by L. J. Hatton
“I’m . . . I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. “Has it happened yet? If it hasn’t . . . I’m sorry.”
Her eyes stopped flashing and settled on brown.
“Did you see my sister?”
“Yes. I’m sorry you lost them, but they aren’t really hiding.”
Nim and Vesper? I’d thought she meant Evie.
“Do you know where they are? Did you see my father?”
“Yes.”
“Where? When did you see him?”
“Never ask me that!” she screamed. “Never ask me when! Never when! Never when!”
Nafiza pulled her shawl tight around her and ran, leaving me standing stunned beside Baba’s porch.
CHAPTER 9
I pushed my doubts about Nafiza’s motives aside and put on the sweatshirt she gave me. Creepy-accurate clothes were a lot more comfortable than molasses-encrusted ones, and now I wouldn’t be as reluctant to meet others on the Mile.
After changing and combing my artificial waist-length tangle into something that looked more like hair than a hastily tatted fishing net, I swept it up into the scarf. It was a relief not to have all that weight pulling me down, reminding me that the only reason I had long hair was because of Iva. The synthetic hair she’d created was heavy and thick, and I wanted nothing more than to find a way to cut it all off so I could feel cool air on my neck again. But that was a petty concern, and it could wait until I’d found a way to force the lock on my father’s room to open. The others were still changing. I wanted a few minutes alone with Magnus Roma—or at least the things he left behind.
I was too late.
The security panel that controlled the door had been pulled apart, with several of the wires snipped and melted to force the electronic lock to release. There was still no power in the house, so the work had been done by someone with his own power source.
“Klok?” I only had to tap the door to open it.
“No, it’s me.” Birch pulled the door open the rest of the way. “Klok was here, but he went in search of the toolkit he brought with him from the Hollow. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”
“That’s okay, I just wanted to take a look around.”
“I think he beat you to it.”
All of the drawers were open, with their contents pulled out. The closet had been emptied onto the bed. The only neat area was the desk, which was arranged exactly as my father’s had been on the train, right down to the coffee cup full of pens and the pad of green paper he used for a coaster. In the exact center of the blotter sat an old-fashioned leather briefcase with hard sides and a three-number combination lock.
“Klok made this mess?” I asked.
“I didn’t ask. It was like this when I got here. I was able to fix the tree, so that’s something.”
He pointed to a potted plant in the corner. What should have been three feet of simple flowering bush towered into the room, covered in orange blossoms the size of my hand. At the top, it brushed the ceiling, fanning out where the branches were too tall to fit.
“I got a little carried away, but it was dead when I got here, and I felt sorry for it. Growing things helps me clear my head.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Winnie promised to show me the community garden. If I have something to do, I won’t be in the way.”
“You’re not.” I tried to touch him, but he shrank away. A flurry of shriveled flowers fell from the branches of his tree. “Are you okay?”
“Why ask me that? It’s not like I lost anyone who matters.”
“Yes, you did,” I told him. “And none of us have even acknowledged it, have we?”
Birch lost Warden Nye when the Center fell. Most of us were celebrating a victory, but Nye was the closest thing to a parent Birch had in his life. It may have been Stockholm syndrome at its most insidious, but that didn’t mean that Birch’s loss and pain weren’t real.
Jermay was allowed to grieve for Zavel. Birch got only silence.
“He wasn’t really my father, but I wasn’t his pet, either. I don’t even know if he’s dead or alive. He could have made it off, and I can’t decide if I hope he did.”
“You should have said something. We would have understood.”
“Oh yeah, your magician friend is really understanding.”
“I would have understood.”
I think.
“He’s not worth missing. It’s just this place . . . and now these clothes . . . I can’t help but think of the Center. Why did she have to pick this color?”
Birch’s new clothes were jeans, like most of what Nafiza provided, and a shirt with leaves embroidered on the sleeves and collar in honor of his touch, but both were an unfortunate dove gray. The color the Commission referred to as “silvers.” Standard uniform for interns and new recruits, and what Birch had worn for most of his life.
“I’ve tried really hard to put him out of my head, and most of the time I manage, but now every reflection triggers a memory. What’s wrong with me?”
“Nafiza did it to us all, but I don’t think she did it on purpose. You said Nye protected you. That’s worth something. Maybe he hoped the silvers would help you blend in, so people would leave you alone. Plus, he gave you that letter from your parents.”
At the Center, a yellowed note from his mother and father had been one of Birch’s prized possessions. He must have lost that, too.
“I’m not stupid. I know the warden wrote it so I’d stop asking him questions.”
“Even so, he chose to answer you with pen and paper. What do you think the other wardens would have done? It was a kindness.”
One of many conflicting layers of a man at war with himself. At his core, Warden Nye had a system of values that he protected, but on the surface, he was the model Commission officer. The two sides rarely agreed, and you never knew which one would appear. I’d seen him go from cruel to kind in an instant, show real concern for my well-being, then threaten to kill me and call it mercy.
“You’re allowed to miss your home, Birch.”
“Some home.”
“I think I owe you an apology. I may have oversold the outside world without preparing you for the bad stuff. I should have known escape was only step one. I didn’t think about the hard parts coming later.”
“It’s not even that.” He stole a peek at the ceiling, a habit ingrained from knowing there were always people watching him at the Centers. He’d learned to speak carefully, even in empty rooms. “I think Jermay was right. Just like you were right when you told me I should have done more to fight from the inside.”
“You did what you could.”
“No. No, I didn’t. I did what was safe. I never got it. Not like I do now. I’d seen units prep for raids before, but never from this side. It was all routine and equipment checks. It’s easier that way. I never saw the casualties or the destruction. When the units came in, they’d be celebrating. It warped the reality of what they were doing. I think I could have stopped at least some of it.”
“Survivor’s guilt,” I said.
“A luxury people like Greyor and Jermay’s father don’t have.”
He laid his hand against the tree, allowing it to bloom and replace the fallen flowers.
“I’m glad you like the tree,” he said. “I’d better go find Winnie before she and her cousin get into it again.”
“Birch? Are you sorry you came with me?”
He paused before saying, “I don’t know,” and then he left.
The room was in such disarray that it was difficult to know where to start. I picked at the drawers to see if there were any papers or photos hidden in the spilled clothes. I approached the closet, but that didn’t feel right, either.
My pocket grew warm, and I knew it was the memory chip prompting me to use it. It was time to face whatever my father had left for me. What greater secret could he have hidden on it than the one he’d locked away up here? Maybe he’d given me a map that would lead us to his allies.
The computer inside was completely drained of power, confirming he hadn’t been to the Mile since long before we lost the train. Pouches sewn into the briefcase’s lid were filled with loose-leaf notes; packets of developed photos had been stuffed into the sides, cushioning the laptop. I lifted it out and gave the battery a jolt, thankful for the conductivity of the house’s walls. Being at cloud level provided an abundance of static electricity; the nearby metal made it flow.
I was both relieved and disappointed to see a password screen pop up. Thirty-three spaces, probably filled with random letters and numbers or an acronym only my father understood.
My father’s recent track record had me prepared for another letdown, and I was afraid to prove that theory right. Once I put that chip into the computer, there was no turning back. I felt it urging me on, while the computer seemed to be warding me off.
“One, two, three, go!” I ordered myself. Whenever something scared me—like a new act or trying a new food Mother Jesek had picked up along the train route—I’d count to three, close my eyes, and go for it. I put my hands on either side of the keyboard and dug in, trying to force the machine to give up its secrets by picturing open locks and doors.
Characters spun in each space, but they all stopped on X. The screen flashed red with the words ACCESS DENIED, accompanied by a counter reading “1 of 5.”
Another try got the same result, this time labeled “2 of 5.” There was a secondary security system in place to prevent hacking. I only had three attempts left before it activated, likely wiping the hard drive. When Jermay opened the door and called my name, I’d never been so happy for an interruption.
“There you are,” he said. “I was beginning to think one of Winnie’s crazy relatives had moved the rooms again and sent you to another dimension. Or flattened you.”
“Nope, still present in all three dimensions.” I slipped the memory chip back into my pocket.
“Is that Magnus’s computer?”
“Yeah, but it’s got more security than the entire Commission. I’m afraid to poke around too much. It could ruin the files.”
“Knowing Magnus, if you press the wrong button, it could come to life as a manticore and eat you.”
“You’re all kinds of depressing today,” I said.
“I know. I’ve got a bad feeling I can’t shake. Something’s creeping up on me.”
“That’s just the clothes talking. Overexposure to Madame Doom.”
The difference in Jermay’s appearance was greater now that I could see him in his new shirt. His eyes had always been noticeable. Complete strangers passing him on Show grounds would stare until he was out of sight to get another peek at them, and most patrons assumed his eyes were made up as part of Zavel’s magic act, since Jermay was his assistant. Now they were just blue. Plain, ordinary blue. There had to be a way to get his spark back.
“I’ve checked around outside,” he said. “The blackout’s restricted to this house. I can’t find any fried wires or broken bulbs, and Klok yelled at me for asking him to help, so I was wondering if you could fix it. All the hot water’s gone.”
“Klok yelled at you?”
“All caps, double bright, and italicized. He says he’s exercising his right to rudeness through inappropriate language. I don’t feel like arguing via subtitle, and I’m pretty sure Anise is looking for ways to disable his display, so will you take a look?”
“I might as well. This thing’s being no help at all.”
I closed the computer on our way out.
Reading the house’s electrical network was similar to taking someone’s pulse. To see how well things were working, I needed to find the right spot and press.
Jermay showed me the breaker box on the kitchen wall, which was already standing open.
“Anything broken in there is not my fault,” he swore. “I only looked at it.”
“And I didn’t even do that!” Baba said, laughing hysterically like this was another of his jokes we didn’t get. He’d positioned himself next to the light switch to turn it on as soon as the power was back.
The others had vacated the house, just in case something went wrong and I accidentally compressed the building to the size of a marble. Nola had returned to her shop. Dev had dragged Anise and Birdie out with promises of a park. I assumed Birch and Winnie were at the community garden, probably making pumpkins of a suitable size for Cinderella. Klok was still there, but he was back in my father’s workroom, tinkering, and he’d taken the golems with him.
“I thought I’d try throwing the breakers,” Jermay said. “But I can’t figure out where they are. The panel’s blank, and there aren’t any toggles.”
“It’s a custom system,” I told him. “You have to be keyed in.”
Or possessed of a touch that made it easy to access and control machinery. A spark jumped from my fingers, connecting me to the circuitry, like a psychic tapping into a schizophrenic mind. The processors were jumbled, the routes backwashing and interrupting each other in a Gordian knot of chaos.
“Just like Magnus,” Baba said.
The more I learned about my own abilities, the less amazing I found my father’s. The stage lights were coming on over his act, allowing me to see the cracks in his makeup and the curve of the mirrors. All of the enchantment in my world was dying, and I hated it.
“Does your house have its own power supply?” I asked Baba.
“It used to. We integrated them all to combine our resources.”
“You shouldn’t have. Each unit is designed to be a closed system. Your integration is off, and it’s burning ten times the power necessary. The extra juice is overloading circuits left and right.”
The Mile was burning itself alive.
“Unfortunately, no one here is quite as in tune with the system as your father, and his absence highlighted how dependent the whole thing was on his maintenance. He never bothered to detail the more delicate areas, preferring to maintain them himself.”
He was good at that. My father had been a lot more controlling than I’d realized. Always secretive. Always playing toward a master scheme that he wasn’t inclined to share with the rest of us. Now that he was gone, we were still on the paths he forged, but there were no road signs, and we didn’t have a map.
“Most of our supply lines have been cut off, leaving us without parts. It’s all we can do to patch the leaks as they rupture,” Baba said.
“You shouldn’t need parts. The Mile’s outfitted with the same self-sustaining advancement routine as our train. It should be capable of repairing itself, assuming you have enough garbage output to supply it with raw materials.”
The Mile should have continued to grow by several inches a month in all directions, providing a slow-building base to accommodate extra people and the resources they would need. The train had used the same routine to lay track as it rolled and build extra cars when we needed them. Up here that routine would make buildings and tools. The Mile could duplicate its own spare parts when the originals wore out. But the system was a mess. It was as if someone read the instructions in Japanese, then filtered them through sign language to someone who only spoke Swedish. Something definitely got lost in translation.
I sent out feelers through the system, clamping off everything specific to Baba’s house until I’d isolated it from the rest of the Mile’s buildings, then I rerouted everything to the smaller internal generator, which was sitting idle and fully charged. Near as I could tell, more than sixty other generators were in the same condition. They’d been wired out of the common power supply.
I gave the whole thing a final tap, an
d—
“Turn it on,” I told Baba.
Everything whirled back to life, faster and brighter than it had been before the power went out.
“I call shower!” Jermay yelled to no one and charged off for the stairs.
He stopped with his foot on the first step, turned around, and ran back to give me a kiss on the cheek. Half a peck, and in a hurry, but the first spontaneous move he’d made since the Center. This time the heat in my face had nothing to do with my touch and everything to do with his. For a second, I caught a glimpse of what had been missing. I would have bet cash money that his eyes were sparking.
“You’re awesome,” he said. “But if you blush any harder, you’ll set the house on fire, which kind of defeats the purpose of fixing it.”
Just like that, he went from charming to world’s greatest irritation. I shrieked, sending water out of the sink spout to chase him up the stairs.
“Sorry,” I said to Baba once Jermay was gone. I called the puddles off the kitchen floor and back into the sink. “He makes me so mad sometimes.”
“That’s how the best ones always start.” He patted my shoulder as he hobbled past. “I think perhaps a few words to my neighbors about your handiwork are in order. They’ll be much more inclined to civility if they know that you have your father’s way with machines and are willing to help with some necessary adjustments. I’m sure they’ve all converged on poor Nola’s shop by now; I should see how she’s faring.”
“Can I ask you something before you go?”
“Of course.”
“What is it that makes them so afraid of us?” I understood why the Commission and the more mundane people on the ground were afraid, but all of the families on the Mile were touched. How were we any different?
“Bah! Nothing worth mentioning. They’ve taken something Nafiza said yesterday a bit too literally. It happens from time to time. They’ll come around—you’ll see!”
I’d never seen a man try to run with a crutch before, but he hustled out of the kitchen with a rickety hop so fast, I thought he was going to fall into a headfirst roll. The door swung shut behind him, and I was left on my own for the first time in ages.