The unanswered question seemed to hang in the air.
Lukas rubbed his forehead, staring at the holographic map before pressing the transmit button on Fijal’s COMM. “Pull back two blocks and set up on the northwest corner of the rooftop,” he told the Outlier recon team leader.
“That corridor is already covered, FC. Acknowledge?”
Lukas cringed. “Copy that.”
Fijal looked up at him and smiled. He was enjoying the fact that Lukas was struggling to impersonate him as field coordinator.
Rena had been gone for half an hour, and Lukas had managed to hold off the ambush thus far. He’d been speaking with the captain and watching OCON’s assault teams shift their positions to anticipate the attack coming from behind. But the Outliers were a different story. They didn’t have active implants, so their positions couldn’t be translated into visual data like OCON’s forces. There were too many movements to coordinate from memory alone, and the recon team leaders were growing restless.
“TL N-sixteen, requesting SOV,” said the team leader. There was suspicion in his voice.
Lukas felt the muscles in his chest tighten. The Outlier wanted Fijal’s Status of Volition, something they’d apparently copied directly from OCON’s communications protocols—a pre-approved verbal code used anytime someone suspected you of being coerced by an enemy. If Lukas failed to answer, or answered incorrectly, the team leader, and all the others listening, would know Fijal had been compromised.
Lukas looked down at Fijal. “What’s your SOV?”
Fijal’s smile became a smirk, and he shook his head.
Lukas aimed his pistol at Fijal’s good leg. The suppressor deadened the shot to a light cough as a round punched through the man’s thigh.
Fijal yelled and grabbed his leg.
“Your SOV,” Lukas repeated.
Fijal looked up with tears in his eyes and lips scrunched into a mask of hatred. Then he slowly shook his head again.
Lukas raised his pistol until the sights blocked the man’s eyes.
“I’m not afraid to die. But you’re not going to kill me. I heard what Rena said about keeping me alive.”
Lukas couldn’t kill the man, and if he put any more holes in his body, the hostage might bleed out.
“TL N-sixteen to FC. What is your SOV? Do you copy?”
Lukas had no answer. The SOV could be a meaningless phrase or a random number. There was no way to guess and not enough time to extract it from Fijal with some other method of torture. The best he could do was to drag this out with silence, which would force the team on the level below to come up to the office to check on Fijal. They’d see the bodies in the hallway and realize there was an enemy in their midst. Lukas couldn’t defend himself in here against soldiers who knew what they were walking into. He could keep the door locked and try to hide, but once they broke in, they’d know he was somewhere in the office or on the balcony.
“The field coordinator is compromised. Repeat, the FC is compromised,” announced the team leader.
Lukas turned from the desk and ran to the main door, unlocking it and pulling it open. Then he paused and spun around, finding the smirking face of a witness.
“You won’t get far. It’s over for you,” said Fijal.
Lukas jogged back across the room, came to a stop above Fijal, and rammed his knuckles into the side of the man’s chin.
The impact twisted his head and turned off his consciousness, like flipping a light switch. His body immediately went limp. And the only thing Fijal would be able to tell the Outliers when he came to was that Lukas had been headed out the door.
But Lukas had decided to go a different way. He took the other door and headed up to the balcony where the black ropes left by Ryce and his team still dangled from the rooftop, coiled on the concrete floor. He grabbed one and gave it a sharp tug to verify it was secure before stepping up on the glass railing. His stomach turned as he leaned out over the sheer drop to the streets of Esh hundreds of meters below.
You can do this.
With a slow, steady breath, he slid his hands up the rope and bent his knees. Then he jumped and pulled himself upward. The pain in his left shoulder erupted, sending icy stabs into his neck and all the way to his fingertips. With his legs clamped against the rope, he used the leverage to move his weakened grip upward again. Then he tightened and pulled again.
Slowly.
One excruciating movement after another.
He worked his way up the rope, trying to ignore the swaying vision of the streets below. The unyielding pavement that would end his life if he made any mistakes. When the edge of the roof came within reach, he grabbed it with all that remained of his strength and heaved himself up. He rolled on his back and stared at the Canopy while his lungs fought to recover. But time was precious, and he forced himself to sit up and gather the ropes, pulling them up from the balcony.
No sooner had they cleared the edge of the roof than he heard the muffled shouting of Outlier soldiers.
Lukas lay back again, wary of the nearby panel of glass that looked down to the balcony. As he lay still, he traced the path of the ropes across the roof to the column, where they’d been tied off around massive bolts. Ryce and his men had obviously climbed across from one of the neighboring canopyscrapers to infiltrate Terrell’s office.
The sound of boots on concrete spread out below. Lukas held his breath.
“Clear,” yelled someone from the left side of the balcony.
“Clear,” yelled another soldier from the right.
“He must have gone down the hallway in the other direction.”
The COMM crackled to life in Lukas’s ear. “We have an operative loose in the building. Be advised … he may have a female recon member as a hostage. If he tries to use her as a shield, shoot ‘em both.”
The soldiers ran back down the stairs and into the office, and Lukas let out his breath when he could no longer hear their boots. Reaching down to the COMM control on his waist, he cycled it to the channel Rena was using.
“Rena? I’ve lost control of the situation down here. Do you copy? Rena?”
There was no answer.
o o o
Each data cable was as large in diameter as Ryce was tall. Forty of them came through the cylindrical wall of the tower, encased in protective metal sheathing. Giant rings of steel, spaced five meters apart, supported the weight of each cable as it stretched across the floor of the mechanical room. They looked like the spokes of a massive bicycle wheel—some primitive form of transportation a toothless old-timer had once described to Ryce over a fire barrel in the village.
Instead of joining each other at a central hub, the cables unraveled, breaking free of their sheathing to peel off into successively smaller cables before the threads recombined again by color. The new groupings, of every hue imaginable, were labeled with numeric designators as they transitioned to vertical lines disappearing into the ceiling. The brain stem of the rating system.
Despite the amount of open air between the vertical lines, this was the location of greatest density. The attack point that would yield the greatest amount of damage. Barrett and his team had the explosives set in a circular arrangement on the floor, facing upward into the spectrum of colors, and spaced ten meters apart like the village excavation team had trained them. The wiring was almost done, and when all the bundles were linked up to each other, their simultaneous blasts would cut through every data cable above them. There was enough concrete and steel on the levels above to absorb the blast, so the integrity of the tower’s outer hull should remain intact. The tower wouldn’t fall onto the Canopy, but neither would it host any more meetings of Esh’s wealthiest citizens.
“You obviously brought enough ordinance to get the job done,” came a voice through the COMM speaker in Ryce’s ear, “but are you sure it’s only going to blow upward?”
It was Rena. And she was whispering. That meant she was either down in the city, hiding from a threat and using Fijal’s amplified COMM to broadcast her message, or she’d managed to get up here above the Canopy and was keeping quiet to hide her position. From what she’d said, it sounded like she was in view of their operation. But how could she have broken out of jail and climbed up here so quickly?
Ryce’s guards, who had been watching the recon team’s actions with only passing interest, now stared at their commander. So did Barrett and his team. Ryce held up his finger to tell them he had the situation under control. Then he switched on his microphone. “Rena! You must be exhausted.”
“Not really. The elevator sure beats climbing.”
Ryce whirled his finger around in a circle, motioning for his guards to do another sweep of the mechanical level. They nodded their acknowledgment and immediately split up, moving out into the room with their rifles sweeping from side to side.
Rena must have used Fijal’s glove to access the elevator, which meant the field coordinator was dead and the recon teams down in the city were blind to OCON’s movements. Rena’s presence was troubling to say the least. It implied that the Outlier mission had been severely compromised. “Sorry we didn’t include you in all the fun, but you understand. Couldn’t have an OCON spy interfering.”
“Funny you should mention that. I’ve never worked for OCON. Ever. But you can’t say the same. Right?”
Ryce brought his pistol up, and he began moving away from the center of the room. His eyes followed the contours of the cables, the shadows beneath them, the steel support rings. Anywhere she might be hiding. “That was a long time ago. My men already know. They appreciate the advantage that comes from my insider’s perspective.”
“Perspective? It looked a bit more like revenge to me … judging from the amount of Terrell’s blood and brain matter on the floor.”
“What can I say? He’d outlived his usefulness. Just another casualty of war.”
“Is that what you’d call the villagers too? Or would you prefer the term bait?”
Ryce lunged to one side and aimed his gun under a cable, finding only empty space beyond his sights. “Every Outlier life is important to me. You have no idea—”
“You mean useful, right?” Her words were laced with malice. “As in … everyone has a role to play? The other villages helped you create an uproar here at the Center. To pull OCON into a confined area. But out east … they didn’t realize their role until the perimeter alarms started going off.”
“We drew OCON back into the city before anything happened. The villagers weren’t in danger.”
“Maybe some small piece of you, buried way down deep, actually cares about those people. So it might relieve some of your guilt to hear that the civilians evacuated in time … while your defense teams were being slaughtered by OCON.”
At the center of the room, Barrett stood, wires dangling from his hand. Normally, he was a difficult person to read, but at the moment, the expression of betrayal on his face was obvious. Ryce had lied to him about evacuating the village and alerting the defense forces. Barrett would never have agreed to leave the village otherwise.
Ryce gave him a look of scrunched eyebrows and a quick, dismissive shake of the head to indicate how ridiculous the accusation was. Then he turned his attention back to locating his enemy. “You really think making up lies is going to disrupt our objective?”
“What is your objective?” Rena asked. Her voice had gotten louder, and she sounded out of breath. She was running. “It isn’t the greater good. I’m guessing you just want to win. That’s why you have no plan for afterwards. Or do you? How are you going to rebuild after you destroy everything?”
Ryce came to the edge of the room and ducked under one of the cables. His three guards were waiting there, next to the curving ramp that led up to the next level. They shook their heads.
He pointed up the ramp, and they nodded before moving up the slope with their rifles aimed ahead. Ryce followed, glancing back to the middle of the room as his elevated position allowed. Barrett and the others stood there, watching their commander instead of working.
Ryce switched his COMM to Fijal’s channel, just to be sure. “Fijal, do you copy?”
There was no answer.
By removing Fijal, Rena had separated the commander from contact with his teams on the ground. She’d disrupted the plan to use the rating system against OCON. He could just detonate the explosives and kill her along with the system, but in the time it would take for him and the others to pull back to a safe distance across the Canopy, Rena could come back down to the mechanical level and cut the timing wires, or maybe disable the explosives altogether, depending on how well OCON had trained her.
Ryce switched his COMM to Barrett’s channel. “How long until we’re ready for detonation?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Make it ten. She’s stalling. Buying time for OCON’s counterattack down there. Hurry up and get your work done.”
“Yes, sir!”
Ten minutes. That was Ryce’s time limit for finding and killing Rena. She was a variable that had to be eliminated before detonation. He jogged up the ramp, catching up to his guards just as they spread out into the living quarters. Then he switched back to the general broadcast channel. “You’re quiet all the sudden. Probably for the best. Not many places to hide up here. Wouldn’t want to give away your position, right?”
“Not at all. I just figured you’d had enough of my uncomfortable questions.”
Ryce couldn’t help but laugh. “You always did have a good sense of humor. I’ll give you that.”
“Well … since you’re being so polite, why don’t we talk about something meaningful to you? Like your motivation for doing all this.”
“My motivation?”
“Sure. What makes a man devote his whole life to destroying someone else?”
Ryce stepped wide of a doorway and swung his pistol across the opening, but the room was empty. “It was never just about Terrell.”
“Did you think you were special to him?”
He didn’t respond.
After a few seconds of silence, she tried poking the same spot. “That he’d keep secrets from other people but not from you?”
One of Ryce’s guards appeared at the end of a hallway and shook his head before moving out of sight again.
“It’s betrayal that drives you, isn’t it?” she continued.
“Survival,” he finally answered. “Pure and simple. Terrell was just one part of an organization designed to oppress us.”
“Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?”
“Exaggeration?!” Ryce spat. She was trying to get a rise out of him, and it was working. He didn’t try to fight it. The feeling of anger rushing through his body made him feel more powerful. More aware. More ready to empty his magazine the second she came into view.
“They hunt us down. Year after year. Tracking our movements. Continually devising new ways to kill us. Absolutely relentless. You don’t know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that. To see your friends murdered one by one around you. To lay down every night in some cold, dark tunnel with the stench of Esh’s sewage in your nostrils, wondering if you should let down your guard long enough to sleep. And if you do, will you wake up with a gun barrel pressed against your forehead? It makes you weary. Bitter. And then it makes you smart.”
“Actually, I do understand what it feels like to be hunted.” Now her voice was full of compassion. She sounded on the verge of tears. “Maybe not for as long as you have, but … when Barrett’s team rescued me, OCON wanted me dead. That wasn’t some trick to sneak me into the Outliers. It was the end of my life as a citizen.”
“Please.”
“No. Listen. You’ve been an Outlier for so long, you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be in the system. And back when you were, you were a field operative. So you never got to experience proper citizenship. You probably never had friends and family tell you over and over that you needed to participate. That it’s your duty to contribute your ideas to society, and then watch as your individuality gets punished. Everyone around you gets rich off agreeing with each other while your rating drops.”
Ryce felt his upper lip curl. “You think your experience is comparable to mine?”
“From another angle … yes. I was forced to live a frantic, all-consuming present just like you. One that left no time for considering the past or the future. And when I tried to ask questions, to find the truth instead of just agreement, OCON saw it as a threat and tried to capture me. If I hadn’t joined the Outliers, the culmination of my life as a citizen would have been torture and death.”
Ryce stopped in the middle of a bedroom that could have slept thirty Outliers. “You came up here to sabotage my mission, and now you’re saying you support it? Whose side are you on?”
“On the side of humanity. This war is like a siren going off. The Outliers obviously can’t live in hiding anymore. So what does that mean for the future of Esh? What’s our life going to look like tomorrow? We must find another way of life, because no one can bear this one. I guess that means I’m on the side of truth. My question is … are you?”
Ryce walked out of the bedroom shaking his head. Earlier this day, he’d told Terrell he wanted the truth, but that it was too late.
Ryce’s guards waited together at the end of the hall. They’d cleared the living quarters’ level and still found no sign of Rena. With only one floor left, Ryce decided to try something different. He tapped his chest and pointed at the elevator door on his left. Then he tilted his head in the direction of the ramp he’d passed a minute ago. The guards nodded and began moving down the hall. On the top level, they’d come out at separate locations and hopefully catch Rena in a crossfire.
The elevator door opened before him, obedient to Terrell’s cloned implant. Ryce stepped inside and stared at the top button. “Truth. That’s an interesting notion, but I think we’re well past that now, don’t you?”
When she answered, her voice was barely above a whisper. “Not if the truth redefines everything you thought you knew.”
Ryce pressed the button and squinted as the door glided into place. The change in Rena’s volume meant she must have heard the guards coming up the ramp, which gave him an idea of where she’d be when the elevator door opened. He held his pistol firmly in a two-handed grip, consciously relaxing the muscles in his arms so his shots would be as accurate as possible.
The door slid open.
Ryce came out in a crouching posture, pistol sweeping back and forth, ready for the slightest indication of movement. He crept down the hallway, rolling from heels to toes, the tread of his boots silent against the polished, stone floor. At the end of the hall, he turned right and skirted the meeting room, heading for the ramp where Rena was hiding. But as he came upon the rectangular opening and the downward slope to the lower level, he found three bodies in Outlier clothing. Blood had just started flowing down the ramp from their gunshot wounds. His guards were dead. She must have killed them with a silenced weapon, or he would have heard the shots. She’d used the ramp hallway as a choke point, where they were forced into a confined area.
“Are you ready to hear the truth?” she asked, her voice quiet over the COMM. “Or are you still more interested in hunting me down like OCON has done with you?”
Ryce’s jaw muscles began to cramp. He was unconsciously grinding his teeth, and it took every ounce of self-control to open his mouth, take a breath, and speak without shouting. “Tell you what. Why don’t you give me the truth while I hunt you down? Accomplish both at the same time.”
“OK. This whole world—Esh, the Barrens, the Ocean—it’s a simulation,” Rena replied. “A virtual existence for virtual humans like you and me. It was designed to make us forget about the physical world outside. It was supposed to grow indefinitely, but there’s a problem on the outside that resulted in a resource limitation in here. This lack of resources is the cause of OCON’s aggression toward the Outliers. It is why they literally cannot afford to have a growing population of people working toward a different end. They’ve been hunting you, sure, but not with the goal of eradicating you. The Outliers have been allowed to survive because the threat they pose, the one exaggerated to citizens, gives a valid explanation for murders and kidnappings and all sorts of crime-related deaths. You’re a population management tool.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“The Founders are the ones who created this simulation. And this tower above the Canopy is their home.”
Ryce moved away from the ramp and kept circling the building, imagining which way Rena would have run after killing his guards. “The Founders died hundreds of years ago.”
“No. They had to make it look that way to complete the illusion that this world is real. They’re still alive. Except for my father, Eldric. He returned to the outside world. And Terrell … well, you know what happened to him.”
Ryce almost laughed. “You expect me to believe he was a Founder?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Terrell is a popular name,” he whispered. “All the Founders’ names are.”
“If you detonate those explosives, you’ll kill the Founders. And all the rest of us will be trapped inside this virtual existence, with no way to fix the resource problem. You’ll be condemning us to a life that can change … but never improve.”
Ryce smiled. He could hear Rena’s voice now, coming from down the hall as well as through the COMM. “That’s absurd.”
“I know. How could anyone accept something so bizarre? So … far beyond our common understanding? But you know as well as anyone—consensus isn’t truth. So if you saw the Founders with your own eyes, if you witnessed the impossible, you’d have no choice but to believe me. Right?”
Ryce had switched off his COMM and pulled the speaker out of his ear so he could listen to the way her voice bounced off the walls and floor. Standing now outside the door of the control room, the place where Terrell had sat for decades, manipulating Esh’s social environment, Ryce knew where Rena was positioned even before he could see her.
He lunged into the room and aimed his pistol.
o o o
The commander only had to move his gun about ten centimeters to target Rena as he came into the room. But in that fraction of a second, a lifetime of training took over the muscles in his arms and hands. A reaction that drew his weapon down to low-ready as his eyes noted the presence of civilians behind Rena—close enough to be in harm’s way.
But they weren’t just any civilians. They were the Founders. Rena had discovered them hiding in the ventilation space beneath the control boards. The commander and his guards had failed to do a thorough sweep of all the levels because they’d been convinced that this was only Terrell’s home. Rena, on the other hand, knew exactly who lived up here. And from her father’s explanation, she’d deduced that the remaining Founders had reached the end of their options for controlling the system and would be open to considering an alternative.
The expression on Ryce’s face shifted from the calculating intensity of a killer to the wide-eyed shock of someone faced with the impossible. He recognized them. From the video footage on the Collective he must have seen as a child. He knew who they were.
Over the course of Rena’s conversation with the commander, she’d managed to erode his authority in the eyes of Barrett and her former team members. She’d slipped in a hidden message to them—using their team names so they’d know she didn’t consider them enemies. She’d used Ryce to prove to the Founders that it was their lies that had caused all this. They’d heard his every word and had been brought to tears at his description of being hunted by OCON. The wall they’d built between themselves and the effects of their decisions had come crashing down.
Rena had also used the live feed from hundreds of security cameras throughout the tower to track Ryce’s movements. To know when she needed to whisper or sound out of breath. To convey anger or compassion. To steer Ryce’s reactions as well as his movements, leading him to where he now stood.
Face-to-face with people who shouldn’t be alive.
Face-to-face with the truth of what Esh really was.
Hopefully, it was enough. Enough for him to call off his soldiers in the city below—the only participants in this conflict who couldn’t be controlled.
Rena slowly took her hands away from the carbine hanging at her chest. “We don’t know if anyone survived on the outside.” She made her voice as calm and soothing as possible. “We may be all that’s left of humanity. We can’t afford this war. Call off the ambush.”
Ryce’s eyes narrowed slightly, but the look of shock remained.
“OCON knows your teams are in position around them. The element of surprise is gone,” she said, drawing out each sentence to combat the sense of urgency present in the room. “Fijal’s COMM is being brought up here as we speak. Please, tell your soldiers to stand down and we’ll have OCON do the same.”
Ryce’s mouth fell open, and his eyes drifted to the floor. “You live … above the Canopy in luxury, while we hide under the ground?” His voice was distant, almost as if he were speaking to himself.
In her peripheral vision, she saw Abigail turn and look at her. Worried.
“You found a way to extend your lives … and you kept it to yourselves?”
Beside Abigail, Xiu tilted her head.
Rena looked back at the commander. “No … they didn’t find it. It’s part of the programming.”
“Do you realize the suffering you could prevent with that medical technology?”
“Did you hear what I said?” Rena asked. “It’s how this simulation is designed. They have to stay alive to manage the system. If they let the population grow, it could jeopardize our entire—”
“Who are you to dictate our lives?!” Ryce shouted. His eyes were wide and aimed at Abigail like a weapon. “Make us rate each other while you live outside the system?!”
Rena shook her head. “None of us are outside the system. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“You make us kill each other so you can have everything you want?” He motioned around the room as if his pistol were an extension of his hand. “You disgust me.”
“He doesn’t understand,” said Masego.
“We don’t need your resources. We’ll go somewhere else!”
“No … there’s nowhere to go,” Rena replied. “Don’t you get it? There’s nothing beyond the ocean. This world is a simulation. Esh is all that exists here.”
Ryce wasn’t listening. He was searching for a solution to the problem as his mind perceived it, eyes tracking around the room as if the answer were hiding behind one of the control panels. Then his frantic movements suddenly came to a stop. “Or maybe you should go somewhere else. Why don’t you find a new place to live?” He turned and fixed his stare on the Founders. “If you’re too important to live like everyone else, maybe it’s time we manage ourselves, right? Like we all thought we were doing?”
“What have we done?” Abigail whispered.
The commander wasn’t reaching the conclusion Rena had led him to. The truth about this all being a simulation was too great a leap for his mind. So he’d latched onto the only part that made sense—the disparity between the Founders’ wealth and the Outliers’ poverty. His hand began to tremble, and Rena could almost feel his muscles preparing to pull the trigger.
With one hand, she took the grip of her carbine. With the other, she motioned for the Founders to line up behind her. “In the outside world, we can all go where we want. Find new places to live. We won’t have to fight over resources. There’s room for everyone. But the Founders are the only ones who understand how to get everyone out. OK?”
His hand stopped trembling. He looked at Rena, and his distant eyes suddenly found their focus. But it wasn’t rationality that calmed him. It was the primal, focusing power of his decision to kill.
His hand started to move, dragging his pistol up from where it dangled at his hip.
Rena twisted her carbine away from her chest, forcing it outward.
Two weapons racing.
One light and fast, with far to go.
The other heavy and slow. But a shorter distance.
A concussive shockwave of sounds filled the room sooner than expected.
Ryce’s posture straightened, his back arching as his uniform burst open. Flakes of insulation swirled through the air, driven outward by spurts of blood. He dropped to his knees, disbelief etched on his face once again. Then he fell forward to the floor.