Page 101 of The Hero Within
Leaping up, he caught the edge of the grate and hauled himself out into the fresh air. A moon hung swollen in the sky, casting soft light down over the city below them.
Arik crouched in a squat, lifting his water canteen to his lips. "Welcome to Cortez City."
Before them stretched a landscape the likes neither of them had ever seen before.
Chapter Nineteen
"Here we are,"Arik whispered. "We made it."
Eden stared about herself in wonder. Lights glittered as though someone had put the stars themselves on earth. She couldn't escape the size of the city.
She'd been pushing herself all week, focusing on getting to Cortez. A tiny part of her hadn't believed they'd make it.
But they were here.
Buildings pressed together, all glittering steel and panes of glass that stretched so high into the sky Eden could barely see the top of them. Wide roads spanned below them, strangely empty. The roads were wide enough to drive a herd of a thousand cattle along them, and they were perfectly straight. In fact, everything was laid out into neat grids, and every building was square or rectangular. Thousands of little windows loomed in the side of each building, like a spider's eyes.
She couldn't escape the impression she was being watched. Maybe that was the point; Henry Chin had spoken of yearning for freedom, after all, and despite its glory, its technology, there was a creepy feeling of eyes boring into her back, no matter which way she turned.
But the thing that surprised her the most was how clean everything was.
Everything bore the stamp of the Confederacy; a half sun in the center of a circle, its rays radiating outward like a new sun rising from the ashes of a former empire. All the roads seemed to point toward the center of the city, where a massive building towered over everything else, comprised of a tiara of five towers built adjoining one another, with the one in the center spearing toward the heavens.
"That building looks like it's giving the middle finger," Johnny mused. "Do you think they realize they're saying 'fuck you' to the rest of the city?"
"Pretty sure," Arik muttered. "That's where the general will be, along with all his boot kissers."
She was staring at a world she could never in her wildest dreams have imagined. The sheer scope of the technology astounded her. Enormous square screens were mounted to the walls, flashing in bright colors in the night. They looked like a bigger version of her datapad, and images of people flickered over them. A scene of thousands of people in an enormous square appeared, waving dark green paper ribbons as a parade of cars drove along the narrow space in the center. A man in a crisp white uniform waved at the crowd with a dignified expression. White and green. The Confederacy colors.
"That's a general," Arik muttered. "Don't know which one, since it's been a while since I was here, but they rule the Confederacy with an iron fist. Each general rules a territory, and virtually owns his own city. Seven generals; seven territories. There was a coup about forty years ago, and ever since the military overthrew the leaders of the time they've been in control."
"There are so many people," Eden breathed, watching the screen.
"Yeah." Arik scrubbed a hand over his face. "They like to play their clips over and over. The military controls what people see, which means they can dictate what sort of information gets out. Expect to see a lot of parades and crowds cheering. But nothing real. You won't see the grimy underside, or the people who disappear just because they broke some imagined law."
All the people on the screen looked so clean. Their clothes were sleek, and everywhere she looked the men were clean-shaven, and the women wore their slicked-back hair in neat buns or braids. Military-style clothing seemed to be in fashion, with most people wearing varying shades of gray, black, or Confederacy green.
She felt very small, and dirty, and ragged. Every inch of her clothes had been repaired multiple times over the years, and her boots were scuffed, the soles thin. Dirt edged beneath her nails. It was something she'd never thought about until she walked into this place.
They'd never be able to blend in here.
"Cortez City's just a military outpost," Arik murmured. "This is nothing compared to the enormous city-states further in the interior. The Confederacy considers Cortez to be out in the sticks."
"What would they think of us?" Eden whispered, staring from one end of the city to the other. Despite her aches and pains, the sight was enough to distract her.
"Most people don't know much about the Wastelands to the west," Arik replied. "Like I said, information gets filtered. All they hear about are the monsters and the reivers. Nobody goes outside the walls. If you do, then they say you might get contaminated. Who knows what's out there? Radiation. Disease. Wargs and revenants. Ghost forests filled with mutos. Better to stay within the walls, where the military can protect you." He sounded disgusted. "They used to show a program in the warg camps about howluckywe were to be taken in. They've given us so much, so we should give back. It was our duty to play cannon fodder, because we were serving a bigger cause. Worse, some of the wargs believed it."
Thunder rumbled overhead, thick boiling clouds rolling in across the Wastelands. All three wargs looked up.
"Time to find some shelter," Arik muttered. "That storm's probably going to help. If the enforcers have wargs out on patrol, then they won't smell us if the rain washes away the scent. This way. We'll bunker down somewhere, then plan our next move on Radisson-Meyers."
Bunkeringdown somewhere consisted of housebreaking. They'd discussed simply tying a family up and leaving them in the cellar, but Eden didn't approve—at all—so she'd insisted on them finding a place that was empty.
The house was four times as large as her home in Absolution, and looked like it had been vacant for a while, though the rooms were sparsely furnished. Sleek furniture, and polished concrete floors. There was little ornamentation though, and a certain efficient coldness to the interior. Despite all the accessories, she much preferred her home.
"Right now we stick out like sore thumbs," Arik said as they gathered in the kitchen, around what was left of the dinner he'd hauled out of the icebox.
Lincoln picked through it, rolling a pea dubiously across the plate. He'd tried to eat the pale gray square on the corner of the plate, then gagged and spat it back out again. "Not meat," came his assessment.
