Within twelve minutes, the thirteen of us are holed up in the abandoned building where we constructed our weapons of destruction.
The second stage of the plan involves surviving. We’ve found a way to make that happen, a way to completely disappear. The king has been killed by scum. But we’re not going to be scum after this. There are two ways out of scum status. You become elite, or you die.
Jax holds up her little stash of options. She is eighteen years old, and she is the smartest person I have ever met. Life has not been kind to Jax. She was born missing the lower part of her left leg, and she has only one eye That eye has limited vision. She has not allowed either of those factors to stop her surviving. What she can’t do with technology isn’t worth doing. I’ll miss her. I’ll miss them all. These are our last minutes together and we know it.
“I have all these sets of implants from deceased elites. They can be inserted between your skin and your skull. Once these go online, you won’t remember anything that happened before going online. They’ll overwrite your more recent memories. They’ll tell you who you are, and what you think. You’ll be an obedient tool of the korabi.”
“Won’t they recognize us the moment they see us?” Taddy has a late game objection.
“From what I can tell,” Jax says, “we all look the same to them. If our minds are wiped, there’s no risk of them recognizing us. Korabi don’t see each other the way we do. They see personality over form. Besides, what kind of mad people would kill the king’s guard and then go to work for the korabi? This plan hinges on our audacity. We owe it to the others to at least try to survive.”
There are general murmurings of agreement. We've had these conversations before, but there’s something about the finality of the moment which makes us all take pause one last time.
“Wait. Maybe we don't need to do this…” Frenchie suggests. She is a tall, powerfully built woman who is not accustomed to submission of any kind. I know she cannot face the notion of a world in which we are not free. “Maybe there’s some other way.”
“We killed the korabi king,” I reply. “They are going to be wiping out every human who looks at them the wrong way for months, if not years. If we want to survive what comes next, or just avoid the pain they’re going to unleash, we have to take matters into our own hands.”
Not all of us have decided to submit to the implants. Those who are not taking the implants are taking cyanide. We are all dying today in one way or another. One by one, each of us makes a choice which will either end our lives or redefine them out of existence.
Henry comes to me. In his left hand is a pair of implants. On the palm of his right, a small white pill.
I hover over his right hand. I intended to take the poison all along. It was my fault the korabi attacked our home. The deaths of our family and friends are on my head. My death, following the death of the king and his guard, is right.
But my hand goes to the left. I choose the implants. I choose oblivion.
Fifteen
Saved
Rath
“Did she sleep well? I didn’t hear from you, so I am assuming there were no further flashbacks?”
Tyvian gives me a long look over his first cup of morning fluid. “What are you doing, Rath?”
“What do you mean?”
“If she doesn’t remember, then she stays innocent of all that has gone before. No matter what the king might do to her, she is going to be outside it. Above it. If we fail, she might die, but she’ll die with a kind of peace she’ll never have if she remembers. She wants to love you, Rath. She wants to believe you are her savior. Don’t you at least owe her that?”
“I don’t owe her anything besides the truth.”
I push past him and go into the cell where Lyric is wide awake, sitting very still on one of the couches. She does not so much as move as I enter.
I can tell from the stiffness of her shoulders and the uncommon quietness of her disposition that she has experienced further recall. I am willing to bet that what she has remembered is a horror I would not wish on anybody.
I put my hand on her shoulder. She flinches and looks up at me with an expression of pure disgust on her beautiful face. She remembers.
“You remembered.”
“I did.”
“What did you remember?”
“There was an attack… and then another attack.” She looks at me with haunted eyes. “An attack on the king. And you.”