The Neo-Spartans: Altered World (10 page)

Old one-eye felt the heat rising off an impatient Kilbert. “My friend, I understand your loyalty to these orphans, but you must face it. As brilliant at finding solutions and bringing our factions together as Declan was, neither of his offspring indicate any ability to follow in his footsteps.”

              Kilbert struggled to restrain himself. “You must give her the opportunity to prove herself.”

              “She’s had a lifetime of opportunity.
Missed
opportunity. No, while we wait for word of what kind of ransom is demanded we will send the young men,” said old one-eye. “They all know the Sanctuary; that’s clearly where they’ve taken him.”

              “It should be Quinn’s job,” said Kilbert.

              “Yes, it should be,” said the grizzled one. “But she can’t keep the boy in the house overnight, how will she ever live up to the promise she made to her father and the tacit promise to all of us?”

              One-eye spoke up again, “We are talking about the boy with the gift we’d be lost without. You can’t entrust his retrieval to this out-of-control girl.”

              Morgan Kilbert shook his head, “That’s not a fair assessment of her.”

              “Fair or not, it describes her as she is.”

              Quinn sank down as she listened. This was bad, really bad. And then it became exponentially worse.

              One-eye went on, “She’ll never be the leader of the Neo-Spartans. I propose that she be married to whatever warrior boy we select to rescue young Gabriel.”

              Quinn buried her face in her hands.

              “Would you also steal the boy’s birthright?” asked Kilbert, growing increasingly incredulous.

Old one-eye’s blood filled his face, “Birthright? To be our leader? We are talking about our survival. The boy’s even worse than the girl. He’s hopeless. If not for his tongue I’d propose banishing him altogether.”

              Kilbert listened, amazed. “You can’t be serious.”

              “He’s a drain on our time, our food, our focus.”

              Quinn had heard enough. She pushed past the screen into the room, to the utter shock of all.

              “To think, my father gave his life for you,” she spat. “You useless, judgmental old fools.”

              “Quinn,” said Kilbert as sternly as he could, “Not now.”

              “Not now? So when?” shouted Quinn. She could feel the blood rushing to her face. She knew down deep that this was not the way to go, but she couldn’t stop the flow of anger and pain boiling to the top.

              “Quinn,” Kilbert repeated. “Get out.”

              One-eye seized on the moment. “What have I been saying? She’s beyond your control.” He called to the other room, “Amos!” The tallest of the Neo-Spartan warrior boys entered. “Escort Ms. McKenna out, please.”

              Amos reached for Quinn but she batted away his hand and assumed a fighting pose.

              “Quinn, not here, not now,” pleaded Kilbert, knowing full well what she was capable of when it came to fighting. Amos was bigger and stronger, but not in her league when it came to speed, strategy and technique, Kilbert knew. So did Quinn.

              Amos reached again and this time she batted away even faster and harder. Slightly annoyed, he took to the task of apprehending the girl with a few of the signature Neo-Spartan disabling techniques, only to be dispatched by Quinn’s deftness and precision. Amos assumed a fighting stance. He was going to teach this girl a lesson. They circled each other, trading blows, feeling each other out. Kilbert noticed Amos’ cocky confidence and sighed silently. Nothing motivated Quinn more than the assumption her gender made her a lesser fighter. Amos pulled out his big guns right away, but Quinn roared back at him with feral intensity and Kilbert noticed to his alarm that she was trying to position herself so she could attack specific vulnerable areas of Amos’s body. This was Kilbert’s technique. He had developed it and taught it to all his students as the most effective self-defense against the Eugenics. He had taken the principle of attacking the opponent’s neural points, and in a flash of genius or luck, a brilliant idea had crystallized: if every nerve is connected to an organ and if every GM organ is nothing but a toxic depot, hitting those precise trigger points will cause a quick and effective blood poisoning. It worked like a miracle against the Eugenics, but even a Neo-Spartan would suffer to some extent if these vulnerable areas were targeted. The “toxin points” technique was a powerful weapon, and all his students knew it was a taboo to use it on one another. And here was Quinn about to violate it.

              She unleashed all of her rage and frustration on Amos. She fought for Gabriel, for her dead father and mother, for all the iniquities heaped on them by the establishment. But most of all she fought for her right to defend her own family. She moved in swiftly and struck the key trigger points, one after another in a blinding whirlwind of accuracy and anguish. Amos faltered, barely able to stand as his system reacted to the abuse it was suffering. But Quinn was gone; unconscious with rage, unaware of how damaged her opponent was. Suddenly he fell down as Quinn was spinning to deliver what she thought would be the coup de grâce, and as she came around she was face to face with Kilbert, whose arms held her in place. She looked in his eyes, and there, found herself. She looked around the room at her downed opponent and the alarmed faces of the decision makers.

            
 
She burst out into the hazy sun, the entire world a blur as she allowed the tears to flood her eyes. She replayed it all and the anger rose again to the top. It wasn’t just that Gabriel had been taken. It was that they really didn’t care. He was a drain on their time, and she was an aimless waste of effort. It made her so angry she wanted to scream. The anger gave way and forced her to bring into clarity what she really felt. She was isolated and alone. These were her own people, her family, people she loved and admired who thought so little of her.

              Neo-Spartan civilians stared at Quinn as she walked along aimlessly. She felt the flush race up her skin into her face. Her eyes welled wet. She needed refuge, and fast. She made her way to Kilbert’s thatched hut where she knew she’d be alone. She put her face in her hands and let her tears flow.

              It seemed like just a couple seconds later that she looked up and found Kilbert entering. She abruptly wiped the moisture from her eyes.

              “I really blew it, didn’t I?” she said.

              “You didn’t make it easy to defend you,” he said.

              “But…?” she said, hopefully.

              “But they recognize the passion. They’re still quizzing the boy for details.”

              “Am I going?” she asked.

              “Quinn, you know I’ve always supported you and I’ll always support you. I’ve tried to be your friend, and a substitute for your parents. I know that you need to go on this mission. I know you’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t try to save your brother.”

              Quinn brightened.

              “So even though my instinct is to stop you, I’m going to say yes. But you have to be careful. Just the way you feel responsible for Gabriel, and you’d be unable to forgive yourself if this turned out badly, that’s the way I feel about you. You must stay off Grisner’s radar.”

              “What is it with him?”

              Kilbert sighed. “It’s complicated. He and your father were once the best of friends. Things happened. Things were said. The kind of misunderstanding that can happen only when you’re young. And you know how it ended. But Quinn, don’t fill your head with this now.”

              “Why are you telling me if you don’t want me thinking about it?” she asked, innocently.

              Kilbert’s face reddened with rage. “Because you absolutely must hear what I’m warning you against,” stormed the response.

              “I’ll be careful,” she said, even more mystified and intrigued, but knowing better than to pursue it.

              “One more thing. This is reconnaissance only. Get the lay of the land and we’ll send in an extraction team for Gabriel and the others. Don’t even think about doing something brave and dangerous.”

              “Okay. I promise.”

              Kilbert provided her with a backpack of food and a pouch of emergency herbs; he walked her to the edge of the Neo-Spartan enclave, wished her luck, and saw her off.

              As she grew smaller in the distance, the weight of the world draped over her shoulders, he wondered if he’d been too easy on her. Had he become old and sentimental? These were Neo-Spartans; if Quinn or Gabriel were ever to lead them it would not be through misguided kindness. They had looked promising once, and now whichever of them survived whatever this hideous assault was, would be seen as the leader of the Neo-Spartans.

PART TWO

CHAPTER ELEVEN

              Quinn weaved her way toward the area known to all as the Sanctuary, that terrible place adults threatened Neo-Spartan kids with when they misbehaved. The Sanctuary was the antithesis of a Neo-Spartan enclave, but ironically similar as it had grown naturally out of the desperation that had seen people dying en masse as a result of the across-the-board genetic modification. As the terrible conditions closed their jaws on people, they grew tired of their deprived lives and some of them said to hell with it. They started a symbolic rebellion against death and the elite at the top. These folks, the flotsam and jetsam at the bottom, formed a core group who lived on the edge. They were called Bangers: if they were going to go out, they wanted to go out with a bang. Over time, more people joined in this bop-’til-you-drop lifestyle, and what had started as a few people in an area of a few blocks had become a massive, rowdy, roiling section of the city that became known as the Sanctuary. An ironic term, of course, because although its lifestyle protected one from thoughts of imminent death, the streets of the Sanctuary were anything but a safe haven. They had become so dangerous, in fact, that the powers that be built a twelve foot concrete barb-wired wall around it. Law enforcement posted at the entrance controlled the number of people allowed out of the gates, and the quota was strictly enforced.

              The idea of the Sanctuary didn’t frighten Quinn. She felt the right amount of curiosity and fear to stay alert and at her top performance. She actually enjoyed that sharp state when mind and body worked like a fine-tuned machine and challenges were more than welcome. The only fly in the ointment was this new revelation that Grisner and her father had been friends. She wrestled with the concept, and any attempt to put it in the back of her mind failed. Kilbert had told her not to dwell on it, but just to be aware of the hidden dangers Grisner might present. But how could she not? Grisner had killed Declan in a brutal way and had become a curse for the Neo-Spartans. She’d been taught to hate him from the bottom of her heart. He had stolen her childhood. How could such a man have been her father’s friend? How was that possible? A gauze of uncertainty enveloped the image of the man she thought she knew so well and brought a sensation of being unmoored. Declan McKenna had been highly esteemed in the Neo-Spartan community for many reasons, but mostly for his wise judgment. Now, this unlikely friendship cast a shadow over her father’s wisdom. Quinn felt tempted to discard the whole thing as a story Kilbert had fabricated to keep her on her toes, to make sure she was extra cautious when it came to Grisner. It didn’t work. She knew it was the truth and it opened the floodgates to questions she couldn’t find the answers to. What did her father have in common with this man? And if they were friends, what on Earth had separated them to such an extent that they had become mortal enemies? Was it politics? Loyalties? Kilbert said it was the mistakes of youth. That last bit burrowed into her mind and Quinn scrolled down the list of likely youthful mistakes until she unwillingly came to hover over the possibility of a girl. It was the most common reason for broken friendships among young guys. She never understood it, but on the other hand she didn’t know much about love and the myriad other feelings that came in its baggage. So, Quinn tried to fit the likelihood of such a piece of information within her neatly arranged conceptions of her father, her life and his role in it, and immediately discovered it didn’t belong there. Her father killed because of a girl? No. It would be too ironic, too cruel to lose the pillar of her existence for such an adolescent reason.

              As she approached the gates of the notorious Sanctuary, Quinn could see the heavily armed policemen up in the turrets. The Sanctuary wasn’t officially a prison, but it had all the trappings of one. She knew about the quota limiting the people allowed to leave. It must have been filled. There was no human traffic in either direction, except for her. It made her queasy: that sensation that accompanies the realization that there must be something off about what you are doing if you are the only one doing it. There was nothing official about entering… you were on your own. She tried to go back to that state of sharp alertness and strode forward to the entrance, hoping that her queasiness was making her as pale as the rest of the Eugenics populating this place. She could hear the guards in the overhead turret as she crossed the threshold, undoubtedly speaking loud enough just for her benefit. She squinted above but couldn’t make out any detail of the guards.

              “Fifty bucks says she gets tossed in an hour,” said the first guard.

              “I say half an hour,” said the second.

              “You’re on.”

              They cackled. Welcome to the Sanctuary, land of the lunatics, was all Quinn could think. She vowed to stay on the alert, eyes open, senses keen. And then she got her first whiff of the Sanctuary. Nothing could have prepared her for the intense, acrid rot that assaulted her nostrils. She wondered if she could shut off that sense and keep the others active. Of course it was like this. Nobody cared what happened to these people. And the people had given up caring, that’s why they were here.

              Everywhere she looked was devastation: the burned-out car hulks littering what once had been roads and were now mostly sink-holes. The buildings with entire walls missing, like an architect’s model where a wall can be lifted out allowing one to see inside. And inside, nothing but rotted dry-wall and loose wires. The effect was so all-encompassing that she failed to hear the purr of motorcycles that navigated the detritus and holes to hell and pulled in behind her. Quinn awakened and spun to the sound, but the bikers had her boxed in. She tried to speak but the smell of rot overwhelmed her and she struggled to hold down breakfast. And despite her greatest efforts she couldn’t hide her inability to breathe. Filtering air had not been included in her many kinds of training and she made a note to inform Kilbert of this unusual requirement.

             
It was then that she took real notice of the bike boys who had stopped her. Chromo-freaks, the favorite gross-out joke of her peers. But as she stared at the disgusting deformities before her, she realized what a cruel joke had been played by the ruling elite on these people seventy or eighty years before. She understood well how the power elite found it necessary to set these unfortunates apart, like lepers. They were the offspring of a terrible early experiment, an attempt to help children adjust to the altered new foods by suppressing genes while they were still gestating. It resulted in mutation, and here it was in all its hideous glory.

              “Look at that,” said the Chromo-Freak with the three bulging eyes. “She’s gonna urp!”

              “Ha! A newbie! What brings you down here, sweet cheeks?” said the one with a row of pierced ears.

              “Not you, that’s for sure,” said Quinn.

              Chromo-Freak number three got off his bike and swaggered toward her, his intentions like a neon sign blinking on his forehead. “Come on, baby, how ’bout a kiss?” He opened his mouth, and waved two fat slimy tongues at her.

              Quinn had her limits, and they had been reached. Despite all her training, pride, and need to continue, she bent over and puked.

              The two-tongued Chromo-Freak stopped where he was. “Ge-eez, get out of here with that. That’s disgusting.”

              His boys quickly joined in herding a distraught Quinn back where she’d come from. Twice she had turned to apply some discipline to the situation—to kick some butt and rescue her self-image—and twice she regretted opening her mouth. Half-blind with stinging eyes, Quinn backtracked past the sink-holes and rotting car hulks and found herself at the entrance to the Sanctuary.

              The bikers charged her simultaneously and she staggered backwards through the entrance and fell in a less than dignified heap on her butt. The two guards who’d witnessed her entrance minutes before calmly observed her clumsy dismissal. The second guard put out his hand for payment on their bet.

              “Hey loser, thanks for nothing!” shouted the guard whose wager had come in second best.

              Quinn dusted herself off and forced herself to her feet in search of her self-esteem. There was not much available, but at least out here it didn’t smell so bad, she thought to herself. She looked at the entrance and beyond and thumbed through her mind to everything she’d been taught. Everything she knew. Never had there been a more important mission than this—the chance to save her brother, to prove herself, to avoid being forced to pair up with one of those miserable arrogant boys. And yet her mind was a blank. But in that void she heard a voice, faint but insistent. She focused on emptying her mind… and the voice came in more clearly. Kilbert’s voice, soothing and reassuring, and, as always, instructive.

              “If some place is hostile to you, don’t try to overcome it. Look for the weak point, the acceptance point. Everything is a living breathing system with rules. And if you respect it, it will eventually let you in.” From Quinn’s point of view at that moment, Kilbert had spent way too much time in the Triffid Forest. How in hell were the walls of the Sanctuary a living breathing system? Okay, okay, calm down. Study the place. Find the spot that will take you in, she told herself, and embarked on circling the perimeter walls.