Irritation curled through me as I watched her mouth fall slightly open, and her breathing even out.
Oh, am I wasting your time?
Beside her was a boy, also about my age, more or less. He was such a study in contrasts that my gaze naturally held on him a second longer. His chestnut-colored hair had a hint of wild curl and was barely tamed, glowing with a faint red sheen in the harsh sunlight. His face was lean, but his features were so strong, the lines so distinct, that I would have believed anyone who told me they had carefully designed his face on the pages of a sketchbook. Even the tan on his white skin only seemed to make his pale eyes burn brighter in comparison. He met my gaze directly, his unreadable expression never wavering, not until the corners of his mouth tipped down.
I straightened, glancing away. “I realize that much has been asked of my fellow Psi, but we must establish limits on those perceived to be limitless. Society can only function with boundaries and rules, and we must continue to work to find a way back into it—to not press so hard against those markers as to disturb the peace.”
The girl could get right up and leave if she was so bored with a talk about her future—but I let myself glance back toward them for a moment. She wore a green button, and he wore a yellow one.
I shifted my full attention back to the speech as I entered the homestretch. It was my least-favorite part: I’d plead with the Psi for patience with those who feared us, and plead with those who feared us to acknowledge the terror that we had lived in every day since IAAN was first recognized. It didn’t feel like a fair comparison, but this had come directly from professionals. What did I know, when it really came down to it?
I stumbled, just a tiny bit, as unfamiliar words loaded on the screen. “And as we enter this new beginning, I think it has become all the more important to acknowledge the past. We must honor the traditional American way.”
It was the new language that Mel had mentioned in the car. The teleprompter slowed, accommodating my unfamiliarity.
“That includes,” I read, “honoring our original Constitution, the core foundation of faith, and the requirements of citizenship in our democracy….”
The words rolled forward on the screen, even as they halted in my throat.
TODAY, THE INTERIM GOVERNMENT HAS VOTED ON AND APPROVED A BILL THAT TEMPORARILY REMOVES PSI-BORN, INCLUDING THOSE OF LEGAL AGE, FROM CURRENT VOTER ROLLS. THIS IS TO ALLOW THEM MORE TIME TO HEAL FROM THEIR TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES BEFORE MAKING POTENTIALLY LIFE-ALTERING DECISIONS ON THEIR BALLOTS, AND SO THAT THEY MAY BETTER UNDERSTAND THE FULL WEIGHT AND IMPACT OF THIS SACRED CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY.
THIS IS ONLY A PROVISIONAL MEASURE, AND THE MATTER WILL BE REVISITED FOLLOWING THE ELECTION THIS NOVEMBER, AFTER THE NEW FULL CONGRESS IS SWORN IN.
A tremor worked its way up through my arms, even as my hands clenched the podium’s glossy wood. The silence stretched on, punctuated only by the muffled sigh of the breeze catching the microphone. The audience began to shift in their seats. A woman in the second row finally stopped using her program as a fan, leaning forward to give me a curious look.
That couldn’t be right. I wanted to look back at Mel, to signal that the wrong text had been loaded in. Whoever thought this was a funny joke deserved a fist to the throat.
The words scrolled back up, repeating. Insistent.
No—this was…The Psi already had stricter ID requirements. We had to wait until we were twenty-one before we could get legal driver’s licenses. I’d given a whole speech about how it would be worth the delay, and how exciting it would be to finally be able to turn in a voter registration form with it. I filled mine out years ago, when Chubs and Vida were doing theirs. I hadn’t wanted to be left out.
This must have…This had to have slipped by him and the other Psi on Interim President Cruz’s council. They were probably already pushing back against it.
Except hadn’t Mel said the language had come directly from President Cruz’s chief of staff? Why spring it on me like this without any explanation or warning?
Because they know you’ll say it no matter what, a small voice whispered in my mind, like you’ve said everything else they’ve given you.
Or…because the Psi Council had already refused to announce it themselves.
This time I did glance back over my shoulder. The crowd began to quietly murmur, clearly wondering what was going on. Mel didn’t rise out of her chair, didn’t take off her sunglasses. She motioned with her hands, pushing them forward, urging me to turn back to the audience. To keep going.
The boy in the front row, the one I’d noticed before, narrowed his eyes, cocking his head to the side slightly. The way his whole body tensed made me wonder if he’d somehow managed to read the words on the teleprompter, or if he could hear my heart hammering inside my chest.
Just say it, I thought, watching as the words rewound again, then paused. I’d promised them my voice, for whatever they’d need me to do. This was what I had agreed to, the whole point of coming here.
Just say it.
It would only be temporary. They promised. One election. We could sit out one election. Justice took time and sacrifice, but like the reparations had proven, it was best won through cooperation. We were working toward a better forever for the Psi, not just one year.
My throat burned. The podium trembled under my hands, and I couldn’t understand why. Why now—why this announcement, and not any of the others?
Just say it.
The girl, the ghost from the past, was back, her gloved hands wrapping around my neck.
I can’t. Not this time. Not this.
“Thank you for your time,” I choked out, “it was an honor to speak to you today, and I wish you the best as you begin a new chapter of your lives—”
The teleprompter’s screen blanked out. A second later, a single line of text appeared.
SOMEONE IS HERE TO KILL YOU.
I LAUGHED.
It was a jarring end to an unfinished thought, momentarily drowning out the persistent hum of the speakers and electronics surrounding me. The shocked sound somehow seemed to multiply as it ricocheted off the pillars of Old Main—like a single bullet summoning a hail of them.
Confusion spread through the crowd; I saw it in their faces, heard it in their murmurs. Bands of anger and resentment locked me in place, and the longer I stood there, useless and silent, the deeper I sank into the humiliation.
Someone with an ax to grind had clearly loaded fake text into the teleprompter instead of the new material Mel had given them.
Say something. Do something.
I should have realized it the second the language about the provisional voting measure had appeared on the screen and wrapped things up as naturally as I could. Instead, I’d frozen like a total novice and left myself open to the worst kind of speculation from the nightly newscasts. I could practically hear them now, dissecting the pause, replaying the moment over and over again, asking, Is the girl well?
I leaned forward and managed to squeeze out, “Thank you again. Enjoy your day.”
Rather than settle the crowd, the words only seemed to stir them. Even the sleeping girl suddenly sat up, curling her legs back under her, glancing at the dark-haired boy beside her.
The dean stepped up to the microphone again, casting a nervous look my way. “Well…thank you, everyone. Please enjoy the refreshments and sunshine.”
The last thirty seconds had felt like thirty minutes. Fake threat or real threat, it didn’t matter: the wheels of the emergency protocol were now turning. Agent Cooper walked straight to me, his tie fluttering with each quick, clipped step. The words on the teleprompter were reflected in the silver lenses of his sunglasses before someone cut the power and blacked out the screen.
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. To anyone looking on, it probably seemed like he was just escorting me off the stage. They might not have noticed that Agent Cooper was pressing me hard into his side, that his other hand was just a few centimeters away from the gun
in his holster. The sun had baked heat into the sleeve of his dark suit and it burned everywhere it touched me.
“It’s all right. It’s all right.” He repeated the words over and over again as the police officers turned to the university staff and began to wave them off the steps of Old Main. Most of the students and their families had risen to their feet and were milling around, talking to one another or moving toward the nearby table of food and drinks.
“I know,” I said pointedly. My heel caught on a crack in the old stone, sinking into it. Instead of giving me a moment to ease it free, Agent Cooper yanked me forward, shredding the leather off it and leaving me stumbling toward Mel.
“Wait here,” he said. “Martinez will come get you. I’ll get the car.”
That was the extent of our security protocol: shelter in place until safe transport could be secured. I nodded and Agent Cooper was off, heading toward where the car was under joint custody of the newly reinstated Pennsylvania State Police and the United Nations’ new federal police force, the Defenders.
I spotted Martinez a short distance away, not heading in my direction, but interrogating the shrugging woman in the tech booth.
Mel’s voice rang out behind me, cutting into my thoughts.
“—unacceptable! I asked you to guarantee a level of security, and you didn’t deliver!”
My heels clicked against the stone as I pivoted and cut a straight path toward her. Mel turned away from the pale-faced university staffer, who’d been nodding, nodding, nodding, simply absorbing the publicist’s lecture. Her face was strained with barely muted anger.
Because of her job, Mel had been trained to be changeable, to shift between many roles depending on who she was with or what she was doing. To me, she’d been a coach, a defender, a guide, and a protector. Incompetence, especially when it came to safety, never sat well with her. This security breach, combined with the car incident, had clearly rattled her.
“It’s fine,” I assured her. “Just someone looking for a reaction—”
“It’s not fine,” Mel said, her hand closing over my shoulder. She drew me behind the nearest pillar, out of the lingering news cameras’ line of sight. “You were supposed to launch the voting order. That’s why I pitched this event to the press!”
I took a step back, lips parting as I searched for the right words.
“I told them you were ready for bigger announcements, but if that’s not the case—” she began.
“No!” Somehow I managed to throw off the shock that had blanketed my mind. “No, I am ready. It’s just, it didn’t seem like—It wasn’t—”
Right.
I couldn’t get the word out, not under the full force of Mel’s disappointment. The day’s heat was unbearable, but her words were coated with ice.
“It came directly from the interim president’s office. They chose you for this announcement,” Mel said.
“Why?”
Mel stared back at me like I’d asked it in another language.
I didn’t look away as I clarified, “Why did they want me?”
Someone touched my elbow, silencing any reply I might have gotten from Mel. “Ma’am? This way.”
The Defenders’ uniforms were as crisp and new as the fighting force itself. The gray jacket was cut close to the body, allowing for a black utility belt stocked with nonlethal weapons and tools, including the signature batons with their motto stamped lengthwise in silver lettering: FOR THE COMMON DEFENSE. A red leather sash ran from the left shoulder to the hip, pinned in place with a silver badge over the heart.
I’d been in the focus group that helped to choose the uniforms. One minute, I was sitting next to Cruz’s chief of staff and the man modeling the sample—the third of five final options—had come into the conference room. The next, I found myself standing at the door, heading out. I still didn’t understand why the sight of that particular one had put my heart in a vise. It was a nice uniform. A fantastic one. There was nothing wrong with it, even if the colors were…
I drew in a deep breath as I looked to the Defender and nodded. I’d been so embarrassed when the chief of staff asked me what was wrong that day, and even more embarrassed when the designer explained the concept. The boldness of the crimson against the gray represented the hope for a stronger, more peaceful future in the face of a dismal past.
There was nothing wrong with the uniform, or me, and I proved as much when I voted for it.
The Defender, with her neat braid beneath her helmet, her sunburned white skin, and rigid posture had likely come out of one of the country’s fighting forces and had gone through psychological evaluations and tactical retraining with the United Nations peacekeepers. She walked us forward with the controlled assurance of someone who was used to giving orders, or at least following them.
“Wait,” I said, trying to pull my arm free. The Defender tightened her grip as she walked me back down the steps of Old Main, toward the speakers and the podium. I only knew Mel was still behind me by the sound of her heels. “Agent Cooper said to—”
“Not now,” Mel said sharply, coming to stand beside me. She waved toward where a group of Defenders had lined up along the edge of the makeshift stage, keeping back the tide of curious attendees trying to snap photos and the few reporters shouting questions at her.
“What are the interim president’s thoughts about the approaching elections? Has she seen the latest polling?”
“Mel, what can you tell us about the rumors of the UN General Assembly coming back to Manhattan?”
“Mel! Mel!”
Realizing how it must have looked to everyone, I stepped in close to the Defender’s side, ignoring the pressing buzz in the back of my mind. The speakers were still humming as power moved through them, whispering something I couldn’t quite hear.
But I heard Mel all too clearly when she hissed from her own plastered-on grin, “Smile.”
I couldn’t.
Across the impatient, jostling bodies, through the shouted questions, I accidentally caught the eye of the boy I’d seen before. He hadn’t moved from where he stood in front of his chair, and now it felt like I had frozen in place, too. His brow creased as his gaze finally broke away from mine and locked onto the sight of a tall male Defender wading through the crowd.
The Defender who had my arm tugged me forward, down the steps. Not away from the crowd, but into it.
“Why are we going this way?” I asked. It would have been quicker to go the opposite direction, following the path Agent Cooper had taken to the other side of Old Main.
“Security protocol has changed,” the Defender muttered. Her dark braid shone in the damp heat.
There’s something deep inside you that shifts—awakens, I guess—when, at one point in your life, you come face-to-face with death and narrowly escape it. From that moment on, it’s like an unacknowledged insight is plugged into your mind. It doesn’t ring like an alarm when it picks up on something that’s off. It doesn’t always make your heart pound. Sometimes, there isn’t the time for that.
Call it instinct or intuition or whatever word you have for self-preservation, but once it’s there, it never goes away. And when it stirs, you feel it like a layer of static on your skin.
I should know. I’d felt it from the moment I’d accidentally stalled my family’s car in the middle of the I-495. From that heartbeat before the truck rammed into the passenger side of the car. It’s saved me too many times to ever risk ignoring it. As Vida always said, there are times you have to listen to your gut and tell common courtesy to fuck right off.
It was just a little bit harder to do that with cameras rolling. I didn’t want to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me afraid. I wasn’t about to flinch again.
But…it wasn’t just a feeling of unease. A faint new vibration coated the air, tickling along the edge of my ear, whining and burning.
In the blur of the crowd moving around me, I caught sight of the girl with the marigold-colored dress. She reached out and
grabbed the boy’s arm, pointing at something behind me.
I glanced back over my shoulder, searching for whatever they were looking at. The whining grew in intensity, melting into the hum of the speakers.
“We should go a different way,” Mel said to the Defender in a low voice. “Avoid the crowd.”
Yes. Yes we should. The attendees had bottlenecked at the only entrance, and therefore exit, in the security fencing. The day’s heat boiled the stench of sweat and the mowed lawn, leaving a burning aftertaste in my mouth.
I turned again, looking for a clear path back up toward Old Main, for Agent Martinez, who seemed to have disappeared. But as the crowds parted, only one figure was still heading our way. It was the male Defender, his uniform too tight across his broad shoulders, sweat gleaming on his white face. He lowered his head but not his gaze. It fixed on me a second too long. Before I could point him out, he was an arm’s length away.
Close enough for me to see my face reflected in his gleaming badge.
Close enough to see that there were no silvered words along the length of his baton.
Close enough to see his free hand slip into his uniform jacket pocket. The deadly shape of the weapon there as he reached for its trigger.
I didn’t think. I didn’t scream. The old woman from the highway, her face, flashed through my mind as my arm shot up. My fingers strained forward, close enough to nearly brush the end of the baton. The man gritted his teeth, eyes narrowed with naked hatred. He raised the gun inside his pocket to level with my heart.
The Darkest Legacy Page 4