Beyond Citadel Read online

  BEYOND CITADEL

  Marcos Efron

  Superior Weight Publishing

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real

  people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places,

  and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Marcos Efron

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or

  portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Cover art by Jarrod Lees, JAZ art

  https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaz-art/

  Superior Weight Publishing

  9107 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 600

  Beverly Hills, CA 90210

  USA

  www.superiorweight.com

  Library of Congress Control Number 2016903878

  ISBN 978-1-4951-9594-5 (ebook)

  For Mom & Dad

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  THE MACHINIST’S WIDE FEET splashed across the puddled floor of treatment chamber number three. He pulled snug the straps on the mask he had slid over his bald head before entering. The masks had an annoying tendency to slip, especially in the treatment chambers where the humidity could draw sweat from coal, and Olsen Kopp was a world-class sweater. But Olsen wasn’t going to risk his life. If he swallowed just one drop of untreated water, he’d be dead before anyone could come to his rescue. Olsen didn’t care for the earplugs either. Trying to extricate them with his stubby fingers was like trying to pick up a fly by its wings. But the clang and roar of the machinery echoing off the cement floors could deafen a man in twenty minutes, so he wore them.

  This was the third time this month that chamber three’s spring valve had failed. And that made it the third time this month that Olsen would have to shut down the main pump, redirect flow to chambers eight and eleven (which were already strained to begin with), set the backflow safety, and pry open the cast iron valve casing.

  Olsen climbed the five steps to the chamber’s service access, removed a panel to expose the spring valve casing, set the backflow safety switch to on, and chose the sharpest wedge pick from his tool belt. It was almost quitting time, and he had no intention of wasting an hour trying to coax the casing plate off with gentle taps. Why be coy about it? he thought. He and chamber three’s spring valve were already on intimate terms with each other.

  “So it’s you and me again,” he grumbled.

  He forced the pick into the groove he’d made from the last two visits and struck the bottom of the pick’s handle with a hammer.

  Tang!

  The pick sank in a centimeter.

  “That’s a good girl.” Sweat dripped down Olsen’s head in streaks.

  Tang!

  The pick went two centimeters further, and the rubber straps on his mask slipped four.

  Tang!

  Two and four.

  Tang!

  The pick wedged in deeper than he had anticipated and shot the valve case cover into the backflow safety switch. At the same time, Olsen’s mask slipped off his head and a surge of water slammed into his face, in his eyes, and down his throat.

  By the time he’d hit the ground, he had swallowed enough of the toxic water to kill a hundred men. Trying to expel it was pointless, he knew that, too. So when Olsen realized he had not suffered a painful, agonizing death, that untreated water direct from the source in the White Mountains had not killed him, he yelped in joy.

  “It’s clean, the water’s clean!” he cried as a shower of water cascaded over him from the gushing valve.

  Olsen heaved himself up from the floor. He was soaking wet and bleeding from a gash on his forehead where the pick had ricocheted back, but none of that mattered. He bolted out of treatment chamber number three, excited to tell all of Citadel the incredible news. Surely there would there be a reward, or some commendation from the Ministry. Maybe even an apartment in Zone Two, far from the reek of the Trench where he had lived his whole life.

  These delusions were playing through his mind when he ran into that aloof Ministry official he’d often seen at the Second Minister’s side. The man’s name was Tippen, and even though he had a way of making everyone feel unnerved with his accusatory gaze, Olsen knew he was the right man to tell about his discovery.

  “You won’t believe what I’ve found out!” Olsen cried, grabbing the official by his shoulders and staining his coat with oil and water. “The water, the water . . .”

  “The water? What about the water?” Tippen asked.

  “It’s clean! The poisons are gone!” Olsen said, “Come, come. I’ll show you!”

  Tippen regarded the wet, over-excited mechanic, with his stubbled cheeks and stupid grin. Olsen looked like a dog—a dumb, trusting mutt who wagged its tail, oblivious until the end. In his childhood, Tippen had tortured and killed more than one of these animals. If the mechanic had had a tail, it would be wagging right now.

  Tippen smiled graciously. “Lead the way,” he said.

  Three days later, Olsen Kopp’s death was noted in the public record (a tragic accident caused by the ingestion of a thimble’s worth of untreated water). Three days after that, water tariffs rose by six percent.

  Chapter 1

  NURA KNEW THE BLACKBOOTS could never keep up with her. She was too quick and they were burdened with body armor and weapons.

  “Stop that girl!”

  Burdened or not, their voices were too close for comfort. She ran faster.

  What the Blackboots lacked in agility they made up for in numbers. And in Zone Five—a.k.a. the Trench—they were as ubiquitous as the watery sludge that ran down the runnels and collected in filthy pools at the base of the wall.

  Nura lived in Zone Two. Compared to the Trench, which was located as far from the Ministry Zone as physically possible, Zone Two was paradise. Its proximity to Ministry Tower and the Dome made it the ideal home for Ministry employees like Nura’s father. Although in theory everyone in Citadel was equal, a person’s prospects and quality of life degraded substantially the farther out from the Ministry Zone they lived.

  While there was no official policy against traveling between zones, Nura’s presence here was sure to raise eyebrows and prompt a lot of questions that she did not want to answer. Yes, she had to get away from the Blackboots. If they caught her, they would find the letter. If they found the letter—well, she didn’t want to think about what would happen to her.

  The letter was written in code, they always were, but the agents in the Ministry of Justice would break it eventually. They always did. Then the real interrogation would begin. She could probably hold out for a
little while, maybe even tell a few convincing lies to stall the agents or set them on the wrong path, but she was scared to her core of what they could and probably would do to her. Nura was only sixteen but that was no security—she was just as responsible for her words and actions as any adult in Citadel.

  At Banishment there was always at least one teenager who had said or done something careless. Nura knew their faces well, if not their names. Beneath the black eyes and swollen lips, they wore stupefied looks of disbelief and terror. Or they cried for their parents who were helpless to do anything for them.

  Behind her, the Blackboots fanned out onto the surrounding streets. If they couldn’t catch her, they would corner her. Try to trap her in the dense grid of Zone Five’s narrow blocks. Above her, electrical wires sagged from rooftop to rooftop. Looking up at them was like looking at a loom whose shuttle had jumped and thrown the weave awry. Nura shuddered. The Trench always made her feel closed in.

  Cursing her recklessness, Nura careened through a crowded bazaar teeming with merchants selling everything from purif pills and medicines, to sweet cakes and homebrew. Her mother always said she was too impulsive, and if she were alive now she would probably shake her head and click her tongue behind her teeth.

  “Come now, Nura. Was that really necessary?” Her mother’s scolding voice sounded in her head. Nura wouldn’t have minded, because with the admonishment would be a glint in her mother’s eyes and an upward curl of the mouth that indicated she was proud of her daughter. Nura told herself she would always make her mother proud. She hoped today was one of those days.

  Her mother’s passing was typical of death in Citadel—neither easy nor painless. But her death had revealed a last, unexpected gift for Nura and her father. With Hope Lowell gone, father and daughter were obliged to speak to each other, something that rarely occurred when Nura’s mother was alive. In time, quiet greetings in the morning became chats in the afternoon, and finally conversations in the evening. By the first anniversary of Nura’s mother’s death, Nura and Edison Lowell were closer than either had imagined ever possible.

  She honestly had not planned on tagging the van but there it had been, unattended and newly washed, almost as if its glassy black panels were canvases begging to be painted. If the painters had not been close by, Nura would not have given it a second thought. But the discarded can of paint with its still-damp brush, as white as the snow caps of the White Mountains, was too sweet a lure to ignore.

  In less than ten seconds, she had smeared the three strokes. Her penmanship had always been called “confident” by her teachers, but now the bold white lines of the hastily drawn N seemed to burn through the black. The fingers of paint dripping irregularly down the side gave it a revolutionary quality that Nura quite liked.

  Even the name “Novum” sounded like it heralded a better future, a future that didn’t include Blackboots. The Novum were a clandestine group of dissenters, nonconformists, and independent thinkers who weren’t satisfied with taking anything the Ministry said at face value. Nura wasn’t technically a member yet (her father had made sure of that), but Nura planned to change that.

  When the sun had broken through the clouds at just the moment she dropped the brush, it illuminated the graffiti like a beacon. Unfortunately, Nura had little time to admire her work—in her eagerness she had failed to even check if the van was unoccupied. It was not. Nura would never forget the amazed look on the face of the Blackboot staring at her through the mesh window.

  “Stay right there!” he ordered as he threw open the door. If she hadn’t involuntarily jumped back three feet at the surprise of seeing him, he surely would have arrested her.

  So Nura ran. What should have been a simple errand had become a race for her life.

  Two Blackboots shot out of the intersection ahead of her. Behind her were three more. Nura cut hard to the right and scrambled over a merchant’s table, scattering condensers, beakers, and other home water purification glassware.

  A squat merchant swiped at her with his beefy arms, but Nura was already through the stand and clambering over a waist-high fence. Seconds later the Blackboots tore through the stand like it was made of matchsticks. Flasks and bottles not broken by Nura’s scramble were crushed under heavy boots.

  “Hey! Who’s going to pay for—”

  A ferocious blow to the jaw guaranteed the last words never made it out of the merchant’s mouth.

  Nura dashed into an alley. She knew the Blackboots would think they had her cornered. She sprinted for the dead-end ahead of her where the wall rose nearly a hundred feet into the air. Most times the haze of the Fallow crept over the wall and you couldn’t see the top, but on this morning the sky was as blue as the picture of the sea she kept in her keepsake box under her bed.

  “Amon!” she shouted as she leapt over an old woman scrubbing rags. Cartons of wilted lettuce toppled in Nura’s wake. “Open the door!”

  She heard the latch fall, and the crinkly metal door rolled up almost immediately. Amon would get her out of this, although now Nura would have to explain to her father why she’d had to bring Amon into what was supposed to be a simple errand: see Benno Janus in Zone Five and bring back the coded letter. Was defacing the van really worth it? Yes, it was.

  Nura dove under the door and it shuttered closed even before she’d stopped sliding across the floor. Nura could just make out the figure of Amon Rumess putting his finger to his mouth.

  “Stay still,” he whispered.

  Nura held her breath. Outside the Blackboots cursed the slippery lettuce and then cursed her when they realized she had evaded them again. She caught her reflection in the mirrored surface of a tangle of metal on the floor. She was lean like her mother had been, with wavy blonde hair that fell to just above her shoulders, and sly dimples that she had only recently discovered gave her an unfair advantage over men. Her father’s genes had won enough battles, however, and she shared with him the crinkle in the corner of her eyes that revealed itself whenever she laughed. In the rare instances she did find a chance to laugh, she was the ideal embodiment of them both. But right now, hearing the Blackboots ransacking the alley looking for her, she couldn’t imagine laughing.

  Nura felt Amon’s accusing eyes on her.

  “I swear I didn’t do any—” she began before the door shook violently.

  “Open up!” commanded the Blackboots.

  Amon jerked his head toward the opposite wall where a paint-chipped panel was set in the wainscoting. Nura got the message.

  “Thank you, Amon,” Nura said, hoping he could read the gratitude in her whisper. She pressed on the panel, which clicked open, and disappeared behind it just as the door burst off its frame, nearly taking Amon down with it. As Nura carefully and quietly reset the panel, she heard the familiar swoosh of air that accompanied the downswing of a Blackboot’s cudgel. She winced at Amon’s cry and made a note to herself to check on him when things settled down in a few days.

  Nura descended a staircase into a dimly lit parlor. She’d heard plenty about the Rumess brothers’ illegal gambling operations but had never actually seen it until now. It was empty at this early hour, or so she’d thought.

  “You’re Edison Lowell’s girl,” a voice spoke from the shadows.

  A man with pock-marked skin stepped into the crosslight slanting in from a ground level window. Nura had seen Zahn Rasitch before, in meetings of the Novum. He had rarely spoken, which, as far as Nura was concerned, was a blessing. When he did speak, she had felt obligated to look at the man.

  Nura shuffled backward to put space between her and Zahn. Her eyes flashed to the trowel in his hand, which in the checkered light looked like a weapon.

  Zahn smiled. His was a wide, oily smile, like a fish’s belly that had been freshly gutted.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, setting the trowel aside. “Just doing a little work for Amon.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Nura said coolly, still keeping her distance. The battering outside hadn’t abated,
and she could see the shadows of the Blackboots through the narrow slats in the window.

  “Got in a little spot, did you?” Zahn asked.

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “No, of course not,” he said with a Cheshire Cat grin.

  Nura felt thankful she was being pursued by the Blackboots. It gave her fair reason to leave his company.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  Zahn cocked his head to the left, where a creaky ladder was bolted to the wall. It rose the entire height of the building and passed through narrow holes hardly wide enough for a man. Nura shimmied up it until she reached the attic. She crawled inside, away from Zahn, who worried her as much as the Blackboots did.

  As she climbed, her thoughts left Zahn Rasitch and Nura began thinking about the Blackboots. Why did they have to look and act like riot police when there hadn’t been a whiff of insurrection in years?

  Nura still remembered the night the windows broke. She had been very young then, but had spent hours listening to her father and his friends, Amon and Benno among them, whispering under the music they played to cloak their voices. At the time she didn’t know what was so important about these secret meetings, but she knew what they spoke about could have gotten them all banished from Citadel. They never spoke the name of their group, but Nura knew they were part of the Novum. She gathered the Novum was something like a secret society made up of people who didn’t think the Ministry should be in power. Whatever they were called, what her father was doing was dangerous. It would be over ten years until Nura would learn just how dangerous.

  Nura was six years old the night the windows broke. There was no music, just the acrid smell of gas and the sight of the Blackboots marching through the wet streets in their riot line, forty men abreast, parting the clouds of roiling green gas. The Novum had planned the protest for months, but they hadn’t counted on the sheer brutality of the Ministry’s response. The protestors whose skulls were not cracked, or whose lungs didn’t hemorrhage from the inside, had been banished to the Fallow. Faces that Nura had regularly seen were simply never seen again.