Rebels (31 page)

We stop. My human shield loosens their perimeter of protection. I'm standing in front of a hole in the wall. The metal grating has been removed from this vent. The rebels each crawl inside and disappear. When it's my turn, someone shoves me. Zavier. I shoot him a look.

I'm crawling through a tunnel, and Zavier's right on my tail, barking, “Move it!” He gives me another shove and I strike out with my heel, which nails the metal siding by his chin. He's less aggressive after that, and I move even faster.

When the butt of the rebel in front of me clears out, I'm greeted by light and, surprisingly, what feels like fresh air.

I stand up in a small alcove. In front of us is an enormous plexi-clear window. Zavier guides me out of his way. He removes a small torch from his belt and its tip ignites into ultra-blue flame. He
scorches the panel at its seams, loosening it. It takes all of the rebels to remove it.

The gusts blow violently inward, as if to warn us to keep our distance. So close to freedom, nothing can stop us. All that separates us is the vibrant dusk sky. Night has begun to fall and we'll use its cover to escape. I think on how this all began, in an Archive, waiting for Kane, and since then how I haven't stopped moving.

One by one, each rebel stands in the windowless frame. They cross their arms over their chests, Zavier whispers—a blessing?—then they launch backward and disappear.

I watch, shocked, as they hurl themselves into the air.

“What's going on?” I ask Zavier, but he ignores me.

Livia's next. She's facing me, back to the window. A rebel stands behind her, his arms around the waist of her once white dress, now brutally torn. A large, dirty swath of it blows in the wind and she rips it off and lets it float away. If only all of us could travel so lightly.

I wouldn't admit it, but she looks so strato this way.

I should offer her words of comfort, but I'm not any good at that. Plus I'm . . . uneasy myself.

She drops like a stone. “Hurry,” says Zavier in my ear. I'm on the edge of the frame, of a building, my feet leaden. I stare out and watch the others become dwarfed by the vast expanse of Indra below. I'm as high as the clouds themselves. I'm very conflicted on this whole thing.

“No time for sightseeing,” says Zavier.

He's all up in my face, doesn't even have the decency to do this like the others. He wants to humiliate me. My silitex body armor can't redistribute my sweat fast enough. He wraps his arms around me, holds me tight enough to hurt. Face to shaggy face. My legs are shaking.

“I thought,” he says in my ear, “you were supposed to be the brave one.”

I can be. I want to be. But not now.

The instant before we fall, as I stand in the windowless frame, Lex catches my eyes.

She stares at me, confused, not sure what to believe, and I share her feelings. If only we had stopped to talk much earlier, this mess we're in would not be. We might've changed it all for the better.

“Don't worry now, Livia. We got the parazips to hold us.”

My rebel protector refers, I assume, to the thin cord from which we're dangling. The man harnessed behind me releases the round cap from a canister attached to his belt and suctions it to the side of the window frame. He tells me hundreds of feet of microcord are compressed into every canister. These cords could suspend an air speeder from an island without failing.

Then I'm flying backward with zero resistance, unencumbered. I've wondered for so long what this would feel like and it's . . .

Exhilarating
.

“They call me Jefferson,” says the rebel loudly, rather cheerfully, I believe, especially considering that we're rapidly accelerating toward an uncertain, yet highly feasibly untimely, ending.

The line grows longer and longer above us. One thin line from a canister that, if I'm to believe this man, will continue to hold us aloft as we're falling.

“Just relax and enjoy the fall,” he says.

I'm starting to, I really am, when we swing back in toward the Council building. Jefferson bends his knees, makes contact, and launches us into air once again.

Sideways we swing, and rapidly we fall. I swivel my head, hoping to glimpse Kane beneath me, when Jefferson puts his hand on my cheek and gently guides my face toward the sky. “Don't look down. That's the key.”

I don't spot Kane, but I think I see Lex above. I can't imagine she's enjoying this as much as I am.

Every few stories, Jefferson halts us, steadying his feet on the side of the building. He's growing tired. For a moment, we rest in midair. He holds the line and takes a deep breath. “Replacement time,” he says.

“May I?” I pull a fresh canister from his belt. He's pleasantly surprised by my initiative. “Like this?” I say.

“Exactly.”

I've been watching him every drop of the way. I flick the switch and a brand-new string releases and suctions to the surface of the plexi-clear. I pull, checking the grip, then wrap the cord like I observed him doing and attach the canister to his belt. His arms bring me in close once again.

I give him a thumbs-up. “Ready when you are, Jefferson.”

“How many of those . . . are there?” I ask.

“Just enough,” Zavier says. “You're not going anywhere.”

The rush the parazip creates shocks my system. With a speeder or stolen craft, at least I'm in control. Running from the PCF and now allied with rebels? I've relented all feeling of it, for now. I have to. I'm harnessed to someone I already despise, rappelling off Indra's highest building into the unknown.

He's right in my face the whole time. And this guy—
Zavier
—puts Cassina to shame.

“What makes you so special, huh?” he says. “That's what I want to know. You're not so bad looking, don't get me wrong. Might even find us a place to ourselves and see how that goes. If I didn't know about your rep. If I didn't know the truth.”

He lands, feet to the building. Crouches. Pushes off. We soar downward.

“Hardcase cadet. You
like
all those rules and regulations. Bet you can follow orders, can't you? Without question. Kill without remorse. Bet you'd let me boss you around.”

“Just try it,” I say, my breath halting from the sheer drop.
I'll kill
you,
without remorse
.

Dangling in space by a thread. He could just drop me, after all. Tell the others it was a horrible accident.

Instead, I bite my tongue.
Later
, I tell myself.
I'll take care of him when my feet are back under me.

Land. Crouch. Push off. Soar downward.

“I said no when they asked,” he continues. He won't ever stop. “Rescue that girl? Not even for all the air in the sky.”

Land.

“But Roscoe, he knows more than me. And much more than you.”

Crouch.

“ ‘She's the one who will save us.' ”

Push off.

“Huh. You can't even save yourself.”

Soar downward.

At some point, we break so suddenly my stomach is still dropping. We hover in midair, rocking back and forth. I can feel his breath on my neck. His body hard and tense with anger.

We're immersed in the spires of Indra. A man-made canyon that can even silence this angry rebel. The city's blood, whether we like it or not, beats within all our chests.

What now?
I wonder. Did he use the last canister already? We're nowhere near the ground.

“In case you don't understand,” he says finally, “you're nothing special. We don't need you, no matter what anyone says.”

I fight the urge to kick him. To choke him until he loses consciousness. Right there, hanging in space. He's made this personal. His hate of me runs as deeply as mine for him.

“What now?” I ask.

“Now?” he says. He gives a low, mean laugh. “We go back where you should feel right at home. Give you your crown.”

The vibrations bounce off the plexi-clear and I see their shimmering reflections glinting right back at us. Four air speeders whip around the corner, coming straight for us.

“Where are you taking me?”

“What do you cadets call it?” He snorts. “Oh yeah.
Rock Bottom
.”

When I used to stand at the edge of Helix and look down at the City of Indra, I'd imagine myself visiting one day. I could see myself walking the corridors with Middlers, doing the things that they did in their everyday life.
I would be just another Indrithian citizen
, I imagined wistfully,
not anyone of Importance
.

Truth be told, I had no concept of what
everyday life
entailed. Still do not, in all sincerity. But that was not part of the fantasy. In my imagination, I was no one special, just another body blending into the fabric of Indrithian Society.

I should have known. This is my first time in the city, and the last thing I do is fade into the background. This is unlike anything I could have ever imagined.

◊  ◊  ◊

I'm on the back of a speeder, my arms wrapped around a disheveled man named Chae. At least, I suppose that's his name, for it was the only word he uttered when he met us in midair.

I have never met someone with hair on their face. Veda does not count.

“My name is Livia,” I told him, elated to be on something solid. The man responded by grunting.

“Hold tight,” Jefferson said from the speeder next to me, shouting
so as to be heard over the roaring engines. “Don't want to go flying right off the back.”

The instant Chae took off, though, I knew that could be a problem, and we race through the sky at ferocious velocity, down toward Indra's gleaming streets.

I clutch him as though he is the thread of a forgotten memory that I'm desperate to grasp. We're surrounded by speeders on all sides, Jefferson remaining at our left flank with his arms around a long-haired rebel. A woman, perhaps, though it could well be a man. These rebels have rather unique appearances.

I see another formation of speeders in the distance. Perhaps Lex is among them, I think, or Kane.

Nearing the ground, broad boulevards emerge from the airscraper-created canyons.
Almost ther
e, I think, believing solid earth has never seemed lovelier.

The only question: Where exactly are we going?

Jefferson breaks into a wide, cheerful grin at my side. He yells something I cannot hear, to which I raise my eyebrows quizzically. He says it again, mouth moving slowly enough to read his lips. He smiles again and this is my last look at him before he goes flying backward, arms and legs splayed at unnatural angles. Blaster fire ionizes the air. Within moments Jefferson will hit the ground, which suddenly seems far from lovely.

He will die instantly, if he's not already dead. Of this I am sure.

His last words were to me:

Enjoy the ride.

“Man down,” Zavier says as he steers the speeder through Indra's canyons. “Left-side enforcement to Cosmo A. Nelson, take up position.
We're on Popper radar now, so take the backup route. Rendezvous Drill-Facil, same as before.” He accelerates into the turn, and then we're plummeting with the same controlled precision I'm known for. His men follow the best they can. “Be careful,” he yells.

He jerks his chin and the whole pack swerves. His hand's choking the accelerator and his piloting is borderline reckless.

I fight the urge to commandeer this speeder. We touch down in some miserable back alley, some stretch where no one walks because it looks like the Lower Levels are seeping into this one. We hover there, his team awaiting his signal.

“Livia?” I say. “Is she—”

“Cosmo A is fine.”

“Kane?”

“You don't need to worry about him neither.” He gives the go sign. “The only casualty,” he says, “was one of our own.”

We take off.

At the Academy, you're taught that the city's laid out in a perfect grid with regulated block sizes. There are public recreational spaces at every ten intervals. To promote communal gatherings. The thought being that if you see and communicate with your neighbors, you're less likely to harm one another. But this has never encouraged a feeling of community, since it is felt that it is just another way the IHC can better observe and control your interactions. I bet the good citizens of Indra also don't think about the people living right beneath them, or the feelings that fester there.

Zavier and his men bend tight corners and passages so narrow I can reach out and touch the sides. We careen through a waste dump. Everywhere we go is fit for only Middlers and Hubbers, and they keep their heads down when they hear us coming. We go so fast I have to clutch this man I despise. I make sure to dig my fingernails into him.

The light of the blasts travels faster than their sound. The energy
is ricocheting off plexi-steel before it all sounds too close for comfort. I spare a glance behind, and this patrol threatens to overtake us.

“Damn Poppers,” Zavier hisses.

Poppers, PCF—whatever you call them—you could illuminate the entire city with the amount of blasting they're doing.

Zavier's doing his best to outrun them, but PCF speeders are far superior. He sets a course for a rigger storage yard to our immediate left. Unorganized and filthy, just what you'd expect from a rigger, but that means space to lie low and duck out of sight. Too bad someone else thought of it first. Those well-maintained, clean-burning PCF engines sound real hungry to me.

Zavier lifts his hand, ready to signal our descent.

“Wait!” I shout. “Not that way. They're already there. I can hear them.”

He refuses to acknowledge me. His hand drops and so do we.