inDIVISIBLE

by Hunter, Ryan

  “We need a PCA or computer to look him up.”

  I chuckled. “Good luck.”

  T dropped back to his elbows and crossed his legs at the ankles. “What about the notebooks? Did your father mention him? Give any contact information?”

  I pulled the notebooks out of my backpack and handed them over. “I’ve only read a bit. See what you can find.”

  T rolled onto his side, his back to the park so the few children who played near their mothers couldn’t see, and opened the first notebook.

  My fingers tingled, numbing from the cold water. I dried them on my shirt.

  He flipped the page, scanned and flipped another. I laid back on the grass, folded my hands over my stomach and watched the drifting clouds. My eyes had just closed when T said, “Brynn.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “There are some things in here you need to read.”

  “Anything about the Carmichals?”

  “Not yet, but—”

  I sat and crossed my legs. “What are we going to do tonight?”

  He closed the notebook. “I thought it looked cozy in those bushes over there.”

  He opened another notebook and began reading. Was he serious? “The park closes at dark.”

  “What’s it matter if they can’t see us?”

  I’d never slept outside before and the idea formed a lump in my throat. “What if they catch us?”

  A young mother stood, a woman with bobbed hair and freckles. She called to her child, a boy with the same sandy hair and baseball cap. The boy kept swinging until she stopped the swing and took him by the hand. They waved to the other child and walked away, the boy jabbering while his mother pretended to listen.

  “One more to go,” T said, “then we make our way into those bushes and find some comfy grass for a pillow.”

  “T,” I said.

  He glanced up.

  “I’ve never slept anywhere but my bed.”

  “Scared?” he asked, eyebrows arched.

  I rubbed the area around my wound, barely able to feel anything through the layers of gauze. “Nervous.”

  He slapped his hand down on my leg and said, “Don’t worry about it. No bed means no monsters, and I’ll protect you from the bogie man.”

  I shoved his hand aside and crouched by the river. The water gurgled by, and I wondered how to lure him closer. I didn’t have to think long before he made the move himself. He put his hand on my back, his voice contrite. “I didn’t mean to make fun of you—”

  I splashed him and he leapt away, his smile back, the dimple deep enough to see even with dark settling. “You’re in trouble,” he whispered.

  I cocked an eyebrow, smirking. “Trouble? That will be a first.”

  T picked up the notebooks, careful to keep his back to the others and closed the covers. He slipped them into my pack and slung it over his back, relieving me of the burden. “There’s a lot more in those books, but I don’t think he’s recorded any contact information,” he said.

  The last woman slipped her PCA into a case and set it in the basket behind her bicycle. She strapped a helmet on her son and held his bike upright until he straddled it and started down the street.

  “Park’s closed,” I whispered.

  T pulled me in for a hug and the water pressed through my shirt. I shoved him away and he laughed. “Tired?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Me neither.” T picked his way through thick reeds that grew along the stream until he found a place trampled by previous visitors. “Bed’s already been made,” he whispered when I stepped through. I sat, the reeds nearly eye-level now, trees blocking the rest of the view from the street.

  T laid down and motioned for me to use his shoulder as a pillow. His body heat emanated through his shirt, his heartbeat a bit fast where I rested my palm on his chest. He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me tighter. “Let me know if you get cold,” he mumbled.

  I didn’t speak.

  “Brynn,” T said.

  The reeds caught in a breeze and clinked together, obscuring our voices on one side while the river took care of the other. “Yeah?”

  “Have you ever been to your father’s office?”

  I eased my hand around his ribs, letting my arm rest over his chest. “Not inside. He showed me where it was from the street once.”

  T’s free hand stroked my hair a few times before he dropped it back on the ground. “Could you find the right office from the inside?”

  Second floor—tenth office in … how hard could that be? “I think so.”

  “I think—” He swallowed and nuzzled his cheek into my hair. “I think we should check it out.”

  I froze. Check out my father’s office? “Why? How?”

  His hand returned to my hair, keeping me snuggled against him. “There’s some things your father’s written,” he started, “things that make me think maybe he’s left something there for you …”

  I shook my head. “You have to have clearance—”

  “—and a sensor,” T said, “I know. But there’s a way … we just have to find it.”

  I moved my hand back to his chest, his heartbeat even now, calming through the thick bandages. “The Alliance is searching for me—both of us by now—how do you think we’re going to enter one of their office buildings?”

  A star shot across the sky, growing brighter and brighter before fading altogether. “Did you see that?” T whispered.

  I nodded. “Pretty but it won’t get us into my father’s office.”

  “Building security is laid out in the notebook.”

  “You read that?” I asked.

  “Was about to before someone got me wet.”

  I wanted to pound him, but settled with snuggling and pretending we didn’t have to break into another building. “I’m feeling like a thief,” I whispered.

  “You’re stealing something that already belongs to you,” he said.

  “Something of my father’s,” I corrected.

  “We think,” T said.

  The air cooled and I shivered. “What if there’s nothing there?”

  “We can still access the personnel files and find Cray.”

  I decided I liked Cray, and I didn’t want to see him hurt, but what other connection did we have to get possible medical supplies?

  T grabbed his tattered backpack and pulled out a shirt. He draped it over my arms and pulled me in close again, trying to keep out the chill.

  I snuggled into him and wondered what it would be like when we quit running.

  “T?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “If you’re so certain these safe havens exist, what are they like?”

  He shrugged. “All the comforts of home—or most of them—running water, electricity, people … lots of people.”

  “Beds?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Homes?”

  “Of a sort.”

  I watched a second star shoot across the sky before it fizzled and asked. “What do you mean by that?”

  “They’re squatter communities, Brynn. Hundreds of people live in these little communities where they use any materials they can find to construct walls and furniture. They’re not sterile, but they have a taste of freedom.”

  I closed my eyes, hoping the sound of the river would lull me to sleep. “I don’t think a taste of freedom is enough for me, T.”

  His hand made circles on my back before he pulled me closer, his lips brushing the top of my head. “I don’t think it’s enough for me either,” he whispered.

  CHAPTER 12

  Living without a sensor is both freeing and limiting. We could now travel without being tracked and speak without being listened to—but we couldn’t use public travel, couldn’t see a doctor and couldn’t access the front doors of the Alliance building where both my father and Cray’s father had worked. So, we sat beneath the picnic tree and watched the entrance. T wore sunglasses he’d found at Mary’s and I kept my face down read
ing, though I struggled to stay focused.

  “Have you found anything yet?” T asked.

  I scanned the pages of the journal, knowing that reading from paper alone could get me into trouble but chancing it anyway. The Alliance couldn’t track what was written on paper, they couldn’t control the ideas being passed, the feelings being communicated. Of course, they passed it off as an environmental threat—the number of trees it took to produce paper and the energy it consumed to make it. I’d never used it much, but I liked paper, I decided, and I wanted a notebook of my own one day to record the poems I’d only scribbled on scraps and onto my bedroom floor. I took a brief look around before turning the page and hiding the book down in my lap where it looked as if I simply read from my issued PCA.

  T lounged in the grass behind me, his hand moving from playing in my hair to making circles across my back in a romantic gesture to make us look like a couple out enjoying the sunshine after school classes.

  “You know, your city is nicer than mine,” he whispered. “Of course, the City Center is here, so it’s to be expected, but even the stores are so limited where I grew up. I bet the rations were tighter too.”

  I continued skimming through my father’s flowing cursive, difficult to make out as I’d never read cursive before, had never even studied it in school. “I thought rations were the same everywhere.”

  His fingers touched bare skin where my shirt hovered above the waist of my pants and a tingle shot up my spine, making me feel lightheaded. He leaned in close, smiling as he noticed the goose bumps he’d provoked and whispered, “Nothing’s the same everywhere. That’s just what they want you to believe.”

  I sucked in a deep breath, trying to keep my hands steady and he chuckled, pulling this romantic vibe off better than I’d imagined. If only our words collaborated with the feelings …

  “What else is different from here?” I asked, turning another page.

  “Housing. A lot of ours are converted from the old style, you know the kinds you see in the history books.”

  I knew them, the tall, angular homes that wasted space and energy. “Yeah? How do they make them efficient?”

  He shrugged. “We’re cold in the winter, hot in the summer, but don’t have much of a choice in the matter as the Alliance controls how high our thermostats go.”

  His fingers traced the hem of my shirt until they reached my side and made me squirm. I swatted his hand away. “That tickles.”

  “When they need more housing, they just build between homes, connecting them to share common walls or they move people into the rising apartments in the center of town. We generally live right above our shopping centers so we don’t even have to leave town to pick up provisions.”

  I turned the page again, sure I’d missed about half of what my father had written on the last. I asked, “Have you been back there, since you were recruited to run?”

  He picked a blade of grass and ran the tip of it along my ear. I snatched it from his hand and couldn’t help but laugh until his answer brought me up short.

  “I haven’t even seen my family since I was recruited.”

  “Oh, T.”

  He shrugged it off and scooted up close behind me, cradling me against his chest as he read over my shoulder. “If they’d seen these journals they’d have destroyed them,” he whispered. His breath sent chills down my arms and I nodded.

  “I know.”

  “We have to protect them.” His whispering had become so quiet that it was mostly breath on my neck now, making me squirm so badly I could no longer concentrate.

  “I know.”

  His breath hit my earlobe firmly and I shivered visibly as he said, “I love the way the hair stands up on your arms when I talk like this.”

  This was the T I remembered and I shoved him away, laughing as he fell to his side. He simply rolled to his back and gazed up into the sky, his face becoming thoughtful—serious.

  “I want it to be like this all the time,” he whispered, “but I know it can’t.”

  My heart skipped and pressure built in my throat. I had to look away so I concentrated on the journals as I said, “Me too.”

  “Which reminds me, I’ve got to ask you something.”

  I swallowed and braced myself, worried and curious about what he might want to know.

  “Have you found anything out about the security in that building?”

  “Are you serious?” I asked. “How can I learn anything with you distracting me?”

  He laughed and his dimple deepened, the dimple that only came out when he truly felt happy. “I’m a distraction?”

  I picked a handful of grass and threw it across his chest. “You know you are.”

  He rolled to his side and braced his head on his hand. “In a good way, right?”

  I shook my head but couldn’t hide my smile.

  “You’re smiling. It’s in a good way.”

  “You’re impossible,” I said.

  He watched my face, his eyes soft, his lips parted. He just laid there and watched me as I read and I kept looking up, every couple of paragraphs, but he didn’t move.

  “There’s so much,” I mumbled. “So many PCAs he’s hacked and recorded in here, so many Alliance plots and schemes …” I switched to another notebook and scanned a few pages before saying, “I found it.”

  He’d become so serious that our laughing already felt days old. “Well?” he prompted, “Can we walk through the front doors?”

  “Hardly. Security is high in the building, T.”

  “How so?”

  “Full body scan upon entering, scanning of the sensor to make sure you’re authorized to enter, security details at the front desk and more officers posted randomly in the hallways.”

  “A walk in the park, so to speak,” he said, voice thick with sarcasm.

  “It gets worse. Security changes from hour to hour. Employees are searched and scanned when they leave.”

  “What time does security leave?”

  I read further down the page, the feel of the paper rougher than the PCA screen, the extra texture making it seem more reliable. “Security 24 hours a day. It drops to a single guard at night. He walks the halls with a flashlight and ERG.”

  “ERG?”

  I shrugged.

  T snapped his fingers, pointing at me as if he’d just gotten the punch line of a joke. “Energy gun. Makes you feel like you’re on fire.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “My friend was a terrorist, remember? That’s why they bugged me. He liked to talk, too much.”

  “Yeah, sorry, T.”

  He shrugged. “How do we get a visitor’s pass?”

  I cocked my head and was about to stick out my tongue when I caught sight of a man I recognized. His goatee had disappeared and his hair was blond instead of blue, but I had no doubt I’d seen him before—on our trip to Europe, I realized. Only now he had on a suit, not torn jeans, and the tattoo up his neck had vanished. I took T’s hand. “Remember the man who stole your traveling papers in Greece?”

  His fingers went slack and he sat. He easily followed my gaze and said, “I see him.”

  “He works for the Alliance,” I whispered as the man slipped on sunglasses and briskly walked from the building he’d just exited.

  “I wondered.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He never spoke, had no reason to steal my papers other than to instill fear of foreigners, and my replacement papers were too conveniently delivered to me within days.”

  “You think it was a set up?”

  T nodded. “I want to follow him.”

  Fear gripped my heart. “No.”

  “I’ll be back, just don’t go anywhere.”

  My heart thundered. I wanted to force him to stay, but knew we had to start sorting out our lives if we were to survive. What better place to start than the Alliance official who robbed T in another country? “I’ll be right here.”

  T jogged in the direction th
e official had disappeared, and I shivered. The wind hadn’t gotten colder, just more noticeable, the fever more fervent now that I was alone. I closed the notebook and opened the one that pertained to me. I’d taken out my sensor, now on to bullet number two, find safety for Brynn while I search out the revolt.

  Safety had already fled. I skipped to the next. Tell Brynn about Sofi and her real mother.

  I turned the page, scanning frantically until I found what my father had never told me, that Sofi was not my mother. My mother had died while I was an infant. My mother had never known me, and I’d never known her. My hands shook, and I had to plant them on my thighs while I continued reading, my life unraveling, my entire childhood playing out as a sham. I shoved the books into my backpack and ran after T.

  The two had turned a corner, the very corner where I now stood, but neither the Alliance official or T were anywhere in sight. A man in a maintenance uniform got into an open service vehicle and buzzed away without a glance, but nothing hinted at T.

  I ran forward, searching a small parking and shuttle area at the back of the building but found nothing. Both men were gone.

  I ran back toward the front of the building, toward the tree where T had asked me to wait but security officers arrived, their little green cars humming to a stop outside the building. Men piled out, guns held ready in their arms, other guns strapped to their backs.

  I eased back behind the building, pressed myself into it as fear creep down my spine. How had they known we were here? Had someone inside the building recognized and reported us? I pushed from the building, determined to look as inconspicuous as possible and strolled to a side street. Without my PCA I had no way to communicate, no way to view the news updates that I was sure were flashing in bright red bars across the screen.

  Something had happened, and I hoped it did not involve T’s capture but what could I do without getting caught myself? I had to believe he was still out there and that he’d find me. For now though, there was nothing I could do but walk away.

  Voices raised at the front of the building, a crowd gathered and I kept my pace even, turning another corner to disappear into a quiet neighborhood where children rode their bicycles in front of their homes and laughed as they played a game of tag in the next.