New World Order (2 page)

I looked down at my
clothes. Army fatigues made of replicated material and thick-soled waterproof black boots with Velcro fasteners. Although I hadn’t been on duty when the recruiters had taken me, I was dressed in my military gear because they were the warmest clothes I owned. The early spring temperatures hovered around freezing, and I had planned to spend the day in the old city with Naoki and the others collecting
artifacts.

I took in my captors’ appearance. With the exception of my stolen coat, which looked completely foreign on Hollywood, they were all dressed similarly: pieced-together animal-hide jackets worn over plain clothes constructed of loosely woven cloth. I regarded Naoki, Ryan, and Talon, all dressed in animal skins too, although their similarly long twisted hair and unique camouflage tattoos
streaked across their skin and clothes gave them a more uniform appearance. The only thing I had in common with my fellow recruits were the urine stains.

Hollywood stared at me with an expectant expression. It occurred to me that by telling him the truth about where my clothes and rifle came from, I might stand a chance of convincing him to take us back. I was pretty sure he would be tempted
by the promise of unlimited supplies. But I couldn’t tell how big an army they were, so there was no way I was going to lead them to the Dome… and to Sunny. Or at least to where I hoped she was.

An image of her being shot by an arrow ran through my head. I closed my eyes tightly to banish the vision. When I opened them, Hollywood was still staring at me, waiting for my response.

“I found them,”
I croaked.

“Where?”

An empty cart pulled by two goliath bears rolled past us. The men walking alongside that cart—three of them—ogled the rifle appreciatively but didn’t say anything.
That’s three more. We’re up to ten men
,
I thought.

Craning my neck, I tried to turn around and look in the direction we were headed to see how many more were up front, but the only sight that greeted me were
the rumps of the two beasts hitched to our cart. With no way of determining how many of them there were, I had no intention of leading them back to our valley.

“I can’t remember.” As the swelling in my tongue receded, the pounding in my head increased. I didn’t know if the two were related.

Tight-lipped, he shoved the bottle back into the holder. That’s when it dawned on me that the bottle
was made of plastic.

“Maybe I found them in the same place you found your plastic bottle,” I said in the hopes it would earn me another drink.

Hollywood narrowed his eyes. “We didn’t
find
these bottles. We made them.” He ignored my look of surprise and turned his attention to Sanjay and Phillip. “Giddy up.”

They snapped the ropes and chanted, “Giddeeeyup!
”
The beasts responded with deep,
breathy huffs, groaning in disapproval, but the cart creaked forward. As Phillip and Sanjay secured the ropes to the cleats, I noticed the quivers for their arrows were made of plastic too. They knew how to make plastic? And yet their clothes—the very wagon I was being hauled in—looked a lot more primitive.

As the cart rolled along the uneven surface of the forest, my head bumped against the
rail. Grimacing, I used the excuse to lean forward so I could get a better view of my surroundings. We were following a rocky pathway dotted with trees still bare from winter but dense enough that the trunks presented an obstruction. On the left, the terrain rose into a rocky outcrop, and to our right it dipped straight down. I could hear water running and assumed it was a river. Two more carts
pulled by bears were behind us as well as several men armed with bows and arrows.

“What are you doing?” Phillip demanded.

I faked stretching out my neck and leaned back against the rail. “Just trying to get comfortable.”

“You want to know why I’m not afraid of a freak scorchedlander?” Hollywood asked. I raised my eyebrows in mock expectation. He jabbed a dirty, stubby finger against his
own chest. “Because
we
are an advanced society. You’ll see when we get home to New Canon.”

Despite my aching head, overwhelming thirst, and imprisoned condition, I couldn’t help but smile at that.

“You think that’s funny?”

“No,” I lied. “I was just thinking that if I
had
to be shot several times with arrows coated in devil’s blood, tied up, and thrown into the back of a cart to languish
in my own piss while I die of dehydration, then I’m glad it was by an
advanced society
.”

Hollywood gave a nod of approval. “It takes most recruits a while to figure that out. Maybe you’re not so stupid after all.”

As the sun sank lower in the sky, snow started to fall. There were rumblings among our convoy about stopping for the night. Foot soldiers were sent to scout for a good place,
and within an hour the wagons were pulling together in a circle to camp for the night. It was my first chance to see the entire group en masse.

There were eleven carts, each hauled by two massive bears and escorted by three or four armed recruiters. Of the eleven carts, four contained prisoners (including ours), and seven were empty. In addition to the teams of recruiters escorting the wagons,
there were approximately thirty armed men who didn’t appear attached to any one wagon. I wondered if they were guards or foot soldiers of some kind.

Hollywood was obviously in command of the team with our wagon. He sent Sanjay to collect firewood while Phillip was ordered to refill water bottles at the river. I noticed no one went to the river alone, but rather they stayed in groups. Hollywood
remained with us and checked on Naoki, Ryan, and Talon, feeling for a pulse to make sure they were still alive. Then he turned his attention to taking care of the bears.

Silently I observed the rest of the camp. There appeared to be a similar routine among the wagons carrying recruits. In two separate instances, a recruit was unbound and his lifeless body rolled out of the cart.

“What’s
with them?” I asked Hollywood.

He paused in his task of feeding the bears to level me with a hard glare, and I wondered if I had broken some tacit rule by speaking aloud without permission. Inching my chin a little higher, I held his gaze. Eventually he went back to tending the bears. “Dead.”

That was alarming. Some recruits never woke up from devil’s blood? I stared at my companions, making
sure their chests were rising and falling. They were breathing.

And then I watched a recruiter approach the dead body, axe in hand, and start chopping. The unbelievable horror of it stole my voice for a second before I screamed, “What the hell!
Stop!
”

Hollywood was beside me in a flash. Last thing I saw was his hairy-knuckled fist.

Sunny

Eight days, twenty-two
hours, and thirty-five minutes had passed since Jack had been taken, and during all that time I hadn’t been able to do a single thing to find him. I looked down at my belly, still flat and unchanged by the life growing inside me. It was difficult to believe that a tiny human being—an actual
someone
too small even to be registered a citizen in our still unnamed city—could actually be residing there.
And yet this tiny little noncitizen was already a powerful force in my life. If not for him, I would have gone after Jack the moment I was able to stand up. Instead, I “took it easy” while anxiety ate away at my sanity. The worst part was the sitting around while every fiber of my being screamed at me to do
something
.

But that was all about to change. Doc had just declared the pregnancy a healthy
one.

Using a damp towel, I washed off the ultrasound jelly and reached for my supersuit. A product of nanotechnology, each suit had been designed to work with the wearer’s DNA in what Doc called an
intrinsic relationship
.
Although I would never pretend to understand just how they were engineered, Doc had said it often enough that I could recite it: using a molecular-sized hydraulic system powered
by nanocrystal solar cells, the exoskeleton interacted with the wearer’s electrochemical impulses to enhance muscular strength, agility, and speed, and layers of nanoparticles gave the material shock-absorbing properties. I once marveled to Doc at the speed with which he came up with these suits, but he said the technology already existed in the computer banks and it was as easy as following
a recipe. In fact, there was so much data on nanotechnology in the computer banks that Doc said he could never get through it all in his lifetime.

I slipped into my exoskeleton, a sleek bodysuit with a high, loose-fitting collar that could be pulled up to protect my head and most of my face. Even though the garment was lightweight, it had excellent insulating capabilities and kept the wearer
warm in cold weather and cool in hot. It was formfitting enough to be hidden under clothes, although I rarely wore it outside of Doc’s underground lab since he was adamant the technology remained secret. The suits were still being fine-tuned, so our small covert militia—a group of soldiers from the Pit with the sole purpose of defense against the bourge in the event of conflict—only wore them beyond
the confines of Doc’s underground lab when taking them out to test their efficacy. Doc was a bit of a madman in his pursuit of perfection, always pushing the suit and wearer to their combined limits in order to make improvements. My mission to go find Jack would mark the first time an exoskeleton had been used in a real situation.

I pulled my everyday clothes on over the suit and pushed aside
the thin curtain that formed the only barrier between my examination room and the lab. The subterranean facility was well equipped but sparsely furnished, with only the necessities for personal comfort. Doc was sitting at his desk, the glow from his computer lighting his face with an unnatural luminosity in the dimly lit cavern. Between his government-backed research in genetics and his position
on the Senate, Doc no longer practiced traditional medicine. I was his one exception, and that was only because the baby I carried could potentially have nanobots making up a portion of his DNA. I had to admit it scared me. Not only will my child be a half-breed in a society populated by bigots, but he might also be part engineered. Ultimately that was my fault, although I couldn’t find enough regret
in my heart to feel guilty. If I were sent back in time right now, back to the day I used Doc’s cocktail to save Jack’s life, I wouldn’t change anything. In fact, I was running on the assumption that the microscopic robots were still doing their job and keeping my husband alive.

Doc was completely absorbed in examining something and didn’t notice me entering the lab. I looked at whatever he
was holding, unable to figure it out. It was there, and yet it wasn’t.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Doc almost jumped out of his chair. “I didn’t hear you,” he said. He hit a key on his keyboard just as he opened a drawer underneath the tabletop and stuffed whatever he was holding into it.

“What
is
that?” I repeated.

His mouth was set in a firm line as he turned his attention to the computer
monitor. “Here’s the first ultrasound picture.”

“I just saw you holding something that looked like a… a… mirror? Only it wasn’t a mirror because it was flexible, like cloth. What was it?”

The thin line of his lips pursed for a moment, and then he turned to face me. “I wasn’t quite ready to share it with anyone, but it’s my own fault for working on it while you’re around. I honestly became
so engrossed I forgot you were here.” I didn’t take it as an insult. Doc was a bit of an absentminded scientist. “It’s called metamaterial. I found it in the memory banks a very long time ago and was intrigued. Admittedly, I am first and foremost a biologist, so it did require some study to understand transformation optics.”

“English, Doc.”

“A cloaking material. Invisibility,” he said.

I eyed him.
Invisibility?
“For real?”

He nodded.

“Can I touch it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t want it damaged. When it’s ready, I’ll share it with the team.” He pointed to the computer monitor and the ultrasound picture. “Everything looks fine.”

I looked at the fuzzy white blobs intermingled with dark areas, apparently a picture of the baby. It looked as abstract as I felt.

“I wish
I could tell you with absolute certainty that the threatened miscarriage was just your body’s reaction to whatever that arrow had been tipped with and the worst is over, but the truth is, I don’t know for certain.”

At the mention of the arrow, I instinctively touched my side. The wound was closed and leaving what promised to be a nasty scar. Whatever substance the recruiters had used on the
projectile had put me to sleep for almost forty-eight hours. But the worst side effect had been all the bleeding. There had been so much blood that it was a miracle that I was still pregnant. Or perhaps this baby had inherited his daddy’s special DNA.

Squinting, I peered closer at the screen, trying to discern anything that might even remotely look like a tiny human being. Maybe if I could see
his face… Doc traced the outline of one of the white blobs. “This is the baby,” he said. I shook my head, still not seeing it, still not making that motherly connection. What was wrong with me? Doc shrugged. “It was an old ultrasound machine I found in a supply closet. I knew the bourge wouldn’t miss it.”

Since Doc didn’t want the bourge finding out about his lab, all of his equipment was “borrowed.”
In the confusion of post-liberation, when equipment had been transferred out of the Dome to new facilities, it had been easy to redirect inventory.

“Can you tell by that picture if it’s… infected with nanobots?” I felt squeamish just saying it out loud.

Doc’s face broke into a rare smile. “Infected?”

I smiled tightly as I fought the urge to snap at him. I had been under enough stress lately
and could do without being made to feel like an idiot.

“Molecular nanotechnology isn’t a biological invasion. I used Kenner’s own DNA to design molecules to repair tissue damage and fight off infection. Since they are capable of self-replicating, it’s a possibility that they could be passed to offspring.” He turned the monitor back to face him. “Unfortunately, only the blueprints for the technology
were saved in the data banks, so there are no records of the outcomes or how widely used nanotech was before the War. Consequently, I don’t know if the molecules are capable of becoming a genetic trait.”