The Society (A Broken World Book 1) (18 page)

I wanted to slam my fist into his throat, but I forced all of that down where it couldn't make it out to my eyes and responded with what I knew he wanted to hear.

"I have no problem with that, Brennan. The ants all deserve to die. If Piter is evil, they are evil boiled down to its purest form. Point me at the right target, give me a weapon, and I'll gladly help you set their world aflame."

"That is what I was afraid you would say, Skye. The sentiment you just expressed is all too common here in the city—both inside my territory and out. It's not the right way to be thinking about things though, and if you're going to be part of my inner circle, then you're going to have to get past that."

"I don't understand."

"Do you know that most of the people inside the barrier believe that they weren't responsible for the Desolation? Hundreds of millions of us on the outside of their energy field have been taught our entire lives that they started the Desolation, that they destroyed our ancestors in an effort to make sure that we would never get to the point where we could challenge them, but they believe something entirely different there.

"They believe that the world was on the brink of a great invention, something that would change the lives of every man, woman and child who would ever be born on this planet, and then that invention was stolen away from them by someone called the Destroyer. They believe that was the trigger that caused the rest of the world to attack them, and then when we couldn't get past their barrier, we turned on each other, bombing ourselves halfway back to oblivion."

Something deep inside of me was shaking, but I refused to let any sign of that out onto my face. This was as critical a conversation as I was ever going to have with Brennan.

"So they are just pawns? Does that mean that you aren't going to go to war with them after all?"

"Yes, most of them are nothing more than pawns, but I'll still be going to war with them. I don't want to kill any innocents—as unlikely as it is that anyone can make it to adulthood in such a depraved place and still retain any claim to innocence—but they have to be stopped, Skye."

I nearly opened my mouth and asked him why, but that would have been the real Skye asking, the one who had grown up on the other side of the barrier. The version of me that Brennan knew wouldn't ask that kind of question. Luckily Brennan answered the question without any prodding from me.

"They bomb us on a regular basis, not because we represent a threat, but because they want to make sure that we never have a chance to become one. Each year they kill hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of people who have done nothing more than be born and manage to survive inside a place like this. That would be bad enough, but the truth is that the ants are a societal dead end—they just don't realize it."

"How so?"

I was pleased that my voice came out without any of the passion I was feeling. If Brennan had been on top of his game it still might not have been enough to fool him, but he was staring off into space—seemingly overcome by whatever vista he was imagining.

"In the last hundred and fifty years, the ants haven't managed to achieve more than one or two significant advances. Before the Desolation, it wasn't uncommon for a single year to see the realization of dozens of amazing discoveries. The ants have sat at the very top of the pyramid for so long that it's easy—even for them—to forget that they have ceased growing and changing.

"They have a stranglehold on progress. They won't let us advance, and they refuse—or are incapable—of doing it on their own."

He looked back at me and shrugged. "I know that makes it sound like I worship at the altar of progress, but the truth is that I do. I disapprove of the slothful, worthless lives that most of the ants live, but that wouldn't be enough to make me destroy them. Even them bombing the cities doesn't necessarily mean that they are evil individually. Reasonable people can disagree, and sometimes those disagreements escalate, but this is something else."

"Slothful?"

That drew a chuckle out of him. "Ant society is the very definition of sloth. They have unimaginable resources at their fingertips. Nearly every inorganic substance they could want is created by one of their automated factories, and their food is grown and harvested by semi-autonomous robots that allow a single human to supervise a force capable of providing food for thousands.

"Down here we slave away for thirteen hours a day in an effort to feed and clothe ourselves while making the capital investments that will allow our children to somehow live better lives than what we've known. The ants could change the very face of the world if they worked those kinds of hours. Instead they lie around, wasting their time with drugs, gambling, and worse.

"The only time that isn't the case is when they are working to become full citizens—to earn their franchise—but even then what they do barely qualifies as work. Once they become full citizens they might work an hour or two in total during any given week. That's all it takes to provide them with food, clothes and everything else they might want."

I felt like I'd been slapped. Hearing someone paint such a terrible picture of the people back home was hard to take—especially because there wasn't any way to really argue with his assessment of life on the other side of the barrier without admitting that I was a spy.

The precepts taught that life was about people realizing the best possible versions of themselves, and art was held as the highest of accomplishments. From the time I'd been born, I'd been taught that the pressure of providing for oneself was a negative influence, one that impeded people in their quest for excellence.

Looking back at my time in the city, I could easily see half a dozen examples where that wasn't the case. Brennan and his people were attacking the work before them—work that had little if anything to do with art—with incredible energy. They were accomplishing phenomenal things, and Lexis was a perfect example of someone who'd arrived at the compound with a useful set of skills and then gone on to make something even more amazing out of herself. She was helping Brennan build a textile operation that was capable of producing a hundred times more per person than she'd ever been able to make back when she'd been doing everything by hand.

I'd talked to Lexis and I was convinced that she had the soul of an artist, but that soul was being governed by the mind of a business woman, one who was accomplishing something with more permanence than would ever have been possible with hair-pins and charcoal pencils.

Instead of arguing with Brennan and blowing my cover, I asked the only logical question—the question that my trainers would have wanted me to ask.

"Why haven't I ever heard this before? If everything you just told me is true, how did you learn it?"

Brennan suddenly looked very tired. "It's impossible to fight a war without intelligence, Skye. It's like I mentioned earlier. Tyrell is very good at this kind of stuff. The ants would never believe that anyone could pierce their barrier and spy on them, but he's managed to do it. We have a…source on the other side of the barrier.

"As for the first half of your question, you've never heard any of this before because it's never been in the best interest of the people you reported to for you to know. A despot like Piter would never tell you the truth of someone he viewed as his enemy because he wouldn't want you thinking of them as human beings. In wars, the side with the best propaganda is often the side that wins."

"If that's true, then there's even more reason for you not to tell me this, Brennan. You just finished telling me that you're going to war with the ants…"

"Yes, but I'm not some kind of amoral despot. We're going to beat the ants because they've backed us into a corner where we don't have any choice, but I don't want any of us to lose our souls along the way.

"I know this is a lot to ask, but I need you to remember that the average ant—the average franchised citizen—isn't necessarily bad. Lazy? Yes. Dreadfully—even criminally—ignorant? Yes. They aren't evil though, the real evil is in the leadership of their people. When this is all over, I'm not going to run around executing the innocent.

"I'm going to rip down the barrier, destroy their military, and steal away their factories, but I'm not going to kill anyone I don't have to. I'm going to just let nature take its course. If they're willing to work as hard as the rest of us, then there isn't any reason for them to starve. The question for you right now though is whether that's something you can get behind."

I swallowed to buy myself time, and then nodded. "Yeah. I can oppose something—actively fight even—without demonizing everyone on the other side. I'll help you bring the ants down, and when the smoke clears, I'll help you save whoever can be saved."

Chapter 13

After my talk with Brennan, my head hadn't stopped spinning. His take on life inside of the barrier—and the revelation that he and Tyrell had somehow managed to slip a spy into the Society—would have been enough to keep me off balance for hours, but things didn't stop there.

Once I'd satisfied Brennan that I could be the person he needed me to be, he'd dropped another bomb. Tyrell had reports that the Society was working on infiltrating his organization—this time with an operative rather than with the semi-autonomous micro drones they usually used.

Both Brennan and Tyrell were convinced that this operative was going to try to assassinate Brennan before he could implement his plan to take over the city. It was almost ironic that they'd somehow stumbled onto information about me that had been known only to the Citizen-President and a few others, but still managed to misinterpret the intelligence so badly that they didn't realize that I was the operative.

As a result, Brennan had decided his best chance of surviving was to lure the assassin into a false sense of security. During significant blocks of time Brennan's team was going to be cut back from the normal complement of five or six bodyguards to just two people…and me. I was going to continue to receive the best instruction Jax could provide—hopefully turning me into one of the most effective guards Brennan had—but by all outward appearances I would be nothing more than what Piter had taken me for at the meeting in his territory.

Even before he'd finished describing the situation, I'd realized I was going to be spending a lot of time with Brennan.

I could feel Brennan's discomfort as he laid out the plan—a plan that he'd apparently been putting together with Tyrell while Lexis had been dolling me up. It read like every guy's fantasy. Take one pretty girl, dress her up to emphasize her sexuality, and then order her to spend nearly every waking minute with you. He stopped short of telling me that I was going to have to sleep in his room every night, but I could tell that it was a possibility if he and Tyrell started worrying that the assassin was going to be able to get inside of the secure floors underneath the headquarters building.

I half expected Brennan to tell me that I was going to have to spend the night with him right then, but after I agreed to keep up my charade of being nothing more than a pretty face, he walked me back to my room and wished me good night.

I fell asleep worrying about how I was going to get away from everyone for long enough to report back to the Citizen-President. One thing was certain—it was only going to be a matter of days before I would know exactly where the generator was being stored.

Brennan didn't strike me as the kind of guy who was capable of letting a project like that sit neglected for weeks on end. Even around all of the work of cleaning up the wreckage in the foundry, he was going to find a way to dedicate some time to his pet project, and when he did that, I would be at his side.

Morning came all too soon. My nanites made me faster and stronger—they were even capable of healing most life-threatening wounds in short order—but they didn't do that much to reduce the amount of sleep I needed. I was awakened by a knock on my door that was far too soft to be Jax.

I should have known that it would be Lexis. She came bearing gifts again—more clothes—and this time everything had been tailored so that it didn't need additional modifications to emphasize the fact that I was female.

She wished me a good morning, handed me a complete change of clothing, and then waited while I changed in the bathroom. Everything fit snugly—just like she'd intended—but she still fussed over me once I left the bathroom and let her see how it all fit.

"It's not much, but this will get you through today and tomorrow, and I'll take the stuff you wore yesterday and tailor it in based on the way that this set fits. This entire floor has laundry service three times a week, so that should be enough to keep you from running around naked until I can get through a few other projects and get back to working on the rest of your wardrobe."

"I can get by with three sets of clothing, Lexis. You don't need to work on more stuff for me."

She shook her head at me. "You're getting a full range of outfits, dear. With what you'll get paid as a guard you could afford most of this on your own within a few weeks, but Brennan is paying for all of it—the tailoring too. He said that you need clothes that let you look like something other than a guard when the time is right."

I wasn't sure just how in the loop she was with regards to the assassin that Tyrell and Brennan were worried about. Brennan seemed to trust her—he wouldn't have her running the textile factory if he didn't—but it was always best to play privileged information close to one's chest.

It made sense though that Brennan was going to want me in stuff that downplayed any association with the guard. It was too bad, I'd just been starting to get used to the uniform Jax had designed.

Lexis looked at me expectantly, so I nodded. "I'm completely in your hands, Lexis."

"Of course you are—that's been the case for more than twenty-four hours now—but it's nice of you to acknowledge the fact."

She showed me how to do my hair up in the messy bun she'd teased it into the morning before, instructed me in the use of the rudimentary cosmetics that were the only thing available so deep inside of the city, and then left me with what seemed to be her entire supply of charcoal and paint.