Biting my lip, I make my way into the back-end coding of the grid. Maybe I can work this out.
I find familiar lines of coding. I’d recognise them anywhere, the blocking script we wrote to hide our chips from the grid so the Feds would think we’d time skipped. Someone blocked Mum’s chip so she’s not visible anymore on the grid. But why? I can’t find any tags for an arrest warrant or anything like that.
I’m reading through the last few lines of code, picking up subtle changes, when something rustles the native grasses outside the cave.
My whole being stills, straining with every sense.
Another rustle comes clearer, closer. Someone is making their way across the garden bed.
Holding my breath, I slip the compad into a bag and slide like a crab deeper into the cave.
The footsteps come closer and the entrance fills with two legs silhouetted against the outside daylight.
A figure crouches to peer in: ‘Who is that? Who’s there?’
That voice.
He’s hanging back, cautious, but I’m a lightning bolt of clarity. All thought disappears as I barrel forwards so fast that Mason’s forced out into the daylight with me. My arms wrap around his waist, my ear pressed to his chest so tight and it’s like I’m back in the tunnel again, where time means nothing and I never have to let go.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘SCOUT! FOR REAL?’
All I can see is Mason’s chin and a distorted view of his face from below. I pull back to take him in, savouring each detail. A strand of dark hair has fallen across his cheek, his face more defined than I remember and shadowed with stubble. He’s been back a while, I can see it in the way he’s changed.
Mason’s eyes travel over my face and his lips kink at the corners as we reach for each other again. His arms hold me, tighter now and surer.
We’re outside the cave entrance, but mostly hidden behind the ghost gum. ‘I thought you jumped ten years,’ I say, and breathe in his smell.
‘I thought you stayed behind.’ There’s softness in his voice. As I pull away to see, his face darkens. ‘When I realised what happened … I’m sorry, Scout, I thought you’d be safe.’
‘So did I.’ But I say it deadpan. However they worked out that I stole the chip is my problem, maybe even my mistake. My mind fizzes with questions for Mason. How long has he been back? Does he know what happened to the others? Are they all still away? But before I can ask anything, Mason reaches for my arm.
‘Woah.’ His eyes go wide. ‘What the …’
By now the tights are soaked to a gruesome damp darkness. I lift my hand, somehow helpless to explain. ‘There was no way out of our room with that stupid chip, and I need to find out if Mum’s okay. The room’s been stripped bare. Without a compad to put the masking code on my chip, I had no other choice.’
He keeps staring. To someone who’s been a citizen all their life I can see how deranged it must seem to even consider what I did. And not just because of the blood.
‘Are you still masked?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. Feds are watching the climbing centre, expecting us all to return there.’ He lifts his gaze away from my wrist and his mouth straightens. ‘They’re all over Mum and Dad, though. Watching for anything unusual.’
‘And my mum? Did you mask her chip too?’
His forehead creases. ‘Huh?’
‘I can’t find her. She’s been masked on the grid. I’m not sure why …’
Mason angles his head as his eyes narrow. ‘Not many people have the hacking skills to get into the grid in the first place …’
‘Alistair,’ I breathe. Of course. ‘It could be Alistair …’ This has him all over it. He’s the only other person I know who could block Mum’s chip. He would have been able to find the script that I first wrote, and he would have made sense of the changes that Mason added later.
‘Can she access rations, do you think?’ Mason asks. ‘Even though she’s masked?’
‘Not sure.’ But this makes complete sense. Even the latest additions have Alistair’s style, targeted and decisive. ‘It has to be him.’
The crunch of footsteps on the path nearby pulls our focus.
‘Let’s get into the cave,’ Mason whispers.
Crouching low, I follow him into the darkness, and find a place with our backs against the dirt wall while our eyes adjust. A patch of daylight reflects off the springwater, flickering soft at the back of the cave.
Mason pulls out his compad and a white glow from the screen lights up his face. I watch as his eyes ping-pong across the script and I cross my fingers, hoping he’ll see some way to help me find Mum. But I know that’s not the only reason he’s checking. To keep the Feds thinking that he’s still on a jump, he also blocked his chip from the grid, which means he can’t access rations like other citizens. If Alistair’s additions mean Mum can access rations without being tracked, Mason will want to apply the changes to his own chip.
But for now at least, he’s as good as illegal. Like me.
When Mason reaches the end of the script, his eyes drift away from the screen, staring into nothing.
I can see the answer in his silence. Mum can’t access rations either. So what is she living on? She knows about this underground spring, so she’ll be able to access water. I scan the ground for scuff marks and other signs that she’s coming here. Hard to say. But what about food?
‘Maybe she’s staying with Alistair,’ I mumble, giving voice to my thoughts. ‘He’s on mega high rations.’
‘Scout, listen.’ Mason rubs the back of his neck and his eyes move to a backpack at his feet. In the dim light I can just make out the tops of two bottles sticking out the top. ‘There’s stuff you need to know.’
I turn to face him, a foot hooked under one knee, trying to make out his expression. ‘Okay.’
‘Rations have been halved,’ he says.
‘Halved? For everyone?’
‘Yeah. It’s enough for people on high-level rations. Just. But for anyone on low level …’ Mason doesn’t have to finish.
Anyone below C-level rations would have nowhere near enough water or food once it was halved. Even if Alistair is helping Mum, they’d only just have enough to get by.
‘Wow,’ I breathe, thinking it through. Because this isn’t just about Mum. Mason and his parents are effectively living on one set of adult rations between them. After sharing Mum’s rations for most of my life, this is familiar territory. Not in a good way.
Already, I’m on my knees, pulling a compad from the nearest bag. ‘But how … why?’
Mason shifts, takes a breath. ‘A massive firestorm, a few months after we jumped. It destroyed the water treatment plant and ripped through the ag farms north of the city.’ There’s a pause as he swallows. ‘Thousands died.’
I have the grid up on the compad already so I track back until I see the impact of the firestorm. It’s awful. So many thousands of dots disappearing almost at once, each marked with ‘deceased’. Mum’s work is right in the middle. Some of her colleagues must have died in the fire. Some survived. But I don’t know whether to be worried or not. Her chip was masked before all of this, weeks before.
My forehead feels tight as I turn to Mason. ‘Do you know anyone who died?’
‘Mum’s sister. Friends lost more.’ He leans his head back against the dirt wall. ‘It’s made people … different. Protests keep getting shut down with tear gas. There’s talk of civil war.’
I clasp my hands together and press them against my lips. It’s difficult to get my head around any of this. It’s like being inside a dream.
‘You realise …’ My words come carefully. ‘… If any of those people knew how to time skip. In the fire …’
‘I know.’
They could have jumped to escape, and then returned once the firestorm had passed. If they’d known that time skipping was possible, they could have survived …
‘I’ve been teaching my folks to skip,’ Mason says quietly. ‘I develope
d a linking code to hide their gaps each time they jump so the Feds wouldn’t work us out. Won’t be long till we can start bunny hopping together.’
He’s watching for my reaction, but it makes sense. Life would be way tough on half rations. ‘How far?’
‘Five years. By then, full rations should be restored. Things should have calmed down. We’ll catch up with Boc and the others.’ He glances down at his hands clasped in his lap and my eyes linger over his long fingers. ‘Maybe you can teach your mum, once you find her.’
Mum always hated the idea of jumping. At the back of my mind I get this pinprick of panic at how she’ll go at learning to skip. I have an idea that she’ll fight me every step of the way.
But life is different now, I remind myself. Maybe she’s changed as well.
‘How long did it take your parents to learn?’
One shoulder lifts. ‘A few months.’
He’s being vague, which makes me think it took longer than that. They must have been sharing two half rations between the three of them this whole time. The only reason Mason is still here, I realise, is that his parents took this long to learn.
‘I need to find Alistair,’ I mumble. Already it feels like we’ve been talking too long. Mason watches over my shoulder while I bring up the grid. He’s not tagged on this compad, of course. So I track back again to 2085.
Alistair was still living in the room next door after I jumped. I’m glad to see his dot meet up with Mum’s occasionally.
Okay. I push my lips together, tag Alistair, and navigate back to the grid today. He’d be close to a hundred years old by now, so I’m not sure what I’ll find.
When Alistair’s dot comes up clear as anything, I realise I’ve been holding my breath. It comes out in a rush as I peer at the screen. He’s not living in his old room anymore; he’s in a room on the top level of Sunshine Hospital.
‘I have to get to him.’ A message would be too easy to trace.
Mason frowns at the screen. ‘Security will be way tight.’ His eyes drop to my wrist. ‘Maybe it’s not so bad that you’re off-grid.’
Already I’m bringing up the map of the hospital, fire exits and stairwells. Now that I’m off-grid again I could sneak in at night, but that would mean hacking past a heap of security doors.
Much smarter, I decide, to go in during visiting hours. If I act like a normal citizen seeing my grandfather, maybe I’ll make it in without any trouble. I have normal clothes now, at least. The plan takes shape in my mind.
It takes a few minutes to search through shift change-over times of security guards and memorise the hospital exits. After a while I glance up to find Mason kneeling at the edge of the spring. As he twists a cap off one of the bottles and plunges it into the water I find myself staring, adjusting. He’s still lean, but his shoulders are broader. He looks strong, as if his frame has been drawn with a sharper outline.
‘You’ve been back a while.’ It’s not a question.
‘Six months ago …’ A pause before his head shakes. ‘No, more like eight.’
So he’s turned seventeen while I’m still fourteen. The difference between us seems to be growing instead of shrinking the way I’d like. I make a note to keep a record of how many days I’ve lived through overall. Somehow it feels important to keep hold of that. I was three weeks off my fifteenth birthday when I jumped.
Mason finishes filling the final bottle and has to jam it into the backpack to make it fit. The bag is so weighed down and bulky that I wonder how he’s going to get it home. Walking around with bottles of water like this used to be risky enough: a sign that you might be accessing an illegal water source. Now it must be like wearing a neon sign begging the Feds to put you away.
He finishes clicking the straps in place. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Okay. Security has a change-over right at the start of the morning visiting session.’
‘Guards will probably be tired at the end of the night shift.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I figure.’ I don’t really want to wait that long before I get to speak to Alistair but I have to be careful. At the back of my mind I can hear the words Mum said when I was first discovered as illegal: We wait and make plans. We use our heads. But most of all, we don’t do anything stupid.
‘That’s when I’ll go in,’ I tell Mason. ‘Tomorrow morning at eight-thirty.’
‘Okay. Good.’ He leans back on his heels. ‘And you can stay with us, until you find your mum.’
I hadn’t thought that far. ‘Thanks. But … I think I’ll stay here. There’s water …’ And it wouldn’t feel right, turning up as another mouth to feed when his family is already struggling. I feel certain that they would insist on sharing whatever they have.
‘Scout, you can’t just camp out here …’
‘Why not?’
That makes him pause, because here at least I have access to water. A place to hide. Out there is a constant risk of being discovered.
Mason nods once, as if it’s decided. ‘All right, I’ll stay too. We’ll have to take the water home. Let my folks know what’s going on. Then we’ll come back.’
I’m not sure what gives me more of a lift: the fact that he wants to stay here as well or the way he used ‘we’ as if there’s no question we’re in this together. As if we’re partners or something.
Or maybe he thinks he has to watch out for me. I could be reading this the wrong way.
‘Mason, I’ll be okay. I mean, thanks. But you don’t have to look after me.’
‘Sure. I know.’ His mouth kinks up at one side. ‘C’mon, Scout. It’s not like I’m going to trigger the park alarm after lockdown.’ He lifts one hand clenched in a fist and presents his chip scar like a boxer preparing for a fight. ‘This thing’s useless at the moment. I may as well make the most of having it blocked.’
My heart sings a little at that, because he’s right. He gets it. Being illegal does have advantages. Accessing this park on my own at night used to be one of my favourites.
‘It’ll just be you and me,’ he says. ‘Citizens will be locked out, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘All right, so …’ He raises one eyebrow. ‘What do you say?’
I push my lips together. Don’t want my grin to give my hopes away. ‘Okay.’
It’s a risk, heading out, but for now there’s no question that Mason and I are sticking together. Before we leave I find the first-aid kit in one of the bags and smother the wound with ice-cold cream that makes my wrist go numb. We finish by sealing it with gauze and surgical tape the same colour as my skin.
Together, we make our way along the path leading towards the entrance, not speaking now that we’re out of the safety of the cave. Even with the skin-coloured tape I’m careful to keep my wrist out of sight, holding my hand behind my back or crossing my arms, just in case.
We’re almost at the entrance gates when we see a woman with wispy white hair up ahead, standing in the garden bed. She reaches an arm deep into the brambles of a blackberry bush and pulls back, battling with a strand of thorny stems stuck to her sleeve.
As we pass she examines something dark and shrivelled pinched between her thumb and pointer finger: a berry, I think.
Mason glances her way but she doesn’t seem to notice us, dropping the berry into her mouth then squinting into the thorns again as she swallows. We continue past without speaking but something else comes with me: a damp sort of guilt at what’s going on. We’re walking past with a backpack full of water. If the woman’s hungry enough to be foraging for the dry, seedy blackberries on those parched bushes, she’ll be thirsty too.
How upside-down is this? I’m illegal, but I have access to as much water as I need. Right now, I’m the one who’s lucky.
I’m glad when we make it through the entrance gates, past the blackberry bushes. Mason strides towards a rack near the park entrance, manoeuvres an old bike out and straddles the seat. ‘C’mon. Not exactly a Ferrari, but it’ll get you there.’
&
nbsp; I sit side-saddle on the bar between the handles and Mason, snuggled between his chest and arms. One of Mason’s arms is against my back as he pushes off with a gentle, fluid movement that makes me feel as if this is the exact place in the universe I’m meant to be.
The bike path is busier than I remember. Some are ridden by preschool kids pedalling like mad, but you can tell from the robotic way the bikes steer and turn that they’ve been programmed where to go.
Mason follows the track beside the canal, then he turns left along Maribyrnong Road. As the incline begins, the bike slows and Mason’s breathing becomes sharper, his body rocking with each turn of the pedal.
A quarter turn of my head. ‘Want to swap for a bit?’
‘Nah.’ Pedal. Pant. ‘Nearly there.’
When we reach the top of the rise, the city unveils itself before us. For a few minutes I get a clear view past the business district, towards Brunswick and out to the northern suburbs and beyond. I can almost trace a line between the old and the new, the familiar and the foreign. Beyond the northern streets, the city has been transformed. The old urban sprawl of period buildings and multi-storey offices has been replaced by rows and rows of those compact polymer flats in the areas destroyed by fire. From here they seem too neat, unnaturally clean.
We top the rise and I catch a view of the city skyline before we begin the descent, flying now, passing slower cyclists.
Everything suddenly seems lighter as Mason calls, ‘That’s better, hey?’
‘Yeah!’ My cry is left behind in the wind.
As we reach an intersection crossing one of the main streets, chanting fills the air and we flash past a row of police wearing riot gear. My head follows them as we pass, trying to make sense of it.
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