by Y A Marks
“I don’t want to hear this,” I said. “Don’t mention my mother!”
My mind cooled as I stared at him, but my fingers tightened into fists. I wasn’t sure if I would strike him, so I took a step back.
“But—” Trivet started.
“No. You say what you want about me, but not about my mom.” It didn’t feel right for him to give me a play-by-play of my life. To go through all of what I had been through like it was some kind of book that needed a quick recap for the reader. I knew who I was. I didn’t want to remember my mother in any way except how she was in my memories.
Trivet made a gesture toward Jonas. I couldn’t see his lips or anything, but I had the feeling that it was about me, about my attitude.
I didn’t like talking about my mother. I had made up in my mind to remember what I wanted and to keep away from anything that was even closely related to her death. I already had my android phobia, and I was coping with Dhyla’s death. I didn’t need any more extra baggage. One day that I’d deal it—all of it, but at that moment, it was too painful.
Trivet’s tone became agitated. “Fine, I’ll stop talking about you. At this point, your family doesn’t matter all that much anyway.”
He said his last sentence like he was a five-year-old. My blood boiled. I wanted to reach over and yank his arms off.
Trivet completed a few turns on his chair before stopping with his foot pressed against an old computer. “Jonas, do you remember someone named Ricardo Diaz?”
Jonas’s face darkened. “Yes, there’s not a day when I don’t remember that crackpot.”
“He was no crackpot.” Trivet smiled. He typed six or seven quick strokes on his keyboard, and a Latino man showed up on the screen. The screen was separated into four sections. In the first section, there was a headshot of Ricardo Diaz. He looked normal except his hair was a little on the unkempt side, and he wore thick-rimmed glasses.
In the second screen, he was giving a lecture at an unnamed university to a thousand or so students.
“Diaz came to me seven—no, maybe eight years ago, saying he had the key to removing the class system for good,” Jonas said.
He took a few steps toward Trivet and rested his hand on Trivet’s shoulder. Jonas eyed the screen as though he was remembering an old conversation. “I requested his literature and ended up investing a few million in him. I heard later that he raised some crazy amount of money via one of those crowd-funding websites. Fast-forward to now, and where is he? Gone with all that money.”
“What if I tell you that he succeeded, well, sort-of?” Trivet asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Check this out.” Trivet tapped a few more keystrokes.
The bottom quarter of the split-screen magnified. Inside, there was a class of children. Ricardo Diaz stood at the front of the room. Off to the side were two people, an older man and a woman who I supposed was the teacher. Both for whatever reason appeared familiar, but I didn’t remember anyone named Ricardo Diaz. So why did the other two adults seem so familiar to me?
I drew closer to the screen. Trivet giggled in his seat, and I exchanged a glance with Jonas, who looked more puzzled than I was.
“You notice anything?” Trivet asked.
“Nothing. I have no idea what this is,” Jonas said.
“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Paaaay-ton.” Trivet’s voice pitched high as though he was dangling a great mystery over my head.
Involuntarily, my body moved closer to the screen. My stomach tightened, and my hands fumbled at my shoulders trying to grasp my backpack straps which weren’t there. “Is that… is that…” My words fumbled around in my mouth.
Trivet tapped a few buttons. The screen zoomed into one of the kids sitting in the class near the front. It was a little girl. Her eyes were fixed on Ricardo Diaz as she listened to his every word. The more I gazed at her image, the more I couldn’t believe it. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and a round, little face. She sat up high with her butt firmly pressing down on her right calf because her leg was tucked under her body.
My mouth felt dry. My heart rattled against my ribcage.
“Is that me?”
CHAPTER 16
I stood transfixed. There I was in pixelated color as an eight-year-old child, watching this Ricardo Diaz guy. I didn’t know what to say or think.
Trivet laughed, then zoomed back out so we could see the whole scene again. “Bingo, that’s you Miss Paeton. It’s the great circle of destiny.”
I replayed the actual event in my mind, but it was all a blur. I searched the classroom for any other clues. After a few moments, I saw something else that I had a hard time understanding.
“Can you zoom in on those two people, just there at the front of the class?” I asked.
“Sure,” Trivet said.
A few moments later, I realized the person who was a principal was actually…
“Mr. Palmer?” I asked myself, trying to confirm with my own memories of what had happened in this scene from my past.
He was slightly younger with a bit less, gray hair and sober. He had on a navy-blue suit that looked like it was pretty expensive. I had only thought about Mr. Palmer a few times since he had killed himself to save my life. I didn’t want to think about his sacrifice. Too many people were dead, and it was hard for me to digest all of the painful information.
An idea shot through my brain—oh my God. Were these people watching over me?
Before I could say anything, Trivet started talking again. “Palmer, huh, well that makes sense. I was working on the link between Diaz and you. Now, all the pieces are in place.” Trivet leaned back and exhaled. “Finally.”
He seemed pleased with himself as if my whole life was a jigsaw puzzle that he’d spent the last few days piecing together.
“Wha—What is all of this? What does this mean?” I asked.
“It’s simple.” Trivet said, spinning back around in his chair. He eyed me and Jonas before his expression widened. “You two are different sides of the same coin.”
I glanced over at Jonas, not quite understanding what Trivet meant.
Trivet leaned back, his hands resting on the back of his head. “Diaz knew that to change things he had to create something that would disrupt the current status quo. To do so, he got some money to create a chip that could be powered by a human electrical field. Then, he got twenty-nine test subjects to host the chip.”
“So, what you’re saying is—” I began.
“Yes my dear, you are the subject of an experiment in social structure.”
“B-B-But how? Why?”
“I’m not sure what was Diaz’s end game. I can only speculate that he wanted to create anomalies in the security system, not unlike many of the Trojans and worm-like viruses for computers.”
“Computer viruses.” Jonas took a step forward. “You’re saying I paid for Paeton to be a walking, talking computer virus.”
I eyed Jonas, but I understood his disdain.
Trivet ran his finger under his nose. “Yes. Well, you paid for it by mistake—sort of.”
“What happened to this guy?” I asked.
“He’s dead. Died in the Five-Day-R. He was on the brink of mass production of the chips when everything went bad.”
“So besides me, there are twenty-eight others who have this ability?”
“As far as we know, yes. I did find out that Diaz had been in contact with a few, elementary schools. Who knows if he implanted any of those other kids or not? As far as we know, there could be a mini army of people out there like you, Paeton.”
“Or,” Jonas narrowed his eyes. “Or, you could be the only one.”
“That too,” Trivet said. “I did create a list of the twenty-nine students from Paeton’s class. I have been trying to track them down. So far I’ve only been able to locate seven of them. Only one lives in Georgia. Like Paeton, he has stayed off the grid. I’m not sure if any of them are helping the national b
ranches of Escerica or not. They could just be petty thieves, never living up to their potential as a true superhero.”
A twinge of sarcasm laced Trivet’s voice. A crawling itchiness slid up my back, making me feel the awkwardness of this whole situation. Part of me wanted to be the super, badass chick that saved the kingdom, er, the state. However, I still had doubts that I was anything more than just a Lower-C who was lucky enough to get some kind of technological, mutant power.
With my past not only catching up to me but whopping me over the head, my brain spun. I stumbled over to a nearby wall. My fingers grasped the rough surface as my world began to blur into orbs of muted color. I didn’t understand why this information was so overwhelming, but my body was shaking. I couldn’t wrap enough intelligence around it for things to seem logical.
Jonas came over.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I think… I think I need some air.”
He guided me back to the ladder, and I fumbled my way back up to the main floor. I made my way outside and almost collapsed three feet from the door. Both my hands and my knees were in the cold dirt, my back arched over the ground.
Jonas reached me and kneeled down beside me as tears streaked down my face.
“I don’t want this,” I said. “I never wanted any of this. I just want to be normal, to paint my toes, and like boy bands. This is too much. I’m just sixteen.”
He wrapped his arms around me and tightened them until I couldn’t move. My arms were pressed against my chest but for whatever reason, it felt good, felt safe. He didn’t say anything. He just held me, like any good parent would.
“I need help—I still need someone. I still needed her. Why did she have to die? Why did she leave me like this? Why couldn’t she be here?”
My mental flood gate blasted open. Every single thing I had successfully held back spilled out. Seeing myself and knowing how the puzzle fit together was hard for me to comprehend at eight-years-old, but it was worse now that I was sixteen. It meant that my mother knew. She knew what Diaz was doing, and she signed me up.
“Why would she let Diaz implant me? Didn’t she know what trouble that would cause? Didn’t she know the government would be after me all my life? Why didn’t she tell me? Why did she hide me? Why did she… get herself killed?”
I rattled on a million “whys” but Jonas didn’t have the answers. No one did. Everyone who knew the truth was dead. My mother, Diaz, even Dhyla knew more than what she told me. I was the one who was clueless.
The shutters atop my bones stopped, and I reigned in my emotions. “I’m okay,” I said. “I’m just… just…”
Jonas released me.
I dabbed my palms to the bottoms of my eyes to remove the tears. I rolled onto my butt and sat forward. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Jonas said. “You’re stronger than you know.”
I glanced at him for a moment before turning my eyes away. I needed to find the strength, but it wasn’t coming. A second or two later, his voice cracked and he began talking. “What I did, before—when I was with Vogel and the Rattlers.”
I turned my gaze back toward him. My heart tightened as his eyes turned glossy.
“I killed someone—a boy, barely fifteen, I think. I did it because Vogel told me to, because it was either the boy or me. I told myself that I was doing it for Rylan and Noriah. I told myself that I had to survive to get back to them. I told myself a million lies, but at the end of it all… I did as I was told.”
“Is that why you left?” I asked, my words slow and cautious.
“No, that’s what I had to do to join. The true horror came later. If Vogel is anything, he’s efficient. I was his number one, military trained, smart and resourceful. After two years, I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t say I wanted to help people if all I did was hurt them. I’d rather die than live like that.”
His words rattled the corners of my mind. He had knowingly killed, and someone barely older than Rylan was at the time. I didn’t know what to think. I was still trying to figure everything out. I admired Jonas, his strength, and his dream.
His face tightened, and I could see his previous emotions boiling on his skin. “I left and asked for a new township. We had twenty people when we started. Before the Death Days that fall, we had ballooned to fifty. After that first Death Days, we were barely nine. Vogel had made us—me—his mission. He did exactly what he said he would do, and hurt me in every way possible. But we grew despite him, and now we are over two hundred strong. We’re the smallest of the townships, but agile, smart, and lean.”
I watched his body clam up and wanted to reach out to assure him. What he had done was terrible, but he found a way to get over it. He had helped Shannon and Pyra and the others. He made them happy and safe. Maybe, I could do that, too.
I forced a smile. “Can you give me a minute, please? I’ll be okay. I promise.”
He nodded a few times, stood, and walked back into the house. I stared into the darkness around the township. I was embarrassed. I had made a fool of myself. What would Dhyla think of me right now? What would my mother think? They both had made sacrifices for me, and I was letting them down. It was just so hard. Having millions of people counting on me to change the world was bad enough. Add to that the fact that I was in jail, where I could die at any moment, and I find out that all of this was some sort of elaborate plan, maybe even made by my mother. How else could Diaz implant me?
After a few moments, I searched for the building that Shannon was taken to. It didn’t take me long to discover which one it was. I went over, pulled back the tarp at the door, and entered a double house. Where the kitchen should have been was an open area which connected to the living quarters of the second part of the building. A kitchen and bathroom were at the very far end. This gave the place enough room for about twenty-four cots to cover the floor.
Pyra and Shannon were both near the kitchen area. They had two cots separating them and someone was working to complete the bandages around Pyra’s stomach.
I made my way through the cots and sat down next to Shannon. Her sleepy eyelids raised a bit as she watched me.
“Hey, Paeton. Just my luck, right?” Her words came out slow. “You walk away virtually unhurt, and I have a huge gash in my leg.”
She was trying to sound upbeat. For all of her talk about being unlucky, she always found a way to survive.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“Not that bad. I can walk and possibly run, but they did put six stitches in it. The arrow cut about a quarter inch of the outside muscle. So it hurts something awful, but I don’t have to lie around.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“What’d you mean?”
“I mean, you’re hurt so, why not just sit this one out? Ya know, the Death Days. Why not just sit out the next forty-eight hours?”
I don’t know what I was saying. I think I wanted validation for my feelings. Maybe I was worried about succeeding or about failure. I couldn’t tell what it was. My mind was so jumbled, and I still didn’t understand what it all truly meant. I wanted someone to tell me that it was okay to not want to fight.
Shannon released a nervous giggle. “Sit it out? I wish, but no one is spared in a war. If someone comes through that door down there…” She pointed to the exit. “And wants to kill me, they are not going to say, ‘Oh she’s hurt, let’s move on.’” Her face tightened as though her leg were bothering her. Once the feeling passed, she glanced at me with a bright smile. “Until everyone is safe, none of us are.”
My gaze roamed around the room, avoiding Shannon. I was ashamed. Why wasn’t I as strong as Shannon? Why couldn’t she carry one of the Master Keys?
“Have you ever felt safe? I mean, ever, like before you were in here?” I asked.
“Sure. I felt pretty safe in my house with my mom and brother. It did help that we all kept a baseball bat under each of our beds.” She laughed. “What about you?”
/> “I don’t remember… Before the Five-Day-R, when I was nine, I did. I don’t remember having nightmares before that, and I know I didn’t have my phobia back then.”
“You have a phobia? I do too. Can’t stand snakes, or ducks for that matter. Everyone understands the snakes, but they never get the ducks. But those little, green and brown bastards bite.”
The mood lightened a bit, and I was glad that she had mentioned the ducks even though it did seem like a weird phobia.
She rolled her body forward on the cot. “What are you afraid of?”
“Androids.”
“Eck, I can understand that. I hate them, too. Don’t you know they put people in them? Gross, right?” Her face scrunched up as though she could see one in her mind.
“I had one fall on me when I was nine. The helmet was off.”
Her face widened, and she leaned over to rub my arm. “Ooh, I can only imagine. You were nine. Yeah, I think I’d have a phobia, too.” Her eyebrows tightened. “Is that what’s wrong? Are you thinking about androids? If you are, don’t worry, only prisoners participate in the Death Days.”
“No, that’s not it.”
She stared at me for a long time. My eyes met hers, but I had a hard time holding my gaze.
“You… You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she said.
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to talk about anything. I wanted to go back into my little world where I had built a brick wall to keep people out. I didn’t care if they were good or bad people. I liked my wall. It kept me safe, but I wasn’t safe anymore.
I had to find a way to break it down, but removing the imaginary bricks frightened me. Each one had been placed there for a specific reason, even if I couldn’t remember why.
I stared at Shannon. Her face longed to know the truth.
“When I… When I lost my mom, it was really hard for me,” I started. “I was sent to live with another lady and taken away from my friends at school. I had no one. When I was afraid, I was just afraid. When I was lonely, I was alone. I stopped wanting to make friends. I didn’t want to love anyone.”
