The Volunteer

by J B Cantwell

  But the warning in his voice was due to the designation I was broadcasting and nothing else. Orange. How threatening I must look. I stared down, realizing that I was still in my fatigues. It might’ve been enough to him, to the store, to allow me to stay. Proof of service to my country.

  But Orange meant I was a criminal, or I had been before I’d been caught. My fatigues may as well have been a prison uniform for all he knew.

  I shook his hand off my arm.

  “I’m going.”

  I made for the exit, but I took my time, letting my fingers slide across the glass as I took one last look at the luxuries within.

  That’s what I would do, I immediately decided. When I was done in the Service, I would spend my prize money not on apartments and servants and white pants and yellow hair. I would spend it on these. These impossibly beautiful diamonds twinkling up at me from their clear, thick cases. Their fortresses.

  He followed me all the way out, but before I got too far, he grabbed my arm again. I turned back, annoyed now.

  “Don’t go above ground,” he said, his voice an urgent whisper. “Wait at the floral shop. Someone will find you. Leave no stone.”

  I frowned, surprised and alarmed. He knew. Somehow he knew who I was, what I was after, and why I was there at all.

  Another Volunteer?

  I looked down at his meaty fist holding my arm in its grasp. He released his grip as I nodded, suddenly terrified again.

  Who else could tell? Who else here knew?

  I felt all eyes on me, then. Everyone could see that I was an Orange, that Amanda was. Everyone knew what that meant about my past. A thief. An abuser. A murderer. Orange, Orange, Orange, flashing across their lenses, warning them to stay away.

  I made for the flower shop I had passed as I’d walked through the mall. It was situated on a corner, just waiting for those travelers who would be arriving home late, placating their brides with the impossibly fragrant stems. I paused, but there was no one inside. I took a few tentative steps, and when I saw the prices on the vases, I gasped. The prices for the flowers, while not as expensive as the diamonds, were astronomical. One hundred credits for a small bouquet of just three stems.

  Wow. It had never occurred to me that they might be so expensive. In fact, I had never even thought about flowers or considered them at all. There were no flowers in Brooklyn, or anywhere anymore. Or so I had thought. These must have been grown somewhere away from the city, somewhere safe from the stinging rain that pushed down the pollution from above as it fell from the sky.

  As I took another step further into the shop, a tinkling bell sounded above me. I looked around, and then heard him. An older man shuffled out from a swinging door in the back of the store.

  James Finton

  Designation: Orange

  “Help you?” he muttered under his breath. He had tiny flower petals scattered across his sleeves, a stark contrast to the scowl on his face.

  “Why …” I began, confused. “Why don’t you stay out here? Don’t people try to steal your roses?” I looked around the shop. There was nobody else inside, no one to keep an eye out for thieves.

  But then, maybe he was a thief, himself. I wondered how he had come to run a shop with his Orange designation.

  He smiled then, and his face turned from irritation to cunning.

  “They’re all chipped. Every last one. I have a special button under the counter. If someone buys flowers, I press the button and they can leave without alarm. But if they try to steal them when I’m in the back … well, let’s just say that the police in Grand Central aren’t very lenient with thieves.”

  I nodded, lowering my gaze.

  “Now, what do you want? Rush hour is only a half hour away.” He paused, wiping away the tiny petals from his arms. Then he looked up again. “Roses?”

  Suddenly his face fell, and he frowned at me, almost as if I were someone he had once known, but couldn’t remember my name. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re one of those girls. One of the ones from,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “the other side of the wall.”

  “I—I don’t know what you mean,” I lied, but I wasn’t sure why. I had been directed here by someone who was clearly a Volunteer. Was this man the same?

  “Get back here before they see you,” he said, gesturing toward the back door.

  I stood still, confused. I felt like the whole world was whirling around my head. The force of so much confusion was starting to make me dizzy.

  “Come on, you idiot.” The smile he had worn was gone. He held out his arm to guide me through the back door.

  I relented. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I had run here to hide, but the truth was that I needed to be found.

  I pushed open the swinging door and walked into the tiny back room. Here, the scent of the flowers was even more intense. On every shelf, beautiful little bouquets waited for new owners. I wondered how someone so moody could make such beautiful things.

  I leaned back against one of the work benches, feeling oddly relieved to be hidden, even though my chip’s signature might still be visible from the outside. I didn’t have much choice, though. There was nowhere for me to go, nowhere for me to escape to. I was as safe here as I was anywhere else in the station.

  James’ eyes became unfocused for a moment, and I realized he must be contacting someone through his lens. I wondered what he saw in there, in that private space in his lens that only he could see. What would interest a man like him?

  His eyes focused again, and he turned to me.

  “They’re on their way,” he said, shaking his head. “I hate this crap. Don’t know why I ever even got involved.”

  “Wait, so you’re … a Volunteer?”

  “For God’s sake, kid. Keep your voice down.”

  I looked around the tiny room, searching for a surveillance system. If we were being recorded, it was already too late. But I found nothing.

  He moved closer to me until he was close enough to whisper again.

  “I’m no Volunteer. But I do them favors from time to time. You’re not the first ‘Amanda Richardson’ I’ve seen in this store, if you follow me.”

  I did. She must have given her identity out before now to other Volunteers in trouble.

  “What’s in it for you?” I wondered aloud.

  He shook his head, exasperated. Then he raised his arms, indicating the shop around us. “All this. None of this would have been possible otherwise. I was a Red back in the eighties, and I made it through one tour with the Service, just far enough to upgrade my status to Orange. But I was done with all that. I wanted out, and I didn’t bother to sign up again. I needed to find another way to make a living. That was when your people found me.”

  He shook his head as he spoke. Like he couldn’t believe his own story. Or maybe he wished he had chosen differently back then. One more tour and he could’ve worked anywhere he wanted. Or, at least, he could have tried.

  “They set me up here in exchange for the occasional favor. The occasional runner. They’d had other Oranges in the workforce before me, and at this location there was an older lady who was already working here. She taught me the ropes. Then, one day, she just vanished. I asked my contact about her, but nobody knew where she had gone. I never found out what happened to her.”

  He stared off into space. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it might burst out of my chest.

  “There are Volunteers everywhere in this city,” he said, looking around. “Sure beats the burning plants, don’t you think? I’d much rather smell roses any day of the week.”

  It was quiet for a time. I didn’t really know what to say. I had to force myself not to sit in a corner and curl up into a tiny little ball. The stress of the past two hours had been overwhelming.

  That was when I heard it. The faint tinkling of chimes from the front room.

  My savior had arrived.

  Chapter Two

  Only it was someone I didn’t know. He walked ri
ght into the back room without bothering to inquire with James first.

  Andrew Stockman

  Designation: Green

  He stared down at me.

  “You’re Riley?”

  I nodded.

  He didn’t waste a moment. He held his stick to my chip and immediately removed all of the information about Amanda. I was a blank slate once again, and it was refreshing in that moment to be without the noise that the lens was always scattering around in my vision.

  I hesitated, waiting for him to give me my own identity back, to hold the stick to my head again. But he just stood there, putting his hands on his hips, glaring as if I’d done something terrible.

  “You’re on your own now.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Amanda is on the run.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “She wasn’t able to carry your identity any longer. She had to swap out with a different operative. She’s been followed all day, as you, and it was getting too close for comfort. She gave your information to one of our runners and headed back to the Stilts. Now we need to find a safe place for you to meet our runner so that we can set things right.”

  Followed. Amanda had been hunted all day under my identity, probably by Hannah.

  My stomach dropped.

  What did Hannah want with me? Was it as simple as pleasing our commanders? Maybe. Maybe she wanted to secure herself a higher position, as someone who wouldn’t find herself back on the battlefield. As someone who would most definitely survive the next two years of service.

  I wondered what I would do to ensure such a fate for myself. Though, I supposed, I had already. I wasn’t heading back to battle, after all, but to training once more.

  “You need to find a safe place to meet.” Andrew looked at me expectantly. He pushed up his eyeglasses over his nose and stared down.

  “Who, me?”

  I was confused. Where was a “safe place?”

  “I don’t know,” I tried. “Maybe back in one of the tunnels?”

  “No, that won’t be possible. You could be seen entering, and things are too dicey right now to risk that. They’re all on alert, looking for you. They may not know where the entrances to the Stilts are, not yet, but they’re on the hunt for you in the meantime. They’ll be after the runner first. He’s hiding out, waiting for instruction.”

  “Me? But why? I’ll be seen no matter what, won’t I?” My breath was coming hard and fast now, as if I’d already been running.

  “That will depend on you. You must choose a place, somewhere out of the way. Somewhere you can hide for longer than an hour in the terminal. It could take the operative some time to get to you.”

  I was starting to panic now.

  “Well, why don’t I just hide here?” I looked around. Seemed to me that this little shop was as good a place as any.

  “No way,” James piped up. “This place might be safe for you for a time, but if you think you’re sleeping back here …” He indicated the tiny room around us. “There’s no way. I’m not taking that kind of risk.”

  I wracked my brain, trying to think of a place, somewhere I could run to with no designation attached to my signature. I would be invisible.

  Only not.

  Slowly, the idea came to me, and I pushed it angrily away. That would never work. She would tell. I knew she would tell.

  But I couldn’t stay in Grand Central forever. Eventually, the stores would close, one by one. And then what? There would be police monitoring the few who might be left, waiting for a late train, perhaps.

  There was no way.

  “I don’t know where I could go,” I lied.

  It was so far away, anyway. I would never make it. Not without a designation.

  “Listen, girl,” Andrew turned back to me. “This is up to you. The Service is after you, and we don’t know why. Probably, they suspect that you’re working with the Volunteers, though if they had proof, they would have arrested you by now. But it won’t be long before they find out if you don’t get yourself out of here and someplace safe to wait. As soon as you’re caught with no designation, that will be the end for you.”

  “Why don’t you just give me back Amanda’s then?” I asked, starting to panic. Would it be easier to hide with a known designation? I knew that Alex wouldn’t be the one to find me. He would never do that. Not now.

  But I didn’t know who else might be working on my case. They would surely be less lenient if they were to capture me.

  Either way, I was in big trouble. Either I was hunted as Amanda, or I could test my fate on my own, digitally invisible.

  “I can’t give you back her designation, and you know why.”

  Yes, I did. Exactly why.

  And I knew where I needed to go, the one place I could hide out and not be discovered.

  Home.

  I ran. Nothing on either side of me but the wall and abandoned buildings, hidden behind where most of the people in the city spent their time. It was my best chance.

  Every once in a while I would stop, ducking into a doorway, looking around like a hunted animal.

  That’s what I was, after all.

  But nobody came. Nobody saw me. The streets in the back were empty. The bustle of the city was just a block away, but it felt like a mile. It was so dark where I was, back there against the wall. The brightness of the city beyond was nothing more than a prick of light in the distance.

  I hid, trying to catch my breath. I was nearly there. Just ten more blocks and I’d be at the station and then on my way back to Brooklyn.

  I dug through my pockets and found my credit card. Would it be traced back to me? Would the machine even work without matching my designation to the card?

  Yes, it would work, I remembered. When I had been the one to buy all the groceries for my mom and I, I had used her card for years with no trouble.

  I turned the card over in my fingers. It looked no different than any other credit card I had handled. Maybe it wasn’t linked. Maybe I would be safe.

  I stuffed it back into my pocket and peeked out from my hiding place. No one was around. No police. No residents. It was a ghost town back here up against the wall. Maybe no one wanted the reminder that the ocean could push up against it anytime, breach the concrete barrier, and come flooding into the city. Drowning it.

  I darted out from behind the alcove and ran, just jogging now. I was tired, not so much from all the running, but mentally exhausted, too. I was wiped out from the terror I had felt more than once today. The hopelessness. It was hard to lift my feet, one after the other.

  But I did lift my feet, and eventually, I made it down under the bridge. I wiped my neck and face with the back of my shirtsleeve and caught my breath as I made my way toward City Hall.

  It would be a miracle if I wasn’t seen. City Hall would surely be swarming with cops.

  But what I had forgotten was that it was still rush hour. There were police, yes, but there were more travelers. I found a group and hid myself within their numbers. Luckily, I was shorter than most of them; something I had always hated about myself that was saving me now.

  Nobody said a word. Nobody seemed to care about me at all.

  It was just me and a thousand commuters, gradually making my way home.

  Chapter Three

  The train ride was terrifying. Scarier, even, than battle. My nerves were frazzled, and my eyes darted from left to right and back again, trying to assess the situation, trying to see if anyone was looking.

  There were people all around me. Anyone might’ve turned me in. Anyone might’ve seen that my designation was gone.

  I did as I’d done on the street and huddled inside a large group of people standing up on the train back to Brooklyn. Everyone’s eyes were unfocused as they watched the events of the day on their lenses.

  Maybe nobody was looking at me at all. Maybe I would have a chance.

  I carefully wiped the sweat from my forehead and neck, which was still running down my skin,
making sure not to jostle anyone, making sure not to draw attention. It ran down my back beneath my fatigues.

  I closed my eyes, and for the first time in my life, I prayed.

  Dear God. Please get me out of this alive.

  The train rattled along the tracks beneath our feet. The compartment swayed with the movement, and I gripped the bar I was hanging onto tighter.

  I’ll do whatever you want, I thought desperately.

  What would God want?

  Just get me there.

  After twenty impossibly long minutes, the train began to slow.

  This was it. Time to run. Not for the first time, I was grateful to Chambers, grateful that he had repaired my leg with my first phasing. That, along with the physical ability to test my strength that I’d been granted, and I could run faster than any other woman I had ever known. At least, anybody who hadn’t been through a phasing, themselves.

  The brakes of the train screeched the compartment to a halt, and the doors opened. Above them, the counter started ticking down from ten. I pushed toward the exit with the rest of the group, head down, hoping that their eyes were not on me, but instead on the platform beyond.

  I considered what I should do, which direction I should take. I could try to keep hiding in the group or I could hide behind a pillar, wait for everyone to exit, then go down to the exit on my own.

  I looked around the station and realized that I didn’t really have a choice; there were security cameras everywhere. Maybe they weren’t active. Hopefully. But I couldn’t afford to take any chances. I would have to stay with the group, hide within their numbers and escape when the time was right.

  Feet moved swiftly down the staircase, and I struggled to keep up. I moved my position to the back of the group. All eyes were pointed ahead now, souls yearning for home. Nobody looked back.

  But that would hardly protect me. I looked up again at the eyes along the ceiling, wondering if they were looking at me right now. The age and condition of the station on the Brooklyn side gave me a sliver of hope. Just like there weren’t any police patrolling the Brooklyn streets, it was unlikely that the cameras were even turned on, much less looked after.