Class Zero

by Y A Marks

  “Isn’t this what you wanted me to do? What’s the difference between this and unlocking the Summit?” I asked.

  “This time you’re on your own with just a hoverbike and a parlor trick to keep the police away. In the Summit trip, you’d have armed guards around you the whole time, men and women who would be willing to die to keep you alive.”

  The weight of her words poured into me. Men and women willing to die for me? Me? My whole life had been a bad fairy tale, with no pretty dress and no handsome prince riding up on a horse. Crix, I didn’t even have an evil stepmother unless you counted Ms. Roller-Eyes. I was grounded, realistic, and cautious. I wasn’t worth dying over, even for my imitation game.

  “For the last few days, I’ve been making my way around the city, talking with many of the other established Escerica compounds. I felt the information was too important to trust to PCD or any other type of communication,” Dhyla said.

  Her warm, rough hands squeezed mine. She had done this many times as we talked atop Café Lanta, but this time it was different. I stared at her. Her eyes were wide with desperation. It had taken years to plan the Summit attack. Two drones were destroyed. Escerica needed the last one, and for the gate to be opened. Both were at hand.

  “They are all ready. They are ready to fight. Ready to follow—” She paused, and my stomach turned. To follow? To follow whom? “Once the last drone goes down, there will be nothing stopping us. This is what we have worked so long for. So many countless hours. So many people dead.”

  Since our conversation in the trailer park a few blocks from Café Lanta, I wanted to know how removing the security from Georgia would affect the whole country. It seemed like a pointless task. Even if the Summit somehow came down, what did it really mean? I could only imagine what Governor Read must be going through with all the attacks, just trying to keep the federal government at bay, especially in an election year, when he didn’t need to appear weak.

  I locked my questions in my mind because Dhyla’s eyes began tearing. My heart broke just watching her. Tiny drops of anguish pooled in my chest. What did it feel like to actually care about the people in this horrible world? People were like dogs fighting over scraps. Many times people are worse.

  At that moment, it dawned on me just how much Dhyla cared about the Escerica members. I loved the people in the Stadium, but I wasn’t willing to die for them. The only people I cared about with that level of passion were Mari and Miko. Dhyla would have given her life for any of them, and the Escerica soldiers were willing to give their lives for me. Crix.

  I touched her cheek with my hand, and wiped away a tear with my thumb. She smiled.

  “I was always afraid to tell you before. I never wanted you to feel like I was trying to replace your mom, or that in some kind of way I was substituting you for my lost daughter, but I want you to know that I… I love you.”

  Every cell in my body seemed to burst. After being ignored by the world, and having very few people I could trust, I wanted love so badly. There was never a day, an hour, a moment, when I wouldn’t have wanted Dhyla as my second mom. I used to curl myself in my cot and imagine she was there holding me. When the thunder broke through the sky and the rain beat on the walls in the drafty Stadium, all I desired was to be near her.

  I wanted to be mad at her. Why was she telling me this now? Why not a year ago? I could have done more, come around her shop more often.

  I let my head rest on her chest and wrapped my arms around her body. She rocked back and forth, and I listened to her heartbeat, like I used to when my mother was alive. I held Mari and Miko all the time, because I wanted them to know how being held felt. I recognized later that those moments weren’t for them. It was for me because I hadn’t had enough. I hadn’t been held enough or hugged enough or patted on the head enough. This is what I was missing. This is what I needed.

  “I love you, too,” I said. “My slow-to-getting-around-to-it Mom.”

  We held each other for a long time. I’m not sure how long. I pulled away, and Dhyla’s chin had a few lines in it from pressing her chin against my hairline. We both laughed and wiped a few tears away from our eyes.

  A few raps banged against the door.

  “You ready?” It was Rylan. He stayed at the door, his eyes focused, his mouth void of his normal infectious smile.

  “Yeah, out in a few,” I said.

  Dhyla put her hands over my cheeks. “Don’t you die out there.”

  “I don’t plan on going anywhere. I don’t know if there are chocolate crème mochas in Heaven.”

  She kissed me on my forehead. I stood and grabbed my backpack off the floor.

  When I left the room, I didn’t look back. I needed to clear my mind and get ready for what I was about to do. I felt stronger somehow knowing Dhyla’s spirit was with me. It made me a little afraid, too. There was so much Dhyla and I could do, talk about now, because it was okay somehow. It was okay to have a new mother. Maybe she felt it was okay to have a new daughter. We were what we both needed, and once Mari and Miko were safe, everything would be perfect. We could live with the Escerica rebels and be happy like all the other people I saw running around the compound.

  Rylan stood with his back against the railing when I came out. He wasn’t smiling, but he forced a bright expression on his face when I came out.

  “You think you can handle this?” he asked.

  I wasn’t afraid of police in the same way I was afraid of androids. I could at least function and think around a human cop. My brain went to mush when I even saw an android. I hoped by some miracle there wouldn’t be many androids today. If there were androids, it didn’t matter. I had to do something. This idea was the best I had. Rylan meant well, but all this doubt was starting to get on my nerves.

  “Yes, I do, Rylan. Now, will you and your merry men believe in me?” I asked.

  “I don’t think any of them believe in you.” He cut his eyes away. I clenched my jaw and a vortex of frustration slid across my back. He returned his gaze. “But… I think everyone is hoping that you’ll prove us wrong.”

  “I will.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “The others are waiting in the hangar. We’ll take one of the pickup trucks back to Atlanta. There’s no sense in having a radar blip in the sky.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Speaking of radar, you’ll need this.”

  He handed me a small object that looked like a watch with no dial.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “It’s the holo-decoy imager. It sends out a small radio frequency that wraps around the body so it can know what it needs to project. I put a few on the hoverbike, too. All you need to do to activate them is to just tap the side, right here.”

  He pointed to a tiny cylinder, which protruded from the imager.

  “I put three floating decoys on the hoverbike. When you start it up, they should slide out and mimic your movements while moving away from you. It’s basically what happened back at the Stadium.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  After stretching his arms, his face brightened. “And last, but not least.”

  He lifted a three-inch piece of plastic that reminded me of a nail file.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Same thing. It’s a holo-decoy, except this one is for you. In case you can’t make it back to the hoverbike, you can throw it, or my favorite, drop it into someone’s bag. It can project right through clothes, and it knows how to position itself a little ways away from the carrier. It’ll look like you’re running in the opposite direction.”

  I really didn’t know what to say. He had to have worked on all these little gizmos all night. There was something about the way he looked at them and at me as I held them as though the tiny gizmo was a diamond bracelet.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He smiled, but he wanted more of a reaction from me. It was just hard to get excited about what amounted to a cool toy. If my life didn’t depend on these objects, I�
��d probably just give them to Miko.

  We went up to the hangar where there was an old blue pickup truck. It looked like it was at least a hundred years old. There were a few rust patches, and the windshield was cracked. AJ had put the hoverbike in the back, secured it with a few bungee cords, and covered it with a tarp.

  I gawked at AJ leaning back against the truck like it cost a million bucks.

  “Seriously,” I said. “We’re going all the way back to Atlanta in that?”

  “It still works,” he said.

  “Yeah, for how long?” I grinned.

  AJ rolled his eyes and threw up his hands. He didn’t like my joke at his expense, but I still could picture the hoverbike incident in my head.

  “No one will notice us in this,” Sun Hi said. “Upper-Cs don’t care about a few Lower-Cs riding around in a beat up old truck.”

  “Yeah, it’ll be fun, Paeton.” Rylan smiled and patted me on the back.

  “If it doesn’t kill us,” I mumbled. I made sure to keep my voice low, so the others couldn’t hear me. I was being a bit cruel. I just had in my head that secret societies were supposed to be rich. The one I was unofficially in was just as broke as I was.

  AJ got behind the driver’s seat, and Sun Hi slid into the three-person cab. She scooted toward the middle, waiting for me to join her. After contemplating the cramped space and the long drive, I grinned and shut the door with me on the outside.

  “You don’t want to sit inside?” Sun Hi asked.

  “Nah, I’m used to being outside. I’ll ride in the back. Rylan can ride up here with you,” I said.

  Sun Hi leaned through the window. “How ‘bout it, Ry?”

  One of his eyebrows flew up, and he shook his head. “No, I’m good. I’ll be fine in the back with Paeton.”

  Sun Hi’s face widened while her eyes danced devilishly. I didn’t even want to know what she was thinking. We didn’t plan to sit together. It was just a nice night out—even though I couldn’t see the sky to make sure my mental ramble was true.

  Rylan and I jumped in the back. I pulled my backpack off and used it as a makeshift pillow. We sat with our backs against the cab’s window. Rylan was a few feet away from me with only the hoverbike’s front pad providing an eighteen-inch gap between us.

  The truck started up and putted its way to the loading ramp which took us up to the main level. We exited the dark timbers and warped planks of the barn and entered the fields outside, which were lit up with thousands of stars.

  The night was perfect. Three tiny clouds marked out what looked like something out of a painting. The moon was three-quarters full. As we hummed down the highway, dozens of animals grazed, hopped, or dashed across the open fields.

  Placing my hand over the side, I let it rise and fall with the wind. The cool breeze slid over my skin. After a moment, I tugged on my hoodie and put the hood over my head to keep warm.

  “You cold?” Rylan asked.

  “Just a bit. I knew I should have bought that two-hundred credit Allison Riley jacket.”

  He smiled at my joke. “Wow, you must be rich. All this time and you didn’t let me know you were Upper-C?”

  “Well ya know, I’m just mingling with the lower peoples for now because it’ll make my memoir more fascinating.”

  “I’m actually doing the same thing, but it’s for dieting purposes.”

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “Yes. Heavy lifting, eating next to nothing. It gives me that sleek, uber rich look.”

  “Well when you’re rich, you have to figure out what to do with your time. I mean, if I see another country club or get another pedicure in the near future, I’ll go crazy.”

  His eyes danced. They were so beautiful. Every time he glanced at me, his gaze pierced my outer barrier, the walls I had put up to keep me safe. Why was I letting this happen? Why did I want this to happen? I should be concerned about the impending doom that could snuff out my life. I shouldn’t be worried about some gray-eyed boy with a square jaw, perfect nose, and broad shoulders.

  The problem was, just like Rylan had said, I hadn’t lived. Here I was about to embark on the most dangerous thing I had ever done, and I hadn’t even gone on my first date. I had never held hands or been kissed. My romantic life was basically nonexistent until now. As much as I wanted to focus on the task at hand, my imagination kept showing me images of my grave site, where the words “Here Lies Paeton Washington, who gave her life so that Georgia could be free, but her dumb ass couldn’t even get kissed before she died” were etched into my headstone.

  Without thinking, I shook my head trying to work out the details of my daydream.

  A confused look tightened onto Rylan’s face. “You okay?”

  I swallowed a wad of saliva and tried to remove a bit of my embarrassment. “Yeah, you know me—well, I guess you don’t know me. But if you did know me, you’d know I do odd things every once in a while.”

  “Oh, like beating up police officers?” He grinned that princely grin of his.

  “Yeah, I guess like that.” My chest heated. “Thank you, by the way. I know I said it but, I was a bit out of it that night, I mean.” My spirit drifted around me and played hide-n-go-seek on my skin. It glanced at Rylan and ran away, only to shyly return again.

  “You were pretty good with that buzzer thing.”

  “Yeah, but maybe if I could get an EMP…”

  “Uh, you think you can handle that kind of power?” His teeth appeared again.

  I wondered if he was having as much trouble as I was at keeping my smiles within me.

  I faked an upset expression. “I can take down dozens of cops with one hand tied behind my back,” I said.

  “Not from where I was standing.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, because I’m a certified gunslinger now.”

  “You weren’t too embarrassed, were you?”

  “You mean about the falls and the cake? Uh yeah, I mean, who wouldn’t be.”

  His face stilled, but a snicker twinkled in his eyes. “I’m going to impart some words of wisdom to you.”

  “Oh-kay?” I leaned back as far as I could and crossed my arms.

  He sat up straight and coughed. “This is something my mother used to tell me. ‘Embarrassment is simply a situation where you fear yourself’.”

  “What?” I laughed.

  “Yep, that’s it. You fear yourself. So I learned not to be embarrassed.”

  “You’re not embarrassed because you have nothing to be embarrassed about—not one single, solitary thing. I doubt you had one real problem growing up.”

  “Well, did you know that when I was seven I had a lisp?”

  I wanted to burst out laughing. “A lisp at seven years old is not embarrassing, it’s adorable.” I raised an eyebrow for him to continue.

  “Well I, my dear, was very ashamed of it. No one in my family had speech impediments. In fact, my family was perfect. My dad was a chiseled Adonis who at two years old had chest hair. Not to mention being brilliant in every wretched way. So when my mother told me these words, it gave me a little feeling of confidence.”

  My spirit slumped inside of me. He was right. I shouldn’t have judged him like that. Crix, I just shouldn’t have been mean to him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry your two-year-old, well-defined father made you feel bad.” I couldn’t stop myself from giggling, but I did feel bad, though, sort-of.

  He grabbed my shoulder and jostled it back and forth. “You think it’s funny—my lissssp?” After a few snickers, he let me go.

  I covered my mouth to hide my smile. My heart skipped. “It’s not funny. You’ve been through a lot,” I teased.

  “You have too,” he said. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed about anything—and, and… you shouldn’t be afraid of me.”

  I gasped. We exchanged glances, and suddenly, I didn’t feel like laughing anymore. My mind stilled and my heart quickened. The steadily growing thump spread down to my hands and feet. M
y fingers and toes tingled. My gaze wouldn’t depart from his.

  “I’m not—” I forced my mouth open, but no words came.

  Everything inside of me told me to look away. This is not what I wanted, but I couldn’t resist his pull. He was gravity, pulling me in.

  The stars sparked through the sky. Fireflies floated and flickered in the distance. The world around us slowed down. His head angled and without even trying, something within me took over. The movement was automatic, magnetic. My head tilted to the side, my lips parted, my eyes closed.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he said as he rolled his body in closer.

  “I…I…”

  My mouth fell open as I waited for his lips, for his taste, but a loud knock startled me. I rotated around. AJ’s eyes glared at me from the rearview mirror. Sun Hi spun toward us. Her expression was as if she watched some romantic movie on TV. She even acted as though she removed a tear from her eye.

  I spun around, wrapping my arms across my body. A scream lodged in my throat. Embarrassment ballooned inside of my skin and needed to be released. It took every ounce of my composure to reel myself in. I wanted to cry. Not a real, I feel sorry for myself cry, but a whiny, baby, I-can’t-believe-this cry.

  This was my moment, my starry, moonlit moment, right before my life could end, and he was the one. His heart radiated love, and his eyes glowed passion. For one moment, we had connected on a deeper plane, almost spiritual and perfect. I groaned. I might never know how his lips tasted or how I would react to his tongue tickling mine.

  I couldn’t believe AJ. I couldn’t believe he was watching. He probably told Sun Hi, and she turned around right as it was about to happen. The worst thing about it was wondering what did Rylan think? My eyes itched to look at him, but I couldn’t bear it. I wanted to fall into my backpack and crumble into a thousand pieces. As the truck teetered along, I recognized that I just had to live long enough to try for my first kiss again.