New Elysium: Breakout (Book 1)

Premonitions or Dreams?

The journey's over but you cannot leave
Let's follow our hearts until we break them
Break them into pieces
Extracting all the traces of who we are
- "Stack Trace"- Soul Extract

The walk to his cell was long as Red contemplated Ember. How did she survive the Purge? How did she end up here? Along with Autonomous AIs, the Vesper pilots were killed off outright.

Neo-Tokyo had killed its own children without hesitation as if they were the enemy. Somehow, somewhere one of them had said no. There was no other reason for it. They killed those they couldn't control.

Red scrubbed a hand over his face as he moved. There was no rhyme or reason to what they did.

The people in this prison were nothing. Most of them had no positions of power, they'd had no plans to overthrow anything. There was no reason for them to even be here.

He took a deep breath as the hallway widened. The halls were red. He'd at first wondered at the coloring and then later believed it was easier to not see the blood on them.

After the media had drifted away things had gotten pretty bad in here once those inside realized, there was no escape. No amount of talking, yelling, or screaming had gotten attention on the outside. And so their rage had been turned on each other...

But Ember? She made no sense... He wondered who she was all the way back to his cell, not realizing he was quite inside until he spotted Dag climbing into his own bed.

"Tell me everything you know about the Vesper program."

Dag looked over at him from the top bunk. He was a very large dark-skinned man with a large titanium arm that was seamlessly connected to his shoulder. It worked just as his other arm did only it was a hundred times stronger. Technology had advanced enough to give him a working arm and hand again. Not that it had helped him during the Purge. Dag had a wife and teenage son on the outside. He hadn't seen either in years.

Coincidentally, he'd also been assigned to work on the Vesper ships. He'd service them when they arrived into the Outlands on their own base. He was one of the few outside of Neo-Tokyo who had worked on them and seen them up close.

Like Ember, Dag had no explanation for why he was still alive, other than luck of the draw. Circumstances and his knowledge dictated he should have been mowed down with his friends. But he hadn't been... He'd been on leave the day they'd come in and lost a lot of those he'd considered friends.

"They're all dead." Dag sat up on the top bunk he was currently occupying. "Kind of useless info, don't you think?" He swung his long legs over the side and let them hang down to get a better look at Red. He couldn't help but catch the excited tone of Red's voice. "What is it?"

Red's voice dropped down to a whisper. "There's one here in the prison."

He had Dag's full attention. "That's not possible... Red I told you, they're all dead."

"I saw her with my own eyes."

"Her?" Dag's eyes widened. "You mean the new girl?" Dag shook his head. "I'm telling you, it's not possible."

"I'm telling you, I recognized the hardware."

"Looked up her skirts, did you?" Dag shook his head still not believing.

"Well no," Red hesitated. He hadn't shared the other information with Dag just yet. The signals that Ember had picked up. "She picked up satellite feed, do you know how long it's been since I've heard anything from the outside?"

"She's a powerful Aug. Doesn't make her a Vesper, could have a lot of expensive hardware. You do. Could be military, another prototype" Dag looked up at the ceiling and Red knew he was struggling to believe him.