Fugitive X (3 page)

“Cass!” he hissed. “Cass, open your eyes!” Nick could see her eyes darting back and forth under her shut eyelids. He was afraid to touch her—he didn’t want to jostle the stick, the stick that surely had pierced her lung, that was causing all the blood—how could she still be alive, with all that blood on the grass? He began to cry. “Cass!” he said again, but she didn’t respond. His sister was dying. Bots were nearby. He got up on his hands and feet and tried to slip his hands under Cass to pick her up, but as he jostled her she moaned and cried out weakly without opening her eyes. Nick pulled his hands away. He stared at his palms. They were slick with blood. Cass was going to bleed to death in just a few minutes. Cass was going to die, right here, while he watched.

The bots. Nick realized, with a wave of dizzy nausea, what he had to do. The bots were Cass’s only chance. He bent down and touched his forehead to Cass’s cheek, then whispered in her ear. “Don’t die,” he said, his voice choking. “Stay alive, and I’ll come for you, I promise.”

Nick ran to a nearby bush and dove under it, burrowing in as deep as he could, ignoring the cuts and scrapes on his arms and cheeks. He turned and peered out, barely able to see Cass through the crisscross of the bush’s brambles. “Come on,” he whispered. “Come get her, you bastards.”

A few more silent moments passed, and Nick could barely stand watching Cass just lie there, breathing raggedly, bleeding. He was about to crawl back out, to be with her—he couldn’t just let her die all alone—and then he heard a whirring hum, and a small sphere bot, a scout, appeared from the south and hovered over Cass. It ran a red light up and down the length of Cass’s body as it bobbed up and down gently in the air. It then began to float toward Nick’s hiding spot.
No,
thought Nick.
Not me. Take care of Cass. I still need to find Kevin. . . .

The scout stopped a few feet from the bush, hesitated, and then floated back to Cass. A Petey appeared, pushing noisily through the trees. It bent down over Cass. Nick held his breath. This was it. The Petey reached down toward Cass with one of its massive arms, and a brief burst of bright yellow light covered the stick jutting out of Cass’s chest. The stick quickly burned away, crisping to black flakes. Cass groaned.
The Petey rolled Cass onto her side and held her there with one arm while it repeated the cauterizing burst on her back. Cass groaned again when he set her back down. The scout bot bobbed lower, hovering just above Cass’s head. A thin black tube extended out from the sphere, touched Cass’s neck for a moment, and then retracted into the bot. Cass shuddered and arched her back, then lay back down, and her panting ragged breath slowed and deepened. The Petey slipped its hands under Cass, and with surprising gentleness, picked her up. It carried her away to the south, her head and legs dangling. The scout sphere followed.

Nick watched them go, tears streaming down his face, hugging himself tightly so he wouldn’t make a sound as he cried.

KEVIN WOKE SLOWLY, DISORIENTED, WITH A HORRIBLE HEADACHE. HAD
he fallen asleep? He realized he was lying awkwardly on his back. The sky and trees above him were moving, and he was cradled in someone’s pale, hairless arms. He turned his head, feeling a sharp pain on the left side of his neck, and saw what was carrying him.

It all rushed back to him—the patch-faced bots, his capture, his broken nose, which began to throb brutally as soon as he remembered it. He started to thrash in the bot’s arms, trying to break away.

The bot tightened its grip, becoming painful on his ribs, and stopped walking. It looked down at Kevin with its emotionless face. “Please do not struggle.” It was the one with the female voice.

Kevin stopped moving, barely able to control his anger. “Let me go,” he said between clenched teeth.

“We are sorry,” said the bot, “but we cannot do that.”

“I’m not going back to the City,” said Kevin. “I’m not being re-educated.” He meant it—he’d do whatever he had to. He wasn’t going to have his memories destroyed.

The bot stared at Kevin quietly for a moment. “We are not taking you to any City. We are not hostile.”

“So breaking my nose and knocking me out aren’t hostile?” Kevin began to struggle again. “Let me go!”

The bot tightened its grip further, compressing Kevin’s ribs painfully and making it hard to breathe. “We repeat, we regret the necessary violence. Hostile robotic humanoids were in the vicinity. It was imperative that we intervened.” The bot began walking again, although awkwardly, since Kevin continued to fight. After a few moments the bot stopped again. The second bot stepped into Kevin’s field of vision.

“We should not linger,” said the second bot, with a male voice.

“Agreed,” said the female-voiced bot. “It is regrettable, but perhaps we should render the human unconscious again.”

“No!” said Kevin. He stopped moving. “Just let me down. I’ll go with you.”

Kevin was surprised when the bot set him down on his feet.

“Do not try to escape,” said the male bot. “Now that we have intervened, we must bring you to the Island.”

“The island?” said Kevin.

“You will be afforded the Island’s protection.”

“I don’t want any protection,” said Kevin. “Go rust yourselves.”

“If you try to escape, we will take all necessary measures to subdue you again,” said the male bot. “Walk now, or be carried.”

“I’ll walk,” said Kevin. He’d have a better chance of escaping if he was on his feet.

The male robot began walking, and the other bot nudged Kevin forward, so he followed. They hiked, Kevin sandwiched between the two bots. Kevin took stock. He was lost; he didn’t know how long he had been unconscious or which direction these strange bots had taken him. His brother and sister were probably looking for them, if they weren’t captured themselves. He could run, but in what direction? And what if the bots had some sort of lases? Even if they didn’t, they were probably just as fast as him, if not faster.

For now, it seemed, the smartest thing to do was cooperate and wait for a better time to bolt, and find Nick and Cass.

Kevin studied his captors as they walked. They seemed similar to the Lecturers that Nick had described—slender, with long arms and necks, and those dead green eyes. Their skin, though, set them apart from any City bots he had seen or heard about. The patchwork seemed like a mix of organic and synthetic—almost as if the bots had run out of their neo-plastic
and needed to finish the job with cured leather. Like patching a pair of pants, but with flesh instead of cloth. It was horrible.

They continued for about a half hour through the thin forest, occasionally breaking out of the tree cover onto cracked roadways lined by pre-Rev structures. The bots hurried through these developed areas, leading Kevin quickly back into the cover of the trees.

Kevin was feeling steadily more dizzy and weak. His broken nose was throbbing with each heartbeat. The bots kept their steady, relentless pace. Finally Kevin stumbled, his vision tunneling, then just stopped and sat down. “Water,” he said.

“We are nearly there,” said the female bot.

The male bot turned around and pointed at Kevin. “Stand. Walk.”

“No and no,” said Kevin. “You broke my nose and probably gave me brain damage with that knockout pinch you used on me and I need some water before I pass out again. I don’t run on an electro-magnetic power core.”

The male bot walked toward Kevin. “We are five hundred meters from the Island. There is abundant clean water inside the Wall perimeter. You will walk.”

“You will kiss my fleshy human butt,” said Kevin, angrily wiping a line of sweat off his face. The back of his hand grazed his broken nose, and he sucked in a gasp and gritted his teeth from the sudden sharp pain. The bot raised its arm and reached for Kevin. Kevin flinched, scrambling to his feet,
and the female bot slid between Kevin and the male bot. “No,” it said. “We do not want to cause any permanent damage.” The male bot said nothing, but lowered its arm.

The female bot turned to Kevin. “Come,” it said. “We have nearly arrived. You do not want to be rendered unconscious again.”

Kevin shrugged, trying to look unconcerned, although his heart was in his throat. “Fine,” he said. “Just keep your boyfriend away from me.”

The bot said nothing, just staring at Kevin with its lidless eyes, and he imagined it was trying to process the concept of having a boyfriend.
Good. Maybe I’ll blow one of your nanocircuits,
he thought. The bot turned away. They began walking again.

A few minutes later, the trees opened up into a small clearing, and the bots stopped.

“I need water,” said Kevin.

“We have arrived at the Island,” said the male bot. “Wait. The Wall cloak is being tested and will power down momentarily.”

“Well, wonderful,” said Kevin. “Nice grass. Very impress—” He cut himself off as the air in front of him shimmered and the clearing and trees began to warp and twist like a kaleidoscope. “What . . .” he said. The clearing faded as it twisted, then went black, and then, as if a lightstick had been flicked, Kevin was staring at the Island.

A moment ago Kevin had been looking at grass and trees in a small clearing in the woods. And now . . . a wall loomed, twenty feet high and stretching a hundred yards to the left and right. It was timber, stacked horizontally, but every twenty yards or so, lodged into the wood, rose a vertical metal pylon. And when Kevin looked more closely, he could see rubberized conduction lines running between the pylons, tucked into the caulked gaps between the logs.

Directly in front of them was an arched opening in the wall. Four figures stood shoulder to shoulder in the archway, blocking Kevin’s view of what lay inside the wall. Two of the figures were human—a large, bulky man, and a tall, thin woman. The woman was holding a burst rifle, pointed down at the dirt, her finger off the trigger but resting nearby. The other two were bots, identical to Kevin’s captors except with individual patterns of patchwork on their skins.

The woman stepped forward, swinging her rifle toward Kevin. Not pointed directly at him, but close enough to make a point. She pushed a strand of loose black hair behind her ear. The rest of her hair was pulled back in a ponytail so tight it looked painful. “What do we have here?” she said. She smiled at Kevin, but her grin was more mocking than welcoming. Kevin took an instant dislike to her.

“Human adolescent male,” said the male bot. “Found on patrol and taken into our custody for protection.”

“Boy mugged in the woods,” said Kevin. “Broke his nose,
knocked him out, kidnapped him, and refused to give him water.”

The woman laughed. “Seems to be a difference of opinion here,” she said. She shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter, although I’m sure our patrol knows what it’s talking about. You’re here now, and you’ve seen the Island, so you’re our guest.” She turned to the bots escorting him. “He’s clean?”

“Yes,” said the female bot. “No tracking device that we can detect.”

“Okay,” said the woman. She pointed her gun toward the entrance and waved Kevin forward with her free hand.

Kevin didn’t move. He had a bad, bad feeling about stepping into this place.

The woman frowned and turned to the large man at her side. “Grennel, please?”

The man nodded, then walked toward Kevin. Grennel was weaponless, but he was huge, with a long scar running up his right arm and a flattened, crooked fighter’s nose. Kevin stepped backward, but the bots were right behind him, and he had nowhere to go. He folded his arms over his chest, trying to appear tough and unconcerned.

Grennel stopped at arm’s distance from Kevin, towering over him. “Come,” he said, his voice deep but surprisingly gentle. “We’ll get your nose looked at. Get you some water.” The big man smiled, and it was genuine, and Kevin let himself relax, just a tiny bit.

Passing through the gate, Kevin could see that the walls were thick—probably about two feet deep—and he could see more cabling running through the interior. Even dizzy and scared, Kevin couldn’t help being curious—what was the tech here? How was the Island camouflaging itself? He unconsciously slowed down, studying the wall, and Grennel laid a massive hand on his shoulder and nudged him forward.

And then he was in, and the gates were sliding shut, and Kevin thought wildly that maybe he should make a run for it, but Grennel still had his hand on his shoulder and the woman had her burst rifle and the bots were nearby, so he just watched the gates shut with the sick feeling that he might never see them open again.

NICK SPENT THE REST OF THE DAY IN A HAZE, LOOKING FOR KEVIN.
He grew more and more frantic as the day wore on, and he found no hint of where Kevin might be. If he lost his brother too, he’d just sit down among the trees and give up. He’d wait until he died from thirst or the bots came to get him and finished him once and for all.

He roamed as far as Kevin could possibly have traveled in the short time he was gone, checking everywhere Kevin might be hiding, for whatever reason—under bushes, even up in trees. Nothing. No clues. Just an empty forest. He even called out “Kevin!” a number of times at the top of his lungs, a stupid thing to do when bots might be nearby. He got no reply. Had Kevin been taken by bots as well? Were both his brother and
sister already back in the City, being re-educated, so soon after their escape?

At nightfall Nick returned to his morning campsite, utterly defeated. He sat down heavily and held his head in his hands, his eyes closed. His sister gone, possibly dead. His brother vanished. What was left? As exhaustion set in, he curled up in a ball and closed his eyes. Some time later, he woke with a start. How long had he been asleep?

A fire was crackling near him. Nick grabbed for his pack and his knife, but they were both gone. “Not very attentive, are you?” he heard a voice say. The girl was tall, almost Nick’s height, with brown hair that was cut raggedly, unevenly short in a bob around her chin. She wore brown cargo pants rolled at the ankles and a green sweater, and had a backpack slung over her shoulders. Nick’s hunting knife was sheathed at her belt. Her arms were crossed in a casual pose as she looked at him, but she stood on the balls of her feet, balanced lightly, and gave the impression that she could bound off in an instant like a deer if she wanted.