After that, it was chaos. Coaches came running in, shouting for everyone to get back. Someone took a swing at Devon’s dad, and someone else took a swing at that guy. Bodies pressed in, around and past where I was standing, but nobody bothered with me. They mostly didn’t seem to notice that I was there. Tara got to her knees in the middle of the press, sobbing and wiping vomit from her eyes, then screamed when some idiot stomped on her fingers. I stepped forward, grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet.
“There’s vomit in my hair!” Tara wailed.
“I know,” I said, close to her ear. “Come on.”
I put my arm around her shoulder and tried to pull her out of the crowd, but the other runners were piling in around us by then. Fairport kids were pushing forward to help Devon, and Briarwood kids were crowding in around us, while the girls from Penfield were just trying to get their finish cards and get out of the way. A man’s hand grabbed my arm and pulled me to the side. I stumbled, almost pulled Tara down with me, and smacked him twice before I realized it was my dad. Tara’s mom was there too. She pulled Tara to her, wrapped her arms around her and pressed Tara’s face against her white silk shirt. A woman in a Fairport polo shirt grabbed Tara’s jersey from behind, tried to start in on her, but Tara’s mom backhanded her and that was that. I ducked my head, wrapped my arms around Dad’s chest, closed my eyes and breathed.
I was hanging out in the solarium that night, supposedly splitting time among abs, stretching, and GeneChem homework, but mostly listening to the soundtrack to Stupid War: The Musical on continuous loop, when my phone pinged. I thought about ignoring it—I was almost to the part where Daniel Andersen sings his solo about the Battle of Frostburg, which always made me cry—but then it pinged again, and again. I sighed and thumbed the screen.
I looked up from the phone, my heart beating a little faster.
“Dad? Is that you?”
Nothing. The door was shut, and the solarium was pretty well soundproofed. I stood and walked over to the glass wall. It was an overcast night, dark as the bottom of a coal mine that far out in the sticks, and all I could see was my reflection. My phone pinged again.
Wilma17: Look, whoever you are. I’m about two seconds from yelling for my dad, who will definitely have Bioteka security crawling up your asses as soon as he sees what’s on this phone.
Wilma17: Okay. Right now, or I’m calling Dad—tell me who you are, and how you got my number, and how you’re ghosting your IDs. Isn’t that supposed to be illegal? Also, while I’m asking, how the flark do you know what my pulse is?
Wilma17: Right. Calling Dad now . . .
Wilma17: Devon? Okay. Where’d you get my digits?
Wilma17: And he got them from?
Wilma17: Found them?
Luckily for me, that actually turned out to be true.
Wilma17: Okay. So let’s assume I believe this is the girl who stomped my friend’s face into a puddle of her own barf this afternoon, and not some random weirdo. What do you want, Devon?
So, she told me.
The next afternoon was a recovery run, two laps around the time-trial course we’d run through the woods around the school that first Saturday in August. I paired off with Tara, as I’d been doing for most of the last few weeks. Miranda and Kerry started off with us, but after the first couple of miles Tara started to push the pace, and the other girls dropped back. I matched Tara stride for stride, letting her slip ahead when the trail went to single-track, then pulling even again when it widened. The first few days of training with Coach Doyle had shaken me pretty badly, but I’d been putting the hay in the barn since then, and I was just starting to get to the point where the workouts didn’t hurt anymore, where my stride had a rhythm and flow to it that I hadn’t felt since the end of track season the previous spring. Tara had been encouraging for the first couple of weeks, but lately I was starting to get the feeling that she’d prefer to just run alone. We’d already made the turn to start the second lap by the time I worked up the nerve to talk to her.
“Tara?”
She glanced back. We were pushing way too hard for the day after a race, and neither of us had a ton of wind to spare for conversation.
“What?”
“What do you know . . .” I took two strides to breathe. “. . . about Devon Morgan?”
“You mean . . . besides that . . . she’s a psycho . . . bitch?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Besides that.”
Tara slowed to a stop at a fork in the trail. I pulled up short. Stopping during a training run was a mortal sin in Doyle’s world. If any of the other runners saw us standing there and reported back on us, he’d . . . I had no idea what he’d do. As far as I knew, nobody had ever stopped during one of Doyle’s training runs. Tara folded her arms across her chest, and stared me down.
“Why do you want to know about Devon, Hannah?”
I shrugged.
“No reason.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You’re not fraternizing with the enemy, are you?”
I shook my head.
“No. I mean, not really. She pinged me last night, just to say hello.”
“And she’d do that why?”
I looked away. I definitely didn’t want to go there with Tara. Not yet, anyway. She closed her eyes and sighed.
“You’re what, fourteen?”
I nodded.
“You remember much about the Stupid War?”
I shook my head.
“I was eight. I think . . . my parents kept us out of it, mostly. We just hunkered down out here until it was over.”
“Yeah,” Tara said. “Us too. Devon’s parents? Not so much.”
“You mean they were . . .” I had to search for the word. “. . . partisans?”
She nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “Lots of people were, I guess. They must have been with the Engineered, right? I mean, Devon doesn’t exactly look like she’d fit in with the UnAltered.”
“Yeah,” Tara said. “You’d think so.”
“But?”
“But no. Devon’s parents? They were with the AIs.”
We finished out the run in silence. When we were done, Tara went off to stretch with Miranda and Kerry, and left me alone in the middle of the soccer field to stew. I thought for a while that this was going to turn into one of those alone-in-the-cafeteria moments that make high school such a joy, but after a few minutes, Jordan and his crew came out of the woods. He saw me sitting twenty feet away from the rest of the girls, gave me a wide grin, and said something to his second. The other boys went off to the far end of the field to run strides. Jordan came over and sat down beside me
.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s with the exile? I thought you and Tara were all good?”
I shrugged.
“Yeah, me too. I mean, we are, I think. She just didn’t seem very social today.”
He leaned forward until our faces were only a few inches apart.
“Remember what I told you, after that first practice?”
I rolled my eyes.
“I didn’t beat her.”
He laughed.
“Not yet.”
I glanced over at Tara. She was watching us.
“Okay,” I said. “Now that’s creeping me out.”
Jordan laughed again, louder.
“I don’t blame you. Kinda looks like she’s trying to decide where to stash your body, doesn’t she?”
He turned to give Tara a big smile and wave. She scowled and looked away. Jordan settled back into the grass, stretched his legs out in front of him and started working his hamstrings.
“Hey,” I said. “Jordan? Can I ask you something totally random?”
He shrugged, and brought his nose down to his right knee.
“Sure, as long as you don’t mind a totally random answer.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess that’s fair. So . . . in the Stupid War, were there really people who backed the AIs?”
Jordan looked up from his stretch. He wasn’t smiling.
“It’s for an essay,” I said. “For Modern History.”
“Right,” he said. “Modern History. You know they don’t offer that class to freshies, right?”
In fact, I had not known that. Jordan sat up, rolled his neck around in a slow circle, and stretched down to his left leg.
“So,” he said. “Tara’s been talking smack about Devon Morgan, huh?”
I didn’t say anything. He straightened, and gave me a long, searching look.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “There were. I don’t think any of them made it to the end of the war alive, though. Devon’s parents weren’t partisans like the UnAltered or the New Human Army, Hannah. They just took a lot of shit over some stuff her pops said when NatSec started talking about doing a total network purge. Honestly, he came pretty close to getting himself lynched. There were all kinds of rumors—I mean, some folks even said they were harboring. The only thing anybody ever proved, though, was that he wrote an essay on one of the news blogs saying maybe NatSec shouldn’t totally wipe out what was basically a brand-new sentient species just because a few of them did some really bad stuff.”
He pulled one knee up, and twisted around to stretch his lower back.
“Anyway,” he said, “I hung out most of the weekend with Devon at States last spring. Whatever her parents did or didn’t do six years ago, she’s a good kid. I know Tara’s fired up about the meet yesterday, but dredging up that shit . . .” He looked over at Tara again. “That’s pretty low, even by her standards.”
Doyle called Jordan’s name from across the field. He sighed, and climbed to his feet.
“Look,” he said. “I know that sounded like I was shitting on Tara. I’m not. She’s a good kid too, for the most part. She just . . .” He looked over at her, then back at me. Doyle called his name again, a little louder. “Right,” he said. “Just watch your back, okay?”
DGorgon: Had a chance to think about what I said last night?
Wilma17: Who is?
DGorgon: Sorry. It’s Devon.
Wilma17: No fake ID tonight?
DGorgon: Yeah, that’s Inchy’s thing. He’s a little paranoid.
Wilma17: And Inchy is . . .
DGorgon: A friend.
Wilma17: A friend who knows how to ghost a system ID?
DGorgon: Yup.
Wilma17: Okaaaaaaay.
DGorgon: Anyway . . .
Wilma17: Yeah, anyway. I don’t know, Devon.
DGorgon: It’s not a big deal.
Wilma17: Really? I barely know you, and you’re basically asking me to spy on my own dad.
DGorgon: Not spy, really. Just . . .
Wilma17: Just what?
DGorgon: Okay, yeah. Spy. But this could be really important.
Wilma17: Says who?
DGorgon: Um . . . Inchy?
Wilma17: Inchy. Your spooky-ass, ID-ghosting “friend”?
DGorgon: Yes?
Wilma17: Look, Devon . . . You need to throw me a bone here. You want me to find out what Dad’s doing with this DragonCorn thing. That honestly sounds more like an industrial-espionage thing than a saving-the-world thing. My dad’s job pays for all of my stuff. I really don’t want to screw that up.
DGorgon: Hang on . . .
DGorgon: You know who Robert Longstreth is?
Wilma17: Uh, yeah. He’s the guy who gives my dad the money that pays for all my stuff.
DGorgon: You know what happened to him six years ago?
Wilma17: No. What?
DGorgon: Let’s just say he’s carrying a really, really big grudge against the UnAltered. Inchy thinks DragonCorn is gonna be his payback.
Wilma17: Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be corn. Literally corn.
Wilma17: Anyway, why would I care if Robert Longstreth wants to do bad things to the UnAltered? Those guys suck.
DGorgon: There’s lots of people out there who are unaltered without being UnAltered, Hannah. Your mom and dad, for instance.
Wilma17: . . .
Wilma17: Tell you what. I’ll think about it, okay?
DGorgon: Okay. Ping me tomorrow?
I put my phone down, went into the bathroom, and brushed my teeth. When I came back out, there were two more messages at the bottom of the screen.
8. In which Jordan provides valuable perspective.
Doyle wanted a captains’ meeting the day after the Fairport meet to talk about the world’s first ever cross-country riot. Much as I would have loved to rehash sweet Tara’s well-deserved comeuppance, however, I had to beg off. I had a date that night with Marta Longstreth.
Micah, needless to say, was not happy when I told him where I was going.
“Seriously? This is gross, Jordan. Does she know you’re not a breeder?”
I sighed, and accelerated up the ramp onto 90. Velociraptor had an honest-to-God gas engine, with enough horses to push us back into our seats as I swung into the left lane and opened it up.
“Yes, Micah. Marta is well aware that this evening is not going to end in the backseat.”
He twisted around to look behind us.
“You don’t have a backseat.”
I sighed again, a little louder.
“Yes,” I said. “I know. It’s just an expression.”
“Oh. Right. So you meant . . .”
“I meant that she knows I have a boyfriend, Micah.”
“Right. Good. So why are you doing this?”
I swung right to pass a cargo hauler that shouldn’t have been in the left lane, then right again to get around a taxi, then all the way back to the left to catch the open lane again. You’d think having 95 percent of the cars on the road driverless would make traffic less stupid, but unfortunately you would be very, very wrong.
“We are doing this for the same reason the children of nobility have gone on dinner dates since time immemorial, Micah. My father is a prince of GeneCraft. Hers is the king of Bioteka. We are the only two people in our social strata within two hundred miles of this godforsaken wasteland, and our parents would very much like for us to form an alliance.”
That got me a long five seconds of silence.
“But you’re not gonna.”
I patted his knee, and swerved back across to the far right lane.
“No, Micah. We’re not gonna.”
“Hey.”
Marta climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the door. The car that had carried her to the Park-n-Ride backed
out and pulled away.
“Hello,” I said. “Nice to meet you in person, finally. This seems unnecessarily cloak-and-dagger, though, doesn’t it? I could have just picked you up at your house.”
That got a short, bitter laugh out of her. She had a tattooed spider in the middle of her throat, with a web that stretched around to the back of her neck. The laugh made it dance in a disturbingly creepy way.
“You obviously haven’t met my dad. Nobody comes to our house. Hardly anybody even knows where it is. I’m kind of amazed he’s letting this happen at all.”
I dropped Velociraptor into gear and headed back to the highway.
“Well, he couldn’t keep his princess locked away in the castle forever, could he?”
She laughed again. She had the least happy laugh that I’ve ever heard.
“Actually, I was starting to think that he could.”
“So what changed?”
She shrugged.
“Basically, I started making myself unbearable. He’s still not pleased, and I guarantee there’s a drone pacing us right now and monitoring everything we do, but at least I’m out of the house.”
“Your dad likes drones, huh?” I said, and eased my foot off the gas. “That’s good to know.”
We had an eight-o’clock reservation at Primo’s on the Lakeshore. I’d been rather proud of myself for getting us a table on a day’s notice. Ordinarily, they were booked a week or more in advance. When we arrived, though, there were only two other cars in the front lot, and a third tucked around behind the main building. I thought at first that they might have had to close for some reason, but the lights were on inside, and I could see movement through the front windows. I looked over at Marta. She sighed and climbed out of the car.
The hostess was waiting for us just inside the door, menus in hand.
The End of Ordinary Page 5
