘He stays put until we can determine if he’s linked to Praesidium or operating on his own. It was a massive risk bringing him here.’
‘If it helps, I don’t think he knows what he is.’
Charlie nodded. ‘I believe you, but try convincing my son. Now, go get some rest. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow.’
Warren headed for the accommodation block, believing now that his parents had come through this place. He still had no idea why Charlie had quizzed him about the Beyond. Did he know who his parents were? Were Philip and Jean Hunt the only tangible link to its existence?
If the information wasn’t in Arcis, how had his parents located it? Perhaps the coordinates were hidden in Praesidium?
Warren found a free bed and lay down on it. He draped an arm over his eyes and made a decision to help the rebels gain access to Praesidium. Then, when he made it inside the city, he would steal the coordinates to the Beyond.
Ω
Thank you for reading THE REBELS. I hope you enjoyed it. The story continues in THE COLLECTIVE (Book 2)
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About the Author
Eliza Green tried her hand at fashion designing, massage, painting, and even ghost hunting, before finding her love of writing. She often wonders if her desire to change the ending of a particular glittery vampire story steered her in that direction (it did). After earning her degree in marketing, Eliza went on to work in everything but marketing, but swears she uses it in everyday life, or so she tells her bank manager.
Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, she lives there with her sci-fi loving, evil genius best friend. When not working on her next amazing science fiction adventure, you can find her reading, indulging in new food at an amazing restaurant or simply singing along to something with a half decent beat.
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