Chapter 15

“What--no! You can’t! It has my severance program on it! I can’t lose it!”

“Zark, this needs to be destroyed.”

“I have a program on it. Rift. It re-separates Operating Systems. Please. It’s my work. If you’re gonna destroy the celltab, fine. Please just save Rift before you do.” he begged.

The one holding the mechanism looked at it. “Your what?”

This is when it occurred to Zark. These were not androids at all. Their speech was too informal. They were people in disguise. Zark explained quickly, but thoroughly, hoping to change the person’s mind. If they knew its importance, they might reconsider.

“It’s called Rift. My father and I developed it. It can partition any operating system. We’ve studied the Fenix OS for years. We’ve been able to reprogram a lot of their androids into learning new things.”

The group exchanged glances, and conversed amongst themselves again. Zark again strained to listen, but could not discern any words spoken. Finally, they broke on a consensus.

“Zark, follow us. We will not destroy this if you would assist us in a small matter.”

“I--uh--ok, but what about Ellis? He’s still out there. He’s gonna come in here looking for me sooner or later.”

The shortest one of them finally removed their gruesome mask. Underneath it, a friendly young girl’s face was revealed. She looked no older than Zark, and had bright, blue eyes.

“Trust me, if any android comes in here, we’re gonna know about it,” she said confidently.

Zark was speechless. He looked at the other two. They too removed their masks to expose both of their ungroomed faces.

“Who...are you?” Zark asked.

“You mean you haven’t figured it out yet?” the tallest of the two males asked.

Zark shook his head in confusion.

“You’re not from here, are you?” the other male asked.

Zark stared at the young man who spoke. He had shaggy, black hair. Something within Zark clicked.

“Wait! It’s you! I remember you. You’re the one from Vogt!”

Realization also hit the young man.

“You’re the one who saved me…” he said.

The other two robed people watched as Zark and Kenny reconnected.

Zark looked down, examining the leg that had been direly wounded. Instead, he found Kenny’s injured leg had been replaced with a rudimentary metal prosthetic.

Zark’s celebratory nature subsided when he recounted the fight that Zedd had gotten into prior to Kenny’s discovery. The assaulters had assumed Zedd and Zark were…

“Verus,” he said quietly. “You’re Verus.” He backed away from them in fearful realization.

The three looked at each other, waiting to see what Zark would do.

“I suppose I can’t just...leave?” he asked, hopefully.

“We think you may be of better use to us here,” the girl said. “For the time being.” Something in her voice made Zark feel like he might actually be safer here. Though they were known as bigoted extremists, they didn’t give off any concerning behavior.

The thought of Ellis escaping from the wreckage came back to him. Ellis may not have returned to Zedd. He might be waiting just outside of the barrier, waiting for them to emerge.

“I wanna show you something,” the younger girl said.

Zark followed the trio to a room where about a dozen small screens were mounted on a wall. The room was dark, but glowed green with the light from the array. Each monitor showed a night-vision viewpoint within the woods. To Zark, they all appeared indistinguishable, featuring enormous trees in each one. Each screen was mounted and tilted to arc around a central viewer.

The tallest of the three, Colin, spoke dryly, “These are live feeds from all around the woods. When you came barrelling down the gravel entrance road on that bike, we immediately sent out a retrieval team.” He pointed to a screen that pointed at the gravel road Zark had driven down.

“And this is how we knew you were not just a lost traveller,” the girl continued. She talked with a gleeful spunk in between smiles. A screen that displayed a topographic map of the entire forest was situated at the edge of the arcing display. It contained a current time counter in the bottom corner of the screen. She pressed a button on the keyboard, and the time began quickly reversing. Suddenly, a red dot appeared on the map, moving erratically towards the edge.