***
I met Blythe on one of the hottest days of the year 4008. Even though we’d just had snow the day before, the temperature is now a blazing 110 degrees in Atlanta, and Georgia’s characteristic humidity is at an all-time high. It is a sign of the times we live in—melted snow streaming down the street in slushy chunks as people in tank tops, shorts, and sandals saunter the sidewalk covered in a glistening sheen of sweat.
I’d give anything to be wearing shorts right now, but I can’t let my legs show. The linen pants I’m wearing are thin, but everything feels like a turtleneck and a pair of corduroys in this heat. I’m walking through a well-to-do neighborhood in northern Atlanta, heading toward a safe house for Bios I’m sharing with about fifteen other people. The safe house is run by an old man we call Pops, and he is not one of us. He lost most of his family in the blasts and just wants to help in any way he can. Little do we know that on this day, the hottest day of 4008, we will lose our only friend and protection from the world in a raid.
It is because of this raid that I encounter a girl with a bionic eye, who sits on the lawn in front of a sprawling, three story house with a white picket fence, crying as she stares down the barrel of a gun. Somehow, everything else ceases to exist in that moment. The groceries I’m carrying fall to the ground and the paper sacks rip, spilling the contents across the pavement. I faintly register the smell of fire and smoke coming from deeper in the neighborhood, and in my mind I know they’ve discovered our safe house and possibly several others.
Families line the street, many of them crying and screaming as MPs cart off their loved ones, shoving them into the back of the hovercrafts lining the street. These crafts are headed for Stonehead and everyone knows once you go in, there is no coming out.
Why this one girl should pull on my heart strings when there are others suffering nearby, I am not sure. Maybe it’s because of the three bodies strewn across the lawn behind her; two adults and a child no older than five, all dead. Maybe it’s because instead of arresting her for due process, three jackass MPs are taunting her over just having killed her family, and threatening to kill her for fighting back as they dragged her from the house.
As I run to her, she looks up and her eyes connect with mine. I know I have to save her.
It all happens so fast. Within the span of a minute, I’ve kicked loose one of the boards of the white picket fence and used it as a weapon against the three MPs. Despite my broken past, this is the first time I will ever kill. I feel no remorse as I shove the pointed fencepost through the face shield of the last officer standing, feel no pity as his blood bathes my neck and shoulders. I feel only primal satisfaction for finally fighting back.
I am tired of running.
The girl is in the fetal position on the ground, clutching dead child against her chest and sobbing in a way I’ve never heard anyone sob before. The sound will haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.
By now we’ve caught the attention of others, who have seen what I’ve done. A riot breaks out on the street, with Bios fighting alongside their families, desperate to save themselves and each other, tired of taking shit from the government.
In the midst of the fray is Blythe, broken, beaten and grieving, lying in the grass like a kicked puppy, waiting to die.
I won’t let her.
I scoop her into my arms and lay her over my lap as I straddle the seat of an unattended hover bike. Somehow we make it out of the neighborhood alive and to another safe house I know about across town. Blythe sits and stares off into space for two days without moving or speaking. The woman who runs the safe house, Mae, bathes her and changes her clothes. She tries to coax her to eat or drink, but she won’t. She doesn’t speak. All she can tell us is that her name is Blythe and that her family was murdered right in front of her.
It is on that third day, when the MP’s raids sweep the city in our direction, that I remember the Professor’s card in my wallet. There is talk of a revolution, a resistance, an organization started by the very man who created us. I don’t know if the rumors are true, but if Jenica Swan can be believed, contacting the Professor will provide me with a safe haven.
On the fourth day, I smuggle her out of the safe house and into the trunk of Mae’s car. She’s agreed to get us as far West as she can, to get us as close to our rendezvous point with Jenica Swan as she can. We arrive in Oklahoma without incident, where we meet up with another group of Bios headed in the same direction. Weeks later we arrive in Nevada, where we rendezvous with the co-founder of the Resistance. She ushers us on board a hovercraft with twenty others and flies us out over the painted dessert.
As far as the rest of the world is concerned, we are never seen or heard from again.