“Don’t move, or your friend gets this arrowhead right to the brain.”
I studied the girl, who seemed to have appeared from thin air. She had spied on us from up in the trees and jumped down when our backs were turned, which meant she was likely part of the Addi spies Jo had mentioned. She looked like an Addi too, or at least as much of her as I could see in the moonlight. Her black hair was tangled and decorated with leaves that clung to the knots and ragged ends, and her eyes looked dull and bloodshot. Too skinny to be a well-fed Outtie, this Addi was lean and strong as a rubber band ready to snap at anyone or anything that stood in her way.
What I liked most about her, however, was the steady aim of her arrow.
She was a girl who never missed.
“Who are you?” the girl demanded as her eyes flickered between Jo and me.
“Her name is Jo,” I answered. “And I’m Jayla.” I bowed deeply as I said my name, my hand going right to the part of my chest where the gun waited in its holster. As I stood back up, I drew out the weapon and pointed it directly at the Addi spy. “We’re in a bit of a hurry, so if you could kindly show us to the dome entrance, we’d appreciate it.”
“There is no dome entrance,” the girl lied. Her arrow never quivered, even as her eyes went to my gun. “Seems you came all this way for nothing.”
“Maybe.” I focused my eyes on the girl’s bow, and in a second, the whole thing crumbled into dust. “Or maybe you’ll show us to the Addi entrance before I turn you into a matching pile of morphoid.”
“Oh my God.” The girl sunk to one knee and lowered her eyes. “My queen, I had no idea it was you. Please spare me.”
“What did she just call me?” I asked Jo.
Jo, now that it was finally safe to move, came over and put her arm around me. “Didn’t you ever wonder why they gave you that nickname in NORCC?”
“Well, yes, but my crew—”
“—was initially composed of girls who knew you from inside the dome. Knew you as their queen. Remember, it doesn’t take a lot for a whole population of druggies to settle on the same crazy idea. Naturally the headmistress and her lackeys never thought twice about the nickname, and neither did you, once those memories became hazy Mo-D dreams. But you’re Royalty, Jayla. Have been since you were born with those special powers of yours.”
I lowered the gun—now that the stranger knew my powers, there was no need for it anyway—and put it back into its holster.
“Take us inside,” I ordered the stranger. “We’re not safe out here.”
We’re not safe in there either, the little voice inside my brain reminded me. Not there; not anywhere.
THE PATH into the dome led us down into a sewage hole that had since been absorbed into the landscape of the forest. Covered in vines and dead leaves, the metal cover was invisible to all Outtie guards who came to the path, but the stranger found it easily.
“You still haven’t told us your name,” I said as she helped me down into the hole like a bucket lowered into a well. A few feet in, I found the ladder carved into the stone side and secured hand- and footholds.
“It’s Riley.” Riley skipped the ladder and jumped the ten feet to the sewer floor. “No last name, just like all the other Addi kids in our dome. If our parents had last names, they’ve forgotten them.”
“And your patrol, the Addis who move in and out of the dome. Are they….” I didn’t know how to put my question delicately.
“Still addicted to morphoid?” Riley seemed unbothered by the question. “Impossible not to be, what with all the smoke filling our lungs and seeping into the food stores the Outties send in. We’re just the people who can still function.”
We followed Riley through a maze of underground tunnels I would never have made it out of on my own. Though I’d known my fear of heights since childhood, now I discovered a new terror: underground spaces in the dark. The stagnant air seemed too thick to inhale, and the walls rolled closer and closer to my outstretched hands.
Relax, Jo thought at me. Apparently I’d been broadcasting my fear like a lighthouse beam.
Sorry.
But I couldn’t relax. Images flashed in my mind in rapid succession: shooting Leah, turning the Authority guys to dust, leaving my crew. Now these walls were closing in on me, forcing me to remember what I’d done.
My breath quickened, short bursts of air that could not feed my panicked lungs. Though the cave was dark aside from Riley’s flashlight, little pinpricks of light danced in my vision. My legs gave out, and I fell to my knees and then hands like I was about to do a push-up.
“Do something!” Jo told Riley as I faded out of consciousness. “Help her!”
Strong arms embraced me and rolled me over. The last thing I saw before everything went black was Riley’s face, close to mine, illuminated by the flashlight’s glow.
Chapter Nine
I WOKE up to the sound of voices.
“Is that really her?” one whispered. “She’s so big now.”
“Oh please, you don’t remember what she looked like.”
“Do too.”
“You were too high to remember your own name. Probably still are.”
“Am not.”
“Then what’s your name?”
“Uh….”
When I opened my eyes, I found myself in an abandoned building unique to the cityscape under the dome. In here, an abandoned building meant exposed ceilings, crumbling drywall, dripping pipes, and rats. All of the windows were broken, and I looked right through them to an identical building on either side.
The two women above me looked like they’d been on Mo-D since before my parents were born. Ragged and toothless, they dressed in layers of ripped fabric and spoke with gummy slurs. One wore a single silver earring dangling from her ear, while the other had pinned an old-fashioned broach into her hair.
“Look, she’s awake.”
“I can see that… whatever your name is.”
“What is my name?” The one wearing a single earring peered up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Marie Claire? Marybeth? Marilyn?”
“Let’s just call you Mary,” I interrupted. “Now, Mary, can you tell me where Jo and Riley went?”
“Jo and Riley?” Mary looked at the woman with the broach. “Now those names sound familiar.”
“Sure do. Were they on TV?”
“TV.” Mary sighed longingly and rubbed her pointer finger against her dry and veiny nose. “I remember back in the day—before those horrible Outties shut off our power, curse them all—we used to watch TV every night.”
“I remember too!” The other woman’s eyes lit up and then dulled. “Now wait. I did remember, I swear. Something about my parents….”
“Jo and Riley,” I repeated as I struggled to sit up. “They’re the girls who brought me here.”
But Mary and her friend had disappeared down the reminiscing rabbit hole, and nothing I said or did could bring them out of it. They wandered off, still mumbling, and left me alone on what appeared to be, once I made it to the window and could look down several flights, the top floor of a tall building. Spread around me was New Orleans, or what was left of it after so many years of decay. Not a single lamp illuminated the scene, although a few candles and flashlights flickered in and out of sight.
“Great. If it’s not tunnels, it’s heights,” I mumbled as I stared down at the rubble-strewn street. Then I walked back across the room to the door and left, hoping to find Riley and Jo on the streets of what had once been my home.
I remembered little of the geography of New Orleans, but the smells—morphoid, smoke, sweet candles, rotted garbage—were as familiar as the olfactory geography of NORCC. Every street smelled the same, and in fact looked the same, as every other. Drugged-out Addis squatted on every street corner and in every alley, as territorial as wild dogs and as protective of their packs. Small children ran around their dozing parents, their eyes gray and unseeing as they played in their collective Mo-D universe.
“Help me chase the ghost,” one of the women squatting near me called out. She wore a sweater with holes in it and dirty pants that had once been white but were now as gray as morphoid. “Chasing the ghost” had developed from “chasing the dragon,” a heroin user’s slang for smoking from the foil setup often used with Mo-D.
“Sorry, sister,” I said as I passed her. “I’m clean.”
Her eyes shifted out of the smoke. “Clean?”
“Yeah.” I held up my hands in case she didn’t understand what I meant.
“No one’s clean in here.” She pointed upward at the sky, where morphoid smoke clouded the dome. “No one can be.”
She made a good point, I thought as I continued to walk. The smoke-filled air was having an effect on me, flooding my lungs with secondhand smoke with every breath. I could not have explained the feeling, but it was like what happened when you got so tired that at any moment you’d fall asleep in your chair. Like what happened when the night became extra quiet, and every interruption—a clock, a heavy sigh, a bird call—seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
A rat scurried under my feet, and I leaped up and over his curious black head and onto the next sidewalk block. When he ran he listed from side to side like a drunk after one too many. Even the rat had gray eyes, and his hair, matted and oily, had gray streaks in it.
Having nothing else to go on, I followed my instincts and continued down the road to the next cross street, where I turned right. Here the road split in two, each block bookended by an identical large building, but nothing in whatever subconscious memories I was drawing directions from told me which building to enter. Both had black windows and metal paneling, and atop both roofs were large-lettered signs that had long since lost their glow.
Not there, my memory told me. My eyes shifted to the left, where an alley led back a different direction. There.
Again, I followed the path. This alley had no squatters, nor voices or candles, to interrupt the quiet darkness. Yet I heard them anyway, the voices, echoing from the past.
Show them, Jayla.
Mom, I don’t want to—
Show them!
White powder drifted down through the air like so many tiny snowflakes. Jo caught them on her tongue and swallowed, though I told her not to.
Amazing, said whoever was watching. A true gift.
Now, as I came to the place where I had spent most of my childhood, I knew different. What had once been the boiler room of a building had been converted by my parents into a makeshift home, one from which they could come and go easily. Though the whole city was there for the taking, Addis were like rabbits, making homes in holes that they could enter and leave just as quickly. Most of them spent day and night outside with only the dome for protection, the easier to trade morphoid and smoke it once they acquired it.
The door was shut, but when I tried the rusted handle, it turned. Inside, the light from the street illuminated two beds—one for my parents and one for Jo and me—a dead refrigerator that had been used as a closet, and a wobbly table with part of the third leg now missing. Perhaps another Addi had used it for firewood, or we had, once upon a time.
Though I expected to be overwhelmed by nostalgia, the room did not feel like home—not like the alley did. We had not spent a lot of time in here, this claustrophobic hovel, except on nights when the Authorities came to collect the children.
“I thought we’d find you here,” said a voice from behind me.
“I didn’t intend to come here, but I did.”
“I know what you mean.” Jo came into the room and sat on one of the beds, the one with a blue blanket eaten into swiss cheese by the rats. “It was a lot worse without you and Mom. Dad pretty much lost his marbles the night you left, and he’s never gotten them back.”
“Where is he?”
“Left him with Riley and the other rebels. I was supposed to collect you from Mary and her friend, but I should have known better than to rely on their memories. Mary’s our grandmother, you know?”
“No,” I said, surprised. Most things were coming back to me now, but not her.
“We never saw her much. She went missing for a good ten years in there before Dad found her in some smoke house on the edge of the city. You’ll never guess what she was doing there.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Good call.” Jo sprung off the bed and took my arm. “I know this is hard for you, but we need to go find Dad and the others. Apparently the Authorities have set a date for extinction: April 1.”
“April 1?” I balked. “That’s less than a month from now.”
“Thus the hurry. Hopefully you can guide the Addis into some kind of plan. Until now they’ve been leaderless and therefore directionless. You need to get them and the other Addis out of here before it’s too late.”
She made it sound so simple, but herding rabid rats might have been easier. From what I’d seen of my fellow Addis, they were perfectly content living for their next smoke.
“Come on,” Jo said, tugging on my arm again. “Let’s go meet Dad.”
Chapter Ten
MY DAD and Riley were back toward the building where Mary and her friend had “watched over me.” This building had something marked in white spray paint on the inside of the doorframe, and when I looked closely, I could make out one word: résister.
“It means ‘resist’ in French,” Jo explained as she knocked three times on the door. “Most of the rebel signs are in the old language, lost to most Addis years ago but retained by the Resistance for secret signals. Tonight they’re holding a meeting.”
Riley opened the door a crack, then wider once she recognized us.
“Come in,” she said as she stepped back. “Your father is waiting, and I want to introduce you to the other members of the Resistance.”
By the door two bouncers checked the eyes of those who entered with a flashlight. Where they got the batteries, I did not know; perhaps they had smuggled them from the Outtie suburbs. We followed Riley across the room, which was filled with Addi rebels alert enough to make it to the meeting, and over to where a few of the older men and women held council.
“I thought you said Dad was….” I made a crazy sign with my finger.
“He is. But as father of the queen, he’s permitted certain privileges.”
“Like getting high?” I asked, my voice filled with rage.
“He’s not the enemy,” Jo reminded me when we were just a few feet away.
“I know. But there are plenty of people here who have been strong enough….” I trailed off when I came face-to-face with the man I recognized immediately as my dad. He had grown old since I’d last seen him, and white streaked through his shaggy brown hair like foam floating on choppy water. The wool coat, far too warm for the weather, was the same as he’d worn when I left so many years ago.
“Jayla, this is Ben,” Riley said softly. “Your father.”
He looked at me with his dull morphoid eyes. I wanted to hit him, to slap him across the face, to tell him that it was his fault Mom took me to NORCC, but my lips squeezed shut and not a word slipped through their gate.
“Say something,” Jo urged. “He’ll remember your voice.”
If I opened my mouth, I knew I would start screaming. How could the dirty, drug-addicted man in front of me just sit there in a stupor while his children tried to defend themselves?
“Are you okay?” Jo asked, but then she got called away by one of her friends, a young boy about her age, and she left me with Dad and Riley.
“Jayla?” Dad asked in the direction of somewhere over my shoulder.
“Is he—?” I couldn’t bear to say high.
“I think so.” Riley waved a finger in front of his eyes, but they didn’t blink. “Try talking to him, like Jo suggested. Maybe he’ll recognize you.”
But no words came, nothing but overwhelming disgust. At least we looked nothing alike—he didn’t have our white eyes, and his hair was much darker.
“Ben, this is your daughter, Jayla,” Riley reminded him. “Is there anything you’d like to say to her?”
“Jayla?” he asked again, sounding like a child who had lost its mother. “Where is my little girl?”
I tried to stay angry, but I couldn’t. Maybe I was too exhausted from the journey; maybe I understood, after so many years in NORCC, that the man in front of me wasn’t really my father. Morphoid had taken over his mind and body.
“Here, Dad,” I finally whispered. “I’m right here.”
He squinted up at me. “No, you’re too old to be my Jayla. My little girl is out with her mother, but she’ll be back any minute.”
Droning on, my father slid back into whatever world Jo had pulled him from when she arrived. Riley could not change his mind about me, and I could not bring myself to try.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said between my dad’s mumbles. “I had hoped… but he’s pretty far gone.”
“It’s fine,” I lied. “Don’t worry about it.”
Riley introduced me to the elders, a group of five men with the same unkempt beards and wool coats as my father. They wore white scarves around their wrists, which Riley explained marked them as Resistance fighters.
“This is Omar,” Riley said as she pointed to the youngest of the old men. “He’s been leader of the Resistance since the last leader, Danzen, was killed by the Authorities on a raid. Omar, this is Queen Jayla.”
“I’m honored,” said Omar as he touched his forehead to my right hand. “We’ve waited a long time for your return. And you,” he said to Jo, who had joined us. “You did well in bringing her here so quickly.”
“I did nothing,” Jo admitted. “Jayla was the one to get us out after she shot the morphoid distributor in NORCC.”
“Always a fighter,” Omar said admiringly. Everyone acted like they knew me, like I’d been gone two days instead of twelve years, but they were still as foreign to me as my powers. “Would you like to address your people?”
Addis on the Inside Page 5