The Resistance, page 3
“Okay Josh, here comes the fun part,” Kaley said, grimacing, as they reached the stairs. “I’m not even going to try to walk you down these steps, okay? I’m going to carry you instead. Just…think light thoughts, okay?
Josh nodded. The thought of his little sister carrying him down three flights of stairs made him want to tumble down them instead. He was her big brother, after all: he was supposed to take care of her, not the other way around.
I’ll try not to bump your leg, but I can’t promise anything, understand?”
“Shur, shur,” Josh mumbled. “Unnerstood.”
And then he saw her grit her teeth and felt himself being hefted onto his little sister’s back, and through sheer force of will she managed to carry him down all three flights of stairs in one go. How she did it he would never know. They said people could perform amazing feats of strength in moments of great need, and perhaps this was just such a moment. She only banged his leg twice against the stairwell on the way down. He screamed both times but tried to do it quietly: he didn’t want her to think him ungrateful.
Kaley carried him all the way out of the building and set him down as gently as she could on the pavement. Then she lay there panting like a dog that had just chased a rabbit across the entire countryside and back. After a minute she heaved a deep breath and said, “Okay, let’s go.” Putting her arm around him again, they hobbled across the street.
Which was when the entire building behind them decided to collapse.
“Too…close,” Kaley wheezed.
“Thought…light…thoughts,” Josh managed to mumble out, and he was rewarded with one of his favorite sounds in the world: Kaley laughing. Exhausted laughter, but laughter nonetheless.
Chapter 6
Hun and Oho were sitting in the living room of their former prison, now their home by choice, when they heard the bombs go off in the distance. They looked at each other, perplexed.
The hatch opened as Old Ben and Connor came rushing in from the outside, where they had been busy milking the inka and tending to other tasks. Descending the automated ladder, they dashed into the Phants’ living room looking shocked. “Newark is being bombed!” Connor cried.
“By whom?” Hun asked in his perfectly correct English. Oho was used to being left out of conversations, so he just waited until Hun could translate for him later.
“No idea,” Connor exclaimed. “We hoped you’d know.”
“Why would we know?” Hun asked. “You think it’s us?” By us he meant the Phants.
“Well, who else would it be?” Connor asked, indignant. “If it’s not Kapela, then it’s some other city-ship.”
The bombs were falling so heavily now, they sounded like the repetitive drumbeats in one of those pop songs Connor liked so much (and Hun and Oho liked so little).
“Kapela doesn’t tell us anything,” Hun informed them. He turned to Oho and spoke to him in Phant for some time. Oho shook his head, a gesture he had learned from the humans and knew they understood.
“Well, can’t ya find out?” Old Ben demanded, not waiting for the translation. “Oho here’s s’posed to be well-connected, ain’t he?”
The two spoke again. Oho pulled out the Phant version of a phone and made a call to one of his contacts in the Kapela dome. He spoke at some length before hanging up. Then he repeated what he had heard to Hun.
“Yes, it’s us,” Hun said. He said it so matter-of-factly, it sounded like he was reporting on the weather, but that was just the Phant way. Only his eyes gave any indication of just how awful he felt. Most of his human friends were in Newark—including Lim, or rather Elena, who was his favorite human by far.
“Well ain’t that just swell,” Old Ben fumed, rocking back and forth from one foot to the other.
“Oho’s contact says they captured one human and brought her back to Kapela,” Hun said. “It must be Lim, don’t you think?”
“Has to be,” replied Old Ben. “They wouldn’t care about no one else. Must wanna question her—probly ‘bout bein’ a spy and all.”
“That’s not good,” said Hun. “Not good at all. But on the other hand, at least she’s not in Newark.”
“Well, Sammy and Johnnie and Stewart are in Newark,” Connor said, voice filled with concern. He was speaking of his fellow dysfunctionals who had lived in the same prison with them before moving just a few days ago to what they called the big city.
“Let’s hope they’re underground by now,” Old Ben murmured, “or else they’re havin’ a real bad day.”
Hun got up from the couch. “I can’t go to Newark. I’d be killed on the spot. Any Phant showing himself right now would be dead meat”—a Connorism he had picked up somewhere along the way—“but I might be able to head to Kapela and rescue Lim…or try, anyway.” Hun looked uncertainly over at Oho and spoke to him in Phant, who said something back that did not sound encouraging.
“Okay, then, just me. If there’s any chance they took Lim before bombing the city, I have to see if I can help her.”
“Then you go to Kapela, and I’ll go to Newark,” Connor said. “Once the bombing stops, that is. I’ve gotta see if our friends are okay—and I’ll keep an eye out for Elena, too, just in case she’s still there.”
“I’ll stay here and mind the inka,” Old Ben said, even though no one had asked him. He wasn’t much for cities even in the best of times, let alone cities that were actively being bombed. He turned to Hun and said, “Y’know, Kapela’s a good ways from here on foot. You’re bound to run into humans somewhere along the way, and if ya do, ya really are dead meat. Humans won’t take too kindly to ya right now, after what your folks just did to Newark.”
Hun thought about that for awhile. “I’ll go after dark,” he said at last. “And in disguise.”
Old Ben and Connor looked at each other in silence for a moment before bursting out laughing. “This I have to see,” cackled Old Ben.
Chapter 7
Rachel Cavanaugh was on the outskirts of the city when the bombs began to fall. Their insistent drumbeat sent a shiver down her spine.
So: the war with the Phants had begun, and much sooner than any of them had anticipated. They had counted on the Phants remaining passive for a time—and yet here they were, taking the initiative and preemptively bombing the Resistance stronghold of Newark.
What had caused them to turn so aggressive all of a sudden? Well, it didn’t take a Ph.D. to figure that one out. The destruction of Salesh must have hit them like a body blow. They had always been so sure they were untouchable—forever beyond the reach of the barbarians outside their walls. And yet, here the humans were, messing with their force fields, attacking one of their cities, and actually managing to bring it down in the end. It must have seemed unthinkable to them that the mjinga humans could have been capable of such a feat.
No wonder they were responding with such force. They must have seen the writing on the wall and realized Salesh was just the first city-ship to fall unless they took preemptive action. If so, how human of them! Perhaps, when push came to shove, the two species weren’t so different after all.
At least the factory was safe; it was well outside the city limits, and fortunately the Phants had no knowledge of it whatsoever. Which was a good thing, because this was now the one and only manufacturing center for the mass production of disruptors—the crucial devices that would allow the Resistance to bring down the force fields protecting the city-ships. Without the disruptors, the humans stood no chance whatsoever. With them, the odds were at least a little less stacked against them.
She paced the factory floor with the help of her cane, listening to the whir of a hundred different machines mass-producing products that had never been mass-produced before. All around her, workers—Resistance members all—were busy churning out disruptors. In another section of the facility, they were mass-producing Phant weaponry, most notably the Phant stun guns known as zam. The zam had proven so useful in the taking of Salesh that they had quickly become coveted by humans as well. The zam could disable whole swaths of enemies in one go without killing them outright. Rachel’s brain trust had gotten to work right away disassembling one of them to understand how they worked, then reverse-engineering them to create their own models. Now they had their very own supply coming off the assembly lines.
She and her brain trust were also hard at work on another device: an override mechanism that would allow troops to remotely control the secure wik leading up to the higher floors of the city-ships. Wik wands, they were calling them. If they had had such devices in Salesh, the Resistance could have overwhelmed the city in a matter of hours. Instead it had taken them days to advance from floor to floor, through a vertical air shaft, before finally reaching Command on the thirtieth floor. The humans couldn’t afford such time-consuming conquests in the future. What with some sixty thousand domes worldwide, they needed to win quick, decisive victories if they ever hoped to take back their planet.
Sixty thousand domes meant sixty thousand disruptors at the very least, and those disruptors had to be distributed, somehow, across all four corners of the earth. No one had really talked about distribution yet, but it would have to be addressed soon. They had to get the disruptors into the hands of Resistance members, not just in America, but all around the world, if they wanted to have a real chance at success.
Rachel, for her part, had been giving the matter some serious thought, and she suspected Royce and Aubrey had as well. The attacks on domes had to happen, if not simultaneously, then from multiple directions at once, so the Phants wouldn’t know where to hit back next. At the moment, the only problem to speak of was Newark, and judging from the black columns of smoke rising from that direction, they had dealt with that problem rather aggressively. No doubt they intended to destroy the Resistance at its root to keep it from spreading—which meant the Resistance had to spread if they wanted to survive.
Rachel envisioned packages of disruptors, zam, and wik wands being delivered to Resistance members all around the world. If they could do that one thing, then the Phants would find themselves facing more than just one city in open rebellion. The whole world would be their enemy. That was a dream worth fighting for, and that was why Rachel and every single worker on the floor kept on working even as Newark burned.
Chapter 8
At an abandoned football stadium on the outskirts of Newark, a strange sort of halfway house had been set up for the menials who had been herded out of Salesh one week ago and shepherded towards the city. Every last menial had wanted to follow their beloved masters, the Phants, to their new home in Kapela, and yet instead they had been bought here, to this awful place. Here, where there were oversoft cots, and strange food, and even stranger humans who tried to comfort them, and touch them, and hug them, when all they really wanted was to be left alone. Was that really so much to ask?
Of course, every last one of them had been brainwashed to love the Phants, but they didn’t know that—or rather, they did know that, at a basic level, but they just didn’t care. Now, volunteers were insisting they take pills dissolved in water that would help them be “less menial” and “more human.” But what if they didn’t want to be more human? What if they liked being the way they were?
One of the volunteers trying to help with this difficult transition was Elena’s mom, Elizabeth. She wanted to do whatever she could for these poor souls—souls that reminded her so much of her own daughter before she had been deprogrammed with the help of the deprogrammer drug. After witnessing firsthand her own daughter’s painful transition, she had lobbied for a take-it-slow approach: no more than ten or twenty menials at a time, ideally with loved ones present. But her advice had been ignored and the decision made to deprogram all one thousand menials at the same time for reasons of efficiency.
The results, unsurprisingly (to Elizabeth at least), had been harrowing.
One thousand souls, all lost to themselves, all coming back to themselves at once. Emotional trauma on a grand scale. Feelings of confusion, denial, rage, fear, vulnerability, self-loathing—emotions these young people had never experienced before, all jumbled together into one vile stew. Things had been bad enough when it had been just one person, her own daughter, but try multiplying that by one thousand and seeing how it went!
It had not gone well, no, not by a longshot. More than a dozen of the “transitioned” had committed suicide within the first three days, unable to deal with the sudden surfeit of emotions. Others were manically depressed or inconsolably angry, and a few were nothing short of raging lunatics who had to be strapped down for their own safety until the pills’ effects could wear off and they could go back to being menials once again.
Gabriel, her husband, had left after the first day, unable to handle “all the crazy,” as he put it. Elizabeth could hardly blame him—it really had been a madhouse those first few days—but she had stuck it out. By now she had been here for one full week, comforting those who would accept comfort, and working to connect as many as possible with family on the outside. For those who had no such family, Elizabeth unofficially adopted them as her own.
As she was making her rounds one morning, she came across one of her adoptees, a young woman by the name of Becca who was in tears for no apparent reason. Elizabeth sat down beside her, being careful not to touch her physically, something she had discovered was counterproductive at this stage. “There, there, my dear,” she said soothingly. “Things will get better in time, trust me. My own daughter has been through this, and she’s fine now.”
“She’s been through this?” Becca asked uncertainly, wiping at her tears. “How is that possible? Is she here now?”
“No dear, she was given the deprogrammer drug years ago, as a sort of trial run. To see if it was safe.”
“And is it? Safe, I mean?”
Elizabeth nodded. “If you’re patient and give it some time.”
“What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Elena.”
“I mean…um…her menial name.”
“Lim 127.”
Becca thought for a moment. “I think I know her. Knew her, I mean. We worked in the library together, but we almost never spoke. None of us did. I was Lim 81. I remember I—“ She looked embarrassed for a moment before finishing her sentence. “Well, I despised her. At the time, I mean. She did something bad, I can’t remember what, and got kicked out of the library because of it. She seemed to be in trouble a lot.”
“That does sound like my Elena.”
“Where is she now?”
“In the city. Sharing an apartment with a man she loves.”
Becca seemed awestruck at this revelation. “Really?” She was silent for a moment. “Well, that’s…surprising. And encouraging, I guess.”
“It is. And it’ll be the same for you, my dear, just you wait and see. Things will get better, I promise.” She patted the young woman’s hand—an acceptable amount of touch, from what she had found—and was about to get up, looking for the next person in need of a little mothering, when the bombs began to fall.
It sounded like distant thunder over Newark, but the thunder was far too prolonged. Elizabeth felt a sudden chill of dread. Everyone she loved was in Newark—her husband Gabriel and daughter Elena, above all, but also members of her extended family, and a lifetime’s worth of friends.
“Oh Gabriel,” she whispered. “Oh Elena.”
She started to cry inconsolably, and now it was Becca’s turn to take her hand and try to comfort her.
Chapter 9
When Elena awoke, who should be staring down at her but Zed. Zed, who had such a look of smug complacency that she reached right up and slapped him, just as hard as she could, right across the face.
To say Zed looked taken aback would have been the understatement of the century. He had never been struck by anyone before. And for this…this menial…to slap him was so outrageous that he just stood there sputtering in incoherent rage for what felt like a full minute.
Then he seemed to collect himself. Rather than going hot, he went cold. He said to the Dom standing next to him, “Tie her down. She is clearly insane.” The venomous look he shot her was enough to curdle her stomach.
“You will pay for that, mjinga,” he told her. “You and all of humankind.”
The Dom proceeded to strap her down to what looked like an oversized hospital bed. She tried to resist before the restraints were fully in place, kicking wildly at the Dom, but he was much bigger than she was and managed to restrain her without too much trouble.
She decided to do what Zed had done: she went from hot to cold in an instant, refusing to meet his eye.
“You’re in Kapela, as I assume you’ve guessed,” Zed informed her haughtily in Phant, now that he was back in full control. “You are to stand trial for your crimes. I already know you are a kaz, but by the time I am done with you, everyone will know—not just what you did but how you did it. Your role in the destruction of Salesh will become evident. You will also tell us all you know about the Resistance and their plans.”
She had intended on remaining coldly silent, just to spite him, but she couldn’t help herself. “And why would I do that?”
“Because you won’t have a choice,” Zed replied. “The chip in your brain—which I assume you already know about, since you’re a kaz—has a reset function. Once we activate it, you will go right back to being your loving and obedient menial self.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Elena muttered, but Zed’s words frightened her more than she cared to admit. Could the chip really be reset, or was he just bluffing? And if it wasn’t a bluff, would the deprogrammer drug continue to offer her any protection?
“Any last words before we get started?”
