False Future (11 page)

T
he soldiers rush inside and grab East first, shoving him to the floor/ceiling of the Ax and binding his hands behind his back with quick, precise movements. They load him into the nearest Humvee, which takes off two seconds later. I look through the open hatch at the sky, but there are no pursuing Axes, no Thorns in the street. Just swirling snow; it’s begun to fall again, with enthusiasm.

Why aren’t they coming after us?

Because the director could already know where we are.

But if she already knows everything, then why haven’t we lost yet? How are we still alive? What am I supposed to do?

If I’m her in the future, then a thousand years or more have passed for her. Would she be remembering these events as they happen? Maybe not. It could be fuzzy, or things could’ve played out differently. They must have. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.

I touch the pouch holding Olivia’s disk.
Soon.

More soldiers pour in. They grab Peter first and yank him upright. “We’re on your side,” Peter says calmly. “Who’s in charge? I was on my way to meet with some soldiers when the attack—”

“Shut your mouth,” the soldier handling him says.

Someone else barks, “If they do the fear thing, drop them. Got it?”

They think we’re the enemy, which is understandable. We’re a bunch of clones in a crashed enemy fighter. A soldier picks me up roughly, then eases his grip when he sees my face. That doesn’t stop his partner from binding my wrists.

“I’m not the bad guy,” I slur.

He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he and his partner just march me out the back. I thought it was cold in the Ax, but I was wrong.

“What if they’re being tracked?” a soldier says. I blink rapidly, trying to force my right eye open, but I can’t even tell if the lid is moving.

“Scan ’em,” another replies. I pick up my feet to walk, but my left knee is suddenly being unhelpful. The two soldiers are basically dragging me along.

We stop in front of a wiry soldier an inch shorter than I am. He’s wearing a blue beret, which makes me want to laugh for some reason. He has a lantern jaw and a dusting of silver facial hair. His narrowed eyes scan me. The nameplate above his heart says
R. KELLOGG
.

“Why did you crash?” he says to me.

“Long story,” I reply.

Another soldier approaches me with a handheld scanner. The long antenna makes scratchy noises as it passes over my body.

“Have you been briefed on Rhys Noble?” I turn my head toward the hatch. “The man right there? We’re on your side.”

He stares at me a beat longer. The soldier with the scanner stops on my forearm, where the display is. “There’s something in her suit, right here.”

“If the Roses were coming, they’d be here.” I point at the sky back the way we came. There is grayish dust and black smoke above the buildings where the Time Warner Center fell. A few Axes are visible beyond that. “See? Talk to Peter. He’s been working with you—
hello
—do you know
anything
?”

“Relax, Mir,” Peter says. “We’ll straighten it out once we’re off the street.”

Kellogg ignores me. “Cut her sleeve off. Cut the boy’s off too.”

“Uh, that’s not going to work.”

A soldier tries with his knife anyway. It goes about as well as you’d expect. He barely succeeds in scratching the scales.

“Should we strip them?” the soldier with the knife asks. They’re all wearing camo helmets with snow goggles, so I can’t tell them apart.

“Try it and see what happens,” Peter says behind me.

“Please,” Noble says, staggering up beside us. He and Sophia are similarly bound. “Where is General Davis? He’ll know who we are.”

“General Davis is dead,” Kellogg says. Then back to his colleague, “We just go the long way. They’ll lose their signal underground. I want to study the suits.”

“That’s a bad idea,” I say. “The tunnels are full of spiders made out of human arms.” I feel drunk. Shocked. I am in shock, I think.

Kellogg squints at me curiously. “I’m aware. We’ve secured a section of tunnel.” He takes a deep breath and then bellows, “Let’s move!”

Some of the soldiers pile into the Humvees and leave, while a few form a perimeter around us and march us down the nearest subway steps. The subway platform is warmer than the street above, but just barely. Hopping the turnstile is more painful than I expected. The platform is deserted, but the lights are still on. We hop down onto the tracks. It’s a difficult jump to make while bound, and I fall on one knee, my bad knee. Peter falls hard on his shoulder, splashing into a puddle between the tracks.

The soldiers get us upright again, not necessarily rough, but not treating us gently, either.

“Easy,” Kellogg says to them. “Respect.”

We start our march down the tunnel. I keep my good eye open, scanning for spiders. I keep jumping at shadows, but there’s nothing there. No clawed hands to grab my ankles and pull me into darkness.

Next to me, Sophia trips on a tie and splashes down in another puddle.

“Help her, dammit!” Noble says when the soldiers are slow to move. They get her back to her feet. She looks as miserable as I feel, her mouth loose in a grimace, as if she’s about to scream.

We march for what seems like miles. Flashlights illuminate the way ahead, but only for so many feet. Two soldiers eventually have to support Peter on either side, his knee is so bad. My nose throbs, and the pain in my left hand grows hotter. I’m scared to take the glove off and see what it looks like.

“Rhys knew what he was doing,” Peter whispers. His voice is nearly swallowed by the echoing footsteps in the tunnel walls.

“So what?” I say.

He doesn’t say anything after that.

“I’m sorry,” I say a few minutes later.

Eventually there is literal light at the end of the tunnel, flickering red, and soon after I can see that the glow comes from burning flares on the ground. There are more soldiers guarding the next subway platform, some kneeling around the rails, guns pointed at us.

“Sound off,” one soldier calls.

“It’s Kellogg,” Kellogg replies.

The soldiers hold their positions until we get closer. They tense up when they see Peter and me.

“Jesus,” a young guy with a beard says. “You brought them
here
?”

A soldier named Q. Tavaras says, “We heard they had the fugitive with them. Is it true?”

“It is,” Kellogg says. “Give these two medical attention”—he points at Peter and me—“and have the man and other girl checked out. I want a full guard on them at all times.” He jumps onto the platform, then turns around and looks down on us. “I’m going to have my men remove your restraints. Is that going to be a problem?”

“No, sir.”

His look softens. “I hope what you’ve been saying is true. We need an ally.”

I nod. “So do we.”

He jogs away from the group, down a set of stairs, as the soldiers remove our restraints. This is one of the underground entrances to Penn Station, I discover. Getting up onto the platform is even more painful than getting down; I can only use one hand, and the effort makes my nose feel like it’s about to burst open. I must be really out of it, because I don’t notice the pile of spider corpses until I’m standing next to it. The tangled heap of black arms is slashed with blood in places, the clawed hands upturned and open.

The soldiers march us down the same stairs, up a ramp, and then we’re in a long and tall tunnel with a dozen restaurants stretching away from us on the left. There is trash all over the floor, but a few soldiers are cleaning it up with huge push brooms, shoving everything into neat piles. The metal gates on all the shops are up, but most of the lights are out. The soldiers pause in their cleanup to watch us with suspicious eyes.
I’m on your side,
I’d say, if I knew they’d believe me.

We go up a final set of stairs, past more armed soldiers, and step onto the main floor of Penn, the one with the giant sign in the middle that would normally be showing what tracks the trains would be departing from. Right now it’s blank. Refugees are spread out all over—there is nothing else to call them. Some of them have suitcases. They’re just sitting around, waiting. Seeing them makes me angry for some reason. I don’t know if I’m mad they’re just sitting there, waiting for someone to save them, or if I’m just mad about everything. I want answers, of course, but they’re not going to let me talk to East, even if I ask nicely.

The soldiers guide us along, shielding us from view. A refugee sees us anyway and cries out like someone stabbed him or something. A few other people look, but by then we’re hustling past them, around a corner and off the main floor.

My injured hand brushes my thigh, and the pain flares up like a stoked log. I can’t even imagine what it looks like. The fingers could be severed inside the glove for all I know, and for all I feel. I suspect I won’t have to imagine much longer.

We follow the path into another open area, where gurneys have been set up in rows, along with trays of instruments and random medical monitors here and there. It’s a thrown-together medical station. Luckily, there’s only one man being treated for a long cut on his forearm. But I notice a few of the other beds are stained with patches of blood from previous patients. I can’t imagine the number of injuries sustained in the panic during and after the initial assault.

The soldier who seems to be in charge—a sergeant, judging by the patch on his sleeve—raises a hand at two women in scrubs. “Move these two into the Taco Bell. I want them out of sight.”

The two women recoil at first and actually stop their approach.

“It’s fine,” the sergeant says.

They share a look; it’s clear they’ve been working together for a while. They could be sisters. Both of them have dyed-red hair.

They push some gurneys into the Taco Bell, which is hollowed out, the chairs and tables ripped from the floor, leaving gaping holes in the tile. I get that Manhattan doesn’t have a military base, but this is the best they could come up with? Penn Station has more entrances and exits than I can count. I can only hope they’re waiting for reinforcements to make their way through the city…otherwise it feels like they’re just waiting for True Earth to find them, or for the cold to kill them.

Peter and I stand there uselessly, trying to stay upright. The women get the lights turned on, then beckon for us to lie down on the beds. I drop my guard simply because I can’t keep it up any longer.

The woman won’t look at my eyes. She has a
HI MY NAME
IS
sticker on her shirt, which says
LAURIE
.

“Hi, Laurie,” I say.

She jumps and drops her clipboard like it’s hot. Then she closes her eyes and takes a breath.

“I’m sorry about what’s happening,” I offer. “I promise you I had nothing to do with it.”

A lie if the director is telling the truth about who I am.

Laurie nods. “Your hand is injured.”

Thinking about it brings a fresh burst of pain.

“Your tools won’t cut through the armor,” I say.

She nods, chewing her lower lip, hovering over me, her fear temporarily forgotten in the face of a new problem.

“Can you shrug out of it?” she asks.

I look at my hand again. The armor is so swollen I think I’d pass out before I could peel it over the skin.

“The seam at the wrist,” Peter says a few feet away. His eyelids are heavy; the nurse has already medicated him. His bad knee is stretched out on the table, the other hugged to his chest with both hands.

To compensate for my swelling hand, the armor at the seam has already started to separate. Smart, otherwise I’d be in even bigger trouble.

I pull at the seam to get it started. A few of the scales snap apart like teeth on a zipper, and then a thick stream of blood pours out from the bottom and onto Laurie’s shoes.

I
’m going to lose my hand. The nurse doesn’t have to say anything; I can tell by her face. The first thing she does is run for a doctor. Peter is trying to get off his gurney to help me, but he’s too far gone, and his nurse doesn’t have much trouble keeping him on his back. She gives him another syringe full of something, and he sinks into the pillow, eyes shut. Good. I don’t want him to see this.

Me? I’m crying. I’m not sure if it’s from the pain or from the knowledge that something bad is going to happen to me—something that will make it harder to fight. I remember the director again. She has both hands. So I should have both hands too, right? Or maybe one is bionic, who knows.

Or maybe she was lying. I’m still not convinced.

I won’t know until I see Olivia’s memories.

Blood is still pouring out of my glove. It started as a river as thick as my wrist, but has tapered to a pencil-thin stream. I can’t feel my ring and little fingers. Come to think of it, I can’t feel my face.
Take heart,
I think.
You are still alive, and the fight is not over.
The thought is surprisingly articulate, given the general fuzziness in my brain. Noah and Rhys and Olive are not alive, but I know what they’d do if they were—they’d keep fighting. So I will in their place.

God, I miss them.

The doctor comes over and begins working on my glove. He actually gasps when it comes off. I still don’t look at my hand. But I feel the cool air on it, so that’s good.

“Give her something, Laurie. Jesus.”

Laurie gives me something. A needle gently inserted into my neck, since my arms are still armored. Something to make me sleep. I am grateful.

I wake up in a KFC. We’re doing the fast food medical tour, I guess.

Kellogg stands next to my bed, and there are two armed soldiers in the corner. His eyes flick to my left hand, so I follow his gaze and find my hand wrapped in approximately four hundred pounds of gauze. It looks like a freaking club. But I feel great. It feels like my blood has been swapped out with…something incredible, I don’t know. I am a blanket. I could lie here forever, if I didn’t have things to do. I’m still wearing my red armor, but it ends just above my left elbow now. I have no idea how they got through it.

My nose is covered in a bandage, and it feels worse and better at the same time, which I assume means someone set it for me.

“I’ve been briefed on the alliance Noble had with General Davis,” Kellogg begins without preamble. “Davis was in charge, but now I am. Apparently not many people knew that Noble and his team have been working with us.”

“Good,” I begin.

“
Bu
t
…
I want to know why you look exactly like the people we’re fighting. Noble gave me a story, but I want to hear it from you now.”

I don’t have the energy to be angry at his demands. It’s either the drugs or that I understand where he’s coming from. Probably both. I just now realize that I still can’t see out of my right eye.

“No offense, but I don’t give a damn about what you want to know. I just saw my friend die.” My voice is so nasal I barely recognize it. I’m breathing out of my mouth, since my nose feels like it’s plugged with concrete.

“We’ve all seen friends die,” he says flatly.

“Where is Peter? How did you and your men get on the island?”

He pauses, clearly debating whether to answer. “My men and I are stationed here permanently. There is always a military presence in Manhattan, in case it becomes separated from the outside world. When the attack happened, we were activated. It is my understanding that the defense of the city was still being planned when the attack came. That’s why we haven’t organized a full retaliation. Communications with the mainland—and my superiors—seem to be disrupted for now.”

“I want to see my team.”

“They’re resting in different rooms. Safe and sound.”

I look away as a wave of nausea passes over me, leaving me light-headed.

“If you say we’re on the same side, you’ll want to help us understand….” Kellogg leaves the idea hanging. “Davis did not share his plans with me before he was killed. I didn’t have the clearance. Technically, I still don’t.”

“Let me talk to the prisoner. Then we’ll discuss understanding.”

After a moment, he nods. “You’ll be under surveillance.”

“Of course. What does my hand look like?”

“Not good,” he says. “Two of the—”

A burst of machine gun fire cuts him off. It came from down the hallway, loud enough to make me jump.

“Stay here,” he says, pulling his sidearm off his thigh and sidestepping out of the KFC. The two soldiers follow Kellogg, leaving me alone. People are screaming down the hallway.

A man is yelling, “SPIDERS! SPIDERS!” at the top of his lungs.

The adrenaline spike quickens my heart, which quickens the throb in my wounds. There is a knife in my skull I’d like to remove. I give the restaurant a quick once-over, but there are no weapons, and nothing I could turn into one easily. I remember when I first saw the spiders in the tunnels. How there was darkness, and then they were visible all at once.

I get off the bed and almost fall to my knees. The velvety feeling in my body has evaporated; instead, hot lead has settled into my hand, which I’m hoping I never have to look at. Kellogg said
Two of the
. Two of the what? Fingers? Are broken, missing, destroyed?

I take a step forward and almost rip an IV out of my arm. I follow the line up to a bag next to my bed, then grab it off the hook and hold it in my good hand.

I stagger out of the restaurant as more machine gun fire boxes my ears. Soon soldiers are yelling “Clear!” back and forth to one another. Threat eliminated, for now. I stand in the big open space until Kellogg jogs back to me. I just don’t have the energy to wander off on my own.

He takes my arm and guides me toward a hallway. “Don’t move again unless someone tells you to. You need an escort at all times.”

“I wasn’t handcuffed.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“How many spiders were there?” I pull the catheter out of my arm and set the IV bag on a nearby gurney. Someone else will make better use of it.

“Three,” he says. “They push at us every few hours, like they’re testing our strength.”

“So True Earth knows your location. Which means eventually they will come for you.” We pass more refugees, who visibly shrink away from us, or me. Their fear brings me a different kind of pain.

“I know they’ll come for us. Maybe they’re waiting for the best opportunity to minimize casualties on their side, so we’ll just keep that opportunity out of reach.”

“What’s your
plan
?”

“Right now we simply don’t have the numbers, or the weapons, to stage an attack.”

“Well, by all means, keep wasting time, then,” I say. Though honestly I’m not sure what they should do, either.

Kellogg stops outside the men’s bathroom. “East’s in here.”

“Seriously?”

He nods. “You have two minutes.”

I hobble into the bathroom, round a corner, and meet an armed guard who doesn’t make eye contact or speak to me. Twenty feet behind him is East. The creator is on his knees between the stalls and the urinals. He’s wrapped in chains, and his wrists are secured to the floor on either side, connected to spikes driven right into the tile. He lifts his head slowly. His hair is longer than Noah kept his, and he’s wearing round eyeglasses. He looks like a kindly man who isn’t quite old yet, but is working on it.

“It’s good to meet you, Miranda,” he says to me.

I just stare at him.

“I assume you’ve been given a short amount of time to speak to me, in return for something else.”

I nod, walking toward him.

“That’s very good. What’s your first question?”

“How did Noble find you?”

He lifts one eyebrow. “That’s your first question?”

“I want to know it’s not a trap.”

He nods thoughtfully. “Not bad. Noble was monitoring a radio frequency we used to use back in the day, as I hoped he would. I sent coordinates over it in Morse code when I could. Doing so I took the chance that the other creators would be able to find me, but I’ve since learned that we’re the only two left, thank the Lord.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t a fan of them overall.”

“Neither was I,” he says. “I only wish I’d had the courage to approach Noble before he left, to let him know how I felt. I would’ve joined him. The creators were always fighting amongst themselves. True Earth took a hands-off approach. We only knew about them in a very ancillary way, and it was mostly Mrs. North, as you called her, who had the connection. The rest of us were just following orders, doing what we had been raised to believe was our duty.” He gazes at the ceiling, and gives a thoughtful smile. “God rest her miserable, wretched soul.”

He doesn’t say anything else, so I ask, “What is the Key?”

His eyes flick down momentarily. “I am the Key. If I travel through the Black, I can choose to enter a room that exists outside of space and time. From that room, one can end any of the universes. Or a war.” Just like Olivia said—
possess the Key, control the Black
. She didn’t say anything about East himself being the Key, though.

“But you know True Earth is part of this time line, right? You know we’re linked?”

He nods. “That doesn’t mean they aren’t a threat to us now. What is time to immortal beings?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

The skin around his eye twitches, like a tic. “Mmm. There is much you don’t seem to know at this point. True Earth is here to re-create a nuclear war they accidentally stopped, but one that was entirely necessary for the world to become what they perceive as ‘perfect.’ Do you understand?”

Nuclear war?
“How did they stop it?”

“Since you stopped the eyeless, the nuclear war that was in your future will never come to pass the way it would have if True Earth hadn’t interfered in the first place. Instead the world will unite and put aside its differences. You were only a few years away from complete annihilation, but now we’re all brothers with a common enemy. Don’t you see?”

“So because I stopped the eyeless, I stopped the coming world war, which alters the future.”

He nods. “Exactly. If they had never brought the eyeless in the first place, things would’ve gone as planned…but I guess someone wasn’t
in the know
, as they say.”

“Why don’t you want them to re-create the effect of war?”

He looks at me as though the answer is completely obvious, and maybe it is, but I don’t know where his allegiances lie. “We should let them kill billions now in an effort to preserve their one idea of the future? To preserve their perfect True Earth? No, I will not go along with that willingly.”

“How did you feel about it before? Back when True Earth didn’t know we were part of the same universe? When they just wanted to wipe us out like
animals
?” My voice catches and I force myself to lower it. That minor exertion has me feeling dizzy. I blink.

“How did I feel? I felt appalled. That’s why I left the creators, not too long after Noble, actually. I didn’t like what we were doing. I wanted to do other things.”

East doesn’t sound very much like Noah. His voice is a little deeper, and the words are different. I can still hear the same attitude beneath them, though.

“Am I the director?” I whisper, hopefully too quiet for any ears other than East’s to hear. East seems to know a lot, and this might be my only chance to get an outside opinion. Surely if Noble knew, he would’ve told me by now.

East recoils, almost dramatically. The chains scrape on the floor. “Why would you say that? Who told you that?”

“She did. She said she had to mold me. She said she didn’t even know who I was until a few days ago, she—”

“Stop,” he says sharply, before I can say more. “We’re being watched.” His eyes go to the ceiling in the corner, where a hastily installed camera is nestled.

He lets his gaze fall to the tiled floor. He starts shaking his head back and forth, lips moving in silence.

“What is it? Tell me,” I say.

“You need to free me,” he says, raising his eyes to mine. The desperation in them chills me to my core. “Or everything is lost.”