inDIVISIBLE

by Hunter, Ryan

  I didn’t dare look until T squeezed my shoulder. The blue screen barely eased beyond dozens of files, each stacked atop the other. I touched one, dragged the file open and fanned the pages. T leaned over my shoulder, stiffening at the same moment as I did. We looked at each other, opened another file and flipped through the pages, catching the same phrases, same ideas. One more confirmed that my father had not only captured the information from the old PCAs, he’d recorded it in his personal files, just as I’d suspected from the notebooks in my backpack.

  “There’s one common in all these files,” T said. He touched the screen and the name Oliver jumped out at me.

  “Who do you think he is?” I asked.

  T mouthed the name over and over as he closed out each file.

  An icon blinked when we got to the desktop, and I clicked it, opening a file I’d never expected to see—anywhere. My father had labeled it: securitymissions/ questionable, a collection of top clearance files my father had hacked from the Alliance computers. I fell back in my chair and looked at T. He scrolled through the files and the titles alone started chills between my shoulder blades that emanated to every nerve ending in my body.

  The alarm ceased and we froze. Seconds passed before either of us moved again, the sudden silence disconcerting.

  “What was he planning, T?”

  He tapped the screen and the page expanded, the files with pictures showing thumbnails of Citizens, others of Alliance officials. One title caught me and I tapped it, Terrorist Watch List – Section Seven.

  My father’s name was highlighted in red, right below mine.

  “No wonder they wanted him dead,” T whispered. “He hacked their system, threatened to expose it to the world.”

  “There are thousands of names on here, T.”

  He closed the file and pulled up the main directory. “He’s got lists from every section along with files that contain information they’d kill us for just knowing it existed.”

  “Nobody else can see this,” I whispered, closing the files. With a swipe of my hand, I moved them to the recycle bin.

  “What are you doing?” T asked. “I think this is what he wanted you to find.”

  “So I take the whole computer or what?”

  Footsteps echoed in the hallway, men speaking in low tones—abrupt—guttural.

  “All we need is the hard drive,” T said.

  I grabbed the computer tower and dug through the trash until I found a hard piece of plastic. I started to unscrew the tower and T jumped in beside me, prying at the tower until we removed the top, the hard drive just inside with a quick release mechanism. My father had told me about that one day—but I couldn’t remember why. I released the hard drive and yanked it from the computer. Nothing changed on the computer screen, and I nearly panicked until T said, “We’re seeing the backup files on the main server.”

  “We have to destroy them. They’ll use them against us if we don’t—say my father fabricated lies—something worse than they’ve already done.”

  T swiped his hand across the screen and everything piled into the recycle bin. I punched in a series of commands until the bin emptied and the files were destroyed, just like my father had taught me.

  Seconds later we browsed his personal data—address books, contacts and private files.

  Talking turned shouting in the hallway and my heartbeat tripled. T silently cursed and began pacing, his eyes never leaving the screen.

  In one last attempt, I opened his backup picture file—three photos illuminated—one of Sofi, one of me, and one of a woman I assumed was my real mother. She had my eyes, my complexion. T reached over my shoulder and closed the photo gallery, dragging it to the recycle bin to duplicate the deletion process the way he’d seen me do. My heart begged me to stop him but I knew we could leave nothing behind, not even the photo of the woman I couldn’t remember. I turned the hard drive over in my hand and prayed the pictures were there and more so that I’d be able to open them again one day.

  T clicked an icon I didn’t recognize and a list in tiny font scrolled up the screen. One tap and he brought it to a stop. I recognized the letters as names, the numbers as addresses. I tapped the letter C on the right hand side and all the Alliance employees with corresponding last names filed into view, fourth on the list, Brennan Carmichal.

  Yelling resumed outside the door, and the doorknob rattled. I jumped from the seat and spun. We had nowhere to go. I read the address over and over—began mouthing it to keep it fresh in my mind as T permanently deleted the file.

  The history—I knew we had to do something with the history or they’d know what we found. I handed the hard drive off to T and he packed it away in his bag while I touched the keyboard—memory failing. How do I delete our history? I unplugged the tower and motioned toward it. T picked it up and smiled. He turned toward the window as the officer yelled for a key.

  “Ready to make some noise?” he asked.

  I stood back as T raised the tower above his head and sent it crashing through the glass. The computer fell through, crinkling the hood of a security car where it landed. Glass rained down behind it. I climbed into the empty window frame beside T—and my stomach did flips as I stared the two stories to the asphalt below.

  “That’s a long way down,” I said, the second story looking much higher when planning to jump from it.

  T squeezed my hand. “It’s our only choice.”

  A key rattled in the doorknob.

  “Land with your knees bent—aim for the grass—” T said.

  A three foot wide strip separated the asphalt from the building. Of course I could hit the grass … I hoped. I nodded.

  The doorknob turned.

  Panic filled my throat. I held to the frame to keep from falling face first from my own shaking.

  “Right behind me, Brynn.”

  I nodded again—like a puppet without a brain.

  T jumped.

  His knees bent as he hit, rolling to soften the impact. The first guard burst into the room, yelling, “Don’t move!”

  I jumped. My knees gave way when I hit and I sprawled across the grass, my ankle pinching. T pulled me to my feet. “Nice. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Flames burst along my spine and whether I’d planned to or not, my legs propelled me forward, away from the heat and the pain of the ERG. I ran faster than I’d ever run before, rounding the corner of the building to sprint across the darkened parking lot. I dove through bushes as floodlights came on, illuminating the entire block housing the Alliance building.

  We didn’t stop. We didn’t even slow or think about where we had to go next. We simply ran until our legs gave out and we lay gasping in a ditch for breath.

  “You okay?” I asked T finally.

  “Yeah. You?”

  I nodded, too tired to form the simple response.

  “They saw us,” he said.

  I swiped my face with the back of my bandage. “I know.”

  “We’re probably all over the PCA news by now.”

  “They work fast,” I agreed.

  T rolled over, propped himself on an elbow and stared at the grass beyond. “We can’t be seen in public now. The Citizens think we’re terrorists. They’ll turn us in.”

  The way we referred to others as Citizens didn’t really surprise me. Thinking of myself as a terrorist, however, made me want to both laugh and scream. For the first time I felt like a complete outcast. I had no home, no family, no sensor. “What are we, T?”

  He looked at me then. “Hmmm?”

  “We’re not terrorists.”

  He shook his head.

  “We’re not Citizens.”

  “Not by Alliance definition,” he agreed.

  “So what are we?”

  “Did you read the files?”

  I recited Cray’s address in my mind again, relieved I remembered it after the adrenaline dump in the business district. “Yes.”

  “I like to think we’re a part
of that society mentioned in those reports, the Freemen.”

  I snuggled in closer to T, hoping his body heat would steal away the chill of the damp spring grass. “I like the sound of that.”

  The moisture from the ditch clung to my clothing and skin, making a great chill conductor, and I sat, wrapping my arms around my knees.

  “I think we have to join them,” he said.

  Deep down I felt the same way, but I had to ask, “What about that safe haven we talked about?”

  T scrubbed his hands together. “I can’t forget what we saw on his computer … I can’t just sit back and live as though we’re in some utopia, like the Alliance portrays. Can you?”

  I rested my chin on my knees. Thousands of names were on that watch list, and that’s just the one that I opened. What of the others? I couldn’t sit back and do nothing when so many waited in line for the same fate as my father. “I want the safe haven,” I whispered, “but I know I’ll never find it now that I know what’s really happening in One United.”

  “It won’t be easy, but we’ve got to get those files to the Freemen,” T said. “I want to join up with them.”

  It was our only chance, and I knew it. We couldn’t survive in a place where Citizens were taught to fear everything that looked suspicious, who were so brainwashed as to believe every word the Alliance published on their manipulating PCAs. But without food, maps, bedding …

  “How are we going to survive the hike?” I asked.

  “I think the question you should be asking is how will we survive if we don’t?” His straight, perfect nose and strong jaw made him look like some sort of Greek god in the dim moonlight. “Even the squatter cities will come under attack eventually … and if they know where we are—”

  “—we don’t stand a chance anywhere.” I cleared my throat, my stomach fluttering when I said, “I’m glad you came for me.”

  T tilted his head and smiled sadly. “Me too.”

  A dog barked, and I flinched. “Nervous?” T asked with a smirk.

  “What makes you say that?” I tried to joke.

  He pushed to his feet and helped me to mine before asking, “You remember that address?”

  I rattled it off to him, and he pointed south. “It’s a bit of a walk. Care for a moonlight stroll?”

  I took his arm as he offered it and walked casually beside him. “You know there’s a curfew in this town, don’t you?”

  “Yes, which is why I’ll push you into the ditch if we see anyone coming.”

  I shoved him playfully. “Aren’t you a gentleman.”

  He smiled again. “Ah, now you play that card. Being a gentleman’s outdated. We have equal rights now, don’t you remember?”

  My eyebrows arched, and I laughed. “You’re right. So, I’ll be the one to push you into the ditch.”

  “Only if you get to me before I get to you.”

  My hand slid down his arm until our palms met and our fingers intertwined. “I think I’ll just leave it up to you, but remember, I’m dragging you with me, wherever you end up pushing me.”

  T’s dimple shone in the moonlight, and our hands naturally began to swing with our stride. We turned into the thickest of subdivisions to begin our walk south, avoiding main roads and well-lit streets. A Citizen calling us in wasn’t as threatening as a security officer driving past and seeing us.

  CHAPTER 16

  We made it to Cray’s home well after midnight. Of course, we had no way of knowing the exact time, but we were exhausted enough to believe it had taken us an entire night to make the trek. My stomach growled, and I clamped my arms around my middle as if to mute it.

  “Shhh—” T teased. “You’ll wake them.”

  We strolled past the Carmichal residence and perched in a neighbor’s bushes. T stripped off his backpack and rummaged inside until he found two energy bars he must have taken from Mary’s kitchen.

  He handed one to me and peeled open the second, taking a huge bite before gnawing on the fruit and nut mixture. I hesitated but the growling persisted until I opened my own and devoured it like I hadn’t eaten in a week.

  My stomach quit protesting but sill I shivered. T scooted behind me and wrapped his arms around me. His warmth radiated through my damp shirt, and I leaned into him, absorbing his heat as if it belonged to me. His arms tightened, and my head fell back into his shoulder before I allowed my eyes to close, my breathing becoming shallow as I drifted into another world where people laughed openly, cried with dear friends and made up their own minds about where to work and live.

  A dream, I reminded myself when I woke. That life could be nothing more than a dream.

  I stretched , aware that T no longer held me. Instead my head rested on a rolled up shirt from his backpack. Another lay draped over my arms. I sat quickly, the sun already drying the meager dew. Faint footsteps had trampled the grass but they faded out before they gave me a clear indication of where he’d gone. I gathered up the shirts, shoved them into my own backpack and slung it over my shoulder before sneaking further into the bushes, out of view of any Citizens who’d be leaving for work soon.

  I crouched and waited for Cray’s mother to leave, for Cray to come outside, but mostly for T to return. Because even if Cray came out, I didn’t have the jammer. I couldn’t talk to him without getting him into trouble and giving the Alliance my location in the process—unless his sensor lacked the listening device that I’d had. I pulled the rubber band from my hair and smoothed it back before replacing it in a low ponytail. I searched the yard behind me, the road, and the yards across the street. With so little obstructing my view, it should have been easy to find him.

  The front door of the entry opened, with a bicycle wheel appearing next. What if T wasn’t here when Cray came out? What then? We stay camped in his yard all day? Hiding behind what? A woman emerged, pushing the bicycle, her dress pants clipped at the ankles to avoid the chain. She strapped her large, black bag to the rack on the back of the bicycle, straddled it and took off at a leisurely pace.

  I sighed and sat back in the dark soil. The door behind me opened and I scampered back to my feet, spinning, my hair getting caught in the branches. A man in his fifties strolled out of the entry, a thick briefcase swinging by his side. He eased down the street, checked the time on his PCA then waited at what I assumed was a bus stop.

  The man stood motionless, eyes ahead as if under inspection. I crouched lower, my entangled hair yanking against my scalp as it clung to the branches above me. I tried to free my hair but it only knotted tighter around the spiky leaves. Afraid the rustling would alert him, I stopped trying to untangle my hair from the bush and waited—while strands pulled from my scalp one at a time.

  The bus turned the corner, the shiny silver paint job shimmering in the morning light, the tires humming as the engine purred. It stopped, doors opening long enough for the man to enter and swipe his hand across the sensor.

  Cray’s entry door opened again, and I wanted to curse T. Where had he gone? Cray was about to leave and we couldn’t even talk to him.

  The bus continued toward me, men and women in business suits looking into their laps, no doubt at the news reports fabricated on their PCAs. I absently reached for my own, curious what it had to say about the Alliance building break in. I dropped my hand and wondered if I’d ever break the habit. Cray’s door opened further, and I wished the bus would hurry past, wished T would return with the jammer. As the front of the bus came even with Cray’s entry, T walked around the corner of the building and clasped the doorknob as if he were about to enter.

  The bus continued past while T and Cray struggled over the door, T holding the other boy inside just long enough for the bus to turn the corner. He stepped back, grabbed Cray’s arm and wedged it up behind him. Cray began to cry out as T pressed the jammer into his right palm, holding both his arm and jammer in place as he led him behind the entry and across the tiny lawn.

  I broke a stubborn branch from the bush and ripped my hair free of it
while I bolted toward the struggling boys. T hauled Cray toward the back of the entry, closer to the bushes—our only source of cover. Cray was swearing. T hadn’t yet said a word.

  I rushed around T, caught Cray’s chin in my hand and forced him to look at me.

  He silenced.

  His eyes widened and he shook his head back and forth.

  “I need your help,” I whispered.

  He jerked on his arm and T nearly lost hold.

  “Don’t talk to me.” He gave me the sign of silence with his free hand.

  “The jammer will stop the transmissions,” I said.

  T lowered Cray to the ground, and I followed suit, all of us sitting low so as to attract as little attention as possible from the road.

  “Please hold onto it,” I begged.

  Cray nodded, and T reluctantly released Cray’s arm.

  He brought it in front of him and stared at the metal ball, mouth rounding as he turned it over in his palm.

  T reached out, clamped his hand around Cray’s forcing him to make a fist over the object to hold it as close to the sensor as possible.

  “What did the news reports say?” T demanded.

  Cray looked from T to me and asked, “Who is this guy?”

  “A friend. He’s helping me.”

  “Looks like he’s gotten you into trouble.”

  I shook my head and opened my mouth to speak when Cray asked, “What about you two? They must be monitoring your sensors, know where you are.”

  “Then our pictures aren’t plastered all over the news bulletins?”

  “I haven’t seen them,” he said. “Why? What did you do?” He looked back and forth between us, swearing again. “If they’re reading your sensors, and you did something to tick them off, they’ll think I’m involved. They’ll come for all of us.”

  I raised my bandaged hand where he could see. “They can’t track me now, Cray.”

  Cray touched the bandage, his eyes darkening. “No, Brynn.”

  “They were going to kill me. It was my only chance to get away.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t remove it.”