“That is … disappointing,” said Director Terrell.
“Yes, sir,” Lukas agreed. He had just finished updating the director on the status of his investigation. None of the other leads he’d been following had developed. Rena was still the only viable link to the Outlier spy initiative. The problem was that Lukas had failed at thinking of her only as an enemy. He’d made his best effort to control his emotions, but since he’d met Rena, that had become a strangely difficult objective. Now he wanted nothing more than to pull her out from the middle of this war and tell her the truth about her past. She wasn’t delusional. She really did live in that house with the Outlier terrorist. And the Outliers were to blame for her fractured memory.
But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t even admit that he wanted to do that. He had to convince the director of Outlier Control that his only concern was exposing the Outlier initiative.
“I’ve even searched the Outlier house,” Lukas continued. “There’s nothing there. Rena is the only valid clue to this initiative. If we could capture and interrogate her, we’d have our answers.”
Terrell folded his hands and rested them on the desk in front of him. “That seems an unlikely prospect as she’s currently living with the Outliers.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if we knew where the Outliers were hiding … this war would be over.”
Lukas nodded.
“However, we are making progress.”
“Sir?”
“The intel you provided about their water transport is paying off. We contracted a sewer maintenance technician who has a fantastic memory. He’s helped us map the primary drainage tunnels, and our assault teams have been concentrating their searches there.”
“Have you found anything?”
Terrell’s eyes seemed to sparkle. “We’ve engaged Outlier soldiers in sixteen different firefights over the past few weeks. They are better trained and armed than we anticipated. We’ve lost men because of it, but we vastly outnumber them. With each engagement, we’re learning how they fight. Where they retreat to.”
“That’s good news. If we locate the larger population, the spy initiative becomes irrelevant.”
Terrell sat back in his chair and crossed one leg over another. “You don’t sound satisfied with this progress.”
“I think it would be wise to continue pursuing both paths to our objective.”
The director didn’t reply.
Lukas knew his comment had made an impression, so he kept going. “I’m not ready to give up on the spy initiative. The only way to capture Rena is to draw her out. To do that, I need to find something she wants.”
“The trouble with Outliers is they don’t care about anything. If they did … enough for it to become leverage, they wouldn’t have left Esh in the first place.”
“True, but Rena’s not the typical Outlier. She thinks deeply about everything. I just need to find some way to lead her thinking in this direction.”
Terrell stroked his chin. When he spoke, he seemed reluctant. “It may be possible to affect the social status of her family and friends … if you think she would care.”
Lukas had to suppress the shock welling up inside him. He wouldn’t even have considered that as technically possible. It violated everything the Founders stood for and the way they had designed the rating system. But he kept his face neutral.
“I’ll look into it,” Terrell said, as if Lukas had answered. “For now, keep looking for other leads.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
o o o
“This is the one,” said Barrett, his voice sounding hollow through his oxygen mask. He tilted his head to inspect a series of metal rungs leading up the wall into a tunnel in the ceiling. Then he checked the oxygen meter on his wrist and gave the signal for everyone to remove their masks.
Rena loosened the head strap and pulled down the contoured piece of rubber tubing that allowed her to breathe in places where algae had used up all the oxygen, or where mold or lack of air flow made it unsafe to try.
The four other team members were already spreading out around the ladder, casually taking up cover positions around their leader.
Rena stepped closer to Barrett and peered up into the circle of darkness, where the near-infrared projection from her NVD couldn’t penetrate. This was the fourth such vertical passage they’d encountered since stepping off the tunnel pod, as they called it. “Do all these lead up to the Barrens?”
Barrett nodded.
“What are they for?”
Even though his NVD covered the upper part of his face, it was clear he wasn’t in the mood to answer her questions.
“For going up to the Barrens,” said Hidinger, one of two men who’d been reassigned to Barrett’s team. He had a dry sense of humor and rarely missed an opportunity to point out the obvious.
“Are you ready?” asked Barrett.
Rena kept her mouth closed this time and just nodded.
“Follow me,” said Barrett, starting up the rungs.
As she climbed, her NVD created enough light for her to see Barrett’s boots and the narrow walls around her. The other members followed her up, and a few minutes later, Barrett came to a stop.
“Opening the hatch,” he said.
Rena switched off the light projection of her NVD. The tunnel became so dark she couldn’t even see her hand on the rung in front of her.
The sound of grating metal was followed by the impact of falling dirt hitting her head and jacket. Though it was 9:00 pm, the amount of ambient light above ground made it appear as daylight through her NVD. She noticed that some of the impact sensations were raindrops soaking her jacket. A second later, a damp, earthy smell washed over her.
Barrett exited the tunnel and turned to help Rena.
She grabbed his hand and climbed out onto the soft, weed-covered soil of the Barrens. The feeling of being out in the open, after being confined for so long, was both exhilarating and intimidating. But the smell of the Barrens was pungent enough to overcome all her other sensations, calming her with years’ worth of positive memories.
One by one, Barrett helped the rest of the team out of the tunnel. Then he closed the hatch and replaced the clump of moss he’d dislodged when opening it.
“This rain isn’t good,” said Zamoro, the other male soldier. “Should we turn back?”
Barrett inspected the device attached to his other wrist before shaking his head. “It’s six degrees above freezing and probably won’t get any colder. We’ll push on and hope the weather clears up.”
“Can we climb in the rain?” asked Syon, the only other female on the team, though you couldn’t tell by the way she talked or carried herself.
Everyone turned to look at Rena.
“Yes,” she answered, without a moment’s hesitation. “We’ll just have to clean the mud off our boots before we go up.”
Barrett locked eyes with each member before asking, “Are we good?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Alright. Let’s move.”
Rena stayed in the second position behind Barrett, who led the team in a precise heading using a compass. The fog was so thick Rena wouldn’t have known which direction to run otherwise. Minutes later, the sky began to lighten to the east, revealing the nighttime glow of Esh’s presence. By the time they were close enough to see any features of the Outskirts, the team was positioned so that the nearest city camera was blocked by the footer of the Canopy support beam they intended to climb. Barrett had navigated their approach perfectly.
“Grappling hook,” said Barrett, when they had reassembled at the base of the footer.
Zamoro took off his backpack and removed a thick bundle of rope attached to a large, treble hook. He’d been practicing for this throw over the past few days, working out the details of how to coil the rope so it wouldn’t tie itself in knots or interfere with the trajectory of the hook.
While the other soldiers took up cover positions with their weapons, Rena watched Zamoro. He untied the bundle and set it on the ground. Then he counted out seven loops of rope, put six around his left arm, and let the seventh dangle below the hook in his right hand. He looked up at the sheer surface of the massive, concrete pillar and positioned himself for the throw.
“Clear,” said Barrett.
The others repeated the status, indicating that there weren’t any citizens in their field of view.
Zamoro heaved the grappling hook over his head with a straight-armed throw. The rope uncoiled from his arm, one loop at a time, until the hook landed with a clank atop the pillar. He waited two seconds before tugging backward on the rope. Everyone watched, ready to dodge a falling, pointed object.
To Rena’s relief, the hook didn’t come back down.
Zamoro gave it one more sharp tug before giving her a thumbs-up.
Rena weighed the least of all the team members, and she had the most climbing experience. So she took responsibility to lead the climb and assume the greatest risk. But there was no room for fear. She still wasn’t an official member of the team and had yet to prove herself to these soldiers. She grabbed hold of the rope, set her boots against the concrete pillar, and began to scale the vertical surface.
The pillar was twenty meters tall, and she reached the top in only a few minutes. After verifying that the grappling hook was in a secure location, she tugged three times on the rope and waited as the other team members climbed up to join her.
Hidinger came up last, breathing heavily when the other soldiers pulled him onto the top of the pillar.
“Can you do this climb?” Barrett asked him. “Tell me now before it’s too late to turn back.”
Hidinger climbed to his feet and stood tall with his hands on his head. “Just takes a little getting used to.”
“All that muscle weighs a lot,” Rena pointed out.
He sucked in a gulp of air and let it out in a huff. “I’ll make it.”
Barrett clapped him on the shoulder.
As all eyes swung expectantly to Rena, she glanced at the bottom of her boots to verify that they were free of mud. It was something she had to do anyway, and was also better than returning their stares and having to think about their expectations. Then she stepped over to the base of the support beam and laid her hand against it. It was cold, and with the rain still falling, sheets of water spilled down its surface. But it wasn’t as slippery as it could have been. She’d climbed more dangerous things in her life. Granted, they weren’t a thousand meters tall. At least it wouldn’t be a vertical climb. In fact, because the beam arched toward the Center, the climbing would gradually become easier.
She looked up at the metal, imagining it as a street running between the transparent panels on either side. She only had to stay on the street, which shouldn’t be too difficult given the bolt heads sticking out of the beam every half-meter along the way. These would be her handholds and footholds, which was more than she was used to working with. But she’d never climbed something so tall before, and there was no telling how long her muscles would hold out, or how her body would react to being so far away from the ground. Would she get halfway to her goal, only to become paralyzed by fear?
“Here you go,” said Zamoro.
Rena turned and accepted another bundle of rope, this one fitted with a tension clamp that had been designed by an Outlier mechanical engineer. Such devices were used regularly by the crews who built the metal stairs and walkways in the village, and she had trained with one for a day and a half to learn how to use it properly.
“Just like the Outskirts,” Barrett said.
The reassurance of his comment only lasted a few seconds. Then Rena realized it was also frightening to think that if anyone could do this, it was her. There was no one else to learn from or depend on. Dwelling on such negative thoughts would only make the task more difficult, but if she and Barrett’s team could achieve their objective, it would speed the Outliers’ planning capabilities by a decade, maybe more. If she wanted her new family to trust her, this was the shortest path to success.
“No problem,” she finally replied. Then she set the bundle of rope down, counted out ten meters worth of loops, slid them over her shoulder, and began climbing before her nerves made her do otherwise.
She kept her body as close to the beam as possible, using her legs to push her weight upward and minimize the strain on her arms. The first ten meters passed quickly, after which she attached the tension clamp to a bolt head, clipped herself to the carabiner tied into a knot at the ten meter mark, and gave the rope three tugs.
Syon came up next, being the second-lightest person on the team. When she reached Rena’s position and placed her tension clamp, Rena removed her own clamp and climbed another ten meters. They continued in this pattern to get all five people on the Canopy and moving upward as safely as possible. It was Rena’s strategy, and the idea was to arrange the team from lightest to heaviest. If Hidinger fell off at the bottom, his rope would be pulled straight and he’d have four other clamps above him as support. If Rena fell from the top, her rope would bend back on itself, putting the most strain on Syon’s clamp below her, and each one in succession after that. The order was meant to limit the possibility of an event that would cause the whole team to fall.
As the night wore on, Rena’s hands became numb. She’d chosen not to wear gloves so she could feel the handholds. But the metal beam was so cold that it ruined her ability to feel anyway. As she waited for Syon to come up to her, Rena removed a pair of gloves from her backpack and slid them over her hands. She tested her grip on the nearest bolt head and found it to be acceptable, now that the angle of the Canopy was less severe. And if her hands ever warmed up inside the gloves, her grip would improve. When Syon reached her, Rena suggested using gloves if she needed and to pass along the suggestion to the others.
As they were talking, the rope jolted. Rena and Syon both grabbed handholds in anticipation of being pulled down. But nothing else happened. Rena leaned to the side and looked down the Canopy to see Hidinger dangling from the rope. It took him a few seconds to turn over and find his footing again. Then he raised his hand and gave a thumbs-up.
“Go on ahead,” said Syon. “I’ll tell them about gloves.”