The Rise of Io (30 page)

“
T
his is
the map of the entire site. It's a lot of ground to cover, but really, the only thing that's important is this building here, here, this one only on Thursdays, and whatever the hell this one here is.”

Cameron had spent five minutes the next day looking over Mogg's sample of intel before deciding to pull the trigger on buying all that she had to offer for a cool one million rupees.

It was a princely sum to Ella, but the man did not bat an eye. They quickly completed the transaction, and before she knew it, they had months of construction blueprints, maps, manifests, power grid layouts, project plans, supply inventories, sewage system, etc… everything.

No wonder the Genjix wanted to replace the union as soon as possible. Mogg and her boys were definitely doing some extracurricular work at the site. Maybe they were planning on robbing the facility in the future or selling this information, as they had to Cameron. In any case, the data here was worth every rupee.

It also told Ella that she had been getting paid far too little. These Prophus had deeper pockets than she thought possible. She definitely needed to ask for a raise.

You do not even know the meaning of deep pockets. The Genjix–

“I'm asking for a raise, not selling my soul.”

Right now, the team was huddled around several maps of Crate Town, Surat, the Gulf of Khambhat, and the construction site. They had spent most of the day replenishing the rest of their supplies, having to get creative with some of their resources.

For one thing, both Dana and Lam were wearing men's fatigues, so everything fit loosely. Jax, who looked like he should have been playing basketball instead of being a soldier, was wearing pants that exposed his ankles. Nabin had had to roll his pants up.

Other than that, they were able to source most of the hardware they needed. The team complained that things weren't as high-tech as they were used to, but they didn't seem to mind too much. They'd worked with worse, they joked, although Dana compared the surveillance gear they got from the Fabs to antiques.

The only thing they were short on was ammunition. Manish and Aarav were supposed to take care of that. It seemed the coach had a small armory stashed away in the basement of his gym.

“How did you come by all this?” Nabin asked. “I mean, you two were only gone for a few hours last night.”

Cameron pointed at Ella. “The samrãjñī of Crate Town here has all the hookups.”

Ella preened.

“All right,” Cameron continued. “Teams of two. Dana and Nabin cover the southern perimeter. That's where the administrative building is located as well the primary facility. Jax and Lam take the heavy construction zone in the middle. That's where the buildings that look like Quasing housing vats and the power stations are located. Ella and I will cover the docks. If we put the two hosts together, it keeps everyone else invisible to Penetra scanners.

“We're looking for Surrett Kapoor's routine. The union boss said the minister has a pretty set routine and spends most of his days on-site making sure the trains run on schedule. We want to lock down his exact location and take him out.

“The Genjix may be using this facility as their primary headquarters. The union boss said a lot of foreigners are currently living in several of the completed buildings on the south end. Now that we have blueprints, we need better intel on the security on site: patrol schedules, patterns, unit strengths, all that. From what we can tell as of right now, it's just cops and guards.”

Lam tapped the largest building on the map. “This central building, what are they calling it?”

“The Bio Com Array,” said Cameron.

Lam put a rock on it and the administrative building. “Whatever they're building, this Bio Comm Array is a big deal. If the opportunity arises, we should try to gather intel to bring back to the Prophus. I have a feeling we're going to need to be back here sooner rather than later, either to blow it up or take it over. In any case, the more we know, the better.”

“Satellites can't pull anything?” Jax said.

She shook her head. “I contacted Command last night. Complete black zone. They have the entire region cloaked from satellite somehow. The Prophus are talking about sending a spy plane overhead, but that's risky.”

“Dana, how do we get out of Dodge once we assassinate a major public figure and are wanted fugitives?”

Dana ticked off each point with her finger. “Planes, trains, and automobiles are all off the table. Airports and major roads have heavy checkpoints and the gulf is teeming with coastguards.” She grinned. “However, there's one direction they don't have carefully guarded.”

“What's that?” Jax asked.

“Upriver.” She pointed at the map. “The Tapi is a major transport hub. We get a boat, sneak upstream to a rural area, then have the Prophus send in an extraction team to pick us up.”

“Clever,” Lam said. “What about–”

Wiry Madras appeared at the doorway. Lam quickly slid all the maps underneath the cot. The old woman rolled her eyes. “You've paid for my silence. Besides, if you're going to hit that monstrosity out west, I'd almost help out. That stupid site has been nothing but trouble for Crate Town.”

“Can we help you?” Lam asked.

“You have a visitor.” The old woman stepped to the side and Hamilton walked in.

“Hamilton!” Ella exclaimed. She bounded to him and gave him a hug. She was genuinely happy to see him. Mainly because she had thought the Genjix had killed him that day, but also because she was sorry for how poorly she had treated him.

“Um, hello Ella.” He looked decidedly uncomfortable and patted her head a few times.

“Don't ever pet my head like that again,” she snapped, before she remembered to be nice to him. “How did you find us?”

Lam raised her hand. “I went to a cyber cafe and called the wakeup service. An analyst named Wyatt patched me through to the auxiliary here. He got us the computer equipment we needed.”

“If I may,” Hamilton said, saluting. “It's an absolute pleasure and honor to work with you, Commander. If there's anything I can do to support these operations, please put me to good use.”

“He never said that to me,” Ella grumbled.

That's because you are the opposite of a pleasure to work with.

Ella had a sharp retort at the tip of her tongue, but she stopped. It was true. She had been a brat to her auxiliary ever since they met. She should do something about that. Ella tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey Hamilton, may I speak with you?”

He followed her out the door. “What is it, Ella?”

“I just wanted to say sorry for being such a jerk. It's this stupid alien. Io's been driving me crazy.”

Sure, blame me for your faults.

“It's quite all right,” Hamilton said. “I've heard that the transition for a host can be traumatic. That's why auxiliaries have extensive preparedness training in the event the tragedy occurs.”

She pursed her lips. “Just so you know, I don't plan on dying anytime soon.”

“Of course not, that wasn't what–”

There was a knock on the back door leading to the alley. Ella's first reaction was to throw her arms in the air.

Really?

Everyone in the other room filed out, weapons drawn. Dana moved to the door and, with one hand holding her pistol, placed the other on the handle. There was a brief pause followed by two more knocks. The pattern repeated three times. Dana nodded and pulled the sliding door open. To Ella's surprise, Manish and Aarav walked in carrying a long crate.

The old coach looked amused at everyone in the room pointing guns at him. “I guess we came to the right place. I got the ammo you asked for. We have three more crates outside. It was a bitch to haul over. Since when did they set up checkpoints into Crate Town?”

“How bad is it?” asked Lam.

“One at every major street,” said Aarav. “It's causing awful traffic.”

Hamilton raised his hand. “I had to pass through one on the way in. It took two hours. It wasn't this bad yesterday.”

“How did you smuggle this gear through?” asked Nabin.

Manish shrugged. “They weren't looking for contraband. They had Penetra scanners.”

A terrible realization passed through the group. Cameron frowned. “The slum isn't small. There's no way they can blockade every intersection.”

“There aren't that many ways out,” said Ella. “Half of Crate Town borders water and the other half was walled up back when the city tried to prevent the slums from growing.”

Cameron walked over to the table. “Nabin, what's the range of Penetra scanners these days?”

“Top of the line can go two hundred meters. Most only fifty to a hundred, and can detect through anything that isn't denser than lead. Buildings and other electronics will dampen its range somewhat.”

“All these places to hide and nowhere to hide,” Cameron muttered. “Still, that's a lot of ground for them to cover. We should be safe here.”

The Genjix are closing in, Ella. These Prophus are as good as dead. Now is your last chance. Slip out the door while they are all distracted. If you come with me to the Genjix, I can guarantee your safety. They may even reward you.

But this game wasn't just about survival. Doing the right thing was an intangible currency that Ella had to factor into her decision. And these people here, they were good people. They were fighting the same people she should be fighting. Also, if she joined the Genjix, what would her amma and Burglar Alarm and Bijan and everyone else think of her in the afterlife? They would be so disappointed. She knew she would feel ashamed.

Ella planted her butt into the chair. “That's my final answer. Don't ever suggest that to me again, alien.”

Stubborn fool.

Wiry Madras barged into their dining area, huffing and puffing. “The police are doing a door-to-door search of the entire slum. Several patrols have clashed with the local population and riots have broken out. One of them is two blocks down.”

“So that's their plan,” said Cameron. “Madam Madras, do you have a place we can hide? A hidden room or attic?”

She nodded. “I dug a hole underneath the building. I hide my opium there. It will cost you though.”

“Sure, whatever.” He signaled to the door. “Bring the rest of the ammo in and stow our supplies there.”

“Cam, the Penetra scanners will detect you anyway,” said Lam.

“I know,” Cameron replied. “I'm going to lead them away.”

“We should go with you.”

He shook his head. “It'll be easier evading the patrols and scanners with as few bodies as possible. Stay with our supplies. Maintain radio contact. I'll ping if things get bad.” He yanked Ella out of the chair so hard she almost fell. “You're with me. Hurry, gear up. We need to run!”

E
lla barely had
time to throw on some clothes and sheathe a couple of knives before Cameron practically picked her up and carried her out the back door. No sooner had they exited to the back alley, he nudged her to his right. “Crash course. You're right-handed, right?”

She nodded. “Manish trained me to be ambidextrous. I can throw knives–”

“Whatever. Listen, I want you to stay two steps behind me at all times to my right, so you can tell me where to go and throw your knives. If we get jumped, stay safe while I take care of it. And, hmm, are you sure you don't want a gun?” He put his hand on his pistol at his waist.

She shook her head. “I'll probably end up accidentally shooting you. Besides, no guns in Crate Town.”

“Why is that?” he exclaimed. “That's ridiculous in our line of work. Anyway, talk about that later. We have to go.”

He pulled out the electronic device she recognized as the thing he and Fab had haggled aggressively over. Cameron fiddled with its controls and then turned it on. At first, Ella saw nothing, and then she saw different colors floating all around them. Layers of yellows, reds, and green lights, some thin lines, others blobs covering an entire wall. A few blue and purple colors were undulating waves that passed right over her head. It was very pretty, but almost blinding.

Cameron punched a few more buttons on the console and then looked around the alley. Nothing changed. He tapped the console with his fingers and then, visibly frustrated, tapped its side. He pulled an earpiece out of his front pocket and hooked it on. “Nabin, you read this? The visualizer. I can't read it. It's in Indonesian or something. No, Tao can't read it. He doesn't know every language in existence. He's not a universal translator.”

While he was talking, Ella saw purple squiggly marks shoot out of the earpiece and into the bathhouse wall. A similar purple mark would shoot back moments later. Her curiosity was interrupted by a crowd shouting at the end of the alley near the main street.

“Um, I think we should get going. You can play with your toy later.”

He brushed her aside. “Third dial? I'm twisting it. Nothing is happening. Oh wait, that third dial. Come on, I read left to right.”

The riot of colors surrounding them faded one by one until the alleyway was completely dark again. Ella took two steps to the other end of the alley, which led to a residential section of the slum when Cameron grabbed her arm. He shook his head and held up a finger.

“Don't move until I'm done. This is important.” He returned to his conversation. “Well, I see nothing now. Which color did you assign to the Penetra frequency? Custom setting? Wait, brown? I don't care if all the other frequencies have defaults. I can't see brown. Everything in this dump is brown. How do I change it?”

A cone of light flickered down the alley from the main street. A few more joined it and waved up and down along the walls. Ella tapped Cameron once more and pointed frantically. This time he noticed, and they ran down the alley.

Where will you go? The Genjix have Penetra scanners. There is no place to hide.

“Hush, alien. This is Crate Town. There is always a place to hide.”

It was so dark that Ella could barely tell open space from container wall, but she had run these streets thousands of times. They ran across streets, down narrow alleys, and into tiny wedges that Cameron had trouble slipping through, all while moving toward the quiet, away from the noise and screams and footsteps of the soldiers.

A few times, they got turned around and had to backtrack away from suspicious figures or sounds. Once, she miscalculated the side alley and nearly stumbled into a clash between a group of neighborhood residents and soldiers. Another time, the police nearly ran them over as they chased one of the street rat gangs directly into them. Three of the police had broken off their pursuit of the kids and come after them when Cameron pulled her behind a set of tents. That was bad for the officers. The Adonis made short work of them.

Ella and Cameron continued running through the maze of Crate Town for two more hours, hopping along roofs and going through the hallways of some of the larger clusters. By now, it was closer to dawn than not, and she was beginning to tire. Cameron still seemed as alert as ever, and he half-carried her through the broken, twisty streets. Along the way, they passed by angry women wielding clubs and scared men guarding their homes. Children peeked from behind curtains and doors. Ella could not remember a time when Crate Town was so on edge.

He finally came to a stop in a small opening in the middle of an alley where three clusters formed a fissure. “Ten minutes.” He took out his flask and handed it to her. Ella gulped the water and would have emptied the flask if he hadn't taken it away from her. “Sharing is caring,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Never mind. Something my dad used to say to me when he wanted a slice of my pizza.” He looked down both sides of the alley and leaned against the wall. She didn't realize how exhausted he was until she saw his face and his slumped shoulders. He closed his eyes. “Wake me up in ten.”

Just like that, Cameron was asleep. He was even snoring, softly, but loud enough in this dead silence to make her worry. She reached out to pinch his nose and squawked when his eyes opened and he grabbed her wrist.

“You're snoring up a storm,” she said. “You'll give us away. How did you do that anyway?”

“What?”

“Go from a snoring sleep to all killer robot.”

“You need to learn how to leverage your Quasing better.”

“Io?”

What do you care? Not like you listen to me anyway.

“My Quasing is pouting,” she said.

I am not!

Cameron checked the time. “Nine minutes.”

Ten seconds later, Ella could hear the soft, even snores hanging in the air again. She kicked off one of her sandals and rubbed her sore feet, and then checked the soles of her shoes. They were worn nearly through. She'd need to visit that Italian shoemaker at the end of Rubber Market. Technically, he wasn't a shoemaker, just a retired soldier who made a living cutting up old tires and using the treads to make sandals. Now that she thought about it, he wasn't even Italian. He was an Armenian or something.

Ella was putting on her second shoe when she noticed a small brown dot on the far wall. At first, she didn't think anything of it. It was probably a smudge or a patch of dirt. Then it grew larger, and became a weird circular hump that expanded directly outward.

Was she seeing things? Ella wasn't quite sure. She was pretty tired. Maybe she was asleep already and was dreaming. Maybe her brain had finally broken from all this stress. Maybe this stupid alien in her head had melted whatever sanity she had left. But there it was; the brown thing grew again until it almost enveloped half the entire far wall. Ella stood up and took a hesitant step forward. She reached out with a finger to poke the expanding bubble.

“Ella, no!”

The warning came too late. No sooner had she poked the bubble, it expanded more until it encompassed her. She took several steps out of the bubble and looked at him. “What is this thing?” Cameron swept her up and carried her, running as far away from the bubble as possible. She looked back and saw the thing chase after them. “What in gods is going on?”

“Frequency visualizer.” Cameron patted the device in one of his pockets as he continued to run. “Brown is tuned to the Penetra scanner frequencies. If that light ever catches up with us, that means we've fallen into the scanner's range.”

They turned the corner, but the ever-expanding brown sphere seemed to be chasing them.

“Is it alive?” she said. “Because it looks like it's smart.”

“They detected a host when you got in their range. They're just heading in our general direction.”

“So what do we do?”

“We keep running.”

The two began a new race through the Crate Town maze until they hit the northern waterline. Ella dragged Cameron west. By now, they were exhausted, and the brown sphere appeared to follow them regardless of which direction they went. Ella changed directions all of a sudden and dragged him through a series of interconnecting containers partially buried in the ground.

“What are these for?” Cameron asked.

“There is a pasture just to the southeast,” she replied. “Livestock had to cross too much traffic to get there, so they linked these containers together and the animals crossed in underpasses.”

She made several turns at the container tunnels, hoping to throw off this crazy brown blob chasing them, although she knew that really didn't make sense. As long as she continued west, she knew she was running away from it. They reached a three-way intersection near the end of a long corridor. Directly ahead was a flow of sewage out into the gulf. The right turn was an exit onto the Tapi River beach.

Ella picked what she felt was the less disgusting route and turned right, and ran straight into a group of darkly-dressed men holding rifles.

“Uh-oh, wrong way,” she said, pushing Cameron in the other direction. “Sewage system it is.”

Cameron drew his pistol, but she pulled him away. “No guns in Crate Town.”

“Why?”

No sooner had they turned the corner, the men opened fire. The echoes from the gunshots were ear-shattering, and the resulting soundwaves in such a tightly enclosed space knocked both of them to the ground. It took her a few seconds to get her wits about her, and she blinked away the ringing in her head. She looked up and saw Cameron, one hand holding a pistol, the other on his temple. She could hear groans coming from around the turn. She staggered to her feet and peeked over the side. Three of the six men were on the ground writhing in pain.

“Come on, let's go,” she said.

“What?” Cameron tapped his ear.

She dragged him along toward the sewer system. They exited the tunnel a few seconds later, and she motioned for him to rest. Her hearing was slowly returning through the constant ringing.

“That's why there are no guns in Crate Town,” she said. “You fire a gun in these metal cans, and that happens. Also, most of these containers are from the war, so they're bulletproof. Bullets ricochet like crazy. I once saw a bullet take out three men at the Cage. Those idiots must have fired fifty rounds between them. I bet half those bullets bounced right back into them.”

“Point taken,” Cameron said, putting his pistol away.

“Come on, that brown blob is still behind us.”

Ella led him down to one of the main drains into the ocean. Cameron protested every step of the way, but the bubble did not follow them after they were approximately seventy meters in.

“That must be the range,” he muttered. “That, or they don't want to follow us in here. Hell, I'd almost rather fight them than wade in here.”

“No one knows the slum better than me,” Ella grinned. “Who owns Crate Town? I do.”

He scowled. “We're knee-deep in shit.”

She shrugged. “You can wash off in the river, though it's probably not much cleaner. Come on, this way.”

They reached Metal Mountain right before dawn. She brought him to one of the containers deeper inside, past dozens of others piled together haphazardly. Most of the containers were still intact, but some were crushed or cut up. Cameron began inspecting some of the container walls, and signaled for her to stop at a particular container that was tilted a little steeper than she was comfortable with.

“It levels out further down,” she said.

He pointed at a faded marking of the letters “Pb” on the wall. “Most of the containers here are like the ones in Crate Town. This one has lead shielding. They were used during the war to cloak hosts from Penetra systems.”

“Does that mean we're safe here?”

“Tao thinks so, or at least they'll have to be really close to detect us.”

“Fine, we'll stop here. Even if they know we're here, they'll never figure out how to get to us.” Shivering, Ella lay down on the ridged floor and huddled into a fetal position to stay warm. The inside of this metallic mountain was freezing and damp. The sun was rising, but it didn't make a difference so deep inside. Back when she had lived in here, she had survived by wrapping herself in half a dozen blankets. Neither of them had that now. It was going to be a miserable day.

Cameron came over and took off his jacket. He wrapped it over her shivering body and lay down next to her.

“What about you?” she asked.

He shrugged. “This isn't too bad. I don't mind.”

It wasn't long, however, before even the tough guy in only a thin layer of thermal clothing began to shiver. Ella crawled a little closer to him and moved his jacket until it partially covered both of them.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Sharing is caring.”

The last thing Ella heard before falling asleep was Cameron's snores echoing throughout the entire mountain.

T
ao opened
Cameron's eyes and watched as Ella got to her feet and struggled to stand on the slippery ribbed surface of the container. The girl put a hand on the wall for balance and moved up the slanted floor one wobbly step at a time. After four or five steps, she slipped and lost her balance, and then slid backward, losing half her progress. This slow crawl continued until she neared the end of the container.