Akaela Read online

  The Gaijins and us, the Mayake.

  Crippled and deformed, we had little chance to make it. We may have beaten the Plague, but we were still going to succumb to the brutality of a decimated world. We didn’t stand a chance until Dr. Prado fixed us.

  He wasn’t a real doctor. He was an engineer, but we still call him Doctor. He invented chips that could be implanted under the skin to revitalize the immune system. He grew limbs through bioengineered tissues, creating prostheses that were part human, part robot, reducing the risk of rejection to virtually nil. He gave us cyborg flesh: nanowires and transistors interwoven in our cells, nanobots that travel through our blood, and chips directly connected to our nervous systems. Dr. Prado died years ago, before Athel and I were even born. He left a legacy, a new way of living for us. Until the Gaijins came and took it all away, our technology, our resources—everything. We live off scraps, now. Whatever we have left.

  Our babies are still crippled when they come to the world. Some have such severe defects they wouldn’t survive a week if it weren’t for Dr. Prado’s implants.

  Uli lets out a heavy sigh, his large belly squashed against the edge of the workbench. “I’ll do my best, kiddo,” he says. “In the meantime...” He raises his eyes and points his chin to a corner in the workshop. “Your kitten is doing much better.”

  I gasp and clap my hands. “Ash!” I dash to the little critter bed Uli’s set between the two charging stations. My four-week-old kitten Ash was about to die of a nasty infection, so I’d asked Uli if he could spare an immune-boost chip for him.

  Chips and implants are rare these days, but Uli is like a father to Athel and me. He’s been checking and updating our wiring and nanobots since we were born, and he never has the heart to say no when we ask for an update, whether for us or for our pets.

  I crouch over the little bed Uli has set up between two charging stations and watch my little kitten sigh in his sleep, his eyes and nose still encrusted with mucus.

  “Can I take him home?” I ask.

  Uli unscrews a flap from the side of the M3 hand and scoops out a few wires tangled inside. “He should be ok to take home. He’ll probably sleep until tomorrow morning. I implanted two chips under his skin: one to regulate his heart, the other to strengthen his immune system. The nanobots will soon propagate throughout his body and monitor his heart rate, oxygen level, everything. He’ll be able to fight the infection and resist future fast-mutating pathogens.”

  I’m ecstatic. “Thank you!” I run to the workbench and hug him, knocking him slightly off balance. Uli pats my back, his face flushed, and then pulls away. His eyes stray back to his workbench, the droid hand now turned into a grid of small parts and chips neatly spread across the working surface.

  “You guys still need to tell me how you acquired the M3 part.”

  Athel swallows and shoots a hard stare at me. I bite my lower lip.

  We’re not supposed to lie, I message him. Our society is built on trust.

  Trust will not save us from extinction, Athel sends back.

  “We found the droid hand in the forest,” I blurt out, walking back to the little bed where Ash is still resting from his surgery so I don’t have to stare into Uli’s eyes as I lie. “The droid must’ve launched it and lost it.”

  Athel nods. “It was buried in dirt and leaves.”

  Uli leans against his workbench and rubs the sparse stubble on his face. “Fine. But let me remind you not to underestimate the Gaijins’ power. You guys are too young to remember their last attack on the Tower. I lived through that, and this—” he raises his prosthetic hand and balls it into a fist, the silicone outer layer squeaking softly as he squeezes his fingers together “—is what is what I lost that night.”

  I wrap Ash in his little blanket and carefully pick him up. “We know, Uli,” I say. “Dad told us many times.”

  Athel prods one of the chips on Uli’s workbench with a finger. “We miss Dad, Uli. Reminding us of the Gaijins’ brutality doesn’t help.”

  Uli’s face colors again, his straight gray hair plastered against his temples. “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. Your Dad knows what he’s doing. Believe me. That’s why he was one of the three chosen to be our ambassadors with the Gaijins. They’ll be back sooner than you know with the much awaited supplies we’ve requested. The Gaijins are still mad at us but they can’t deny three unarmed men begging for our species’ survival.”

  Athel looks down and bobs his head. “I hope so,” he says, his voice low.

  Uli waves his prosthetic hand in the air and grabs the drill with his other hand. “Go, now. I’ve got work to do. You ordered a new hand for your Mom’s birthday, didn’t you?” He spins the drill and winks.

  I bring a finger to my mouth. “Shh,” I say. “It’s going to be a surprise!”

  Athel smiles, his eyes still laced with sadness now that he’s thought of Dad. “Thank you, Uli.”

  I snuggle Ash against my chest. “Yes. Thank you.”

  As we shuffle down the hallway and up the stairs to our quarters, I watch my sleeping kitten’s little face, his pink nose scrunched against my chest. It makes me so happy to know that Uli was able to fix him.

  “Do you think the M3 droid will come after us?” I ask Athel as we step inside the elevator.

  Athel shrugs. “Droids are stupid. And they can’t cross the river.”

  “Droids are stupid, but the Gaijins who made them aren’t.”

  The old elevator car reaches our floor with a loud clang. The doors squeak open.

  Athel lowers his voice. “I think next time we should get more than just a droid hand.” He winks. “Think of the stuff we could get. Lithium batteries, nanocircuits, thermosensors…” He walks to our door waving a hand up in the air, a devious smile plastered on his dreamy face.

  We’re the Mayakes. We survived the Plague, we won’t perish now.

  Chapter Two

  Akaela

  Kael taps the metal flap on my forearm. Tap, tap, tap. I blink. The timestamp on my retina tells me it’s 4:30 a.m. Too early to get up. I shoo Kael away and roll over. The falcon flaps his wings and leaves. Minutes later, I hear him bugging my brother in the bunk bed above mine.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  I drift back to sleep, but it doesn’t last long. The springs of Athel’s bed whine. He tosses away his blanket, climbs down from his bed and runs to the window. “Holy Kawa!”

  I sit up. “What’s happening?”

  “Droids,” Athel mutters. “Lots of them. Go call Mom.”

  I sprint from the bed and lean out the window. The river bend shimmers under the grin of a crescent moon. Along the shore closer to the Tower, fishing nets hang from their stilts and shiver in the night breeze. The droids lurk on the other side, at least half a dozen of them, their bulky silhouettes delineated by the blinking LEDs studding their backs. They wobble back and forth on their claw legs, flashing their eye beams as though looking for something.

  Kael clasps the windowsill with his talons and bobs his head, smelling the danger.

  Droids fear water. They scavenge the mesa by day and spend the night in the gorge, their robotic frames folded into big metal cubes. Their presence by the river tonight is not only unusual. It’s ominous.

  Are the Gaijins planning a new attack?

  Muffled voices come from the kitchen. Athel and I exchange a quick glance and then dart out of the bedroom. Mom’s by the door talking with aunt Kara.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “And why are there droids out by the river?” Athel barges in.

  Mom’s face is a web of worry. “We don’t know. Skip went out to check the fishing nets but he hasn’t come back yet.”

  Athel frowns. Skip’s our cousin, aunt Kara’s son. “He went by himself?”

  Kara nods, her face wet with tears. “I told him not to go by himself. He can be so stubborn sometimes…” She brings a hand to her mouth and chokes her last words in a sob.

  “Go get the flashlig
hts, Athel,” Mom says. “We’ll stop to get Uli on our way to the ground floor.”

  “Mom—” I whisper.

  “No,” she snaps. “You stay here, Akaela. It’s too dangerous out there.”

  Athel shoos Kael off the window, knowing that once they’re out with the flashlights, the falcon will fly low and be on the lookout with them. Kael’s a cyborg, too, with a bear’s sense of smell.

  They all scramble out the door and suddenly I’m left alone, the dancing ghosts of the embers from the fireplace my only company. I dash back to the window. The droids are still pacing on the other side of the river, the pale light of the moon glistening on their metallic bodies. I squint and lean out the window.

  One of the droids has no hands.

  They’re looking for the hand we stole.

  I feel a pang. Did Athel and I cause all this?

  I bite my lip and clasp the windowsill.

  If anything happens to Skip it’ll be our fault.

  I think of Dad, who left two weeks ago in hopes of finding more resources, as our own technology is getting old and stagnant. We never talk about it, yet with every day that goes by without Dad coming back, something breaks loose inside us. Mom especially. We cling to one thread of hope that the Gaijins didn’t deny our ambassadors’ request.

  A sudden urge possesses me. I have to help search for Skip. It’s our fault the droids are out by the river. If I jump, I’ll be out looking in under a minute, while the other men and women scramble down the forty flights of stairs, taking turns with the old elevator box. I can hear the groan of the cables as they cycle up and down the Tower.

  I climb over the windowsill—mottled with Kael’s droppings—and look out into the emptiness of the night, the forty-story drop calling me like an echo. The moon peeks through a sheer veil of clouds. I lean out and inhale the dampness of the night, nippy now that the air has chilled down. The breeze is mellow, blowing away from the Tower.

  You’ve never jumped in pitch dark, I hear my inner self say. It’s risky.

  And yet I don’t care.

  It’s my flaw. Dad always says how one of these days he’s going to fix me before this flaw of mine kills me.

  I grasp the window jamb with one hand and prod the air with the other, waiting for the breeze. My heart pounds with excitement.

  I have no fear.

  That’s my flaw.

  I know no fear.

  And so I jump.

  * * *

  At first I just drop, as if underneath there were only void. I spread my arms and release the sail. It holds me back, stopping my plunge. As soon as it does, the breeze catches me and lures me away.

  The river looks silver in the moonlight, marred by the long row of fishing nets quivering in the breeze. The smoke that always ribbons the horizon glows in the dark, casting an eerie yellow over the mesa. After they attacked us fifteen years ago, the Gaijin burned the cities on the other side of the mesa, creating a wall of fire between our lands. To this day, the fire never stops burning.

  The blinking lights from the droids’ backs wobble up and down the shore. As soon as they spot me up in the air they flash their lenses at me. I swerve and ride the thermal up, staying upstream of the river and away from the droids’ fire. Soon, I spot the bobbing flashlights of the men and women who’ve come out looking for Skip.

  The droids seem surprised to see them. They’re just machines, though, with no feelings or thoughts, only an algorithm running inside their metal heads. They see the men and women coming toward the river with their flashlights and scramble away—all but one, the biggest of the lot. It comes dangerously close to the water and rises on its hind legs, towering over the other droids. It’s so big it would make a bear look tiny.

  “You’ve challenged us today,” it chimes in its metallic voice. “You’ve stolen from us.”

  Uli steps out of the group of people walking toward the river. “You steal from us every day,” he yells.

  The M3 raises its right arm, ready to fire. A shiver goes down my spine.

  “No!” I yell. I whistle Kael’s call, hoping the falcon will swoop down on the droid and divert its attention. The droid never fires, though.

  “This is only the beginning,” it says, then lowers its upper body and crawls away, following its companions back to the gorge.

  “Over here!” somebody yells. It’s Athel. He waves and points to a dark spot bobbing in the shallow water, partly hidden in a thick growth of reeds.

  My sail wavers in the wind. I switch downwind and bank, preparing for landing.

  Uli wades into the water. He keeps his flashlight away from Athel so as not to damage the sensitive cells implanted in his eyes. As I glide down, circling with the breeze, I watch the sudden commotion unfold before my eyes. The flashlights move around the patch of reeds where I saw the bobbing object. I’m about thirty feet from the ground now. The breeze pushes me away from the river. I lower my legs and prepare for landing.

  I wasn’t born with my sail. I acquired it at age six, after a bad viral infection nearly killed me. My legs stopped working for months, but at the time all leg implants were in use by other people and they couldn’t get new ones for me. While I waited for new prostheses, Dad built me a sail and taught me to fly. He’d take me riding, and once the horse reached a gallop, he’d lift me up over his shoulders and let me glide by his side while holding my hand.

  In a way, it was a good thing they didn’t have any legs available when I got sick. It took me over a year, but I did recover. And it wasn’t until I could walk again that I gained full control of my sail and learned to glide.

  Jumping and gliding comes natural to me, like talking or running. And yet landing will always be the trickiest part. Every glider will tell you that the instinct is to slow down as you approach the ground. But you can’t. You have to approach the ground fast, lower the body and then tilt the tip of the sail up—but not too much—and let the incoming wind act as your brakes.

  I learned from watching Kael.

  I hit the ground with one foot, flare, then retract the sail between my shoulder blades, and roll in a patch of wet grass, the stalks a pale blue under the silvery light of the moon. I crawl back to my feet and run to the bank.

  “Careful, now. Pull slowly.”

  “What happened?” Kara screeches. “Is he breathing?”

  Three men pull a heavy weight out of the reeds. I spot a hand lolling to the side and realize the men are lifting out of the water Skip’s unconscious body. They drag him on the dry sand and Uli immediately crouches over him, searching for a pulse.

  Kara runs over, whimpering. “Is he alive?” she yells. “Please tell me he’s alive!”

  “I’m not getting a read from the nanoelectric sensors,” Uli says. “Quick, I need the TBC.”

  A man puts a mask on Skip’s face and pumps air through his nose. Another starts chest compressions. Uli pulls up Skip’s right sleeve and opens the flap on the inside of his forearm. They hand him the TBC, the transcutaneous battery charger, and he plugs the cable into the USB ports inside Skip’s forearm. A green diode goes off on the TBC, then turns orange and blinks.

  Unnoticed, I squeeze between the men and women ringing Uli until I find Athel and tap on his shoulder.

  “What were you thinking?” he hisses. “Mom told you to stay home!” But he has no time for me. Everybody’s attention is on Uli and the rescuers. Some watch silently, others voice their outrage.

  “Was he shot?” a woman asks.

  “The droids must’ve shot him. The bastards!”

  “This has to stop!”

  Minutes go by. The mask on Skip’s face puffs, the man pressing his chest grunts. The TBC blinks. Kara closes her eyes and mouths a silent prayer, tears lining her face. Mom comes forward holding a penlight in her hook hand. She lifts Skip’s eyelids one at a time with her good hand and points the beam at his irises. When she raises her head and looks at Uli, I read the news in her face.

  They all stop and bow their
heads. Uli unplugs the TBC. “No signal,” he whispers. “Not a single joule left in his system.”

  There’s a moment of silence. Then, suddenly, Kara’s outcry of pain pierces through the night.

  Skip is gone.

  The droids killed another Mayake. Our cousin, one of our own.

  Chapter Three

  Athel

  Day Number: 1,529

  Event: Skip died, shot by droids while checking the fishing nets. Number of Mayakes left: 432.

  Goal for today: Survive.

  I look at the numbers streaming on my retina. My friend Lukas and I have been keeping a daily memo since we were twelve. Back then, there were 463 Mayakes. In four years, we had 84 births and 115 deaths, all dutifully recorded in Lukas’s data feeder.

  I save the record, send it wirelessly to Lukas’s stream, then close the connection. Mom and Akaela are still arguing. I can hear their voices through the closed door. Dottie yells that she’s perfectly capable of gliding at night and she’s tired of being told off.

  “Quit worrying, Mom!” she says.

  But Mom won’t quit worrying. Not until Dad is back, not until the droids stop murdering our people.

  We’ve lost aunts, uncles, friends, cousins. I’ve become numb to the pain, my emotions hardened by too many losses. That’s what we all do: we bow our heads and wait for our turn. We’re all going to die, sooner or later.

  Maybe that’s why Mom and Akaela still find the energy to fight after what happened. Whatever the reason, I’m tired of hearing them argue. I sneak out of our family quarters on the fortieth floor and push through the heavy fire doors into the stairwell. Chilled air funnels up the winding staircase and howls. Disturbed by the clatter of my steps, the pigeons stir in their nests. Pigeons are like rats—they’ll never go extinct. They keep mutating resistant forms, no matter how hostile the environment becomes.