The Empowered, page 95
Yet, there they were, looking at me like those Ultimate Empowered had looked at my mother.
Part of me rose in my mind. This was just like Loris. In Sanctuary, Loris could make people feel things about themselves they didn’t normally feel.
But it was different. Loris made you like her.
Zarathustra did something a lot more powerful even than that:
He made you like yourself.
5
The air in the community hall was musty and dry. God only knew the last time someone had been inside.
My mother and Zarathustra led me, Alex, Keisha, Ella, and Roy into the hall for a private chat. The crowd outside was over a thousand now and busily put up tents from supply. I didn’t know if “Haven” had enough insta-meals for a thousand people, but since there were tents for at least that many people, it seemed likely. But there had to be a limit.
And the Dark-Net worked, but for how long?
Two of Zarathustra’s Ultimate Empowered stood guard outside the sealed door. We sat in camp chairs around a folding table in a corner of the hall. There was a map of the world on the nearest wall. Florescent lights flickered overhead.
I massaged my temples. The place was as sterile as a business office in some old building. All that was missing was the rubber ferns in plastic pots.
Zarathustra and Michelle stood to either side of the world map. She’d taken off the clear visor, but kept the gauntlets on. Only they looked less like gauntlets now and more like formfitting mesh gloves with little indicator lights on them.
“I won’t sugarcoat what I have to tell you,” Zarathustra said, in a deep baritone. “The world is in upheaval. Since RAMPART went down, we few Empowered have become, at last count, over a million.”
A million. A million newly-empowered humans.
He went on. “But, predictably, the world governments have not seen this as the blessing it is. They’ve monitored and tagged our new brethren. The Hero Council has shirked its leadership. It should have reached out to the transformed and helped guide them. But, along with its watchdog Support, the so-called Hero Council aided the world’s governments.”
He paused. “Who watches the watchmen? Who monitors the governments? No one. They run rampant. Then they complain when our people fight back, and blame the ensuing chaos on us.”
My muscles tensed at his words, and an icy rage knotted inside me.
Damn the normals. Damn all of them.
“Fuck them,” Keisha muttered. The others’ faces were hard, eyes cold. Even Alex.
That stopped me. Alex never got angry. He wasn’t like me. Yet, he looked like he was ready to murder someone.
“After RAMPART went down we in Ultimate reached out to the Hero Council, to stop the senseless conflict between the two of us, and forge a new partnership. The Hero Council finally understood we needed to work together to guide the hundreds of thousands of new brethren in their powers.”
The room was so quiet I swear you could’ve heard a freaking pin drop. The Hero Council talking with a rogue Empowered group — especially the Empowered supremacist group, Ultimate, seemed impossible.
Zarathustra went on. “We agreed to meet in secret, in Mali, to discuss how we could work together.”
I chewed my lip. Things must have really been in the shit for the sanctioned Empowered to agree to meet with Ultimate. It smelled like a setup to me, with one side playing the other.
“Our two organizations gathered, and that was when the so-called Coalition attacked us.”
“Coalition?” Alex asked.
“That’s what they call themselves, a coalition of the world’s governments. The United States and its allies.”
“What about the U.N.?” Alex asked.
Zarathustra’s mouth twisted in scorn. “The United Nations does what the United States commands.”
Bile burned in the back of my throat. “How… what did the Coalition do?” I stammered out the question.
He smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. “They struck the meeting site with three thermonuclear weapons.”
I shuddered. They had nuked people. An atrocity I couldn’t wrap my brain around.
“They meant fucking business,” Keisha spat.
“The Hero Council and Ultimate were annihilated,” Zarathustra said.
I closed my eyes. “How many people died?” The Scourge had schemed to hit the Hero Council with neutron bombs, back, what - three, no - nearly four years ago in the outside world’s time. But this, this was even more horrific.
“Thirteen hundred Empowered combined,” he replied.
“Thirteen hundred?” Tears streaked Ella’s face. “How can they be that evil?”
“Because they hate us,” Zarathustra replied. “The Coalition’s actions are the personification of the evil the fearful commit on the just.”
“What about Support?” Alex asked. “They must have been sent agents to Mali.”
Zarathustra’s eyes narrowed. “The Hero Council insisted on including them. Five thousand to secure the area. I believe they were why three nuclear weapons were used, rather than one.”
“Five thousand Support agents also dead,” Alex whispered, staring at the floor. I squeezed his hand, but he didn’t react.
But what about all the people living nearby? “What about innocent normals?” I asked. “How many died?”
Zarathustra’s mouth tightened. “Their deaths are inconsequential, but perhaps an additional ten to twenty thousand bystanders. They held the meeting in the Sahel, an area only lightly populated by normals.”
A mere ten to twenty thousand additional dead on top over six thousand.
My mother sighed. “The Coalition followed that horror with another.” She looked each of us in the eye before continuing. “The world’s governments have conscripted millions of normals into their armies and used those millions to round up the Empowered.”
“To do what with them?” I asked.
“They put them in what they label' Detention Centers'.”
“Detention Centers?” Keisha asked.
“That’s what they call them. Concentration camps are more like it,” my mother replied.
“Nazis pulled that shit on the world last century,” I spat. I didn’t know much history, but I’d learned about the Holocaust from my Grandmother Ruth.
Zarathustra smiled grimly. “Yes. The world’s governments are following in those foul footsteps. And like the Nazis, they are hiding their evil deeds. What happened in Mali is unknown to the world at large; no so-called average citizen has any idea.”
“What about these concentration camps? Why hasn’t anybody said anything about them?” I demanded.
Zarathustra cocked his head at me. “By anybody, you mean normals. They are prisoners of their own fears. The Coalition labels these as Detention Centers, not Concentration Camps. It’s important to recall that Nazi Germany did not create the original Concentration Camps. The British in South Africa did, during the Second Boer war. Remember, too, that the United States created internment camps to hold Japanese-Americans suspected of treachery.” Zarathustra paused. “But like us, the only reason they were being held was because of who they were. They weren’t traitors.”
But there was a difference between those Japanese-Americans and us. We had superpowers. Worse, Ultimate was an Empowered supremacist group. The Hero Council technically wasn’t, but it did put itself up on a pedestal as the defender of humanity. Sanctioned Empowered licensed to protect normals from Empowered.
That didn’t excuse any of this, though. No one should be imprisoned just for being who they were.
That had already happened to me and hundreds like me.
“You were in Special Corrections, Mathilda,” Zarathustra said, like he’d read my mind. More likely, he knew my history and could read my expression. I didn’t exactly have a poker face.
“Yes,” I said. “It sucked.”
“I’m sorry,” my mother said.
I couldn’t tell if she meant it. I couldn’t read her, and that made her an unknown. What did she want? She’d plugged herself willingly into RAMPART for twenty years. What did that tell me?
I rubbed my hands together under the table, and did my best to look grateful for her sympathy, whether it was real or not.
“Thanks,” I said. Keep it simple, I told myself.
“I haven’t appreciated all you’ve been through,” she said. “You, among all of us here, can imagine what the detainees are experiencing.”
“Yeah,” I muttered.
I lifted my head, looked at Zarathustra. I still didn’t know what that name meant, or where it had come from. Alex might; recognition of something had flickered across his face when Michelle had first mentioned his name.
“How do they keep the Empowered detained?” I asked him.
“An excellent question. They drug them with a cocktail of chemicals that manages to suppress their powers. It also turns them into shambling, zombie-like creatures who are easily managed.”
I shuddered. Talk about a horror show. Back in Special Corrections we’d thought we’d had it bad. We hadn’t realized just how bad it could get. There’d been a couple hundred inmates in Special Corrections, divided into the men and women’s sections. They had forced us to wear null cuffs and white prison overalls and constantly spied on all of us. They hadn’t drugged us.
“So, what do you propose?” Alex asked Zarathustra.
Zarathustra watched our faces. “We break them out.”
“How many soldiers guard these detention centers?” I asked.
“Not as many as you might expect, given the docile prisoners.”
“They would have to crank out those chemical cocktails by the trainload,” Keisha said. “I mean, if they’re keeping that many Empowered drugged. It seems like a stretch.”
Zarathustra didn’t miss a beat. “Unfortunately, it’s not. The Coalition and the U.N. have set up numerous pharmaceutical factories producing nullifying cocktails and what they call pacification drugs.”
I exhaled, rubbed my suddenly hot palms against my jumpsuit. Monsters. I took a deep breath. “Okay, so you want to break these people out.”
Zarathustra crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes.”
“Do we have enough people to manage all these zombified, drugged prisoners?” Alex asked.
“We have a plan, but it won’t be easy,” my mother said.
“It’s never easy,” I said.
“I’m sorry that it’s been like that for you, Mathilda. You’re too young to be so cynical.”
My chest tightened. “It’s the way things have been for me.”
She sighed and regarded me. “You’ve been through far more than I realize or can understand.”
Did she really care? I had no clue. “What happens after we free the detainees?” I asked.
“We get them to a temporary sanctuary,” Zarathustra replied. His voice rang with confidence.
I gestured at the walls. “You mean, tins cans like this place? We will get, what, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, however many prisoners, out of these camps and into bolt holes like this place? I mean, come on, there’s a shit-ton of hidden places in the world, way more than I’d ever dreamed, but there can’t be enough human-built ones stocked with food and supplies to house that many people, especially newbie Empowereds needing special handling.” Newbies didn’t have much control over their power, or how they felt about it. Things could go bad very quickly.
Zarathustra’s eyes were bright. “You have an endearing way of putting things.”
Endearing, that was a laugh, but I kept myself on track. “And, even if you did, how would you get them there? You’d overload the Dark-Net.”
Keisha nodded.
“No, it won’t,” my mother replied. “The Dark-Net can handle the load.”
“Handle the load? Of two hundred thousand people?”
“Have faith, dear.”
Dear. My jaw tightened. She didn’t know me, but I’d already backslid enough in the anger department. I needed to stay calm.
“Okay, I’ll have faith. But you’re telling me we will move two hundred thousand—”
Zarathustra steepled his fingers. “No, three hundred thousand to be more precise, and that’s just the beginning. Eventually, we hope to have all, or nearly all, of the newly Empowered moved.”
I gasped. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. But let me correct you on one thing, Mathilda. We’re not using the Dark-Net to move the rescued brethren to sanctuaries scattered around the world. The Dark-Net will be the sanctuary for all.”
“That’s crazy!”
“It might seem like such until you consider the Dark-Net itself.” Zarathustra nodded to my mother.
“It’s a hyper-dimensional place, one that overlays our world,” she said
“I know,” I said impatiently. “Created by Goldin as both a shunt and a transportation network.”
Her eyes gleamed. “Because it’s not only hyper-dimensional; it’s vast, and it’s vast because its hyper-dimensionality can be expanded.”
“If you say so.”
Ella gave me an angry look. “Don’t be so sarcastic,” she said under her breath, but our mother heard it, too.
“It’s hard to visualize,” she said, sounding annoyingly agreeable.
“Whatever,” I said. “I’ve been through so many of these longshots that depend upon some weird thing or place. I’m tired of it.”
Zarathustra got up and strode over to me and squatted down. “Believe it or not, I understand. The world’s bizarrely intricate, in part because of humanity and all it has wrought, but also because of Gaia.”
“How does Gaia make things bizarre?”
He smiled. “Not deliberately so much as just a part of how it functions, in our human terms.”
“No offense,” I said, “but all of this explanation doesn’t really help me understand. I guess I just don’t have the brain for it. You say that the Dark-Net can hold a million people, a million Empowered no less, and I’ll just have to go with that.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” he said. “It takes time to process understanding.”
I shrugged. Still, we could use more help. Lenore used to tell me to never pass up aid, not if it really could make a difference.
Lenore. Lenore and all the other inmates in Special Corrections were Empowered.
There were Special Corrections prisons in San Diego and Johannesburg, South Africa.
“We need help,” I said. “Experienced help.”
“Go on,” Zarathustra said. He stood.
“We need to rescue the inmates at the two Special Corrections facilities.”
“They need their freedom, but how do you expect them to help us?”
“They have experience in using their powers. And they aren’t drugged out zombies.”
“But,” my mother said, “they’ve been in prison, their powers nullified, for years, decades sometimes. They’re out of practice.”
“It’s a worthy idea, one that does you credit,” Zarathustra said, in that tone you get when someone’s trying to make you feel better after shooting down your idea. “But, consider that the two Special Corrections facilities might no longer be operational.”
“You mean the prisoners have been freed?” Keisha asked.
“No, he means killed,” I said.
“We don’t know,” Zarathustra said. “We can’t see into Special Corrections because of the shielding. It’s possible that the prisoners are still alive, and all still imprisoned in those facilities. It’s also possible that the Coalition eliminated them and is just using those installations as shielded operations bases. Either way, we can’t take the time. The detainees come first. Once we free the detainees, we need to pull back into the Dark-Net and not risk any more lives.”
That smelled like bullshit to me. I argued for another five minutes, but they wouldn’t budge. Lenore had helped me when I was in Special Corrections. Now that the world was on the line, I had to help her. But they wouldn’t let me.
I’d keep after this. I wanted to free her, and the others. After all this time, it was suddenly very important to me. I forced myself to not argue any more, and instead focused on what we needed to try right then.
“Okay, what’s the plan?” I asked them.
They told me.
“I don’t like this, Mat,” Keisha said later, when she was back with Alex and me in our hut.
“It stinks,” I said. “But, they have a point. Those people could be next on the chopping block.” I turned to Alex. “What do you think?”
“It stinks, but we don’t have a choice,” he said. “It will be risky as hell.”
“Someone’s got to break the prisoners out from the biggest camp.”
“But, Mat, it’s a freaking suicide run,” Keisha said.
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
Our team was responsible for the first breakout, at the Inland Empire Detention center in central Washington. There were fifteen thousand Empowered there. It was close to the node Alex, Keisha, and I had come out of, a thousand years ago. Or so it felt like. I couldn’t keep track of time anymore.
The plan was to take down a section of the electrified fence, neutralize the guards and then evacuate to the Dark-Net. It would take us some time. Right after we hit, the other teams would break into the other nine detention centers. This was a worldwide operation. My operation needed to draw off part of the forces guarding the other centers.
We just had to make this work.
Winterfield once told me, the more complicated a plan, the more ways it could go wrong. This plan was simple—multiple break-ins and releases.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
The next few days were a scramble. People coming in and out of the Dark-Net. We practiced the operation. I would use my plant power, which surged until I could grow spruce from pine cones with a snap of my fingers. I felt the ebb and flow of sap through the trees, even the light became food as the plants converted it. As long as my power kept going at this level, we could pull this off. I went alone to a deep part of the forest, to a canyon where there was a clearing, thanks to fallen trees, and practiced what I discussed with Michelle. I thought it would work.
Part of me rose in my mind. This was just like Loris. In Sanctuary, Loris could make people feel things about themselves they didn’t normally feel.
But it was different. Loris made you like her.
Zarathustra did something a lot more powerful even than that:
He made you like yourself.
5
The air in the community hall was musty and dry. God only knew the last time someone had been inside.
My mother and Zarathustra led me, Alex, Keisha, Ella, and Roy into the hall for a private chat. The crowd outside was over a thousand now and busily put up tents from supply. I didn’t know if “Haven” had enough insta-meals for a thousand people, but since there were tents for at least that many people, it seemed likely. But there had to be a limit.
And the Dark-Net worked, but for how long?
Two of Zarathustra’s Ultimate Empowered stood guard outside the sealed door. We sat in camp chairs around a folding table in a corner of the hall. There was a map of the world on the nearest wall. Florescent lights flickered overhead.
I massaged my temples. The place was as sterile as a business office in some old building. All that was missing was the rubber ferns in plastic pots.
Zarathustra and Michelle stood to either side of the world map. She’d taken off the clear visor, but kept the gauntlets on. Only they looked less like gauntlets now and more like formfitting mesh gloves with little indicator lights on them.
“I won’t sugarcoat what I have to tell you,” Zarathustra said, in a deep baritone. “The world is in upheaval. Since RAMPART went down, we few Empowered have become, at last count, over a million.”
A million. A million newly-empowered humans.
He went on. “But, predictably, the world governments have not seen this as the blessing it is. They’ve monitored and tagged our new brethren. The Hero Council has shirked its leadership. It should have reached out to the transformed and helped guide them. But, along with its watchdog Support, the so-called Hero Council aided the world’s governments.”
He paused. “Who watches the watchmen? Who monitors the governments? No one. They run rampant. Then they complain when our people fight back, and blame the ensuing chaos on us.”
My muscles tensed at his words, and an icy rage knotted inside me.
Damn the normals. Damn all of them.
“Fuck them,” Keisha muttered. The others’ faces were hard, eyes cold. Even Alex.
That stopped me. Alex never got angry. He wasn’t like me. Yet, he looked like he was ready to murder someone.
“After RAMPART went down we in Ultimate reached out to the Hero Council, to stop the senseless conflict between the two of us, and forge a new partnership. The Hero Council finally understood we needed to work together to guide the hundreds of thousands of new brethren in their powers.”
The room was so quiet I swear you could’ve heard a freaking pin drop. The Hero Council talking with a rogue Empowered group — especially the Empowered supremacist group, Ultimate, seemed impossible.
Zarathustra went on. “We agreed to meet in secret, in Mali, to discuss how we could work together.”
I chewed my lip. Things must have really been in the shit for the sanctioned Empowered to agree to meet with Ultimate. It smelled like a setup to me, with one side playing the other.
“Our two organizations gathered, and that was when the so-called Coalition attacked us.”
“Coalition?” Alex asked.
“That’s what they call themselves, a coalition of the world’s governments. The United States and its allies.”
“What about the U.N.?” Alex asked.
Zarathustra’s mouth twisted in scorn. “The United Nations does what the United States commands.”
Bile burned in the back of my throat. “How… what did the Coalition do?” I stammered out the question.
He smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. “They struck the meeting site with three thermonuclear weapons.”
I shuddered. They had nuked people. An atrocity I couldn’t wrap my brain around.
“They meant fucking business,” Keisha spat.
“The Hero Council and Ultimate were annihilated,” Zarathustra said.
I closed my eyes. “How many people died?” The Scourge had schemed to hit the Hero Council with neutron bombs, back, what - three, no - nearly four years ago in the outside world’s time. But this, this was even more horrific.
“Thirteen hundred Empowered combined,” he replied.
“Thirteen hundred?” Tears streaked Ella’s face. “How can they be that evil?”
“Because they hate us,” Zarathustra replied. “The Coalition’s actions are the personification of the evil the fearful commit on the just.”
“What about Support?” Alex asked. “They must have been sent agents to Mali.”
Zarathustra’s eyes narrowed. “The Hero Council insisted on including them. Five thousand to secure the area. I believe they were why three nuclear weapons were used, rather than one.”
“Five thousand Support agents also dead,” Alex whispered, staring at the floor. I squeezed his hand, but he didn’t react.
But what about all the people living nearby? “What about innocent normals?” I asked. “How many died?”
Zarathustra’s mouth tightened. “Their deaths are inconsequential, but perhaps an additional ten to twenty thousand bystanders. They held the meeting in the Sahel, an area only lightly populated by normals.”
A mere ten to twenty thousand additional dead on top over six thousand.
My mother sighed. “The Coalition followed that horror with another.” She looked each of us in the eye before continuing. “The world’s governments have conscripted millions of normals into their armies and used those millions to round up the Empowered.”
“To do what with them?” I asked.
“They put them in what they label' Detention Centers'.”
“Detention Centers?” Keisha asked.
“That’s what they call them. Concentration camps are more like it,” my mother replied.
“Nazis pulled that shit on the world last century,” I spat. I didn’t know much history, but I’d learned about the Holocaust from my Grandmother Ruth.
Zarathustra smiled grimly. “Yes. The world’s governments are following in those foul footsteps. And like the Nazis, they are hiding their evil deeds. What happened in Mali is unknown to the world at large; no so-called average citizen has any idea.”
“What about these concentration camps? Why hasn’t anybody said anything about them?” I demanded.
Zarathustra cocked his head at me. “By anybody, you mean normals. They are prisoners of their own fears. The Coalition labels these as Detention Centers, not Concentration Camps. It’s important to recall that Nazi Germany did not create the original Concentration Camps. The British in South Africa did, during the Second Boer war. Remember, too, that the United States created internment camps to hold Japanese-Americans suspected of treachery.” Zarathustra paused. “But like us, the only reason they were being held was because of who they were. They weren’t traitors.”
But there was a difference between those Japanese-Americans and us. We had superpowers. Worse, Ultimate was an Empowered supremacist group. The Hero Council technically wasn’t, but it did put itself up on a pedestal as the defender of humanity. Sanctioned Empowered licensed to protect normals from Empowered.
That didn’t excuse any of this, though. No one should be imprisoned just for being who they were.
That had already happened to me and hundreds like me.
“You were in Special Corrections, Mathilda,” Zarathustra said, like he’d read my mind. More likely, he knew my history and could read my expression. I didn’t exactly have a poker face.
“Yes,” I said. “It sucked.”
“I’m sorry,” my mother said.
I couldn’t tell if she meant it. I couldn’t read her, and that made her an unknown. What did she want? She’d plugged herself willingly into RAMPART for twenty years. What did that tell me?
I rubbed my hands together under the table, and did my best to look grateful for her sympathy, whether it was real or not.
“Thanks,” I said. Keep it simple, I told myself.
“I haven’t appreciated all you’ve been through,” she said. “You, among all of us here, can imagine what the detainees are experiencing.”
“Yeah,” I muttered.
I lifted my head, looked at Zarathustra. I still didn’t know what that name meant, or where it had come from. Alex might; recognition of something had flickered across his face when Michelle had first mentioned his name.
“How do they keep the Empowered detained?” I asked him.
“An excellent question. They drug them with a cocktail of chemicals that manages to suppress their powers. It also turns them into shambling, zombie-like creatures who are easily managed.”
I shuddered. Talk about a horror show. Back in Special Corrections we’d thought we’d had it bad. We hadn’t realized just how bad it could get. There’d been a couple hundred inmates in Special Corrections, divided into the men and women’s sections. They had forced us to wear null cuffs and white prison overalls and constantly spied on all of us. They hadn’t drugged us.
“So, what do you propose?” Alex asked Zarathustra.
Zarathustra watched our faces. “We break them out.”
“How many soldiers guard these detention centers?” I asked.
“Not as many as you might expect, given the docile prisoners.”
“They would have to crank out those chemical cocktails by the trainload,” Keisha said. “I mean, if they’re keeping that many Empowered drugged. It seems like a stretch.”
Zarathustra didn’t miss a beat. “Unfortunately, it’s not. The Coalition and the U.N. have set up numerous pharmaceutical factories producing nullifying cocktails and what they call pacification drugs.”
I exhaled, rubbed my suddenly hot palms against my jumpsuit. Monsters. I took a deep breath. “Okay, so you want to break these people out.”
Zarathustra crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes.”
“Do we have enough people to manage all these zombified, drugged prisoners?” Alex asked.
“We have a plan, but it won’t be easy,” my mother said.
“It’s never easy,” I said.
“I’m sorry that it’s been like that for you, Mathilda. You’re too young to be so cynical.”
My chest tightened. “It’s the way things have been for me.”
She sighed and regarded me. “You’ve been through far more than I realize or can understand.”
Did she really care? I had no clue. “What happens after we free the detainees?” I asked.
“We get them to a temporary sanctuary,” Zarathustra replied. His voice rang with confidence.
I gestured at the walls. “You mean, tins cans like this place? We will get, what, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, however many prisoners, out of these camps and into bolt holes like this place? I mean, come on, there’s a shit-ton of hidden places in the world, way more than I’d ever dreamed, but there can’t be enough human-built ones stocked with food and supplies to house that many people, especially newbie Empowereds needing special handling.” Newbies didn’t have much control over their power, or how they felt about it. Things could go bad very quickly.
Zarathustra’s eyes were bright. “You have an endearing way of putting things.”
Endearing, that was a laugh, but I kept myself on track. “And, even if you did, how would you get them there? You’d overload the Dark-Net.”
Keisha nodded.
“No, it won’t,” my mother replied. “The Dark-Net can handle the load.”
“Handle the load? Of two hundred thousand people?”
“Have faith, dear.”
Dear. My jaw tightened. She didn’t know me, but I’d already backslid enough in the anger department. I needed to stay calm.
“Okay, I’ll have faith. But you’re telling me we will move two hundred thousand—”
Zarathustra steepled his fingers. “No, three hundred thousand to be more precise, and that’s just the beginning. Eventually, we hope to have all, or nearly all, of the newly Empowered moved.”
I gasped. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. But let me correct you on one thing, Mathilda. We’re not using the Dark-Net to move the rescued brethren to sanctuaries scattered around the world. The Dark-Net will be the sanctuary for all.”
“That’s crazy!”
“It might seem like such until you consider the Dark-Net itself.” Zarathustra nodded to my mother.
“It’s a hyper-dimensional place, one that overlays our world,” she said
“I know,” I said impatiently. “Created by Goldin as both a shunt and a transportation network.”
Her eyes gleamed. “Because it’s not only hyper-dimensional; it’s vast, and it’s vast because its hyper-dimensionality can be expanded.”
“If you say so.”
Ella gave me an angry look. “Don’t be so sarcastic,” she said under her breath, but our mother heard it, too.
“It’s hard to visualize,” she said, sounding annoyingly agreeable.
“Whatever,” I said. “I’ve been through so many of these longshots that depend upon some weird thing or place. I’m tired of it.”
Zarathustra got up and strode over to me and squatted down. “Believe it or not, I understand. The world’s bizarrely intricate, in part because of humanity and all it has wrought, but also because of Gaia.”
“How does Gaia make things bizarre?”
He smiled. “Not deliberately so much as just a part of how it functions, in our human terms.”
“No offense,” I said, “but all of this explanation doesn’t really help me understand. I guess I just don’t have the brain for it. You say that the Dark-Net can hold a million people, a million Empowered no less, and I’ll just have to go with that.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” he said. “It takes time to process understanding.”
I shrugged. Still, we could use more help. Lenore used to tell me to never pass up aid, not if it really could make a difference.
Lenore. Lenore and all the other inmates in Special Corrections were Empowered.
There were Special Corrections prisons in San Diego and Johannesburg, South Africa.
“We need help,” I said. “Experienced help.”
“Go on,” Zarathustra said. He stood.
“We need to rescue the inmates at the two Special Corrections facilities.”
“They need their freedom, but how do you expect them to help us?”
“They have experience in using their powers. And they aren’t drugged out zombies.”
“But,” my mother said, “they’ve been in prison, their powers nullified, for years, decades sometimes. They’re out of practice.”
“It’s a worthy idea, one that does you credit,” Zarathustra said, in that tone you get when someone’s trying to make you feel better after shooting down your idea. “But, consider that the two Special Corrections facilities might no longer be operational.”
“You mean the prisoners have been freed?” Keisha asked.
“No, he means killed,” I said.
“We don’t know,” Zarathustra said. “We can’t see into Special Corrections because of the shielding. It’s possible that the prisoners are still alive, and all still imprisoned in those facilities. It’s also possible that the Coalition eliminated them and is just using those installations as shielded operations bases. Either way, we can’t take the time. The detainees come first. Once we free the detainees, we need to pull back into the Dark-Net and not risk any more lives.”
That smelled like bullshit to me. I argued for another five minutes, but they wouldn’t budge. Lenore had helped me when I was in Special Corrections. Now that the world was on the line, I had to help her. But they wouldn’t let me.
I’d keep after this. I wanted to free her, and the others. After all this time, it was suddenly very important to me. I forced myself to not argue any more, and instead focused on what we needed to try right then.
“Okay, what’s the plan?” I asked them.
They told me.
“I don’t like this, Mat,” Keisha said later, when she was back with Alex and me in our hut.
“It stinks,” I said. “But, they have a point. Those people could be next on the chopping block.” I turned to Alex. “What do you think?”
“It stinks, but we don’t have a choice,” he said. “It will be risky as hell.”
“Someone’s got to break the prisoners out from the biggest camp.”
“But, Mat, it’s a freaking suicide run,” Keisha said.
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
Our team was responsible for the first breakout, at the Inland Empire Detention center in central Washington. There were fifteen thousand Empowered there. It was close to the node Alex, Keisha, and I had come out of, a thousand years ago. Or so it felt like. I couldn’t keep track of time anymore.
The plan was to take down a section of the electrified fence, neutralize the guards and then evacuate to the Dark-Net. It would take us some time. Right after we hit, the other teams would break into the other nine detention centers. This was a worldwide operation. My operation needed to draw off part of the forces guarding the other centers.
We just had to make this work.
Winterfield once told me, the more complicated a plan, the more ways it could go wrong. This plan was simple—multiple break-ins and releases.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
The next few days were a scramble. People coming in and out of the Dark-Net. We practiced the operation. I would use my plant power, which surged until I could grow spruce from pine cones with a snap of my fingers. I felt the ebb and flow of sap through the trees, even the light became food as the plants converted it. As long as my power kept going at this level, we could pull this off. I went alone to a deep part of the forest, to a canyon where there was a clearing, thanks to fallen trees, and practiced what I discussed with Michelle. I thought it would work.
