by Carol Riggs
A few solitary figures pass me, intent on pre-dawn errands. I turn right.
“Four blocks to go,” I mutter. I need to hang on just a little longer.
By the time I make out the dim figure of Vonn in his poncho, the cold has settled into my bones. Vonn leans against the wall of an office building, sheltered under a pillared entrance overhang. I dash over and throw myself against him. The sting of tears pricks my eyes, and a sob burbles out before I can stop it. He pulls me closer and kisses my cheekbone, my nose, my mouth.
“Shhh, you’re safe now,” he whispers into my lips.
I blink in quick succession at the tenderness of his voice. A strong shiver convulses me.
He rubs my arms. “You couldn’t find something warmer?”
“I’m fine. Did you tell anyone you were coming to meet me at the airport?”
“No. Not even my mom. I was too worried about you and what was going on in the Spares room, plus scrambling to get a flight up here. As much as I’d like to know what all this is about, I bet you need to get somewhere dry and warm first.”
I give a jerky nod. Vonn shields me from the wind and pulls out his phone. I close my eyes and lean into him, feeling a profound fatigue begin to replace my adrenaline. It’s a relief to let him take over for a bit.
After a minute or two, he lets out a satisfied murmur and shows me a street map on his screen. “There are a couple of fairly cheap hotels seven blocks from here. I’ve checked into this bigger one, room 276.”
“I’ll meet you there. You go this way.” I point at the map. “I’ll circle around the other way so we’re not seen on vidfeeds walking down sidewalks together. If I have enough credits I’ll get a separate room, since I’ll need to stay in Seattle longer than you. That way I’m not suddenly booking a room right as you leave.”
“That’s extremely careful.” He gives me a troubled look before planting a warm kiss on my forehead. “See you in a bit. Be safe.”
The billowing shape of his poncho disappears into the downpour. With my thumb, I massage the sore spot on my opposite hand where I inserted the chip. I’ll stay here about ten minutes to be sure my check-in time won’t coincide with Vonn’s. I also need to know if my ID is going to work. I’d feel a lot better trying it out for the first time in a public area, rather than in an enclosed place where autodoors can lock and trap me inside if an alarm goes off. Maybe I can test the chip before I reach the hotel.
After a few more minutes, I plunge back into the rainstorm, keeping an eye peeled for a place to buy something.
Three streets down, I find a sheltered set of vending machines selling trail mix, sweatpants, and hooded souvenir sweatshirts. I select one of each, press “purchase,” and let the scanner read my chip. I press my hand onto the bio-ID pad and brace myself to run. I flinch as the machine gives a scraping click.
A second later, the machine screen informs me: Purchase verified. Thank you, Ana Maria Ramos. Balance: 1770 credits.
Three objects land in the bottom tray with two thumps and a thunk.
Giving a throaty giggle, I slip the packages into a courtesy recyclable bag and trot down the street. It worked! How lucky the Institute’s auto-system starts out new Spares with eighteen hundred credits. Or at least that’s the total it generated for my body. It’s not a huge amount, but if I’m careful, what’s left will pay for a room, food, and even travel expenses at some point. And how interesting my name is Ana Ramos. The computer files must’ve registered my Spare’s ethnicity in order to match my chip correctly. I sure hope no one expects me to be fluent in Spanish.
I keep walking. A few blocks later, two hotels come into view, the smaller one rising up like a cheesy-looking fortress. It’s decorated with a flashing neon sign and a teddy bear hologram opening and closing its eyes. I’ll go for that one. I step into the quiet building and try to ignore the fact that I have security cameras pointed at me. After checking in with the concierge-bot to pay for my lodging, I dart across the street to the bigger hotel and take an elevator pod to room 276.
Vonn answers when I tap on the door, and I slip inside. He’s already removed his soaked poncho, socks, and shoes.
“I had enough credits to get a room in the other hotel,” I say. “I’ll pay you back for this room when I can.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Vonn looks at me, from my soaked hair to my drenched slip-on flats. “Go thaw out in the bathroom, quick, before your chattering teeth make you bite your tongue.”
Great idea. I scuttle off to take a steaming hot shower. When I’m done, the bathroom smells like raspberry shampoo, and my skin tingles, warm and dry at last. My new hair hangs in a thick black mane near my shoulders. I study myself in the mirror. What did this girl do to deserve a brain wipe? Was she a murderer, or just someone who opposed the Institute—or the government? She obviously was experienced at shoplifting, but that alone shouldn’t have caused her to get turned into a Spare.
Shoplifting. I was the one stealing clothing today. I can’t believe I did that.
I pull on my vending machine clothes. When I emerge from the bathroom, Vonn twists in his chair to face me. I flop into the other chair. “I feel so much better now,” I say. Nowhere near normal, but better.
“What’s up with all the secret agent clothing switcheroos, Morgan? I’m curious why all the Enforcers in Seattle are after you.” One corner of Vonn’s mouth quirks up. “Did you rob the Institute or something?”
“Sorta. I stole this body.”
His half smile fades. “That’s not the one they assigned you?”
“No.” I take a deep breath and give him a rundown of my frightening Spares discovery, and how Leo canceled my reversal and slated my backup file for deletion. “I woke up in the Spares room and barely escaped.”
Vonn looks pained. “Leo authorized your file deletion on purpose?”
I nod and let the ugliness of that fact settle in. Leo worked hard to make something of himself, to reach his goals, but he sacrificed things like morals and integrity to get there. I clamp my arms around myself, fingers pressing against the bones underneath.
Leo tried to kill me tonight.
It’s unreal. It’s like I’ve been tossed into some warped action-adventure vid. When I first joined the program, Leo seemed supportive and sincere and caring. Somewhere along the line, he changed his mind about me—like I changed my mind about him. I was duped last spring, brainwashed into believing he had my best interests in mind. He didn’t. His main concern was The Body Institute, period.
Back then I thought the Reducer and Loaner program was an awesome system to help people lose weight. But there are too many glitches with the brainmapping, and too many ways the ERT procedure can be twisted into something evil.
Spares, illegal ID chips, even murder.
“Your backup was more than a week old,” Vonn says. “Leo didn’t have to delete you. You wouldn’t have remembered any of what you learned about the Spares.”
I frown. “I hadn’t thought of that. Talk about overly vindictive.”
Vonn makes a gruff noise. “And now you probably can’t go back to the Yellow Zone or live with your parents. Do the Enforcers know what you look like?”
“I don’t think so. At first I had my coat hood up everywhere except the Spares and Transfer rooms, where it was pretty dark. Then I wore a baseball cap, and now I have this hooded sweatshirt. I think all they know is I’m an average-height female. I’m going to lay low in Seattle a couple of weeks, since they probably expect me to run far away from here, and soon.”
“Won’t they know which body is yours when they check the Spares database?”
“The nurse said any data and images about the body are wiped after the new ID is generated, since it’s illegal.”
“Then I’d better not blow your cover. I’ll go to the Space Needle today, since I’ve always wanted to see it. I’ll stick around town for a day or two to make it look like a legit vacation.”
“Delete everything about me on
your phone, too,” I say. “I’m going to leave in a few minutes. I’ll take a side exit to the stairs where there’s only one camera instead of two or three like in the lobby.”
“I hate to let you do this alone. This is a really scary situation.”
Yeah. I wish he didn’t have to leave Seattle. The next two weeks will be stark and empty without him. And like he said…scary.
“I won’t be able to see you until I get to the Blue Zone,” I say. “That’s a safer place for me to stay than the Yellow Zone, where everyone else I know lives.”
Vonn breaks into a full smile. “Great. We can get jobs and pretend to meet each other at a café. Start up a hot whirlwind romance.”
I smile back. The tension in my shoulders eases a little. “Absolutely.”
He scans me, head to toe. “You know, I love your new looks, but it’ll take me a while to get used to the difference. One day I’m hanging with a girl who looks like Jodine and I’m calling you Morgan. The next day I’m hanging with a girl who… What’s your new name, anyway?”
“Ana Maria Ramos. You won’t be able to call me Morgan anymore.”
“That’ll take a while to get used to.”
For me, too. I get up and sit on Vonn’s knee, curling against him. He’s warm. He’s here with me. That’s all I want right now. “Thanks for flying up to Seattle to make sure I was okay.”
“I had to do it, Ana,” Vonn murmurs, and tips my chin up so he can kiss me.
Chapter 33
I blow out a determined breath into the January air. The handles of the grocery bag I’m carrying bite into my fingers, and I shift the bag to my other hand. Vonn and I are having chef salads tonight. He’s done stacking crates of apples and cauliflower at his new produce job, and we have just enough time to throw together a dinner at his apartment before I take off for my restaurant hostess job.
Ugh. I hate my job, but there wasn’t much available when I arrived in the Blue Zone last week. I’m still living in a nearby hotel instead of an apartment, until I get one more paycheck. Welcome to the real world. No more basic-level schooling for me. My records say I’m twenty-five and have already earned an education certificate.
Once I’m inside Vonn’s megacomplex and on the tenth floor, I press my hand to the ID pad by his apartment door. It slides open, since he programmed the pad to recognize me.
“The salad lady has arrived,” I call. “Get your veggie-chopping hands ready.”
He pops out from a back room and smothers me in a hug. I stand on my toes to kiss him. “Hi, new boyfriend.”
“Greetings, old girlfriend.”
“Funny.” He doesn’t miss a chance to remind me that I’m now a few years older than he is—at least according to our ID chips.
He grabs the grocery bag, and we start chopping. “Mom invited us for dinner Sunday so she can meet you,” he says. “If you don’t think you can survive that, I can make up an excuse.”
“No, I’ll give it a shot.” Might as well get it over with. His mom sounds nice enough, though nosey and full of unsolicited advice.
“Do you think it’ll ever be safe enough for you to see your mom?” Vonn asks.
“I doubt it.” I blink, and the wetness in my eyes isn’t because of the onions. I wish with all my soul that I could see Mom, Dad, and Granddad. It’s so wrong I can’t see my own family. I’d like to “happen” to bump into them somewhere, someday. Just once, to tell them I’m alive. But it wouldn’t be safe. Leo or the government might be tracking my friends and family. Monitoring their calls, reading their texts. I wouldn’t put it past him or the Enforcers.
I have to let Mom, Dad, and Granddad mourn and move on. Having me appear as Ana would only endanger them. It really sucks they think I’m dead. In a Seattle newsvid, Leo spouted about how he sent me to the airport in an Institute vehicle after my Transfer, and that’s the last he saw of me. The driver and four Enforcers lied to verify his story. Later, the body of the sandy-haired girl was found by the river.
Yeah, he and the Enforcers lost track of me at the airport, all right. That part is true.
Leo hurt my friends by arranging my fake death. He destroyed my life and the lives of my family. As soon as it’s safe for me to do something—and as soon as I figure out what to do—Leo and his prized Institute are going down.
I sure hope Mom and Dad made the December payment deadline for the debt. Maybe with Granddad and me gone, they were able to move into a cheaper one-bedroom unit, even if Dad’s wages got garnished.
An abrupt pounding rattles the front door, which makes me drop the onion knife. I shoot Vonn a glance. His eyes are wider than mine.
“Open up, by orders of the U.S. government,” a man shouts. “Your emergency door is also guarded, so don’t try to escape out the back.”
Enforcers. Have they discovered my real identity, or is Vonn the one who’s in trouble?
It doesn’t matter. Neither one of us can escape.
Vonn opens the front door to a pair of male Enforcers, one weathered and steely-eyed, one young and pimpled. They enter without being invited, and the door closes behind them. The pimpled one scans our IDs and logs our names.
The weathered Enforcer studies me. “Our main business is with Mr. Alexander. For the record, Miss Ramos, state your relationship with him and why you’re here.”
“Um, girlfriend,” I say. “Making chef salads. Has Vonn done something wrong?”
“How long have you known him?”
“Eight wonderful days.” My palms and the back of my neck begin to sweat.
“Mr. Alexander, I’ll get straight to the point.” The weathered Enforcer takes a visual sweep of the apartment, his blue eyes sharp. “We’ve combed Institute surveillance feeds and discovered you talking with the late Morgan Dey in the Clinic weigh-in room. Using facial recognition matches, we then found you on public Green Zone cam-feeds for October, November, and December. We recorded you entering an interactive vid theater, patronizing the Half-Moon Café, and walking with her in two different parks while holding hands.”
Oh, no. They’ve made the connection to Vonn. What if they suspect I’m Morgan?
The pimpled Enforcer folds his arms. “Of course, these things were done while Miss Dey was in the body of Jodine Kowalczyk.”
“And now Morgan’s dead,” Vonn says with a bit of a growl. “What’s your point? Sure, we became friends while we walked in the park, and then we found out we were both Reducers. We decided to keep walking together. I didn’t think it was a crime to be friends with someone.”
“As a Reducer, your interactions offsite were restricted,” the weathered Enforcer says.
Somehow, I need to steer them off any possibility that I might be Morgan. I narrow my eyes at Vonn and pour my nervousness into a glare. “You didn’t tell me about this other girl, honey.”
“I didn’t have time to!” Vonn says.
The pimpled Enforcer holds up his hands. “Don’t be getting all riled up, you two.”
I step toward him. “I want to know about Vonn and this other chick. Did they just hold hands, or did they kiss?”
“That’s not the issue here,” the weathered Enforcer cuts in. “Mr. Alexander, state the last time you saw Miss Dey.”
Vonn pretends to think. “Uh, I saw her in the Green Zone’s South Park, just before she went to Seattle to get a new body. Well, after that I also went to Seattle to try to surprise her at the airport, but she wasn’t there.”
I jam my fists on my hips. “You told me you took a vacation to Seattle last month to see the Space Needle. Not to see some old girlfriend.”
“Miss Ramos,” the weathered Enforcer snaps. “Be quiet, or we’ll cite you for impeding an investigation.”
I sink onto the couch while the Enforcers continue to grill Vonn. Time inches by. I don’t dare bring up the fact that I’m going to be late for work. After they’re done with Vonn, they question me, and it’s a good thing I studied my personal file so I know my background. One deceased parent
, the other in a long-term coma in an Orange Zone care home—who I suspect is a legit person the auto-system connected me to. No siblings, as is usual these days. Born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. Luckily, the Enforcers don’t ask specific questions about where I supposedly grew up.
“What made you move here to southern California?” the weathered Enforcer asks.
Careful. My records state I worked in a parts-assembly factory for a year in Seattle—which is smart of the Institute to give Spares a reason to be in the area—but it might look too coincidental that I’ve ended up where Vonn lives.
“Have you ever been to Seattle?” I say with a brittle laugh. “It’s about the gloomiest, wettest place on earth. Well, plus I had a bad breakup with my ex and wanted a fresh start somewhere far away from him.”
“State the reason you checked into the SnooZee hotel three weeks ago.”
Whoa. I guess they know that fact from scanning my ID earlier and pulling up a search. “Post-breakup. I left my ex and let him have the apartment until the end of the month. Since it was already paid up, and all.”
“Noted,” the pimpled Enforcer says. “What do you think of the Institute and the WHA?”
I shrug like I don’t care. “The Reducer program sounds good. Vonn did a great job for his client, until the WHA blew up his real body. I wish the WHA wasn’t violent and fanatical, because if they weren’t, they’d be a way better organization. It’s not against the law to want my rights protected, is it?”
“No,” the weathered Enforcer says with a grunt. He taps his comm-device and moves toward the door. “That’s all the questions we have at this time for either of you. Mr. Alexander, you will be fined five hundred credits for violating offsite restrictions in your Institute contract. This amount will be auto-deducted from your account.”
