Access Restricted

by Gregory Scott Katsoulis

  Margot rolled her eyes.

  “I love these things,” Sera said, like that excused her.

  “Dig in,” Norflo said. I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. He walked over to me and held out the opened box.

  “Thank you,” I said pointedly, hiding the sadness welling up in my gut. Beecher’s grandmother had mostly lived on these bars because she couldn’t own a printer. She’d been caught and Indentured because of me. The last time I’d seen her was through the feed of her eyes.

  “Henri, make sure Mira gets one,” Margot said with an affectionate push.

  The orange wash of light faded. I ducked back into the truck. The interface was back.

  “Don’t touch anything!” Sera said, her mouth full of Harvest™ crumbs. She pressed in next to me.

  “Give me some space,” I said, pushing her back in spite of myself. Something in me fluttered, wondering if any of what had happened to her parents was truly my fault.

  “We should be careful,” Margot said, joining us as Henri and Norflo carried the bars off to the Meiboch™. “Remember, we need to recharge the car.”

  I examined the options on the screen. “Well, the map isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  I tapped the DIAGNOSTICS button. The screen populated with a dozen or so options. I selected BATTERY PERFORMANCE. The NanoLion™ logo glowed, dots pulsing in the background, and a new Terms of Service appeared. I AGREE’d it away.

  “How does this help us?” Sera asked.

  “Just wait,” I said. The screen now showed us the truck’s battery status.

  Charge: 71

  Predicted Range: 948 km

  Estimated Battery Life: 7 years

  Two buttons also appeared on the screen: CYCLE and RECHARGE.

  “How is the truck going to recharge itself?” Sera asked.

  “Let’s find out,” I said. I tapped RECHARGE. The truck lurched forward, nearly giving me a heart attack. Just as quickly it stopped, an inch from the Meiboch’s bumper. The engine hummed louder.

  “What now?” Margot asked.

  “Now we get the Meiboch™ out of this truck’s way. I think it’s looking for the nearest recharge.”

  OiO™: $22.99

  I sat in the passenger seat and let Margot take a shift, gnawing away on the dense Butter Crunch Harvest™ Bar Norflo had given me. I wanted to sleep, but I couldn’t. Every time I tried, my eyes opened instinctively, checking to make sure we were still following the truck.

  “I will not let it get away,” Margot said.

  In the back seat, Sera and Norflo both had their eyes closed, with her leaning against him as he snored. I’d spent almost every night of my life sleeping in the same lumpy pullout bed with my sister. Even when things were at their worst, I took comfort in being near her and Sam. It was what always came to mind when I thought of home. Sera had never had that, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how alone she must have felt.

  Mira watched the road or her sister, as if she was waiting for something to happen. Her eyes were drowsy and darkened with fatigue. Henri had his forehead pressed to the glass of the window, looking out into the darkness.

  “Margot,” I whispered.

  Her eyes flicked to me and then back to the road.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. “I know you wanted to go home when we had to escape. This wasn’t what you planned.”

  “It does not matter,” she said.

  “But what about your parents? Won’t they be worried?”

  Her hands tensed on the wheel. “No,” she said without further explanation. When she sensed me looking for more, she added, “You can stop staring at me for answers.”

  I could feel something was very wrong. But how could I help if she didn’t tell me? I contemplated asking Henri at some point, but Margot would be furious if she found out.

  The sky outside was half-clouded, but we could see a few crisp, shimmering dots of light in the haze between. The clouds themselves glowed faintly in spots, lit from underneath by far-off domes. I searched for the moon, but didn’t see it. I thought the clouds would eventually shift or clear, and it would just be hanging in the sky, like it did in every Moon Mints™ commercial. But I saw no sign of it, not even a pale glow to hint it existed. A quiet anxiety invaded my thoughts: Was the moon just a story? Was it just part of a logo to sell mints? I honestly didn’t know.

  I opened my mouth to ask, but realized how silly and childish the question was. If it was real, I would sound ignorant. If it wasn’t, I would still sound like a fool.

  I didn’t know exactly what the moon was supposed to be, either. Sometimes it was a crescent shape, and sometimes it was big and round. I asked once in school, but Mr. Kellogg said specifics about the moon were the intellectual property of Keene Inc.—because of Moon Mints™.

  “Why do they show it in the sky?” I had asked. “Why is it up there?”

  He’d told me not to make him waste money repeating himself. That was in third grade. Penepoli had said it must be a ball, which made sense, but knowing its shape only made the thing seem stranger.

  I fell to dreaming about it, but the dream was vague and full of regret, like the moon had gotten away from me, or I had betrayed it. Henri had told me Margot’s parents lived there on weekends, but kept their second home secret from Mira because she was a baby bird with a bad wing, just like Sera.

  It seemed like only moments later, Margot was poking at my shoulder.

  “Speth,” she whispered. “Speth!”

  I opened my eyes and saw we were following the truck along a wide, curving road in a whole new landscape. The sky was entirely clouded over again, but a great glow shone from beyond the trees. Whatever the light source, it illuminated a wide swath of sky over us.

  I wasn’t the only one to wake. “Is it a dome?” Henri whispered, rubbing his eyes, trying not to wake Mira. She was asleep beside him, her mouth open, breathing softly. I had to shake off what he’d told me in my dream. Mira was no bird.

  “What dome is it?” I asked, unsure how far we’d traveled while I slept.

  “I do not think it is a dome.” Margot peered ahead with great intensity. “I think it is a city without a dome.”

  “What ift’s escapees?” Norflo said, excited. “Made a whole city? We could—”

  “It isn’t,” I said. I didn’t mean to cut him off, but I wasn’t going to hope for something impossible. I yawned and tried to clear my head. “The truck wouldn’t go to a place like that to recharge.”

  “We don’t know for certain that is what it is doing,” Margot reminded me.

  Norflo slumped back a little. Sera looked from him to the outside, like she wanted what he’d said to be true.

  “Are there places like that?” Sera asked. “Are there stories?”

  “Nah,” Norflo said. “Be cool, tho.”

  The city slowly revealed itself around the curve—only it wasn’t a city. It was a miles-long cluster of cheaply printed barracks. They clung to each other at slightly different heights, like no one could be bothered to print them uniformly. Beyond the buildings, a pair of towering wedges billowed a thick smog that reached up into the haze from a long, low factory. A single bright sign read: OiO™ Products.

  “‘OiO™.’” Henri read aloud. Mira stirred beside him and made a short, dissatisfied noise.

  Almost the moment he said it, the Meiboch™’s doors locked and the dashboard lit up.

  “WiFi,” I said.

  “I hate those things,” Sera said, rubbing her midsection as if she knew the feel of an OiO™ Holding Corset. Saretha had worn one when she was trapped in the house, hoping it would keep her in shape. The memory of her in it made me feel sick.

  “Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” Henri whispered. Mira twitched and smacked at his arm to be quiet.

  “Nothing we have do
ne is a good idea, Henri,” Margot said quietly. She tapped the dashboard. “But letting the car die is a worse idea.”

  “Poor car,” Mira said, eyes still closed, trying to get comfortable.

  I took a deep breath and tried to steady myself, sickened by the idea of what I was looking at. “How can there be a market for so many corsets? How can they need a factory for it?”

  “How did you think these things got made? Fairies?” Margot asked, pointing to the long, decidedly unenchanted building.

  “They make more than corsets,” Sera commented, her body tense. Did they manufacture something worse than a device that crushed your middle to disfigure you into looking thinner?

  Near one end of the factory town, light glowed from a long tube that wound off into a dense forest of dead gray trees. It was a tunnel to the domes, like the one we’d escaped from.

  “We should avoid that thing,” I said, eyeing it like it was a snake waiting to strike.

  “Couldn’t we take it to DC?” Henri asked.

  “Sure,” I answered, looking at the tunnel’s glow threading into the dead forest. “We could drive right to Lucretia Rog’s home.”

  Henri paused. “I was thinking of Kiely Winston. But what if we did look for Lucretia’s place in DC? We’re Placers. We could sneak in.”

  “Henri, do you not remember how badly your last visit to a Rog went?”

  “Badly? We defeated him! We blew his place up.”

  “After I rescued you,” Margot said. “And that was mostly Speth’s quick thinking.”

  “I got lucky,” I said as the truck ahead of us slowed.

  “Humble Speth,” Margot commented.

  The truck turned left, heading away from the tunnel, toward the dark end of the town, where a sign for Sylvectric™ Inductions glowed dimly and spun. The streets were deserted.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “Eerie,” Norflo commented. His brow furrowed. “Think s’all Indentureds?”

  “The whole place?” I asked, feeling a pit of dread in my stomach.

  “’Cept whoever keeps ’em in line,” Norflo muttered.

  This was how our parents lived. This was a factory, not a farm, but the idea was the same. The people here were prisoners, forced to do whatever work they were handed.

  I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. But I held both back. I looked at Sera and wondered if she felt the same way.

  The truck pulled into the space under the rotating sign, and the whole area lit up. The ground was marked with parking lines. Inside these were black metal charging plates. After looking around cautiously, Margot pulled in behind the truck.

  I felt strange, almost tingly. A thin buzz seemed to fill the car, even though it was still silent. I could feel it in my bones rather than hear it. The tints of the glass brightened, like the black glass had turned off. The car’s screen went dark.

  “I don’t think we should be here,” I said.

  “We—” Margot began, but the dashboard’s screen suddenly popped up a bright logo.

  Sylvectric™ Inductions. Tap AGREE to charge.

  Below this, a block of minuscule ToS text appeared, the unreadable kind they use when they know you have no choice. Margot tapped AGREE, and the soundless buzz changed to a higher tone.

  “What’s happening?” Sera asked.

  “The car is charging,” Margot said flatly. The red battery light flickered to amber. Margot peeked back at Mira sleeping.

  “Let’s switch off,” I whispered to her, pointing from her seat to mine. I began to move, and Margot, after a moment of thought, did an awkward dance with me so we could switch places.

  I scanned the windows of the buildings nervously, looking for any sign of life. In a second-floor window not far from us, a gaunt, dark face was gazing, expressionless, into the night. Her eyes looked cloudy even from this distance. She was weary and elderly, and seemed only vaguely interested in looking out her window. I wondered if she could see at all.

  Her eyes turned to us—to me, without interest. Her window abruptly flickered and turned black. It might have been showing her an Ad, or maybe she was allowed just a brief period to look outside.

  I saw no one else. There wasn’t anyone out strolling. There were no shops or parks. There did not seem to be anywhere to do anything. I suspected everyone was sleeping, or, worse, working deep into the night. Everything appeared locked down tight. There were no ledges on the barracks for Placers, or windows that swung out for easy access. If my parents were in a place like this, how would I even find them, let alone get them out?

  The window the woman had been looking out from flickered with a brief flash and went clear again. She was gone.

  The front door of the building beside us, flat metal and unadorned, slowly pushed open. The elderly woman made her way out, her face still an expressionless mask, but her eyes were searching now. A younger woman, maybe my mother’s age, held the door for her and took her hand to guide her. She turned to us, and her eyes went wide. She seemed both alarmed and excited. She grabbed the door and appeared to be yelling inside, but no sound made it into the Meiboch™’s Squelch.

  Norflo pulled up on the handle of his door to get out, but the screen chimed soothingly.

  ACCESS RESTRICTED.

  The door didn’t move. “Dafuc?”

  ACCESS RESTRICTED.

  “Don’t go out there,” Sera cried.

  “Can’t,” Norflo said, demonstrating. The same chime sounded. Mira stirred at the noise.

  The truck in front of us began to move, and the lights around it dimmed. It turned, half circling us to head back up the road toward the tunnel.

  The two women moved toward our car, slowed by the older one’s shuffling speed.

  “Are we trapped?” Sera asked, panicked.

  “Trapped?” Mira repeated sleepily.

  “No,” Margot said. “They are only restricting our access to the workers and those who keep them in line.”

  “How’s that different from being trapped?” Sera asked.

  “We’re not authorized to even be here?” I asked. I pulled uselessly on the door myself. It chimed and showed the same ACCESS RESTRICTED message again. I don’t know why I was surprised. This was a world where people could be bought and sold. Not letting us exit the car because we weren’t “authorized” to be in OiO™’s factory town was nothing compared to that.

  I suddenly realized what was upsetting me so much. “What if all the Indentured places are like this? What if we get to Crab Creek, and we aren’t even allowed out of the car?”

  “That is an unfortunate possibility,” Margot said.

  The temperature around me seemed to drop. Had I lost everything, and I didn’t even know it? Would I never see my sister or my parents again?

  “Are you saying we should give up?” Sera asked, her eyes filled with a desperation I understood. I reached back and took her hand. Her face registered shock.

  “We’re going to try,” I told her.

  “We should try to find Kiely Winston in DC,” Margot said. “She is our best option.”

  The two women stopped at the sidewalk, across the street from our car. They squinted at us, and the older woman grew excited. She made the sign of the zippered lips to her younger companion.

  “Let’s get back on the road,” I said, aching to U-turn like the truck and leave. A pang of guilt hit me. I knew I was being a coward, leaving these women behind, but I didn’t want any of this. I wished the black glass had stayed on. I didn’t want their attention. A horrid sour guilt crept up my throat. I wanted to say we should help them, but we couldn’t. If there was any hope of helping my parents and Saretha, we had to keep moving.

  Margot’s head was turned, looking back at the way we’d come. She bit her lip.

  The truck we’d followed in was wending its way up
the lonely curved road out of town, but she was looking past it.

  “We should probably move,” Margot said, pointing in the direction of the tunnel. A car raced toward us, followed by a second.

  “You think they’re here for us?” I asked, fearing there was no other possibility. A few more women emerged from the door and hurried to the side of the first two. As they spoke to each other, their Cuffs blazed amber in the night, charging them for words we couldn’t hear.

  “Don’t wait and find out,” Norflo suggested.

  I put the car in Drive. The noiseless hum sputtered. The car felt like it was being held in place by a magnetic field—like the ones I searched for with my lock pick.

  “They’re blocking the road out of town,” Henri said. Sure enough, the two cars had slowed and then stopped in the distance, barricading the exit.

  “There’s no way out,” Sera breathed.

  Mira’s eyes went wide.

  I stared ahead, searching desperately for another route. My eyes landed on a rusted metal gate, flecked with ancient yellow paint, sitting in the darkness outside the recharge station lights. Beyond it, an ancient, cracked stretch of pavement vanished into the darkness of the dead forest.

  I pressed down on the accelerator, trying to get us out of the magnetic field. It didn’t want us to go. I pressed down harder, and the screen lit up with a warning about nonpayment as the car finally wrenched free. I glanced in the rearview mirror to see a third car emerging from the tunnel. Though it was far-off, it appeared to be a Meiboch™.

  I steered our car toward the dark hole in the trees beyond the rusted gate.

  “Smash through it,” Henri said.

  Margot looked at him. “Henri the subtle.”

  The front of our car was still bent and sputtering colors. I didn’t think more damage would be useful. There was a spot between some of the trees and the gate where I was pretty sure the car would just fit, if I angled us right. The undergrowth would scratch up the car, but it would be better than crashing into anything.

  I eased us onto the road and turned out our lights.

  Behind us, the distant car sped past the exit. There was little doubt in my mind where they were heading.