The Neo-Spartans: Altered World (2 page)

              In those seconds of meandering around the maze of her inner contemplations, Quinn had missed Gabriel’s appearance, so when his mutating voice announced his presence it gave her a slight jolt.

              “Check it out, Quinn has a pulse.” He had followed her gaze and discovered the object of her observations. His impudent little snigger made Quinn clench her jaw.

              “You’re late,” she almost hissed.

              “And you’re in dreamland. You’d have better luck with one of those chromo-freaks at the Sanctuary,” Gabriel snorted. She smacked him on the head, and he swallowed his share of public humiliation because this particular sibling display of “affection” was clearly noticed by his classmates.

              “Lighten up, Quinn.”

              “Stop screwing around. You’re always late. Now Kilbert’s gonna chew me out for it.”

              “You let him get to you. Your problem, not mine. So, what’s the deal with you and that Eugenic dude?” Gabriel tried steering the conversation away from himself.

              “Nothing.”

              “Nothing?! Really Quinn…”

              “So what, I’m not allowed to look?” she tried to play it cool.

              “He’s the walking dead,” Gabriel stated heartlessly and for no particular reason it annoyed Quinn.

              “They’re people, you know?” She sounded defensive.

              “They’re Eugenics,” Gabriel countered.

              Quinn knew he was right—no sympathy for the people who rejected them so vehemently. Still, her rebellious mind wrestled with the status quo that mandated such enmity between the two groups. Quinn didn’t want to dwell on where these thoughts were coming from and concentrated on the task at hand instead.

              “Let’s get moving. We’re already late for seed class. I’m guessing you didn’t bring your sample?”

Gabriel produced a box, rattled the seeds inside. “Shocking,” he grinned like a monkey.

              Indeed. But Quinn didn’t want to acknowledge that he had done something right. It would be like giving him a permission slip for a dozen screw-ups. Instead, she led him out of the school yard and they disappeared into the foul fog of the metropolis.

* * *

              They walked hurriedly for a few blocks, turned a corner and quickly backtracked for half a block, and disappeared into an alley. At the end, where it intersected with the traffic-ridden avenue, Quinn and Gabriel stopped. She looked at him for a brief moment and he saw the worry of mistrust. He grinned, enjoying his sister’s torment.

              “To trust or not to trust? You know we can’t walk together. Too dangerous if somebody decides to stalk us. So, if I ditch you, you’ll be in trouble, if you walk me to seed class, you’d violate Kilbert’s rule. Again, in trouble. So what are you going to do, Quinn?”

              Gabriel’s joke went too far and Quinn’s face turned stone cold. She hated dealing with her brother, she hated being responsible for him. It was exhausting and she was utterly lost. She knew she had to keep him safe: he was so important for the Neo-Spartans, the little freak! But he didn’t want to be safe. He liked parkour, he liked danger. She tried to discipline him. He went out of his way to be a delinquent. When she reasoned with him, he overreacted with emotion. On the rare occasion she opted for the emotional approach he’d shut her down and build impenetrable walls around himself. What was the point?! Why had she promised her father that she would watch over Gabriel?! Guilt and resentment washed over her as she stood there in front of him, wishing he were never born. This brief involuntary sentiment must have leaked out because Gabriel quickly wiped the smirk off his face.

              “I’ll be there. I promise.”

              Quinn sighed: “Do you have any idea how meaningless this promise is?” Gabriel scratched his head and looked away. She was right.

              “Just chill, I’ll meet you at the monorail.” Quinn still didn’t believe him. He looked at her and half-heartedly blurted out: “I can’t ditch you before that. All my escape routes are after the mono Terminus Station. Happy?”

              It was a relief. Gabriel split and, after watching him disappear in the crowds of pedestrians, Quinn stepped into the busy avenue. A short distance along, she ducked into a diner and made her way toward the back. She slowed down at the restrooms as if to walk in. She made sure nobody was interested in her, and sneaked out the back door. This was a daily routine, and every Neo-Spartan had to follow it. It was a matter of survival. There were more Eugenics than Neo-Spartans. And when you’re a minority you’re perceived as a threat. You are different. You do not follow the mandated laws and rules. In the eyes of the scared majority you are the enemy. And once they are afraid of you they start persecuting you.

              So a Neo-Spartan never took a straight route. You assumed you were followed and you picked a route that was designed to ditch your tail, using what spies used to call a cleaning route. You took whoever might follow you through a maze of streets and alleys and made sure he could never find out where you live and surprise you with an ambush.

              Quinn gingerly weaved along Liberty Street, slowing down to window shop and make sure she hadn’t developed a tail. She picked up her pace again and aimed for the bus stop three hundred yards ahead of her. She had worked out her timing to catch the express arriving at 3:20. Suddenly Quinn noticed that the bus was a short distance away from the stop. Had she miscalculated? Impossible. She checked her watch—3:19. Shoot! It was all because of Gabriel. He had to be late and gab about James. Few minutes here, few minutes there, and now she was going to miss the bus. Without thinking twice, Quinn sprinted madly toward it. She was fast and focused on the bus as if it were an Olympic trophy. She pushed people aside, ignoring their shock and outrage. The hydraulic doors opened and the bus puffed out its flimsy passengers. More got on board and just as the doors started to close, Quinn leapt from the sidewalk to the step and squeezed inside the bus. Her daring athletics made the passengers back off and stare at her as if she were holding a bomb. Quinn caught her breath and looked around. Inside and outside the bus, people had stopped to watch what she had just done in horror. She had sprinted for three hundred yards and leapt into an almost moving vehicle. This was bad. She might as well have hijacked the bus.

              Quinn found an empty seat and tried to disappear into it. She pressed her face against the cool window, trying not to look at the people who were still glaring at her. But there was no escaping. As the bus was pulling out, she could see those outside, still looking at her, their eyes filled with hatred. They’d seen her running. They’d seen how fast she was, how effortless she made it all seem. Quinn peeled her face away from the window and cast a furtive look inside the bus. She was still the center of attention. There she was, a healthy Neo-Spartan, with flushed warm cheeks, who ran like the wind and didn’t drop dead. How they hated her in this moment. Quinn lowered her gaze and fixed it on her lap. She was not going to be bothered by this. But she was. Those looks were like invisible lashes tearing into her skin.

              Come on Quinn, shake it off. You’re used to it. At first they are shocked and amazed and it feels kind of good. Then envy turns to hate. Been there, seen that, it’s the way the Eugenics world goes. Nothing new. She raised her head, chin up. Let them stare, so what?!

              It wasn’t her fault they bought into the fancy lie. Eugenics Inc. dangled the cheap, abundant, poisonous food as bait and they took it. Who could blame them? The company was the avant-garde of progress. Their motto was change, and they changed everything. Every plant, every animal, everything that made it to our table had been tweaked to produce more. More food, more money, and more problems. The land was turning into a desert, the air into a fetid stink, and people into terminal patients—big deal! Eugenics, Inc. wasn’t going to trip over minutiae. They came up with a quick solution. Newly designed organs went on the market to help people deal with the bad food and the bad air. They were the product of the latest, most awesome technology. And Eugenics, Inc. made people want them. The population went crazy. They’d already become accustomed to smart phones, smart computers, smart cars. But now they wanted smart organs. No need to get a headache over your diet. Just eat crap and live longer. Sounds too good to be true? That’s right. In their mania to get the newest and the best, people didn’t bother to ask questions. It didn’t alarm them when they stopped being able to reproduce, and now every single Eugenic baby had to be engineered in advance.

              The few who dared distrust this new advancement were labeled old-fashioned. They wanted to stay the way they were and grow their own food. It all seemed pretty primitive and harmless. But that was not the way Eugenics, Inc. saw them. Those people were dangerous. They were rocking the boat of consumer confidence. In the book of big corporations this was a serious crime. So they dealt with it promptly: those who swapped their organs for the new and genetically “improved” ones could have access to any doctor and hospital they wanted, but those who opted to keep their vintage models were deemed a health hazard and denied medical care of any kind. Life became an endless string of hardships for those people, but it made them stronger. They learned how to cure themselves, how to grow organic food, how to defend their communities. They became the Neo-Spartans, tough people with tough lives who were proud of their resilience. They knew how to endure and survive and passed it on to the next generations: us. We live the way they taught us to because our way is the only way to save humanity from extinction.

              Quinn rose from her seat, leaving her guilt and embarrassment on it like discarded gum. She didn’t look at any of the faces surrounding her. As the bus approached its next stop, the doors hissed open and she deftly dismounted. She could see the tracks of the raised monorail crisscrossing the cityscape like the suspended limbs of a giant museum exhibit. Her old worry bubbled up again. What if Gabriel weren’t there? Quinn made it to the monorail stop, and when she spotted him in the crowd, she started breathing easier. She joined him just as the train arrived. They boarded it with the rest of the throng, but once inside, Gabriel could tell something was wrong.

              “You got followed?” Gabriel couldn’t believe the chance to read his sister the riot act had finally presented itself. Her glower quickly put an end to his fantasy.

              “Don’t be a moron, of course I didn’t get followed.”

              He kept looking at her.

She leaned closer and half-whispered, “I ran.”

              “Wow, you violated rules?! Alert the media!”

              It was all his fault, but she resisted accusations.

              “You should’ve seen their faces. I thought they might call the cops.”

              “Duh, you did something they can’t even dream of doing. What did you expect, a big round of applause?”

              “I know, but it still bugs me.”

              “Who cares, you got some delinquent fun, that’s what counts.”

              “I don’t like rubbing it in their faces.” It did feel good though, she admitted to herself.

              The train stopped and Gabriel and Quinn were the first to jump out. They emerged from the underpass. Her attention was caught by a huge video screen displaying a series of ubiquitous video ads, showing off the glamorous life of Grant Hughes, owner and CEO of Eugenics, Inc., the hereditary “monarch” of the empire that controlled everything. He had it all: money, power, good looks and what seemed to be self-perpetuating youth. Quinn’s eyes lingered on the images of this perfect human being entertaining himself in paradisiacal places all over the world. Who wouldn’t want his life?—jet skiing, paragliding, swimming with the dolphins—endless, effortless fun. Keep swapping your body parts and you, too, can have it all. No wonder people abandoned reason and listened to his sugar-coated lies without questioning them. Look at this fabulous life! Who wouldn’t want it?!

              Something in the video ads interrupted her thoughts. She stopped and examined the screens. There was something wrong. She couldn’t nail it at first, but the realization fought its way to the surface. She tapped Gabriel’s arm.

              “What’s with this ad? Something is off,” said Quinn.

              “Yeah, I’m not in it,” quipped Gabriel.

              “No, I mean, Grant Hughes looks younger than ever. Eugenics his age look like Frankenstein resuscitated, and this guy looks like he’s found the Fountain of Youth.”

              “He’s the richest man ever. I bet his labs whipped out some new skin for the jerk to make him look twenty forever.”

              “It’s not just the skin,” said Quinn.

              “Bah, he can have anything he wants,” said Gabriel. “Screw him.”