Rebels (18 page)

Transporters rumble through the uncharted blackness ahead. They cross the scouter's path, but no one identifies the stolen vehicle for what it is.

The mountain grows closer in the dark, then I see it. Coming from the left side on the projector feed. A shadow, barely detectable.

They must see that
, I think. I can't be the only one seeing that. O and C don't speak.

The shadow approaches. I'm so close to the monitor projection I almost bump my nose on it. I feel my eyeballs expanding.

An enemy craft
. That's what it is. Crude blasters attached to the sides, pointed and ready.

“Armored craft, vectoring at minus sixty-three,” I bark before I can stop myself. “Aiming to fire!”

Within a millisecond, the scouter redirects and the videofeed goes ballistic with live fire. I bolt up and throw the headset off, my ears splitting with the first barrage of the firefight. My senses can get overloaded easily. It's part of the reason I keep these abilities to myself. By the time I stop reeling, the feed's gone out.

◊  ◊  ◊

I wait by the monitor as patiently as I can to hear from O and C. Instead, Langhorn buzzes in on my earfeed and says, “I told you not to speak.” I've waited three hours for this reprimand, and I'm still grateful.

“Affirmative,” I say. “I saw the craft and—”

“Quiet, Apprentice,” he barks. I shut up. “You alerted the Ops just in time,” he says, calmer. “They retreated unharmed.”

My pride surges, but I'm not expecting a compliment. I just do the work that needs to be done.

“Your training isn't complete, but higher-ups believe you're ready
to be called up. In two days, you'll be taken to your forward operating base.”

My stomach jumps. I wait for his kudos.

The line goes dead. Even with his lack of warmth, I'm still elated.

Two days to report. Enough time to meet Kane, just like we planned.

I'll get to tell him about the end of my apprenticeship. I'll get to see him before I begin my new life.

◊  ◊  ◊

I'm waiting for Kane in his childhood memory. Everything is too bright, the edges all blurred. Still, it beats anything I've got.

I was taught that your experiences are filed away by the High Council, and a handful are made available to you. How they get them, I'm still not sure. These are the incidents they deem important, pivotal points in your growth and development. Good times, bad times, I hope they've captured it all. You're issued a memory chip as soon as you're old enough for the experiences not to induce trauma and you're expected to learn from these highlights of your life.

Recruiter gave me my first one on the way to the Academy. I put it in, expecting some massive understanding to how life screwed me over, and then I just got the same thing I always got: nothing. Complete and utter darkness. It was like the Orphanage had never happened. I kind of wished that were true.

Memory Archives are personal. It's strictly forbidden to go into someone else's. “You wouldn't understand their memory anyway,” Instructor explained during our unit on Archives: The Universe in an Access Chip. “The memory is personalized, their emotions captured instantaneously to be infused into the database. The colors and sounds will reflect their inner state. Archives aren't duplicated experiences, they're subjective. Without the proper framework, going in as a stranger could induce brain trauma, and remains strictly prohibited by the High Council.”

Not that Kane ever cared about rules. Not that I don't already feel brain damaged.

Now, waiting for Kane in his eighth birthday, I understand. The colors are so vivid they hurt my eyes.

Maybe all memory Archives are like this. Maybe everything is brighter in our memory. Or maybe it's so bright because Kane never came here before. Something not worth revisiting or something he wanted to stay away from. You degrade an Archive every time you visit, just like the make-believe at the Orphanage. That's the only memory I could keep returning to.

I hear Kane's voice in my head.
I'll meet you on my eighth birthday. On my family island. Behind the obelisk.

I'm on his island and I found the obelisk.
Now where's Kane?

I'm in a small clearing bordered by a copse of trees. Everything seems enormous. I've always wanted to see a real synth-tree, but I'm sure they're nothing like these ones. They tower over me. You can drown in their shade.

I must be seeing everything from Kane's eight-year-old eyes. The world seems too big around me, and too small at the same time.

I've been circling the same grounds since I got here, unable to get a glimpse past its border.

I can only imagine how far his childhood estate stretches. I reach out, the rubbery surface buzzing under my touch, but then it pushes my hand back. If I try again, I might be flung from the memory. Then I'd never see Kane.

Breaking into the Archive access room was risky enough. I waited until late at night and snuck through the Cadet Quarters. I briefly stopped to look at the entrance to rooming pod 13, my former home. It hadn't changed. Neither had the camera positions or the instructor floor sweeps. Their patterns Kane and I had long ago memorized.

The quarters were quiet, the cadets dead asleep. I didn't belong there. Not anymore.

I felt stupid for even thinking it possible. I moved on, crept my way to the Archive access room.

Breaking the code on the room itself was easy; Kane taught me a dozen ways to bypass. The chip locker was a little tougher, but SpecOps training has its advantages.

“I build stuff,” Kane once said while rewiring a beamer to glow green, “and you take them apart.”

That made me smile. In the times I'm not actively apprenticing, I learn stuff from the patrol Archives. Stuff that would be considered illegal in the hands of others. I cracked the code. The chip locker slid open. I scanned the names, finding Kane's memory box. They keep them here until we graduate and have served out our probationary period in our official placement. “But don't worry,” Kane told me. “You can just keep it for me. Give it back when you see me.”

I punched in the code he gave me. The box buzzed and popped open. I locked the door behind me and sat on the cold steel floor. Heart thumping wildly, I'd tapped my wrist, put my thumb tip to my pulse, inserted the chip, and closed my eyes.

Instantly, I was here. On the memory of soft synth-grass. I was in Upper Indra for the first time. Even in someone else's memory, it felt real. Not to mention strange.

Time works funny here. However long I'm here, only a fraction of that time will have passed in the real world. Still, I've got to worry about someone discovering me.

Pretty soon, the cadets will get up. They'll do appearance maintenance, eat their rations, and head off to class. I'll be found out eventually, I know.

I kill time walking the memory perimeter. Its border looks like dense fog.
C'mon, Kane
.
Where are you?

I find a makeshift campsite: bedding, a supply of wafers. Kane spent a lot of time here, I can tell. Probably even slept here sometimes.

It's his birthday
.
Why would he remember being at this place? Where is everyone?

Birthdays are important, I've learned. At least, they are to people outside the Orphanage. Funny, since I don't even know the date of mine. All I got every year was a visit from the recruiter.

From what I've seen at the Academy, everyone wants to be around you on your birthday. Yet Kane spent his eighth one here. By himself.

Kane was alone a lot, I guess. Just like me.

This was the place he made sculptures and sound paintings before he had a Center of Creation. These sculptures are made of cast-off scraps, just like at the Academy. Only the materials are different: Tree limbs, fancy ration plates broken in half. Pieces of shiny metal. High-quality stuff. Stuff people would miss if they cared. But obviously, they don't.

I think of Kane's sculpture in the Center of Creation studio. The metal face he made with the eyes protruding on spikes. These pieces are frightening too, but different. More childlike and obvious: monsters from bad dreams that hide under your sleeping pod.

Kane was weird. Even as a kid. That makes me smile.

“Looking for me?” says a voice. I spin around quickly, already on edge, knowing immediately that something's gone wrong.

A shadow steps out from behind the obelisk, and then Cassina's standing in front of me. “Not who you were expecting?” She pouts like she's sad for me.

I don't answer.

She's wearing her new PCF Security uniform. How predictable.
She's
protecting Indra. Assigned to the public projects, news of them running along holoscreens to make the Indrithians feel secure, like installing defense gates in the Hub. I can see her pained smile on an awareness campaign projected on the side of Indra's glass towers: “Indra Gives You What You Need.”

She's holding her pointy chin high, which makes it plenty exposed.
The pride of holding an official public position. Her main obligation? Look important, probably. They don't even carry blasters on them in most sectors.

She's probably living on Apprentice Island with all the other cadets. Her same group, following her around. Just killing time till they cohabitate and relocate to an island. Things change, but not really.

I wonder if Kane is on Apprentice Island with her.

I wait for her to speak. I think of the small blaster on my hip. It won't kill her here, but it will boot her quick and give her a massive headache.

“Wow,” she says, looking at a spiky sculpture made of ration forks. “Kane did this? He was always . . . different.”

“Why are you here?” I say.

“Isn't that the question I should be asking
you
? In case you haven't picked up on it, my family is very, very, very important. Therefore, I matter.” She smiles. Her chin has gotten even pointer. “More than an orphan ever could.”

I've had enough. I start for her and she backs up, eyes wide. “Stop,” she says, her voice catching. “Kane! Kane!”

I'm so close, she's shrinking back.

“Where's Kane?” I ask. Get any closer to her and we'd be cohabitants.

“Take out his access chip and I'll show you.”

“Why not show me here?”

“You can't access an Archive within another Archive, so . . .”

“You first.”

She nods.

“There're no instructors here to save you if you're lying,” I say.

She nods again.

It's not a trap, I tell myself.

I narrow my eyes. I have no choice. I reach for my chip, but only after she reaches for her own.

◊  ◊  ◊

I'm back in the Archive access room, getting up from my resting position. Cassina stands too, right across the room from me, both of us holding the Archive access chips.

“How'd you find me?” I ask.

She grins. “Indra has its way of finding you all. Even if you didn't stray that far. Don't you get that by now? My security placement grants me total access. Whereas yours grants you a one-way trip core-low.”

She thinks her life is all sweet. Out here in the real world, somehow she has more control.

“How'd you get a copy of it?” I ask her. She just stares at me. “Where is he? Tell me!”

She reaches into her pocket and holds out another access chip. “Put this in and you'll see for yourself. It's another of Kane's memories.”

“You first.”

“I only have one. It's hard enough sharing this with you, I don't want to
share
it with you.”

“And he gave it to you?”

She nods. I have no idea if she's telling the truth. She's only ever wanted me to fail. Why stop now?

We stare at each other and her face softens. She's never been a good actress.

“Because,” she says quietly, “he's hurt.”

I've never seen so much hate in her eyes, but this time they're telling the truth. My mind clouds whenever I try to figure her out. But she seems to be worried about Kane, and that makes me worried.

“After all your training, haven't you learned that rebels never win?” she says, holding out the chip.

In my after-hours I've learned how you can weaponize everything, even an access chip. Once an Archive starts, you're supposed to be able to jump out at any time. But there are ways around it.
False memories could wreck your mind for a lifetime. You could get trapped and never know you were out of touch with the real. You'd be lost in there just like a shadow person for all eternity.

I hold out my upturned palm. She drops the chip in my hand, pinching her lips at the thought of touching me.

Using the chip could be dangerous for all those reasons. But most of all, I fear that learning the truth may be the most dangerous thing of all. But it's Kane, so I have no choice.

Excerpted from
The Book of Indra,
Chapter V: “Indra: Society and Customs”

The Indrithian upper elite abide by a given set of unspoken laws. The young people are allowed monitored interaction in the form of Socialization Clubs and balls. At seventeen, the young women will be introduced to society through their Emergence Ball, and soon after they must choose a mate, cohabitate, and embark on the journey of being Proper Indrithian Citizens.

I'm spinning and the world is watching.

Elevated high above the Helix Grand Ballroom, with each rotation I alter my pose. I move as slowly as the platform itself, my face emotionless, yet projecting the countenance of an esteemed Proper Young Woman.

In the words of Etiquette Tutor, “As though you have barely a thought in your head.”