The Liberty Box Trilogy

by C. A. Gray

  The group fell silent, and it seemed like they were considering my idea. Finally Nick said, “It sounds like it has potential, Kate, but we have supplies for the faraday cages now, and we can’t afford to waste any more time.”

  “Well, I think double protection sounds like a great idea!” Molly interjected.

  I whirled on Will again. “Will it work or won’t it?”

  He stared at me like he’d never seen me before. Finally he said grudgingly, “It might. But it’s a moot point, because Nick’s right. We have neither the supplies nor the time to build them.”

  I slammed the book shut and leapt to my feet, tucking it under my arm as I hurried away.

  “Kate!” Nick called after me, “We need your help with the knitting!”

  “I’ll be at the stream when you’re all done eating, come find me!” I shouted back.

  For now, all I knew was I needed to be alone.

  The moon rose high in the sky, and I sat by the stream, clutching the book to my chest. I’d intended to read it more thoroughly, but instead I realized I needed to figure out my next move.

  If Will had backed me up then they all would be on my side, but as usual, he didn’t. I knew this was a good idea, though. And if Will hadn’t been so mad at me he would have seen it too. Maybe he already did see it, and he was just being stubborn.

  So I could go on the grid by myself tomorrow for a brief raid to get the supplies the book in my arms told me I’d need, and then try to follow the instructions myself.

  But who am I kidding. I’m not capable of building a circuit. I don’t know the first thing about circuits, or science of any kind.

  So that left only one other option I could think of: tonight, after we all finished knitting ski masks for the raid team, I could knit myself an extra one and not tell anyone about it. I was fast enough. Then I could go try to find Charlie tomorrow, and he could make the jammer.

  That is stupid, Kate.

  It was Will’s voice in my head, but… much as I hated to admit it, he was right. The second I entered society I’d either be a target because I’m Kate Brandeis, the Face of the Republic, or I’d be a target because I was wearing a ski mask.

  Jackson’s voice came back to me this time. Identify the thought, Kate. Is it truth, or a lie?

  The thought was that the reason I needed to risk my life to go get my brother was because I wasn’t smart enough to follow the step-by-step instructions in the textbook I held. I needed someone else to do it for me.

  That’s a lie.

  I was smart enough. Just because Will didn’t think I could do it… just because he didn’t take me seriously didn’t mean I wasn’t capable. I just needed a strong enough motivation to figure it out. And I had one.

  I took a deep breath. Okay. Okay. I can get the supplies myself.

  I flipped the textbook open to the diagram, and the supplies list beside it. I read, Batteries, scrap aluminum to build a trimmer capacitor, a transmitter chip, some plastic or perfboard, solder or paperclips. I had no idea what a trimmer capacitor or a transmitter chip were, and the only reason I knew what a perf board was was because I’d seen Charlie use them so many times. But there were pictures of all of the items. Surely, then, I could find them all within my two hour window. I only needed to build one jammer at first, after all—just as a proof of concept. Then the others would want to go back with me and get all the stuff we needed to make more.

  You can do this, Kate, I told myself again.

  Suddenly my heart sank: how would I know where to find a house that was safe to raid? I didn’t even know which direction to go for the city the others had been in, and if I ran into anybody who might recognize me, it could be disaster. The hunters had scoped out a part of the periphery that they’d deemed practically abandoned, but if I went to the same place they went, even if I followed far enough behind them, Jackson would still know I was following them.

  Of course he’d know. He’s Jackson.

  He’d catch me long before I could reach the grid, and then Will would blow up at me, and that would be the end of it.

  I sat and stared at the water for a long moment, trying to puzzle my way out of that one. I could only think of one possible solution.

  I had to tell Jackson in advance. He was going to find out anyway. It was my only chance.

  I made my way back to the camp and rejoined the others. Nick passed around supplies; Will showed us how to unravel the copper wire, and just thread it along with the yarn so that our needles picked up both at the same time. I showed Molly, Violet, Rachel, Sam, Brenda, Nelson, Brian, and Pete how to knit, and we all got to work. Since we only needed five ski masks, most of them took shifts, passing their work to one another when they got too exhausted to continue.

  At probably one in the morning, I finished my second ski mask. I tucked one of them into my waistband to hide it, and held the other, deciding to use it as an excuse for the conversation I needed to have.

  I’d expected Jackson to be sleeping, but somehow I still wasn’t surprised to find him sitting with his back to a tree, staring off into the night. His face looked so peaceful that I had to stop and watch him for a moment. I wondered what it would feel like to be so serene.

  “Hi,” he said, without turning around.

  I jumped, and stepped out of the shadows. “Hi.” I tossed the ski mask into his lap, still clutching the textbook under my arm with my finger tucked into the page with the diagrams.

  He looked down at the ski mask and smiled, glancing at me for the first time. “Thank you. Nice job.”

  I nodded. Then I just stood there awkwardly, waiting for an opening. He didn’t say anything either. I had a feeling he was waiting me out.

  At last, he said, “I’m listening.”

  I untucked the book, opening it to the appropriate page and crouching down beside him to show him the diagram. “I’m going to try to make this.”

  Jackson looked up at me, eyebrows raised. “From what?”

  The question felt rhetorical. He already knew what I was going to say, I just knew it. Still, I took a deep breath. “From the materials I’m going to steal tomorrow.”

  “Is that right?”

  I gritted my teeth and nodded, feeling more confident. “I’m not asking permission. I’m going to do it. I’m only asking you not to stop me, and not to tell Will when you notice you’re being followed tomorrow.”

  He watched me for a long moment, the mirth fading. Then he said at last, “You’re asking me to let you go onto the grid, unprotected and totally by yourself, and not tell anybody?”

  I stared him right in the eye, and nodded.

  “Kate, do you know me at all?”

  It took a moment for the meaning of this statement to sink in. When it did, I almost cried, or screamed with frustration—the only reason I did neither was because I couldn’t decide which to do. Before I could muster up any words harsh enough to rebut this, Jackson interjected, “Okay, look, there’s another possibility here, and it’s really simple. I’ll just get the materials you need for you.”

  My mouth fell open. “You would do that?”

  “Why not? Nick, Alec and I are basically just going to be standing around for hours and hours anyway, and we’ll be right where we need to be to get all this stuff.” He glanced at the page, and skimmed the list of supplies with his finger. “I don’t see why you have to be the one to do it.”

  “But… Nick and Will both said no…”

  “I thought you weren’t asking for permission.” His eyes danced at me, and a lump rose in my throat. “Look, Kate, it’s a good idea, and frankly as you pointed out, even if these cages work perfectly in terms of blocking us from detection by the control centers, they’re not exactly inconspicuous. It sounds to me like any future plans we have will involve more public ventures, in which case we’ll need an alternative. I agree, we should at least try to make these jammers of yours. I’ll help you. There’s no reason for us
both to go.”

  I didn’t trust myself to speak. I just nodded, embarrassed when I felt the wetness on my cheeks. I brushed away the tears hastily.

  “Thanks for the ski mask. Good night, Kate.”

  “Good night,” I whispered.

  As I stumbled through the forest back to my makeshift bed beside Will for the night, I tried very hard not to name the thing I couldn’t help feeling.

  Chapter 10: Jackson

  “Jackson!”

  I blinked the sleep out of my eyes, bewildered. Will’s face peered down at me as he shook my shoulders. He didn’t look happy.

  “Nick wants us to get going. Come on.”

  I must’ve slept only three hours, judging by the position of the moon. I still felt groggy, but I brushed the earth off my clothes, grabbed my satchel containing the ski mask and Kate’s book inside, and followed him.

  Once I regained my bearings, I asked, “Why were you the one to come and get me?”

  “Because the others are eating,” he said shortly, not turning around.

  The subsequent silence felt hostile. I tried to think of something to say that didn’t feel like smalltalk. “Do we have enough ski masks?” Still smalltalk, but the best I could do.

  “I know you have yours,” Will snapped.

  Ah. Ok. I weighed how to answer, my feet crunching on the ground after his. “Why don’t you just say what you have to say. It’ll save time.”

  He shot me a cold look over his shoulder. “Fine. I know you and Kate had a little rendezvous last night, and then she didn’t sleep all night. So something must have happened. Maybe you want to tell me what it was.”

  “She came to ask me for a favor,” I said carefully.

  “Oh yeah, and what favor was that?”

  “I don’t see why it should be a secret, but if it is, then it’s not mine to tell.”

  Will turned to glare at me, but then something in his expression relented. “Let me guess. She put you up to something for her while you’re on the grid?”

  “Something like that.”

  “It’s either got to do with the broadcast or those jammers of hers,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “And you can’t possibly do anything for the broadcast where we’re going, so she must want the materials to build the jammers, then. Am I right?”

  I blinked, impressed. “You know her well.”

  “Yeah well, I’ve known her a lot longer than you have,” he retorted, turning away from me again. I did notice, though, that his mood had improved somewhat. I assumed his imagination of what went on last night between Kate and me had been much worse than that. “Do you even know what you’re looking for?” Will asked me. “I thought you grew up in the boon docks in Iceland. Can’t see you being an electronics whiz.”

  “I did, and I’m not,” I admitted. “All I have to go on is the textbook she gave me. I was hoping I could figure it out.”

  Will sighed heavily, extending one hand behind him like a parent confiscating a forbidden toy. “Give it here. I’ll have a look.”

  I suppressed a smile and reached for it in my satchel, opening it to the appropriate page and handing it to him. Will stopped walking, furrowing his brow and skimming the items with his finger. “Batteries are easy. I assume even you will know where to find those.” He rolled his eyes, and came to the next item. “Ok, you’ll get a transmitter chip from an old radio… you know what those look like, right?”

  I decided to take that as rhetorical. He could insult me if it made him feel better.

  Will went on, “Once you break it open, you can recognize the transmitter chip from the picture here.” He frowned again as he came to the next item on the list. “I’m a software guy, not an electrical engineer. But I’m pretty sure you’re not going to find perfboards or breadboards in any household electronics. Those are only for building prototypes. You’re only going to find circuitboards, and those are going to be harder to use, since they’ll be soldered already. You’ll need something blank. It’s possible to get a circuitboard out of any old piece of electronics, like a netscreen or something. You’d scrape off the land components to get a clean board… but then you’d have to have a soldering iron and a drill to create a new circuit. You’d have to have those even with a breadboard, though.”

  I was trying to follow this. “Show me a picture of a circuitboard in there, so I know what I’m looking for.”

  “Oh, those are all over,” Will said, sticking his finger in the page we wanted but flipping through and pointing out photographs throughout the rest of the text. “There… and there… and there….” Then he flipped back to the list of items we’d need and kept skimming.

  “It calls for scrap metal to build a trimmer capacitor, but you don’t need to build one. You can get it out of a watch, or a keyless entry key. It looks like this.” He showed me the picture of a trimmer capacitor. The image meant nothing to me, but I hoped at least I’d be able to pick it out from the guts of a watch. “Toughest part will be getting the watch open if you don’t happen to have a tiny enough screwdriver, though,” Will told me, “but if you can’t find those, then just bring the watch and we can find a way to pry it open later if it comes to that.”

  He kept reading. “Paperclips aren’t gonna be too reliable for forming connections, if Kate intends to build something we can carry in our pockets. They’d get dislodged too easily. Like I said, we’ll need a soldering iron. The only homes that will have one of those are like her brother Charlie’s house, because he built circuits all the time.” Will shook his head. “I think that hoses the whole thing right there. If you can’t form solid connections, you ain’t got anything.”

  “What about the copper wire the group stole yesterday?” I asked. “If we have extra, that’s conductive and flexible enough that Kate and the others wove them into these ski masks of ours… can’t we just use that for the connections? If we drill holes in the right places and tighten them well enough?”

  Will paused. “That… might work,” he said, handing the book back to me. Then he added as he turned away, his voice clipped, “Just don’t come in bothering Jean or me with questions while we’re working. This isn’t the priority.”

  “We could be friends, you know,” I told him. “I appreciate your help.”

  Will snorted but didn’t reply.

  As we neared where Molly and the others ate their breakfast, Will stopped walking, and turned to me abruptly. “Kate told me last night that she thought we were growing apart. She wants to slow things down. She wants space, so she can ‘figure out who she is,’ or whatever.”

  I opened my mouth, but couldn’t think of anything to say. That was the last thing I’d expected.

  “I don’t know how much of that is because of you, but I’m guessing a lot of it. So I just want you to know, I’m not letting Kate go without a fight.”

  With that, Will turned his back, approaching Molly’s spread of nuts and berries for our breakfast.

  Well, I thought. That changes things.

  The group spoke very little on the way to the house they had earmarked. Nobody seemed disposed to conversation. I carried leftover bear meat in my satchel for each of us, along with my weapon, and Kate’s book. Jean stuck by my side as usual on the way, so I told her my intentions. She was excited, as apparently she’d thought Kate’s jammer idea was a great one as well.

  “I’ll come out and help you when I can!” she promised.

  “Only if Will doesn’t need you,” I told her. “Of course this isn’t top priority—”

  “He doesn’t really need me at all,” Jean murmured. “I’m not sure why I’m coming, to be honest.” She twisted her ski mask and pulled it away from her mouth. “Ugh, could these be any less comfortable? I feel like I’m suffocating!”

  They were pretty itchy, I had to admit. “All the more incentive to get in and get out, I guess,” I murmured.

  When we arrived at the edge of the forest and within sig
ht of the house, Nick stopped us short. “All right. Alec, you’re the scout-slash-sniper. Stay back here, and alert us if anyone approaches. I’ll guard the outside of the house. Jackson, you’re inside with Jean and Will.”

  “Hold on, before we go in,” I said. “Describe the house to me. Anybody.”

  “Describe it?” Will scoffed. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean these masks only block us from detection, but the control center signals can still get in. So tell me what you see. What does that house look like to you?”

  Silence. Finally Alec said, “I’m guessing, not a lovely split level suburban home?”

  “Not remotely. Look carefully, knowing what you know about the control centers. See through the lie.”

  At last, Nick said, “The top window is shattered. The siding is falling off.”

  “Yes, and?”

  Jean piped up, “Graffiti. And water stains. It looks like the whole thing is riddled with mold.”

  “Alec?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah, okay. I see it now.”

  “Will?”

  I couldn’t see the rest of Will’s expression through the mask, but he glared at me through its eye holes. “I see your point. Yes.”

  “All right,” said Nick. “Everybody keep the truth in mind, and consciously focus on seeing what’s really there. Let’s go.”

  The net screen was in an office, which left me the run of the rest of the house. I pulled out Kate’s textbook, and made a checklist in my mind based on the conversation with Will: A circuitboard from old electronics. A drill. A watch. Some tiny screwdrivers. A soldering iron if I can find one. A radio. Batteries.