The Resistance, page 6
Elena had tried talking to Lim—she was that desperate—but Lim had had nothing nice to say to her, only curse words in Phant.
But one thing was for certain: one of the two of them, Lim or Elena, was going to tell them everything they wanted to know and then some. And this was just the first of two doses!
*****
By the time Zed administered the second dose, she was already trying to tell him all about her love for Josh, and about the tipping mattress, and about all the fun they’d been having before that bot had so rudely interrupted them. But he didn’t seem interested in any of that.
Instead, he’d asked her if she had ever been a kaz, and she’d nodded eagerly and said, “Yes, I sure was!” Then he’d asked her if she had stolen any data from the restricted library, and she’d said, “Oh yes! Loads of it!” “Are you a member of the Resistance?” he’d asked, and she’d replied, “Absolutely! Have been for years!” Then he’d asked her about the kitab from Salesh and if they still existed and she’d answered, “They sure do! Rachel’s in charge of them now.” Who is Rachel, he’d asked, and she’d proceeded to tell him everything she knew about Dr. Rachel Cavanaugh from California and what a wonderful human being she was—but unfortunately, he’d cut her off before she could finish.
She had been just about to tell him about the factory Rachel was running these days to mass-produce disruptors, but Zed had apparently heard enough. He’d nodded, satisfied, and told her he would be back in an hour to bring her up to the High Council for a second meeting. “This one, I think, will be much more productive than the first,” he’d told her, and then he’d headed out the door.
“Wait, don’t you want to hear more?” Elena had called out to him. She was desperate for company—even Zed’s, which was saying a lot—but he’d already closed the door.
Too bad! She’d so wanted to tell him everything about herself. It was like an itch she couldn’t stop scratching, even though she knew her skin was raw and bleeding by now.
Chapter 16
Hun covered the final two miles to Kapela without further incident. A minor back road called Two Bridges led him to an underpass that cut below I-80 before bringing him to the verge of a former nature preserve signposted as Great Piece Meadows. An overgrown trail wound through the preserve, past wetlands and red maple forest, before depositing him, to his considerable relief, within sight of the Kapela dome.
As dawn broke, he was so sleepy he could barely walk in a straight line. He decided to take a short nap in the woods just outside the dome. Snuggling down in a pile of leaves, he fell fast asleep and didn’t wake for several hours.
Brushing himself off, he removed his human clothing and placed it carefully on top of an old tree stump for possible use later on. Then he put on a Phant robe that he had stuffed into one of his capacious coat pockets, repocketed the zam, and strode out of the woods straight towards the dome wall. He walked right through it without a second thought. He was a Phant, after all, and the force field wasn’t meant to keep him out!
He took an automated walkway all the way into the city proper. Ah! The joys of walking once again in a Phant city! He passed kilika trees in full bloom, heard the tinkling of endless water in the city’s interconnected fountains, and smelled so many delightful smells coming from so many restaurants that he was half-tempted to stop for a slice of achicha or a bite of gulub. Peering into one of the many display cases filled with Phant treats, he overheard two Phants muttering about being in lockdown mode and whether it was really necessary or not. They seemed to think it was not, but then again, they were half-drunk on achicha at the time, from what he could tell.
Hmm, lockdown mode. Not good, not good at all. Hun hadn’t counted on that. It would make his rescue of Lim all but impossible.
He decided to forego the achicha and gulub and focus on his mission instead. Descending from the first floor to the Mekt—the windowless bilge of the city-ship set aside for menials—he began walking around the outer “wheel” of the Mekt where the menials’ living quarters were located. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for, but he guessed he would know it when he saw it.
And indeed he did. There was a lone guard, a Dom, standing in front of one particular door, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist, as the human saying went, to figure out who was behind that door.
Lim was behind that door.
Hun approached the Dom and zammed him without a single word. The guard crumpled to the floor. Hun opened the door and peered inside.
“Hun!” came the delighted cry from inside the room. “Hun oh Hun it’s you it’s you! I’m so happy to see you! I have so much to tell you! So much has been happening lately, and I haven’t had anyone to talk to except stupid old Zed and that stupid old guard!”
Elena gave him a huge hug, the likes of which no Phant had ever received before.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” Hun tried to say, but Elena wasn’t even close to done yet, not by a longshot. She continued talking up a storm, and it quickly became apparent to Hun that she had been shot full of prodigious amounts of chepfu. Its effects were notorious, even among Phants.
“Is Josh okay? What about my parents? What about Royce and Aubrey and Kaley and Rachel and—”
Hun interrupted her stream-of-consciousness questions. “I don’t know about any of them, Lim. All I know is, Newark was bombed, and you were taken.”
“But what about—“
Hun put a finger to his lips in a very human gesture and said, “Hold that thought, Lim,“ and then he popped back out the door and dragged the unconscious guard inside the room.
“Lim, I’d love nothing more than to chat with you about all of this, but right now we really have to be going. It won’t be long before they realize the guard is missing, and so are you.” He took her by the hand and led her out the door and into the circular passageway that extended all the way around the Mekt.
Elena kept talking nonstop, but she seemed compliant enough, happy to follow along wherever Hun led her, so he led her towards the southern exit of the Mekt. Along the way, they passed several menials who eyed them surreptitiously. After all, it wasn’t every day they saw a menial babbling away with such obvious enthusiasm to one of their masters.
Eventually they reached a series of automated walkways that sped them to the Mekt’s southern exit. Circular doors irised open to let them out. Now they were standing outside the city-ship itself, but still well inside the dome of the force field, which extended south for another seven miles or so.
Elena was still talking a mile a minute. Hun kept nodding and saying “Uh-huh,” but his focus was elsewhere. Now that he had her, what was he going to do with her?
With Kapela in lockdown mode, he couldn’t take her out of the dome, he knew that much. She would get electrocuted on her way out. Hun himself could go in and out all day long, at will, but not a human—not in lockdown mode. Nor could he walk around with her inside the dome for much longer. A Phant and a menial walking side by side on the outskirts of the city for more than a few minutes at a time would inevitably draw attention.
Surely the Dom would begin looking for Lim as soon as they found the stunned guard. They wouldn’t know how Lim had escaped, but they would soon question other menials in the vicinity and learn about the strange Phant who had been leading a talkative menial through the Mekt. Zed, at least, would be smart enough to put two and two together and figure out what had happened. And he would be none too pleased to discover that his own mzaz had foiled him once again!
There was really only one good option available to him: he needed to find a prison inside the Kapela dome, one that was similar to his own prison home back in Salesh.
The good news was, he knew exactly where to look. All Phant domes were built according to the same specs, and prisons such as his were situated at precise locations about half a mile outside each city-ship’s cardinal points. The bad news was, he had no idea who he would find inside said prison. How would its occupants react to the sudden appearance of two strangers, one a human and one a Phant?
Still, it was the best chance they had. By definition, prison Phants were “flawed” Phants, as he himself was considered to be. Nonconformists. Odd ducks. Free thinkers. They might not care that two more nonconformists had joined their ranks. They might, in fact, welcome and protect them.
As Elena continued to tell him her life’s story and then some, Hun guided her towards the prison located on the southern side of Kapela—the cardinal point closest to Newark and his own prison home in Salesh-that-was—hoping against hope they could hide out there until they were rescued by the Resistance. It was a longshot, but it was all he had.
Chapter 17
Connor wandered the bombed-out streets of Newark with a bewildered look on his face. A few skyscraper skeletons reached upwards in supplication to the heavens, but otherwise it was hard to tell where he was. Whole residential blocks had been reduced to grim piles of rubble. Putrid odors rose from those piles, making it difficult to breathe when the air happened to gust the wrong way. He had to detour around several streets that had become impassable, even on foot, but eventually he found his way to the correct block. The bent signpost remained standing, even if that was about the only thing that still did.
This was where his friends—Sammie, Johnnie, and Stewart—had lived since coming to Newark less than a week ago. Sammie had given him the address just a few days back, when he had returned to his old prison home to pick up a few last possessions. He had spoken excitedly about their new digs and had invited Connor to come stay with them. Connor had been considering doing just that—right up until the moment the bombs had begun to drop.
“We get to live rent-free in this little studio apartment in exchange for manual labor six days a week,” Sammie had explained to him then. “We found some used mattresses—not too grody, I swear—and spread them out on the floor and made ourselves a little nest. There’s even an extra mattress with your name on it, in case you come to visit. The place has a kitchen with a microwave and a bathroom with a shower and everything. We’re living the dream, Connor, just like we said we would!”
Except the dream had turned into a nightmare. Now there was just the bombed-out shell of a building where their home had been.
Connor noticed an old man picking through the rubble and asked him if anyone had survived from around these parts. The old man pointed him towards a building about a block away—one of the few that were still intact—and said it was serving as a makeshift hospital and survivors’ camp.
Connor stood in the building’s doorway and saw row upon row of hospital beds. Wandering up and down the rows, he searched for his friends but couldn’t find them. Doctors and nurses tending to the wounded ignored him altogether. He wandered further into the building and discovered more survivors, these ones physically uninjured but shell-shocked and homeless. It was here that he finally found Stewart.
Stewart was sitting with his back against the wall, coughing incessantly, as if he had inhaled a lungful of smoke and was still trying to get it out of his system.
“Stewart!” Connor cried.
Stewart’s eyes opened wide. He scrambled up and embraced his friend with a sob. “They’re gone!” he told Connor, and then a coughing fit took him and he couldn’t say anything more for awhile. “Sammie and Johnnie, they’re gone,” he eventually rasped out. “The Phants, they killed ‘em!”
Stewart had always hated the Phants with a passion for turning him into a dysfunctional in the first place, and recent developments had done nothing to improve his opinion of them.
“What happened?” Connor asked, sitting down with his back against the wall and inviting Stewart to join him. Eventually Stewart stopped coughing long enough to tell him his story.
“They were in the apartment when the bombs fell,” he said hoarsely. “The whole building came down on top of them. Their bodies are still down there somewhere, mixed in with all that rubble. I’d gone out to scrounge up some food for the three of us, and that’s when it happened. No warning, no nothing. They never stood a chance.”
“You should come back with me,” Connor urged. “There’s nothing here for you anymore.”
Stewart shook his head, eyes turning brittle. “Thanks but no thanks. I’m gonna join the Resistance, if they’ll have me, and kill me some Phants.” He started coughing uncontrollably again. “And if I ever see that Hun or Oho again, I’ll probably kill them too.”
“Stewart, no!” Connor cried out, aghast. “Why would you say such a thing? Hun and Oho are our friends!”
“They’re Phants,” Stewart rasped, as if that was all that needed saying.
“But they’d never hurt us!”
Stewart coughed through half his words. “Which is why I’m never—going—back. I might not be able to control myself if I saw ‘em again. Just look what they did!” he cried, waving his arms around as if to encompass all of Newark.
“But Hun and Oho didn’t do this!” Connor protested. “Them other Phants did, them ones from Kapela!”
Stewart was about to respond, but coughs wracked his body so hard he couldn’t say another word. When the coughs finally subsided, he seemed spent. He remained silent and moody after that, unwilling even to meet Connor’s eye.
*****
After an hour or so of Stewart’s silent treatment, Connor couldn’t take it anymore. He brought him some food and water, renewed his offer to bring him home (and was refused again), then bade him farewell. Privately he found himself wishing it had been either Sammie or Johnnie who had survived. Stewart had always been the least likable of the bunch.
He decided to head towards Elena’s last known address, which Hun had provided him before he’d left. Spybots flitted past him every now and again as he picked his way through the streets, but since he wasn’t tagged or doing anything suspicious, they left him alone.
Eventually he reached the right address for Josh’s apartment and found himself staring at a giant mound of smoking rubble. Continuing on, he located Elena’s parents’ apartment just around the corner and found the exact same thing. Only the mangled street sign on the corner confirmed that this was…or had been…the right place.
He spied an older woman with tired eyes picking through the rubble, apparently looking for something—a memento, perhaps, or a photograph from the past—and asked her if any of the people on this block had survived.
The woman shook her head, eyes tearing up. “No, dear, I’m afraid not. Except for me, that is. I was at the stadium, helping those poor menials from Salesh, when the bombs started to fall. I used to live here with my husband, Gabriel, but he’s gone now, bless his soul. Somewhere down there, I’m afraid. I can’t even give him a proper burial.” She wiped at her eyes.
Connor took a chance. “Are you, um…are you Elena’s mom by any chance?”
The woman’s eyes widened. “You know Elena? Is she still alive? I’m her mother, Elizabeth.” Seeing the sudden hope kindling in her eyes was almost too painful for Connor to bear.
Connor explained to her that he had known Elena, back in the day, back when she had still been Lim. “I…um…I used to have a pretty big crush on her back then, to tell you the truth,” he admitted, blushing. “I heard she was taken by the Phants just before the bombing, so she might still be alive.”
Elizabeth’s whole demeanor brightened, and she suddenly looked ten years younger. “I want you to know you’ve given me a great gift, young man. You’ve given me the gift of hope. I tried finding Elena’s friends yesterday to see if they had any news about her, but I couldn’t find any of them. I’m afraid this whole city is a disaster zone. I nearly broke both my ankles coming out here.”
“I wish there was more I could do,” Connor said, and he meant it. He wanted to advise her not to get her hopes up too high, given her daughter’s capture at the hands of the Phants, but he didn’t have the heart to say it.
She seemed to recognize his concern. “Don’t worry, dear. I already know my husband is dead, God rest his soul. So if there’s even a chance my Elena is alive, I’m going to hold onto that. It’s all I’ve got at this point.”
Chapter 18
What do you mean gone?” Zed demanded. “She was just here an hour ago! I shot her full of chepfu myself!”
He was beyond furious: he had been heading down to collect her for the meeting with the High Council when news reached him of her disappearance.
“Someone must have helped her escape,” the Dom replied as they approached her room.
Zed threw open the door and took in the Phant guard lying unconscious on the floor.
“Go up to Security immediately,” Zed seethed. “Track her through the chip implanted in her brain.”
“But the chepfu…” the Dom replied hesitantly.
Sfek! Zed had forgotten all about the chepfu. It would scramble the signal coming from the implant and make an utter mess of things until it wore off. “Then get busy manually searching every room in the Mekt,” Zed growled. “Every room. Search outside the Mekt too. She can’t have gone far, not in her current condition. And start questioning every menial in this quadrant to see if they know anything about her whereabouts.”
The Dom acknowledged and strode off, calling on other Dom to help him with the search.
Zed stood there staring at the unconscious guard, wondering how in the world Lim 127, in her current condition, had been able to overpower him, steal his zam, and shoot him before disappearing into thin air. It seemed impossible. She must have had help. But who would have helped her here in Kapela? She had no friends here—no Hun here.
Or did she?
A terrible thought suddenly occurred to him. Could his mzaz have come all the way from Salesh-that-was to rescue her?
As soon as he thought it, he knew it to be true.
