Blood Zero Sky (32 page)

I drop the health bar wrapper on the floor and go to my bunk. I slip my hand under my pillow. There, between two fingers, I grasp the tiny data stick Randal gave me. When I was captured, I carried it under my tongue through the cavity search, through the questioning, through it all, carefully concealing its location from my captors and the many cameras they certainly had trained on me for the last few days.

Dad clears his throat. “Those bastards on the board always hated me. Hated the way I cursed, the way I walked. Hated me for the way you were. They never trusted me. For good reason, I guess it turns out.”

He looks at me, filled suddenly with emotion, eyes brimming with tears, but his mouth twists into a grin. This behavior is so unlike him, I’m too startled to speak.

“Cell door, open,” he says.

And it does.

I stand there, astonished.

“One of the perks of being CEO,” Dad reminds me. “My voice is encoded as a master command for all Company doors. Come on, before they see what we’re doing and override my command,” he holds out a hand to me. I take it, and he pulls me through the open door, to freedom.

“There goes my severance package,” he says. “Run, go. I won’t be able to keep up!”

“But, Dad,” I say, “with the sats and everything, neither of us will get away. They’ll catch us in five minutes.”

“We’ll live until then,” he says. “Now go!”

“Wait,” I say. “Give me your IC.”

“What? Why?”

“No time!”

“But it’s brand new.”

“Dad!”

He pulls it off his wrist and hands it to me.

“I love you, May.”

“Love you, too,” I say.

“All compound doors, open,” he says. “Emergency override blocked, code three-four-seven-nine-six-one.”

The Plexiglas door ahead of me opens, and I run.

“I’m proud of you,” Dad calls after me.

As far as I remember, that’s the only time he’s said it. Despite everything, I smile.

The data stick! Running fast on wobbly legs, I jam the triangular card into a slot in the side of the IC. It beeps at me. A moment later, I hear Randal’s voice.

“Hello, Ethan—or Clair or McCann or May, whoever’s alive to use this card. As I’m sure you know, this is the last help I’ll be able to give you. . . . ”

As I turn a corner, sliding haphazardly on the smooth floor, I see a squad member standing at the far end of the hall. He sees me and yells, “Hey!”

I spin and sprint the other direction and around a corner.

Randal’s voice continues: “This is a transmittable p-program, designed to reformat all five billion ICs on the Company network. Once the new program is uploaded, all normal IC functionality will cease. It will be replaced with a manifesto of the Protectorate, a summary of American and Company history, proof of Company transgressions, and finally, an address by you, giving the people the instructions for action. All you have to do is record that last portion and say the words ‘transmission final,’ and our message will be passed to every Company employee in the world.”

Gunshots from behind me. I hear a bullet glance off the wall near my shoulder, but my legs are feeling stronger now. Imager screens on every wall blink on. My picture is there.

The automated voice in the ceiling drones:
“Code red, escape: prisoner May Fields. Code red.”

The clamor grows as, throughout the facility, more guards are alerted. I can feel their pursuit rising behind me like a wave.

“It’s up to you, now,” Randal says. “I love you guys. God b-bless the Protectorate, and God bless America.”

A female squad guard appears around a corner and squawks as I bowl her over. Her gun skitters across the floor, and I snatch it up and keep running, hardly breaking stride. A security checkpoint lies just ahead, and behind it, a huge bank of windows, extending many stories high. Squadmen stand next to a row of body-scan machines, talking to a handful of perturbed-looking people trying to get past the security checkpoint. By the time they notice my approach, I’m already on top of them. I scream a vicious war cry and level the gun, but because of the palm coding, it doesn’t fire. Still, the squadmen are startled and duck, buying me just enough time to sprint past them. Behind me, I hear calls of “That’s Fields! Stop her!”

Ahead: a huge window.

Bullets buzz over my head and strike the glass in front of me with several dull
cracks
. Where each one hits the glass, a shatter pattern appears like a giant snowflake.

This is my only way out, my only chance. They’re close behind me, now. I charge the window, lower my head—

“
Please commence recording audio message at the tone—”
says the IC in my hand.

Through the window. Shatter.

Falling within the musical clink of broken glass, among a thousand twinkling shards. A story below, I hit a grassy slope, roll, and am back on my feet again, running.

Cuts on every part of my body protest at each step, but the pain only spurs me on. Above, behind me: murmurs of consternation. No squad member dares to jump after me.

I look down at the IC in my hand as it beeps. Mouth gaping like a fish, I capture enough breath to speak.

“I am . . . May Fields. . . . Like you, I was a grateful slave. . . . Now, I know the truth. You are about to learn about all the evils of the Company, and the virtue of the Protectorate. . . . ”

I pause, glancing over my shoulder then dashing across a busy street, narrowly missing several cars. Ahead, a few blocks away, N-Corp Headquarters looms. With nowhere else to go, I fight my way toward it, hoping to disappear into the morning rush.

“Our intention is not to create chaos, or a new order,” I continue. “It’s to reinstate the democracy that was stolen from us. It was supposed to be a government for and by the people, not a Company
owning
them.”

Sirens coming. Cars honk at me as I stumble across a street. Feeling weak now, like my legs might give out at any second. My mind reels. What to say?

“If guns can’t change things, then use words. And if words won’t work, then use action, and leave your job, boycott the Company church, burn your N-Apartment to ashes.”

Squad trucks ahead and the shriek of sirens behind. I turn off the street.

Under the shadow of the headquarters building, I shove my way through a throng of tie-men and women, drawing a thousand strange looks. I fight through the crowd, into the square outside the N-Corp Headquarters entrance, up to the steps of the building.

“If some of us will die for freedom, the least you can do is stand up and demand it. . . . And if everyone stands up and yells together . . . ”

Like a bee sting in my back, the first bullet.

“. . . We cannot fail.”

Next, a pain in my arm, like a pinch, nothing more, but when I look down, I see my own torn flesh.

“Transmission final.”

I turn to face my attackers, raise my useless gun to them. Maybe twenty squadmen are there—young men, mostly. Their scared faces are probably paler than mine, but still they fire.

I see the mist of blood on the steps at my feet. My blood.

What I feel is not so much pain as the uncomfortable feeling that something inside my torso is wrong. Organs shifting, being rearranged.

And here it is, that instant where your whole life is revealed to you, played out before your eyes, just like they say it will be. All the beauty and heartache, loneliness and triumph compressed into a single, flickering, achingly vivid instant.

When it’s over, I am here, under the shadow of the headquarters, with the squadmen still firing bullets into my body.

I hear a low, grinding moan escape my mouth.

Somehow, I am still standing. No, now I fall. Something comes out of my mouth, but whether it’s spit, puke, or blood, who knows? Funny, it’s as if I’m sitting outside myself, watching it happen.

And strange thoughts wash over me: I think of my poor body, and what will become of it, where it will be buried, whether it matters at all. I think of the blood seeping out from me, vibrant crimson, thick against my cheek, warming the pavement beneath me.

I think of the concrete, cold under my skin, and the mirrored glass of the buildings above, reflections of reflections, of the parade of empty zeros and ones and the machines making shoes and guns and wedding dresses. The Company.

I think of God, and hope he isn’t really a close friend of Jimmy Shaw’s, or I’m screwed. My eyes roll upward and I see the vapor trail of a jet, painted a vivid pink by the dawn, trailing to the end of a flawless blue sky. A path of magical light, ending.

Then, I think of the people. The real Protectorate. They had filled the square, heading in to work. Now they cringe away from me. They hide their eyes. Some run. Only a few stand and watch.

Pain comes in a huge, dizzying convulsion, then ebbs away.

The people. I imagine them watching me die, hearing my last words on their brand-new, state-of-the art ICs, and, one by one, standing up from their desks.

I imagine them, one by one, walking out of their offices and into the sunlight, refusing to work again until they are free.

I imagine them, holding hands, billions and billions of them, and in that one act of simple defiance accomplishing what all this spilled blood never could.

And somewhere in her N-Academy cell, I imagine my Rose listening to my message on her IC and beginning to dream of a different life.

I imagine a better world, and in imagining it, there is hope.

This is how the revolution begins.

—EPILOGUE—

Dearest Protectorate,

When I first wrote
Blood Zero Sky
back in 2005, I couldn’t get it published. The people I showed it to felt that it was rife with hyperbole, a depiction of a future so exaggerated that it wasn’t believable. In the following years, however, the world has marched steadily in the direction that the book foretold. Corporations consolidated. Government agencies privatized. A multibillion-dollar bailout blurred the lines between the federal government and our nation’s “too-big-to-fail” corporate giants. Consumer debt soared, and the middle class in America became increasingly marginalized. Now the world of
Blood Zero Sky
, far from being hyperbole, actually seems a bit too close for comfort—and indeed, the first rumblings of a peaceful revolution have already begun. As a result, I feel compelled to issue a word of caution.

The preceding novel tells the tale of a world in which the only path to freedom for the characters is armed revolution. Though this world seems eerily similar to our own, it is not our own. Let me be clear: this novel is not a call to arms. It is a call to awareness. Violence is not the answer to our problems, and, personally, I reject it on every level.

Only truth can defeat lies, only generosity can defeat greed, and only love, patience, and long-suffering can defeat violence.

Let us come together peacefully to restore what our forefathers envisioned: a vigorously competitive capitalist system regulated by a democratic government that is truly controlled by the people.

If you wish to combat the injustices of the world (and I hope you do), then first educate yourself, then educate others, then demand change with a spirit of brotherly love and cooperation. That way, the power of the Protectorate can reign in peace for another generation.

Yours in Gratitude,

J. Gabriel Gates

—About The Author—

J. Gabriel Gates is the nationally acclaimed coauthor of
Dark Territory
and
Ghost Crown
, Books 1 and 2 in The Tracks series, and the author of the horror novel The
Sleepwalkers.
A native of Marshall, Michigan, Gates discovered his passion for writing and performing at a young age. He received his bachelor’s degree in theater from Florida State University and relocated to Los Angeles, where he acted in numerous television commercials and penned several screenplays.

When Gates is not writing, Gates can usually be found reading, working out, hanging out with his friends, or watching college football. He is an advocate for social justice and has participated in the Occupy Detroit and Occupy Lansing. He currently lives in Michigan with his dog and faithful writing companion, Tommy. Visit him online at www.jgabrielgates.com.