Quinn continues. “I know this isn’t what you expected. I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to… I couldn’t bear to keep hiding this part of me from you. And they really can help find out what happened to your sister.”
Can they? My hands are fidgeting in my lap to combat my nerves. Quinn’s bright gray eyes are dilated, her brows folded in pleading earnestness.
I cannot believe she has been hiding this secret from me. I cannot believe she brought me here. I can’t believe she talked me into breaking out after curfew at all.
I lean away, and the branches of the bush jab into my back and neck. It’s too late, I realize. If I leave now, between the security cars and the watchlizards and the climb back up into my room, I am bound to be caught. Whatever this is, there’s no turning back now.
I feel confused. I feel betrayed. I feel reckless and unpredictable. What I imagine it must feel like to be Quinn.
And Quinn’s right. We have hit a dead end, trying to find Evie. Maybe this is the only thing left.
“Okay,” I whisper.
A smile breaks over Quinn’s face. “Okay.” She turns the rest of the group. “Okay.”
C glares, but he doesn’t argue. “I guess it’s too late now anyway. She’s here.”
The others grudgingly scoot to make room for me, and I settle in next to Quinn, ignoring the knot of nerves tightening in my stomach.
Quinn has to break the silence. “G is the one who has been helping me dig up info on the research program.”
The two figures who have not spoken straighten up a bit more and lean in, as if to get a better look.
C sighs. “We might as well get down to business. We don’t have all night.”
Tonight’s business is a plan to get into the LQM storage building, on the Quad’s outskirts. They say that if the secrets about this study on failed departures are anywhere, it will be there.
I did not even know the Directorate had storage buildings.
The plan is pretty simple – and, C says, keeping it simple is the best way to ensure it is successful. Quinn, C, another person they call P, and I will meet behind the building.
“I’m sorry, but is she really necessary?” C gives me a sharp glare.
“Yes,” Quinn says. “She’s the one who read the report. And she’s got a photographic memory. She’s the best one to know if we find something related to it, quickly.”
We will break in, and then we will split up. Quinn and I will head to the top and work our way down; the other two will start at the bottom. We will meet in the middle, or if we do not find each other quickly, make our exit.
It will happen a week from today.
They fire questions at one another about timing, security, building layout, so fast that I cannot keep up. I listen, and hope they know what they are doing as much as they appear to.
Before we leave, C turns to me.
“Now give me your ID and digi account.”
I lean away, jamming into the branches of the bush surrounding us. “No way. I don’t even know your name.”
With those two pieces of information he could get my name, my address, my data – my entire history.
“It’s okay,” Quinn says. “He needs to hack your profile. So it looks like you were in your room, asleep, this whole time.”
“And again for next week, since she’s apparently a part of that,” C adds.
I hesitate, weighing my options, but Quinn hands him a scrap of paper. “It’s all there.”
I guess at this point there is no other choice. Why did I not think about my digipad’s tracking before? I was so afraid of the immediate ways we could get caught that I failed to think ahead. That is not like me.
On the way back, even through the adrenaline and the mist’s cool dampness, exhaustion seeps into my bones. At this point, there are only a couple hours left to sleep.
Climbing back up the tree to my room is harder than coming down, and pulling myself up makes my muscles burn. Before I slip back through my window, Quinn tugs on my hand.
“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you. I was afraid you wouldn’t come. I didn’t know how to explain.”
I study her. Her skin glows pale in the dark, and a bright ringlet escapes from the side of her hat. But is that fear clouding her eyes?
I know what I should do. Someone like Hanna, a good Directorate citizen with a perfect record and a future to protect, would report this immediately, before they risked being associated with any of it.
But I am so tired of being perfect.
So tired of complying and scheduling and optimizing.
So tired of this cold, hard knot of fear in my stomach of what might have happened to Evie. I have to know. I have to help her, if I can.
How would I ever explain why I was breaking curfew myself anyway? I can already see the hurt, hardened expression in Father’s eyes if I were to even try.
“You’re probably right about that,” I say. And then I lean over the branches and kiss her.
Nerves still swim through me, mixing with my drowsiness and making me feel out of control. Out of control. I have never felt so untethered in all my life. Like anything could happen. Like I might do anything. Like there are no safeguards left to hold me in place.
Quinn kisses me again. I plunge into her, and she reaches over the branches and tugs at my hair. Then I push away and climb back into my room.
“Here, for next time,” Quinn says. She digs into her bag and hands me more of the silver tech-tape for the window, along with my own little watchlizard-repellant box.
“Thank you.”
She flashes her gorgeous, crooked smile at me. Then she carefully pulls tonight’s strip away from the ledge and closes my window.
So late past bedtime, I expect to fall into sleep right away, but I lie awake, my mind spinning, too stirred-up to rest. The Licentia are real. The Licentia are real, and I think I just joined their ranks. I hope C is hacking my vitals tracking in addition to my location log from tonight, because anyone who might be tracking my heart rate or adrenaline levels would know something is wrong, and that just like my data points, I have far surpassed the appropriate ranges of activity. I lie awake through the rest of the night in a state of shaken-up disorder.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Evie
I wake up still slumped on the floor with Kinlee, both of us leaning into each other. Visions of last night still float through my mind – the rush of the air, Kinlee’s wild giggle, the ominous glow of the Quads – and my arm hums with a slight sting under the wrappings from my new tattoo. I have never felt so alive.
I shuffle away from Kinlee and stretch. For once, it looks like a beautiful, temperate day outside. But ouch. Sleeping like that has left me stiff all over.
Kinlee starts to wake up, too.
“Shit, my neck,” she grumbles. “Never let me sleep in this position again.”
“Same,” I say.
She shakes out her head, and suddenly, her expression turns from groggy to determined. She jumps to her feet. “I gotta get to the bunker,” she says.
“I’ll be there later,” I say. “Testing again.”
I was supposed to be there first thing this morning, and judging by the brilliant violet of the sunny sky pouring through the window, it’s already second or third thing, by Sue’s count. “Or, maybe I should reschedule and come to the bunker, too.” After how shaken Raina was last night, and how exhausted they both are, I feel I should be doing a lot more.
“No way!” Kinlee looks exactly like Raina when she gets stern. “That’s important too. Go.”
I grab a few pieces of toast on my way to the Med cabin and keep moving, propelling myself forward as fast as my legs will let me, though I wish I could slow down and soak up this rare, gorgeous day. That’s the thing about weather, I guess – it’s only with the awful days you know how to enjoy the amazing ones. I never once thought about weather in the Quad.
“Sorry!” I burst through the door bracing for a scolding fro
m Sue, but find only Noah’s warm smile.
“Don’t worry, Raina sent word you’d probably be late,” he says.
“Is Sue already on rounds? I can come back – ”
“No, no,” Noah says. “She’s with Rosie. I’m holding the fort today.”
With Rosie? I look around.
“Hadn’t they just moved Rosie in here?”
“Well. It was, um, too busy in here. She wasn’t getting the rest she needed. And frankly, her condition changed again. She’s better off in her own room, at this point. Have a seat, Ev.”
I take the chair he pulls out for me next to the desk.
I remember how frail and depleted Rosie looked the last time I was here. A change from that has to be good, right?
“What do we have here?” Noah nods to my arm.
“Oh right.” I hold out my arm to show him the rose, pride swelling in my chest. “Seemed like time to get rid of the departure date.”
“Ah,” he says with a nod. “Let me wrap it properly for you while it heals.”
He replaces the wrapping with a proper bandage, and then we settle in for the business at hand.
“Testing today will be different from the last few times. We’re assessing your brain today – psychological issues, learning disorders, that kind of stuff. No poking or prodding. Just you, me, and some puzzles.”
He holds up a large ink blot. “What do you see?”
The next few hours are mental gymnastics. After the ink blots, he asks me questions about my life – challenges, behaviors, trends. Then I solve a series of written puzzles, and spend an unreasonable amount of time staring at a blinking box on a screen, clicking a button when a dot is at the top. I read passages and he quizzes me on them. He calls out number sequences and has me repeat them back to him. By lunch time, my brain is fried.
“Well, Ev, no surprise, you’re a very intelligent girl. But has anyone ever told you, you’ve got ADHD?”
Panic flutters through my chest. “What’s that? Is it terminal?”
“No. It just means you think differently than a lot of other people. And between you and me, that can be a good thing.”
He gives me that Noah smile, the one that always makes me feel a little better.
“Okay. But what is it?”
“It means you’re spontaneous and creative. You’re resilient. You’re maybe not so attentive. Less able to keep focused on things. More likely to lose things. You get lost in your thoughts. It means you’re a daydreamer, Ev.”
I nod along as he talks – it resounds so deeply. Oh yes, these are all things the Directorate hated about me. How many times did I get caught drifting in class, doodling in the margin of my notes without realizing what I was doing, or confuse a homework assignment and do the wrong passage, even though it was right there, clear as day, in my digipad alerts?
Knowing this was all for a reason, having a name to call it, it’s like a hole has been filled that I never knew I had.
He flips back through the notes of my chart. “I’m also seeing shortness of breath – when does that happen?”
“When something bad happens.”
He nods. “Sounds like panic attacks to me.”
“So… that’s what’s wrong with me? That’s why the Directorate didn’t want me?”
After all I’ve learned these past weeks, this shouldn’t surprise me. But anger for the Directorate burns through me all over again, along with my relief. They end lives, separate families, over this?
“It’s possible. There have certainly been cases where that’s the best reason we could find for a departure, particularly in younger individuals like you. But we need to complete the rest of testing still, to know for sure there’s nothing more serious we should be treating. Sounds like your coping methods for the panic attacks are working, so I’m not going to worry about that, but come to us if they get more serious. We can treat the ADHD if you want. But first I want you to learn about it. I’ll request some books for you on the next supply run.”
I leave for lunch feeling lighter, as if an invisible load has been removed. I grab a sandwich and run off towards the bunker, enjoying the light breeze in my hair.
But as Noah’s news settles into me, a new knot of anxiety tangles through me. Everything I learn about the Directorate makes them seem more and more dangerous. If they’re willing to kill their own citizens to keep control and ensure a certain type of population in the Quads, what else would they kill for? I assure myself that Gracelyn, ever the perfect citizen, couldn’t possibly be in any immediate danger. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve got to get her out of there, as soon as possible.
When I get to the bunker, it’s stuffed full and bustling with tense energy, everyone crossing back and forth with grim expressions.
Kinlee is next to one of the large, usually quiet machines of the main room. Except now, it is humming and grunting and spitting out an endless stream of messages. Kinlee glances at each page and moves them into various stacks she’s placed all around her on the table, the floor, and the machine itself.
“Crap. What’d I miss?”
“Hold on, it’s coming too fast,” Kinlee says. “Can’t talk and read at the same time.”
Even as she pauses to say this, more fresh papers begin to pile up. She shuffles through them.
“Mom!” she calls out, glancing past me. She waves, points at me, and goes back to filtering and stacking. Raina makes her way through the flow of traffic towards me. Her eyes are bloodshot and darkly-rimmed, her hair mussed and sticking out in spots.
“Glad you’re here. I’ve got a big update for you and no time to sugarcoat.”
She has that same tension in her eyes as last night, and my muscles tense, bracing for bad news.
She continues. “The big news the other day – we confirmed the Directorate has Tad. He’s alive, and we know where they’re keeping him. We were planning an extraction, but then last night we learned more. He wasn’t caught. He turned on us. We’re on full alert for our agents in the Directorate, getting all the info we can and checking in on our people. Reports are coming in from every Quad. Kinlee’s sorting as they come in, and we could really use a runner to get them to the appropriate teams for briefing. She’ll tell you where they need to go.”
He turned on us.
Questions crowd my head in a rush, but already three more people are hovering around us, waiting for Raina’s attention. Now isn’t the time.
Kinlee hands me a stack. “Northeast Division,” she says, pointing to one of the classified rooms at the far corner of the bunker. “Go.”
A numbness sets in, like my emotions have switched off. How could he do it? I try to envision Tad running into Viv’s office with that puppy-dog way of his and dumping the whole thing on her – how this other group is out there, and they’re infiltrating the Directorate, and he’s one of them. Seems more likely to land him in a mental health evaluation than it is to be taken seriously. Hell, I didn’t take him seriously.
“Ev, Northwest Division. Go.”
Kinlee’s words snap me back to the bunker.
“Right.”
Even as I run, I sneak glances at the papers, trying to piece together more about what’s going on. But it’s impossible – they’re written in an odd shorthand I can’t decipher.
“Code, actually,” Kinlee says.
We talk in snippets between paper runs, as she hands me the latest reports.
When I come back again I say, “Code? Seriously? Can you read it?”
And then I’m off again.
When I get back, she says, “Sure. But it’s not helping right now. Southeast Division.”
I make the run.
She continues, “Even if I hold a page long enough to decipher it, the information is too fragmented and out of context to mean anything. Southwest.”
We continue on like this for a couple more hours before the pace starts to die down in the late afternoon, then stutters to a stop. Then we stumble towards
the closest chairs and collapse.
“Geez, did every citizen of the Directorate send a report? How many agents are out there in the field?”
Kinlee has to think about that one. “I guess a couple in most Quads, plus some special hot sites, like where I got you out from.”
I try to figure out how many Quads there are. Fifty? A hundred? More? I realize I have no idea. The Directorate kept each Quad isolated from the others.
“Yeah,” Kinlee says. “Keeps you all in nice, easy-to-contain little bubbles. Literally. Something stirs up in one, most of the citizen body goes on like it never happened. Because for them, it didn’t.”
I remember what the Quads looked like from up in the trees when we zip-lined. Neat and contained – even from one another. It should make me angry, but thinking about it, how insulated and disconnected they are, just makes me sad.
Raina comes over to us. “Now that the field reports are in, there won’t be much you can do for a while. Go to dinner,” she says.
We get up – slowly, our muscles fighting back after the busy day.
“And Kin,” Raina adds. Kinlee perks up. “If you want to check back in tonight – if you think you have learned your lesson – we can probably find something you can chip in on. For your training credits.”
“Really?” Kinlee leaps in the air and tackles Raina in a hug. “Yes, yes, yes. Definitely learned my lesson.” She pulls her expression into a sorry attempt at solemn.
Raina shakes her head. “I’ll see you later then. Sorry Evie, you don’t have the clearance for this. We might have something for you in the morning.”
I am totally fine with this. My stomach is rumbling, my muscles are aching and my bed sounds like the most wonderful thing in the world right now.
Dinner is quiet, with so much of the Intel & Recon crew missing. Even the teens’ table doesn’t have the joyful chaos it did when I first got here, and we pass baskets of food without the usual banter. As the day winds down, a lazy sunset streaks a clear sky with fierce reds and mellow blues, and the air takes on a refreshing coolness.
Departures Page 21