Turncoat: Turncoat Trilogy Book 1

Chapter 5.1

A pair of rough skinned hands grabbed me the instant I walked through the door. My feet left the ground for a moment despite my brief argument, which amounted to a panic stricken scream muted by a hand clamped over my mouth. Suddenly I left the tight grasp I had been in and plunged into a short freefall that terminated on my couch. All of this occurred in what felt like half a second and left my duffle on the floor and my door standing wide open. I opened my mouth to scream and the hand clamped down once more and cold steel pressed against my throat.

"If you scream, I will flay your throat," my attacker snarled. "Friend or not."

I blinked a few times and recognized Kai standing over me. I nodded and he released my mouth. I pushed myself up into a sitting position and saw Vicki sitting against the wall, not making eye contact with me.

Something clattered against the tabletop, bringing my attention back to Kai. An SD chip sat on the tabletop. "You needed backdoor access to servers, that's backdoor access to every server we have access to."

"Alright, then why do you need me?" I asked.

"Because, we don't have access to the server we need," he said. "Pick a server and then go through it into another."

I reached out to pick up the SD and he placed his hand over it. "If you take that chip, you become an active member of our resistance cell."

I sat unmoving for a few moments. An active resistance member would mean if I got arrested for anything resistance related, it would be straight to an extermination camp. But at the same time, with server access, I could find out what happened to my parents. I looked over at Vicki for a moment but she turned her head away. What was going on?

"Alright," I said. "What do you need?"

Kai removed his hand. "A train schedule," he said. "For the F738 from Aelmere to Praia."

My heart stopped for a moment. Everyone in the slums knew of Praia, home to the infamous Neshkoro Work and Extermination Camp. Praia had been a small town down south, mainly made up of nonmilitant Tzi families, at the base of the mountains before the Purge. They were mostly miners or farmers. Once the Purge started, Praia was one of the first towns struck by the military, where they enslaved the people and used the rocks from quarries to build the first work camp dubbed Neshkoro.

That's where everyone got shipped to at first, then once the Purge turned to the Extermination, it became the first extermination camp, using the mining caves as gas chambers or drowning people in the abandoned quarries and shooting anyone strong enough to swim. Any train bound for Praia carried people and nothing else. Just people bound for the work or extermination camp, depending on their skills. Anyone who went to Neshkoro wasn't heard from again.

"How much of the schedule do you need?" I asked.

"Schedule from start to finish, arrival and departure times, and manifest," he said.

"The manifest is easy," I muttered. "People, though it won't say that. They'll list them as political prisoners, which I doubt. They might list them as Ferals if they're feeling politically correct."

I connected my SD reader to the table and brought up my computer screen. I started into the access points, flipping through what I had access to: military deployments, military personnel, civilians, and blueprints. Not much to work with and definitely not the hard hitting stuff like the dead head server or something like that. I selected the deployment server and code began to scroll across my screen.

I looked over to Kai as my screen filled slowly with code. "This might take a few hours," I said.

"Don't get caught," he said and walked away. He reached into his pocket and drew out a badly beaten up cardboard box and drew a thin cylinder out of it. He stuck the cylinder between his teeth and brought a lighter up to it.

"Hey, no smoking in here," I said.

He got the end of the cigarette lit and pocketed his lighter. He stepped out and closed the door behind him. I began to dig around the server, looking for train schedules. The file names began to blur together after a while. Vicki sat down next to me and looked at her hands clasped in her lap.

"What's up?" I asked her.

She sniffled and rubbed her eyes. "I didn't want for you to get this involved," she said. "You risk the most of any of us."

"What?"

"This train run," she motioned to the computer. "Please, don't get caught."

I put my hand on hers. "I'll be alright," I said. "They won't find me."

My computer dinged and I turned my attention back towards it. A deployment record sat on the screen, a train engineer by the name of Liam Bacster had been deployed on a F-type train for the past six years and he was scheduled to be on F738 from Aelmere to Praia. I began to dig into his file, the two files, his deployment and the train schedule, had to be linked for easy access. So if something happened, they could go quickly through to find out where he currently was and the train schedule.

It took me another hour to circumvent the security measures around the train schedule. I began downloading a copy of the file to my computer. As it downloaded, I brought up the manifest and began looking down through it. Food and medical supplies for the camp, a Dead Head squadron for security on the train, and...oh my god, now I wished they listed the people as Ferals, no matter how degrading the term. Listed below Dead Head Squadron was a single word: Livestock; and in parentheses next to it: to be sorted for slaughter or labor.

I pushed myself out of my chair and crossed the room, covering my mouth with my hands.

"Tawny? What's wrong?" Vicki asked.