Access Restricted

by Gregory Scott Katsoulis

“Now what?” Saretha asked.

  “Now we wait,” I said, then added, looking Arturo in the eye, “If they don’t assume I’m dead or unreachable.”

  “You must understand our predicament.”

  “I think I understand your predicament better than you understand mine,” I retorted.

  The communications officer cleared his throat. “Someone has pinged X0562.1.1 every fifteen minutes for the last twenty-four hours. They haven’t given up.”

  “I need some air,” Randall said, launching his lanky body into the wall as he rushed off, like someone who felt unwell. I doubted he was sick, but I wasn’t going to stop him.

  “How long until the next ping?” I asked.

  “Seven minutes,” the officer answered.

  “You swear you are going to talk them out of blowing up that center?” Arturo asked me.

  “I promise.”

  He digested this for a moment. He gazed at the waves rolling by the low window.

  “If I make this signal, you will cut off the transmission,” Arturo said to the communications officer, making a slicing motion across his neck. “You understand,” he said to me.

  “I do,” I answered with a glare. In the Onzième, that gesture meant You’re dead, and usually preceded a fight. It cost $1.99, cheap enough that even kids without resources could intimidate each other. I was going to explain this to him, but before I could, an alarm suddenly blared. Arturo and all of his men tensed. One of the officers took off, tearing up the stairs, in the same direction Randall had fled.

  “What’s that?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound like a person who already knew.

  “The alarm for the lifeboat,” Arturo growled. He seemed to consider running up top, but then thought better of it. “Can we stop him?” he asked the nearest guard.

  The guard was ready for action, but he looked helpless. “At top speed, we could follow, but we wouldn’t catch him until he hit shore. The lifeboats are all the same.”

  “Which is fastest,” Arturo muttered, repeating the question Randall had asked. He must have felt like a fool.

  “I’m going to find them,” Mr. Stokes said in my ear. His voice echoed into the room. I didn’t understand how he was accessing my implants, but he was clever, and they had repeated the frequency in front of him at least once.

  “You’re monitoring what comes through these?” I demanded, pointing at my neck. “You’re broadcasting it?” The communications officer dropped his head in shame. Arturo’s cheeks flushed.

  “I gave him orders.”

  “They can’t destroy Delphi™,” Mr. Stokes added. “It would be a terrible mistake.”

  A boat engine roared in my head under his voice.

  “Should we go after him?” one of the officers asked.

  “What is the point?” Arturo asked, then turned to me. “Did you know he was going to do this?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  His frustration was immense. “We are supposed to be working together! I need to be able to trust you,” he said.

  “I’m supposed to trust you when you monitor private communications in my head? Do you have any idea how much I hate these things Lucretia Rog put in me? It isn’t bad enough that I have to worry that at any moment she might pop into my head, but also that you could listen to any conversation I have.”

  “We would not do that.”

  “No?”

  Arturo stiffened, his pride wounded. “I give you my word.”

  “Then you have to trust me as well.”

  “Of course,” he said, but his face, and the faces of the officers around the room, looked skeptical. I needed them to understand that the final data center at Delphi™ would not be blown up, but they could not know our plan was still to destroy the entire system, just in a different way. The chaos they wanted to avoid—the hordes of refugees—would be exactly what they feared. I had to prepare myself to walk a very fine line, to give Kel the information she needed and keep silent about what I must not say. I knew words had power, but silence had power, too. I needed to find a way to use them both in just the right combination.

  Words & Silence: $59.97

  Kel’s voice sounded in my head, right on time. “Speth?”

  I took a deep breath and hoped the sentence I had planned would do what I needed. “Kel, you can’t blow up the center in Delphi™. The consequences will be disastrous.”

  Arturo breathed a sigh of relief, but I didn’t know if it was enough. I still felt hot and obvious. A drop of sweat trickled down my back.

  “We’re in Delphi™ now,” Kel said in a low, frustrated growl. She wasn’t alone, and it must have taken considerable effort to travel, again, from Portland.

  “They have backups. Destroying the center at Delphi™ won’t do what we want.”

  “She is right,” Mr. Stokes called out over the engines of his boat. It felt especially strange to have two people talking in my head. “It won’t work like you think.”

  “Who is that?” Kel asked.

  “Spider Jupiter,” he said quickly, before I could call him Mr. Stokes. The name felt ridiculous to me, but maybe it was safer for him not to give out his name.

  In my time working with her as a Placer, Kel had learned to read my face. Now I had to hope she could read my voice.

  “Spider Jupiter may be able to help,” I said.

  “Help with what?” Kel asked. “If we aren’t destroying the data center, what are we going to do?”

  This wasn’t a question I could answer. Not like I wanted.

  “Find Spider Jupiter,” I said. If I could get him to her, Mr. Stokes could explain.

  Kel paused. She was considering. She knew something was up. “Who else is listening in?”

  There was an uncomfortable shifting in the room.

  “I’m here,” Saretha said, and then, because no one else would take it on, she added, “And there are lots of Téjican officials and Lawyers here to help us with the trial.”

  “Hello,” Arturo said.

  Saretha still had faith that the Lawyers could work everything out for us, despite their uneasy caution.

  Kel paused again. Come on, Kel, I thought. You can figure this out. In the window, a wave swelled up and blocked the view of the horizon. The gray-green water darkened the room for a moment, and a school of silvery fish flashed past.

  “What is your plan?” Kel asked.

  “We’ve found a way to Portland,” I said. “We have a trial everyone thinks we can win.”

  “Everyone?” Kel asked. She knew I didn’t think so.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “And everyone is okay with the consequences?” She also knew that, even if we won the trial, I would be left behind.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Again she paused. I thought I heard Kiely in the background.

  “Do you want us to meet you there?” Kel asked.

  “No,” I said, perhaps too quickly. “I don’t even know what we’ll find when we get there. Do you know?”

  “The Rogs restored WiFi to the city. They have a temporary system up and are building a new, stronger core.”

  My heart sank. “What about my friends?” I asked.

  “We got a lot of kids out,” she said. “We had to scramble for places to stash them. Speth, if we can’t find a way take the system down, I don’t know how long we can hide them. The Rogs are especially keen on tracking down anyone from the Onzième now.”

  Arturo exchanged a look with the communications officer. I could see they were considering shutting off my connection.

  “Even if we could take the system down, it would be chaos,” I said with my jaw tight. “Could we get them to Téjico?”

  I looked at Arturo and hoped he would think it was better to have a trickle of refugees than a flood. He nodded, but it w
as obvious we were only going to pretend to trust each other. Maybe if everything else failed, a few kids from the Onzième could survive.

  “Now? I don’t think so,” a different voice said. It was Kiely. I was glad to know she was there, but her appraisal did not encourage me.

  “Maybe Nancee and Penepoli. Kiely has them pretty far south,” Kel said.

  “I don’t know if they would go,” Kiely chimed in, her voice ringing with approval.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “They’re on a mission, Speth. I know you’d be proud,” Kel said. She didn’t want to say more.

  “What about Mandett?” I asked.

  “Mandett was taken in Portland,” Kel said quietly. “A lot of people were rounded up in Portland.”

  My fists clenched. It wasn’t fair. No one was safe. I’d understood that, but it was different to have it proved. The only hope for any of us was to wipe out the database, Pads and all, and soon. But how could I let her know that? She still needed the distraction of the trial to get into the data center—maybe even more so now.

  I looked at the communications officer, knowing that as long as I was on the ship, I wouldn’t be able to talk to Kel without being monitored. If I took off, like Mr. Stokes, that would jeopardize the trial. My next chance to talk would be when we arrived in Portland.

  “I’ve landed,” Mr. Stokes called out.

  “How long until we reach our destination?” I asked.

  “Six hours,” Arturo said.

  “Kel, I need you to do what I ask.”

  Her response was instant. “What are you asking?” There was no doubt in her voice.

  “Find Spider Jupiter,” I said.

  “39.9179, 75.1472,” Mr. Stokes called out, then repeated the numbers again.

  “Coordinates near Delphi™,” the communications officer confirmed.

  “And then?” Kel asked.

  “I’ll tell you when we arrive. But, Kel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please remember: just because a solution is painful, doesn’t mean it isn’t for the greater good.”

  The water splashed by, covering the window in a spray that streaked with our speed and then washed away at the next wave. Kel quietly said, “Understood.” A faint click followed, and the ambient noise behind her vanished.

  “What does that mean?” Arturo asked, with equal parts curiosity and suspicion.

  I examined the window again. Another wave washed by.

  “It means she knows that however this turns out, I’m not likely to make it,” I said honestly.

  “That’s not true!” Saretha said.

  “Think about it. If we win the trial, you’ll be able to go back to Mom and Dad and Santos359™. The Téjicans will be in a position to negotiate a way to keep their food sources safe. But me?” I shook my head. “They’ll never let me go.”

  “We will negotiate for your freedom as well, of course!” Arturo said. “We have already planned this.”

  “I know,” I said. “But you won’t succeed. They’ll give you what you want, but they will demand that I not be part of the bargain. And you won’t sacrifice everything for me.”

  Arturo opened his mouth to say otherwise, but we all knew anything he said to reassure me would be a lie.

  Saretha’s eyes were wet with tears. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she cried. “I can’t lose anyone else. I can’t.”

  “You need to understand.” I took a step back to address everyone in the room. “You all need to understand, that what I’m doing is for the greater good, even if it seems like a terrible thing.”

  Saretha looked devastated. I wanted to tell her that there was still hope, but if Kel had failed to understand me, at least she would be prepared for the worst.

  Two of Us™: $60.99

  The rest of my journey was spent with Saretha, crying and occasionally laughing as we reminisced on the deck of the ship. The coast crawled along in the distance to our west, marking the passage of what little time I had left. A knot sat in my stomach, a tiny bit of hope surrounded by a mound of worry. What chance did I really have to change things now? I had come so close, only to find I wasn’t nearly as close as I had dreamed.

  Arturo brought us some food. He called it a quesadilla. I’d never seen anything like it.

  I sniffed it. It smelled warm and delicious. “Was it printed?” I asked. It was flat, but also a little uneven.

  “Printed? No. This was made by hand.”

  My stomach might have been in knots, but I was also starving. I took a bite. The flavor was amazing, cheesy and earthy at the same time. There was an undertone like CornLock™, but without the chemical edge. There was also a slight tang, something red I couldn’t identify.

  “These have actual tomatoes,” Saretha said. I had devoured half of mine by then.

  “Thank you,” I said, my mouth full, and Arturo left us alone.

  My stomach craved more, like I couldn’t eat fast enough. Saretha laughed at my greed. The moment between us was so normal, like how things had once been. Before she turned fifteen and had to pay to talk, we could be silly like this without a thought.

  “I wish we had more time,” I said wistfully. “I wish we could be close again.”

  “We are close,” Saretha answered.

  I didn’t want to disagree, but we had grown apart. We’d been split and separated by my silence and by circumstance—and by how we had changed from who we had once been. Even before everything fell apart, things had begun to change between us. There had been no time to say I’d felt misled by her leading up to my Last Day. She’d told me my Cuff was beautiful. She wanted me to be excited for my Branding. It wasn’t her fault—Mrs. Harris had taught her to do this—but I felt let down. I knew she felt the same way about me. I knew she believed that if I had just broken and said one word that day on the bridge, those brothers might have spared Sam.

  “Can you forgive me?” I asked suddenly.

  “Forgive you?” Saretha asked in total surprise. “For what?”

  “For Sam,” I burst out.

  “Oh, Speth.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice shaking. It should have cost me $10. It should have been a legal admission of guilt. But it was more than both those things. It was more than an apology for Sam or for drawing Silas Rog’s eye onto us. It was also an apology for the state of things and that they couldn’t be different. I struggled to find a way to explain that to her.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Saretha said, and then, with more conviction, “It wasn’t. I’m sorry I made you feel like it was.”

  We pulled together for a sisterly hug. It was just her and me now—she knew that. And I loved her with all my heart. If we made it through the trial, and what might be the end of the world, maybe we could talk about everything then. But that was a slim hope, and it would have to wait.

  It was a comfort to be with her. Like something I’d lost had been found again. I was just so sorry that the world had to be like this. I wished I had spoken the word sooner, for a hundred different reasons. Whatever definition the Word$ Market™ had for sorry, it could never capture everything I felt. Whatever it cost me to say, the Word$ Market™ couldn’t calculate its worth.

  If Kel succeeded, if she’d understood me and could make it inside, and she and Kiely and Mr. Stokes could hack into the system, the definitions and Laws would be gone tomorrow, their values erased. The Rights Holders would have nothing to hold.

  If we destroyed everything, if we erased it all, it would be so satisfying to watch everything horrible vanish, leaving the Rogs and their kind with nothing. But so much would be taken with it. I felt horrible about that. Sorry wasn’t enough. Its meaning was too thin.

  As the ship crested a swell in the water and dropped, leaving my stomach behind, a new thought hit me. What if erasing it all wasn’t
our only option? What if something else was possible? There wouldn’t be much time to work it out, but a new hope bloomed in me that I might have found another way.

  Lucretia's Revenge: $61.98

  As Portland came into sight, a new and tenuous hope flickered inside me. I wished I could contact Kel, but there was nothing I could do but wait. I’d never seen Portland’s dome from the outside. None of us had. We’d all gone out through the tunnel and saw nothing of it, not even Mrs. Croate, who vividly remembered the day they’d taken her away. I’d wondered about what it looked like from out here, mostly hoping to see the ocean someday. But I’d never dreamed that I’d see it from the waves, gently undulating on an enormous floating ship that had been Patented out of the public mind.

  The dome wasn’t so different from what I’d imagined. The concave hexagons I’d grown up with as my sky were convex out here, forming the bubble over the city. Between them, an iridescent sheen of solar paint gathered power for the city. The ocean lapped and crashed right up against the dome’s eastern edge.

  I had been taught there was no way in or out from the eastern side. It was all water, we were told. But a tunnel crept up out of the coastline and curved its way into the dome. I knew the city well enough to know that it would line up with the city’s massive courthouse. That was our way in. The sight filled me with apprehension, but there was no turning back now.

  The ship slowed and stopped farther out than I would have expected.

  “You’ll need to go belowdecks, to the bridge,” Arturo instructed.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “They have mined the water. We need to clear the way.”

  “Mined?” Saretha asked.

  “Explosives, under the waves,” he said as he ushered us toward the door inside. “They must have known we’d detect them. A show, so we’ll understand that we’re not safe.”

  A host of dropters rose up from the Téjican ship, buzzed forward and plunged into the water. A moment later, the first explosion came.

  An immense, foaming bubble broke the surface of the water. A massive column of water burst up in a geyser of spray. As we hurried to the bridge, a deep, rumbling pop rocked the ship. Another exploded behind it, then two more, each with massive gushing detonations and thundering sounds that reverberated the sides of the Téjican vessel. A cacophony of sound and showering vapor rose between us and the dome. It looked and sounded like the world was ending.