The Liberty Box Trilogy

by C. A. Gray

  Did Kate look like this once? I found myself wondering.

  I sensed Alec approach beside me before I saw him in my peripheral vision. He lowered his voice and murmured disdainfully, “You really think I envy these cattle, do you?”

  I glanced at him. “If you have such a low opinion of them, why are you risking your neck to save one?”

  “Brenda Halfpenny isn’t one of them anymore,” he returned, unable to hide his expression of disgust. “If we told most of them the truth, they not only wouldn’t believe us, they’d turn us over to the agents straightaway as Enemies of State. And they’d be absolutely convinced they were doing the right thing.”

  I thought about this, watching face after face with that gentle, totally trusting expression. I wondered if he was right. If it was impossible to save them, then how did any of them wake up?

  It took an hour and fifteen minutes on foot to reach the bullet trains. When we arrived, Nick surreptitiously passed each of us an ID card, formerly belonging to a government official. Mine once belonged to a balding man in his late 50s. “Official Representative for the Second Province,” it read.

  Nick explained, “These are how you get on the bullet train. Only approved workers are allowed to ride it.” Then he added with a touch of dryness in his voice, “It’s not for the unwashed masses, you understand.”

  “Where did these come from?” I asked Kenny, who was closest to me.

  “Same way we get everything. We stole them a long time ago, from some of the abandoned houses,” Kenny explained under his breath. “Government workers get special privileges, but their ID cards serve as their payment, instead of money. This way nobody squabbles.”

  “But if these belonged to dead officials, surely they’ve been deactivated?”

  As I spoke, Nick stepped up on the platform, swiped his card, and a little green light dinged his admittance.

  “Apparently not,” I murmured. Alec followed Nick, then Kenny, and I copied them last of all.

  As the little red light turned green for me too, the door slid open and admitted me into the compartment. Kenny stepped aside so I could hold on to the brushed metal pole beside them. Then he lowered his voice and explained, “The ID itself is invalid, but the chips inside aren’t specific to the individual.”

  “So that means they don’t get an alert somewhere that someone who’s supposed to be dead is riding the bullet train?” I asked.

  Kenny nodded. “At least we think so. Maybe they do get alerts, but they’ll find unregistered citizens within two hours with the control center sweeps anyway. Maybe the Potentate just figured a dual system was unnecessary.”

  I glanced around the car, taking in its polished sheen—so stark a contrast to the abject poverty of the rest of the Republic. A silver screen spanned the top half of the front of our car, much like the one on which I’d first seen Kate, the day I arrived in the Republic. Passengers filled the car to standing room only; two of them wore the charcoal gray uniform identifying them as agents. I nudged Kenny and gestured at them with my eyes as discreetly as I could, and whispered without moving my lips, “When our time runs out, do the control centers alert them?”

  “They’ll alert someone,” he whispered back. “Probably the one closest to us. So yeah, probably.”

  Nick, behind us, leaned in and breathed, “We’ll hit the two hour mark in ten minutes. Get off at the next stop.”

  The train slowed to a stop, and the four of us joined the queue to exit; I noticed that the entrance and exit doors were separate, presumably to prevent unlawful riders.

  “Next train comes in two minutes,” Nick told us, his voice taut. “I’ll make sure it’s agent-free before we board.”

  It was—the next train was mostly empty. By Nick’s calculations we’d still have another hour before we got to the last stop.

  I took a seat beside Alec. Might as well try and smooth things over. The only way to do that, I knew, was to address the issue head-on. He looked up and glared at me. I didn’t say anything. Finally he snapped, “What?”

  In my most unassuming tone of voice, I said, “What was she like?”

  “I don’t want to talk about her.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just waited. He’d tell me eventually. People usually told me stuff whether they meant to or not.

  Finally he said, grudging, “She was a rebel. A fighter. Smart as hell. Wicked fast with almost any weapon you can imagine.”

  “As a fourteen year old?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

  He scoffed. “Of course not, she learned all that after we got out.” He sighed, and I could feel his defenses come down as he slipped back into the past. “Her parents were dead, like mine. She got sent to McCormick afterwards. I don’t even know why the government bothers sending kids like us to be rehabbed—when you’ve got memories like that, no amount of brainwashing is gonna wipe them away.” He looked out the window. “We met when we were twelve. In secret mostly. We could just tell from the minute we saw each other that we were the same. We were watched everywhere on campus, so we started crawling into each other’s dorm rooms through the vent systems. When we were fourteen I always had to come to her, because she hit puberty and her hips got too big to fit in there and still move much. I was still really skinny though.”

  I looked at Alec’s frame, but didn’t comment. He didn’t look as if he’d changed much since then. “When did Kate show up?” I asked.

  “When we were fourteen,” he said, and then fell silent. I thought he was done, turned off again by the subject of Kate. Then at last, he ventured, “At first she was like us, so we could keep meeting in their room… but then she got brainwashed and we knew she’d turn us in.”

  “So you started meeting somewhere else?”

  He nodded. “We figured out how to trick the cameras in this corner of campus into playing in a loop so they wouldn’t detect us, and that’s where we met. I think Kate suspected and tried to catch us more than once, but once people got brainwashed, they got dumb and slow.” He gave a hollow laugh and gestured out the window. “I mean, just look at these people.” But they whizzed by so fast we couldn’t see anybody in particular. “It wasn’t hard to outsmart her.”

  “Then you escaped?”

  He nodded. “Nobody really stayed at McCormick longer than two years. Either they ‘graduated’ and got sent home, or they got sent off to… somewhere. We called it ‘special projects,’ and assumed it was a death camp. Since we never got to ask anybody we never found out what it was. But when we were fourteen and graduation approached, and we knew neither of us would graduate, we knew our time was up. We planned this whole elaborate getaway involving decoys tricking the cameras, since we’d figured out how to do that already, and tunnels only we knew were there… and it actually worked. We could hardly believe it.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “We tried to get to New Estonia, but first we had to get off the grid. Since they had our brain waves on file… well, it was pretty much like this,” he motioned to the train we were on, and I knew he meant our elaborate ruse to try to evade the agents. “Except then we were trying to get out, not going further in.”

  “How long did it take you?”

  “About a week on foot. Only reason we made it out at all was because we found a gang of rebels doing the same thing, and they were a lot more prepared than we were. Otherwise we would have probably died of starvation or thirst or exposure.”

  “So you stuck with them?”

  He nodded. “For years. They told us we were headed in entirely the wrong direction for New Estonia, and in order to get there, we’d have to go back through the Republic. They taught us how to fight, and hunt. Maggie was better than I was.” He smiled bitterly, the light outside reflecting off his cheeks. “She was better at most things than I was.”

  “You guys were together by this time?”

  “Oh, yeah. We would have been together at McCormick if we hadn’t been u
nder surveillance all the time.”

  I fell silent. “So it wasn’t until you tried to get through to New Estonia that you got separated?”

  He nodded. “We were twenty then. We got attacked by agents four days in. I let myself get captured so Maggie could escape.” He stopped, and swallowed hard. “I never heard from her again. But I always hoped she made it.”

  “Kate said she did make it to New Estonia eventually.”

  “Yeah well, Kate also said she got shot in front of a firing squad a few weeks ago,” Alec spat.

  I could have pointed out that this was only years later, but that hardly seemed comforting.

  The train started to slow down, and Nick gestured to us surreptitiously that it was time to disembark at the next stop. I got up and followed him off with the others, not sure if I’d made things better or worse with Alec.

  “Excuse me,” called a man’s voice behind us when we stepped out onto the platform. I saw Kenny hold his breath, but all three of them kept walking without looking back. I did the same.

  “Excuse me!” the voice cried, more insistent this time. I heard the footsteps growing swifter. Nick broke away, veering to the left of our path. Alec and Kenny kept walking, not even glancing at Nick. I followed them.

  “Sir!” called the voice, but it was farther behind us now, and the sound of the footsteps receded to the left.

  “There will be more soon,” murmured Alec.

  A few minutes later, two more agents approached us from the front.

  “Excuse us, gentlemen, we need to ask you a few questions,” one of them said. “Would you mind stepping to the side—”

  Alec moved in front of Kenny and me, as if he was the only one they had addressed. “I’m traveling alone,” he said pleasantly. “How can I help you?”

  Kenny and I kept moving. We were almost out of the terminal now.

  “Do not look back, do not look back,” Kenny muttered to me nervously.

  “Gentlemen!” called one of the agents after us.

  “Run!” said Kenny.

  We broke into a sprint, and the people parted in astonishment, allowing us to pass. As soon as we burst out of the terminal, Kenny pointed to a smoke stack less than a mile ahead.

  “That’s the factory!”

  Two sets of footsteps pounded behind us—the agents’ shoes click-clacked on the pavement, making them easy to distinguish from the rest of the crowd.

  Another set of click-clacking fell in step with the others. Three agents now.

  “You go!” I told Kenny, “I’ll lead them off, or we’ll never make it!”

  “Stop!” shouted one of the agents behind us, and then a gun fired.

  “Go!” I shouted. Then I spun around and ran straight at the agents.

  A look of shock paralyzed all three of them for a moment, but then in unison, they all leveled their guns at me.

  “Stop this instant!” one of them commanded—the same one who had spoken earlier. When I didn’t, he fired straight at my chest.

  I didn’t even flinch. I kept running.

  He fired again, and so did his partner. I was maybe fifteen yards away now.

  All three of them opened fire, point blank. I closed the distance between us and snatched the center agent’s gun. Then I flipped it around, aiming straight between his eyes.

  “You’re—that kid from Iceland!” gasped the agent. “You were supposed to be dead!”

  I blinked at him, and realized that I recognized him too.

  It was Agent Dunne.

  Chapter 24: Jackson

  The two agents flanking Agent Dunne stopped firing, gaping at me.

  “You will stop following us,” I commanded Agent Dunne through clenched teeth, the barrel still pointed at his forehead. “You will let my friends and me pass.” When he didn’t reply, I snarled, “Won’t you?”

  “Of course. Whatever you want,” he choked out.

  “Good.” I reached out my free hand and snatched the gun from the agent on his right, and stuffed it into my waistband before doing the same with the gun of the agent on the left. They didn’t resist.

  “Who are you?” asked the agent on the left in amazement.

  “His name is Jackson MacNamera,” murmured Agent Dunne.

  In my peripheral vision, I noticed for the first time that we’d attracted a crowd. Four of them moved toward me together, and I whirled, aiming the gun in their direction. One of them, a man in a pair of threadbare overalls with a scrawny beard, held up his hands as I pointed the gun at his chest. But his face… quickly I scrutinized the expression. The muscles were taut, not slack, and the eyes looked sharp, not glassy. Beside him stood a very pregnant woman, her hair lank and unwashed. On the couple’s other side, a young man in his twenties with a cleft chin stood with his hands raised too, and a rail of a girl hid behind his shoulder. All of them wore the same expression: that of a sleeper coming awake.

  The man in the overalls and I stared at each other for a long moment before he spoke.

  “Where you goin’?” he asked at last, in a low, cautious voice. I didn’t reply right away, and the man repeated, “You told ‘em to let you ’n yer friends pass. Where you goin’ to?”

  “I… can’t tell you.”

  The man looked at the pregnant woman, who nodded at him, wide-eyed. Then he turned back to me, and set his jaw like he’d made up his mind. “Well, wherever it is, we want ter come too.”

  “So do we,” declared the young man with the waif-like girl behind his shoulder, puffing out his chest.

  I stared at them, perplexed. “Why?”

  “Because,” said the man in overalls. “Because they was shootin’ you, but you kept walkin’ forward like you didn’t feel it atall. But the minute you took that there gun and turned it around,” said the man, “somethin’ came over me, an’ I saw they never hit you in the firs’ place!” He nodded vehemently and said, “So wherever you’re goin’, you got somethin’ I want. An’ I wanna throw in my lot with you.”

  Another woman in her fifties stepped forward to join the others, and then another, and another, and another. “Me too,” they said one after the other. “Me too.”

  I stared at them, not knowing what to do at this point. I glanced back at the agents. Two of them looked as astonished as I was. But the one in the middle, Agent Dunne, watched me with a curious expression.

  Behind me, a voice said, “Jackson?”

  It was Kenny. I spared a quick glance in his direction: beside him stood a woman with sleek black hair piled on top of her head, dressed in a pinstriped black suit. Brenda Halfpenny.

  “That was quick,” I murmured.

  “She didn’t need much convincing… um… what’s goin’ on here?”

  I ignored him and barked at the agents, “Your ID cards. Hand them over.” They looked at each other, and reached into their suit pockets. As they did so, I looked away from them to glance back at Kenny. “Does Brenda have one already—”

  Bang.

  The crowd screamed and scattered, and I stared in disbelief as Kenny’s mouth fell open in shock. He crumpled to the ground.

  I whirled, and saw the agent take aim at Brenda.

  I shot him first. My bullet left a blossoming red stain on the front of his chest. The agent on the other side of Dunne aimed at Brenda, and I shot him too. Next I trained my weapon on Dunne.

  “Don’t shoot!” he begged, his arms up in the air. “I want to come with you!”

  I scrutinized him, confused. He hadn’t pulled another weapon, while the other two had; presumably he had an extra. Was he trying to get me to spare his life, only to betray us later?

  I didn’t have time to contemplate the question. Kenny needed my help, which meant I’d have to turn my back on Dunne. I either had to shoot now, or let him live.

  Your heart will tell you the truth, when all your senses fail you, Grandfather once told me. Often your heart will ask things of you that do not make
sense. But you must trust it, Jackson.

  I turned around and ran to Kenny just as the bullet train approached. His eyes stared back at me vacantly.

  “Kenny,” I shook him. “Kenny!” But I knew it was useless. Kenny was already gone; this was only his shell.

  No time to think about it now. I reached inside his pocket to retrieve the ID card Nick had given Kenny. Then I looked up at Brenda and ordered, “Get the ID cards off the other two agents and give them to these guys!” I indicated the eight people from the crowd, now the only remaining people on the platform. Everyone else scattered the minute the agents opened fire. “Their weapons too!”

  “What about that one?” she demanded. I knew she meant Dunne.

  “He’s with us!”

  “Are you insane?”

  I glanced over my shoulder, inspecting Dunne for a split second. “He’s not a threat to us. He’s on our side now.”

  “Based on what?” she demanded.

  I unstrapped Kenny’s two guns and three knives, handing them to the man in the overalls, along with his ID card, as I said to Brenda simply, “Trust me.”

  While Brenda and I argued, I saw Dunne was already carrying out my orders to Brenda, distributing his colleagues’ ID cards and weapons to those in the crowd. They shied away from him, wary, but took what he offered.

  “What about the others?” Brenda shouted to me, “We don’t have enough ID cards for everyone!” The train arrived, and the doors opened.

  “We’ll get on anyway and take our chances!” declared a middle aged woman.

  “Those with no card’ll get a weapon,” growled the man in overalls, passing Kenny’s knives and guns around to those who had none.

  I got on last, glancing once more at Kenny’s body on the pavement outside. I pictured him beside me the night before, laughing that he’d tricked me into thinking I had a good hand as he snatched up all the chips.

  The doors shut behind me. I looked around the car and identified only two other government workers—no agents, thankfully. None except Dunne. The other passengers stared at us, terrified, as if at any second we might take them hostage.