The blanket above Alida was smooth and almost weightless. She was in a bed – a proper bed with silvery grey covers – on the bottom tier of a shiny blond-wood bunk. A second bunk stood on the opposite side of the room. The room was as clean and slick as the inside of the LeaderCorp Hub. Pure bright light, untainted by dust particles, slanted in from a single window and made the yellow walls glow. In the distance she could hear birdsong.
She had no clue what had happened to Graycie and she’d lost contact with Shuqba. She searched her vision for the Intelli-Enhance switch. It was still gone. She tried voice commands.
Shit-all.
Alida pushed the blanket back and sat up. She was wearing a white T-shirt and shorts that were as soft as the skin on a Citizen’s hand. She pulled one of her curls straight beneath her nose. It was soft and silky and smelt like strawberries at their sweetest, just before the white fuzzy mould bloomed. The familiar dirt horizons beneath her fingernails had been scrubbed away. Flashes came back to her of her head lolling about in the warm foam of a bath while Zaneela and Jocasta purified her to their liking – as they had when they’d shelled out for her all those weeks ago. Those jerks were obsessed with the Cinderella scenario.
Whatever they had drugged her with had shattered her. Even more than passenger. She got another flash of walking up a spiral staircase, everything around her gold and white, with a blue-uniformed goon holding her up. She didn’t feel like anyone had touched her. She put her hand into her underpants. There was no slick of jizz or lube, none of the tenderness of forced sex. Maybe they’d just polished her up and put her to bed. It was possible.
She leaned her head out. The bunk above was empty.
The sunlight was brighter than any she’d ever seen through the smog over the Demi-Settlements. She walked over to the window.
Three large greenhouses with semicircular frames rose out of the lawn like monstrous earthworms. Massive trees, ten times larger than the fruit trees in the garden market, stood on the other side of the lawn, their leaves thrashing about like green flames. The trees went on and on. Mum had reckoned bush like this still existed, but even when Alida had trekked as far as the outer burbs she’d never clocked anything like it. Birds flitted in and out of the upper branches and soared across a sky as blue as her runners. Graycie would love this. Alida sniffed and teared up. She didn’t care what these plastic-faces wanted or what they did to her. She needed to find Graycie and Shuqba.
The air in front of the bush shimmered and distorted slightly, like the second before fainting. A real domeshield. She’d say it was slick if it wasn’t just another shining wall holding her back. She screwed up her face. It didn’t matter how hard she tried, she just kept losing. She’d worked her butt off to get ahead, but without privilege or clout it was worth shit-all.
The sound of feet came from outside the bedroom door. Alida bolted back to the bed and pulled the blanket up to her nose. Two buff-looking goons in blue uniforms opened the door and pushed a red-faced chick, a little older than Mum, into the room. She had short mousy brown hair and her sun-damaged skin looked grubby against her slick white threads. Definitely not a Citizen.
‘Rest a little,’ one of the goons said. ‘The doc says the hormones might make you woozy.’
‘And have a bloody shower. You stink like a camel.’ The second goon leaned against the doorframe and put one hand on her hip.
The red-faced chick pointed a finger in the goon’s face. ‘No, I smell like a human being, like God and Mother Nature intended. All you unholy dipshits’ll be smirking out of your charred corpses when my people come and burn this house of sin to the ground. Ya hear?’
Uh-oh. A loopy God-bothering Rewilder. The worst kind.
‘Righto. Looking forward to it. Keep it up and you’ll get another sedative.’
The other goon, the guy, turned towards Alida and Alida snapped her eyes shut. ‘I know you’re awake. My name’s Vinod and my partner here’s Kiama. We’re here to help you and ensure your safety. We’ll be back in about fifteen to take you down to breakfast.’
Alida cracked one eye open and looked into Vinod’s face. He had the longest, darkest eyelashes she’d ever seen on a guy. Her stomach rumbled. Breakfast would be slick. No use starving to death while she figured out how to split and find Graycie and Shuqba.
The goons left.
The woman sat on the bed across from her, legs spread wide, giving Alida the up-and-down. ‘Were you abducted too?’
Zaneela and Jocasta had given her shit-all say in the matter so she reckoned abduction was the right word. She nodded.
‘I’m Rhea.’ Rhea began doing push-ups on the floor between the beds.
‘Alida.’
‘You a Rewilder? A believer?’
‘Um …’ Bullshitting had been a survival tactic in the Demi-Settlements, but Alida’s attempts always reeked. She would lose moments of confident credibility wrangling with the flaws and consequences of her lie. Even Graycie was a more convincing bullshitter. Right now, though, Alida needed all the mates she could get. So she gave it a crack. ‘Yep,’ she said, and even to her own ears it sounded like a question.
Rhea pushed up from the floor and grabbed Alida’s arm.
‘Hey.’ Alida pulled back but Rhea was strong. She flipped Alida’s arm over and clocked the credit chip embedded in her wrist.
‘Demi-Citizen?’ Rhea raised an eyebrow. ‘You got one of those brainwashing implants too?’
She’d only mess up more if she tried to back up her first lie. Alida raised an eyebrow and curled up one edge of her mouth as if to say waddayoureckon?
Rhea got back down on the floor and started on sit-ups. ‘I heard nearly everyone who got those implants was judged as unworthy.’
‘What?’
Rhea tutted. ‘God slayed them is what.’
Alida swallowed, remembering Zave’s dead body lying on busted tiles.
‘You even know where you are now?’
Alida didn’t bother trying to answer. She’d already clocked Rhea as someone who talked at you, not to you.
‘I’ve lived on a neighbouring property for a few years now. The she-demon who owns this place, the SEM leader, used to be a LeaderCorp director. Till they booted her out. Priscilla and all her people survived whatever it was that happened with the implants. Don’t you think that’s a bit fishy?’
Alida shrugged. She didn’t care why the implants had messed up, and she reckoned it had shit all to do with God or demons. She just wanted to find Graycie.
‘Do you even know why you’re here?’ Rhea sat up, draped her arms over her knees and stared at Alida like she actually wanted an answer this time.
‘I reckon it’s because they want me to pop out some littlies for them.’
Rhea’s face crumpled and she blinked like she was trying not to squeeze out any tears. ‘They’ve already stuck things up me like some whore and injected me with their toxic chemicals. All these vampires care about is living for eternity. They don’t care about the next generation. I reckon they wanna make soulless little clones of themselves.’
Alida rolled her eyes. Typical over-the-top, conspiracy-theory-spouting Rewilder.
‘I’m telling you, this place is a hellhole.’
If Rhea reckoned this was a hellhole the chick had obviously never been chained up beneath the ground by tunnel trolls.
‘You look sceptical.’ Rhea shook off the sads and launched into squats, her head bobbing up and down like a demented folk dancer.
‘Nah –’
‘I can’t be a baby factory for these transhumanist sinners. I just can’t.’ Rhea leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘Will you help me escape?’
‘Hell yes.’ Why not? She wanted out of the joint anyway.