By some sort of cosmic miracle, I made it back to my quarters unseen and unchallenged. I sat down on my bed. I stood back up. I paced back and forth, unable to stay still for more than a few seconds. Part of me wanted to cry out in despair—I had finally discovered my best friend’s fate—only to watch her be sentenced to death once again. Most of me, however, was as numb as usual. No weakness, I had to keep telling myself. No fear. There’s nothing you can do.
Letting a frustrated groan explode from my lips, I flopped down on my bed and kicked off my canvas boots. Something sharp jabbed into my foot. It was the card the bearded man had dropped at the demonstration. I casually scooped it up and curled over into the fetal position so the camera in the corner couldn’t record me as I began to examine it. The card was flat, white, and impossibly thin to the point of semi-translucence, but it wasn’t made of paper. I tried to crease it, but it continued to retain its original shape, smoothing itself out like a still pool of water wherever I disturbed the surface. I did this over and over for several minutes, trying to reveal its secret. There was no doubt about it; the man wanted me to have it.
“Why?” I said out loud, running one hand through my tangled hair. “Why did you drop it?”
Hello.
The word appeared on the card almost as soon as my own words had left my mouth. It wasn’t a printed word, as with ink, it was just… a word, floating animatedly on the center of the card. I flipped it over and sure enough, I could see the same image in reverse. It was like a hologram of sorts, hovering just above the surface.
“Um… hello?” I kept my voice low and hollow, all too aware of the monitoring systems that were probably hidden in the walls of my cell.
Did they punish you?
My eye widened to the size of plates. The card was actually talking to me! I racked my brain for all logical solutions; the only one I could come up with was that someone, the bearded man, maybe, could hear me and was transmitting responses. I looked over my shoulder again, paranoid.
“No,” I half-whispered.
Good.
I didn’t know how to respond to that, but I didn’t have to. More words began filling the card, appearing smaller and smaller so that they could all fit on the few inches of space:
We are going to rescue you. I came to the demonstration to have a look at the facility. Do not panic. You will be safe. Do not speak to anyone about this rescue.
So it was the bearded man transmitting the messages. Or it’s a trap, I couldn’t help consider. I wouldn’t put it past the Executive to set something up this elaborate just to have an excuse to punish me. Or simply just be done with me and have me executed. Every fiber of my being wanted to believe what I was reading, though. The tiny flame of hope had been kindled, and even the rational part of me didn’t have the heart to snuff it out.
“How?”
I had to wait half a minute for the response, heart pounding. This card has tracking capabilities. Meet my group one hour after facility curfew in the large training room. We will have to fight our way back out. Be ready.
“Why?” I repeated quietly. “Who are you? Why not rescue the others?”
You have unique gifts.
The bold black letters glared up at me from their bright surface, reminding me only too well of what I was… what they had made me. I was a weapon now, a weapon that couldn’t be defeated. If only that were true, I thought bitterly. My wounds might have healed near-instantly, but the fact that I was sitting in this cell proved my uselessness as anything more than a spectacle.
We are the Nightstalkers.
The words replaced the last sentence abruptly. Rebels. I opened my mouth to refuse, to tell the bearded man to call off the attempt, to leave me alone and to stop causing the deaths of innocent citizens all over the city. Something stopped me, though; perhaps it was the prospect of freedom, or the possibility of safety. Whatever it was, I shut my mouth and whispered that I would be waiting. Better a weapon with freedom than without, I considered silently, disregarding the risk.
Place this card on the floor, out of reach. It will self-destruct in ten seconds.
SELF-DESTRUCT?! I scrambled, feigning falling out of the bed for the camera, and shoved the card as far under the bed as I could manage. I used my body and my thin woolen blanket to shield the area as best as I could and squeezed my eyes shut, bracing myself. Nothing happened. I opened one eye just enough to see the card gently shrivel and fold up on itself until all that remained was a hard, synthetic sphere the size of a bean. I reached out to grab it, snatching my hand back when it burned my fingers instantly. I watched the skin bubble and roll like water on a windy day, healing the burned portion in just seconds. I waited for almost a whole minute before trying again; now it was merely warm to the touch.
I climbed back onto my bed, all too aware of how strange the whole ordeal must have looked on the camera and prayed that no one had been monitoring me too closely. I curled back up on the bed and examined the little ball. It was now hard, like glass, and opaque. I turned it over and over in my hands, wondering what to do with it. Something caught my eye: in tiny, almost illegible letters, the word “swallow” was printed around the center of the object. It took me a few moments to realize what it meant; this must have been the tracker, and I was supposed to swallow it to keep it near. I closed my eyes, tossed my head back, and let the tiny orb slide down my throat, shuddering at the warm, sickly feeling it gave me in my stomach. Now, all I had to do was wait for something to happen.
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I didn’t have to wait long; I lay peacefully on my bed for only half an hour before none other than my least favorite being in the entire universe made a grand entrance, accompanied by two helmeted Enforcers. The executive wore a different red tie today, a little more festive with thin white diagonal stripes. He smiled his snake’s smile when I rolled off my bed and got to my feet, hands clasped behind my back and feet shoulder width apart as I had been instructed to when any facilities staff made an unexpected all to my quarters.
“Ah, my sweet little pet project,” he cooed, assaulting me with those horribly icy eyes. “Unfortunately, we have no time for pleasantries today; we’re going on a little field trip.” With that, each Enforcer grabbed one of my arms and I was being frog-marched out of my room and down a corridor I had never been down before. The group was silent as I was led down several more corridors, then into a sturdy elevator. We exited after traveling for a full minute straight upward; since even the seventeen-story Dormitory elevator didn’t take that long, I could only guess that we were in the Spire, the tallest building in the entire city. If the Nightstalkers really plan on some kind of miraculous rescue, they better plan well, I thought as I was led through a pair of large glass doors into a huge dimly lit room surrounded almost entirely by heavily tinted floor-to-ceiling windows. The Spire stood precisely in the center of Solstice. To reach it, one had to get past the wall and three districts overflowing with Enforcers on constant alert. My hopes immediately fell, and more than just a little.
The room we entered seemed to be full of people, most of them Enforcers. Everyone’s attention was turned to a huge table in the center of the room, which was displaying a collage of projected images. I recognized Sam’s face in several pictures immediately, but most of the other pictures were strange to me. A huge, crumbling building being overgrown by thick green vines; a deserted street, pavement cracked and pitted; a man with a grey shock of hair and a long pink scar on his cheek and several more pictures of people I didn’t recognize. As soon as the Executive stepped up to the table, the room fell immediately silent.
“I’m sure everyone knows why I called this meeting,” he began, looking hard at every face in the room before beginning to circle the group slowly. “As we all very well know, our friend Number Two has been causing quite a bit of trouble recently. We’ve lost over a dozen prisoners to rebel raids in the last two weeks alone. Clearly our protecting force is inadequate—” The Executive’s icy stare rested on a barrel chested man who cleared his throat nervously, “—so we are going to go on the offensive. If Number Two wants more prisoners, we will give him much more than he bargained for.”
Most of the men chuckled rather menacingly and I began to understand the general feeling toward “Number Two.” I couldn’t help but wonder what he had done to foster such resentment; then again, I wasn’t in much of a position to wonder, considering my own situation. The Executive clearly enjoyed making enemies out of the smallest grudges. The barrel-chested man stepped up to the table and pulled up a large image of what looked like the City from a bird’s eye-view. The image included a huge grey area splotched with greens and blues and blacks beyond the wall. I felt a few butterflies flutter up in my stomach. I was seeing beyond the wall for the first time in my life! It was just a fuzzy picture of nothing, but it was a picture nonetheless. It was proof that something existed beyond Solstice.
The man in front of us began to lay out the plan for the evening. He drew lines and shapes on the image with his pointer finger, indicating attacking motions and defensive positions. The Enforcers all looked exhilarated at the thought of vaporizing a bunch of Rehabilitation subjects, as was to be expected. After the bombs went off, a force of fifty Enforcers was to move in and pick off any survivors, then get rid of any evidence. It all seemed pretty cut-and-dry; for the first time, I suddenly wondered why I was being forced to attend this meeting. It took the officer about a half an hour to detail the whole thing, taking a little extra time to assign teams and captains.
“Sir, we’ve gotten definite confirmation from our inside man that they are planning on raiding the party when it moves,” A thin, blading man with a beaklike nose stood up at the end of the other man’s briefing, getting nods of approval from everyone in the room.
“This all sounds good. I’ve only got one question…” A broad-shouldered Enforcer with a mop of blonde hair and a permanent scowl stepped forward, setting his helmet down on the table. “What’s the girl doing here?” He couldn’t have been much more than a year or so older than me, but his tone was clearly intended to make me feel like a little child. I turned to look him straight in the eye, glaring him down until he crossed his arms and looked away, toward the Executive, who now had his back to us and was gazing thoughtfully out of the center window. He didn’t answer for the longest time, letting the air thicken to an almost unbearable heaviness.
“The girl—” he copied the captain’s tone, throwing in his ever present venom to good effect, “—is going to accompany you on your little journey beyond the wall. Her abilities as a combat asset outside the training room are still untested. I think this would be the perfect opportunity to test how… useful… she is.” The Executive turned and leered at me, making my blood run cold. Whispers and murmurs broke out throughout the room. Several of the pot-bellied officers began to object with choice phrases like “men’s work” and “untrustworthy” paired with “women”. I forced myself to remain a blank slate, to hold my swirling thoughts and emotions inside.
I’m going outside the wall. I was all I could process. I’m leaving the city. And I’m going to watch Alicia die for real now. I swallowed, mouth dry. Suddenly, I wasn’t so eager to go beyond the wall.
“SILENCE!” The Executive’s face turned a slight shade of pink as he silenced his subordinates at the top of his lungs. I had never seen a room full of grown men—military men, at that—go quiet so quickly in my whole life. “There will be no questioning my judgement—ever!” A few of the men nodded apologetically; most people just looked at the floor. I forced myself to look straight ahead and show no fear—to show these men what I was capable of. “We will begin preparations for the ambush immediately. The party will leave the wall at sunset. Dismissed!” The Executive surveyed the room threateningly, daring anyone to challenge him again. No one did; with a great shuffling of papers and chairs, people began to hastily exit the room and pack themselves into the elevator, disappearing in groups of ten to twelve. I stood still, watching my Enforcer escorts out of the corner of my eye. They made no move to bring me back to my quarters, so I stayed put.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why I invited you to join our little gathering tonight.” The Executive gazed lazily at me and pressed a button on the underside of the table; the tint upon the glass disappeared with a click, momentarily blinding me. The early afternoon sun poured into the room from all directions, warming it almost instantly. Without the tint, I could see for miles out over the city; we must have been at least twenty-five stories in the air. The wall looked like nothing more than a large stone fence from here; beyond it, I could only see grey and green, though some kind of jagged shapes appeared to rise out of the western horizon. The city itself sparkled with late spring, green and busy. The artificial lake at the very center was the deepest shade of pure aqua I had ever encountered, ferried crossing back and forth like tiny white ducks. Each building simply glowed in the sunlight, huge glass windows throwing colorful, playful beams of light across the walkways and the lesser channels. I could almost hear the birds chirping as they darted from tree to tree in the Plaza District; I could almost feel the warmth of the sun on my face. My heart swelled as my eyes tried to take it all in; it was the first time I had seen the outside world in over two months.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” I was startled from my thoughts when the Executive moved next to me, surveying his plaything with the expression of a proud creator. I couldn’t help but agree with him. On the surface, Solstice was indeed a beautiful thing, a jewel in the hand of ruin. “My ancestors and I built this from ashes,” he said in a hushed voice. I watched him from the corner of my eye. His expression was pensive and gentle… almost human. “I’d sooner die than see our blood, our sweat, and our tears wasted for nothing.”
I almost felt sorry for him, almost agreed with him, before I remembered who I was talking to.
“Natalie,” he turned to me, “I need to be able to trust you. I need you to be able to trust me. I need you to help me secure this city’s future; you need me to help secure your own.”
“What about all the stuff you told me when we first met?” I accused, refusing to be swayed easily. “It’s all a game, you told me. A power game you play for your own amusement. I’m sorry, but I don’t trust you. I can never trust you, after what you’ve done to me.”
“Done to you?!” The Executive snapped. He flared up and looked as if he were going to strike me across the face; I braced for it, but it never came. “Natalie… Natalie, Natalie…” He said my name softly, dangerously. “Please. I haven’t ‘done’ anything but improve you; you are invincible now! I have made you a god amongst mortals! How can you not thank me for what I have ‘done’?”
We looked at each other for a long, long time. I felt no trust; I felt nothing. This man had ruined me with his immortality games; I was just a tool, a tool of destruction. “You need me,” he repeated, tone hardening noticeably. “I’m not an animal, I am capable of forgiveness. I’m already willing to forgive you for your unauthorized contact with rebels today.”
He knew.
I said nothing, afraid to convict myself anymore. The Executive smiled that mirthless smile; he knew he had me. “I’d hate for anything to happen to you… or anyone else, if you were to betray my trust again.”
This is it; I thought, resigning myself to some kind of terrible punishment. I’m finished. He knows everything.
“I’ll give you a deal, my sweet puppet.” I shivered when his hands rested on my shoulders, cold and dead. “If you promise to do your part this evening—if Number Two is indeed eliminated in our ambush—I will personally make sure your little friend makes it back alive.”
Act surprised. If he found out I already knew Alicia was alive all bets might be off.
“What are you talking about?” I blurted, doing my best to look puzzled.
“That’s right; your little friend—Alicia, is it?—will be joining the group tonight, and she’ll be wearing one of our wonderful exploding jackets. See your end through, and her jacket might just experience a small malfunction. If you try anything funny, well—” He make a popping sound with his mouth and grinned evilly. I knew immediately what I had to do; I had to save her life at all costs.
“Deal,” I said shortly, trying to push the feeling of impending doom from my stomach.
“Wonderful. Enforcers!” The Executive snapped his fingers. “Take her down to the launch deck. I want her well-acquainted with her equipment before the mission tonight.”
“Yes, sir!” The Enforcers snapped to attention and grabbed my arms again, steering me toward the elevator.
“We’re going to get him tonight, boys!” The Executive cackled almost gleefully as the elevator doors slammed shut with clang.
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The Launch Deck proved to be a huge underground staging area for military operations. Every square inch of the vast cavern seemed to be covered in vehicles, weapons, and Enforcers. I felt like my eyes were going to pop out of my head; I’d never could have imagined the sheer military force of Solstice all collected in one place. The Enforcers within the city carried basic weapons, small rifles, I think, but here were stashed lasers, artillery, bombs, and every other kind of destructive force conceivable. My escorts marched me between two rows of huge flying craft and across a painted roadway to a cluster of tents and computer equipment that appeared to serve as a command post of some sort.
“She’s all yours, sir.” One of my guards pushed me forward, none too gently, toward a tall man wearing an officers cap with several stars pinned to the front. One eye swirled around it its socket, emitting a series of beeps and chirps; it took me a moment to realize it was a bionic. My stomach turned over as it flipped around to survey me, glowing an angry, bright red. He thanked the Enforcers, dismissing them, before looking me up and down with an expression of skepticism and doubt.
“So… you’re the Executive’s little pet project, hmm?” His voice was gravelly and coarse; he seemed to be quite a bit older than he appeared. “My name is General, and you will refer to me as such. Is that clear?”
“I’m not his pet,” I shot back, before I could stop myself. “I don’t belong to anyone. General.” I added hastily.
The commander looked at me for a few moments before he burst into rough laughter that felt like sandpaper on my ears. “Feisty, huh? I think we’ll get along just fine on this mission. Hey, Westin!” The broad-shouldered captain who had spoken against me at the meeting appeared from the other side of a stack of equipment. He scowled at me, but he said nothing. “Take her to the armory; we’ll find something useful for her to take out with you tonight.”
“But—”
“Dismissed!” General barked, bionic eye screeching and going on a spin at top speed. Captain Westin looked none too pleased, but threw up a snappy salute and ordered me to follow him. I stayed a few steps back, not eager to prod his apparent temper, until we reached a separate group of tents pitched over about a dozen rows of shelves packed with equipment.
“Can you use a gun?” His tone was quite frosty. I shook my head no. “Crossbow?” Again, no. Westin listed off several more, most of which I had never heard of before. He threw up his hands and let loose an unfriendly string of swears. “If you can’t use any weapons, why are you even here?!” he berated me. I simply shrugged.
“I can use weapons,” I offered, really not appreciating the captain’s childish attitude. It was a wonder how he got to be a captain, anyway; he must have been an Apex. “Just not any of the weapons you seem to have here.”
“Fine, then, how about you find something you can actually use here?” Westin crossed his arms and glared at me.
I browsed through three sets of shelves before I found a staff, about five feet long, leaning against a rack of loaded rifles. I picked it up, testing the weight. It was made of some kind of synthetic material, light but strong. It felt good in my hands, though a bit short, and I took it back to present to the captain. He just laughed when I showed it to him.
“That ancient thing?” Westin laughed scornfully. “Fine, but I’m not saving your sorry corpse when you find out that you’re the only one who isn’t using a gun.” He selected himself a huge, bulky rifle and slung it over his shoulder with a smug look. “It’s probably for the best; girls shouldn’t have guns anyway.”
It was then and there that I decided I hated Captain Westin.
We spent the better part of an extremely unpleasant hour outfitting ourselves with whatever gear we wanted from the armory. Westin loaded himself up with a huge amount of bullet-proof armor, grenades, ammunition, and at least four different knives strapped to various parts of his body. The entire time he boasted about various equipment he had used to kill dozens rebels, and seemed to delight in the thought of slaughtering as many of them as he possibly could. I held my tongue and tried to avoid him to spare myself his ridicule of my equipment. I found a sturdy pair of black combat boots that fit just right and a set of dark, lightweight combat trousers with a matching long-sleeve shirt. I knew mobility would probably be my friend as opposed to strength, so I only added a black kerchief around my neck when Westin started adding gas grenades to his gear—just in case. As an afterthought, I snatched up a smaller-sized handgun with a holster that strapped to the leg. I wasn’t a huge fan of guns, but you never knew when you might need one. I hadn’t received any formal training with one, obviously, but the concept seemed pretty simple: point and pull the trigger. How hard could it be?
When we finished gathering up our gear we reported back General, who was immersed in maps and diagrams when we returned. He praised my selection of gear and its effective simplicity, causing Westin to scowl at me and complain about girls once again. I smirked at him and couldn’t help making a few snarky comments with General at his expense. I wasn’t usually that way, but his antics were really starting to tick me off. Our commander directed us to wait around until the entire expeditionary force arrived and suited up; sunset was in three hours.
Most of the Enforcers didn’t show up until an hour until sunset. When everyone was fully equipped, and I had changed into my gear, we gathered in a large tent for the pre-mission briefing. Most of it was the same as the meeting at the top of the Spire, with a few more details about the function of each team. As if spending three awful hours with Westin wasn’t enough, he and I were placed on the same team. Our orders were to back up the main attack element, protecting its flanks from any Nightstalker trickery, as they seemed to be well known for. As our briefing wound to a close, a commotion erupted from the elevator as the rehabilitation subjects arrived. I craned my neck to try to find Alicia in the crowd, but they were all bundled too close together and surrounded by Enforcers.
“Alright gentlemen—and lady—” Westin made a sound in his throat and General glared at him, bionic eye screeching again, shutting him up sharply. “—it’s go time!” Board your transports and go crush some rebels!” The Enforcers cheered, none louder that Westin, and we all moved toward a pair of twin-rotor flying craft. As the Rehabilitation subjects were being loaded onto the far craft, I could see that they were putting on bulky red jackets. Alicia’s face appeared through the crowd. I wanted to throw up my arms and wave to her, but the Executive’s warnings burned fresh in my mind. I resigned myself to sadly watching her don her own explosive jacket and happily board her craft with Jonah and Abagail. I sat down between two bulky enforcers and prayed with every fiber of my being that the mission would go as planned, and that my best friend would be safe.
The floor below us lurched to life with an electric hum. With a swoop of my stomach, we were suddenly in the air. Besides the elevators I had ridden, I had never actually flown before in my life; the feeling was both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. With a loud hiss, the cargo doors on both sides of the flying craft opened up so that we could see outside; the ground inside the cavern swooped by at an alarming rate, a blur of equipment and concrete. A loud rumble came from somewhere ahead; evening sunlight, red and fiery orange, began pouring into the underground space as a set of gargantuan metal doors opened with the force of an earthquake. With a burst of light, we exited the cavern at the base of the Spire and were climbing up, up into the sky, leaving the sparkling white city down below us.
Incredible, was all I could come up with, looking at the amazing view below. Simply incredible. Then, another thought invaded my mind, one I couldn’t un-think, no matter how hard I tried: What if I never make it back?
Our flying craft swooped down low over Wall District, making one complete circle of the city. I strained to see what lay beyond the wall, but we were too low for me to make out anything on the opposite side of the city. After one lap, we swooped above the huge grey shadow of the wall and dipped down over the other side. In the dim light, it was almost impossible to make anything out at the speed we were travelling at. The pair of flying craft weaved around tall, crumbling structures that looked like they were the skeletons of a once-massive skyline. We crossed a river, dark and glassy in the shade of the dying sun, over a large amount of leafy trees, dipping in the valleys between wooded hills, and zoomed over ruined remnants of a previous world. I felt like I spent the entire fifteen-minute flight with my mouth hanging somewhere down in my lap; everyone else seemed to be quite unfazed. The rotors on our craft began to turn slowly on their pivot-points and we slowed, coming to a gradual halt over a clearing between two huge structures and a whole lot of trees. The craft descended slowly and carefully. A red light appeared overhead as me neared the overgrown concrete below. The light flipped from red to green; as we had been instructed, I unbuckled my safety belt and leapt out of the large cargo door.
The ground was a little further away than I had expected and I stumbled, scraping the palms of my hands on the concrete, sending my staff rolling away. I rolled to my feet, snatching my weapon up off the ground, and hoped that no one had seen me fall; I could feel my skin knit itself back together, and I tried to rub the pain out on the legs of my trousers. As soon as Westin jumped off—stumbled off, really, with his massive amount of gear—we moved rapidly to the edge of the clearing, taking cover behind some rocks while the Rehabilitation Subjects noisily and excitedly unloaded. There were eight members in our team in all, led by a burly Enforcer everyone called Cook. Cook lit what I guessed was a cigarette and smoked thoughtfully, surveying the area with an experienced eye. As soon as the last of the unwary subjects had unloaded, the propellers on the flying craft rotated back to their forward position and they took off, heading back to Solstice and leaving us, four teams of eight, alone in the clearing with a dozen unsuspecting innocents wearing enough explosives to level a city block.
I looked around, from the huge concrete ruins to our front and back, to the cracked and fading street-like pavement, to the invasion of the forest all around us and it hit me for the first time: I had left Solstice.
We were officially outside the wall.
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