With nothing else to do I reached for the book that Nora had left. It felt odd to hold the bound pages in my hands. They smelled musty, and somehow ancient, but I liked it. I flipped through carefully. I hadn’t really paid attention when Laira had given it to me. Now it seemed like some kind of cosmic joke. It was a book of destinies. From the lowliest triggers, to the most important ones that had reshaped our world after the Event. I felt the absence of my own to my core.
I read deep into the night, though must have fallen asleep eventually, because I was jolted awake by an alert on my tracker. I was sure I had it set to do not disturb, but it kept sending out a soft ping.
I rubbed my eyes and looked down at it. A message marked high importance kept blinking on the screen and sending out an audible alert. In all my years involved with the ministry, I’d never seen that—not even in the rare instance when a destiny was broken, and that had only happened twice.
I tapped the message, and it jolted me wide awake.
Happy to hear you’re alive, it read. Especially since I know your secret.
I instinctively looked to the door. But no one was there, no one was watching me, not even the guards. Once they realized I wasn’t the intended target at the UV, they were dismissed. I grasped the rails on the hospital bed, and squeezed my eyes shut. This was all a bad dream. Maybe the sleeping medication was creating some kind of hallucination. I opened up my eyes and looked back at my tracker. The message was still there. I had to face facts, this was happening.
The worst part was that I didn’t even know what secret they were referring to. That I helped three prisoners escape, that I was in cahoots with the Revenants—who weren’t even supposed to exist—or that I that I was hiding my true destiny. Any of those would be enough to have me locked up, or worse, for life.
Was it from Dax? Doubtful. She was smart, but she wasn’t a hacker. Whoever it was had broken into my tracker, overriding the settings. I studied the message, but there was no clear sender. It came from a proxy server that just gave me a list of numbers. Sol was the only person I knew who could do something like this, but he’d never try and blackmail me. Not after everything that had happened. Besides, if he had wanted to extort ostows from me, he would have done it ages ago. But he would be able to help me find the person responsible. I knew it was late and that he was probably asleep, but I pinged him to come see me as soon as he could. Then I replied to the note: Don’t know what you’re talking about.
Before I even had time to lower my wrist, there was a reply. Sure you do future minister. Though I guess that name doesn’t suit you any longer, does it?
Who is this? I responded.
Someone who wants justice. And if you don’t want the truth to come out about who you really are, you’ll do as I say.
I wrote back, fingers trembling. I’ll do nothing of the kind.
Of course you will.
I didn’t respond, but that didn’t stop the mystery sender from continuing. Get me Minister Worthington’s security clearance code and we can forget this ever happened.
I would never do that, I replied.
You have thirty-six hours.
I waited, but no more messages came. This was crazy. There was no way I’d do what they asked. I wasn’t a thief. Only I sort of was. I’d stolen Dax’s destiny. Not only that, but I’d helped break criminals out of the cells. Was stealing a simple security code really that much worse?
I chided myself. I didn’t take Dax’s destiny. It was given to me, and I wasn’t planning on keeping the truth a secret forever—just until I worked out a plan. And the jail break, well, I couldn’t let Link die. I just couldn’t.
There was a slight knock on my door, and Sol peeked his head in.
“Hurry,” I said. “Come in and shut the door behind you.” If my doctors saw anyone in my room, they’d send him away, possibly even punish him, and I needed to talk to Sol. “How did you get here so fast?” I asked once he was safely inside. “It’s after curfew.”
“They have me staying here overnight as a precaution. I wanted to come see you before, but they wouldn’t let me. Are you okay?” he rushed over to my side. Panic and worry flickered over his face as he looked down at me.
“I’m okay,” I said. “You?”
“Madden,” he looked away from me, his voice growing hoarse. “You shouldn’t have done that. The bullet was for me. You could have died.”
“But I didn’t.”
He turned back to face me. “But I will. It’s my destiny. If I’m not dead by my eighteenth birthday, the Specialists will take me out. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I knew I cost you your life.”
“Well,” I said, giving him a tiny smile. “You wouldn’t have had to live with it that long. Eight months tops.”
I could tell he didn’t know whether to laugh or stay mad at me. He wound up with something in between. “Just don’t go putting yourself in danger again. Especially not for me.”
“Maybe I changed your destiny,” I said. “Maybe it’s possible.”
“It’s not…” he stopped himself. “You never know,” he said instead. “And thanks to you, they may raise my ring. Even if it is posthumously, it will help my family. It will get them out of Ash.”
“That’s great, Sol. It really is.” I hated thinking about what his fate held for him. Before I could continue, he changed the subject.
“You called me here for a reason. What’s up?”
“Maybe I just wanted to see if you were okay,” I said.
He knew I was more selfish than that. “Visiting hours are over, you wouldn’t break the rules if it wasn’t important.”
“Well, I did want to see you, but yeah, there is another reason,” I confessed. Then I showed him the messages.
“You shouldn’t have responded to them from your tracker,” he reprimanded me. “Not without me setting up a roundabout.”
“If anyone sees it, my cover’s blown anyway,” I said. “Besides, if they were able to get it to override my settings, I could always say they sent the response messages.”
“True,” he said, pulling out his plexi. His fingers flew over the keys. “Whoever sent this knows what they’re doing. It’s bouncing off a dozen signal points. I can’t pinpoint it.”
Then it hit me. I knew who was behind this. Dax might not have been tech savvy, but the company she kept certainly was. “Not surprising. The Revenants seem to know how to do a lot of things,” I said, and explained to Sol who Dax’s friends really were.
“I thought it might be something like that,” he said.
“Wait, you knew they were real?”
“I had a hunch.” He must have seen the shock in my eyes. “I see things I’m not supposed to,” he explained. “Pulling files is my job, I fix the UV computer system, I hack sites on the side. I mean, I didn’t know for sure, but it looked like there was some truth to the rumors.”
“And now they want me to steal for them.” Dax must have told the Revenants my secret. Not that I could blame her. If I was an Ash who found out I was a Purple, I’d have been screaming it to anyone who would listen. At least they hadn’t spilled the news to the rest of the world. Not yet anyway.
“You know,” Sol said, “I can get you that code if you want it.”
“Who knows what they’ll do with it though?”
“It will give them access to his files, but with their hacking skills they’d probably be able to get it without you. This just makes it easier for them,” he said.
“And makes me… us… their accomplices.”
“We already are.”
“Don’t remind me,” I said.
On one hand, I wanted to tell Dax and her friends to take their threats and shove them, but on the other, I wanted to comply. It would buy me time. Dax’s time stamp wasn’t until December eleventh. That gave me more than two months to come up with a plan to let her fulfill her destiny without giving up my status, but that was only if I could get the Revenants to stay quiet.
That meant one thing—it was time to add ‘thief’ to my resume.
Two PAE vehicles were outside my house when I arrived. I hoped Zane and Oena were right and that my tracker would hold up under inspection. I wasn’t the strongest liar, but since I met the Revenants I’d had no choice but to come up with some clever alibis. Tonight was going to be no exception.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I opened the front door, trying to look as confused as possible. Four officers were standing in our living room. Two by the door and two by my parents who were seated rigidly on the couch. They looked like prisoners in their own home.
“We’d like to know that ourselves,” the female guard asked. “Where have you been this evening?”
“Out for a run.”
“Since six o’clock?” she questioned, each word a jab.
“Off and on,” I answered. “There’s not much else for me to do.”
“We’ve tried to track you down for the last hour,” she said. “You weren’t in the spots your tracker indicated.”
“I run fast.” I tried not to cringe at my response. Even I knew that was lame. There was no outrunning a tracker.
The guard turned to her partner. “We should take her in for interrogation.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” I heard my mother say.
I looked at her, shocked. We all did.
“She was out because I told her to get out of our house. I’ve been upset. Of course I have.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Two sons gone in a week. It’s more than a mother should have to bear.”
“I don’t see how this has anything to do with your daughter’s whereabouts,” the guard said, pulling out a pair of laser cuffs.
“It has everything to do with it. I sent her out at six. You can check the time on our trackers, 6pm. She was here, my husband too,” my mother said.
I had been here at six, but I took off right after. I had no idea where my mother was going with this, but I nodded along as she spoke.
“I needed space, and I told her to leave. To not come back until curfew.” My mom motioned to her own tracker. “And you see it’s almost curfew. It’s hardly any of our faults that you can’t keep up with a teenage girl.”
I couldn’t believe it. My mother was actually trying to cover for me. I did my best to sound sincere as I added to her story. “I’m sorry if I caused any trouble.” I held out my tracker. “Would you like to check? I did take some trails off the usual path, so it might have been hard to find me. I run a lot, so I try and mix up my route.”
The guard grabbed my wrist. I thought she was going to cuff me. Instead she powered the handcuffs down and hooked up a small drive to my tracker. I felt my body stiffen. Would the Revenant’s apps and information show up? Would they somehow be able to track Link down? She studied the results for a good four minutes and little beads of sweat began to form on my forehead. I did my best to stay calm.
“Everything okay?” I finally asked.
“Looks like it checks out,” the guard said, but I could tell she wasn’t convinced I was innocent. “Tell me, Miss Harris,” she questioned, “what do you know about your brother’s actions tonight?”
“Which brother?” I asked, careful not to give anything away.
“The outlaw,” she said.
“Do you mean Link? He’s in the cells.” I let the real panic I felt fill my voice. “Wait, did something happen? Did they execute him already?”
“Your parents will fill you in. Those are all the questions we have for now.”
I nodded. I was going to have to be extra careful about my dealings with the Revenants going forward. The guards turned and exited.
My father watched from the window. “They’re gone.”
“Great,” I mumbled.
“Dax, where were you?” he asked.
“Just… out,” I answered, avoiding his gaze.
“Dax…” He stopped himself and shook his head. “‘It is a wise father that knows his own child.’ I’ll let you have your privacy, but you know you can always talk to me, right?”
“I know.”
My mother remained silent. She was standing with her back to me, bracing herself on the sofa.
I moved toward her. “Thank you,” I said.
She turned her head to me, and it looked like she was going to say something. Instead she left me standing there and went upstairs.
My dad put his hand on my shoulder. “She loves you, Dax.”
Maybe. Or maybe she knew where I had been, that I helped save her son. Or maybe she just couldn’t bear the thought of losing another child. Either way, my mother finally came through for me when it mattered.
“What did the PAE say happened?” I asked my father.
“That Link escaped from jail.”
“But how?”
“They don’t know. They say he must have had prior knowledge, that before he denounced his destiny, he knew he’d be thrown in the cells and devised a breakout plan.”
“That’s crazy.”
My dad rubbed his temples. “That’s not even the worst of it. They say he got a hold of a guard’s gun, killed three people and shot Madden Sumner. They say, in an odd twist of fate, an Ash was the one who saved her.”
“No,” I yelled. “That’s not what…” I caught myself. “Link would never shoot Madden. Or anybody. He would never put someone else’s life in danger to save his own. They’re lying. We can’t let them say those things about Link.”
My father pulled me in for a hug. “Let them say what they want. Whatever happened, he’s alive, that’s what matters.”
At least for now, but there was sure to be a manhunt. And as far as the general public knew, Link was enemy number one.
“Go get some sleep,” my father said. “It’s going to be a long week.” He had bags under his eyes himself but, despite it all, he looked happy. His son was free.
I flipped my bedside lamp on as I walked into my room. The space was exactly how I left it, yet it didn’t feel the same. The knickknacks I’d collected over the years were still there. An old-fashioned paper fortuneteller sat on my dresser, compliments of Laira. We’d made them as kids so we could pretend to be Destiny Specialists. My cube sat next to it. I was probably the only Ash with her own personal one—all of my brothers had chipped in to buy it for my last birthday. There was the quilt that usually covered my twin mattress in a crumpled heap where I’d tossed it that morning. A sock lay on my dresser, resting there until I could find its match. Laira’s dress still hung on the rack in the corner, waiting to be returned. I used to think all of this mattered. Now it just seemed insubstantial. I didn’t feel like the same girl who had grown up here. It was like I was splitting into two different Dax’s. Maybe three. The Blank. The Revenant. And if Madden had been right, the Minister.
I wanted to ping her and get answers, but I stopped myself. She was in the hospital recovering. I could wait another day. Besides Zane said he’d look into in. My dad was right. I needed to sleep. I grabbed some clean clothes from my dresser when I heard a rap at my window.
I turned toward the sound. Someone was outside. It was too dark to see more than a shape, but that was enough. Fear gripped me, but I forced myself to relax. Intruders wouldn’t knock. I had just left Zane, maybe he’d come to tell me something. To be safe, I reached into the pair of pants I’d worn when I’d first met the Revenants. The glass I grabbed from the subway car was still there. I picked it up and paused. “Who’s there?” I said.
“Dax, it’s just me,” a frantic voice whispered.
The glare made it hard to see, but I could make out a shock of familiar coppery hair. I put down the glass and flipped off my bedside light to cut the reflection before sliding the window open.
I had to be seeing things.
“Theron?” I whispered.
“Hi, Dax,” he said giving me a sheepish smile as he stood balanced on the trellis.
I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it, for once absolutely s
tunned into silence. Theron. Was outside my window. In the middle of the night. I took a step back, finally settling on the obvious suggestion. “Come in before someone sees you.”
I moved out of the way as he hoisted himself over the window frame and into my room. The space was small to start. With Theron standing next to me it suddenly felt tiny. I was basically pressed up against my bed with the boy I’d been dreaming about for as long as I could remember. “What… what… are you doing here?”
“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. I’m sorry if I scared you. I didn’t mean to; I just had to know how you were. You didn’t answer my ping. And I heard there was a breakout, and after our conversation the other day, I thought you might have been there,” he said barely pausing for air. “Madden’s in the hospital. I needed to know you weren’t hurt too.”
The look of concern on his face was overwhelming. “I’m fine, honest.”
“But you were there, weren’t you?”
I nodded. “I went with Oena. We got Link out. He’s safe.”
“Dax, what if you’d been caught?” he asked. “You have so many people who care about you…” His voice caught.
“But I wasn’t.”
His eyes searched mine. “I couldn’t stop picturing you hurt. I didn’t know what to do.” I had never seen him look so intense.
“So you came all the way to the Yellow ring after curfew just to see if I was okay?”
“Yeah, it was stupid. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
I could barely hear the rest of what he was saying, my heart and mind and lungs were all working on overdrive. The moonlight streamed through the window, turning his face into a complex series of valleys and planes. I caught his eyes and everything seemed to stop. “It wasn’t stupid,” I said and for a brief second my nerves were gone. I reached up and pulled him toward me, closing my eyes as his lips touched mine.
I was kissing Theron. I was kissing Theron! I was kissing Theron? A moment of panic set in. What if he had only come here as a friend? What if he didn’t want to kiss me? What if I had just made a huge fool of myself? I quickly stepped aside, afraid to look at him.
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