Disclose

by Joelle Charbonneau

  I know Stef wants to fight back. It’s the reason she thinks less of the Stewards—because they have always operated on the fringes—storing and protecting the truth instead of exposing it. She had heard rumors of the Stewards, but her group wasn’t interested in waiting in the shadows. They wanted to create change no matter the cost. That’s why Stef was shocked when she saw the symbol of the Stewards tattooed on Atlas’s arm. We had prevented Marshals from taking her off the streets and almost were killed in the process. It was the first time anyone had heard of a Steward risking anything to come to the aid of someone who wasn’t one of their own.

  I follow the stairs as they turn into the basement doorway and take the final scarred wooden step onto the concrete floor of a large unfinished basement filled with faces that are all turned toward me. The reason Ari mentioned the curfew hits me square in the chest.

  “You can’t be serious,” Atlas says from directly behind me.

  I can’t help thinking the same thing because several of the people crammed into the underground space are younger than I am. They aren’t worrying about the driving curfew. Their curfews are imposed by parents.

  Stef’s friends, the ones I have been counting on to help fight the government—are children.

  Four

  At least a dozen twelve-year-old kids are sprawled on black-and-white zigzagged rugs or seated on sunken blue and brown couches. There are some my age standing along the gray, pocked concrete walls. Here and there are a few that appear to be older, like Stef. But not many.

  “These two helped me escape from the Marshals,” Stef says, draping her arm around a girl with a cascade of long, dark braids. In her oversize orange-and-white football jersey she looks maybe as old as thirteen. “They’re Stewards.”

  A low murmur of disapproval colors the tense room. A pair of twins with slightly angular hazel eyes and mops of curly red-brown hair sit cross-legged to my left. They might be as old as fourteen, and they glare with open hostility. One of them says, “Is that supposed to make us trust them?”

  “Only if you’re foolish,” I shoot back, taking a step away from the stairs. Atlas moves to stand at my side. “I doubt you could know what you know and still be sitting here if that was the case.”

  The twin boys roll their eyes, but the girl standing at Stef’s side grins. Considering some of the dumb things Rose and I did a few years ago, I’m not sure that’s a positive sign. But I’ll take what I can get.

  “Stef says you fought the Marshals for her.” A scrawny boy with a bruise blooming sickly yellow near his left ear pushes away from the wall. He crosses his arms in front of his puffed-out chest. “She said you know how to beat them, but how do we know you didn’t just get lucky?”

  “Really?” We don’t have time for this, but it’s clear by the way the others are nodding that they think we do.

  By Stewards standards, I’m not all that skilled, but I’ve learned enough in the last few weeks that I am certain I can put on a decent demonstration. “Fine. If you back up, Atlas and I can spar for you,” I say, pulling off my hat.

  “I don’t want you to fight him.” The kid smiles. “I want to see you fight her.” He points to a woman in her early twenties standing in the back of the room. She is solidly built and only an inch or two over my height, but holds herself as if she is at least a foot taller. Her brown-and-blond-streaked hair is pulled into a high ponytail. Long gold hoops dangle at her ears. Anger gleams bright in her eyes.

  “We’re not here to fight,” Atlas says.

  “Because Stewards don’t fight,” Hooped-Earring Girl snaps, weaving around the couches until she comes to stand in front of me. Now that she is up close and personal, I’m certain she could kick my ass, and her predatory smile says she knows it, too. “Stewards hide.”

  Atlas shifts, but I shake my head. “I’ve got to do this,” I whisper. Atlas is bigger. Stronger. The one they expect to fight.

  For a heartbeat of a moment, I’m transported deep in the Lyceum standing in front of Spine. She mopped the floor with me, and didn’t give me warning before doing it. With her in my mind, I jab at Hoop Girl’s face. Everyone gasps. As I’d hoped, instinct causes her to jerk back. Her balance shifts just enough that when I hook my leg around hers and pull, I send her to the ground in a less-than-graceful heap.

  “She took down Joy!” rings above the other shouts of outrage, excitement, or both.

  The girl’s name is Joy? The girl scrambling to her feet doesn’t look all that joyful to me. In fact, she looks seriously pissed. She faces me again, then snarls and curls her hands into fists.

  Atlas and Dewey have drilled me on a lot of fighting techniques. The first is never be where your attacker thinks you’ll be. Which is why when Joy puts all her weight behind her punch, I dart out of the way. She yelps and sails through the empty space I vacated, then crashes into the wall next to the stairs. If Joy were a Marshal, I’d use the opportunity to do the smart thing and run. But there’s no running now. Instead, I shift my weight to the balls of my feet while Joy grunts, shoves away from the wall, and comes at me again.

  I dive to the side, but not before Joy’s attack glances off my ear. Head ringing, I dive to the cold, hard concrete floor.

  “Enough!” Stef calls. “This isn’t playtime.”

  There are snickers. A few mentions of Joy being in trouble before a pair of scuffed running shoes come into view, followed by Atlas’s hand. I take it, let him haul me to my feet. Joy has retreated to the far side of the basement, alone. Face flushed, she stands with her arms crossed over her chest, watching me with narrowed eyes.

  “This is a waste of time,” Atlas says into my ear. “Come on.” He takes my hand and turns toward the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” the girl with the long braids demands. One by one the others in the room fall silent. “Stef said you wanted our help.”

  Atlas grabs the stair rail. “We made a mistake.”

  “Why?” the girl yells. “Because Joy doesn’t like you?”

  “Joy doesn’t worry me,” Atlas says.

  “Then why are you leaving?”

  Atlas runs a hand over his short-cropped hair and turns. “How old are you?”

  She lifts her chin. “Fifteen.”

  “And you?” He looks down at a wisp of a girl with almost colorless hair and skin that I am certain would turn an angry crimson if she ever spent more than a few minutes in direct sunlight.

  “Thirteen.”

  He shakes his head and looks at me. “That’s why we’re leaving.”

  “We’re not good enough for the Stewards?” one of the twins asks.

  “They think we’re too young,” the other sneers.

  “No,” Atlas shoots back, then sighs. “Look, it’s just . . . your age means we can’t in good conscience ask for your help. It’s too dangerous.”

  “And what we’ve been doing is safe?” the girl with the braids snaps. “Tell that to my uncle. Or to Ari’s cousin. Or Stef’s boyfriend.”

  When I blink my surprise the girl looks over at Stef and asks, “Do the Stewards even know what we’ve been doing? Do they even care?”

  Stef waits as bands of silence stretch tighter with each passing second.

  Finally, I break the silence. “I don’t think most of the Stewards do know who you are or what you have been doing. Do you?” I look to Atlas.

  Ari turns to Stef. “You said they knew about our hacking into government systems and the code we’ve been working on to keep them from locating people who are discussing the truth online. You said they had a plan that could help stop the government from taking our friends and family.”

  “We do have a plan,” I say. “And we are going to stop them.”

  “Merriam.” Atlas places a hand on my arm. “This isn’t what we expected.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I admit. “But I wasn’t what you thought I would be, either.”

  I turn back to look at the faces scattered throughout the room as something clicks int
o place.

  Yes, a bunch of them are younger than me. Yes, I hate the idea that what I’m asking will put them directly in harm’s way. But I was being watched by the Marshals before I saw the faded ink of the word “verify” on the Stewards’ rain-soaked page. I was already in harm’s way long before Atlas decided to give me the “train ticket” and take me to the Lyceum. I just didn’t know it. My mother never told me the truth. No doubt she believed she was protecting me, but I never had the chance to learn what she knew. Because it was too late. She died. Murdered by the government I was taught to put my faith in.

  Being unaware of the truth didn’t mean I was unaffected by the consequences of the lies that surrounded me. It simply kept me from making my own decisions about how I wanted to deal with it.

  “I didn’t know about the missing words—the parts of history they took away—until a few days before I saw the Marshals go after Stef. Atlas taught me the meaning of the word ‘verify’ and introduced me to the Stewards. If you asked most of them, I doubt any would say I belonged with them. They thought I was like you.” I turn toward Atlas. “The Stewards believed I was too young, too.”

  He steps to the floor beside me. “Meri. You can’t be okay with putting these kids in danger.”

  “I’m not,” I snap. Whispers echo through the basement. “I had the same reaction you did when I came down those stairs. But they’ll be in danger whether they help us or not. So, if they want to fight with us to change the world for the better, who are we to tell them no?”

  Atlas looks from me to the faces scattered throughout the basement. His eyes shine dark and hot. Desperate for an answer of glistening white. One that absolves him. But the truth is never that clean. As far as I can tell it’s always made of shades of gray.

  “The Stewards weren’t wrong to want to keep me safe,” I say quietly. “They were just mistaken to think I was ever safe in the first place. Or that they had the right to choose whether I should have the chance to fight for my future.”

  I keep my eyes on Atlas as he struggles with what he was taught to believe by the Stewards—by his father and grandfather—and the plan we have embarked upon.

  Mrs. Webster and Rose won’t be able to hold off the Marshals forever. They have sacrificed everything to give us this chance. We can’t squander it.

  Atlas’s hand tightens on mine. A weight I barely recognized on my heart lifts. This is a decision I do not make alone. We are in this together.

  “Merriam is right,” Atlas says. His sigh tells me everything I need to know about how much he hates that phrase. “The government changed all our futures when they took away the pieces of our history they found inconvenient. They stole our choices. I would never try to do the same thing to you. You have a choice.”

  The others in the room exchange looks. A few of the younger boys leaning against the wall roll their eyes. I smile, remembering that I wasn’t exactly impressed by Atlas when we first met, either.

  “Can we get on with it?” A tanned boy in ripped jeans and a Voices of Freedom tour shirt shatters the moment from his place on the floor. “If I’m not home in twenty minutes, my ass is going to get grounded.”

  “I guess your parents know that’s the only part that needs to be grounded since it’s where your brain is located,” a blond girl about my age giggles.

  He crosses his arms defiantly over his chest. “You only wish you had my skills.”

  “Enough!” Stef calls and the room goes silent. “Shep has a point.” She looks at the smug boy in the ripped jeans. “Although not about your skills. If you had been more careful, Shep, Merriam and Atlas wouldn’t have had to rescue me from the Marshals in the first place, and they wouldn’t be here now.”

  “But we are here,” I say. “And we’re going to uncover and expose the truth about what happened to the people the Marshals have taken away.”

  “We know what happened to them.” Ari pushes away from the wall. “They’re dead.”

  “No,” I say as Atlas stiffens beside me. “At least, not all of them.” Aware time is slipping away, I quickly run down how I broke into the City Pride Department archives and the Unity Center plans I discovered there.

  “We were right! We knew they had to be using paper!” the blond girl from before exclaims. “That’s why we haven’t been able to find anything useful when we wormed our way through a crack in their firewalls.”

  “Being right also means we’re screwed.” A guy with buzzed hair and two gold hoop earrings shoves himself out of the sunken, faded blue couch. “We can’t hack information if it’s not sitting on servers waiting to be hacked. And everything about the truth we’ve put online gets taken down by their software in minutes.”

  The room explodes with frustration and angry words.

  “Even if you had found information to share and managed to put it online long enough for people to read it, it wouldn’t have changed anything!” I shout.

  “How the hell would you know?” the guy shoots back.

  “Because we tried.” I swallow my own anger at the loss and my naiveté. “We put information right into people’s hands that explained everything to them, and most of them refused to see it. The news told them it was all a Hollywood stunt so that’s what they believed. I thought if we gave people access to the truth they would embrace it. I was wrong.”

  People died because I was wrong.

  “So, we’re screwed,” the guy in the back reiterates. “We can’t get the information we need, and even if we did no one would believe it is real.”

  “Not if the source of the information makes them uncomfortable,” I say.

  “The truth is uncomfortable.”

  “You’re right,” I agree. “Which is why we have to present it in a way they seek out and automatically trust. We’re going to use Gloss and we started today.”

  “We recognized the Steward symbol in the logo,” Stef says, stepping forward. “The Marshals will, too. They’ll shut it down.”

  “We have that covered,” Atlas says with more confidence than I feel.

  “So what? You created a logo for a magazine that is all about fashion. Congratulations.” Joy scoffs. “You’ll now have the ability to change the world one smokey eye at a time.”

  “Gloss is popular,” I say, deliberately not looking at Joy. I will not take the bait and get into an argument with her and waste what little time we have left. “People pay attention to things that are popular and no one wants to feel like they’re missing out—especially when it’s the thing everyone is talking about. We’re going to get people talking about Gloss so that even people who don’t read it feel as if they have to pay attention. We’re going to make it so talked about that the government can’t risk shutting it down without drawing notice. Then we’re going to start including some of the government-erased words inside the pages.”

  “And the software programs the government has designed will find the content in their scans and shut the whole thing down,” Ari says with a sigh. “Bubble busted.”

  “Their software scans articles.” I smile. “Not artwork.” Mrs. Webster had me add a word into one of the ads two weeks ago as a test to see if the programs would flag the magazine’s image files. No alarms. No Marshals. And a softening of the ground under the readers for the information that, if we do this right, will change everything.

  The two who were fighting about hacking exchange a look.

  Stef glances down at them. “Are they right?”

  “Maybe,” the blond girl says. “The software might be able to recognize block letters, but stylized ones would be hard, if not impossible, for it to detect when the magazine is scanned, especially if it’s uploaded at the same time as the rest of the content. The most aggressive programs are reserved for external additions to known sites and web searches.”

  Something I know all too well from my online search of the word “verify.” Had my query not come back with error messages and alarms, I might have simply recycled the “ticket” the Steward ga
ve me and never thought about it again.

  “So putting stylized words in artwork could actually work,” Ari confirms.

  The blond girl and the boy in ripped jeans nod.

  “Eventually, someone in the government will notice,” Stef says. “And Gloss’s popularity will only stop them from shutting it down for so long.”

  “We know. Gloss will publish the truth long before that happens,” I say. “But we have to move fast. The quicker we get everyone paying attention to Gloss, the better chance we have of getting out the facts we need them to hear. In a way they can accept hearing it.”

  I will uncover more of those facts once the next phase of the plan is in motion.

  “Gloss is the e-zine they trust—that everyone they know loves. When we give them the truth, they’ll pay attention.”

  “But none of that will work if we don’t draw new attention and readers to Gloss,” Atlas adds. “That’s where we need your help.”

  Stef looks around the room, then says, “Most of our team has to leave, but I want them to hear one answer for themselves before Ari, Joy, and I make any decisions about partnering with you. The Stewards have been rumored to have been working in secret for dozens of years—while many other people, including those who we have known and loved—have been captured and killed for trying to make people relearn how to question what our government is doing. In all that time no one from the Stewards has made an attempt to be a part of that effort. You’ve given us a lot to think about today, but the Stewards have never aided us. So why should we put ourselves on the line to help with your plan now?”

  A hundred responses leap to my lips, but I turn to Atlas and wait for him to answer. His grandfather was one of the first in the city to see the implications of the government’s push to remove words from public use, then textbooks, and finally all sources of printed words. He and his friends went against the popular recycling push and not only collected and preserved books, they created the Lyceum under the city to house them until the time came when people were ready to embrace those books and the truth inside them again.