Behind the wall, the child stared at the glowing flower as yellow light burst through the cracks and holes. Underneath the sounds of heavy breathing from the three figures, a faint hum vibrated through the air.
“Where’s the child?”
Dirt and small pebbles pelted Lilly’s motionless body as a gust of wind pushed its way through the broken city. The dirt began to hide her body. It was as if the Fringe had already begun to consume her. Sensing the jaws of the landscape closing on her, she jumped up, disoriented, and reached for her gun.
Gun’s still there.
She frantically aimed it in every direction, but there was no one, just the two dead Fringers and the transport.
I’m alive.
She saw that her bag was gone, which was expected, and realized her arm felt much lighter as well. Ripp’s Pigeon was gone too.
Ripp’s gonna kill me.
Lilly looked at the sky and figured she had been unconscious for less than an hour. She was grateful for there being plenty of daylight left, but more so for being alive. The crack in her visor worried her. She could feel the cool Fringe air coming through the crack when she inhaled. She checked her pockets for an anti-rad syringe and found one. Exposure to the Theonium radiation didn’t mean immediate effects, but she didn’t want to start losing her mind at such a young age.
Lilly turned towards the transport and bent over in pain. Her entire body felt like it had been run over. Nausea hit her hard nearly causing her to fill her mask with vomit. The thought of what that would be like for the next few hours was enough to suppress the urge. She managed to get to the transport and grabbed the side rail. After taking a few long breaths, she hit the side plate with both her fists and screamed at the sky. How could she let someone sneak up on her? This was supposed to be her decisive moment. She painfully hopped in the transport and sat there with her eyes closed, waiting for a little relief. She knew there was no way to get out of this one.
The transport jerked forward as she entered the ignition code.
Thank goodness for ignition codes.
Luckily, the wind hadn’t had enough time to erase her tracks completely, so she would be able to follow them back to Nucrea without needing Ripp’s Pigeon.
Yeah, he’s gonna kill me!
After a mile, she spotted a second set of tracks that veered off into a slightly different direction. Excitement, but more importantly vengeance, filled every cell in her body as she changed her course. She had the painkiller she needed.
Five
Bale, nearly out of breath and bleeding from a wound on his arm, barely dodged rifle fire as he rushed around a corner into an alleyway. He hadn’t been paying attention to the streets and ended up at a dead end. He threw his hands up in frustration, realizing he had gone the wrong way.
“You have to be kidding me! Shit!”
He checked the magazine in his handgun, already knowing it was empty, and tossed the gun in a pile of trash near one of the corner. He knew there was no way to change what was going to happen next, so he turned around to face his pursuers and raised his hands.
The soldiers rushed around the corner ready to fire. They approached him, ready yelling commands at him that he didn’t seem to hear.
Bale tried to make sense of how the Elites showed up to the armory so fast, and the only thing that made sense was someone had to have tipped Kurth off. The plan to take the armory was solid. Kurth and his Elites were scheduled for security detail at the Consulate inauguration, and there was no way they could have responded that fast.
He said nothing as they bound him and flipped him over. One of his closest friends had betrayed them all.
Kurth charged around the corner, and as he approached, two soldiers squared Bale’s body to face him. Without hesitation, Kurth pointed his pistol at Bale’s chest and fired.
Bale collapsed, but not out of pain. The only pain he felt right then was that of betrayal. It wasn’t just that his closest friend betrayed him and the rest of the insurgents, but his closest friend had betrayed humankind all together. His heart broken, he thought about his children, his friends, and his sister, who would now be the only hope to stop the Council’s plan to enslave Nucrea.
Kurth squatted down in front of Bale. “You know, you don’t seem like the kind to talk, but I’m going to have fun trying.”
Six
The blue glow of the crystalline holo-desk’s surface and Commander An Yeong’s stolid expression were the only things visible through his fortieth floor window. Yeong looked out at Nucrea, the last city on earth, and watched as people pushed past one another, hurrying off to what they thought was important. He knew that the city’s once humble heartbeat had changed.
Yeong’s office was dramatically simple. The cold concrete walls were bare except where steel beams ran up the corners and disappeared into the high ceiling. The dark metallic tiled floor was spotless and seemed to devour the light coming from the window. The only furniture was the blue crystalline holo-desk that displayed multiple camera views and digital data from around the city. This single desk gave him the information he needed to keep Nucrea under his control, but that control was now slipping.
His younger son, Chul, stood patiently behind him. Chul was dressed in the traditional black and deep red garb of a newly appointed Consul. His lean figure complimented the closely tailored suit.
“I am proud of you, Chul.”
Chul shifted his weight to one side and ran his fingers through his hair.
“Thank you, Father. I promise that I will bring our family honor.”
“I know you will.”
Chul hesitated to say what he was thinking, but he could feel his father’s annoyance building with his hesitation.
“I have not known the Council to be so impatient with you. Are they really that concerned about the uprisings?”
“It is the appearance of disorder that they are concerned with. They depend on me to control this city. The armory being attacked, whether it was successful or not, shows that this city is not under control.”
“There have been rebellions before, and you have always stopped them,” Chul added, as he remembered the previous attack on the agricultural blocks.
“That is the problem son, and there will always be these types of revolts until the neural embedding is successful,” Yeong said.
Chul moved closer and stood behind his father.
“You need to understand the people rule. The council knows this. This is what they are afraid of, and it’s the reason why it is imperative that the integration work. Because, until there is a system that controls the people, and keeps them from destroying themselves, there will always be chaos. There will always be uprisings. There will always be unnecessary death,” Yeong said as he paused, turned, and put his hands on Chul’s shoulders.
“I understand father,” Chul reaffirmed.
Yeong straightened Chul’s collar, then put his hand over the silver pin that signified him as a member of the city’s Consulate, and smiled.
“I understand that making the right decisions sometime seem like the wrong one, but this is necessary for humanity. After the Fissure, this family built this city from nothing, We sacrificed so that we might have a chance to survive, and here we are facing the same decision.”