by Julian North
Kortilla shrugged. She knew I wasn’t being honest with myself. I did need something from them. She kept staring at the puncture hole. “You going in to get the freedom juice?” The question hung in the air like a foul odor. “You never did anything wrong. Star student. Best natural-born runner in Bronx City. You can get the juice and be done.”
I frowned. “You mean limp into an Authority sub-station, head low, tell them their metal enforcer shot me with a correction pellet by mistake on my way home, I’m a good girl, give me a shot of the blue stuff so I don’t have to spend the next two days in unbearable agony? Yeah, I’ll do that.”
“Why go through hell if you don’t have to?” Kortilla replied, her back straightening. “Your record is clean. Hell, your family even pays tax—you got a friggin’ voter in there. They’ll give it to you.” In a whisper, she added, “No one is going to know if you go in.”
I held onto my lofty speech about not humiliating myself in front of the richie stooges that I might have spouted off to almost anyone else. “I’m clean, no record. Nothing on video except me running away,” I conceded. “But Mateo isn’t. I’ve got no idea what he did in Manhattan tonight. Or where he is now. He’s desperate. They all are. I won’t become leverage for los richos if he’s on the run. No Authority.”
“It won’t start getting bad till morning. You can stay here to wait it out. I’ll speak to my mama and papa. They’ve been through it.”
“I can’t do that; they’ve got you and your brothers to worry about. I don’t—”
Kortilla put a finger on my lip. “I hope you’re not stupid enough to think you’ll get through correction easier than everyone else.” Her tone was cold.
I swallowed hard. “I don’t want them to see me screaming, crying…” I shut my eyes, not liking any of my choices.
“I’ve got you covered, Dee.”
I looked away, my eyes nearly wet. After a moment I turned back, rubbing my busted viser. “Is your viser working yet?”
Kortilla looked down at the device wrapped snugly around her wrist, a sleek, glittering thing that was as much fashion as function. Not that she needed it. Kortilla could make a pimple look like a gem so elegant that the rest of the girls at school would be dotting their faces with red by the following day.
“Got a signal,” she declared with a grin. “I guess the Authority machines are done. You want me to red ping Mateo?”
“No,” I told her. “It’s too soon. The Authority will be listening after what just happened. If he’s in trouble, I don’t want you tied to it.”
The barest hint of a smirk made it to the far end of Kortilla’s lips. “I’ll use Pele’s viser.”
“How…” I began, but Kortilla raised her brows in a “you’re going to question me?” expression. I chuckled in spite of everything. It hurt my ribs, but felt nice deeper inside.
“How about Aba?” Kortilla asked, already flicking the fingers on her visered hand. Only Kortilla, Mateo, and I called my grandmother Aba.
“You up for that call?” I asked her.
Kortilla puffed up like a marching soldier. “Blood takes care of blood. Besides, it’s only a ping. I’ll keep away from her for a while afterwards.”
I closed my eyes again, more weary than I thought. “Thank you, hermana.”
“Rest for a bit,” Kortilla urged. “I got you.”
CHAPTER
THREE
Pain woke me. A knife sliced through my veins, the pulsing agony spreading from the foot that had taken the correction pellet through the rest of my body. I twitched and turned, trying to escape the inescapable. My teeth gritted shut, trapping the howl of anguish that wanted to break out of my mouth.
“She’s awake,” said a tired voice. A male voice.
I forgot about my suffering and worried about my clothes. Luckily, the most naked part of me was my arm: I wasn’t wearing my viser. The rest of me was under the covers of Kortilla’s bed, dressed in what I guessed to be her pajamas because the arms and legs were too short, and the fabric too silky to be anything I would own. That all made me feel better. As did recognizing that the voice belonged to Kortilla’s brother, Otega. He was the younger and gentler of her surviving siblings, although still four years older than me. His gentleness included a wicked left hook. He leaned back in his chair, calling out to Kortilla. I smelled the stim-chew he had in his mouth.
Kortilla strode in wearing the same clothes she had on last night. Bleary eyes, no makeup, hair tousled, and she still looked better than I could on my best day. She held a small rectangular box in one hand and a glass of precious, clear water in the other. A wave of nausea swept over me as she knelt beside the bed.
“Hang in there,” Kortilla said, her voice gentle. I appreciated her skipping silly questions, like how I felt. She held the glass to my lips. “See if you can manage a sip. It’s the good stuff: ration-issued, machine filtered.”
I tried to drink, but ended up choking.
“How long?” I managed to croak out between spasms. My throat smoldered like charcoal.
“It’s ten in the morning. We hoped you’d sleep longer, for your sake,” Kortilla said. Otega hovered over her shoulder, pitch-dark hair dripping in front of his equally dark eyes, the resemblance to his sister obvious. Lucky him. They both looked worried. I hated that.
I urged myself to put the pain aside. I knew how to do that. I did it almost every race, even if this hurt was a deluge compared to the trickle I dealt with when running. I reached for that place of cold I had inside myself, where I could turn it off. That place where my strength was hidden. But the agony in my veins pushed back. My head spun; I grunted. All hope of peace disappeared as my body spasmed.
“Breathe through it,” Kortilla said. “Every minute is a minute closer to it being over.”
I sucked in air as if it were anesthetic. Another wave hit me. I clenched my teeth till the worst of it passed.
“Mateo…and Aba?” I managed to ask.
“I spoke to Aba last night, I told her…I did my best for you. She came over this morning, early, before she had to get to work. She didn’t stay long. ‘No sick days, no excuses,’ she said.” I groaned, and not from the pain. “It’s going to be okay. She loves you, she’s just—she’s from a different world.” Kortilla put a hand on mine. “We tried to reach Mateo. Don’t worry, I was smart about it.”
“I helped,” Otega interrupted. “And I got you what you need.”
Kortilla glared at her brother, but didn’t correct him. Instead she opened the small box in her hand. It held a clear syringe filled with a liquid the color of a radioactive sapphire.
“Mateo’s not answering his viser, but Otega found one of his boys, Vincent, at one of their usual haunts late last night. Claimed he crossed the bridge with your bro, and he’s safe. Said he’d get him a message about you.”
“Vince is a rabid pup,” I said, not feeling reassured.
Kortilla held forth the syringe. “Well, he dropped this off early this morning. Said Mateo wanted you to have it.”
“Is…is that the juice?” I wondered, hope rising in my voice. I didn’t know if I could take two days of what I felt right now. “How’d he get it?”
“It’s a fabrication. The best possible, though. Supposedly it’s just like the real stuff.”
“People have died using fabricated counteragent.”
Kortilla pursed her lips, looking hard at the syringe. “Mateo wouldn’t have sent it if he thought it would hurt you.”
I thought about my brother, trying to be objective through the pain he had indirectly inflicted on me. He always meant well, at least where I was concerned. That didn’t make him any less of a fool. The cold truth was that dying people made bad choices. And I didn’t trust Vincent. He hung with Mateo for the action, the fighting, the thrills. He didn’t care about anything Mateo cared about, he just wanted to look important and hurt people. There was no telling where the syringe had come from.
“I don’t want it,” I said
between clenched teeth.
Kortilla and Otega’s jaws dropped.
“You loca, Daniela?” asked Otega. “I almost got my rear beaten trying to find your bro and get this—”
Kortilla silenced him with a sharp elbow. She leaned closer to me, her voice a whisper. “It’s going to get worse. Bad like you can’t imagine. So bad you’ll wish you were dead. And that’s not even the end. After, you’ll remember. At night, in your dreams, you’ll remember the pain. It chases you. Every time you think about…about doing something they don’t want, you remember, just for an instant. Think carefully before you decide, sister.”
I managed to meet her eyes. “I’m not afraid of them. I can take whatever they want to hit me with. No shot.”
Kortilla drew back. “We’ll keep it handy in case you change your mind.”
“Get rid of it,” I told them, my voice strained. I thought of the gaunt man who had been running beside me last night, the one I had swerved in front of. “A lot of other people got hit. Give it to one of them. Shouldn’t be hard to find takers.”
Otega shook his head in disbelief, although there was also a bit of a sparkle in those smoldering eyes. I had said “give,” but he had heard “sell.”
“Anything else you need?” Kortilla asked.
I bit my lip, hoping it looked like I was thinking; I was actually fighting off a wave of burning spears dancing in my belly. “Tell your parents I’m sorry…”
Kortilla snorted. “You’re the smartest girl I know, hermana, but you have some stupid thoughts.” She left me alone, dragging Otega along with her. Kortilla knew I did my best fighting alone.
Within an hour, I regretted letting the magic syringe get away. By noon, I had to fight off the urge to scream for Otega to get it back for me. The only thing that stopped me was that I was too nauseous to get out of bed, and in too much pain to make intelligible sounds. Fire surged through my body, searing my flesh from the inside, then receding just enough to make the agony’s inevitable return even more dreadful. Drool dripped from my lips, and even the faint light from the closed window forced my eyes shut. Desperate for an escape, any escape, I retreated inward, to the place that had always saved me in the past.
I found it when I was five, the night I finally accepted that my mother was never coming home. It was a place in my mind, but I felt like I was outside my body when I went there. I could see myself sometimes, as if I was a spirit watching my body from above. A sphere surrounded me, a seamless shell of shining silver, so brilliant that I could only look inward at myself. And it was cold. So very cold. That was how I found the place, by remembering the bone-chilling sensation inside. If the walls of the sphere weren’t there, I would lose myself forever in that ethereal place. But the silvery shield protected me. When I was there, I could usually make myself do the things that needed to be done.
When my mom disappeared from my life, that place helped me fill the hole enough to go on living. When I raced, that place let me call on more strength, more speed. There, I could turn off the pain of an injury, or the burning sensation in my lungs and legs as I reached what I thought were my physical limits. That was why no one could beat me in a race. I had an on/off switch for strength and pain. But I’d never endured a level of physical punishment like that inflicted by the correction pellet. The burning inside made it hard to remember the cold, and I struggled to focus my thoughts with the hammering inside my head.
Waves of torment came at me as unceasingly as the ocean tide. The pain hit me high and low, with brute force and deft subtlety. I just couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t get the window of peace I needed to concentrate. I had no idea how long I fought; time flowed imperceptibly, like in my nightmares. I didn’t know if my eyes were open or closed, if it was day or night. Until I got angry. Suffering gave way to frustration. From frustration came hate. I hated that I didn’t have parents. I hated that I worked my ass off every day for nothing. I hated that everyone I loved lived in the same bleak world. I hated that my brother was dying, and that I couldn’t find a way to save him. Hate overcame pain, at least for long enough for me to get to where I needed to be. Once inside my shining sphere, I controlled the pain. I willed my body to feel peace, to free itself of the poison within. It didn’t work, of course. Not completely—but enough. I ached like I’d had major surgery without pain meds, but it was an improvement. Time returned to normal; I knew who I was, and where. I made a choice not to cry or scream. I lay there for countless hours, willing the pain to end. Finally, it did.
A little more than forty-eight hours after being struck by the correction pellet, I crawled out of Kortilla’s bed, her arm wrapped protectively around my waist.
“I don’t believe it,” she said, awe in her voice. “No one gets through a correction so easily. You got steel, girl.”
“I must’ve gotten a partial dose. Shoe took some of it.”
Kortilla grunted her skepticism.
“You sure you’re okay to walk home? You could take a day to rest before, you know…”
I did know. Aba was not keen on excuses. “Another day isn’t going to make it any better. Best to get it over with.”
“I’ll get you something to eat at least.”
I was about to decline when Kortilla interrupted me. “Mama’s not home. You don’t have to explain anything to anyone. She left it for you. Eat it, girl. She may not have your Aba’s will, but she’d have my head if I sent you home with an empty stomach.”
I ate their food and drank their ration water, careful to pace myself after two days with nothing. It was tomato and beans. Fabricated, of course, but Kortilla’s mom could make the humblest fare taste like heaven. Afterwards, Kortilla and Otega walked me home. Otega hung back, strolling casually behind us, although I knew he was armed. We walked past two crushed cars pushed up onto the sidewalk, their hoods torn apart by an enforcer’s caterpillar tracks. The graffiti of defiance already covered the ruined hulks. The few other people on the streets looked sullen, the way a child might after a spanking. Still, I was walking, and that was something. All too quickly we arrived at the sorrowful six-story block of crumbling bricks where I lived on the nights I wasn’t with Kortilla’s family.
Otega gave me a fist bump and a wide smile genuine enough to make me feel guilty about the difficulty I had mustering my own. “If you can handle what you just been through, you can run with anyone, girl.”
Kortilla wrapped me in a great hug. As we parted, she slipped my viser back onto my arm. “All fixed. Otega knows a guy.”
Relief surged through me, guilt hard on its heels. What had it cost? I knew Kortilla wouldn’t take my money. I hated debts, even to those I loved.
Kortilla read my mind. “You can be damn sure he sold that syringe for way more than it cost to fix your viser. Go home, girl. Tomorrow’s Saturday, so get some sleep. Ping me when you get up.”
I left them to face home.
CHAPTER
FOUR
I walked through the door to my apartment with the courage of a mouse, my steps just slightly more than a tip-toe. The ancient wooden floorboards mocked my attempt at silence. A familiar figure, elf-like in stature, with tightly pulled iron hair and eyes stern enough to peel skin, stared at me from an upholstered armchair in the den. The sight reminded me of an aged queen sitting on a threadbare throne. A muted screen flashed on the wall behind her. She said nothing as I ventured deeper into her domain. When I stood where she wanted, Aba spoke, her voice graveled.
“Feeling better?” There was no softness in her words, but no mockery either.
“Yes, Aba,” I replied, meek.
“You missed two days of school.”
“Yes.” I might have noted to anyone else I was being tortured during that time, but not to Aba.
“Your shoe is broken, your ankle injured,” she noted without her eyes releasing their hold on my own. “Does that mean you aren’t competing this weekend either?”
“I’m still running on Sunday,” I declared in t
he face of her challenge, although for the first time since I was a kid, I didn’t want to. My ankle throbbed. But I couldn’t admit I would quit to Aba. I couldn’t admit I wouldn’t try. She raised my mother, then Mateo and me, by herself. She owned this place. She was a citizen, and proud of it. How could I quit when she never did?
“Have you seen your brother?” she asked. I saw just a hint of worry around those life-hardened eyes.
My teeth clenched. I considered not telling her what little I knew. For a fleeting instant, I considered asking her why she only worried about my older brother. But the fire faded quickly. Most folks around here had it worse than me. Way worse. I told her what Kortilla had told me, the hearsay of Mateo’s safety as related by Vincent.
A huff from the old woman’s throat told me she thought even less of Vincent’s message than I did. “When did you see him last, with your own eyes?” she asked.
“Wednesday, the morning before the protest,” I admitted, seeing her eyes go rigid as I spoke. “I told him not to do anything foolish. I tried to make him promise—”
“But you left him after that,” Aba pressed. “To go wherever.”
“I went to school, yes,” I replied, more sharply than I had intended. “He’s four years older than me, I can’t control him.”
Aba scowled. “He’s scared, you aren’t. His vision is clouded, yours isn’t…usually. He can pull through this. But not if he gets himself killed. Go save him. Go succeed.”
“He can take care of himself,” I declared, not believing it.
Aba paused, studying me, her face as unreadable as ever. “He can ruin your future too, if you both aren’t careful.”
I flushed. “So what?” I regretted saying it. I sounded like a spoiled little girl.
“You wouldn’t run so hard if you thought that. Stop lying to yourself, and to me.” Her words slapped my face. “Get some rest if you really are going to run on Sunday.” She huffed again, this time as punctuation. I knew the sound well. I retreated with relief.
