FORTY-FOUR
THE RISING
In each Ark—their computers never fully powered down—something registered.
Each Ark had remained in communication with the others throughout the century. They even could take note when disaster befell an Ark somewhere, crushed by the shifting of a tectonic plate, or desperately struggling to emerge to the surface before being trapped by bedrock.
But though linked, each Ark was its own entity.
Each had dominion over its own planned time for emergence, its own response system to emergencies.
That had been core to the Ark Project.
No longer.
Something new registered as each Ark continued to get signals from the other Arks.
And the code being executed carried with it all the information needed for each Ark to act in self-preservation.
A false reading of danger. Mimicked in each Ark’s computer, simultaneous, and not recognized as false. Danger—to which there could only be one instantaneous response.
To rise …
To begin what could be a perilous journey to an unknown surface.
And all the Arks of what had been the government of the United States—the ones still intact, those not already surfaced, not destroyed or hopelessly damaged—sent a signal to the great bore machines that sat at each nose, rock-chewing machines that could screw the Ark through any rock … to whatever world awaited.
The Arks began to dig their way out.
Some journeyed in a straight path, easily grinding through loose rock and debris.
Others faced mammoth chunks of bedrock that required a steady, endless digging that to a human would have seemed hopeless, but to the lifesaving brain of the computer was merely what it had to do.
Others became damaged during their emergence, crushed as rock shifted, quickly killing the still-sleeping survivors.
But whether successful or not, all the Arks struggled to be born into this world.
And as they came closer to the surface, as a reading signaled that the new world and the surface was only minutes away, revival systems began their process, readying the Ark passengers for what might have to be a quick exit.
And outside, for these Arks, people waited.
The Arks rose.
Bringing with them to the surface something the people outside had thought an impossibility: a chance to fight back.
Before these emerging Arks, they had been a mere resistance, with all the weaknesses and hopelessness that such movements can bring.
Now, on this new day, it turned.
It changed.
It was no longer a resistance.
It was a war.
For all those who had lived in fear, who were imprisoned or brutalized—for everyone who hated the Authority with a rage that seemed to consume their lives—on this day …