“Are you all right?” Julius grips me by the shoulders, looks into my eyes. “Are you all right?”
I nod, point to the car, eyes wide. Pru! But he’s already back at the car, reaching into the back where Pru had been sitting. People are starting to stop and get out of their cars. Two people with devices in their ears approach. One of them sees that we are gen-eng, turns, and dashes back to her car.
“She’s still breathing,” Julius calls.
Breathing? I start to choke back small shouts and look outside. The truck that hit us—a behemoth—looks unharmed. Its nose is a little crinkled, but that is all. In contrast, our SUV seems half as wide as before. Cars are supposed to be safe! Cars aren’t supposed to hit each other anymore! Science took care of that. The words auto drive disabled replay in my head. But what about the other cars? Why didn’t they—but my thoughts are interrupted with the sudden realization that we are free now. Free to run.
A bald man sprints up, starts helping Julius pull Prudentia from the car. Blood oozes down her face from a gash near her hairline. She is moaning and squirming. A drone the size of a panther whooshes down upon the scene, calls out orders to remain calm, and begins to clear the crash site. A red light flashes as it wheels madly around. A smooth, digitized voice says help will be arriving in less than three minutes.
We have three minutes to disappear.
They lay Pru on the pavement a few feet from the car, then the bald man turns and starts tending to the driver, Mr. Hicks.
“Pru?” I whisper, kneeling beside her. The gash on her forehead squirts a stream of blood like the waterfall from the Center’s fifteenth floor.
“You’re determined to get us killed, aren’t you?” she mutters.
Adrenaline boomerangs my emotions from anger to fear and back. I laugh, grateful she is feeling good enough to taunt me. Her death is not something I want on my record of bad deeds. “Can you get up?” I look at Julius. “Can we move her?”
He stares at me for a moment. “They’ll just take us right back to the Center. Or worse, to that rehab place.” The drone beeps out that help is two minutes away.
The bald man tending to Mr. Hicks at the car shouts, “Still breathing!” as if we’re twenty feet away. The words sound bulky and foreign on his tongue. Maybe he doesn’t know we’re gen-eng; maybe that’s why he’s helping us. A few cars have slowed as their GPS devices recalculate to avoid the crash, but soon the traffic is snaking around us with ease, picking up again to the ever-present fever pitch of people getting where they need to go. From rolled-down windows, the word gen-eng snaps out like a whip. At their slower speed, they can see what we are. In no time, the Center will know we escaped.
Julius ducks back into the car for a moment, reappears with his tablet.
My head pulses. A hot bruise forms where Mr. Hicks punched me. I had been trying to cut off his air, just make him pass out. Not die. I’ve never ridden in a car before, didn’t think this would happen. I didn’t even know auto drive could be disabled.
I swat the guilt away and look around at the small crowd gathered.
We have two minutes to get Pru away from here. Think! I move over to the highway railing, leaning against it for support and looking to see what is below: a group of dirty houses, all too far away to be a landing pad. A few paces away, though, I see something better: the handles of a maintenance ladder curving up and then leading down.
“Julius!” I wave at him. “We’ve got one minute before whatever help that drone is talking about shows up. If they take us to a hospital out here, we’ll wake up with our brains wiped and never know the difference. We’ve got to get out of here.”
At that moment, a raucous display of lights and ear-splitting sirens creates a rift in the artery feeding the city with people. The letters on the front of the vehicle barreling toward us are printed backwards.
“We’ve got to go, now!”
Julius helps Pru to her feet and leads her to the ladder as the medics descend on the wreckage. I edge toward the ladder, hoping to hear something that will assure me our driver will live. Nothing.
Pru is wobbly, but able to climb down after Julius. With the distraction of the sirens and the flutter of energy around Mr. Hicks, no one seems to even notice as we slink away and slip over the edge. Gone.
Fifteen
My wrist feels naked without the wristband I’ve worn since before I can remember. Julius made us dump them back at the overpass behind some shrubs. Traceable, probably. We can only hope the sensors imbedded in Pru’s and my skulls can’t transmit thoughts back to the Center from this far away.
“Progress?” I ask, looking over at Julius, nose close to his tablet, as we walk down a lower-level sidewalk, the kind full of cheap electric light and people who walk slower than the ones bustling up above. Somehow, this feels more hidden than the sidewalks that were built over the streets.
“Julius?”
Pru’s voice cuts through his concentration, and he nods. Our only hope of avoiding the Center’s traps lies in his hands right now. “I’ve isolated your sensors’ signals. Working on jamming them with this.” He lifts his tablet a few inches.
We keep moving, trying to avoid the chill that follows us in the March air. I want to run, but I am weak, uneasy, as if I might fall over from nothing but the breeze, and Pru is getting less stable by the minute. Julius and I take turns helping her walk. We head in the only direction we know: into the city. Into the sea of faces where we will hopefully float away.
Though I am weak, though I am tired, I am free. Or I will be as soon as I can get these sensors permanently turned off. Julius will find a way. That, or I’ll claw mine out like he did. The thought makes me jerk in a sudden shiver.
Pru is still bleeding from the gash on her head, and I’ve noticed Julius walking with a slight limp. The bandages behind his ears are still intact, but he keeps reaching up to rub one of them, blinking slowly in pain. Other than the bruise forming on my forehead and a few cuts from the glass, I came out of the car unscathed. Mr. Hicks certainly took the brunt of the crash. I hope he lives; otherwise I can add murder to my list of crimes.
They got to him in time. Surely.
We are helpless, but we are free. And the three of us are smarter than a dozen generics combined. We’ll make it just fine out here.
“We need to get her some help,” Julius says for the hundredth time.
Looking over at Pru, I know he’s right. Her flawless face is now caked in clotting blood, but new sheets of it still drizzle down her cheek, onto her collar bone, and into her shirt. Julius has graciously surrendered a sock to help staunch the bleeding, but her arms are getting too tired to put any pressure on the wound. Her eyes are glassy, her mouth hanging open. She looks terrible.
“You’re right. Let’s find a place where she can rest.”
That’s when I notice a bench under a street lamp on a road lined with darkened windows in unfriendly buildings. A few people hug the walls in the growing shadows and do not speak to us. This part of the city is nothing like the shopping district with its bright lights and bass beats and flashy ads.
“They’ll know we’ve escaped by now,” Julius says once Pru is seated. He keeps his eyes on her as he talks, but his words are to me. Pru is breathing in short, shallow bursts. Infection won’t take long out here. “They’ll plaster our names on every tablet, palmer, and news screen in the city. Soon everyone in the whole city will be looking for our faces if they aren’t already.”
“She needs medicine. And I know what you’re going to say, but there are about four pharmacies in the mall,” I add, looking at Pru.
Julius folds his arms, shaking his head. “It’s where they’d expect us to go. They could get any number of eager citizens to grab us.”
“If our faces are all over the city, then that will be the case no matter where we go. She needs antiseptic. I say we go to the mall. There might be someone there willing to help us, like that man up there.” I nod over my shoulder in the ge
neral direction of where we came. “Not everyone out here is a humanist. Some of these people work for that HFH group, the ones who forced the Center to put cameras up to, as they claim, make sure we’re not tortured. Except they don’t get to watch the joys of streaming.”
Julius scoffs. “Ha! The Humans For Humans. The ones who have to convince the world we’re flesh-and-blood homo sapiens, not Frankenstein’s monsters.” He flashes a fake smile. “Yeah, maybe we can find them before the Center finds us.”
I shake my head. “But I have no idea how to find them. No idea how to find anything but that mall. It’s all we know.” Wynn’s words echo in my head: you know nothing about the real world. “What about that place I tried to go into last time, Streamline Impressions, it was called? It may be anti-Center in some way. Maybe that’s why they caught me when I went in.”
Julius frowns. “If they’re anti-Center, they’re anti-us. Gen-eng, remember?”
His frown infects me, and I start turning in circles, looking for something, some clue for what to do next. Pru remains silent, her expression sagging.
“Whatever we do, we need to stick”—but at that moment, his advice is cut off.
A drone—this one smaller than a swallow—zips directly overhead and stops as suddenly as if it hit a wall. Its whirring wings sound like an army of wasps. One unspoken word hovers in the air: detected.
“They’ve got us,” I whisper, looking back at Julius and Pru. Pru’s eyes are on the drone; her hand rests in her lap holding Julius’ black sock now soaked with a red hue. “That didn’t take long.”
“It’s got to be your sensors,” Julius says, suddenly reabsorbed into his tablet.
He drops to his knees, setting the tablet on the bench beside Pru. “Initiate t-screen,” he says, and a web of information springs up around him. “It’s so much easier this way.” He slides his fingers through the three-dimensional code like a maestro conducting an orchestra. He mumbles a few incoherent things, slams his fist into the bench once or twice, startling Pru, and finally stands, eyeing the drone. Less than two minutes have passed. “There.”
He lifts one hand, cupped like its reaching for a gift from heaven. The drone begins to descend.
“Julius, what on earth?”
The tiny drone lands peacefully in his hand, its hornet wings going silent. He tosses it to the ground and stomps on it. “Radio signal. Too easy.” He shakes his head. “That buys us a little time if we move quickly. And I got your signals. Both of them.”
“Julius!” My smile isn’t big enough to express my gratitude. “My sensors aren’t transmitting?”
He shakes his head. “Jamming them. For now. But that drone certainly told someone where we are. We need to move.”
He bends and attempts to insert two hands beneath Pru’s armpits, but she swats him away. “Pru, we’ve got to move. That drone was just the first of many that will find us.”
“I don’t want to move. I’m tired; I’m in pain. And I want them to find me.” She presses the sock back against her forehead. “I never asked for this. You two got me into this.”
I step forward, feeling no desire to kneel or soften my tone despite her injury. “If they find you, they will expunge your memories like a stain and implant some whole new person inside you. You’ll wake up none the wiser and live forever as someone else, head full of memories not your own.” She’s scowling at me now, but I continue anyway. “Your time at the Center is done.”
Snarling, she stands up on her own and starts walking.
“Where are you going?” Julius asks, snatching up his tablet and walking after her.
“You said you wanted to go to the mall.”
Julius looks back over his shoulder at me. “I don’t think the mall is really the best—”
“I’d prefer if this didn’t get infected,” she snaps. “Pharmacy first, then we can go wherever you want.” She flicks her hand in dismissal of any other options.
A car rounds the corner up ahead. Something about the tinted windows, the way it moves as if not on GPS self-drive, causes Julius and I to say at the same time: “Run!”
He loops an arm under Pru’s elbow—no resistance this time—and hauls her around. We take off down an alley that leads to a wider street. Pedestrians in stilettos and commuters on glide boards ignore us, their t-screens broadcasting their own little worlds around their heads. For some reason, none of them seem to have been alerted via a news blast to three missing gen-eng scientists. We do not pause to wonder why. The black sedan squeals as it arrives on this street.
“There!” Pru shouts, pointing at the tubular shape of the nearby tram, one of the many that pipes people into and out of the city like an IV. The station is just ahead, and people are spilling off the tram. The doors will be open only a moment, then our chance is gone.
I pump my arms as I sprint, feeling the chemicals in my blood turn to fuel. Pru seems to forget her wound for a moment and runs, both arms swinging. Julius sticks right beside her, throwing glance after glance over his shoulder at the street corner. The sedan peels around the corner with angry tires, motor hissing as it accelerates.
The only place to cross the road is at the crosswalk unless we want to decorate the pavement with our entrails. The GPS-driven cars know to stop at red lights, but not for jaywalkers. This much I’ve gleaned watching the flow of traffic from the tram windows all these years.
“Don’t cross,” I shout over my shoulder, just in case they’d thought about it. “Up here,” I careen around the corner of the sidewalk, onto the crosswalk as the floodgates open and people start to walk. Their pace is too slow! We’ll never make it!
Elbowing my way, I make it to the far sidewalk, aware now that our pursuers have given up the sedan and are now on foot. Two dark-suited men, previous Olympic record holders by their pace, sprint toward us, weaving around the oblivious pedestrians and knocking some over.
The doors to the tram are still open. I can make it, but can Pru and Julius?
The air quality changes and the temperature increases as I fly onto the tram car, huffing and puffing. A few eyes look up at me from screens; most do not. I turn, frantic, to look for Pru and Julius. Come on! Even though she is running, she is fading. Julius is a few steps ahead of her, flinging his gaze between me and Pru. He knows they won’t make it. I lean out of the tram, hoping I can grab Pru’s hand before it is too late. Julius leans forward, shouts at Pru, and hands her something like a baton in a race. Then he does something stupid.
He stutter-steps to a stop, spins himself around, and starts running toward the men in dark suits. Pru watches him but keeps coming, Julius’ tablet folded up in her hand.
“Julius!” I shout, stepping off the tram. The voice overhead pleasantly tells me the doors are closing. With a flame of adrenaline, I place one foot inside the tram door, one foot on the platform. I don’t move.
Julius runs smack into the man on the right, taking him out. For just a moment, the second man is so stunned that he stops, considers his options, and decides to pull Julius off his counterpart.
Please stand clear of the door.
Just one more second.
Pru stumbles onto the tram, blood running into one eye. I step backward, and the door slides shut. Outside, Julius’ red hair blurs as we are whisked away.
Sixteen
My vision gets fuzzy from looking out the window at the place I last saw Julius. Buildings zip by, smears that suggest human endeavor. The faraway buildings blink in and out of sight, as if turning in slow motion as the tram skirts the city center. Pru slumps in a nearby seat, hand pressed against her forehead. A few faces spy us with uncertain expressions. Three seats down, a young girl stares at Pru with eyes as wide as globes.
When the tram stops at the mall, many passengers exit. When I move to depart, Pru does not. She’s passed out.
“Pru!” I shake her shoulders. Her arm is limp in her lap, the wound only softly dripping now, blood leaking down a well-traced line beside her ear, down he
r neck, and into her collar.
Vacant eyes open and find me, then the pain returns and she winces.
“Pru, we’ve got to go!”
Finally, she nods and tries to stand. I help her up, her weight much heavier than I expected. She leans into my shorter frame, all pride drained out from the gash in her forehead.
“Julius,” she whispers, face flat. “He stopped them.” Dense silence. “Why didn’t they keep coming for us?” For the first time in my life, I have no answers, no scientific truth to help me figure out this world. But out here I can—if things ever slow down—see who I really am, who Valeria really is. It’s worth it. Right?
People begin to stop and watch. T-screens retract into ear pieces. Eyes follow our movement, then fingers, then voices.
“Hey! She needs help!”
The people here are not as blind as the commuters and pedestrians further out in the city, perhaps because they are here to look for things they do not need.
“Wait, those are gen-eng!”
Not as blind, not as ignorant.
I try to up the pace, shuffling along under Pru’s bony bulk. I came here because I didn’t know where else to go. And I came here because some part of me burns to know what lies behind that silver door several levels down. It is to the elevators I now drag my burden.
Fingers are tapping on palms as slit-eyed mall-goers tell the absent that we are here. We won’t be here long. Either we find a place to hide now or the Center finds us.
“Get to the elevators,” I mumble to Pru, even though it’s me taking her there. She could help at least a little more.
“Pharmacy first,” she corrects, still conscious enough to be right.
Perhaps if her face wasn’t free bleeding, fewer people would stare. I maneuver us toward a green cross up ahead. Above the din of ads and music and flashing lights, the smell of curry rises, sprouting a fountain in my mouth. On the far side of the glowing green cross is a sign that reads Thai Garden. Suddenly, food becomes my sole mission.
The Veritas Project Page 12