Rebelwing, p.14
Rebelwing, page 14
Seated at the center of the room like a queen upon her throne was a startlingly beautiful woman with shining dark ringlets, legs crossed on the leather sofa. Cradled behind the guitar in her arms, a boy of seven or eight plucked studiously at the strings, his features obscured beneath a wild mop of that same thick dark hair.
The woman’s hands stilled the boy’s small fingers, along with the music. She laughed. “Oh, your son is learning our love songs beautifully, cariño.” She spoke with the faint Spanish accent common to born-and-bred Southwesterners. “He’ll be illegally playing underground concert clubs in Old Guadalajara by the time he’s thirteen, if he takes after you. And yes, you can quote me on your little family video. Don’t think I didn’t see you sneak your shiny new auto-camcorder in, Etienne.”
Etienne and Julia. Pru’s belly twisted as she stared at the little boy tucked between Julia’s arms. So these were Alex’s long-dead parents after all.
“Me!” scoffed the speaker behind the camera—Etienne—in wounded tones. Warmth underlaid his voice as he drew closer to Alex and Julia. “I’m not the one who started Alexandre on piano lessons at four and guitar at six, Julia, much less the legendary songstress who used to play three secret shows for every Mexican music hall the UCC tried to shut down. Once a rebel, always a rebel.”
“But always a musician, first.” The woman raised a pair of terribly familiar eyes toward the camera, dark and fathomless and utterly penetrating. “Always an artist.”
“What do you think, Alexandre?” Julia’s Spanish accent rolled an extra flourish over the R in her son’s decidedly French name. She set their guitar aside, and tucked his mop of dark curls under her chin, as he giggled. “Shall we raise you for art, like me, or for war, like your dramatic gringo of a papá here?”
“Dramatic gringo!” squawked Etienne from behind the camera, dramatically.
His wife’s eyebrows climbed. “I’ve heard you fight with your brother. Dramatic gringo is generous.”
“I love Gabriel,” said Etienne, “but he’s too trusting. Too easily satisfied.” Something in his voice had shifted. “The assumption that we’re safe behind our Barricades, that the UCC will leave us alone now that a ceasefire’s been called and treaties have been signed, it’s a mistake. Incorporated executives are too hungry to leave our cities safe forever. And besides”—the camera bobbed as Etienne took a seat beside Julia—“there’s the rest of the continent to consider. There’s the rest of the world. Not everyone has the privileges of those born behind Barricade Coalition walls.”
“You want to move against Jellicoe.”
“Jellicoe built the first wyverns, Julia,” said Etienne, low and urgent. “It’s what made him so valuable to the Executive General’s military. He didn’t get rid of his labor camps just because the war ended. All he cares about is his bottom line: revenue.”
“Cariño—”
“There are children Alexandre’s age working in those camps. We could put an end to it. To the camps, to Jellicoe, to his whole disgusting operation—”
“I agree.”
“Just because my older brother is too distracted preserving the peace behind our walls to see beyond—what did you just say?”
“I said that I agree with you, you absurd, beautiful crusading man,” repeated Julia patiently. The corner of her full mouth twitched. “Sophie Wu was right, you know. I married into madness when I married into your family.”
“Ma chérie,” said Etienne, with feeling, “I honestly cannot tell if you’re insulting me or enabling me in this moment.”
“Let’s call me a multitasker,” replied his wife dryly. To Alex, who’d been watching his parents with wide, curious dark eyes, she said, “Go, practice your piano scales, mijo. Your father and I will be busy for the next hour.”
“Doing what?” asked Alex, the child’s voice colored with more curiosity than suspicion.
“Planning something exceedingly stupid,” said his mother cheerfully. Then, to her husband, “Shut off that camcorder, my love. We need to discuss strategy.”
The footage paused, along with Pru’s heart. She inhaled through her nose, once, twice, fingers twitching over Rebelwing’s touchpad. Three more videos sat in the queue the dragon had loaded onto the view screen, waiting to be played. With shaky fingers, Pru tugged her phone from her pocket, and thumbed open the society pages’ search engine. It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for: the obituaries of Etienne and Julia Santiago Lamarque. They’d died when Alex was twelve. Pru, when she wracked her brain, faintly recalled headlines and footage of the state funeral for the Head Representative’s younger brother and his wife. A road accident involving a transport mech, supposedly. Tragic, but unremarkable, save the victims’ famous surname.
None of the news outlets had said anything about a scheme against the Executive General’s top arms dealer. The father of wyverns himself.
Pru stared at the somber, scrolling text of the obituaries. Transport mech accident.
“Bullshit,” she whispered at her phone, and hit play.
The next video took a moment to boot up, before two shadowy figures jerked slowly into focus.
“—calice de tabarnac!” one of them hissed. “Gabriel, je crois—”
“Swearing in Québécois doesn’t make your anger any likelier to sway me,” said the opposite figure, in a voice that had graced news broadcasts since Pru’s childhood. The Head Representative. Weariness hung heavy on the well-worn amusement in his tone. “Etienne. I cannot condone the things you’ve been doing behind my back. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
The speakers stood in the hallway, before a familiar couch. With a start, Pru recognized an evening-shaded rendition of the foyer where she’d once sat beside Alex, listening to Mama fight with Gabriel Lamarque. Now Gabriel—younger, the silver absent from his hair and his face unlined—bent toward a lean blond whip of a man, their shoulders knocking together.
“Je sais,” spat Etienne, raking long pale fingers through his hair. He was built slighter than his handsome, soldierly older brother, like he’d been made for the ballet instead of the battlefield, his sun-golden head bright as a candle compared to Gabriel’s brunet coif, but they had the same blue eyes, set over the same sharp, aristocratic bones. “Tu pense que—” With a frustrated snarl, Etienne switched abruptly to English. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Your wife begs to differ,” drawled the Head Representative. “As did Sophie, once upon a time.”
“Sophie Wu stopped taking your calls a year and a half into your first term as Head Representative, so don’t try to weaponize our old war buddies against me,” snapped Etienne. His shoulders slumped at the momentary hurt that skittered across his brother’s face. “Forgive me. That was a low blow. But this was as much Julia’s idea as mine. She and I are united in this.”
“Your unauthorized attacks on Harold Jellicoe’s private com pound, you mean? And how would that poll among the electorate, eh, my own brother and his wife committing treason?”
“Oh, I’m a traitor now, am I?” Etienne’s voice dipped flat and cold. His eyes, narrowed on his brother, were twin chips of ocean-blue ice.
“Of course not! I’m not talking about what you are, I’m talking about what you look like to everyone else!”
Etienne’s pale hair obscured his gaze, as he gave a slow shake of his head. Danger threaded every tension-pulled inch of his body language. “You’ve changed since the war. What did we fight for? I thought it was freedom from Incorporated tyranny, but you seem to think it was for the right to make pretty compromises with men like Jellicoe while children waste away in his camps, bare kilometers from the walls of your precious New Columbia.”
“Alexandre,” said Gabriel.
“Don’t you dare use my son as—”
“No,” said Gabriel Lamarque, in a different voice. “Your son is here.”
Both sets of blue eyes flickered toward the camera. Etienne’s squeezed shut, as his expression crumpled. “Mon fils. How long have you been standing there?”
“You told me I could play with the camcorder,” said a small voice. “I’m sorry, Papa. I heard your voice, and Uncle Gabriel’s, so I thought . . .” Hitched breath. “But I didn’t know—”
“I’m not angry, Alexandre,” said Etienne. His jaw set. “In fact, I’m glad you’re here. You’re getting older. It’s important that you learn what’s worth standing for.” He rounded carefully on his brother. “So long as we live, Julia and I will continue sabotaging Jellicoe’s compound. We will free as many children as we can, and destroy whatever wyvern prototypes we can find in the factories. Arrest us now, if you’d like. But don’t pretend you never had a choice, brother.”
The video ended. Pru didn’t have to wait long, this time, for the next one to start.
A flurry of motion exploded across the view screen. Pru swore, flinching from the white noise that flooded the sound system. As the camera righted itself, Julia Santiago’s face fell into focus. A bruise was blooming over one dark eye, and her cheeks were streaked with soot, but the stark, understated beauty of Alex’s mother was unmistakable. “Alexandre,” she called. “Alex, mijo, I don’t have much time, so I’m using the last of our reserve power to transmit this video. I—your father is dead.” Grief crumpled her features as she spoke, but Julia persisted, steel under her voice. “We miscalculated. Jellicoe was ready for us. He sprang a self-destruct mechanism in one of the wyvern factories. Almost all the children working there were killed, except . . . except one. Badly hurt, but a survivor. A fighter, just like a little cat. I’m copying the child’s coordinates to you and your uncle, so you know where—”
An explosion rocked the lens. Voices rose in alarm over the sound of plasma gunfire in the distance. “It’s over.” Julia’s eyes closed. She tried to smile. “But save the little cat, Alex. If we can save even one child, it will all be worth—”
Another explosion. A final smile bloomed across Julia’s features, even as tears leaked out from beneath her lids, carving long streaks through the soot on her face. “Don’t forget to practice your scales every day, mijo. Guitar and piano both. Even when the world is falling apart, the music still matters, all right? Sometimes, that’s when it matters most. And never doubt that I l—”
A final explosion shorted out the remainder of the video.
Pru pressed the heels of her hands against stinging eyes, thumbing angrily at the tears at their corners. Exhaling through the threat of a sob, she skipped to the next video in the queue. Second to last.
The picture took a moment to calibrate, shuddering in and out of focus. Someone blinked over the lens. “You’re not Etienne,” said the voice from behind the camera, young and suspicious. “Or Julia.”
“No, I’m not.” The answering voice had deepened since Pru last heard it on the recording, but there was no mistaking that mop of dark hair, or the great black eyes peering out from beneath its fringe. Barbed wire crisscrossed the fences behind him, beneath the half-light of a graying sky. “I’m Alex.”
“Who’s Alex?”
The boy—not the round-faced child he’d been, nor the svelte young man Pru knew now, but Alex at the dawn of his teens, all jutting bones and growing shoulders—swallowed, lifted his chin, and said, “Their son. What’s your name?”
A pause tightened between boy and camera. Then, as if offering something breakable on outstretched fingers, “Your parents called me Cat.”The little cat. The back of Pru’s head thudded against the cockpit seat. Of course. That machine-made eye Cat wore. There would be a camera at its center, to allow its owner a full range of vision. The engineer’s eyes recorded everything she saw. Literally. And that included Alex and his family, never truly off-camera, even in these quiet, stolen moments of a war-worn childhood. Pru studied the barbed wire in the footage, letting its implications settle into her mind.
“Cat,” repeated Alex. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
“You?” Even a few years younger, even trapped in an Incorporated labor camp, a familiar skepticism colored the way Cat spoke. It almost made Pru smile. “What are you, twelve?”
“Fourteen!”
“And you, a fourteen-year-old, are going to sneak me out of Harold Jellicoe’s famously well-guarded labor camp.”
Alex’s jaw set, the subtle, stubborn twitch of that facial expression jarringly familiar on this younger, softer face. “I promised my parents I would.”
“Are you here alone?”
Alex bit his lip.
“Mierda,” swore Cat. “You are, aren’t you? How did you make it past the sentinel mechs? Good god, does anyone even know you’re here?”
“I’m good with mechs. And no, not right now,” Alex admitted. His smile was too thin for someone three years younger than Pru was now. “But my uncle will, inside the hour. I figure that’s about as long as I need to convince you to sneak out the back gate with me, before the next round of sentinels show up.”
“Your uncle the Head Representative?”
“Uncle Gabriel won’t just send a Coalition ops team to save some Incorporated kids under Jellicoe’s thumb,” said Alex bluntly. “He’s . . . it’s not like he doesn’t want to, but it’s his job to keep the peace, you know?”
“Then why the hell did you come here?”
“Because he’ll send whatever it takes to save me.”
A blink over the lens. “You’re using yourself as bait? For someone you’ve never met?”
“We have too met. We met, like, ten minutes ago.”
“You could die!”
“We both could, yeah,” agreed Alex. He gave a mulish little shrug. “But Papa said once, when I was a kid—”
A snort. “You’re still a kid.”
“—that it’s important to know what you stand for. And like I said.” A strange, hungry expression flickered over Alex’s face, painting vulnerable planes where he hadn’t yet grown into those Lamarque cheekbones. “I made a promise.” His hand extended between them. “Please. Will you come?”
The footage ended. Only one video clip remained. Pru took a breath, checked the manual remote to make sure Rebelwing was still locked in stealth mode. Then, swallowing, she hit play.
The camera lens jerked around a few times, before settling on an engineer’s workshop. Gone were the barbed wire and muted hues of the Incorporated factory. In the background hung the flag of the Barricade Coalition: a white starburst against a navy blue field. Pinned beneath it was the seal of the city of New Columbia: swords crossed over a flame red poppy. Before the camera, a pair of hands—Cat’s hands, gloved in worker’s synthetics—poked and prodded at the deconstructed pieces of what looked like a hastily crafted robot. “Wrench.”
Someone shuffled off-camera. A tiny silver wrench arced through the air, and landed in Cat’s outstretched palm. Cat grunted her thanks, and returned to prying apart the robot. “I need to ask a favor of you. Wire.”
“Favor, eh?” A ball of neatly rolled-up chrome-plated wire landed next. Alex ambled into view. He looked the same age he had in the previous recording: still a few years shy of his present-day self, all gangly limbs and soft features. “Sounds like a bigger deal than handing you discarded robot bits or an engineering kit.”
The camera shuddered. “You say you’re good with mechs. You were good enough to get past Jellicoe’s sentinels. Well, I’m a good engineer. I built my own damn prosthetics after Jellicoe nearly killed me. I’ve studied cyborgs and robots and every kind of mech under the sun. I know how his wyverns work. And I know Jellicoe’s not going to stop building them, not so long as they turn a profit.”
“I know,” said Alex softly. “Where are you going with this?”
Cat dropped the wrench and wire with an angry clang. “I want you to help me build something stronger than a wyvern. Something that could blow those disgusting machines to pieces and eat them alive.”
“Like a dragon?”
“Take this seriously!” snapped Cat. “Also, aren’t those the same thing as wyverns?
A smile fought the corners of Alex’s mouth. “No, they’re not. Not always. You don’t read many fantasy novels, do you?”
“In UCC-controlled territory, practically choking on censorship regulations? Astonishingly not. I’m asking for your support in crushing Jellicoe, not creating some . . . pale copy of his monsters.”
“That’s not what a dragon would be.” Pru could practically see the gears turning, lightning quick behind this younger Alex’s gleaming dark eyes. “Not one we made. It would be better. It would be ours. Not all mechs have to be monsters.”
“And what would differentiate our dragon from Jellicoe’s wyverns, pray tell?”
Alex’s smile grew in full at the word our. “Free will.”
Cat sucked in a breath. “Sentience. You’re talking about programming sentience into artificial intelligence.”
“Yes.”
“Engineers have been working on that for years.”
“Yes.”
“No one’s succeeded.”
“No one invented the lightbulb before Thomas Edison decided to, either. Think about it, Cat.” Alex leaned over Cat’s worktable, long hands twisting together. “Jellicoe could never build something that freely chose its companion pilots. No one Incorporated could. It would be too human. Too kind.”
Cat said nothing. The camera was shuddering again, as she stripped her gloves.
“Come on, mi gato,” whispered Alex, and he sounded like a gangly-limbed boy once again. Bright, painful hope colored his inflections. “You want to build something that will tear apart Jellicoe’s monsters? This is the way. I’ll help you. I promise. You know I keep my promises.” Pru blinked, listening to this younger Alex’s voice crack on the recording, and wondered exactly how many days or weeks or months had passed since his parents had died trying to save Cat, and kids like her. How many times he’d replayed his mother’s final video message.
