by J B Cantwell
And Hannah.
It had to be Hannah.
“She’s being followed,” I said. “That’s the only reason that makes any sense. She wouldn’t go back to my mom’s place as far as I can tell. That would be suicide.”
My mother may be sober now, and even loving, but I knew that if she found out any laws were being broken, she would use the information to her advantage, or maybe even to try and help. There was enough suspicion revolving around me already. Her story might ring true to the right set of ears.
Peter moved around to behind the counter and took out a rag, pretending to wipe down the sparkling clean countertops, one last chore for the night. Or at least it would look like that to anyone peering in through the shades.
I went on.
“Where would she go if she was being followed? Are there any hiding spots where we might find her?”
“Well, she wouldn’t have gone back to the Stilts. She knows better than to do that. The biggest problem is that she has your chip’s information. She has no way to become invisible now, no matter what she does. Even if she removes your information from her own chip, as long as she has the stick reader with her, it will display your signal to anyone who might be watching. If Hannah is in fact on your trail, it will still appear that it’s you she’s following.”
My stomach sank. “Where would she go? I mean, where would Amanda go?”
Peter stopped wiping the counter for a moment, towering over me as I sat on the floor of the kitchen.
“She’ll try to lose her, first of all. But she won’t ditch your chip information; you’re too important. Even if Hannah corners her, Amanda is fast and light on her feet, with a mean sucker punch to boot.”
“Yeah, and Hannah might not realize what it is she’s supposed to be tracking. She probably still thinks it’s me that’s running around.”
Hopefully.
“Well, you can’t stay here,” Peter said. “This is an important meeting spot for the Volunteers on the inside. There’s a tunnel back there, but it’s only used in emergencies.”
“And you don’t think this is an emergency?”
He snorted.
“It may be, but that doesn’t mean it’s best for you to stay here. We need to find Amanda to make the switch. It’s crucial.”
I felt tears of panic welling up in my eyes. What could I do?
“Where should I go, then?” I asked, trying not to sound too hoarse. Regardless, he picked up on my reaction.
“You need to get it together,” he said. “You have an important mission right now. Start acting like it. You’re a soldier.”
I blinked as the tears ran down my face, but his words embarrassed me, and I wiped my eyes and cheeks with the back of my sleeve.
Okay.
“Tell me what I should do.”
“Go to the entrance you were at with Jonathan last. If she comes here, I’ll send her there.”
I took a deep breath and started to stand up.
“No,” he reprimanded. “Not yet. Crawl to the back of the kitchen, and I’ll let you out.”
I did as I was told, and Peter turned out the dim light in the front of the diner. Then, he followed me and opened up the back door. Beyond, I could see that the city was now growing dark. It would have been easier to hide if I hadn’t been broadcasting Amanda’s information. But I had no choice.
He looked down at me. “Good luck. Stay down.”
I nodded, rising to my feet and setting off at a run. I sprinted between the buildings on the back street running parallel to Central Park West, rushing so that I wouldn’t be seen by anybody walking by, relieved that I didn’t see a single police officer along the way.
I looked up at the buildings on either side. A few of the windows were lit. There were some who lived in Manhattan who couldn’t afford the high prices of the buildings away from the edges of the wall. Those people paid a high premium for the relative safety that the wall delivered. At least they knew that their buildings wouldn’t be reclaimed by the sea, just like the Stilts had been. Though, those very buildings dominated their views, ever the reminder that the sea was very close, too close for comfort.
I wondered if anyone was watching out of their windows, or even cared.
I hoped not. I hoped that a flash of orange on my way uptown would be ignored by anyone who happened to be looking out into the gathering darkness. I had no other choice but to run for it.
My mad dash to the station seemed to last forever, and I was grateful for the single phasing my body had been put through several months before, giving me speed and healing my leg injury from when I’d broken it as a kid.
But unlike the brainwashing of the super-soldiers the military had been creating, they had left my mind alone. I had managed to escape with the best of both worlds, just strong enough to outstrip many in a footrace, but not altered enough to be brainwashed.
My stomach dropped as I imagined again the man who had been following me, so tall, it seemed, from a distance. He could probably outrun me, no problem, with legs so long.
I rounded the corner, and the station entrance came into view. I flew down the stairs. Once inside the tunnel, I knew my identity would be shielded from view, or at least jumbled, by the concrete.
But it was dark down below, even more so than it had been when I’d been here with Jonathan earlier in the day. I only took a couple steps inside, and instantly I couldn’t see a thing.
Then, to my surprise and great relief, a headlamp clicked on a few feet away from where I stood. Its wearer pointed the lamp toward his face, identifying himself. But it wasn’t who I was expecting to see. It wasn’t Amanda. It wasn’t Jonathan.
It was Alex.
Chapter Nine
I froze.
Suddenly, I recognized him as the man who’d been following me. Something about his silence now, though, gave me pause, made me feel like a mouse caught in a trap.
I nearly turned and ran the other direction, though my body and mind screamed at me to stay, to wrap my arms around his middle and try to make everything that had happened in the past year go away.
But what was he playing at, following me all day? He was dangerous to me now. He had stayed far behind me, just far enough back to make his signature invisible to my lens. If he wanted to see me, why hadn’t he just come right up to me, out in the open?
Maybe the worst had happened. Maybe they had succeeded in turning him against me entirely. It didn’t matter that I’d saved his life. It didn’t matter that I’d led that team out of the battle for Edmonton. Someone wanted something from me, was watching, waiting for me to give my game away. And now they had sent my best friend to track me down like a dog.
Shivers of fear ran down my spine.
Then I heard his voice.
“Riley, don’t go.”
Too dangerous. Everything was just too dangerous. Stay or go, my life was in danger. Every step I took was monitored.
I wondered what would have happened if I had never joined the Service, if I hadn’t fallen for their lies, reaching out for a cash prize so large that it was ridiculous. False.
And what would’ve happened to him? To us?
I paused, unsure.
“Why didn’t you make yourself known today?” I asked, still poised to leap out of the tunnel.
“Because I didn’t realize it was you I was following, not until later. They had me on Amanda’s trail today. She’s caused alarm with the Service, and they’ve gathered a few of us together to search the streets for her. You’re in danger here. You need to wipe your chip.”
I paused, frowning. “What? How do you know about that?”
“Riley, you’re broadcasting Amanda’s designation, and I’ve been hunting Amanda all day.” He took a step toward me, his hulking, unnatural frame towering over me. “Hunting you all day.”
“And what are you supposed to do once you find Amanda?”
“Just bring her back to headquarters. That’s all I know. But it can’t be go
od. You need to wipe your chip.”
“I can’t. I don’t have a stick with me. Do you?”
His eyes grew wide as he realized neither of us could wipe away Amanda’s information. I was stuck as her until we could find her again.
“Oh, my God,” he said. “They can see us, you know. They have a map of everyone in the city. They know where we are right now. The concrete helps to jumble our signatures, but still …” He looked past me, shining his lamp up the stairs to the street above. “We have to get you out of here.”
My breathing started coming hard and fast. A map? I figured there was a way for Hannah to be following me, but it hadn’t occurred to me that they had a map of everybody in Manhattan.
But they did. And wherever the real Amanda was now, they knew it. And they thought it was me.
And they thought I was her.
Suddenly, every sound seemed to echo in my brain. They would be coming for us, wouldn’t they? Any second now, they would descend and take me away, crowning Alex king for his spectacular find. He hadn’t found the real Amanda, but he’d found something even better: the girl from home, turned terrorist by a handful of dirty Volunteers, hunted down and turned in by the crafted Prime.
“Why you?” I asked. “Why would they bring you all the way back home to track me down?”
He sighed. “Don’t you get it? I wasn’t here to track you down. It’s Amanda I’ve been looking for this whole time. I didn’t realize what you’d done until I saw your face earlier today. That’s why I kept my distance. I wanted to give you a chance to escape. And to see if you really were in contact with Amanda. With the Volunteers.”
I shook my head. “It still doesn’t make any sense.”
“It doesn’t need to make sense. You need to go now. They could be here any minute, and once they find out that the two of you have traded identities …”
“But where? Where can I even go? If you’re right and they’re watching us right now, then it’s going to look like you just let Amanda go. And you’re … you. You’re huge. There’s no way that she would be able to get by you, to beat you in any way. You could crack her in half. They’ll know you let ‘her’ go.”
“That’s not true.” He pushed me closer to the opening of the staircase. “Amanda’s supposed to be fast, isn’t she?”
I paused.
“So run. Go somewhere else that you can disappear. You’re nearly invisible here, but they watched us both come down those stairs before we got to the inside of the station.”
“It still doesn’t make sense. Why you?”
He grabbed me by the shoulders and stared hard into my eyes. “I think they want you. They’ve got Hannah on you now, but I’m sure I’m next; she’s failed to produce any proof that you’re working against the Service. They think I’ll be able to bring you in, that you’ll trust me with all of your secrets or something. You know, because we know each other from home.”
I shook my head, starting to pull away, but his grip on my shoulders held fast.
“I won’t bring you in. I would never do that. Not after everything. But I can’t protect you here.”
He pulled me in closer, close enough that I could see the blue crystalline of his eyes behind his headlamp. His grip loosened, and he moved one hand to my cheek. He leaned down and put his lips to mine.
It was a curious feeling, and the first time he had initiated a kiss. Alex had been my best friend for as long as I could remember, and I had never really thought of him as anything more than a friend. At least, not until we were split apart by the Service. There had been that other kiss, the first one I had planted on him, trying desperately to bring him back to life, to wake him up from the hell that he was living in.
But it hadn’t worked. His lips had stayed slack, rubber.
Then, at the battle for Edmonton, I’d kissed him as they were getting ready to lift him in a helicopter to a hospital. I hadn’t expected it, the warmth that I’d felt as our lips met. He’d been my friend, and only my friend, for so long. But not anymore.
And here we were again. And he was himself. Not brainwashed. Not broken.
How?
I let myself relax for a moment, enjoying the still-new feeling of warmth as it spread through my body. I stood up on my tip toes to reach him, not wanting our lips to part.
Then, in an instant, it was over. He was pulling away, talking to me, saying things I couldn’t understand because my ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton.
That kiss.
He turned me around, facing me away from him.
“You have to go now. Please. I’ll come up with some story. Anything.”
I was having a hard time catching my breath. Where would I go? Not back to Peter’s. Not back to the Stilts. Not unless I wanted this to all be over. Not unless I gave up completely.
Then it came to me. A building. Somewhere busy. Somewhere too busy, especially at this hour.
“Grand Central. Send her there when she comes.”
“Okay, okay. I will.” He stared into my eyes again, that new intensity running like fire between us. He turned me around by the shoulders, whispering in my ear.
“Now, run.”
EPISODE 2
Chapter One
I was lost in a sea of people, the great mass of us all undulating up and down as the waves of the ocean might. It seemed that every movement, every footstep, was headed in the same direction, the people of New York filing into Grand Central Station as if they were all trapped in a whirlpool, spinning down, down, into the depths of the water.
They all had somewhere to go, but I had reached my destination.
Two blocks away, I had forced myself to stop running, to slow my legs, to wipe the sweat from my forehead and neck. To look … normal. It had worked. No one had seen me, no guards, no police. At least no one on the ground. Somewhere in the distance, perhaps high up in one of the city buildings, someone was looking at me. Watching me. One girl. Nothing more than a dot on their map.
I slipped inside the building with the others. And then it was me and a thousand people, all jostling for position, everyone desperate to be the first in line.
In line? To where?
I had to move, but I found myself stuck, feet planted in the middle of the crowded train station. I slowly turned around, taking it all in, heart pounding.
All I had to do now was wait. For Amanda? For some other Volunteer? For the police? The Service? Some unknown foe, ready to throw a bag over my head and drag me out of the station?
Breathe.
I needed to look busy. I had the card I’d been given by the Service, which had been loaded up with a couple thousand credits, intended to serve as a reward to be spent on our break home from war. But it barely had any money left on it, and even though it didn’t have my name inscribed upon it, I felt sure that if I used it, I would be leading the authorities right to me.
I had to move.
I forced my feet forward, my army boots squeaking quietly upon the highly polished floor. I paused, unsure of where to go first. I could only stand in the middle of the terminal for so long without calling attention to myself. I looked up at the train schedules. I didn’t have enough money to take a train, and besides, my signal would broadcast loud and clear again if I were to leave the station. Amanda’s signal, her designation that had temporarily been activated in my chip. A lie.
A sign directed me toward a mall down below, but I paused, unsure. I remembered the volume of the software systems used in these types of places to call you out by name, beckoning you to come into their stores. To buy, buy, buy.
But I had little choice. I decided I would zip around and duck into shops quickly so that the systems wouldn’t have a chance to call out my name. Amanda’s name.
As I descended the stairs, I soon realized with great relief that the recognition systems were disabled here. Or, at least, the advertising voices beckoning potential shoppers into their stores were silenced. It could have been that, though quiet, th
ey were still keeping tabs on every consumer that walked their way. Perhaps the matrix of my movements within the station were broadcast out. Maybe we had been wrong, all of us, to think that I could hide here. Anywhere.
But I breathed a sigh of relief nonetheless.
There was no need for me to hurry now. No need to rush. I was as safe as I could be. As safe as any Orange could be, at least, because Orange was Amanda’s designation.
I started with just standing outside of the shop windows, gazing into the interiors, temporarily dazzled by the variety of wares. Chocolates in a hundred flavors. Toys for children organized into great piles of stuffed bears and train sets. And diamonds. So many sparkling, unbelievably beautiful diamonds. I had never seen one up close before, and I found myself standing in front of the store, mouth agape.
I wanted to see more.
I entered the store, and walked to one of the counters where no one seemed to be working. I just wanted to look.
Rings. Necklaces. Bracelets. Watches. Everything seemed to be adorned with the sparkling gems. My troubles seemed to fade away as I looked at the stones, suddenly wanting nothing more than to wear them, to wear all of them.
I was surprised to feel a hand grab my bicep, and my stomach sank as I realized I had been caught. They had found me. It had only been a matter of time. I should have chosen somewhere else to hide.
I turned abruptly, ready to run, and slipped from the grip of my attacker. My eyes flitted to the exit, and I nearly tripped over him as I made for the door. He grabbed me again.
“Don’t come back,” he said quietly into my ear with a firm note in his voice, partnered by discretion so as to not scare off the other, more serious, shoppers. “We do not allow Oranges in the store.”
I stared at him for a moment, confused. Then, I realized, and I nearly laughed with relief. This wasn’t a police officer, not a sergeant in the Service, not a Prime come to take me in. The smile that crept over my features must have confused him.
He was nothing but a store security guard. Big, for sure. Maybe he had been a Prime in his day, too.
