“Windmill Bay is also an isolated facility. A secret facility. No signs to show the way, not labeled on any map. Outside this office, you will not speak its name. The com settings on your nanochips and tragus implants have already been placed under my control. You can access localized data and toolsets, but communication with the outside world is one-way, restricted at my discretion and solely accessible in the pursuit of your education. WiFi and WiPo are monitored rigorously.”
Circling her desk, she stands so close, I can see shards of icy blue surrounding her pupils. I resist the urge to step back.
“Please don’t miss this point: if our efforts here are wasted, you will have no other opportunity to rejoin society in the Sand. You will either be assigned to labor detail or drafted into the army. Fighting the Resistance cures even the most stubborn students, one way or another.”
Stepping toward Xoey, she trails one painted fingertip along her bruised cheek. Her lips curve upward for the first time. “Of course, if you’re pretty, you may be picked for special service to a government official.”
A burst of light flames along my optic nerve. I step forward, fists forming at my side. “Take your hands off her!”
Director Kino reveals perfect teeth between her red lips. Leaning against her desk, she inspects me from head to toe. “Sometimes, lovely boys are chosen for special service too.”
Before I can respond, the girl in the brown uniform returns and gives each of us a tablet.
“Read and sign this document and you will enjoy a different kind of stay,” the director continues. “The law requires us to educate you for at least six months, but I am prepared to offer special incentives to any student who cooperates fully from day one. Warm clothes, better food and dormitories, along with lighter workloads.”
I take the tablet but don’t bother reading it. I’ve been offered this document before. Buried in four pages of legal language is a confession. If I sign, I am disavowing my family name and calling my dead parents traitors, I am agreeing to interrogation, to reveal any secrets I may have learned at home, and indebting myself to the government and whatever work they wish to assign me for the next ten years. This confession promises nothing. Nothing but shame. I have enough of that already.
“I’m not signing this.”
Xoey refuses as well. “I want to apply for religious accommodation.”
A chill runs down my spine. It’s a bold request, making me suspect she’s not as fragile as I thought.
“Granted.” Director Kino turns back to me, amusement tugging at the corners of her mouth. “What about you? Your father was a preacher. Don’t you want religious accommodation?”
I say nothing.
“Hmm. Maybe you don’t share his superstitions. Or Xoey’s.” Her expression lights with strange joy. “Interesting.”
She nods toward the girl, who grabs Xoey by the arm and pulls her from the room.
“Where’s she taking her?”
The director waves her fingernails toward the window. “To her dormitory, where else? No need to worry. You’ll see her again soon enough. I expect you want to get settled yourself.”
Down in the courtyard, a handful of students are starting to move around in the gray morning light. She’s right. I’m tired. More than that, I’m hungry. Still, there’s no way I’ll ask for breakfast. Director Kino returns to her chair and crosses her legs, bouncing one against the other while she watches me.
“You’re so protective of a girl you just met. Loyalty is such an admirable trait. I hope yours doesn’t fade as quickly as it blooms.”
I clench my jaw and focus on the unsigned tablets we left on the corner of her desk. “No. It doesn’t.”
“Good.” She leans forward. “Because I give the same speech to all new students, offering them the opportunity to be my little caged pets before scurrying back to the Sand, but I hoped you would refuse. And you do not disappoint.”
She returns her attention to the data above the fireplace. Xoey’s is gone. Mine now fills the space and includes several warning tags, which flash in bright orange letters. Flight risk, resourceful and intelligent all catch my eye. My grandmother’s name is there too, which doesn’t surprise me. She gave the government a decent bit of trouble back in her day, making me stand a little taller when I shift back to Director Kino. This time, I can’t keep from grinning.
“You sure you want me here?”
“I do,” she says earnestly. “You see, I have a problem. Tight funding means I have only a skeleton staff at my disposal and almost a thousand students to monitor. And while my security tech lets me track every move, every word on campus, it’s too much data to filter through daily. Besides, obstinate students will always find ways of getting around the system. I want ears on the ground. You’re the perfect boy for the job.”
“That’s why you admire my loyalty? So you can broker it for yourself?” I laugh. “Why would I be your spy?”
“Why, indeed.” Her lips tightens. “No, I’m not counting on your loyalty to me. I’m counting on your loyalty to her.”
She shifts her attention back to the wall above the fireplace. When mine follows, my heart skips a beat. The vid loop lasts eight seconds, but the date and time stamp are current. It shows a woman pacing in a concrete cell. She turns toward the camera once, but long enough for me to be sure.
It’s a live feed of my mom. She’s still alive.
Chapter Two
Xoey
* * *
When I was eleven years old, I found a puppy in the alley behind our apartment. He was sick and starving, with matted fur and a belly full of worms, but I carried him inside anyway, washed him, and fed him scraps. Most importantly, I hid him from my father.
He stayed quiet for three days. But as his health improved, his activity increased. When my father heard him scratching at my bedroom door late one night, he burst into my room, cursing and stomping. Grabbing my puppy by the neck, he stormed out of our apartment, pausing long enough to backhand me for trying to stop him.
I do not know what he did with him, but I can imagine. Mom held me back when I clawed at the door, probably fearing what more my father would do to me. She did not scold me though. She just held me and let me cry.
I felt so lost in that moment. As if nothing could be worse. As if I would never be safe again.
I was only half right.
The door to Director Kino’s office closes, cutting off the warmth of her fireplace, cutting me off from the boy with dark hair and darker eyes who traveled here with me: Reed Paine. I have just learned his name, but he was kind to me. The only kindness I have been shown in a long time. Without him, I am lost again.
“What is your name?” I ask the girl who is all but dragging me down the hall. Strong and sturdy, even her skin looks bullet proof.
“Monica. I’m the director’s student aide.”
“You are hurting me, Monica.” Trying to smile splits my lip open again. A wasted gesture since she does not return it. “I will go wherever you want, but can you please let go of my arm?”
She hesitates, but releases me. “Director Kino put me in charge of you. You better not cause any trouble.”
“I promise.”
Monica leads me downstairs to the cafeteria, then hovers, tapping on her tablet while I eat. Every few minutes she shares details about the director’s improvements since she took over the school last year. How the reeducation rate is climbing under her tenure, how discipline is tighter. I ask her how many months she has been here.
“Long enough so nothing gets by me.”
“Are there other aides?”
She frowns. “No one helps the director like I do.”
When I take my last bite, she urges me forward again, to the trash bins and then outside where I take a deep breath, relieved to feel the cold morning fill my lungs. The air inside was stifling.
The trees catch my attention first, or their ghosts at least. Five large oaks with stout trunks once grew in this cou
rtyard. I imagine they once sang mossy melodies to the students, tempting them through classroom windows: come lie in my shade.
They are nothing now. Just rotting stumps.
“The trees!” I say.
“What trees? Come on. Keep up.”
Monica marches me past a cracked fountain filled with dirt and vines. It must have been pretty when it worked. A few students pass through the courtyard. Some squint at me in the morning sunlight, others look away. Silvery dew covers the grass, sticking to my ankles. My eyelids droop. I could sleep right here if they let me, dew and all.
Lord, get me through this.
Mom taught me to pray this way, between one step and the next. “God is always with us,” she used to say. “We just need to reach out to Him.” But I miss praying with her and the small assembly of believers we worshipped with in the Sand.
“It was my duty to report her,” my father told the judge. “She was breaking the law.”
I learned a lot in the courtroom. How worship is regulated in the UDR and how churches must submit their creeds for approval. That was what made our congregation illegal. The government rejected us for submitting the Bible as our creed. We met in secret after that. Until my father turned us in.
I fought back when they arrested Mom, pulling on the arms of the police officer and howling in anger until she admonished me.
“Be peaceful, Xoey. Pray for me and be good for your father.”
Forgiveness came quickly for her. It doesn’t for me. Now my father has delivered me to the state too, so I may never figure out what it would take to forgive him.
Monica marches past a sturdy pole where our nation’s flag droops in the still air. I follow. We enter a dormitory where she orders me to shower and change into a brown uniform. Next, we head to a building across from the cafeteria. A peeling sign identifies it as the library. Broken windows on the second story draw my attention. Above it, charred beams stick out in odd directions from a hole in the roof.
“Don’t ask,” Monica says.
Inside, we walk down a dark corridor toward a door she unlocks with her nanochip. I step forward, expecting a room. Instead, I am faced with a dark closet.
My heart pounds. I back up.
How did they know this was my father’s favorite form of punishment?
“What is this?”
Monica smirks. “Religious accommodation.”
She pushes me inside.
“Wait! No!”
Panic floods me, seeking escape through every nerve ending. I try to get past her but just bounce backward. She shoves harder, this time knocking me to the floor. My head ricochets off the wall. Stars blur my vision. Before I can scramble to my feet, she slams the door.
The closet is not just dark, but pitch black. Not even a thread of light beneath the door. I bang on it and scream for help. Time passes: minutes or hours, I cannot tell. When I am too hoarse to continue, I give up and shrink into darkness, at the mercy of the monsters of my imagination.
Then I hear Director Kino’s voice through my tragus implant, whispering in my ear.
“I don’t share your faith, Xoey, but I know where Jesus said you should be praying.” Her laugh is sharp, biting into my eardrums. “I’ll leave you to your…worship.”
Chapter Three
Reed
* * *
I stumble out of Kino’s office, trailing after the tall boy who showed up just as the video of my mom disappeared. He tells me his name — Zak Wythe — and about the dorms and cafeteria. In a bland voice he promises clothes, food, and a schedule, but none of the details sink in. My mind is jailed in a six-foot cell.
Seeing her alive should have lifted the weight of grief I’ve been carrying all these months. It hasn’t. My joy is matched with terror. My hope with disbelief.
It can’t be real.
We cross the courtyard. A few students stop and stare. One of them mutters something about a new shell.
Sea shells from the sea shore?
I guess that’s me.
I tug on my sleeve and focus on my dirty feet. How many guys arrive in their pajamas? Will I pay for it later with taunts and fists, like I would have at the state home?
My petty concerns evaporate. I am home again with my parents. Our front door splinters. Dad is pushing me toward the kitchen, telling me to follow Mom. “Run!”
There is nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. Out the back door, almost to the back gate, then bullets tearing flesh, and horror pounds my skull from the inside, drowning me.
Mom falls to the ground near my father. Blood pools around them both. She reaches for me and the light leaves her eyes.
I watch her die.
But that was more than a year ago and now I’m not sure of anything, so I push the image away and replace it with the one I just saw. A tiny cell and Mom pacing, pushing fingers through her hair like she always has when she’s worried.
Despite myself, I believe it. I believe my mom is alive.
We enter another building reeking of body odor. The boys’ dormitory.
“Separate from the girls? Seems kind of old fashioned.”
Zak shrugs. “Kino’s idea. Fewer pregnancies to deal with.”
He points to the nearest door. “Showers are in there. The soap’s gonna smell like ash and cat mick, but use it anyway. Every time we have a lice outbreak, Kino makes us shave our heads.” He rubs his regretfully.
“Cat mick?”
“Mick — urine. It’s what we call it on the farm. What we call it here.” He scratches his nose. “Dirt lingo gets used a lot around here, even though most of you come from the Sand. Go figure, right? Anyway, you’ll get used to it. Here’s a uniform and shoes. I’ll wait outside.”
I appreciate the shower, but he’s right about the soap. After drying off, I pull on the clean clothes, most thankful for socks and shoes. Leading me upstairs to a dorm room, he points to one of six bunks.
“That’s you. It’s Sunday, so the rest of your crew is at workforce conditioning this morning.” He stares at the bunk across from mine, his eyebrows pushed together. Something about one of my roommates bothers him, but I don’t ask.
“Workforce conditioning?”
“It’s on our curriculum records as a required class. Actually, it’s just work. Everyone’s part of a crew. Manufacturing, maintenance, custodial, laundry, cafeteria, train yard.” He ticks them off his fingers. “You’re gonna work in munitions eventually. For now, most everyone is harvesting potatoes.”
“How about you?”
“I’m an aide, part of the director’s administrative crew. There are four of us: Monica, Claire, Chad, and me. Get used to us. We’re always nearby.”
We leave the dorm through a rusty door and follow a cracked sidewalk toward the cafeteria. All the buildings are old. I’d swear they were built at least a hundred years before my grandmother was born. Most of them are made of brick and seem sturdy enough, though the one on the east side of the courtyard looks like someone tried to burn it down.
“What happened there?”
“Library fire. Come on, I’m cold.”
The cafeteria is steamy and smells of boiled vegetables. Students work the chow line, but they don’t talk and their focus stays fixed on our trays. Only two adults supervise us — a thick man leaning on the wall by the door and a sullen woman by the kitchen who wears a name badge: Ms. Rhim. Dour students drop a dry baked potato and a helping of mush on my tray. I sniff the concoction, deciding it must be turnips and cauliflower with bits of meat in it. A dining loft upstairs is set aside for kids who sign Kino’s confession. Short Timers, Zak calls them. We can eat anywhere else we want.
Before I grab my spoon, he hands me his tablet. “Sign this. It says the school has provided you with food, clothing, and shelter within four hours of your arrival.”
I scrawl my fingertip over the scratched surface and give it back. “Is that it?”
He smiles, but there’s no joy in it. “Get used to signing your name. Our
compliance keeps this place running.”
Shrugging, I dig into my food. It’s hot at least. With warm clothes and something working its way toward my stomach, my sharpness returns. “I don’t much care about keeping Windmill Bay running.”
“You want a nasty visit from Haak?” Zak points to the man leaning against the wall. “Keep saying the school’s name.”
“Who’s he?”
“Kino’s security chief and one mean dude, when he wants to be. We call it the House. Keeps it simple.”
“The House?”
“Home sweet home, baby! That’s what this place is now. Get used to it.” He leans in and whispers. “Besides, we don’t wanna become another Cable Bay.”
“What’s Cable Bay?”
“Another reeducation facility, closer to the Eastern Sand. Students rebelled and took over. Their siege lasted four days. Two teachers were killed. Once the Secret Service got it under control, they pulled out all the staff and locked it down. Then they went all scorched earth on the place. Within an hour, all the students were dead.”
“Dead from what?”
“Drones. They smart bombed them from the sky, targeting students through their nanochips.” He taps his wrist. “Picked ’em off one by one from an SS office a thousand miles away. It’s their final option, if we don’t play nice.”
I find the closest camera and stare at it for several seconds. Kino could be watching, listening right now. Wondering what I make of Zak’s tall tale.
What does she want from me?
Suddenly my gut twists, rejecting the food I’ve just eaten. I push my bowl away. Zak doesn’t notice.
Stealing Liberty Page 2