Impact (25 page)

This time, Prakesh pays more attention.

He hardly got any sleep, but even a little is better than nothing. He's more alert now, looking for anything that he can use.

They're back in the farm, carrying the last of the soil sacks to their new position. Some of the workers have already begun filling the troughs, and the hangar is alive with the thumping, scratchy sound of dirt on metal. As Prakesh drops a sack on the pile, he takes a closer look at the guards.

It isn't hard to see how they've kept control. The workers might outnumber them three to one, but they've got all the guns. And they're smart about their positioning, too, spacing themselves out around the edges of the room, always keeping the workers in view. It would be easy to see a coordinated attack coming–and even if it succeeded there's no telling how many workers would die in the attempt.

Prakesh looks back at the troughs. They stretch all the way from the middle of the hangar to the far wall. Each one is waist-height, around forty feet long.
Easy enough for a man to hide behind.
If he could slip out of view, he could find a way out. And once he's out into the ship…

But there's no way he'll be able to get to a hiding place before being cut down. It would take an extraordinary amount of luck. For a moment, he entertains the idea that the guards have set movement patterns, but then discards it. They aren't robots.

Frustrated, he starts walking back the other way, his shoulders groaning under the heavy sack. Jojo passes him on the right, not looking at him. He hasn't said a word to Prakesh since the night before, as if the act of talking as much as he did has exhausted him. Prakesh can't help thinking of their conversation–how Jojo shut down the man who tried to stop them talking. He may have a stutter, may not even be out of his teens yet, but the other workers respect him.

The sack slips a little, sliding down Prakesh's shoulder onto his upper arm. He stops, shifting it back, and that's when the idea comes.

It's not just what Riley would do in this situation. It's what Aaron Carver would do, too. Carver, whose first response to any situation was to use a gadget or a tool, to use something he'd made. Carver, who was (
is
, he tells himself) always looking for new equipment.

Carver wouldn't just rely on what was here. Carver would be looking to see what he could do with it.

Prakesh stands there for a moment too long, and one of the guards shouts at him to get moving. He bobs his head in apology, hefting the sack as he starts walking.

He can't take out the guards individually. None of them can. But what if he could take them all out in one go?

They move to the troughs, all of them unloading the soil now, dumping it in and mixing it with fertiliser. The stuff comes in foul-smelling buckets, the white granules gritty and slightly slimy. There's insecticide, too: yellowish dust that Prakesh recognises as sulphur. He spotted it earlier, off to one side in a pair of grimy containers. It stains his hands and prickles the inside of his nose. You're supposed to handle this stuff with gloves–it can irritate the skin, causing blisters if you use a lot of it.

Jojo is next to him, head bent, patting the soil down. Prakesh doesn't look at him. Keeping his voice low, he says, “Jojo.”

No response.

“Jojo,” he hisses, a little louder. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jojo's hand flick the air twice.
No. Not now.

“Then don't talk, just listen,” Prakesh says.

It doesn't take him long to explain his plan. Jojo does nothing, doesn't even register that he's heard, but Prakesh isn't worried.
He wants this more than you do
, he thinks, pushing a handful of fertiliser under the soil.

When Prakesh is finished, Jojo doesn't respond for a long minute. Then his right hand forms a quick thumbs up.

It takes a long time for Jojo to tell the rest of the workers the plan. He has to be careful, changing places only when the guards' attention wanders, conferring with them in an almost inaudible voice. Eventually, he makes his way back to Prakesh, and flashes another thumbs up, more emphatic this time.

Prakesh lifts his hands out of the soil. He can feel the other workers watching him. There's a guard close by, a stick-thin woman with a shorn head, and Prakesh slowly starts to walk towards her.

The guard sees him coming before he gets within twenty feet. Her rifle goes up instantly, finger in the trigger guard. “Stop right there.”

Prakesh can feel the other rifles on him, like needles sticking into his back. For a moment, it's as if all activity on the floor has stopped. He can't hear anything but the roaring of blood in his ears.

“Back in the line,” the guard says, jerking her rifle. “We'll take a break in an hour. You can piss then.”

“I don't need a piss. I need to ask you something.”

“I said,
back in the line
.”

Prakesh looks over his shoulder, gestures to the troughs. “I can make your fertiliser better.”

The guard's eyes narrow. “What?”

“Fertiliser. I used to be a plant technician, a biologist—”

He feels the bullet before he hears the gunshot. It
spangs
off the floor a few feet away, the gunshot echoing around the hangar. Prakesh jumps, and the workers hit the deck, throwing themselves to the floor.

“Move away!” shouts a voice. One of the other guards. “If she doesn't shoot you, I will.”

Prakesh puts his hands above his head. He speaks as loudly and clearly as he can. “I can make it so everything grows faster. OK? Faster and stronger. I can make you a new batch of fertiliser. We can grow new plants–tomatoes, fruit, whatever you want. I just need a few things to do it.”

Silence. The guard still has her gun on him. He tenses, sure that at any second a bullet is going to slam right through him.

But he guessed right. A grow-op like this won't give them a lot of variety in their diet. He's offering them some new tastes, and he can see them looking at each other, thinking it over.

One of the guard's colleagues wanders over, and they have a whispered conversation. Prakesh watches, not wanting to move, not wanting to give the others any reason to shoot.

Eventually, the first guard looks over at him. “I'll pass it up the chain,” she says. “Keep working.”

The three men stand frozen, staring at me like I'm a ghost.

One of them is young, still in his twenties, with a round face and tiny bud of a mouth. The man on his left is enormous, a neat goatee covering his chin, the skin above it lined and scarred. The one on the right has a hooked nose and prominent chin that look like they've been carved from stone. Somehow, I know he's Iluk–he looks like his name sounds. The one with the round face must be Koji.

All three are wearing thick jackets, and all three have rifles. I have just enough time to take this in, and then I'm face down in the dirt, my arms twisted behind me. The ice-cold tip of a gun barrel is shoved into the back of my neck, and I can feel grains of sand digging into my cheek.

All three men are shouting–two in English, and one in that strange language. The man with the rifle shouts at the others to shut up, digging it harder into the back of my neck.

I have to tell myself to breathe. This is the only way. If I want to get off this island, I have to go with them. I don't know what happens after that, but I'll figure it out. Somehow.

“You alone out here?” the man says. When I don't answer immediately, he shoves the back of my head. I feel sand in my mouth, rough against my tongue. “Answer me.”

“I'm alone,” I say, the words muffled.

“You sure you're telling the truth there, girl?” I feel the gun barrel shift, as if the man holding it is getting a better grip on the trigger. “Because if you're not…”

I raise my head, just enough to get my mouth out of the sand. “I'm the only survivor.”

“Now I know you're lying. There were more people in that plane of yours. It was still flying, even after Curtis shot 'em full of holes.”

The pressure comes off my back, and the man flips me over. I try to get an elbow underneath me, but then the gun is in my face. It's hard to look anywhere but the huge black barrel in front of me.

“Where'd you come from?”

There's no point lying to him. Unless they've got planes of their own, they're not getting to Eric's people. “Whitehorse,” I say.

He laughs. “That so? Long way to come. You want to tell me why you're all the way out here?”

To find my friends. To kill someone.

While I'm trying to think of something to say, he lifts his foot and slams it down on my stomach.

I curl into a ball. I don't have a choice. The pain is hot and feverish, radiating up from my abdomen in long waves. I feel Ray digging through my pockets, pulling out the contents, grunting as he stuffs them into his jacket.

“Jesus, Ray!” says Koji. Iluk spits a sentence I can't understand–I don't know if he's angry with Ray, or goading him on.

“You want to come back with us?” Ray's mouth is inches from my ear. “Fine. But you're going to wish you'd stayed here.”

My hands are bound behind me, held in place by rusty metal cuffs. The edges are worn and jagged, and I have to keep my hands as still as I can to avoid cutting the skin. The floor of the boat is hard plastic, cold and wet under my cheek.

It goes against everything I am to lie still. I want to take these people down, one by one, take that rifle away and shove it in their faces, listen to them beg. But the voice tells me to be calm, and I'm learning to listen to it.

Ray sees me looking up at him, and shakes his head. “The second you come off that floor, I'll put a bullet in your kneecap.”

The sides of the boat are large tubes made of grainy rubber, tapering to a point at the front. A wave slaps the side, its tip launching over the tube, spraying me in the face. There's a motor at the back of the boat, which Iluk controls using a long handle.

We crest another wave, and the engine coughs and splutters, threatening to give out. Iluk says something back in that strange language, irritated. Ray stands up, moving to help him. “Watch her,” he says, jamming the rifle into Koji's hands.

I clear my throat, looking up at Koji. He seems calmer than Ray, less likely to lash out. “Where are we going?” I say.

No response.

“Am I the only new person?” I say. “Or are there others like me?”

Koji looks down, then back up at me. For the second time, I see something in his eyes, something I can't quite read.

The engine starts up again. Ray straightens, satisfied, then glares at me. “You speak when spoken to, you hear?”

I fall silent, desperate to know more, but aware of how fragile my position is. Underneath me, my bound hands are in agony.

And then all at once, there's something above us. Sliding into view, impossibly huge. It's like a mountain decided to shoot up from underwater. I squint up at it, trying to work out what it is.

This was what I saw from the island–that strange shape against the skyline. It's man-made, built from giant metal plates, leaning over us at a sharp angle. The plates are discoloured for a few feet above the water, painted with green fungus and brown rust. Over our heads, I see the letters A-11 marked on the metal. Each letter is white, outlined in thick grey paint, and each one has to be four times the size of a man.

There's a wide rectangular gap in the plates, twenty feet above the waterline. Faces peer down from it. Iluk cuts the motor, and one of them shouts, the words lost in the rush of the ocean. Ray cups his hand to his mouth and yells back. “Nah, just the one. Throw us the ladder.”

The face vanishes. A second later, a rope ladder unfurls, clanking against the hull and splashing into the water. Koji reaches out for it, pulling it towards us, while Ray secures the boat. There's an upright piece of metal that's been welded to the hull, sticking out from it, and Ray ties the boat to it with a thick, wet length of rope.

Iluk's face appears above me, upside down. He grabs me by the shoulders and hauls me to my feet. The rocking motion of the boat nearly topples me over, and he has to grab me by the scruff of my jacket, only just stopping me from falling in.

“How's she gonna climb?” says Koji.

“What?” says Ray.

“Her hands are tied.”

Ray makes an annoyed sound, then grabs hold of me, spinning me around. The cuffs snap off my wrists, and I resist the urge to cry out as the blood rushes back, pins and needles digging deep into my hands.

He brings me back the other way, pulling my hands together and cuffing them in front. This time, the cuffs aren't quite as tight.

“Climb,” he says, jerking his thumb upwards.

It takes one or two tries to grab the swaying ladder. The sides are rope, but the rungs are made of rough wood, and splinters bite into my palms as I move. The cuffs make the climb even more awkward. Halfway up, I glance back over my shoulder. Fire Island is there, and the impossibly empty sea beyond it. I look for the seaplane, but it's nowhere to be found.

“Keep moving,” Ray says from below me.

As I reach the top of the ladder, strong hands pull me over the edge. I roll onto the deck, my heart pumping. The people standing above me are all variations of Ray, with beards and grimy skin and dark, angry eyes.

I look past them, to the space we're in. It's huge–big enough to park two seaplanes across, wingtip to wingtip. The walls are made of ribbed metal, with curved struts every couple of feet. Oversized fluorescent lights criss-cross the ceiling.

“This is all you came back with?” one of the men says, prodding my shoulder with the tip of his boot. “Doesn't look like much.”

“We'll let Prophet decide that,” Ray says. Now that he's in here, his voice is quieter, as if shouting won't be tolerated. He and Koji lift me to my feet, and the crowd parts in front of us.

I'm hustled through a door into a narrow corridor–so narrow that we have to walk single file: Iluk and Ray in front, Koji behind. The corridor has heavy, ribbed walls, like the entranceway. The lights are sparse, one every twenty feet or so, each one covered by a wire cage. There are enormous pipes running along the ceiling, cocooned in thick, silver insulation.

There's no chance of escape here, nowhere to go, no door that isn't sealed tight. Frustration starts to build–Carver and Prakesh are somewhere on this ship, they have to be, but I can't see any way I can escape.

And there's something behind the frustration. It takes me a moment to pinpoint it. A weird sense of déjà vu, like I should recognise my surroundings. Like I've been here before.

I close my eyes, irritated with myself. My mind's playing tricks on me, just like it did when I looked at the sky for the first time. I breathe deep, letting the frustration fade, letting it be replaced with anger. I have to trust that anger–it's kept me alive so far, and it's going to keep me alive now.

The passage opens up a little. There's a stairway leading up to the next level: impossibly steep, with steps even narrower than the corridor. Ray and Iluk are already climbing it, and Koji gives me a push from behind, his hand on the small of my back.

Another door, with a valve handle. When Iluk cranks it back, bright daylight shoots into the corridor. I try to raise a hand to my eyes, forgetting for a moment that I'm cuffed. Ray reaches for me, pulling me through the door.

We're outside, on a long balcony bordered by waist-high railings. Below us is the deck of the ship: a massive space, bigger than any gallery on Outer Earth. Its surface is covered with strange markings, yellow chevrons, white stripes, warnings in huge lettering.

There are a dozen planes, lined up in rows along the deck. They aren't like the seaplane: they're sleek, predatory, with needle-like noses and enormous tail fins. But as I look closer, I see that their surfaces are caked in rust. The surface of their wheels has rotted away, and several of them list to one side.

We move along the balcony. My shoulder blades are hurting a little less now, and it's getting easier to move. I keep sneaking glances at the deck. There are things I missed the first time round, like the metal plates angled at forty-five degrees to the deck. There's a strange structure on the edge, too: a massive cylinder, capped by a dome.

Ray sees me looking, claps a hand on my shoulder. For a moment, he sounds almost jovial. “That's the Phalanx gun. Still got plenty of ammo left. But you and your friends in the plane figured that out already, right?”

As I watch, the gun gives out a metallic whirring noise, turning a few degrees to the right. Its barrel comes into view, sticking out at right angles to the cylinder.

A moment later, we duck through a door, coming out into another narrow stairway. There's more light here, and it's a little quieter than down below.

Another set of stairs. Then another. And then Ray is cranking open a door, much larger than the others, and he and Iluk pull me through.

We're in a control room of some kind, not much larger than the one in Apex on Outer Earth. The layout is immediately familiar: banks of screens, chaotic groups of chairs, low lighting. There are large windows overlooking the deck, and I can see the fog just starting to lift.

The room is packed with people. Some of them are gathered around screens, while others are off to one side, talking in small groups. Several of them have rifles, slung across their chests or hanging down their backs. I feel their eyes on me, sizing me up, taking in my mismatched clothing and bound hands.

My gaze falls on a table in the middle of the room. There's a map spread across it, like the one Harlan showed me, only much larger. Alaska, the Yukon, other areas I can't name.

Ray reaches into his jacket, pulling out the items he took from me: the scarf, the bear spray, the meat strips. He lines them up on the table in front of him, then clears his throat. “Prophet.”

One of the men clustered around the table raises his head to look at us. He wears a stiff, brown jacket over a dark shirt, and one of his eyes is gone, sewn closed with ugly, amateurish stitches.

And sitting behind him, bent over a computer screen: Janice Okwembu.