Force

Bearers Burden

  The light in my face makes it impossible to see any details of the room.

  I’ve been laid out on my back and strapped to a table. The only sound is the whoosh of controlled air. And me, grunting as I fight the restraints.

  Suddenly something in the wall near the corner moves. Only it’s not the wall, but a person moving past the cracked wall.

  This can’t be good, I think, watching as the dark figure steps into the light that’s shining in my face. The person looks down at me, casting a deep shadow so I can’t make out the face, but a scratchy voice fills my ears.

  “Where did you come from?”

  My legs are tied together, but I thrash and struggle, hoping to loosen the bands. Whatever binds them is very strong.

  “There was no breach in our perimeter. No abandoned transport. So, how did get here? Who sent you?”

  I can tell by the force in his voice that he’s someone who’s used to having people obey, no questions asked. My response—my spitting in his face—is sufficient to say that I’m not one who conforms.

  It’s kind of disgusting that my mucus hitting his eye doesn’t faze him. He swipes away as he talks, continuingly looking down and keeping my blind to the identity of my company.

  “You’re human, yet have no inhibitors, so you aren’t one of us. And no modifications—no tracker—so you aren’t one of them, either.”

  I’m seriously considering spitting at him again, but then he shoots to the left side of the table and starts unfastening the strap on my forearm. It’s the young man, the one who looks like Enanda. ‘Arlen,’ is what the man called him. “If you want my help, I need to know whose side you’re on.”

  This throws me and I swallow down the loogey. “Mine.”

  “You told Enanda you were a Bearer, but the High Counsel has never heard of you. They’ve ordered us to hand you over. But you also brought us seeds. No one out here has seeds.”

  His hands have stopped moving. I’m still tied up. “I don’t like authority, especially when that authority beats and ties me up for no damn reason.”

  “Whose side are you on?” His hands are holding onto my restraints, waiting for me to give the right answer.

  Seems to me the right answer is to offer aid for aid, even if they’ve already taken my only bargaining chip. My stomach aches as I think, authority. Speak with authority.

  “I don’t know anything about inhibitors or modifications. Obviously, I’m not from around here and take no sides. I was lost up there and came across your sister. She offered help, I took it and repaid ten times over. If you let go, you can keep the oranges.”

  “Where did you come from?” Arlen asks again.

  “From very far away, from another group of people in another plane.”

  “Another plain?” He gasps. “How many are there?”

  “Too many.”

  Arlen is quiet for a moment, his hands stay stuck on the wide band over my forearm and wrist. “What are they like?”

  I consider for a moment how to describe the people in my world, how they would seem to the people over here: self-seeking and entitled, yet gullible and still occasionally heroic. “How do you mean, in what way?”

  “There were rumors about other plains and people... but the ones we’ve sent searching never come back. Some say because the lands beyond are so beautiful that the travelers can’t bring themselves to leave.” He pauses and then looks me in the eye. “You have trees there?”

  I nod. “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “Thousands.”

  Arlen draws his hands back, repeating the word like it’s made of gold. “Thousands of ball fruit.”

  “They’re called oranges.” I correct, and add, “We have different types of trees that grow different fruits; like apples and pears, nuts, too.”

  “What is nuts?”

  It’s freaking miraculous that I manage to stave off the laughing fit. “A nut is a little crunchy, brown thing. It grows on trees inside a hard shell.”

  Arlen’s hand goes to his mouth. “Your people grow trees? And food?”

  “We call them Farmers.”

  “Will your Farmers help us?”

  I shake my head because he’s asking for the most basic thing and I don’t have an answer. “I don’t know.” Arlen must understand because his shoulders sink. So I add, “I’ll ask. It’s not a crime to ask for help.”

  More quickly than I expect, Arlen loosens the restraints on my arms. I sit up and find that it doesn’t matter if I’m free because the room is spinning.

  “Slowly. You are weary.”

  My throat swells as pieces of recycled bark and twig force their way out. Arlen jumps back from the spray, smiling. I gag and let it go. After my stomach has wholly ejected Enanda’s concoction, I rub my aching head and look down at the mess I’ve made, noticing most of my stomach pain has gone south. The throbbing pain grows the longer I sit up.

  I’m still in my rubber suit, I remember, thankful. That tea looks no worse for wear.

  Groping for my front pocket, I feel the lump of the Threestone, but it’s another, unexpected lump that stops me cold. Down between my legs where the abdominal pain is worst... is a tent. A raging, painful, hard-on.

  Arlen’s eyes follow mine. He looks on sympathetic. “It’s the Virilustea. It should wear off soon.”

  After wiping my mouth on my sleeve, another light comes on and I can tell that I’m not in a small room like I thought. It’s an alcove adjacent to a much larger area. Everything is new concrete mingled with old, cracked brick. The light is soft, unlike the painful rod between my legs. The air feels warm though I’m still bundled up in four layers of clothes so who the hell knows. I might actually be comfortable if I didn’t have nature’s Viagra coursing through me for subversive purposes. The image of Enanda’s flushed cheeks as she passed me the Virilustea makes me shudder. I loosen the bands on my legs and let my feet dangle from the side of the table I was strapped to.

  “While you were out, we took code samples. Our Multiplier says you have the cleanest DNA he’s ever seen.”

  “Of course you did.” Freedom has revived my penchant for sarcasm. “No one needs to ask me before doing anything to my person. What the hell is a multiplier?”

  The last word is drowned out by a loud rumble. The walls don’t appear to move, but I feel them shaking. The noise is encompassing. Consuming, it drills into my head with the force of a jackhammer. My temples drum like a marching band is using my skull for practice sessions. I rub each side, trying to counter the pressure of the vibrating room.

  When the sound stops, I ask, “What was that?”

  Arlen has washed white, moving to the wall he presses another strange lock—a Biolock—on a closed door. “They’re back.”

  I take my free hand and press it to my chest, double-checking that the stones are still there. “What was that noise?”

  The door behind him changes from brick to metal and slides open like a pocket door. Arlen steps to my bedside and hands me my backpack, explaining. “A sonic cannon; their favorite weapon.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The Breeders.” He mutters bitterly and all I can think is, ‘like the band?’

  But this is no time for dumb questions as Arlen helps me from the table and I swear all the blood in my body rushes to my cock like it’s trying to morph into a giant third leg. Sounds awesome, I know, but it’s not. It fucking hurts.

  I’m limping as Arlen leads out a door and down a long corridor. We pass several passage ways with stairwells leading down.

  “Where are we going?” I need to get back to the surface. I need to get the hell out of here.

  Arlen doesn’t answer. Maybe because it’s too noisy. We hustle down the corridor and into another. I find my strength, keeping one hand pressed to the heavy pain in my groin.

  Arlen starts talking as other greasy-haired people file into the hall in front and behind us. Most are in white a
rmored suits that remind me of police riot gear. The shapes are all round and smooth like storm troopers, but not as cool. I’m too shocked to take in anything that Arlen is saying, but that doesn’t stop me from asking questions about what kind of place he lives in.

  “The war started about a hundred years ago.” He pauses at a cement portico that looks down into a vast room filled with groups of tables and chairs. People down there are moving like ants. “The survivors were stuck underground for years, waiting for the dust to settle. When there’s no sun to count the time who can keep track?”

  Arlen goes down the steps on our right, leading through the room labeled ‘Community’ and relaying the state of the icy world I’ve stepped into. He isn’t sure how the war started or why, but from the sound of it, it was global and all-out nuclear. Nations destroyed one another and then fought over remaining resources.

  As Arlen describes the war that ended all wars, he leads. I follow, listening closely and realizing for the very first time—the place I’m standing in is not my America. It’s a nameless refuge in an ice desert remotely ruled by an eight member council and populated by people whose DNA is so broken down, they implant everyone with inhibitors to stop the symptoms of mental disease, then modify their behavior and sometimes their biology to make them capable of reproduction.

  There’s nothing normal left. It’s a continent covered in ice, scarred land burning through an endless nuclear winter.

  “Most of us were modeled here. Except my father. As a youth, he came from the Breeders but was labeled an Outlier and expelled from the last city. A Mole found him in the snow and brought him here. He was too young for interrogation. They say he had an honest face. But I think they let him in because he was healthy, and this outpost was depleted by disease at the time. And my father had knowledge they found helpful.”

  Another boom shakes the walls and Arlen pushes me into a crouch beside him. His worn shirt is missing a sleeve and his bicep is near the same size as my wrist.

  “Brace for sonic blast!” Someone yells and everyone around us stoops, too, leaning into the shaky walls. When the trembling stops, I follow Arlen through another portico, to the base of a staircase, listening as he talks. It’s like he doesn’t even care about the sonic blasting, or maybe he just needs the distraction. I know I do.

  So I keep listening as he talks of the Outliers—these underground people who are also called Moles—most recent efforts to repopulate, hence the High Councils call for Seed Bearers. People with the least modified, most usable DNA.

  Usually, people are cloned because in the time Arlen has been alive—twenty years, he says, but he looks fifteen at most—only a handful people have been found capable of old-fashioned reproduction; his sister, Enanda, being one of them.

  That makes my stomach turn to ash. The throbbing ache between my legs shrivels at the thought.

  She’s a child.

  Arlen tells dark tales of environmental engineering experiments that poisoned and killed many people. But he says the Breeders have perfected climate control with MoGen; the nickname of a massive atmospheric generator that’s used to keep the controlled cities and farmlands snow free and sunny while Outlier camps, like this one, are deemed unfit. Some members of the population are considered unfit for survival and cast out of MoGen territories. Most freeze to death before they find help.

  “The ones that make it here usually end up dead, too.” Arlen whispers. “We die fighting.”

  “Fighting what?” I ask, as Arlen reaches the top of the next set of steps and throws open a hatch.

  When I step through, I find that we are outside. The daylight is offensive, reflecting off the crystal white snow, blinding me. I strap on my hood and secure it in place to keep the sudden cold from stealing my breath.

  Arlen pats a white wall of snow the bare skin of his arm is already red. “Stay behind this blind until it’s safe to depart. Get word to your farmers as fast as you can.”

  Just past the edge of the wall meant to hide us, white oval shapes hover over the icy terrain, reflecting the rising sun. I hear the whir of their engines. Areas hit with the sonic waves are easy to spot. It looks like someone has taken a giant shovel and pounded down the snow. They’re a hundred yards or so off, and I wonder about the tunnels that were directly beneath the charges.

  How can Arlen, who looks more boy than man, be so calm?

  And I don’t know what it is that wells on the inside of me—definitely not the Virilustea. Probably pity peppered with insanity—but I turn back to look him straight in the eye.

  “I’m going to help you fight.” I declare, and for some damned reason, I mean it.

  Arlen’s smile is no better than his sisters—gray teeth too big for his malnourished face. He reaches behind his back and pulls off a strap from around his shoulder. At the end of his strap is an oblong looking barrel, an odd-shaped shotgun with a wide stock.

  “It’s not the most accurate, you know because the barrel was warped and we had to cut—”

  “It’ll do.” I take the gun and set the strap on my shoulder.

  The snow beneath our feet begins to shake. We both peak around the edge of our enclosure to watch a grouping of hovercrafts shooting lights into the snow. The ground beneath them grumbles and breaks apart, collapsing in patches.

  “You’ve got to evacuate. Now.” When he doesn’t respond I turn around, finding only the sealed hatch door beside me. He’s gone back down. I pull at the lever on the edge of the door, but it won’t budge.

  Alone in the snow, clutching the pouch with the stones, I feel a little like Gollum, always wanting to touch the Precious. I could take them out right now. Let them suck the energy from this place and I’d be home in less than a minute. In a warm place with trees and sunlight, where there aren’t any people living like gophers, breeding like rats, and hoping for the strength of numbers to turn the war-tide in their favor.

  And if I did that, then what? Their back-up generator switches on? These people probably don’t have a back-up anything. Absorbing their power is the same as killing them myself. That makes me no better than the guys in the hovercrafts, blasting their walls with sonic waves.

  Stepping out from behind the snow wall, I break into a run.