by D. K. Dailey
My hat is stuffed inside along with the old flutterboard and a circular, handheld metal device: a pointholder. An instrument for people who prefer not to keep points on their c-chips. I press a button, and 2,000,000 points flashes across the side screen.
My mouth drops open. She gave me points! How did she manage that? I tear up. Because my mom is still my mom. I shove everything back into the bag. I don’t need a biological mom when I have a great one already.
After a shower, I go through the stacks of clothes under the sink and decide to stay in the Dreg gear they’ve provided for now. I grab a pair of black cargo pants, boxers, a thin black shirt, and a matching gray one from the stash. These will make my muscles look impressive.
With a towel wrapped around my waist, I peak out of the bathroom, glistening with water. “Which shirt?” I flex discreetly and then hold the shirts up side by side.
“Get back in the bathroom with that.” She throws a fluffy pillow from the bed at me.
I dodge it. “The black one then?” I place it near my bare chest.
Giggling, she shakes her head. I throw her a one-hundred-watt smile before returning to the bathroom, happy we can share humorous moments, too. I choose the black shirt, then find a navy-blue hoodie like the one I’ve been wearing and put it on. After I come out, Saya goes in and comes out later dressed in an outfit similar to what she usually wears: tight-fitting stretchy black jeans and a loose-fitting tank top.
I’ve never had a micro meal, which come in self-heating, biodegradable containers. They exist because of the Dregs’ need for convenience and limited access to power. I watch her press a button on the side of one and follow her lead.
In a minute, the meals are in our laps, and we’re sitting on the beds eating fish, beans, and rice across from each other. “Can I ask you a question?”
“I might not answer.” She chews a mouthful of food loudly. Her bad table manners don’t bother me though. They’re an interesting quirk. She never cares about being dainty or neat like other girls. She doesn’t care about feelings either. Not positive I like that, but I appreciate honesty.
“When you were outside my skate park, you asked me to come with you. Did you know I would be targeted by the government before that happened?”
Using her fork, she plays with her food before answering. “That’s a question loaded with a massive accusation.”
I blush.
She exhales and puts down her fork. “We were getting food and went off track up and through the forest, hoping to lose the officers since we never go into the hills. We had been watching you in the skate park, at your dad’s job, and in the market. It was one of our missions. Sometimes, if we know a Dreg is faking Golden status, we’ll approach and ask them to join us. But Pike knew you would hold on to your status. He only had me collect intel. But in that moment, I thought it’d be best to take you. Cress didn’t agree, and he was the mission leader.”
“You must’ve liked what you saw.” I recover, like always, with a witty line.
“You were an assignment.” Her eyes harden. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Am I still an assignment? This is my life we’re talking about.”
“You do have a serious side.” She smiles lightly.
My immediate instinct is to make up another quip, but I don’t feel up to it.
“You asked me before what I was afraid of.” She speaks so quietly I have to lean forward to hear her. She remains silent, but I wait patiently.
I finish my food.
She finishes hers.
I watch her fold her empty micro meal container into itself until only a palm-sized square is left, and I do the same. Grabbing both, she puts them in the compactor and comes back to sit on the bed.
“You’re afraid of love, aren’t you?” I finally ask.
“You think you have me figured out,” she hisses.
“No, I don’t.” I shake my head. My dad once told me, ‘Don’t ever try to figure a girl out. It’s pointless. Girls are like streams…your favorite stream. As you watch it over and over, every time you notice a new detail. They’re very complicated, with many layers.’
“I’m not afraid of love. I just don’t believe in it. People who love you let you down all the time.” A sting conquers her voice. “I am afraid of people being taken, though.”
“That’s silly.” I use Ems’s favorite word but realize a second too late that it’s the wrong thing to say. It’s how she feels. How everyone feels around here.
“A lot of things about you are silly,” Saya scoffs.
“Guess I had that one coming.” I laugh with her.
You know that moment in a stream when everything slows, and two people look at each other and time stands still? Well, I thought that kind of thing was shucky until now.
She stands up and sits down beside me. Before I know it, her hand is on one of my thighs, creeping its way ever so slowly up to my chest. I look down at her hand—her skin is feather soft—caressing the side of my face. Does she have feelings for me? Is she making her feelings known with her touch?
The more time we spend together, the more layers of this part of Saya slowly part, like petals of stargazer lilies. Her face moves ever so slowly toward mine. I stall mid-action and stare into her eyes. This is truly a sign she wants to kiss. Or maybe she’s gonna brush lint or a crumb off my face. I have to stop jumping to conclusions when it comes to her.
Her lips touch mine, and complete shock takes me over. The aching I have for her is resurrected. She’s kissing me for real this time. Playing chase with my tongue, she flicks hers over mine to control the kiss. I like it—the wetness and urgency of it—so I chase back, pushing my tongue deeper into her mouth as she bends hers under mine.
My heart thumps, full of electricity. Getting harder by the second, I want to peel off her clothes. I almost burst from the kiss alone. I wish it could last forever, but she ends it much like she started it—abruptly. She then returns to her twin bed as if nothing happened.
“What was that for?” I lick my lips. I still taste her on them, sweet berries and bubblegum.
“So you won’t try to figure out the right moment. I could see your mind working.” She makes a twirling gesture near her head. “There’s no right time. You have to go on instinct. All the time.”
I yearn to speak, to be debonair and lush, but nothing comes to mind.
“People who wait for the right moment get left behind.”
She can’t blame me for not rushing to make another move. The last time, she damn near scarred my lip after I bumbled my attempt at a kiss.
“There’s only one thing left to do, you know,” she purrs.
I pat the top of my twin bed. I didn’t think she would fold so easily under my charm. I flash a big toothy grin.
She giggles, her mouth wide open. I laugh, too, not getting the quip but guessing it’s definitely on me. When she catches her breath, she finally says, “We have to break into your dad’s lab during the gala like Pike has planned.”
My dreams of Saya succumbing to my charms vanish as business takes a front seat. “Y-you took the thought right out of my mind,” I stammer. But from the look on her face, she knows that’s not true.
“Okay, pretty boy.” Tucking herself under the blankets—fully clothed—she commands, “Lights out.”
I pull the blanket over my body. Such a close call.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Positioned high near a ceiling corner, a speaker spills out a disembodied voice early in the morning. The announcement echoes through the thin walls of every apartment. “We are apprehending criminals from building two-thirty-seven. According to law number thirty-two, you must open your doors and allow entry if we command it.”
I look at Saya. “Do you think they’re after us?”
She nods.
We scramble. I’m quicker than she is and arrive at the door in seconds flat. Good thing we’re fully dressed, ready to go at a moment’s notice.
�
�Is there another way out?”
“Door or balcony. No hidden passageways in the slums.”
Shucky. “We’re trapped.”
It can’t end like this. She kissed me of her own accord. She gave me a look that said she knew I could help her Dreg clan get what they wanted, and that was enough confidence to fill me up like a balloon. To be needed or desired by her was all I wanted. I press my back to the wall near the door and slide down, stooping.
My mind plays out different scenarios. We could scale the outside wall somehow. Or go out onto the balcony and take off on my flutterboard. Or maybe we could hide somewhere else in the building, avoiding cop squads until we figure a way out of this.
Commanding the lights on, she tiptoes to the balcony window and presses against the side of the wall where the window meets the corner. “There’s a few squad bubbles out there.”
“What can we do? Can we leave and hide outside?”
“No, they lock down the buildings during raids.”
I run to check the door instinctively, pressing the open button. I push it hard to the side but it won’t budge. “What the—?” I push my hardest on the panel, tugging and pressing the button interchangeably, but the door is sealed shut.
How can they control the ways in and out of a building? That seems like a fire hazard and super intrusive, like forcing a kid to remain in their room as a punishment.
I rack my brain for all the main laws of the Americas. The ones we commit to memory in school are the five under-eighteen laws involving indecency, education, gatherings, sex, and delinquency, and the three common laws that prohibit Dregs and Goldens from leisurely socializing, Goldens from harboring Dregs, and Dregs from falsifying Golden status. Nothing I can think of warrants these raids, though.
“Should we surrender?”
“No. Never surrender.” Her mouth turns into a hard line and she repeats, “Never,” like she’s clenching onto a bad memory. Then she tiptoes from the balcony door, shoves me aside, and presses a few buttons on the door’s keypad. Geesh—I made her angry again. I gulp back my pride.
A liquid screen appears like a tiny window, allowing us to look out into the hallway. Touching the screen enables her to move a viewing port side to side, sweeping the stretch of the hall.
“They’re in this building but not on this floor.”
“At least not yet.”
She cuts her eyes at me and huffs before angling the screen with her fingertips again. At the end of the hallway, the black jumpsuits of the cop squads come into focus, snaking around the corner in a jog.
The loudspeaker switches on again. “All occupants of unit eight-twenty-four, assume surrender position. We are coming in.”
“What’s surrender position?”
“On the floor, away from the door, spread-eagle.”
I squint. Must be a Dreg thing.
I face the screen. The squad goes about ten doors down and enter into what must be unit eight-twenty-four. The other squads slow, nearing our unit.
Saya turns me around, her hand on my shoulder. “You have your hat?”
I nod.
“Put it on. And your hood.”
I follow her orders despite how strange they sound. I cover my head, and Saya attacks me with her mouth and hands. She throws herself on me, and we careen against the door. The back of my head hits but doesn’t hurt. I’m invincible under her touch. The way she’s caressing me and kissing me, all over my chest and my face, carries all the passion of olden-day romance novels and airport reunions.
I pull away. When things feel too good or happen too soon, my initial reaction nowadays is to fear it. To scamper, not to careen into it, eyes closed. All of a sudden she wants me? Enough to literally throw herself at me? And during the worst possible time, too.
I open my mouth to speak, but she presses against me, pushing up on her toes. She’s so sexy, more so now because she wants me bad.
Lowering my head, I succumb to her desire. I can’t deny anything she wants, especially if it’s me. I forget everything as we kiss. I forget my name, where we are, what’s going on, the trouble I’m in…absolutely everything. Like a stick figure drawn on olden-day dry-erase glass, I’ve been obliterated, rubbed away. Wiped clean of all knowledge and sensibilities.
All over my body, the pressure, tingling, and lightness make me feel like a helium-filled balloon released into the air.
Her lips part to accept my tongue. She’s hungry, pushing up on me so hard my chest aches from the pressure of her soft breasts. Our tongues play together: hers over mine, mine over hers. Once again I’m in the storage port, minus Nell and Rasa, my body ablaze. This kiss is more insistent than the other one she gave me only a few hours ago.
She pulls back to lick my mouth and then my cheek and nose. Where is this going? Is this the real her? The one hidden under all her layers?
I withdraw, but she grabs my wrist midair.
“Lick me now.” She meets my eyes with the same intensity as the night she rescued me. But this time, it scares me and turns me off, which I never thought I’d be when it came to Saya.
“You’re off your rocker.” I pull away. “We’re about to be arrested, and you want me to lick you.”
I open my mouth to talk again, and she sticks her finger in it. I cough, trying to slip past her and away from the door I’m backed against. This is going too far, getting too weird. Her hand has a glob of saliva on it, and she looks at it curiously.
“Unit eight-oh-four, move away from the door.” I jump. The cop’s voice startles me, but Saya blows my mind. Taking the wet finger she stuck in my mouth, she swabs her face with it like she’s putting on makeup.
Gross.
I move away from the door and from her. “You’re mental!”
“Sir, this isn’t one of the units with the wanted Dreg or the ones with reported infectious Dreg,” an officer says outside the door.
“This is one of the units under continuous suspicion, though.”
The argument between the two cops—one muscular and one short—spills onto the door screen as we turn to face it. A few squads stand in the screen’s viewable area. Yet, until they ask for access to the door screen, we are merely voyeurs to their conversation.
Saya and I stand against the wall, across from the front door, afraid to move closer to the screen.
Short touches part of his helmet, “Unit eight-twenty-six secured? Affirmative…and the other three units are, too? Copy that.”
“The mission is complete then?” Muscular asks.
Short listens to his earpiece.
“Sir, can we move out?” He asks Short.
“I want you to check this unit. Stand still so we can see your faces.” He faces the outside door. “Run facial recognition on them, Officer.”
Muscular steps in. “Stand side by side so we can scan your faces.”
I stiffen at the order, trying to figure out what to do next.
“You look real familiar, boy.”
“Us Dreg all look alike,” I snort uncomfortably through the door.
The squad behind the officer stifles a laugh.
I think about our options as he fumbles with the facial-recognition machine. Do we let them do this or do we run? Run where?
Chapter Thirty-Five
First, Muscular scans Saya’s face. A flashscreen on his side of the door enlarges her face into an all-dimensional floating head. A virtual map sits inside a rectangle on their handheld screen, with dots and lines crisscrossing distinct facial points. Beeping alerts erupt, and the screen flickers a message in all-D: “No DNA match with any wanted criminals,” repeats a mechanical woman’s voice three times.
“Try the boy.”
A vein pops out, pulsating on my forehead like a wiggly worm. My hands sweat, and I side-eye Saya. She winks, and I look back at the door. My head pops up on their flashscreen, and I inhale, trying to be calm. I don’t want to go back to jail. I don’t want to be executed. Saya may not be a wanted criminal, but I am.
Their facial-recognition technology knows it. And then what? We’re trapped.
On the flashscreen, the mechanical dots ping across my all-D face to the points of the surrounding rectangle. After what seems like forever, an error sounds, and my face remains unreadable too. I narrow my eyes at the machine. It must be broken, or Pike found a way to erase me from the system.
“No read.” Muscular bangs a hand against the back of the machine. “We should take them into the precinct with no reads.”
“We don’t have time.”
I move my feet anxiously, and Saya murmurs, “Be still. Nonthreatening.”
“We can scan their wrists,” he offers.
“We need probable cause,” Short says, “when they’re in their homes.”
“They’re Dregs,” a cop from the back of the squad says.
My bones grow rigid but focusing on the officers through the screen calms me for some reason.
“Commander, permission to speak frankly, sir?”
Short turns to face the officer. “Permission granted.”
“These kids probably rented the room by the night, if you know what I mean. This is one of those apartments where random people have been reported to come and go.” A few other officers break into stifled laughs under their helmets.
Short examines us through the screen. “How old are you two?”
“We’re eighteen, sir,” Saya says quickly.
“So, they’re not breaking any under-eighteen laws.” He places a hand near his ear. “You’ve secured all the prisoners? Great.” He faces the exit. “Today’s your lucky day, Dreg.” Then he leads his officers down the hall and back the way they came as the door screen goes blank.
“Little-known fact.” Saya gives a huge sigh of relief. “DNA transfers scramble facial recognition.”
My chest heaves. I am in awe.
She kissed and slobbered all over me so we wouldn’t get caught. She rubbed spit on her face so the scan would error out. A part of me cracks open and I feel like a wound someone smeared salt into, but most of me is grateful for her quick thinking. I actually thought she’d succumbed to my charms. But she’s had her head in the game this whole time.