I turned toward where I thought she sat; only a black space stared back. Starr hesitated. I felt like she was hovering above me.
“I made a memory chip for you.” Her spoken-out-loud words burn burn burned in my ears. Her breath breezed across my cheek, blazing hot. “Don’t watch it until you’re gone. Don’t tell anyone. Okay?”
An army of questions marched across my mind. Who else knew I was leaving? Did Thane? She’d said he’d read my mind…
“Gunner? We’re in this together, right?”
Yeah, I chatted her.
“Good.” She placed her burning palm in my jeans pocket, leaving a microchip behind with the memory of her voice, her smell.
Her delicate footfalls echoed back to me. As did her voice when she said, “He’s all yours.”
* * *
I lay limp on my hoverboard. A high-pitched whine emanates from it: a warning to recharge the power supply, stat. But I can barely lift my head, let alone worry about my now-plunging hoverboard.
My throat scratches with each breath. Every muscle in my body aches. The little patch of sky I see holds only the unforgiving chill of winter. My bones throb with the cold, my teeth clench.
The whining increases. The board pitches downward. If I’d had anything to eat, I would’ve jacked it up. My angry stomach rolls as the ground nears.
I crash, hard. But it’s just another layer of pain on top of a mountain of hurt. I close my eyes, knowing I need to get up, run, hide.
I can’t.
Someone says, “It’s an outsider,” and I want to protest. He has it all wrong. I’m an Insider, and I need help—in more ways than one.
“Don’t touch him,” someone else says, a girl.
I manage to open my eyes in time to see a gold-ring-wearing hand holding a needle and plunging toward my neck.
* * *
I woke up yelling. “Stop! Wait!” I thrashed, finding my jeanless legs tangled in blankets. And not mine. The smell in the room was the same as it had been earlier, when Starr was here with me. The only thing missing was her floral perfume.
I shoved the blankets away, panic fully rising. “What’s going on?”
“You’re nightmaring,” a robotic voice said.
“Where am I?” My voice power coated my tongue, reverberated in the still, unscented air.
“Rise Twelve, room two hundred thirty-seven.”
Rise Twelve! Wait. Rise Twelve?
“Lights.” Soft tech lights breathed some life into the room. Sterile from wall to wall, at least I could see I was alone in a chrome room with only a single bed for decoration. “Whose room is two hundred thirty-seven?”
“Gunner Jameson’s.”
I suppressed the urge to shout profanities at the useless computer. “Whose room was it before it was mine?”
“Empty.”
“Super,” I muttered. “Where’s Thane Myers?”
“Asleep in his flat. Sixteenth floor.”
I opened my mouth to ask another question, but I stopped short. My heart slap-slap-slapped against my rib cage. Asleep in his flat on the sixteenth floor? Asleep in his flat on the sixteenth floor—of Rise Twelve?
Thane knew what was going on in Rise Twelve?
Impossible.
“Thane Myers is asleep on the sixteenth floor of Rise Twelve?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Is he … is he the Thinker of this Rise?”
The wall remained silent. The room held no dressers, no clothes. I stood up, wearing only my boxers, and activated my cache, intending to infiltrate the database and find out as much as I could about Rise Twelve. A red band streaked across the middle of my vision-screen as it came to life.
“Watched,” I whispered. I checked the time: 3:49 a.m., and immediately shut down the cache. Someone would know I’d woken up, manually turned on my cache to check the time. No way I could hack into the database now, technopath or not.
The assistant had been protecting me since I’d joined the Insiders. Yet the red band burned behind my eyes. I wondered where the assistant was now. Did s/he know I was here in Rise Twelve, being watched?
I couldn’t sit around and wait for help. The only entrance/exit was a white door opposite the bed. Two vents poured breathable air from the ceiling.
I paced to the door and back to the bed, trying to quell the desperate need to get—out—of—here. With every step, the walls seemed to press closer, smothering, choking, caging.
I swallowed hard, tried to breathe. The air filled my lungs like sludge, heavy and dark. Fury mixed with panic mixed with fear, and my own skin felt too restrictive.
I had to get out of the confining room. I couldn’t live another second in—
The door clicked behind me. I spun, my chest heaving. I expected Director Hightower to saunter in, tech scalpels and microchips at the ready.
Nothing happened. The air swirled. My heartbeat pulsed in my neck. My palms dampened.
After one, two, three agonizing minutes, I strode toward the door and lifted the latch.
It opened. Just swung right in, leaving me to face a long white hallway.
I was alone in Rise Twelve. I’d taken two steps when I dismissed the idea of Thane being this building’s Thinker. For one thing, he wouldn’t be asleep when his uncontrolled people were awake.
And the Citizens of this Rise had the opposite schedule from the rest of us. I didn’t want to meet any of them now, though, wearing only boxer shorts. I hurried toward the end of the hall, where a slight bluish glow seeped under the door there.
The latch lifted easily, allowing me to slip into a room filled with blazing lights on the floor. Ascenders to go up. Descenders to go down.
“Which one to get to the sixteenth floor?” I asked.
Instead of responding verbally, the lights on the floor dimmed until only one remained: a bright orange box.
Super, I thought. A box = the embodiment of my life.
One ascender ride later, I stood on a posh carpet that ran down the center of a shiny, silver floor. Instead of the traditional doorways lining the hall, the sixteenth floor only had one door, way down at the end.
Without thinking, I moved toward it. Like I could get in the flat. Like I wanted to get in. I stood outside it, listening.
I don’t know what I expected to hear. Thane’s snores? The pad of his feet against the luxurious carpets as he got up to use the bathroom? The scuttle of guard-spider legs?
I heard nothing.
The door had a simple latch. No iris scanner. No fingerprint portlet. None of the same security that existed in every other building in the city.
I put my fingers on the latch, lifted it.
The door swung open. The smell of an engineering lab hit me full force. Chemicals and smoke and metal and tech. The scent didn’t mesh with the fancy fluted mirror on the wall. Or the vase of flowers on the side table just inside the door.
My feet seemed to have a mind of their own, because the next thing I knew, I’d entered the flat and gently shut the door behind me.
Whoever lived here either (a) took extreme care of their home or (b) had some serious spider maid service. Not a spot of dust existed anywhere. The latest tech gadgets filled the kitchen, which I could see from my position just inside the door. Every surface flashed with a yellow light, which meant they were equipped with p-screens.
Three doors and two hallways led out of the main living area. I didn’t dare take a full breath for fear it would make too much noise. I stood rooted to the spot, trying to figure out how I’d come to be in this place. Wearing only my underwear.
The tech in the flat zipped through me, spicy and alive. I reached out and touched the mirror. Instantly, a two-columned menu popped up. My finger automatically went to an item labeled Citations.
Three options appeared: Waived, Addressed, and Pending. Each one had a number in brackets, indicating how many citations had been processed that day.
I touched Pending (15).
Three thi
ngs happened at once.
One, I stumbled backward into the door because fifteen citations came up on the mirror. They all had my name on them. They all have my name on them.
Two, the mirror said, “Identity confirmation needed to execute citation options.” Beneath the list, twelve names appeared as pushable buttons. Twelve names = one Thinker for each of the Rises, including this one.
Thane’s name was listed at the bottom. Thane’s name is listed at the bottom.
Three, a series of loud thumps sounded from somewhere down one of the hallways off the living area.
I fumbled with the latch and scrambled out of the flat. “Direct me to the nearest hoverboard,” I breathed through unmoving lips, desperate to leave without getting caught. “On quarter sound.”
“Tenth floor,” the wall whispered.
When I reached the descender and turned back, a man stood in the hallway, frowning in my direction. I couldn’t tell if it was Thane or not. It could’ve been, but a lot of men have dark hair and pale skin.
Right? Yeah, totally, a lot of men have dark hair and pale skin, especially in Freedom.
The man raised his hand as if telling me to come back, but I said, “Tenth floor,” and descended the hell out of there.
After three turns, endless white hallways, and entering a coded room, I stood on a hoverboard, ready to launch through a portal.
The frigid February night sliced at my bare skin as I flew. I felt it, felt it deeply, and crouched on the board in an attempt to preserve body heat.
Like that worked.
By the time I arrived on Raine’s balcony, the only part of my body I could feel was my barely beating heart.
Raine
24.
Through the thickness of sleep, something tapped. And tapped. And tapped. Which was strange, because I was walking through peach-scented orchards in my dream, and tapping shouldn’t exist. Still, it lingered, beating against my subconscious.
I didn’t wake up until I felt the pressure in the room change. Someone had opened the sliding glass door to the balcony.
“You’re a boy,” Vi said as I came back to full awareness. “Lights. Why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”
As the lights came up, Vi stepped back. She cried out and covered her mouth with her hand. “Raine, get over here.”
Gunn had dropped to his knees, shivering violently, wearing only his underwear. His skin looked a ghastly gray, rough and textured like cement. I fumbled out of bed, dragging my quilt with me. I flung it around Gunn before yanking the sliding door shut.
“I know him,” Vi was chanting. “I know him, I know him, I know him.”
“He’s come over before,” I told her. “It’s my friend—”
“Jag,” she said at the same time I practically yelled, “Gunn.”
A sharp hiss sounded over my cache, but no alarm came to life. No EOs started beating down the door.
“Don’t say that name,” I whispered, rubbing my hands over Gunn’s shoulders in a futile attempt to warm him. “And this isn’t—him. This is Gunner.”
Gunn raised his head when I said his name. His eyes looked vacant. “I’m s-so c-cold.”
Vi knelt in front of him, stroking one hand over his face. She explored his cheekbones, his forehead, and down his nose. Both Gunn and I stared at her, and I’m sure I was putting off some serious what the hell? vibes.
Finally Vi looked at me. “You’re sure he’s not—”
“Don’t say it,” I cut her off. “That name is flagged.” I pulled Gunn to his feet and supported his weight. “Come on. Get in bed.”
He collapsed on my bed, wrapped in my blanket.
“I’ll get the warming blanket,” Vi said.
I watched him shiver and shake, unsure of what to do next. I pulled the quilt off Vi’s bed, wrapped it around myself, and snuggled in next to him.
His breathing came quick and shallow at first. It sounded like my mind felt. Sharp. Frenzied.
Vi returned with the warming blanket and covered both me and Gunn with it. She hummed the same melody she had for me. It vibrated through her throat, rising and falling, finally forming into words.
I closed my eyes, allowing the comfort in the words to seep into my pores. I’d never heard the song before Vi had voiced it; music wasn’t meant for the masses. Too thought-provoking, Dad said. But listening to Vi, I wanted to hear the lullaby again and again.
The lyrics calmed back into a throaty hum, and Gunn seemed more relaxed. But I couldn’t shake the way Vi had looked at him. How she’d called him Jag. Sure, the last time I’d seen Jag he’d been beaten up pretty bad, but I didn’t think he and Gunn looked that much alike.
Certainly not enough to be mistaken for each other. For one thing, Gunn’s lighter brown hair hung longer—“No way.”
“What?” Vi whispered from her position on the floor.
In answer, I reached up and ran my fingers through Gunn’s hair. His enhanced—and trimmed—hair. If I had to guess, I’d say it was about the same length as Jag’s had been last week.
“What happened to your hair?” I asked him, pressing my face into the cocoon of blankets enveloping his head.
“I—I don’t know. I woke up in Rise Twelve.”
My eyebrows shot up. I searched his face and found the confusion residing in his tea-colored eyes.
Except they weren’t tea-colored anymore. I jerked away and almost fell out of bed.
“What happened to your eyes?” I felt like a broken e-board, repeating the same questions.
“What’s wrong with them?”
“They’re—they’re not the right color. Did you get enhancements?” I blinked, and the icy blue of his new eyes beamed on the back of my eyelids.
When I opened my eyes, his stared back in that unnervingly wrong color. His jaw trembled; I felt the tension in his body from throat to toes.
“What else is wrong with me?” he asked.
Absolutely nothing, I wanted to say. Yet everything. I liked Gunn as Gunn, not teched up as Jag. “You’re not wearing any clothes.”
Something akin to total freak-out crossed through his eyes. “My jeans.”
“No jeans,” I whispered.
“Starr gave me a microchip. She put it in my jeans pocket.” He rolled a bit closer to me, moving his lips until they hovered a few inches from my ear. “She has your file.”
I nodded as his lukewarm breath dripped over my neck. I didn’t like how “She put it in my jeans pocket” sounded. But I didn’t say anything. As we lay there in silence, Gunn’s breathing steadied and deepened, sending shivers over my shoulder every few seconds. All the nerves in my body stood at heightened alert despite the thickness of the blankets that separated me from Gunn. The thought of Gunn leaving brought a squirm to my stomach.
I wondered if I’d ever see him again. I immediately recalled the thought as I remembered what I’d seen in Vi’s drain.
Gunn would be there. At the end of the world, he’d held my hand. He’d kissed me. And now that I knew what his kiss felt like, my lips yearned to meet his again.
As if he could read my mind, he dislodged his hands and pulled me close. With his eyes closed, he murmured, “Don’t worry so much.”
Then he kissed me, and his lips seemed as excited as mine to be reunited. I saw nothing except my own fantasies where Gunn and I could live a life where we could kiss each other whenever we wanted.
Half an hour later my brain still buzzed with unanswered questions and anxiety I couldn’t smother. Gunn’s steady breathing indicated he was fast asleep. I needed to clear my head, and surely Gunn would sleep for at least an hour. I could get to the hoverboard track and back before he even knew I was gone.
I’d slipped out of bed, bundled myself in my winter coat, and stood on the balcony before I heard Vi say, “Wait for me.”
* * *
Fact: Violet Schoenfeld has never flown on a hoverboard. And if she has, well, she hasn’t.
The girl swerved all over the p
lace, all yelping cries and flailing arms. At this rate, the entire squad of EOs would find us before we even made it to the track.
“Bend your knees.” I flew in close to her, whispering. “There, like that. Feel the center? Shift your feet back a little. Yeah, good.” I edged away. “No, keep your arms down. Better, better.”
At least she was a fast learner. We circled the track in silence. I needed time to think, to sort through what to do next. So many people around me seemed to be coming to a crossroads.
I felt like they were all looking to me, judging how to proceed by watching my choices. This thought weighed heavy in my mind. I analyzed each person whose life was somehow entwined with mine.
Starr: She had Vi’s file. I didn’t know what Gunn had told her to get her to keep it. More than that, I wondered if Gunn knew all her secrets by now. Or if she knew his. No matter what, she wasn’t my biggest enemy.
No, that role belonged solidly to my dad. My jaw tightened at the mere thought of him. If he told me I needed water to survive, I’d never take another sip just to spite him.
A penetrating sadness filled me when I thought of Cannon. He’d nursed me back to health so many times. He played his part without flaw so many times, which left me feeling guilty that I hadn’t done the same.
He’d warned me to be careful with Gunner, and I’d failed. And now Cannon had disappeared. My last e-comm to him was still unanswered. Worry seethed with my guilt. If anything happened to him—
I silenced the thought. My throat burned. I inhaled, and my breath entered in icy shudders.
Jag: I didn’t know him personally, but everyone on the Inside received a lesson about the Resistance—and thus Jag Barque—early in their training. My success, the Insiders’ success, depended largely on getting Jag out of Freedom. Which meant I had to risk losing everything and everyone to do that.
Including Gunn.
That’s what it came down to. Losing Gunner to ensure Jag’s escape. Losing Gunner to get my dad (and Thane) off my back. Losing Gunner so Starr wouldn’t tell the world about my ability. Losing Gunner so I could finally understand the depth of loss Zenn must’ve felt when he spent every day with the brainwashed version of Vi.
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