Rebels (26 page)

“Hurry up,” I say. “I can hear them coming.” They knew what direction we were heading. They didn't take us down because we always had nowhere to run to.

“Hurry,” I tell her. She's saying good-bye to the beast. You'd think animals had feelings, the way it's looking at her. She ignores my urgency, just stares into the horse's big brown eyes. Whispers something. Of course I can hear.

“Now you have to run. Fast. Find a place to hide until this is
over. I'm going away for a while. Don't worry, girl. I'll see you again. I promise.”

The horse hangs its head . . . crying?

Creepy
, I think. Sometimes I wish I didn't hear so well.

She gives the horse a firm smack and it takes off.

“What are you looking at?” she barks. “Run for your life!”

I think she was almost crying, too.

◊  ◊  ◊

I follow her into the trees, deferring to her knowledge of this big floating rock. The crafts hover above the tree line, but it's the men on the ground who worry me. I hear their feet behind us. We have a head start, but not much.

“There's only one way off the island,” she says, as if reading my mind. She does that a lot. It's starting to freak me out.

We've emerged into glaring spotlights, but she doesn't stop. She moves unnaturally fast and I race to keep up.

“They've probably infiltrated the heliopad, where all visitors land, and that's where we keep the air transporters, so flying away is not an option.”

We're moving so fast my silitex sheds my sweat at an unreal rate.

A sharp pain in my shoulder. I've begun to cramp up and I can't get enough oxygen. If I'd planned better, if I hadn't rushed off, I would've taken a ventilator. I was too hotheaded.

Airgirl's barely winded, her face calm, her feet practically skimming the ground. She's chattering on and on, like this is a social occasion or something.

“Audiofeed is in the main quarters. Lamentably, we cannot use it to signal a transporter.”

“Speak like a human!” I'm huffing for air now.

“Breathe like one,” she says.

“I can't . . . there's something wrong with . . .”

“The altitude is not
wrong
, you are simply unconditioned.”

I'd say something mean if I could spare the breath.

“Marius's chauffeur would be an option, yet he's not—”

“Here? I get it, okay!” What's left of my voice is ragged. Defeated. “There's nowhere for us to go!”

I run right into her long arm, stretched out in front of me. She's come to a stop.

“Correct,” she says serenely. “Nowhere to go . . .” She lowers her gaze. I follow. “Except down.”

We're staring into clouds. There's a massive rig below the island. It's an enormous piece of raging metalwork, its frame an unsightly rust red, yet there's life on it—most important, a large synth-nursery.

“It has been here quite a while,” she says.

Kane's rig
, I think. Where he spied on her.

“If we aim for the foliage on the outskirts, perhaps that will cushion our fall.”

“That's a big perhaps,” I say. I've already dislocated my shoulder once today. A fall from this high would dislocate the rest of my body.

“Stop running,” booms the speakerfeed, “or we will actively engage. Drop to the ground
now
.”

The PCF handbook, chapter 6. “Restraining Enemies of Indra.” Right after this comes the penalty of noncompliance.

Death.

“Special Operative Lex, you have abandoned your sworn post,” it says next. They know it's me.

“They'll stun us in three seconds,” I say.

“Ready?”

“Are you?”

She nods. Closes her eyes. Takes a breath.

“Now,” she says.

Together, we take a big leap over the edge.

For the first second you fall gently. My dress billows out around me. Then it snaps up and I can barely see, the world goes white.

◊  ◊  ◊

On the island we never had trees with so many branches. I hit every single one, then I hit the ground. The pain lets me know I'm alive. Barely.

When I open my eyes
, I tell myself,
I will be somewhere other than Helix Island
.

Instead, I'm staring into the eyes of Lex. She's landed before me. It wasn't a race, but she just had to beat me.

I gasp.

I want to lie here. That's all I want to do.

I move my arms and legs and they feel like they belong to someone else.

“Are you hurt?” I ask, sitting up.

“No,” she says. “Are you?”

I shake my head, amazed at our fortune. I start to laugh out loud at the audacity of our escape.

“Never have I seen a vision so beauteous,” says a voice. “As women diving from the sky.”

A young man stares down at me. He's around my age, yet smiles
in a boyish way. He wears a black helmet, his face streaked with dirt and grime. The sleeves are ripped from his uniform, revealing bare arms. We are definitely no longer on Helix.

Proper Young Men maintain discreet attire, their flesh fully concealed, even when engaging in vigorous leisure pastimes.

Then again, they also don't have “RIGGER” stamped across the blue fabric on their chests.

Not surprisingly, the girl—Special Operative Lex, I remind myself—has already risen to her feet, braced to attack. So that's where she received her training, as one of Indra's finest. She wanted to kill me, yet it was also PCF who beat her Kane. Something doesn't match up. And somehow I'm at the middle of it. But why?

The young man smiles at her. “I see no need for that, love. Not until we've had a proper introduction.”

“He doesn't intend to harm us,” I say, back on my feet.

“Riggers are no better than scavs.”

“Except they don't see girls here often. Harm is not what they want to do to us,” I tell her in a firm manner, patting down my dress. Reluctantly, she lowers her fists.

“Nothing so vulgar. I'm Hep,” he says, then he points to the words engraved across his helmet.

“ ‘Garden Crew,' ” I read, finding the actual letters disconcerting. Other than
The Book of Indra
, I have never seen words that were not holo.

He nods at me, his face lit with pride. “Not many scavs can tend an orchard like me.”

I try to comprehend, my mind racing. Gardeners, as those of Indra are well aware, serve in a position of utmost importance. “Vital to Indrithian Society, for they are the growers of life itself, caretakers of our very existence,” according to
The Book of Indra
. Synth-trees may be birthed in the Aero-Crown, but the gardeners are the
ones who nurture them into beautiful specimens. They hold the key to oxygenating our world, literally giving us the air we breathe. A prideful bunch, gardeners. Even cocky. Few would waste their artistry on a rig.

Hep, on the other hand, seems carefree. An artist
and
a ruffian.

“The Islands have so many beautiful women now, they're just throwing them away?” he says, still looking at me. He reaches out his hand to me, Lex wary of it all. She's an oath breaker. She has much to be wary of now. I place my hand in his, diverting my eyes from the filthy fingernails. And yet all I see is that my own are not much better at this point.

“The Islands have a distorted view of all three of us. I'm Livia,” I tell him, and he bows graciously.

I send Lex a knowing glance.
These
, I silently tell her,
are referred to as “manners.”

“Great,” she says. “Now we're old friends. But our new friends, they're still . . .”

She quiets suddenly. Hep's dropped to his knees and is rooting in the dirt. “Here we go,” he says, removing several orange roots still caked in earth. He holds them out to her. “Something to catch your breath?”

“This isn't some tea party.”

“Every time you take a breath, you wheeze. She's from the Islands, but you're most definitely not.” He takes a bite of the root with a loud snap. “None of us living here are from anywhere even remotely aboveground. So we eat these. They used to grow carrots in the old world, but my own hybrid helps regulate oxygen in the blood.” Then he smiles at us, teeth neon green.

“Boosters,” Lex says.

“Try one,” Hep says. “All natural, plus they'll help you escape from whatever it is you're escaping from.”

I take one and Lex does, too. I brush away the dirt, and a few seconds
after my first bite, I feel marginally stronger. Lex won't admit it, but I can feel her change in disposition. With her changing moods, she's not a lot of fun to be around.

“Thank you,” I say.

He reaches into a pocket and removes a small bottle, which he presses into my hand. It is filled with capsules. “I've dried them and powdered them, too. It's a nice blend. You hold on to these.”

I nod in thanks.

“So who is it that's got you on the run?” asks Hep.

“PCF,” I tell him.

The change is sudden, Hep's calmness evaporating. He drops the half-eaten root. “This is just the fight we've been waiting for. We won't let the PCF control us on our rig! Come over this way. I have someone for you to meet.”

◊  ◊  ◊

The bulky man is named Durley and his helmet proclaims him “Building Crew.” Two patches are ripped from his pants, his knees protruding. He has the same “RIGGER” stamp across his chest, but has added his own sloppily scrawled addition: “I'm a RIGGER. Mine is Bigger.”

I focus on his shocked face instead.

“You growing these ladies as well?” he asks Hep.

“Excuse my comrade,” says Hep apologetically. “Even down below they could tell he was a brute.”

“Unless you count rig gals, which I do not. Rigger diggers, excuse my bluntness, aren't exactly
ladies
. But what's this about, Hep?”

“The PCF are after them.”

Durley goes silent, and then he explodes. “I'll kill them!”

I reach for my humming zinger. Lex's fists are up before I draw it from my sheath.

The ground rumbles as if the whole rig is groaning, a PCF craft
is now hovering directly overhead. My teeth tremble, every part of me vibrating. I've read of rigs destabilizing. It's rare, but entire crews have been lost. That we seem to be close to its outer perimeter has me even more worried. We all turn to where the thicket of trees part to reveal the sky beyond.

Its engine whirs and sunshine glints off its silver paneling. There is nowhere to hide. I'm sure that this PCF patroller is only the first of many.

“Follow me,” Hep tells us. We're in no position to argue.

The engines swirl up a cyclone of leaves. If we ever were to stop running, every part of me would be shaking. Our island leap has left me off balance. My brain most of all. The air up here clouds my thoughts, boosters or not.

We're racing through the forest that borders the rig and recycles the air and keeps the local atmosphere clean and rich. Hep is ahead, leading us. Durley trails behind us. The big man doesn't quit running his mouth. If this wasn't a rig, he'd be detained for agitating speech. Labeled
instigator
after the first sentence.

“Highfalutin thought enforcers, the sky-high nerve of them! I'll tear apart every last one of 'em, just you wait. Rip out their insides and use 'em for fertilizer. Them softhead PCF. Them crappies, daring to mess with a rigger.”

We're fast, but not undetectable. The patrollers circle the rig's perimeter, waiting for us to emerge. They could just blast the whole forest, but they can't risk bringing an entire rig down. No, they'll go by the book. It's never failed them.

“We're not losing them!” I yell.

“We don't want to,” says Hep. “We're gonna get those PCF bastards.”

“They have my friend Kane,” I tell him. “They've hurt him, locked him up.”

“We had a Kane here,” says Durley from behind me. I slow some to run beside him. “I always thought he was too pretty to rig.” He's breathing harder than I am. “Liked the boy. Good with building. But riggers come and go like we got an open door. Make the vow, then jump off the side in two days. If they don't fall off first.”

I feel the uncertainty below my very own feet. Rigs are unstable, fitted from Lower Level salvage. These men sacrifice their safety to live up here.

“The rigs serve as havens for the dregs of Indra,” Instructor once told us. “Those who cannot function within society. Often recruited from Rock Bottom, for few would take such a job. The surface is unsteady; the minutest of interference might send hundreds plummeting. And yet the true dangers lie aboard: rabble-rousing ruffians, always eager for a fight.”

I almost laugh. What would Instructor think if she saw me now? Riggers
do
want to fight, but at least it's for a cause.
Our
cause.

“So where'd they take Kane?” Hep asks.

“The Independent High Council,” says Livia.

Shocked—
she knew all along—
I glare at her. Her back, unfortunately. I wouldn't be surprised if she was smiling.

“The Hickie? Riggers aren't even allowed in Indra, let alone the Council building.”

“It wasn't his choice,” she says.

“Goddamn Idiots Holding Court!” Durley yells.

“Where exactly?” I say to Livia.

“High Security Detainment,” she says. “Anything more than that, we'll have to find out from the inside.”

“You get the others,” Hep tells Durley. We lose the PCF as Hep directs us toward the center of the rig. It won't take them long to find us again, so we can't waste the time we've bought ourselves.