The Rebels Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Free book

  One - No Longer Safe

  Two - Confessions

  Three - Caught

  Four - The Camp

  Five - The Hands of Enforcement

  Six - An Unusual Group

  Seven - With No Eyes But Our Own

  Eight - The Meadow

  A Note From Me

  Copyright © 2019 by Nicole Grotepas

  Version 5.26.19

  Revised and serialized from Feed by Nicole Grotepas, originally published as the short story “Life Feeds” in 2011 on Amazon.

  Appeared as “Feed Pt. 1” in 2014.

  Other titles by Nicole Grotepas:

  Novels:

  Blue Hearts of Mars

  World in Shadow

  Eye of the Colossus

  Hands of the Colossus

  Heart of the Colossus

  Shadow of the Colossus

  Gears of Aether: Shiro and the Orrery

  Incident in Analogue: Cosma and the Painting

  Shoulders of Giants: Odeon and the Statue

  Feed: The First to Awaken

  Short stories:

  “The God Machine”

  “Cities of the Sun”

  “The First Post-Android Buyback Program”

  “The Coldest Heart”

  Cover by Deranged Doctor Design

  Immense gratitude for the invaluable

  Tim Birmingham and David Gervais

  Report typos here. Thank you!

  Get your free copy here today.

  ONE

  NO LONGER SAFE

  Elliot didn’t remember falling asleep on a bamboo floor. And he didn’t recognize the walls decorated with Japanese-influenced art surrounding him, or the wooden desk his leg rubbed against. He felt disoriented and frightened, for a moment, overcome with shock, almost paralyzed. Where was he? As soon as he moved to stand, the throbbing in his skull reminded him: he’d been knocked out. Not asleep.

  It all came rushing back to him like glacial run-off pouring down his back. Fuck.

  The moan turned to a growl as he rose, touching his temple and waiting for the blackness swimming across his vision to dissipate. The old man was gone he saw, as his eyes cleared and the room came into focus. Elliot’s tools were scattered in a mess on the floor and across the desk. Turning, he spotted the item used against him: a tire iron. He hefted it and inspected a still-damp bloodstain smeared along one end before slamming it in a furious rage onto the desk with a loud crash.

  The emotion left him quickly. Outbursts like that clouded his faculties. For his work, Elliot needed to be clear of mind and focused. He was embarrassed that he’d permitted himself to lash out for even a second.

  He’d been betrayed. Or the man’s wife came home, unexpectedly . . . but then how had she caught him unaware? How had she known? It was unlikely that it was her. A woman doesn’t leave her lover early. At least, that was what Elliot knew of women and he only knew it from the feeds. It was possible something happened to spoil her evening and bring her back.

  Elliot fumbled through the house, looking for a bathroom, toting his bag of tools with him. In the bathroom, he found the bloody spot on the back of his scalp using the extendable, magnifying mirror and the mirror hung over the sink. With the needle and thread from his bag, he stitched up the gash, though the process was awkward and difficult. He was used to operating in less than ideal circumstances and finished in twenty minutes. Already he had lost a considerable amount of blood, but he’d now lose no more.

  Though it infringed on his sense of propriety (he was no monster, after all), he needed to replenish his blood supply. So he raided the fridge of fruit and juices before leaving out the front door. Taking long, purposeful strides, he hurried up the sidewalk with his shoulders brushing against the blossoms of Japanese lace leaf trees. He paused on the driveway and activated his implanted communication system, intending to inform his superiors of what had happened. After he talked to Ghosteye, of course.

  Why hadn’t someone been sent to rescue him before he’d been knocked out? Better yet, why hadn’t Ghosteye warned him? The Editor had seen, hadn’t he?

  “Ghosteye, Elliot here. Ghosteye?” He opened the driver-side door, frowning in dismay at the broken window. This didn’t bode well. “Ghosteye? Are you there?” No answer.

  Inside the compact car, Elliot set his bag on the passenger seat and tried to start the vehicle. Nothing. It wouldn’t start. Frustration made his throat tighten, but he refused to let the emotion take over.

  Redirecting his call only took a clipped, vocal command. Soon there was an educated British accent speaking in his ear. “What is it, Elliot? Make it quick.”

  “Sir, the subject has escaped, my vehicle has been neutralized, and the Editor fails to answer his phone,” Elliot said.

  “Get in touch with the center. I’m in the middle of an extraction. This is hardly appropriate. I have a subject halfway through a procedure.” As though to punctuate his claim, Elliot heard muffled, desperate cries in the background.

  Elliot felt the blood drain from his face. Had he made a terrible miscalculation? He had thought the subject he’d been sent to interrogate was a top level security threat and that the director would be most interested. He coughed and cleared his throat. “Someone betrayed me. The Editor, I believe.”

  A pause before the director finally said, “What gives you that idea?”

  Elliot swallowed. He wasn’t nervous. He didn’t get nervous. He was too familiar with fear and pain to get nervous. “I’d been struck in the head with a tire iron. I’m not sure how long I was out, but a clean up team never showed up and when I attempted to contact the Editor, there was no answer.”

  “There’s a procedure for this—though I don’t expect you to know everything. Sounds likely that there’s a defector in our midst. So, send a team to the Editor’s studio and phone in for a clean up team. Your subject is married, no?”

  “He is.”

  “If his wife shows up, take her into custody. She may know something. Or was she responsible for the escape?”

  “It’s possible. I would ask the Editor, but he’s offline.”

  “Once you have transportation, find him. Track down the defector. Track down your subject. Kirkwood needs whatever he’s created.”

  “He claimed to have nothing, Sir,” Elliot said.

  “And that very well may be. However, prototype or not, we require having him custody. You’re not to kill him. Remember that.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And Elliot?”

  “Yes?”

  “If this gets any messier, betrayal or no betrayal, someone will have to pay.”

  Elliot’s hands went cold with perspiration. “Of course.”

  “My superiors will want to know who failed. When I’m finished here, I’ll be looking in on you.”

  “Of course,” he answered. The words sounded raspy.

  Just like that, the director was gone. Elliot’s fingers trembled until he gripped the steering wheel. He wasn’t nervous. No matter how shaky his hands were. Elliot didn’t get nervous. Fear of pain had been cut out of him almost before he knew how to walk. Keep telling yourself that. Whatever it takes to endure the gut-chilling fear that’s making your palms sweat.

  What did he think would happen? The director wasn’t about to take responsibility for Elliot’s failure. Maybe his subject’s wife would show up if he waited long enough. It could save Elliot. If not that, perhaps tracking him down would prove a simple affair. It should. After all, the cameras were everywhere.

  Elliot called for a clean up team. As he waited, he searched the feeds for Ramone, hoping against hope that the man was still being br
oadcast. If he wasn’t, Elliot would know for certain who the traitor was.

  ***

  The silence disturbed Marci. How long could they go without saying something? Were they silent because she was there? She would have thought they’d be used to being watched. Everyone should be used to being watched, so why didn’t they just talk already? The tension reminded her of dinners at home with her parents right after a “disagreement.” Their silences created a vacuum in the room and suffocated her like the air was being sucked out of her lungs.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, after they had finally left Ramone’s neighborhood behind and reached the freeway.

  “I don’t know,” Blythe answered, quietly.

  “Who are you, anyway?” Ramone asked, a surprising amount of distrust in his voice. “And why are you here? Did they send you?”

  “I don’t think she has anything to do with that, Ramone,” Blythe said before Marci could answer.

  “They? I don’t even know if I know who you mean, other than that man Blythe saved you from.” This wasn’t going at all how Marci had imagined. “Look, I’m a college student. That’s it. And I forget you don’t know me. I guess that’s one of the peculiarities of the feeds?”

  Ramone snorted.

  Marci shrugged and continued on. “What? You don’t like the feeds? That’s pretty obvious, Ramone. Well, you know you’re a hit, don’t you? I wasn’t the only one watching your show. It was one of the number one romantic feeds. But even if you didn’t know then, you should know now. It saved your life. That’s how Blythe knew to come for you, Ramone. Right, Blythe?”

  “Enough,” Blythe said, merging into the perpetual nighttime freeway traffic. “Look, let’s just . . . be quiet for a while, please. I need to think.”

  Marci cocked her head, thinking she could hear embarrassment in Blythe’s voice. Why was she embarrassed? Ramone could probably hear it as well. The shadowy profile of his face tilted down until his chin touched his chest, and Marci wondered what she had said that disturbed him. Was it the mention of . . . what he’d just gone through? Or the fact that Blythe had seen him in such a weak position? That would explain something, because no one wanted to be subjected to that sort of thing in a public fashion. It was shaming.

  Or was it that Ramone had caught Sue cheating?

  “What? Did I say something wrong?” Marci asked insistently, ignoring Blythe’s request for silence.

  “Uh, yeah, everything’s wrong,” Blythe said, flicking the turn signal on in a rigid motion. “The entire world is wrong, young lady. Can’t you see it? You realize that some of us would like our lives to be private? The fact that a voyeur has shown up claiming to know me is not my life-long dream. I’m sure Ramone feels the same.”

  Marci bristled, flicking her hair to one side and biting her lip. “I am not young, Blythe. I’m in my twenties. I can vote. I can drink alcohol legally. At least the state recognizes me as an adult, so maybe you should too. Please, just call me Marci, none of this ‘young lady this’ or ‘young lady that’. God, you sound like my parents. Look, I—I know this must be awkward. I’m sorry,” she apologized. She ought to at least admit that it was awkward. Perhaps that would put them at ease. It was strange, what she had done. Just showing up like that. “It just happened. And it seemed right. Until this very moment, when I—when I realized you don’t exactly know me, like I know you.”

  “Why did you come?” Ramone asked quietly, his voice barely audible over the hum of the engine and the road beneath the tires.

  Marci leaned forward and in the passing illumination of the towering interstate street lights, she could see his hands tighten into fists around the metal shaft of the tire iron. She coughed self-consciously. “Not really sure how to answer that, actually. Uh, it seemed right. That’s all I can say.”

  “So no one sent you?” His voice was a dangerous purr. Chills rippled across Marci’s back like the windblown beach grass near her parents’ summer home. She was no stranger to the sound of bottled up rage in a man’s voice. She just hadn’t expected to find it here, with Ramone. Harmless, introverted Ramone.

  “I sent myself. But, well,” she said in a bubbly tone, hoping to put him at ease. She hesitated and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Was she really going to say this? She cleared her throat, throwing herself into it. Why not? She’d come this far. What pride remained in her could be quickly whittled away just to preserve her spot at his side. “Watching you, something changed in me. You’re different from anyone I’ve ever known, in a good way, I mean. And I don’t want it to end—the changing, that is.” She paused, feeling herself blush. The amount of embarrassment going around the inside of this car . . . God, it must be contagious. She shrugged and let out a breath. “Anyway, that sounds ridiculous. I don’t even know what I mean. It’s like I’ve been asleep and I’m waking up, and I want to keep waking up. Things weren’t going well for me where I was, before I came here, so I left. I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “Stop,” Ramone said gruffly. Marci bit her lip, shocked. “You came for the wrong reasons.”

  Blythe glanced at him. “So there’s a right reason, Ramone?”

  “No. There’s no good reason. None. I don’t want anyone to ‘come find me.’ I’m not responsible for anyone but me. Not even Sue at this point.”

  Blythe paused, “So they won. They’ve defeated you.”

  “No one won.” Ramone looked out the window at his elbow.

  “At first I thought it made you stronger. And better, somehow.”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” he said, a derisive tone in his voice.

  “I think you do.”

  He sighed, then continued quietly. “I thought I had answers, Blythe. But I don’t.”

  “So we’re going to give up?”

  Marci watched them, her eyes wide in shock and, if she was honest, a bit of embarrassment. Watching them in interact in real life about such personal issues was a bit more awkward than it had been with the intervention of a screen and the intrusive affectations of the Editors.

  “There was never any fight,” he muttered.

  “Excuse me if I think you’re wrong. That’s why she came, Ramone. Because there is.”

  “What are you talking about?” Marci asked, forgetting the awkwardness and leaning forward to interrupt, just like she used to do with her parents when she was a girl. Neither of them answered and Marci fell back against her seat, the embarrassment returning in a hot flush.

  “I should call Sue. Maybe she’ll answer this time,” Ramone said, lifting Blythe’s phone and dialing a number.

  Blythe nodded.

  Marci frowned and turned to look out the window, resting her elbow on her luggage. Something important just happened. It was harder to interpret without the feed and the music that often accompanied pivotal scenes. She felt forced to try to grasp it all on her own, running through the interchange again and trying to imagine how it would have been framed by an Editor. What song would have played in the background? What filters would have been applied and how would the close-ups happen?

  “Sue, it’s Ramone,” he spoke into the cellphone, his voice huskier with some emotion Marci couldn’t name. “I’m borrowing it from a friend—yes, I know it’s late, where are you?—good. I’m glad it’s going well.” His voice caught in his throat. He swallowed roughly before continuing. “Listen, stay there as long as possible. Stay away from the house. Go somewhere else for the night, if you can—somewhere unexpected.” He made a choking sound. “ No. I’m not joking. Just don’t come home. Something bad has happened—I’m not really sure how to explain it, Sue—yes, I’m serious. Isn’t there somewhere else you can go? Somewhere with . . . with that man?”

  Marci would have whistled through her teeth if she were more crass. But she wasn’t. And anyway, she felt for him. She shook her head and looked out the window. Stars of reflected light bloomed off the windows of nearby cars as they moved like a herd of silent beasts over the endless fields of
pavement. The world was a brutal sea and she was lost in it, trying to find herself a harbor, a mother ship, a lighthouse. Something to guide her.

  “I don’t care, Sue, I just want you to be safe. Someone’s after me. And they might use you to get to me—-no, this isn’t a joke. Just listen to me. Please. It might be best for you to get in a car and drive away, for a while—I know hiding is pointless, I know. But just try—I didn’t do anything. Do you think you have to do something to attract their attention?”

  Marci shook her head and looked down at the black, empty tablet staring up at her. The velvet soft screen reflected all those bright yellow lights that lined the freeway and shone down through the windows. She wanted to look inside the tablet to see if they were still being broadcast, to see if she was in the picture now. Would it matter at this point? she wondered bitterly. Even if she was in the feed, she wasn’t really in the picture. Not that way. Not the way she wanted to be.

  And Ramone. Even though Sue didn’t deserve it, Marci could hear the undertones in his voice. He loved that woman still. Maybe he knew his wife well enough to know that there was still a piece of her that belonged to him. Maybe it was the kind of love she’d read about in that required English literature class—the kind where a person loves someone so much they’ll let the one they love go.

  Even though she didn’t turn the tablet on and look for Ramone’s feed, Marci felt like she knew what was happening. The darkness stretched through the thick air of Ramone’s sports car and coiled around her heart like an icy wind. Chills went through her and she felt like crying. She was losing something. No, it wasn’t her. It was Ramone. He was losing his anchor. It was like a scene in an old movie she’d seen as a little girl, the black and white one (what a sad world, seeing it all in black and white!), with the ugly guy with the lisp, the bar owner, when he lets the woman he’s been in love with his entire life get on the plane with the blond guy she was married to. The bar-owner watched her leave and the only thing right about it was the fact that he thought he was doing the right thing, but really, he was watching his dream walk away.