This is not a city at all.
It’s a camp.
In the middle of the desert. A desert that looks not too dissimilar from the landscape that surrounds the compound.
A dozen or so people flutter through the maze of tents and fold-up tables. Some stop to stare at me like I’m an alien visiting from another planet. Most are too busy to notice me.
I once received an upload about the ancient cultures of our world. Savages, the upload called them. Long before technology and science and modern amenities, there were people who lived like this. In tents. With no climatization. No power. No sturdy walls to keep intruders out.
I can feel how hot the air is. I can see it in the damp clothing of the passersby, the sheen of sweat on their foreheads and necks. But inside, my body is still frozen. How can I possibly be this cold in the middle of the desert?
So many questions filter through my mind at once.
What is this place?
Who are these people?
Before I can take another step into their strange, primitive village, the barrel of a shotgun is thrust against my right temple. Out of the corner of my eye, I can just make out the weapon’s owner: a tall man with green eyes and a tired, pinched face.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he barks at me.
“Jase,” Lyzender says, pushing the gun from my head. “It’s fine. She’s with me. I’m taking her to the war tent.”
“Why isn’t she cuffed?”
Lyzender chuckles. “She’s not going anywhere.”
I almost laugh at his ignorance. At his blind trust. Dr. A was right. Faith does make people stupid. If Lyzender thinks I have any loyalty to him—that I won’t run from this place the moment I find the right window—then he’s put his faith in the wrong person.
Jase looks unconvinced. Smart man.
“I’ll take her there and escort her right back.” Lyzender’s patience is dwindling. “She won’t leave my sight.”
Has he completely lost his mind? Does he not remember how fast I can run? How strong I am? What makes him think he could stop me if I wanted to leave? The only reason I’m still standing here is because I choose to be.
The man stands firm, shaking his head. “No can do. Boss’s orders. The girl is to remain in this tent.”
“I don’t take orders from your boss,” Lyzender sneers.
“And I don’t take orders from you.”
I glance around the camp, searching for guard towers or borders, but for some reason I can’t seem to see past the next row of tents. When I try to focus on the horizon, my vision swims and smudges. Like I’m looking through a dirty window.
I blink hard. What is wrong with my eyes?
I can hear Kaelen’s voice in my head, telling me what to do.
Don’t wait.
Run, Sera. Get help. Count your steps, remember landmarks, and lead us back there.
He’s right. I don’t know who is in charge of this camp, but I can’t wait around to find out. I have to get back to the compound. This is my chance to be a hero in Dr. A’s eyes. To prove my redemption once and for all.
After this, he’ll never be able to doubt my devotion to the Objective again. He’ll never be able to look at me like I’m a traitor. He’ll see me as he sees Kaelen. A confidante. A friend. A daughter.
Lyzender is still arguing with Jase. Would this man shoot me if I ran? Would he even be able to hit me?
It depends on how good his aim is. How fast his reflexes are.
Not that I wouldn’t heal if he does turn out to be a good shot.
I gauge my best route, quickly determining it’s behind me, around the back of this tent, which appears to be positioned at the far edge of the camp. I blink again in frustration but something still seems to be malfunctioning with my vision.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter. Once I get back to the compound, the scientists will be able to fix whatever’s wrong with me.
I need to devise a distraction first. Something to divert Lyzender and Jase’s attention and give me a head start. Just in case that hover they transported me on is still lurking around the camp somewhere. It shouldn’t make a difference, though. With my speed, by the time they’re able to get to it and start the engine, I’ll be a mirage on the rippling desert horizon.
But a head start never hurt anyone.
I eye the small rickety table beside me, next to a chair I’m assuming Jase was occupying before our exit. On the table sits a jug of water, a plate of what appears to be browned meat, and an ancient communication device that my sluggish brain is telling me is called a walkie-talkie.
I take a deep breath, steeling myself for the challenge.
I hold Kaelen’s bright blue-green eyes in my mind. This is what he’d want me to do. I’m sure of it.
His voice is back in my head, counting in Russian the way he always does when we start a challenge course in the training dome.
The training dome.
The compound.
Home.
I’ll be home soon.
Odin, dva, tri!
I kick out one foot, knocking the table over with a splash and a clatter. As expected, Lyzender and Jase both startle and look to my left. I duck right, around the back of the tent, and take off.
Into the desert.
Into the unknown.
Toward redemption.
36
LEADER
I only make it a few steps before my lungs start to burn. I cough up hot, angry air. My legs tremble beneath me and I can tell from the passing scenery that I’m not moving very fast. I will my body to speed up. To run like only Kaelen and I can.
But it refuses to cooperate.
I’m still shivering but now I’m sweating as well. Sweating from the effort. From the heat. From the frustration.
What is happening to me?
I stop to catch my breath—something I’ve only ever seen people do on the Feed shows. My chest feels as though it’s on fire. Fighting for oxygen. I rest my hands on my knees, panting wildly. I turn and look back to see if anyone is following me. I think I see silhouettes in the distance but my vision only blurs again. Everything melts together until I’m squinting at nothing but a smudged canvas of colors.
Keep going! I hear Kaelen’s voice in my head. Keep running!
He’s right. I don’t know what’s happening to my body, but I can’t stop.
I turn my back to the camp and will my legs to move again. They reluctantly oblige. My lungs scream with every step. My thundering heart protests in my chest.
My feet slow, dragging heavily beneath me, until I’m barely shuffling through the desert dirt.
And then I collapse.
Hitting the ground hard.
Feeling the collision everywhere.
When I wake up, I’m dizzy and my head is throbbing. I’m back inside a tent. A different one. It’s much larger and with better appointments. From the bed I’m lying on, I can see a large table in the center, littered with various maps and documents printed on real paper.
If I didn’t know any better, I would think I had transessed two hundred years into the past. But my transession gene is gone. Dr. A made sure of that.
My whole body aches when I attempt to sit up, and I quickly find that my hands are bound to the bed frame with a pair of heavy handcuffs that feel like they’re made from real metal, not the lightweight synthetics.
I blink the room into focus and see Lyzender standing by the entrance. He ducks his head out the flap and calls, “She’s awake.”
A moment later a woman strolls in. She’s tall and slender with skin slightly darker than mine and thick, black hair that’s been braided down her back. She’s dressed in a simple pair of green pants and a soiled gray T-shirt. The sleeves have been torn off, exposing muscular arms and bronzed shoulders. Her skin is covered in markings. Not nanotats, but old-fashioned ink tattoos. The kind that are etched into your skin forever.
Even without spotting the small red crescent moo
n on the inside of her right palm, I recognize this woman from the Feed footage I watched in my hotel room.
Jenza Paddok.
The woman Director Raze promised me wasn’t a threat.
I wonder what he’d say if he knew she’d successfully kidnapped me from right under his nose.
She’s less polished than the woman I saw on my wall screen. A layer of grime and sweat almost baked into her skin. I can’t help thinking that she would be pretty if it weren’t for the animosity weighing down her features.
“Hello, Seraphina.” I place her voice right away. She was with me in the hovercopter when they injected my veins with liquid fire.
“It’s just Sera,” I mumble.
She shares a quick glance with Lyzender before grabbing a chair from the table and straddling it. “As you wish, Sera.”
“I don’t think any of this is what I wish,” I snarl.
Paddok turns to Lyzender. “Will you give us a moment alone?”
Lyzender stiffens, his eyes darting between us.
“I’ll be quick,” she assures him.
Reluctantly, he exits the tent, but I’m certain he hasn’t gone far. My body heaves with a barrage of nasty coughs. It reminds me of the horrific sound Lyzender made when the transession gene was slowly killing him.
“Yeah, about that.” Paddok offers me a cloth handkerchief but I refuse it and wipe the spittle from my mouth with my shoulder. “We had to take precautions to avoid”—she pauses and smiles—“well, what just happened.”
Precautions?
“What did you do to me?”
“Don’t worry. It’s only temporary. A little concoction devised by a member of my team to dull your enhancements. An inhibitor of sorts. Essentially, it’s keeping you sick and blocking your body’s natural ability to heal itself.” She lets out a soft laugh. “Welcome to the real world. It’s flux, isn’t it?”
“You turned me into a Normate?” I say it with such disgust I surprise even myself.
Paddok barks out an empty laugh. “Is that what Alixter calls us? It certainly has a nice ring to it.”
There it is. Just for a flicker of a moment, I see behind her façade. I see her loathing for the man who created me.
“Anyway, you should be grateful that’s all we did to you. Jase wanted to kill you and Feedcast it live.”
I fight back a shudder. If Kaelen had to watch me die on a wall screen, he’d lose himself.
“He can be a bit dramatic,” Paddok adds. “I, on the other hand, feel that you could be much more useful in other ways. Namely, getting us onto the Diotech compound.”
“Well, you’re wrong. It’s a fortress. Even I don’t know how to get in.”
She smiles. “We’ll see about that. I imagine Alixter will be pretty anxious to get his precious science experiment back.”
“So that’s your big plan?” I mock. “To use me to gain access to the compound? Then what? A few shotguns aren’t going to stand up against Raze’s security force.”
She chooses not to respond to this. Instead, she says, “So, Lyzender tells me that you two used to be something of an item. Is that true?”
I turn my gaze to the ceiling. If she won’t answer my question, there’s no reason for me to answer hers.
“It’s why he persuaded me not to lock you up.” She nods toward my restraints. “I hope you’ll forgive my change of heart.”
When I don’t speak, she goes on. “He also seems to think that given enough time here with us, you might actually come around. Join our side.”
“I’ll never join your side,” I spit, breaking my vow of silence.
She sighs. “That’s exactly what I told him. But he has this crazy notion that somewhere deep inside of you, there’s a real person. With morals and a conscience and all that fancy stuff.”
If she’s hoping to get a reaction from me, she’s going to be disappointed.
“I warned him though,” she continues, “that you’re a product of Diotech. That evil and corruption run in your blood. Quite literally. He refuses to believe me. He still thinks there’s something redeemable about you.”
Without my permission, my eyes drift to the entrance of the tent.
“I have to say,” Paddok goes on, “I admire his faith. Even if I don’t agree with it. I guess we all need to believe in something, right? It gives us a reason to get up in the morning. Something to fight for.”
When I don’t say anything, she stands and returns the chair to the table. Then she sticks her head out the flap and beckons Lyzender back inside. “Return her to the medical tent, will you? Our strategy meeting starts in an hour.”
37
OFF-LINE
The last time my hands were bound was in the year 1609, when the townspeople of London believed I was a witch and arrested me. I had shown my special abilities in public. I had moved faster than their eyes could keep up with.
I had done it to save Lyzender.
And it landed me in prison. On trial for my life, and eventually, on a stake being burned alive.
That should have been my first clue right there. That should have alerted me to the fact that being with him is not safe. That it is not my true purpose.
But it didn’t.
I was too far over the edge to recognize the dangers of loving him.
I won’t make that mistake twice.
He doesn’t hold on to my shackles as he guides me through the camp. He must know I’m not going to try to run away again. Not when the truth has been revealed to me and this debilitating poison is coursing through my blood, keeping me weak.
The bottom line is, I need another plan.
“So,” I say to him, jogging slightly to walk by his side. The minimal effort leaves me winded. “Are you going to tell me how you got here?”
He flashes me a sideways look. “Whatever do you mean?” There’s a playfulness mixed in with his acidic tone.
“Last time I saw you was in the year 2032. You were dying in a bed in Cody’s town house.”
He lets out a biting laugh. “I bet that pleased you, huh?”
“What? Of course not.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. Before I can analyze where they’re coming from.
But it’s evident to me now that they’re coming from the past. From the girl who stood by his bedside weeping over his frail body, wondering if she would ever see him alive again.
Not the girl I am now.
He kicks a rock with the tip of his shoe. “Right.” His sarcasm hangs in the air, swirling into the dust that’s being roused by our footsteps.
I open my mouth to protest but to be honest, I don’t know how to handle this brooding, rancorous boy I’ve never met before. The hopeless romantic spouting devotion and poetry? I had prepared myself for that. I had spent the last year building up a tolerance to it.
But this?
I just don’t know what to say.
So I settle for the truth.
“I certainly didn’t feel that way then,” I admit softly.
He stops and faces me. “And now?”
I try to turn away but he grabs my chin and forces me to look at him. “No,” he asserts, “you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to avoid me. Not anymore.”
I tremble at his touch. It warms my glacial skin. For a moment, the shivers stop and I feel my blood heat again. Then his hand falls away and the cold front returns.
“And now what?” he asks. “You’d step over my dead body and keep on walking?”
I shake my head. Hoping it’s enough. Knowing that it’s not.
“What?” he demands.
“I…”
He bends to meet my downcast eyes. “You?”
“I … don’t want you dead.”
He tips his head back and laughs. “You don’t want me dead? Really? How sweet. That’s touching.”
I shut my eyes tight, berating myself.
What kind of an answer is that?
It’s a truthful one, sure. But it’
s not a complete one. I don’t want to see him die. I don’t want to see anyone die. I just don’t want him here. With me. Touching me with those hands. Challenging me with those eyes.
I want him in the past where he belongs.
He keeps walking. I assume I’m expected to follow him so I do. The day is almost over. The sun is starting to set. As we pass through the camp, people stop what they’re doing to watch us. To watch me.
I’m the anomaly. The one who doesn’t fit in. The high-value prisoner whose face has been on every streamwork. On the cover of every DigiMag.
No one speaks to me. I wonder if they’ve been ordered not to.
I silently count them as we walk by. Twenty-two that I can see.
The conversation between Dr. A and Director Raze filters back through my mind.
“Child’s play,” was Dr. A’s reaction to the size of Jenza’s nonexistent army.
I wonder what he’d think of her now that she’s managed to take me prisoner.
We’ve reached the tent on the far side of the camp. The one I woke up in. I now see the small white cross on the front, labeling it as a medical facility. Although the word facility is a stretch. The only things inside are a bed, a table, and a few outdated medical supplies that I somehow failed to notice when I was here before. I have a vague recollection of these supplies from my short stay in the hospital in the year 2013. My brain stretches to access the correct names for each instrument: stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, thermometer. Devices that have become obsolete since the invention of nanosensors.
I recall my nurse, Kiyana, fitting the stethoscope into her ears, pressing the cold plate against my chest. Waiting. Listening.
The memory of her causes me to ache a little. She was the first person to treat me like a human being. Not a miracle. Not a freak.
It suddenly hits me that these are all manual tools. Nothing that requires power or a SkyServer sync.
“She’s gone completely off-line. Shut down all devices. There’s no way to track her unless she turns something on.”
She’s staying off Diotech’s radar.