The curved windows of the meeting room looked out to a clear, blue sky. The clouds over Esh formed a carpet of gray starting beneath the windows and spreading to the horizon, like churning sewage water frozen in time. The sun, Ryce observed, was apparently yellow. Not the pale thing that moved across the arc of the Canopy like a diagram on a two-dimensional screen.
Everywhere he went in this tower, the commander saw another piece of evidence. Proof of Terrell’s lifestyle of excess. Polished stone floors. Glass walls, semitransparent in locations where privacy was needed. Gleaming metal surfaces. Lighting that ramped up in intensity when you entered the room, then faded when you left. Multiple living quarters. A massive kitchen and dining room that could have functioned as its own restaurant down in the city. Luxury beyond comprehension. And now this meeting room, with five chairs arranged in a circle. A place for Terrell to wine and dine Esh’s most influential members. Ryce had been right about his former mentor, but that didn’t make it any less disgusting.
“Commander,” said one of his guards. “You’re gonna want to see this.”
Ryce pulled himself away from the windows and met his guard at the door of another large, circular room on the north side of the tower. The other guards were already inside, staring at the plethora of holographic information hovering around the perimeter of the room. Rows and columns of three-digit numerical data. Charts and graphs of every imaginable type. Video feeds from the Center to the Outskirts. Keyword analysis of the content on the Collective. Ryce strolled around the room, inspecting each social management tool, bile rising in his throat.
He saw now that the rating system was only the outward expression of OCON’s control over citizens—the part they were allowed to see. But the manipulation went so much deeper. From here, Terrell had a window into every aspect of their lives. A way to extract and analyze information from everyday activities. And why would the director bother unless he had the means to affect change based on that information?
This was the oppression Ryce and every other Outlier had felt but couldn’t name. The dark, suffocating cloud that forced them to flee the city. That pursued them still. This was the reason citizens continued to seek refuge in the tunnels. Why the ranks of Ryce’s military forces kept swelling, exponentially, every year. And now was the time for it to end.
“Barrett’s waiting on us,” the commander said, turning to his guards. “Let’s go. We have work to do.”
o o o
Dozens of faces, stretched and distorted by the transparent walls of the tubes, streaked by every few seconds. The outbound pods of the R2-8 line were packed with citizens fleeing the Center. Rena sat next to Lukas in an otherwise vacant inbound pod, trying to catch a glimpse of someone’s expression on the parallel line.
“Did you see the water … when you lived with the Outliers?”
Rena turned away from the window. “Yeah. My friend Evelyn took me there one day. When did you see it?”
“I went across the Barrens looking for signs of an Outlier camp. To find you. I wonder if that’s actually what the ocean looks like. In the real world.”
“My father called it the physical world, remember? I think he probably would have said they’re both real … just in different ways.”
Lukas nodded before fixing his eyes on the floor.
“What’s the matter?”
He didn’t look up. “I’ve lived my whole life with the assumption that I understood reality better than everyone around me. The other kids at the orphanage. The operatives at OCON. And with you at school. I couldn’t have been more wrong.”
“Not used to it, are you?”
Lukas smiled and looked at her. “No.”
“I’ve lived my whole life with that feeling. Everyone else reached consensus, but I was just …”
“The outlier?”
“Yeah. Even among the Outliers.”
“Must feel pretty good to know you were right all along?”
“I wasn’t exactly right.”
“But you didn’t accept the reality everyone else lived with. Including me.”
Rena shrugged. “I guess. I’m still trying to process all the stuff from my father’s message, so …”
Flashing red lights interrupted their conversation, suddenly drawing their attention to the streets below the elevated tubes. Rena stood to get a better view of three emergency vehicles speeding toward the Center. Blue lights also flashed at each intersection where police officers stood beside their parked vehicles, directing throngs of panicked citizens fleeing in the opposite direction. “I’ve never seen so many vehicles.”
Lukas came to stand beside Rena, shaking his head slowly. “This is worse than I thought.”
“Can we get through to OCON headquarters?”
Lukas’s eyes began glowing again. “I think so. It looks like the fighting is contained to the Center. Law enforcement has a perimeter set up at Fifth Street and they’re evacuating everyone from there outward. But they’re too busy to prevent anyone from going in.”
“We’re the only ones crazy enough to try.”
Lukas smiled before picking up the rifle from his seat and slinging it over his shoulder with one hand. Then he put on his dark suit jacket, which covered most of the hanging weapon as well as the blood stains on his shirt.
“How’s your shoulder?”
“I’ll be in a lot of pain when the medicine wears off, but its working for now.”
The station was approaching quickly, and Rena could see that the platform was so crowded with citizens that she and Lukas would have to push their way out, even on the unloading side. “Alright. Here comes our stop. Remember … we’re just scared citizens like everyone else. OK?”
“You’re dressed like an Outlier, and I’m carrying a rifle. But yeah, we’ll do our best to fit in.”
Rena chuckled as the pod began slowing down. She followed Lukas over to the door, and as soon as it opened, both of them stepped out onto the moving platform. Lukas kept his rifle pointed down and held tight against his left hip, using his good arm to push through the crowd. Rena stayed on his left side, hoping to further conceal his weapon as she held onto his jacket.
A few citizens gave them strange looks, but the rest were so focused on getting inside a Transit pod they were oblivious to anything else around them. Lukas muscled through them at a calm pace that didn’t attract attention. Though he walked against the flow, he moved with such ease that it reminded Rena of Dal’s mom, Janelle, weaving through the lobby of the community hall before consensus.
The concentration of citizens lessened by the time they reached the steps and descended to the street. At the bottom, Lukas turned and began jogging away from two police officers directing people toward the Transit platform. He led Rena through a small gap between a building and an unattended, temporary barricade, then down a sidewalk toward the Center. Within seconds, the crowds had vanished from sight. She followed, zigzagging through abandoned streets with canopyscrapers towering on every side, blocking the light of the midday sun. Esh was eerily quiet, except for the distant crackle of gunfire and the faint, stuttered shockwaves coming up through the pavement.
“We’re getting close,” said Lukas, eyes glowing as he came to a stop on the sidewalk.
Rena held out her hands, feeing the bite of a metal cable against her skin as he cinched her wrists together.
“Sorry, but I have to make it convincing.”
“That’s OK. Your turn will come later.”
“Only if this works.” Lukas stepped back and eyed her up and down.
“How do I look?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Just let me do the talking.” Then he pulled out his silenced pistol and pointed it at her. “Turn around.”
Rena did as she was told, reminding herself that this was her plan—the only possible way to reach the Founders in time. But that knowledge didn’t calm the fear and doubt growing in her mind.
“Start walking,” Lukas ordered.
With her hands tied and a gun aimed at her back, Rena couldn’t help but wonder if this might be some elaborate trick that Lukas had devised to capture her. Pretending to believe Eldric’s message. Killing a few OCON soldiers to prove he was on Rena’s side. Letting her find the only logical solution to this conflict so she’d feel as if this were her idea.
“Left into the alley,” said Lukas, his voice cold and precise. Hopefully for the benefit of anyone listening.
Rena turned, the pace of her heartbeat quickening at the idea that she’d been outsmarted. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves, but it didn’t help. So she tried logic.
Why would he go through all this just to capture me? OCON doesn’t need me now that the war has started. OCON doesn’t even need him. And if he wanted to kill me, he could have done it in the cabin.
“Stop.”
Rena stopped at the corner of the building. In the street beyond, the backs of a dozen OCON soldiers were visible—the rear lines of the assault forces.
“On your knees.”
Rena lowered herself to the ground. Against the distant popping of automatic gunfire, she heard the approaching sound of boots hitting pavement.
Lukas stepped past her and onto the sidewalk, keeping his pistol aimed at her head.
o o o
The assault team had their weapons at low-ready as they came across the street. “What’s going on here?” yelled the leader.
Lukas waited until they were nearer so he didn’t have to yell. “I need to speak with your captain, immediately.”
The soldiers slowed to a walk and brought their weapons up as they spotted Rena on her knees in the alley.
“Who is this?” asked the team leader, his gaze jumping back and forth between Rena and Lukas.
“Unless you’re the director, I’m not authorized to discuss mission details. I just need to see your captain.”
“He’s busy.”
Lukas didn’t have to pretend to feel angry. “I didn’t ask for your assessment, soldier.”
The team leader’s cheek bulged with clenching muscles. “Guard them,” he ordered his men. Then he turned and ran off down the street.
Lukas watched him go, noting dozens of other teams in black assault armor lining the sidewalks on both sides of the street. All of them faced the Center, where a few hundred meters away, the central support column rose up to the Canopy. Tiny flashes of light sparkled in the broken-out windows of the buildings clinging to the column. Just over a second later, the sound of those gunshots reached Lukas’s ears.
As they had been ordered, the four soldiers spread out into a semicircle and took aim at Rena. She seemed legitimately terrified, and Lukas wondered how much of that was acting. He lowered his pistol and waited for his demand to be fulfilled.
Two minutes later, the team leader returned with another man walking beside him. The captain was tall and muscular, with black hair turning gray around his temples. Intense, brown eyes locked onto the Outlier prisoner, and Lukas prepared himself for a heated exchange. But when the man turned in his direction, his face looked surprisingly calm. Then he tilted his head toward the street and began walking away.
Lukas followed him to where their conversation wouldn’t be overheard.
The captain folded his arms. “What can I do for you?”
“I need an escort into headquarters.”
“It’s a battle zone at the moment.”
“Hence the need for an escort.”
The captain squinted. “Who’s the girl?”
“Someone important to their cause.”
“You report to the director?”
“I’m not authorized to discuss that.”
“So I’ve heard,” said the captain, exhaling as he turned to look down the street at OCON’s headquarters. “Well … reporting your mission status is going to be difficult from now on.”
“Why is that?”
“The director is dead.”
“What?” Lukas brought up his city map and looked down the street, noting the positions of the soldiers. The ones too far away, or blocked from sight by a building, were represented by blue spheres. The lobby of OCON’s headquarters glowed blue, but there were no green spheres of operatives in the entire building.
The captain must have seen the light in Lukas’s eyes, because he offered an explanation before Lukas could even verbalize a question.
“By the time we got here, the Outliers had the building secured. They kept us pinned down outside while they worked their way through the interior. The operative signals inside went out one by one.”
Just to be sure, Lukas turned on the alphanumeric designators, but the only white he could see were the letters and numbers floating above the lobby.
“Terrell was the last to go. It looked like they kept him alive for a while before they did it.”
Lukas glanced at Rena cowering in the alley, five assault rifles aimed at her. It was her idea to play the alternating roles of captor and hostage in order to get inside the building and up to Terrell’s balcony. But with Terrell dead, there’d be no way to access his private elevator, if it even existed. “Where did he die?”
“In his office.”
“Did they bring him there from somewhere else?” Lukas asked. He was grasping now. Gathering details to see if there could be another angle.
The captain shook his head. “Couldn’t say. By the time we got here, his signal was low to the ground in his office. They had him on his knees.”
“An execution.”
The captain nodded.
Lukas pictured Terrell kneeling in the middle of his office, hands on his head. Outliers standing around him, jabbing their rifles in his face as they blamed him for every injustice they’d suffered. “Wait. How long did they keep him alive?”
“A couple minutes after we got here.”
Lukas realized that such a well-coordinated diversion and counterattack—like what the Outliers had accomplished—didn’t fit with the imagined scene in Terrell’s office. They had been swift and brutal at every other opportunity, so why would they hesitate to kill him? “Did his designator drop to the floor at any point?”
“Not until he died. You’re wondering if they interrogated him? Beat him?”
Lukas didn’t answer. He was busy picturing what might have happened before the Outliers broke in to Terrell’s office. The director would have been at his desk, coordinating the movements of all his forces from his private system. No soldier or operative had ever seen the system in use, but it was common knowledge that one existed. Could that be the reason they kept him alive? Oh no!
“Captain, you need to pull these men back.”
The man chuckled as if it were a joke. “I’m not going to do that. We’ve got them outnumbered. We’ve retaken the lobby, and they’re surrounded above ground and below. I’ll have the rest of the building under my authority in a matter of hours.”
Lukas looked down the street again, noticing what he’d overlooked before. OCON’s forces were concentrated around the Center. Every agent was eager to get inside and repay the Outliers for such an offensive act as an attack on their headquarters. “That’s what they’re counting on.”
The captain turned his head and followed Lukas’s gaze.
“They’re using Terrell’s system to monitor our movements. They’re drawing us into a trap. Please. Pull the men back.”
The captain appeared concerned but not entirely convinced. He needed more incentive to try something other than his brute force approach. Without a valid reason, he wasn’t going to escort Lukas and Rena into the building.
“Look. They’ve already drawn OCON into the open. The Collective is probably flooded with news of today’s events and the mysterious, armed people in black. Citizens know about us now … but they don’t know the extent of what we do. If we keep it that way, we might be able to recover from this.”
“I don’t follow.”
It was exactly what Lukas wanted to hear. The captain needed to think he was one step behind Lukas if this was going to work. “There’s a storage bank of surveillance data on every citizen in there. If the Outliers leak that info to the public … we’re finished. There’s no recovering.”
The man looked down the street again, the lines of concern across his forehead deepening. “We need to storm the building, then.”
“No. That’s what they want. Don’t you see? If we rush in there, they’ll blow the whole building. Thousands of OCON agents and all our data gone in one explosion. We’ll have no way to tell the law-abiding citizens apart from the criminals who prey upon them. We’ll have lost decades of progress, and the Outliers will have achieved their goal of making everyone equal.”
The captain was struggling to keep up with Lukas’s convoluted explanation, but his brain was hopefully latching onto the belief every OCON agent shared—citizens needed protection.
“Are you saying the Outliers win no matter what?”
“No. We still have a few angles to exploit. We need to drag this out as long as possible. Don’t send any more men into the building. Turn this into a standoff and force them to come to you with demands. If they threaten to release the data to the public, make them do it. It’s their only leverage. If they actually put it up on the Collective …”
“It can’t be destroyed in an explosion,” the captain realized.
Lukas nodded. “Then there’ll be nothing to prevent you from storming the building and killing them all.”
“But why drag this out?”
“I guess there’s no reason for secrecy now,” Lukas admitted. Then he faked a devious smirk before looking across the street at Rena. “She reports directly to the Outlier commander. She’s a critical component of his plan, so when she takes me inside as her hostage, guess where that’ll put me?”
“Within striking distance.”
Lukas waited a few seconds for his point to sink in. “He’s coordinating all their movements, so taking him out will throw their whole campaign into chaos. That’s when you’ll storm the building.”
“Why would she agree to this?”
“It turns out she has some family and other close connections in Esh. If anything happens to me …”
The captain’s eyes widened.
Lukas hoped it was because the man was both impressed and intimidated by the other side of OCON’s operations. The side responsible for gathering the very intel that the captain acted on. Though soldiers didn’t particularly like operatives, they respected their function and the difficulty of their work. Lukas decided to push it a little further.
“This is what I do. I use information as a weapon. A little leverage can sometimes be more effective than brute force. But in instances like today, we’ll use both. The Outliers won’t realize what’s happened until it’s too late. And maybe not even then.”
Now the captain grinned. “Alright. We’ll get you into the lobby, but you’re on your own from there. If they start leaking the surveillance information, we’ll have no choice but to storm the building and hope we can take them out before they detonate the explosives.”
“Understood,” Lukas replied, as if the captain were in charge. “I’ll make sure it never comes to that.”