by C. A. Gray
Collins bobbed his head in acknowledgement frantically. Still they all stood there.
“One more thing, sir—” Collins swallowed hard. “It appears that… MacNamera broke Joe Martin out of prison, as well.”
Voltolini began to shake violently. This could not be happening. This was not happening. He took a deep breath.
“But he’s transferred his knowledge to the IT team on how to program the signals. Hasn’t he?”
Nobody answered.
“HASN’T HE!”
“They’ve been working on that for years now, but he’s still the only one who knows how to program new messages!” Collins blurted.
Voltolini swore, and picked up the saucer under his coffee cup, sending it flying across the room just for the satisfaction of seeing it shatter. If there was more bad news, he couldn’t handle it right now. “Enough. GET OUT!”
The two agents and Collins tripped over each other in their haste to obey. Only Williams, stoic as ever, exited the room with quiet dignity.
Chapter 20: Kate
As the sun rose the next morning, Will sped down the highway into the city of Ellings, a ghost town where a series of textile factories once thrived. My head still felt foggy and stuffed with cotton. I was thirsty, hungry, sleepy, and dirty—in that order. I hadn’t said anything about it last night because I knew the priority had been to get as far away from the palace as possible, but now that I was pretty sure we weren’t being tracked, I didn’t know how much longer I could go on without meeting some basic needs. I wasn’t even the one driving; I couldn’t imagine how Will must feel right now.
“Can we pull off and look for some supplies?” I murmured at last. Neither of us had spoken for hours, and my voice sounded raspy.
“Too dangerous,” was Will’s reply, still focused on the highway. That was apparently all the response he thought the question required. I almost laughed—it was just like one of the comms he used to send me back in the day. Soundbites.
“C’mon, Will,” I pleaded. “Nobody even lives in this town. Everything’s abandoned, you have a signal disruptor, and nobody’s followed us…”
“Do you know that?”
“Not for sure, but if they have, they’re too far behind for us to see.” I craned my neck around to look out the back windshield. The road behind us stretched and shimmered for miles. “We’re going to have to stop eventually. Better to do it in a ghost town before we’re both too bleary to function.”
Will sighed. “I guess that’s true.”
He picked a clapboard house with chunks falling out of the side of it, which looked like it had once been a sort of pale peach, but was so sun-bleached that now that it looked white with a bit of a tinge to it. Inside the smell of mildew was overwhelming; I opened every window in the house to try to air it out.
“Please be on well water, oh please, oh please…” I begged as I moved toward the faucet, and let out a whoop of joy as the clear, fresh liquid poured out. I splashed it on my face and slurped it from my hands, gulping until I thought my stomach might burst from trying to hold it all. Will hovered next to me, thrusting his hands under the stream too and slurping greedily. Between the two of us, in a few seconds we’d splashed an enormous puddle on the peeling linoleum floor. Giddy with relief, Will filled his hands again, and this time tossed the rest of it on the front of my filthy nightgown. I cried out at the shock of cold water, and for a brief second I was annoyed until I saw the impish grin on his face.
“Oh, is that how it is?” I retorted, filling my own hands and soaking the front of his shirt. He blocked me, and half the water splashed on the floor, the other half on both him and me. Laughing, he pinned down one of my wrists, while pressing his thumb over the faucet and angling the stream of spray at me. I squealed, trying to use my free hand to bat his thumb away. We laughed like we were delirious, which we both probably were.
He let go of my wrist, and I slurped more water down, spitting it onto his shirt. But as I did so, I slipped on the puddle on the floor.
“Careful!” he cried, grabbing me with one hand and the kitchen counter with the other. He pivoted, pinning me to the counter with his body. Both of us were panting, and I could see the merriment mingled with fatigue in his bloodshot eyes. For a brief second, it felt like nothing had changed. There were never any caves, nor rebels, nor a revolution brewing. It was all a bad dream. It was as if Will and I still had a wedding coming up next summer. Everything was as it was before.
The spell broke for me when I saw Will’s expression grow serious. I knew before he did it that he was about to kiss me again. Before I could pull away, his lips touched mine. I froze, and gently stepped back.
“Where are the other rebels supposed to meet us?” I asked, changing the subject and moving toward the cabinet to look for canned food or anything imperishable.
Will sighed, but decided not to press the issue either. “Friedrichsburg is where we were supposed to meet up with Nick, Jacob, Roger, and—anybody who might have survived in Beckenshire,” he said. “Alec and Jean were planning to go there to rendezvous with them. They should be there now, but the deal was, they’d wait three days to give a window for the other party to arrive if they’d been delayed for any reason. We’ll get there tomorrow, if we drive straight through.”
“Aha!” I gloated, waving a couple cans of tuna in the air. “Or in two days, if we sleep in between,” I added pointedly.
“We can nap, that’s it,” Will declared, shaking his head. “Let’s eat here, shower, get you a change of clothes, and sleep for thirty minutes—”
“Thirty minutes! Will, I can barely stand up straight, so you’ve got to be nodding off at the wheel! After all we’ve been through, I’d really rather not die in a car accident—”
“I’m not going to kill us,” he assured me, crossing the distance between us and cradling my chin in his hands. He was still trying to recapture the moment. “After all we’ve been through, I’m not losing you again,” he whispered.
I wished we could save this conversation until after we were both out of imminent danger, but if I couldn’t do that, at least I wanted to put it off until we’d both eaten, slept, and showered. At the moment I could barely string a sentence together.
So I again moved away from Will deliberately, peeling off the covers of the cans of tuna and crossing the kitchen to look for forks. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him run a hand through his hair in frustration.
“Here you go,” I said, passing him a can of tuna and a bent spoon with a little rust on the corner of it. I didn’t look at him, and we ate in silence.
Finally, Will conceded, “All right, fine. We can sleep for an hour. I’ll see if I can find an analog alarm clock in this house. But not a second more!”
It was the best I was going to get. “Thank you,” I smiled at him. He smiled back—wistfully, I thought.
I walked into the dining hall, wearing the very thin backless red satin gown Ben had imported from Italy. The halter neckline plunged almost to my belly button. I’d felt humiliated the first time I’d worn it, but tonight I held my head high.
“Kate,” Ben stood when he saw me, a complacent smile on his lips. He gave me a once-over with those roving black eyes of his. “My dear, you are more beautiful every time I see you.”
I cocked the safety off the revolver dangling from my hand. Somehow his lustful stare had missed the most important accessory of my outfit.
“Thank you, Ben,” I said, raising the gun to eye level. “I aim to please.”
The alarm clock squawked its rude greeting. I groaned, and my first conscious thought was the desire to smash it into little tiny pieces.
“‘I aim to please?’” I whispered to myself. Must’ve been a line from one of Charlie’s stupid movies. No way I’d ever say anything so corny.
Then again, I’d never committed murder, either.
“What was that?” Will murmured next to me, his voice garbled with sl
eep.
“Nothing.”
I crawled to my hands and knees before straightening to my feet, wondering if I felt more or less tired than before the nap. An hour felt like a tease.
“I’m gonna go get as much water and food as we can carry,” I told him, stretching and yawning and sneezing a few times. The mold in this house was starting to get to me.
I gave silent thanks for the pair of cargo pants and t-shirt I found in the musty closet. Both were much too big for me and not exactly clean, but in a much better state than the nightgown was at this point.
“Let’s burn that,” Will told me before we left, pointing at the nightgown. “Just in case someone tracks us this far, we don’t want to leave any evidence that we were here.” He took it to the sink and disposed of it with a match. He pocketed the rest of the matches in case we needed to make a fire later.
Twenty minutes later we were on the road again, heading to Friedrichsburg. I shielded my eyes from the mid-afternoon sun with one hand and glanced at Will’s profile as he drove. He clenched his teeth when he felt stressed, and I could see the little muscle of his jaw bulging now.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said at last, “about what to do after Friedrichsburg.”
I nodded, waiting for him to go on.
“I think we should go to New Estonia in person.”
It took me a second to process this. “New Estonia? What?”
“Remember I sent them that message, telling them Voltolini was constructing control centers on their soil? I don’t know if they ever got it or not, and if they did, I don’t know if they believed it. But if we go in person, maybe they would believe us, and at least they’d defend themselves in their land, if not come to our aid.”
I opened my mouth, and closed it again. “But… what about the Republic? What about the people here?”
“Well, if we can convince New Estonia of the seriousness of the threat, they might get involved here too. Who knows?”
“Will, this is our home!” I insisted. “These are our people! What about fighting for freedom? You were with the rebels, destroying repeaters, risking your life! Now you just want to leave?”
He glanced at me briefly before looking back at the road. “I did that when I thought you were dead, Kate,” he said at last. “I wanted revenge. I went to find you in the caves. When I found you there, I’d have suggested you and I get out of the country then, except I could see you weren’t willing to go. Though whether that was because of the rebels’ cause or because of Jackson, I wasn’t sure,” he added, a bitter edge to his voice.
“Okay, wait a second—”
But he kept going. “I joined in the rebels’ cause because of you. I was breaking repeaters because of you, because when I thought I’d lost you, nothing mattered anymore. I went to the palace because of you, Kate! But now I have you, and I’m sorry if you think it’s not very patriotic of me, but aside from the other rebels, I don’t really give a damn what happens to the rest of the country. New Estonia, at least for the time being, is still free, and even if they do come here to help overthrow Voltolini—which is highly unlikely—it would be decades before this place would be livable again. So why not go to New Estonia together, try to send aid back, and then just stay? We can start a new life together. Both of us have skills I’m sure they’d be more than happy to employ. We can take Charlie with us, if you want—”
“What about my parents?” I cut in. I couldn’t believe he was saying all this. “What about your parents?”
“Your mom made her choice, we couldn’t rescue her if we tried,” Will replied. His tone was flat and matter-of-fact, but I saw the little muscle in his jaw bulge again. “And I’m truly sorry about your dad, but if he won’t go without her, then there’s nothing we can do for him. My parents are still brainwashed like everyone else here. Their best bet at freedom is also New Estonia’s aid, which we can try and send to them.”
I stared at the dashboard in disbelief. I didn’t even know where to start.
After a long pause, Will pleaded, “Well. Say something.”
“Will—”
“And don’t you dare say you’re staying here!”
I sighed, running my fingers through my hair. “If you think going to New Estonia to send aid is the best move, I won’t stop you. But—I’m afraid you’ll have to do it without me.”
He pounded the steering wheel with his palm. “Why? Why won’t you come with me? Why? Is it because of him? Are you hoping to see him again?”
“No,” I said quickly, and meant it. This wasn’t about Jackson. Any future we might have had together was stolen the minute I let those agents drag him away from me. My eyes filled with tears—now, I could hardly bear to think of him.
But that was exactly the point.
“I have to fight, Will,” I whispered. “For the years they’ve stolen from me. For the many lies I’ve told on the air. For Maggie.” For making me betray Jackson, I added silently. “I have to make it right somehow. I have to make it right, or die trying!”
We drove in silence for what felt like an hour after that.
“I’ll ask you again after Friedrichsburg,” Will growled at last.
I sighed. He could be so stubborn sometimes.
Chapter 21: Jackson
“Okay,” Charlie breathed heavily once we were well clear of the palace. “Okay, so… who is Joe again? You made the Liberty Boxes and the control centers and stuff?” He looked at Joe in the rearview mirror.
Joe turned to look out the window. “My partner and I created the technology,” he said, reluctant. “Although I can’t say I’m proud of it.”
Charlie let out a low whistle. “What are the freaking odds…” He looked at me. “So… we’re gonna use that, right?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I hadn’t thought about it, actually. Aloud, I said, “I hadn’t gotten that far. I just didn’t want Voltolini to have him anymore.”
I could see the wheels turning in Charlie’s head. “So… did you target Kate specifically during that broadcast, then?”
Joe blinked. “I… wrote the code, yes. I didn’t know who I was targeting, I just encoded the message and synchronized it to the brainwave signature they gave me,” he added, a bit defensively. “We targeted two brainwave signatures, actually. I guess one was her, and one was someone else.”
Charlie and I exchanged a look.
“What did you program the other person to think?” I asked.
Joe scratched his head. “It was something like… you’re a terrorist, you’re a murderer… turn yourself in… she hates you, they all hate you, and—” he stopped, like he was ashamed of himself. “Why don’t you just kill yourself.”
After a stunned pause, Charlie said what I was thinking. “So that was meant for you, then, Jackson.”
Joe turned to me in horror. “But—it can’t be!” He stammered, “Unless you had a jammer the whole time?”
“I didn’t, we can’t broadcast with a jammer,” I said coldly.
“But… it couldn’t have been you then,” he spluttered, truly perplexed now. “You’d be brainwashed too!”
“It was me,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“Because I heard all those things in my head.”
Joe stared at me, dumbfounded. “Yet—you weren’t brainwashed? Even for a little while?”
“You might have the power to suggest ideas to me, Joe, but you don’t have the power to make me accept them. I knew they were lies, and I rejected them.”
After a long pause, Joe murmured, “Amazing.”
We’d reentered the usual stream of traffic now, and I knew we were almost into the city. I tried not to think what I was thinking.
If I could resist, then why couldn’t Kate?
I turned over the list of lies Joe had intended for me, and got stuck on, she hates you.
That one I might have believed a little bit.
“Doesn’t look like we’ve got a lot of fuel left,” Charlie cut in as we reentered the usual stream of traffic into the city. “We’re gonna have to do something soon.”
I sighed. I’d think about all this later. I added, “I still need some pants other than the prison ones, too. For that matter, I’d like to get a disguise.”
“Not sure how we can disguise your face, although that shiner helps a little,” said Charlie. “Maybe a hat with a really wide brim. We can make you a cowboy, if we can find a sombrero…”
“That’s helpful. You could make me a ninja if you could find that outfit, too.” As long as we were being ridiculous.
“Or a bank robber. If we can find a ski mask,” he returned, grinning.
“That’ll blend in great,” I agreed. “Nobody would look twice.”
We merged with traffic on the interstate, which thankfully was light that morning, as the sun had only just risen. It had been relatively light the last time I was on this highway too, since only a small percentage of the Republic could afford cars.
Nobody said anything for a little while, which I appreciated, and Joe stuck to his side of the backseat, which I appreciated even more.
I needed to get my head on straight. I felt shaken by the revelation that there had been targeted signals against me too. It was different when I thought Kate was up against something brand new, manufactured all for her—I could excuse her then. But knowing that I faced the same signals she had, and they’d bounced right off of me made it harder to excuse.