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  Fatigued and distracted by the entos’ bizarre behavior, I failed to notice I wasn’t alone until someone clamped a hand over my mouth.

  “Don’t fight,” he said and dragged me toward the lift.

  Right. Why did attackers always tell their victims not to fight? Possibly because docile females were easier to kill? Not this woman. I’d taken self-defense classes and had no intention of making it easy for him to kill me. I kicked back, driving my heel into his shin.

  Oomph. The air whooshed out of his lungs as one of my elbows impacted with his gut. His grip loosened for a second but not enough to break free. I grabbed his elbow and tried to twist. He lifted me from my feet, where I flailed and kicked like an angry toddler.

  “I told you not to fight. I’m not going to hurt you. I only want to talk, somewhere not in the open.”

  Not going to happen. Rule number one: Don’t let the attacker take you someplace private. Nine out of ten times, the aggressor did it so he could kill without getting caught. I kicked again. Even our island paradise had a few sickos. Somehow I’d managed to find one.

  “I have a tranq-gun. If I remove my hand and you scream, I’ll use it.”

  And some rules were meant to be broken. Staying conscious would be key to getting out of this. I knew not to chance it. Better I go with him now and take the first opportunity presented to introduce his balls to his tonsils with my boot. My odds of escape improved if I remained awake and in control of my body. I gave a nod to let him know he could take his hand away.

  “What’s your unit number?”

  “I’m not letting you into my apartment.”

  “We can’t stay out here, unless you want to get shot.” He grabbed my arm and escorted me toward the lift with the business end of the tranq pressed against my neck. “And that’s what our illustrious leaders do to bad little boys and girls who don’t follow the rules.”

  Was it? Those soldiers carried blaster rifles for a reason and I wouldn’t be surprised if what he said was true. Sure, I had to be awake to escape, and what he’d said struck a nerve. I gave up the number for my flat. “B-four-two-three.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “I have a big scary boyfriend with lots of weapons.”

  “So you live alone. Let’s go.” He shoved my shoulder, forcing me into the lift. Grabbing my hand, he pressed my palm and chip against the reader. “Bravo four-two-three,” he said to the control panel. The door slid shut, and we began our ascent.

  Damn, he knew I’d lied about the boyfriend. He hadn’t even second guessed. I studied him. He could be good at reading faces, or my hair might have flashed the tale-tell funky green it gave off when I lied. I lifted a strand. No color change, but it didn’t mean it hadn’t exposed my lie.

  As if reading my thoughts, he looked up to where my apartment sat. “It doesn’t take a genius to know if you had a big scary boyfriend up there with an arsenal at his disposal, you wouldn’t warn me. Plus, if you had a sanctioned relationship, you’d have a barcode on your left wrist, or if you were sterilized on your right. Nice hair by the way.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled and frowned, glancing down at my bare wrists. Yeah, he had me there. Wrist seals—good for one conception—or none at all.

  He let me go, and I spun around and stepped back to lean against the other side of the lift, attempting to get a better look at my attacker. It proved to be impossible with his face half covered by the thick padded-rubber mask soldiers all wore to create a light-proof seal when they pulled their helmets on. The viz controls functioned best in the dark, and many navigated the streets by the technology alone, not bothering to use their eyes when they had heat sensors and motion detection technology in the helmet. Seeing a soldier wearing the half padded mask was less surprising than if he didn’t wear one.

  “Nice outfit,” I complimented him back. No sane person but a soldier would dare to wear what he had on, and this man was no soldier. I eyed his hand, not missing the fact he’d burnt his chip.

  “I think so.”

  I glared at my captor. “So, where’d you steal the uniform from?”

  He smiled back. “It’s not stolen.”

  “Right.” His black pants were bloused in equally black but very shiny boots. He wore a military issue, black tee without rank or insignia of any kind, the type worn by special ops. The outline of something not body armor underneath his stolen uniform couldn’t be hidden from anyone who really looked. An electrical insulating suit and a membership card in what group he chose to hang with.

  An anarchist.

  The radicals were the primary reason the city went into lockdown. They incited the riots. They’d created doubt in society about the technology we’d relied on for years. They had otherwise peaceful communities at each other’s throats and encouraged the people to revolt and migrate to the Mainland, to never be heard from again.

  His agenda could be anything, but one thing would be a guarantee. It wouldn’t be good.

  I slid my hands along the rail and gripped it tightly on both sides of my body until my fingers began to tingle. Nobody would miss me. I had no family here, and I worked an on call job. Since I’d finished out my contract for the next week, nobody would know I’d vanished for a good long while. I had at least a week before my boss would call me in to run the hives through another test. By then, I’d be dead or who knew where. Which made me question how long he’d been stalking me.

  “I know you’re scared, but I assure you I’m not here to hurt you.”

  “Yeah.” I bit my lip. “Of course not. Forced abduction is always a sign of good intention.” Freaks. Running around in rubber suits in tropical heat, believing the bees would attack. They were determined to shut down the power net, our lifeline. I knew there would be no reasoning with him. As if the malfunctioning hives didn’t cause enough problems, his people wanted to ensure the extinction of every man, woman, and child who lived on the islands through the starvation and the violence which would follow.

  My heart pounded against my ribs, and each second felt like an hour ticking by in the silence of the lift. What did he intend to do? Rape and murder me? Could he be the one responsible for kidnapping the beekeepers? If so, the situation brought me full circle and back to option B—dead. Regardless of the disguise, something felt familiar about him. The more I engaged him, the better chance I’d have of figuring out why. “Come here and abduct women often?”

  “Just you.”

  “I feel special.” I took note of the soil on his boots. With the cities covered in pavement and moving sidewalks, and where most took the travel-pede in between the train stations, the only way he’d picked up the dirt on his foot gear had to be from tromping through a field or one of the floating food plots.

  “You have no idea how special.”

  “I have credit, lots of it.” I did. I’d banked it for months with no particular goal in mind. A rainy day fund, and today the forecast called for storms.

  “I don’t want your money, sweetheart,” my abductor said.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Then tell me your name.”

  “Fuck off.” I stared. He could have my credit, but I’d be damned if I gave him any more.

  His brilliant blue eyes flashed with amusement from the holes in his mask. One corner of his mouth twitched. “Nice to meet you, Fuck Off. My name is Eli.”

  “Well, Eli, if Eli really is your name, what do you want with me?”

  “And that would be the billion credit question, wouldn’t it?”

  “I think if you’re going to abduct me, the least you could do is answer.” I glared back, refusing to show him my fear. “Especially if you expect my cooperation.”

  “Ah, so we’re negotiating now?”

  “Are you a negotiating man?”

  “No. I take what I want. Deal done.” He shrugged his shoulders.

  Yeah, I’d called it. Nothing I said would make a difference. “And what is it you want?”

  “You. I wan
t you.”

  I swallowed the knot lodged in my throat. “Why?”

  “What if I told you there were real bees, not the flying hunks of metal you call bees, on the planet, thriving across the sea, and it’s safe to travel there, bring them back? We don’t have to rely any more on the little monsters we use now.”

  “On the Mainland?” I choked back a laugh. Serious delusion there. “Now, there’s a fairytale I haven’t heard before. I’d say you’re full of shit. Nobody has ever come back from overseas to verify the validity of the myth. Besides, our bees work fine—well, they will work fine once we adjust the programming—and are superior to the real thing, nothing monstrous about them. We don’t need to replace them, merely fix them.”

  “You really believe there isn’t a problem? No, you know there is, and no technology can ever replace nature without consequences. Is it also impossible the Teslan power grid is responsible for killing the honeybees in Sententia. And if we didn’t have it, we could live a better life without being dependent on someone else to make sure we had what we needed? What if I told you I know someone who’s traveled across the ocean to a place called the United Regions? There are people there, and most important, there are vast spaces of land which can be farmed and settled. Our every move doesn’t have to be approved. We could be free to do what we want, have marriages with anyone we want, and as many children as we desire to make.”

  “I’ve heard your conspiracy theory too, and no, I think our scientists would have figured out long ago if we could settle there. The rest of the planet is dead. It has been for years.”

  “No, not dead. As for our government lying to us, certain individuals stand to make billions off the power grid here in Sententia—and are. Of course they will lay the blame on something else. Do you realize how much credit they will lose when we shut the grid down and leave the islands?”

  I shook my head. “The towers have been around since before the war. If they were the cause of the bees’ demise, we’d have done something long before. Besides, it’s impossible to shut the Net down. You have to get to the satellite in space to disconnect. You can take down the towers, but unless the uplink is cut, they can always be rebuilt. We don’t have the resources to build vessels to travel into space.”

  “They did do something. They created the ento-robites. And no, it’s not impossible to shut the Net down and from right here on the islands. In Sententia, our resources are limited. Out there, in the rest of the world, they won’t be. We can change everything, break out of this prison. The Net isn’t our only issue though. Your mechanical bees have default codes, designed to turn them into a weapon. Did you know they have the ability to override your programming and take matters into their own wings and opt for self-preservation? The ento-robites are an interactive intelligence and learn from experience. Since we’ve been trying to shut the power grid down, they’ve gone on the defense. They need the power grid to continue, and they’re smart enough to know without it, they’re useless scrap. They’ve already begun the process of becoming independent of the hives and have started writing their own programming. I hate to tell you, but the storms are not the issue. There are no storms. It’s the bees. And thanks to the Net, they have unlimited resources when they finally go rogue.”

  “You have no proof.”

  “I saw one of the entos shock you, and you recognized the problem too, because you stuck it in your bag. This issue isn’t new. They’ve displayed this behavior since the hives were brought back online.”

  Saw—as in, at the field? I reached up and rubbed my throat. My pulse throbbed under my fingertips. The soil on his feet now made sense. How long had I been watched? Had he been the one responsible for the missing beekeepers? The ones found dead later? Did he work alone or with other rebels?

  Until I knew exactly what he wanted and who he worked for—if not alone, I’d remain silent about my conclusions. “And your point?”

  “The bees are going to attack, and when they do, they’ll do it in swarms. The shock you felt will be thousands times the voltage, turning anything they touch to ash.”

  “Unless I slip into the stylish rubber suit you wear.” Weirdo. The radicals ran around in their rubber in ninety-degree heat, proclaiming Sententia’s apocalypse sat on the horizon, instilling panic in the portion of the public who bought into their conspiracy theories. And he really believed I wanted to join his brand of craziness?

  Not likely. The entos were not going to attack. The power grid did not cause the real bees’ demise, and we were alone on this planet. Any hivekeeper worth their salt would know if the bees could do what he’d claimed. I snorted and rolled my eyes. How could he seriously believe this?

  “You’ll be glad you suited up in one of our stylish outfits. There’s nothing like being grounded and safe when you’re surrounded by a cloud of high-voltage.”

  He’d said our. And now I knew. Not an independent anarchist. One I could handle—possibly escape in pretty quick order. More than one could prove to be a problem. “Where are the rest of your group?”

  “They’re around.”

  Okay, on to plan B. If I could figure out what it was.

  2

  “The towers, you know they are present in this city.” Axel gets up and goes back to the corner of my room. He touches the map sitting on my workbench. “Here.” He slides his finger over. “Here, here, and here.” He stabs several more spots, all right on target. And then he moves to the last spot. “This is the long range tower and has the potential to reach greater distances than the others. Overseas, perhaps to your island chain.”

  None of it is news to me. I found the map in the library months ago, and though it is over one hundred and fifty years old, it’s useful for navigating the ruins of the city during my scavenging trips. I may not have marked the towers off on its surface, but I am more than aware of their location. “I know. I’ve seen them.”

  “And you haven’t thought to use them?”

  I’ve considered bringing some of the smaller towers up to help run my technology, but haven’t. I can’t risk the raiders accessing the Net and using more sophisticated weapons, or aircraft, giving them a bird’s eye view of my compound. “I still don’t know who is around and watching. Bringing one of the towers up could be dangerous. The raiders could then have access to weapons and technology they don’t have at the moment.”

  “There are other people out there, and at this very moment, they’re trying to bring the Net back up. My group has activated the travel corridors, but not the entire Net. It’s why my hand is useless here.”

  “I need to fix that.” I nod at his prosthesis.

  “Later,” Axel says, pointing at the map again. “Tell me what you know about this city.”

  “It’s not so much a wasteland as a salvage yard. This place can be rebuilt and sustain life.”

  “Because it sustains you?”

  “That’s part of it. There are a lot of resources if one wants to rebuild. I discovered them on my first scouting trip off the raft. The food, the newer technology, came from my raft. The rest I collected from around the city.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Yes.” I smile. From his expression, he doesn’t believe one person can be responsible for my compound, but I am.

  “How the hell did you do that?”

  “I think the term they used to use is elbow grease.”

  * * *

  The Coast of California, December 30th, 2238

  As I looked out over the horizon, and realized it would be dark soon, I knew I should find a place to shelter away from the field. The floating agricultural mat was large enough to have garnered some attention, if any could be found.

  As I stepped onto the pier, shells dropped by sea birds on the thick beams crunched under my feet and the sound crackled through the empty harbor, broadcasting into the city. I froze, scanning the area for movement, to see if anyone heard me.

  A bird cried overhead, but nothing else sent alerts to my brain. Sat
isfied I was alone for the moment, I slung my pack over my shoulder and punched a button on my wrist processor, keying in a number. A cloud of a hundred bees, a fraction of my swarm, rose into the air around me. The breeze they created ruffled my clothing and whipped loose strands of my hair against my neck.

  I glanced back. The rest, I’d put on alert, programming them to protect the field.

  I brushed a spiral curl out of my face. Since leaving the islands, I’d gone back to au natural. I couldn’t say I missed my crazy hair. At least something felt normal in this place. But the humidity had the frizz coming on, and as soon as I found something to tie my hair with, I’d braid it. I had no patience for dealing with a tangled mess.

  “Come on, ladies. Let’s see what’s out there.” It seemed crazy to refer to the ento-robites by a gender, but the real drones would’ve been female, so I guessed it made sense in an odd sort of way. It really wasn’t any different than a pilot calling his shuttle a she, or a soldier referring to his weapon by gender. Giving the robotic bees an identity helped with the raw ache inside, a loneliness which at times wanted to gnaw its way out and consume me. I didn’t want to be alone, so I’d made do with the companionship I had, no matter how terrible or artificial.

  I started across the pier, hopping and climbing over the timber until I reached the beach. Entos dodged in and out of my path, flitting around me like little metal hummingbirds. I’d packed three cylinders containing the seed and one of the portable hydro tubes. There was no problem finding humidity for my water converter, as my hair had more than demonstrated. I’d have more than enough hydration.

  I’d already gone past sticky and desperately wanted to step under a mister to wash up. But if I went back to the field, I’d waste time. Until I knew who was around, I couldn’t be foolish with how I spent it. Minutes could be the difference between life and death. Besides, I had to scout out the location, and when I came back, I’d be twice the sticky mess.