Stolen Future Read online

  “This”—it pointed at a square black card—“is for monetary transactions. Enough for you to get by once you're able to leave here. It will last you quite a long time.”

  “Where do I go?” I blurted out.

  Drive Nine hesitated. “Do you remember anything of your life on Luna?”

  A lump formed in my throat. I hated that this robot knew more about my past than I did. Slowly, I shook my head.

  It lifted an oval-shaped black device that fit in my palm. “This will answer some of your questions.”

  Staring at it, I wondered how it worked.

  Outside, an intense thrumming erupted, shattering the eerie quietness.

  Drive Nine swiveled its head, then turned back to me. “They are patrolling. I will lead them away. You'll be safe for a while, but you have to move soon. Do you understand?”

  I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

  “Goodbye,” it said.

  “Wait! What on Mars? You're just going to run off and leave me here with no explanation?” I grabbed my pillow and launched it as hard as I could at Drive Nine. It landed at its feet.

  With one metal hand on the doorknob, it watched me. “I should have explained more. I did not think you were ready. I'm sorry.”

  “You’re sorry!” I rolled to my knees on top of the bed, even though my legs were sore and tingling with pinpricks as if they’d been asleep. “Fuck!”

  “Goodbye, Diya.”

  Drive Nine left, and I sat there, shuddering. My chest was hollow. My pulse raced. I was flooded with adrenaline and something else—my stomach had butterflies like the kind of thrill you feel when you're excited about something.

  I was pissed at the robot. For leaving me. For not telling me shit about who I was or why I was there. Despite asking a ton of questions, it had ignored me for days. And now, all of a sudden, it left in a hurry, acting mysterious.

  At least Drive Nine had told me my name. Diya.

  My gaze landed on the two objects the robot had left. Money and some kind of device that I had no idea how to use.

  Outside, the roar of an engine intensified. A blinding light shone, flooding the window. I froze in place, and then the light passed. Was I strong enough to walk across the room to the window? Only one way to find out.

  And, since I didn’t have a robot watchdog anymore, I could do what I pleased.

  I rolled to the edge of the bed and hoisted my legs over the side. Pressing my soles against the cold tiles, I shivered. Leaning forward, I tested my weight. Beads of sweat gathered at my hairline. I can do this—ten feet, no problem. Sucking in a deep breath, I pushed myself to standing, but I wobbled and lurched forward on shaky legs. A dizzy wave swarmed my head. How long had it been since I stood? Too long. Another step forward, and I sank to my knees.

  Someone shouted outside on the street. I needed to know what was happening. Crawling forward, my bare legs slid across the grimy floor, but I didn’t care. I reached the window and opened the bottom slats wide enough to see outside.

  An air cruiser had landed in the middle of the road. All the usual signs of city life—food vendors, pedestrians, rickshaws, air bikes, and scooters were gone—cleared out. The vessel occupied the avenue, and a massive spotlight scanned the building facades, illuminating windows and peering into alleyways. Drones circled the area, scanning rooftops.

  What were they searching for? And why had Drive Nine gotten so nervous it had to leave? The robot had said something was happening—sooner than expected.

  Damned secretive robot. If I ever found it again, I’d have to teach it a lesson. I clenched my fists so hard, my nails dug into my palms.

  The beam on the cruiser rotated and headed my way. I released the blinds and ducked underneath the windowsill. When I was sure the light had passed, I resumed my position. Men and women streamed out of the ship and flooded the pavement. They were dressed in dark uniforms—black or gray or blue. I couldn’t tell in the darkness. Helmets with visors covered their heads. They started banging on doors. Every door.

  And then something bright erupted, blinding me for an instant, forcing my eyes shut. After I recovered and stared back outside, a drone had crashed to the ground.

  I edged to the opposite side of the window, straining to see what was happening farther down the road.

  Squinting, it was hard to make out distant objects. I blinked in rapid succession, and suddenly there was a loud hum centered between my ears. Where was it coming from? My body tensed, and I ducked. Had I been spotted?

  A strange tingling began in my neck and spread downward, filling my chest and back, then reaching into my legs until I could feel the pins and needles in my toes.

  Hyperventilating, eyes clamped shut, words crossed my field of vision:

  Diya CGU 1.

  Operational.

  Systems diagnostic 67%.

  Desperate to understand this strange experience, I thrashed my head. Was I hallucinating? As I looked around the room at the furniture and walls I’d grown so tired of, the words still flanked my vision as if I was staring at a computer screen with a sidebar.

  Outside, gunfire erupted, and the rat-a-tat-tat ricocheted off the neon jumbotrons. I glanced outside and glimpsed a figure in the distance. The people—soldiers?— from the ship were returning fire. Straining, I couldn’t make out the person they were targeting, but then all of a sudden my vision focused, and my eyesight adjusted. I could see in the dark, far away, with a stunning crispness.

  They were shooting at Drive Nine.

  Three

  In the cramped room two stories above the lunar avenue, I watched the skirmish unfold with my freakishly enhanced vision. I’d been augmented. But why? And by whom? Had I asked for this? And why hadn’t Drive Nine thought to explain this?

  But I didn’t have time to process these new revelations as the soldiers advanced on the robot. Zooming in, I saw Drive Nine lift and aim its right arm, then fire a weapon at the soldiers.

  A fiery blaze lit up my field of vision. Digital words flashed, and a grid hijacked my gaze, tracking the trajectory of Drive Nine’s power weapon. The shot failed to hit any of the people. No more drones fell from their close, hovering orbit. Drive Nine fired again, seeming to purposely miss them.

  Then the robot—my robot, the one who’d been spoon-feeding me from bowls of soup—ran. The combat drones pursued it, followed by most of the soldiers.

  Just below my window, where the air cruiser rested, stood a bulky man. The stripes on his shoulder indicated leadership. He shouted into his helmet and stormed up a ramp onto the vessel. I edged away from the blinds as the ship rose. Its thrusters blasted shafts of air, whirling paper and bits of garbage into a mini-tornado. The cruiser soared forward in Drive Nine’s direction. Soon, the action moved out of view.

  Drive Nine had said it would lead them away, had said it wouldn’t expose me. The robot had created a diversion. Why did those soldiers want to find me?

  I shivered. What if they were trying to rescue me from Drive Nine? What if I’d been deceived by the robot? My lungs were heavy, and I slumped against the wall next to the window. Once again, exhaustion overtook me. My body hadn't caught up to my enhanced brain, apparently. Nor to my emotions which were on a runaway train of panic.

  What now?

  As I drifted off into sleep, I resolved to confront the woman as soon as I woke.

  As it turned out, she found me the next morning. Or rather, her dog found me.

  Woken by a shrill yapping, I opened my eyes and glimpsed a growling, shaggy beige furball. Groggy, I struggled to remember why I was passed out on the floor, and then the images of the previous night flooded back—Drive Nine firing weapons, the soldiers in the air cruiser, my augmented vision.

  But I was distracted by the dog assaulting me. It clamped its sharp teeth on the edge of my gown and started yanking it. I drew my knees to my chest, but the canine only seemed to get angrier.

  My gaze traveled to the door where a petite woman lingered on
the threshold. She didn’t look at me, just stared ahead at the wall behind me.

  “Binksley,” she said. “Stop that!”

  The yapping dog bounced up, barked, and ran to her, nudging its wet nose against her ankle.

  “He won't hurt you,” she said. “It takes him some time to warm up to strangers.” She had a lilting accent. Her blonde hair was tied back in a bun, and her dark green eyes avoided me. “I’m Terry.”

  “Hello,” I said, still too weak to stand.

  Her gaze flickered, drawn to my voice. “Oh, why are you down there?” Still, her eyes didn’t find me.

  She was blind, I realized. My stomach did a somersault—it would be easy to escape her now that Drive Nine was gone.

  “Were you watching from the window last evening?” she asked.

  “I was.”

  “D9 is really gone, I suppose.”

  “Why did it go out there? Who were those soldiers? What were they looking for?”

  “You haven't figured it out?” She stepped forward, bending, and reached out with open palms. “Do you want me to help you to bed?”

  “I can do it myself.” Feeling helpless sucked, especially when faced with a blind woman. I should be helping her, not the other way around. I leaned forward, but my stiff joints refused to cooperate. Unable to hide it, I groaned.

  “Are you okay?” Terry asked. Meanwhile, Binksley became interested in me again and wandered over to sniff my hand.

  “Gentle, Binksley. That's a good boy,” Terry said.

  I crawled forward, but it was actually more like a slide. “How long will I be this way?”

  “D9 told me you're still healing. I'm no doctor, so I can't say for sure. You're much better than you were at first.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  She hesitated. “Two weeks.”

  At the edge of the bed, I hoisted one arm up onto the mattress and attempted to pull myself up, but my body shook and sweat dripped from my upper lip into my mouth, tasting salty and metallic.

  “You're struggling. Here, let me help you.” She moved toward me, reaching out. She touched my back and right arm, lifting and guiding me onto the bed.

  I collapsed in a heap. “Ugh. Thank you.”

  “It's no problem at all. You must be hungry.”

  My stomach growled in reply. “Now that you mention it…”

  “I’ll prepare some soup. Would you like some bread too?”

  So far, I hadn't consumed anything solid. I'd have given a kidney for some bread.

  “It's not very fresh,” she continued. “It's very hard to get fresh things on Luna.”

  “I don't care.” Famished, I could’ve eaten twenty loaves of bread, stale or not.

  Terry left and Binksley stayed, staring up at me.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked.

  The pup nodded as if we had an understanding and grunted.

  Sighing, I pushed myself up and tried to steady my breathing. If crawling across the room had winded me this much, how the hell was I ever going to get out of here?

  I gazed at the money card and oblong device that Drive Nine had left. The robot had said I would need to leave soon. Did Terry know that?

  Still lacking memory, how would I even know where to go or what to do? I wondered if the strange object would help me remember my past. I could interrogate Terry, find out what she knew, and bide my time until I got enough strength to move around without fainting or feeling like I was eighty-five years old.

  But if those soldiers were to come back? What then?

  Where had Drive Nine gone?

  And how long could the robot distract them?

  Four

  Two more days passed. I knew because Terry brought me a clock that showed Universal Time. Old habits—the humans on Luna defaulted to a time standard based on Earth’s rotation. With every passing hour, a tiny bit of strength returned. She fed me solid food—mostly canned beans and more soup, plus sofu from the food vendors. I was ravenous, which Terry chalked up to my healing process.

  I ambled up and down the apartment’s narrow hall, supported against her petite frame. Thank the Lunar settlers for installing centrifuges to augment lunar gravity. I didn’t think I could have handled one-sixth G in my weakened state.

  Lo and behold, there was a bathroom. Not a spacious one, just a toilet, sink, and a water hose attached to the wall. Nevertheless, I gladly ditched the chamber pot.

  On the second night, late in the evening, Terry pulled up a chair next to my bed as we chowed on sofu noodles—a Lunar staple. The meat substitute had a gritty texture with a bitter aftertaste, but you got used to it.

  Terry had been hesitant to answer my questions, but I continued interrogating her, trying to nudge a bit more out of her each time. Perhaps I was wearing her down.

  “Can you tell me what this is?” I asked. She reached out, and I placed the round memory device in her palm. She clasped it and explored the strange object with her fingertips.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked abruptly, her skin flushed.

  “Drive Nine gave it to me. Said it might help answer my questions.”

  “I know this.” She set the object down on the table and recoiled as if it were a poisonous snake. “It’s from NeuroDyne. A retrodisc.”

  “A what?”

  She cleared her throat. Her color was gradually returning to a normal shade. “It’s a way to take uploaded memories from Cerulean and transport them. Like a storage device. I haven’t encountered one since I was on Earth. Sorry… it spooked me.”

  “It’s okay. What’s Cerulean?”

  Her forehead wrinkled and she shivered. “Tech invented by NeuroDyne. Cerulean is a hub for safe storage, so that specific memories can be accessed later.”

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “The tech is controversial. There are people called species purists who protest, but the very wealthy want the memory uploading to continue.” She folded her arms. “Sometimes the protesters are violent. As NeuroDyne employees, Newt and I had to be careful where we lived, how we traveled.” She frowned. “It was a hard time for us.”

  “Do you think my memories are on that thing?”

  “It’s possible,” she answered. “Someone’s memories are on the retrodisc.”

  “And you have no way to access it, right?”

  She shook her head. “Newt left all the tech behind on Earth. He didn’t leave much here in the apartment, either. If he had a reader, he must have taken it with him when he left.”

  I sighed and chewed on a big chunk of sofu. “What happened when I arrived here?” I asked in between mouthfuls.

  She stroked Binksley who had flopped himself on her lap for belly scratches. At my question, Terry clenched her jaw. “I’m not supposed to tell you...”

  “Why not? Did Drive Nine forbid you to give me information?”

  “Please,” she whispered, “if we could just keep this civil.”

  “Civil!” I stifled a scream and raised my arm as if I was going to hurl the box of noodles across the room. I wanted to, and nearly followed through, but I was still hungry, so I resisted the urge. Terry couldn’t see my threatening exaggeration anyway.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, as if sensing my movements.

  I sighed, then dropped the food container back on my lap. “Nothing.” Digging my chopsticks into the box, I took my frustration out by mashing the tangled mess of noodles. “It's just… Imagine being in my situation. Waking up in a stranger's apartment with a robot who won't tell me shit. And no memory.”

  She swallowed a bite of her dinner, nodding.

  “It's confusing and scary,” I continued. My guard was down, and with the robot gone, I felt Terry was on my side.

  “I understand,” she said quietly.

  “What did Drive Nine say to you exactly? That you couldn't answer questions about me—about my situation?”

  “Yes.” She stroked Binksley between his ears, prom
pting him to unleash a wide yawn.

  “So, you can answer questions about other people, right? Just not me.”

  She hesitated, considering. “I suppose.”

  “Then who were the soldiers outside the window the night Drive Nine left? They landed on the street in an air cruiser, and they had guns, lots of them. Were they police?”

  She bit her lower lip, choosing silence.

  “Terry,” I said, softening my tone. “Answering questions about them doesn't break the rules.”

  She rose from her chair and dumped Binksley on the ground. He snorted, upset at the turn of events as she paced the small room. “From what I gathered, those men were not police.”

  “Then who are they?”

  “NeuroDyne security forces.”

  Security. No longer hungry, I set my noodle box on the side table. “Who’s NeuroDyne?”

  “A Corporation. The largest employer on Earth.”

  “On Earth…” My heart skipped faster now that she was giving me something, and for a moment, I hesitated. Did I really want the truth? But I suppressed the warning bells in my head. “Then why is this NeuroDyne force here on Luna? What were they looking for? Why did Drive Nine go out there and shoot at them?”

  Terry clasped her hands together, squeezing her fingers so tightly I could see the whites of her knuckles.

  My throat was dry, as I asked, “Are they looking for me?”

  Silence. She just stood there, biting the insides of her cheeks, her skin flush, betraying every emotion.

  Uncrossing my legs, I sat on the edge of the bed. My heightened adrenaline caught up to my racing pulse, and I couldn’t conceal the rising urgency in my voice. “Why are they looking for me? Is it because of what Drive Nine did to me?”

  She jerked her head. “Drive Nine didn't do it,” she said abruptly. “They did.”

  “They who?”

  Someone banged on the front door of the apartment, and we both startled.