Stop.
Rosabelle, do you trust me?
I close my eyes, pressing my shaking hands to the cold, wet ground. I inhale the icy air, tasting rain.
I’ve been living here too long.
Almost a month I’ve spent in a world without the Nexus—without synthetic intelligence—without the constant fear of looking into someone’s eyes and being surveilled for information.
I have a job to do; it’s time to go home.
It was a relief to discover that, all this time, I’d been deposited on the southwestern coast of what used to be North America. All these weeks of not knowing my location had made it difficult to strategize. Now at least I know that I’m not so far from the Ark as to make the journey home feel impossible—and yet not close enough to accept anythingless efficient than a plane for transportation.
I sigh.
Reflexively, I lean my aching body against a massive tire of the maintenance truck, then quickly straighten, refusing to accept help even from inanimate objects.
The trouble is I trust nothing, dead or alive.
Rosabelle, do you trust me?
Stop—
If you trust me, we can fix this together. If you trust me, everything is simple—
STOP, I scream in the silence of my mind.
My heart continues to race and I exhale hard, wicking away the memories, forcing my mind to blank. I clench and unclench my deadened fists, then reassess the parked jets through the unrelenting downpour.
They look new, or at least well-maintained, but they’re unmistakably older models built for an era of weaker security. They have internal combustion engines, not electric motors; requiring fuel, not batteries. They don’t appear to be secured by external locking mechanisms or even basic biometric scans.
Essentially: unprotected.
I spent the last decade of my life surviving on an island where every person is connected to a neural network—a network that effectively transforms all beings, human and animal, into active recording devices. Every pair of eyes is a camera; every thought uploaded to a server; every word spoken and unspoken transmitted to a central surveillance office.
No one is safe.
No mother is spared spying on her child; no husband spared spying on his wife. But here—
I have no idea how they keep order.
I suppose it’s possible that the weak security measures of the mainland are enough to keep its civilians in line, but their outdated technology is so unsophisticated I’m almost disappointed. The rebels don’t appear to understand how vulnerable they are. Hacking these ancient systems will require little effort.
Still, I’m not prepared to leave.
Not only would it be impossible to fly in this weather, but I can’t face Klaus without the right weapon; the synthetic brain that controls the surveillance technology of Ark Island is too inhuman to be killed easily. My only chance at disrupting the system, destroying the Ark, and saving my sister requires tracking down the authentic vial of earth—which means the hardest part of my mission is still ahead of me.
And I need to be untraceable.
I’ll have to find a new source of shelter every night, but first I need to verify my exit plan. My short-term goal is to wait for nightfall before stowing away in a nearby hangar, where I’ll be close enough to test my theories about these jets. I’ll need at least a few days to do some basic reconnaissance, not only at the airfield but—
“Hey,” he whispers. “Why are you dressed like a cat?”
My body turns to lead.
7
Rosabelle
