She walked up to them, without thinking as if it wasn't quite her doing it, stepped in between them, and slapped Riley hard. At least she hoped it was hard. She could see the redness on his cheek. He watched her silently, not moving, hands still behind his back. She slapped him again, and again, and then she was done with her anger at him, done with him. She wasn't going to be running anywhere with him.
"I'm not going with you, Riley. I've changed my mind." She walked away, back to the door to the rest of the compound, to where people didn't do these things to people. She felt Ams’ steps behind her, and she was glad Ams wasn't angry with her for bringing her here like this.
"There is something else, Ams, and you need to hear this, and then you never need to see me or talk to me again... Your memory of what happened to you, to your family, I think it could be right." He was still standing where they left him, face still flushed, and he looked uncomfortable like it would really hurt him to say whatever it was he was going to say.
She waited by the door as Ams walked back to where he was, slower now than before, stopped in front of him, and waited.
"Tell me. You owe me that much, Riley," she finally bit at him.
He winced. "I know. I just don't know if it would make it any better for you, knowing. Something I remembered when Laurel told me about your memories of them. Something from when I was a little kid. My parents had these old paper journals in a box under the roof that Ella and I found. We didn't know what they were, or at least I didn't. I was too little. But there weren't any paper books left, and we couldn't afford to charge the screens all the time just to read, so Ella would read to me, from the journals, to put me to bed. I didn't understand any of it then, didn't think about any of it until now. One of the things Ella read to me...." He stopped, looking at Ams, visibly struggling. She was worried for her friend now, about what this thing he was trying to get out would do to her if it was really bad, and she felt that it was.
She watched Ams reach out and take his hands, looking at him in that way she had, her old, gentle way, the way she always looked at everybody.
"I can take it, Riley, I really can, whatever it is. I can't take the not knowing."
He nodded. "One of the things she read to me talked about some failed experiment, a pill or something that was supposed to fix something that was killing everybody, but it didn't work. Something was broken about it, and nobody could have babies anymore, not in Alliance anyway, so they started doing all these tests on every baby girl that was born, looking for the ones that weren’t broken, the ones that could still make babies.
“Something in their genes was different, but there were very few of them. Nobody knew what the tests were for. They did it when the baby was born, and when they found one, they'd tag her, and in two years, they would send people to take her away to a safe place, so nothing could happen to her, and so she could maybe have babies with the unbroken genes, babies who could have other babies...." He rushed through that, not looking at Ams.
He looked sadder than anyone she'd ever seen, and she felt every kind of wrong for hitting him earlier. And then she knew that she had to run, that she couldn't stay here with the other girls, these stolen babies, to make other babies that someone else might steal for one reason or another. What kind of a person steals babies?
It made her want to lash out at everything here, punch through the walls. It made her want to run.
"Ams, I can't stay here. I have to run. I just can't. I'm sorry," she said as softly as she could. She could see that Ams was crying softly, few streaks of wetness running down her cheeks, hands still wrapped around Riley's, her head down.
"I can't stay here either," Ams said barely above a whisper, put her head on the boy's chest, and cried.
She didn't want to watch that. Couldn't watch that. But she knew it was okay for her to leave now, and that Ams wouldn't stop her.
13
Traitor
Riley, May 2, 2233, Waller (3 Years Prior)
Riley couldn't bring himself to get up. Not after staying up half the night plotting all the compounds on his screens and trying to figure out how he would ever get to all of them. He could go with Brody, of course, as far as the first Alliance city, but that wouldn't help him get to Ella. He couldn't ever go to any Alliance places looking the way he did. Brody knew it, so he didn't even ask. There was no point in asking.
He heard Janet leave the house. He looked out onto the street, to make sure the snow was still melting and running in streams of water from all the high places; to make sure it was still Spring. It was, but the day was drearier than he would have liked. He dressed quickly, carelessly, snuck a breakfast bar from the kitchen table, and ran out the door. The streets were deserted with all the kids in school and the adults going about their business elsewhere. A stray they nicknamed Spartan because you could see his ribs no matter how much food he got in scraps from everybody, followed him for a bit. He couldn't bring himself to pet him or any dog after losing Samson.
He turned a corner and was finally completely alone. This felt right, this walking alone, listening to the water run from the roofs in trickles, now that it was warm. The trees looked gray today, reflecting a miserable sky, but he could smell the greenness of the leaves on them. Soon, maybe in a week or so when all the water stops running, there'd be grass and all the trees would be fully green. The first flower buds would scent the air with their perfume. He loved this just before full bloom week. This waiting was the only kind that ever felt right.
He turned onto Willis, knowing that it would take him past his old house. He didn't plan to do it at first, but it seemed as good a time as any to say goodbye to the little shack. Few more blocks and he could see the corner of the roof with the hole in it, only there hadn't been smoke coming out of it for years now. Nobody took over the house, so it sat there, empty and dark, overgrown with vines in summers and completely covered by snow in winters. He knew it because he could always picture it like that in his mind.
And now he saw it, after eight years of deliberately avoiding this entire side of town. He stopped across the street from it, staring at it. The little windows were so dirty he couldn't see inside. The door no longer had any words on it and it was padlocked shut. He stood there for a long time, trying to force himself to cross the street, jump over the tiny fence, and into the backyard. He wanted to know if mom's herbs were still there in their old pots if nothing else, but he just couldn't do it. He knelt where he was, put his head down, and whispered his goodbyes. To his parents, and Samson, and the little yard with the not-garden garden, and when he felt there was nothing else he could say, he turned around and ran back to Janet's, soaking his feet in the gray puddles, splattering mud and dirt on his clothes.
As soon as he got on his block, he saw the unmistakable form of Brody, sitting on the stoop of Janet's house, so he picked up the pace. "Hey, Brody! What the hell are you doing here? You don't skip school, remember? Who am I supposed to cheat off now?" He was panting hard from his run. Brody looked up at him and he wished he didn't say anything just now. His face was not at all like Brody's face was supposed to be. He unlocked the door and pulled Brody in by the arm, not saying anything. Brody would tell him whatever it was in his own time.
He sat him down at the kitchen table and went to the stove to make tea. "Hungry?" He didn't think he was, but worrying about the little things would take the edge off.
Brody just shook his head.
The tea kettle boiled and he poured the two cups, no sugar for Brody, the way he always drank it, and sat across from him, looking at his friend, waiting. Brody didn't touch his tea, just sat there like a statue, looking blankly at the wood grain on the table. He let him for a long time, and then finally Brody took a screen out of his pocket, turned it on, and handed it to him, not saying a word.
He watched a tall man with very white hair pace a small room in front of a light-haired man and a woman who were sitting on a bench behind him. Brody's parents, but a little older than he rem
embered them. They looked smaller now, especially Max. He was the largest man Riley had ever been picked up by when he was little, and he remembered how tiny he felt when Max held him, and how safe. There was something comforting about being pressed against his stubbly cheek, smelling of pipe tobacco, and something else, sweet and syrupy, that he always smelled of. He couldn't remember the woman's name. She looked fragile, and he could see dark circles under her stark blue eyes, looking much too large for her face. He didn't get a chance to know her when he was little. She'd serve them supper on occasion, but mostly, she’d let them be.
Something in the room dinged. The man stopped his pacing and moved away from the camera with a nod at Brody's parents. Their faces were smiling now, full-on smiles with no life in them.
"My name is Max Fuller, and this is my wife, Alana. For years we lived in a small town called Waller, in Zoriner territory. We were what you'd call missionaries, I guess. We wanted to help civilize them because we thought we could. Alana's sister married a Zoriner, illegally, of course. We got to know the man a little, and it seemed that maybe they weren't the animals we were taught to believe they were. We were idealistic, I guess, and young. So we moved to Waller and lived among them for years. We even raised our boy there, hoping he could remain one of us in the end. But when he turned six, we already knew we'd lost him. Everything about him, except for the way he looked, was Zoriner even then. He was full of anger, and there was a maliciousness to him that shouldn't have been possible with his genes. We knew then that we made a mistake, a terrible mistake... I urge any of you who may feel pity for them or compassion and who might think you can change how somebody is wired–with Zoriners, you can't. They might not all be as dumb as we were taught, but they are not quite human anymore. There is raw, animal anger in every one of them, no matter how docile they seem. They will turn on you, and they will turn on everyone who looks like you. Our son, Brody, his name was, he is dead to us now. He is one of them. We can't ever undo the damage they did to our boy... We are just not the same... They look human, but they are not. I never thought I'd say that, but here it is. They’re animals. And the best we can do is keep them contained."
Tears ran down Alana's face. She didn't try to hide them or wipe them away. She didn't seem to notice that she was crying.
The white-haired man stood in front of the camera, his face still, serious. "This message was brought to you by the Council's office of public information. Thank you for watching. If you know of anyone who could benefit from this message, please pass it on to them. And, as the laws dictate, if you know someone who has committed a crime or plans to commit one, it is your lawful obligation to notify the Council immediately."
The feed shut off. Brody was still staring at the same spot on the table, not moving at all. He didn't know what to say to him. They always just assumed that Brody's parents were killed, like everyone else's parents who were taken by the Alliance. He never thought of Brody as not a Zoriner anyway, so this, everything that Max said, it didn't make sense for him to say it. He couldn't possibly mean it about them, about Brody.
He heard the door open and saw Janet standing in the hallway, looking at the two of them. He wished he could tell her, show her what he saw. She'd know something. But it wasn't his secret to tell. Maybe it wasn't so secret anymore, and that's why Brody had it on his screen in the first place. Maybe everyone in Waller already saw it, and that's why Brody wasn't in school now, but sitting here, staring into nothing.
Janet shook her head at Riley and walked back out. She seemed to know they would want privacy for this, and he was sure then that she knew what this was about. That meant everybody in Waller knew.
"There is no way he meant any of it, Brody. You know that. They probably threatened them or tortured them." He cringed when he said it, regretting it coming out like that. "I'm sorry. Sorry for saying that, I wasn't thinking. But it didn't seem real, not like the real them. They made them do it somehow. Maybe they were trying to protect you. I don't know...." He got up and walked around to where Brody was sitting and put his hand on his shoulder, squeezing hard. He wished he'd say something already, or pound his fists on the table, or cry. Anything better than sitting there like that.
And then he did.
He jumped up, grabbed him by his jacket collar, and slammed him hard against the wall. "I need to know something. There isn't a person in Waller now who doesn't think I'm a traitor or a danger to them after this. Not a one, Riley. They broadcast this in school today, on everyone's screen. Trina, too…. I need to know if ... if you are I are done too." He was still pressing him into the wall, staring him in the eyes.
"That's what you think of me? That I'd walk away from you because of this? What the hell is wrong with you? What kind of an asshole do you think I am, Brody?" He pushed Brody away from him and walked out of the house. He needed air, needed to get away from that look in Brody's eyes, that question as if he truly believed he was capable of something like that...
He stood on the stoop just breathing, trying to calm himself enough to do what he knew he needed to do. He was still panting when he went back into the house.
Brody was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, holding his head in his hands. "Please, don't say anything, Riley. Just. Don't. Talk."
So he sat silently, waiting, his back to Brody, waiting for him to stop crying, waiting for him to know for sure that he'd never betray him. That even if Max meant everything in that feed, it couldn't change how he felt about Brody. Nothing ever could.
He let him be for a long time and then went to Trina's, just down the street, to talk to her, only she slammed the door in his face before he got a chance to say anything. And when he got back to the house, Brody was gone. He never saw him in school again. He went looking for him every day after school at Andy's warehouse, and then at home, but he always just missed him. Andy promised to tell him that he was looking for him every time, and he believed he did, only Brody never came.
He saw him walking down the street one day, keeping his head down, not looking at anybody, and he ran after him, screaming his name, but Brody wouldn't stop. And when he was just catching up, Brody turned around and looked at him for a long time, then shook his head and turned away from him. He knew then he couldn't chase after him like that, that Brody didn't want him to. He would give him time. However long he needed.
Two days after that Brody was gone.
14
Mi2
Doctor Sandra Groning, March 3, 2122 (114 Years Prior), Manchester, UK
Cassandra was making tea. She always made tea when she felt that she might need to talk. She never pressed her for it, she just knew. Like Charlie always knew. She’d spent so many years wishing she had that ability to read people's moods, but it never came, and the doctor in her knew that it wouldn't come. She just wasn't wired that way. She could use the tea today though if not the conversation. She never quite knew how to explain what she was working on to Cassie and not make her feel like an idiot, and she didn't want to do that, but the only words she knew for any of it were full of strange-to-Cassie names and numbers and markers.
She could smell a hint of jasmine in the tea that Cassie brought her. That was a rare luxury, and she was afraid to ask her what she did to get it. You couldn't grow jasmine in a pot on a windowsill. It was the middle of winter, so even if you had decent enough land to grow things on, this wasn't grown here, and flying anything in was prohibitively expensive. But she welcomed the sweet scent, the scent of their summers, now a million years ago, in the country, the air warm and humid and full of jasmine and fireflies. She missed that old house, missed everything about it. The small one they moved to when everybody lost all the money they had and nobody knew how to get any of it back, that one she didn't miss at all. But Cassie probably did. That's why she stayed, not just the graves.
Cassie was watching her over her teacup, a big utilitarian thing—a tea mug really—steaming in her hand.
"I think Jason and I made a mistake,
Cassie. I've been trying to figure it out, to fix it for weeks, but I don't think I know how to, and it scares me to death. The subjects have been having babies for six generations now after the GSX shot, and all has been going well. The babies are healthy. We've tested every one of them and there were no issues, not a one. Anyway, Amy, one of the first to mature from Tanka's litter, we mated her for days. Tom, her mate, is perfectly healthy too and has done fine by them before, so we know it's not him, but we had her mate with Leto just in case, and Leto had just gotten Sophie pregnant, but it didn't make a difference. We just couldn't seem to get her pregnant. So Jason and I tried with Tanka's other females, and only three out of seven got pregnant...." She needed a break, to think of how to tell her what it meant, or what she thought it meant, so she sat there looking into her tea mug, inhaling the smell, and trying her best not to feel like the murderer Cassie probably thought she was when she just started working on AlterX.
"They started distributing SG17 in schools fifteen years ago to all the girls as a shot, Cassie. Every girl in the cities gets one when she turns twelve. And the GSX won't work on them at all. It can't help them. These kids, they might never be able to have kids. I may have killed everybody, after all, Cassie, and I don't know if I have enough time left to fix it. I don't even know if it's something that can be fixed...." She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She was bone tired and more scared than she wanted to admit to Cassie or anyone just yet. Jason knew, of course, and was scrambling to help her figure out what happened, sleeping as little as she was these days. He was always at the damn lab. She hated the lab now and stayed in the office as much as she could.
Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller Page 10