“People will fight for many things over the course of their lives. It hardly matters. If you want to know who they really are, ask what they will not live without.”
~ private conversation with Agent 5 of the Ministry of Defense
Day 202/365
(July 21, 2069)
Village of Missingham
Shadow Prime
A gentle summer breeze ruffled the feathery, gen-engineered grass of the Shadow Prime. Donovan reached down and ran his hand over it, feeling the difference from the sharp blades in the hellish rogue iteration. This was soft, almost fuzzy, like touching a cloud.
Senturi walked up the hill toward him, smiling. “What do you think?”
“It feels real.” Not quite right, but solid.
“There’s no known nodes here,” Senturi said. “They diverged from the Primes when pacifists won the vote, and Emir never came to power. He’s here, but working out of a basement lab. Everyone thinks he’s mad.”
The corner of Donovan’s lip twitched up in a smile. “Have you found a way for us to move the soldiers in?”
“Not all of us. Not yet.” Senturi licked his lips and looked away. Lying. “They have a sort of urban legend about a group of radicals who went underground and started building a secret army years ago.”
“We’re that army?” Donovan shook his head. “I don’t want more violence. There needs to be an end to it.”
Senturi nodded. “We’re escapees. When I first met the locals, I slipped, told them I worked for a military organization. They filled in the rest. It will be so easy!” He smiled. “We’ll be the heroes. The coddled, protected lost boys. I have names for all of us.”
“We have names.”
“Now we have the names of the dead. Children who went missing before the world wars ended. They’re dead, but we can still have their lives. We can have their families, their place in society. It’ll be perfect.”
Donovan ran a hand over his arm. He’d been itching since going to the rogue iteration. Something in the air there made him crazy. “Rose isn’t returning to Prime.”
“Good,” Senturi said. “She’d only ruin this.”
“She wouldn’t know how,” Donovan said. “There’s no one for her to murder. No way for this iteration to collapse.” Which is what made it so perfect. The low population could withstand an influx. There were plenty of resources to go around. “What about the leadership? How do we control things?”
Senturi shrugged. “Everything is done by democratic vote. No one here had real leadership skills. They’re all a bit docile, to be honest. Very calm.” The way he said it made it a warning.
“Drugs or genes?”
“Indoctrination, I think. No one gets angry here. When you argue with them, they agree. If you try to provoke them, they ignore you. If someone did take over, they’d make good slaves. Very amenable to whatever you suggest. But it hardly seems worth the effort. Why fight them? They don’t resist.”
“They need us,” Donovan said. “Need us to keep them safe.” He wondered if this was how Rose felt every time she was asked to decide humanity’s fate. Did she feel like she was soaring? Rushing to the sky with the whole world held in the balance?
He walked over to a tree with white bark and yellow leaves with frosty-white tips. “Do you have the evacuation list ready?”
“The first wave of soldiers can be here in three hours.” Senturi crouched. “You do realize there is a payment needed.”
Donovan nodded. “What does the Ruling Council want?”
“Power. Always power. They already know what the conditions are like in the Shadow Prime. It will be easy for them to walk in here and take control.”
“They’ll make a pet of Emir,” Donovan guessed.
Senturi shrugged. “He needs to be controlled. You know that. This is how things are. The Council gets to control the population, and we get to live here unchallenged. You’ll have everything you want.” Senturi patted his arm.
Donovan nodded. “I know.” Lifting a pair of binoculars, he scanned the streets of the nearest village, looking for a woman with bright red hair who walked along the dirt road from her home, where she’d had lunch, to a shop each day. He’d seen her before. Soon, he promised her.
Soon, I’ll spend all day with you.
The villagers hurried from their homes to the shops, but the red-haired woman was missing.
“She’s not there,” Senturi said.
Donovan turned to him with a frown.
Senturi smiled apologetically. “I had to show the Council what was available here. We need weapons, soldiers who will obey us.”
“We had both already.”
“You think you did, but I don’t trust anyone who was raised in Emir’s shadow. We needed the Council’s troops. Soldiers trained to ignore Emir.”
“Where is the woman?”
“In the Prime,” Senturi said with a shrug. “She’s a very striking woman. Very agreeable.”
There was something in the way he said that that made Donovan’s throat tighten.
“Don’t take it personally,” the other man advised. “This is simply politics. Here or in the Prime, there’s always going to be someone whose needs are greater than your wants. And the Council needed a sign. Call it a partial payment.”
Donovan pivoted, driving his fist into Senturi’s jaw and stunning the other man. Senturi dropped to the ground, dazed. Donovan stomped on his chest, breaking his ribs and piercing his lungs and heart.
Two swift kicks, one to the head and one to the stomach, and Senturi was gone. He’d breathe for a few minutes more, but the internal bleeding and damage would kill him soon enough.
Donovan looked down at his friend. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal,” he said in case Senturi could still hear him. “I’m a node for the soldiers, not the Council. I’m not here to defend or follow orders. I’m here to conquer. To take. To have. This is my world,” he explained. “I was going to share this with you, but you broke my trust. She was mine.”
Senturi groaned. Blood bubbled from his mouth.
“Your mother on the Council will die quicker,” Donovan promised. “I’ll leave her for the decoherence to wash away. She won’t feel anything but impending terror, and then there’s silence.” He knelt down by Senturi. “You know how I know? Because I have died so many times, death is all I know. The pain followed by the silence. Then I wake up and kill myself again. Every day.”
Senturi’s pulse stopped fluttering in his neck.
Donovan checked the man’s wrist. “Dead. Welcome to silence.”
He stood back up. There was no need to bury the body. The grass here was aggressive, and no one walked in the hills. They kept to their villages. Four hundred and thirteen buildings in every one. Every person had an assigned job, a designated place. Everyone was happy.
She had been happy here. Would have been happy to welcome him home. Now he needed to raid another iteration to find the red-haired woman again.
His timer chirped, warning him that the next portal was opening. The anomaly would take him to the tunnels running between Control and the civilian towers. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be any industrious techs coming home late from work again.
He’d hate to ruin the afternoon with another murder.