Proxy (32 page)

It wasn’t that her father was a bad man. He’d done bad things, but he meant well. He meant to keep her safe and the only way to be safe in the Mountain City was to be rich. So he’d made the choices he made. For her. But there were more important things than safety. She hoped he understood that, or that he would one day.

She looked over at Knox, wondering what he must be thinking.

“Do you believe now?” Marie asked him. “Do you believe about Syd?”

Knox had always believed in whatever was most convenient, whatever worked for whatever he wanted at the moment. He hadn’t known until a few days ago how fragile that kind of believing could be.

He wanted to tell her yes, now he believed. He wanted to tell her he believed what she believed because maybe then she’d hold his hand, maybe then she’d smile back and remind him who he used to be. But he didn’t believe and he didn’t say yes. He just couldn’t fake it. Instead, he shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t matter either way.”

“How can you say that?” Marie straightened up, letting the blanket fall from her shoulders.

“Look around.” Knox waved his hand toward the kids huddled around the cargo hold, clutching sacks seeping with the blood from raw horse meat and worse, and to Syd lying broken and unconscious. “Is this better than what we’ve got? Civilization costs something, you know? Some people win and some people lose, but civilization survives because the winners and losers make a deal to keep it working. You tear it down, you break that deal apart, and what do you have? Just death in the desert. I don’t want to live in that world.”

“But we could build a better system,” she objected.

“I don’t see how,” said Knox. He felt bad about it. Marie believed so strongly in her cause that she couldn’t imagine anyone believing something different. She was an optimist. She thought people were better than they were. She thought Knox was better than he was.

“Syd,” she said, as if that explained anything. “It has to be him. It’s destiny.”

Knox rubbed the back of his neck. He tried to form a response.

“Destiny didn’t make me take that car or get in that accident,” he told her. “Like the old man said, it was just choices. And everything since then too, just choices I made and you made, others we didn’t make. There’s no meaning to it. I could have just as easily slipped away from Syd at that club, left him to escape on his own.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Because I wanted to get back at my father.”

“No.” Marie looked up at the blur of stars racing by. “Because you were meant to be part of this.”

“I wish I believed like you do,” said Knox. He looked down at his lap. He’d disappointed her like he disappointed everybody. “You know, I hoped you might convince me.”

“That’s not my job. I’m not your mother,” Marie said.

When Knox flushed, she knew she’d gone too far.

“Sorry.” She pulled back. “I didn’t mean to . . . you know . . .”

“It’s fine,” Knox told her, even though it was far from fine. He didn’t like anyone bringing up his mother. She was a private thing. He’d built an airtight container around her memory and only he could slip inside it. Talking about her let the world in and the memory began to decay. But he didn’t want the conversation to end with Marie hating him again. He’d come too far. He didn’t want to be alone again.

“My father wasn’t much for heart-to-heart talks,” he told her. “I’m not so good at it.”

“You don’t have to talk,” she said. “I already told you, I like you better when you don’t.” She smiled at him, put her hand on his. They didn’t need words. They didn’t need to agree, even. They just needed each other. Her touch sent a shudder through Knox’s body.

“Pretty amazing,” Marie said, pointing up at the stars through the hole in the roof.

“It’s just like looking at a holo,” Knox said.

“A lot better than any holo I’ve ever seen.” Marie pulled the quilt back up over her shoulders, leaned against him.

“I think I prefer the digital version,” Knox joked. “Smells better.”

Marie wrapped an arm around his back. He tucked a stray hair behind her ear. He saw his reflection on a dark panel behind her. It was the first time he’d seen himself in days. His hair was a tangled mess of muddy knots, pressed down and poking up in all the wrong places. His forehead was swollen where Egan had head butted him; he had a cut on his cheek and a nasty yellow-and-purple bruise around his left eye. His lip was cut and caked with dried blood. There were welts and burns all over. The only part of himself that looked familiar were his eyes. They looked so much like they always had that, somehow, they were the most unsettling part of his appearance. He didn’t know them at all. They were a stranger’s eyes. He looked back at Marie. Hers somehow were not.

He wanted to kiss her.

She shivered and rested her head on his shoulder. Maybe, he thought, when this was over . . .

He breathed quietly in time to her breaths. The air in front of their mouths frosted.

“My father killed my mother,” Knox said.

Marie sat up.

“I mean, not, like, literally,” Knox said. “But it was his fault. She was kidnapped and he wouldn’t negotiate. I saw it happen. I hid when they took her. I wonder, if they had taken me, would he have negotiated then?”

Marie didn’t respond. She nodded, letting Knox say what he needed to say.

“I always thought if I could hurt my father, it would make me feel better. Like we’d be even. I’d tried it all those years with everything from stealing to getting tweaked out of my head, but it never really helped. I figured maybe sneaking Syd away would do it. Like if I could save Syd, it would make up for my mom. A life for a life or something. I don’t know . . .” Knox wiped his nose on his sleeve. He looked at Syd behind them. “Now I want Syd to get to safety because he’s earned it. It’s got nothing to do with my father anymore.”

Marie grunted. “Earned it?”

“Yeah,” said Knox.

“You still don’t understand.” She frowned at him. “Why should he have to earn it? If people only got what they earned, where would that leave you?”

Knox wanted to reach out and grab her hand again, go back to the almost kiss. He should have kept his mouth shut, should have told her what she wanted to hear, like he used to do with girls. But he didn’t. He told the truth.

“I guess it would leave me right where I am,” he said. “
This
is what I earned.”

“Well, you got that right, anyway.” There was no anger in her voice. She leaned against him again. Her hair warmed his neck. They didn’t have to agree. Honesty was its own kind of peace.

Knox wondered how many other people had ever known him so well. None that he could think of. Well, Syd perhaps. Syd, who’d known him less than a week, knew him better than anyone. He
had
earned better than this life he’d been living. Even if he hadn’t, he
deserved
better now. Knox was afraid of tearing down the system that had served him so well his whole life, but if that’s what it took for Syd to be free, maybe it would be worth it. Not for some ideal world. For Syd.

He felt himself dozing off some time in the night, when the land had started to show signs of life. Tiny scrub brush poked from the hardpan earth. A cactus here and there or a strange-leaning type of tree. Fragments of rusted metal signs lay by the side of the road, back from the days before augmented reality, when information was planted in the dirt.

He dreamed about his mother. He saw her on a holo, hovering in the air before him. He was in his living room.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” she told him.

He wanted to tell her he had changed, that he had grown, that his world was bigger now, but he couldn’t speak. It was one of those dreams.

“You only think of yourself.” Her voice was his father’s voice. His mother didn’t know him at all. She’d been gone for so long, she couldn’t know him. He wasn’t a selfish little boy anymore. Or at least, he wasn’t
only
a selfish little boy. When he opened his mouth to tell her that, the sound that came out was his own name.

“Knox.”

He trembled.

“Knox.”

He opened his eyes. Marie shook him.

“Knox,” she said. “Wake up. We’re here.”

He sat up and looked through the porthole on the side of the hovercraft. They were on a narrow road running through a crumbling jungle city. They sped down a wide avenue, a man-made canyon of steel and concrete that had long ago surrendered to nature.

Moss carpeted the facades of the buildings and dark holes that once were windows gaped black like the gouged eye sockets of a corpse. Vines broke through the sidewalks, and trees tore through the roofs of low rises, strangling one another for sunlight. Branches had grown so long on either side of the street, they met in the middle, crossing and tangling, and formed a covered canopy that muzzled the sun and cast spiderweb shadows over the street below.

They landed beside the loading dock of an old factory and almost immediately, figures rushed out to greet them, armed men in mismatched uniforms from different companies, armies, and eras. A tall medical bot just like the ones in the Upper City rolled with them, a stretcher extended from its midsection.

Gordis opened the rear hatch and the men swarmed in, grabbing supplies and directing the children out of the way. They ignored Knox and Marie, and lifted Syd right onto the stretcher. The bot turned and began to roll away.

Marie jumped out of the hovercraft after him. Knox followed her and they were quickly blocked by one of the armed men with a fracture cannon mounted on his shoulder.

“Gordis!” Marie shouted. “Where are they taking him?”

The bot flashed projections of Syd’s vital signs to a man running alongside it. Must have been a doctor. Syd and the doctor and the robot disappeared up a ramp into the factory and vanished through a dark doorway.

Marie tried to push past the soldier.

“We go wherever Syd goes!” Knox yelled. “Whatever happens to him, happens to us!”

The soldier didn’t move. He aimed his cannon straight into Knox’s face.

“Let them pass,” a man called from above.

Knox looked up the ramp to see the old man from the Valve, Mr. Baram, hobble outside, leaning heavily on a crutch, but otherwise unscathed.

“He’ll want to see some friendly faces when he wakes up,” Mr. Baram said and the soldier swung open like a door. Knox and Marie ran forward after Syd. Mr. Baram followed behind on his crutch and the factory door slid shut.

[46]

WHEN SYD WOKE FROM a dreamless sleep, he was in a bed with clean white sheets and a firm mattress below him. He wore white shorts and a white shirt. Projections floated in the dim light of the room, showing his vital signs, his biodata, and various other information he couldn’t decipher.

The walls of the room were paneled in wood, with discolored patches here and there. Above these strange patches were the faded outlines of stenciled letters. He could only make out a few:

   RD  OTO  C  MP  Y

Syd felt a strange sensation on his arm and pulled it out from under the sheet. He saw the spot where he’d been branded, except the branding was gone. There was scarring and discoloration, but no more metal. No more Marie. He could just make out the
R
and the number
1.
He looked back at the letters on the wall.

Anything man can make can be unmade, he thought. Everything fades.

He kicked the sheets off and felt the cool air on his skin. Climate control. He was in civilization, or some approximation of it. It had to be the Rebooters. If he’d fallen into anyone else’s hands, they wouldn’t have fixed his wounds or repaired his body. They’d have killed him for the reward. So he was in Old Detroit.

Must be in an old office. He smiled, because he had made it, but still, he didn’t know into whose hands he had fallen, or where Knox and Marie had gone, or if he was truly safe, or if he ever could be again.

His bed lay next to a large casement window, but the window was boarded up with mushy-looking wood. Shoots of green broke through the wood and crept along the outside of the glass. He watched a large slug crawl along one of the green shoots. A trail of tiny ants followed it, feeding off the goo it left behind. A tiny patch of boarded window in an abandoned city contained more life than he’d seen in days. He could have watched that slug for hours. He wondered how long he’d been unconscious.

The door swung open and Knox and Marie came in, both of them clean and dressed in new clothes. Marie ran to his bedside and hugged him, and Knox, without hesitation, did the same.

“We thought you might not make it,” Knox told him.

“
He
thought,” Marie corrected. “I always knew.”

Marie still held her weapon, although it looked like it too had been cleaned.

Knox noticed Syd’s eyes drift to it. “She hasn’t put that thing down except to let Gordis show her how to clean the barrels. Said she’s vowed to protect you with her life and she’s not about to stop now.”

Marie blushed. Syd smiled. “Thanks,” he said.

“You’re looking much better, by the way,” Knox told him.

“You too,” Syd said and his voice came out smooth and clear. They’d even fixed his throat. He couldn’t recall ever having medical care like this in his life. He found himself wondering what it would cost him—an old habit—when he remembered why they’d treat him this way. He had something the Rebooters wanted. The weight of the memory settled down on him. Everything costs.

“There’s someone else here to see you,” Marie said. She didn’t want to overwhelm Syd just when he’d woken up. She wasn’t sure how fragile he would be, but he looked well and he looked eager, so she went to the door and opened it.

Mr. Baram came in on a crutch, his face cracked in a smile so wide that his beard almost parted.

“Ah, boychik!” the old man cried. “You’ve ridden a rough road, but you made it here at last. I knew Gordis would find you. He’s a good man, that one.”

“You’re—here?” Syd muttered.

“I am here, Sydney, yes,” Mr. Baram said, nodding. “Your powers of observation are as sharp as ever.”