NAAN (The Rabanians Book 1) (5 page)

“Dug!” Daio raised his voice and Dug walked angrily towards the wall that hid the toilet.

“Even if you scrambled information they cannot do anything to you,” said Daio and looked at me. “Don’t worry about us. Look at this place. There is nothing we can do.”

I removed my shoulders from his grip.

The sound of a hovercraft motor suddenly interrupted our conversation. We looked at each other surprised. 

“That is really close,” said Dug.

Daio gazed at the ceiling. “We are outside. Probably in some kind of compound.”

The cell started to vibrate. I heard hydraulic engines start up and a few bangs shook the bars. High pitched squealing followed. It gave me the creeps. The noises suddenly stopped and then the hydraulic engines came on again.  Next we heard the sound of steel hitting steel and another noise I could not identify. The cell started to vibrate again and the squeaky noises returned, then everything went silent. The hydraulic engines roared again and with them the sound of the hovercraft engines. We could tell the hovercraft was leaving. Its noise faded away to nothing.

“What was all that?” asked Dug.

“These cells,” said Daio, “I think they are detachable.”

“Detachable?” wondered Dug.

“They can be moved from place to place. I think they just lowered a new cell.”

I sniffed the air and walked towards the open window. “I think they emptied the trash,” I said and sniffed again.

"I can’t smell anything," said Daio touching his nose.

Dug nostrils expanded and he took a deep breath.  “Great, they empty the trash,” he said. “I am glad we cleared this matter up.”

Daio chuckled. He walked to the sink, opened the tap and started to clean the blood from his face.

“How do you know they want to kill us,” asked Dug. “There wasn't a trial and not every scrambling trial ends with a death sentence.”

“It was in the network,” I said. I hadn’t had time to look but this was the only thing I could think of.

“What was in the network?'” continued Dug.

“After I removed your pictures, I looked deeper. They’re saying one of our boxes caused a lot of damage and they are going to judge us harshly for it.”

“And you manage do all this in just a few seconds? Change our pictures and names and still have time to find this?"

I didn't answer. Daio looked at me as he walked from the sink to the bed.

“I am not a liar,” I said confidently as I could. I couldn't tell Daio what was on my mind. I was afraid of him like a son is afraid of his father’s reaction to something really stupid he did. In addition, I thought there was still a chance for us to find a way out of this without me needing to tell them my suspicions.  Besides, maybe it wasn't me after all.

We heard the lock on the door click open. It slid aside and two Flyeyes rushed inside. They moved fast, looking in every direction, then they hovered in front of Daio and Dug. A few seconds later they both flew towards me and hovered in front of my face. I trembled with fear. They both had a small lump at their bottom. I knew they carried a deadly gas that would kill us all in seconds.

A man walked into the cell and ordered them to leave. They awoke, lifted above me, and rushed towards the door.

“My name is Anigram, I am the chief of this detaining facility,” he said and gazed at each of us. “I assume you know why you are here?” 

He walked and stood in front of me.

“You are Sosi,” he said and nodded. “Eighteen years old.”

“He is seventeen years old,” said Daio immediately and rose from the bed.

Anigram gazed at him with full contempt. “A bit too late to worry about your little brother, don't you think?” He looked back at me. “Usually at such an age the system tries to find you an appropriate vocation and maybe pull away the evil within you, but under the circumstances I doubt that it is possible.”

“What circumstances?” asked Dug.

“We'll move you from here in few days. You'll receive a closed trial. I assume you know why. You will have a lawyer but this is only a formality.”

“Closed trial?” called Daio. “We are box traders! You cannot hold us accountable if other people broke the law by using them.”

Anigram walked towards him. “These boxes have only one purpose and it is forbidden.” He examined Daio's face. “You know, the difference between real and fake innocence is in controlling your facial expression, and as a professional information scrambler you should work on yours."

“I am not faking anything,” said Daio, “and I would like to know what we are being charged with.”

“The damage you caused goes beyond any use of regular or accelerated box. You caused an unimaginable damage to the future of Seragon.”

“We?” said Dug, his voice squeaked.

“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Daio.

Anigram gave him a blank look. He didn't really know what it was all about. The arrest report had contained only one line: "Arrested due to potential future damage to Seragon."

He’d seen countless arrest reports. They always had at least one paragraph explaining the crime, never just one line. Either someone high in the government was eager to put his hands on them for no reason, or the felony was so big they didn't want to detail it. Either way Anigram wanted to know who they really were.

He looked at us for few more seconds and shook his head in disappointment. “Food will be brought in through the slot in the door,” he said and pointed. He then walked out of the cell and the door closed behind him with a thud.

“That was interesting,” said Daio. He looked at Dug’s pale face. “Potential future damage. What does that even mean?"

“I don’t think he knows,” said Dug and sat on the bed.

To me it was completely clear.

He had replaced the hinges a few days ago and the feeling was so good that he regretted he hadn’t done it long before. But it was only temporary feeling; the surgeons had told him two hundred years before that replacing the hinges would make him feel younger. They’d also warned him that once the mechanism had been opened, new problems would arise. Bless them, thought the Doctor as he walked towards the governor’s house. He felt decades younger and it was just in time too.

It was the season when the plague would strike and he would need to do a lot of walking to and from the White Plains. But the plague came every year. They were not the reason he had decided to replace the hinges. For a few years, he had been expecting the arrival of the person who had made the journey to this human wasteland. He felt his arrival was close now. He didn't know what exactly would happen or how things would evolve. He had plans of course, but he felt it wasn't going to be simple and didn't want his legs to hold him back.

Very few people were in the streets and he used this lull to go out to the forest and send a message to the rebels. Twice in the past he had contacted them and asked them to be alert.  His contacts had become impatient and told him they would charge him for every additional false alarm. Nevertheless he sent the message again. He was sure this time.

Two days had passed since Anigram’s visit to the cell. Once a day someone slid synthetic food through the slot in the door. Their meals consisted of tasteless carbohydrates and proteins blocks. Dug tried to mix them to create different tastes but other than giving him something to do, his efforts were wasted.

Thoughts of escape never left my mind. Even during, the second night in the cell, I found myself completely awake, my head filled with ideas. I didn't mention the escape to my brothers anymore. I guess I was in shock when they first brought us in. Now it seemed stupid of me to talk to them about the urgency of finding a way out.  They had given up. There was nothing they could do about it. I, on the other hand, couldn’t think of anything else.

I lay on my bed above Daio. The cell was dark, but from time to time, I opened my eyes and looked around hoping for inspiration. I could see some details of the cell, but really how stimulating can a steel, echoing cell be? Even the chairs and table were bolted to the floor.

I wondered how quick the trial and the sentencing would be. Not very long, I assumed. It would be tomorrow or at most the day after, unless they decided to interrogate us beforehand. If they did they would soon learn it was all me. Surely they would want to know how I did it. I would have. If this smart database, Shor, were so important they would need to find out how they could protect it from future attacks.

I went back to wondering for a second if I was completely wrong and this whole idea was just a figment of my wild imagination. I shook off this thought and went back to thinking about the escape. It's hard to plan an escape from a place when you don't know the layout.  Someone once said that brilliant ideas don't just pop into our minds without proper preparation. One needs to stimulate the mind, to think about the problem he is facing, to think about the surroundings, and to give the mind all the available tools. You need to give the unconscious mind free rein to find creative solutions. When it works, sometimes an idea you never could have come up with, suddenly pops into the conscious mind.

The only thing that popped into my mind just then was a new wave of foul odor from the nearby cell. A disgusted feeling rose within me. I turned to the side and fell asleep thinking about the escape. 

The smell was in my head when I suddenly woke up with an escape plan. Sometimes I dream of things that are completely logical, but when I awake in the morning they turn out to be ridiculously unrealistic.  The idea was completely crazy but made some sense, yet I still wasn't sure I was fully awake.

I opened and closed my eyes several times but in the darkness my state of consciousness was still unclear. Were the cells identical? Was their opening mechanism the same? I closed my eyes and thought through the escape steps, but they were complete conjecture. Beyond the idea for how to get out of the cell, I didn't really know what would follow.

I sank into my thoughts and fell asleep. I woke a short time later in a panic. The cell reverberated with strange noises. I opened my eyes wide and lifted my head. Two bulgy Flyeyes hovered in the middle of the room. They were the source of the irritating noise. I noticed Daio’s legs
sprout from underneath me. In the nearby bed Dug leaned on his elbow.

“What happened,” I asked looking again at the Flyeyes. Neither of them had an answer. I didn't remember hearing the door open. The noise it made when it opened or closed could wake up dead.

“What do you think?” asked Dug and looked at Daio.

“I don't know. Doing nothing is probably safest,” said Dug huskily.

The cells. The dream popped into my head. I was surely awake now. If the cells were identical it could work.
I must get out of this cell
, I thought. I looked at the Flyeyes. They were hovering in front of me. The bulge in their belly looked threatening, but maybe it was my way out.

I sat up in my bed and jumped down.

“Sosi,” I head Daio yelling from behind me. I stepped forward but he grabbed my shirt. I pulled the shirt out of his hands, jumped on the chair, and skipped high enough to punch one of the Flyeyes in its belly. It smashed into the ceiling then started making strange noises and trying to recover.

“Sosi!” yelled Daio and Dug together. They said something else, but I couldn’t understand them because of the stun charges hitting me all over my body.  A hissing, noise like the sound snake followed and a suffocating smell entered my throat.  I fell on the floor my eyes shut, my body trembling, and my throat completely blocked.