“Track secret.” Celeste grinned. “If I told you, you’d tell him.” She nodded at Xavi who’d fallen asleep, curled up in a ball at the bottom of an open-topped car. Celeste and I sat on the lip of the car, hooking our feet on the bars that crisscrossed the edges so we wouldn’t fall. There was a sensation of wind pushing at us, and it contradicted how our feet anchored us down. One wrong move, and we could fall between the wheels, but the way the wind whipped at our faces was freedom in and of itself.
“Nope. Promise. Bond of the Vagabond.”
She laughed at the Track-ism I’d picked up on on. The phrases etched into my new accent, and it was getting harder and harder to tell I was a Colony-kid.
“Seriously. I want to see it all.” And it was the truth. There was so much world I hadn’t seen yet, and living in the Colonies I didn’t even realize I was missing out on all the places worth seeing. The travel— the wanderlust— grew into my marrow and became the thing that kept me going. I wanted to see and taste and learn it all.
“Well. If it’s a Bond, then,” Celeste said and raised her eyebrows. “The 10th.”
“Huh?”
“I’m originally from the 10th.”
“You gave that up pretty easily.”
“There’s this old lake south of it. It’s so small that no one really thinks to visit it. It used to be the beginning of an entire river, but the river part no longer exists. Old buildings are all around it, and they make great hiding places. The only problem is, it’s hot. Hotter than most Vagabonds can handle in the summer, which also means the Militia doesn’t inspect it often. But I can handle it. I like a little sizzle to my steak, if you know what I mean.”
I laughed. “I’m not sure I ever know what you mean?” I looked up at the stars. They were mustard-seeds trapped against a dark bowl, and I wanted to pluck them up and swallow them by the handfuls.
“You know more than you think.”
“Do you really believe all that stuff about being a Rebel just by being out here?”
“What do you think, cutie pie?”
The answer, when it came, surprised even me. “It makes sense when you reason that way. I mean, if I wasn’t rebelling, I’d have turned myself in that night and let them kill me. It’s a law I’m okay with breaking, because living is better than being dead. I guess, if I could die tomorrow, I may as well live hard now.”
“You can come with me, you know.”
I nodded. “I know.”
“But you won’t.”
“No. I won’t.” I looked down at Xavi. His chest rose and fell, and the heart that was beating somewhere under all the muscles and clothing chained me to where ever he was going.
“Ono. Leave.” Xavi ignored the other boy’s question.
“No.”
Xavi’s eyes widened at that. “What’s going on?”
“Flea. Don’t—“ I pleaded.
“This is my partner,” Ono whispered. “My father accused her of treason and murdered her parents because he was upset at the pairing, but she’s not a Terrorist. It’s a bunk charge.”
“Partner?” Xavi’s eyes narrowed, and anger, or something like it, flared through them.
“Ono. Let it go,” I warned. He was digging himself into a hole. Xavi could turn him in for treason just for that small confession.
My voice made Xavi’s eyes return to mine. “Niko. We don’t have time for this.”
“Time?” I wanted to laugh. When did I ever have time for anything?
Xavi ignored the confused look on my face. “I’m so, so sorry. I was trying to keep you out of it all.” He said it as if it was an explanation— as if those sentences would finally allow everything to make sense.
“Sorry? All you have to say is sorry?”
The expression on his face kept shifting in and out of hard and soft. It held every gradation of texture, and I saw traces of the old Xavi— the one I knew so well. “Do you trust him?” He asked nodding towards Ono. There was a bigger question hidden in there. Was it okay to speak in front of him?
“More than I trust you. How could you, Xavi?”
Ono’s face blanched and became a messy mass of confused understanding. “Xavi?”
“Chancellor Petrakis?” Mama laughed. “Of course he’d get another term.”
“I voted for him.” Daddy swirled the nib of whiskey in his glass.
“Of course. Like you’d vote for that other moron. She’d never even been a Celebrity, and she’s too radical.”
Daddy laughed. “Don’t tell me you believe that rumor! There’s proof. She was a Celebrity. Eight children. Eight. But Petrakis was clever about it. Rode the rumor straight to the polls until it was all over. But rumor or not, Petrakis has what it takes.”
I hated politics. I hated that one day, I’d have to vote or participate in it. Science fascinated me so much more than the squabbling and arguing side of the Republic. Scientific facts could only be undermined by discovery and solid proof while political facts could easily be undone by rumors.
Mama rolled her eyes. “You mean, he’s the G.E.G.’s lap dog?”
“No. But Tantalos is too liberal. She claims that the G.E.G. has already succeeded. That we need to restructure how we do things.”
“Like Petrakis is any better? Sterilization? Really? Enforced rather than voluntary? That’s just stupid. But to restructure slowly, that’s smart. Slowly, so we don’t bottleneck,” Mama growled. “I only voted for him because he was the lesser of two evils.”
“Politicians talking like they understand the Science of things. It’s just plain ridiculous. What we need is members of the G.E.G. in office.” Daddy swallowed the whiskey and left to put the glass in the kitchen sink.
Xavi told me to be patient— that he’d get me out, but I had to follow the soldier to the barracks without a fuss. He promised he, or Ono, would find a way to help me.
I didn’t believe it.
But I didn’t exactly have a choice, seeing as I was tied up.
The soldier marched me through the chaos, and we walked along the clusters of bodies piled along the tracks. I saw one dressed in uniform-black, but all the others wore torn fabrics of all colors. There must have been over twenty people in the piles, but I didn’t recognize any of the bodies. That is, I didn’t recognize any of them until the moment I did.
His red hair was a neon beacon, and his dark face wore a slack-jawed mouth. Red… Gilbert. My eyes darted across all the other faces. Polo couldn’t be there. There was no way I could have seen him the night before only to lose him today. But I didn’t see Polo or Moon-teeth or Grizzle. What if Polo was under one of the bodies in the pile? I wanted to claw through them and make sure, but the soldier pushed me forward.
Red. His laughter from last night was still fresh on my ears. It wasn’t right. All those deaths? No one in that pile deserved what had come to them.
And Xavi had called the intel in— caused all of it. The soldier even called him the “man of the hour.” How was I supposed to trust him?
The soldier shoved me into a cage in the boxcar. The bars were made of shiny, bright metal, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand up in the squat box. The soldier didn’t speak to me or the other bagged face that was already shackled up in it. At least he hadn’t re-bagged my head. He cut the zip-tie from my wrists before he shackled me by my hands and feet to the bars. The sound of metal sliding on metal felt too permanent, like I’d never be able to get away.
“Wait,” I said. “Don’t do this.” Panic. I thought I’d felt it once before, but this panic was sturdier than any anxiety I’d ever experienced. The click. The clack. The lock turning.
It was over.
I was over.
The debates went on for an hour. My legs were getting tired from standing in the square, but it was our duty to listen to all sides. We needed to be informed by all parties before making decisions, and Mama and Daddy said it was time for me to start listening to the politics.
“If she was a Celebrity,
then where are her children? There are records, but the children themselves are missing.” It was Caster Pardo, and her face was bulbous on the screen.
I looked around and saw Citizens of the 18th lounging around on chairs and tables. Their heads alternated from the screen to their tablets. There was a live feed going on where people all over the Republic posted their thoughts on the databases. Voices of the populace heard instantly as the debates went live, but I just stood and watched. I didn’t have an opinion enough to participate.
“Missing? They aren’t missing. We have a duty to protect their identities. Their foster parents have requested that we not bring them into the lime-light, and her children deserve that privacy at least. Why can Petrakis keep the privacy of his, and Tantalos can’t?” Caster Maras growled. He was good. The indignation he displayed was almost enough to discard the rumor.
“If that’s true, what about Corinna?” A picture of a girl with bright brown eyes and smooth dark skin bled onto the screen. She had the same river of perfect hair and symmetrical features as her mother, Senator Tantalos. “Why is Corinna allowed to be subjected and not her other children. She parades Corinna around, while Petrakis keeps his son out of this ‘lime light’ you speak of.”
“Celebrity parents have the right to protect their children from undue harassment. Senator Tantalos will not use them as pawns in her political games. Corinna is the last— the eighth child, and therefore, the one the Senator was allowed to raise. It is the only reason Corinna Tantalos is a part of the entire spectacle, much to the Senator’s dismay. She wants the Republic to pay attention to her politics, not her children.” Caster Maras tried to explain, but it wasn’t enough.
“But, sir, you forget. Her children are the science of things, and we can’t have the politics without the science. All enlightened Citizens deserve proof. Where is Senator Tantalos’?”
“If we want to speak in rumors,” the third vid-caster, Castor Delis interjected. “Then we need to address the other speculation.”
“You can’t be serious?” Caster Pardo scoffed.
“There’s speculation that her seventh child was a double Celebrity. They say that Petrakis’ own last-child, his son, is also Tantalos’.” Castor Delis continued.
“Pshh. Rumors,” Caster Maras redirected. “If we want to really talk about rumors, let’s get back into the Scientific debate we are supposed to be having: Is it possible that another rumor is true? The G.E.G. have succeeded? They’ve fostered enough genetic diversity that we have nothing to fear? Some people even claim that the G.E.G. are actively manipulating genes now. That they are creating mutations that can bring out super-human traits. What’s the point of saving Humanity if we’re just going to so recklessly redefine what it means to be human?“
“Careful, there. That’s bordering on treason,” Caster Pardo barked.
I couldn’t fit it all into my head.
Xavi told me to sit tight. To be patient. To listen. To not fight.
But how could I trust him? He handed me off to one of the masked soldiers, and marched Ono away.
He promised me he’d find a way to get me out.
Could he have been any more cryptic? Was it just a way to get Ono to leave me? A false promise to elicit false hope so there was no struggle?
A way out? There was no way out of these shackles.
The train moved, and I thought of the strangest things.
I wondered if it’d be easy to surf on a Military Transport. They were some of the fastest trains. Would the speed knock me down before I could even stand up?
I wondered what a moose looked like. I’d still never seen one.
I wondered what ocean water tasted like. Was it really as fishy and salty as Polo described it?
I wondered if anyone would find and use whatever was left of my pack. I’d imagined the contents of clothes and food strewn about like a torn-open carcass. I wanted someone to find it. I wanted some Vagabond to gain from my loss.
I wouldn’t need it anymore— not where I was going.
“It’ll be okay,” Ono’d whispered when Xavi led him away.
But it wasn’t okay.
I tried to think about anything but the cage I was in. I looked at the bagged faced girl. She was slumped in on herself and still hadn’t woken.
This stranger with no face— we shared something so intimate… the same fate… a similar torturous death.
I reached over and tugged the burlap off. Whoever she was, I didn’t know her, and her eyes remained as limp as she was.
“My bared teeth are broken chains.” It was a faceless voice, but it haunted my dreams for a week after I first heard it. Then, I realized it wasn’t just silly babble from a crazy Terrorist. The phrase kept escaping during the executions I witnessed. When I was a Citizen, I thought nothing of it.
But after the first execution I witnessed as a Vagabond, it hit me. “My bared teeth are broken chains,” the woman said.
And I dreamed of her for months and months afterwards. I saw myself on that stage with the needle in my veins.
There were things hidden in my brain. Xavi had said so. But at the moment, my brain remained mush and nothing solidified. The day shifted into night, and there was nothing to do but stare at the bars.
The girl stirred and groaned. Her brown lids opened to show crisp green eyes. Something about those eyes looked familiar, like I’d seen them worn on someone else, only in a different color.
“Hi,” I whispered.
“Where are we?” She tugged at the shackles.
“A bit of an obvious question, don’t you think?”
She laughed at the sarcasm. “A bit.” She reached up and rummaged in her hair, as if she was scratching it. “My bared teeth are broken chains.”
“I guess mine are too now. I don’t know the rest of the chant.”
The girl sucked in a breath. “Either you’re a spy, like that jackass was, or you don’t know anything. If it’s the second one, I’m sorry. They kept you because they think you know something. There won’t be a slow death in it for you.”
I shuddered.
She pulled out two bobby-pins from her hair— hair that was knotted and gnarled into chunky braids. “Lucky for you, I know how to pick locks, and you have, exactly two minutes to convince me you’re not a spy, or I leave you here.”
“Roll Call?” I tried.
The soft lighting in the boxcar settled over us in shadows, and her eyebrows narrowed. “Two minutes, and you want to play Roll Call?”
“Celeste.”
The girl laughed. It was rancorous and beautiful. “You got balls, kid. You got balls. Name’s Claire.”
I smiled. “Her sister?”
“She must have thought you were something if she told you about me.”
“I’m Niko.”
“Niko! No shit! I’ve been looking forward to running into you. Celeste said you had potential.”
Potential? The idea made me feel bright inside.
Claire wore Celeste’s same expression of concentration as she worked. She wiggled the pin in the lock and took slow and steady breaths. She was just about to un-cuff the wrist shackles when we heard a sharp metallic noise. “Damn it,” she whispered and jabbed the bobby-pins back into her braids just as the door slid open. Moonlight leaked in, and I let out a hopeful gasp as Xavi threw himself into the car.
“Traitor!” Claire yelled.
Xavi shook his head. “Shut it. Do you want them to check on you? They’re in that next car, stupid.” There was bitter in his voice, and I wondered what had happened between the two to make them dislike each other so much. Xavi continued in a lackluster attempt to sooth her. “It wasn’t supposed to go down that way. I wasn’t the one who called it in, but I acted that way to save your life. Be a bit more grateful you’re not in one of those death piles. Talk to your sister before you jump to conclusions.”
Claire spit through the bars at him. “They’re dead. You killed them all.”
Xavi wiped off
the glob of slobber that landed on his arm, and frowned. “Claire. We don’t have time for this.” He pulled out keys from his pocket and slid one into the cage.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“I don’t have the time to explain. Go to our lake. Promise me. I’ll meet you there and explain it all,” he said. His fingers felt warm on my wrists as he unshackled them.
“Where’s Ono?”
Xavi fingers fumbled with the keys, and a look of hurt fluttered across his face. “He’s being held in the debriefing room. I’m supposed to escort him back to the 12th to get his new assignment. It’d be too suspicious if he came to help right now… he’s safer if he never leaves the sight of Commander Hanas.” He sucked in warm air and shuddered. “Just promise me you’ll go to our spot. I’ll get there as soon as I can and explain everything.”
“Explain what?” I growled.
He unhooked the shackles at my feet and threw the keys to Claire. While she unlocked herself, he helped me out of the cage. He cupped my face in his hands, and made me look at him and only him. The browns of his eyes were murky and bright, and I wanted to know what was behind them. Nothing he said made sense.
“Niko. There are things you don’t know. Things I couldn’t tell you before. But we don’t have time right now. In about two miles this train is going to speed up, and you won’t have another chance to jump.”
Claire walked past us and steadied her hand on the door. “You’re a real ass, Xavi. If I find out it was you, I’ll—”
“Please. Just shut it for once, Claire. Talk to Celeste. She’ll explain it all.” Xavi dropped my face and shrugged off his pack— only it wasn’t his.
“That’s Ono’s.”
“He won’t need it where he’s off to. He asked me to tell you… he’ll find a way back to you.” It was hard for him to say the last part. He choked it out and put the pack on me. He tugged at the straps so that they were tighter on me.
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