Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(22)
His terror reaches out to me, clutching me in a choke hold. Ransom’s shooting star–shaped moniker alerts him to an incoming communication. He backs away from my capsule and taps the back of his hand. “Yes?” he responds to the small holographic screen. I see his lips move. I can’t hear his voice with my ears, not the way one would hear a normal voice, not with the noise of the compressed air and the thick glass surrounding me. The sound is in his head. I hear it telepathically.
“Where are you?” a stern voice replies. “You’re not at your post!”
My eyes slip out of focus, and my head pounds with pain, trying to filter out all the noise. Ransom turns and creeps away on the grated catwalk, back the way he’d come from earlier. I close my eyes and try to strategize how to survive in Swords. The only plan that comes to mind is “Fake it until you make it.”
Chapter 5
Heads Will Roll
Hours later, a hot mist infuses my capsule, drenching my skin and opening my pores.
Pine-scented disinfectant mixes with the humid air, clinging to everything. The warm steam vents. Cool, dewy air pipes in from above. Droplets of water form on me and run down my limbs. A rush of warm air blasts from above and below, forcing the moisture from the capsule and drying me. The intravenous tubing attached to me retracts, leaving a stinging reminder.
All the capsules on my level open. AI programming, disseminated through Spectrum via the implanted device in my head, takes over. A rush of neurotransmitters floods my brain with a tingling sensation. Electrical impulses fire inside my head and down my spine, causing me to shiver. The command of the neuro-enhancer feels tenuous, but still it has some hold over me. My left foot lifts, without me directing it, and takes a step forward onto the grated catwalk. More AI-generated impulses fire, and I’m all the way out of the capsule, turning, and walking in the same direction as everyone else. We all move with precisely the same gait, as if we’re one entity instead of thousands of individuals.
I don’t have to think or pretend to be a part of Census’s world. I’m integrated—one of them—but my thoughts are my own, which makes me different. I’m simply floating in a current, moving and shifting by the will of an outside force—on autopilot. It’s a struggle not to fight the alien impulses. I’ve conditioned my body to perform as if it’s dancing on a pinpoint. The anxiety of being out of control now may just get me caught. I focus on slowing my breathing, on letting go.
I calm somewhat when I reason that I can resist these impulses. The proof is in the way I direct my eyes to scan the surroundings. More proof is in my autonomous thoughts. I’m only partly engaged with Spectrum. Outright resistance now could be suicide.
Wide tubes loom ahead, reminding me of heartwoods. The soldiers in the line in front of me each enter the transparent tube and fall from sight. My heart flutters faster than a hummingbird’s wings, but I don’t defy the programming directing me forward.
I step off the catwalk and fall. Compressed air from holes along the tubing blasts me. It slows my decent along with an antigravity device.
I reach a lower deck and land on my feet with almost no impact. The air forces me out of the transport tube. The colossal metal hull of the airship dwarfs me. Massive automated machinery whirls and clangs nearby. A silver orb the size of a man’s head whizzes up to me. It has a face of a thousand tiny blue lights. It bobs toward the Black-O moniker on my left hand and scans it. A floating hoverboard darts from a waiting line of them to pause just in front of my shins. Still on autopilot, I’m made to step on it. The hoverboard shifts me sideways across the complex. From the corner of my eye, I see Cherno make it to a hoverboard and follow me into another industrial room awhirl with machinery.
My arms lift and outstretch. I pass through a halo of blue lights. My holographic image, a mirror image, shimmers in front of me. Measurements are assessed—the machine processes a multitude of numbers and lengths, the digits spinning so fast I can hardly track them as they float by on the side of my likeness. Steel robotic arms from sinister-looking contraptions rise around me. A huge bolt of black textile surges up from the floor. Chrome pincer hands unwind a length of it. Shiny material whirls and sheers from the bolt in midair. The pincers drape the fabric on me. Red lasers cut my silhouette from the cloth. The heat from the laser melts the material so that when the burned edges meet, they mesh without a seam. It’s self-healing fabric. With my Black-O uniform complete, my hoverboard whisks me down the line.
A layer of black liquid puddles on my sleeve. At first I think it could be something disgusting, but glancing up I find it came from an iron cauldron suspended above. Warm to the touch, the liquid polymer forms fibrous strands as it spreads over my arm, crawling and weaving until it covers my hand and fingernails, forming a protective glove. Machines mount cylindrical bands and clap them onto my wrist. The silvery metal sinks into the polymer, becoming a cuff to detach the combat glove. More drips of polymer fall on me and spread over my shoulders and back until I’m covered from my toes to my neck in hardening armor. The final machine on this line stamps the breastplate with a large crystal ring. From it, a holographic black O projects outward, appearing to suck at the surrounding light and draw it in.
My arms fall to my sides. The hoverboard makes a ninety-degree turn. A new chrome-plated machine awaits me. Its mechanized arm has a bristle attachment on the end. The brush whirls, catching my hair up with its quills. It gathers and winds silky strands into a long ponytail, then secures it with a rubbery fastener. Picking up speed, the hoverboard careens from the room with me atop it. It chauffeurs me through a series of towering archways and halts at a troop-assembly room. Rows and rows of mind-controlled Black-O soldiers stand, like effigies, with their backs to me.