Akaela (2 page)

Chips and
implants are rare these days, but Uli is like a father to Athel and me. He’s
been checking and updating our wiring and nanobots since we were born, and he
never has the heart to say no when we ask for an update, whether for us or for
our pets.

I crouch over
the little bed Uli has set up between two charging stations and watch my little
kitten sigh in his sleep, his eyes and nose still encrusted with mucus.

“Can I
take him home?” I ask.

Uli
unscrews a flap from the side of the M3 hand and scoops out a few wires tangled
inside. “He should be ok to take home. He’ll probably sleep until tomorrow
morning. I implanted two chips under his skin: one to regulate his heart, the
other to strengthen his immune system. The nanobots will soon propagate
throughout his body and monitor his heart rate, oxygen level, everything. He’ll
be able to fight the infection and resist future fast-mutating pathogens.”

I’m
ecstatic. “Thank you!” I run to the workbench and hug him, knocking him
slightly off balance. Uli pats my
back,
his face
flushed, and then pulls away. His eyes stray back to his workbench, the droid
hand now turned into a grid of small parts and chips neatly spread across the
working surface.

“You guys
still need to tell me how you acquired the M3 part.”

Athel
swallows and shoots a hard stare at me. I bite my lower lip.

We’re not supposed to lie
, I
message him. Our society is built on trust.

Trust will not save us from extinction,
Athel
sends back.
 

“We found
the droid hand in the forest,” I blurt out, walking back to the little bed
where Ash is still resting from his surgery so I don’t have to stare into Uli’s
eyes as I lie. “The droid must’ve launched it and lost it.”

Athel
nods. “It was buried in dirt and leaves.”

Uli leans
against his workbench and rubs the sparse stubble on his face. “Fine. But let
me remind you not to underestimate the Gaijins’ power. You guys are too young to
remember their last attack on the Tower. I lived through that, and this—”
he raises his prosthetic hand and balls it into a fist, the silicone outer
layer squeaking softly as he squeezes his fingers together “—is what is
what I lost that night.”

I wrap Ash
in his little blanket and carefully pick him up. “We know, Uli,” I say. “Dad
told us many times.”

Athel
prods one of the chips on Uli’s workbench with a finger. “We miss Dad, Uli. Reminding
us of the Gaijins’ brutality doesn’t help.”

Uli’s face
colors again, his straight gray hair plastered against his temples. “Oh, I
didn’t mean it that way. Your Dad knows what he’s doing. Believe me. That’s why
he was one of the three chosen to be our ambassadors with the Gaijins. They’ll
be back sooner than you know with the much awaited supplies we’ve requested.
The Gaijins are still mad at us but they can’t deny three unarmed men begging
for our species’ survival.”

Athel
looks down and bobs his head. “I hope so,” he says, his voice low.

Uli waves
his prosthetic hand in the air and grabs the drill with his other hand. “Go,
now. I’ve got work to do. You ordered a new hand for your Mom’s birthday,
didn’t you?” He spins the drill and winks.

I bring a
finger to my mouth. “Shh,” I say. “It’s going to be a surprise!”

Athel
smiles, his eyes still laced with sadness now that he’s thought of Dad. “Thank
you, Uli.”

I snuggle
Ash against my chest. “Yes. Thank you.”

As we
shuffle down the hallway and up the stairs to our quarters, I watch my sleeping
kitten’s little face, his pink nose scrunched against my chest. It makes me so
happy to know that Uli was able to fix him.

“Do you
think the M3 droid will come after us?” I ask Athel as we step inside the
elevator.

Athel
shrugs. “Droids are stupid. And they can’t cross the river.”

“Droids
are stupid, but the Gaijins who made them aren’t.”

The old
elevator car reaches our floor with a loud clang. The doors squeak open.

Athel
lowers his voice. “I think next time we should get more than just a droid
hand.” He winks. “Think of the stuff we could get. Lithium batteries,
nanocircuits, thermosensors…” He walks to our door waving a hand up in the air,
a devious smile plastered on his dreamy face.

We’re the
Mayakes.
We survived the Plague
,
we
won’t perish now
.

Chapter Two

Akaela

Kael taps the metal flap on my
forearm.
Tap, tap,
tap
.
I blink. The timestamp on my retina tells me it’s 4:30 a.m.
Too
early to get up
. I shoo Kael away and roll over. The falcon flaps his
wings and leaves. Minutes later, I hear him bugging my brother in the bunk bed
above mine.

Tap, tap,
tap
.

I drift
back to sleep, but it doesn’t last long. The springs of Athel’s bed whine. He
tosses away his blanket, climbs down from his bed and runs to the window. “Holy
Kawa!”

I sit up.
“What’s happening?”

“Droids,”
Athel mutters. “Lots of them. Go call Mom.”

I sprint
from the bed and lean out the window. The river bend shimmers under the grin of
a crescent moon. Along the shore closer to the Tower, fishing nets hang from
their stilts and shiver in the night breeze. The droids lurk on the other side,
at least half a dozen of them, their bulky silhouettes delineated by the
blinking LEDs studding their backs. They wobble back and forth on their claw
legs, flashing their eye beams as though looking for something.

Kael
clasps the windowsill with his talons and bobs his head, smelling the danger.

Droids fear
water. They scavenge the mesa by day and spend the night in the gorge, their robotic
frames folded into big metal cubes. Their presence by the river tonight is not
only unusual. It’s ominous.

Are the Gaijins planning a new attack
?

Muffled
voices come from the kitchen. Athel and I exchange a quick glance and then dart
out of the bedroom.
Mom’s
by the door talking with aunt
Kara.

“What’s
going on?” I ask.

“And why are
there droids out by the river?” Athel barges in.

Mom’s face
is a web of worry. “We don’t know. Skip went out to check the fishing nets but
he hasn’t come back yet.”

Athel
frowns. Skip’s our cousin, aunt Kara’s son. “He went by himself?”

Kara nods,
her face wet with tears. “I told him not to go by himself. He can be so
stubborn sometimes…” She brings a hand to her mouth and chokes her last words
in a sob.

“Go get
the flashlights, Athel,” Mom says. “We’ll stop to get Uli on our way to the
ground floor.”

“Mom—”
I whisper.

“No,” she
snaps. “You stay here, Akaela. It’s too dangerous out there.”

Athel
shoos Kael off the window, knowing that once they’re out with the flashlights,
the falcon will fly low and be on the lookout with them. Kael’s a cyborg, too,
with a bear’s sense of smell.

They all scramble
out the door and suddenly I’m left alone, the dancing ghosts of the embers from
the fireplace my only company. I dash back to the window. The droids are still
pacing on the other side of the river, the pale light of the moon glistening on
their metallic bodies. I squint and lean out the window.

One of the droids has no hands.

They’re looking for the hand we stole
.

I feel a
pang.
Did Athel and I cause all this
?

I bite my
lip and clasp the windowsill.

If anything happens to Skip it’ll be our fault
.

I think of
Dad, who left two weeks ago in hopes of finding more resources, as our own
technology is getting old and stagnant. We never talk about it, yet with every
day that goes by without Dad coming back, something breaks loose inside us. Mom
especially. We cling to one thread of hope that the Gaijins didn’t deny our ambassadors’
request.

A sudden
urge possesses me. I have to help search for Skip. It’s our fault the droids
are out by the river. If I jump, I’ll be out looking in under a minute, while
the other men and women scramble down the forty flights of stairs, taking turns
with the old elevator box. I can hear the groan of the cables as they cycle up
and down the Tower.

I climb
over the windowsill—mottled with Kael’s droppings—and look out into
the emptiness of the night, the forty-story drop calling me like an echo. The
moon peeks through a sheer veil of clouds. I lean out and inhale the dampness
of the night, nippy now that the air has chilled down. The breeze is mellow,
blowing away from the Tower.

You’ve never jumped in pitch dark
, I hear
my inner
self say
.
It’s
risky
.

And yet I
don’t care.

It’s my
flaw. Dad always says how one of these days he’s going to fix me before this
flaw of mine kills me.

I grasp the
window jamb with one hand and prod the air with the other, waiting for the
breeze. My heart pounds with excitement.

I have no
fear.

That’s my
flaw.

I know no
fear.

And so I
jump.

*
 
*
 
*

At first I just drop, as if
underneath there were only void. I spread my arms and release the sail. It
holds me back, stopping my plunge. As soon as it does, the breeze catches me
and lures me away.

The river
looks silver in the moonlight, marred by the long row of fishing nets quivering
in the breeze. The smoke that always ribbons the horizon glows in the dark,
casting an eerie yellow over the mesa. After they attacked us fifteen years
ago, the Gaijin burned the cities on the other side of the mesa, creating a
wall of fire between our lands. To this day, the fire never stops burning.

The
blinking lights from the droids’ backs wobble up and down the shore. As soon as
they spot me up in the air they flash their lenses at me. I swerve and ride the
thermal up, staying upstream of the river and away from the droids’ fire. Soon,
I spot the bobbing flashlights of the men and women who’ve come out looking for
Skip.

The droids
seem surprised to see them. They’re just machines, though, with no feelings or
thoughts, only an algorithm running inside their metal heads. They see the men
and women coming toward the river with their flashlights and scramble
away—all but one, the biggest of the lot. It comes dangerously close to
the water and rises on its hind legs, towering over the other droids. It’s so
big it would make a bear look tiny.

“You’ve
challenged us today,” it chimes in its metallic voice. “You’ve stolen from us.”

Uli steps
out of the group of people walking toward the river. “You steal from us every
day,” he yells.

The M3
raises its right arm, ready to fire. A shiver goes down my spine.

“No!” I
yell. I whistle Kael’s call, hoping the falcon will swoop down on the droid and
divert its attention. The droid never fires, though.

“This is
only the beginning,” it says, then lowers its upper body and crawls away,
following its companions back to the gorge.

“Over
here!” somebody yells. It’s Athel. He waves and points to a dark spot bobbing
in the shallow water, partly hidden in a thick growth of reeds.

My sail
wavers in the wind. I switch downwind and bank, preparing for landing.
 

Uli wades
into the water. He keeps his flashlight away from Athel so as not to damage the
sensitive cells implanted in his eyes. As I glide down, circling with the
breeze, I watch the sudden commotion unfold before my eyes. The flashlights
move around the patch of reeds where I saw the bobbing object. I’m about thirty
feet from the ground now. The breeze pushes me away from the river. I lower my
legs and prepare for landing.

I wasn’t
born with my sail. I acquired it at age six, after a bad viral infection nearly
killed me. My legs stopped working for months, but at the time all leg implants
were in use by other people and they couldn’t get new ones for me. While I
waited for new prostheses, Dad built me a sail and taught me to fly. He’d take
me riding, and once the horse reached a gallop, he’d lift me up over his
shoulders and let me glide by his side while holding my hand.

In a way,
it was a good thing they didn’t have any legs available when I got sick. It
took me over a year, but I did recover. And it wasn’t until I could walk again
that I gained full control of my sail and learned to glide.

Jumping
and gliding comes natural to me, like talking or running. And yet landing will
always be the trickiest part. Every glider will tell you that the instinct is
to slow down as you approach the ground. But you can’t. You have to approach
the ground fast, lower the body and then tilt the tip of the sail up—but
not too much—and let the incoming wind act as your brakes.

I learned
from watching Kael.

I hit the ground
with one foot, flare, then retract the sail between my shoulder blades, and
roll in a patch of wet grass, the stalks a pale blue under the silvery light of
the moon. I crawl back to my feet and run to the bank.

“Careful,
now. Pull slowly.”

“What happened?”
Kara screeches. “Is he breathing?”

Three men
pull a heavy weight out of the reeds. I spot a hand lolling to the side and
realize the men are lifting out of the water Skip’s unconscious body. They drag
him on the dry sand and Uli immediately crouches over him, searching for a
pulse.

Kara runs
over, whimpering. “Is he alive?” she yells. “Please tell me he’s alive!”

“I’m not
getting a read from the nanoelectric sensors,” Uli says. “Quick, I need the
TBC.”

A man puts
a mask on Skip’s face and pumps air through his nose. Another starts chest
compressions. Uli pulls up Skip’s right sleeve and opens the flap on the inside
of his forearm. They hand him the TBC, the transcutaneous battery charger, and
he plugs the cable into the USB ports inside Skip’s forearm. A green diode goes
off on the TBC, then turns orange and blinks.

Unnoticed,
I squeeze between the men and women ringing Uli until I find Athel and tap on
his shoulder.

“What were
you thinking?” he hisses. “Mom told you to stay home!” But he has no time for
me. Everybody’s attention is on Uli and the rescuers. Some watch silently,
others voice their outrage.

“Was he
shot?” a woman asks.

“The
droids must’ve shot him. The bastards!”

“This has
to stop!”

Minutes go
by. The mask on Skip’s face puffs, the man pressing his chest grunts. The TBC
blinks. Kara closes her eyes and mouths a silent prayer, tears lining her face.
Mom comes forward holding a penlight in her hook hand. She lifts Skip’s eyelids
one at a time with her good hand and points the beam at his irises. When she
raises her head and looks at Uli, I read the news in her face.

They all
stop and bow their heads. Uli unplugs the TBC. “No signal,” he whispers. “Not a
single joule left in his system.”

There’s a
moment of silence. Then, suddenly, Kara’s outcry of pain pierces through the
night.

Skip is
gone.

The droids
killed another Mayake.
Our cousin, one of our own.