Another knock, followed by: “Hurry!”
She listened to the rustling of boxes, and when she peeked out from behind the bed she saw Hiro move aside the barricade he’d placed in front of the broken entry. Outside the shop, the crowd still hollered and roared, and the sound of glass shattering set her nerves on edge.
When he opened the door, a boy spilled inside. Thin. About her height. About her age. His eye was nearly swollen shut, and blood trickled from his nose.
Adam.
Marin jolted up.
His white shirt was ripped and stained with dirt, and his mouth was set in a hard grimace. One of his legs was bent at the knee, and he gripped a large stand-up cross, working hard not to let his foot touch the ground.
“What is this?” Hiro slammed the door shut behind them and quickly replaced the boxes.
“The patrol … they were pulling people in … I didn’t know where to go…” He reached into his pocket and removed a small silver band. “My comm is broken. I need to call my family. Please.” He held up a bracelet with a sleek, rectangular box opposite the clasp. The tiny screen was cracked, and black, and it took her a second to recognize the communication device Adam had carried during the riots when they’d hidden in the stairwell.
His gaze swung wildly around the room, landing on Marin and growing wide with fear.
She hadn’t realized the knife was in her fist, or that she’d entered the room, holding it braced before her. She was aware of the tattoo on her neck, prickling, just as it had when her father had marked her with the inky needle on her fifth birthday.
“Your friend shot me.” She took a step closer.
Hiro stepped between them, as if she weren’t holding a blade. “A kanshu boy dies on our streets and they’re bringing in the Armament.”
Mention of the military that roamed Noram’s waters and land had her blood running cold. If people thought la limpieza was bad, they had no idea what awaited them with the Armament.
“Please.” Adam’s eyes were wide, his bottom lip trembling. “My dad’s the vice president. Noah Baker. My friend and I were just being stupid. We didn’t think. We didn’t…” He swallowed a breath. “It’s the truth, okay? Look it up on one of your tablets. If you hurt me, there will be consequences.”
Hiro gaped at him, then quickly stepped back.
Part of her registered what he was saying—that he was important. The son of one of the most powerful men in Noram, in all of the Alliance.
The other part of her flew to rage, because where were the consequences for hurting her?
“Adam Baker,” Hiro said under his breath, making her remember how he’d said they were “familiar” earlier. “And your friend. He’s the president’s son. Torres’s son.”
Marin glanced at Hiro, wondering if this was some kind of joke.
“It’s not true,” she said. There was no reason for someone like him to be down in the docks. “He’s just saying it so I don’t poke a hole in his gut.”
But she was filled with doubt. She did recognize them now—she’d seen them at some point on the news with their families.
No. That was impossible. A Torres would never be caught dead in this neighborhood unless surrounded by a team of security.
Or one angry man, willing to shoot her just to get him out.
“He can’t be harmed,” said Hiro, suddenly urgent. “His people…”
He didn’t need to finish for Marin to understand his intent. His people included the vice president and the president. If Adam were harmed, the bodyguard and his stunner would be nothing compared to the wrath they would face.
“Please,” Adam whispered. “The men who pulled me from the car thought I’d been kidnapped or something. They were trying to save me. The patrol just took them up a block away.”
She did turn toward the window then, ears perked for sirens. Any sign that la limpieza was nearing.
“Why don’t you just tell the patrol who you are?” she asked.
“They won’t believe me,” he said. “They’re not even looking at me. They just see my clothes and skin and think I’m something I’m not.”
“A Shoreling?” she asked.
“A criminal,” he said, and pressed his thumbs to his temples. “I am a Shoreling, okay? Please. Do you have a comm?”
Part of her wanted justice, wanted to throw him to la limpieza. The other part of her feared what Hiro did: that his pain would cause much more of her own.
Her knife lowered an inch. Then another. Her throat tightened.
“Step back.” Hiro helped him into the other room and settled the vice president’s son on the same cot Marin had sat on just minutes before. He removed supplies from the same cabinet he’d pulled her bandage from—clean cloth, needles, thread, and antiseptic. Peeling back the leg of Adam’s pants revealed a long red gash, running from the inside of his knee halfway down his calf, and when he grimaced in pain, even Marin had to look away.
She sheathed her knife and snagged the comm he’d dropped on the floor. Gloria had scored a box of them a year or so back, then tossed them because they were too busted to use. But she’d gotten one to work. She’d tinkered with it, taking it apart, figuring out how it worked, then putting it back together.
She tucked it into her pocket. If it did start working again, she didn’t want Adam to do something stupid, like call his bodyguard again.
His face contorted with pain as Hiro attempted to straighten his leg. He tossed his head back, gripping the covers on the bed with both fists. She felt a tiny bit of pity for him then. The gash was deep, the mouth of it opening wider than her finger.
From outside came another bang on the door, this one heavier and more insistent.
“This is the City Patrol; open up,” came a male voice.
They all froze.
There were more voices outside. Closer now. All talking at once. A beam of light streamed through the front window of the shop.
“We saw people run this way,” said the man outside. “Open up!”
She extinguished the candlelight between her thumb and forefinger as Hiro hurriedly tried to bandage Adam’s leg, then ran for the back door, lined with locks. Pressing her ear against it, she heard the whir of the sirens, too close for comfort.
Her whole body pulsed with a singular need: escape.
She ripped open the locks, one by one, and cracked the door. A dark alley appeared before her, in full view of the street, just fifteen feet beyond. Blue light flashed from the patrol cars parked there, and in horror she watched as a shirtless man running past them crashed to the ground and began writhing like a worm left to bake on the asphalt. An officer came running to kneel beside him, still holding the weapon that delivered the shock. A few people had appeared outside, staying on the fringe, despite the earlier warnings of curfew violations, but they scrammed as three more cars appeared, two of them black vans.
The man was lifted and hauled through the sliding door of one of them.
She slammed the door, recalling with a jolt of dread her words with Hiro about an offshore prison.
He’d finished dressing the wound and was helping Adam to stand.
“Leave him!” Marin hissed at Hiro. Their best bet at making it out of here in one piece was for Adam to be found alone.
The old man gave one quick shake of his head, and then glanced toward the front of the shop. “I can hold them off.”
“You’re crazy,” she hissed, grabbing his shoulder. “We need to get out of here.”
She turned back toward the alley door, but the sirens on that side of the building were still screeching.
They were trapped.
She should have left when she had the chance.
“Go through the back,” said Hiro. “Keep your heads down and move fast.”
She didn’t like it; leaving felt like turning him over to la limpieza. Like he would soon disappear just like the Lus, maybe to that offshore prison. He’d done nothing wrong.
“Be safe, Ma
rin.”
With that, he ran to the front of the shop.
Her eyes met Adam’s, and the white-ringed horror in them was too familiar. They brought her to another place, another time. The moment where everything in her life had broken in an unfixable, irreplaceable way.
He looked to the side, then gave a small groan. “Help me get out of here and there will be money, I promise.”
Her fingers moved to the bruise on her chest. This sounded like a trap if she’d ever heard one.
“Ayúdame.” Adam’s voice was a broken whisper. Help me.
If there was a reward, Gloria could use it to buy the food they needed.
If.
There was no time to weigh the options. She grabbed his arm and slung it over her shoulders, then plowed through the back door into the alley.
It was saving all of them, she told herself. If she was caught with him looking like this, they wouldn’t believe she was innocent in a million years.
They snuck through the alley toward the main street, and the patrol cars, and the people who shouted their insults from the sidewalk. She stayed behind them, keeping her head down.
Not more than twenty paces and she knew they’d been spotted.
“Hey!” a woman shouted. “Stop!”
They had to get off the road. Frantically, they ran, a three-legged hobble as Marin supported half of Adam’s weight. She searched for a place to hide, making the split-second decision to dive behind a trash compactor. Her knees skidded across the ground, the pavement scraping through her pants. Fumbling with Adam’s shirt, she pulled him close. Their bodies smashed together, jammed against the dirty metal bin and the rough stone wall.
Footsteps ran in their direction. Voices: They went this way. Did you see them?
Adam folded closer against her, trying to pull his leg in. The knife was smashed between them, useless. She could feel his comm pressing into her hip, in the pocket where she’d shoved it. The sharp smell of his sweat brought on a fresh wave of fear, and she felt her body harden and brace for a fight.
The footsteps stopped.
They became statue-still, mouths open to keep their breaths as silent as possible. She could feel him shaking, and she wanted to scream at him to stop. To hold it together.
Shadows moved against the far alley wall, then blended with the darkness.
She slid one hand over Adam’s face, over his parted lips, feeling his hot breaths on her hand. Be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet.
“Got you,” came a gruff voice from the side.
With a shout of surprise, he was sucked away from her, out from behind the trash compactor. Her fingers grasped his hair, the collar of his shirt, just as his dug into the floor, making an awful scraping sound that gripped the base of her spine. His next cry was that of pain, and a sob rose in her throat, silent and choking.
“Looks like someone just got himself a one-way ticket out to sea,” said the man in the boots. “Where’s your friend, huh?”
She stayed where she was, even when everything within her screamed to fight. Adam wasn’t her problem. She needed to get herself out of here.
While he argued, she braced the knife before her. Another set of boots approached, and though she could hear the unmistakable sounds of fists striking flesh, Adam never gave her away. She could only see his feet around the corner. One hung loosely, the other kicked the bin.
“The other’s got to be in there somewhere.” The trash bin’s metal lid clanged against the wall as it was flung open. In the street she could hear more sirens coming. They screamed with the blood pounding in her ears.
They dragged Adam away, laughing as he said his name, and his father’s.
There was nothing she could do. As soon as they took him into the street, she ran.
She ran until the sirens were a faraway whisper, until her lungs felt like they would explode. She ran until she could hide, and then she huddled in the dark until the shaking passed.
CHAPTER 12
IN HIS room, where he’d been told to go to wait for information, Ross gripped his comm, delivered an hour earlier from the museum along with his coat. For the fiftieth time, he tapped the small screen until Adam’s face appeared, then dialed his friend’s device.
When he lifted it to his ear, he heard nothing but static.
“Hello?” His voice cracked.
Nothing.
He turned the comm off and on, over and over, feeling another punch of guilt each time Adam’s face appeared. He opened the tracking screen to locate the other device, but the GPS map was blank. Questions streamed through his brain. Where are you? And What is wrong with everyone below the cliffline? He willed Tersley to return with news, but the only person who’d come by was Barrett, the head of housekeeping, offering him a sedative.
He’d declined.
Standing, he paced around his bedroom, unable to shake the image of Adam being pulled out of the car from his mind. Too much time had passed. Hours, Adam had been down there alone now. Anything could have happened.
From beneath his collarbones came a stabbing pain, making it hard to breathe.
Blankly, he stared at the black screen mounted above his desk. It was as wide as he was tall. A game console sat below it, untouched since it had started boring him a month ago. There was a plate of food on his desk that Barrett had brought, but he’d yet to take a bite. There was enough purified water in the attached bathroom to drown a horse.
He wanted none of these things. All he wanted was Adam back, and that girl alive. But he couldn’t even help the security team find them, because his father had ordered him to go to school and pretend things were normal. If he didn’t make better decisions, the president would be blamed. The entire nation would face consequences. Civil war, his father had said. They were on the tipping point.
The responsibility of it all threatened to crumble him. He collapsed into his desk chair, sick with himself. Sick that Adam hadn’t pushed harder to stay at the museum.
Sick that the girl hadn’t put her knife down faster.
Was she alive now? Was she hurt? He tried to think of something—anything—else, but his thoughts kept returning to her wild tangles of dark hair, and the number just below her ear—“86.” To the sound she’d made when she’d been shot, and when she’d crashed to the ground.
After a moment, he turned on his computer and stared down at the keyboard, finding the microphone button Adam had shown him a long time ago.
He cleared his throat, but it didn’t make it any easier to breathe.
“Number eighty-six,” he said.
Instantly, the screen was filled with a barrage of images and words. The pictures drew his attention. Some of them were old, grainy scans—military pictures of submarines that could no longer be used because of debris in the water, restaurants and bars from the pre-Melt days. Most were just various scripts of the same number.
“Refine search,” he said. “Tattoo number eighty-six. Photos only.”
He looked at each of them but they were too big, or too fancy, or part of something else. He wanted to see her 86. The simple, small numbers in black ink.
He scrolled down through the pages until his eyes landed on a faded stamp on pale, bluish skin. Immediately he recoiled. The tattoo was clearly on someone’s neck, just below their ear, and from the looks of it, they’d been dead awhile.
It wasn’t her, he told himself. She had curly hair, and what was shown here was short and light—with stubble on the jaw. A man. Not a girl.
Ross’s hand hovered above the clicker for a long moment before he pressed down.
The image expanded to fill the screen, and his chest constricted. Words popped up on the right side, a jumble of letters and numbers that swam in his mind like his memories from the night before last.
“Search result six hundred forty-seven,” came an automated male voice. Ross jumped. He’d forgotten the computer was still in audio mode. He scrambled for the volume button, lowering it to a whisper. “Department of Justi
ce archives, photograph of unidentified male found by Armament, tangled with ocean debris, ten nautical miles west of California Islands. Age: late twenties. Date: January, forty-one post-Melt.”
The picture was forty years old.
“Tattoo,” Ross said quietly, glancing at his door. The house was quiet.
“Unidentified body with seventeen black ink tattoos, in various states of decomposition due to water damage.”
“Tattoo beneath his ear,” Ross clarified.
“Tattoo number eighty-six, thought to be in gang affiliation with the Original Eighty-Six.”
“What is the Original Eighty-Six?” asked Ross.
The screen flashed to a white screen with red letters.
“Access denied,” said the computer.
“Refine search,” said Ross. “Gangs, Original Eighty-Six.”
“Access denied,” repeated the computer. This wasn’t unusual. The security restrictions on the internet were tight in the political districts. It was a way to protect sensitive information. Sometimes they were ridiculous, though. He could have been blocked because the numbers eight and six had been used in a legislative bill this week. It might have nothing to do with what he wanted.
He sat back, then tried other search terms. Gangs, Noram City. Gangs, post-Melt. Criminals. California Islands. Armament. 86.
Every time he got close, he was denied access.
The alarm beside his bed beeped. It was time to go to school.
* * *
For the first time since he’d entered high school, Ross was early to meet the car. A new security officer stood beside it, a man with a narrow nose and short, dark hair, clasped hands hanging below his belt like he was afraid someone might kick him between the legs. His eyes were hidden by sunglasses, and he wore Tersley’s same plain, navy suit.
“Good morning.” He held out a hand. “I’m Brighton. Your new security officer.”
Ross did not shake his hand. The man’s arm lowered. Beyond the overhang, a light drizzle had begun, making the air thicker. In the distance, Ross could already hear the grumble of thunder.
“Where’s Tersley?”
“He was reassigned.” The man’s expression didn’t change. “I’ve been briefed on your schedule. If there are any changes just let me know.”
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