The advantage of the false sun they used at Wyldewood was that it was never too strong. Everyone else on the beach with me was much older but looked a decade or two younger than the sixty or seventy-year-olds from 1986. They had their Bio-nets to thank for that. I dug my toes into the sand and noticed it wasn’t the weird fake stuff they usually had other places, the kind that wouldn’t stick to you. If you weren’t thorough about brushing the Wyldewood sand off it’d still be clinging to your skin when you got home.
Because Kinnari and I had been to the beach in Lewistown and West Glacier with our moms on all-clear days a few times, I knew Wyldewood’s beach experience was a couple of shades closer to reality than gushi but still not entirely right. The seagulls never shit, the wind never blew sand in your face, and the waves had a programmed uniformity to them, something you’d only realize if you’d been staring at them for twenty minutes straight like I had.
I don’t know how Seneval knew I was out on the beach but she stalked over to me, tearing my gaze from the water as she looked me quickly up and down. I felt at a disadvantage in my swimsuit and the sight of her filled my nostrils with the imagined scent of cloves. To this day the thought of Seneval or anything to do with art class still conjures the smell for me.
“You’re early,” she noted, plopping down next to me. “Minnow’s not ready to see you yet.” Seneval’s hands were making circles in the sand. “He’s finishing up a shift.”
I nodded like I was in no hurry. “And you—are you in the middle of a shift?” I’d been hoping to see her but hadn’t expected it. She looked tired.
“I’m done for the day,” she replied, one of her fingers brushing accidentally against mine in the sand. If it’d been Mara I wouldn’t have thought about it twice, but this was Seneval, and my hand jerked.
“Nervous?” she asked. “You don’t have to do this, you know. You can just go to New York and leave us all behind. You haven’t done anything irreversible yet.”
Both of our faces were pointed at the waves. It seemed easier to speak that way.
“I think you’re really brave,” I admitted, knowing that she wouldn’t want to hear it. “Losing your parents, having to take care of your sister in the camp, and then dedicating yourself to this gateway work. I want to be like that. I want to know I’m doing something good.”
In the distance two seagulls swooped down low over the water, their paths crossing in a graceful arc. For a split second I forgot none of this was real.
“I’m not so brave,” she said. “My life took a turn that woke me up, that’s all. I might’ve stayed a sleepwalker, like Silas described, if my parents hadn’t disappeared.”
“Lots of people have hard lives,” I countered. “It doesn’t wake them all up. There’s something inside you that made you choose this.”
“You’re idealizing me.” Seneval smiled out of one side of her mouth. “It’s nice but it’s not the whole story. Just be careful, okay? Don’t try to be a hero. I’d feel bad if something happened to you.”
I scratched the back of my neck. I knew I couldn’t be getting a burn under the false sun. It only felt that way. “You should be careful too.”
I risked a look at Seneval and saw her head bob. “We can wait upstairs in the domestic quarters, if you want. You can see how the other half lives. Minnow will come get you when it’s time.”
I slipped into the changing room to put my clothes back on. Then Seneval led me upstairs, to the floor where the majority of Wyldewood employees lived. Most of the doors were closed—unlike in the social welfare camps, people had their own rooms—but Seneval showed me a communal kitchen area. Someone had tried to make it homey by decorating the walls with food-related artwork. One of the pieces was a vintage-style poster of a food group chart complete with illustrations of things like a block of cheese and head of lettuce.
My stomach rumbled in response and Seneval reached into one of the lower cupboards to pull out a jomange for me. Popular and highly nutritious, the scientist-created fruit looked like a courgette but had a sweet citrus taste. I chomped into it as we edged down the long corridor, wiping away the juice that ran down my chin.
“Here,” she said, stopping beside a door identical to all the others except it was labelled #43. She pressed her left palm flat against the door, a DNA scan unlocking it. I caught a three-second glance of Seneval’s room—a simple assortment of light brown living room furniture contained within a space of what couldn’t have been more than sixty-four square feet—before Isaac Monroe’s voice carried along the hallway.
“Let me take this guy off your hands,” he said with a business-like smile.
I turned to Seneval to say goodbye. “Go on,” she prompted. “I’ll see you on Friday.”
“Right. See you then.” I moved away from her room and heard the door close behind me.
“I’m at the end of the hall,” Isaac said. “The luxury suite.” His stiff smile began to loosen into something more genuine. “That’s a joke. By the way, Cleo Dixon was happy to get that plate. She wanted me to thank you. Malyck’s back at the camp now with her. He couldn’t believe you’d come to Fairfield to bring the dish back, not even knowing who he was.” We’d reached Isaac’s door and he raised his hand for scanning. “Most people wouldn’t have done that.”
My shoulders bounced as if to say it was nothing. I followed Isaac into a room no larger than Seneval’s. Because I had more time to examine it, I was able to spot the rectangular section of wall, about three feet from the ceiling, where Isaac’s bed would emerge from when he required it. A lot of smaller properties were set up with retracting beds to make the best use of space. Seneval’s room was likely the same.
Although I wasn’t hungry anymore, I took a second bite of my jomange as Isaac urged me to sit down. “What happens when I get to New York?” I asked impatiently. “Who do I have to talk to?”
“There’s still the vote.” Isaac furrowed his brow. “Seneval didn’t tell you that?”
“She told me.” I’d just assumed Isaac’s desire to talk to me meant the vote would swing my way and he wanted to discuss the next step.
“And then it could be some time before you’re called upon to do anything,” Isaac added. “The warren doesn’t rush when it comes to who they can trust.”
The warren. I’d heard that name for one of the core groups responsible for retaliations against the U.N.A. government on the Dailies, but it had never been directly mentioned in the gateway classes. Up to now I’d half deluded myself into thinking I was involving myself with some shadowy but more benevolent organization.
Hearing Isaac say otherwise made me feel like I’d been pushed out into the elements during a cyclone. This wasn’t a game. If I threw my fate in with the warren I’d always be at risk.
“How do I know I can trust them?” I asked. “They’ve killed people.” Two civilians had died at the Ro factory bombing three and a half years earlier. The government had lumped the warren’s actions in with foreign-led attacks, terming the bombing ‘terrorism.’ Security forces later captured one of the women responsible and wiped and covered her before shipping her out to a radioactive spill site in Arkansas the government had been attempting to clean up for over a decade. Either the woman had one foot in the grave by now or she was already dead.
Isaac calmly shook his head. “Only ever in self-defence. The Dailies twist the truth. It’s what they do. By definition, taking action can’t be without risk. Every cause worth fighting for has casualties. You’ve already said you didn’t want to be responsible for hurting anyone, and no one will ask you to. People do what they can and everyone is comfortable with different things. So if you want to go back to the official grounded movement campaigns and their slow-motion crawl towards change, that’s what you should do.”
“I didn’t say that.” The jomange was turning brown in my hand where I’d bitten into it. “I want change. I don’t want to live in a police state. That’s not what this country was meant to be.”
I waited for him to explain. There was Wyldewood sand in my shoes, caught between my toes, and for a second I wondered if New York and law school might be enough for me, learning to help people the way Michael Neal did. But what if I didn’t live long enough to get my law degree? Another nuclear attack could spell the end at any moment. Maybe that meant ultimately nothing mattered, but I didn’t feel that way.
“My father’s David Bruck Monroe.” Isaac cocked his head. “You know who he is, don’t you?” Of course I did. His company had built the Zephyr as well as Montana’s commuter train lines. But if David Bruck Monroe was Isaac’s father, what was Isaac doing working in Wyldewood, and why did he look the way he did? It didn’t make any sense. He should’ve been born perfect.
Puzzled, I nodded slowly.
“What you wouldn’t know is that my mother was an illegal,” he continued. “My father didn’t realize it either, when he first got involved with her. She’d told him she was a college student from Kansas, completing her degree out of state. But without the Bio-net to protect her, she was soon pregnant.”
So that was why Isaac was so short. No one had fiddled with his DNA.
Isaac hunched over in his chair. There was no window in his room, but the lighting mimicked daylight, his eyes shining as if a hazy late afternoon sun were wafting down on him. “When he found out, he reported her. He wasn’t in love with her—he just had a taste for grounded sex—so it meant nothing to him to have her disappear. But the government case worker who was assigned to her got a high-profile lawyer involved. Because of my father’s money, everything was decided in private. It was ruled that I had the right to U.N.A. citizenship. On those grounds my mother was allowed to remain on U.N.A. soil until I was born, at which time she’d either be wiped or expelled.”
A familiar guilt crept into my ribcage. Isaac’s story was even more tragic than Seneval’s. I had everything; Isaac hadn’t been so lucky. “What happened to her?” I asked.
“While she was in custody waiting for my birth, she tried to run. She fled north into Canada. It’d only been a part of the U.N.A. for a few years then and a lot of former Canadians didn’t feel any loyalty to the U.N.A. government. They were known to harbour rebels and she thought she’d try her luck in finding a sympathizer. Which she accomplished. I was born on an Alberta farm where the family made a habit of harbouring illegals. My mother and I were there for another five months before the SecRos caught up with us. They might never have found us except a local from the town was suspicious of the family she was staying with and turned in their names.”
What he’d been describing had happened so many years ago, but an old pain whistled through the words. “I’ve never been able to find out where they sent her after that,” he added, his voice like wood worn smooth. “The government handed me over to my father to bring me up. I was raised by a succession of Ros and human nannies he hired. I was ten before I even found out who my mother really was. My father had told me she’d been killed by a terrorist virus—he said that’s what had made me the way I am.”
The air in the room had grown stale. We each paused to slowly inhale. “Are you still in touch with him—your father?” I asked.
“I can’t write him off entirely. His name has influence. How do you think I get into the camps on a regular basis?”
“But why are you working here, then? Obviously you don’t need the money.”
“Obviously.” Isaac echoed. “You could say it’s more window dressing than a real job. It has its organizational advantages too. And my father gave up trying to make me into anything he could understand a long time ago. He’s more than happy to forget about me most of the time. But enough about me, I need to know about you.”
“I don’t want to talk about my family. I don’t want them involved in this.”
Isaac inclined his head in a sign of understanding. “You don’t have to tell me about them. I want to know about you. Why and what you think you can do for us.”
“I’ve already told Seneval and the other gateway voters that.”
Isaac’s jaw set like I was beginning to try his patience. “It doesn’t matter. Now you’re talking to me.”
Was it a bad sign that I hadn’t done any work for the organization yet and was already wondering if I could completely trust them? They hadn’t given me any solid reason not to. It would be impossible to help the movement in any meaningful way without having to trust someone at some point.
And so I told Isaac about the indelible feeling inside me that said things weren’t right in the U.N.A. and that they hadn’t been for decades. I told him if we were bound for destruction I still believed it was better to look the reality of the planet in the eye than to check into gushi and absolve ourselves of responsibility. I even described what listening to Arlette Courtemanche make people cry had done to me. Her, Malyck Dixon’s broken plates, and hundreds of other things I’d seen.
Then I repeated what I’d said at the classes about wanting to help exchange information and keep eco-refugees safe but that I didn’t believe in bombing and violence. Isaac listened without interrupting, and when I was out of breath and didn’t have an unsaid thought left in my head that related to the grounded movement, I stopped and stared down at the bruised remains of the jomange Seneval had given me.
“Okay, then,” Isaac said with a finality that told me I’d never see him again. “Thanks for coming to see me, Garren.”
“That’s it?” I wanted a hint in one direction or the other—were they going to accept me?
“For now. You might hear more in Friday’s class.” Isaac pointed at my jomange. “I’ll take that for you if you’re finished.” I let him ease the fruit out of my hand before taking a step towards the door.
Alone in the corridor I shook my head, annoyed with myself and Isaac. Me for not being more certain about what I was doing and him for not giving me the thing I wasn’t positive I wanted.
Head reeling, I staggered towards Seneval’s room. I wanted to talk things over if she’d let me. Let her vouch for the warren. There were still hours until curfew.
Seneval’s door was ajar. I noticed before I reached it and thought I must have had the wrong room. But no, it was #43. I knocked as I pushed the door open. It caught on something and I peeked inside, simultaneously saying Seneval’s name and spying the body crumpled on the floor. Hers. It was Seneval’s left foot that the door had snagged on. She was lying on her side with her head tilted at an unnatural angle, one of her arms folded underneath her torso and the other splayed to display the inside of her thin wrist. I dropped to my knees and gazed into her eyes. They were open but showed no signs of life. It was like peering into a pitch-black room that had no windows, no lights. She wasn’t breathing, either. I’d never seen a body that still. I held my hand to her mouth to be sure, the way I’d seen people do in old movies.
Nothing. No warmth or flow of air from her lungs. Technically, she was dead. My ears started ringing and white blotches danced behind my eyes as I slipped into shock. The loss wormed its way into my stomach, making me choke.
No. This had to be a mistake. People didn’t die easily in 2063. Not if they had Bio-nets and as a U.N.A. citizen, Seneval surely had one. There was no equivalent of the early twenty-first century anti-vaccine movement in the future; even the most fanatical grounded members didn’t risk their lives by denying themselves a Bio-net.
Where I’m from, the first thing people did in an emergency was dive into gushi to contact the SecRos. No matter what you thought of the Ros, they put 1986’s emergency services to shame. But the shock had turned my brain to pulp; the Ros didn’t even occur to me.
Seneval had smiled at me on the beach. She’d made me believe I could b
e something more. She’d been right here, alive and well, when I’d walked down the corridor with Isaac.
Instinctively, I pushed back through the doorway and sprinted for Isaac’s room. My shoulder hurt where it had collided with Seneval’s door and I winced as I raised my hand to knock wildly. How had this happened? It couldn’t be true; despite appearances I must have been wrong.
Isaac opened up for me, his eyes wary. “What now, Garren?”
“It’s Seneval—” My unfinished sentence sliced at the air, my throat closing in distress.
We careened back to her room, my mouth and eyes gaping and her door still ajar like I’d left it. Isaac shut it firmly behind us and knelt beside her body. He took Seneval’s wrist, feeling for her pulse while I crouched behind him.
“Did you send for the SecRos?” he demanded, turning to glance at me over his shoulder.
“No. I’ll do that now.” I cursed myself for letting precious moments elapse.
“Wait.” Isaac smoothed his right hand over each of Seneval’s eyes, gently closing them. Then he swivelled on his knees and stared at me with a pained expression. “She’s gone. They can’t help her.”
“But they need to investigate.” My voice cracked like a dead branch about to catch fire. “Someone her age doesn’t just keel over dead.”
“I think someone snapped her neck,” Isaac said quietly. “Spinal shock. It must have happened fast; otherwise she would’ve sent for the SecRos.” He paused and sat pensively back on his heels. “I’ve heard of something like this happening before.”
“Look, just let me tell the SecRos. We’re wasting time. Whoever it is could be getting away.” If it’d been anyone but Isaac next to me, I wouldn’t have stopped to debate the issue. But his opinion had weight; Seneval would have listened to him. That knowledge made me pause.
“Unless it was you.” Isaac’s unblinking stare turned cold.
Desperation ricocheted through my chest, sadness immediately surging in to cover it. “Come on, you know it wasn’t me. I left here with you earlier.”
Tomorrow Page 9
