The Body Electric - Special Edition (26 page)

Jack raises a hand, flashing a burner cuff on his wrist. “She’s with me,” he adds. The suddenly tense air around the cave relaxes. I remember what Jack said about the Zunzana—although the core group is reduced to just the three of them, the network created by it was vast, with friends throughout the Unified Countries and beyond. People may not be willing to stand up and fight the government, but they are willing to help those who are.

Jack steps aside, letting me enter the cave first. I step into the darkness.

forty-five

A metal door just inside the cave slides open, and we step inside a room so bright that I have to blink rapidly until my eyes adjust.

Rough-hewn limestone walls curve around us, extending far beyond what I can see. This isn’t a cave—it’s a tunnel. I stumble as I step forward, and it’s only then that I notice the long magna-track embedded into the floor. On top of the track is a worn-out carriage—little more than a giant metal tub set into the track—and in the center of the carriage, where the power supply is supposed to be, is a glowing glass brick.

“Solar glass,” I gasp, peering closer. Solar glass comes from one of the interstellar colonies—the perfect fuel source. Set it out in the sun for just a little while, and it stores enough energy to pull a train across the world. The glittering tops of Triumph Towers supply all the energy for the upper city of New Venice, and the solar glass bricks embedded to the bottom of the bridge spanning the short stretch of sea between Malta and Gozo—the roof of the lower city—provides an alternate for sunlight and power for the entirety of the lower city.

But on its own, as single bricks used by people and not giant powerhouses, solar glass is rare and super expensive.

Jack’s friends, Xavier and Julie, step forward, casting long shadows that dance down the tunnel.

“What… what is this place?” I ask.

“Originally, Paradise Bay was going to be a bit of a tourist attraction,” Jack says. “This was going to be a train stop. But then the plans fell through, and the homeless moved in, and ultimately, the tunnel was abandoned. It goes all the way to the Silent City.”

“It has been convenient,” Xavier says in his rough voice. “The resistance movements have been using the tunnels since before the Secessionary War. The government has been kind enough to forget it existed.”

“Since before—?” I ask.

“Ever since the Financial Resource Exchange started in the middle of the 21st century, people have seen what was coming and worked to prevent it.” Jack starts to lead me to the metal carriage on the magna-track.

“What was coming?” I struggle to keep up; Jack’s long legs make his strides twice as long as mine.

“A unified government. Which, yeah, doesn’t sound bad. But the thing is, if a government gets too big… well, it forgets about the people.”

The Foqra District is proof enough of that, I guess. There aren’t supposed to be poor people in New Venice—not poor like that. Akilah’s family was never well off, but they always had a home and enough food to live on. Or, at least, I thought they did. She never told me… I never knew… No wonder she wanted to escape to the military.

“Sacrificing the few for the good of the many is fine, until you remember that we’re talking about people,” Jack adds, a bitter note in his voice.

“Sacrificing the few for the good of the many.” I parrot his words right back at him, stopping in my tracks.

“The android explosion wasn’t the Zunzana’s fault,” Jack says immediately.

“Oh, I believe you on that,” I say, stopping him from speaking again. “But….” I think about Akilah, about Mom. About Dad. About Estella Belles and the one hundred and three other people who died in the android explosion. And then I think about the hundreds of thousands of people who died in the Secessionary War. Of the pockmarks caused by bombs that dot the island, of the cities wiped out. “I don’t want my friends to die. My family.
I
don’t want to die,” I say. “But I don’t want another war, either.”

“Ella, we
can’t
let the government take away our humanity,” Jack starts.

“They started it!” Julie says, her clear voice ringing. “If it takes a war to stop those—ugh!
C’est vraiment des conneries! Pute!
” She rambles in more French that I don’t quite pick up, and Xavier draws her aside, calming her down.

Jack turns to me, an argument on his lips.

I throw my hands up. “Look, I’m not trying to get into another argument here. I was just calling you on your bullshit. Whatever—don’t try to be noble when you have blood on your hands. You’re rebelling against the government, and even though you haven’t resorted to their methods yet, where do you think this is heading? If you want to overthrow the government, you’re going to end up in the exact same place as them.” I look away; I can’t bear to look at his face like that. “There are no winners here. There is no good or bad. By the time this is over, we’ll all have blood on our hands.”

Jack tilts my face until I meet his eyes again. “Ella,” he says, his voice dark and grave. “I realize that you don’t remember me. But if you did, you’d know that I would
never
become the kind of person you seem to think I already am. But I will
not
let myself be turned into… whatever those things are. If I have to kill, I’ll kill—I’ll do what it takes to protect myself, and humanity. But if it does resort to violence, you can rest assured I will not just explode half the city and kill innocent people. If I’m going to kill someone, then I’m going to look that person in the eye when I do it, and they are going to know why I am doing it.”

He pauses, and his hot, angry gaze sweeps up and down the full length of my body. “Besides,” he says, “every hero I know is soaked in blood.”

I swallow down the lump in my throat, because, judging from the way he talked about him earlier, Jack counts my father as one of his heroes.

“We should go,” Xavier says in his low, gravelly voice. He opens the carriage door for us, and Julie scrambles in, giving me a foul look as I follow her. She is spitfire and rage, and the fact that I don’t want the world to burn like she does is enough to make her question my worth.

Jack sits beside me, and Xavier moves to the helm, starting the carriage up and whisking us into the dark tunnel. The solar glass brick not only powers the carriage, but also casts a radiant glow of light around us, illuminating the tunnel minutes before the magna-track rushes us through the shadows.

“I don’t want a war,” I whisper.

“What?” Jack asks. I turn away—I hadn’t realized I’d spoken loud enough for anyone to hear.

Jack reaches for me. “I didn’t ask for this,” I confess. “I just…” I don’t know why, but I’m shaking my hands, as if they’re wet and I’m trying to dry them. The motion becomes more violent, and I’m thrashing my arms against my body. I can’t control it. Across from me, Julie stares, eyes wide. I am overwhelmed with this knowledge that nothing—
nothing
—is the way I thought it was, that even I am not who I thought I was—that I’m not human, I’m not even a person, I’m some thing, a thing that doesn’t need air to breathe, that can turn off pain, that may as well be an android, a monster, a soulless shell, like the thing my mother has become that maybe Akilah has become and I’m alone, I’m a soulless monster and I’m alone alone alone.

Jack wraps his arms around me and holds me until I still.

He doesn’t say anything. He just holds me.

“I didn’t breathe,” I say after I calm my heart, voicing my confession.

“What?” Jack pulls back, confused.

“I hid under the water. And I didn’t breathe.”

“Good,” Jack says, slowly, still confused. “I’m glad you weren’t caught.”

“I didn’t breathe for half an hour.”

Jack’s eyes widen.

I rip away from him and huddle against the carriage wall. The limestone zips past us, leaving the scent of petrichor in its wake. “That thing that wasn’t my mom… Akilah, who’s no longer Akilah… I’m afraid I’m something like that. I’m… I’m afraid.” I turn and look into his eyes. “You say I’m missing memories. Maybe… maybe I’m just breaking down.”

The sound of a hundred million bees descending on me from a cyclone fills my ears.

But then Jack’s voice rises above the sound. “I don’t know what you are, Ella Shepherd, but I’m sure that you’re still Ella Shepherd. Those things that the government’s been creating, the ones that look like people we know but aren’t—they didn’t have emotion. They didn’t have fear. They were empty inside. And you are not.”

“But—”

Jack silences me. “We’ll figure this out. Together.”

I snort. “Just like we’ll win a war against the world’s largest, most powerful global government?” I say incredulously.

“I never said we could win.” Jack bites the words off one-by-one. “I just said I wouldn’t quit fighting.”

And for the first time, I really appreciate how dangerous Jack Tyler is. He may have only a handful of people on his side and the ghosts of his parents to back him up, but he will never stand down.

He will never give up. Not on the war.

Not on me.

forty-six

Xavier stops the carriage so suddenly that I nearly lurch out of my seat. I think for a moment we’ve arrived wherever it is that we were heading—we must have travelled at least ten kilometers. But rather than open the carriage door, Xavier curses and shutters the solar glass brick with a metal cap, sending us all into pitch black darkness.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. From the glow on their cuffs, I see that Xavier, Jack, and Julie all have silver eyes—they’re seeing something with their eye bots, a program that they share and I do not.

“We’ve been followed,” Jack answers me.

“Five kilometers away… four and a half…
merde
, they’re going fast,” Julie whispers.

“No other carriages on the tracks—they’re running,” Xavier says. He pauses. “Two people, definitely two people. But—”

“No human can run that fast,” Julie says.

“Shit,” Jack curses. “We have to hide.
Now
.” He throws open the carriage door, pulling me out behind him. Julie and Xavier rush to follow.

“We should stay in the carriage, yeah?” I ask, but even as I say it, Xavier starts the carriage up again, and it speeds away into the darkness, without us. I guess they think whoever is chasing us will chase after it without realizing that we’re missing.

“The Templar tunnel’s around here,” Jack mutters.

“Three kilometers away,” Julie says, a panicked edge to her voice.

The only light we have now is from the glow of our cuffs. I look around at the oppressively small tunnel and swallow down the hysterical laugh rising in my throat. “Where can we go?” I say quietly.

Jack grabs my wrist and pulls me into the wall—or, not the wall, exactly, but a crack in the tunnel, a slim passageway that we barely squeeze through. Xavier follows us, and Julie brings up the rear. The crack in the tunnel reveals a niche perfect for hiding in. It’s clearly manmade—narrow, but uniform, and just the right height for a small person and extending further back than I can see. Xavier has to hunch, and the footing’s uneven.

“One kilometer,” Julie whispers.

Whoever is chasing us is speeding insanely fast.

“Cuffs out,” Jack orders in a low voice. Julie and Xavier immediately turn their cuffs off, but I hesitate. The light from the cuff is so dim, but it’s better than nothing. Julie reaches over and force closes my cuff.

The stone in the crevice is wet and dank, and when I touch it, slime leaks from the stone and onto my skin.

A slant of light leaks through the tiny cave Jack pulled us into. Whoever’s been chasing us has caught up.

Voices.

The sounds are muffled, but it’s two women.

Jack grabs my forearm, his fingers digging into my flesh. I can feel the fear emanating from him.

And then I can make out one word from our pursuers.

“Here.”

They’ve found us.

Jack slips his hand over my face, clamping my lips shut. And it’s not until then that I realize what voice I heard before, the person who said, “Here.”

Akilah.

I creep closer, shaking off Jack’s hand and moving toward the light. From the narrow crevice in the wall, hidden from view, I get a glimpse of Akilah’s face. This is my friend, my very best friend, my sister. My eyes are thrown wide open, drinking up Akilah’s image in the pale light of the lantern clipped to her side. She’s aged, just a little, some of the baby fat around her cheeks gone, replaced with sharper lines. Her eyes are deep brown, but hooded and shadowed. Her hair—she always used to wear it in twisty braids that snaked down her back, or in a poofy cloud around her head, but it’s shaved off now, nothing but curly black tufts close to her skull.