“We’re thirty stories up if you think that balcony door is an exit for you,” Lucretia added. The girl’s eyes darted toward the door as well before she returned her gaze to the floor.
Lucretia put a hand in front of the girl to hold her back and breathed in deeply before continuing. “Perhaps you are confused, Speth. I expect your obedience, not your silence.”
My mouth grew tight, holding back all the things I wanted to say to her.
“Oh, this trick,” she said. “It’s your favorite one. Silence. I know some Lawyers who would argue that the way you do it is communication.” Then, a little quieter, with a giggle, like she had a silly little secret, she said, “I tried to Trademark that mouth scrunch of yours myself.”
She slapped her thighs and found her way back to her seat. “Maybe I could find some way to encourage you? Andromeda, where are her friends?”
My body immediately reacted to the question, twitching at the shoulders, like part of me might be able to reach out and find them. Andromeda looked up from the floor to me, and her face turned ruddier. My heart started thumping away against my ribs.
“Both of them?” Andromeda asked, her gaze uncomfortably shifting between Lucretia and me.
“Both of them.” Lucretia’s lips tightened with disapproval.
What did that mean? Had someone else been captured? Had only two of my friends survived? I tried to find hope in that idea.
“Very clever.” Lucretia’s face went pouty again, and she tapped at her sleek, glimmering Cuff.
Andromeda dropped to the ground, withholding her scream in a way that told me she’d done it many times. I could hear an almost imperceptible tone from her head, like tiny speakers played too loudly. I knew it was agony.
“Would you like it to stop?” Lucretia asked me. “Just say the word.”
The girl now moved over to Lucretia, her eyes wide with horror.
“She’s very disciplined,” Lucretia explained, watching the woman convulse on the floor. “But it won’t do for her to pass you information like this. Both of them,” she muttered.
The girl put a hand on Lucretia’s shoulder and, shockingly, Lucretia allowed it. The bodyguards didn’t move, either. Lucretia put her hand on the girl’s in return. I thought she might try to break it, but she just held on tenderly for a moment and then let go.
“Oh, all right,” she said, tapping her Cuff and releasing Andromeda from her anguish. The girl hurried over to Andromeda and helped her to her feet. The grape was gone from her hand.
“If you won’t talk to me, talk to her,” Lucretia said to me, gesturing to the girl.
The girl’s mouth sealed tight as she turned to me. She put a shaking thumb and finger to the corner of her mouth, but Andromeda grabbed her before she could make the sign of the zippered lips.
“No!” Lucretia barked. “Victoria Grace!”
I waited for Lucretia to send the girl into shocks on the floor, or worse, but she didn’t. She only sighed and indicated to Andromeda that Victoria should be escorted away.
In the quiet that followed, Lucretia sat silent—not angry, as I would have expected. Instead, under her digital enhancements and makeup, she looked heartbroken. The girl was obviously important to her, but why?
Don't Worry: $28.98
For the next several days, I was forced to clean and do menial chores in the Rogs’ DC home. I was punished when I was too slow, or if I didn’t perform my tasks to Lucretia’s satisfaction. Or, sometimes, when she was just feeling cruel. Then hours would go by, and she would completely ignore me. The girl, Victoria, was nowhere to be seen, but I held the memory of her in my mind. She’d attempted to make the sign of the zippered lips. I tried to figure out what that might mean. Was she an ally? A fellow prisoner? Why did Lucretia Rog put her hand on the girl’s with affection? The best theory I could come up with was that Victoria was somehow her favorite servant, but it was hard to imagine someone as horrible as Lucretia Rog forming any kind of attachment.
Every evening, I had to scrape away real vegetables and fruits and meats from plates and dump that food in the trash. It accumulated into heavy bags I carried to a bin that would crush and dissolve the leavings into a goo, which one of the servants said would be made into printer inks. The idea nauseated me. My entire life, nearly everything I’d eaten was literally leftover garbage discarded by people like the Rogs.
* * *
A week into my Indenture, I stood at a sink filled with soapy water and rubbed dishes clean with a rough yellow thing Andromeda said wasn’t printed, but was the dead body of a creature called a sponge.
“It lives in the sea,” she said. I don’t know why she’d wasted words telling me about it. It did not help me go faster or clean better. When I slowed at one point and examined the thing, I was punished with a full minute of brain-melting patterns and screaming tones. When it was done, I found I wasn’t alone on the floor.
Andromeda stood, looking chagrined. “Mrs. Rog wants you to know we will be punished for even the smallest infraction from now on,” she reported, wiping the tears from her eye and keeping her voice businesslike. I wasn’t sure how this was different from what she had been doing since I arrived, but it was obviously a signal that things were about to get worse.
“Unless you are ready to speak to Victoria,” Andromeda added. Why did Lucretia want me to speak so badly? And to Victoria in particular? I wanted to ask Andromeda who the girl was, but the moment I spoke, I’d be charged—and I was certain Lucretia would be alerted. I didn’t want her to know what I was thinking. My silence was the only leverage I had.
Other servants brought more dishes back for me to clean. None of them looked me in the eye. I didn’t know where the dishes were coming from—everyone entered from a door opposite where I’d come in, and I couldn’t see anything beyond the hall they wandered in from, but I could hear the chatter of a party. People were speaking freely because they could afford to say as much as they wanted.
I’d never washed dishes before my Indenture. My family didn’t have any. We had no place to keep them. My mother always said a print of Wheatlock™ tastes the same on a plate or from a chunk in your hand.
By the number of plates coming in, I could have been fooled into thinking there were dozens of people dining with her, but they were different sizes and designs, and the matching smudges and crumbs on certain sets led me to determine six people were eating. I kept my mind busy working out the logic of it. I didn’t know if this information was of any use to me, but I steeled myself against Lucretia’s petty tortures and vowed to use any information I could to escape.
“You’re going too slow,” Andromeda warned me. Her sole job seemed to be fretting over my work.
We both knew this job made no sense. There was a silver machine on the opposite side of the room labeled CleerCleen™ Dishwasher. So I put down the sponge and stopped doing it. Andromeda stared at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Please don’t disobey,” Andromeda begged.
I waited for the sound and patterns. They didn’t come. Instead, there was a sharp jab in my arm, just at the rim of my Cuff. My arm spasmed, and I shattered a plate against the side of the sink. Andromeda looked at me, aghast. My Cuff buzzed.
I let go of the shard of plate left in my hand. Small triangles of porcelain had scattered across the counter and floor and into the sink. My finger was bleeding at the knuckle, cut in the confusion. I sucked at it, tongued a small piece of grit and spit it out. I didn’t feel right, but it wasn’t something to worry about.
I examined my arm, pulling at the skin where I’d felt the short stab. The skin had gone pink, with a single dot in the center. My eyes had trouble focusing on it. I felt weak and limp, but oddly untroubled. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. I started to pick up the broken pieces, my mind falling curiously blank. Andromeda paced behind me, worrying at her own Cuff, like something
might happen to her, too.
I took a deep breath. I raised my arm and slammed it, Cuff first, as hard as I could against the sink. It bounced off, unharmed. I found myself smiling. This was fun, satisfying and terrible. I was grinning and weeping at the same time.
“You have to finish those dishes,” Andromeda whispered to me, taking me by the shoulders and pointing me at the task.
I picked up a delicate fluted glass. I slid two soapy fingers along its long neck until they squeaked. It reminded me of something. It was so delicate—I had to be careful not to snap it.
“Don’t worry,” I said. I meant it, but my brow furrowed, like it didn’t agree with the words coming from my mouth. I giggled at that. My brow was being ridiculous. Don’t furrow, I thought. My Cuff buzzed with the charge.
“You may always look at your charges,” Mrs. Harris’s voice rang in my head—not broadcasted, but a memory from long ago. “A responsible consumer monitors expenses. You are paying not only for each of your words, but for their administration and display. How else could you be grateful for any discounts you receive?”
Did I have reason to be grateful?
Speth Jime—phrase (Don’t Worry): $27.99
Zockroft™ applicative discount: $3.00
Total: $24.99
Zockroft™? My brow furrowed again, and my eyes crinkled up, like I might smile or cry. I looked at my arm again—at the tiny pinprick there. It’s fine, I told myself, but some coal of anger and fear stayed lit within me. My Cuff buzzed with a new message.
Keene Inc. officially notifies you that you are formally in violation of your Terms of Service with us, which required the recitation of a mutually agreed upon speech [exhibit 1A] as your first adult communication. A fine of $428,559.61 will be added to your debt, as well as a $1,769.44 convenience fee for this notification and a $4,037.00 remittance fee. Keene Inc. reminds you to have a nice day.
With rising horror, I realized I’d just done the unthinkable. I’d just done what the Rogs had wanted—the thing I’d worked so hard to avoid since my Last Day. I’d spoken my first paid words.
“Andromeda!” Lucretia cried out jubilantly over a loudspeaker. “Bring the Jime girl to me,” she ordered, her voice full of excitement. “Bring her to me now!”
Andromeda’s Cuff pinged with a bonus. $10,000. She didn’t look happy about it, though. She took me by the arm and gently led me away.
Family Line: $29.98
“Bertrand,” Lucretia called. One of the bodyguards moved to the door that led to her balcony and opened it. “Uthondo,” she said to the other.
“You’re a mess,” she noted.
Of course I am, I thought. I had cleaned silently for days, plotting and evaluating every door and window for a possible escape route. I had even wondered if I could smuggle myself out in a drum of the sludge sent off to make printer inks, but I couldn’t figure out how I would breathe. On top of it all, I’d just been drugged with Zockroft™. What did she expect?
Andromeda tried to smooth me out, petting my hair, but a steely look from Lucretia stopped her.
By contrast, Lucretia was perfectly dressed in a long scarlet velvet gown with thin luminous trim along the sleeves and regal collar. An arrangement of legal medals pressed into the velvet, or perhaps the dress had been printed to fit them exactly. I wondered what would happen if she got another medal, but realized at once this was an absurd thought. She would just print a new dress and throw this one into the trash.
Uthondo walked over to me and grabbed me by the back of the neck, guiding me toward the balcony, following some command of hers I hadn’t seen or heard.
“For the record, I didn’t kill your brother,” Lucretia said out of the blue, heaving a great sigh. “I honestly don’t know what happened. You upset Silas so.”
I was forced out onto the balcony, where Uthondo pushed me ahead of him with his heavy hand. A long, low divider of potted plants rose to the height of my waist. This building would be easy for Placers to visit.
“Look down, please,” Lucretia said.
I eyed her from under Uthondo’s grip. Could I break it and get to her pale neck? Could I grab her and take her over the edge with me?
My gaze shifted to the view from the balcony, and I stifled a gasp. This was my first real look at DC. Was Kiely Winston out there somewhere? Could I reach her? Had any of my friends made it to her? The Zockroft™ was wearing off, but it still numbed my anguish and worry over them.
“Do you remember Bridgette Pell?”
A sick feeling churned in my stomach. I remembered her perfectly, even though we’d never met. She was the Affluent girl who’d jumped to her death on her Last Day. Now that I’d spoken, was Lucretia going to toss me off that balcony and make it look like Bridgette’s suicide?
“I made sure you were assigned to that cleanup assignment with your little group of Placers,” she said. “Though maybe I should have made you scrape her toasted, mangled corpse off the sidewalk, rather than simply clear away her Last Day trinkets.”
She locked her eyes on mine. I had to look away.
“You didn’t intend for her to jump, did you?”
I said nothing.
“Did you?” she asked again. Uthondo’s grip tightened. The Zockroft™ wasn’t going to make me answer. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“My daughter was at that celebration,” Lucretia hissed. “She watched the girl drop away to her death.”
Her daughter? A dawning realization shivered up my spine. I suddenly understood why Lucretia had tolerated Victoria’s touch. The girl was no servant. She was no prisoner, either.
She was Lucretia Rog’s daughter, and she’d gone silent.
I knew I shouldn’t smile, but the Zockroft™ and the delicious irony made it impossible to suppress it. How was such a thing possible? Why would any Affluent care what I had done? I stifled a snicker, but too late.
Lucretia’s eyes flared at me.
“It’s the Zockroft™, ma’am,” Andromeda tried to explain.
“Fetch Victoria,” Lucretia ordered. Andromeda scurried away.
Lucretia shot me another look and instructed Uthondo to haul me back inside. She took a moment to compose herself out there, then entered looking somewhat refreshed, careful to lock the balcony’s door behind us as Andromeda returned with Victoria.
Was Lucretia worried the girl would follow Bridgette’s example?
Lucretia forced herself to smile and crossed the room to her daughter. “Did Andromeda tell you the Silent Girl has broken her silence?”
Victoria only looked at her mother.
“So...” Lucretia inclined her head, as if she expected the girl to speak. I couldn’t see any resemblance between them, but who knew how much of Lucretia’s face was real?
“Show her your Cuff,” Lucretia ordered me and, without waiting, she grabbed my arm and scrolled back to the charge for the two words. “See?”
Victoria remained unmoved.
“Andromeda, play the recording,” Lucretia ordered.
Andromeda obeyed. My voice sounded from her Cuff. “Don’t worry.” The words were a little slurred from the Zockroft™. Victoria’s brow knit. She looked at the Cuff and then at me. I could tell she wasn’t buying it. She moved over to me and placed a finger on my cheek. She was checking to see if I was real. She wasn’t even sure I was actually there—she distrusted her mother that much.
“Speth, tell her your silence was nothing more than a silly little error in judgment,” Lucretia instructed.
My jaw tightened. I may have spoken before, but I would not do so again. The only power I had was in silence and doubt. Victoria knew her family was full of frauds and liars. She would need to witness me speaking with her own two eyes. She poked my face twice more to make sure what she felt matched what she was seeing.
“You are violating
our Terms of Service,” Lucretia said to me. She looked at her Cuff and pressed a button. Something jabbed my arm under the Cuff. Panic hit me—more Zockroft™.
I was immediately overwhelmed with a woozy sense of well-being. Even Zockroft™ couldn’t make me like Lucretia Rog, but I found myself filled with warm feelings for Andromeda and Victoria. I wished Victoria would speak so I could know why she’d become a Silent. I wanted to ask her. I could taste the words forming on my tongue.
“I will pay for whatever you would like to say,” Lucretia offered, looking hungry.
I concentrated on breathing in and out, fighting the way the Zockroft™ seemed to loosen my tongue. I held my words back and was proud for keeping silent. Victoria looked suspicious. I loved her suspicion. I took a step toward her to hug her and show my appreciation, but Uthondo yanked me back. I hugged him instead. My Cuff buzzed.
“See!” Lucretia said. “That is legal communication!”
Victoria wasn’t buying this, either. She turned her back on us. Lucretia clucked her tongue.
“I think it is time for lessons.” She waved Andromeda off, and the older woman guided Victoria out of the room. The moment the door shut, the pain began. Patterns in my eyes. Blaring sounds in my ears. They cut right through the Zockroft™, clearing it like smoke blowing in the wind. The pain grew harder to bear. I dropped to my knees, and then it ceased.
“You think your silence is clever?” she asked.
“No,” I said in return. My Cuff buzzed. Lucretia’s eyes shot to the door. I went on. “Bring her back, I don’t care. The minute I see her...” I zipped my lips. I felt giddy to know I could make Lucretia suffer. Or maybe it was the lingering effects of the Zockroft™.
Uthondo took a step back, frightened by my hubris—or maybe by the reaction he expected from Lucretia.
“I don’t have to be silent.” I jabbed a finger at the door. “I just have to be silent around her. That’s worse, isn’t it?” My Cuff scrolled and vibrated with my words. “Silent Girl,” I whispered. I watched the charge scroll up my Cuff. $18,000. They didn’t want anyone saying it.
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