Arcadian's Asylum (22 page)

Other courses weren’t as easy. Under sec escort, Jak was taken with three other men into a densely wooded area that lay somewhere to the north of the ville. A fenced-in area, barbed wire standing three yards high
with cameras along the length of each side, was their destination. Within this, starving dogs and bizarre mutie creatures who were mammal, but unlike anything Jak had ever seen, prowled hungrily. It crossed his mind that Doc’s erstwhile friend Andower had been experimenting on more than humans.

The four men were herded into the expansive pen and then told that they would have to survive forty-eight hours, finding their own food and water in the dense enclosure, while avoiding the predators. Their weapons had been taken from them.

The purpose of the exercise was immediately obvious. The sheer density of the enclosure and the proliferation of ravening beasts meant that the men would have to overcome their first instinct to go solo, and work together. As a way of observing both instinctual behavior and the modification of such under extreme duress, it struck Jak as both effective and dangerous.

Especially as the three men he was with showed little initial sign of a willingness to cooperate. One of them cursed heavily, told them he was better off on his own, and at the first sight of a dog pack deserted them. The wisdom of his move was belied by the anguished screams that sounded from within the dense growth.

“Better stick together than buy farm,” Jak told the others. Unwillingly, they agreed.

Although each of them could hunt and had excellent instincts for danger, to merely avoid being chilled wasn’t enough. They had to establish a safe place where they could take turns at watch during the dark, and protect whatever food and water they could find.

It was while one of them slept, and Jak was on watch,
that he was approached by the third man. He sat side-by-side with Jak at the fire they had built, and said nothing for some time. Finally, in an undertone, he said, “You want to get out?”

“Trap?” Jak asked simply.

The man shrugged. “You could see it that way. But I’ll make you do nothing. Just make a suggestion.”

Jak nodded, and the man spit into the fire before continuing.

“Vid’s all around here to see how we do. Vid everywhere. But no sec. Not enough, see. Baron likes us to think so, but you keep your eyes open and you’ll see there ain’t that many. So if you find the vid blindspots, then you can move. Nothing between sectors but empty dirt. Good vid, though.”

“How you know?”

The man grinned. “Got me some pussy in another sector. Separated ’bout a year back, but she’s too sweet to lose. So I worked out the angles. You look at them vid cams, you can do that. Try it, dude. That’s if we get out of here.”

“How I know you not with sec?”

“You don’t. But you’re smart. Even if it is a trap, then you can beat it, boy.”

Jak said nothing. The man stared at him for a while, as if trying to work him out.

Finally he said, “Your choice. Leave it at that.”

Chapter Fourteen

Jak wasted little time. He and his two erstwhile companions made it through the forty-eight hours with little threat. The beasts in the enclosure were hungry and vicious for sure, but they were kept too hungry. It gave them an edge of desperation that made them clumsy. Jak could have heard them coming from a mile away. Being ready for them and avoiding having to fight them was easy under such circumstances. Their carelessness also meant that they were easily trapped for food.

Jak was almost contemptuous when he and the others were freed. The three men were rushed to the center of the sector, where they were put into individual rooms and questioned on their responses and what they felt was good and bad about their actions. The whitecoat who questioned him had Jak watch a vid of the forty-eight hours. Jak was sure he glimpsed the moment when he had been told about the cameras and their blindspots. He kept his face blank, and the moment passed. If the whitecoat had been hoping for a reaction, he was unlucky. If he wasn’t, then good.

Jak was impatient for the interrogation to end, and glad when they were led back to their respective quarters. He sat on his bunk, staring out the window, waiting for night to fall.

So he had experienced the ranges, and they hadn’t been the frightening things that had been suggested by the words of Pulaski and Foxx. He suspected that they talked a better bunch of experiments than they actually ran. A lot of the ville seemed to be based on words that those using them barely understood. Not that he understood them, either. Point was, he didn’t claim to. They were fooling themselves. That would be fine, if not for the fact that they were harming a lot of people along the way. More important, they were likely to harm his friends and himself if things didn’t change. Jak didn’t want that to happen.

So it was that, when darkness fell, Jak stayed in his room and waited for the sounds of the night to settle outside his window. When background noises had reached a level where he could identify every little sound, he nodded to himself and moved.

The two madmen who ran this sector believed in heavy sec when they were conducting experiments, and around their own building. But Pulaski and Foxx were plain stupe when it came to the rest of the sector. They relied solely on the ingrained behavior of their subjects and the vid cameras. Jak didn’t have the one, and knew the failings of the other.

Jak exited the room and moved swiftly to the stairwell. He was down it in a matter of seconds and onto the ground floor. There was little sign of life. Most of the other inhabitants of the building were either taking part in experiments, or sleeping off the effects of those from which they had recently returned. There was little light here, and pools of shadow where he could pause and take stock.

The entrance would be a bad place to exit, as there was a camera roving the sidewalk outside, just as there was one at the back. But the side of the building looked out onto a narrow alley. It was easy to find an empty room and slip out of the window.

Now that he was outside, he would wait. He had all night.

There was one sec patrol. Two men. They passed him after a half hour, not even looking down the alley. He listened intently. It was so quiet that he could hear their footsteps as they echoed away, turned a corner, walked on, then turned again. By the time they were out of his sight, he had a good idea of their route. He settled on his haunches, hunched against the chill night air, and waited.

It was an hour before they passed by again. It had been a tedious hour, but he had made use of it by running over the layout of the sectors, as much as he knew of them, in his head. By the time he had heard the sec patrol pass by and round two corners, he had a plan. He set out and shadowed them as far as the point where the barren stretches of land delineated the marker points between sectors. Where the sec patrol took the middle of the road, Jak used alleys to cut out exposed stretches of sidewalk, pausing to wait while the cameras turned on their podiums before slipping past on the blindside. For those that were fixed, he simply slipped up to them while the moving cameras were away from him, then passed beneath the body of the vid.

It was only when he reached the empty stretch of land that he had a problem. There were cameras along the wire. Sec patrols also passed at regular intervals on
his side. On the other, he noticed, there was none. He would have to find a dark spot and wait it out, working out the patterns of the cameras and the patrols before light came to ruin his plans.

One patrol made its circuit, and came in contact with the deserted land in such a way that Jak would be seen if caught out.

He cursed to himself as he timed them. They came exactly halfway along the patrol circuit he had followed. And they chose a time when most of the cameras were turned away from him—his optimum moment to cross the barren area. Very well, then, he would have to take a chance. The strait became a blind spot in only one location that gave him enough time to cross, and that would mean risking coming within the purview of one camera in this sector. The window of opportunity when he could hit the barbed wire and tumble over into the barren area would be just over ten seconds. And just under a hundred yards. Jak was fast, but it was asking a lot.

He looked up at the moon as sparse cloud scudded across its face. If he was to get over, find Doc and Mildred and get back, he would have to move. He was sure they would be in this sector. Arcadian may have assumed he was dumb because he didn’t say much, but the baron had underestimated him.

Jak’s thoughts blanked as instinct came to the fore: now was the time. Heart pounding, he shot from the shadows and made for the wire, one eye on the camera as it just pivoted beyond the path he was taking. He took the wire at a running leap, grabbing at the knotted metal between the barbs and using his own momentum to lift him up and over the top. He felt the wire catch and rip
at his clothes, and the sharp needle pain of scored flesh on his hands. He ignored it as he landed on the balls of his feet. A quick look to see that he had left no telltale remnants of cloth and he was across the barren area in a few strides. Looking back, he could see in the moonlight that the earth was packed too hard for footprints to register. That had been a gamble won. Now for the next. He took the wire on the far side with more caution, having had less chance to build up a head of steam. He winced as he felt the wire bite into those parts of his hands that had been scored. Blanking the pain, he was over and into the shadows once more. A look back showed him cameras that were still turned away.

Now he was in a sector that he didn’t know. The instincts and senses that the coldheart whitecoats wanted to test and analyze would be their downfall in a way they couldn’t understand. He moved around the streets, past the open area where the chess tables and the giant ground board were located. Their absurdity didn’t register with him. He had more pressing business.

Scent and sound were his raw materials: areas and buildings where the people of this sector were sleeping at this hour. Areas where they were awake to be treated with particular caution. There was no indication of any sec. It should have puzzled him, but in his current mood he just took it as a bonus.

Jak moved quickly. He knew the particular scents that attached themselves to Doc and Mildred. As with everyone, there was something unique about them. He also knew that if they were awake, Doc would be talking. He allowed himself a smile at that. Even more so when he caught Doc’s voice, no more than a whisper
on the still air. Enough for him to find the building. His smile broadened as he heard Doc’s discourse on how they needed to break the bounds of the sector. He accessed the building via an alleyway and an open window. From there, finding Doc and Mildred’s room was simple. He could hear Doc as he reached for the handle of the door, then his voice cease as they watched the handle drop.

“Need stop talking and start acting, Doc,” he said with a vulpine grin as he pushed the door open and stepped back.

They were framed in the doorway, both in the act of reaching for their sidearms. The look of astonishment on their faces alone was almost worth his efforts.

“LOOK, I KNOW YOU don’t want to trust me, but just give me this chance, okay?”

Ryan Cawdor stared at Tod with his one good eye, the burning blue orb trying to penetrate into his very being. No, he didn’t want to trust him. Truth was, he didn’t like him at all. Even before Krysty had told him about their little discussion when she tried to retrieve the weapons, the one-eyed man had picked up something in the way that Tod looked at Krysty. No, what he really wanted to do was to put his fist right through the slightly smug and condescending face in front of him. He didn’t doubt Tod’s sincerity—the man had put a lot on the line leveling with Krysty, and by all accounts had played more than fair—but the gnawing canker of jealousy still ate at him.

An interesting feeling for Ryan. It had been a long time since he and Krysty had been in a situation where
he had come face-to-face with someone who wanted his woman so openly. If he had put it to her like that, likely as not the Titian-haired beauty would have put her own fist into his eye. His judgment was being impaired, and he knew that it wasn’t a good time for that to happen.

“Suppose I do trust you. What guarantee have I got that you won’t screw me over?”

“Not just you. Both of you,” Tod countered slowly, staring from one to the other. “I’m not just taking you, Ryan. I’m taking Krysty, too.”

He was aware of Ryan’s feelings. Including Krysty made it clear that it wasn’t merely a move to get the one-eyed man out of the way. Ryan appreciated that, but there was more than just that personal itch to be scratched.

“What if it’s both of us you want out of the way?”

Tod snorted, exasperated. His manner was almost certain to rub Ryan the wrong way, but maybe it wasn’t deliberate? Ryan let him speak, considering this as he listened.

“What,” Tod snapped, “so I’m going to lead you both into a trap because she spurned me? Fuck it, you think this is all about you? Or even all about me? This is more than that. You think I want revenge? Think again. Listen, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make a better world—you’ve seen more of this land than I have, and you can’t tell me that it isn’t a pesthole. But the way Arcadian goes about it? No, that’s all wrong. You don’t make a better world by treating your own people like animals just so you can experiment on them. You work with them. Now mebbe if things change
we can start making this ville better as a start. Mebbe it’ll all go to shit. But at least it’ll be our shit.”

He stopped, breathing hard, glaring at Ryan. It was obvious that he’d stopped before completely losing his temper. The one-eyed man returned the glare, then extended his hand.

“That’s a hell of a lot of words, friend, but I reckon you mean ’em. And they sound about right to me. I won’t pretend we’ll be best buddies, but we can be allies.”

Tod nodded curtly and took Ryan’s hand. “Okay, then let’s get going before it’s too late.”

They were in the office where Krysty had spoken to Tod the previous evening. The rendezvous had been arranged, and Ryan had reluctantly agreed. Now they had their weapons back and he was, if not exactly happy with the situation, then at least prepared to go along with it. The plan was to lead them across two sectors and to the edge of the wooded areas surrounding the ville, where they would rendezvous with a rebel faction that was barely keeping its head above water.

As they left the building by a side window and took a circuitous route that led them past vid posts and patrolling sec, across the barren areas dividing the sectors, and out into the wooded areas, Ryan gave thought to what he and Krysty had been told.

In each sector there were small groups of people who didn’t like the way the sectors were being run. Consensus among these people was that Arcadian and his cronies had long since lost whatever strategy for the future they had once had, and were lost in the morass of their own theories. Most of the population was either
beaten down by the way in which they had to live or was too scared to organize and fight. The only ones without these burdens were those in the central sector, and they were too busy clinging to their semifreedom, scared of slipping back into one of the other sectors. Which left those few who tried to find a way of fighting back in their own sectors, or those who couldn’t take it any more and made a desperate bid to escape, banding together outside of the ville to try to survive by stealing supplies and avoiding the sec patrols until such time as they were sufficient in number to mount a revolution.

Meanwhile, those who stayed in the ville had found ways to maintain irregular lines of communication by working out how to avoid the patrols and vids. Arcadian was too used to his people being kept in line, apart from a small majority, and so if they kept their profiles low and moved only singly or in pairs, they could go from sector to sector and back again overnight. It was something, but they lacked the combat instinct or know-how to move the game up a notch.

Which was where the newcomers came in: Arcadian might have his own ideas of their use, but those who maintained an underground—of dissent if not resistance—had other notions, figuring that the newcomers wouldn’t want to stick around if an alternative presented itself.

They were, of course, right. But Ryan was well aware that the largest cell of rebellion was also the one from which his people had taken out several members. Who was the coldheart in this equation, and how would that affect their first meeting?