by Julian North
Kortilla shook her head. “Get over yourself. Paul was supposed to be a girl, you know.”
Nythan’s eyes grew wide. “You read Dune… maybe I died after all.”
“If the boy is well enough to kiss my cousin, he’s well enough to get the hell outta here,” Zippo declared.
Kortilla looked at me. “You said they were taking Papa to Charlotte?”
“He was too hurt to come with me. Rhett won’t let anything happen to him. Still, if I go there, if I go back to Charlotte—”
Zippo scoffed. “Charlotte? Those kids down there are finished. I heard the Yank troops are in the streets of Raleigh. Charlotte’s got a few days left. Going there would be like marching back into friggin’ Fishkill.”
That news took the shine from Nythan’s recovery. I hoped Jalen would move Alexander if they had to retreat—assuming the whole Southern government didn’t collapse before then.
“Matias?” I asked Kortilla, already knowing the answer.
She shook her head, eyes downcast.
“I don’t see Alexander either,” Nythan said.
“I need your help with him, Nythan. More than I’ve ever needed anything.”
I think my voice told Nythan enough that he could guess the rest. “Never give up hope,” he whispered.
“Alissa wanted me to contact Headmaster Frost-Bell.” I said it mostly to myself. “She thought he would be a potential ally.”
Nythan’s eyes fixed on me from the exam table. “The headmaster? You want him to expel Virginia’s vicious little brat or something? You better bring me up to speed before you do anything silly.”
“Later, Nythan. Alexander told me I could trust Frost-Bell as well. They were family… in a bind, I could trust him. A man of honor, he said. Alexander doesn’t use that term lightly.”
“What can a schoolteacher do for us?” Kortilla asked.
I shut my eyes, trying to recall the images from Kristolan’s memory. She knew him. I was sure of it. I needed to understand more, but they wouldn’t come. “I don’t exactly know. But Alissa told me a while ago that she saw him meeting with an agent from California that she knew. And Kristolan… she knew Frost-Bell. There’s a memory I have, of him, in a place… I think it’s in California.”
“You remember… you have her memories?” Nythan’s eyes were tight with concern.
“Yeah, I do.”
“That worries me.”
“You have your own problems, and that can wait. I’m okay.”
Nythan shook his head, unhappy. “It’s true that Cali is likely to be a lot safer than anywhere else in this country. Maybe they can help us with some other things as well. I need to understand what is going on with you as well, Daniela.”
“You’d abandon Jalen?” Kortilla seemed more troubled by that than I would’ve expected. More troubled than my having memories of Kristolan Foster-Rose-Hart, it seemed. “He helped you because I asked. And Papa, your bro, and Alexander are still there. I know you’re not ditching Alexander. I know it’s still you in there. So, what’s the real plan, hermana?”
I chewed on my lip. I had no good options, no clear choices. I had to help Alexander and Mateo. My brother had looked bad on the roof of the prison. Helping them meant getting them both out of Charlotte. They’d be better off in California. We all would be, I thought. Not that I’d ever been there, or knew anything about the place, except that Virginia wasn’t in charge there, and her armies weren’t in the midst of conquering it. But I would be abandoning Jalen and his people. I had given my word to help him… yet blood had to come first.
“Nythan, can you access the Tuck network from here? I know it’s only used to contact a student or teacher with a direct link, but I think that is what we need. Let’s see if Frost-Bell is willing to meet us.”
“You’re going into Manhattan? That’s loco.”
I shook my head. “Tell him to meet us in Jersey. Someplace we won’t draw attention, a place not on the corporate highways. Can you do that, Nythan?”
“Of course I can do it. The question is: will he come?”
“If he’s the man Alexander says he is, if he’s what I suspect, he’ll come.”
Nythan struggled to raise himself off the table. Kortilla caught him before he toppled onto the floor. “Take it slow. Zippo will carry you.”
“There’s something else I need to get. It’s sensitive.”
I gritted my teeth. “What, Nythan?”
He motioned me closer. “Some decent clothes and a viser. We should be able to buy something adequate in the Maze upstairs. More importantly, the controlColonies are here, remember? Especially the sub-colony cure I’ve been working on. We should take them with us. After I’m dressed, we can find out if we can trust the illustrious headmaster.”
Chapter 16
We arranged to meet Alistair Frost-Bell, Headmaster of the Tuck School, former Senator of the State of New York, at an abandoned gas station off the old New Jersey Turnpike. I told Nythan everything that had happened on the drive out to Jersey, about Havelock, and about Alexander.
“Havelock must have betrayed them in grand fashion. That is the only rational explanation for them to imprison and torture him like that.”
“They might have just thought he was holding out on them about something… he had his own plans for me, it seemed. But, knowing Havelock, you are probably correct that it was something devious.”
Nythan bobbed his head. “In any case, he must have had information they wanted desperately. Otherwise they just would’ve killed him,” Nythan mused. “It’s sounds like they may have gone too far.”
“I don’t think it was that… his mind was a void. Like a chip slave. But I don’t think they got whatever they were after.”
“What makes you conclude that?”
I pursed my lips. Everything had happened quickly. “There was still something left of Havelock, buried deep inside. He had been maimed, but not shattered. And there is the matter of Ji-ho. He claimed he was working on something ‘critical.’ He made it seem like getting killed was just an annoyance for him—he seemed to imply he was working on a much bigger problem. I have a feeling it was connected to whatever Havelock did.”
“To have someone from the Korean Corporate Council here, and working on a project… it may indeed be something big. We know Havelock was not one for small plans.” Nythan rubbed his head. “I’m glad you were able to find me, obviously. I hope I can live up to what you need.”
Kortilla spoke haltingly. “Matias?”
“I’ll try,” was all Nythan managed. “If we can find him.”
Neither of us told Nythan that we were counting on him to save our loved ones, but
I think he felt the burden of our hopes. He was uncharacteristically quiet during the rest of the drive. Sometimes it sucked to be a genius.
We arrived early to case the old filling station that would be our rendezvous site. Kross had snatched another car and arrived ahead of us. Nythan, Kortilla, and I, along with Zippo, went inside after Kross gave us the all-clear. The station was a crumbling mess of deeply dimpled concrete. There were holes in the ground where the gas pumps once stood. Fetid water and fields of dirt and weeds were our neighbors, but at least it would be hard to approach this place without being seen.
Zippo showed us what little there was to see of the place. “I had to send a couple of squatters on their way. But other than that, this place seems okay, just like your fancy friend promised.”
“It stinks,” Nythan commented.
Zippo shrugged. “What do you expect? Ground’s toxic. That’s why there’s nothing else out here.”
“You’re joking?”
Zippo pointed toward the Manhattan skyline. “Where do you think your richies’ waste goes? Not enough room in BC to hold all that crap.”
I expected Frost-Bell to drive up in an elegant black sedan, maybe even one with Tuck markings, although that wouldn’t have been very intelligent. Instead, the first sign of him was the beati
ng thunder of gasoline-fired pistons.
Zippo called out from his lookout post, “There’s a man on a motorcycle approaching. Coming in over the fields instead of the road. Really pushin’ it too.”
The rider steered his noisy bike all the way to the station and wheeled it inside. Only once he was under the roof did Frost-Bell remove the biker’s helmet that concealed his identity.
“That richie looks like a tricked-out Z-pop pusher, Dee. You sure you got the right guy?” Kross said, keeping his gun trained on the headmaster.
I stared at Frost-Bell, at his chrome and black hair still perfectly coiffed, his face so dignified. Something about the arrogance of his bearing itched my temper. “I thought gasoline engines weren’t permitted in Manhattan.”
“It’s got an electric motor too. I turn on the gas when no one is around.” He looked at Zippo and Kross uncomfortably, perhaps struggling to keep a sneer from his face. “Can you send your friends away so that we might talk.”
“It’s okay, boys, give us some space.”
Kross and Zippo shrugged as one, as if they were being controlled by the same set of puppet strings. “We’ll be around if you need us, Dee,” Kross said. He gave Frost-Bell an ominous pat on the shoulder. “Real close, fancy man.”
The headmaster looked appraisingly at Kortilla. He wasn’t impressed. “The young lady too. Let those of us from Tuck speak frankly among ourselves.”
“This is Kortilla Gonzales, my sister in blood. My life is hers if she wants it. There is nothing you can say to me that you cannot say to her.”
Kortilla lifted her chin in challenge.
Frost-Bell made a face like he had swallowed something sour. “As you wish.”
“Alexander said I could trust you.”
“You can.” Frost-Bell scanned the room. “Where is he?”
“Not here,” I said curtly. “Alissa told me you were looking for me, making inquiries, even speaking to well-placed alumni. That was a risk—trying to help, particularly with Virginia’s nope-hating son being at Tuck. Why?”
“You are a Tuck student—I was concerned about all of you.” He saw I wasn’t satisfied with that answer. “Alexander asked me to look after you. If he disappeared, you were the person I was to seek out. He was quite adamant about it, and I gave my word. Do I get a real answer to my question now?”
“Alexander is in Charlotte.” I sucked in a difficult breath. It was still hard to speak about him. “He… he has been chipped.”
Frost-Bell’s façade of quiet dignity vanished. He took a hasty step toward me. Kortilla raised her force pistol just as quickly.
“Chipped… it…that cannot be.” His eyes grew tight, disbelief turning to anger. “What happened to him?”
“My turn. What is your relationship to Alexander? He told me you were related.”
“He told you that?” Frost-Bell shook his head in disbelief. “He must truly trust you.”
“You shouldn’t be so surprised.”
Frost-Bell’s face flushed hotly, but he quickly brought his countenance back under control. “Very well. It seems we two must find a way to trust each other, for Alexander’s sake.” He stepped back to a more comfortable distance, his anger seemingly fading. “Alexander and I are indeed related. I am his uncle—his mother’s half-brother, technically.”
Nythan made a twisted smirk of skepticism. “No way. That would be the gossip of Tuck. Highborn have no secrets. You were a senator. It would’ve come out. Manhattan society is like a net drama.”
Frost-Bell drew himself up, as if mustering his dignity. “I am illegitimate. A bastard son of an affair, with a nope—a non-highborn—no less. A family humiliation, my humiliation. That is my secret. However, given my family, they were very effective in covering it up.”
I thought about the disdain with which this man had treated me at school when he had called me out in front of the track team, openly wondering if I even belonged at Tuck. My words were bitter: “A secret best hidden behind a veneer of haughty dignity.”
He offered a stiff head bow but no apology. “I could never have gotten to where I am if the truth was known. As you say, Mr. Royce, it’s like a net drama. Except in the real world the underdog does not get to triumph. Now you know my secret, Ms. Machado. I am a liar, but I am not unfeeling, despite what you may think. Will you please tell me what happened to my nephew?”
I considered my next words for a long moment. “You were at Kristolan’s funeral, weren’t you? I saw you in the window during the ceremony.”
Frost-Bell nodded. “Family—one longs for what is denied them. It was a stupid risk to indulge in such emotions.”
Under that mask was someone who cared about Alexander, it seemed. “He came with me to find the answers we needed to stop the chipping of people in Bronx City.” I told him about the prefab chipping unit we’d hijacked, about the extraction platform, about being captured and the rest. I left out Havelock. “I don’t exactly know what happened to Alexander aboard that platform. But the doctors in Charlotte said the chipping process wasn’t complete. Something went wrong, like it did with me. Nythan was almost chipped too, but he’s still with us. Alexander may still be in there. He must still be in there. There is hope.”
Frost-Bell stared down at the floor. His hand was shaking. “Chipping… it’s irreversible. The damage to the mind cannot be undone—it’s like burning a Picasso and trying to repaint it from memory. Certain things just cannot be recreated, even by a master. Each person is unique.”
He said the words, and I believed his grief was real. But there was something else too— the tiny flicker of an idea he didn’t want to share.
“You have an idea?”
Frost-Bell’s mouth tightened. He had more secrets, despite his earlier words about trust. But I had Kristolan’s memories and Alissa’s story about his meeting with Californian agents to aid in my analysis. I took an informed guess about what he didn’t want to speak about.
“You were in California.”
His head shot up. He stared at me, alarmed.
“You were there… with Kristolan. With Alexander.”
Frost-Bell’s mouth opened. I was close. I kept probing those latent memories that Kristolan had left with me.
“You were… you were visiting their mother, your sister.” As I said it, I knew it was true. Kristolan remembered it all. “Alexander’s mother is in California. That’s why he never speaks about her.”
Frost-Bell’s eyes bulged with alarm, but eventually he nodded. “Yes, that is how certain things started.” He sounded regretful.
“It’s a clinic,” I said, getting excited as the full memory came to me, as I understood the hope it offered. “There is a medical facility; it’s a secret place. Even most people in California don’t know what they do there—because it involves chips. They use chips and chemicals to try and repair brain function.”
“It’s not like that, Daniela. They don’t treat chipped slaves… chipped people. No place does that. It’s just a therapy. Dimitri Yasoff—founder of the greatest of California’s Thought Giant corporations—established the clinic to try to preserve his consciousness after death. They’ve failed in that task so far, but their research led them to certain therapies that we hoped might help save Beatice, my sister and Alexander’s mother.”
“What happened to her?”
“That is not something we speak about.” He sighed. “I will not speak of why, but I can tell you that she did things to cope. To cope with events in her life, she turned to a drug to survive. The drug was the substance you in Bronx City call Z-pop.”
Kortilla whistled in surprise. “Richies… on Z-pop. That’s just too jackin’ real.”
Frost-Bell frowned at her crassness. He might care about Alexander, but he was still a snob. “It’s more common than you might think, although addictions like those are covered up by well-bred families, as it represents a double disgrace: illegal and uncouth. In any case, she overdosed. Her mind was damaged, a portion of
the prefrontal cortex essentially erased.”
“Chips do similar damage,” Nythan said, his mind already working.
“I confess I do not understand all the science behind the therapy, but it involves using the memories stored within the healthy part of the brain, and the so-called genetic memory of the subject, to repair and remap the damaged portions of the mind.”
“That sounds promising.”
“Beatice has been there many years. I will not say she has shown no improvement—she can feed herself, occasionally recognize people, which are great strides compared to when she began treatment, but she is not the person she was. Perhaps she does not want to come back, and we are merely torturing her in that place.”
I advanced upon Frost-Bell until our faces were just a few inches apart. “We need to get Alexander there. Matias too, when we find him. You can arrange that, can’t you? You are an agent of the Californian government.”
He laughed, and not with mirth. “The Californian government. Ah, let me explain a bit about that.” Frost-Bell placed his hands together. “There is so little contact between the United States and California due to the embargo laws and Orderist propaganda. People think California is some monolithic entity, our devious enemy. The government encourages that belief. People forget that the Orderists came to power because of the utter chaos this nation’s democracy inflicted—people were at each other’s throats, while the government barely functioned, so torn was the country by competing factions. Breaking off from the rest of the United States did not suddenly make a democratic government function better. California retained our old single-person voting system—but also the political chaos that came with it.”
“What are you saying?”
“Their government is so factionalized it hardly functions. Indeed, it is barely a government at all. Rule of law is failing out there; localities and factions hold sway over their own territories. Even their military is split into pieces that don’t always cooperate. The situation was a bit better years ago, when we made a deal with one faction of their government—they call themselves the Jobsians. The section of northern California where the clinic is located is in their territory. They are part spiritual cult, part political movement—so very Californian. They espouse the utilization of technology to solve problems and bring people closer together.” He laughed at the absurdity of the notion.