Son of Sedonia (34 page)

“Hm,” the man said, reading as he stepped to Matteo. Matteo turned his arm over and hesitated, looking at the skin. He remembered Themis. Being pinned to the ground and forced to submit to a similar device. He looked at Liani.

“It’s okay,” she said, “It doesn’t hurt.”

Matteo nodded. Stretched the arm out for the worker. Reading the profile, the worker’s eyes went wide.

“Yeah. He’s what’s worth your while,” Corey said, “calls himself Matteo, but, as you can see, the chip’s got a different name.”

“He follows me. You two stay here,” he said, turning away.

“Wait, what?! No, man, we’re—”

“You’re Media, or at least you were. We can’t risk you leaking anything that we’d rather keep tight,” the worker tapped a finger on the side of the gun, “No arguments.”

Matteo stole himself, putting on the toughest scowl he could. But truth was, every inch further into the complex they went, his nerves screamed. He buried the thousands of questions for the moment and refocused his mind on their route. A long forgotten lesson from Jogun surfaced right on cue.
‘When in doubt, know the way out.’
The voice was so vivid in his head. Heard through the new knowledge of his hidden talents, it dropped a lead weight on his shoulders. Still, he did his best to take the advice.

He found the pattern in their path. Thick black cables hung bracketed to the metal frame walls. Some kind of hard line setup for both power and networking, not all that different from some of the rigs used around Rasalla. The EXOs could tap into Wi-Fi signals too easily. The cops had to find a local hard line before they could hack in.
Why would anybody on this side of the Border need to hide like this?
The people of the City were all supposed to be rich, fat, and comfortable, living in beautiful apartments that look down on the rest of the world.
Do the EXOs raid here too? In their own City?

Another turn and the two of them arrived at a small clearing in the structure. In the center of the cylindrical chamber squatted an older model IG-6 military transport. Matteo flinched as years of programming begged his legs to run. But this one was rusted. Sleeping under a camouflage net to hide it from open sky. A ring of dried mold surrounded its base and crept up the hull, showing him it hadn’t moved in a long time. The black cables wormed their way up to modified ports all over and around the ship, spread over the platform like thick noodles. The worker stepped over the cables toward the ship. Matteo hesitated. Heard the familiar click.

“No turning back now, I’m afraid,” said the worker, holding the gun for Matteo to see, “C’mon.” With every step, the decaying ship grew. It loomed over the two of them as they approached the hatch door under the nose. A surveillance camera next to the hatch buzzed as it focused on the two of them.The worker grinned up at it, showing his crooked stained teeth.

“It’s Simon, open up,” he called up to the camera, “Got a special guest who’d like to...uh...reminisce.” The hatch bolts popped and the door squealed open on rusty hinges.

It took a moment for Matteo’s eyes to adjust in the dim blue glow of the inside. Flickering monitors lined the stripped bulkheads, outlining seated figures. They swiveled in their chairs to look at him, then turned back to their work. Whatever that might be. A thin figure descended from a ladder in the ceiling and jumped down, landing with a thud on the metal floor. The hot cherry of a lit cigarette swayed from side to side in the twilight as the figure walked over to greet them. A monitor brightened, lighting the mystery man’s face.
Just a kid?

He had to be between Matteo and Jogun’s age. Sunken eyes studied Matteo in the dark, set in a gaunt, scruffy face. He was thin except for a slight gut and dressed in a filthy undershirt and baggy sweatpants. They watched each other in silence for a moment.

“Well?” asked the raspy, young voice, “What’s up Inner Ring? How can I be of service?”

“You’re Illyk?” Matteo asked. The strange kid spread his arms and bowed.

“A votre plaisir,” Illyk intoned, “Now, I’m busy so get to your fucking point.” Matteo had just about enough.

“I’m not ‘Inner Ring.’ I’m not any ‘Ring.’ My name’s Matteo and I grew up in Rasalla. Scrap, ashes, and dirt, but
this
,” Matteo held up his left arm, “This says my name is Aden Rindal.” Illyk sucked on the filter of the cigarette, staring. The others in the room stopped typing and turned in their seats. Matteo felt hard, expectant eyes on him. The air hung dead as Illyk exhaled a curling plume of smoke.

“That’s...a heavy story...‘Aden,’” Illyk said, “‘Long lost son of the fallen hero.’ Not sure I believe it, although trust me...I’d like to. That’d get some serious cloudtime, and way beyond just the forums. Dad, prep the Chair for our guest here.” Simon crossed the room, opened an inner hatch door, and dipped out of sight. Illyk stepped closer to Matteo, his sour breath seeping out as he spoke.

“To reiterate, I’d like to believe you. But I don’t. My time and services are not only valuable, they are very, very risky and, as I’m sure you know, very, very illegal. We’ll take a look for you, but it comes with a price. Whatever I find, I copy and keep, got it?”

Matteo didn’t. He squinted at Illyk.

“TM Data, bro. Your worst, most traumatic memories. Don’t ask me why, but people pay max credits to live through someone else’s pain and anguish. Not exactly pretty, but it’s how we keep the lights on and fight the good fight, so I’ll repeat: Whatever I find, I copy and keep. Got it?”

Matteo clinched his fists. Looking around the room, the others were still seated in front of their screens. Illyk looked pale. Underfed. He could take him. A quick punch to the jaw or throat, then he’d flip around to deal with…

Matteo felt the gun barrel dig into the small of his back. Simon. Father to the grinning rat boy in front of him.

“Sorry, kid, it’s for the cause,” said Simon, “Think of it as your contribution. Now let’s go have a seat.”

It was a reclining chair bolted into a platform in a small separate chamber. A headdress of electrodes and wires sprouted from the headrest like some kind of techno jellyfish. Open shackles waited for his limbs on the arm and leg rests, each blinking inside with strange technology. Where the main cabin had been for prisoner transport, this room was for something else.
Interrogation
. Matteo had heard rumors around the market about it. The EXOs would strap you down in this chair, hook you up to machines, and put the screws on you. A few T99s would try to brag that they got put in the chair and never gave up a thing. But the ones that really went through it...they never came back the same. Most spent the rest of their lives as permanent patients in the Temple. Matteo prayed a silent prayer that the hardware in his head made him different.
Corey said I was recording...maybe they’ll just hit ‘Play’?

No choice. Matteo tried to imagine he was sitting in Utu’s healing chair back in the Temple, waiting for a check-up. He regained focus as he sat down.

“What ‘Cause’ is this for again?” Matteo asked, “All I see is a buncha guys sittin’ on their asses in a rusted out dropship.”

Illyk turned his forearm over in the humming blueish light. A long, ragged scar ran the length of his pale flesh where the chip should be. It rippled as Illyk closed a fist.

“To show people that their paradise is a prison. Death Row for the human race,” Illyk said as he stepped to the chair control panel and punched a few buttons. The shackles clamped shut, trapping Matteo’s forearms and ankles. The tentacles of the headdress grasped his skull and squeezed. He felt the electrodes arrange themselves with little ice-cold snaps. Illyk tapped a few more buttons then inserted a smooth, rectangular cartridge into the panel.

“Brace yourself,” Illyk said.

The comforting memory of Utu’s office dissolved as bits of blinding light streaked toward him from the room. They gathered faster and faster, blotting out his vision. Before leaving the present moment entirely, he heard Illyk’s grinding voice.

“This isn’t gonna be fun.”

The scenes came on fast. Racing through settings and times and people and emotions at a thousand miles-an-hour. All from his living point of view. Every bit of it was as vivid and detailed as though the moments were happening. And somehow his mind kept up, tasting every breath and feeling, every hurt. The hurts seemed to slow things down closer to real time. Somewhere in his current awareness, he could almost feel Illyk watching.

Matteo felt the cold floor of his cell back in Themis, watching himself pound the glass as Jogun explained the truth. His past mind swam with confusion. Waves of anger crashed against denial and pain as the answers rolled out of his broken brother, destroying the world and his place in it. Then came Kabbard. Then the gas. Darkness. Fading to Jogun’s screams.

He blinked then winced as the cinder block wall above him was cratered by rifle rounds, raining hot debris down on his head. Suomo and the T99s huddled around him, popping up to take quick shots at the stranded EXOs. A boy beside him, no older than sixteen, took a bullet in the brain. Warm, red wetness splashed his ear and shoulder. Bits of gray in it.

Rewind through six years in the Pits. A chunk of falling fiberglass nearly took off his arm at the shoulder, crippling him for weeks as he healed.

Lying awake and starving to death on more nights than he cared to remember.

Jogun appeared, lying bloody and limp on the grooved metal roof of their old house. Kabbard and the EXOs had beaten him almost to death, and they kept at it. The sickening impact of each strike shook Matteo’s tiny body. His throat burned with wheezing, choked sobs as he shrieked for them to stop. Jogun smiled. ‘
You got this.’

Then he was in the Dream. The same one he’d had off-and-on since he was a kid. Yet as the scene slowed to real time, it came into waking focus. He looked at his hands. Small, chubby fingers wiggled and flexed. The feeling made him curious. He waved the little hands in front of him, then squealed.
So happy
. A white bandage wrapped tightly around his left forearm, tugging the soft skin as he wriggled.

Two people sat in the front seats, talking. A man and a woman. Beyond them, bright white clouds and blue sky shone through glass, moving gently over them. The two familiar voices warmed him as they spoke, but his observing, adult mind understood words that the young mind did not.

“Dammit, Alan, would it kill you to look on the bright side?” the woman asked. “I know this is important to you, I really do, but it’s been eating you alive for years now. It’s been eating
all of us
lately with all the long nights, press conferences...cameras in our faces. We all need some time away, and this—”

“There is no ‘time away’ anymore, Patty! We’re not taking a break, going to visit old friends, we’re running for our lives...and I’m not sure I can live with what I’m leaving behind,” the man said. Somewhere in time, the icy tingle of recognition worked its way up Matteo’s spine. The voices...his real mother and real father, continued.

“Are you so goddamn preoccupied with that that you can’t see what you’re taking
with
you?!” The painful tone in his mother’s voice tightened Matteo’s small, weak chest. Tiny, wheezing sobs chirped out of him. His parents turned in their seats. The looks on their faces filled him, both then and now. The corners of his mother’s hesitating smile...he’d seen them thousands of times since in the mirror. Her opal eyes trembled as they looked down at him.
Mama?
He’d always wondered what she looked like. Dark, almost black skin, smooth like still water. Short black hair kept neat in gentle waves, the longer strands in the front draping across her forehead.

Then there was his father. The man Jogun told him he didn’t want to know, except this was a different man.
My real dad...
Love radiated from the man’s gaunt, brown features, but through a mask of desperation. Matteo had seen that face in the mirror too. His parents turned back to each other.

“That’s
all
I can see now,” his dad said, “I look at you and Aden, and I just—I don’t just want us to be safe, I want us to be
free
. I’d do anything to find a place where he could grow up to be his own person and not a slave. To choose a life rather than it be chosen for him, but that’s not the world we live in now.” His dad held up the left hand. A thick black ring coiled around his middle finger.

“Like hell it’s not,” his mom said. She reached over and snatched off the ring.

“Patty, no!” he screamed, lunging for the device. She recoiled in her seat, holding the ring out of reach. Matteo...Aden started to cry. After several moments, the cabin stilled.

“You see? Nothing’s happened. Nobody’s chasing us, your brain wasn’t hijacked. It’s not the end of civiliza—” she stopped as a loud bang erupted from the reactor compartment. The ship’s smooth glide dipped into violent, shaking free fall.

“Alan?! ALAN!” his mother screamed, clawing at her arm-rests. She fainted, rapping her head on the dash.

Though his dad’s hands were firmly locked to the flight sticks, trying to pull up, the man could still speak. Matteo strained to listen past his own piercing screams.

“You’ve seen what’s happened, Aden! You can’t understand it yet, but if you survive this, someday you will! Others have to see what you’ve seen, and they need the truth you carry! Five-seven-echo-alpha-zero-zero-one-two-one! Remember it! Remember forever...we’ll always love you!”

The roar outside the ship drowned out any other sound as they plunged. Matteo could still feel his cries stinging his soft throat. The dust-colored streets of Rasalla quaked in a blur below them. Closer and closer until...Black.

Then he was alone. Wheezing sobs reflected back to him in the tiny chamber of his child seat. It was hot. Smells from his wet pants choked him as he struggled to breathe. His sips for air grew smaller and smaller.

Muffled sounds came from outside his bubble. Yelling voices, heavy thuds, screeching metal...and a scraping. A chunk of foam broke away, spilling light into his car seat. A shadowy face appeared in the hole. More scraping. A series of pops released the bubble, and rough young hands scooped him up.