Youngbloods, page 10
Shay leads the way, tightroping across a girder leading to the tower.
It’s strange, seeing my childhood home encased inside another structure. For ten years, it was the tallest building in Shreve, by law. But now it’s been swallowed, soon to be digested by half a million tons of permacrete.
Going last across the girder, I notice something stuck to the back of X’s radiation suit.
A patch—his suit tore in our crash.
‘X …’ I start, but he spins around and leans in close. With his faceplate pressed against mine, his whisper fills my helmet.
‘Not a word.’
I hesitate—we’re supposed to abort if our suits are torn. Patches are better at sealing in air than keeping out radiation. But this is Boss X … and he patched it up before we came in.
I give him a nod.
We turn our attention back to the hundred-meter fall on either side of us.
The others wait at a ragged, gaping hole, entry to the second-highest floor of the tower. I remember now—the control room was blasted open by my sister’s rebels as the Fall of Shreve neared its final act.
Astrix sends her scout drones into the room, then gives the all-clear.
Shay whispers to me, ‘You first.’
I stare into the darkness. My father’s body is only a flight of stairs above us, three months dead. Rafi didn’t bury him, just left him to rot, preserved like trail meat by the radiation leaking from the walls.
They took Col’s body that night, away to Victoria and a funeral I missed. Those hundreds of thousands lining the streets of the newly freed city. His little brother, Teo, walking beside the hovering casket, one hand steadying its passage in the cloud-seeded rain. I watched it from a Paz hospital, radiation poisoning making me vomit.
The world becomes dizzy and unstuck, the open space of the Sarcophagus yawning beneath me.
I finally realize—this is the spire of grief that comes for me every night, stretching up from darkness. This tower, this spike where I was raised, is now forever aimed at my heart, Col’s death poisoning its tip.
Tally’s voice is gentle. ‘You know the building, Frey-la. We don’t.’
‘Sure.’ I take a few slow breaths, flicking on my wrist lights to push away the darkness.
The control room lights up before me. This is where Security watched the city in real time, sampling the countless feeds from surveillance dust. Now it’s a galaxy of glass from shattered wallscreens, bullet-pocked walls and ceiling.
‘Anything out of place?’ Shay asks.
I scan the room, trying to recall that night three months ago without setting the world spinning again. My sister and I fought side by side here. We were sent hurtling out of this room by a shockgun, only to be caught midair by Diego jump troops.
You’re magnificent would have been Rafi’s last words to me.
The rebel soldiers’ bodies have been taken away, but a few Shreve heavies are piled by the door, still in their armor. I’m grateful for the rebreather in my suit.
The rest looks like it did at the end of that awful night.
‘Nothing’s changed that I can see,’ I say. ‘The data vaults are one floor down.’
The stairs are a nightmare of armored Shreve soldiers and rebel blood.
Gouges expose the wiring in the walls—Rafi’s army was trying to cut off my father from his dirty bomb. But he had enough explosives stuffed into his office fireplace to detonate the whole tower. The only thing that saved us was my sister killing Col.
The stairs waver for a moment.
No—Rafi didn’t save anyone except herself.
‘You okay?’ Tally asks.
‘I’m fine, Boss.’ More deep breaths.
One of Astrix’s tiny drones is sniffing something at the bottom of the stairs. It shimmers, just out of reach of my new vision. When I shine my light on it, it vanishes completely. But when I point the light away, it glints again on the stone.
It’s a drawing, in some kind of half-invisible metallic ink.
A bundle of feathers.
I’ve seen this symbol before, scrawled on the rooftops of Shreve during my father’s rule.
‘The palimpsest.’ I descend the stairs and kneel beside the symbol. ‘The resistance had a secret code, like invisible graffiti. You needed glasses to see it. For some reason, my Special vision’s picking it up.’
‘For some reason,’ Astrix repeats with a soft laugh. ‘Who do you think invented this stuff?’
I stare at her. ‘Wait. You were helping the resistance here?’
She smiles. ‘Not just in Shreve—the ink’s everywhere. We give it to opposition cliques, journos investigating corruption, the odd crim. Whoever needs to keep secrets from a local government.’
‘But my rebels friends hadn’t heard of it,’ I say.
Shay shrugs. ‘Not all rebels. Just us.’
‘Turn up your ultraviolet,’ Astrix says.
When I do, the symbol grows steadier.
‘We just supply the ink,’ Tally says. ‘Every city creates their own code. Can you read this?’
‘A little. A feather duster means this place is safe from surveillance.’ I look up at the control room. ‘Which means it was definitely written after the fall.’
‘It might mean something different now,’ X says.
He right—the palimpsest was scrawled across the entire city of Shreve, a catalog of frustrations, petty rebellions, and crimes. But those countless layers of symbols are mostly irrelevant in the age of Frey.
Tally nods at the door to the data vaults. ‘One way to find out. Send a drone in, Astrix.’
‘Already did, straight through an air shaft—it died,’ Astrix says. ‘Too many grays in there.’
I stand and walk toward the door. It’s made of thick metal, like a vault full of gold.
‘We have to be quick,’ Astrix says. ‘It’s hot in there.’
I check my helmet seals again, then take a deep breath of recycled air.
The door isn’t locked when I give it a shove. It swings open to reveal an empty room.
The memory cores are gone.
22. CORES
‘How?’ is all Astrix can say.
I walk into the room, trying to ignore the rad meter hailstorming in my ears. I turn the volume down another notch.
The room is completely empty.
Growing up, Rafi and I snuck in here a few times, expecting to see recordings of debauchery and treason. Of course, the reality was superbly boring—a few hundred identical, soccer-ball-size cores, each holding one week of dust recordings.
They were full of goo, I remember, jam-packed with strands of artificial DNA, the most efficient form of data storage. Every cell in our body contains the whole human genome, after all.
While planning this mission, Astrix couldn’t think of a way to carry them all on our low-powered hoverboards.
We were simply going to destroy them.
‘How’d they manage to get every single one?’ Astrix says. ‘It’s only been three hours since nightfall!’
‘They might still be here,’ Shay says. ‘Check the other vaults.’
We storm back out. But at the bottom of the next staircase down, the same symbol is drawn on the floor.
‘They’ve cleaned it out,’ I said. ‘That’s what a feather duster means.’
Tally looks at me. ‘Who did this? Who uses these symbols?’
‘Everyone. Smugglers, citizens blowing off steam, all the cliques …’ My voice hitches.
The Futures.
But there’s no way that a bunch of self-obsessed kids could’ve pulled this theft off. Maybe it was Whole Truth, looking to shame my fathers’ collaborators.
A sound comes from the closed door of the second vault—a soft voice, moaning.
I throw myself at the door, but this one’s locked.
‘Astrix!’ I yell, but she’s already beside me, squirting nanos on the hinges.
The metal heats up, glowing red in seconds. An infernal smell fills the cramped staircase.
The moaning comes again.
Astrix turns to X. ‘It’s ready, if you hit it hard enough.’
The rest of us clear space for him.
He throws himself down the stairs and against the door. It snaps open wrong ways, hinge side swinging inward, then breaks free completely, spinning for a moment on one corner before it tumbles to the ground.
We charge inside.
This room’s like the ones above—stripped bare of cores. But in a corner lies a figure in a radiation suit, surrounded by dead hovercams.
A murmur comes from him.
‘Told you … to leave me.’
The voice is sickeningly familiar. I kneel beside him and rub at the helmet’s fogged-over faceplate.
It’s Counselor Chulhee, the boss of Future.
‘You’re kidding me,’ I say. Sentry drones knocked out, hundreds of cores removed in a matter of hours, all with the precision of a military operation. ‘But you’re just a bunch of kids!’
‘Who is?’ Tally demands.
‘No time for introductions,’ Astrix says, a scanner in her hand. ‘We have to get him out of here. We have to get out of here!’
The rad meter in my helmet is shrieking again.
X and I grab Chulhee and head for the door.
‘I’ll check the last vault,’ Astrix cries. ‘Meet you up top!’
Five of us head up the stairs. I’m climbing backward, carrying Chulhee by his shoulders. He makes small protesting noises, his head lolling from side to side.
‘Did we get everything?’ he murmurs.
‘Looks like it,’ I say.
A sigh leaks from him, a mix of agony and satisfaction.
The Futures spent the last ten years performing their lives for an unborn audience. They must have decided it was worth risking death to save all those historic moments from oblivion.
We reach the control room, and I stumble backward across wreckage and dead bodies. Chulhee groans as I almost drop him.
Shay’s already called the hoverboards inside.
‘I’ll take him,’ Tally says. ‘Anyone else shows up at a hospital with a radioactive body, they’ll get arrested.’
‘He’s not a body yet, Boss,’ Croy says.
We load him onto a board, and Tally straddles him. She lifts up and out the hole in the control room wall.
As we watch them fly away, Shay breaks comm silence. ‘Astrix?’
A soft sigh in my helmet. ‘No cores down here, Shay-la. But there’s another body.’
Shay swears, then gathers herself. ‘I’m coming down to help you.’
‘Don’t,’ Astrix says. ‘There’s nothing we can do for this one.’
Shay looks at me. ‘You said a bunch of kids. Who are they?’
‘A clique called Future. They thought the surveillance recordings were … historically important.’
She frowns. ‘A bunch of kids care about history?’
‘They care about being history,’ I say.
‘Well, at least one of them is,’ Shay mutters. ‘Like we’ll be, unless we get out of here—five of us on two boards!’
‘Right.’ I look around the control room, as if another hoverboard is going to appear.
Then I see what I missed on the way in—a small shiny object under one of the shattered wallscreens.
A butter knife.
I walk over and pick it up, remembering the drone carrying silverware that was leaving just as we arrived. All the other drones were dead.
Drones don’t drop things by accident … and I never looked under the top layer of silverware.
‘The Futures were finishing up when we got here.’ I drop the knife. ‘They used that cargo drone to sneak past us.’
‘What do you mean?’ Shay asks.
It’s too much to explain, and every second gives them more time to get away.
‘Follow me.’
I head for the ragged opening at a dead run.
23. CRASH LANDING
My feet clang on the girder as I run, the sound echoing down the hundred-meter drop.
My feet slip near the other end, but I grab the girder with both hands and swing out the opening in the pyramid wall.
Our remaining boards are there on standby, but there’s a faster way down to the ground.
I grab one of the dead construction drones, with fine manipulator arms and big grippy footpads. I tear off two of its legs, then step out onto the slick skin of the Sarcophagus.
My feet slip out from under me, but I slam the borrowed grippy pads against the glossy black surface of the pyramid. They slow me down a little, the friction building through my gloves.
Every second, I’m sliding a little faster.
The cargo drone is down there at the bottom, crashed onto its side, silverware strewn everywhere. It walked right past me and X, and we practically ignored it.
The Futures saw us coming. They snuck the last few cores out right before our eyes.
I try to angle my skid away from the two crashed drones, toward softer ground. But I’m headed straight toward the wreckage.
As the earth rushes up, I curl into a ball …
The ground hits me like a giant fist, a whump traveling through my body.
Then I’m rolling across thick grass and scattered forks, knives, and spoons. Pinpricks jab me, tearing at my suit like tiny radioactive teeth.
I roll to a halt on my back, staring up at the taunting stars.
It takes a moment to move again. Healing nanos are swarming across my broken skin, clustering around a bruised rib.
But there’s no time to linger. I stand and pull off the radiation suit, worse than useless now that it’s torn. Two sprained fingers on my left hand scream as I work the clasps—more nanos flock to the pain.
I take a step toward the cargo carrier, and my rad meter starts clicking. Nothing protects me but a sneak suit now.
The carrier’s empty. A few meters away, the grass is marked with four deep ruts—the landing skids of a hovercar with a heavy load.
‘Shay?’ I say to the darkness.
No answer comes. I boost the power in my comms.
‘Shay! Can you hear me?’
‘We’re coming. But turn down your—’
‘The Futures were here,’ I interrupt. ‘We just missed them. Looks like they were in a hovercar!’
A moment of silence.
Then Astrix’s voice: ‘She’s right—there it is! Headed west, and seriously radioactive!’
I scan the sky, thermal imaging turned up. But the pyramid blocks half the sky.
‘Pick me up. I’m at the bottom.’
‘You’re on your own,’ Shay cuts me off. ‘Comm silence.’
‘But I don’t have a …’ My voice fades. There’s not even static in my ear, my comms overridden by Shay’s command.
A pair of hoverboards streak across the sky above me, carrying Shay, X, Croy, and Astrix toward the west.
With only two boards left, there’s no room for me.
I have to walk out of Shreve.
That’s when I hear the sirens on their way.
24. EXFILTRATION
I run hard, my bruised rib making every step a gut punch.
At least I’m finally out of that bulky radiation suit. The wind tastes like pine needles and this afternoon’s rainstorm. The stars are rampant overhead. I feel like a Special again.
The sirens are almost here. Did the Futures trip an alarm inside the pyramid, or did we?
Then I realize—this is my fault. The night was quiet until I boosted my comms to talk to Shay.
Three warden hovercars are in the sky, headed for the Sarcophagus. They’re small unarmed craft, part of the civilian force that replaced my father’s dreaded Security.
I slow my run a little. The new wardens are armed only with shocksticks. Brutal by most free cities’ standards, but a mere annoyance for me.
I see flickers of heat in the sky—the lifting fans of a dozen hoverboards. It’s not just wardens in cars; my sister’s personal bodyguard of former rebels is joining the response.
I pull up the hood of my sneak suit, looking around for a hiding place.
The pyramid is still a construction site—bare ground, piles of parts and materials. A huge fabricator sits ready to produce half a million tons of permacrete.
The piles are organized into girders, pipes, glossy tiles for the pyramid’s outer layer. Then I spot a mountain of offcuts, a chaotic jumble.
I dive in, picking my way toward the middle. It’s a jungle of scrap, jagged edges everywhere, ready to stab or slice me. But the broken shapes are perfect for my sneak suit to copy.
The warden hovercars shoot past overhead, going for the pyramid. Most of the bodyguard follows, but one of the boards takes a slow circle above the construction site.
A young rebel rides it, peering down into the darkness around me. He takes out a scanner.
I pull up my camo mask.
That’s when I hear it—a gentle ticking in my ear, like the end of a rainstorm on a roof. My rad meter is still picking up trace radiation.
But these are offcuts, not scrap from the pyramid …
The radiation is me.
My boots on that poisoned stone inside. My gloves touching the walls. All the pinpricks in my suit when I rolled across scattered silverware.
The ticking is soft, unsteady. Nothing the rebel’s scanner can pick up at a distance.
His hoverboard descends, weaving through the site. He’s retracing my path exactly, following my footprints in the soft dirt.
I search for an escape route, hints of starlight leading me toward the far side. But the first shift of my weight sends a soft creaking through the pile.
I freeze again.
The rebel comes closer. He’s staring into the mountain of scrap, uncertain.
He’s probably wondering whether to call for backup. A few footprints could be uglies playing hide-and-seek.
‘Anybody in there?’ he shouts.
I don’t answer.
‘Okay, be that way,’ he says. ‘But don’t come crying if you get hurt.’
He flies up to the summit of the scrap mountain, directly overhead. His lifting fans spin up, and he rises straight into the air.
For a moment, I think he’s leaving …
