The Beam: Season One (14 page)

1163. 1171. 1181.
 

Something was coming. There was something on the horizon. And here he was, with his hands tied behind his back.
 

1187. 1193.

York swore, heard himself swear, and again found his foot kicking at dirt. It was still kicking when a woman came up to him on horseback.
 

“Hop on, Crumb,” she said, indicating a second horse behind her. “We’re going for a little ride. Leo wants us to play on The Beam.”
 

1201. 1213.
 

It was a good idea. York didn’t know why, but somehow, it was.

He tried to tell the woman on the horse that he wanted to go, that he felt a sense of foreboding in the air.
 

“Noah Fucking West,” he heard himself say instead.

EPISODE 2

Chapter 1

July 13, 2027 — Amalfi Coast, Italy

“Watch this.”

Nicolai didn’t reply. He held his tongue and kept his eyes on Enzo as his friend lined up a paper airplane with Ms. Marco’s ass, then used a blob of spit to stick the hover disc to the plane’s bottom. The disc — a wafer-like slice of nanobot substrate that was not, in the normal course of affairs, meant to be attached with spit — was slightly smaller than a 1-cent coin and a fraction of its weight. Once attached, Enzo whispered to it and let it go. The plane hovered in the air, unsupported.
 

“Knock it off,” Nicolai whispered, watching the floating plane. He reached forward. “Give it back! You’re going to get me busted!”

Enzo looked at Nicolai. “
You
are going to get busted?”

“Yes, me!” Nicolai hissed, watching Ms. Marco’s ass to ensure it hadn’t heard them at the back of the classroom. “You know, by my father? Or maybe by his partners? While Marco sends you to the office, I’ll be getting arrested for espionage.”

Enzo flapped his hand dismissively at Nicolai. “
Industrial
espionage at worst.”
 

He whispered again to the plane. It began to drift slowly between the rows of desks, making for Ms. Marco’s serendipitously still-bent-over ass. The other students turned to watch it drift past them, gaping. Enzo would probably have preferred the plane to move faster, but if he made it do so, the disc would come off the paper, and Nicolai would jump Enzo if he considered using glue on a piece of equipment that he suspected might be worth thousands if not millions of Euros. Enzo had no idea what he was playing with. He thought the flying disc was a fun novelty. He didn’t understand that what made it float were the millions of nanobots embedded in the substrate, chugging air in one end and out the other, floating by virtue of what amounted to countless synchronized mechanical farts. Enzo thought it was a toy, not a classified bit of technology that might one day change the world. It was Nicolai’s fault for showing Enzo his father’s office that morning, and failing to watch his prankster friend’s hands at all times.
 

“Stop it! Now!”

Enzo leaned back. “Oh, shut up, Nicolai.”
 

“That’s a priceless piece of cutting-edge equipment you stole,” Nicolai whispered. “And now, you’re going to lose it.”
 

“I’m not going to lose it,” said Enzo. “I’m going to score a bullseye.”
 

The plane closed the gap between the front row and Ms. Marco’s desk at a putter. Ms. Marco was still facing forward, opening new windows on the network board at the front of the room. She moved like a woman who’d grown up with whiteboards, which of course she had. But this was a high-end private school, without any whiteboards. Marco was one of the oldsters who’d bitched up a storm about the loss of markers when they’d gone digital in 2018. Nicolai remembered whiteboards — but only barely, from his older brother’s school.
 

The students watched as the plane politely poked Ms. Marco in the rear, as if trying to remind her of something. She turned. Enzo laughed. The teacher’s eyes looked down at the plane and hardened. She opened her mouth to yell, but didn’t have a chance before sounds of breaking and screaming exploded from the other end of the building.
 

“It’s a Rake Squad,” said a girl.

“It can’t be,” said Ms. Marco, looking uncertain. “This is the most secure school in the area. The rabble…”
 

She stopped talking as a hail of bullets ripped the top half of her head away from the lower half of her uncertain expression, leaving her face like a pumpkin sheared at the middle. The wall behind her was painted in a crimson spatter.

The students in the room began to scream.

Nicolai looked at the front wall and saw sunlight salting the room through fresh holes. The voices of the Rake Squad (and it
was
a Rake Squad, Nicolai realized, no matter what the bottom half of Ms. Marco’s head claimed) swelled closer. The tromping of feet mingled with booming shouts. Nicolai heard them as Marco’s body fell: a group of men and women who had nothing to lose and everything to gain by harvesting from elitists who carried on with business as usual while the world outside went to shit. The way the Squads of glorified rioters saw it, Amalfi and the other coastal hotspots would be lost to rising ocean levels within a few months anyway; they were just taking today what the ocean would take eventually. The poor and their families had to eat. If a few spoiled rich kids had to die in order to make that happen, then so be it.

Something inside Nicolai flipped like a switch. His mind seized onto his situation’s stark reality: the holes smoking in the wall, Ms. Marco’s corpse striking the desk and collapsing like a bag of meat, Marie’s hair flying as she whipped her head around two rows up, clearly out of her fucking mind. The feet were coming closer, the screaming getting louder. The bullets had entered near the door. There was only one other viable way out, and he had to take it now.
Now
. There would be no screwing around, no trying to be a hero and save everyone. He could save himself, and he’d give Enzo exactly one chance to come with him. The others could follow, but whether they did or didn’t wasn’t his problem. The decision wasn’t logical or emotional. It was pure adrenaline-laced survival. Nicolai had lived sixteen years on an idyllic, unified planet, then another on whatever Earth had become after the weather had declared war on humanity and everything it had built. If Nicolai didn’t want his seventeenth year to be his last, he couldn’t afford to be selfless. You couldn’t become a martyr without dying, and Nicolai had no intention of dying in a school, cowering under a gum-pocked plastic desk..

Nicolai stood and yelled a command. Paper rustled as the hover disc detached itself from Enzo’s plane and screamed across the room to slap against the reinforced window glass. The windows, which faced the fences, were bulletproof. But that wouldn’t be a problem.
 

“Duck,” he said to Enzo.
 

They dropped. Above them, the window glass began to crack as nanos from the disc burrowed into the windows, chewing through the lattice. Nicolai felt seconds tick off, hearing the beat of the Rake Squad’s boots as they combed through classrooms. But the nanos worked fast. After a few fractures had webbed across the window, the tiny machines started to vibrate, setting up waves of resonance. Then the window blew out in both directions, showering the screaming students with shards of glass.
 

“Run!” Nicolai yelled.
 

Without waiting for a response, Nicolai ran. He dove head-first through the shattered window, tucking and rolling as he struck the grass beyond it. He hopped up, his eyes darting around for rioters. Enzo climbed through the window behind him — feet first, as if they had all the time in the world. Nicolai wasn’t waiting. He darted to the fence and threw a scrap of metal at it to see if it was still electrified. Nothing sparked, but he didn’t know if that meant anything. It didn’t matter. If they were going to escape, this was the only way. Getting fried was better than waiting to be shot and robbed.
 

Nicolai gripped the fence.
 

It was safe. The Rake Squad had shut it down when they’d broken in, of course.
 

Without taking time to reflect on his good fortune, Nicolai clambered up hand for hand, moving fast. Enzo slapped into the fence below him and began moving upward, clumsy and slow. Nicolai stepped on his fingers. Enzo yelled, but Nicolai found himself unable to care. He reached the top, peeled off his sweater by alternating hands on the fence, and tossed it over the razor wire. He made it halfway over before one of the blades sliced into his calf. The cut wasn’t deep, but it made him grip the fence too tight. His balance teetered. Then a second blade pushed through the sweater and cut his palm. It was too much pain at once; his grip slipped. He was briefly airborne, then crashed roughly into the tall grass on the far side of the fence.

Nicolai looked up. He didn’t know where Enzo was. He heard gunshots close by. They were almost certainly coming from the classroom he’d just left. Rake Squad incursions were strangely formulaic, based on the internet and news reports they’d been getting throughout Italy: the Squads tended to rob low academies and massacre high academies because seventeen and eighteen year olds had an annoying tendency to fight back. Either way, the Squads took the spoils. If Nicolai returned to the school tomorrow, which he never would, he’d find it stripped to nothing, worse than a ghost town, probably burned for spite.

Something thumped beside Nicolai in the weeds. He looked over and saw Enzo, dazed but still breathing.
 

“They’re dead,” he said. Enzo was a class clown at best, an arrogant jerk at worst. But now, his shoulders twitching at the sound of each of the gunshots, his usual cockiness and bravado had totally left his eyes. He looked more than terrified. He looked
lost
, as if he had no idea where to go or which end was up. It seemed impossible to believe that just a moment before, this same boy had been trying to hit his teacher in the ass with a paper airplane.
 

Nicolai nodded. “Yes. But we’re not. Keep moving.”
 

Nicolai’s head was cool. He’d lived a luxurious life, but a year of global disaster had burrowed its way into his brain. Nicolai had been sensitive for years — an artistic temperament, instructors and family agreed — but the only way for such a temperament to survive the reports of billions dying and countries brought to their knees was to anticipate the worst. And here it was, real and present:
his classmates were dead and his school would burn
. Some day, that would bother him, but not today. Right now, only Nicolai mattered. His family came second, and Enzo, for now, came third. Everything and everyone else was trivia, nothing more.

“Good thing you had that disc,” said Enzo. “Otherwise we’d have been toast.”

“I’ve been carrying a stunner in my pack for weeks,” Nicolai replied, still looking around. If they hadn’t been able to get through the window, he would have stormed through the crowds. “Stunner” was a bit of an understatement. The weapon — one of a few publicly known goodies in his father’s arsenal — was like a grenade that exploded in only one direction. Enzo’s stealing the disc had made things easier, but Nicolai had been prepared to turn acres of rioters to hamburger if he had to.
 

“Bullshit! How did you sneak a stunner past the gates?”
 

Nicolai didn’t answer. Jesus Fucking Christ. Why did it matter?
 

He started walking, not caring if Enzo followed. They tromped through brambles, down into a small ravine and across a tiny clear river, using their hands and feet to scramble up its steep bank. Nicolai missed a foothold and clocked Enzo in the face. He didn’t bother to apologize. Enzo was still yapping about school regulations while their world was ending — their cloistered little rich man’s paradise finally catching the chaos the rest of the globe had been facing for months.
 

As they came out of the ravine, Nicolai could see smoke pluming from homes up the hill. He had two tasks: stay alive, and get home. He’d have more tasks once he reached his family’s villa, but for now singular focus would fuel his motion. Nicolai couldn’t afford to think, if thinking meant stopping.

They ran across a field, staying judiciously back from the winding road that wound up from the touristy downtown to the estates on the cliff. If there were rioters up this far, they’d be on the road. Nicolai stayed low and kept quiet, staying light and fast on his feet. Enzo walked high and was loud. Nicolai wondered if he should outrun his friend and leave him behind, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. So he hissed at Enzo to stay down and shut the fuck up. When Enzo didn’t listen, Nicolai hit him in the face, hard. Enzo didn’t protest. Something in Nicolai’s eyes stopped him cold.

“Where’s your stunner?” said Enzo.

“In my bag.”
 

Enzo looked Nicolai over as if he was missing something.
 

“I couldn’t take it. Going through the front door was plan A. Going over the fence was plan B, and my bag was in the corner. There was no time.” It was a bummer, but there was no point in lamenting the loss of his father’s restricted weaponry. The rest of the world didn’t even know most of the technology in his father’s office even existed. There were privileges that came both with wealth and connections, but now Nicolai, as just one more boy fighting to survive, was on equal footing. And so be it.
 

They were crossing a yard when two men stepped out from behind a shed. Nicolai turned and found another behind them, holding a knife.
 

“Well, whatsie’s this?” said one of the two men in front, speaking in the mishmash accent that had become common in the rabble.
 

“Kindlings,” said the man beside him. “Kindlings with richy bitchy shoes. Where you got those shoes, boys?”
 

Nicolai looked around at the group, then subtly lowered the timbre and rhythm of his voice to match the feel of their speech. It wasn’t overt enough to look like mockery — just enough to make them feel they knew him, and that maybe he wasn’t so unlike them at all. “You want ‘em? They’s yours.”