“I know,” Kel admitted. “It isn’t fair, what I’m asking of you. You don’t deserve this. I truly do want you to be happy. But if you make it to Portland, it will put all eyes on you and give us a real chance to strike at Delphi™. We could take down the last Central Data node.”
The dog jumped and the owner let out the leash. Arturo stared at me intently, waiting. “And what happens to us then?” I asked.
“If we succeed, the entire system will be destroyed. They won’t be able to beat you at trial because they won’t be able to have a trial. There will be no more Laws, Ads or WiFi. They will have no more power than you. We’ll all have a fresh start.”
I honestly didn’t know if what she was describing would be better. “I know we cracked the DRM, but people... Some people aren’t going to make it.”
“Just because a solution is painful doesn’t mean it isn’t right,” Kel said.
“But it isn’t right!” I exclaimed. “People will starve. People will die.”
Arturo put a hand on my shoulder, but I shook him off. I didn’t want his comfort.
“Let me rephrase that. Just because a solution is painful doesn’t mean it isn’t for the greater good.”
That was almost exactly how Kiely had phrased it back in DC. I swallowed hard. “What if you fail?”
“Fail at what?” Arturo asked, alarmed.
“You can’t tell the Téjicans what I’m suggesting,” Kel warned. “It would only put them in danger, and they’ll cut me off from you. The aftermath of what I’m suggesting will be a difficult time for everyone.”
“What if you fail?” I asked again.
“There is a small chance you could still win the trial,” Kel said, but she didn’t sound hopeful. She’d already been clear about the prospects. “But you need to know that even if you win—even if they admit they faked Carol Amanda Harving, and they pay the Téjicans and let your family go—they will never let you go. The only way we’re getting you out is if Kiely and I can take down that data center in Delphi™.”
I turned to Arturo. “I don’t really have a choice in whether or not I go, do I?” I asked.
“We can’t force you to be part of the trial,” he said, looking at the ground. “But I am sorry to say that if you don’t participate, we would be required to turn you over to the American® authorities. There is no choice for us in this.”
Kel was silent for a minute. Then she whispered, “If you want to escape, I will help you. You don’t have to agree. I know this isn’t fair. I can get you far, far away.”
Of course I had to agree. Where would I go? How could she help me? She couldn’t help us all. I knew that, and so did she. I thought of all the times I’d seen people forced to tap AGREE on a screen. The choice wasn’t a choice at all.
In this case, there were too many people who needed my help. I thought of this whole Téjican nation that I’d barely seen. I thought of Mandett and Penepoli fighting in Portland right now. I’d rescued Nancee from her owner to set her free, not so Rog and people like him could take her again. Those women in OiO™ who had blocked the way to save us deserved a chance to see the Rogs and their Laws brought low. In my mind, chaos had to be better than slavery, but I couldn’t let Arturo know that.
Finally, I thought of Sera, whom I’d known for so long, but hadn’t really seen clearly. Her life had been like mine, but with even fewer choices and comforts. I was supposed to bring her to Crab Creek to find her mother—her only family in the world—and I had failed her. I could do almost nothing for her from here, but if I went to Portland, there was a slim chance I could help her.
“If we won the case,” I asked Kel through the static-filled air, “would they let Sera go? Could she be free?”
Kel took a while to answer. “If they’re claiming she’s Carol Amanda Harving, and she confesses otherwise, then yes.”
I didn’t know what state of mind I’d find Sera in. She wouldn’t know or understand any of this. Her prospects were likely as grim as my own.
“I have to go,” Kel said suddenly. I heard a faint zipping sound, static, then silence.
Arturo gazed off into the distance, uncomfortable in the role he’d been given. “Can I go see my family now?” I asked him. I didn’t elaborate, but I wanted to do more than just see them. I wanted to do something I hadn’t really been able to do since I was nine years old: ask for my parents’ advice, and say a proper goodbye.
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The day had waned by the time we reached the outskirts of the refugee camp. The sun had sunk out of sight and left behind a cobalt sky caught between twilight and night. Music played on live instruments far off, from somewhere I couldn’t see. People walked in the warm glow of both streetlights and colored lamps strung down the lane under a vaulted latticework canopy. They called this town Glimmer, and I could see why.
All of this was under another dome. Instead of geometric hexes, the roof was crisscrossed by curved, printed scaffolds and thin shapes of translucent glass that Arturo called Art Nouveau. This dome’s biggest difference from the ones back home was that there was no wall around its circumference. In Téjico, the domes were open to the outside. Breezes blew through. They provided cover from the sun and rain, but allowed the people to come and go as freely as air.
“The camp is inside the dome?” Saretha asked.
“The camp is the dome,” Arturo said. “We began work when the first refugees arrived weeks ago.”
Norflo looked around in wonder. It was hard to believe they’d built this so quickly. Margot and Mira had stayed behind, but now I wished they had come, if only to see it.
“You built all this in weeks?” I asked, awestruck.
“And so beautifully?” Saretha added.
“Many people came to help,” Arturo said. “And the printers can be very efficient, especially with the right hands working them. Some are still at work, you can see.”
He pointed with a long finger up to the tops of the buildings. Some were finished, but many were still being printed on their upper floors, printers zigzagging elegant structures.
“But they look so fancy,” Saretha said. “It looks like it was designed long ago.”
“It is just as easy to print a beautiful shape as a blank wall,” Arturo replied. “Why make them ugly?”
A tall, lanky man about my father’s age was bent over one of the printers, tinkering with it four floors up, harnessed astride the wall and deep in concentration.
“See that man?” Arturo asked. “He was one of the first to arrive. Very clever. A genius, really. This is what you lose when you don’t let people explore their gifts. In your country, he was nothing. His abilities were utterly shackled to the DRM you all suffered. Here, he can make these printers do almost anything. Half of the beauty here was created by his hand.”
Arturo put his fingers in his mouth and let out a loud whistle. The thin man above us looked around and then down. He waved, then bent his head like he couldn’t believe his eyes. He seemed to recognize us, but I had no idea who he was.
In a heartbeat, he’d grabbed the rope that was holding him safe and begun to rappel down the side of the building.
“What’s he doing?” Saretha asked.
“I suspect he wants to meet Carol Amanda Harving,” Arturo said. “Or the Silent Girl.”
But he didn’t. He hit the ground, bending his long legs at the impact and unclipping himself as he stood. He came striding toward me on his long legs, his eyes shining as he called my name. “Speth!”
Something about his gait was familiar to me. I had no clue who he was, but Saretha recognized him when he got close.
“Mr. Stokes?” she said, stunned.
“Beecher’s dad?” I asked her. I saw the resemblance now. He was taken into Collection years before Beecher and I grew close. I might have seen him before then, around the Onzi�
�me, but I wouldn’t have committed him to memory. Beecher, of course, had no pictures of him. He and his grandmother weren’t allowed any contact at all once he was taken away for circumventing a food printer’s programming.
I didn’t know how to feel about seeing him in Téjico, but when he held his arms out, I felt like I owed him a hug. I was there the day his son died. Did he know that Beecher had killed himself on my fifteenth birthday? Mr. Stokes didn’t ask about Beecher. He must have been told, or seen the news. How else would he know me now?
“Speth,” he said again, breaking the hug. “I knew you’d make it down here! I’d say call me Randall, but I had to change my name.” He held out his hand. “Spider Jupiter.”
His whole manner was light and jovial, but his eyes were dark and sad—not so different from the haunted look I’d seen in my own reflection.
“Were you at Crab Creek?” I asked, shaking his rough, calloused hand.
He shook his head. “Agropollination™ 3,” he said. “Fixing equipment. Managing walnut trees. They triple-Cuffed me!”
He held out both arms and a leg, though all the Cuffs were gone now. He seemed manic, almost a little unhinged.
“I had not realized you knew each other,” Arturo said. He peeked down at his handheld device and stepped back patiently. I knew he wasn’t expecting a delay, but it would have been rude to cut this moment short.
“How did you escape?” I asked.
“Oh, that,” he said. He rubbed at one arm and then the other. “When you knocked out Portland, you rippled a power spike throughout the system. Rest of the domes had to split the extra power. Saw the surge, so I hacked our dome’s hydroponics battery system to store the excess energy until it overloaded. Blew out the dome’s grid. Turned it dark.”
“But how could you see any of what was going on? How did you know about Portland?”
“The fools gave me three Cuffs!” Randall said again, holding out the same three limbs. “They locked me down three ways, but it also gave me three windows and systems. You can’t connect me to the WiFi and keep me from the WiFi.” He started laughing, and Saretha laughed with him politely.
Mr. Stokes put a finger on my neck where the implant was and frowned, his laugh fading. “What did they do to you?”
“Lucretia Rog, our dome’s lovely representative, put an audio implant in there,” I replied with a grimace. Guilt crept across my shoulders as I remembered how Lucretia had offered to free Beecher’s grandmother. I had no idea what had happened to her.
“Do you know if your mother—”
He shook his head, cutting me off. “I hope she’s headed here. The farm they had her on revolted during the second power spike. Was that you, too?”
I didn’t understand the question.
“Did you take out that second data center in DC?” he asked, a little louder, maybe wondering if the implants interfered with my hearing.
“No,” I said. “That wasn’t me.”
“Good,” he said with relief. “Glad more folks had the chance to escape, but I was worried maybe you were trying to take out all the data centers.”
A terrible feeling grew inside me. That was exactly what Kel was hoping to do.
“Why? Would that be bad?” I asked.
“It would be if one were seeking to destroy the system that charges for words, for example.”
An icy sensation rolled through my gut. “Why? Wouldn’t blowing it up knock out the whole thing? Wouldn’t that just...end all of it?”
Arturo shook his head. “Destroying the entire system would be disastrous.”
“Won’t take down the system,” Mr. Stokes said. “How foolhardy do you think they are? They have backups. Lots of backups.”
I could feel all my hope draining away. If knocking out Delphi™ wasn’t useful, the only thing left was the hopeless trial.
“I thought the three data centers were the backups,” I said, in the desperate hope that this was true. It was my only real chance.
“You should not be concerned about this,” Arturo counseled. “Such a plan would be a catastrophe. The refugees alone would be more than we could withstand.”
Anger flared in me. “The refugees? Is that what you’re worried about?”
“In part. There is only so much we can do.”
I understood he was afraid, but I don’t think he fully understood the oppression people lived under.
“The three Central Data nodes are more like redundant systems,” Mr. Stokes explained. “It’d be better to have a few dozen, but they kept suing each other for rights, like they always do. They’re lucky they even managed to build those three.”
“Then what are the backups?” I asked.
Mr. Stokes grinned. “Guess,” he said, looking from me to Arturo.
“I don’t want to guess,” I said. This wasn’t fun for me. If what he said was correct, I was doomed. An old resentment bloomed in me at his son, for tossing his life away for no reason. He could have fought, but he didn’t.
I would fight on my way down, at least. And I would try to save as many lives as I could.
“We should be on our way,” Arturo said. I agreed with him on this. I was so close to my parents now, and I wanted to see them more than anything. I didn’t want to play guessing games.
“If you just think about it a minute, it makes perfect sense,” Mr. Stokes teased.
“We really have to go,” I said.
“We do have a time constraint,” Arturo offered gently, putting one hand on my shoulder and holding the other out to Mr. Stokes. “They haven’t yet seen their parents.”
“Oh!” Mr. Stokes said, understanding the situation, but looking a little sad. I could imagine why. His family had been completely and irrevocably destroyed. He shook Arturo’s hand, grinned and tapped the side of his head, indicating that we should think about what he’d said.
“It was nice to see you,” Saretha said, like we’d all just had an enjoyable chat.
“Thank you,” Arturo said with a crisp nod, and then he moved us away.
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Arturo followed an instruction on his handheld device that led us into a courtyard. The music grew louder as we approached. There were about a dozen people in the center of the printed cobblestones, accompanied by lots of trumpets, a few guitars, two giant basses and a full set of drums. Around the musicians, people were dancing—freely, openly dancing. Some were teaching the moves, and I guessed they were Téjicans. The rest must have been the refugees.
I scanned the crowd for my parents. I saw too many people my age and younger, with both delight and sorrow in their eyes. I saw more with blank faces, like they weren’t really there. Many of these latter ones sat out the dance, though a few stood amid it, completely still.
Arturo had crossed the courtyard to a man who must have been in charge. They spoke for a moment, and then Arturo returned to us.
“He will not say if they are here,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Understandably, he does not think it wise to admit the parents of the Silent Girl are among these refugees, for their protection, and probably for yours.”
Saretha elbowed me and pointed. She’d spotted our parents on the far edge of the crowd. I ached to see Sam with them, even though I knew the third DNA match had to be a mistake. I saw no anticipation on their faces, only a mild relief as they watched the dancers. I grabbed Saretha’s hand. I didn’t know what she was going to do. I didn’t even know what I was going to do.
Suddenly, she was running, pulling me along. I couldn’t think. Could this actually be real, after all this time? We hadn’t reached them yet, and I was already crying. I wanted to believe Sam was here, too. That it was possible. That this was the end of our journey. That this was home.
“Mom,” I said. My voice wasn’t strong enough aga
inst the music. “Mom! Dad!” I yelled. I suddenly felt like I was five years old, running toward them. For a moment, all the burdens on me fell away, and I was just desperate to feel their affection.
My father turned first, his face stunned. I threw an arm around him, grabbing for my mother at the same time. Before I knew it, the four of us were held together by some irresistible force, like gravity. My parents and Saretha and me, finally together. Seconds ticked away with no Cuff clocking us for our affection. I wished we could stay like this forever.
“Oh, my girls,” my mother cried.
“Speth!” my dad said. Only he and my mom could say my name nicely, like it was actually worth something. Even Saretha couldn’t do that. Only Sam had ever come close.
Sam.
The longer our hug lasted, the more hope I could hold on to. For as long as it lasted, I wouldn’t have to answer their questions or explain. I could hope somehow, Saretha had been right: that Sam was here, dancing to the glorious music. I couldn’t think of any explanation for it, but I hoped all the same. I could almost see him, freed from the dome, loving the bright, joyful sounds around us. I peeked out into the dancing crowd, celebrating their freedom. I scanned for kids who were his age. I searched for the ones who were dancing. Sam would be dancing.
My mother finally broke away and looked at us questioningly. “Where’s Sam?” she asked as gently as she could. She held Saretha out by the arms, as if Sam might be hiding there in the space between, but also like she knew a dark answer awaited.
Saretha swallowed hard. She seemed to hope for one more second that my mom would look around and say, “He was just here.” My dad’s eyes were already teary from our reunion. He looked like he was certain Sam would turn up. Like he didn’t really believe anything bad could have happened to the smallest of us—like he was too tired to really let the truth dawn on him, especially without words.
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