“The fifteenth sector is down,” someone said very softly.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
Eight officers paused on the fringers of the track, watched us. I tightened my grip on my board. When we were as far from the officers as possible, I said, “Thanks, guys. Split!”
The group broke up, scattering in twelve different directions.
“Drop,” I said, and my board fell out of the sky. I sucked in a breath and stayed in a low crouch. The tents of Camp B flapped at my body as I maneuvered through them. Vacationers looked up at me casually, and no one tried to stop me. I turned south and zipped under the cover of apple tree branches, heading back toward the rendezvous point.
Sector fifteen really was down. I could tell even from a distance, because the wild wasn’t obscured by the film that covered the rest of the world. Instead, lightning flashed, illuminating something much worse than I imagined. The color of the looming horizon smudged against the dark sky as kohl, like tech gone wrong. Viewed through other sectors of the barrier, it appeared silky and flowing, silver and peaceful.
The real, unobstructed wild felt menacing. Dangerous.
Jag emerged from the orchards, alone. Thank the stars he knew how to handle himself on a hoverboard.
“A quarter mile past the wall, we’ll cross through the barrier!” I yelled to him. He flew on his knees, gripping the sides of the board like he thought he might fall any second. Even so, he maneuvered the board over the wall with unfailing precision.
Techtric shocks jumped the gap between the sectors, weaving the barrier back together. I moved in front of Jag so I could shock the barrier before it could regenerate itself. I held my hands in front of me, palms facing the unknown. I gathered the last tech I could feel in the surrounding sectors of the barrier, focused it, and fired.
The alarm wailed in protest; the surrounding barrier shivered; the fifteenth sector crashed completely; Jag and I shot through the weakened spot.
Into the wild.
I held my breath for as long as I could, thinking only of those special suits the maintenance workers wore. In thirty seconds we’d probably gone another mile. Every cell in my body screamed at me to turn around and look! but I kept my face forward. And then my lungs were crying, Breathe, man! Breathe!
So I did.
The air seemed full of ice, and I almost expected it to shred me to bits. I exhaled. Took another breath, drawing deeper. This time the oxygen tasted like freedom.
I laughed, letting the unrestrained feelings swell inside. I laughed until air wasn’t the only thing coursing through my body.
I nudged my board closer to Jag’s, handed him the backpack with medtech inside. “I’ve never felt so alive!”
He tossed me a grin from a crouched position on his hoverboard. He ripped open a package with his teeth and applied the tech to his neck. A few seconds later the silencers lay discarded in the dirt far behind us.
He applied med-gel to his wounds, ran his fingers through his hair, stood up. I watched as he nosed his board near mine. He ran his gaze from my face to my feet and back, real quicklike.
“Nice hair,” he said. His voice sounded old, misused. He pocketed the med-gel.
“You too,” I countered. Suddenly I felt nervous, like this guy knew more, had done more, simply was more. Which was lame, because I had almost a year on him in age and at least half an inch in height.
I straightened my shoulders. “So, we’re headed to the Badlands.”
“We don’t want to go there,” Jag said casually, as if I’d said, “I’d like to go to the hoverboard track, pretty please.”
“Why not?” Uncertainty mixed with annoyance. My best chance of finding Indy and the journal was in the Badlands. Jag had been in solitary confinement for weeks. And he’d even said that’s where she’d be.
“Trust me, the Badlands isn’t safe at the moment.”
He spoke in riddles, the same way Zenn did. “At the moment?” I asked.
He cut me a look out of the corner of his eye. “I’ve got some people working on it.”
He had some people working on it? Working on what, exactly? And how did he manage that? He’d been in solitary confinement for weeks.
Right when I opened my mouth to bite out, What the hell does that mean? a sensor portlet on my belt buzzed.
“Incoming,” I said, twisting to look over my shoulder. Freedom lay in the background, a glowing smear against a storm-filled sky. Lightning struck in the clouds, making the tips of the Rises spark white-hot for a second.
I couldn’t see anything that would bother my portlet. When I turned around, Jag was flying backward—backward!—next to me.
Show off, I thought, throwing him a dirty look.
He chuckled as if he could hear my thoughts. And maybe he could. I knew next to nothing about Jag Barque.
“Someone’s coming,” Jag said, barely loud enough for me to hear over the wind rushing in my ears. I didn’t like the way the edges of his eyes held fear. I might not know much about him, but I knew enough to know it would take a helluva lot to scare him.
I flipped my board around, partly to show Jag that I could fly backward too, but mostly so I could scope for the threat. We flew that way, scanning the horizon, for several minutes.
I didn’t see anything, but I felt twinges of tech in my muscles, my bloodstream. Every flicker of lightning made me jump. Jag cleared his throat, and I almost turfed it. Thing was, Jag seemed just as agitated as me.
Like that made me feel better. If anything, his nervousness tripled mine.
“Hello, boys.”
I spun around, matching Jag in speed, direction, and intensity. I sucked in my breath at the sight of Thane Myers, also riding a hoverboard backward. The immense wave of hostility coming from him was only matched by the cloud of hatred echoing from Jag.
Bad blood there, and I didn’t want to get in the middle of it. But I sorta already was.
Next to Thane, Zenn flew with his knees locked, his eyes staring straight ahead. Brainwashed. Or was he? Junior assistant, Informant status looped in my head.
“Lyle,” Jag sneered, and my breath stalled in my lungs. Of course Jag knew Thane as Lyle Schoenfeld. The alias was well documented.
“Jag.” Thane clipped the word out like it had been contaminating him for years.
I kept my face impassive as I regarded Thane with a terrible dislike I’d just begun to develop. I’d always lived in fear of him. Hating him felt foreign, new. Natural.
“I’m sure this has been fun for you boys,” Thane said. “But we really need to get back before the barrier is restored.”
Jag burst out laughing, but I simply cocked my head sideways, trying to get a better read on Zenn. He still looked like Jag, but I felt nothing from him. How could he be so susceptible to brainwashing? Didn’t he have any willpower?
The same mindlessness of a clone radiated from Zenn. Weird.
That’s when I noticed the spot of blood on his neck. He’d been medicated and brainwashed.
Horror snaked through me, mingled with a profound sadness for Zenn.
“No way in hell I’m going back,” Jag said, pulling my attention from Zenn.
I liked this guy more and more with every word he spoke. “Me neither,” I added.
Thane’s eyes hardened into sharp edges and anger. “Yes, you are. You both are. You’re screwing everything up.”
Jag didn’t even look at me for confirmation before he employed his voice power. “No, I’m not. And you can go to hell, Lyle.”
Thane’s face slackened, and I seized the opportunity. “You just head on home, Thane,” I said. “You look tired. Maybe you should request a mandatory rest period.”
I swear, if Jag and I were in a different situation, we would’ve grinned at each other, chatted about how easy this game was. But we weren’t. So we didn’t.
Thane actually reversed his board, lifted over our heads, and started back east. “Zenn, now would be a good time to fulfill your d
uty.”
Zenn arced over Jag stiffly, his expression unchanging. I adjusted my hovercraft to watch him, so I saw the taser in his hand. I would’ve felt the tech in my bones anyway, and I did, but not before he fired it—at Jag.
“Stop,” Jag commanded, but the barbs continued forward and embedded in his chest. Everything slowed into techtricity and Jag and spiked hair and Zenn and voices and Directors and right and wrong. My life spun around me in half time, and I replayed a conversation I’d had a few days ago.
“Can you brainwash me?” the Director asked.
“I believe I can, sir.”
“I believe you can too, Mr. Jameson.”
“Leave,” I ordered. My voice sounded so loud, so authoritative. Thane swung his head toward me, his eyes bottomless.
One word wouldn’t cut it. So I filled my lungs and said, “Now, Assistant Director Myers. You will return to Freedom and forget this day ever happened.”
Thane nodded at Zenn, who released Jag. Blood stained his jacket in crimson rings. Then Thane paused, searching my face as if he’d find a way to ignore my command. I repeated it and said the same to Zenn. Maybe then he wouldn’t remember what he’d been forced to do today.
Thane scrunched his lips up, squeezed his eyes shut. He managed to snap his fingers, and Jag’s hoverboard whined as it stopped, reversed, and zoomed toward Thane.
Holy technopathic ability.
“I have to take something back. And this will pacify him.” By the end of Thane’s holy-weird statement, his voice sounded robotic.
But without a board and with bleeding chest wounds, Jag fell, which in my mind, was a much bigger problem than trying to riddle out the meaning behind Thane’s cryptic words.
“Leave,” I commanded them. Thane complied, his face a smooth plane of nonemotion, and Zenn mimicked him.
“Rescue,” I ordered my board. I crouched as it swung in a tight arc under Jag. Once I had him safely onboard, I said, “Half power,” hoping to preserve what techtricity I could.
Jag’s breath came and went in shallow gulps, his eyes fluttered under closed lids. I pressed my hands to his chest, trying to stop the bleeding with sheer pressure. Then I remembered the med-gel Jag had put in his pocket. I spread the glop over his taser damage, hoping it would be enough to slow the bleeding until I could find proper medical attention.
* * *
Time passed as we flew. Breaths. Seconds. Minutes. Hours.
I pulled out Starr’s microchip, but when I went to insert it into my wrist port, I found the slot damaged. Dried blood streaked over the back of my hand from where I’d punched a hole through the window.
Super. I replaced the chip in my pocket, applied some med-gel to my wounds, checked the sting on my ankle. My motions felt hollow. The unwatched microchip felt like it weighed fifty pounds—and so did my injured leg.
* * *
Hours later the only movement from Jag was the rise and fall of his chest. The med-gel had stopped the bleeding, but he looked bad.
The dead, wintry landscape repeated endlessly. I might as well have been alone.
I was mapless, foodless, hopeless.
For the hundredth time in as many minutes, I wondered how far away the Badlands were.
Raine
32.
I didn’t waste any time lounging in my dad’s office. I made an excuse to the clones about needing to use the restroom and returned to Level Seven to inquire about Cannon. The physician couldn’t seem to do anything but frown.
“Where is he?” I asked for the third time. “He’s my match; I have the right to see him.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Miss Hightower. Citizens don’t have rights.”
I wanted to stomp my feet and scream. I couldn’t read minds, couldn’t compel with my voice, but I could do something. I lifted my hand and removed my gloves. I flexed my fingers and watched the physician swallow. Hard.
“I am not an ordinary Citizen,” I said, very low. “Now, tell me where he is.”
When he hesitated, I reached toward him. He jerked backward. “He’s in room seven-oh-four.” Panic had replaced the superiority in his voice.
I wasn’t sure whether I was satisfied or disgusted by his reaction, so I strode away without thanking him.
Every step echoed off the slick walls, announcing my arrival. I opened the door to room 704 without knocking.
Cannon lay in a bed—the only piece of furniture in the tiny room—his chest rising and falling in an even rhythm. Relief gathered inside me, almost filling the empty spaces.
The p-screen on the wall adjacent to the door broadcasted his medical file and monitored his vitals. Everything appeared stable, and his diagnosis ran across the top: dehydration, exhaustion, malnutrition.
I clenched my teeth in anger. People didn’t suffer from these kinds of symptoms anymore. Ever. Mandatory rest periods and detailed meal plans made sure of that.
I turned toward Cannon, disturbed by the concave shape of his chest under the thin blanket. The room felt so cold. I tapped the p-screen until the temperature regulations came up. After setting it a few degrees higher, I moved to stand beside Cannon.
His skin, more transparent than ever, stretched over his bones. His shock of dark hair slashed across his forehead, and when I moved it, the clamminess of his skin surprised me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. His condition was my fault. They’d been trying to get to me through him. And he hadn’t broken.
Tears splashed my cheeks. Guilt eased in, filling the hollow places Gunn had left behind. What do I do? I chatted him, even though he wouldn’t hear me. No one answered, and I had no clue what my next step should be.
Time seemed to stretch endlessly before me. Finally I leaned down and pressed my lips to Cannon’s chilly temple. “I will make this right.”
After I left the room, I’d only taken two steps before my father materialized in front of me.
“Come with me, Raine,” he said, marching toward laboratory seven.
“No, thanks.” I wasn’t entering that room ever again.
“It wasn’t an invitation.” Dad flicked his hand across the sensor, and the frosted glass hissed to the side. Dim conversation from the lab filtered into the hall.
“Sorry,” I said, not sorry at all. I continued toward the ascender rings, knowing my father needed to pay for Cannon’s condition, but unsure about how or when or where. I needed time to think, collaborate, and plan. I needed the safety and quiet of the nocturnal lounge.
“You’re not leaving,” Dad said.
I ignored him long enough to make it to the descenders, but when he said, “Lock,” I couldn’t leave no matter how much I wanted to.
“Unlock them,” I said. “Now.” Rage bubbled in my stomach. I turned back to face him.
He looked disappointed sad. “Raine, please. Don’t go.” His voice took on a pleading quality, and something strange lilted across my mind.
“That won’t work,” I said, recognizing the subtleties of his brainwashing. “I’m way past you guilting me into doing what you want.”
“I suppose you are.” A hard edge flashed in his eyes, but after he blinked, his eyes were round and full and innocent. “It’s Friday night; don’t you want to watch a projection? Have popcorn?” A genuine smile pulled at his mouth.
Confusion filled my mind. So much of what he said didn’t make sense. Was it Friday already? Yes.
Had I missed another week of school? No, you’ve been excused, what with Cannon being in the infirmary and all. I glanced past my dad to room 704 and thought about how much better Cannon looked.
But … wasn’t there something I needed to do? Not unless you count relaxing and eating popcorn with your old man.
I stepped out of the descender ring, unsure where I was. This didn’t look like his posh flat on the nineteenth floor. “Dad?”
“Come on, the projection’s about to start. You chose something with rainbows on the chip.”
Rainbows.
&
nbsp; Vi’s voice filled my ears, singing her mother’s lullaby.
I ground to a halt. “It’s not Friday.” My words tripped over each other; my voice came out sticky.
Dad clamped his hand on my bicep and began dragging me down the hall.
I thrashed. I swore. I kicked. “Stop brainwashing me! I hate you!”
But he was too powerful for me. Soon, three physicians assisted him, and I went limp.
Help me, I pleaded to the air, the walls, to anyone listening.
No help came. After half a dozen tethers were secure, my dad slipped on filament gloves and advanced toward me.
His lips curled into a snarl. “Let’s see what you’ve been hiding, Rainey.”
* * *
Having someone sift through your memories isn’t painful. At least not physically. But I felt violated. Deeply.
Dad’s hands pressed on the top of my head, and he stood over me, murmuring. Flashes of my memory flew across my vision-screen, each one also landing on his.
When he discovered my involvement in the Insiders, he jerked his eyes to mine. Shock resided in his, as if he couldn’t believe his darling daughter would go so far to oppose him. Surely he knew; he’d just been looking the other way because I performed the drains for him. Or maybe because I’d ignored the whole Vi issue.
Until now.
I closed my eyes, grateful for the resulting darkness. I focused on the sound of the air circulators so I wouldn’t have to think about what my Dad might see next.
Because I knew what he’d see: Vi’s drain.
His fingers tightened in my hair. I refused to cry out, though it hurt.
Bright colors danced in the darkness. My body felt light, weightless.
Fire slashed across my eyelids. Smoke choked the room. My breath shuddered in my chest at the sight of Gunner coming up behind me, of the feel of his hand in mine.
Then the images splintered into a thousand others—memories from my childhood. Things I’d forgotten—or that had been concealed.
* * *
The world is fresh and green. Buds perch on delicate limbs, and apple blossoms scent the air. I’m skipping, and a basket bumps into my side with each leap. “Hurry!” I call behind me.
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