Age of Order

by Julian North

  I had no clock or sense of time as I sulked with my gloom. Perhaps Mateo came every hour. Perhaps every ten minutes. “Come outside with me, Daniela.”

  My sorrow didn’t end. Always, he came. He brought me food I wouldn’t eat, then hid it for later, so Aba wouldn’t know. I didn’t know how long it went on for. Days. My throat was so dry by the end that I couldn’t have spoken if I wanted to. I certainly couldn’t have stood up.

  “Come outside with me, Daniela.” Then he added, “I’m never giving up.”

  It was the “never” that did it. That was what I needed to hear, what I needed to believe. That night, I found a place inside me that was cold. It gave me the strength to go on living.

  I meant it when I told Mateo “never.”

  Dr. Willis arrived at the safe house an hour or so later, her knuckles white with rage. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t—he’s my brother.”

  “Damn it, Daniela, I can help him. But he’s got to come in.”

  Don’t trust these people, Mateo had said.

  “Why are you willing to do this for me? For him?” I asked, low and even.

  “I’m a doctor,” she said. “But I need the patient if I’m going to do any actual doctor stuff. What was the point in healing the force rifle blast if he’s going to go off and die anyway? A waste of good nanites.” She paced while I sat at the kitchen table.

  My eyes watched her move, the agitation in her fisted hands. I didn’t believe her answer. She wanted something more than to help Mateo.

  “Can you get a message to him?” Doctor Willis asked.

  Don’t trust these people.

  “It might take a while, given the method I have to use.”

  “It’s important. He needs to reconsider.”

  “Nothing is more important to me than Mateo. But I need to go back to Bronx City to get in touch with him.”

  “Right,” she nodded, looking around as if realizing where we were for the first time. “I’ll arrange something.”

  Dr. Willis disappeared into the other bedroom. Ten minutes later, a nondescript corporate car picked me up at a corner a couple of blocks away.

  Aba was asleep by the time I got home. As far as she knew, I had been studying with a friend in Manhattan. If she had been worried about me, there was no sign of it. I imagined my mom would’ve known something was wrong, if she’d been alive. A nice thought, a nice illusion. I wanted to ping Kortilla, but it was past midnight.

  I crawled into bed. My bones ached to their core, my head spun, but sleep didn’t come. Instead, I stared into the same corner I had retreated to a decade ago. The wobbly red table was faded but still hanging on. Just like Mateo. Minutes became hours as I lay there, the air stiff and warm. I told myself there was still hope for my brother. Doctor Willis might not be telling me the whole truth, but she did know about the Waste. She had studied it. I tried to piece together how I fit into all of this. The answers had to be at Tuck. Havelock had them. I wanted to get back to school and talk to the man. There were only a few hours left before sunrise when sleep finally took me.

  As soon as I arrived at school the next morning, I went down to the track. Alexander wasn’t there today. It was still early, and I’d gotten home late, so I showered in the locker room, letting gallons of warm, clean water wash over me, enjoying the decadence of it. Towards the end of washing, I remembered I was going to need a new digiBook. I’d have to head over to administration at lunch. I didn’t see how that conversation was going to be anything except awful. I didn’t even have the wrecked remains of the thing to show them. They’d probably assume I sold it.

  Alexander was at his seat by the time I got myself to Lit class. He was twiddling with his digiBook. He turned to me, his face typically unreadable.

  “Sorry I ran off yesterday,” I said.

  “What happened? If it is something you wish to talk about, of course.”

  “Family emergency.”

  “I understand,” he said. His tone was so flat I would’ve thought he was mocking me if this had been anyone except Alexander. “Family is not easy.”

  I let a slight grin crawl onto the edge of my lips. “Maybe we can stretch our legs downstairs at lunch?”

  No smile, but I got a full nod.

  “I’ve gotta get a new digiBook first,” I told him right as class started. “Might be a few minutes late.”

  It took split-second reflexes to be the first student out of my Trig class, combined with cat-like agility to maneuver around the other hungry competitors in the hallways, then sheer will to overtake my final adversaries climbing the stairs up to the dining hall, but I did it: third in line for food. I loaded up on bananas and sliced carrots, then headed down a flight of stairs to the administration floor. Castle’s directory informed me that I was looking for the Office of School Services. I’d only been on this floor twice, both times to see the headmaster. Its layout was even more maze-like than the rest of the school. My viser displayed a map and suggested route, but I was having trouble distinguishing between the dark warren-like corridors that twisted, intersected, and abruptly ended without logical purpose. I made a couple of turns that my map didn’t think existed. Based on the plaques on the doors around me, I had stumbled into the teachers’ office area. I thought about Alexander waiting for me downstairs and walked faster. I stopped looking at the map as I turned repeatedly, then doubled back. I covered a fair amount of ground, but seemed to get nowhere new. There wasn’t even a teacher around to ask. They took their lunch at the same time we did.

  As I crossed an intersection of two hallways, I caught a glimpse of two students just outside a doorway down one of the smaller passages. I didn’t stop. I didn’t have time. I turned another corner. But the image of the students lingered, gradually coming into focus in my mind. I slowed. It couldn’t be. It made no sense and I didn’t have time to chase the imaginary and the impossible. I glanced at my viser. I’d been searching for ten minutes already. There was no telling how much time I’d have to waste talking to the people in school services. But I turned around anyway. This time I ran, rules be damned.

  I slowed before the intersection where I might have seen the impossible. I peeked my head around, telling myself I was wrong. But there they were. The air flooded out of my lungs as I tried to understand what I was seeing: Alissa, standing not more than six inches from Drake Pillis-Smith. I was perhaps forty feet away, but there was no mistaking those two people. Alissa had a blank, almost confused look on her face as she gazed at Drake. I would’ve guessed they were about to kiss, except for the look on Drake’s face. There was an intensity there, an expression more appropriate for the starting line of a one-hundred-meter sprint than casual conversation. He might have even been sweating.

  Just as I was about to leave, Alissa gave a grave nod of her head and turned abruptly. She walked away from me, her expression hidden. Drake watched her for a few seconds, then walked in the same direction. With a reluctant sigh, I followed as quietly as I could. Alexander was going to hate me.

  Alissa disappeared into one of the teachers’ offices. The doors were unlocked, of course. Tuck didn’t bother with locks; we had the honor code. Drake stood a few steps behind her, as if keeping watch. His lips curled in a look of wicked satisfaction. He moved closer to the office door. The fingers on his visered hand twitched. His head jerked. I slid behind the corner that concealed me a moment before he stole a quick glance over his shoulder. When I judged it safe to stick my head out again, Drake was just outside the open door, his visered hand inside. I tried to see what he was doing, but the door and Drake’s hulking body blocked my view. Ten seconds later he backed away, walking quickly down the hall away from me. A shiver ran up my back. Alissa exited a few moments later. She walked towards me. I ducked into the office of Ms. Marisa Jones-Mailer, whom I had never met. She had a messy desk and a dusty terminal in her small cubicle. Blood pumped in my ears as Alissa walked past. Once the sound of her feet had disappeared, I
ran back to the office she and Drake had entered. The inscription on the door plaque made my heart skip: George Lynder, Literature. I checked to make sure no one else was around, then opened the door a crack. I knew what I’d find even before I saw it lying on the small mahogany desk: Mr. Lynder’s notebook.

  “Why, Alissa?” I whispered as I shut the door and hurried away.

  I dashed up the stairs to the dining hall, dodging throngs of students with food trays to where Nythan and Lara sat. Lara gave me a cold stare as I approached. I grabbed Nythan’s arm.

  “I need you to come with me, right now.”

  He spun in surprise, his mouth open, some mockery at the tip of his tongue. Then he absorbed the look on my face. His mouth snapped shut. I dragged, he followed. I heard Lara asking what the hell was going on.

  “Where are we going?”

  I didn’t answer. My mind was too consumed by the implications of what I had just seen. It shouldn’t have been possible. Alissa loathed Drake. I’d seen it. I couldn’t have been that wrong about her. He was highborn, she a malformed nope. It made no sense. But that didn’t matter. She was in trouble, and I owed her twice over.

  I led Nythan up the stairs, four flights to the top. Then down a corridor and up another flight of stairs marked “Roof Access.”

  “Daniela, you’re starting to freak me out.”

  I shoved the heavy door that led to the top of Tuck, yanking Nythan into a gloomy afternoon haze. We had a magnificent view of Central Park, and the great edifices of Manhattan encircled us in the distance. This was where Marie-Ann took the leap that ended her life.

  “Why-are-we-here?” Nythan demanded. “Not that I don’t enjoy being manhandled but—”

  “There aren’t any cameras out here.”

  His mocking grin vanished. “Why are you worried about being overheard?”

  “Because I just watched Alissa sneak into Mr. Lynder’s office and steal a look at the exam questions.”

  I wanted to punch the center of the arrogant grimace that appeared on Nythan’s face. “No way, my friend. Alissa ain’t wired that way. I’ve known her forever. She’s a devoted follower, not a cheater. You saw wrong. Just talk—”

  “Shut up and listen to me. She did it, but that’s not the worst part. The really screwed up part is that I saw her talking to Drake right before. So up close and personal I thought they might’ve decided to be a couple. Then our crazy girl walks off without a care, waltzes into Lynder’s office, and doesn’t seem to notice the huge troll with his viser just outside, recording the whole thing.”

  I didn’t think it was possible for Nythan to get any whiter, but I was wrong. He’d gone so pale I could see the veins in his face.

  “Were they talking? Could you hear the words?”

  “No, too far away. And I didn’t see Alissa speak. Only Drake, I think. He had a strange look—like whatever he was saying was the most important thing in the world.”

  Nythan rubbed his forehead. “It can’t be.”

  “I saw it, Nythan. I don’t make mistakes about things like this.”

  He waved an absent hand at me. “I believe you.”

  “Why would she do it? I thought she and Drake hated each other. How could Alissa be so stupid?”

  “They do hate each other. And Alissa hates the highborn—maybe more than you. She just hides it better. What she said about Drake at the track meet…it must’ve pushed that hulky psycho over some edge. That chemically engineered swill he takes to compete with Alexander probably didn’t help. But I can’t believe he’d dare this. Or that Kris would be so stupid, even if his family is in debt to them.”

  “Kris Foster-Rose-Hart? You’re not making any sense. And if Alissa hates Drake that much, why would she speak to him, much less put herself in that position? He’s going to get her expelled. That recording, it’s the end for her.”

  Nythan stared into the distance as I spoke. I wasn’t sure he heard me. Then he blinked, as if suddenly returning to the real world.

  “The recording…yes, you’re right. We need to deal with the recording first. Then the rest.”

  “Yeah, but how? He’s got it on his viser.”

  Nythan looked at me, his eyes intense. “This is decision time, Daniela. We can save her, but we’re going to have to put our futures on the line. If we fail, we get expelled with her.”

  I pursed my lips. A few weeks ago, walking away from this place would’ve been easy, except for Mateo. Now I wasn’t sure my being at Tuck would do my brother any good, but the prospect of losing this place weighed on me. I didn’t want to give up what I had here: the place, the track meets, and the people too. Some of them, anyway. But I knew what had to be done.

  “Alissa saved me, and she helped saved my brother. Blood pays its debts.”

  “Here we go then.”

  Nythan’s fingers flicked and pointed. His viser screen flashed data faster than I thought possible, his eyes danced in a frenzied tango with the code displayed on his palm and arm. He looked more machine than human as he worked, his body seemingly frozen, except for his eyes and fingers. I tried to make out the flood of numbers scrolling across the screen on Nythan’s wrist. It was mostly beyond me. Except that he was downloading something big. After several minutes, Nythan’s fingers slowed and his eyes became still. The data stopped flashing. He shut his eyes, as if in a trance.

  “You in there, Nythan?”

  His eyes opened. He was looking right past me, at some point on the horizon.

  “Gort, Klaatu Barada Nikto,” he pronounced, stifling a grin.

  Even I got that one. Over one hundred years old, but so classic it had been remade as a VR simulation on the net. I punched him on the arm, not as hard as I could have, but hard enough. He winced.

  “This isn’t The Day the Earth Stood Still. There’s nothing to shut off.”

  “Oh, yeah? Look at your viser,” Nythan replied. Smug.

  I looked at the device wrapped around my arm: “No connection available.”

  “You crashed the network?”

  Nythan bowed. “Not just crashed. It’s jamming itself, and everyone else’s visers too. No one can use Castle, and no one can transmit viser-to-viser either.”

  “You carry computer viruses around with you?”

  He squirmed. “It was for something else. But easily adaptable for a man like me.”

  “What does crashing Castle get us?”

  “You’ve got an AT above thirty and you need to ask? If you’re on Tuck grounds, your viser cannot link with the real net. The school blocks everything else. Hardwire connections are the only way for data to get out of this place. Castle is a closed environment. Therefore, if you have data on your viser, say an illicit recording of a girl we all love, you can only do three things with it: upload it to Castle, transfer it to someone else on Tuck property or keep it stored on your viser. I’ve just eliminated the first two options.”

  “But he’s still got it on his viser. As soon as he walks out of school, he can transfer it onto the net. It could go anywhere.”

  “You’ve got the problem now, young padawan,” Nythan said.

  “He could just leave, walk beyond Eighty-Ninth Street and upload it to the net.”

  “Policy violation. Students can’t leave the grounds during the school day without consent. And he’d miss classes. But I’ll send a little virus to the front door locks just in case.”

  I huffed. “That’s fine for now. But how do we get Drake’s viser? He’s a little big for you to tackle.”

  “He’s gotta take it off for track practice, no? It’ll be in his locker. No locks at this school.” Nythan smiled at me, eyes big and expectant.

  Deuces.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The school was in viser withdrawal. Nythan’s smile broadened every time he saw a distraught student flicking their fingers in disgust. Most class lectures had been disrupted by the failure of Castle as well, forcing some ad-hoc lessons.

  Nythan e
xplained the next part of his plan to me in Script, his demeanor giddy. It sounded simple. The boys’ locker room had two doors. One led inside from the main corridor, the other led to the track. Drake would go to track practice, leaving his viser in his locker. At ten minutes past four o’clock, after practice had been going on for a few minutes, Nythan would slip into the locker room, find the viser, use his programming magic to delete the recording, and get out. Lara would keep watch on the external door, I’d monitor the door on the track side and keep an eye on Drake.

  I watched the brute throughout Script. He couldn’t sit still. I caught him looking at Nythan several times, who played it cool for once.

  When classes finally ended, a huge line formed at the main exit as the door-locking mechanism switched on and off at random intervals. To top it all off, the vestibule holding the students’ precious familiars was malfunctioning. Nythan knew his business.

  I met him and Lara just before practice was set to start.

  “Has anyone seen or spoken to Alissa?” I asked.

  “I have. She denied everything,” Nythan told me. “She might even believe that.”

  “Maybe Daniela imagined all this,” Lara suggested.

  “She didn’t make it up,” Nythan said. “Alissa’s acting strange. If I had any doubts about what I think happened, I don’t anymore. Her memory is messed up.”

  “What the hell you are talking about? How does any of this make sense?”

  “Let’s just focus on saving Alissa,” Nythan said.

  I gritted my teeth. “I owe Alissa, so I’m in. But this is it, do you understand? I know you’re part of whatever the hell is going on around here. Havelock won’t speak to me. And I want to know the truth about what you people want from me.”

  Nythan and Lara shared a look. Wariness? It was hard to tell. Lara’s eyes had the passion of a bored cat.

  “If I don’t get an explanation, I’m gone,” I told them. “From this place, and from whatever it is you are trying to get out of me.”