Resist

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Second book in the Recall series

Thick black clouds of smoke billowed up until they clashed with the ceiling overhead. The ventilators used to recycle the air couldn’t keep up as the fire spread throughout the power plant. The place didn’t even have a proper name, just a designation—Two.

The underground facility was the size of a small city, although this place could be called anything but a city. The designers of the plant hadn’t had any interest in the people who had to live there. Every structure or piece of machinery had only one purpose, and that was to provide power for the shields protecting the few remaining cities above ground.

Thousands of people had to survive under the harshest conditions, and they worked hard to provide for strangers, but all of that was about to change.

A loud explosion made me flinch. Without ear protection, the noise echoing down from the dome-shaped rock ceiling above my head would have been enough to have my ears ringing for a week, but fortunately, the heads-up display strapped to my head, one of the few remnants of my enforcer days, protected me from the sound invasion. 

Moments after the impact, the blasts of magnetic weapon fire took over again as smoke rose from one of the structures up ahead. I couldn’t tell which of the buildings had been struck because of the throng of panicked people running around and the heavy machinery blocking the road. 

Green letters scrolled across the lenses of my heads-up display as I scanned the area. The device provided me with all the communication feeds essential to this operation, but I tended to ignore most and focused on the ones I knew to be of consequence to me. One of the things that I had picked up from the chatter in my ear was that all of this was taking too long. Somehow our lines weren’t advancing fast enough, and the delay cost lives. 

I pushed through the crowd and made my way to a metal structure used as a crane. The machine towered over the area, and with the help of the support beams, I climbed up to see if I could get a better grasp of the situation.

From thirty feet off the ground, I had a better overview of the plant. This place didn’t have anything like the multilayered structures that we used for housing back in Subterra nor the high-rise buildings blocking the skyline like I had seen in the City of Umbras.

All I could see were the machines that generated power. Metal constructions no higher than single-story buildings stretched out over the ground. Pipes and wires led in and out of different sorts of devices, and lights blinked on and off all over the place. Only weapons fire from the battle raging around me and the occasional explosion drowned out the constant roar of the engines and machinery. 

The people living here had—and it seemed prudent to use the term living loosely—taken up residence deep underground. But even at the lowest sublevel, one couldn’t escape the everlasting hum of machines and the tremors they created as they reverberated through the ground.

In the middle of all these structures stood the distribution hub. The sight reminded me of the platform inside the rebel base hidden underneath the City of Umbras, although this platform was a lot bigger. Four-feet-wide conduits that jutted out from several places in the walls and ceiling all converged upon this one piece of machinery that towered over the rest. Scaffolds used for maintenance surrounded the device, but no plant workers would be working there anytime soon. I just hoped no one would be foolish enough to take a shot at that thing. The chain reaction from a direct hit could cause this entire plant to blow up.

“Maece!” a voice called up. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” I glanced down and saw Saera staring up at me. Saera Lux, my best friend and sister by choice, looked fierce in the Subterran version of an exoskeleton suit, and seeing her staring up at me threw me off. 

It wasn’t the suit or the array of weapons that came with the intimidating-looking armor that had me waver. The stone-cold glare Saera shot me with those blue eyes of hers and the way her sharp jawline flexed in annoyance made me feel like a kid again. Saera was a few years older than me, and after our parents had died, she had taken on a role that surpassed a big sister’s. She’d always taken care of me, and that fact made me wish I could step back in time and undo some of the things that had happened. Unfortunately, the battle raging around us didn’t make this the right time to address personal issues.

We all wore the body-fitting suit made of armor reduced to an atomic-scale honeycomb lattice that would protect us from a lot of the assault weapons available these days and the built-in exoskeleton could absorb most forces exposed to our limbs. Well, at least the suit would protect me from most of those things. My armor was different and had been developed by the ArtRep corporation. The suit I wore was more advanced than the Subterran version. My suit was another reminder that I had once served the Combined Districts of Tenebrae as an enforcer. Both types of suit did a hell of a job of protecting our people, and even though rebel engineers had been able to reverse engineer my protective armor to enhance the Subterran version, the latter failed to maintain its integrity after an excessive assault.

Ignoring the icy glare Saera shot me, I pointed down the road past the machines blocking it and the distribution hub that lay beyond.

“We have to advance on the perimeter,” I called down. “There are still too many workers in the line of fire.” 

Up until then the attempt to retake Power Plant Two had gone pretty much as expected. As anticipated, workers had joined the fight and were helping us to overthrow the Tenebrae presence that had ruled these power plants for five decades.

We would probably never have risked another war fifty years after the first one. Not over some power plants that our government had willingly relinquished during the peace negotiations with the Combined Districts of Tenebrae. The information we had stolen from the ArtRep computers—one of Tenebrae’s most influential corporations—had changed all that. We still wouldn’t have taken the risk if it had been up to the Subterran government, but we weren’t part of that government–well, at least not officially. We were rebels, and with the help of the Power Plant Resistance, we were keen to change the fate of many.

Saera nodded and raked a hand through her messy blond hair. Unfortunately, our scientist hadn’t been able to reverse engineer my heads-up yet, and at the moment the device was the only one at our disposal. That’s why Saera had to rely on basic communications technology that fed directly into her ear. Like most rebels, she opted not to wear a helmet, which was plain stupid but something I remembered doing myself. There was something to be said for not having your head stuck in a metal bucket. 

She shouted something to a rebel soldier standing close by. I didn’t need to know what she said as she pointed down the road and redirected my order. Unfortunately, we only had a handful of rebels at our disposal and had to rely on the inexperienced and untrained workers who had joined the resistance for most of the fighting.

Another loud explosion and something that sounded like a landslide drew my attention. Craning my neck, I noticed that one of the Hymag tunnels we had barricaded to stop enemy troops from using it to sneak up on us from behind had disappeared in a cloud of dust. 

“What was that?” Saera shouted. I shifted my footing and leaned back to get a better look and gasped.

“Harp,” I said over the communication device embedded in my heads-up. “Are you seeing this?” 

Colrin Harp, the leader of our small rebel group, didn’t take long to answer. Sitting in one of the Hymags we had used to get here, he monitored our progress. Knowing Harp, he would have preferred to have been in the middle of this fight, but as it was, we needed him to maintain an overview and to direct our efforts. 

“Are those what I think they are?” Harp said. Because my heads-up fed directly into our monitoring systems, Harp was able to see and hear everything I could, through the device. Except that, instead of through a visor, he watched the scene unfold on a monitor. 

“Maecy!” Saera shouted, and this time, along with the nickname she often used to annoy me, I could hear the anger in her voice. She’d been able to listen in on my exchange with Harp, but she hadn’t seen what we had. I looked down, and perhaps it was a good thing that, because of the heads-up, she wouldn’t recognize the grim expression on my face. She crossed her arms over her chest and waited for me to speak. Instead, I jumped down from the rig. The hydraulics of my suit’s built-in exoskeleton easily absorbed the force of my landing, and I stood to face Saera.

“They’re freaks,” I said. “There are a lot of them.” Saera’s eyes widened as I referred to the creatures for which I didn’t have a proper name.

“Like that one we met at ArtRep?” she replied. In the corner of my visor, a few images of a previous recording of our break-in of Harand Sulos’s office flashed across my screen. Sulos was the owner of the ArtRep corporation and had a hand in everything evil they’d ever done and were still doing. We’d run into one of his freaks as we’d fled the building, and it had been a memorable experience. A shiver ran down my spine as I briefly reviewed the footage and remembered how only one of those things nearly had me killed.

“I wouldn’t say exactly like that one,” I said with a shrug, “but sort of, I guess.” Freaks weren’t things or monsters per se. They once had been human beings, ordinary men and women with hopes and dreams, but ArtRep had taken that from them. The company had manipulated their bodies and rendered their minds useless by shoving them into bioprinters and turning them into fighting machines.

Looking around, I noticed the workers maneuvering vehicles and heavy machinery forward to advance on our perimeter. If it hadn’t been for the breach behind us, I would have predicted a relatively smooth victory, but now I had a sinking feeling that our odds had changed.

“Harp,” I asked over the coms, “have you figured it out already?” If we wanted to keep the upper hand, we’d need a strategy change, and there was no one better for that job than Harp.

“Getting final status updates,” he said in his low gruff voice. “Hang on.” I heard the tapping of fingers on a virtual keyboard in the background and knew Kyran, our tech guy, was doing his utmost to keep up with Harp’s commands. Static assaulted my eardrums for a second, and then a different voice came on the line. 

“Another sunny day down below,” Reece said cheerfully, but it wasn’t hard to hear the underlining tension. Still, my heart warmed at the sound of his voice; it always held a sense of mischief. I tried to suppress the smile that the thought of his blue eyes, rugged-looking face, and cheeky grin tended to draw out. Saera must have noticed because she rolled her eyes at me. 

“Update,” Harp said, his tone sharp. Never deterred by Harp’s lack of humor, Reece must have sensed something was up because he came straight to the point.

“Sublevel two is cleared, and we’ve just started on sublevel one, but there are so many of them, and most of the workers have joined the fight upstairs before we could zap them,” he said, now serious. “Whose stupid idea was it anyway to engage the plant without clearing all the neuro-regulators beforehand?” 

By decree from ArtRep, overseers who managed the plant had inserted the workers with these neuro-regulators as a way to control them. If we wanted to successfully overtake this plant, we needed to render these devices embedded inside the workers’ heads useless.

“How long?” Harp asked.

“Too long,” Reece replied. “Don’t forget everyone we zap is out for at least fifteen minutes, and Kelle and Riffy are doing their best to redirect everyone to a somewhat safe location to adjust to the change, but like I said, there are too many of them.”

“Stop thinking about their whereabouts and move through them faster. Those workers have a better chance at survival without the regulators,” Harp said. “Just zap them and render those devices useless where they stand.”

The way he said it, Harp sounded heartless, but we all knew he was right. Neuro-regulators had the potential to kill a person if they had one of those things stuck in their head. 

Fortunately, we’d been able to take over the plant’s systems, and by destroying all of the signal boosters that connected this plant to the Feed, it would be hard for anyone to activate the neuro-regulators. 

Any communication with life beyond these plant walls needed signal enhancement. The rock and the metals embedded within the ground were just too dense for any signal to penetrate. By destroying the signal boosters, we had prevented outside intervention within the plant’s systems. At this point, we controlled these systems, but that could change at any time, and Harp knew it.

“Do you have any idea of what it is like down here?” Reece said. His voice, edged with anger, rose, which was unlike him. The situation on the sublevels must have been bad or else Reece would never have reacted like this. “These people are afraid.” I had a sense that Reece wanted to say more, but Harp cut in.

“Keep at it and send me three people you can spare with those brain-zapper things.”

“Haven’t you been listening?” Reece said. “And I’m sure as hell not going to send you Kelle or Riffy.”

It was hard for me to hear the anguish in Reece’s voice. Usually, he clung to a note of humor as a way of self-preservation during tense situations, but I couldn’t detect any of that. This could only mean things must have been terrible down there. 

“Do not make me repeat myself,” Harp said. Because I had an idea of what Harp had planned and sensed where this conversation was heading, I cut in.

“Reece,” I said, “we’ve got freaks coming in.” The line fell silent for a beat. Reece had been there the last time we had encountered one of those things. I had barely survived the attack, and that had been just one of them.

“All right,” he finally said. “What else?”

“Keep neutralizing those neuro devices,” Harp said. “We widened our sector and have more people coming your way.”

“Got it,” Reece replied and signed off. 

“Maece, Saera,” Harp started. 

“Yeah,” we both replied at the same time. I glanced at Saera, who had been uncharacteristically quiet. She didn’t even look at me as Harp continued. 

“I’ve already sent in another team. I need you two to help them stop those freaks from getting a foothold,” he said. “See if you can use those brain-zapping things or whatever they’re called to put them out of their misery.” I shook my head at Harp’s reference to the device designed to disrupt the neuro-regulators implanted in people’s heads. He was never that into technical stuff.

“Got it,” we again both said at the same time. Saera turned to me and nodded in the direction we needed to go. 

“Lead the way,” she said.

* * *

With an easiness that came from growing up together, and having each other’s backs since we were kids, we fell into step. Weapons drawn, we zigzagged through the crowd of people who were trying to get away from the frontline. Anticipating Saera’s every move and her doing the same with me, we acted as one. That familiarity intensified as a stray enforcer, who had somehow made it past the line, stepped into my path.

Although the memories of being an enforcer once myself had been erased from my mind, the instincts I’d gained seemed engrained in my soul. Within a hundredth of a second, my heads-up scanned the area. Metal structures that were part of the inner workings of this plant enclosed the narrow alley as we ran. The increased chance of weapons fire bouncing off the conductive material and striking one of the plant’s citizens limited my assault options.

Numbers scrolled across my screen as I aimed my weapon. The enforcer had no intention of sparing any of the people fleeing the crossfire. The moment he had detected our approach, his weapon pointed in our direction. He fired several times, and a woman who was unable to escape his line of fire screamed before she crumpled to the ground. 

Unable to help her, I jumped over her unmoving body and headed straight for the enforcers. He fired again, but my heads-up had already anticipated his intent, and I dodged the magnetic blast. A direct hit would instantly kill someone without the protection of an exoskeleton suit. Still, even while wearing a suit, the blast could cause severe pain and would surely give the enforcer the upper hand. I couldn’t tell what was happening behind me, but my heads-up registered Saera’s footsteps and her heavy breathing, meaning she hadn’t been hit, which was enough for me. 

Up close, I noticed a slight hesitation in the enforcer’s reaction and used it to knock the weapon from his hand. He struck out with the other, but I managed to deflect his blow. In one swift move, I grabbed his heads-up and yanked it from his head. I didn’t recognize the person behind the mask, but I knew I couldn’t hurt him—not much anyway. Similar to the freaks, enforcers were just as much victims as the men, women, and children living within these plants.

Eyes that held a strange glow looked at me seemingly confused. Enforcers depended on the information fed to them by their heads-up, and without it, they had trouble functioning. It wasn’t that they couldn’t perform; it just wasn’t in their natures anymore. 

The ArtRep corporation was located in Umbras, one of the cities that belonged to the Combined Districts of Tenebrae, and it had created these mindless soldiers. The rest of the world thought of enforcers as being artificial representations or ARs that were built to serve and maintain order. 

Little did the citizens of Tenebrae know that ArtRep kidnapped people and then had their brains and physical bodies altered inside a bioprinter. After the procedure, which left them with neuro-regulators inside their heads, these enforcers had no idea of who they once had been. They lived and breathed what ArtRep told them to be. The thought nearly made my stomach roll, knowing that at one time I had been one of them. 

Using the opportunity his lack of reaction gave me, I hit him on the head with the weapon I was holding. Apparently, I hadn’t struck him hard enough because he tried to grab me, but before he could get a firm hold, I hit him again. Shifting my body, I caught his arm and threw him over my shoulder. 

He landed with a thud, and within seconds, Saera knelt beside him. She pressed an orange device to the back of his neck, and as she flipped the switch, the man’s body began to convulse as if he were being electrocuted. In a sense, he was. The device Saera held to the man’s neck sent a strong magnetic pulse, not unlike the power emitted by a Hymag line at the exact moment the high-speed transport would pass. The neuro-regulator disrupter was the device that Harp had called a brain zapper ever since he’d introduced it to us.

With the help of what I had experienced, Spiro, our resident genius, had designed the device explicitly to render the neuro-regulators that sat lodged in the back of an enforcer’s head useless. It also knocked them unconscious, which gave us one less enforcer to worry about.

The device beeped, and Saera withdrew it from the man’s neck before she stood and holstered the orange device. She looked at the guy for a moment longer and then knelt again to retrieve his weapon. The weapon was identical to mine and could fire more powerful rounds than our Subterran versions of a magnetic blaster. She appraised the weapon with an almost evil-looking grin before turning to me. 

Her demeanor instantly changed, and I noticed a combination of curiosity and amazement in her expression as she shook her head.

“What?” I asked, and my curiosity piqued. Her reaction also sparked a shimmer of hope. We hadn’t talked, at least not really. Ever since I’d told her about the real reason behind my enforcer adventure, it had felt as if she was stonewalling me. I’d never seen her so angry, and it was going to take time for her to put it aside. We had been down these roads before, but I knew I had taken it too far this time. I hoped that sooner rather than later we could act like sisters again and not talk in the civil but cold way we’d been communicating these past few weeks, but it would have to be enough for now.

Looking surprised, she raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth as if to say something. My heads-up detected her elevated heart rate, but that could have been from the excitement a moment ago. Her pupils had fully dilated as if she had just witnessed something incredible, although I did read some concern in her eyes as she bit her lower lip. Before I could fully analyze her initial reaction, it shifted as fast as it had occurred. As if something had spooked her, she donned a mask, and her eyes grew cold as she shrugged it off. 

“Nothing,” she said. “Let’s keep going.”

Sidestepping the enforcer’s unmoving form, she bumped my shoulder harder than necessary and took up a firm stride in the direction of the barricades. Unsure of what had triggered her latest reaction, I hurried after her. For the past few weeks, it seemed Saera had needed her distance, and I had honored that by letting her be. This time, though, I couldn’t help myself as I asked, “But there is something.”

She ignored me and kept looking in the direction in which we were going. “Saera, please—” I started to say, but the hard look she gave me made me swallow the rest. 

“Not now,” she said in a firm voice, “and stop scanning me.”

My step faltered as she continued and walked up to one of the workers. Shit! She must have noticed the little green light on my heads-up that indicated a scan was in progress. I hadn’t even meant to scan her—well, not consciously anyway.

It seemed that these days our only way to communicate was either through hard glares or by avoiding each other. How else was I supposed to figure out what was going on with her when she refused to talk to me?

Exhaling slowly, I pushed the thought aside; this wasn’t the time or place to fix our problems, and I needed to focus on the battle. Moving in behind Saera, I caught the tail end of her introduction as she said my name and pointed with her thumb over her shoulder.

I stared up at the worker towering over us. It wasn’t as if the man was that much taller than us. It had more to do with the metal contraption he sat in. The piece of machinery looked like an extension of his body, holding him tightly secure within his seat. The technology used was similar to our exoskeleton suits except for being a lot bigger. This suit made the worker at least ten feet tall, and instead of hands, it had these large clamps for hauling around crates and other stuff.

“The name’s Clyde,” he said in what almost sounded like a growl. His face sat covered in streaks of grime, and dirt and a thick beard hid most of his features. What stood out were his gleaming gray eyes that shone like tiny beacons in the smoke-filled surroundings. As with the enforcer I had struck down, those eyes were a sure betrayal that Clyde still had his neuro-regulator inserted in the back of his head. 

Not as invasive as the enforcer version of the device, these neuro-regulators were used to maintain order within the power plants. Even though the occupants of these plants were allowed to move freely, the devices gave overseers employed by the districts information of the workers’ whereabouts and their work ethics. 

Similar to the enforcer devices, though, the neuro-regulators embedded within the workers’ heads could also be used to administer a high-voltage shock directly into their brains. This would effectively kill a person, and it provided the overseers with another measure of control. 

Because of this kill switch, we had taken our time infiltrating Power Plant One. Disrupting the regulators inside the workers’ heads had been our primary objective before we’d even initiated a full-blown attack. The same tactics should’ve been applied to this plant, but someone had decided on a different course. I just hoped that wouldn’t become a problem for Clyde later on. 

Hinges creaked, and hydraulics hissed as Clyde raised an arm and pointed beyond the barricade. “I’m not sure what those things are that just broke through, but they seem to be in a holding pattern.”

“They’re ArtRep’s new pets,” Saera said as she started to walk toward the barricade. I followed as she climbed the struts that led to the top of a vehicle blocking the road. The machine used for garbage disposal stood on wheels as tall as me and should give us a good view of the situation. 

I joined Saera on the vehicle’s roof and saw Clyde’s assessment of the freaks still applied. Five of them stood in a line as dust and smoke swirled around them. They held still like a bunch of drones waiting for someone to command them what to do. One of them looked female, due to certain exposed parts, but otherwise, I couldn’t tell anything about who they used to be. Their faces looked ashen, and their skin bulged unnaturally with mechanical components occupying their bodies. With two of them, oversized hydraulic limbs replaced their legs to make them stand taller than the others. All of them had either one or both arms replaced. They looked ominous standing there in the gloom, surrounded by a cloud of dust and smoke with only the occasional glint bouncing off their metal constructs. 

From the corner of my eye, I noticed three bodies in Subterran armor maneuvering across a scaffold as they made their way to us. They had to be the men Harp had requested from Reece. I hadn’t noticed any of the other rebels Harp had assigned, but I knew for sure we were going to need them with these five. 

“Odd,” Saera said, and I had a feeling that she was talking more to herself than to me. “They’re not even doing anything.”

Saera shifted her newly found enforcer weapon from one hand to the other. The piece was heavier than her regular gun, but I knew she’d be able to handle it. I just wondered how effective it would be on these freaks. 

The ArtRep corporation built those weapons—including the enforcer armor—and these freaks. Wouldn’t they design those freaks to withstand those weapons? My enforcer suit could take several hits before its integrity started to waver. 

“Let’s see if we can take advantage of that,” I said, referring to the fact that the freaks still hadn’t moved. I looked down at Clyde and called out to him. “Got any more of those?” I gestured to his cargo-carrier suit. He nodded, and a couple of hinges squeaked.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll round up some of the workers.”

“See if you can circle that way and start work on building up that barrier again. I don’t want any more enemy troops using that Hymag line to get to us,” I said and pointed in the direction where the explosion had occurred.

Until now we had managed to keep this area isolated and only had to deal with the enforcers and overseers stationed here. Considering the underground nature of this base, that hadn’t been so hard. All the connecting Hymag lines had been blocked, which should have given us enough time to take over this plant, but we hadn’t anticipated that we’d be busy removing neuro-regulators during the assault. I didn’t understand why Harp had allowed this to happen.

“Will do,” he answered gruffly.

“Oh, and Clyde,” I added. Hinges shifted as he looked up at me. “Be careful; these things are bad news.”

Without a reply, he lifted his arm. Hydraulics hissed, and metal parts ground as Clyde pointedly displayed the massive clamp before snapping it shut. I flinched at the loud clank of metal. It wasn’t hard to imagine what those clamps could do to a person if caught in there. The suit would surely give him an advantage in fighting the freaks, but I feared it wouldn’t be enough. Still, it was better than nothing. With a wicked grin on his face, Clyde nodded and set his cargo carrier in motion.

Saera was chewing her lower lip again. She looked anxious, and I couldn’t blame her. I had a clear memory of what those things were capable of, and so had she. 

“This ought to be fun,” she said under her breath. I gave her a sideways glance, unsure if I should even reply. Before, we would never have stepped into a situation like this without some form of reassurance that we had each other’s back or telling the other one to be careful. Although Saera’s steely gaze gave me the answer, I could have done without, and I took a step forward. 

A hand on my upper arm stopped me from jumping to the next vehicle to get to the other side of the barricade.

“Hey,” Saera said in a timid voice. I turned to face her, feeling a bit shocked at the sound of that single word, and I wasn’t even sure why. “Be safe.” I suddenly had the urge to scan her again. It felt as if I was getting conflicting orders that didn’t make sense. 

“I, uh…,” I said, feeling confused and sounding like a babbling idiot. Maybe being an enforcer had rubbed off on me, although I couldn’t remember much about it.

Saera shook her head in disbelief as if something was wrong with me. She grabbed me in a hug as she repeated, “Just be safe.”

“Be safe,” I echoed.