Ixeos: Book One of the Ixeos Trilogy (12 page)

Gilles gave a Gallic shrug. “They do not do anything in the way that you mean. They do not spend time with their families over a good meal and a glass of wine. They do not go to a beautiful beach and watch the sunrise. The old ones teach the young ones, they work on their science, their laboratories, they have a government structure that makes sure everyone does their tasks. And that is all.”

Neahle frowned. “But that’s not living! Why did they need your planet if they don’t care about its beauty? Couldn’t they have found some barren planet somewhere?” She was frustrated and scared and she felt like she was on the verge of hysteria.

Gilles gave her a one armed hug and a smile. “We ask these questions, too,
mon cher
, but there are no answers. They came because they were like us and they could pretend to be us until their plan was in place. They came because we already had the buildings, the basis for technology, we had energy and food and water and air. They came because they could and they killed billions of people because they could. There is no other reason.”

Neahle flopped down in an upholstered high back wing chair. She closed her eyes, feeling the exhaustion and fear mingling together. She hadn’t signed up for this! She didn’t know how to run and hide and kill people. She felt Hannah’s hand on her knee and opened her eyes to see the young woman kneeling beside her, her pale eyes intense.

“I know, honey. It’s your first mission, and it’s been a doozy. I’m sorry. I can’t say you’ll get used to it, but you’ll get better at it, and that’s the truth.” She smiled and squeezed Neahle’s knee, then stood.

“Will we get the others tonight?” she asked Gilles.

“
Oui.
They will not send another watcher tonight, I do not think. When this one does not come back, in the morning, they may send someone then. We will go a back way, not on the main road. Just you and me—Neahle can stay here and sleep where she will be safe.”

Almost asleep in the chair, Neahle felt a quilt being placed gently over her and her hair being smoothed back from her face. A gentle kiss was placed on her head; she didn’t know if it was from Hannah or Gilles. As she drifted off, she focused her thoughts on Gilles and what it would have been like to meet him in her world. She did not think about the dead First.

Chapter Fifteen

A
t midnight, Vasco and Monkey
stood and brushed the dirt and leaves off their pants. They’d shared a dry, tasteless dinner of homemade granola bars and water, which hadn’t been particularly impressive. Since then, Marty had alternated between needing to use the bathroom and wanting to fall asleep. He finally asked where he could do the former and was shown a bush.

The three walked, skirting the riverbank, for a quarter mile, then slipped into the darkness between two small industrial buildings that had long been abandoned. Marty could barely see Monkey, whom he was supposed to be following, and missed it when the Mayan slipped through a doorway. Jogging past, he stopped suddenly when someone grabbed the back of his shirt.

“What?” Marty started to yell, then found a hand over his mouth. He started to panic before realizing it was Vasco.

“Stay with us!” he hissed in Marty’s ear. Vasco led him through the dark door into an even darker space beyond.

“Where are we?” Marty asked.

“We keep some bikes here. Painted the windows black. Can you ride?” Monkey clicked on a tiny pen light and pointed it at an old dirt bike propped up on its stand.

Marty shook his head.

“Behind me then,” Monkey said, walking to a slightly larger road bike. He climbed on, kicked the start, and motioned for Marty to join him. When Marty was securely behind, one hand gripping the small bar at the back of the seat and the other arm around Monkey’s waist, Monkey clicked off the penlight. Vasco’s bike purred to life. The motorcycles didn’t have large engines and weren’t loud, but in the small space and the silence of the deserted city the sound made Marty jump.

Monkey turned his head and looked over his shoulder. “Hold on. When I stop, get off. If I run, you run. Don’t speak. If you lose me, follow the river south, back here.” He raised his eyebrows to make sure Marty understood, then nodded and turned around. The bikers went through the narrow doorway and turned left, back towards the street.

Marty had only ridden on a motorcycle once in his life, when his Uncle Mike, Clay’s dad, had taken him down Front Street in Beaufort. He had been ten, and Clay’s helmet had been so big that it kept sliding down over his eyes. He hadn’t understood that he needed to lean with the bike and had felt like he was constantly about to fall off. When his uncle deposited him back in the driveway, Marty had decided he would be happy never to ride another motorcycle for the rest of his days.

This ride made that one look like the Dumbo ride at Disney. Vasco and Monkey flew down the Quai de la Megisserie, keeping the Seine on their left. Neither turned on their lights and no one wore a helmet. The one time Marty dared to look at the speedometer, it read one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. He didn’t look again.

There were no longer any traffic rules, or, if there were the men ignored them. No stopping for stop signs, stop lights, or crosswalks. They barely slowed for curves and turns. Marty put his head down and closed his eyes, trying to hold on and lean when he was supposed to. And he prayed. Hard and out loud.

After fifteen minutes, they stopped and Marty heard Monkey say “Off!” He jumped off, looking around for Vasco. They were under a canopy of trees in a park next to an old bridge. Across the river, Marty could see the outline of buildings but no lights. Looking west, though, Marty could see a vague haze of buildings and street lights.

“What’s that?” he whispered, pointing.

“La Defense,” Monkey answered. “Home of the Firsts. Come on.”

Leaving the bikes behind a row of overgrown decorative shrubs, Vasco led them through the park to the edge of the bridge. He crouched down and Monkey followed suit. Marty knelt on one knee beside them.

“This is the most dangerous part. You’ve got to stay
low
, below the level of the rail. We’ve got to stay on the shadowed side. When we get across, turn right and stop behind the bus shelter. If something happens on the bridge, dive off. The current will take you downstream. Stay underwater as much as you can, come up quick for breaths, then dive deep. There’s a dock a half a mile down. Swim to that, stay in the water, and wait. Got it?” Vasco looked at him intently.

“Dive off?” Marty asked. He looked at the bridge. It wasn’t terribly high, but still, it was probably at least a twenty or thirty foot drop, and the night was dark. There were immense stone columns holding up the bridge, which, if you dove off the wrong side, would crush you as the current hurled you forward.

“Dive off,” Vasco confirmed.

“Sure, no problem.” Marty wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it, so he just prayed he wouldn’t have to.

The moon was only a crescent, and there were clouds in the sky, so visibility was at a minimum. The bridge was dim; it was only by the slightest degree that the far side was more shadowed than the near. Vasco went first, then Marty, then Monkey, and Marty knew that he had to follow Vasco in speed and posture exactly, or Monkey would be on him. His quads burned like the time his gym teacher had introduced them to plyometrics.
Boy, would Mr. Jenkins like to know about this workout
, Marty thought grimly.

Fast and low, the men ran the quarter mile across and turned right. When Vasco straightened up and ran flat out, Marty followed suit. He could hear Monkey’s footsteps behind him. Coming to a stop behind a stone shelter, Vasco bent at the waist and took deep gulps of air. Marty sat down and leaned back against the wall.

“Okay, that was fun. Not,” he said. “There’s not even anybody here.”

“Not tonight,” Monkey agreed. He took a bottle of water from his back pack and took a swig. “There have been.”

“Firsts?” Marty asked.

“Street people,” Vasco said. “Most of the real crazies have been killed by the Firsts—the ones who were truly insane or addicts who couldn’t understand that they needed to stay hidden. But there are gangs out here. They’re only out for themselves. They find or make drugs and alcohol and they prey on the weak. Sometimes they kill Firsts, but sometimes they kill our people, or rebels, or some of the people who are somewhere in between.”

“In between what?” Marty asked.

Vasco sat down next to him. “Not everyone is a warrior, Marty. And not everyone is a criminal. Most of the people who found a way to escape the Firsts fled the city. They scrape out an existence in hovels in the mountains or forests. But sometimes they need things and they come to the city to scavenge: clothes, medicines, even weapons. These people, they just want to be left alone by everyone. We talk to them if we can, try to make them understand the need to bring down the Firsts, but few will listen. They’re free to choose that, even if I disagree.”

“If I could choose, I’d probably go live in Jordan and take up fishing,” Marty said, feeling the pulse in his neck with his fingers. “This is pretty insane.”

Vasco smiled. “Yep, it is. Pretty insane. But we can beat them or we wouldn’t have been brought here. And if we win, then there are a whole lot of people who will be free again. That’s what you have to keep in mind.” He stood, pulling Marty to his feet.

“We’re almost there now. You may not like all the running around and hiding, but I guarantee you’ll like this next part.” Nodding at Monkey, he took off again, jogging into the myriad old buildings on the island.

The computer station was housed in a huge bank vault. Cable had been run all over the floor, coming from holes that had been drilled through the ceiling outside the metal structure. Two men in their twenties and a teenage girl looked up when they walked in. All smiled hello but went right back to the screens in front of them. Marty stopped at the door, dumbstruck.

Four large conference tables had been set up in the vault, making a square. On top of the tables were at least twenty computers of various kinds. Laptops sat side by side with personal towers, but three commercial servers were set in the middle of the large square. Everything was lit up, and the only sound was the tapping of keyboards.

“There’s power!” Marty said, stating the obvious.

“Yep. It took us two years, but we’ve run cable from La Defense’s grid. Landon brought over this genius kid Boz about six years ago. His dad was some kind of electrical engineer guru and he knows all about power, internet, all kinds of stuff. We’ve started tapping the grids in all the major cities we can access and are slowly setting up computer centers. We’ve only got four right now, but Boz has plans for at least a dozen.” Vasco went over to the techs and looked over their shoulders.

“That’s freaking amazing,” Marty breathed, walking over to the table. There were Macs and HPs and Dells and some that looked hand made. Most of the monitors were at least seventeen inches, with a few massive thirty inch screens taking up space. The screensavers spelled out “Save the Planet” across multiple screens.

“Cute…” he muttered.

“So Marty,” Vasco finally said. “Can you do something with this?”

Looking up from the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro he’d been fooling with, Marty grinned. “Oh, yeah…”