Shuqba parked the van near Gate 4. The back seats were loaded with nutrition bars and bottles of water from the tearoom of the vehicle depot. Ferrassie’s body was in the cargo compartment. Graycie sat behind the driver’s seat, rubbing her toy panda against her cheek. In the passenger seat Amud stared at the ceiling of the van, his fingernails digging into his blood-caked thighs.
Shuqba entered the unlocked guard booth and brought up the live feed of the zone outside the gate. This was not the time to become careless.
An armoured truck was stopped less than one hundred metres from the wall. A group of around thirty individuals were approaching the truck from further up the road. Shuqba zoomed in. They weren’t wearing the distinctive hub-printed clothing of Demi-Citizens and they held metal bars and lengths of wood in their fists. Rewilders.
To the left of the screen, a Demi-Citizen with orange dreadlocks halfway down his back was staggering out of a shipping container wearing nothing but boxer shorts. One of the Rewilders veered off the road and clubbed him in the ear with a plank of wood. The Demi went down and the assailant stamped on his skull with a heavy-looking boot. Shuqba’s stomach flipped. Alida was out there with these savages. When the androids on the battlements powered down after twelve hours without being reactivated, the Rewilders would swarm the city.
Shuqba zoomed in on the truck. There was someone on the running board on the passenger side, a Demi-Citizen with curly black hair. The Demi turned towards the gate. It was Alida.
Shuqba slammed her palm down to open the gate and ran to the van. She sprang into the driver’s seat and edged the vehicle towards the slowly widening gap.
‘Come on, come on,’ she murmured. Anything could be happening while she had no visual contact with Alida.
The proximity alarm blared from the dashboard as the van scraped against the edges of the gate.
Amud broke his gaze from the ceiling and looked around. ‘What’s the rush?’
They crossed through no-man’s-land and into the Demi-Settlements. Shuqba leaned forward in time to see blue runners withdrawing into the cab of the truck. Alida always printed sky blue runners. She’d told Shuqba she had chosen the colour as a joke because it was nothing like the sky she knew, and then she’d grown fond of the cheery hue. The door of the truck slammed closed as a Rewilder hit it with a steel bar.
The belligerent crowd pelted the truck with rocks, pots, pans and debris torn off nearby shacks, breaking their planks of wood and bending their metal bars against its reinforced panels. Alida was safe in the truck. Shuqba would make contact and they would all be reunited.
Shuqba opened the communications interface on the van’s dash and selected Search for nearby vehicles.
‘There is one active vehicle within a one-kilometre radius,’ the Vehicle Intelligence System said.
The identification plate of the truck flashed up.
‘Hail it please, VIS.’
‘Connecting now.’
‘Why are you contacting that truck?’ asked Amud.
‘I, um …’ Shuqba didn’t want to say anything in front of Graycie. In case it all went wrong. ‘I think they require assistance.’
‘Unfortunately, this vehicle has put a block on communications. Would you like me to increase the search diameter to detect other vehicles?’
‘No, VIS. Thank you. Damn it.’
They had to see the van behind them. They were purposefully declining contact. Shuqba would have to get within visual distance so Alida could identify them. Rewilders swarmed over the truck.
‘They’ve got an armoured truck. Let them fight their own battles,’ Amud said.
A sharp crack sounded and the crowd was thrown from the truck like human shrapnel. The driver must have discharged the electroshock defences. Free of assailants, the truck hurtled away. Stealing Alida away with it.
Shuqba accelerated. The Rewilders regrouped and eyed the van. An easier target than a truck equipped to protect valuable cargo. The crowd converged on them. Shuqba braked heavily. Amud pitched forward and hit his forehead on the windscreen.
‘Just drive through them!’ Amud brushed away fresh blood on his brow ridge.
Assailants banged on the panels of the van and pushed their angry, shouting faces up to the windows. Shuqba refused to make eye contact. She let their words and the thuds and clangs of their weapons tangle together like their matted strands of hair, impossible to pick apart, and concentrated on edging forward through the crowd and after the truck.
Five Rewilders stood at the front of the van, belting the windscreen with the metal bars they’d bent on the truck. The van rocked slightly under the blows. It may not have been equipped with weapons powerful enough to dispel attackers; still, it would take a powerful explosion to pierce its shell.
Graycie whimpered and buried her face in her knees. ‘Alida’s supposed to look after me. Mum told her she had to look after me for always.’
‘Just drive over the fuckers,’ Amud yelled.
Every second they were delayed, Alida was getting further away.
Shuqba pounded on the horn and activated the loudspeaker. ‘Step away from the van. I’m a Security Force Officer and I’ll take defensive action if you do not step away from the van immediately.’ Shuqba pulled Noon’s rifle out from beside her seat and waved it for the assailants to see.
Some of the Rewilders laughed. One of the females near the windscreen spat at her.
‘No one gives a fuck about the Security Force anymore and they know you’re not going to fire that gun inside an armoured van. Just go,’ Amud said.
Shuqba peered at the road ahead. There was no sign of the truck carrying Alida. They’d been so close and she’d failed. The Rewilders had jeopardised her mission.
‘Get us out of here!’ Amud yelled.
Shuqba moved her foot off the brake. These people wouldn’t show her a moment’s mercy. She eased the van steadily forward. Four of the five in front scrambled out of the way. The fifth, a wide-shouldered male, stood his ground, facing down the van. These were the people left to rebuild Sapien society. These angry extremists who believed every other way of life and every other type of human should be destroyed. The Neos left in the city were in for a fight.
The male bounced off the front of the van and the wheels rose and fell over his body. The crowd fell behind as the van picked up speed. The rear camera showed the male they’d run over lying in the road holding a mangled leg.
Shuqba sped to the nearest major intersection and idled there. The route to the right led through industrial complexes towards cities 2 and 3. The route straight ahead went to the medical research centre, the cloning orphanage and the Security Force Academy. The route to the left led to coastal farmland and cities 5 and 6. There was no sign of the truck.
‘Where’s Alida?’ asked Graycie. ‘Are we meeting her soon?’
‘Um …’
Karain would’ve told Shuqba to follow her gut instinct. However, her instincts had never been worth anything. That was why she’d found such comfort in the protocols and regulations of the Security Force. Commander Rayne would tell her to act on the best available intel and adhere to protocol. Now she had no intel and there was no protocol. The truck could’ve gone in any direction.
Alida was lost.
Shuqba clamped the steering wheel tightly. She didn’t want to disappoint Graycie.
‘Damn it,’ she said under her breath.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Amud said. ‘The free-Neos’ meeting spot is out past the cloning orphanage.’
Shuqba turned to Graycie. ‘Alida’s going to meet us later. For now we’re going somewhere we can rest and wait for her.’
Graycie chewed on the collar of her pyjamas and said nothing. Her eyes were red and glassy. Shuqba eased her foot onto the accelerator and drove straight ahead.