B018YDIXDK EBOK Read online

“Eh, maybe. It’s been years. It probably thinks I’m useless now, or at least not interested in harming it or anyone else.”

  “So you didn’t want to join an Unders gang?”

  “Right — spend my days wandering aimlessly, looking for humans to torture and trade to explain my desire to live outside the System’s reach?”

  Ravi raised his eyebrows.

  “I know. You think that’s exactly what Hunters do, but you’re wrong. We put food on the table — our table. Not a boss’ table, or anyone else’s. We don’t even kill people — we just turn them in for payment. It’s a solitary life, and I’m not saying it’s full of integrity, but it’s still better than living in the System’s shadow. I’ve got the BSE memory enhancement, Cardio-Ventricular Enlargement, everything. Just about as robot as a human can get. I move when it tells me to move, and for some reason it keeps me alive. It keeps my family alive.”

  Ravi could see the man struggle with the word. He hadn’t seen his family since before Umutsuz was deactivated, and there was no way to contact them out here. Sol wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to use a terminal to get a message out.

  Ravi nudged the conversation a different direction. “But you don’t kill people.”

  “No — I have before, but I don’t in general.”

  “Sounds very righteous.”

  “I’m not trying to impress anyone.”

  “Good thing.”

  Sol shot him a glance, but then he forced himself to relax. The muscles in his face visibly loosened, immediately putting Ravi at ease. It was another skill he’d learned as an executive — how to coerce a subordinate by making them feel as though you were on their team first and foremost.

  Sol watched the kid watching him, both men trying to silently cross-examine the other. Sol could tell he was up against a solid competitor — Ravi hadn’t survived out here by being dumb, or by making friends with everyone he’d met. He wasn’t going to fall for Sol’s corporate parlor tricks, either.

  “Why are you a Relic?” Sol asked.

  “Who says I am?”

  Sol just stared blankly at him.

  “Fine, old man, you got me.” Ravi smiled. “Not much of a secret, I guess. I pegged somewhere on the Boards, and you probably saw my name a few times back in the day.”

  “For about four years you’ve been bouncing around near the top,” Sol said. “It’s hard enough to stay alive, but to stay alive as a Relic with a hefty price tag on your head… that’s another story.”

  Ravi shrugged. “Not really much of a story, actually. Every one of these guys was in a position of leadership, or inclined to lead, or somehow a direct threat to the System’s power, but that means most of them were out of touch with what the real world was like. I wasn’t. I’m not.”

  “So you survived.”

  “I had to, and I knew how.”

  Sol waited for more, but Ravi wasn’t going to give it up easily. “You impress me, kid. You’re tough, and resilient. I like that.”

  “Thanks. Glad you’re proud of me, Dad.”

  “Why were you scraped?”

  Ravi thought about the question for a few seconds before answering, allowing the silence of the canyon outside the cave to sneak in around them. “I only got a BSE installed two years before I was scraped. Waited as long as possible.”

  “So they only took two years from you.”

  “And a little more, as you explained. But yeah, not much. I was subversive, I guess. Had an attitude that didn’t gel with what the System wants us all to become.”

  “And you had the smarts to do something about it.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Ravi said. “You don’t get scraped for being an idiot. I was a programmer. A hacker, really. Fell into it, but it suited me well and I learned quick. I was the guy behind that pID scare five years ago.”

  “That was you? They never released a name…”

  “And they never will. Yeah, that was me. I hacked the new pID system interface and allowed the System to be able to find anyone, anywhere.”

  Sol shook his head. “We spent months making that —“

  “I know,” Ravi said. “Secure, impenetrable, yada yada. I hacked it in a few hours and installed the subroutine in a day.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I could.”

  “Why?”

  Ravi nodded slowly. “Right, can’t get past you, old man.” He thought for a moment. “I thought the System wasn’t in control then. I assumed getting that information into the hands of the public would be for the greater good.”

  “And the pedophiles, serial killers, and rapists the world over would rejoice.”

  “Think long-term,” Ravi snapped. “It’s bigger than that. You know that. If virtually everyone could know where everyone else was, at any time, how would that change things?”

  “People would die, Ravi.”

  “People have already died! They always will!”

  “Calm down. I just mean… I don’t think you thought it through —“

  “No? You don’t think I did? Consider this: the next time a third-world country’s government wants to persecute its people, another country can know exactly what those troop and militia movements are, and exactly where the leaders are. They’d prevent a massacre.”

  “They’d only postpone —“

  “No,” Ravi said, stepping over to Merrick’s location in the cave. “They’d save them. That’s the difference between guys like me and guys like you.”

  Sol raised his eyebrows, the rest of his face completely stoic.

  “I might be looking out for myself, but I’m an optimist. I believe in the greater good. You, on the other hand, guys like you and Myers, you just want to profit.”

  “Myers wasn’t — isn’t — like that,” Sol said. “He believes people are inherently good, too.”

  “Fine. Whatever. I’m not sorry for what I did, even though —“

  Sol waited, but Ravi just swallowed and looked at the ground. “Even though what, Ravi?”

  Ravi’s nostrils flared once, then he turned and stormed back to a dark corner of the cave.

  Sol let it pass, and turned and stared out over the open valley in front of their prison cell. A minute passed, then another, and Sol started to consider trying to catch some sleep.

  A ratcheting sound riveted him to attention. Ravi was at the entrance to the cell a few seconds later, looking out and upwards.

  “They’re coming down,” he whispered. Sol wasn’t sure why he whispered, but it seemed appropriate.

  Sol stood, brushing off his pants, an old habit he had to always attempt to appear presentable.

  The lift lowered until they could see a pair of legs — skinny and brown — descending in front of them. A girl.

  The lift continued down until it was halfway covering the opening of the cave, and Sol and Ravi stood face-to-face with their captor, a girl kneeling down on the lift’s floor.

  Ary.

  Ravi opened his mouth to shout something, but Ary held up a hand and spoke first. “I know. Shut up. Anything happens, those guys take a shot at you. Both of you.” She moved the hand that was held open, in front of her face, and pointed behind her at the top of the cliff on the other side of the valley.

  Sol had to lean out over the edge to see, but he used the bottom of the lift as support. At the top of the cliff, four men with face coverings and sand-colored clothing were pointing rifles directly at them. He recognized the guns immediately — long-range EHM rifles, easily capable of making a shot from that distance with a few-inch accuracy all around.

  Sol reached his arm out and across Ravi’s chest, gently pushing him back. “Ary,” he said softly, “just tell us what’s going on.”

  “Rest assured, you’ll know exactly what’s going on once you’re up there. Get on the lift.”

  “Why?”

  Ary frowned, a flash of anger shadowing her face for a split second, then lifted her chin slightly. “You can die here, or you can make your
case up there. Your choice.”

  Sol considered this for a moment, then spoke. “I’d rather take my chance at persuasion.”

  She pressed something with her left hand and the lift continued downward a few more feet.

  Ravi looked at Sol, but he just nodded. Both men stepped forward and onto the lift with the girl they’d “rescued” only a day before. Sol watched the valley floor shrink below him as the lift rose, the men across from them keeping their sights glued to each of their foreheads.

  MYERS

  HE’D FOUGHT AGAINST IT AS long as he could, but Myers finally felt the sleep overcome him. He’d waited, hours, then another half an hour, then another fifteen minutes, until every stretch of time he counted off seemed to grow longer and longer.

  After he’d been separated from the rest of the group, Myers was taken to the small building next to the one they’d sat inside after they’d arrived in Relica. It was dingy, surprisingly even less appointed than the tent. The walls had a rust-colored grime dripping over them, the roof and ceiling clearly not providing adequate cover for the interior of the room.

  There was a bed, or something that Myers thought resembled a bed-shaped object, in the corner of the room. It was square, so he wasn’t sure which side was the “front.” It rested on four metal poles that had been cut down to about six inches in length. There was a mattress made of an unknown material on the bed frame, but no blanket or sheet. For a pillow, Myers saw a rolled-up ball of fabric.

  The squat, red-haired man that had spoken briefly at their meeting and had joined them on the tour of Relica nudged Myers forward farther into the room. “All the way, Mr. Asher,” he said.

  Myers was still reeling from the shock of the day’s events. An entire city, fully functional, completely off the grid. It was ironic that one of his lifelong dreams had been to help create a city like this — self-sustaining, able to be completely cut off from the rest of the world. And now he was standing inside that very city, and he was considered an enemy.

  Or am I?

  Myers hadn’t really figured out what he was in this game. A pawn? Or one of the power players? He certainly didn’t feel powerful. So far he’d only been pushed around, pulled around, told what to do, and given only tidbits of information that explained the screwed up world he’d woken up in.

  And he couldn’t think straight.

  Memories came at him, fuzzier than they had been before and shifting around before they vanished again. He could no longer control them as easily; they determined for how long they would be seen before fading back into his subconscious.

  Even memories that had been strong — of Diane and the girls, Christmas vacations, sitting around a campfire in the summer — were now almost irretrievable. He felt lost, as if he was wading through a sea of someone else’s thoughts.

  What is happening to me? He wondered. He’d been confused for days, but he’d at least felt like he could keep himself in control. Now, standing in the middle of a rusting shack in the middle of a strange city in the middle of nowhere, Myers felt like he was losing even that last bit of control.

  He told himself to make a plan. To stop, breathe, and plan out the next few minutes. Then hours. It was a strategy he knew he was comfortable with — he didn’t have to remember that, he just knew.

  He focused on the next few minutes.

  Red-hair is going to leave, and they’ll probably have someone outside the door. They expect me to wait here until they’re ready to turn me over to the Unders.

  How long will that be?

  He had no idea. Josiah Crane had promised them all that it wouldn’t be until the next day, as there ‘was something that had to be attended to,’ to quote the man directly. It was cryptic, and Rand didn’t want to believe him, but Myers recognized that so far Crane had told them the truth.

  They’d expect Myers to sleep — he wanted to, and he needed it. But sleeping was passive; no matter how much he experienced the healing effects of sleep, Myers had always tried to get away with robbing his body of as much of it as possible.

  He sat down on the “bed” and looked toward the door. Red-hair nodded once and stepped backwards out to the street. The door slammed shut, and Myers waited to hear the sound of a lock or deadbolt.

  Nothing.

  Myers’ planning mode immediately took over. That means I’m being heavily guarded, or they don’t imagine that I’m a threat. Why is that? Am I a threat?

  He considered that thought for an extra moment.

  Something is changing in me. I’m becoming… slow. Or… passive. He couldn’t place it, but there was a feeling of serenity sliding over him that had been there since they’d landed. He’d seen it on the faces of the others in Relica — even on Red-hair.

  He wondered what Red-hair’s real name was, and what he’d done before… all of this. Before Crane had swiped him up and turned him into a passive crony. These men with Crane weren’t advisors, as Crane had led them to believe. They were guards.

  Myers knew Red-hair — and the other man, probably — would be outside the doors of his enclosure. They’d be standing guard, just as Crane had ordered them to. He considered yelling, to see what the men were able to comprehend, but he decided against it. It wouldn’t help him here, and it wouldn’t help Rand or Diane…

  Diane.

  He missed her, more now than he had before. Seeing her face and talking with her calmed him down, but it tore him apart on the inside. He only remembered a time when they were together, but there was an ocean of time between them. She had years of new memories, ones he was not a part of.

  He drifted through those memories, the ones that allowed themselves to be seen, as if he was swimming through that ocean. The memories swam with him, some keeping up and others pushing back against him, a different current than his own.

  And that was when he realized he’d fallen asleep.

  How long he’d been asleep he didn’t know, and how much of his thoughts and dreams and memories were part of the sleep he couldn’t tell. He sat up, physically telling his body to wake.

  It was dark in the shack — night? Or early morning? He had no idea.

  He stood and walked to the front of the building, and gently pushed on the door. It gave easily, and he immediately realized that it wasn’t completely dark outside. The shack had blocked out almost all of the light, but it was clear that it was dawn outside his tiny cell.

  Myers quickly glanced through the slit in the partially opened door, checking to see if Red-hair or the other guard were outside. He couldn’t see anyone, so he opened the door a bit farther.

  Stepping just over the threshold of the shack — a single slice of wood that had been pressed into the ground — he let his eyes adjust to the morning sunlight. The sun rose directly behind the shack, casting the entire street in front of him in a deep shadow. He followed the shadow’s outline toward the city’s square, where the large Tracer was still waiting.

  However, instead of seeing the Tracer’s full profile, Myers saw more shadows floating around the Tracer’s side. Heads bobbed and swayed, and as his eyes adjusted, he saw that there were people in the square.

  A lot of people.

  No one accosted him as he stepped fully out of his cage and into the street separating his shack from the town square. No one approached him, tackled him from behind, or even shouted his name.

  He was completely unwatched.

  The uncanny feeling of being alone while completely surrounded by people made Myers shiver. His mind was still slow, as if it were being slowly melted over a spit, but he knew enough to see that something had changed.

  The plan had changed.

  Josiah Crane wouldn’t have left him unguarded — something deep inside Myers told him that. Crane would have at least put two or more guards on him, the entire night, without fail.

  But he didn’t, which meant Crane’s plan has been changed. He wasn’t sure if it had been ruined or just slightly altered, but Myers had a feeling it wasn’t something
Crane was anticipating.

  People milled about, all drifting generally toward the platform at the center of the square. He tried to make eye contact with a woman near him, walking across the street, but she had her eyes fixed straight ahead.

  “Psst,” he whispered. The woman, stunned, jumped as she looked at Myers, finally seeing him.

  “You — you’re…” she frowned, unsure of what she was trying to say. “I — you’re…” the woman mumbled some more gibberish, her voice eventually drifting down to an inaudible level.

  Myers stopped and watched the woman turn and continue toward the square.

  What is going on here? It seemed like mind control — like someone was manipulating these people into aimlessly following some hidden or invisible command. Is that even possible?

  He’d seen some remarkable things the past few days, but this was too much. He convinced himself there was no way someone could fully incapacitate a population into following orders and instructions that weren’t even audible.

  He started again toward the square, and that’s when he heard it.

  The screams.

  Her scream.

  Diane.

  He stood up higher, pushing up onto his toes as he tried to look over the ever-widening sea of Relics.

  Crane was there, the only one tall enough to stick out above the rest. Myers could tell by the shape of the man’s large head, and he could tell that he was moving quickly toward the platform.

  He watched Crane ascend the steps up onto the platform, people jostling each other out of the way as their leader passed. One by one, he saw Red-hair, the other guard, and then Rand and Diane step onto the platform.

  Rand and Diane were pushed forward by two more people — more guards, he presumed — onto the center of the stage and then bound by thin cord around their hands and feet.

  What is about to —

  The words crossed his mind, then were gone. He remembered thinking something, but then like a flash they disappeared.

  Weird.

  He continued pressing forward, pushing his way through people, trying not to call any attention to himself. He was almost certain none of these people — Relics — would do anything to impede his progress, but he had to be sure he could get close to the stage.