their location, the Nord pushed his way past worried clumps of families and through groups arguing with each other. "I'm not sure. They're debating all this on the forums, and there's some talk of throwing out anyone on the list if it comes down to it. They don't want to take a stand defending people that might be guilty of private communication."
He lowered his head bitterly, more than familiar with the feeling. "You mean they don't want to take a side."
Og grimaced. "Yeah."
Noticing two Nord men glaring at them from across the street, Rolf grabbed Kitna, and they both began walking, trying not to draw physical attention.
Up ahead, a few arguers stopped to turn and look at them.
The two Nords began moving.
"I'm going to the refinery to help Elizabeth, she's caught in the riots," Og wrote. "Can you meet us there?"
The Nord men began running toward them. An attack seemed nigh - until everyone on the street froze and went absent-eyed, their attention captivated by more pressing events.
Hurrying away from the area, Rolf and Kitna watched the live feed in the corner of their vision - along with a hundred million others.
The zealous Anglan who had been the first to cast off his cell now spoke to a contact held in his hand.
"Behind me is Factory Six and its refinery," he explained, grim. "We have control of these facilities, and we have rigged some of their mechanisms." He paused to allow two men clearing bodies to pass, and for his words to sink in.
"There will be no more violence. One-sixth of all fuel passes through these districts. You've seen what happens. This will become another Factory Seven if anyone attempts to attack us, or to cut off the Rails here. We refuse to live under the heel of owners any longer. If those who would impose their will upon us come anywhere near, we will detonate the refinery and destroy ourselves - and the infrastructure around us. I encourage all who have suffered at the hands of society to join us here."
"As of this moment, we stand together. We stand as one - Unionized."
The Hand
"Can they… do that?" Jason asked, astounded.
Elizabeth scanned the dumbfounded throngs all around. The world had seemed on the brink of all-out anarchy mere minutes before… but now something completely unprecedented had happened. Even violence - usually the easy answer - now seemed problematic, in the face of a threatened explosion of some unthinkable magnitude.
She gazed up at the clear sky between the closely packed buildings towering above, following the impenetrable and flawless blue with her eyes. The vault seemed to form a path over the street ahead, mirroring a rising terror and hope in her heart.
Several older Scientists were heading that way as a group.
"Where are you going?" Jason shouted after her. "Wait…!"
Passing between milling and confused masses, she came to a vast open plain of stone, her hopes a chaotic storm of vague phantoms. She didn't know what to expect, but she felt drawn to this moment, to some uncertain opportunity…
The five Scientists eyed her with concern as she caught up to them. Numbering three women and two men, all many decades older than her, they raised eyebrows at her arrival and shrugged in various reactions, but they did not stop her from following them.
Across the stone wasteland, pockmarked by bloodstains and debris, the zealot stood watching, an unfamiliar device in his hand.
He tensed.
The lead Scientist, a woman with tightly-wrapped white hair, stood tall for a tentative shout. "Hello."
He glanced back at the supporters scattered behind him, silently acknowledging that this group was not here for violence, and then returned her greeting. "Hello."
"Can we -" The woman stepped forward when she realized she was speaking too quietly. "Can we talk?"
He eyed her warily, not sure what to say.
"What's your name…?" she asked, visibly realizing that, for the first time, she couldn't simply look it up. She had absolutely no idea who she was speaking to - or what he was thinking.
"Michael." He seemed to relax somewhat. "Have you been chosen as a representative? Has this group?"
"No." The older Scientist looked at her own stats, surprised. "But… over two hundred million people are looking through my eyes right now."
Elizabeth stood nervously at the back corner of the knot of would-be diplomats, keenly aware of the open vulnerability of their position, and of the innumerable throngs watching their every action.
Michael coughed mid-breath, surprised by the viewership. "That many? Okay then."
A light breeze swirled across the empty area, bringing a slight chill despite the sun.
The knot's leader continued. "I just thought that we could talk about this development, fiery speeches aside. I'm sure people want to know more, but without cells…" She raised her hands, indicating the lack of options for communication.
"Right." He seemed to acknowledge that realization with some chagrin. "What would they like to know?"
The group's incoming texts were hopeless, filled with support, hate, confusion, and millions of other messages they would never have time to read. The tough old woman chose one with confidence nonetheless. "Do you plan to still produce from this area? Are we still connected economically?"
"Yes," he replied immediately. "We don't expect to have food Railed in here without exporting production of our own. I'm really glad you asked that. As you can imagine, we haven't had much time to plan any of this." He stepped forward, breaching the empty territory between them. "Would you all… care to sit?"
"We don't have to kill anybody if they just go there, to that refinery," someone said to their left. "We don't even know if they're guilty, right? A million people… that's a bit more than a thief-killing. Just let 'em go."
Kitna narrowed her eyes, watching Elizabeth and the distant group of diplomats with mixed emotions. "What does she think she's doing out there? She's going to get killed, or worse."
"She's doing what she does," Rolf answered, his attention on the sentiments brewing in the groups passing by the window. He glanced back at the huddled families in the dim room behind, all hoping for the storm of violence to just pass by. "I'll never understand it…"
Kitna touched his arm lightly.
He lay against the stone sill weakly, the stress of the last few hours finally catching up to him. "They're never going to allow it, though. Any of it. The refinery, the factory, the Union."
"Why not?"
Venom and fire surged through his chest. "I know you remember. You know as well as I do what happened when the big Subian families tried to unionize twelve years ago. I don't know how she still cares. The vast majority of people have only ever been horrible, vindictive thugs out only for themselves, bigots, hateful, never thinking -"
He spluttered on his own words, overcome with the astonishing depth of his own pain, bile seeping through his weakened castle walls - seeping out, from deep inside.
He gripped stone until his knuckles turned white, forcing his breathing and heart rate to slow. "There's just no way this Union is going to work. The animals will burst in there and kill everyone, no matter what the cost, just to satisfy their hatreds, to reinforce their sense of superiority, or whatever knee-jerk reaction drives them. We can't go there."
She put a hand over his. "We should, though. That's where we belong."
"We'll think our way out of this," he insisted, his attention on the three dots heading for them. "We only have the time for one choice, so it better be right."
Gazing absently out the window, he began thinking out loud. "So there's the pressure, and the riots, the conditions are right… then a huge divisive issue - the list of people with checksum errors… forcing people to take sides. Forcing confusion, and confrontations, and a directed riot at Factory Six to take control…"
He shook his head, frowning. "It's not a great plan. It can go wrong in so many ways. It seems rushed, like a hasty move in a losing game. I understand time tables change, but this… was this re
finery thing not even their original plan?"
Kitna gave no reply, but her heart rate rose sharply, her eyes on the ground.
He put a hand in her short black hair, touching the streaks of blue as if to remind himself of something. He couldn't ask the obvious question of her without publicly confirming both their guilts, but the answer was equally as obvious. She knew more than she'd let on, and he'd already suspected it was unlikely she'd just been recruited into the revolution in the last few days.
She'd lied - again.
"I don't care," he whispered, keeping his response vague. "We just have to survive what's about to happen, alright?"
Her lip trembled, and one of her eyes brimmed with a single half-tear, but she couldn't apologize without giving them both away. "Alright."
"What do you think should we do?" he asked, hoping there was more to the revolution's plan; something she knew, but couldn't say out loud.
She stood and pulled him up by the arm. "We should go to that refinery."
An arm flung out across Og's path, holding him back lightly by the chest.
Behind him, an incredibly dense crowd watched and murmured to each other in a collective eerie calm.
Before him, a wide section of the Stonework lay filled with bits of metal, stone, and torn clothing. Bloodstains marred some sections. In the middle of all this, a group of Scientists sat -Elizabeth at their back corner - all talking with an Anglan man in light blue clothing.
To his left, another Anglan man held him back.
"Hey, it's you, from the Hangout -"
"Jason."
He nodded. "Is this really going to work?"
"I don't know, but I hope so. I've no idea how we'd have started a dialog with them otherwise. Can you imagine us trying to pick someone to go out there and speak for everyone?"
"No…" He watched the proceedings from Elizabeth's live feed. "But it looks like they're definitely making progress," he noted, watching the numerous Scientists in Forum B conversing with the diplomats, asking them to relay questions and concerns.
"They killed my brother," someone to his right choked out, his eyes red, his anger obvious. "We should attack now, while they're busy talking."
"Are you kidding? They said they'd blow the whole thing up!"
"He's right! The arrogance of these people is incredible - they think they can make a Union work? We'll all starve while lazy layabouts cash in on everyone else's hard work! I'm not supporting slackers. I won't do it."
Og's gaze jumped around as he tried to follow the arguments in the crowd. Thankful for his height, he tried to bring calm. "Let's just wait and see. This is preferable to untold violence, right? Let's just let them live over there, it won't be any problem for us."
"But we have no idea what they're doing," a woman shouted back. "What if they decide to attack us one day?"
Another yell answered her. "Attack us? They just want to be left alone!"
"Wait and see," Og said again. "Look, they're talking about that right now."
"They're asking how you plan to enforce social rules," the man acting as second said, reading the forum posts.
Michael raised his eyebrows. "We actually haven't thought that far. We certainly don't want to kill people on the spot, since we'll no longer have absolute knowledge of guilt."
"So you'll form some sort of militia to enforce…" the leader looked up the word. "Laws?"
"That could work. We used to have courts. Trials. We could bring those back."
Heart pounding, Elizabeth spoke up for the first time. "But didn't those just decide whatever the Gangs wanted? And what the Tyrant wanted before them?"
The older five Scientists turned and looked at her for a moment, as if evaluating her interruption.
Looking past them, she saw a familiar face in the crowd near the refinery.
Sitting against the distant wall, Dierk waved awkwardly.
She waved back, incredibly relieved to see he'd survived the initial riot.
"Yes," Michael replied after thinking about it. "But I'm sure we can solve those issues with time."
The older Scientists waited, as if subtly attempting to embarrass her, but she seized the opportunity to speak instead of backing down.
Referencing another post, she changed tack. "Oh, actually, they're more worried about that organized force becoming some sort of military. We don't have anything like that, and we'd have no way to tell what you're doing in your territory."
"They're worried that we'll attack them?" he laughed. "No, it is you who wield the Hand."
"What's that?"
"The Hand of Society. That's what we're calling it. There's nobody to blame for anything bad that happens. It's everybody's fault, and nobody's fault, all at the same time. It's the ultimate bystander paradox. In our case, here and now, the Hand is most employed when the majority wields violence against the Marginalized, and yet nobody actually takes responsibility. Thousands die, and yet, somehow, there is no murderer - no one held accountable, so it will just happen again. That's the Hand."
She just stared at him for a tick, breezes ruffling hair in her face - the demon finally had a name.
"I see you've suffered the same as we have," Michael said softly, examining her expression. "You could join us. The Scientists are a lot like a Union, you know. That's one of the few reasons you manage to exist at all."
Gripping one crossed leg, she looked back at her own crowd, her features pained, her memories a physical ache within.
And there, impossibly, was Og, standing in support, trying to calm the crowd and support her - and Jason, too. Both men ran a dangerous game of fast-talk and platitudes, working to keep the uneasy temporary truce.
But not Rolf.
Glancing down at the sun-warmed stone, she ran a search.
He was on his way, and not too far at that. She wasn't sure what she'd expected, but… that unexpected result made her feel strange and fuzzy, as if everything was going to be fine. Even with everything so strangely wrong between them, he was still coming.
She wiped her nose with her sleeve. "No, I'm alright. I've got… family… out here." She took a deep breath and considered her next words, but the patience of her older colleagues had finally run out.
"They want to run a vote," the oldest woman stated. "I think it's a good idea."
Michael blinked. "A vote? For… us?"
She nodded. "First one in twelve years."
Seeing the two of them head for the refinery, and calculating that they would reach it first, the three dots pursuing them suddenly sped up.
Finally breaking the ruse that he hadn't noticed them, Rolf checked their stats.
"Shit, they've got jobs," he breathed. "Calories…"
The Tree of his future suddenly shed many branches. He could almost hear the clock ticking in time with his heart.
"They can run?" Kitna asked, gripping his wrist. "The whole way here?"
"They're going to get between us and the refinery…" He looked around the street, eyes pained by bright greens and sheer yellows. "And who chose the colors for these goddamn buildings?! Who thinks this looks good?!"
He gripped his head, trying his best to plan a route that might end in salvation.
"Rolf," she insisted. "Come on! We'll circle around somehow. We'll make it."
He did not believe her, but no other option remained.
The street yawned wide before them, filled with people flooding past them, all heading toward Factory Six to seek asylum. The Union would have at least a million members - the list of potential private communicators guaranteed that. When faced with death or joining the Union, their choice was easy.
While the crowd surged toward Factory Six, they moved the opposite direction.
Gaunt, worried faces watched the street from behind the false comfort of closed windows, blemishes on the glass giving them an eerie ghostly aspect.
"Rolf," she said between ragged breaths from the effort of moving against the crowd. "I'm so tired…"
/> Holding her hand tight, he wiped sweat from his forehead with his free hand. "I know."
It wasn't enough. They simply didn't have enough calories, couldn't move fast enough.
"I'll make a stand," he panted.
"I'm with you, idiot," she coughed.
"They want me, not you. You should go."
She grinned, a drop of sweat falling from her chin. "Do I ever do what I'm told?"
An inspirational high note rose from a song playing from a building to his left. It matched his emotions, oddly enough. "There is another route I've been considering."
"Anything. I'm with you."
At that moment - maybe because the future seemed comprised of precariously few paths riding utmost luck, maybe because he'd never seen her so committed - she seemed the most beautiful thing in the world. For once completely present, for once ignoring the world of data and statistics flying high all around, he really looked at her. Her sweat-glistening cheekbones seemed incredibly real, framing her worried but determined eyes. "Your eyes are brown," he thought aloud, surprised.
Her face curled with a genuine smile, and he knew she had a thousand things to say - snappy comebacks, heartwarming comments - but she just nodded.
Filled with a strange determination - a strange hope - the two of them made a run for it, the only people heading east.
The only people heading east, save for their pursuers.
Looking back, he could see the first rounding the corner a block away.
"Up!" he shouted, pointing to his right, and they ducked into a muted red residence.
Numb, fearful families stared at them as they rushed through the halls, jumping lightly over layabouts and accidentally bumping into several passersby. They ran up the stairs, fighting red-faced exhaustion even as the first dot reached the main entrance of the building.
The area's map firmly in view, Rolf pulled at her each time they approached another turn.
Pounding across a grated catwalk, pushing between surprised onlookers, he slowed them subtly, letting the first pursuer catch up.
He pulled hard at a rusted support rod, breaking it off at just the right moment to bring it down with the full force of his body.
The rod fell hard across the lanky Subian running after them, slashing across his chest - he screamed in pain, gripping his body as he fell to grated metal, a spray of red splattering his shirt. He would survive the wound, but further pursuit was out of the question.
Scrambling back up from his fall, Rolf wasted no time. "That way!" he shouted, leading Kitna up another set of stairs, more than aware they were almost out of energy.
They reached the roof after a few floors, emerging into a forest of black panels and oppressive heat. The Unsetting Sun watched their flight, aloof and uninterested.
"That way?" Kitna asked, pulling him along.
He nodded, beginning to limp as he ran out of willpower to resist his old knee injury's slight impairment.
Their second pursuer rose out of the stairwell shortly after, laying an angry gaze on them. Shorter than the first, but visibly healthier, he retained the energy to run - and quickly pelted between the solar panels, closing the distance between them.
"Now?" she asked.
"Now!"
They pushed off the edge together, soaring across the gap between the buildings.
They broke apart, rolling painfully as they hit the top-floor balcony of the building next door.
Their pursuer eyed the jump, and then decided to follow, after settling on hatred over fear.
Rolf leapt to his feet and pushed as the other Subian landed, shoving him out and over. He tumbled onto the prior building's lower balcony, gripping his leg and shouting in surprised pain.
"Come on," she insisted, pulling him away from the sight.
They moved through dirty, dank rooms filled with wide-eyed families huddling in the dark. The steps down took them to the main street again, near the limit of their endurance -
- an angry arm slammed him into the building's green-patterned outer wall.
"Finally caught you," a furious voice uttered through clenched teeth. "You're really the best survivor I've ever seen. I'll give you that."
"Get off him!" Kitna screamed, clawing at the tall Subian man.
He shoved her away with a furious grunt, and then looked to his prey again.
Reaching down desperately, he threw a handful of dusty gravel in the face of his attacker, freeing himself. Running for the corner, he bolted down, leaping a dozen prone zombies and curving into another main street.
A passing flatbed truck, loaded down with refined metals, had the street pressed thick with compressed crowd.
Jumping between the truck and the wall, he clambered over, climbing on shoulders and heads in desperation. Shouts of annoyance followed him as he turned down another corner - but this gap was no alley. Slimming down to less than the width of a person, the stone clawed at his clothes, grinding as he pushed forward in sheer agony - and then pulling at his skin, scraping blood and pain - and then he was out, stumbling into the street.
But he'd underestimated the power of his pursuer's hatred. The healthier man shed more than his share of flesh squeezing between the buildings, quickly catching up to him. A flailed grasp caught his tattered shirt, and a powerful grip forcefully slammed him against a blue-dappled wall.
"You will…" the other panted, his chest bleeding from a dozen places. "You will answer for what you've done."
Back of his head hard against stone, Rolf locked eyes with his demon. "Your brother, right? I haven't forgotten. I remember them all."
The other Subian flinched for a split second, taken aback. "Yes."
He carefully considered his next words. "He wasn't very good at Starships II… he would have starved anyway."
The arm against his neck increased its pressure. "That's not the point. We were supposed to work together, supposed to survive as a people. I told you - I told you to concede, that he was starving, but you didn’t. And he died. By refusing to cooperate, you killed him. You betrayed your people so many times. So many starved. And you think you can just go live your life, work for the Scientists, and be free of your crimes?"
Straining for breath, eyes misting, he gripped at the other's arm. "You blame me… why don't you blame the sadistic rich… betting on us…? That's not what they wanted… to see…"
Brow trembling, the other man hesitated again.
"And how many of us…" he continued, struggling to speak. "How many of us survived, anyway? Why are you… still alive?"
The arm against his neck dropped.
His assailant stared at a spot on the wall behind him. "I don't care about the people who bet on us, because I can't do anything to them. But you… you I can blame."
"No," Rolf countered. "That's a mistake."
"A mistake? How?"
"Look at that Union at Factory Six - they have the right idea. We've wasted years hating and fearing each other, but why? We didn't do this to each other. Others might have starved because I couldn't help them, refused to help them, but I've never killed anyone. I just did what I had to do, what the world forced us into. I'm not irredeemable." He stood, surprised at his own words. "If we just work together, if we just make the right choices, the smart choices - if we play the game well enough, we can survive. If we just make enough good choices, everything will be alright. I really believe that."
He laughed, almost not believing the sliver of hope still residing, impossibly, within his heart. "There's always a possibility, always some way to win, some way to survive. Do you believe that? Because I do. Even after everything we've been through, I still believe there's a chance. There's always a chance. It's not nice, not happy, but it's fair. Life is fundamentally fair, in that brutal way. I have to believe that. I have to believe this was all for something."
The other Subian man blinked a few times, visibly at a loss, all hatred and angst drained. He stepped forward, perhaps moving to speak, but he never had the
chance.
The muted blue building behind them and the intricate brown-and-gold building across the street both suddenly shifted color palettes in response to changing light patterns. The street fell absolutely silent.
He could see it in their faces. He knew before he even looked to his left, following his assailant's terrified gaze. Too distracted by the chase, he hadn't been following the major events captivating everyone else…
The mountains on the western horizon could no longer be seen.
The main street's endless canyon channeled his sight down a tunnel of buildings, all leading straight into an infinite darkness. A massive black fist seemed to rise into the sky, forcing apart the scant misty clouds above in an unbelievably wide circle. Myriad arcs of fire framed the expanding ebon cloud.
It all seemed so distant, so quiet…
Roiling madness surged outward, storm clouds gone insane, eating the world in a raging tide.
In that moment, all his plans evaporated, wrenched from his very soul by the sheer power of reality itself. In the face of that power, he was nothing, his plans were nothing, and his foolish hopes were nothing. His impassioned hopeful words had been wrong.
He knew his mistake, then; a very personal and core mistake. He'd assumed, like the games he'd grown up on, that some manner of fairness sat hidden within reality itself.
But, of course, many groups would have benefited by the destruction of the refinery. Of course the Hand of society had called the Union's bluff - and of course they'd actually done it, rather than live a day longer as veritable slaves. The revolution was over the moment it began.
It had never had a chance.
He realized with utter certainty, in that moment of total despair, that there was not always a way to win; that life was not fair in any manner whatsoever, and that, sometimes, one could make every play perfectly and still lose - if the game was rigged.
He understood, then, that it was rigged.
It always had been.
The Lone Path
As one, enmities forgotten, they turned and tried to run.
The crowd reacted less quickly, an agonizingly slow series of moments where old and young and Orani and Anglan and Nord and Subian ran alike, all too slow to escape, all chaff in the wind.
A massive hand gripped him bodily and threw him upward, a thick current of scraping dust blasting his raw skin and tearing through his tattered clothes as he hung in empty space for an endless time.
Eyes tightly shut, he had no chance to anticipate the impossibly hard stone crashing into his arms and legs. He felt his right knee crack horribly, and then he was in the air again, floating without thought and without sense.
Flat stone came again, rushing by, ripping skin horribly.
He rolled this time, sliding along, coming to rest on his side.
Coughing, unable to feel anything, dust sifting off with every movement, he pushed himself up, staring at the hard stone beneath his bloodied and dirtied hands.
He felt his own shocked outcry vibrate his throat, but no sound followed; deafening silence hung like a blanket in his numbed ears, punctuated only by a strange, high squeal.
His skull - no, every bone in his body - seemed electrified by pain. He felt his limbs, his tissues, and his very nerves, in a horrifically real sense. His body seemed a wire-doll, frail and weak, only loosely obeying his commands.
Looking past roiling swirls of dust and smoke in a throbbing daze, he found himself alone in the middle of the street, stumbling over a large crack in the Stonework itself on his hands and knees. Bodies lay scattered everywhere, though whether they were dead or alive…
A drop of something cool hit the side of his neck.
Touching the spot lightly, he looked around for the source.
Massive curving white columns towered overhead, seeming to touch the sky - sudden eruptions from below, impossible and beautiful all at the same time. As he stared at them, numbly trying to understand, they toppled, spilling between the buildings with a roar resonating through the street and into his very bones.
A young woman managed to get up and run from the oncoming sea. He raised a hand, not sure what he wanted to tell her, but he never had the chance.
Preposterous force seemed to grab his body, spinning him, madly shaking him, sweeping him farther and faster than he could process. For a brief moment, he managed to flatten his bare feet on stone, but the recovery was an imaginary one.
He felt the flow curve down. He held his breath as best he could through the interminable fall, shooting down deep into raging waters. Head pounding, lungs burning, he kicked - but thick mud shot up to his waist.
Powerful force continued to press down, and he waited, waited, waited, his neck straining, his head burning with desperation… until the forceful current shifted, and his thrashing freed him from the clinging mud.
Daring to open his eyes, blinking against the salt