Inner Circle

by Y A Marks

  “I’m glad you’re alive.” Her voice cracked as she said the words.

  I forced myself to giggle. “I am, too. You have pretty good aim.”

  Her lips tightened into something pleasant, but her eyes were vacant.

  “Don’t worry… it gets easier,” I said.

  “Are we murderers?” she asked.

  I was shocked by her question, and my body deflated under the power of the words.

  The man’s screams radiated in my ears, stirring my emotions. I didn’t want to think about the man’s rant right now. We could be attacked again. I couldn’t be weakened by emotion.

  “We defended ourselves, nothing more,” I said.

  Despite myself, the echoes of his words haunted me. I didn’t want my mind to piece together the mystery of the strong man yelling “murderer” and the smaller person with the higher-pitched feminine voice. Even as I contemplated it, the answer rang in the forefront of my mind. I had killed a woman, his woman, probably his wife. She could have been pregnant with his child.

  He wasn’t angry with me. He was enraged. There was something deep within him that gave him strength that I didn’t have. Yes, I was a ninety-pound nothing next to a two-hundred-pound man, but I was quick and smart. He overtook me faster than I could blink, removing all of my options of escape.

  He just wanted to save his wife. He wanted the same thing I wanted, and I killed him for it. I killed both of them. It didn’t matter that she had tried to hurt me first. In his mind, we were just an invading force, someone coming to snuff them out in the darkness. I wish I had stopped when I first heard his wife’s cries. Where was my compassion?

  My torso heaved and a wrenching pain spread through my chest.

  I wanted to keep walking. I wanted to get Shannon to the short man’s township. I wanted to feel safe even if it was just for ten minutes, but it was too late. My anger and resolve had faded. Regret oozed into my veins and slid out of my eyes. I had killed someone’s love. I had killed someone who represented everything that I wanted in my own life. I had taken away someone’s heart.

  Tears slid down my cheeks, and my lungs continued to tighten until I couldn’t control them any longer. My strength was gone. I took a step forward and began sobbing. Soft whines came from my throat, mixed with a gargling sound from mucus forming.

  I stopped moving. Shame spread through me and with it I second guessed every move I had made, from killing Governor Read to the guy in the Nobody Township to the woman in the woods. I was a murderer. I had killed people, lots of people.

  I had killed when I was afraid. I had killed to save my life. I had killed to save others. I had killed. I had killed. I had… killed.

  If I had just gone home… if I wasn’t curious about other teenagers… if I had just gone back to the Stadium, none of this would have happened. All of them would be alive. Everyone would be alive. I’d be safe with Mari and Miko. Dhyla would still be here. It was all my fault. Everything was my fault.

  Shannon grabbed me and held me. I felt like a fool. She was wounded, but she was holding me up. How could she be so strong? Why was I so weak? I was secure just a minute ago. What happened?

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay. We all need to let it out sometimes. You can’t hold it in forever.”

  Shannon stopped and wrapped her arms around me. I held onto her, working to find her warmth in the chill of the night and searching for my connection to humanity. Shannon shushed my whimpers and rubbed my back.

  I couldn’t stay here. We couldn’t stop in the middle of danger, but death’s cold voice had caught up with me. Its laugh echoed in my ears and pierced my soul.

  I pulled myself away. I had to be stronger than this. I stared into Shannon’s sunburned face. Why was she so nice to me? She just met me. Her warm nature made me feel worse.

  Jonas walked over a put a hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”

  I glanced over at him. The party had stopped moving forward. Everyone was staring at me.

  “Can you keep going?” His face was full of concern.

  I nodded a few times, increasing my strength with each bob of my head.

  “Then, let’s get to it. We’re sitting ducks out here,” he said.

  I forced myself to move forward. I had to be strong for others. I did my best to lift some of Shannon’s weight, but she wasn’t leaning on me as much as she was a few moments ago. I wanted to complain, even to scream at her that it was okay, that I was fine. Deep down, I think she knew I wasn’t okay, and she wanted to show me her own resolve.

  I tugged at her wrist and hefted up my body a little more to force her to lean on me. “I’m okay. I’m here for you.”

  She glanced at me, acknowledged my words, and a few moments later my body was weighed down with another fifteen pounds of Shannon’s weight. Through my struggle, a tear slid down my cheek. It was warm, but I was happy and proud that I could be there for someone else. That I could possibly be the Dhyla that Shannon needed in her life.

  After another half mile, we reached the Razorback Township. Our escort guided us into a small house near the center. He stood outside for a minute as another group of people made their way toward us.

  The short man stood in front of Jonas. “He wants to see you and the girl.” The man pointed a flattened hand at me.

  Jonas turned his eyes toward me, and then back at the man. “That’s fine.”

  “We will tend to the other two. No harm will come to them.”

  Several people came out from the crowd and gently put their arms around Shannon.

  “Will they be okay?” I asked the man, but he didn’t answer. I turned to Shannon. “Will you be okay? Do you want me to come with you?” I asked. The words seemed weird coming from my mouth, but I needed to be with Shannon. I didn’t want to let her go.

  “I’ll be fine,” Shannon said. “Get in there and find out what this guy wants?”

  I nodded and wiped my face with my sleeves. I still wasn’t myself. Irrationality and fear tore at my bones and joints. I needed to pull myself together.

  I watched a few women move Shannon and Pyra into a building close by. Pyra had a severe wound in her side, and her right arm was limp.

  Jonas called out to me as my gaze lingered. “You’re not hurt are you—cause if you need to—”

  “No… no, I’m fine. I’m just a bit shaken up.” I wanted to lie down and give my mind a few minutes to reel my heart back in, but we needed to go.

  Jonas came and rested his hands on my shoulders. I glanced up into his face. He looked so much like Rylan that it was almost scary. “You sure you’re alright?”

  “Yes,” I said. There was no doubt where Rylan got his caring nature from. “I’m not hurt.”

  “So, on the way here…”

  He was referring to my breakdown with Shannon. I shook my head. “It was nothing. I’m fine.” I wasn’t fine. I was a wreck. At the worst possible time, I had fallen apart. I had to be stronger than this.

  “Okay, let’s go,” he said.

  The short man held back the drape to the house behind him. Jonas and I exchanged glances and walked in. The house was just the same as all the others: a small kitchen, a living area, and a bathroom in the corner. Everything was where it should be, except there was no one in the house.

  The short man walked around to the kitchen and, as weird as it sounds, he opened the small oven and crawled inside, feet first. I thought this was a joke, but soon his whole body disappeared.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” he called in a monotone with no hint at comedy.

  Jonas shrugged and followed him.

  I had to be losing my mind. Maybe, I did die, and I was in some kind of out-of-body dream where up was down, and down was up, maybe there would be “drink me” bottles and “eat me” cookies.

  I spun my body around to put my feet inside. After a few seconds, my toes hit a few rungs stuck in so
me kind of hard rock surface. The more I wiggled inside, the more I understood that I was on some kind of ladder.

  I crawled down until it ended and found myself in a sort of basement area about twice the size of the house above me. The ceiling was low, but it was comfortable for me. Jonas however, had to hunch over. There were wood beams holding up the roof and a pile of supplies in one corner. Everything from food to concrete was stacked there.

  The room was dark, lit up only by two oil lamps and a flurry of LED lights that radiated from the far corner. It smelled of loose soil, motor oil, and root vegetables. I saw at least two tunnels that were just large enough for a narrow man to fit inside. I almost laughed aloud. Jonas was right. Whoever this guy was, he was obsessed with finding a way out of this prison—if that was even possible.

  “Trivet, I brought Jonas and the girl,” the short man said.

  Trivet had his back to us. In front of him was a pixelated projection of what appeared to be a video game. A large, square sphere was eating dots backward on the screen. It was as if the back of the square’s head was absorbing the square dots. It reminded me a lot of the game Yellow Man, but the game was older somehow, antiquated.

  The square player shot around the screen until a blue square with eyes killed it.

  “Damn,” Trivet said. His voice was low but sharp.

  He spun around on his chair before he flew into a standing position. He was a little younger than Jonas, maybe thirty, with a thick goatee. Under a bush of hair was skin so fair that I could see a few veins along his temple. He had a slim build and sharp, green eyes that seemed to move around constantly in his head, as though the whole room was a video game and he didn’t want to miss any secret moves.

  He stared at Jonas for a minute before his gaze fell on me. His expression widened, and he took a few, quick steps until he was right in front of me.

  “You did good, Jonas,” he said. “She’s still alive.”

  I didn’t understand Trivet’s words. Why was he so concerned about me?

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate you saving our lives and all, but what is this all about?” Jonas asked.

  “About?” Trivet turned to face Jonas. “What it’s always been about. If I’m one thing, my friend, I think I’m pretty persistent.”

  “So, you have a way out?”

  “No, my friend, you have the way. I’m just going to show you how to use it.” He turned back toward me, a toothy smile on his face.

  I took a step back. He was crowding me. His eyes seemed as though they had some x-ray vision, and suddenly I felt like I didn’t have any clothes on. Before I could get too far away, he grabbed my left hand and kneeled down to examine it closely. I was shocked and exchanged glances with Jonas. It was as if he were going to propose.

  “Don’t worry, I don’t bite,” he said.

  His nimble fingers slid over my hand. His movements were soft but accurate. I could only imagine that it was from playing videos games from days on end. Jonas hadn’t told me Trivet was a gamer. It didn’t take long for me to figure it out from his pale skin, the basement-like room, and the mounds of computer equipment.

  “Ahh, there it is,” he said to himself. “It’s much smaller than I thought.”

  I concentrated on what he was touching. It was near the center of my hand, almost where the two joints of my middle and ring finger came together in a V-shape.

  “What is it?” Jonas asked.

  “It’s the way out,” Trivet replied. “Your friend Paeton was blessed by somebody a long time ago with one of only a few Master Keys.”

  “Master Key? What are you talking about?” I asked and pulled my hand back.

  He looked slightly offended that I had retrieved my left hand. He eyed my hand longingly as I held it over my chest and covered my left hand with my right.

  “How did you think you were robbing all those banks, Paeton? Good luck?” he asked.

  Standing, he twisted his head and glanced into my eyes. My embarrassment ripped into my back.

  “Wow, funny. You didn’t know—weird,” he said.

  His words cut into me, but I didn’t know why. He was accusing me of knowing something that there is no way I could know.

  “Okay, explanation please, for the technology challenged,” Jonas said.

  Trivet walked back toward his seat. “Your friend, Paeton, was given a gift of precious technology years ago. When, who knows? Why, who knows? But it’s big, and it changes everything.”

  “Again, need more details.” Jonas wagged his head and put a hand on his hip.

  Trivet sighed, and his face darkened. He spun around in his seat and picked up a PCD.

  “It works like this. Everything has a key. Like a key to a door, a password is a key to a computer. When the D-Tags were created, the purpose was to track people. Seems easy enough, but tracking data needed to be constantly uploaded to computer systems. Real-time data is different than true tracking data. Real-time data is passed into RAM and sent to destinations. Government tracking needs to be stored in databases, which have to save each bit of information. Millions of people multiplied by date and place and class is a lot of information. Not to mention, the information is taken at places where thousands of people gather, overloading the computers at the capture site. Because of these problems, most computers track with delayed algorithms.

  “By the time someone or something has moved through the system, sure the computers can find them, but sometimes they find the person too late or give them access to something special too late. So, in order to move faster, the great and powerful ‘they’ created the class chip. Class chips mainly are RAM based computers that store not only class data but also the last purchasing data from any registered capture site. In this way, computers can gain quick access to who a person is and how much money they have. So basically, you go buy a stick of gum. The computer at the store checks the credit of the person, delivers the money to the vendor, but at the same time updates the class chip with location, class, and most importantly, how much money is in the account.”

  “So, what’s a Master Key?” Jonas asked.

  “A Master Key is simply an override chip to a class chip. If a computer sees the Master Key, it ignores all other data and assumes that the person with the key is an administrator to the computer and therefore gains full, unrestricted access.”

  Jonas stared at Trivet for a long time before the weight of their stares shifted onto me. I glanced down at my left hand. I didn’t understand everything that Trivet was saying.

  “So, what you are telling me is that Paeton can open any computer-based lock?” Jonas asked.

  “Yes, provided that the computer system allows for a Master Key override.”

  I stood there in shock. Dhyla had told me about this, but I never understood it until now. This key, this computer inside my hand, really was the way into the Summit.

  My mind spun with a million questions. I took a step forward. “Are there more Master Keys?”

  “Yes, I’d say hundreds of them,” Trivet said.

  His answer should’ve made me feel better, but I deflated. I was special to Dhyla, Sun Hi, and Escerica, but if they could get another key, why would they need me?

  “But…” he started. “I’d never heard of one inside a human before you. What you have is different, because it can be snuck past all types of detection equipment.”

  I perked a bit. I’m not sure why exactly. A few days ago I was ready to abandon this rebel world, maybe even a few hours ago. Escerica needed me, but I was starting to feel like I needed them.

  Trivet turned around and faced his computer. Grabbing a keyboard, he started to type in a few words on the screen, and to my surprise, my face appeared in the pixilated projection, and not just one. There were dozens upon dozens of images of my face. These weren’t random pictures. They were stills from video feeds. The same video feeds from all the ATMs that I had stolen from over the last two years. In some images, it was just me and my hoodie. In other vi
deo feeds, I had large glasses and heavy makeup. Every disguise that I had thought up was now displayed, from the elaborate to the simple. They were all there.

  Trivet saw through me into my sins and displayed them for anyone to see. My stomach tightened with the constant worry.

  “When Dhyla first told me about you, I was curious,” he said.

  Dhyla? Had this guy talked with Dhyla? I tried to remember. When Dhyla showed up at the Escerica Compound a few days after me and Sun Hi, she said she had been out talking to a few, important people. I couldn’t believe this was one of those people. In the back of my mind, I was thinking maybe she was talking to a senator or some wealthy stockholder that secretly wanted to help. I never thought she’d be conversing with a prisoner.

  The more I was in the Escerica world, the more I believed that everything I had seen in movies or in an online series was just a big lie.

  Trivet continued, “It took a while, but I was able to call in a few favors to find out that there was a mysterious person who had been stealing from all over Atlanta.”

  He turned his head toward me. “And just so you know, Dhyla didn’t tell me you were a thief. She just said that there was a girl who had the ability to hack into random computer systems.” He put his attention back on the screen. “Then, I remembered a news feed about a few small robberies and thought, what would I do if I was a Lower-C on the street? I’d go get me some money!” He said the last part like he was some kind of redneck comedian. “I started my research from there. When you ended up on TV at the Perimeter Market, I had my first visual. I tracked your photograph back through a few files that my hacker friends gave me access to.”

  I wondered, what kind of friends did he have? How was he doing all of this—while in prison no less? I had heard of criminals running drug cartels while in prison, but he was following leads that he could only get through computer access to secure systems.

  “Once I located your mom—”

  “Stop!” I said. “You… You don’t have the right to spy on my mother.” Anger coursed through my veins and blasted me with surges of adrenaline. The regret I felt over killing the woman in the woods faded as the new emotions flooded my body.