Thomas had frozen, his eyebrows meeting in the middle of his nose in a wary line, and I flashed him and his sister a congenial smile. “Sorry. We’ve had a pretty tense day today, and we’re a little jumpy. What is it?”
“It’s a book,” Melissa said in a slightly forced, airy tone, her mouth breaking on a nervous smile. “It’s actually the story of our parents and how they changed the destiny of two nations and—”
As she spoke, Thomas slowly pulled a book out, and as soon as the glossy, colorful, and clearly paper-made rectangle came into view, I stepped forward and snatched it out of his hand, my fingers eager to touch something so precious and rare.
The cover was cool and slick to my hands, and I had a childish urge to press it to my chest and hug it. Using wood for anything other than growing food or producing air was scandalous, but these people clearly came from a place where they had wood in great abundance. I turned it over in my hands, feeling the soft touch of the fragile pages inside. The entire book was flexible, like the journals, but also looked incredibly new.
Unlike the journals, there was a painting on the front, of a girl with rich, brown, wavy hair and silver-gray eyes. She was standing in relief against a large gate that led to a city beyond, with massive mountains in the background. The likeness between Thomas and Melissa and the girl on the cover was uncanny, except that the girl had a hardness in her eyes that theirs lacked. Well, maybe not lacked, but certainly had to a lesser degree. The title read The Gender Game, and underneath it was a small note of Annotated Edition, followed by the author and illustrator, Owen Barns. I drank it all in with my eyes, trying to absorb every detail.
My hands had a mind of their own, however, and were gently flipping open the thick outer cover to the page inside.
I blinked in surprise and looked up at them, then back down. The book… wasn’t a book. It was filled with little rows of separated rectangles with more illustrated designs inside. Text was given through small bubbles that were coming out of the people’s mouths in the illustrations. I cocked my head at it, utterly confused.
“What kind of book is this?” I breathed, unable to keep my bewilderment off my face.
Melissa and Thomas exchanged looks. “You’ve never seen a graphic novel before?” she asked.
I shook my head and looked back at the page, only removing my attention from it when Maddox and Leo stepped closer to have a look. Maddox reached out to run a finger over the page, and I had to resist the urge to slap her hand away, knowing that paper was very fragile. Besides, I had been doing the same thing seconds ago; I couldn’t begrudge her the chance to know what it felt like.
“It’s a comic,” Leo suddenly announced in delight. “Lionel used to tell me about these all the time. They combined pictures and words to create a story, just like a fiction book would. He even drew me a few. But it’s clear he wasn’t the artist this man was.”
“Owen’s our uncle,” Melissa said. “Kind of. He was with our mom and dad for a lot of the mess that happened. Just like Amber.” She paused and suddenly shook her head rapidly, as if clearing her head from a smart punch. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves here. This book is for you, and explains who we are as a people. We hand it out to civilizations and cultures when we first meet them, so they can understand what we represent.”
I frowned, looking up from where the young woman—Violet Bates, according to the text—was smuggling her brother in a box, depicted by a pair of wide eyes floating in a dark void, and tried to focus on what Melissa was saying. “Why would you want to tell other cultures and civilizations about yourself?” It seemed pretty dangerous from where I was sitting. Going out and meeting new people was a good way to get yourself killed, especially if you knew nothing about their culture.
Then again, I could already tell that these people’s lives were very different from our own.
“How else would we meet them?” Melissa replied with a smile. “We figure out very quickly if they are people we want to build a relationship with, based on how they react to us and the story. And it helps them understand where we come from, and how resourceful we can be in times of trouble.”
I raised an eyebrow, a slow smile growing on my lips. So it was informational and a deterrent. That was smart. “Fascinating,” I replied with a smile. “So I can keep this?”
“Absolutely,” Thomas said. “Sorry we don’t have the full edition, though. Our uncle got a little carried away when he started making it. And there were things that Mom and Dad thought it was better to keep out, for… security purposes.”
Even smarter. Although, this particular display of intelligence left me mildly disappointed. I wanted to know about the story, more about her time here, because I was pretty sure that something had happened during that time that changed the legacies, making them more aggressive in their attempts to gain control. It could’ve just been about the intrusion from the outside world—learning that there was, in fact, an outside world—but I had a feeling it was more than that. I just didn’t know what, and I couldn’t access the records of the event without asking permission from the council—and telling them why I would want the information, along with how I even knew about it.
Suddenly, a concerning thought popped into my head. If this was their mother’s story, and she’d come to the Tower, then that meant the Tower was in the book somewhere. And they were handing it out to random civilizations.
“So wait, the part about her visiting the Tower is in here?” I speared them both with a wary and alarmed look, letting them know that this was a serious question for me. “Are you saying you’ve been passing out information on our location and lives?”
If they were, then they had potentially put us in grave danger. I wasn’t sure about the other surviving civilizations, but I knew our system had food, water, and energy, as well as thick walls to protect us from the outside world. Anyone ambitious enough, who didn’t have anything to lose, could turn their eyes on us and take what they wanted.
“No,” Melissa said, shaking her head. “We didn’t reveal anything about the Tower other than that it exists. We didn’t include any specific directions or times or anything that would give away your location. Mom and Dad didn’t think it would go over well, if you guys ever decided to rejoin the outside world.”
“Rejoin?” I asked, surprised and almost amused. “We don’t have the technology to fly, and everything around us is a radioactive wasteland! I mean, how did these other civilizations survive? How did you survive? The fallout must’ve been—”
“Different in different places,” Thomas cut in. “The north is still mostly decimated from the Fall, and—”
“The Fall?” Leo asked. “Do you not call it the End?”
“Uh… no,” Melissa said. “Everyone has their own name for it wherever we go, but yeah, the big event approximately three hundred years ago that changed civilization as we knew it forever. Blah blah blah. Look, there are pockets of survivors everywhere, and as for your radiation problem…” She trailed off and looked at her brother. “Can we tell them that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t see why not. I’m a little surprised they don’t know.”
I sighed and closed the book with a loud snap. Scipio knew that my brother and I could be like this too, but we didn’t have time for it, and I wanted some honesty.
“‘They’ are standing right here, and we’d appreciate a little directness. We’re taking a big risk even talking to you, and if anyone on the council finds out that I’m here, and plan to let you go, then all of us will be executed, plain and simple. So how about this. Instead of beating around the bush about what you can and can’t tell us, let’s just be straight with each other. You tell me your story, I’ll tell you mine, and maybe we’ll find some middle ground and some trust.” I paused at that and decided to be fully honest with them right off the bat. “There aren’t a lot of people I can trust at the moment, so I’m hoping that I can trust you. Because I’m tired of making enemies and playing games. I want ans
wers, and you might have some. So I’m asking you, please, will you just tell me what’s going on?”
20
Nobody said anything for several seconds, and for a moment, I wondered if I had pushed too far. These people were suspicious of us, and from what they were saying, they had a right to be. Devon Alexander had wanted to take their technology and had been pretty outspoken about it. Now I was here instead of him, and I was guessing they weren’t quite sure what to make of me.
And who could blame them? I wasn’t exactly the most upright and loyal citizen to the Tower, so my behavior had to be worlds apart from what they had read about in their little book. It actually bothered me that I wasn’t looking at it even now, trying to find the parts about the Tower and get their point of view. It would help me gauge what they had learned about our life here, and what their perception of us was. They were obviously wary, but I wanted to know more about why.
I resisted the urge, though, and tried to keep my face neutral, if not mildly pleasant, while the two deliberated.
Thomas broke the silence first, with a chuckle that was as rich as it was smoky. My body tingled with awareness, and I resented every moment of it. I already felt like I was juggling two men; I had no room for a third—especially one who looked as arrogant and commanding as Thomas. I could tell he liked being in charge, taking the lead, and that was my job, dammit, not his.
“All right,” he agreed amicably. “If you’re so eager, you go first.”
I regarded him with a coolness, indifferent to the fact that he had called my bluff. I had meant what I told them: I wanted to be honest. There was an opportunity here for us to become friends, maybe even plan our escape, once we had stopped the legacies, restored Scipio, and gotten people used to the idea that other pockets of humanity had survived. Better yet, maybe we could be the first envoys from the Tower, doing what Thomas and Melissa were doing and making allies of other civilizations. I knew it would take time, but the first step down that road was telling the truth.
I started by asking them what they knew, which wasn’t much, beyond a handful of titles and names they couldn’t remember but promised me were in the book. They knew about the bio-foam, and how we repaired our broken bones and had walls that displayed medical information. I was surprised that they didn’t have all of that already, but they assured us they were working toward it, having been inspired by what they saw. I felt uncomfortable about that, like they were stealing our technology. It was something that gave us an advantage—something to trade with if the people of the Tower ever emerged. Something we could use to create relationships with the rest of the world.
Then I realized they hadn’t really stolen it. Just tried to emulate what we had done. In that light, it was a little flattering.
As for my side of things, it was impossible to tell my story in a linear way once I got started. I started by explaining who I was, my position, and my department, and gave them an idea of what we did. But that invariably led Thomas to make a comment about how it was good that we didn’t have gender discrimination, which made me ask if they did, and then they were telling me about Matrus and Patrus, the countries divided by gender. I listened in awe and horror as they told me about what life was like for the women of Patrus—treated like slaves, little better than dogs, even stolen and ripped from their homes—and the boys of Matrus, who were screened for aggressive behavior and weeded out of the populace if they tested positive. They had supposedly been sent to the mines to work, but had actually been experimented on (they wouldn’t go into detail as to how, but judging from Melissa’s and Thomas’s faces, it wasn’t good).
They asked if our society had a lower class, and in response, the three of us held up our wrists, displaying our indicators that showed our ranking. I explained to them how the ranking system worked, about the nets in our heads, but glossed over Scipio and the AIs altogether. I kept the rest of the story much simpler for them, explaining only that we had learned of a secret group that had been manipulating laws in order to gain power over the system, resulting in more and more people losing rank, while those in power remained on top.
Melissa rolled her eyes and said, “Ah, yes, no truer love story than that between people and power,” with a quirky smile that had us laughing.
In return, they told us about the former Queen Elena and her quest for power, in which she had faked Patrian aggression to start a war. In doing so, she had killed hundreds of Patrian males, and it had taken the better part of ten years for the country to rebuild. But rebuild it the Patrians did, with the help of their ally Queen Morgana, of Matrus, and Prime Chancellor Viggo Croft, of Patrus. The latter of whom, of course, was Thomas and Melissa’s father.
The siblings talked about their parents a lot. It was actually kind of sweet, and I could tell by the way they smiled and laughed that they had a very healthy relationship with both of them. I could see the love and pride beaming out of them. I envied that, a little bit, mostly because it started to drag me back to that “what if” place I had been in after my mother died, and I quickly resumed my thread in the story. Even though I omitted the AIs, I told them everything else, the words spilling out of me faster than the water the hydro-turbines sucked up from the river. It felt good to talk about it with someone who was outside of the situation. My friends and I lived, breathed, and slept with this crap on a daily basis, so talking to them about it was pointless, as they knew all of the problems. But Thomas and Melissa were different; they were safe, and neutral. They didn’t have a dog in this fight, no vested interest, and they were very sympathetic listeners, empathizing with our plight as the story unraveled. I could tell they agreed with a lot of the choices I had made.
It took over an hour for us to finish, and by the time we were done, we were all sitting around the conference table, having all sat down at various points in the conversation. Our talk had fallen off, in one of those natural pauses that occurred during lively conversation, when Leo said, “You never told us about the radiation of the Wastes. You indicated you knew what it was caused by?”
That was right. I had forgotten about that in the organic exchange of information. I leaned forward, interested in what Thomas’s answer would be. The radiation was the only thing keeping us from crossing the Wastes outside, and if they knew what was causing it, I wanted to know what it was. Maybe it was a pipe dream, but I had a hope that if we knew what it was, we could figure out how to stop it and finally leave the Tower.
Thomas blinked and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “As a matter of fact, you’re what caused it,” he said flatly, and I blinked.
“What do you mean?” I demanded. “The radiation is fallout, right? From the End?”
Melissa shook her head, her green eyes simmering with sadness. “Your Tower dumps toxic sludge into the river, and it has seeped into the surrounding area, killing everything within a hundred-mile radius, give or take.”
Disoriented by the news, I sank back into the chair. We were causing the radiation that was keeping us here? The entire time… it was our fault that we couldn’t go outside? Did the other councilors know? Was this just some unforeseen byproduct of the Tower that no one predicted? Or worse, was it some sort of deterrent to keep others away from us? What was it doing to the rest of the world?
“The two-hundred-mile radius is also barren, but in the three- to four-fifty range, things start to get interesting,” Thomas added, seeming to read my mind.
I didn’t like this. He was beginning to speak cryptically again, meaning he was hiding something.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “What gets interesting?”
Melissa rolled her eyes and smacked her brother on the arm. “He’s being a jerk. Just ignore him. Basically, the toxic stuff you dump back into the river has done something to the environment and surrounding atmosphere, and has kind of created its own ecological system.”
“I…” I looked over at Leo, who shook his head, and Maddox, who shrugged, looking as be
wildered as I felt. No, I was beyond bewildered. I was downright deflated. All I knew was that the very thing that was keeping us alive was also keeping us trapped inside. “Thank you for telling me that,” I told them.
Thomas nodded solemnly, and for several long seconds the group fell into silence. I didn’t mind; I was still trying to process the bombshell they had just dropped on me. Then he started speaking again, this time with a note in his voice that signaled a change of topic.
“You know, in situations like these, I am permitted to offer people from an oppressed culture refuge in Patrus. We obviously wouldn’t be able to handle the entire Tower’s population, but from what you’ve said, you don’t have many people on your side helping to fight against these legacy cats that are messing everything up.”
“Cats?” Maddox echoed, cocking her head.
In my opinion, she was focusing on the wrong damn thing. He had just told us he could give us an escape. Freedom from the Tower’s insane laws and broken systems. From the nets in our skulls and Scipio’s watchful and polluted gaze. We could be free, breathe fresh air, see the world without the glass of the Tower warping our view of it!
“It means people,” Melissa said dismissively. “Anyway, my brother is right, but there’s a catch. We couldn’t take you all now. One of you must come with us to lodge a formal petition with the government and request permission. That person would need to give our people information on how many you intended to bring into our country, and what sort of skills they would be contributing to Patrian society. Then our people will have to deliberate and decide, but we could push them for a decision within a week, given the precariousness of your situation. No matter what they decide, I promise that when you next see is, it won’t be without the representative you send.”
The Girl Who Dared to Endure Page 16
