Masked (10 page)

M
y legs were back
. They hurt like fuck.

My arms were missing. Which was a good thing.

I only wished my head was too; a pounding had started up behind my eyes, a sharp stab of something lethal jabbed an eyeball.

And then light washed my pupils, making the world turn blindingly bright white for a moment. As shapes formed and my vision adjusted, I saw the tip of an actual needle.

“This will probably hurt,” that distorted voice - which had become as much a tormentor as a welcomed visitor - announced. “And I’m afraid you’ve proven we must first make an example of pain, or you simply don’t believe us capable.”

“You talk too much,” I said, my words only slightly slurred. I was proud of that fact.

“Of course,” the voice said. “You could tell us where it is and maybe I won’t need to prove we mean business.”

“Go fuck yourself!”

My eyeball felt as if it burst. I struggled in the restraints, realising I still had arms even if I couldn’t feel them. But the excruciating agony of having my eyeball repeatedly stabbed overrode any other thoughts for a while.

The sound of harsh breathing and soft whimpers broke through the fog. I could feel blood and other things running down my left cheek. I didn’t dare lift an eyelid.

“You have one more eye left,” the voice advised.

I couldn’t take anymore. I knew it. It had been days of this, with little rest. Only what unconsciousness could offer.

I silently begged for it now. Or death. I’d take either.

“Of course, there are other eyeballs we could use instead,” the man declared.

It took a second, maybe two, for me to parse his words.

“No,” I ground out between gritted teeth. They fucking hurt too. I was sure several were broken.

“And
her
eyes are the blue of a morning sky, I believe,” the fucking voice announced with casual flare.

“Don’t you dare touch her!” I yelled, struggling in earnest now. My body rocking, the back of my head banging, the restraints clanging, and that fucking cog threatening to turn at any moment. “Don’t you fucking dare!” I screamed.

Silence. Not even the drip of blood that must have been still dripping.

“Too late,” the man said, and nothing could have prepared me for the pain that followed.

D
rones were everywhere
. Not in the numbers we had seen at the end of Shiloh’s reign. But enough to be noticeable. People screamed when they spotted them, grabbing their children and scurrying to shelter in nearby homes. Whether theirs or someone else’s, it didn’t matter. Doors were bolted, curtains closed. Lights extinguished.

Wánměi shut down more effectively than an Overseer commanded curfew.

We crept along shadowed alleys, the unconscious Cardinal slung between us. We hid in darkened alcoves, hearts in our throats, perspiration beading our brows. My mind raced to comprehend what it was I was seeing. Shiloh was no more, I knew this. I’d risked asking Calvin. But my eyes were telling me otherwise.

And yet we were still blind.

Sat-loc was operational. Street-cams were out. Most of Wánměi existed on isolated servers. We’d thrown our nation into the dark ages.

Freedom had definitely come at a price.

I held my breath as two drones marched past our current location. More than a little surprised that they weren’t searching as thoroughly as Cardinal drones would have done in the past. All it would have taken was a step into the shadows, a flash of illumination from their eyes, and we’d be seen. But the drones marched on. Their goal something other than flushing us out, it seemed.

“Maybe we’re not their target, after all,” Alan whispered beside me. Clearly thinking along the same lines as myself.

“If not us, then who?” I whispered back.

He shook his head, equally as dumbfounded as me.

“We can’t stay here,” he finally announced.

“I can’t give you directions,” Simon advised over the earpiece, keeping up with our conversation, if not our progress on a vid-screen. “We’re still blind,” he added, mirroring my earlier thoughts.

I looked up at the outline of nearby houses, their slanted, tiled roofs beckoning in the encroaching darkness. A cat walked along the far edge of the closest, then jumped down out of sight. The sound of bottles clinking and rubbish cans toppling over shortly followed.

The synchronised beat of metallic feet grew closer.

“The roof?” Alan asked, watching the trajectory of my gaze. “It’ll be tough getting him up there.” He nodded down at the slumped form of the Cardinal. “We could leave him,” he suggested, a hard edge to the humour he’d attempted with those words.

Alan
would
leave him, if it meant our lives. But I wasn’t quite ready to take that step. The Cardinal
had
taken the paralytic laser shot on my behalf. Why, I had no idea. But he’d thrown me out of harm’s way, so the least I could do was return the favour.

“Damn it,” Alan muttered as I shook my head, my eyes scanning the vehicles parked along the edge of the street we were on. “Trent would have said yes,” he muttered, as I indicated with my hand for him to remain where he was, then snuck out into the open to test a theory.

I crouched low beside the nearest car, attaching my decoder to its locking mechanism. It was state of the art, but Calvin was better. The car door disengaged and swung open within seconds, light from inside the vehicle quickly doused by Calvin’s programme.

“Vehicle acquired,” he announced in my ear. A part of me wished I’d had Calvin back in my thieving days. But then I quickly dismissed it.

Sometimes the challenge was all that had mattered.

I opened the rear door of the car and returned to help Alan with the Cardinal. In minutes we were inside the vehicle, crouching low in the seats as more drones walked down the opposite side of the road. They passed without so much as a glance in our direction. Laser guns out, the harmony of their feet setting a rhythmic beat to the pounding of my heart.

We watched them as they turned the corner, the soft glow of their eyes shining briefly in the window pane of a building. For a second I just stared at where that glow had been. My mind racing, but unable to define what had upset me.

I dismissed the notion that there was more to be upset about than the unconscionable fact that drones had returned, and nodded to Alan when his hand rested on the ignition, eyes on mine, waiting for agreement.

“The next few minutes could be crazy,” he warned.

I offered an Elite superior smile. “When have they not been when you’re behind the wheel?”

He grunted out an amused sound and hit the button. The electric whine of the vehicle filled the hollow interior of the car. I brought my window down immediately, to better hear the approaching sound of drone feet. They were close, but we were already moving.

Within seconds we’d turned the corner and were tearing down Parnell Rise, crossing empty intersections with the odd soft glow of a pair of drone eyes the only sign of them in the darkness.

I thought we were going to make it. None of the drones we’d seen even fired.

And then we turned onto Muhgah Foh Road.

The eerie glow of red seemed to be everywhere. On the street corners. In the windows of shops and cafés. Peering out from behind travellers palms. Standing in the middle of the street as we barrelled towards it.

Alan swore harshly, pulling hard on the steering wheel, the screech of tires sounding out on the still night air. Burned rubber wafted up to meet my nose, as my shoulder hit the door panel sharply. The grip I had on the laser gun weakened, the gun itself clattering to the floor at my feet. I reached down to grasp the handle, when Alan slammed on the brakes suddenly.

My forehead hit the dashboard. A warning alarm sounded out in the vehicle.

And the drones started firing.

Laser lights arced across the night sky. The whine of the guns competing with sparks zapping from beneath our car’s bonnet.

“Motherfucker!” Alan yelled, attempting to restart the stalled vehicle.

“Calvin,” I called. “Get it going!”

“The central motherboard has been compromised,” he supplied. “I’m attempting to circumnavigate the areas of weakness. This may take a minute or two. Please stand by.”

We didn’t have time to stand by. Laser fire danced on the heated air like a battle of fireflies. A flash of red. A burst of blue. A searing shock of vibrant green. I grasped the recovered laser gun in my hands and started firing. It took me several seconds to realise those drones on my side of the car weren’t firing back.

But they were firing.

At the drones across the street.

My hand stilled on the laser gun’s trigger, just as Alan yelled something scathing in my ear, and Calvin replied in calm tones unaffected by the chaos flickering intermittently all around us, “The vehicle is repaired.”

The electric whine broke through the shock. Alan slamming the car in gear had me flattened against the seat-back unable to act despite the returned desire to do so. The laser gun lay ineffectually in my hands, as we rocketed between the two waring groups of drones, taking heavy fire. Windows shattered, upholstery exploded, the smell of burned plastic filled the air.

Then Alan grunted, his foot landing heavier on the accelerator, and the car threatened to revolt, sparks and smoke emitting from the engine compartment as we barrelled round the corner and out of drone fire.

“Fucking hell!” Alan swore, his right hand falling off the steering wheel, landing limp in his lap. “Lena!”

I reached over in time to grab the steering wheel, just before his other arm fell uselessly at his side.

“Oh, fuck,” he managed, the words not as distinct as they should have been.

“Can you move?” I yelled, as we careened down the road approaching the apartment complex at the speed of light.

“Can’t…” was all he could get out.

I glanced down at his foot on the pedal, the weight alone managing to keep the accelerator down. My eyes came up and took in our trajectory. There was simply nowhere for us to go. And not enough time.

I struggled one handed to steer the almost out of control vehicle, reaching behind me to fumble with my seatbelt. The lock came free. The street curved. We left the tarsal for a second and then slammed back down in a teeth jarring crunch of tires and metal.

And then Calvin calmly said, “Deactivating vehicle.”

My heart thundered in my chest making breathing difficult as I watched stunned as the apartment came towards us in a type of slow motion.

Then with an hysterical sounding laugh I realised it wasn’t the world slowing down as I faced imminent death, but rather the car itself coming to a stop. Mere feet from the entrance to the building.

A Cardinal rushed out, covered by two further laser toting accomplices offering cover, and opened the rear car door to retrieve our silent back seat passenger.

Alan let out a slow breath of air, his eyelids growing heavier, and then he too slumped forward, unconscious. The car’s horn sounded briefly before Calvin silenced it.

Paul rushed out of the building, then, to retrieve Alan, as instructions flowed over me issued by Cardinals, and Simon over the earpieces, and Tan from the front steps despite his guards trying to unsuccessfully keep him inside.

I climbed out of the vehicle, my legs a little shaky, and sucked in a few lungfuls of air.

“Drones,” I said, my throat parched, the word sounding scratchy.

“For some reason,” Calvin advised in my ear, “they don’t seem to be following.”

I nodded, it was hard enough to do that, let alone talk. But I found the will when I came abreast of Tan.

“Elite?” he queried, taking the bedraggled sight of me in, and my now two comatose companions. “Lena?” he added, for good measure.

He gripped my arm and helped me inside, the doors locking loudly behind us. I watched Alan and the Cardinal being carried toward the elevators, and then turned my attention to the President.

“They’re not ours,” I said into the quiet.

“I know,” he replied, keeping up with my train of thought. “But they were certainly made here.”

I nodded, running sweaty palms down my clothes, somehow drying them and testing I was in one piece at the same time. The outline of the command module chip from the drone in the alleyway met my fingers. I pulled it out.

“They
were
ours,” I agreed, turning the chip over in my hand and displaying the Wánměi flag. “But not now.”

“We know this, Lena,” Tan stressed, attempting to get me into a vacant lift.

I shook my head. “You don’t understand.”

“Then make me,” he shot back as the lift doors closed behind us.

“What Lena is trying to say,” Calvin announced coolly over the speakers inside the elevator. I closed my eyes, slumping against the mirrored wall of the box. Just great. “Is that we have got more than one set of drones in Wánměi.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Tan demanded, making the Cardinals who stood beside us stiffen.

“I am Calvin,” Calvin declared.

I let a long breath of air out and lifted my eyes to meet those of Tan’s.

His held disbelief, shock, and I was thinking not just a little hurt.

All of it vanished, though, in a flash of pure anger.

“And who, Lena,” he said so very quietly, “is Calvin?”

I guess our secret was out.

“
Y
ou’re missing the point
,” I stressed.

“The point, Lena,” Tan growled back, “is you activated your Shiloh against direct Presidential orders.”

I raised an Elite eyebrow at him.
Now
he was throwing his weight around as the country’s President?

“Regardless of that,” I forged on, “those drones were firing on each other.”

Tan let a frustrated breath of air out and ran a hand through his already tousled hair. “You need to deactivate it,” he ordered, ignoring the more pressing matter of the drones.

So I ignored him.

“Why would there be two sets of drones?” I asked, turning toward Simon as he sat mutely in his chair. He jerked slightly in his seat at suddenly and unexpectedly being the centre of attention. I couldn’t blame him, right now Tan was as irate as I’d ever seen him be.

“Two different invaders,” Simon said in a rush of words.

Silence followed.

Tan slowly turned towards him, his head tilted to the side as he considered Simon’s words. For his part, Si slunk down further in his chair. If he could have, he would blended into the material.

“Why would there be two?” Tan asked, thankfully forgetting Calvin for the moment. And Calvin was remaining perceptively silent. I only hoped he’d stay that way.

Chance would be a fine thing.

“We need to go back to who we sold drones to in the first place,” I offered, flicking my eyes across the room to Alan and strangely wishing he was conscious in order to be part of this conversation.

Paul met my gaze and offered an encouraging smile. He’d cleaned off the paralytic compound, and when no one was looking slipped a sample of it inside a small jar. He hadn’t had a chance to take it to Calvin for analysis, but I had to admit, I was impressed with the young rebel. I smiled back, mine not quite as optimistic as his.

Alan - and the Cardinal - hadn’t moved an inch since we’d got back here.

“Merrika and Urip,” Tan offered, reading off a vid-screen. “From what we can tell, those were the only two countries we traded drones with. Of course,” he added, “
they
may have traded with someone else.”

“But there’s not too many countries left, is there?” Simon offered.

We all slowly shook our heads.

“Apart from that one across the water from Hillsborough,” he added.

“We have no record of trading with them,” Tan admitted, then lowered the vid-screen. “In fact, from what we’ve managed to discover so far, they are rarely mentioned in any documents of worth. And those Overseers we’ve questioned have confirmed that government policy was to ignore they existed at all.”

“Such ignorance is confusing,” I said softly.

“Indeed,” Tan agreed. “But it exists.”

“Existed,” I corrected. Tan didn’t answer.

“So, two sets of drones,” Simon finally felt compelled to say. “One from Merrika. One from Urip. This just gets more and more fucked in the head,” he added in a mutter.

“Either they’ve had a falling out,” I commented. “Or they were never here as a unit to start with.”

“Which means,” Tan concluded, “we’ve possibly been invaded by two separate enemies, at roughly the same time.”

“There’s no roughly about it,” Si countered, staring at the largest vid-screen in front of him. Footage taken from our stolen car’s dashboard camera showed the drones firing at each other across our bonnet.

I stared at the screen for a long time, trying to understand what it was I was seeing. What it was I was feeling. That sense of missing something invaded my psyche. That sensation of disquiet I’d had earlier, when looking at the drones as their reflections had passed a large window.

I took a step closer, my eyes scanning the image, my mind whirring at an alarming rate. Light suffused the dark street on the vid-screen. Ambient light, always present in night time Wánměi, and the red of laser beams.

But there wasn’t just red, I realised. There was blue and green as well. Initially, I’d thought the added colours were a new form of laser beam, but that wasn’t exactly what I was seeing now.

A small surprised breath of air escaped me.

“They’ve got blue eyes,” I whispered.

“What was that?” Tan asked, moving closer.

I lifted my arm and pointed at the drones who’d been firing at us on the screen. “Red eyes, like Shiloh,” I said. Then shifted my finger and pointed at the drones across the street. “Blue eyes,” I added.

“Huh,” Tan said on a huff of expelled air. “Interesting.”

“Then the drones
are
different from each other,” Simon mused. “Well, at least we can tell them apart.”

“It still doesn’t help to ascertain their reasons for invasion,” Tan pointed out. “This could have been a fight between recently joined forces. One trying to claim victory of the spoils over the other.”

It was a valid point, and with what little we knew, there simply wasn’t any way to make things clearer.

“Fighter jets,” I said. “Masked saviours. And two sets of drones.”

“That about sums it up,” Simon said. But no one else offered a comment. We were still blind.

I flicked my eyes over to Paul and Alan, and then turned my attention back to Tan.

“I need a shower and something to eat,” I advised. He nodded absently, his gaze still locked on the vid-screen. Searching for answers that I was sure would not be there.

But I knew where else they might be.

I crossed the room to Paul and looked down at Alan.

“No change?”

“He’s breathing better, and a second ago, his foot twitched.”

“Good,” I said with a nod of my head, accepting the surreptitiously offered jar from Paul’s hand. “Keep me abreast of any changes.”

“Of course,” he answered, making a fuss of Alan’s placement on a pillow, drawing everyone’s eye as I silently left the room.

Cardinals stood guard outside the tech-room, and down the corridor of the penthouse floor, but none stopped me from entering my apartment. The door locked behind me and I leaned against it and just breathed.

“You should have remained silent,” I said into the quiet space.

“You appeared to need assistance,” Calvin replied.

“Not that kind of assistance,” I shot back.

“It all worked out in the end.”

“He’s going to insist you get shut down. And there won’t be a thing I can do to stop it.”

“I know,” Calvin replied, infuriatingly calmly. “But I can always be activated again.”

“Are you suggesting I disobey my President?”

“When have you ever obeyed the rules, Lena?” my father’s voice asked.

I swallowed thickly and stared down at the ground. I was so tired, so exhausted, emotions were running a little too close to the surface, it seemed. Tears were stinging my eyes.

Pulling myself together, with more effort than I would have liked to admit, I crossed to the kitchen and slipped the sample jar into Calvin’s analysing unit.

“Can you find an antidote?” I asked.

“It will take some time, but I believe it is possible,” he replied.

I pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and leaned against the bench while I drank it. My eyes on the Shiloh unit as it hung suspended in the opposite wall.

“What do you make of the drones?” I asked eventually.

“One group is from Merrika, and the other from Urip, as you deduced.”

“What do they want?”

“It is difficult to say, but I’d hazard a guess that those firing at you want you captured. And those firing at them want something else.”

“You’re a genius,” I deadpanned.

“If you do not wish for me to offer my opinion, then do not ask for it,” he simply replied.

I wanted answers. But if Calvin didn’t have them for me, then there were no answers to have.

“Any news on the Net about Trent?” I asked instead.

“The social forums have remained silent since the drones appeared. The last communiqué from Sir Galahad was,
‘Going dark.’
”

No more help on the forums then.

“The Masked are involved,” I insisted.

“Undoubtedly.”

“They have Trent.”

“Do they?” Calvin enquired.

“They were at the crash zone,” I pointed out, suddenly furious that Calvin would offer a different perspective. I needed to believe I knew something. That I wasn’t worse off than before.

That Trent wasn’t farther away from me than ever.

“And yet,” he replied calmly, in a tone of voice I’d heard my father use many times in the past, “there are two sets of drones in Wánměi.”

I stared mutely at the Shiloh unit for a long moment, and then asked quietly, “What exactly do you mean?”

“I mean, Lena,” Calvin said in a perfect imitation of my father, “that if there are two sets of drones, how can we be sure the ones who have Trent belong to the Masked? Which group do the Masked belonged to?” he added. “And finally, do the Masked belong to a set of drones at all?”

Now he was just muddying the waters for the sake of things. Because he was a computer programme designed to extrapolate answers from as series of inputs. Two sets of drones and one caste of people. Three inputs meant three possible answers.

And he hadn’t even touched on the fighter jets!

“You’re not helping,” I said in a dangerously close to cracking voice.

“No,” he said. “I apologise.” Which only made me laugh out loud. It wasn’t pretty.

I slumped down on a bar stool at the bench and stared at the condensation on my water bottle. It had been hours since Trent had gone missing. Hours in which any manner of things could have happened. I didn’t want to think of them. I didn’t want to imagine him injured, or worse. I didn’t want to, but how could I not?

Drones on the streets again. Masked vigilantes causing havoc as they “saved the day.”

One thing was certain, neither the drones nor the Masked came from Wánměi. Oh, they all may have started here, but they hadn’t been Citizens of our country for many months.

So what did that make them?

Invaders. Enemies, as Tan had said. I wanted another explanation, but my exhausted and bruised mind kept coming up blank.

Wánměi was under attack.

And Trent was missing.

A sob threatened to escape. I brutally forced it back down. Tears wouldn’t help him. But unfortunately I had no idea what would.

I’d never felt quite so alone and desperate as I did right then.

“Is there nothing new you can tell me?” I pleaded with the Shiloh unit.

“Nothing new,” Calvin confirmed, in that calm voice belonging to my dead father. “But there is something you have overlooked.”

I didn’t have energy enough to answer.

“You have one missed message,” Calvin announced with all the enthusiasm of a sentient answering machine.

My eyes came up to stare at the blinking green light in the upper right corner of the vid-screen. I’d seen it before, of course. And ignored it for more pressing things. Now suddenly I found myself reluctant to clear it.

“Is it urgent?” I asked. I’d thought it was from Tan. But for Calvin to mention it now, it couldn’t have been.

My fingers began to tremble, even as I stood to my feet. I fisted my hands tightly around the water bottle, trying vainly to face what was coming with dignity.

“I believe it is,” Calvin replied.

I stared at that light. No doubt Calvin stared back at me. Neither of us said a word for several seconds.

“Ask, Lena,” he finally instructed. “You have to ask.”

Damn it. What choice did I have?

“Play the message, Calvin,” I said in a surprisingly level tone.

“Voice imprint accepted,” he replied, surprising me with the unusual addition of security to clear a simple telephone message.

The pause that followed was excruciating. But not as painful as hearing that voice.

“Lena,” the message said. “Baby girl,” it added with
such
familiar emotion. “Please don’t be alarmed.”

The water bottle fell from my grasp and crashed onto the kitchen tiles.

“Calvin,” I started, prepared to shut down the malfunctioning Shiloh unit on the next command.

“This is real,” the recording went on in my father’s voice. “This isn’t the machine talking,” he added.

I forgot to breathe. The message kept playing, heedless of my faltering reality.

“I’m alive,” it said, as I followed the bottle to the floor.