Metal Heart: Book 1: The Metal Heart Trilogy

by Melinda Crouchley

  “I just want out. I don’t want to hurt anymore people.” I squint hard and only one stray tear winds its way down my cheek. I brush at it, hoping to play it off like it was a piece of dust. Crying in front of Rabbit Santiago in the middle of the basketball court is definitely not how I thought this evening would go. My cheeks flush and I sniff loudly, working to blink the remaining tears back into my head.

  “Can you forget you saw that?” I ask. “Like, please never tell Fuller.”

  “Saw what?” His expression is earnest and concerned but his tone is soft and neutral. Warm even. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “Saw me crying about my dead parents. It’s really killing my aloof asshole vibe.” I choke out a laugh and another tear slips down my cheek. I swipe it away. “This is so stupid.”

  “Eleni—” he stops and his eyes go wide.

  The intimacy of my first name surprises us both. We’re not first name friends. We’re last name squadmates. Raptor One and Raptor Two. Santiago and Garza. Santiago’s breached an unarticulated but formerly impassable divide. He lapses into stunned silence. I join him there, wishing he would keep going. I like the way his mouth forms my name. I like the flush crawling up his neck. I stifle a weird desire to press my fingers against the skin there and feel the warmth rush into my fingertips.

  “Rabbit?” I touch his arm instead—neutral territory—but even offering this friendly gesture flips panic in my belly. He blinks and meets my gaze, eyes searching.

  “Eleni," he shifts closer. Heat radiates from his body. Rough stubble lines his jaw. The fingers on my hand clench reflexively around his arm, squeezing tighter. “Eleni, you—”

  “Rabbit!” Kang calls.

  “What?” he asks, without turning.

  “You in?” Kang asks. “Game three?”

  Rabbit rolls his eyes up to the ceiling. “Fucking putas.”

  I release his arm. He watches the movement with a flicker of his heavy brows.

  “You gotta go.”

  “I don’t,” he says. “I don’t gotta go. I could stay here.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “To stay here with you?” he asks, his voice low and his words rough.

  His tone sends a full claxon alarm ringing in my head and my stomach heaves in a strangely pleasant roller coaster way. If I sit here another moment longer this close to Rabbit’s warm body and soft voice and the friendly way he says my name I’m going to lose it. And I can’t lose control and I’m going to move closer and I don’t know what happens after that. I can’t do this. With him.

  “You could stay.” I scoop up my tablet. “But you’re gonna go anyway, aren’t you? You’re not done playing your game.” I shift to stand up and the movement catches his eye.

  “What’re you always writing? In your diary?”

  I laugh. A grin breaks over his lips and my stomach flips again. “It’s not a diary.”

  “Oh right.” He curls his fingers in air quotes, his grin widening. “It’s a journal.”

  I elbow him and he chuckles, a sound like campfire crackling. A sound like marshmallows roasting. The scent of sweat hits my nose again. I can’t tell what I like better: the sound of him laughing at something I said or the rough sound of his voice saying my name.

  Maybe both?

  “It’s a sketch pad,” I say, jamming the tablet in my bag.

  “OK. A sketch pad. What’re you drawing?”

  I shake my head.

  “Come on, what’re you drawing?” he asks. “Is it a secret? I’m good with secrets.”

  “I’ll bet you are. I’m just you know, drawing—” I gesture to indicate the court, including him in the movement. The grin on Rabbit’s face extends to his raised eyebrows. He leans in closer to me and then it’s my turn to blush. I shouldn’t have done that.

  “Are you drawing me?”

  I don’t answer. Instead, I grab the tin and jam it in on top of the tablet, flipping the bag closed. This is not good. This is so bad. This is the best-worst thing. How did this even happen? We only have four months of service left. I only had to avoid this, avoid Rabbit, for four more months. Why couldn’t I stay away? Why did I come here?

  “See ya around,” I say, rising from the bleachers and jogging across the court.

  “Wait!” Rabbit calls from behind me. “Eleni.”

  The way he says my name tightens a weird knot of anxiety in my stomach. I stop moving. The basketball game temporarily halts and the guys on the court whistle in Rabbit’s direction.

  “Eleni don’t go!” Kang calls out in a warbly, high-pitched voice, followed by a chorus of cackles from the basketball players.

  “Fuck off,” Rabbit growls back towards them.

  I spin on my heels to face him, clutching my bag to my chest, very conscious of the dozen eyes watching our every move.

  “What?” I ask, snatching a glance towards the players. “What do you want?” My heart pounds and heat climbs around my wrist, snapping and gurgling underneath my hoodie. He follows the direction of my gaze and a shadow flickers over his face. Kang is watching us. Everyone’s watching us. Our pretend moment of privacy is gone.

  “Nothing,” Rabbit says. “You should do what you want.”

  He turns and walks back to the huddled group of players.

  “What do I want,” I say, too quiet for him to hear me.

  I reach down into the bag and close my hand around the tin, running my fingers over the cool metal surface. A sigh escapes my chest, and the heat on my face and wrist dissipate. I push through the gym doors, casting a glance back over my shoulder. Santiago watches me go, pressing a hand to the pocket of his hoodie, scowling.

  In the barracks, I dump the contents out of my bag, intending to return the tin to its proper resting place under my bed. When I shuffle through the spill of items, my fingers come up missing. There’s something missing.

  Mateo’s letter is missing.

  There is a good chance Rabbit has Mateo’s letter.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

  I don’t waste time debating the next best move. I throw my covers over the tin and tablet, then dash out of the barracks and back to the gym. It’s empty.

  I have no idea where Rabbit bunks. I mean, I have a general idea because all male residents bunk in the northern wing of the barracks, but each barracks is divided into four sections. Not grouped by specializations. Randomly selected. I’d have to knock on the door of every barrack to find him and there’s only a few minutes left until lights out. That would attract a lot of unwanted attention.

  I crawl back into bed and pull the covers up over my head. There’s no way Rabbit could read the letter even if he wanted to. It’s written in the code Mateo and I developed to obscure our communications for situations just like this. Fear twists in my guts. It’s rudimentary code. Rabbit is smart. If he really wants to, he’ll crack it.

  I’m the first one out of my bunk this morning. I dash by the Commons, but there’s no sign of Rabbit. I stalk the cafeteria until he appears—pushing through the main doors with bags tucked underneath his eyes. A sleepless night for Santiago too, apparently.

  “Do you have it?” I ask, accosting him near the doors.

  “It?” he asks, his hand rushing to the pocket of his hoodie.

  “Don’t be coy. My letter, Rabbit. You took my letter.”

  He drops his gaze and nods. He pulls the worn handwritten page from his hoodie pouch and hands it over. I pluck it from his fingers.

  “I found it on the bench after you left. I didn’t take it.”

  “Did you read it?”

  He doesn’t nod or shake his head and he still won’t meet my eyes.

  “Did you read it?” I ask.

  “It’s in code.”

  “That’s not really an answer.”

  “Why do you have a letter written in code?”

  “Did you read it?”

  He opens his mouth to reply and a pair of massive arms appear
from both sides of him. They crush Rabbit up in a bear hug, lifting his gangly legs up off the ground.

  “Lookee here everyone. I caught me a Rabbit.”

  “The fuck?” He struggles in Clinton’s grip. “Put me down.”

  Clinton laughs, dropping Rabbit off to his side. Rabbit slumps to the ground like a sack of dirty laundry and sits there, stunned. Too angry to speak.

  “Did he read what?” Clinton asks, blasting me with his charmless grin.

  Rabbit climbs to his feet. “He didn’t read nothing.”

  “Good.” Clinton grabs the chest of Rabbit’s hoodie and drags him forward, pushing past me. “It better be nothing. Don’t forget our deal Garza.”

  About ten paces away, Rabbit squirms out of Clinton’s grip, glancing back over his shoulder. His brows flicker and his gaze drops to the letter in my hand. I shove it in my pants pocket. Scarlett shuffles through the door and grimly takes my arm. The morning routine starts.

  There is only one small variation during breakfast. Despite all the chaos of the last few weeks, I set that robot in motion Scarlett requested—the one to track her parents. I retrieve the jump drive with the resulting info and slide it across the table.

  Scarlett snatches it up, cheeks warming. “You’re the best, Lenbot.”

  “Don’t thank me until you see the file,” I warn, snapping a piece of bacon in my fingers.

  “What does it say?”

  “Your parents were transferred to a new camp. Slingold. Doesn’t have the best reputation. And your brother—”

  “What did he do this time?”

  “Escaped during transfer. Somehow slipped his band and vanished. Last known sighting is in a brothel in New Orleans.” I pop the bacon in my mouth and crunch it between my teeth. “A brothel filled with Flash junkies.”

  The bacon tastes like bark dust. Scar’s face turns ashen and she pockets the drive solemnly, offering me a half-hearted smile.

  “Thanks anyway,” she says, reaching for her coffee cup.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” I pause, hands rushing to grip the letter in my pocket. “I’m having a crap day too. I have to help Clinton cheat on his test. And Rabbit found one of my letters.”

  “Your priceless treasure letters that you won’t even let me read. How?”

  “I left it behind,” I say, hardly believing the words as they leave my mouth. These letters are priceless treasures. Dangerous priceless treasures. They’d narrowly avoided ending up in the wrong hands this time. Maybe.

  I lock eyes with Rabbit across the cafeteria. His comment about the code was not exactly reassuring. And his resulting question was equally disturbing.

  “That’s almost impossible to believe. You guard those letters with your life. What could have possibly distracted you.” Scarlett turns and follows my gaze. “Santiago? I thought you were in love with Letter Boy.”

  “I thought so too.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. I shake my head and shift my gaze back over to Scar.

  She raises an eyebrow. “You’d better watch yourself, Lenbot.”

  Under the table, electricity pulses between my fingers. “What? Why?”

  Sweat blooms under my arms. My guts tighten.

  What does she know?

  “It looks like you’re falling.”

  The sweat doesn’t stop blooming and my guts only slightly loosen. Revealing secrets is only slightly more scary than falling for someone. Especially for someone like Rabbit. Who, like my letters, also seems a little dangerous.

  “Impossible,” I say, tossing a shard of bacon at her. “You need a heart for that.”

  In tech lab, Clinton sweats in his seat and Rabbit favors me with foreboding looks from across the room. Sergeant Vargas enters and closes the door behind her, the universal signal for the exam to begin. I access the exam document on my tablet, quickly filling in the answers. It’s easier than I thought it might be, but harder than I’d hoped for Clinton’s sake. In order to make his test look legitimate, I must be smart in the choices I make for him.

  I finish my test earlier than the other residents, like usual, and turn my attention to hacking the network. Clinton slipped me his personal area network identification in the hallway on the way to Tech Lab this morning, while Rabbit averted his eyes in what I assume was moral indignation. I wanted to say something to Rabbit, I wanted to accuse him of stealing my letter or explain again why I’m helping Clinton but then it occurred to me, I have nothing to explain. I don’t have to justify my decisions to Rabbit or anyone else.

  So, why do I want to?

  I open up a separate screen and tap a remote access app feeding directly into Clinton’s tablet, subverting Prothero’s tracking system. A moderate firewall used by the Academy to discourage this type of access is quickly erected but I bypass it by tunneling through the network, executing an encrypted PAN mirroring his system. I type in Clinton’s Academy password and instantly my tablet reveals his screen.

  Clinton filled in very little of the test, aside from the most basic of answers. Even some of those are wrong. A dart of fear stabs in my brain when I stare down at his exam. Along with a massive amount of irritation that someone so inept could move this far into National Service with virtually nothing to show for it.

  In the upper right corner a red blinking timer ticks off the remaining twenty five minutes left in the exam. I could do more than enough damage on this test for Clinton Fuller to pass. A stupid urge wells within me and I cast a glance back at Rabbit, my mind spinning with all his admonishments, with all the heavy conversations of the last couple days.

  His head is bent over a tablet, his shaggy dark hair obscuring the upper half of his face. His jaw is set in concentration, and the faintest tip of his tongue pokes to wet his lips as he works. The effect this has on me is akin to the dipping, rolling sensation I experienced the first moments of waking up from the coma years ago. All of my senses working in disharmony, my eyes and ears and limbs fighting one another.

  Maybe it’s the power of my gaze, but Rabbit looks up. Catches me staring. Mouths “don’t” very clearly, with his bushy eyebrows arched in a silent plea. Clinton sits towards the head of the class, also hunched over his tablet. Watching the blinking cursor on the exam page, waiting for me to fill in the answers for him. Indecision pulls all the muscles in my neck taut.

  My left hand, dormant with my fingers barely touching the tablet, twitches. Electricity sparks from the band, jumping to the tablet, frying the tech inside. The screen, poised on Clinton’s exam, plunges into complete darkness. The scent of melted wires fills the air and a thin black tendril of smoke climbs up from the device.

  “Garza,” Sergeant Vargas barks from the head of the class. “What’re you doing back there?”

  Heads swivel in my direction. Clinton turns to me, his visible horror mirroring my own. His features fluctuate between rage, fear, and desperation.

  “Nothing. Honestly. My band shorted. It killed my tablet.” I flip the device over to expose the burnt plastic on the back. Pieces of the black material cling to the desktop.

  “That’s impossible. Bands don’t ‘short’ Garza. For this interruption, I’ll pause the time on your tests,” she informs the class. All around me, shoulders relax.

  “Bring your tablet up to the front. I’ll reboot it manually. Your test was autosaved to the network. It looks like you completed all the answers. Are you done?” Vargas asks.

  “I was almost done. I was refining my answers,” I say, hoping she believes this thin excuse.

  “You may need to stay after to finish up your edits if we cannot remedy this. The rest of you have twenty minutes left. As in real life, you will work around this distraction. Eyes on your own tablets please. Bands in neutral.” She releases the timer and once more an aura of panic settles over the room.

  “Your band should have been in the neutral setting during the exam.” Vargas furrows her brows as I reach her desk.

  “It was on the setting, I swear. Loo
k.” I tip my wrist towards her. The band clicks on and the neutral screen rolls out.

  “It’s on the setting now. Let me pull your PAN from the last five minutes, to be certain you weren’t accessing the extranet,” she says.

  A surge of panic rolls through me. My PAN would show no alteration, but I’d logged into Clinton’s band to use his tablet. It would show on his logs as a dropped signal with an immediate reconnect, an innocuous piece of data appearing much more sinister given my band’s malfunctions. What if they scrolled PAN records of all the students and noticed a discrepancy? I’d covered my tracks well, but I’ve never encountered this situation before. I’ve made a habit of keeping quiet and uninteresting so as not to attract attention to these hacking abilities. I can’t help casting another gaze at Clinton who sweats bullets at his desk while time ticks away. Fifteen minutes now. I stand next to Vargas as she hems and haws over the ruined tech equipment.

  “Whatever you did to this tablet, it appears to be permanent. I’ve no hope of resurrecting this device. You can use mine in the interim. Please return to your seat.” She holds it out to me. I accept it with a cowed dip of my shoulders.

  “Try not to ruin this one.” Vargas waves me away.

  I jog back to my seat and slam down into the chair, clicking on the tablet. The welcome screen rolls out, I enter my information and log into the exam document. All my data is saved, I make a few changes in case Vargas monitors my document. Software and networks transfer to any usable piece of tech, via the bands.

  Through my network, the remote access app is available. I run the same encrypted tunnel and gain remote access to Clinton’s tablet, with ten minutes left in the exam. I begin with the basic questions first, leaving the simply stated but correct answers in place and correcting the wrong ones. Five minutes left in the period. At the head of the class Vargas watches me like a predator after slippery prey.

  “I see you haven’t updated your answers in the last several minutes Garza. Are you daydreaming another method of sabotage over there?” she asks.