“Let me.” Dani had already stripped to her underwear and tank top. “I’m tougher than you.” Without waiting for a response, she grabbed hold of the rope and started her descent.
Two meters down, she reached the place where the cement angled steeply from the side. From there she stepped off the ladder and walked down, using only her hands on the ladder to slow her progress. Finally, she reached the edge of the cement.
“Punk bucket,” she called. “Way more water than I thought. At least five times as big as the pool. Maybe more.” Grabbing onto one of the strange white pipes, she knelt on the sloped cement and peered over. “It’s hardly moving on the sides, though, so I think we’re good.”
She balanced again on the ladder where it dropped over the water, and Reese backtracked to the middle of the grate to keep Dani in view for a few more seconds as her body sank below the slanted cement. If there wasn’t enough ladder to reach the water, they were all going to be disappointed.
A loud splash sent terror through Reese’s chest, but a second later, Dani’s voice echoed up to them from the deep. “It’s great! Come on down! The ladder almost reaches the water. No worries about getting back up.”
The rest of the crew needed no further invitation. Jaxon was next, and Reese followed, first shucking off her jeans and sandals, her heart pounding with equal parts fear and anticipation. The lower she climbed the cooler it was. She could almost forget that seconds before she’d been melting under the hot sun.
As Reese stepped off the ladder and onto the sloping cement, she brushed one of the protruding white pipes. Air was coming out of it, emitting a smell she couldn’t identify, and the aroma intensified as she climbed over the last bit of cement, stepped back onto the ladder, and swung unsteadily into the air.
Below her, Jaxon jumped the rest of the way, landing with a splash into the water. He was immediately caught up in the current, but with a few strong strokes he made it to the calmer water at the edges where Dani was swimming lazily on her back.
The sloping cement was open underneath, where huge iron bars jutted from the walls, supporting it. It puzzled Reese that the builders had included the extra cement at all. What was its purpose? Going down the rest of the ladder felt like entering a huge cavern that she’d once seen on the Teev.
She was getting ready to jump into the water when she noticed the cylinders—dozens of them, each thirty centimeters long with the circumference of a dinner plate. The cylinders were secured to the underside of the cement, directly under the pipes that jutted out on top. What is that about?
Above Reese, Lyssa was already climbing down, her bare feet approaching quickly, so Reese jumped, careful to angle her fall toward the calmer outer edges of the water. She hit and went under, her body tingling all over at the sudden change of temperature. The water was cool, but not icy, and for a moment of pure bliss, she floated on her back, moving her arms lazily to keep in place.
No one had ever done this before. No one but them.
Eagle was the last one down, and he paused for longer than Reese had on the ladder, studying the cylinders. He reached over and put a hand on one. “These things are some kind of membrane,” he called down. He sniffed his hand and then shrugged before carefully climbing down to the end of the rope and sliding into the water. Even then, he held onto his glasses with one hand as he swam awkwardly in Reese’s direction.
“Anything dripping from those canisters?” he asked. “I can’t see well enough to tell.”
Reese studied them for a moment before nodding. “Yeah. Clear stuff. Just every now and then. A drop or two. Must be chemicals. They have to treat the water to make it safe to drink.” Now the sloping cement seemed to make more sense.
Jaxon closed the meter separating him from Reese. “But they treat the water inside the station before it goes into the pumps. This must be something else.”
“Maybe.” Reese glanced over at Dani, who had swum to the far wall, peering into what they could see of the opening where the rush of water entered the transfer station. “Anyway, I always wondered why they put in a grate at all.”
“Leaving it open to the air helps the flavor.” Eagle accidentally splashed a little water on his glasses and scowled in frustration. “Least that’s what they said in science class when we studied water filtration.”
Reese didn’t remember that, but she trusted Eagle to have been paying attention. She glanced back up at the green canisters. “You think the chemicals will hurt us?”
Eagle considered her question. “I doubt it. They’re very tiny drops. It’s probably just something else to make it taste better.”
“Hey, come look at this!” Dani shouted at them.
Reese let herself drift partially into the main current, gliding along toward Dani. Jaxon reached out and pushed her to the side of the opening as they neared. “Careful,” he warned. “The current’s stronger here.”
Reese pointed her feet forward, landing against the cement wall with a jolt.
A fine wire mesh covered the six-meter hole where the water entered the transfer station. Reese vaguely remembered hearing something in school about a series of filtration grates as the water came down the man-made canal from the closest river. Even so, slippery bits of debris had gathered along the mesh.
“Fish, here?” Jaxon said.
Sure enough, small fish about the length of Reese’s longest finger lay pinned against the wire mesh by the rush of water. She peered closer to see them nibbling at the debris.
“Look at this one!” Dani exclaimed, pointing. Just below the water level, a fish had broken away from the mesh. It was almost transparent but glowing with some kind of light.
Apparently even Eagle could see it. “Weird,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought it was big enough to fight the current.”
“What do you mean? It shouldn’t be here at all.” Dani reached toward the glowing fish, which didn’t seem in the least bothered by their presence.
“Could have been tiny eggs when they came down the canal,” Jaxon said. “Then they grew here.”
“They’re not like any fish I ever seen on the Teev.” Eagle stared so intently that the bottom rims of his glasses skimmed the water.
“You even seeing them?” Dani teased. She touched the fish and immediately pulled back. “Saca!” she cursed.
“It bite you?” Reese asked.
“No. It tingles all over like some kind of smeg flush.”
Reese had never tried smeg, but her dad used the drug every time his new girlfriend came over. The way he zoned out before hustling Cecelia into his bedroom frightened her.
Lyssa started to touch the fish, but Jaxon grabbed her hand. “Better not,” he said, jerking his head at Dani. “We should wait to make sure there aren’t any side effects.”
He glanced up at the cylinders as he spoke, and goosebumps rippled across Reese’s shoulders.
“Gee, thanks,” Dani muttered.
Suddenly, Reese wanted more than anything to climb out of the water and get away from the transfer station completely. But Lyra started a water fight, and in the ensuing fun, Reese forgot the feeling. They swam the length of the cavern, reveling in their secret and the accomplishment of being there.
All too soon, Eagle was telling them it was time to go, and Reese climbed up the ladder first. She was glad Dani volunteered to be the last one out.
The heat of the sun felt good after being in the cool water. The grate was warm against Reese’s skin now instead of searing as it had been earlier, which meant the sun would soon set and she’d need to get home in case her father wanted her. She spread out over the grate to soak in the warmth as Eagle and Jaxon used the magglue to temporarily secure the cut piece of metal. By the time the boys finished with the glue, she was dry enough to pull on her jeans.
Thankfully, the car that had been parked outside Jaxon’s house was gone when they arrived on their street. Jaxon waved at her and headed inside, walking tall and grinning wide, as if there hadn’t been
a visitor at all. Reese opened the door to her own house, and the smell of nuked food—a sure sign she wouldn’t be home alone tonight—made her stomach growl.
As she walked into the room that served as both living room and kitchen, her dad’s girlfriend, Cecelia, looked away from the three-dimensional Teev figures moving above the table. “Hey, Reese, where you been? Why’s your hair wet?”
Reese shrugged. “We were playing a game. Is my dad home?”
“In the shower. You hungry? I got some chicken. Your favorite.”
“Thanks.” Reese grabbed one of the flat readymeal containers from the sack on the counter, slid it into the narrow opening of the microwave, and punched start. As she waited for the food, she turned her eyes to the holographic Teev projection. From her vantage point, she could only see the sides of the characters, but they looked real. The only apparent difference between the Teev feed and real life was the smaller size. At school they had Teevs that projected life-sized characters, and teachers constantly used these to present their lessons. She’d grown used to seeing the teacher talking at the front of the class while simultaneously working on grades in the back of the room.
Cecelia loved to watch romances, and two characters were kissing passionately on the screen. Reese couldn’t understand why that was interesting, but she couldn’t help thinking about Jaxon and wondering if some day they might want to kiss like that.
Leaving the meal to cook, Reese grabbed her sketchbook and pencils from her room, returning as the readymeal glided out of its slot. It wasn’t really chicken, according to her science teacher, but Reese had never tasted real chicken, so it made no difference to her. She cleared a spot in the weeks of discarded food wrappers on the table and sat in the chair opposite Cecelia. Her eyes avoided the Teev as she ate with one hand and drew with the other. First, she wanted to capture the underside of the grate and the strange canisters. She was glad she’d “borrowed” the colored pencils from school because they made her drawings much more realistic. She was about to fill in the water when she felt her dad enter the room.
“Hey,” he said. “You guys better not have eaten everything. I’m starved.”
The knot Reese hadn’t even realized existed in her stomach relaxed. He hadn’t been drinking. Not yet. As Cecilia jumped up to cook his food, he paused at Reese’s shoulder. For a moment, she was terrified he would recognize the transfer station and forbid her to go there, but his attention locked on the kissing couple. With a scowl, he barked a command, and the Teev feed changed from romance to the news, which was almost as bad, but not quite. Grownups were so boring.
Carefully, Reese turned the page of her sketchbook, hiding the transfer station. She concentrated on eating for a while, but before she could finish, the drawing she’d begun earlier that afternoon beckoned like a promise she had to keep. Before she could help herself, her fork lay discarded as she turned the pages to the quick sketch of the man who’d visited Jaxon’s house.
She frowned at it. No, it wasn’t quite right. The face had been wider and more square. She erased the old lines and new ones began to form under her pencil. That was better—just as she had “sketched” him in her mind. She shaded in the too-smooth forehead that hinted at Nuface therapy. Next, she enhanced the deep-set blue eyes under the thick brows, followed by thinning the lips slightly and adding an oddly pointed chin that made him seem cruel. The nose wasn’t right either, but flattening it added the distinct toughness she remembered. To finish, she shaded in the shock of medium gray hair with a prominent widow’s peak.
Perfect. The most telling thing about the man was the fleshy cheeks, rounded with rich foods, which meant he didn’t belong in the Coop. He was slumming. He wasn’t ugly, but something about him made her feel upset. Maybe it was because she knew how much his visit had bothered Jaxon.
Cecelia brought her father’s meal and squeezed in between them at the table, cuddling up to her father as he began forking down his food. Feeling crowded, Reese arose to go to the other side, and as she did, her eyes were drawn by what was streaming on the Teev.
She gasped. It was him! The man she was drawing. No mistaking those eyes.
Both her dad and Cecelia looked in her direction. “What?” barked her dad, his tone annoyed.
Reese tried to clasp the sketchbook to her chest, but he was already reaching for it. His strong fingers pulled the book from her. He stared at the picture and then back up at the Teev. “Where did you see him?”
“I-I didn’t.” She pointed to the man on the Teev. “I mean, just now.”
Her father’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Reese.”
She shrugged. “It’s just a picture.” Even as she spoke, the man disappeared from the Teev.
“Tell me. Now.” Her father’s voice was slow but sharp, reminding her of nails and broken glass. “Where did you see that clud-faced pus bag?”
Pus bag? That meant he was an Elite who held an important job in the CORE, and that Reese was right about him slumming. She’d have to answer her father or spend the night regretting it. And what harm could there be in telling him anyway? “He was at Jaxon’s today.”
“Did you actually see him?”
Reese shook her head.
“But he was there.” His words weren’t a question but demanded confirmation.
“Jaxon saw him.”
A smile curving his lips, her father tore the drawing from her precious sketchbook, and Reese almost felt that he tore out a piece of her soul. She had three other books, but they were crammed full of drawings already.
“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” Cecelia looked from Reese to her father. She didn’t know about Reese’s flashes or sketches or whatever they were, and Reese had hoped she’d never know. She wanted Cecelia to like her, not consider her a freak.
“Later.” Her dad went back to eating, his eyes no longer on the Teev but fixed on her drawing. The intensity of his stare made Reese uncomfortable.
Abandoning the rest of her dinner, she slipped away to her bedroom, the door barely clearing the bed as she pushed it open. Sinking to her mattress, she waited until her heartbeat slowed before carefully redrawing the man, this time adding better shading.
Once it was finished, she relaxed. Good. Now she could rest and forget him. Eventually, the drawing would fade from her mind. She hoped it was the last time he’d visit the Coop.
REESE’S RELIEF WAS short-lived. Barely a week later, she and Jaxon were swimming at the transfer station when he abruptly insisted that he had to go home. He’d done the same thing for the past two days, and Reese was a little annoyed, but she left the other kids and went with him because he was acting strange, and it worried her. Arriving on their street, they discovered a silver enforcer shuttle and an ambulance jammed into the space in front of his house. Two EMTs carried a sheet-covered form on a stretcher to the ambulance.
“What’s going on?” Jaxon asked the nearest enforcer. Panic made his voice rise at the end, sending needles of fear into Reese’s gut.
“Beat it, kid. Take your nose somewhere else.”
Outrage filled Reese, overcoming her fear of the clipper. “He lives here.” She wanted to add some of her dad’s more colorful adjectives, but enforcers—or clippers as most disrespectfully called them—on the Coop beat were known to tag kids with their mood-altering temper lasers just for fun.
“Not anymore, you don’t.” The man gave them an unpleasant smirk.
“Leave him alone.” This from another enforcer, a wide-shouldered man with red hair, a freckled complexion, and a slight accent Reese couldn’t place. Obviously, he wasn’t from around here. He thumbed toward the shuttle, and the other cop left.
“I’m Enforcer Tennant,” he said to Jaxon. “Look, I’m really sorry, kid, but your mom’s dead.”
Jaxon’s mouth opened. “No, no . . . she can’t . . .” He looked as if someone had punched him in the gut, the color bleeding from his tanned face.
“We think it was a robbery.” The cl
ipper laid a comforting hand on Jaxon’s shoulder. “We’ll find the guy who did this. For now, you need to come with me. We’ll get you fixed up with a place to stay.”
As the man led him away, tears ran unchecked down Jaxon’s face. Reese wanted to run after him, to put her arms around him and tell him it was going to be okay. But it wasn’t okay. Not for him or for her. His mom was gone. That meant he’d be taken away, and Reese would lose Jaxon. Kids whose parents died always left and never came back.
Reese couldn’t find her breath. She couldn’t call out. She couldn’t even cry. She couldn’t do anything but watch as the enforcer closed the door of his shuttle with Jaxon inside and drove down the street.
Blindly, Reese headed for home. Jaxon is gone, gone, gone. He promised we’d leave together, but now I’ll never see him again. She wept for him and for herself. Now that they’d finally come, she couldn’t stop the flood of tears. Why hadn’t she at least told Jaxon how sorry she was that his mom was dead?
No one was home at her house. She sank onto a chair next to the table, staring at nothing. Her wet hair dried, but not her eyes. She was still sitting there in the dark when her father stumbled into the room and flipped on a light. She could smell the stench of sauce on his breath.
He took one look at her, sneering a little as he said, “What’s wrong with you?”
Inwardly, she cringed. “Jaxon,” she whispered. “They took him away. His mom’s dead.”
For a full three seconds her father didn’t speak, but his eyes seemed to grow two sizes. “When?” he choked out.
“A few hours ago. She was okay before we went to play. I think someone killed her.”
“Get your stuff. We’re leaving.” Just that fast, her dad wasn’t drunk anymore. He grabbed a large duffel from the closet and began shoving in food.
Reese jumped to her feet. “What? No! Jaxon might come back. I have to wait for him.”
“Now!” He slammed a cupboard just as Cecelia walked into the kitchen.
“Gerry,” she said, running to him, “what’s wrong?”
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