“But I don’t understand,” said Marshall.
The officer behind the counter shrugged. “What’s to understand? You’re free to go.”
“First you arrest me without citing a reason. Then you hold me without charges. Now I’m being released, and all you can do is stand there and say ‘You’re free’?”
The officer rubbed his scarred eyebrow before replying. “Look. I don’t make the decisions. I just enforce them. Here are your personal effects. If you need a ride somewhere, I can ‘verse a cab to take you to the Transit station.”
“No, thank you,” said Marshall, grabbing the plastic bag off the counter. “I’ll manage.” He turned away and made it three steps before realizing something was wrong. “Wait. This isn’t mine.”
Officer Naylor rolled his eyes.
Marshall held up the bag and stared at the exterminal with a frown. “Whose is this?”
“It’s in the system with your name on it, so it must have been on you when you were arrested.”
“I didn’t have anything on me.”
Naylor turned up his hands.
Marshall spun around and stormed out of the police station.
Lukas waited almost a minute before getting up from the bench along the wall of the lobby. When he stepped out the front door and onto the sidewalk, he noted from the corner of his eye that Marshall had only made it a dozen paces or so. He was leaning against the building, plastic bag tucked under one arm, staring at the message Lukas had programmed to come up as soon as the device was powered on.
Dad,
Sorry for everything. OCON was using you to get to me. Go home. Talk to mom. She’ll explain what that means. And give Gareth and Suzanne a kiss from me.
Love,
Rena
She didn’t actually write it, but it’s what she would have said.
Marshall powered off the exterminal and stuffed it in the bag before setting off down the sidewalk in the direction of the nearest Transit station. He didn’t even notice the 055 on the back of his hand—a little something Lukas had arranged for the man’s troubles.
He watched him go for a moment, then turned the opposite direction. Lukas also needed to catch a pod, but he’d walk to a different station so Marshall didn’t spot him. The extra distance was no problem. Lukas didn’t need to arrive at the Center’s community hall for another ninety minutes, and walking would give him a chance to collect his thoughts.
As the new director of OCON, he would be responsible for representing the agency’s interests in the meetings scheduled to take place over the next several weeks. There was no longer a need for an Outlier control organization—so the name would have to change—but there might be other applications for its intelligence and military capabilities. And the remaining field operatives and soldiers were still citizens—a decent sized voting block by anyone’s standards. Lukas was the obvious choice for representing them, given that Terrell had been grooming him for the job anyway and the Founders didn’t fully trust anyone else with the responsibility.
From the commentary circulating on the Collective, it sounded like these meetings were going to be more like debates. That was to be expected. Not everyone shared Lukas’s optimism about the future. Some citizens were furious about being deceived and had lost all hope in the consensus model of social order. They thought the first order of business should be to replace the rating system with something less oppressive. Others were indifferent. They didn’t worry about violations of privacy or the distribution of authority, as long as their lifestyle wasn’t significantly affected. Still others had drawn up guidelines for deciding which citizens would get to leave, and in what order. They’d already decided the outside world was better than Esh, without any data to back it up. Every imaginable reaction was being vocalized, and that was just among citizens.
Outliers had a full spectrum of their own concerns, such as whether or not they should come back to Esh. Where their food would come from if they did. How much of their lifestyle could be brought with them. And the logistics—not to mention wisdom—of participating in a society that had already failed them. Some refused to leave their village homes now that the threat of being discovered had passed. Many felt that Outliers in general, more than any other group, possessed the mindset and survival skills to explore the outside world. If anyone should leave this simulation, shouldn’t it be the ones who’d previously left the city?
Though leaving was at the forefront of everyone’s imagination, the realities put it low on the priority list. There were only two bio-regeneration systems. And to generate a human being from the cells up, using the blueprint of their digital DNA, would evidently take months, if not longer. With such a severe bottleneck, leaving couldn’t happen fast enough to relieve Esh’s resource problem. The more fundamental question was whether anyone should leave. The world outside was a complete unknown, and until Rena sent word of her findings, it didn’t make sense to argue about plans. Once again, consensus couldn’t reveal truth because citizens didn’t have all the necessary information.
There was one thing, however, that everyone seemed to agree on—Rena was a hero. Even if she failed to bring back more machines, she’d saved thousands of lives, including the Founders’, and had changed the course of history for everyone in Esh. She’d torn away the veil of lies and forced everyone to look at the truth. And for that, they loved her.
Lukas, more than anyone.
Rena had changed him. Left her mark. Left him longing for the day when he’d get to see her again. Who knew when that would be? Or if it would be? It was a question that would drive him insane if he allowed himself to dwell on it. So he didn’t. Instead, Lukas put one foot in front of the other, savored the feeling of walking through a city set free, and opened his mind to what the future might bring.
o o o
Warm.
Dry.
Quiet humming … like the air exchangers on the Canopy.
Smell of freshly washed bed sheets.
Is it safe?
Rena opened her eyes to the sight of concave glass. Her distorted reflection. Outside the tube, a walkway of light gray flooring. The opposite wall lined with empty sockets. Massive, gaping holes cluttered with wires and tubes—the scavenged remains of other regeneration chambers. The image slid upward. Gradually changing perspective. It took her a few seconds to realize the movement was due to her chamber rotating from horizontal to vertical. She was almost in a standing position.
A moment later, her chamber stopped. A soft click sounded, then the glass opened from bottom to top. Cool air rushed in, blowing across Rena’s bare skin. She looked down at her physical body. Naked. Clean. Freckles in all the same places. She lifted her right arm and turned it outward, the muscles quivering as if fatigued.
On her forearm, the word RENEGADE was spelled out in letters paler than the rest of her skin. Slightly raised. Her team name looked like a scar. The closest representation of her digital body that the regen machine could produce. Apparently, dull needles and black ink weren’t part of its inventory of building materials.
She felt weak. Dizzy. Hungry. Very much alive. And when she tried to lean forward, her body mostly obeyed. Rena stumbled out of the chamber into the walkway, her legs wobbling like the day she came back down from the Canopy. Turning around, she saw another chamber beside hers, this one in its horizontal position with the glass door closed. Eldric’s regen system was the last one at the end of a wide hallway. All the others had been scavenged for materials to make more servers, which Rena assumed were somewhere nearby.
For the moment, she was more interested in the wall of glass beside her father’s chamber. She lurched forward, pushing through a translucent door into a brightly lit cubical room with neatly folded, gray clothing in cubbies along the wall. There were various sizes of shirts, pants, socks, and shoes, all of a plain design that would have made Kirti cringe in disgust. Rena removed a pair of pants, marveling at the dry, scratching sound the fabric made as she unfolded them. The tingling feel of it as she pulled it over her skin. The squeak of her shoes on the floor when she was finished and heading toward the door on the opposite side of the room.
Outside the door, polished concrete flooring reflected the multitude of blinking green and blue LEDs from tall, steel cages lining both sides of a walkway. The ceilings were low, the air colder than the Barrens, moving through the room with enough force to sway Rena’s hair. Together with the hum of electricity and cooling fans, the room had an intimidating presence that made her think twice before starting down the center aisle.
The servers, she realized moments later, went on and on. Thousands upon thousands of glass-fronted cages. Millions of wires sprouting from their tops and gathered into thick bundles that disappeared into the ceiling. Aisles designated as A1, B2, and on into multiple letters and digits. Rena kept walking in a straight line, entranced by the realization that she was now observing Esh from the outside. Everything and everyone she had ever known existed as bits of digital information stored inside these machines. And here she was, bits of biological material, stored inside a physical world.
Her limbs gained coordination as she walked, muscles slowly adjusting to real movement instead of the electrical stimulations required to keep them alive. Her lungs were slower to adjust. It felt as if she’d never walked in her whole life. Technically, she hadn’t.
At the end of the server room, which turned out to be larger than a warehouse, Rena found a gowning room with hanging lab coats, an air shower for particle removal, and a changing room with waterproof coats, boots, and gloves. The door leading out of this area had a wheel the size of her head where the handle should have been. As she spun it left, large bolts retracted from all sides of the door, thudding into their sockets. The door swung outward with a squeal.
Rena stepped out into damp air that smelled like the Ocean beyond the Barrens. It was cool, but not enough to require the thick clothing hanging in the room behind her. Above, the open sky was a pale blue. Not as vibrant as the simulated sky over the cabin, but not as dull as the gray of the Canopy. She stood on a walkway of steel grating, revealing several lower levels through its diamond-shaped openings. Horizontal tubes of metal formed a railing in front of her—the only barrier to a four-story drop into the water below. She leaned over and peered down at the center of the metal island. It was circular, supported by eight gigantic columns extending into the bluish green depths. The columns, like every other surface Rena could see, were covered in crisscrossing metal stairs and walkways. There were pipes and cables. Support beams and cranes. Storage tanks and electrical lines. All of it had been painted at one time, in stripes of black and yellow where people weren’t supposed to walk. Red surfaces to indicate tripping or falling hazards. The rest of it in a deep gray color. But most of the paint was gone now, replaced by rust in all the exposed areas. It reminded Rena of the Outskirts, but much older. Everything here looked more vibrant and gritty at the same time.
Down in the water, hidden at the center of the island by the decaying structure of metal around it, was an array of cylindrical storage tanks. Their chromed surfaces indicated they weren’t part of the original design of this place. This was where the biological material of humanity was stored—the building blocks of life used by the regen machines.
Leaving the interior, Rena took a set of stairs to the bottom level and followed a walkway around the outside of a building to the island’s exterior. Before she even reached the outer railing, she heard hundreds of overlapping, screeching noises that triggered a memory of being at the beach. Her feet in the sand. Warm sun on her back. Someone else’s memory of something she’d never experienced. But she knew the word that accompanied the sound.
“Seagulls,” she said, looking out at the white birds gliding on the updrafts of wind.
Beyond them lay the ocean, stretching as far as her new eyes could see. Abigail had been right. There was no indication of land. Rena leaned over the railing and looked down at the nearest support column. Waves lapped against the outside, leaving a line of foam on the metal one moment and washing it off the next.
The pale remains of the capital letters NNE still clung there. Rena turned right and walked along the outside of the platform to the next column, labeled NE, to where Abigail said the boats would be. But there were no boats. Just a floating dock with empty slots.
They’re gone!
Rena’s stomach went cold.
How will I get off the island?!
The same panicked feeling as in the Barrens, when she and Dal had gone back to where they left Kirti and realized she was missing.
I’ll never find him!
Fear took over, creating one horrible scene after another in Rena’s mind. She imagined starving to death on this island, alone. Finding her father’s bones in one of these abandoned buildings. Trying to swim northeast where Abigail said land should be, only to lose strength and slip beneath the surface.
She wandered for what seemed like an hour, searching for evidence of which scenario would turn out to be true. Then a distant droning noise broke through her imaginings. It came in waves, disappearing for seconds at a time. Returning louder than before. Finally, Rena spotted something approaching across the water from the northeast. She backed away from the railing and hid herself among the maze of pipes and cables infesting the island. As the object neared, she realized it was a small boat carrying three men. One sat at the prow and another at the stern, his hand on the pipe sticking out of the growling motor. The one in the middle carried a rifle with the muzzle pointed up at the sky.
Rena waited until the boat passed from sight under the railing before she climbed out to change her vantage. The pitch of the motor dropped into a garbled sound, then went silent altogether. When she came in view of the dock, she saw that the boat had been tied into place. The driver sat at the stern. The man with the rifle was halfway up the stairs on the outside of the support column. The third man was gone.
The words of her father’s message began playing in Rena’s mind like a warning.
… the data suggested that some humans had survived. But I wasn’t able to determine what they had become or what their society was like. Were they peaceful or violent? Did they destroy my machines out of ignorance, or fear, or naked aggression? Had they devolved into an animalistic state? A sudden and careless reintroduction of the two halves of humanity might destroy them both.
Rena stared at the man in the boat—a boat that could take her off this island. She looked to the man carrying the rifle. He possessed the ability to end her life but also a tool she could use to take the boat from the other man. Obstacles and resources. Would her physical body react the same way as her digital body had? Was she capable of overpowering these men? Or did she lack the strength and speed? Perhaps it was wiser to keep hiding and watching.
She crept closer, moving into a dense cluster of pipes that would provide cover from bullets if the need arose. The man with the gun stopped at the top of the stairs. He stood now on the same level as Rena and close enough that she could make out his tanned skin. Unshaven face. Disheveled hair, bleached by sun exposure. His clothes were worn through in several places and stained with sweat and dirt. He looked like an Outlier, which only made Rena’s assessment more difficult.
Was he an enemy or a potential ally? The casual way he held his gun indicated a lack of discipline or training. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. It could mean he didn’t anticipate any threats because he’d already eliminated them. Rena stared at him from her hiding place, trying to read the expression on his face. Was it arrogance? She couldn’t tell.
He suddenly perked up and raised his head. “Well?” he asked, staring off down a walkway to the interior.
“Gone,” came the distant reply, ringing as it echoed off the metal surfaces. It was the third man, but Rena couldn’t see him.
“Maybe we didn’t get here in time,” suggested the man with the gun.
“No. I checked the log file. The system opened less than an hour ago, so she has to be here.”
The man with the gun began looking around.
She slid farther back into her hiding place.
“Rena?” yelled the third man. His voice was nearer, and it no longer echoed. There was a hint of something familiar about it. “Rena, where are you?”
“DADDY?” she blurted out before even thinking through the consequences. Her body wriggled through the pipes, trying to escape their confines, moving on instinct while her mind argued that it could be a trap.
Then she was free of the obstacle. Standing in the open. Staring at a man with silver hair. A face somewhat like a hologram she’d seen recently but obscured by wrinkles and sunken cheeks. No deerskin clothing. Yet the eyes were exactly the same. “Daddy?”
He smiled. “Hi, Chipmunk.”
Rena burst into a sprint, her shoes ringing out against the metal grating. She threw her arms around him and he absorbed the impact, picking her up and twirling her as if she were five years old again. He felt just as strong as Rena remembered him.
When he set her down, he held her at arm’s length to get a good look at her. Tears followed the wrinkles away from his eyes, running down between the stubble on his cheeks. The grin he wore was one of pride. Of deepest satisfaction. Of a longing fulfilled. “I knew you’d find your way.”
Rena had so much to say. So many things to share with him. To ask him. To ask of him. But words didn’t matter at the moment. There would be time for conversation later. Right now, all she could manage was, “I missed you.” Then she leaned in for another hug.
He wrapped his arms around her and rocked back and forth, swaying with her like he used to do in front of the campfire.
“Eldric. We need to go,” said the man with the gun.
Rena looked up and watched her father nod to the man. Then he looked down at her. “I’m sorry for leaving you in that alley. You must have been terrified. I want to know everything that happened … from that moment until now. And I have so much to share with you.”
Rena nodded.
“We’re too exposed out here,” repeated the man with the gun.
Eldric smiled at her, as if to apologize. “There’s so much work to be done. We’re making progress, but I desperately need your help. Will you join me?”
She examined the man with the gun and recognized fear in his eyes. Down below, the man in the boat seemed impatient. Yet her father’s eyes sparkled with excitement. There were challenges ahead, but also possibilities. Successes and failures. She could read that much in the expressions of the men around her.
After everything she’d faced in the past months, perhaps Rena’s greatest victory was the confidence of knowing she was capable of facing it all. She was no longer just an orphan trying to fit in. An inadequate friend. A delusional citizen drowning in social pressures. An Outlier who questioned before following orders. The object of OCON’s suspicion. A tool of someone else’s manipulation.
She’d become the woman her father had designed her to be. And so much more.
A thinker.
A negotiator.
Strategist.
Leader.
Soldier.
Revolutionary.
Renegade.
She took her father’s hand in hers and stared deep into his bright eyes. The words he’d spoken so often came now to her mind. This is how we used to live. She wanted more than anything to help him rediscover what that was. To dig it up from the soil of forgotten history, clean off the grime of deceit and misconception, and hold it out in the sunlight for anyone willing to look.
It wasn’t something that came from within. It existed apart. And it would define the next era of human civilization. Truth was its name.
“Let’s get to work,” she said.
__________