As if reading her mind, Jaxon threw off his gloom and sat up. “They’re coming. Just wait till you see what Eagle and I have to show you.” Now his eyes sparkled.
Reese jumped to her feet, spurred by the excitement in his voice. “There you go again with that super hearing.”
He always knew when the others were arriving. He also guessed when their teachers were going to be absent, or the times Reese’s father would be coming home so sauced that it was safer to sleep outside.
Jaxon laughed. “Just a hunch.”
Sure enough, Eagle Jensen’s head poked over the concrete wall, and he began scrabbling over. More heads appeared after him. By the time she and Jaxon half fell, half slid down the metal rungs to the ground, good old Eagle Eyes was already across the open space, his brown eyes hidden behind thick glasses that still left him almost blind. He did odd jobs all around the colony to save up for surgery, but the price tag on his dream seemed impossible to Reese. Kids from the Coop never had surgery, or at least she’d never known anyone who had.
Lyssa and Lyra Sloan were with Eagle, and Dani Balak brought up the rear. All six crew members were present and accounted for. Lyssa and Lyra were an oddity in the Coop, not just for their obvious Asian heritage, but because they were identical twins. Dani was equally odd, with nearly black skin and her short, stiff hair a strange off-white, as if someone had dumped bleach over it.
Reese’s green eyes and pale skin made her almost as unusual as the others. At school in level ten, the six of them were considered the smart oddballs, and their very peculiarities were the reason they’d banded together after leaving the nursery levels when they were barely five.
Only Jaxon was mostly normal—at least in Reese’s estimation—but their longtime friendship meant he belonged in their crew all the same. Together they were strong enough to ward off other kids who tried to take advantage of them. There was safety in numbers, especially when one of those numbers was Dani, who could outfight anyone, even those twice her size.
Jaxon sat on the thick, two-foot-high cement base that held the huge grate. The water wasn’t visible from where they stood now, but Reese could hear it gurgling below. Beckoning, taunting in the summer heat.
“You got it?” Jaxon asked Eagle.
Eagle hefted a battered cloth backpack in his hands. “You know it.”
Jaxon’s grin grew wide. “Yeah, but you think it’s going to work?”
Eagle shrugged unevenly, his right shoulder lifting slightly before the other. “Don’t see why not. You should have thought of this at the beginning of summer.”
“Will someone tell me what’s going on?” Reese looked at the other girls, but they shook their heads.
Dani put her hands on her hips. “Someone better start talking. It’s hot as Breakdown out here, and my show’s on the Teev.”
Jaxon turned eyes on her. “Oh, it’s so gonna be worth it. I promise. Took us long enough to gather the parts. But this is something you can’t share with anyone outside the crew, or we’ll lose it.”
Lyssa and Lyra both rolled their eyes as if they were an extension of one another rather than separate people. Reese shuddered internally, slightly spooked by it, though she’d known them since nursery school and liked them almost as much as she did Jaxon.
“Like we’d ever say anything to those jukeheads,” Lyssa said. Lyra nodded, her sister’s words apparently enough for her.
“Come on, then.” Jaxon took a step onto the cement ring and looked over the grate.
“I think we ought to do it over there.” Eagle pointed to the middle. “Less noticeable if someone comes.”
Jaxon frowned. “Yeah, but kids could fall in if we do it there. Some still sneak in even though they know we’ve claimed it. Let’s do it closer to the edge, near the building. At least they’d have a chance to grab that slanted cement edge under the grate if they fell.”
Eagle rolled his eyes, and Dani smirked. Only Jaxon would think about other kids, and it made Reese proud of him. He was like their conscience or something.
“Anyway, it’d be less tricky for us to get down,” he added.
“Right.” Apparently convinced, Eagle jumped up on the grate and started across it, staggering slightly under the weight of his backpack. Reese followed with the others, curious now. The rush of the water grew louder.
The grate was significantly larger than the opening it covered. Underneath the grate, a layer of cement angled down on all sides until it formed a small, open rectangle where they could glimpse the water. The rectangle was small only in comparison to the grate, however, because the opening had about the same footprint as a house in the Coop. Every now and then white pipes poked up a few inches on the angled cement, like the roof vents on the Coop houses. Reese didn’t know why whoever built the transfer station had installed the grate instead of covering the entire thing with cement, but she was glad they had. Even if they couldn’t get to it, the water was entertaining.
She stopped and peered down at the water, wondering at the sheer volume. So much liquid, all moving forward at a clipped pace, though not so fast as to be frightening. She’d heard about oceans and people swimming in them, and lakes in the mountains, but no one she ever knew had personally seen them. The only water she’d seen that even came close was the chemical-filled pool at school where they did endless laps under a teacher’s watchful eye.
Reese pulled her attention from the water and hurried across the grate, her toes slipping off her too-small sandals, the hot metal searing the skin slightly. By the time she reached the others, Eagle was cutting into the grate a few feet from the station.
“I thought this had an alarm.” Reese glanced around, feeling strangely exposed, though she’d been on the grate a thousand times.
Eagle grinned up at her. “That’s what this is for.” He gestured to a heap of wiring that he’d apparently attached to the grate on each side of the parts they were cutting. “They have detectors in the metal, but this’ll fool them. Got the laser cutter from the lab. The science teacher’s out at a funeral, but I gotta have it back by tomorrow.”
With a few swift cuts, the piece of grate was free, and Eagle carefully pulled it away from the rest. “It’ll never seal like before, but I got some magglue to make it look right,” he said. “It should hold if no one walks on it. Mr. Day will never miss the glue, and there’s enough to reseal it a bunch of times before we’ll have to steal more.”
“Okay, now what?” Dani asked.
Jaxon began pulling out what looked like coils of clothing from Eagle’s backpack. A small, battered sack of pretzels came out with the clothes, and Eagle opened it to share. They were his favorite treat, and he’d been known to scour the school garbage bins in search of them whenever they were served in the lunchtime readymeals.
Reese took a pretzel as she eyed the mishmash of clothing. “Wait, is that my old sweater?”
Jaxon laughed. “Oh, yeah. Eagle and I’ve been working on this for a while.” He shook out the coils to reveal a makeshift ladder. “Ladies, we’re going swimming.” No wonder the backpack had looked so heavy.
Jaxon threw the ladder down the hole, the metal hooks on the end clipping easily to a part of the grate. “I’ll go first.”
“Let me.” Dani had already stripped to her underwear and tank top. “I’m tougher than you.” Without waiting for a response, she grabbed hold of the rope and started her descent.
Six feet down, she reached the place where the cement angled steeply from the side. From there she stepped off the ladder and walked down, using only her hands on the ladder to slow her progress. Finally, she reached the edge of the cement.
“Punk bucket,” she called. “Way more water than I thought. At least five times as big as the pool. Maybe more.” Grabbing onto one of the strange white pipes, she knelt on the sloped cement and peered over. “It’s hardly moving on the sides, though, so I think we’re good.”
She balanced again on the ladder where it dropped over the water, and R
eese backtracked to the middle of the grate to keep Dani in view for a few more seconds as her body sank below the slanted cement. If there wasn’t enough ladder to reach the water, they were all going to be disappointed.
A loud splash sent terror through Reese’s chest, but a second later, Dani’s voice echoed up to them from the deep. “It’s great! Come on down! The ladder almost reaches the water. No worries about getting back up.”
The rest of the crew needed no further invitation. Jaxon was next, and Reese followed, first shucking off her jeans and sandals, her heart pounding with equal parts fear and anticipation. The lower she climbed the cooler it was. She could almost forget that seconds before she’d been melting under the hot sun.
As Reese stepped off the ladder and onto the sloping cement, she brushed one of the protruding white pipes. Air was coming out of it, emitting a smell she couldn’t identify, and the aroma intensified as she climbed over the last bit of cement, stepped back onto the ladder, and swung unsteadily into the air.
Below her, Jaxon jumped the rest of the way, landing with a splash into the water. He was immediately caught up in the current, but with a few strong strokes he made it to the calmer water at the edges where Dani was swimming lazily on her back.
The sloping cement was open underneath, where huge iron bars jutted from the walls, supporting it. It puzzled Reese that the builders had included the extra cement at all. What was its purpose? Going down the rest of the ladder felt like entering a huge cavern that she’d once seen on the Teev.
She was getting ready to jump into the water when she noticed the cylinders—dozens of them, each a foot long with the circumference of a dinner plate. The cylinders were secured to the underside of the cement, directly under the pipes that jutted out on top. What is that about?
Above Reese, Lyssa was already climbing down, her bare feet approaching quickly, so Reese jumped, careful to angle her fall toward the calmer outer edges of the water. She hit and went under, her body tingling all over at the sudden change of temperature. The water was cool, but not icy, and for a moment of pure bliss, she floated on her back, moving her arms lazily to keep in place.
No one had ever done this before. No one but them.
Eagle was the last one down, and he paused for longer than Reese had on the ladder, studying the cylinders. He reached over and put a hand on one. “These things are some kind of membrane,” he called down. He sniffed his hand and then shrugged before carefully climbing down to the end of the rope and sliding into the water. Even then, he held onto his glasses with one hand as he swam awkwardly in Reese’s direction.
“Anything dripping from those canisters?” he asked. “I can’t see well enough to tell.”
Reese studied them for a moment before nodding. “Yeah. Clear stuff. Just every now and then. A drop or two. Must be chemicals. They have to treat the water to make it safe to drink.” Now the sloping cement seemed to make more sense.
Jaxon closed the few feet separating him from Reese. “But they treat the water inside the station before it goes into the pumps. This must be something else.”
“Maybe.” Reese glanced over at Dani, who had swum to the far wall, peering into what they could see of the opening where the rush of water entered the transfer station. “Anyway, I always wondered why they put in a grate at all.”
“Leaving it open to the air helps the flavor.” Eagle accidentally splashed a little water on his glasses and scowled in frustration. “Least that’s what they said in science class when we studied water filtration.”
Reese didn’t remember that, but she trusted Eagle to have been paying attention. She glanced back up at the green canisters. “You think the chemicals will hurt us?”
Eagle considered her question. “I doubt it. They’re very tiny drops. It’s probably just something else to make it taste better.”
“Hey, come look at this!” Dani shouted at them.
Reese let herself drift partially into the main current, gliding along toward Dani. Jaxon reached out and pushed her to the side of the opening as they neared. “Careful,” he warned. “The current’s stronger here.”
Reese pointed her feet forward, landing against the cement wall with a jolt.
A fine wire mesh covered the six-meter hole where the water entered the transfer station. Reese vaguely remembered hearing something in school about a series of filtration grates as the water came down the man-made canal from the closest river. Even so, slippery bits of debris had gathered along the mesh.
“Fish, here?” Jaxon said.
Sure enough, small fish about the length of Reese’s longest finger lay pinned against the wire mesh by the rush of water. She peered closer to see them nibbling at the debris.
“Look at this one!” Dani exclaimed, pointing. Just below the water level, a fish had broken away from the mesh. It was almost transparent but glowing with some kind of light.
Apparently even Eagle could see it. “Weird,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought it was big enough to fight the current.”
“What do you mean? It shouldn’t be here at all.” Dani reached toward the glowing fish, which didn’t seem in the least bothered by their presence.
“Could have been tiny eggs when they came down the canal,” Jaxon said. “Then they grew here.”
“They’re not like any fish I ever seen on the Teev.” Eagle stared so intently that the bottom rims of his glasses skimmed the water.
“You even seeing them?” Dani teased. She touched the fish and immediately pulled back. “Saca!” she cursed.
“It bite you?” Reese asked.
“No. It tingles all over like some kind of smeg flush.”
Reese had never tried smeg, but her dad used the drug every time his new girlfriend came over. The way he zoned out before hustling Cecelia into his bedroom frightened her.
Lyssa started to touch the fish, but Jaxon grabbed her hand. “Better not,” he said, jerking his head at Dani. “We should wait to make sure there aren’t any side effects.”
He glanced up at the cylinders as he spoke, and goosebumps rippled across Reese’s shoulders.
“Gee, thanks,” Dani muttered.
Suddenly, Reese wanted more than anything to climb out of the water and get away from the transfer station completely. But Lyra started a water fight, and in the ensuing fun, Reese forgot the feeling. They swam the length of the cavern, reveling in their secret and the accomplishment of being there.
All too soon, Eagle was telling them it was time to go, and Reese climbed up the ladder first. She was glad Dani volunteered to be the last one out.
The heat of the sun felt good after being in the cool water. The grate was warm against Reese’s skin now instead of searing as it had been earlier, which meant the sun would soon set and she’d need to get home in case her father wanted her. She spread out over the grate to soak in the warmth as Eagle and Jaxon used the magglue to temporarily secure the cut piece of metal. By the time the boys finished with the glue, she was dry enough to pull on her jeans.
Thankfully, the car that had been parked outside Jaxon’s house was gone when they arrived on their street. Jaxon waved at her and headed inside, walking tall and grinning wide, as if there hadn’t been a visitor at all. Reese opened the door to her own house, and the smell of nuked food—a sure sign she wouldn’t be home alone tonight—made her stomach growl.
As she walked into the room that served as both living room and kitchen, her dad’s girlfriend, Cecelia, looked away from the three-dimensional Teev figures moving above the table. “Hey, Reese, where you been? Why’s your hair wet?”
Reese shrugged. “We were playing a game. Is my dad home?”
“In the shower. You hungry? I got some chicken. Your favorite.”
“Thanks.” Reese grabbed one of the flat readymeal containers from the sack on the counter, slid it into the narrow opening of the microwave, and punched start. As she waited for the food, she turned her eyes to the holographic Teev projection. From her vantage p
oint, she could only see the sides of the characters, but they looked real. The only apparent difference between the Teev feed and real life was the smaller size. At school they had Teevs that projected life-sized characters, and teachers constantly used these to present their lessons. She’d grown used to seeing the teacher talking at the front of the class while simultaneously working on grades in the back of the room.
Cecelia loved to watch romances, and two characters were kissing passionately on the screen. Reese couldn’t understand why that was interesting, but she couldn’t help thinking about Jaxon and wondering if some day they might want to kiss like that.
Leaving the meal to cook, Reese grabbed her sketchbook and pencils from her room, returning as the readymeal glided out of its slot. It wasn’t really chicken, according to her science teacher, but Reese had never tasted real chicken, so it made no difference to her. She cleared a spot in the weeks of discarded food wrappers on the table and sat in the chair opposite Cecelia. Her eyes avoided the Teev as she ate with one hand and drew with the other. First, she wanted to capture the underside of the grate and the strange canisters. She was glad she’d “borrowed” the colored pencils from school because they made her drawings much more realistic. She was about to fill in the water when she felt her dad enter the room.
“Hey,” he said. “You guys better not have eaten everything. I’m starved.”
The knot Reese hadn’t even realized existed in her stomach relaxed. He hadn’t been drinking. Not yet. As Cecilia jumped up to cook his food, he paused at Reese’s shoulder. For a moment, she was terrified he would recognize the transfer station and forbid her to go there, but his attention locked on the kissing couple. With a scowl, he barked a command, and the Teev feed changed from romance to the news, which was almost as bad, but not quite. Grownups were so boring.
Blinded Page 31