“I-I don’t know,” I stutter. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Of course you do!” My father’s voice lifts with rage. He paces, keeping his eyes from me. “They are forbidden to us. You know this!”
“Leave it,” my grandfather says. “Leave it well alone now, Loden. For goodness’ sake.”
“Look,” my mother says, pointing to the display. “Verity’s back.”
Verity’s white face circles into the stream. An influx of images rushes at us. Houses burning. Children hungry. Cities of rubble. Faces covered in soot. Hands clutching charred belongings. Bodies littering a road. Blood seeping from an invisible wound. A quiet shot of the Vales. Birdsong. The sun glinting off the hard shell of the bioslice dome. New Down City’s tower. The eye in the sky, John calls it. A reminder.
Verity’s face shrinks, taking on human dimension. She pulls forward into the center of the room, then rotates, spreading her face a full 360 degrees. There is nothing she cannot see.
“Good evening, Hartley family. Our apologies for the interruption. We are experiencing signal failure due to bad exterior weather.”
“Thank goodness,” my mother says. “We thought it was something serious!”
My father’s pacing stops. “No reason for alarm, then. Thank you, Verity.”
“You’re welcome. Hartley family, please report any unusual activity that occurred during the interruption.”
My grandfather inches toward Verity’s face. “Define unusual.”
“Unusual: any activity not habitually occurring or common under the laws of Fell.”
“You mean a breach?”
“Repeat. Any activity not habitually occurring or common under the laws of Fell.”
My mother’s eyes dart around the room. “What is she looking for? What does she mean?”
“Nothing to report,” my grandfather says. “Please resume streaming.”
“Request denied.” Verity’s face blossoms, growing three times its normal size. “Report any unusual activity that occurred during the interruption.”
Grandpa’s eyes find me. They hold something in them that worries me. I don’t know what he’s thinking until he says it. “They know.”
My grandfather sighs, resigned. “This is William Hartley. Please log my request, Verity.”
“What are you doing?” my mother cries.
“Noelle Hartley, my granddaughter, mistakenly undertook to decipher the words during the interruption. She did not realize what she was doing constituted a breach of Fell’s laws. Rest assured, she has been reprimanded, and punishment will be issued. I would like to request that her logs be cleared of this transgression.”
“Request denied,” Verity booms.
“Denied? What does she mean?” my mother cries. “Loden, do something!”
Grandfather steps forward, inches from Verity’s glow. “If you won’t clear her logs of this transgression, transfer it to mine instead.”
“Grandpa?” I dart toward him, but my mother holds me back.
“I will carry her fault as my own.” My grandfather sits, his eyes focused straight ahead. “Please submit my request.”
“Submitting request,” Verity says in her politest voice. Hidden behind it is a great power. The power that keeps us safe. The power that controls us.
“Your request has been accepted,” Verity closes. “Thank you for your compliance, Hartley family.”
I wrench free of my mother’s grasp and run to him. “I’m sorry, Grandpa.” I take both of his hands in mine. “I didn’t know. It was an accident.”
He nods once but doesn’t meet my eyes. “It is done now.” There’s an edge to his words that bothers me. What is done? What will happen?
“We need to do something about this,” my father says. “This kind of thing cannot happen.”
“She’s going to immersion tomorrow,” my mother says. “Then we won’t need to worry.”
My father nods as if agreeing with her. But there’s something in him unresolved. I know where this is headed, and I wish I could stop it.
“Verity—”
“Dad, please, you don’t have to—”
“Show us Noelle’s prediction score for a successful immersion.”
“Certainly, Mr. Hartley. Successful immersion predicted at a likelihood of thirty-seven percent.”
My parents look at me, horrified.
“That can’t be right,” I say. “Something’s wrong with the scoring. I’ve been logging my hours.”
My mother swivels her head around as if a spring inside her has popped loose. “You’ve been distracted. You’ve been spending too much time with that Winnower boy. That John Potts.”
“That John Potts is my friend! And I hardly ever see him.”
“You know what I mean,” my mother says. “You’re always going off to meet him, neglecting Verity.”
“That’s just not true!”
“Isn’t it?” My mother looks at my father, as if for permission. He nods, betraying no emotion. I feel my face burn. Don’t they realize this is about to be a violation of my privacy? Of course they don’t. There is no privacy.
“Verity, show Noelle Hartley’s logs.”
“Mom!”
She holds up her hand to silence me. “For the last three weeks, please, Verity.”
“Certainly, Mrs. Hartley. Compiling Noelle Hartley’s logs.”
Verity silently partitions her face below my Learning stats. My records fill the empty air of our living room. The snippets of my life flash by—weeks, days, hours, minutes. It’s all there, perfectly dissected. There’s me, logging time in my room. Me, logging Learning while getting dressed. Me, in the bathroom, brushing my teeth. Me, getting out of bed, groggy and red-eyed from a night of bad dreams. I’m everywhere all at once. The images flip and shuffle. Soon I’m no longer alone. All of them show the transport station. All of them contain John. Day after day. Night after night. Those few minutes stretch into hundreds, the data of our friendship spread out for all to see.
“Show us an instance up close, Verity,” my mother says. “Mom, what are you doing?”
“Be quiet, Noelle. If you won’t repeat the facts, Verity will.”
My father looks momentarily worried, as if he knows there might be something they don’t want to discover.
“Dad?” I plead quietly. “Is this really necessary?”
Something catches their attention. Verity broadens her display, making her face huge and rectangular. It’s from today. John and I are on the platform. John is talking about the bird, describing the feeling the people of Fell Intel gave him.
“Compliance,” I hear myself say.
“Remind me to stop telling you about my day, NH.”
My heart sinks as the screen fills with images of us playing the same game. The game of guessing the forbidden thing. Words.
My mother’s eyes hit me like frozen darts, her expression frightened. “Noelle, what is this? What are you doing?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a kind of game,” I tell her. “That’s all.”
Confusion twists her face as she tries to understand.
Then, without command, Verity speeds forward to the moment when John gave me the place marker. When I see it, I instantly feel faint. Verity zooms in to my hands. There he is, expertly attaching it to my wrist. My look of surprise. John’s smile. My eyes begin to water, because I know exactly what’s coming. John’s face stills. His voice booms from the center of the display. Verity amps her volume so it reverberates through our pod. “They’re always with us,” he says.
The sound stops. Verity freezes on John midwave. My parents look at each other, horrified.
“We weren’t hurting anybody. It’s just a game. For fun . . .”
My father’s eyes grow with rage. “Fun? Do you realize you have put this whole family in danger? It’s bad enough you’ve been spending so much time hanging around with this, this Winnow boy. But this, Noelle? How could you be so careless?�
��
Careless? All this time, I thought I’d been careful! Careful to follow instructions. Careful to absorb the stream. Careful to log Learning hours, just as I’m supposed to. Careful to pretend that I’m not averse to all of it.
“The name slack exists for a reason,” my father shouts. “I never thought it would apply so well to my own child!”
“Loden, don’t!”
“No, it needs to be said, Kiralynn.” My father turns to me, pointing, all his anger funneled into the tip of his index finger. He’s shaking. “How long has this been going on? These games?”
“I don’t know. Awhile . . . I guess.”
“How long is awhile?”
“Since we first met.”
“I always knew he was trouble,” my mother adds. “That boy is dangerous.”
“It’s not his fault,” I shout. “The games were my idea. I started it.”
My mother glares at me, horrified. “You, Noelle? But why?”
I sigh, knowing it won’t end until I tell them. Until I let them know the truth of what I am. “Because John understood the way I am. With the words. They’ve always been with me. I’ve always seen them.”
My mother releases a strange yelp, then claps her hands over her mouth. She composes herself. My father starts pacing again.
“Noelle, this is very serious. Very serious indeed. This has to stop. Now.”
Logically, I know they are right. Fell has laws. But in some strange way I don’t fully comprehend that what I’m doing is . . . forbidden. I know I’m breaking the rules, and yet some very deep part of me just doesn’t truly believe it. They tell me it is wrong, that I am wrong. But the words don’t feel wrong. They feel . . . perfect. Like they belong inside me.
My grandfather clears his throat. “There can be no more of this. No more discussion. No more of any of it. Do you all understand?”
Are those tears in my grandfather’s eyes? It’s impossible to read him. “Loden, Kiralynn, you know what must happen. Let’s be done with this, for all our sakes.”
“What’s going to happen?” I ask.
“It will be okay,” my grandfather tells me. “I made worse mistakes than this when I was young.”
My father sits down. He wrings his hands. My mother lowers herself near him, her face stoic. “I’ll tell you what is going to happen,” my father says. “You are going to log your hours with Verity.” I swallow nervously as his voice rises. I know where he’s headed. “You are going to immersion just like everyone else.” Here it comes.
“And you are going to get rid of that, that thing, whatever it is, that the Winnower boy gave you.”
“But this isn’t anything. It was just a gift.”
My father stands. “I don’t care. In fact, give it to me. Now. Right now. You are not wearing this to New Down tomorrow. I want it gone.”
I say nothing and remove the leather cuff from my wrist. I feel suddenly naked without it, as if I have been wearing it my whole life instead of just the last few hours. I place it in my father’s waiting hands. My insides feel sloshy.
“What about the boy?” my mother asks. “We have to put a stop to it, Loden.”
My father glances at her and back to me. “You’re not to see John anymore, either. That’s the end of it.”
“What? That’s not fair!”
“Fair? You want to talk to us about fair? Have you any idea what it has taken this family to, to—” My father looks at me, his rage meeting my eyes.
“John has nothing to do with this!” My voice climbs to the ceiling. I’d like nothing more than to tear it open and let the air come rushing in.
“He has everything to do with this,” my mother shouts. “He’s been encouraging you. He really is to blame.”
“What are you even saying?”
My mother’s eyes deaden. “In fact, Fell ought to take a look at him.”
“What are you doing?”
She raises her voice, as if to let Verity hear her. “Fell ought to make sure the ideators they hire from the outside are properly screened. For security reasons, of course. You can never be too—”
I can’t help it. I rush at my mother. I clamp my hand over her mouth to silence her. Her words are poison. If they listen, if they hear, who knows what could happen? “Please, just stop. Stop it! You don’t know what you’re doing!” I yell at her.
“Silence,” my grandfather says. “Everyone.”
I back away from my parents. Their faces fill with hurt, anger, and a breed of disappointment I haven’t seen before. I know it’s for me, that I’ve caused it to be born inside them.
“It’s over, Noelle. No more games. No more lies. Whatever this is, whatever is wrong with you, they will fix you tomorrow.”
Fix me? My eyes burn furiously right back at them, but I don’t want to cry. Not here. How could they do this? I feel violated and humiliated and ashamed.
“You don’t understand now,” my mother says. “But one day you will.”
It’s happening fast now. My shrunken little kernel of a world is collapsing, getting smaller each second. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it. My cheeks burn with hot drops. I swipe my hands across them, desperate to make it stop.
Is that a trace of sorrow I see behind their eyes? I can’t tell anymore. And the fact is I just don’t care. I bolt to my bedroom and throw the stream from my wrist-plate toward the floor. It lands on the far wall of my room. Raindrops. Swaying reeds. Winter snow. These are the banal images of sadness Verity feeds me. It’s what she thinks I want to see. But she doesn’t know me. No one does. Except John. He knows everything. So how could he leave me to this?
I stare down at my empty arm, where the leather cuff had been. The idea hits me like a slap to the head. I sit up. “Verity, please show me the moment at the transport station from today. I want to remember my mistake,” I say, making my voice sound as convincing as possible. “So I never make it again.”
“Thank you for your compliance, Miss Hartley. Here is the feed.”
I watch us from above, John sitting next to me, fastening the leather against my skin, then removing it, flattening it between his palms. Just like the girl from the sign-language post. Just like the word it gave me. The leather was only half my present. The other half is still waiting. I want us to go and get it. Together. John had said. When it’s safe.
“Freeze!” I tell Verity.
The image stops, the leather cuff in full focus. I enlarge it with my fingertips and pull the stream into my lap. The pattern. The stitching. I thought it was an effort at aesthetics. I thought John had done his best, that this was the work of a boy who cannot see. But it’s so much more.
The cluster of circles at one end, the seemingly haphazard lines, the long stitch connecting the circles to a dot. The pattern is a picture, but from above. A map.
I’m aware of being watched, that Verity is showing and seeing at once. “Thank you, Verity,” I say in my calmest voice. “You can resume the stream now.”
“Certainly, Miss Hartley. What would you like to see?”
“Nature, please.”
Snow falling. Deep winter. Icicles hardening into daggers. A mother wolf licking her cub. A cold sweat comes over me, and I shiver. I know what she’s doing. She’s feeding me images to make me feel alternately safe, then vulnerable. But I’m done being fed. I’m done waiting for permission to feel.
The words mean something. There’s a reason they live inside me. I know now that was what John was trying to tell me. The place marker is part of it. He was careful, but it is definitely part of it. Just like the thing it is for. The thing we don’t talk about, that’s forbidden to us.
A lake freezing over. Fish swimming beneath a frozen sea. Blinding white snow snapping the boughs of sturdy trees, their limbs breaking over and over.
There’s a word I get from the images Verity’s pouring into me. I know what she wants, but I cannot give it to her this time. I have just twelve hours before I’m marched off to immersion
, and they “fix” me. Twelve hours before my world folds up around me.
I have to find out what the words mean. I have to see John one last time to say good-bye before I evaporate into the stream and everything changes. Before I change . . . His words swim inside me now.
Follow it. Come find me, NH. Before they change you.
Compliance is not an option.
NOELLE
THREE
I feel it like the words humming in my bones: John wants me to try. Somehow, in a way I don’t understand, the games and the map stitched into my leather cuff are supposed to help me try.
I keep my decision buried deep, where I hope Verity cannot sense it. Slipping through the hard shell of my world might be impossible, but I decide I will go there. I will use the map John gave me to find him in the Winnow.
After the evening nutri-trays, my parents come talk to me. They sit on the corners of my bed and enlarge their streams around us. Together we’re surrounded in Verity’s nighttime influx. There are animals. Cute ones and lots of them. Families with babies. Adults holding hands. The images, full of life and color, enclose us. I’ve heard of this before. Some Valers call it cocooning. But it’s never happened to me. Until now.
“Is this really necessary?”
“We just wanted to make sure you’re okay,” says my mother.
“I’m fine.”
“Your father and I are sorry for how things went this afternoon. We just want the best for you. A nice, clean immersion, so you can have a good life here, in the UVF. We love you, honey.”
My mother strokes my back evenly and just three times. It’s brief and calculated. In the stream, happy people skip along white, paved Vale roads. Sunsets bloom in soothing colors. Lights twinkle in New Down City. Verity’s soft string music plays in the background—digital violin and cello, as if somehow this is all an orchestration.
“One day you’ll know what it feels like to love your child,” she adds. “There isn’t anything you won’t do for them.”
Her eyes well with tears, but her words don’t make sense. Love? How can you love someone and deny what they are? What is love if you take away everything they love? What does it even mean to live a good life? I know what it means here, in the UVF, but is that it? Is that the life they mean? My mind feels granular, like I’m seeing pieces of things but not the whole picture. I wish I could shut Verity up for just a second. She’s boring a hole in my head with those strings.
Blood, Ink & Fire Page 3