Mistrunner - Chapter 9 - Goodbye, Nova City

Humanity had grown soft. Pliable. Weak. The Initialization drove that point home. So many people had no idea how easy their lives really were. When society collapsed, they found out.

Jeremiah Braddock III

“I…thought…you…” I tried to get out between heaving breaths. It was a useless endeavor, so I pushed the thought to the back of my mind before redoubling my concentration on the task before me. I heaved the barbell above my head, holding it there for a brief second before dropping it to the rubber mat. I leaned forward, hands on my knees, as I caught my breath. Finally, I looked up to see my uncle standing beside Nora, who had a curious smile playing across her lips. “I thought you said we couldn’t train until we left the city.”

“This?” asked my uncle. “This isn’t training, Mirabelle. This is just a light workout.”

As I straightened back to my full height, I laced my fingers behind my head. We’d been at it for hours, as evidenced by the fact that my clothes were drenched in sweat. And I could barely stand for the wobbling of my legs.

My uncle had woken me up before the sun had even risen, and after I’d gotten dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a tank top, he’d taken me to the roof the building, where he had a full training set-up, and put me through my paces. The first bit was easy – just running through an obstacle course he used to train his Operators. But after the third time through, I’d felt the fatigue set in.

That was only the beginning, though. Next, he made me run, and more than I’d ever run at any time in my entire life. Following that was a weightlifting session with Nora, which I’d just completed.

“I think I might die,” I muttered.

“Maybe!” was Nora’s cheerful reply. “That’s how you know you’re really working!”

“I hate you. You know that, right? Like, fire of a thousand suns level of hatred.”

The muscular woman crossed her arms, saying, “Well, that’s just mean.”

“Enough,” Jeremiah stated, looking up at the sky – a weird habit, considering that if his optical interface was anything like mine, there was a clock right there. “We’re done, right, Nora?”

“Yeah, boss,” the woman said. “Give me a few weeks with her, and I guarantee she’ll make some real gains.”

“Wish I could,” he said. “But we’re leaving this afternoon.”

“But what about –”

“Not around the kid,” Jeremiah said.

“Sure, boss,” Nora responded, though I could see her jaw flex at the interruption. I knew I was missing something, but I was too exhausted to care. “You want me to do anything else? I could put her through some hand-to-hand drills.”

Jeremiah shook his head. “It’s already going to be hard enough to hide her as it is,” my uncle stated.

“Thought she took [Spycraft],” Nora said.

“She did, but it’s undeveloped,” was Jeremiah’s response. “Until she hits the second level of Tier 1, it’s basically useless. They all are. Or did you forget?”

Again, Nora’s jaw flexed. She was a prideful woman, and she didn’t like being talked down to. I couldn’t blame her for that; my uncle was a hard man, and he didn’t mince words. If someone did or said anything stupid, he wasn’t going to sugarcoat his response, even when the situation called for it. Tactful, he wasn’t.

“No, boss.”

Jeremiah responded, “Good.”

“Uh…am I done? I’d really like to be done now,” I said, trying to relieve some of the tension in the air. All around us, there were people going through morning workouts; the training area was atop the building, and it was expansive enough to accommodate hundreds of people with varying levels of strength. Nearby, a man was doing squats with over a thousand pounds, and he wasn’t struggling at all.

“Go downstairs, and get cleaned up,” Jeremiah ordered. “Pack whatever clothes you want to bring with you. Remember, though – it’s hot down there. Hot and humid in a way you’ve never experienced. So, be ready to dress accordingly.”

I nodded. I’d heard plenty of stories about the climate below Nova City, but having never left the city – as far as I knew, few people did – I had no context for what it might entail. I would just have to figure it out, I supposed. So, I quickly left before they decided to put me through more torturous exercises, riding the elevator down a level. A few minutes later, I was back in the apartment, where I found Heather waiting on me with some sort of green semi-liquid in a tall cup.

Smiling broadly, she thrust it into my hands, saying, “Drink up! It’s good for you!”

“Uh…what is it?” I asked.

“It’s a health shake! Your uncle loves them after his workouts,” she assured me.

I gave the stuff a sniff and nearly gagged. Still, I’d decided to at least try with Heather, so, steeling myself, I tipped it back and drained the contents. Or I tried to. The moment the foul liquid hit my tongue, I almost gagged. Still, I was aware enough of Heather’s smiling face to know that doing so would absolutely destroy her. So, I gulped it down, and when I was done, I gave her a weak smile and a thumbs up. “That was…uh…that was great,” I muttered. “Really awesome. Thanks.”

“I knew you would love it!” Heather exclaimed. And before I knew it, she’d thrown her arms around me. She hugged me tightly, adding, “I’m so proud of you. I wish you didn’t have to go, but Jeremiah explained everything to me. I’m going to miss you so much!”

“Uh…y-yeah. Me, too,” I said. “But…I’ve got to…you know…pack. So…”

She released me. “Yeah. Right. Sorry,” she said. “I’m such a ditz sometimes. Go ahead. I’m sure you have a lot to do!”

“Sure. Um…thanks again.”

After that, I headed to my room where I quickly started packing. I still wasn’t sure what I should take, so I gathered just about everything I owned – including my new boots – and shoved it into a duffel bag my uncle had provided. Then, with a thought, I threw it into my Arsenal Implant. It went without any issue, but I could sense that it barely fit.

“Take it out,” I heard my uncle say. I turned to see him standing in the doorway.

“What?” I asked.

“The bag,” he said. “Save your Arsenal Implant for survival supplies or ammunition. Putting anything else in there is a waste of space.”

“Fine,” I said, yanking the bag out of my storage.

“Follow me,” Jeremiah ordered. Without checking to make sure that I was following, he turned on his heel and stalked through the apartment, ending up in an oft-forgotten back room. Inside were three huge, metallic boxes. He pointed to them, saying, “Load up.”

I crossed the room and read the labels. The first was ammunition for the Kicker. The second was a variety pack of rounds meant for my pistol. And the third contained the ammunition for my scattergun. Finally, a smaller box held empty magazines.

“Uh…what do you want me to do?”

“You can’t be that dense,” Jeremiah stated. “Put the rifle rounds in the magazines, which go in your first space. Second space needs to hold your pistol and scattergun ammunition. Third is for survival supplies. Or explosives, but that’s probably us getting ahead of ourselves for now.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Skills are fluid,” Jeremiah answered. “What you’ve got now are not what you will have for the rest of your life. Things change. Combine. Evolve. On top of that, you’ll probably get a class around level ten. My point is that you need to just follow my lead. I know what I’m doing, and I won’t steer you wrong.”

I sighed. “Fine,” I said. Even if I sometimes resented Jeremiah, I trusted him more than anyone else in the world. That might not have been saying that much, but I had the benefit of knowing two things. One, he’d already spent a fortune on me, so it stood to reason that he wanted my skills to develop properly. And second, he’d never done anything to hurt me. Sure, he’d kept me sequestered at the top of our megabuilding for years, but that was only because he wanted to ensure my safety.

But overriding everything else was the simple fact that he was the only person offering me any advice. Without him, I would be fumbling in the dark. So, until I knew more about what was going on, I had little choice but to follow his lead. Once I started figuring things out, though, I was sure that I would start to have more opinions on my own development.

“Get to work,” he said, nodding at the boxes.

I let out another sigh, but I didn’t complain. Instead, I went to the box containing the rifle magazines, retrieved one, then opened the crate of ammunition. Next thing I knew, I was loading rounds into the magazines. It was slow. It was tedious. And by the time an hour had passed, my fingers were actually bleeding. However, I persisted, and after a couple more hours, I was done.

That’s when I loaded up the ammunition in the other crates before heading back to my room, where I spent another couple of hours wishing I wasn’t miserably exhausted with aching fingers. I tried to distract myself by flipping on my screen, but everything just seemed so much less interesting than it had the day before. Now that I had a Nexus Implant, it felt like I should be doing something important. But there I was, trying to pretend like nothing had changed.

Finally, at around five in the afternoon, my uncle returned. After making sure that I’d loaded everything up, he said, “Okay, then. Say your goodbyes, because it’s time to go. Follow me.”

Left unsaid was that I had no one close enough to warrant a farewell. I’d had a few acquaintances at school, but other than that, I’d lived an isolated existence. I suspected that that was by design.

Shouldering my bag, I followed Jeremiah through the apartment and, after traversing the halls, to the elevator that would lead us to the parking structure. Soon, we were on our way, passing through the city that had always been my home. It looked no different than before, with the towering buildings, ubiquitous neon lights, and lewd holographic displays. The people were unchanged, going about their lives with dogged determination. Some had just gotten off work, while others were just heading in to report for their shift, but they all wore the same expression.

“It’s resignation.”

I looked up to see that Jeremiah had been watching me. “What?” I asked.

“That expression,” he said. “These people, they know they’ll never be more than they are right now. They trudge back and forth, going to jobs they hate, all so they can survive another day. They live a desolate mimicry of a life, completely devoid of anything more than sheer survival.”

“Why?” I asked.

“What’s the alternative?” was his responding question. When I didn’t offer an answer, he went on, “Do you think anyone wants this? No. They didn’t just wake up one day and tell themselves that they were going to be ordinary. Do you think they decided that they weren’t going to try anymore? Of course not. It happens one tiny decision at a time. Death by a thousand cuts. And the whole time, you’ve got those assholes over in King’s Row making each micro-death easier and easier. Making it more palatable. They give you all those things that make life more comfortable – the entertainment feeds, the junk food, the booze, and the drugs – and before you know it, you’re stuck. You’re on the downslope of your life, and there’s no stopping your momentum into irrelevance.”

He ran his hand over his bald head. “The Mist could have been gift,” he said. “It could have made us so much better. We could have forged a path to galactic relevance. But no. We holed up in our concrete cities, shivering in fear, even as our doom looms over us like a huge, fucking shadow.”

Jeremiah turned and looked at me, saying, “But not you. You’re going to be what humanity should have been. You’re going to survive. You’re going to go out into that galaxy and make your mark.”

In another situation, I might have made a sarcastic remark, but the feverish look in his eyes pulled me up short. So, I just nodded and looked the other way. Even as we passed by dozens of Silos – the huge, circular buildings that housed the vertical farms that fed much of Nova City – I thought about what he’d said.

Did I agree with him?

Was it a crime, just wanting to survive in comfort? My uncle clearly thought so, but I wasn’t sure I blamed people for making that decision. It was a difficult world, and most people just weren’t special. Even at my young age, I knew that much. I’d seen that at school. Some people – in fact, most – were meant for mundanity. Maybe that was the definition of normality.

But was the population of Nova City mired in mediocrity? Or had they sunk lower than that? More, what about the ones who could’ve been better? Usually, they got caught up in the same net, didn’t they? Some of the classmates I knew were smart or talented enough for better lives had been destined for a life in the Silos. Or worse, in the factories that dotted Algiers. Wasn’t that a waste?

Such thoughts rattled around in my brain as we left the Garden behind and descended into Algiers. The district was positioned on a lower plane than the Garden, so we were forced to follow a winding, sharply declining spiral until the car emerged onto the platform. Gone were the towering megabuildings, replaced by the blocky factories that made so many of Nova City’s goods. Some things came from other cities, transferred via a similar system that had sent my weapons and implants down to Earth. However, it was incredibly expensive, so it was only used for the most valuable of luxuries. Those almost never made it to the Garden. Instead, we were dependent on the products that came out of Algiers.

And it was up to the task, belching out a bevy of products as well as plenty of pollution to go with it. As soon as we left the Garden behind, I smelled the heavy smog, even in the nearly airtight hover car. Garbage was piled high in every alley, and the graffiti on the walls was often covered by some unidentifiable brown sludge.

As dirty and depressing as the buildings were, the people were even worse. Gone was the colorful hair and daring fashion choices, replaced by threadbare clothes that looked like they’d never been washed. The people themselves bore smudges on their faces, and most walked with a kind of depressed apathy I’d never seen before.

Thankfully, our path took us through Algiers pretty quickly. Otherwise, I might have begun to share my uncle’s pessimistic outlook. As it was, I had gained a distinctly bad taste in my mouth that had nothing to do with the decline in air quality.

Finally, we passed through the docks – a system of warehouses where goods were often stored. Most were guarded by intimidating-looking security personnel, each armed and armored with the latest military technology. Eventually, the road curved, and in front of us, I saw a looming gate.

“When we get to the gate, don’t open your mouth,” Jeremiah said. “Let me do the talking.”

I nodded as we slowly drifted forward, finding ourselves in a line of other vehicles. Unlike Jeremiah’s hover car, the ones in front of us were giant, boxy transport trucks with actual wheels.

“Where are they going?” I asked, nervously massaging the Realskin covering the Arsenal Implant in my forearm. It somehow simultaneously felt like authentic skin and a rubber sleeve, but it was mostly undetectable, save for a pair of tiny seams – one on my wrist and the other just below my elbow.

“To other settlements outside the city,” Jeremiah stated. “And stop fiddling with your cybernetics. It’s off-putting.”

“I thought –”

“It doesn’t matter what you thought,” he said, interrupting me. “You are entirely ignorant of the workings of the world. Accept that and endeavor to remedy it.”

“It’s not my fault I don’t know,” I muttered, crossing my arms as we drifted one spot closer to the gate. “You could have told me.”

“If I would have told you these things, you would have told your friends at school,” he said. “And they would have told others. Before we knew what was going on, I’d have politicians from King’s Row breathing down my neck for disturbing the peace. People are told what they need to know and nothing more. Get used to that because information is another form of power, and not one that the people in charge will part with lightly. Now, shut up.”

I thought that was entirely unfair, but I could recognize when Jeremiah was in one of his moods. He didn’t seem like he wanted to hear my arguments, so I did as he asked. Slowly, we made our way to the gate, which was guarded by at least a dozen soldiers. Each one had visible cybernetics and carried high-end weaponry, the likes of which I wouldn’t have even recognized if I hadn’t just spent a couple of hours browsing through Gala’s wares. Hers were clearly superior, at least to my eye, but the soldiers’ weapons weren’t that far behind. What’s more, I got the sense that they were all at least Tier-2. A formidable force, assuming they were properly trained.

The driver eased the car into a blinking, red rectangle of light, and one of the soldiers approached. Nonchalantly carrying a submachine gun in his gleaming, cybernetic hand, he wore black combat fatigues and a tactical vest. Leaning down, he motioned for the driver to activate the window. When he did, the soldier said, “What’s your purpose in leaving Nova City, citizen?”

“Just a driver,” was the grunted reply. He hiked his thumb over his shoulder, adding, “Ask the boss.”

The soldier, who I’d just noticed had the name Valdez stitched on his vest, nodded and came to the back door. He repeated the motion, and my uncle rolled down the window. The moment he laid eyes on Jeremiah, he muttered, “Oh, shit…”

“There a problem?” asked my uncle.

“Uh…n-no, sir,” the soldier stammered, his finger creeping toward the trigger.

“Keep your trigger discipline, son,” Jeremiah said. “I’m taking my niece outside the city so she can see where she came from.”

“Uh...can’t let…you know…Unawakened outside the city, sir,” the man stuttered.

“She got her Nexus Implant yesterday,” Jeremiah said. “There’s not going to be a problem, is there?”

The man glanced around, almost as if he was looking for someone else to take the responsibility away from him. Then, with a sigh, he said, “No, sir. You’re cleared to head on through.”

“Appreciate it.”

After that, the gate slid open, revealing a wide platform that already contained a few of the transport trucks. The driver accelerated, and we took a place between a pair of hulking trucks.

“What now?” I asked.

“Wait for it.”

I was about to ask what he meant when the platform let out a rumble. A moment later, it felt like my heart had jumped into my throat, because we were falling. And fast.

I looked at my uncle, who was just smiling. I wasn’t certain if that should’ve made me feel better or worse about the whole thing. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the platform stopped moving. A moment later, the trucks in front of us pulled away, revealing the landscape.

“Welcome to Louisiana,” my uncle said. “Head to the safehouse, Bart. No stopping. We need to get there before dark.”

“Yes, sir,” said the driver. Bart, apparently. I’d never even bothered to find out the man’s name, and suddenly, I was a little ashamed of that fact. In any case, Bart soon accelerated, and before long, we were speeding down a paved road.