The Neo-Spartans: Altered World (37 page)

              “Can it be hooked up? Can we broadcast?” she asked.

              “Sure, in theory.”

              Quinn looked at him as if to say, “Well…?”

              “Don’t look at me. I’m a Neo-Spartan, remember? I just… understand it.”

              Nico sighed deeply and made his way for the camera gear. “Not a word. Before I was a Banger I worked in an electronics store in the Valley. We had all this stuff.”

              “Get it ready,” said Quinn, “We’re going to show the world the truth. Well, not all of us. Gabriel, you’ve got to go.”

              “We all go,” said Nico, “We aim the camera at him and show the world what he is and get out. Job done.”

              “Not enough. People have to know it all—what they did to us, what they did to our boys,” she said as she ran a hand along Gabriel’s cheek in a gesture that astonished both of them.

              Nico went to the door and whistled for his Vaqueros. He turned back to Quinn. “You can’t stay. It’s suicide. Security will get its act together soon enough.”

              “I’m not asking you to stay. But I have to. It’s personal.” Gabriel caught her eye and nodded. “If I do this, it will change my life,” added Quinn.

              “If it doesn’t end it,” said Nico.

              “Well, that’s why it’s worth doing, isn’t it?” said Quinn.

              A couple Vaqueros showed up and reported in to Nico. Gabriel stepped across to them.

              “Good luck, Quinn,” Gabriel said, and he grabbed an IV stand and poked open a ceiling tile. “Listen, when you guys do take off, go this way. Follow your nose to the pantry.”

              “You get to Kilbert and the Triffid Forest. We’ll catch up with you,” Quinn said.

              They all took off. Nico closed the door and blasted the lock.

              “You stayed,” said Quinn,

              “I’m just here to run the camera gear.”

              “Right,” she said. Together they went about rolling the gurney in front of the green screen.

              Below, just outside the walls of the Citadel, Gabriel and his colleagues breathed in the open air of the Sanctuary. Fetid as it was, it meant freedom, and it tasted good. Gabriel threw a look back at the crumbling brick wall of the old factory’s smokestack, from which he knew his sister would soon be visible across the world. The sense of freedom was short-lived as a faction of well-armed Social Defense Forces closed in fast on them from around a corner. But as the Social Defense Forces drew down on the Neo-Spartans, the forces were surprised by the sudden onslaught of a new set of attackers from behind them. A flurry of fists and kicks hammered toxin points with astonishing acuity and predictable results. As the dust cleared, Gabriel recognized the face of Amos, and beyond him, ten more members of Kilbert’s extraction team dusted themselves off. Amos stepped forward.

              “We gotta get you out of here,” said Amos. “Where’s Quinn?”

              “Stayed behind,” answered Gabriel. “More heavy lifting to be done.”

              Amos shot a look at the Citadel. “I’m going in.”

              Gabriel threw out an arm to stop him. “No need. Somebody’s already helping her.”

* * *

              As Grisner drove back to town he had expected a wave of comfort and ease to spread through him at the death of his long-sworn enemy. He’d expected to feel more powerful than ever. To his surprise, he felt sick. Grisner was not some little girl who became nauseated at the spilling of blood. It was ridiculous; death was a normal passage of life. Kilbert should be thanking him. And yet, he felt unanchored. His hatred of Kilbert had always been there to drive him on.

              Instead of power, he experienced a strange bottomless feeling, adrift in the current of a powerful sea. He quickly examined the routes available to him to reverse this alien sensation and get back to the surface. He needed to exhibit his power… and it crystallized for him. Never mind Julius, he would return to the city, recruit reinforcements and destroy the Neo-Spartans, once and for all.

              What had he been thinking asking Julius to undertake this? He didn’t need to be surreptitious. He was the new force; Grant Hughes had signed the document. The government doesn’t like his approach? Tough. He’d get rid of the government and install a new one.

              Ah, there. The power started pulsing through his veins again. And Quinn’s witnessing his unharnessed supremacy would be the crowning glory of it all. The nausea disappeared at the thought. He pushed hard on the accelerator and roared toward town.

* * *

Quinn and Nico had maneuvered Grant Hughes’s gurney in front of the green screen, and the camera in front of the gurney. Nico anxiously navigated his way through the electronics while Quinn paced and tried to pull her thoughts together.

“You ready?” pressed Nico.

“No,” she responded.

“That door’s not going to hold forever.”

“That’s not helping.”

It wasn’t the fear of the doors being broken down and the SDF wiping the floor with their corpses that made her nervous. What terrified her far more was going on camera. She’d never even got accustomed to the family photo, what with her father being taken from her at such a young age. She laughed at the thought, and suddenly her mind was filled with him. She tried to imagine what he’d say under these circumstances, and the more she focused on what and who he was, the more she knew what he’d say. Declan would have told her to be herself. Not to forget the past, but also not to be haunted and dominated by it. That if ever she were to continue it could only be by incorporating it into who she was, including his loss. And suddenly she understood something: what she was doing wasn’t the same as rushing in to protect food stores as Declan had died doing, but it was coming from the same place. Putting herself in the direct path of danger with no thought for herself. And in that moment it all became clear for her; what Declan had done was the reverse of selfish, no matter what the consequences had been for her. He was a hero who deserved her respect, love and devotion, not resentment and anger. Spontaneous tears poured uncontrollably from her eyes, no matter what she did to try to stop them.

Nico had been watching. He started to speak but bit his tongue and waited.

At length, she gathered control over the tears. “Are you good to go?” she asked.

“It’s your show, Quinn. Knock ’em dead.”

He flicked a switch and a low flying helicopter view of the gloriously beautiful aqua-marine Mediterranean Sea swept across the special effects screen beyond. He flicked another switch and a red light came to life on a camera aimed at her face. Quinn glanced at the composite image on a monitor and she gestured to the outside as if to say, “This is what the world sees?” Nico nodded and Quinn looked into the camera and spoke.

“Hi, I’m Quinn McKenna. I’m a Neo-Spartan. When we are young we are full of hope and innocence… it’s natural. As time goes by, a terribly sad but necessary transition takes place. Slowly but surely hope is redefined by an understanding of what life is really like… of the compromises that must be made, the dreams that must be put aside and often broken. But as difficult as it is, it’s all survivable. That’s life and it has always been so.”

Throughout the crumbling city, people on the street had stopped where they were to watch this unusual broadcast on the massive video screens where Grant Hughes’s image was usually worshipped. Businessmen, housewives, kids watched with a combination of awe and incomprehension. Who was this pretty girl saying these bizarre but undeniable truths?

“But in our society we endure something far worse than the natural changes life presents. In our society we are lied to, treated like children, kept in the dark by our leaders, not for our benefit, but for theirs. What could be more useful to them than our being kept in line by lies and falsehoods? I need to show you one of those lies now.”

Quinn stepped aside and the camera zeroed in on the pale, trembling figure that was Grant Hughes. Frail and out of it as he was, he still recognized his image on the monitor.

“This poor being is Grant Hughes. This one is not.” She glanced at Nico who punched a button, thereby starting up a fictitious Grant Hughes isn’t-life-grand advertisement—a fit, tanned, younger Grant Hughes living it up poolside in some exotic locale with some equally exotic female partner.

Gasps could be heard rising from every corner of the city. Side by side the extent of Hughes’s decrepit condition was brought home in appallingly fine high definition. In the corner of a plaza, hidden from CCTV cameras, Gabriel and the Neo-Spartans watched Quinn’s description of reality. Gabriel brimmed with pride.

Davies slid in next to him. “That’s your hard-ass sister?” he said. “Pretty cool.”

“This beautiful Grant Hughes is nothing but a memory.”

Grant Hughes studied his former self on the big screens. Terror formed in his eyes.

“His physical devastation at age thirty-nine was brought about by genetically modified foods, and then by genetically modified organs to process that food. You all know the story. You all know someone in exactly the same position. What sets apart Grant Hughes is the solution he and his people chose to correct his destruction.”

At this moment, outside the door of the Grant Hughes theater, the SDF sprang loose Dr. Mallory and his staff.

“Where is Grant? What’s going on?” demanded Dr. Mallory. His answer came with immediate clarity as he glanced out the window and saw the image of his patient and Quinn on a giant screen together.

Someone suggested cutting electricity to the room from which Quinn and Nico were broadcasting. “No! We can’t. It would cut the power to all of Grant’s devices. He’d be dead in a matter of minutes. Where the hell is Grisner?”

Grisner was crossing town on his return to the Citadel with his phalanx of SDF when he saw Quinn’s face on a giant screen. He couldn’t hear her at first, and for the briefest of moments he lost track of who she was. Up there on the big screen was Rose, his Rose. He was forced to stop his vehicle and listen to the massive speakers that informed all:

“For weeks the powers that be have been kidnapping Neo-Spartan boys. And do you know why?” Quinn’s voice quavered as all the emotion of the past weeks gathered at once in her throat.

“Come on, Quinn, you can do this,” whispered Nico. “It’s not just for them, it’s not just us—it’s everybody!”

“Their intention was to remove the organs of these healthy boys and implant them in this wretched excuse for a human being who decided that his one counterfeit life was worth sacrificing the lives of innocents,” said Quinn.

              “Their plan didn’t stop with resurrecting the life of this trust fund baby. Their plan, upon seeing Grant Hughes come back to life, was to sign up everyone who could afford it, and supply new organs for all. Everyone who could afford it… as if money were some kind of gauge of the quality of a human being, a measure of the mercy and kindness in his soul.” Quinn steeled her jaw and stepped closer to the camera. “The privileged elite. That’s who they wanted to save… using the organs of the one percent at the other end of social spectrum. Us. The Neo-Spartans. Well, I’m here to tell you—we will not allow this.” She took a moment to gather herself, then she stared again at the camera. “There’s somebody else I want you to meet.” Quinn gestured at Nico to join her. He held up his hand, shook his head. “Now,” she mouthed, and he begrudgingly stepped in front of the camera.

Grisner stared at the screen, his ruddy features catching fire. In the plaza nearby, hundreds of people were reacting to Quinn’s revelations. A distinct grumble moved like a wave through the crowd, the kind of grumble that preceded uncontrollable actions. Grisner grabbed his phone but an image on the screen stopped him cold. Nico had joined Quinn. Black and blue and beaten, but big as life.

“This is Nico. He’s from the Sanctuary. The kind of place people go when–”

“If people want to feel alive,” said Nico. Quinn stepped aside. He thought for a second, stared at the camera. “Everybody in the Sanctuary… what we want… all we want is to live life to the fullest. If it’s gonna be short it, better be fun, and wild, and crazy! And that’s the way we’ve lived by God, and we’re proud of it!” He took another moment. “All of that changed recently for me and my
hombre
s, the Vaqueros. We cleaned up. We were able to rid ourselves of the poisons of altered foods. Even though we’re Eugenic, we were given a gift. We got years more. And without stealing somebody else’s organs. Thanks to Quinn, thanks to the Neo-Spartans, we got… life. More life.”

Across town, Julius’s eyes bore into the seventy-inch screen in the basement of his lavish digs. A half-finished drink sat warming in his massive hand, but his jaw was slack and his face flaccid as he looked at Nico. “You’ve been busy behind my back, kid,” he said. “More life…” Suddenly his attention was caught by the small figure of a young woman miraculously pushing aside his mountainous bodyguards. Following her was a loudly dressed, mocha-colored urchin whose eyes roamed him as if he were the Empire State Building.

“Magda…? What the devil, woman!” he said and started to rise.

“Julius, put your tough black derriere back in that chair an’ listen. Times are crazy and you gotta know this, I don’t care what Nico says.”