Beat (22 page)

“Let’s figure it out together.” I straightened. “Be right back. Keep going north.” She nodded. I walked back to the Prime Administrator and patted him down as well as I could with one hand. His pockets were empty. As I straightened, his body seemed to come back to life.

“Nik,” the Prime Administrator said. “I’m not going to lie, you’ve made a lot of trouble for yourself and your friend.”

“Shut up.” I kept patting down his legs, scanning his shoes. I caught sight of a couple of Keepers racked on the pod’s wall. I stopped, picturing a way to make this all a lot less complicated. I looked back at the Prime Administrator.

“We should just shoot you. Or throw you out of the pod.”

He gave no expression. “It would do me no harm.”

There he went again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You will never find out.” He stared at me with his empty eyes. “I don’t see you surviving this, Nik.”

“I said shut up.” I checked his arms and realized I hadn’t cuffed his hands. I dug around one of the lockers nearby and found some cuffs, slapping them around his wrists. “I should give you the knockout, let you die of the Bug.”

He didn’t even look up at me. “It would have no effect on me.” There was a playful tone in his voice now. He was playing with me.

“Bug off.” I turned away. We needed to figure out what to do.

“But if you don’t want your family to suffer consequences, I can make you a deal now, Nik.”

My family. My mother and father still probably had no idea what was going on—all they had was that awful call the first night. I gave the man my hardest glare. “They’re already suffering because of you. You make them sick every day. They, and everybody else, have no choice about their lives.”

“Be that as it may, you’ve taken this as far as you can. Let me go now, turn yourself in, and I’ll make sure they’re not hurt.” It still surprised me that he refused to deny what I was saying. Totally unbelievable. “You must know we cannot let you escape.”

Escape. I gave him another hard look. “I said shut up.” I headed back up front. This wasn’t about escape.

This was about bringing down the New Chapter.

After we’d been flying north for a while, I asked Melisa to make a wide circle to the east and south. While we flew, we talked and planned.

“First thing is that we need to tell everybody the truth. All of it.” I still stood so I could talk to her and keep an eye on the Prime Administrator.

“Will they believe us?”

“That’s why we have to have proof.”

“Do you think a skreenshot will be enough?”

“I don’t know.” I considered for a minute. “I think between the video of me blocking the knockout and pushing my heart rate past 140 and not dying, with everybody knowing that Bren died of the Bug, added to a skreenshot of the makeup of the knockout might be enough, yeah.”

“What’s he saying?” She jabbed a finger toward the back of the pod. “I mean, about the knockout and stuff.”

“He doesn’t deny it.” The fury I’d felt in his office when I’d revealed that I knew the truth came burning back. “I said it in his office, but the Enforsers were gone. And he didn’t deny it.”

“So it’s true, right? The Bug’s in the knockout?”

“It has to be. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“So why aren’t you dead?”

“I haven’t had the knockout in months. Maybe a year.”

She was quiet for a minute. “That’s why you asked me if I’d had it recently. Because the Bug can’t stay in our system if our heart rate doesn’t go high enough.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Do you think people will believe us?”

I thought about that for a while. She was right; people might not believe us, no matter how much proof we showed them. A lot of people seemed happy to go about their controlled lives. Were we much different from animals? It seemed like if we had food and a place to sleep safely, most of us didn’t care about not having any choices. So would everybody just not care?

I thought about Bren. He would have cared. Melisa cared. I was sure my parents would care, even though they seemed fine with life as it was. An image came to me of thousands of people lined up outside several Admin stations, wrists held out for a refill of the knockout. Allowing themselves to be tricked and herded and controlled. Like the old sheep or cows.

“We’re not animals.”

“What?”

I muttered. “I said we’re not animals. It doesn’t matter if they don’t want to know, or even if they don’t care.” I felt like a hot coal in my core was flaring, almost breaking into flame. “We don’t need to be supervised. We should be able to choose our own life and not have to be given a disease that will control us.”

“Nice speech. But we still don’t have a plan.”

“Shut up.”

“You say that a lot.”

I wasn’t sure where to go from there. I felt like I knew what I—what
we
—needed to do, but it was like my brain had frozen. I forced myself to start talking. “Well, I think we need some help.” I looked down. “But I don’t like the idea of getting anyone else involved.”

“That hasn’t stopped you yet.”

What was her problem? “Hey, I told you I didn’t think you should—”

“Relax. I was kidding.” She spared a glance my way. “Besides. This is about everyone in New Frisko anyway, so everybody’s involved. Kind of.”

“But not everybody kidnapped the Prime Administrator.”

“This is truth,” Melisa said. “But I’ve been talking to the other Pushers since two nights ago. They really wanted to know what was going on.”

I had no idea where she was going with this. “And?”

“And I think we should get them to help. I mean, we have to get real proof, send it out to New Frisko, all while not getting captured.” She nodded in my direction. “Unless it’s on purpose.”

“You’re funny.”

“I know.”

“I think you’re right.” I thought back to the main lab and the cold storage rooms the knockout was in. We’d been taught in school that the knockout had to be kept at a certain temperature, or it would go inert and soon become useless. “We do need help, because you missed something.” I closed my eyes, trying to picture the steps we would have to take. “We have to destroy the knockout and the Bug so they can’t do it anymore.”

Melisa looked me in the eyes. She nodded. “Good. Yeah.” She made a face. “Who is “they” anyway?”

“I don’t know. Maybe just the Prime Administrator.”

“We’re going to have to find out.”

“Yeah, but we don’t have time for that right now.”

“We might have to make time,” Melisa said. “It’s not as if they’ll want us to stop them.”

“But we don’t have any way of doing that. And the Prime Administrator’s the boss anyway.”

“You think he’s the only one at the top? What if there’s someone else?”

“I just said we don’t have the time to figure that out. We have to assume he’s all there is.” I flapped my hand toward the back of the pod. “Besides, if there were anybody else, would they have let us get away like this?”

She thought for a moment. “Okay, maybe you’re right.”

I let my mouth drop open and I stared at her.

“What?” she said.
“You just said I’m right.”

“I just said,
maybe
you’re right.’”

“Ah.” I turned and watched the forest zooming under the pod. “Okay. So number one is to get proof, then we have to spread the word.”

“That’s number one and two.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.” She smiled in my direction. “And three, we have to destroy the bug.”

“All while not getting caught.”

“Unless it’s on purpose.”

She was never going to let that go. I cleared my throat. “So we have to get in without anybody noticing. But since they’ll be on guard and watching—”

“Are you sure?”

“What do you mean?”

She gestured backward with her head. “Maybe they’ll just think we want to escape now. If we drop him off and then take off, maybe he’ll think we want to get away.”

“Good point.” I scanned the terrain outside of the pod. “Here. Set it down and we’ll let him go so he can’t figure out what we’re doing.”

As Melisa maneuvered the pod to the ground, I headed to the back. I stood in front of the Prime Administrator. “We’re going to let you go.”

“You’ve come to your senses? Surprising.”

“Haha.” I felt the pod settle to the ground and punched the button that opened the door. “Just leave us alone and we’ll call it even.”

He smirked at me, which looked really strange since his eyes were as empty as ever. “Your freedom will not last, Nik.”

“Shut up.” I grabbed a Keeper from the weapon rack and pointed it at him. “Your life won’t last, Mr. Prime.”

“You have already proven that you are unable to do what is necessary,” he shook his head. I released the restraints and followed him with the gun as he stood. “Every breath you take is proof of my cause.” This last sentence was much quieter.

“What the Bug are you talking about?”

He walked down the ramp and stared up at me through the bright light of the early day. “It doesn’t matter.” He turned and walked away. “Goodbye, Nik.”

I wished I had it in me to just pull the trigger. If he was gone, things would be much easier. I tightened my grip, aiming at the back of his head. So much easier. I stood there for a second, then a few more. My right arm wobbled and jittered in exhaustion and pain.

I lowered the gun. “Bug-ridden fragger.”

“Nik? What are you doing?”

I pushed the gun back into its brackets and joined Melisa up front as the door closed. “Nothing. Let’s go. Head straight east for a few kilometers, until we’re sure he can’t see us. Then circle around and go south. I know what we need to do.”

“Really?” Her mouth turned up at one corner. “Get taken prisoner again?”

“Are you ever going to let that go?”

“No.”

“Fine.” I pictured the layout of Prime One. “We’re going to have to get really lucky. And we need a way to communicate. I’m not sure EarComs are safe right now.”

“We need the others.”

“All the Pushers?”

“No, just Pol and Koner. They stuck around and I know they’ll help us. We IMed a few times before we realized the Admins were probably watching us. And they told me you called last night.”

“Okay. But how do we contact them without the Admins finding out?”

“You know Pol’s a little inventor, right?” Melisa banked right. We’d probably gone three or four kilometers away from where we’d let the Prime Administrator go.

I remembered Pol fighting his brother, David, two nights ago. David had been scared, but Pol had been excited about what I’d done. “Sure. He’s got his own station in Dev 4.”

“He found a way to convert the EarComs’ wireless transmission from light to a radio signal, then send it out on a higher frequency. He and Koner are together and they have one EarCom that’s rigged, and I have another.” She blew a raspberry and grimaced. “Or I do at home. I forgot it.”

“That’s amazing. Do you think he has any more?” Pol had saved me last night. Could he do it again? For such a young kid, he had turned into a reliable friend.

“He said he might have enough materials for a couple more. He was trying to make them for all the Pushers.”

“We have to get to him.”

A beat. “Without getting caught.”

I rolled my eyes. I remembered the thick, black-trunked pine tree. “I know how we can do that.”

I sent my thoughts back toward the Prime Administrator. He had to have something on him that would help the Enforsers find him. A tracker or something. How long until he made it back to the city? Would he believe we were trying to get away now?

“We have to assume they think we’re coming back.” Melisa’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

Was she reading my mind? “I think so, too.”

“We’ll have to be careful. Have a real plan.”

“I know. But I think if we actually make a real distraction, or diversion, one that seems legitimate, we might be able to get back in.”

“Okay. So something big.”

“Really big.” I thought hard. We needed equipment and supplies for this.

“Where will we do it?” Melisa asked.

“I think we should blow up the Enjineering Dome.”

We flew south for a while, Melisa pushing the Enforser pod hard. There had to be some way to track the pods, even if it was just through radar. We needed to get completely off the New Chapter’s radar, like the Wanderers did. No Papa, no knockout, no Bug, and total freedom. That was the right way to go.

While Melisa guided the pod, I collected guns and other equipment. And finally called my parents on the EarCom I’d picked up in Prime One. I had to keep things as general as possible and even lie, in the hope that the frequencies were being recorded.

“Mom?”

“Oh bug me, Nik!”

I almost burst out laughing. I’d never heard her use language like that. “Get Dad on?”

“Nik, what’s going on? Enforsers have been guarding the house all day, since really early.” Mom should be at the Nursery. Had they not let her go to work today?

“I’ll tell you, but I need to tell Dad, too. Can you get him on? And fast.” As I shoved a couple of flexible restraints in my pocket, I noticed that the benches attached to the pod’s walls looked like they were storage compartments. I lifted the seat of one of them, stopped for a second, and smiled. Perfect.

“Nik, is that you?” Dad sounded tense.

Relief and fear and lots more washed through me as Mom and Dad talked over each other, asking me questions and wondering if I was hurt. Mom said something about “that horrible call the other night.”  I shook my head. I shouldn’t have called them that night. But this time it might help.

“Mom, Dad, I’m sorry. I don’t have time to explain much.”

“Don’t have time?” Mom’s voice went really high-pitched on that last word. “What does that mean?”

“Nik, just come home. This is crazy what they’re saying.” Dad’s voice was still really tight.

“I’m sorry about what’s happening. Last night. Bren and I snuck out.” I swallowed. “We blocked the knockout and he died.”

“We know about Bren,” Mom said. “Please just come home. We’ll figure out what happened.”

“I’m so sorry about Bren,” Dad said. “I know you two were close.” Now his voice felt like a hug. I wished I could stay in that moment.

“It was my fault. Kind of. But I got in a lot of trouble.” I held my breath. This was the only way to keep them safe.

“We’ll figure it out,” Dad said.

“Please come home,” a sob broke through Mom’s voice.

I leaned on the bench of the pod, exhaustion making me want to collapse. I had to do this. If my plan worked, I might not make it and they would have nobody else. But I couldn’t drag them down with me. “Melisa and I are running. We’re just going to get away. We stole a pod and we’ll find somewhere to hide. I’m so sorry.”

“Nik! You come home this instant!” Mom’s voice shook. “You’re not running anywhere.”

“Please, son.” Dad sighed. “Just stay safe.”

Did he understand?

“Kate,” Dad said. “Nik knows what he’s doing.”

“But he’s only fifteen!” My mom was crying again. I felt like I was being stabbed right in the heart.

“I’ll try to come back some day. I’m sorry. I did all this—it’s my fault!” If my plan worked, they would know the truth. They would understand. They would.

“He’s a man, Kate. He’s making a choice.” Dad was crying now, too. I wished I could reach through the EarComs and hug them both. “We have to let him.” Somehow my dad understood.

“Bruse, he’s all we have left, we can’t—” Mom cut herself off.

“I have to go,” I said. “I love you.”

I turned the EarCom off with a tap. A violent shudder tore through me. I wanted to scream. I yanked the EarCom out. “Monitor this.” I dropped it on the pod floor and stomped it to tiny pieces.

I wanted to tear the New Chapter down, lie by lie.

A couple minutes later, I walked back to the cockpit.

Melisa must have caught me from the corner of her eye, because she jumped and yelped, then swiveled to stare. “Fragging Bug, Nik. You scared me.” She looked me up and down. “I thought you were an Enforser.”

I lifted the dark mask off my face, forced a smile and hoped my eyes weren’t too red. “It’s not even hot in here. I think the helmet has a built-in cooler. And the mask’s wicked. I can tap it here,” I dropped the mask over my face again and hit the button at the side of the helmet. “And it goes low-light, night, and even heat vision. I wonder if it does x-ray.”

“You’re ridiculous.” She scowled at me. “But that’s great. That’ll help a lot.”

I pulled the helmet off and peered out the cockpit window. “Okay, we’ve got to be getting close now. These are the trees and hills, and we have to be far enough south of New Frisko. Find a road.”

We both leaned forward while Melisa guided the pod lower, slowing us down somewhat. “There.” We had just floated over a hill when Melisa pointed. “Is that it?”

We moved closer and I got a good look. I checked north and south, trying to figure out where it ran among the hills and trees. “I think so. Go south, follow it.” After a couple more minutes, I knew we were on the right track. I had seen those rotting cars before.

“Okay, slower.” I plopped into the co-pilot seat.

“What is that?”

“What?” I followed her pointing finger. I’d noticed the dark cloud, but had thought maybe it was going to rain. But rain almost never came from the east. “Is that smoke?”

“Looks like it.”

A wide swath of smoke, the color of a dirty road, spread across the sky. Some wispy columns of darker smoke drifted up from the middle of the forest. Something burned deep inside me. This wasn’t left over from when the Ranjers had caught me.

“Find a place to land,” I said. “A clearing or something. Fast.”

“What is it? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. But it’s not good.” A sick feeling settled in me.

She found a clearing maybe a quarter kilometer from where the small columns of smoke still floated upward. As soon as I felt the bump of the struts hitting the ground, I opened the door and jumped out. A sour, heavy stench filled my nose. Was that the smell of trees burning? It smelled like the fire the Wanderers had used, but stronger. Thicker.

“Nik, what’s going on?”

“The Wanderers. It has to be them.” But why would they have such big fires? I took off, worried that I already knew what I would find, but hoping I was wrong. I heard Melisa break into a run behind me. As we ran, we found trees that were blackened and scarred and quite a few trees that lay on the ground, still putting out smoke.

Along the way, I came across some packs and saw other signs of the Wanderers. Some of the packs were nearly unrecognizable, totally destroyed by fire. One or two of them still smoldered. Why would the Wanderers drop their packs? We found one of the rectangular packets that was one of their tents.

Coughing at times against the slight haze and the ashes we kicked up, we kept moving. I could tell by Melisa’s expression that she was worried about what we would find. I knew, although I wished I didn’t, how our search would end.

We found the first body within a hundred meters. She wore the colors of the forest, her hair curly and black. She was on her face, her back a torn mess. I stumbled and almost fell over another body I hadn’t seen, hidden behind some brush. I dropped my left hand to steady myself, and brushed this body somewhat. I stood, breath catching, my stomach squeezing up through my chest, scrubbing my hand against my pants.

Melisa shouted something, then coughed. I spun. Not a Bug cough. I threw up, too, strangely thinking to make sure I didn’t throw up on one of the bodies.

“Nik.” Melisa’s voice was a whisper, hoarse and torn. “What is this?”

“Wanderers.”

Some time later, we found ourselves walking in silence, pointing with our eyes and heads at each body we found. I realized Melisa was squeezing my left hand hard, as if she was trying not to fall. I squeezed back. My legs felt detached, weak, like they were moving without my control.

Dolfo. His nearly white hair looked dull against the leaves and dirt of the forest floor. I forced myself not to look at his blackened chest. His eyes were open, but he was long gone. I thought of his raspy voice. He’d been a spammer to me, but this was wrong.

“Nik? What happened here?”

I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to find a way to squeeze the images of all of these people out of my head. I’d recognized a few more faces, especially the boy who’d told me I was eating deer meat. This was wrong. So wrong. “The Ranjers. Or Enforsers. Maybe both.”

“Killed them? The Enforsers? Why would they do that?”

I stared at her, willing her to figure out the answer so I wouldn’t have to say it.

She looked at me for a long moment, then dropped her gaze. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“You knew them?”

“Kind of.” I hadn’t seen Wendy yet. Maybe she’d escaped. “They gave me food. Drugged me.”

“This is bad.”

“Yeah.” I wondered if Gabe was around. I could still hear his soft voice in my head. “We need to check for survivors.”

“Nik,” Melisa backed away, reaching for a nearby scarred tree. Her eyes were wide. “I . . .   This . . . I don’t know if I can . . . ”

“It’s okay. I’ll do it.” I turned away. Wait. She can’t? “If you don’t want to go back—”

“No, that’s not it. I’ll help bring them down.” She gestured around us, obviously fighting to not look down. “But this . . . I can’t.”

“Oh. Yeah. It’s okay.”

“It’s not.”

I turned again, taking a deep breath and holding it for a moment. Was this my fault? As I searched, finding Stan and Mat not far from Dolfo, I knew it wasn’t. The Ranjers were always trying to find the Wanderers. That’s what the Wanderers had said. Not just find them, though. The Wanderers couldn’t be put in the New Chapter; they knew the truth. This had to be what Ranjers did when they found any Wanderers.

Wendy was the last one I found. She was curled over a medium-sized gray rock. I hurried to her and put my good hand on her shoulder. She was cold and didn’t move. “Bug it.” I felt like throwing up again and fought it down. This was wrong. Wendy had been nice. She’d left me medicine, even if it had included a tracker for the Ranjers to find me. She’d helped my arm feel better.

I put my right hand on her still shoulder, next to my left. I swore. This was too much. Too much. I was so tired. So sick of running. Suddenly I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt like something was squeezing my chest. My body shook, shivered. This had to stop. They didn’t have to kill everyone. Anger burned. I felt the tears streaming down my face and only slightly registered Melisa approaching and crouching next to me. I wanted to break something. Break the trees. Split the ground open and swallow the whole fragging New Chapter up. I tried to choke back the tears and couldn’t. The whole thing. Break the whole world.

Melisa pulled me close to her. I wanted to hold it back, didn’t want to put this on her, but she was there and I was burning and dissolving with grief and pain and fear and fury.

I don’t know how long she held me like that. When I realized that I was putting nearly all of my weight on her and could feel her soaked sleeve under my cheek, I pulled back, embarrassed. “It’s okay.” Her whisper felt like a soft touch.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

I cleared my throat, trying to ease the pain and tightness. I felt . . . different. Now that it was gone, I realized I’d been holding a knot of something. Or damming it up. In its place . . . I looked around at the still forms of the Wanderers. In its place had settled something else. The only word that came to me was rage. Cold and hot. How was that possible?

I shook the stupid question away.

“Are you okay?”

I forced what had to be an ugly smile onto my face. “Nope. But I will be.”

“What do we do with them?”

I stopped and thought about that. In New Frisko, when people died, they were cremated, their ashes buried in organic boxes in Memorial Park. We couldn’t burn everyone here. How did the people before the Infektion do it?

I had no idea. “Nothing, I guess. I mean, what could we do?” I turned Wendy toward me, wanting to see her face. She rolled slowly my way and I scrabbled backward to avoid her gruesome back. She dropped off the rock and rolled over.

Except it wasn’t a rock. It was a little girl.

The girl was alive.