XVI

by Julia Karr

  “I’ll be fine.” It was getting painful to talk. “But don’t say ‘hit’ again.” I tried to smile, but that hurt, too.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Derek said. “Wei and I can take you home. You need protection.”

  “You guys go on.” Sal put his arm around my shoulder. “I’ll make sure Nina gets there safely.” I could get used to this kind of attention from him, but not under these circumstances.

  When we got back to the apartment, instead of taking me right upstairs, Sal pulled me into the emergency stairwell.

  “You’ve got to be careful, Nina. I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you.” He wrapped me in his arms.

  “Stop.” I pulled back. When I saw his confusion, I quickly added, “You were crushing my face, it hurts.”

  He moved my hair aside and barely brushed his lips across my cheek. “I would never hurt you.” He traced a finger lightly around the reddening on my face. “He will pay for this. I should have been there to protect you. I shouldn’t have let you be alone.”

  “Sal, I wasn’t alone, I was with Wei. It was my fault.” I ran my hands up and around his neck, pulling him closer to me. “You can’t exactly move in. And I’ll be fine. I won’t be that careless again.”

  “I’ll pick you up in the morning. It’s not that far out of my way.” That wasn’t true—but I knew he would be there. And that he would be there every day until he was sure I was safe. I kissed him—I didn’t care that it hurt. He took the elport up with me, not leaving until I was inside the apartment.

  Gran didn’t believe my slipped-on-the-snow story. She removed the Band-Aids, washed the cuts with hydrogen peroxide, which really stung, and put a spray-on protectant over them.

  “That should help.” She leaned on the bathroom doorjamb. “You want to tell me what really happened?”

  “I was careless,” I said. “But I’m okay.”

  She pointed to my wounds. “I wouldn’t call that okay.”

  “Gran, I’m almost sixteen. I have to be able to take care of myself. And I’m learning.” One more lie wouldn’t hurt. “Wei’s teaching me some of her martial arts moves. This won’t happen again.”

  Cold packs helped with the swelling, but it was impossible to sleep on the side of my face where Ed had hit me. Banged-up face or not, I tossed around, replaying the day’s events. Ed knew my FeLS contract was missing, so I was right, he had been behind the break-in. Even if he wasn’t the Chooser at my school, he still had the authority to have me chosen. And the minute I left, he’d take Dee. The book was at the center of all of this. I couldn’t keep it safe any longer. And that meant finding my father, as soon as possible.

  Despite the pain, I felt sleep overtaking me. Before I drifted off, I thought that even if Ed had my contract, the FeLS agency had to have a record that Ginnie’d bought out my contract. Gran would call them in the morning. That would be one less thing for me to worry about.

  XXXV

  Sandy called first thing next morning. “So what time are you coming this weekend? I can’t wait to celebrate my birthday with you! I have my appointment for my tattoo already, and I know exactly what I’m going to wear—”

  “Sandy—I ... I can’t come see you this weekend. I fell last night, landed right on my face.”

  “But, Nina, it’s my birthday!”

  “I’m sorry, it’s really bad.” I winced, and gently touched my cheek. “Here, I’ll send you a digi so you can see. It hurts like you wouldn’t believe”

  I heard her fumbling with her PAV. “Nina! What’d you do? Skivs, you can’t go out looking like this! Anyway, I’m coming to town next time Derek plays.” She gushed on about how great he was. “Oh, yeah, and Mike called. I said I’d go help him at the zoo when I’m in town. It sounds like fun. Besides, I won’t have to worry about losing my virginity to him, and I’ve gotta stay virginal for FeLS. Do you have any idea how hard it’s going to be? Guys are already betting on who’ll be my first.”

  She rambled on this way for about five minutes, until I couldn’t take it anymore. “I gotta get ready for school,” I mumbled, clicking off.

  Things were becoming way more complicated than I wanted them to be. I didn’t see how I could keep Sandy and Wei from clashing over Derek. And I sure didn’t want Sandy to lead Mike on; that would be so unfair. I wasn’t sure I could handle relationship drama on top of everything else, but I figured I’d come up with some kind of plan. After all, these were my friends.

  Before we were out the lobby door, Dee spotted Sal. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you.” He winked at her.

  “I like that. Kind of like a big brother. I always wanted a one.” She quickly looked at me. “But I love having a big sister, too. See Nina’s face? She fell down yesterday.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Sal said.

  I wished I could hide the purple-black bruise that spread upward from my jaw to my eye, but there was no way. It covered my whole cheek.

  “I was there—sort of,” he said.

  “You should’ve caught her,” Dee said. “Then she wouldn’t look so awful and hurt so bad. She’s really grumpy when she’s in pain. She couldn’t even eat breakfast this morning. Gran had to make her a protein shake. I hate those. Ugh!” She wrinkled her nose.

  “Was it awful?” he asked me.

  “Better than nothing ... maybe,” I muttered. It hurt whenever I opened my mouth. Gran had suggested going to the medical clinic in the building. But I didn’t want stitches in my lip. I said I’d keep my mouth shut; not an easy thing for me.

  Derek met up with us at the usual place, but Mike was nowhere to be seen.

  “He’s running late,” Derek said. “His dad got real sick from the last batch of meds. Mike had to help his mom get him to County General.”

  “Hey guys!”

  We all turned around at the same time. Mike was running down the sidewalk.

  He was out of breath by the time he reached us. “What the hell happened to you? Kiss a trans?” he asked me.

  “Long story,” Derek said.

  He started to explain, but I managed to catch his eye and shook my head vigorously. Not the smartest thing to do when every muscle in half your face is bruised and swollen. I nodded toward Dee, who was busy telling Sal about her class’s upcoming field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry.

  I’d worked out a way to speak by keeping my lips still and talking very slowly. “She thinks I fell,” I whispered as best I could.

  “Huh?” Derek just stared at me.

  I repeated myself, just a little louder.

  He still didn’t get it.

  “Fell?” Mike said. “You fell?”

  I nodded.

  “Klutz.” He grinned at me. “I hope it doesn’t hurt too much.” I knew he felt bad for me, but that was the best Mike could manage for sympathy.

  After we dropped Dee off at school, Wei said, “I scanned the news last night. There was a six-transport pileup with a bus on the south side of the Loop. No one was seriously injured.”

  “Too bad,” Sal said. “If I get ahold of Ed, he will be seriously injured.”

  “Will you stop with the threats, already? It’s not helping.” Wei said, “Dad’s not back from Amsterdam yet. I think we need to figure out what to do if something happens before he returns.”

  Sal inclined his head toward a group of approaching students. “We can talk about this later. At your house, Wei?”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t know what you guys are talking about, but I can’t come,” Mike said. “Zoo duty.”

  “Me either,” Derek said. “Practice with Riley. I’m really sorry, Nina. You know ...”

  “’S okay,” I murmured. “Your music’s important.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Wei said.

  After homeroom, Wei was waiting for me. “Come on,” she whispered. I followed her down the hall.

  We went through a door, down some stairs, and ended up in a cor
ridor in the basement. I followed her to a small room at the end. “This is the old detention room. It’s DZ, ’cause they never wanted anyone to know what really went on in here.”

  Sal was inside.

  “We’ve gotta be quick—here are some hall passes to get you back to class.” He handed them to us. I noticed Miss Gray’s signature at the bottom. “I can’t make it this afternoon. John’s got something going down; I have to be there to back him up.” He squeezed my hand. “You understand, don’t you?”

  I nodded. There were obviously things going on all around me that I knew nothing about. I was more than a little nervous about finding out what they were.

  “Wei, talk to your dad, okay?” Sal said. “I think there’s only one way to take care of this.”

  “You don’t mean ...” I left the awful conclusion he was leading to unsaid.

  “Nina, if Ed gets you he’ll go straight to the Governing Council—or worse. You wouldn’t stand a chance with GC interrogators.”

  Icy shards of fear shot up my spine. “Are you saying it’s him or me?”

  “Of course not.” Wei gave Sal a withering look. “We just can’t let anything happen to you. Your father needs you; the Resistance needs you.”

  “But I don’t know anything about the Resistance. How can they need me?”

  “We don’t have time for this now,” Sal said. “First things first. We have to take care of Ed, or you’ll never be safe.”

  “Can’t we just scare him? Or capture him and take him to, you know ... uh, someplace ...” My voice trailed off. I meant the Lodge, but wasn’t sure if it was all right for me to mention it.

  “Look, hopefully my father will be home after school,” Wei said. “Nina and I will talk to him. We’d better get going or we’ll have a hard time explaining these passes and we don’t want to get Miss G in trouble.”

  I left first; Wei and Sal followed. I peeked through the door on the main level. It was all clear. I didn’t look back as I hurried down the hallway to my next class.

  XXXVI

  Wei and I hardly said a word on the way to her house. She seemed preoccupied and my jaw hurt too much to make small talk. When we got inside there was a message from her mom. While Wei was listening to it, I tried to call Gran, but my PAV wouldn’t work. Of course, Wei’s house was DZ. I caught Wei’s eye and motioned that I’d be outside.

  I was able to get reception at the sidewalk. “I’m at Wei’s, Gran. I’ll be home by dinner.”

  “Nina ...” Her voice sounded strained. “The FeLS agency doesn’t have any record of Ginnie’s payment. You’re still available to be chosen.”

  I hung up and heard Ed’s voice in my head: ... while you’re out there for training ... Joan’s face flashed in front of me. I’d bet my life that Ed knew what really went on at FeLS training. And I was more certain than ever that it wasn’t good. Especially since he’d seemed to get such a kick out of the thought of sending me there.

  “Dad’s leviton set down in Greenland,” Wei said. “Supposedly because of engine trouble. He never reboarded.”

  “Maybe he just missed it. Where’s your mom?”

  “She’s out shopping for something to wear in Tokyo. She’s going there for a couple of weeks to visit her brother. Whenever anything is going on, we keep our routines normal so it doesn’t look like we’re worried. She thinks Dad’s probably being questioned about you being here the other night.”

  “They wouldn’t do anything—” I stopped midsentence. “We can talk freely, right?”

  “Yes. The whole building is always a dead zone. Actually, Dad’s such a techno-geek, it’s even better than DZ. It sends out phony normal conversations whenever there are people inside talking. We can say whatever we want and all they’ll hear is whatever kind of talk would most likely be going on between whoever came in. Since it’s you and me, they are hearing talk about school or boys.”

  “Who’s holding your dad?” I couldn’t have been anywhere close to as calm as Wei seemed. “Is it B.O.S.S.? They wouldn’t hurt him, would they?”

  “Probably B.O.S.S. And, yeah, they’d hurt him if they discovered he was a NonCon. After they’d gotten whatever information they could out of him, they’d either reassimilate him or kill him. You want something to eat?”

  “You’re not worried?” I followed her down the hallway, hardly believing the matter-of-fact way she’d talked about her dad possibly being killed. “I would be insane if it was my dad.”

  “Of course I’m worried. But it doesn’t do any good to get upset and emotional. I’ve grown up knowing that at any time my whole family could be taken from me—or me from them. That’s one reason why I took up Cliste Galad; it keeps me sane. Sparkle?”

  I took the can from her. I’d have given anything to be as composed as she was. But I didn’t think it would ever be possible.

  We sat at the counter. I sipped my drink through a straw.

  “How’s your grandmother?” Wei asked. “She wasn’t worried about you, was she?”

  “No, but she had some not-so-good news. Remember that break-in about a week ago? At first Gran didn’t think anything was missing. She thought it was someone looking to steal Pops’s pain meds. But yesterday she discovered that my FeLS contract was missing.”

  “The agency—”

  “Doesn’t have a record of Ginnie buying it. I’m back on the available list. It’s Ed, I’m sure. He said he’d make sure I was chosen for FeLS; he knows my contract was missing.” Then I told her about seeing Joan. “Something really bad happened to her, and I think it has to do with FeLS training.”

  “We have to find your contract, or get money to buy it,” Wei said. “I know things about FeLS. I listened in on a conversation that Mom had with Rosie. From what I could hear, the government is using FeLS as a cover for sex slavery.”

  “I don’t get it—any sixteen-year-old-girl is already legal to have sex. Why would they—”

  “You know how FeLS recruits have to be virgins? They’re more valuable. And it gets worse.”

  My stomach was already twisted into knots.

  “The training is led by Governing Council members. They get the virgins. Then FeLS makes sure there’s a fresh run of girls for upper-level government officials.”

  “But what happens to the girls, after the government is done?” My voice shook, but not as bad as my insides. “What happens to all the girls?”

  “They consider them ‘used’ and send them to Mars, as wives for the ocribundan miners.”

  “That can’t be,” I said. “It sounds just like Mars Rising, but that’s fiction. People make that kind of stuff up, they don’t actually make it happen.”

  “1984 was fiction,” Wei said. “And it came true decades ago.”

  She was right. Women Scorned and several other books had been banned after society accepted their premises as a normal way of life. I only knew about them because of Ginnie. And B.O.S.S confiscated all of her books already. The GC wouldn’t ... the look on Wei’s face was more than proof that they would. “But I ran into Joan on Earth—how could she have gotten back here?”

  “The Resistance has some people at the training station. They manage to sneak out some girls and get them back to Earth. The girls on Mars, though, they’re infected by the same viral disease that keeps ocribundan miners from returning. I think a lot of those girls commit suicide. That’s part of why FeLS keeps sending the used girls there. The miners demand them. The girls who sneak back, well, the homeless community is the only safe place for people like Joan.”

  “What about the girls who talk up the program at school? They go through the program and end up as models or get high-tier jobs in Media.”

  “Mom and Rosie didn’t get into that. They must have more than one training station, though, to keep up appearances. Then it seems legit, but most of it isn’t.”

  My head was reeling. My contract was gone. FeLS was sex slavery. “Can we talk about something else? Please? I can’t think about this right now
. My head will explode.”

  Wei and I stared at each other for the longest time. Then she reached over and gave my hand a squeeze. “We’ll figure something out, I promise. Mom and Dad won’t let you go.”

  “Wei,” I said. “Sandy ... What about her?”

  “I bet you can talk her out of it.”

  “I’ve been trying for the past year. She figures it’s the only way to get out of being low tier. That’s how they talk it up in school and in XVI Ways. You probably noticed she’s not scholarship material.” I felt guilty talking this way about Sandy, but it was true. “And there’s a ton of girls for every higher-tier guy. Not much chance of getting out that way.”

  “Maybe we could hook her up with some guy?” Wei said. “She seems awfully eager to, you know ...” She gave me a sideways glance.

  “Have sex? Yeah, I know. But she knows that FeLS recruits have to be virgins. And, honestly, I think she’s really into flirting, but nothing else.”

  “Maybe we find her some guy that she can’t resist.” Wei twisted the soda can in her hands. “Like Derek.”

  “Derek? No way. Derek isn’t anything to her. Besides, I can tell he really likes you.”

  “Really?” The only emotion she showed was a brief smile that danced around the corners of her mouth. “But if she did want him to ... I wouldn’t mind if it kept her out of FeLS.”

  “You wouldn’t?” If Sandy wanted to have sex with Sal, I didn’t think I would be so nonchalant about it.

  “Nina, I like Derek.” She tapped the edge of her Sparkle can. “A lot, actually. I don’t think he wants Sandy in a sex-teen way. He’s not that kind of guy.”

  I knew she was right about that. The word that popped into my mind about him and girls was “gallant.” The way he’d always been around to stand up for me. “Yeah? So ...”

  “I don’t want to see any girl go into FeLS. Someone’s life is more important than any insecurity I might have about a boy. Although, Derek is a pretty special guy.” She took a sip of Sparkle.

  We talked more about Derek and that led to his music and then to more normal things. The threat of being chosen retreated to the edge of my thoughts, hovering there, waiting to return faster than a wing beat.