Access Restricted

by Gregory Scott Katsoulis

  Lucretia shook with fury, but she managed to control it. “My daughter hasn’t spoken a word since that Pell girl jumped. You ended a beautiful life with your little protest and ruined another.”

  “No.” I forced myself to stand tall. “Bridgette ended her own life. Like Beecher Stokes, who ended his because he couldn’t bear the thought of being Indentured to someone like you.”

  “Bridgette Pell would never have been Indentured to anyone.” A sad note sounded in Lucretia’s voice. An Affluent’s death was far more tragic than some kid from the Onzième’s.

  “No one should be Indentured to anyone,” I said. My Cuff buzzed again, and I was glad those words would be recorded. They’d done so much to erase our history, but they were also inadvertently preserving our present.

  “Sedition,” Lucretia said with a sigh. “Do you want to know who I have here in this house, toiling away? Indentured to me?”

  I wasn’t going to play her game. It was probably a lie, anyway.

  “Ask me nicely, in front of my daughter, and I will free them.”

  I let my silence serve as my answer. She knew how to torture me, but now I knew how to torture her back.

  “What about Belunda Stokes?”

  I tried not to react, but my widening eyes betrayed me. Could she really save Beecher’s grandmother?

  “I’ll be kind. She can live out her last few years in comfort. Or you could free Uthondo here, or Bertrand. That would be easier than fetching the old woman. Just say the word.”

  Uthondo braved a look at Bertrand. Bertrand stared forward. I said nothing.

  “Silence again?”

  I shrugged. My Cuff buzzed with the charge. I didn’t care.

  “You see!” Lucretia said to her bodyguards. “She won’t even speak to free you.”

  She waited. The room sat in silence. My silence.

  Suddenly, static played loudly in my ear and my vision went black. She’d effectively rendered me deaf and blind, which, while terrible, was better than her usual form of torture. At least my eyes didn’t feel like they were being pulled apart.

  I was lifted, probably by Uthondo or Bertrand. The giant meaty hands bore me away. I started screaming, even though I couldn’t hear myself. Whoever carried me tensed and moved faster. My stomach dropped suddenly, and I realized we had probably taken an elevator somewhere—down, by the feel of it. Then my escort began walking again, and soon I was dropped onto a bed, left to endure what Lucretia had left me with.

  The hours dragged on. The static kept playing. The blackness engulfed me. I slapped at my Cuff. I felt around the room. It was small and empty. The walls were soft, like a Squelch, but it wasn’t—when I called out for it to stop, my Cuff buzzed in return.

  I began shouting the most expensive words I could think of, just to feel the buzz of my Cuff. I chanted, “Silent Girl, Silent Girl,” for an hour. I sang it to the tune of a Beatles™ song I’d once heard used in a movie. I expected shocks in return for this, but instead I saw only an occasional flicker or spark in my vision—probably a trick of my mind.

  I put my hands on my mouth to feel it form words, exhale breath and vibrate the air. My throat grew raw. I must have spent a fortune. What a waste—all that money on words I couldn’t hear. Did anyone?

  I closed my eyes. I told myself the static was the sound of the sea and that I was sleeping beside it in the deep of night. Someone poked me. Startled, I swatted at them. They poked me again and I took a full swing, connecting with someone’s soft body. I suddenly worried that it might be Victoria. Had she heard me speaking?

  I tried to stand and move through the space, but I still couldn’t see anything. After a minute, someone took hold of me. The brusque motions felt like Andromeda, but I hadn’t imagined her hands could be so cold. I was pushed down a hall and handed over to someone enormous—probably one of the bodyguards again.

  Whoever it was shoved me into a tiny room—a cell, really. I felt around the walls and found a light switch, which was pitifully useless with my darkened eyes. There was also a bar that crossed over my head and let me swing and kick at the door until I was exhausted. Unsurprisingly, it would not budge.

  My stomach ached from hunger. I lost track of how long my sensory deprivation went on. I slept. I pounded on the door with my Cuff. I slept more. Eventually, I was awakened by the faint smell of Wheatlock™ Dry. It was the worst of all the Wheatlock™ products, but I was ravenous and fumbled for it with my greedy hands, knocking over a cup of water in the process. I devoured the square in three huge bites and then searched the damp, puddled floor for more. I dabbed up a few more crumbs and sucked the water off my fingers. I fell asleep again, wondering if this was how she meant to kill me. Maybe she wasn’t legally obligated to feed me. Or maybe, legally, she could kill me however she pleased.

  I was awakened by a tremendous thud—I didn’t hear it, so much as feel it through my bones. The whole building shook. A second smaller shock pounded my gut. I felt blindly around, as if I might find the cause.

  A moment later, the static faded from my ears. My vision flashed brightly and then returned to normal. I reeled for a moment, adjusting to my surroundings. I wasn’t in a cell, but an emptied closet. And whatever had woken me was now followed by an exquisite silence.

  A dot formed in the center of my vision, then vanished. It was oddly comforting, even if it was nothing more than a misfire of Lucretia’s system. I wondered if there was some limit to how long she could sustain her punishment. Maybe she was obedient to Laws I didn’t know requiring certain amounts of food and untortured rest, even for an Indentured.

  For half a second, I thought a word flashed across my eyes, but I was wary of trusting my senses. My thoughts were too jumbled. I longed for that night long ago when my eyes lit with a path to the Placers—for a time before everything in my vision was subject to Lucretia’s cruel whims.

  I missed Henri and Margot and Kel. I missed Mira and Norflo and Saretha. I even missed Sera, in a strange way. My heart ached, wondering if they were all okay.

  Uthondo and Bertrand both arrived at the door soon after my vision returned. They stood before me, looking intimidating as usual, but wearing looks of mild confusion on their brutish faces.

  “Yes?” I asked, pretending theirs was a casual visit to mask my fear. Then something flashed in my vision a second time. I definitely wasn’t imagining it—or seeing it clearly.

  “Quiet!” Lucretia’s voice suddenly echoed in my head. She shocked my eyes twice, and I forced myself to stay steady. She must have said something to Uthondo and Bertrand, too, because they each grabbed me by an arm and dragged me away.

  Jump: $30.99

  Lucretia sat behind her desk, concentrating on a wide desk screen too bright for me to look at after so much darkness. Rainbow halos rimmed every bright thing. This wasn’t some digital effect—it was definitely something to do with my eyes. My vision seemed to stutter with shifting relics of being blinded.

  In the screen’s glow, Lucretia’s face seemed less friendly than before, like the illusion of appeal was too much to maintain—or maybe she just didn’t care to any longer. Through the windows to the balcony, brilliant orange light flickered across the city. A ball of flame and smoke plumed in the distance from somewhere I couldn’t see. The red, white and blue flags that hung everywhere had turned a flaming red.

  “What did they say?” Lucretia demanded without looking up. Her usual jaunty tone had fled, which made my hate for her easier to summon. Victoria sat behind her in the same corner chair I’d seen her in before, staring at the floor.

  I didn’t say a word. Lucretia fixed me with a glare. “The messages,” she said menacingly. “What are the messages?”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. She stood up and leaned toward me. I backed away, but Uthondo and Bertrand remained motionless behind me. I changed tactics and ducked behind Uthondo
, realizing even as I did it how ridiculous my attempt to avoid her was. It wasn’t as if he would try to protect me from her.

  “I know they have contacted you,” Lucretia said. She swiped at her Cuff. I winced at the flash. It hurt, but the stab of pain in my eyes lasted only a second.

  “What could they possibly hope to accomplish?” she spit. Her voice was awful, not at all appealing anymore. Her long neck no longer seemed graceful, but viper-like.

  She kept talking to the spot where I had been, between the two bodyguards, rather than where I stood. At first, I thought this was some creepy tactic of hers to unnerve me. I doubted for a moment that I was actually awake, or if this was just a strange dream. It was like she couldn’t see that I’d moved.

  Victoria stood and put a finger to her lips. She was smiling. Static crackled in my ears—a different static from before. It was fragmented, like something was broken.

  “Don’t you move,” Lucretia growled, but she still wasn’t looking at me.

  Victoria waved her hands in front of her eyes and pointed at her mother. A grin had spread across her face. I cautiously took another step away. Uthondo and Bertrand made no attempt to stop me, and Lucretia’s eyes didn’t shift. Barefoot, Victoria moved silently to me and put a finger on my cheek. Her mother was being fed an image that wasn’t real.

  Something flashed again in front of my vision, and I winced automatically. I caught a better glimpse this time. It wasn’t a pattern, but a word. My mind scrambled to reconstruct it, and then the message flashed again.

  JUMP.

  I didn’t understand. Jump where? Victoria took my hand. Had the whole system broken down? Was she sending this message? Was this all some twisted plan to get me to kill myself? Was this what Lucretia had been trying to make me do all along?

  Lucretia rounded her desk, her body tensed like she was coiled to strike. But not at me—still at the spot where I had been.

  “You will be broken,” she snarled, reaching out into the air. When her hand met no resistance, her mouth dropped open, astonished.

  The JUMP message flashed in my vision again, unmistakable this time. Victoria tugged me toward the balcony. Lucretia pushed at the air once, twice, then stammered, “She’s...she’s...”

  She glared at Uthondo and Bertrand, at a loss to explain what was happening—like they were too dumb to understand. I didn’t understand, either. “Find her!” she screamed, her frustration palpable in the air.

  Uthondo and Bertrand both shifted, looked to the spot between them and reached out. Their faces contorted in a flurry of confused blinking. “She’s not there,” Uthondo said, his watery eyes blinking as he patted at the air.

  They scanned the room, braced for action, but their eyes skimmed right over Victoria and me. Someone was overwriting their ocular feeds, making it look like I hadn’t moved.

  “Listen for her,” Lucretia cried out. The static crackled in my ears again, and I thought I heard a voice buried in it, trying to reach me. I slipped out of my shoes and tossed one across the room to throw them off my trail. Both brutes turned in that direction, and we quickly padded to the balcony door. If I had a grapple, I could have swung away into the city. Without one, jumping meant certain death.

  Victoria eased the balcony door open slowly. It emitted a slight creak, and Lucretia wheeled around, her eyes wild. “There,” she said, pointing right at me. She’d heard us.

  My body panicked. I raced across the stone tiles and jumped up into the scratchy fake plants. Victoria followed.

  “No!” Lucretia cried.

  What kind of plan was this? We were thirty stories up. I was a Placer, not a superhero. Lucretia dropped to her knees, her eyes going blank. It looked as if she’d been blinded, just like she’d done to me. Behind her, the two brutes fought through the same darkness, their eyes watering. Uthondo pulled himself blindly through the door with a heavy hand, feeling his way toward me. I backed to the corner of the ledge. We were out of options, but Victoria looked utterly thrilled. Did she know something I didn’t?

  JUMP appeared one last time. How was Victoria doing this? She wasn’t touching her Cuff. She put a hand on my chest, like she wanted to feel my heart, and leaned close. In the rasping whisper of someone who hadn’t spoken in a very long time, she said, “Kiely Winston says hello.”

  Then she pushed me back, straight over the edge.

  Proximity Exceeded: $31.99

  My heart thudded as I hurtled downward. Someone grabbed me around the waist, and we fell together for a moment before swinging away from the building. My Cuff started buzzing, flashing and sounding an alarm. My eyes were shocked. Proximity Exceeded flashed across my vision, and my eyes were shocked again. The pain resounded through my skull.

  “Victoria?” I gasped, but that couldn’t be right. We zipped upward, suddenly landing on a rooftop with a swift balletic landing. The masked Placer who released me was very tall, powerfully built and graceful. Who else could it be but Kiely Winston?

  The alarm sounded, and my eyes were shocked again. I reeled back in pain. With a quick, fluid motion, she produced a small device and ran it over my Cuff. It snapped open, alarm still blaring. It clung to my arm, sticky where it had cut into my damp flesh. I peeled it off with disgust and hurled it over the roof. It hammered the side of a stone building and pinged down to the ground, the alarm wailing all the way down.

  I rubbed my eyes. Smoke was still rising, rolling out against the roof of the dome in slow-moving swells. Had she done that? The damage was far worse than what I’d done to Rog’s tower.

  She slapped a grapple into my hand and gestured for me to follow. Hope rose in my chest. I tried to aim, but my vision was still blurry from being locked away in the blind dark and static. My hand trembled. I blinked over and over but didn’t have the nerve to fire.

  Kiely didn’t wait long to toss me over her shoulder and carry me away. She darted through DC at astonishing speed, and I struggled to take in the city’s unfamiliar topology. Many of the low buildings were old and made from real stone, built long before the days of printing. Many of these looked French, too, which I didn’t understand. I’d thought that was something modern.

  Kiely abruptly stopped at one of these old French-style buildings. The outside was opulent, with arched glass windows and pillars in front of them. She zipped up between two of the pillars and stopped on a thin ledge before an ornate iron grate. She ran something over the metal, pulled the grate aside and ushered me into a low, narrow passage. I crawled forward to a dead end and stopped. We were going to hide in here?

  She pressed past me, all business, no grace now. She muscled the wall at the end of the path and pushed open a hidden square of a door. Behind her, I saw a dim light and shelves filled with books. Were these the ones she’d stolen?

  She dropped down into the space, and I followed her. With a finger to her lips, she picked up a foam square, edged in a thick rubber, and stuffed it into place, then pulled on a lever in the wall that made the pressure in my ears pop.

  With the Squelch sealed, the only sound was my hard breathing. Kiely pulled off her mask. She looked just as Margot had described her—tall and intimidating, with piercing eyes and a shock of blond hair in a public domain pixie cut very much like mine. Despite her height, she moved silently. I stared at her, more than a little awed.

  “How did you find me?” I finally asked.

  Kiely rubbed a hand across the back of her neck. She was obviously strong, but her eyes looked exhausted.

  “Kel said to expect you,” she said, sitting on a mattress on one side of the room. Did Kiely live here? There were stacks of foodstuffs and blankets, so my guess was yes. “I didn’t think you’d turn up in the hands of Lucretia Rog, but I wasn’t surprised. I had a distraction ready.”

  She put two fists together and then pulled them apart, fingers splayed.

  “That explosion—that was
you?” I asked, still a little disoriented from everything that had happened.

  “I’ve been planning it for years, so don’t get too bigheaded. I took out DC’s Central Data. I had wanted to coordinate and get all three centers at once, but then you took out Portland.” She grinned a little at me, like she was proud, then snapped back to looking serious. “Which meant extra security for me to deal with.”

  “I wasn’t after Central Data,” I confessed. “I was after the WiFi.” Even that was an accident, but I didn’t want to say so.

  “Noble enough. And, on purpose or not, you got one of the Central Data nodes, which was pretty good. I just had to accelerate my plans. I’d rather have done a full erase. It’s less showy, but more effective.” She shrugged. “But there wasn’t time. I had to go messy.”

  From her tone, I got the distinct impression that “messy” meant people had died in the explosion. The thought unnerved me. She began gathering things up into her bag.

  “I didn’t have a good way to get to you, though. Lucretia’s place is shut tight, and if I’d crossed that boundary to get you, I’d have been instantly blinded. That’s how she likes to do things. But I couldn’t leave you there. Fortunately, I knew about the girl.”

  “Victoria?”

  “There have been rumors for months that Silents have been popping up in prominent families. They try to keep it quiet, but when you hear nothing, for example, about Victoria Rog’s Last Day celebration, it isn’t too hard to figure out she’s zipped her lips. It should have been a huge news story. Instead, no story.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why would they go silent?”

  “Being wealthy doesn’t make people awful, it just makes the awful ones powerful. It’s easy to believe Affluents and Lawyers are all terrible, but that kind of prejudice is foolish. I’ve tracked a half dozen Affluent Silents like Victoria here in the DC dome.”

  She could see I was struggling with this idea. “And remember, Kel is a Lawyer.”