Liora
Cap takes my hand and leads me down the passageway.
She’s been preparing for an occasion like this.
“Did you know? About today?” I ask, trying to keep up with her brisk pace.
She stops walking and gives me a blank face.
“I guess,” she says, “but not know-know. Just felt I had to have a back-up plan. You and Auryn were so focused on the Eldon project. And Khan used the opportunity to fool you.”
And on she goes, jerking me along, her hand still welded to mine.
“What do you mean? Fool us? In what way?”
I have no idea. She halts again, in front of a garden gate. I don’t think she can talk and walk simultaneously.
“She’s been planning this for much longer than you think, Lior,” Cap says, and opens the fake wooden door.
Nobody has ever called me Lior. It gives me a tickle.
“In there,” she says, using her nose to point at the shed, because her hands are busy zipping the zips that keep up the front of her red overalls.
Like a stage curtain, it drops.
My hand was reaching for the doorknob, but my eyes get stuck. She’s not wearing a bra. The shoulders she wiggles out of the red work-gear are round, with that little pointy thing of the collarbone.
“You’re not a Genan?” I say, staring.
“You have…” I make a vague shape with my hands.
She smiles crookedly. “Some of us weren’t made for elder care.”
Then she rolls down her trousers and steps out. Only wearing her boots, knickers, and a ponytail.
“Are you gonna open that door, or what?”
“You’re stunning.”
She looks at me. Shifts her weight.
“That’s not my fault.”
She sighs.
“Even you respond. Imagine the effect on a healthy male. They didn’t stand a chance.”
I didn’t know.
“You were made to have sex?”
Her eyes go inward. She shakes her head almost unnoticeably.
“I was a collectrix, programmed for wide harvesting,” she says, and sniffs. “They made me to collect. And we did. Freezers full. Samples stacked to the ceiling. Didn’t change a thing.”
She reaches for her boots. “And you’re wasting breath. We’ve got things to do.”
We keep talking as we put on dresses, overdoing the layered look of the cult, share an energy bar, fill a bag with water-capsules, torches, her electrical tools.
“You have a name, Cap?” I ask. She’s tying a bandana around my head.
“Sixteen,” she says, pursing her lips and taking it off again. “I didn’t like any of them. Cap is better. Call me Cap.”
She starts looking for something else to disguise me among the gathered stuff. Reveals a case I recognise.
“That’s the suitcase from the Kemushi.” I kneel and stroke it. “You have the bombs?”
That discovery puts me back on track. Gives me the boot-kick I need.
“Let’s just go like we were. I don’t want to dress like them. It’s just a short sprint, and once we’re in the cabin, they can’t touch us. And let’s take the case—just in case.”
She laughs, gives a big nod, and concludes, “I think you just want me to take off my dress again.”
She isn’t wrong.
We’re ready to go.
“Can you drive that old machine?” she asks, back in the alley. “Without the assist?”
“You said you did a reboot.”
“Yes, and I removed the interface. Just to be certain the agent had nowhere to hide.”
“Put it back in, then.”
Pursed lips again. I stop walking.
“Auryn says it’s really hard,” I say, rubbing my nose.
Cap nods.
“Glad you’re the driver. Shall we try?”
Of course. No question.
So we do.
Capturing the Kemushi goes really smooth. Nobody notices until we start the engine. And even then, there is no immediate response, buying me a little time.
Two pedals and two joysticks.
I close my eyes. Try to sense the thing.
Nothing comes.
First I lift the spike, which is point-down on the cobblestones.
It scrapes toward me, making sparks, engraving a deep line. The Kemushi shakes and trembles. Now the girls are alarmed. All eyes on us.
There. It is off the ground. I lift my hands. Just feet to drive.
I asked a million questions when Auryn told me about the excavators. I remember some of the answers.
We make it out of the square. Down the street. Driving seems doable. Fast enough that they can’t keep up. They hardly try.
Then I get overconfident. Adjusting the arm while driving. That is house number one. With the third try, I get the hang.
Cap tells the way. Hangs on to the back of my seat, smelling of chunky after-shave.
I think Auryn took a different route in. The Pyrrha had just entered the town as I drove my heavy machine out to the desert.
I let the Kemushi come to a halt. Just to see.
It is dry.
“It hasn’t rained out here,” I say to Cap.
She is also staring out the cabin windows, comparing the oozing wet river-street estuary right behind us with the total drought in front. I am staggered.
I look up through my side window. At Her. The wet mountain glistens in the returning light. I feel betrayed by the rock.
“That’s not good,” Cap says.
“The garden will not survive without rain.”
Pretty soon, we’ll have nothing.
“Let’s keep going,” says Cap. “We must try.”
I agree, but drive with tears in my eyes. With anger growing in my belly.
“What did you mean with Khan being here first?” I ask after a few minutes of being jolted. Even the suspension seems back to basics now.
“I don’t know how long, but she’s been here a while on her own before the first ones arrived.”
I look at Cap behind me.
She uses her hands to turn my eyes back to the lacking road.
“Her entrance was staged,” she says. “Except for the hungry part, but she was definitely not close to dying. Not by a mile.”
I am not the beacon. I am not Her first. Not tasked with the Task.
In my rear-view mirror, in the distance, the sun’s coming out, lighting the valley floor like it’s on fire.
I have never been this kind of angry.
It resembles that fire—but cold.