Graycie waved through the van’s back window at the three Neo children running through the red dust thrown up by the wheels.She giggled as one of the children tripped and fell face first onto the dirt track.
Shuqba dialled up the air conditioning and accelerated away from the free-Neo settlement. Ventilation pipes for the underground dwellings skewered the sterile earth behind them.
Shuqba had thought these rebels would be the core of the revolution. She was wrong. At meeting after pointless meeting they’d voted to stay in hiding and maintain a communications blackout. They’d insisted fighting would get them nowhere. Shuqba couldn’t hide behind the imaginary wall they’d built around their community any longer.
‘Isn’t Amud coming with us?’ Graycie leaned over the front seat and put her chin on Shuqba’s shoulder.
‘No. He needs to rest for a while. And put your seatbelt on.’
Amud had been billeted to a curtained alcove in what had once been a mining tunnel. Since arriving at the settlement he had holed up in the cool, silent dark drinking a brew made by one of the locals from fruit and vegetable scraps. Shuqba didn’t know how to help him.
The barren plains came gradually to life the further they travelled from the deadlands. A spindly bush here, a bird cutting across the blue sky there. Once she was sure they’d passed the hundred-k zone Shuqba stopped the van in the middle of the potholed road and flattened out her folded OmniScreen. Even if she hadn’t been eager to bug out, she would have made the journey anyway to check for messages from Alida.
While the screen booted up she stared at the tumbledown shacks lining the edges of the road. Graycie had asked repeatedly about her sister. She had a naive faith in Shuqba’s ability to track Alida down. One thing they hadn’t taught at the academy was how to resist the quivering lower lip of a child.
Shuqba didn’t know what her next move would be. Other than a change of clothes, a good feed, and a place to rest, the free-Neo community had given them nothing. A message from Alida would change everything and give her new purpose. For a while.
The OmniScreen dinged four times. Shuqba looked down and her stomach flipped, threatening to eject her breakfast of dried meat and fruit. Three messages were from other Neo Security Force Officers and one message was from Alida, time-stamped from the day before.
Shuqba opened her mouth and turned towards the back seat. Graycie was licking the glass on the inside of the window. Shuqba calmed her breathing and turned back, damping down her excitement. She didn’t know what the message would say. She needed to be practical and assess the information before getting the child’s hopes up.
A small spiral swirled in the middle of the screen as the data loaded. The message lit the screen with the intensity of a smile from Alida. Shuqba quickly read it, a smile spreading across her own face.