Tales of the Republic (The Complete Novel) Read online

  His panic lurched to the surface.

  “My face!” he tried to say. “What on Earth?” But his words came out as an unintelligible croak.

  Strong, soft hands yanked his arms back down to his sides. “Easy,” said the first man.

  Ari squirmed out of the man’s grip and felt his face with both hands. His right cheek felt normal enough, but his left cheek was irregular and rough, covered with some kind of rubbery silicate substance that didn’t feel back. His fingertips explored a shallow crater filled by the synthetic material where his left eye had once been.

  “Oh my god,” Ari whispered. “My eye! What happened to my eye?” His whole body broke out in a cold sweat.

  “Calm down,” the first man said. “You’re okay.”

  Ari ignored him and struggled to his feet, fatigued but determined to get out of there, to get away from these men, whoever they were. He stumbled, and something metal clattered to the floor.

  “Easy! Easy.”

  Hands grabbed his shoulders and pushed Ari back into the bed. He struggled, but the soft-handed man was stronger than he seemed—and Ari was much, much weaker. He held Ari down while the other handcuffed each of Ari’s wrists to the metal frame of the bed.

  “For your safety, and ours.”

  Ari struggled momentarily with his restraints, but he only managed to agitate the skin around his wrists. When he finally relaxed, the cramp in his neck eased, though the pit in his stomach remained.

  Ari cast about, looking with his good eye for the exit. There was only one door that led out of the small square room. A wood and metal desk with two chairs occupied nearly one whole wall.

  The first man came back and stood over him. His shadow softened the glare from the fluorescent bulbs, and Ari noticed that he wore teal scrubs stained with blood and sweat.

  Like distant thunder, another crash rumbled overhead.

  The man helped Ari drink some water from a metal cup, which he swallowed in breathless gulps.

  “My name is Dr. Nianzu Neru,” the man said. A sparse goatee framed his mouth. “I’m here to help you. You can speak English, right?”

  Ari nodded.

  “Tell me your name.”

  “Uh…I—” Ari stammered. The other man in the room—tall, with black hair shaved close at the sides, most likely the source of the second voice—held him with an unblinking stare. “Um. Ari.”

  “Do you know your full name?”

  “Ari Klokov.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Where am I?” Ari asked.

  A pause. “You’re in an underground facility in Enshi.”

  “Enshi?” The word felt slippery on his tongue.

  “The eponymous capital city of the Republic of the East.”

  Ari fidgeted in the bed. He had heard of the Republic, but as far as he remembered, he’d never been there. All of a sudden, the memories he awoke with began to seem very urgent—the feeling of incompleteness, the sounds and smells of his father’s shop. “My parents. They’re expecting me. I have to go.”

  “You’ve just been through a very serious medical procedure. I need to ask you a few more questions, okay?”

  Ari nodded. What good would refusing do in his present situation?

  “Where were you born?” Dr. Neru asked.

  “Slovakia,” Ari said.

  “Where do you live now?”

  “Near Brestov.”

  “What’s your favorite food?”

  “I don’t know. Wait. Pirohy.”

  “Damnit, Nianzu,” the tall man interrupted. “Get to the point.”

  “Take it easy,” the doctor said. “We’ll get there. He needs time to acclimate. When did you first come to Enshi, Ari?”

  Ari glanced between the two men as an instinctive distrust seated itself in his gut. “I…I don’t know.”

  “What year is it?”

  Ari thought about that for a moment. “2036,” he said at last.

  Dr. Neru paused. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty.”

  Dr. Neru glanced at the tall man. What were they looking for?

  “Ari,” the tall man said, uncrossing his arms and stepping closer. Ari noticed that his ear was ragged at the top, like it had been chomped on by sharp teeth. “This is very important. Do you remember where the riverside storehouse is?”

  Ari took a shuddering breath in, the pain in his shoulder making it impossible to take a full breath. These men had obviously saved his life, and he felt like he owed them for that kindness. But he couldn’t give the tall man whatever it was he was asking about. “No.”

  “Think,” the tall man said. “Dig deep. You don’t remember sending me a message?”

  Ari flushed, and a quickening panic returned. “I’m telling you, I don’t remember, all right?”

  The man went perfectly still, like a poised serpent ready to strike.

  Ari tensed, and shook his head as another low rumble trembled through the room.

  “I’m sorry,” Ari whispered. “I don’t remember any storehouse, or you.” What else have I forgotten? Who are these people?

  A muscle bulged in the tall man’s jaw as he clenched his teeth.

  The door opened, and a woman with a freckled face and a thick mane of curly red hair poked her head into the room. “Felix, we have the girl—”

  “Wait outside,” the tall man—Felix, apparently—snapped over his shoulder. Ari tensed again. The woman closed the door without a word, and Felix exchanged a long look with Dr. Neru. Then he gave Ari a tight smile and patted him on the shoulder.

  “All right,” Felix said with false cheer. “The doctor will take good care of you. If you remember anything, you’ll let me know, right?”

  “Sure,” Ari said. Agreeing seemed like the safe thing to do, but there was nothing about Felix’s tone that promised to put the matter to rest. If Ari didn’t remember the information he was trying to pry from his barren memory, what did they intend to do with him? And if he did manage to remember, would they let him go? Ari contented himself in the knowledge that, at least for now, he had something that Felix wanted badly enough to help him recover. That bought him some time.

  Felix left, closing the door behind him.

  “Who is he?” Ari asked when he and the doctor were alone.

  “His name is Felix Hull,” Dr. Neru said.

  “Why can’t I remember?”

  “It appears that you have retrograde amnesia, Ari. Memory loss. Time will tell how your short-term memory was affected. As for your long-term memory, you seem to have lost several years, though you were unconscious for just a few days.” Dr. Neru took a deep breath. “It’s actually 2048.”

  Ari felt light-headed. He let his throbbing skull sink into the pillow. Twelve years?

  “You still know your name and how to speak English, which are good signs. You must have been taught the language when you were young. Eventually, your neurons will regenerate—stem cells will replace the absorbent synthetic that sealed your wound. When that process is complete, you may get some memories back, but I want to tell you up front that some will never return. You’ve got to accept that. Move on. It’ll make the rest easier.”

  “Wait,” Ari said. “What happened to me?”

  “You were shot in the head.”

  Ari stared. Dr. Neru dumped surgical instruments off a metal tray, wiped it on his dirty scrubs, and held it over Ari’s head at an angle.

  Ari barely recognized the face of the older man who gazed back. On his right side, he made out smile lines that reminded him more of his father’s face than his own. On his left—the wreckage extended from the corner of his mouth up to his eyebrow, like a drunk sculptor had battered a piece of rubber against a pile of bricks, and molded it haphazardly over Ari’s cheekbone and eye socket.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” Dr. Neru asked, calmly enough to make Ari want to scream.

  Ari turned away. Though his father had been a locksmith as well as a mechanic—thei
r village being small, and all small villages being in need of a decent locksmith—and though Ari suspected he still knew how to pick the lock of the handcuffs given the right tools and enough time, he had neither. He only had Dr. Neru, who waited with infuriating patience for his response.

  “I was on my way home,” Ari said. “I’d just finished basic training with the European Army, and I had two weeks of leave before I got my first assignment. I don’t know where yet. Or I didn’t then.” He sighed.

  “What do you see?”

  Ari closed his eye, and with an effort of will, summoned the mental image once more. “I see my father’s shop. There’s snow on the ground.”

  “Anything after that? Focus.”

  Ari considered it. He shook his head.

  “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but that memory is twelve years old. You can’t go home now.”

  “Not if I’m a prisoner here,” Ari said, rattling the handcuffs. The slight shaking motion went straight to his head. Blood throbbed at his right temple and reminded him of his delicate state.

  “That’s not what I meant. I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just going to say it. A series of nuclear disasters turned most of Eastern Europe into a wasteland.”

  “Slovakia is nowhere near any of the primary exclusion zones.”

  “It’s way more than just Chernobyl now—Bratislava, Budapest, and Krakow are gone. The entire region has been evacuated. Maybe that’s how you came to be in Enshi in the first place.”

  Ari didn’t want to believe it, but he had no counter argument. The doctor’s certainty was terrifying and logical, and, Ari had to admit, not that surprising. Nuclear meltdowns had been covered on the news as long as he’d been alive, and yet his family had always been lucky enough to avoid the worst of the fallout. As for the rest of it, Ari remembered the barracks at basic training, but had no memory of leaving Slovakia, no memory of his first assignment with the army, and certainly no memory of Enshi. To him, Enshi was a distant country—practically on the other side of the world.

  “What about my parents? My brother?” Ari couldn’t keep the desperation from creeping into his voice. Even if what the doctor said was true, being stuck down here, handcuffed to a hospital bed, wouldn’t help him recover what he lost. “What’s become of my family?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The ceiling shook again, coating them both in a layer of fine dust.

  “Can I have some more water?”

  After helping him sip from a metal cup, Dr. Neru left Ari alone.

  The handcuffs stayed on.

  CHAPTER 6

  REFUGEES AND REBELS

  Ari woke with a fever, and jerked away when Dr. Neru loomed into his vision from his blindside. The handcuffs bit into his wrists and kept him in place. Ari scanned the room. On the desk was a pile of folded clothes—jeans, a folded grey shirt, a black leather jacket, and a worn pair of boots.

  “Your clothes,” Dr. Neru explained. “I had your boots cleaned. The rest are new. I hope they fit. Your old shirt and pants got ruined.”

  “I feel awful,” Ari said in a low, hoarse voice.

  “I would have preferred to let you sleep, but that can be dangerous. Brain trauma convalescence 101: Wake your patient every few hours to make sure they’re still alive.”

  Ari laughed in spite of himself. “And if I didn’t wake up?”

  “Let’s not pursue that line of thought. Suffice it to say, coma followed by death isn’t an uncommon outcome in head trauma cases as severe as yours.”

  Ari noted the immense care with which the doctor hung an IV bag on a nail in the wall. He flicked the needle, tested the drip, and placed it in a cannula embedded in Ari’s left arm.

  “How many of those do you have left?” Ari asked.

  “Not many,” the doctor admitted with a sideways glance. “It’s promising that your wit is sharp, though. We need to make sure you stay hydrated until you fight off that fever.”

  Occasional shelling continued to sound overhead as Dr. Neru fiddled with the IV. The concussions were more distant, but no less startling than the first time he’d heard them. Even if Ari did manage to slip his restraints and escape from this room with his life, would he be better off out there?

  “Why am I here, doc?” Ari asked.

  “I told you before,” Dr. Neru said as he turned to the desk and marked something in a paper folder. “You were shot in the head. Felix started the RNSCSR procedure, and brought you down here to me.”

  “Rinser?”

  The doctor gestured to a metal rolling cart next to the bed, where a jet injector sat in front of three rows of vials filled with clear liquid. Chinese characters were printed on the chrome handle of the jet injector, and along the length of each vial.

  “RNSCR: Rapid Nanobot Stem Cell Reconstitution. It’s medical technology invented by the Chinese military to staunch deadly wounds in battle. That’s why your face is covered with a silicate compound—the material expands to seal the wound. It saved your life.”

  The isolation, the medical attention, and the costly supplies expended for his sake…it added up to tell a story of Ari’s value to these men that he didn’t fully understand.

  “That’s how I got here. But why? What do you want with me?”

  The doctor took a deep breath, and shook his head. “You should ask Felix. I don’t speak for him. Here,” he said, pulling a square foil packet from a pocket of his scrubs. “Eat this. You need something in your stomach before I give you any more medicine.”

  Dr. Neru unwrapped the foil and held a gray square of dense fibers near Ari’s mouth. His stomach did a sickening flip.

  “What is it?”

  “Synthetic rations packed with vitamins and protein. I won’t lie, man, they taste awful.”

  Ari chuckled. He couldn’t help it—he liked the doctor. His gut told him that Dr. Neru was a trustworthy and loyal person. Besides, his need to heal, to recover, was more immediate than his quest for answers. Ari would get the answers he needed in time. But first things first.

  Ignoring his stomach’s objections, Ari opened his mouth and choked down the tasteless food one foul bite at a time. He chased the meal—if it could be called that—with a small cup of water the doctor tipped into his open mouth.

  Then Neru picked up the jet injector and brought it close.

  Ari leaned away. “What’s in that?”

  “An antibiotic and an immunosuppressant populated with nanobots. They’re programmed to carry stem cells to the injured area and use them to repair any breaks or imperfections in the silicate. Also, there’s a mild sedative to help with the pain.”

  He tried not to cringe when Dr. Neru placed the jet injector against the fleshy part of his shoulder and pulled the trigger. His nausea tapered back as the painkillers hit him. A mild sedative, indeed.

  But he had to admit, he did start to feel better.

  Dr. Neru disposed of the empty vial outside the door, and returned the injector to the cart by the bed. Perhaps to fill the silence that stretched between them, the doctor said, “A few more wounded were brought in this morning. They’re in the infirmary—well, that’s what we’ve been calling it. It’s really just an old maintenance shaft. You’re lucky to be in here. It’s quieter.” His eyes went hard as he seemed to remember something. “Anyway, I have to check on them. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  Ari didn’t feel lucky, but he appreciated the doctor’s attempt at normal conversation. And he thought that if he made friends with the man, maybe he would cough up some answers eventually. “Thanks, doc.”

  “No problem,” Dr. Neru said, taking a set of keys from his pocket. “If you promise to get some rest, I’ll remove your handcuffs.”

  Ari suppressed a sigh of relief. “That seems fair.”

  The doctor undid the handcuffs and Ari rubbed his wrists. Then Dr. Neru departed, locked the door from the outside, and left Ari alone.

  Ari put the unfamiliar clothes on and walked sti
ffly around the small room to stretch his sore limbs. The boots must have been his—they fit perfectly. But they were strange to him, foreign, and felt like lead on his feet. Every joint in his body seemed to stab or creak, and the painkillers made him lightheaded. He turned off the lights, kicked off the boots, and stumbled back to the bed in his clothes.

  His pulse raced and sleep danced away from him while his fingers absently traced over his wound, exploring the strange, bumpy polymer that had replaced the skin of his left cheek. It tingled and itched at his neck where it melded with his flesh. The edges were tender even accounting for the numbing effect of the painkillers.

  Weariness finally overcame him. Ari slept fitfully for what he supposed must have been several hours, waking with a start each time a distant explosion shuddered through the darkness.

  He covered his eyes when a clicking sound preceded the sudden glare of the overhead lights, and squinted through his fingers at Dr. Neru as he entered the room.

  The doctor stepped to the side, and then Felix walked through the door. His heavy black shirt and camouflage pants were stained and wet, and he had dark circles under his eyes that intensified his narrow glare. “You’re looking better, Ari,” he said cheerfully enough.

  An explosion burst right over their heads, like a great clap of thunder. The lights flickered. Felix crouched as his hand darted toward a muddy boot. Ari felt suddenly exposed lying prone in the narrow bed. He swung his legs over the side as he sat up. The lights came back on. Felix relaxed his grip on a pistol handle sticking out of his boot. Ari gripped the bed while he waited for the floor to cease swaying.

  A moment passed, and then two. No explosions followed.

  “I don’t feel any better,” Ari finally said, breaking the tension.

  One corner of Felix’s mouth twitched. “I appreciate your honesty. I can’t stay long, but I wanted to check in. I hear you’ve been asking about me.”

  Ari nodded, considering his next question carefully. News traveled fast. What were his options here? Being friendly was going well for him so far. “I wanted to say thank you. For saving my life.”