Rebellion (27 page)

I’m not an official, I want to tell him. But I’m wearing the uniform, aren’t I?

“I agree,” Other Me says with a wide smile. “Let’s spar.”

Parker smiles in turn. “I’ll get you a pair of gloves.”

He walks into the small supply room on the other side of the floor mat. He must be encouraging this because he believes I’m a permanent addition to Charlie’s team. He knows Other Me came in here with the intention of practicing to fight Charlie’s enemies—my friends.

I will try my vruxing hardest not to let her do it. But Colonel Parker thinks I won’t be able to stop her.

He brings me gloves that must be meant for someone younger, but they fit my small hands perfectly. He gives me a mouthpiece too. I face him on the mat.

“Ready?” Parker says.

“Ready,” I say through the mouthpiece.

And we begin.

25

Commander Charlie sends for me in the evening. A guard finds me after dinner and escorts me to Restricted Division.

It’s the first time I’ve been able to walk through the corridors when I’m not fearing for my life. At first the hallways look no different from those in the rest of the Core. But as we move farther in and take a set of stairs to a floor below, the corridors become narrower, reminding me of the passageways in a spaceship. Some of the doors we pass have markers over them
: HALL OF COMMANDERS; CREW QUARTERS; ENGINE ACCESS
.

Even though I’m subdued, I’m amazed Charlie’s letting me see these rooms. Most of the doors require access codes, but now I know exactly where the engines are, and the hyperdrive systems. All the equipment that might someday allow the Core to run as a battleship and survive on her own.

If the systems were destroyed, that would never be an option.

We come to an unmarked door, a short way beyond the Hall of Commanders. The guard types a code into a lock-pad on the wall, and the door slides open. I follow him inside.

The room is large, with a huge round table taking up most of the space. A meeting room. Only eight of the twenty or so seats are taken. I pull out the nearest chair, glancing around at the other faces.

Most of the people here are familiar. Two of the officials I’ve never seen before, but Colonel Parker is here. He gives me a nod and a smile when he sees me. My knuckles are bruised from our sparring match earlier, but I’m glad I agreed to it. It made me feel more confident, capable of defending myself with my hands.

Cadet Waller sits a few seats to my right, her long, black hair tied in a high ponytail. A couple seats beyond her is the scientist who helped Charlie make his big false announcement about the increase of moonshine in the atmosphere, in the Core pavilion several weeks ago. Sitting in the chair beside him is Fred.

Fred’s wearing a simple gray tunic and pants, even though he was once a colonel and I bet he has an old uniform. His eyes seem less dead than I remember, but his skin is just as sunken and scarred. When he looks at me, a flash of guilt crosses his face. He is the scientist who developed the KIMO bomb; my friend died because of him. He is the one who gave Logan’s name to the doctors; Logan was tortured in Karum because of him.

I forgave him for those things. I knew that he was weak and desperate, looking for a way out. But now he’s on Charlie’s side again, helping him design Strykers and other weapons capable of destroying Marden’s fleet. He’s helping commit genocide, and this time it’s not a trick; he knows it’s going to happen.

It’s hard to keep forgiving him.

I look away from him, to the person I’ve been wanting and also dreading to see. Beechy sits across the table from me, to the left of Commander Charlie. He’s wearing his old skintight suit made of dark leather. He smiles at me—an unnatural smile; it stretches too wide and doesn’t completely fill his eyes, because they’re layered with film—and I smile back.

My insides churn. I want to know what happened at the Surface security hub—how, exactly, someone caught him. Did he turn himself in, as Sam said? Did he not have any choice?

Beechy folds his hands together and looks at Charlie, who’s speaking.

“Now that we’re all here, let’s get started,” he says. “Colonel Parker, please update everyone on the status of Operation Stryker.”

I want to ask what Charlie did to Beechy after he was caught. I want to know if being the test subject for the submission serum was painful at all, because if it was, I want to tell him I’m sorry. It’s half my fault, since Charlie developed the serum because of me.

I want to ask Beechy if he feels as trapped inside his skin as I do. I want to ask him if he has any idea how to break free.

Colonel Parker’s talking, and I realize I should be listening to what he’s saying. Hopefully Other Me looks like she’s being attentive.

“All officials in Crust, Mantle, and Lower have received the order to begin loading workers from the camp into transports at nine tomorrow morning,” Parker says. “It will take a few trips to transport everyone, and they’ll be staggering the trips between sectors, so as not to clog the Pipeline. The commanding officer in each sector will keep in contact with me throughout the morning. I’ll be following them to the Surface with a small squadron of officials, departing at approximately ten thirty, or sooner if it becomes clear reinforcements are needed. Cadet Waller, I believe you said you’ll remain here in the Core to be my primary contact once I’ve reached the Surface.”

“Yes, sir,” Cadet Waller says, clasping her hands on the table. She has her tablet with her, as always.

“Let’s go over the plan once the transports reach the Surface,” Charlie says.

Colonel Parker runs his palm over the table, which is made of the same touch-screen material as the table in the Core bridge. Small, holographic buildings pop up from the center of the table. A miniature city builds itself. The Surface city. I can pick out the education tower, the sanitarium, and the building I scaled the evening I was picked for Extraction.

“We’ll be unloading the transports in the city,” Parker says. “The child workers will be told this evening that they’re being transferred to the Surface because the city will be their new home and the work camps are dissolving. We’re allowing them to sleep in the resident buildings. Our goal is to make this seem like a new kind of Extraction for them—a reward. This will lessen the risk of them giving us trouble. We’ve also ensured that the nutrient vitamins the workers in the lower sectors usually receive every week were replaced by a different kind of pill, which contained a small dosage of submission serum. That should make them docile.”

Lies, lies, lies, that’s all people in the camps are ever told. The horrible thing is, most of them will fall for this. Most of them would give anything for a chance to spend even one night in a city building instead of in a shack or on the floor of a cave. Even if they don’t believe the Developers would really shut down the work camps, once they’re in the city, they’ll want to believe it so much, they’ll forget how strange it seems.

“The pill form of the serum wears off within a few days, though,” says the scientist I don’t know the name of. He’s tapping his hand on the table like he has a nervous itch. “If we’re wrong about the arrival of the fleet, I hope you realize we could run into a serious problem. Some of the workers are bound to question this and try to make trouble, especially if we give them free rein of the city. I don’t like that we’re putting all of them together—their numbers are
huge,
and they have the highest percentage of potential Unstables. There are more of them than the entire Core population.”

Ariadne recited the numbers when we first arrived in the Core—she said the population is roughly ten thousand. The Surface camp had about four thousand people, and the other camps must have a similar number, maybe a bit smaller. That means there are about sixteen thousand people in all the camps, combined.

Hope stirs in my chest. With that many of them, surely there’s a chance they can band together and form an uprising. Surely there are lots of people like Nellie among them, who don’t trust the Developers or the officials, even if they don’t know about the KIMO bomb.

But even if they fought back, they don’t know about the Strykers, and they have no way to remove them from their bodies.

“We’re not letting them run free,” Commander Charlie says calmly. “We’re locking them inside the resident buildings. The air is still contaminated by moonshine—though we’re telling them it’s been decontaminated. The recreation options they’ll have available to them should distract them from the reality of their situation.”

“And officials will remain on the Surface to keep things under control,” Colonel Parker says, flipping off the hologram of the city. “As soon as Marden’s fleet appears within close range, which should be within three or four days, they’ll evacuate immediately. Once the fleet arrives, it won’t matter if the workers break free of the buildings. All that matters is that they remain within the bounds of the settlement and don’t have access to any ships.”

The only hope of survival for the workers would be to hijack ships and fly down here to the Core, so Charlie wouldn’t detonate the Strykers for fear of destroying his precious home, and dying himself in the explosions. But as long as I’m trapped in my body, I can’t warn them about this. I can’t help them. Three days isn’t enough time.

“Clementine,” Commander Charlie says, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Do you see any serious issues with this plan? Do you have any suggestions?”

I try to close up my throat so I can’t answer. I try to convince Other Me to say what I really want to say:
Don’t go through with this plan.

But the words escape my mouth anyway: “While you’re transporting the workers into the buildings, you should have a demonstration. Make it clear to all of them that moonshine is still a threat, and they’ll be too scared to venture outside.”

“I like the way you think.” Commander Charlie adjusts one of his gloves. “Colonel Parker, I’ll let you take the initiative on that.”

“Yes, sir.” Vrux, vrux, vrux. How could I suggest that? He’s going to listen to me; he’s going to kill some of the workers in the worst way possible, and it will be all my fault.

You couldn’t help it,
I remind myself. But that doesn’t make me any happier.

“Now, let’s move onto the other important topic: the fugitives,” Commander Charlie says. “They’re part of an insurrection group they call ‘the Alliance.’ We have two members in our company, and two other rebels in custody. I will be interrogating one of them when we’re finished here, but for now, the information we have about Alliance operations comes from Mr. Beechy here, as well as what Lieutenant Sam has determined while dealing with the recent destruction of the Crust quarantine facility. Beechy provided the list of names of those who were working with his company.”

Charlie taps the table screen, and the list appears in a floating hologram big enough for all of us to read. There’s a picture and an identification number beside many of the names, but not all of them.

Sandy*

Skylar

Clementine

Logan

Jensen

Darren*

Buck*

Rita

Fiona*

Wright

Ansel

Wanda

Ellen*

Richard*

Clarence

The small star beside some of the names seems to designate the people who remained at headquarters. But there are missing names. Our company didn’t have only fifteen people, last I checked.

I scan the list again. Mal’s name is definitely missing, along with Paley’s. Did Beechy forget about them, or leave them out on purpose?

To leave them out, he would’ve had to fight his injection.
How?

“Clementine,” Charlie says.

“Yes?” I say automatically.
No, no, no
. If he asks me for more names, I’ll give them. I won’t be able to stop myself.

“Can you tell me the location of any of these people?” he asks.

“I know Jensen is somewhere in Crust,” I say. “He was disguised as a guard the last time I saw him. As for the other names, I’m sorry. I don’t know. I was separated from most of them before I boarded the transport for the work camp.”

I’ve never been more grateful for the way Charlie phrased a question.

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Cadet Waller’s cheeks pinching.

“That’s unfortunate,” Commander Charlie says. “But I’m hoping our most recent prisoner, Ms. Skylar, will be able to fill in some of the blanks. She denied having anything to do with the recent Crust incident, but during our interrogation this evening I’m sure I’ll get the truth out of her. I’m confident she knows the location of at least a few other Alliance members. The rest will appear with time when they attempt another form of sabotage, and we’ll have our friends here to help us identify them.”

“Shouldn’t we attempt to prevent more attacks from happening, sir?” Cadet Waller asks.

“Lieutenant Sam is putting suitable precautions into place,” Charlie says. “And we’ve made sure the word has spread about the capture of certain fugitives already, so as to discourage the others. At the moment, I’m less concerned about the fugitives in the lower sectors and more concerned with the ones who remain at their headquarters. They are, as yet, unaware of the situation with Marden’s army. If they remain where they are without knowledge of this, their reaction to the fleet’s arrival could be devastating for our cause. They also may be coordinating an attack to penetrate Core defenses as we speak. My daughter is among them. I believe it’s in our best interest to bring them all here for questioning, to see if their skills can be useful to us, if we subdue them with the new B-strain serum. The facility where Sandy and her team are based is well fortified, but Beechy assures me it has its weaknesses.”

“Where is this facility?” Fred asks, speaking for the first time. His voice is as deep and hollow as I remember.