Maybe the power being cut off has made him nervous, unsure of what’s to come.
Markus breaks the silence. “A dozen guards. That can’t be good.” He hugs his own black backpack against his chest, shivering in the cold night air. The blue suit he has abandoned up in the hayloft, behind the bales and old IKEA storage boxes, must have had a hell of a thermo-system.
“It’s not guards.”
Two beams of light shine on Yeti’s face.
“What do you mean? Is it the nurses? The city employees?”
When the man grunts and covers his eyes, Kaarina stops dazzling him with the flashlight and overwhelming him with her questions. Markus’s light remains stubbornly fixed on the scarred face.
“I’ll tell you if you stop burning my eyes out with that damn thing.”
Markus’s flashlight turns off. “Is it the doctors? The Server-Center management?”
The Yeti walks up to Markus and stops—a few inches too close. Markus stops asking questions. This man is twice his size. Before Markus has time to react, the man grabs his flashlight and starts back toward the woods.
“No, you mop-headed fool. It’s the blue suits. Looks like they sent the sheep to do their dirty work.”
***
The Unchipped community, the people Kaarina used to despise, now remind her of a colony of ants. Their shapes move in the night from one house to another. Yeti’s people took her in without questions. They gave Markus hot tea, handed her a thicker coat and a pair of winter gloves. They seem nice. Friendly. Caring. Has she been wrong about them? All this time?
Some of them gather around the Yeti, like they’re there to watch his back. Kaarina recognizes some of their faces from their last visit to her barnyard. So they’re—what—the Yeti’s soldiers? His bodyguards?
A woman with eyes cold and hard like glass steps closer. She, whom Kaarina once nicknamed Glass-Eye, leans in and whispers in her ear. “What gives, girl? Suddenly you’re no better than us?” Glass-Eye nods at Yeti. “Now that you need his protection?”
Kaarina stares forward, unsure what to say. “I just didn’t want the animals to die,” she then mumbles.
“You’d rather have us die instead?” The woman glances at her leader and lowers her voice. “Do you even know what the black market meat gets us? Because I do. Antibiotics. Painkillers. Vitamins. Fresh vegetables. We don’t kill just for the sake of killing. We kill only if we have to. To survive.”
An image of a young, black-haired girl holding a black and white bunny flashes through Kaarina’s mind. Suddenly she knows who smuggles pets inside the Chip-Center. Who crawled through the same window that helped Kaarina to escape.
Kaarina turns to face the Unchipped woman. When Glass-Eye sees her eyes, teary and regretful, she waves Kaarina off.
“Save your tears, girl. Just forget it. We got bigger rabbits to fry.”
Glowing red, the tiki torches light up the yard. The Unchipped leader’s enormous shadow covers a third of the old playground Kaarina and Markus are standing in. Slides, sandboxes and swing sets make the giant leader look like something out of this world—indestructible and god-like.
Would this creature stand against an army of the Chipped?
Shifting her weight from one foot to another, Kaarina stands next to the Yeti. Markus hovers behind the odd pair. Heartbeats thump inside Kaarina’s head, but she’s unsure who they belong to. They’re all tapping one another. All listening in.
She closes her eyes and hopes that no one catches her talking to her distant friend. Or is Bill even that much of a secret at this point? Now that the Yeti knows about him? Now that Markus knows?
I don’t want them to get hurt, Bill. They’re innocent people. She’s not entirely sure who her thoughts are referring to: those with the chip or those without.
In her mind’s eye, Kaarina sees Bill shrug before he replies. “At least they’re not carrying guns. You’ll have a better shot dodging a knife than a bullet.”
From the corner of his eye, the Yeti glances at her. Then he quickly refocuses on the conversation going on inside his own head. Lips pressed into a hard line, Kaarina continues her conversation with Bill.
Why blue-suits, Bill? Why would they leave their lazy-boys, AR-movies, and government paid nightly highs, just to hunt down a nobody—a hobo that lives in the woods?
“Maybe they’re being forced to. Or maybe something has changed.”
People don’t change, Bill. People hate change.
Rubbing her temples, Kaarina closes her eyes and hopes that she’s wrong, and Bill is right. Then, a movement in the distance catches her eye. Something hovers by the tree line, right outside the playground. As she counts the hovering silhouettes in her head, Kaarina fails to answer Bill silently. “I guess we’re about to found out.”
***
The Chipped arrive in pairs. One by one, their dark blue shapes move against the tree line surrounding the playground. They’ve come for Kaarina. To drag her back into the city and onto that operating table. To make her leave her new-found allies behind. No more Ässä, Rocky, or Markus. She’ll be removed from their world, this reality.
But maybe it’s not just her who the blue suits are collecting? Maybe it’s all of them?
As she stands here, side by side with all these people, what she has done is suddenly more apparent to her than it’s ever been. She has started a war. Not intentionally, but still. Maybe she belongs in that death-capsule. If she was now turned off and forgotten, these people wouldn’t be in danger. There’d be no war. The power would pop back up. The Unchipped community would be allowed to stay in the suburbs. Markus would keep his job and move into his luxury house.
Everything would remain the same, except that Doctor Solomon would have a new fish in her aquarium.
But she knows how fragile it is—her wish for a better life for those who now stand beside her. Because Doctor Solomon will come for them. All of them. Kaarina is not the cause of this war, only the catalyst. She’s just a
