“What happened to keeping Improvement a secret, like the note says?”
Before Clair could reply, she was blinded by a bright emergency flash, the kind she only ever saw in stories, never in real life. Only peacekeepers had the authority to override someone’s vision. She stopped momentarily, stood blinking until her lenses cleared. When they did, a single red patch was glowing like an afterimage of the sun in the center of her vision.
qqqqq . . . qqqqq
Furious, she hurried to catch up with Zep and Jesse and took the call.
“That flash was you, wasn’t it?” she said, mouthing the words so she wouldn’t interrupt Jesse’s story. “How the hell did you hack my lenses?”
“That is what I’m good at,” said the eerily childlike voice. “There is nothing I can’t get into. Nothing I have come across yet, anyway.”
“Why won’t you leave me alone?”
“I just want to clarify the connection between you and Dylan Linwood. This is something else I don’t understand.”
“He’s nothing to me. A pain in the neck. I thought he might help me understand something, but he’s only made everything worse.”
“He broadcast you against your will,” the voice said. “Is that correct?”
“Of course it is. Why are you so interested?”
“I could help you, if you wanted.”
“Like you helped Libby? No thanks. I want you to leave me alone.”
“But—”
“I mean it. If you’re not going to tell me what’s going on, stay away from me and stay away from my friends.”
There was another empty silence, until finally the voice said, in a tone that was almost reproachful, “‘Beauty is a terrible and awful thing where boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.’”
Another quote, one Clair recognized. It was Dostoevsky this time, but there was a missing piece: “God sets us nothing but riddles,” something like that.
She agreed wholeheartedly.
The call closed from the other end, and Clair’s infield returned to normal. The last message from Libby was still in view. Clair felt no loyalty to the secrecy Improvement demanded of its users, only to Libby’s privacy and well-being.
Zep was saying, “I’ve heard that Stainer meetings are where WHOLE recruits hard-liners. Is that true?”
“I don’t know, Zep. No one’s ever tried to recruit me.”
“What about your father?”
“He never came out and said he was in WHOLE.”
“But he never said he wasn’t, either.”
Jesse nodded. “He and I argued all the time. When I was a kid, I used to talk about turning fifteen and getting into a booth and visiting my grandmother in Melbourne. Dad had cut me off from her, pretty much. He didn’t want me influenced by her. So it was exciting to imagine—because it was a little bit terrifying, too. My mother died in one of those things. Who’s to say it wasn’t going to kill me, too? When it came down to it, though, I couldn’t make myself go through.”
“That’s what you were doing yesterday,” Clair said. “When the PKs hassled you.”
He looked surprised that she was listening. “Yes. Thinking about it but never doing anything about it. The story of my life.”
A new bump from Libby appeared in Clair’s infield. She opened it, hoping.
“You can’t stand that I’m perfect,” Libby said. “Get over it or stay away from me forever.”
19
CLAIR DIDN’T HEAR much of the conversation between Zep and Jesse after that. They passed the station, and Jesse led them onto the side streets of the suburb he lived in. All Clair could think about was the people stepping into and out of the rows of shining booths, remembering games she and Libby had played when they were younger. “Guess” involved one taking the other blindfolded to a destination that they then had to determine without using the Air. “Cram or Crap” scoured the strangest corners of a fabber’s memory to find the most revolting food officially designated as edible. They had attended performances advertised in the Air just moments before the acts went onstage, braving traffic jams and instant crowds just to be there in that moment.
Libby had always been the one to push Clair into something new, and Clair the one to pick up the pieces afterward. Now, it looked like there would be no putting the pieces back together, no matter what Clair did. It wasn’t even about Zep and Improvement anymore. Clair was caught between the uncompromising extremes of competing with Libby or trying to unravel her new sense of self-worth. It was a lose-lose situation.
Clair felt a terrible hollowness in her chest, as though Libby had already vacated from her life, leaving nothing behind but the echoing sense that it was all her fault.
“If Libby would only come forward,” Jesse was saying, “if we could prove that her birthmark has really gone, then we’d have all the evidence we need to make someone act.”
“If it really has,” Zep said.
“Don’t talk about her like that,” Clair said. “Libby’s not a courtroom exhibit. She’s a person.”
Jesse’s face disappeared behind his bangs again.
“I’m sorry—I know that.”
They turned onto Jesse’s friendly neighborhood street and walked along the opposite side, sticking to the shade. No sign of the kids, but the dog droppings were still there, turning white in the heat.
“That’s my place,” said Jesse to Zep, pointing two houses along. “Don’t expect much—oh, hey, there’s Dad.”
Dylan Linwood walked through the front door of his house and stood there with his hands on his hips. He had changed since Clair had seen him. He was wearing a shirt that was even more crumpled than the one before, and there was a bruise on his forehead. One of his eyes, the left, was red where it should have been white. He looked as though he had been beaten up. But he didn’t look beaten. His expression was anything other than cowed.
Jesse raised his hand in greeting.
Dylan Linwood vanished into a giant ball of flame.
The flash, the bang, and the physical impact of the explosion weren’t simultaneous. They came in that order, spaced out over tiny slices of time that the human mind couldn’t individually distinguish. All of them outraced alarm. The electrical impulses in Clair’s nerves might have traveled much faster than the ball of flame radiating outward from the structure that had once been Jesse’s home, but the shocked tissues of her brain needed time to catch up. A second wasn’t long enough. Two seconds wasn’t long enough.
After three seconds, she found herself on her hands and knees in some bushes, coughing her lungs out. The air was full of soot and smoke. There was ash in her eyes, making her lenses sting. Her ears were ringing so loudly she could barely think, and her skin felt hot and raw, as though she had been rubbed all over with sandpaper. Her headband had come off, and she had no idea where it was. Next to her right knee, a tiny flame burned a black hole into the grass.
Rough hands grabbed her around the waist and pulled her upright. She lurched to her feet and threw up. The bile was acid and foul and seared her already aching throat. Distantly, through the whining in her ears, she heard a voice urging her to hurry. She didn’t recognize it, but she did her best to obey, fleeing the fire.
The street was transformed. Where Jesse’s home had been was now a shattered, skeletal frame issuing thick black gouts of smoke. There was almost nothing left. The apartments on either side were burning too, along with the gardens and trees lining the sidewalk. Broken glass crunched underfoot. There was debris everywhere. Bits of Jesse’s life. Bits of his dad, too, probably.
That made Clair feel sick again, but this time she kept her gorge down.
Clair blinked grit from her eyes and discovered that the hands tugging her away from the blast zone belonged to a solid woman with close-cut brown curls. She was wearing a dark-purple sweater and black jeans that, like everything around them, were now gray with ash. Her eyes were noticeably out of alignment, giving her face a lopsided cast
.
Clair could see the woman’s mouth moving, but her words were indistinct. “Take your own weight. I can’t carry you.”
Clair felt light-headed, but she found the strength to stand on her own. The four of them—Clair, Zep, Jesse, and the woman who had pulled them from the blast site—staggered to the nearest corner. Clair felt bruised all over, as though she had been hit by a giant fist. The woman urged them to go faster, but Zep was falling back, limping, his face contorted in pain. Blood flowed in a steady stream from his right thigh. Clair took Zep’s right arm and put it over her shoulder in order to bear as much of his weight as she could.
Jesse trailed them, looking stunned. The right sleeve of his orange T-shirt was burned black. His jeans were filthy. Multiple tear tracks carved lighter lines down the dust on his face, and he kept glancing behind him as though to check the veracity of what had happened. The columns of belching black smoke left little doubt of anything.
Through her shock, Clair noticed a couple of drones swooping in from the north, smoke swirling like translucent wings around them as the woman hurried Clair and the others down another side street. The effects of the blast were minimal there, just a light rain of ash settling on the roofs and grass. People were issuing from their houses in ones and twos, some of them heading to the blast scene, most standing about uneasily, uncertain of what they should do. Someone offered help. The mystery woman waved them away.
The fog Clair had been operating under began to lift, and it occurred to her to wonder what was going on.
“Wait,” she said. Her voice echoed in her ears as though it came from the bottom of a very deep well. “Who are you? Where are you taking us?”
“I’m a friend of Jesse’s,” the woman said. “We have to get off the streets.”
“Why?” asked Zep through gritted teeth.
“You’re injured, for one.”
Jesse didn’t say anything. He didn’t seem to be hearing or seeing anything at all.
“What happened back there?” Clair pressed. “Who did this?”
“Later. Come on.”
She pulled Jesse up the path to a simple single-story house behind a stand of drooping palms. Clair, unsure of her options, followed. Blood continued to flow from the wound on Zep’s leg, and even through the ringing in her ears she could hear him gasp with every step. Whoever she was, the woman leading them seemed to know what she was doing.
The door opened before they reached it, and two men urged Clair and her bedraggled entourage inside.
“Get that door shut,” said the woman to the smaller of the two men, who was wiry, flat faced, bald, with ears like jug handles. “Go on in, you three.”
“Did anyone see you?” The second man followed them up the hallway. He was long and overstrung like a fencing wire, a head taller than Zep.
“Just drones, and they were focused on the house. We got past them okay.”
Clair wondered why that was necessary. Any disturbances the drones spotted drew PKs to the scene like red blood cells to a cut—and that was a good thing, right?
They entered a boxy sitting room, lit only by what natural light came through the loose-shuttered windows. The walls were uniformly cream-colored, the floors carpeted in flecked gray. The woman led Zep to a low couch, and he fell awkwardly onto it, crying out with pain.
“Easy,” she said, crouching down to inspect the source of the blood. A small cross swung from a silver chain around her neck, and she tucked it down into her sweater, out of the way. “You’ve taken some shrapnel, but it can’t be too serious or you wouldn’t be here to complain. Jesse?”
Jesse was still in shock, staring at nothing in the real world.
“Jesse, listen to me.”
The bark of command in the woman’s voice snapped him out of it. “Gemma?”
“What were you doing back there? You’re supposed to be at school.”
“We came . . . we came to talk to . . .” He stopped, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Dad stirred up something serious this time.”
“He did. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen.” Her uneven eyes were watching Clair. “You’re the girl from the video.”
“And you’re Abstainers,” Clair said, beginning to piece it together. “Like Jesse.”
“Congratulations.” Jesse had called the woman Gemma. “You win a prize. How about you tell me what you’re doing here?”
“She wanted to ask Dad about the data,” Jesse said. “Where he got it from . . . what it means . . . if it’s real.”
“Of course it’s real,” Gemma said. “You really know someone who’s had a problem with Improvement?”
“Maybe,” said Clair. “My best friend.”
Zep groaned again. Gemma had found a rip in Zep’s track pants and torn it wider. His leg was slick with red. Something was sticking out of his thigh. Something metal, like a shuriken. Gemma wiped the blood away, revealing one of the metal cogs from Dylan Linwood’s workshop.
Jesse turned even paler under the ash and grime.
“All right,” Gemma said. “Jesse, take her to see Dancer, in back. I need to deal with this. Ray.” The tall man looked up. “Get me the med kit. Watch the door. Tell me if anyone comes.”
20
THE TWO MEN jumped at Gemma’s command. Clair did too, because it was only beginning to sink in that they had just seen someone die. Dylan Linwood had been standing in front of her one second, gone the next. How was that possible?
Jesse took her arm and guided her through the house. After the sitting room was a flight of stairs leading down to a cellar shrouded in gloom. There was an old-fashioned wall telephone anchored to one wall, then a dining room and a Stainer kitchen, complete with stovetop and sink and cupboards for preparing the ingredients that would become actual food. The air smelled stale, though.
“In here,” called a voice from the kitchen. “Come clean yourself up and let me take a look at you.”
Silhouetted against the rear window was a figure in an electric wheelchair. A woman in her seventies with a halo of gray hair, spine straight not slumped, wearing a comfortable pantsuit in peach. Her hands were long boned and thickly veined, and her nails neatly trimmed. She was watching them with keen attention.
“Aunt Arabelle?” said Jesse in a cracked voice.
She nodded. “Wash your hands in the sink. There’s a towel for your faces. Then come and sit with me.”
Jesse nodded and used the tap first. While she waited, Clair felt the bright gaze of the old woman studying her closely.
“Are you Dancer?” Clair asked.
“That’s what they call me,” the woman said. “My real name is Arabelle. Are you a friend of Jesse’s?”
“Uh . . . kind of. I’m Clair, Clair Hill. I don’t think Zep and I are supposed to be here.”
“None of us are, Clair. Wash up and I’ll explain.”
It was Clair’s turn to use the tap, and she felt relief that the woman’s gaze was temporarily off her. Her hands shook as she splashed cold water onto her face. In her mind she saw the fireball over and over again, Dylan Linwood’s compact figure vanishing into it, lifted momentarily off his feet as though about to take flight.
He hadn’t even had time to look surprised.
She leaned her elbows on the sink and let the trembling spread from her hands, up her arms, and into the rest of her body. It was okay to feel shock, she told herself. No one was hurrying her anymore. She could take all the time in the world if it made her feel better.
It did.
When the shakes passed and she was done with the towel, she found Jesse kneeling and weeping into the old woman’s shoulder. Arabelle—Aunt Arabelle—Dancer . . . Clair hadn’t decided yet how to think of her . . . Arabelle put an arm around him and patted his back.
“Shhh,” she said softly, as though to a child. “I know what happened, and I’m very sorry. We all are, Jesse. You have to be brave. Those psychopaths in VIA have been up to no good again.”
“VIA
blew up Dylan Linwood?” asked Clair in disbelief. “Who says it wasn’t an accident?”
“I do.” Gently but firmly, Arabelle pushed Jesse from her. “Take off my shoes, dear boy. She needs to understand what she’s gotten herself into.”
I haven’t gotten myself into anything, Clair wanted to say. Then she wondered if that was entirely true. It had all started with Zep and Libby and led via Improvement to Dylan Linwood’s door. Maybe she could have walked away, but she hadn’t. And here she was, watching Jesse crouch down, tug the old woman’s traditional paraplegic blanket aside, and expose a pair of brown slip-ons.
Jesse pulled the left one off first, revealing a thin but perfectly ordinary foot. The right shoe was next.
When he had finished, he sat back and stared resentfully at Clair, as though daring her to argue with what she saw.
Clair saw a thin but perfectly ordinary left foot. A second one. She clenched her fists to stop them shaking again.
“I wasn’t born with two left feet, believe me,” said Arabelle. “In fact, I used to be a very good dancer. But I can’t walk on it now, thanks to d-mat. The entire leg is out, and my hip, too. I tell myself I’m lucky a blood clot didn’t kill me the very moment it happened. But I don’t feel lucky. I feel trapped and ignored by a system that doesn’t like to acknowledge its failures. It prefers to sweep them under the rug like they never existed. Well, Clair, some of us won’t be swept away so easily. Jesse’s father wasn’t one of them, God take his precious soul. None of us will be.”
“WHOLE,” said Clair again, feeling as though she had fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole and landed in a nest of vipers. “That’s who you are. You’re terrorists.”
“Jesse, you can put my shoes back on. My toes are getting cold.”
Jesse wiped his nose on his sleeve, smudging his face with ash anew. Clair was relieved when the feet were hidden. They made her feel queasy—not in a getting-sick way, but as though the world had just shifted underneath her in a subtle and utterly disconcerting way.
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