3.
My sister, Tyson, is the talented one, but she’s been gone for years. So my mother never expected me to make it to sixteen, the age when I could really help her with the bills. I’d almost made it. A few more weeks and I could’ve landed a lame job with the loser algae department in the City of Water.
My only consolation for living that life had been Zenn. My mother allowed our friendship because Zenn’s dad—a government official in the teleportation department—had called us a “smart match.”
Which meant she thought he could keep me in line. Too bad she didn’t know that Zenn planned most of our rule-breaking expeditions. Or that he was more than who the Thinkers had matched me with.
“I’d choose you anyway, Vi,” he’d said that day as we lounged next to the lake. “So it’s perfect that we’ll be . . . that They matched us.” He trailed his fingers through my hair. It was still long back then.
“I’d choose you,” he repeated.
I smiled and kept my eyes closed, memorizing his words. Because in that moment, it felt like Zenn and I had the world in our hands.
Then he was chosen for the Special Forces. Everything changed. But not how I felt about him. And not how he felt about me.
After the painful removal of the silencer and the tech-cuffs, I fingered my already-raw wrists.
They’d stripped me of my ID card and taken my purse, so all I had were the clothes I wore—a beige long-sleeved shirt, standard blue jeans, my soft sneakers, and . . . yeah, that’s it.
I kicked the Mech escorting me, but the silver casings made damage impossible. In fact, my right foot felt like I’d cracked a couple of bones.
The stupid robot babbled in its monotone voice about how empty the place was. “Apparently there aren’t too many Baddies in trouble right now,” it said, followed by a weird hacking sound. Mech laughter. Creepy robot-people, I thought.
Mechs have unlimited power. They can talk and talk and talk. They can run and run and run. Which is why no one ever escapes. How do you beat a robot?
They don’t need to eat. They don’t need to sleep. And they can sense body heat and bar codes and who knows what else.
I hate Mechs—more than I hate Thinkers. More than the idiotic rules.
I wished this stupid tin can would shut up already. And, miraculously, it did.
The Mech remained silent as we stepped out of the ascender ring and into Ward D. It led me down a row of cells with bars along the front—no privacy up here. It stopped in front of the only occupied cell.
“Oh, hell no. No way!” I yelled, fumbling under the Mech’s silver casing for the power button that was surely there.
My fingers found the switch, clicking it off. An alarm wailed. I clapped my hands over my ears just as Jag Barque rolled off the bed, pulling his pillow over his head.
Four human guards appeared. One of them turned on the Mech while another slid the bars open. Several hands shoved me into the cell. Human and Mech laughter mingled together in a horrific medley. At least I wasn’t cuffed, and the redness on my wrists had started to fade.
Jag settled back on the bed, stretching out and putting his hands behind his head. “Nice try.”
I ignored him as I sized up his cell. A shelf above the bed held a few rare printed books, and his tray from breakfast still lay on the floor where he’d chucked it. This cell had a toilet in the corner. I’d finally made it to the big time. Next to the toilet, a metal sink held a bottle of teeth-cleaning tablets and a tube of green gel.
In an ungentlemanly way, Jag stayed on the bed, leaving the concrete floor as my only option for places to sit. I paced for a minute, but that merely increased my tension as I could only take two steps before turning around.
I stared through the bars, fighting down a stream of profanity and wishing I could fly somewhere far away and never come back. When I turned around, Jag was sitting up.
“What?” I asked.
He grinned. “Nothing.”
Didn’t look like nothing to me. “Why are we in here together?”
“You have wicked hair.”
“Shut up,” I said, folding my arms. “I got arrested for walking in the park with a boy. Now they have me living with one. This makes absolutely no sense.”
He lay back down, his eyes dancing with amusement.
“You gonna hog the bed?”
“Yeah.”
“Fine.” I sat with my back against the metal bed frame and flinched when he tousled my hair.
“Don’t,” I growled.
“I like it. It’s just like mine. Very posh.”
“Sure, posh.”
“Bad,” he said, and I twisted to look at him. He managed to shrug with his arms behind his head. “I like it.”
I ignored his comment. I’d always longed to be bad, maybe then my mother would have a real reason to hate me, and I wouldn’t feel so bad about myself all the time. But now the thought of really becoming bad scared me more than I wanted to admit.
“How are we gonna get out of here?” I asked.
“I think you already know the answer to that.”
Umm, no, I don’t. That’s why I asked. He didn’t seem troubled by my glare. A superior glint reflected in his eyes.
“I’m not living here with you for a week,” I said.
“You can have the bed. I don’t sleep much anyway.”
The sleeping arrangements were not my main concern. I glanced at the toilet and he laughed. “You can go when they take me to shower.”
“How often is that?”
“Every morning.”
“Great,” I said, turning around and admiring the blank wall three feet in front of me, wondering how long it would take to train my body to use the toilet only once a day.
The night stretched into eternity. Jag let me have the bed, but he paced back and forth, and the constant squeak of his boots kept me awake. Finally I sat up, and he told me about life in the Badlands. People didn’t have teleporters in every room because they actually walked to their destinations.
“Really?” I asked. “They walk?”
“Yes, Vi,” he said. My nickname sounded natural in his voice, like we were old friends or something. “The Baddies don’t have access to your superior tech crap.”
“I thought that’s why you were here,” I said.
“Yeah, but—”
“Yeah, but nothing, jerk. You like our superior tech crap.”
Jag did his annoying shrug. He reached above me to the shelf and pulled down a book. He lifted my legs and slid his underneath, leaned his back against the wall, and trained his eyes on the pages.
“What’s with the books?” I eyed the two remaining on the shelf.
“It’s called reading.” He didn’t look up. “Surely you know how to read.”
“Of course I do. It’s just that we don’t publish books anymore.”
Jag finally lowered the book, his gaze sharp enough to make me flinch. “But you used to. I requested something to read. This is what they brought me.”
Maybe they didn’t want him to have access to our tech, didn’t want to give him an e-board. Whatever. He went back to reading while I thought about what he’d said about the Badlands. Such freedom. I envisioned my dad walking wherever he wanted. Without fear. Without that pinched look he got around his eyes when he went out to develop our “superior tech crap.”
He’d hug me good night—yeah, that broke a rule—wearing his jacket. The shiny black leather made my nose tingle with the smell of polish.
And I knew.
He was going into the forest. At night. Two more broken rules.
Rule-breaking must run in the family, said that voice again, the same voice as in the courtroom. I wished I’d been able to turn and see who it belonged to.
I hadn’t heard any voices before this. Maybe it was my proximity to the Thinkers. Or maybe my offenses had finally landed me on someone’s to-be-monitored list.
Maybe the Baddies didn’t abduct Dad after all. Maybe the Greenies . . . This time, the voice was all mine. I shoved the thought aside and told myself to go to sleep. My dad had worked in the tech department, level ten, top secret. He’d developed the highest-class tech in the Goodgrounds.
He’d had clearance to enter the forest. Anytime he wanted. That’s what he’d told my mother when she asked. That he’d gotten the proper approval, that many of his inventions needed power he could only get when the rest of us were asleep.
And I’d believed him.
As I drifted to sleep, I could almost smell the leather of his jacket. Almost feel the gentle press of his embrace.
Almost, almost. But after seven years, everything about my dad was harder to imagine.
Waterfalls and rivers and streamlets and the sound of waves on the shore . . .
I couldn’t keep the images of water out of my head, and I seriously needed to go. Morning had arrived and Jag still hadn’t left to shower.
The luxuriously warm water of a hot spring called to me.
“I gotta go!” I sprang up and took the two steps to the toilet. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t go in front of him. He would hear!
I felt his eyes on my back. Didn’t he need to go? Turning, I saw his playful smile before he wiped it away.
He closed the book and started banging on the bars with it. “Hey! Get me outta here!”
Slowly, painfully slowly—so painful and so slow, I thought I might wet myself—the guard sauntered down the hall.
“I gotta go,” Jag said. “And I’m not goin’ with her here.” He jerked his head toward me.
My face must have looked absolutely pitiful, because the guard laughed as he unlocked the cell. “You guys working together yet?” He ran a red reader from Jag’s shoulder to his ankle and bound his hands with superior tech crap.
I stared at the guard. Working together? What did that mean? Jag shrugged and threw me a look that made my heart do a little flop. The guard appraised me for several seconds before escorting Jag down the hall.
And then I was able to go.