Evolution (19 page)

His eyes scan over mine again, his expression falling. 
I feel the same sense of loss that I read in his face.  But the dead are
meant to be buried.  Jason and Lily are dead.

He reaches up and touches my face.  "I don't know
how to let you go," he whispers.  "I've been waiting for you
ever since I woke up."

I can't stop the tears from falling now.  I look down
and they drop freely onto the log between us.  "I know," I choke
out.  "I'm sorry."  I can only wish that I
was
Lily.  That I could be that thing that would have completed him. 
Instead, I am the end of his journey.  The place that he's ended up, that
is nothing like he wanted or expected.

But he shakes his head, then he leans in and kisses me
gently on the forehead.  "Don't be," he says.  His voice
wavers.  "You're right.  You're barely out of the box.  How
can I expect you to know who you are, when I don't even know who I am after
three—almost four years, now?"

I sit back to look up at him, and we search each other's
eyes in a first moment of understanding.

He smiles at me sadly and brushes one of my tears
away.  I want to do the same for his, but my hands are lead.  They
won't leave the log.

"Let's try to move past this," he says. 
"Let's not be horrible to each other."

I nod, but find myself closing my eyes.  "What I
did at the Outpost," I say, before we can move on.

"Done is done," he says quickly.  "You
did what you had to.  Here we are.  And this was the plan all
along.  Right?"

I manage to throw him a smile as we climb up from the log
and head back toward camp.  "You know," I say, still wiping at
my eyes, "I really did make the right choice.  Don't you see? 
We're going south.  I gave you what you wanted all along."

He looks at me sideways as we walk and gives me a funny, sad
little smile.  Then he looks ahead of us, toward the camp, where we can
see our friends getting everything ready to go.  "I guess
so."  But his voice does not sound like he believes it.

We join our friends and gather our packs.  Apollon
catches my eye questioningly when Jonas is turned away, and I shrug it
off.  In only a moment, we're heading toward Minneapolis and I know we'll
reach it in a few short hours.  Part of me feels light as air, ready to
face anything.  But part of me is heavy.  There's a sadness, a grief,
that won't go away.  That's Lily, I'm thinking.  Go away, Lily. 
I'm not you.

My first real glimpse of the city
squashes any other thoughts.  The buildings tower into the sky, like
nothing in Outpost Three.  The odds are, I've lived in a city like this
before.  The only other thing is the Outposts, and surely I was not
dropped so close to home after my erasure.  I've imagined this sort of
thing in my mind's eye, but this—this is foreign.  The city butts up
against the boundary line, ready to spill out.  Everything juts straight
upward.  There is forest, then scanner posts, and then skyscrapers. 
They've built right out of the wall, right up to the scanner posts, making the
most of every inch of space.  We stand back, hidden by the trees, and
gape.  We're still a safe distance away, but now we consider a detail that
has not occurred to us before.  Our original plan is gone, along with the
Sentries that should have accompanied us here—that should have gotten us back
inside the scanner line.  Now we must cross the barrier on our own, with
nothing to protect us.  As far as we can see, there are only a few small
gaps between buildings—the only paths into Minneapolis.  Each one of them
is filled with the still-gazing body of a Sentry.

"How are we going to get in," I whisper, ducking back
behind a large tree.

We look at each other in silence.

Jonas, considering, glances toward the city. 
"We're going to have to take one down."  His voice is soft and
dark.

A chill passes through me.  An image of an arm thudding
into a pool of blood, fingers twitching.  I have to remind myself that
these aren’t Matt’s Sentries.  They’ve not been reprogrammed to defend
their crystals.

Jacob and Taylor look at each other.

"It's the only way," Taylor agrees.  His
brother nods.

"OK," says Apollon, "how do we want to do
this?  We can maybe confuse it with misdirection.  Come at it from
different sides."

Jacob shakes his head.  "Nah.  There's only
one way to do it.  That thing's gotta scoop one of us up in order for us
to get at its compartment, so one of us is just going to have to walk up there
and let it have us.  The others can run through, get in quickly.  And
then when the Sentry is down, we'll all be in and running for it before another
can respond."

I open my mouth to volunteer, but Taylor is ahead of me.

"I'll do it."

"Hell no," Jacob says.  "I'll do
it.  You go with the others."

"How 'bout I do it?" I say.  "Neither of
you knows what you're doing.  You weren't there for the takedown at
Outpost Three."  Part of me is dying to destroy another of these machines,
though I know, ultimately, it means nothing.  There's no real revenge.

Jacob and Taylor are both laughing.  Apollon and Jonas
are just looking at me darkly.  I can see now there's no way Jonas or
Apollon are going to let me do it.  But they don't need to protest,
because Jacob and Taylor are already shaking their heads furiously.

"We let you tangle with a Sentry when we could have
done it, and Matt has our balls on a stick," Jacob says.  "We're
here to protect you, and that does not include letting you play with killer
robots."

"Matt's not here," I say, crossing my arms, but
they've already dismissed me.  Matt has a way of being there, even when
he’s not.

"I'm doing it," Taylor says.

"I am," insists Jacob.

They look at each other, then simultaneously pound their
fists on their palms three times in a row, followed by different gestures.

"Scissors beats paper," Taylor says triumphantly.

Jacob grunts, but he makes no further protest.  They
turn and look toward the wall.

Apollon, Jonas, and I exchange weird looks.  "What
was that?" I whisper to Apollon as we slowly follow Jacob and Taylor's
lead forward.

He shrugs.  "Hoodoo?"

"Fate has decided," Jonas says softly from behind
me.  I feel a chill move up my spine.

As we inch closer, I realize I'm surprised that Jonas and
Apollon aren't fighting it out for the chance to take down the Sentry. 
Then I understand, when I notice how both of them are standing closer to me
than usual.  They're not letting me out of their sight.  Jacob and
Taylor might think of themselves as my guards, but Jonas and Apollon are my
true protectors.  Both of them have risked their lives for me, and they're
happy to do it again.  I would do the same for them in a heartbeat. 
And truth is, there are probably things in Minneapolis that are more dangerous
than Sentries.  We may be walking straight into them.

We form up as close to the boundary as we can without being
seen.

"I'll enter the line here, to draw it off," Taylor
whispers.  "You guys go over there near the gap to get ready. 
As soon as it moves out of the way, run for it.  When you get a couple of
blocks down, wait for me.  I'll catch up in a minute."

Apollon nods and takes Taylor's pack.

Jacob grips his brother by the shoulder.  "Be
careful."

"I'm always careful, little brother," Taylor
grins.  "You could still learn a thing or two about that."

Jacob rolls his eyes as we move off, stalking quietly
through the forest's edge toward our waiting place.  We stop only a short
sprint away from the Sentry, barely daring to breathe.  We look back at
Taylor.  Jonas nods at him.  He nods back and walks toward the
boundary line.

The instant that he crosses between the scanner posts, the
Sentry springs into life.  There is no delay.  It barrels toward him,
its huge metal feet clanking against the pavement, then sinking inhuman
footprints into the mud.

Jonas holds his arm out in front of us, signaling us to
wait.  We have to time it right, or the Sentry will turn away from Taylor
and head for us instead.

Heartbeats pass.  The Sentry closes the distance
between itself and Taylor.  It is almost upon him.  Now.

We start running.

I can't help but turn my face to watch.  Everything
comes in fractured glimpses.  My body jars with every step I take.

Taylor, in the Sentry's fist, swoops upward.  His blade
flashes in the sun, moving toward the Sentry's chest compartment.  A
blur.  A noise—a shriek from Taylor, subdued by the distance.  A
gurgling sound.

Jacob, in front of me, skids to a halt, looking back. 
I slam into his back.  I'm not looking at him.  I'm looking at the
Sentry.  We all are.

Its back is to us.  The claw lowers Taylor.  We
can't see him, now.  But we see the blood pooling around the Sentry's
feet.  We see the arm that falls into the snow, fingers twitching.

"Nooooooooo!!!" Jacob screams.

Apollon and Jonas tackle him and drag him into the gap
between the buildings.  They barrel forward, not losing momentum.  I
trail in their wake, making my feet move forward.  My mind is
reeling.  My stomach threatens to launch its contents.  But I keep
moving, too.  I know beyond all doubt there is nothing we can do.  If
we don't keep moving now, we will all share Taylor's fate.

We run down the narrow alley and take the first turn, then
another.  We keep running, moving.  I don't even notice my
surroundings until, at last, we slow to a stop.  The smell hits me
first—the stench of piss, of something rotten, all condensed into a small
space.  Breathing hard, we stand in the street and look around us. 
We're in a main thoroughfare now, judging from the traffic, but it’s still
narrow.  I feel squashed, smothered.  On all sides, a crowd throngs
around us.  Most of them are dressed in rags.  Hollow faces huddle
three or four bodies deep against both edges of the road, dirty, hopeless, and
lost.  Many of them are children.

I'm scanning their faces frantically before I even realize
what I'm doing.  "Oscar," I hear myself whisper.  It hits
me, and I break off before I can call out his name.  Before I can start
running again, sifting through the masses of them.

Apollon's hand clamps onto mine, but he says nothing. 
He and Jonas are focused on Jacob, who is shaking violently.  Tears are
pouring from widened eyes down his face.  I want to help him, but all I
can do is stand here trying not to break down, myself.

"We need to find somewhere to regroup," Jonas says
quietly.  "Get out of this mess."

I cast around for somewhere to go, but as far as I can see,
it's piles upon piles.  People, and people, and buildings looming over
them.  There's no breathing room.  No space.  I have to force my
breath to steadiness.  It's too much.

There is a commotion on the street ahead, maybe a block
away.  The ragged masses push away from the center, squashing and
trampling each other in the process.  We're caught in a wave of motion and
carried backward, but still we try to look.  Where the commotion started,
there's a group of figures, similarly dressed in black with blue
bandanas.  They're moving down the street toward us.

The wave of people suddenly backlashes from the other
direction, and we're pushed the opposite way from before.  We manage to
finally see why.  On our opposite side, there's another group of
people.  These are dressed primarily in white.  One of them, clearly
a leader, wears a purple doo rag and carries what might be the biggest gun I've
ever seen.  He raises it toward us.

My feet are almost yanked from under me as Apollon hauls me
toward the side of the street.  If my friends weren't so big, weren't so
physically powerful, we'd never get a step in this crowd.  But somehow we
do.  Somehow we move through it, when everyone else is jostled
about.  I don't have a clue where they think we're going until we're
almost to the tiny crack of an alleyway.  Gunshots blast through the
street right before we reach it.  Screams.  People fall and are
trampled.  I glance back as Jonas pushes me into the alleyway before
him.  It’s a bloodbath.  Both the black-and-blue wearing guys, and
the white-wearing guys are in an open firefight now.  None of them seem to
give a damn about all the people in between.

"Go!" Jonas urges me.  I turn and start
running.  Ahead of me, Apollon pushes a stumbling, disoriented Jacob
forward.  The alley is so narrow that Apollon's shoulders brush the walls
on both sides.  We keep moving as long as we can, sometimes having to
climb over people who have blocked the way. 

At last, we start to turn onto a larger street, but Apollon
backpedals.  Hovering a few feet back from the opening, he whispers,
"Sentry."

I'm not sure about the boys—who knows if the Sentries would
recognize them as being from Outpost Three or not—but I know about
myself.  The Sentries have me in their database.  They will kill me
on sight.

Apollon nods toward the crack where our alleyway continues
on the opposite side of the cross street.  "It's back is turned,"
he murmurs.  "It's a little ways down."

I nod.  We walk out into the street as silently and
calmly as we can.  I count backward as we go.  Steady. 
Calm.  Ninety-nine.  Ninety-eight.  Ninety-seven.  It only
takes a few seconds to cross, but it feels like centuries.  We pick up our
pace on the other side and continue on.  Above us, the buildings grow
taller.  We're in shadow so deep it feels like night.  We're all
exhausted, and there is no real place to rest.  Everything has a feeling
of incredible danger.

I'm about to suggest we stop to catch our breath at the next
cross street, where there might be a touch of open air.  The alleys reek
of excrement.  The smell is overwhelming.  But we turn onto a road
maybe three times wider than the alley, and I glance to my left.  When I
see it, everything else is gone.  There is no thinking.  I start
running.

"Eden," Jonas' voice sounds startled,
distant.  I'm already moving off.

My feet pound and pound against the icy pavement.  I'm
in a dream.  I barrel down the street, shoving ragged bodies out of my
way.  There are gunshots in the distance, but they mean nothing. 
Footsteps drumming along a ways behind me mean little more.  I'm only
vaguely aware that my friends are following.  I don't care if they are or
not.  I have to get to the tower.

It's nestled into a tangle of skyscrapers—a wonder I even
saw it—overwhelmed by their presence.  This city has grown upward since
the tower was built.  I skid to a stop at the bottom of its steps,
ignoring the blasts from a few blocks down, and look up at the white
spire.  It's the briefest pause.  I run up the steps and through the
open arch.  I'm here.  I'm here!

Inside is an open chamber.  Above, an overhang of upper
levels.  A maze of stairs.  I bolt for the nearest stairway and take
the stairs two at a time.  Apollon's voice flits to me from somewhere far
away—outside, perhaps—and bounces off the walls of the chamber, distorting his
words.  There are other noises outside.  The gunshots are drawing
nearer, but I barely register them.

I run the stairs for all I'm worth, heading upward.  I
burst onto the level stretch three floors up and slide to a stop, gazing down
the barrel of a gun.  My hand is on my knife instinctually.  I have
it out and ready to throw, but I'm probably too late to save my own life.

The gun wavers, and only then do I see the person holding
it.  His brown eyes are wide.  His hand trembles.  He looks
young—so young.  Hardly more than a boy.  He lowers the gun, not
taking his eyes from me.  I freeze.  It takes him a moment to find
his voice, but then he chokes out, "Lily, don't be afraid.  You've
found what you've been looking for."

No.  Fucking.  Way.

My knife clanks loudly as it hits the marble floor.