Rebels

“To our fans, your support means the world to us! You are the best!”

The light broke through the surface.

Twenty feet tall and armed with bits the size of a man, the drill engines had been running continuously. Andru read the depth sensors and knew that the end was nearly in sight. Already his crew had broken two more drill bits as they clawed their way upward, covered in dirt and ash and dust and clay. The last two engines carried on, alternating running times to stave off overheating. Even this close, closer than any had been in the thousand years since the world went dark, the heat pooled and sweltered. Andru oversaw the engines' running when his team needed rest. He found that he had no need for sleep. It had been five days since he last laid his head down, and it remained that way no more than an hour. He'd been woken by a breeze, fresh air traveling through an unseen vent. The first taste of fresh air in his life. He'd lived beneath the earth for too long. He would wait no longer.

His crew were loyalists, committed men who'd left their families to give them better lives. None of them had ever met anyone who'd survived the Great Catastrophe, and they were no longer sure just how long they were supposed to live beneath the crust, without questioning the world that could be reclaimed above. Generations and generations had carved out communities beneath the earth and grown pale and weak-sighted. Generations upon generations had inherited the conditions wrought by the Great Catastrophe and the evils it had created. Humanity had been left behind, and there was
no longer hope. Even the tales of former earth lost their wonder. Andru was not like the rest.

Once he'd salvaged and repaired the engines for his expedition, Andru petitioned the council to arm and feed his men. They gave him enough to gamble on the dream he sold, but not nearly enough to truly believe in it. Even his brother had tried warning him off his journey, but Andru couldn't quit his stubbornness. And that is why he also left his wife and son and daughter behind, promising to come back when he finally had sky overhead. He wrapped them in his arms and kissed them all good-bye, then left to assemble his men. Most thought his pursuit of the overworld mortally foolish, but Andru thought the same of their willingness to war with each other, splintered factions fighting over dwindling supplies and inhabitable caverns. They would continue killing each other down below until none were left.

The drill engine pounded at the stone, and Andru persisted through its unrelenting assault. The light overhead was no more than the size of a fist and yet it was glorious, though it hurt his eyes. He pulled his goggles on and watched to his satisfaction as it grew larger.

Many of his men had died along the way. From cave-ins and blasting explosions. From toxic exposure to unknown elements and collapsing lungs and vicious attacks from what had once been their own people. Andru was not without blood on his hands.

Sacrifice.

Each man had agreed to his part, knowing that their pilgrimage to the world beyond afforded a better life than what below could ever give. Sacrifice themselves and reclaim the ruined land for a new future.

He heard the rock fracture and crack and his men yell as it fell upon the drill engine. Its operator was killed instantly. The light grew brighter. He couldn't allow his men's faith in him to falter.

He stepped up and manned the last remaining engine himself. If more were to die, then he would be next.

◊  ◊  ◊

He had taken but a mere moment's rest, still seated in the running engine. He wiped the sleep from his eyes, touching the beard that had grown so wildly that his own wife wouldn't recognize him. Thoughts of her and his children kept him sane. Had it been a year since he last saw them? No. Not that much. It couldn't have been. . . .

He drank enough to wet his mouth and wash the grit from it when one of the spotters came running.

For him to have deserted his post . . . something was terribly wrong.

As the spotter came closer, Andru could see blood streaming from his face, and even worse, an eye missing. His shouts were unintelligible and panicked.

Andru hopped down, the engine still firing into the world above. He waved one of his men in to replace him, even as wild calls rose from the darkness beyond the camp.

“Gear up!” Andru shouted. They'd escaped being attacked since the surface had been broken, and he'd hoped . . .

His hope was foolish. He could show them only through action that testing his might was immensely foolish.

There were almost two dozen of his crew remaining, minus the spotter with the savaged eye. In their hands they held metal bars and pikes. Andru hefted his sledge in two hands. It was still stained with the blood of the last pack who'd thought his men would be easily broken.

Did they not know that his men had broken earth itself?

And yet, they weren't prepared for the force of men who flooded their camp, perhaps three, even four times the size of his crew. It just meant more for his sledge, which he swung now with unmatched resolve and felt a man's skull give way.

Yet these men who attacked were not savages, or mutants, marred by pollution and interbreeding.

“Atros?”

He saw the man who he once called brother knife a grunt of no more than sixteen cycles. More of his men died around him, as Andru continued to swing his sledge, breaking bone whenever it landed. His arms cried through the strain. The drill engine hammered away.

By the time Atros and his men took the camp, they'd left only three men alive, but wounded. All three would surely die. None could remain to remember the truth of the attack. Andru was forced to kneel at Atros's feet. The drill engine was now silent, its operator killed in his chair.

“Why?” Andru asked, his mind reeling, betrayed by his own people. His own brother.

“The world will not be yours,” Atros said. “It will be greater than that. Know that your journey was not in vain. Your plans will continue, but you will not see them through.”

And then, looking into his brother's eyes, Andru was killed, a knife passed across his throat, and he slumped over as the life left his body and soaked into the earth. He cast his eyes upward with the last of his energy at the broken ground, a gust passing through it to cool his face, and finally he saw the sky and the hard-won heavens above.

I'm breaking the rules, and I absolutely refuse to care.

Veda gallops through the floating gardens and whinnies ecstatically as we pass the last of the designated security posts. Each gallop takes us farther and farther away from the main quarters, and closer to where the island ends and the clouds begin.

For a moment, I forget I'm virtually a prisoner. I can leave this island, but not unsupervised. And even then, there is little I'm allowed to see, especially what lies below.

Back in the main quarters, Governess will go to wake me from my rest. She'll be displeased at my unexpected absence, to say the least, with so many tasks yet to be done: final gown mods, vitamin injections, rosebud cheek infusions, last-minute blemish inspection and evulsion.

Then there is practice. There is
always
practice.

The curtsy: low, but not unladylike. The conversation: pleasant, but not probing.

There are fan drills to rehearse. The art of fan communication is delicate, this I've been endlessly taught. An incorrect flick of the wrist, a hereafter with a man I despise.

Expand the fan wide to indicate interest. Tap his shoulder to flirt. Right hand:
I am available.
Smack closed:
I daresay we are incompatible.

I plan on using that last one a great deal.

The guest list must be memorized, ranked in order of importance. There are more insults to perfect, not to mention an inhuman amount of grooming.

Tomorrow is the most important day of my life, after all. I've been told it so much I'm starting to believe it and fear it.

“Keep going,” I tell Veda. The rhythmic thumps of her hooves grow faster. A frenzied, unrestrained drumbeat.

My mother loved music just as I do. She spent entire days on her air harp, her fingers dancing along its cords, weaving songs while painting her studio with colorful beams of light.

My mother, according to Governess, was a charming conversationalist and graceful dancer. Governess tells me all about my mother, and she often repeats herself. There is only so much to tell. Only so many stories. I know that she designed her own formal wear, and enjoyed berries and chocolate after dining. That she favored the color blue, and wore one long braid down her back unless the occasion dictated a more formal updo.

I know a great deal about my mother, and yet nothing at all.

A sudden rush of cold smacks me across the face, the air off the clouds growing stronger. “Faster,” I tell Veda. I pass the hedge maze and Tranquillity Pastures. Roar underneath the welcoming gate.

Not that anyone is really welcome. Not to Helix Island.

I want to go faster than I ever have. Farther than I ever thought possible.

Now, Governess will have gone from displeased to frantic. This is worse than skipping penmanship, worse than rolling my eyes when one of the debutees expresses her unfortunate opinion during Etiquette Training.

“Why can't you just try?” asks Governess when I'm reported for impropriety. “Can't you put forth the tiniest bit of effort?”

What she will never understand:
not
saying those things takes
a lot
of effort.

This is the farthest I have gone without a chaperone. Beneath me, Veda snorts with elation, and fear. “Don't be afraid, girl,” I say. I hold my own fear tight, letting it surge through my body and push me farther.

When I'm found, Waslo will be informed. He is sure to engage me in a Discussion. Waslo Souture was my father's protégé. My father had friends as well, though I haven't met any. They have good reason to keep their distance from the legacy he left behind.

I can't imagine Waslo was ever a friend to my father. A most talented student, I can't deny, for his ascent into the Independent High Council is praiseworthy.
If
that's the sort of thing you'd like to do with your life.

Waslo has been around for as long as I can remember. There have also been Discussions as long as I remember.

Perhaps he will choose “Respect for the Family Name” or “Appropriate Behavior as a Reflection of Upbringing.” Those
classics
I have committed to memory. Waslo grows especially passionate nearing the end of “Appropriate Behavior”; sometimes even a little spittle catches on his bottom lip.

No, those are not suitable enough. Not for an offense this bold. For this, he will choose “Being a Proper Young Woman.”

“A Proper Young Woman would never dishonor her legacy in such an inappropriate manner,” he will say. “And on the eve of your Emergence Ball, at that! What would your father think?”

I wish I knew
, I will think but never dream of saying. Instead, I will stay silent, head bowed in shame, waiting for him to finish. Hoping his spit doesn't find purchase farther than his thin lips.

I will feel inadequate, just as he intended. Perhaps this is why
Waslo is so important: he has a gift for making others feel unsatisfactory.

This will be our last Discussion, I suppose. In a few hours, I will reach my seventeenth year of life. Tomorrow is my Emergence Ball; within the week I will have a cohabitant. Shortly after, I will be relocated to my cohabitant's island or, as is done in some cases, he will come to live on Helix. And then we will officially, as
The Book of Indra
tells us, “embark upon the journey of becoming Proper Cohabitated Citizens of Indrithian Society.”