| THE LORELEI SIGNAL |
.
| Written by Selena Thomason / Artwork by Johnathan DeBruyn |
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| The Thoughts of Cats |
Someone was calling my name, but I knew better than to answer. The Guild had sent retrievers for me, but they weren’t
very smart. I had used a gel to cover my natural scent, but I was more concerned they might have a mindhound with
them. So I focused all my energy on projecting the thought pattern of a cat. It took a lot of effort to hide the cluttered,
complex thoughts normal to humans, but I had learned from the best.
Karn was a master thoughtpainter. I was lucky enough to be one of his students, his last student as it turned out. He had
grown old and sick, but anyone who reached out toward his mind would have found it young and fresh, even rebellious
and willful like a teenager’s. Perhaps that’s why his death came as such a shock to those around him.
One morning he was simply gone. An aide found him laying on his pallet as usual, an expression of peaceful rest on his
face. Only upon coming closer did he notice the old man wasn’t breathing.
The cat was at his side even then, nestled under his left arm as usual but awake this morning. The master’s cherished pet
stared up at the aide then looked back at the master’s still face. The cat seemed to know its companion was gone, but
perhaps it was confused about where he had gone and why he had left his body behind. It was a long time before the cat
could be pried from the dead man’s side and even then the animal hovered in his room for days, as if the master might
suddenly return.
“Cats are the perfect animals to study,” Karn had said on more than one occasion. “They have simple animal minds, but
their thought processes are more elegant than other animals.” He insisted that sometimes their languorous thoughts would
approach poetry.
“You would be surprised what they understand,” Karn told me when I complained that cats were the topic of the week’s
lesson. As if to demonstrate the point, the master’s cat crawled silently into his lap and looked up at him as if listening to
his teachings.
Karn stroked the animal in a way that was both distracted and compassionate, as if he didn’t have to pay attention to the
animal to know it was there. “Chirl, here,” he said, referring to the cat by its name, “can teach you how to fool a
mindhound.”
It seemed a ridiculous claim. “How is a cat supposed to teach me that?”
“You must study Chirl, his thoughts in particular. If you can learn to mimic them, then a mindhound will mistake you for a
cat and move along. Cats are ubiquitous in this strange, new world. Anywhere you would be hiding from a mindhound,
there is likely to be at least one cat hiding in the shadows as well. If you paint your thoughts well enough, the hounds won’
t be able to tell you from the other concealed felines.”
I hoped he was right.
I sensed a cat approach as I waited quietly in the shadows, hoping to go unnoticed by the hounds. I sent it a friendly
thoughtwave. Cats usually know cat people, but you couldn’t be sure and I didn’t want the animal giving away my
position with a hiss and a screech.
Thankfully the cat seemed to recognize me as a kindred spirit. I felt its soft fur rub against my ankle as it said hello. It
continued to brush against me, its newfound friend. I was afraid it was in a playful mood and would draw the hounds’
attention. I silently begged it to settle. After a few tense moments, it did. I felt the cat nestle on the ground next to my feet.
I patted it in appreciation. A sense of sleepy comfort washed over me in return.
The hounds were closer now but they didn’t seem to have picked up my human thoughts. I had the usual tell-tales: ego,
strong sense of self, complex thoughts, conflicting emotions, all safely covered by layers of the same sleepy comfort I
was feeling from the cat. In fact, I adjusted my thought patterns to match its as much as possible. Hopefully, they would
see either one cat or two.
As I hid there, pretending to be a cat, I thought about why I could not afford to be taken by the Guild. It wasn’t fear of
pain or death that kept me hidden. I was afraid that, if captured, I might give away the rebel’s location without even
realizing it. The Guild’s scientists were said to be especially tricky. They could get your mind to believe anything. They
could make me think I had already reached my destination and was passing along the vital intelligence to its intended
recipient - not its intended target. Boa had given us all suicide caps on our back teeth, but I wasn’t completely sure the
thing would work. It seemed implausible that I could chomp down on my tooth hard enough to crack the thing open and
release the poison. Besides, I knew for sure that I didn’t want to use it.
I pushed the thoughts aside. You couldn’t be too careful with a mindhound in the vicinity. So I buried my muddled,
worried, human thoughts under a cat-like calm. I tried to focus on the cat’s soft breathing. I tried to adopt it as my own. I
just had to wait until the hounds and retrievers gave up and went away.
“She’s not here,” one of them said after what seemed to be a very long time. “Maybe the intel was wrong.”
“The source is pretty reliable. He’s positive it was this Kel Milla who escaped from the Sector 12 school as a kid. We have
to find her. Our contact says she’s got the target location for some big attack the rebels are planning.”
This one seemed unwilling to give up. I was afraid I would be trapped here, pretending to be a cat, for the rest of the day.
Finally, he said, “Let’s try the mall ruins. I hear the undesirables hang out there. The sewers connect these abandoned
office buildings with the mall. Maybe she went down into the tunnels to retreat to their not-so-secret lair.”
“It would be just like an undesirable to lurk around sewers and ruins,” the other snickered. “It’s not like they have
anywhere else to go.”
I quickly smothered the thought that the rebels hadn’t hidden in the mall ruins for nearly a year.
“Come on, let’s go. This place is a waste of time.”
I could hear them moving away now. The cat next to me stirred slightly at the noise, then settled back into its snooze.
“They are so stupid,” one said as their voices began to fade around the corner. “All they have to do is play by the rules,
just a few simple rules, and they can be a part of society. But they won’t do it.”
“Yep, they’re just born wrong. No way around it,” his comrade agreed.
It was a common argument. Nearly two decades ago, scientists had discovered a cluster of genetic markers that predicted
personality traits like nonconformity and lack of respect for authority. It was a surprisingly quick jump from there to
declaring all such traits, and anything else the government proclaimed “undesirable,” to be birth defects. Things really got
out of hand when the government mandated that all undesirables come in for genetic resequencing.
I remember clearly when it happened. I was twelve. I lived with my parents and two brothers in one of the quirky, old
houses down by the waterfront. My parents were both artists: my mother a writer, my father a sculptor. Even my
brothers looked like they would go into creative fields. Arin had taken an early interest in music. And though Lev had a
love of science rather than art, he most loved to invent new things and his designs were always as beautiful as they were
functional. Me, I couldn’t decide what I wanted to be. Back then I never would have suspected that I would become a
courier for an underground movement seeking to overthrow the government.
Looking back it is easy for my adult mind to see what a bunch of dangerous subversives we were. In retrospect, it is no
surprise the Guild came storming through our door that spring morning. My parents had heard the call for undesirables to
come in for treatment, but they had ignored it. They hadn’t considered any of their traits particularly objectionable.
The Guild’s enforcers took my parents away first. They seized all their belongings, and put us kids into a “reform” school.
I suppose they thought we might be young enough we could learn to be good citizens and didn’t need genetic manipulation
in order to be rehabilitated. They were wrong, of course.
Within a week, Lev had devised an escape.
“Just follow my instructions,” he had said, “and everything will be fine.”
“But Lev, there are guards everywhere. We might get caught, then we’ll just get punished for trying. They could
resequence our genes after all.”
“You worry too much, little sister.” He turned to Arin, who was a couple years younger than me. “What do you think,
baby brother? Are you ready to get out of here?”
Arin was nodding his head before Lev even stopped talking. I could see that Arin was just as scared as I was, but he
adored our older brother and desperately wanted to be like him. He would follow Lev anywhere.
“Lev, you can’t seriously expect Arin to be part of your plan. He’s just a kid.”
“No, I’m not,” Arin protested, like the child he was.
“Arin, you’re only ten years old. Mom and Dad wouldn’t want you to take this risk. Remember, they always said that if
we got separated from them to just wait where we were and they would come for us.”
An annoyed sigh escaped Lev’s lips. “They are not coming for us, little sis! No one is coming for us.”
“You don’t know that,” I protested.
“What do you think they took them away for? To ask them their favorite dessert recipes?”
“No, of course not, but…”
“They are probably not even alive anymore. And if they are, they have surely been resequenced by now.” Arin looked like
he was going to cry, but Lev was undeterred. “Even if they remembered us and wanted to come back for us, there is no
way the gov is going to let them. We’re undesirables, Kel, haven’t you been paying attention?”
“Of course,” I stammered. “I know we’re under suspicion but they haven’t taken us away for treatment, so maybe…”
“How long do you think we will be able to fool these people into thinking we are conformists?”
Arin placed a small hand on Lev’s arm to get his attention. “What’s a conformist?” he asked, stumbling a little over the
new word.
Lev looked down at his younger brother with compassion in his eyes. “It means like everyone else, like the gov wants us
to be.”
“Oh,” Arin replied. His face was so grave I thought he might finally understand what all the fuss was about.
“We have to get out of here,” Lev said, looking at me again. “Think of all we will lose, all Arin will lose, if our individuality
is beaten out of us. You know that Mom and Dad would want us to stay free, to stay the people we are, the people we
were meant to be. You know that, right?”
“Of course.”
“Then this is the only way.”
“Alright.”
Arin clapped his hands as if a new game had been decided on. “Yeah! We’re going to escape the bad guys.”
Lev placed a hand on our baby brother’s shoulders. “Yes, Arin, we are.”
It didn’t go as planned. They caught up with us as we approached the perimeter wall. We were running toward the
boundary when a bright light landed on the stone wall ahead, scaring off a cat that had been sleeping there.
Arin couldn’t keep up with Lev’s much longer legs so finally Lev picked him up and carried him as he ran. But the extra
weight must have slowed Lev down because I was suddenly out in front of them and getting further away every second.
I looked back and started to slow.
“No,” Lev yelled, “Keep going as fast as you can. We’re right behind you. Keep going!”
I picked up speed again and reached the wall just as our pursuers began firing.
“Keep going, Kel! Get over the wall. We’re right behind you!”
Bullets ricocheted off the wall as I scaled the stone. Lev hollered, “Don’t stop!”
As I got to the top of the wall I heard Arin cry out in pain. I turned to see Lev still carrying him, running toward the wall.
“Keep going,” Lev commanded again, but there was something new in his demeanor. It was panic. He looked down at
Arin, still in his arms. That’s when I saw the blood seeping from the side of Arin’s head, staining Lev’s shoulder in the
light.
Another shot sounded and Lev twitched and fell, taking Arin down with him. I started to climb back down the wall toward
my brothers.
“No!” Lev yelled up at me. “Keep going. Don’t let it be for nothing.”
“But,” I began to protest.
“Kel, you can’t help us if you are in here too. Get out of here. Help us from the outside. It’s the only way!”
“I’ll come back for you, somehow.”
“I know,” was all he said as the govmen reached him. They fired at me on the lip of the wall, but I let go and dropped
safely down on the other side. In the moonlit dark, I ran as fast as I could toward the old mall at the edge of the city. All
the stores had closed years ago. No one went there anymore, so it seemed like a good place to hide.
When I finally got there, I was surprised to find I wasn’t the only person who thought a deserted mall made the perfect
hideout.
***
This time instead of heading to the mall like the govmen expected, I headed toward a factory on the east side of town. Boa
had sent me across town to meet with another rebel faction. They weren’t as organized as us, or as well-armed, but they
had something we didn’t; someone on the inside, an undesirable who had managed to go undetected and was finally in the
right place to feed confidential information to the rebels.
“Are you sure you can trust this person?” I asked.
“We’re sure,” the east-side leader said. Her face was angry. There was a slash scar over her left eyebrow. Some said she
got it escaping a resequencing clinic. She was legendary, but too brutal a leader for my tastes. It was said she kept track
of her gov kills by cutting lines into her left forearm. I glanced down, hoping to catch a glimpse, but she was wearing long-
sleeves. “The Slasher,” they called her when they weren’t calling her Mac, which was her name.
I could tell she didn’t like me, and was weighing the annoyance of having to deal with me with the positive of getting some
of Boa’s weapons. “Do you have the location of the merchandise?” she said finally.
“Yes.” I handed her the slip of paper as Boa instructed. “Tell the person at the door that your cousin Stefan said they
served the best linguini.”
Mac the Slasher crinkled her face. I guess she didn’t like linguini. But she took the paper anyway, and pulled an envelope
from a vest pocket.
“Here is the location of the G5 clinic, plus security badges and the necessary papers for the driver. Did you get the truck
as planned?”
“Yes.” I took the envelope and shifted my feet. “What about the other matter? Was your contact able to provide anything
about the two people I’m looking for?”
Mac hesitated. I pulled a wad of cash from my jacket. I had been saving it for years. Now, finally, I hoped it would buy
me the location of my brothers.
Mac took the money. “Yeah, we found them. One is dead.”
My heart clenched. “Which one?”
“Lev.”
I didn’t know what to feel. Lev was the older of my brothers, but last I saw them it had been Arin who seemed closest to
death. “What happened?”
Mac looked up from counting the money, as if she wasn’t sure I was paying enough for such details. “There wasn’t
much in the file. It seems he was killed during an escape attempt. Apparently he tried to escape several times, but never
succeeded.” She stuffed the money in a pocket and looked back at me. “You’ve got to respect him for trying though.”
“What about Arin?”
“He happens to be in the clinic you guys are planning to hit.”
“He’s in G5? Are you sure?”
Mac’s face twisted in annoyance. That was her only answer.
“Of course you’re sure. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Do you know what room?”
“No but based on his age, he should be on the third floor.”
“Thanks. We’ll be in touch.”
***
I left the east-side factory and headed west, toward a run-down church in what used to be downtown. That part of the
city was now a wasteland. The gov hadn’t gotten around to rebuilding after the October 13th riots destroyed most of the
neighborhood.
Some said the govmen were superstitious about the area. Three hundred and seventeen people had been killed when the
gov tried to quiet a crowd of angry undesirables. I suppose some of the govmen thought ghosts from that day might still
be hanging around looking for a bit of payback.
Little did they know that there really was a bunch of undesirables lurking around downtown plotting payback. Not ghosts,
just a bunch of rebels.
I headed to the church to meet Boa. He hadn’t killed as many govmen as Mac the Slasher, but I appreciated that about
him. I don’t think I could ever follow a leader like Mac. But, Boa was different. His methods were more technologically
focused and generally less violent than other rebel leaders.
Boa had recently figured out how to break into the gov’s network of computers. He’d only been able to access basic
administrative functions so far, but that was enough. Supply and requisition records told us where the weapons were kept,
and just last week Boa had taken his best fighters for a raid. They returned with enough firepower to make our band of
rebels easily the most well-armed.
Boa wasn’t satisfied though. The weapons depot was just a necessary stop on the way to his real target. He wanted a
strike that would hit the gov hard but not just in terms of people and supplies. He wanted a strike that would break their
will, their “heart” if govmen could be said to have such a thing. He knew what that target was, but the east-siders knew
where it was and how to get in. Hence the deal with scary Slash. Boa planned to attack a clinic, but more importantly to
disable their tracking system and erase all the records of the undesirables who had been captured.
It was a good plan and would make a big difference in our struggle with the gov, but all I could think about was that I had
to get Arin out of there safely. I knew Boa’s people wouldn’t intentionally kill all the innocents housed in the G5 clinic, but
some would certainly be hurt when the rebels attacked. I had to figure out a way to ensure Arin wasn't one of them.
***
It took some doing to convince Boa to let me join the team attacking the G5 clinic.
“You’re not a commando, Kel. You’re a courier,” he rightly argued.
“I know. But I have to make sure my brother gets out okay. Your soldiers can’t concern themselves with that. They have
other priorities. Please, we have enough badges. Just let me go. I promise I won’t get in the way.”
Finally he agreed. “Okay, but you’ll be on your own once you get there. The team won’t have time to worry about you.
And if you’re not back at the rendezvous point on time, they will leave you without a second thought.”
“I understand.”
“And if you get captured, you know what you have to do.”
I knew he meant the suicide capsule, and I nodded my agreement. Still, I promised myself it wasn’t going to come to that.
***
Getting in was no problem. The IDs were apparently legit. The guards at the gate didn’t give us a second glance. They
assumed the truck was just the usual food delivery from Vargas Farms. They had no idea that the refrigerated
compartment in the back contained bundled-up rebels instead of meat and dairy products.
I only hoped that they didn’t have any mindhounds nearby. I could project the thoughts of a cat, but no one would believe
a cat was hanging out in the back of a refrigerated truck. Hopefully if a mindhound sensed us we could get lucky and he
wouldn’t look too close. Certainly there were plenty of cats roaming the grounds both inside and outside the clinic walls.
So, we painted ourselves a nice unobtrusive color and hoped for the best.
We got all the way into the delivery dock with no sign of alarm. Lery the driver let us out once he made sure the dock area
was empty. I was so relieved when the doors swung wide and I could finally get out of the cold.
“We’re here,” he said.
Chilled rebels jumped down out of the truck. The commandos quickly disappeared into the building.
Lery turned to me. “Okay, kid, this train’s heading back out in exactly twenty minutes. If you’re late, you’re on your own.
Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good luck then.”
***
I headed to the third floor where Mac the Slasher suspected my brother was being held. I knew that Sari and Mic were
headed to the computer control center to unlock all the doors, disable the tracker, and upload a virus that would destroy
the database. Boa hoped the virus would also be transmitted to all the other gov sites, corrupting that data as well. If we
were lucky, the gov would lose all their undesirables' tracking and micro-chipped escapees everywhere could disappear
into the ruined, forgotten parts of the world.
I didn’t know how to find Arin. Sari had promised to radio me if the microchip database listed Arin’s room number, but it
didn’t seem likely.
I quickly found the back stairs and ran up to the third floor. Doors stretched before me in opposing rows as I stood at the
head of the hallway. I glanced at my watch. Fifteen minutes to go. Sari and Mic should be in the control room by now. I
hoped that shortly I would hear the sound of locks throughout the floor clicking off.
Something brushed my ankle and made me jump. I looked down to find a small cat wrapping itself around my foot. I bent
down and picked it up.
“What are you doing here?”
The kitten nuzzled me and meowed softly.
“Do you know where my brother Arin is?” I asked idly, not really expecting an answer.
The cat squirmed as if it wanted to be let down so I put it back down on the floor. I ventured out into the hall with the cat
at my side. It was early morning, about 5 a.m. All the “patients” were locked in their rooms for safekeeping and only the
sparest of staff remained to keep an eye on things. I hoped there was no nurse or security guard on the floor. I hadn’t
seen one yet. Maybe my luck would hold.
I cautiously approached the nurse’s station. No one was there. I peeked around the corner to get a glance at the
guardroom just behind. There was a large man sitting there. I could see him in dimly lit profile. He was facing the monitors
on the wall instead of looking out into the hallway. That was a bit of luck, especially since, judging by the way he was
slouched over, he was probably asleep in his chair. If I was quiet, he might stay that way. I wondered if Sari and Mic
could unlock the rooms without setting off any alarms. I realized too late I should have asked that question before
attempting this rescue.
I began peeking into the rooms looking for Arin. After trying several rooms with no luck, I noticed the cat had gone on
ahead of me and was now brushing against a door toward the end of the hall. Its soft meow was barely audible in the
silence of the sleeping floor.
I wondered if the cat was trying to show me where Arin was, but the thought seemed ridiculous. Even if cats did “know
things” as Karn suggested, there was no way the cat could know who I was looking for, who “Arin” was. There was no
way the cat could recognize the sound of that word and equate it with one of the prisoners. It was absurd.
But then I remembered that Arin always loved cats and, more importantly, that cats had always loved him. So, I quickly
headed for the cat’s preferred door. Cats always know cat people, they say. If the cat lived in this clinic, as it seemed to,
then Arin certainly would have befriended it by now.
As I approached his door, I heard a soft click then the door opened inward. As the cat headed into the room, I heard my
brother’s voice.
“Flix, what are you doing here so early in the morning?” I reached the doorway just in time to see Arin picking up the cat.
“Arin,” I said, stunned. “Is that really you?”
“Kel, what are you doing here?”
“Looking for you, of course. Come on. There isn’t much time. We have to get you out of here, right now!”
Arin was painfully slow to respond. I kept hearing the seconds tick away. I knew we would be left behind if we didn’t get
back to the truck in time. “Hurry up, we have to go now! People will be coming.”
He was still in his pajamas. I grabbed his jacket from a hook on the wall and pushed him into the hallway.
“What about Flix?”
“Bring him if you want, just hurry.”
Arin murmured to the cat as we shuffled quickly down the hall toward the back stairs. “What do you think, Flix? Are you
ready to get out of this place?” The cat signaled its agreement by cozying further into the crook of Arin’s arm. “Hey, what
about Lev?”
“He isn’t here.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. Now, be quiet,” I said, indicating the guard desk, “we don’t want to wake the guard.”
***
“Mission accomplished, I see,” Lery pronounced when we arrived at the truck.
“Yep. Where are Sari and Mic?”
“Hopefully on their way. It’s about time.” He glanced at his watch. “What’s with the cat?”
“He’s my friend, Flix,” Arin said simply, then turned anxiously to me. “Flix can come too, right?”
“Of course. Cats are always welcome,” Lery assured him.
Lery looked anxiously toward the door then back to me. “We gotta go.”
“But they will be here any minute,” I argued. “I know it.”
“Look, I understand, but if we wait we may all get caught and what good is that going to do anyone? We have to leave
now.” He started to close up the back of the truck.
“We’re here, we’re here,” Sari’s voice called as she and Mic ran for the truck and dove in.
“Great, let’s go.” Lery closed up the truck and we were off.
“What about everyone else? Who is going to rescue them?” Arin asked.
“They will have to make their own way to whatever homes or hideouts they have. We can’t take in everyone, Arin.” I
gestured around the cramped interior of the truck. “As you can see, there is barely room for us.” Arin’s cat tried to
snuggle even deeper into the arm of Arin’s jacket. It was clear that neither of them were prepared for the cold of traveling
in a fridge. I drew them close, hoping to warm them a little. “We can’t take the others with us, but we unlocked all the
cells and disabled the trackers, so they have a chance. If they can get out, the gov won’t be able to use their microchips to
find them.”
“Do you think they’ll be okay?”
“Some of them will, Arin. I’m sorry, but today we can only save a few and help the rest. Today we could only save you
and Flix. That’s good though, right?”
“Right,” Arin replied.
I turned to Sari and Mic. “Thanks for letting me come along and get my brother.”
Sari smiled. “No problem.”
“And Flix too,” Arin added. “Thanks for letting me bring my cat.”
Mic reached out to pet the cat. “No prob, kid. You can never have too many cats around.”
very smart. I had used a gel to cover my natural scent, but I was more concerned they might have a mindhound with
them. So I focused all my energy on projecting the thought pattern of a cat. It took a lot of effort to hide the cluttered,
complex thoughts normal to humans, but I had learned from the best.
Karn was a master thoughtpainter. I was lucky enough to be one of his students, his last student as it turned out. He had
grown old and sick, but anyone who reached out toward his mind would have found it young and fresh, even rebellious
and willful like a teenager’s. Perhaps that’s why his death came as such a shock to those around him.
One morning he was simply gone. An aide found him laying on his pallet as usual, an expression of peaceful rest on his
face. Only upon coming closer did he notice the old man wasn’t breathing.
The cat was at his side even then, nestled under his left arm as usual but awake this morning. The master’s cherished pet
stared up at the aide then looked back at the master’s still face. The cat seemed to know its companion was gone, but
perhaps it was confused about where he had gone and why he had left his body behind. It was a long time before the cat
could be pried from the dead man’s side and even then the animal hovered in his room for days, as if the master might
suddenly return.
“Cats are the perfect animals to study,” Karn had said on more than one occasion. “They have simple animal minds, but
their thought processes are more elegant than other animals.” He insisted that sometimes their languorous thoughts would
approach poetry.
“You would be surprised what they understand,” Karn told me when I complained that cats were the topic of the week’s
lesson. As if to demonstrate the point, the master’s cat crawled silently into his lap and looked up at him as if listening to
his teachings.
Karn stroked the animal in a way that was both distracted and compassionate, as if he didn’t have to pay attention to the
animal to know it was there. “Chirl, here,” he said, referring to the cat by its name, “can teach you how to fool a
mindhound.”
It seemed a ridiculous claim. “How is a cat supposed to teach me that?”
“You must study Chirl, his thoughts in particular. If you can learn to mimic them, then a mindhound will mistake you for a
cat and move along. Cats are ubiquitous in this strange, new world. Anywhere you would be hiding from a mindhound,
there is likely to be at least one cat hiding in the shadows as well. If you paint your thoughts well enough, the hounds won’
t be able to tell you from the other concealed felines.”
I hoped he was right.
I sensed a cat approach as I waited quietly in the shadows, hoping to go unnoticed by the hounds. I sent it a friendly
thoughtwave. Cats usually know cat people, but you couldn’t be sure and I didn’t want the animal giving away my
position with a hiss and a screech.
Thankfully the cat seemed to recognize me as a kindred spirit. I felt its soft fur rub against my ankle as it said hello. It
continued to brush against me, its newfound friend. I was afraid it was in a playful mood and would draw the hounds’
attention. I silently begged it to settle. After a few tense moments, it did. I felt the cat nestle on the ground next to my feet.
I patted it in appreciation. A sense of sleepy comfort washed over me in return.
The hounds were closer now but they didn’t seem to have picked up my human thoughts. I had the usual tell-tales: ego,
strong sense of self, complex thoughts, conflicting emotions, all safely covered by layers of the same sleepy comfort I
was feeling from the cat. In fact, I adjusted my thought patterns to match its as much as possible. Hopefully, they would
see either one cat or two.
As I hid there, pretending to be a cat, I thought about why I could not afford to be taken by the Guild. It wasn’t fear of
pain or death that kept me hidden. I was afraid that, if captured, I might give away the rebel’s location without even
realizing it. The Guild’s scientists were said to be especially tricky. They could get your mind to believe anything. They
could make me think I had already reached my destination and was passing along the vital intelligence to its intended
recipient - not its intended target. Boa had given us all suicide caps on our back teeth, but I wasn’t completely sure the
thing would work. It seemed implausible that I could chomp down on my tooth hard enough to crack the thing open and
release the poison. Besides, I knew for sure that I didn’t want to use it.
I pushed the thoughts aside. You couldn’t be too careful with a mindhound in the vicinity. So I buried my muddled,
worried, human thoughts under a cat-like calm. I tried to focus on the cat’s soft breathing. I tried to adopt it as my own. I
just had to wait until the hounds and retrievers gave up and went away.
“She’s not here,” one of them said after what seemed to be a very long time. “Maybe the intel was wrong.”
“The source is pretty reliable. He’s positive it was this Kel Milla who escaped from the Sector 12 school as a kid. We have
to find her. Our contact says she’s got the target location for some big attack the rebels are planning.”
This one seemed unwilling to give up. I was afraid I would be trapped here, pretending to be a cat, for the rest of the day.
Finally, he said, “Let’s try the mall ruins. I hear the undesirables hang out there. The sewers connect these abandoned
office buildings with the mall. Maybe she went down into the tunnels to retreat to their not-so-secret lair.”
“It would be just like an undesirable to lurk around sewers and ruins,” the other snickered. “It’s not like they have
anywhere else to go.”
I quickly smothered the thought that the rebels hadn’t hidden in the mall ruins for nearly a year.
“Come on, let’s go. This place is a waste of time.”
I could hear them moving away now. The cat next to me stirred slightly at the noise, then settled back into its snooze.
“They are so stupid,” one said as their voices began to fade around the corner. “All they have to do is play by the rules,
just a few simple rules, and they can be a part of society. But they won’t do it.”
“Yep, they’re just born wrong. No way around it,” his comrade agreed.
It was a common argument. Nearly two decades ago, scientists had discovered a cluster of genetic markers that predicted
personality traits like nonconformity and lack of respect for authority. It was a surprisingly quick jump from there to
declaring all such traits, and anything else the government proclaimed “undesirable,” to be birth defects. Things really got
out of hand when the government mandated that all undesirables come in for genetic resequencing.
I remember clearly when it happened. I was twelve. I lived with my parents and two brothers in one of the quirky, old
houses down by the waterfront. My parents were both artists: my mother a writer, my father a sculptor. Even my
brothers looked like they would go into creative fields. Arin had taken an early interest in music. And though Lev had a
love of science rather than art, he most loved to invent new things and his designs were always as beautiful as they were
functional. Me, I couldn’t decide what I wanted to be. Back then I never would have suspected that I would become a
courier for an underground movement seeking to overthrow the government.
Looking back it is easy for my adult mind to see what a bunch of dangerous subversives we were. In retrospect, it is no
surprise the Guild came storming through our door that spring morning. My parents had heard the call for undesirables to
come in for treatment, but they had ignored it. They hadn’t considered any of their traits particularly objectionable.
The Guild’s enforcers took my parents away first. They seized all their belongings, and put us kids into a “reform” school.
I suppose they thought we might be young enough we could learn to be good citizens and didn’t need genetic manipulation
in order to be rehabilitated. They were wrong, of course.
Within a week, Lev had devised an escape.
“Just follow my instructions,” he had said, “and everything will be fine.”
“But Lev, there are guards everywhere. We might get caught, then we’ll just get punished for trying. They could
resequence our genes after all.”
“You worry too much, little sister.” He turned to Arin, who was a couple years younger than me. “What do you think,
baby brother? Are you ready to get out of here?”
Arin was nodding his head before Lev even stopped talking. I could see that Arin was just as scared as I was, but he
adored our older brother and desperately wanted to be like him. He would follow Lev anywhere.
“Lev, you can’t seriously expect Arin to be part of your plan. He’s just a kid.”
“No, I’m not,” Arin protested, like the child he was.
“Arin, you’re only ten years old. Mom and Dad wouldn’t want you to take this risk. Remember, they always said that if
we got separated from them to just wait where we were and they would come for us.”
An annoyed sigh escaped Lev’s lips. “They are not coming for us, little sis! No one is coming for us.”
“You don’t know that,” I protested.
“What do you think they took them away for? To ask them their favorite dessert recipes?”
“No, of course not, but…”
“They are probably not even alive anymore. And if they are, they have surely been resequenced by now.” Arin looked like
he was going to cry, but Lev was undeterred. “Even if they remembered us and wanted to come back for us, there is no
way the gov is going to let them. We’re undesirables, Kel, haven’t you been paying attention?”
“Of course,” I stammered. “I know we’re under suspicion but they haven’t taken us away for treatment, so maybe…”
“How long do you think we will be able to fool these people into thinking we are conformists?”
Arin placed a small hand on Lev’s arm to get his attention. “What’s a conformist?” he asked, stumbling a little over the
new word.
Lev looked down at his younger brother with compassion in his eyes. “It means like everyone else, like the gov wants us
to be.”
“Oh,” Arin replied. His face was so grave I thought he might finally understand what all the fuss was about.
“We have to get out of here,” Lev said, looking at me again. “Think of all we will lose, all Arin will lose, if our individuality
is beaten out of us. You know that Mom and Dad would want us to stay free, to stay the people we are, the people we
were meant to be. You know that, right?”
“Of course.”
“Then this is the only way.”
“Alright.”
Arin clapped his hands as if a new game had been decided on. “Yeah! We’re going to escape the bad guys.”
Lev placed a hand on our baby brother’s shoulders. “Yes, Arin, we are.”
It didn’t go as planned. They caught up with us as we approached the perimeter wall. We were running toward the
boundary when a bright light landed on the stone wall ahead, scaring off a cat that had been sleeping there.
Arin couldn’t keep up with Lev’s much longer legs so finally Lev picked him up and carried him as he ran. But the extra
weight must have slowed Lev down because I was suddenly out in front of them and getting further away every second.
I looked back and started to slow.
“No,” Lev yelled, “Keep going as fast as you can. We’re right behind you. Keep going!”
I picked up speed again and reached the wall just as our pursuers began firing.
“Keep going, Kel! Get over the wall. We’re right behind you!”
Bullets ricocheted off the wall as I scaled the stone. Lev hollered, “Don’t stop!”
As I got to the top of the wall I heard Arin cry out in pain. I turned to see Lev still carrying him, running toward the wall.
“Keep going,” Lev commanded again, but there was something new in his demeanor. It was panic. He looked down at
Arin, still in his arms. That’s when I saw the blood seeping from the side of Arin’s head, staining Lev’s shoulder in the
light.
Another shot sounded and Lev twitched and fell, taking Arin down with him. I started to climb back down the wall toward
my brothers.
“No!” Lev yelled up at me. “Keep going. Don’t let it be for nothing.”
“But,” I began to protest.
“Kel, you can’t help us if you are in here too. Get out of here. Help us from the outside. It’s the only way!”
“I’ll come back for you, somehow.”
“I know,” was all he said as the govmen reached him. They fired at me on the lip of the wall, but I let go and dropped
safely down on the other side. In the moonlit dark, I ran as fast as I could toward the old mall at the edge of the city. All
the stores had closed years ago. No one went there anymore, so it seemed like a good place to hide.
When I finally got there, I was surprised to find I wasn’t the only person who thought a deserted mall made the perfect
hideout.
***
This time instead of heading to the mall like the govmen expected, I headed toward a factory on the east side of town. Boa
had sent me across town to meet with another rebel faction. They weren’t as organized as us, or as well-armed, but they
had something we didn’t; someone on the inside, an undesirable who had managed to go undetected and was finally in the
right place to feed confidential information to the rebels.
“Are you sure you can trust this person?” I asked.
“We’re sure,” the east-side leader said. Her face was angry. There was a slash scar over her left eyebrow. Some said she
got it escaping a resequencing clinic. She was legendary, but too brutal a leader for my tastes. It was said she kept track
of her gov kills by cutting lines into her left forearm. I glanced down, hoping to catch a glimpse, but she was wearing long-
sleeves. “The Slasher,” they called her when they weren’t calling her Mac, which was her name.
I could tell she didn’t like me, and was weighing the annoyance of having to deal with me with the positive of getting some
of Boa’s weapons. “Do you have the location of the merchandise?” she said finally.
“Yes.” I handed her the slip of paper as Boa instructed. “Tell the person at the door that your cousin Stefan said they
served the best linguini.”
Mac the Slasher crinkled her face. I guess she didn’t like linguini. But she took the paper anyway, and pulled an envelope
from a vest pocket.
“Here is the location of the G5 clinic, plus security badges and the necessary papers for the driver. Did you get the truck
as planned?”
“Yes.” I took the envelope and shifted my feet. “What about the other matter? Was your contact able to provide anything
about the two people I’m looking for?”
Mac hesitated. I pulled a wad of cash from my jacket. I had been saving it for years. Now, finally, I hoped it would buy
me the location of my brothers.
Mac took the money. “Yeah, we found them. One is dead.”
My heart clenched. “Which one?”
“Lev.”
I didn’t know what to feel. Lev was the older of my brothers, but last I saw them it had been Arin who seemed closest to
death. “What happened?”
Mac looked up from counting the money, as if she wasn’t sure I was paying enough for such details. “There wasn’t
much in the file. It seems he was killed during an escape attempt. Apparently he tried to escape several times, but never
succeeded.” She stuffed the money in a pocket and looked back at me. “You’ve got to respect him for trying though.”
“What about Arin?”
“He happens to be in the clinic you guys are planning to hit.”
“He’s in G5? Are you sure?”
Mac’s face twisted in annoyance. That was her only answer.
“Of course you’re sure. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Do you know what room?”
“No but based on his age, he should be on the third floor.”
“Thanks. We’ll be in touch.”
***
I left the east-side factory and headed west, toward a run-down church in what used to be downtown. That part of the
city was now a wasteland. The gov hadn’t gotten around to rebuilding after the October 13th riots destroyed most of the
neighborhood.
Some said the govmen were superstitious about the area. Three hundred and seventeen people had been killed when the
gov tried to quiet a crowd of angry undesirables. I suppose some of the govmen thought ghosts from that day might still
be hanging around looking for a bit of payback.
Little did they know that there really was a bunch of undesirables lurking around downtown plotting payback. Not ghosts,
just a bunch of rebels.
I headed to the church to meet Boa. He hadn’t killed as many govmen as Mac the Slasher, but I appreciated that about
him. I don’t think I could ever follow a leader like Mac. But, Boa was different. His methods were more technologically
focused and generally less violent than other rebel leaders.
Boa had recently figured out how to break into the gov’s network of computers. He’d only been able to access basic
administrative functions so far, but that was enough. Supply and requisition records told us where the weapons were kept,
and just last week Boa had taken his best fighters for a raid. They returned with enough firepower to make our band of
rebels easily the most well-armed.
Boa wasn’t satisfied though. The weapons depot was just a necessary stop on the way to his real target. He wanted a
strike that would hit the gov hard but not just in terms of people and supplies. He wanted a strike that would break their
will, their “heart” if govmen could be said to have such a thing. He knew what that target was, but the east-siders knew
where it was and how to get in. Hence the deal with scary Slash. Boa planned to attack a clinic, but more importantly to
disable their tracking system and erase all the records of the undesirables who had been captured.
It was a good plan and would make a big difference in our struggle with the gov, but all I could think about was that I had
to get Arin out of there safely. I knew Boa’s people wouldn’t intentionally kill all the innocents housed in the G5 clinic, but
some would certainly be hurt when the rebels attacked. I had to figure out a way to ensure Arin wasn't one of them.
***
It took some doing to convince Boa to let me join the team attacking the G5 clinic.
“You’re not a commando, Kel. You’re a courier,” he rightly argued.
“I know. But I have to make sure my brother gets out okay. Your soldiers can’t concern themselves with that. They have
other priorities. Please, we have enough badges. Just let me go. I promise I won’t get in the way.”
Finally he agreed. “Okay, but you’ll be on your own once you get there. The team won’t have time to worry about you.
And if you’re not back at the rendezvous point on time, they will leave you without a second thought.”
“I understand.”
“And if you get captured, you know what you have to do.”
I knew he meant the suicide capsule, and I nodded my agreement. Still, I promised myself it wasn’t going to come to that.
***
Getting in was no problem. The IDs were apparently legit. The guards at the gate didn’t give us a second glance. They
assumed the truck was just the usual food delivery from Vargas Farms. They had no idea that the refrigerated
compartment in the back contained bundled-up rebels instead of meat and dairy products.
I only hoped that they didn’t have any mindhounds nearby. I could project the thoughts of a cat, but no one would believe
a cat was hanging out in the back of a refrigerated truck. Hopefully if a mindhound sensed us we could get lucky and he
wouldn’t look too close. Certainly there were plenty of cats roaming the grounds both inside and outside the clinic walls.
So, we painted ourselves a nice unobtrusive color and hoped for the best.
We got all the way into the delivery dock with no sign of alarm. Lery the driver let us out once he made sure the dock area
was empty. I was so relieved when the doors swung wide and I could finally get out of the cold.
“We’re here,” he said.
Chilled rebels jumped down out of the truck. The commandos quickly disappeared into the building.
Lery turned to me. “Okay, kid, this train’s heading back out in exactly twenty minutes. If you’re late, you’re on your own.
Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good luck then.”
***
I headed to the third floor where Mac the Slasher suspected my brother was being held. I knew that Sari and Mic were
headed to the computer control center to unlock all the doors, disable the tracker, and upload a virus that would destroy
the database. Boa hoped the virus would also be transmitted to all the other gov sites, corrupting that data as well. If we
were lucky, the gov would lose all their undesirables' tracking and micro-chipped escapees everywhere could disappear
into the ruined, forgotten parts of the world.
I didn’t know how to find Arin. Sari had promised to radio me if the microchip database listed Arin’s room number, but it
didn’t seem likely.
I quickly found the back stairs and ran up to the third floor. Doors stretched before me in opposing rows as I stood at the
head of the hallway. I glanced at my watch. Fifteen minutes to go. Sari and Mic should be in the control room by now. I
hoped that shortly I would hear the sound of locks throughout the floor clicking off.
Something brushed my ankle and made me jump. I looked down to find a small cat wrapping itself around my foot. I bent
down and picked it up.
“What are you doing here?”
The kitten nuzzled me and meowed softly.
“Do you know where my brother Arin is?” I asked idly, not really expecting an answer.
The cat squirmed as if it wanted to be let down so I put it back down on the floor. I ventured out into the hall with the cat
at my side. It was early morning, about 5 a.m. All the “patients” were locked in their rooms for safekeeping and only the
sparest of staff remained to keep an eye on things. I hoped there was no nurse or security guard on the floor. I hadn’t
seen one yet. Maybe my luck would hold.
I cautiously approached the nurse’s station. No one was there. I peeked around the corner to get a glance at the
guardroom just behind. There was a large man sitting there. I could see him in dimly lit profile. He was facing the monitors
on the wall instead of looking out into the hallway. That was a bit of luck, especially since, judging by the way he was
slouched over, he was probably asleep in his chair. If I was quiet, he might stay that way. I wondered if Sari and Mic
could unlock the rooms without setting off any alarms. I realized too late I should have asked that question before
attempting this rescue.
I began peeking into the rooms looking for Arin. After trying several rooms with no luck, I noticed the cat had gone on
ahead of me and was now brushing against a door toward the end of the hall. Its soft meow was barely audible in the
silence of the sleeping floor.
I wondered if the cat was trying to show me where Arin was, but the thought seemed ridiculous. Even if cats did “know
things” as Karn suggested, there was no way the cat could know who I was looking for, who “Arin” was. There was no
way the cat could recognize the sound of that word and equate it with one of the prisoners. It was absurd.
But then I remembered that Arin always loved cats and, more importantly, that cats had always loved him. So, I quickly
headed for the cat’s preferred door. Cats always know cat people, they say. If the cat lived in this clinic, as it seemed to,
then Arin certainly would have befriended it by now.
As I approached his door, I heard a soft click then the door opened inward. As the cat headed into the room, I heard my
brother’s voice.
“Flix, what are you doing here so early in the morning?” I reached the doorway just in time to see Arin picking up the cat.
“Arin,” I said, stunned. “Is that really you?”
“Kel, what are you doing here?”
“Looking for you, of course. Come on. There isn’t much time. We have to get you out of here, right now!”
Arin was painfully slow to respond. I kept hearing the seconds tick away. I knew we would be left behind if we didn’t get
back to the truck in time. “Hurry up, we have to go now! People will be coming.”
He was still in his pajamas. I grabbed his jacket from a hook on the wall and pushed him into the hallway.
“What about Flix?”
“Bring him if you want, just hurry.”
Arin murmured to the cat as we shuffled quickly down the hall toward the back stairs. “What do you think, Flix? Are you
ready to get out of this place?” The cat signaled its agreement by cozying further into the crook of Arin’s arm. “Hey, what
about Lev?”
“He isn’t here.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. Now, be quiet,” I said, indicating the guard desk, “we don’t want to wake the guard.”
***
“Mission accomplished, I see,” Lery pronounced when we arrived at the truck.
“Yep. Where are Sari and Mic?”
“Hopefully on their way. It’s about time.” He glanced at his watch. “What’s with the cat?”
“He’s my friend, Flix,” Arin said simply, then turned anxiously to me. “Flix can come too, right?”
“Of course. Cats are always welcome,” Lery assured him.
Lery looked anxiously toward the door then back to me. “We gotta go.”
“But they will be here any minute,” I argued. “I know it.”
“Look, I understand, but if we wait we may all get caught and what good is that going to do anyone? We have to leave
now.” He started to close up the back of the truck.
“We’re here, we’re here,” Sari’s voice called as she and Mic ran for the truck and dove in.
“Great, let’s go.” Lery closed up the truck and we were off.
“What about everyone else? Who is going to rescue them?” Arin asked.
“They will have to make their own way to whatever homes or hideouts they have. We can’t take in everyone, Arin.” I
gestured around the cramped interior of the truck. “As you can see, there is barely room for us.” Arin’s cat tried to
snuggle even deeper into the arm of Arin’s jacket. It was clear that neither of them were prepared for the cold of traveling
in a fridge. I drew them close, hoping to warm them a little. “We can’t take the others with us, but we unlocked all the
cells and disabled the trackers, so they have a chance. If they can get out, the gov won’t be able to use their microchips to
find them.”
“Do you think they’ll be okay?”
“Some of them will, Arin. I’m sorry, but today we can only save a few and help the rest. Today we could only save you
and Flix. That’s good though, right?”
“Right,” Arin replied.
I turned to Sari and Mic. “Thanks for letting me come along and get my brother.”
Sari smiled. “No problem.”
“And Flix too,” Arin added. “Thanks for letting me bring my cat.”
Mic reached out to pet the cat. “No prob, kid. You can never have too many cats around.”
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