by Julian North
“There’s Nythan and Lara,” Alissa said, preparing to wade into the crowd. I put a hand on her shoulder.
“Not a word to anyone that I was there, about the van or the headmaster—not even to Nythan and Lara,” I told her in a harsh whisper.
“But they’re our friends,” Alissa protested. “You should trust them.”
“It’s not about trust. It’s about my privacy, and me being me,” I said. In a softer voice, I added, “Please, Alissa.”
She nodded with reluctance. “Let’s go speak to Nythan. He always knows interesting tidbits. I think he unscrambles Authority encryption for fun.”
I shook my head. “Not interested. I’m going in. Too crowded out here.”
“You’re no fun. See you in Lit.”
The Authority was waiting inside. Two hulking guys in the standard uniform with their helmets’ optic screens down. They stood beside the translucent security door like statues, force pistols at their waist. Even without the massive rifles of BC troops, the officers looked ominous. The black boots were in addition to the usual team of lemon-coated school security cops in the observation room. One of the Authority officers took a scanning wand from a holster at his side when he saw me. I thought about the repulse spray in my pocket as my jaw locked.
“Please approach, arms out,” he ordered as he raised his helmet shield to expose a pair of tiny, suspicious eyes.
“Extra precautions today, I guess.”
The darkly attired officer began at my feet, working his way up, looking at the data feed on his viser more than me. The device was silent, which I took to be a good sign. Gradually, the scanner moved upwards, towards my pocket, towards the repulse spray. I tried to relax. California tech. The best, I told myself. If the Authority discovered the spray, even Havelock wouldn’t be able to bail me out.
The scanning wand reached my faux lipstick. It went past, moving upwards. Just as I relaxed, the officer’s arm paused. He squinted at his viser. His eyes met mine. I could have run fifteen hundred meters in the time gap between my last heartbeat and the one that followed. The wand resumed its journey upwards.
“All done here,” he announced.
Not completely trusting my knees, I walked inside, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other without falling. I traversed the near-empty halls with quick steps. The Lit classroom looked empty, and I found my seat, my thoughts on exploding missiles and my missing brother. I was sitting right next to Alexander before I noticed him. I jerked in surprise.
“I’m the one that’s supposed to be jumpy,” he commented in a dry, tired voice.
“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to be here…I mean, I wasn’t expecting…you know…in school…Or in that seat, I guess.”
“We don’t give in to terrorists in my family,” he said stiffly.
“I saw what happened. It was awful, terrifying.”
“You saw a net recording. It won’t hurt you.” He sounded annoyed, condescending.
“No, I was there actually, big boy. I almost got roasted.”
This time Alexander jumped. “What were you doing there?”
I wouldn’t have answered him on most mornings, but I decided to cut him a bit of slack given his father’s ordeal.
“Trying to get back to the subway. Almost walked smack into one of those strange fat drones…”
His brows came down like a collapsing tunnel. “What drones?”
Students flooded into the room before I could answer, drawn to Alexander like moths to a flame. He turned his attention to his worthier supplicants. I heard outrage, expressions of support, and vows of solidarity. At first I thought it sounded ridiculous; these kids were talking like the politicos on the net, as if they wielded real power. But on reflection, I supposed it wasn’t much different than the banter of gang members like Mateo or Otega or Vincent. These highborn kids would lead the country one day. I didn’t want to think about what Alexander might be in charge of one day.
Mr. Lynder’s arrival ended all conversation. He had merely to sweep the room with those aged, hawkish eyes to drive the last straggler into his desk. The last student to conform with the silent directive fell under questioning worthy of an Authority interrogator, even if the topic related to the previous evening’s assigned reading rather than disorderly activities.
As the unfortunate Darin Sorell-Weaks squirmed under questioning, I caught Alexander glancing over at me. I pretended not to notice. He continued to do so throughout class, his hands fidgety. I tried putting myself in his place, imagining what it might be like to have a father, imagining how I would feel if someone tried to kill him. The closest I could come was thinking about how I felt about Mateo’s struggle, although I doubted my brother’s life, or death, would merit a minute of net time. Still, I would’ve hated coming to school and have people talk to me about it, pretending to understand.
After Mr. Lynder finished terrifying us, he reminded the class about the forthcoming essay examination in his ominous voice. I had a mountain to read in the next two weeks. As soon as class ended, Alexander was swarmed by classmates. I left him trapped amid the circle of fawning sycophants.
I spotted Headmaster Havelock in the hall ahead of me, his head bobbing above the shorter masses around him. I followed him rather than go directly to class, hurrying to close the distance between us. When I got near, he noticed me, but pretended not to. Instead, he ducked into a classroom and engaged in a discussion with a teacher I didn’t recognize. Not anxious to see me, it seemed. Perhaps I had exhausted my quota of goodwill. Blowing my track tryout and getting myself detained by the Authority could have that effect.
I retraced my path, heading towards my next class against a tide of students. I turned onto a gloomy, truncated corridor that led to the battered amphitheater-like room that was perfect for lectures on economic theory. As I walked, warm vise-like fingers reached out from one of the corridor’s dark alcoves. They wrapped themselves around my arm. My hands balled into fists. When he tugged at me, I turned on the perpetrator, a right hook leading the way.
I didn’t pull the punch, even when I saw who the hand belonged to. Bastard deserved it for grabbing me. But somehow, Alexander caught my fist in his huge palm. Damn, he was quick. I’d thrown dozens of punches in the barrio over the years, and no one had ever managed to duck, much less grab my hand.
“Easy, I mean you no ill,” he said, his speech stiff. “This is Tuck. Not…elsewhere.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, laying hands on another student?”
He looked stung. “I just want to talk in private. You did not seem the type to startle easily. I was mistaken, it seems.”
My knee itched with the urge to show him how mistaken he was, but the tiny bit of softness in those sapphire eyes stopped me. It was like seeing a baby turtle crossing the street. Odds were that it wasn’t going to make it, but I didn’t want to be the one that did the deed.
“What’s so important?” I asked.
“You mentioned running into drones last night. Were you serious?”
“Of course,” I told him. “Three of them. Large and sphere-shaped. Way slower than the wing-shaped ones guarding your father’s convoy.”
His eyes scoured my face so intensely I could feel his skepticism. “There was no mention of attacking drones on the net. No footage of anything like that, not even on the deepnet sites playing personal videos.”
I pursed my lips. Alissa had been more interested in the net reports than I had been last night. But she hadn’t asked me about any drones, and she’d questioned me rather intently about everything else.
“I saw what I saw. I don’t have any reason to lie to you.”
“You said they looked like spheres?” He was glancing at his viser as he spoke, a dazzling device forged of gold so thin it was translucent.
“Yes, with four small rotors for power. Decoys, I think. Those winged military type machines made quick work of them.”
He held his viser up in front o
f my face, closer than it needed to be. It displayed a picture of a machine that closely resembled the trio I had seen yesterday, except this image was embedded into what looked like a design schematic pulled from one of the books in Castle’s directory. “That’s them. And my eyesight is just fine, even if I am a nope.” I pushed the viser away.
“Doesn’t make sense,” he said more to himself than to me. “No one controls the entire net. There would’ve been something.” He looked at me again, daring me to prove myself correct.
“There are ways of scrubbing the net. I’ve seen it done.” As soon as I said it, I wondered why I’d offered anything additional to a boy with the manners of a barrio beggar.
“When?” It sounded like a challenge.
I gritted my teeth. “I need to get to class. Out of my way.”
“Daniela, wait. I do not mean to accuse you of dishonesty. Please, I’m trying to figure this out. It…it is important to me. And I could use your help, as the only witness I have access to. When have you seen something edited from the net?”
“Out of my way.”
He stood aside. But I caught a glimpse of the turtle again. I sighed. “Once you’re out of Castle’s domain, do a search for Marie-Ann and Tuck. You won’t find anything, not even on the darkest parts of the net. So it can be done. But I’ve no idea how.”
I left him staring dumbly in the hallway. I hoped the turtle would be okay.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
A short buzz of excitement from my viser signaled that my first week at Tuck was over. I walked out of those imposing doors, marveling at how much my life had changed in just a few short days. The streets of Manhattan had become familiar, but I lived uneasily in this second world. I just had to hang on until Mateo came to his senses.
Alissa met me on the stone steps outside of school. I hadn’t asked her to be there, but I was surprised to find that I was glad to see her. The sun was shining, and the towering trees of Eighty-Ninth Street swayed in the gentle breeze. A tiny cardinal, its feathers luxuriously red, stared at me from a nearby branch, blissfully unaware of its nest’s privileged location.
“You made it through a week at Tuck,” Alissa proclaimed. “After tryouts on Tuesday, I wasn’t sure you would.”
A dark cloud passed in front of the sun, or it could have just been my mood changing at the passing memory. I wondered if Alexander had spoken to Coach Nessmier about me. Was that why I had cut him so much slack?
“Last night, I expected to spend the rest of the term in an Authority cell.”
“Well, you made it to the weekend, at least,” Alissa said. “Lara and Nythan are going to meet us around the corner.”
I fell into stride beside her, this girl who I’d just met, but to whom I already owed at least one great debt. Were four days long enough to make a friend?
“How you doing with Lynder’s reading list?” she asked me.
“I’m through Shelley, Golding, and Orwell. I’ve still got Huxley, Atwood and Vonnegut to go. I haven’t even thought about how they fit together.”
“Pay attention to Huxley,” Alissa advised, her voice sage. “Doomsday will be here before you know it.”
“Is it really that bad? It’s just an exam.”
Alissa looked at me, her gaze sharp. “Colleges look at this stuff. Not to mention the egos around here. Lynder has quite a reputation on grades. He fails students every year. Make sure you know every last bit of what those authors wrote, and not just the stories. Mr. Lynder’s tests are always zingers, which is why he makes everyone so nervous. He writes the damn questions out by hand, delivered to us on paper in class on the day of the test. No real way to prepare in advance.”
“Great,” I said, feeling much worse than I had a minute ago.
Alissa led us onto Madison Avenue, past the store where Kortilla and I had nearly been mistaken for lurkers. Now, I wore a Tuck uniform. When people noticed me, it was with respect, approval, or envy. That felt better than it should have.
Alissa stopped outside a café with round, marble-topped tables scattered around its interior as well as on the adjacent sidewalk. A looming grass-colored awning kept the outside seats shady. A glass counter filled with pastries, more art than food, sat just inside the transparent doorway. Dark-suited waiters scampered between the tables.
“There they are.” Alissa headed towards a half-occupied table next to the window.
“Wait,” I told her. “I’m not going.”
Alissa spun at me. “What?”
She spoke loud enough that a few heads turned toward us. I stepped closer. “Alissa, this place…what does it cost to even sit at one of these tables? I don’t have money to waste on this cr—well, on this sort of thing.” My face flushed when I admitted it. I dug my nails into my palm as penance for my idiocy.
Alissa waved her hand at a non-existent fly. Her dismissiveness made my blood heat. “We’re talking coffee. I’m happy to treat on this one, Daniela. It’s not a big—”
“I don’t take charity.”
Eye roll. “You’re being ridiculous. This is just the way people—”
I was pretty sure I knew how the sentence ended, but given the distance I had put between us, and the anger ringing in my ears, I didn’t actually hear her. Not that it mattered. Los richos.
I stormed toward the subway, fire flaring through my eyes. Familiars hovered above, watching me as I sped along the sidewalk, coming almost too close to their precious cubs below. At least one finder beam clicked on me. I ignored it.
My viser vibrated with a ping as I reached the Eighty-Sixth Street station, but I didn’t look at it. I took the steps two at a time. A train pulled out of the platform as I arrived, leaving me to cool my heels for another eight aggravating minutes. My curiosity bested me during the wait. It was a text message from Nythan: “we will harvest her organs to pay bill if you return -N.”
The note garnered a half smile, but not a return trip to the richie café. I wanted to go home, to be with my blood. I wasn’t ready to sit in a Manhattan café sipping a day’s wage worth of coffee picked by a chipped slave in Colombia, discussing things fashionable and fancy. I hoped I would never be ready for that.
Kortilla was there for me when I got back, as always. We had dinner at her house with her parents and Otega—tortilla de patatas and a rich tomato soup, thick and filling. We laughed about Pele’s outfit, Otega’s lame attempt at a beard, the carrot-shaped holes in Mr. Gonzales’ shoes, and a dozen other things I wouldn’t be able to remember tomorrow. The knots in my legs and back came undone over the course of dinner. I missed the savory taste of Sung’s bulgogi, but otherwise managed to forget about my other life for a few precious hours. Otega and Kortilla walked me home afterwards, through streets lined with vagrants instead of trees, repair shops instead of cafés.
“I checked in at a few of Mateo’s haunts. He’s still in the wind,” Kortilla told me. “He’ll be okay, wherever he is. He always is.”
I nodded, but without conviction. “It’s different this time. He’s not even letting his friends know what he’s up to or where he is. Something about him feels desperate.”
“You’re making too much of it, Dee,” Kortilla assured me. “You worry about him too much.”
“He’s someplace dangerous,” I said, my voice a husky whisper. “I can feel it.”
The look my friend gave me had fear in it. Kortilla knew about my special sense—my spider-sense. She used to laugh about it when we were younger. She didn’t anymore. It had saved our rears too many times—keeping us a step ahead of muggers, and worse. Kortilla said it was a spirit, my mom probably, looking over me. That was a nice fantasy.
Rather than offer words, she took my hand and kept it until I felt a bit better.
“I’m going to try to find Marie-Ann’s parents tomorrow,” I told her. “They never answered my ping. But they’ve got a bodega on Melrose.”
“I’ll meet you,” Kortilla declared without hesitation. “Not crazy early thou
gh, okay?”
Aba was dozing in her chair when I walked in. She saw me with a half of a groggy eye, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t either. We both knew how the conversation would’ve gone. We were both worried about Mateo, in our own ways. Talking about it wasn’t going to help. If I had anything to tell her, I would have. I fell asleep quickly. When I awoke, Aba had left for work, even though the sun still hid itself. Early genes were in my family.
I headed out to the old PS 62 track rather than trying to rouse Kortilla. The only people awake and on the street were dealers and addicts. I attracted looks from both groups in my running clothes, bag slung around my shoulder, but I kept a brisk enough pace that it wasn’t worth bothering me. I didn’t run hard—just enough to stretch, to think, to pass the time.
I met Kortilla in front of her building afterwards.
“You smell,” were her first words. My dear sister.
“I had a run this morning, so you could sleep in,” I told her. “Deal with it.”
“Hah. It’s friggin’ eight-thirty in the morning¸ hermana. You have no idea what ‘sleep in’ means, do you?”
I guess I didn’t. I should’ve run a few more laps.
Pedro and Anita Rebello’s store sat mid-block on Melrose Street. The sign above the steel-gated doorway read “La Bodega.” I didn’t have a picture of either of them, but tax records had the couple listed as joint owners of the property as of this year. They were on the tax rolls for the past sixteen years, which fit together with the year of Marie-Ann’s birth: They started paying into the system when they needed it.
We entered the store accompanied by the chiming of simulated bells. The whole place consisted of three long, battered plastika shelves filled with necessities like private label water, bags of fabricated rice, beans and flour, as well as mouth spray, med cleansers and the like. Vacuum pouches of pre-fabricated meals, along with the usual selection of stim-chews, adorned one wall. Closer to the front were the real items, all located behind a rusted metal gate: eggs, field-grown rice, milk, and a few aging carrots and potatoes. Glum and typical. There was nothing like this place in Manhattan.
