Lux and Lies (Whitebird Chronicles Book 1)

by Meg Collett

  Bode stepped forward. “Wren is going to the city for a while.”

  “What?” Mak’s eyes narrowed with lethal intent. “Why?”

  “Her health. We’re going to help her.”

  The seed of hope inside Wren fluttered at his words. She didn’t want to trust him, but she couldn’t stop herself from getting a touch excited.

  Mak raked her eyes up and down Bode, sizing him up and finding him short of the mark. Almost everyone fell short of Mak’s high standards.

  “He’s lying,” she said, loud enough for Bode to hear. Mak knew liars—it was how she excelled at poker—but Wren had to stop this before her friend took things too far.

  “Mak,” Wren said, grabbing her best friend’s hand and squeezing it. “It’s okay. I’m okay. They’re really going to help me, I promise. Just trust me. Do that for me.”

  Mak’s inked fingers clenched around Wren’s as she studied her face. Mak leaned in close and whispered, “Whatever’s happening, I’ll come for you. I’ll find you. No matter what, okay?”

  “Time’s up,” Bode said from behind them. “We have to hit the road.”

  Mak jerked Wren into another lung-crushing hug.

  “I love you, Mak,” she whispered into her best friend’s hair.

  “I’ll find you. I promise. I promise.”

  4:

  Wren watched the Links escort a hissing and cursing Mak back into the station and then stepped off the curb, her hand hovering above the car door. “I have one question.”

  Bode leaned against the door, eyes on her, as though he had all the time in the world. “Shoot.”

  “I can say no? I can walk away—at any time.”

  Bode inclined his head. “You don’t trust many people, do you?”

  “Only one.”

  “Mak,” he guessed. Wren said nothing. “You know, if you stay, I’ll win your trust too.”

  “Can I say no?” she asked again, caring little for his promise.

  He sighed. “Yes, but you’ll forgo the help you need. We won’t be able to save you.”

  Wren studied his eyes as he spoke, taking in his steadfastness. Her seed of hope turned into a tiny ember that kindled in her heart. She could have a life—a real one not governed by a ticking clock. She told herself only fools hoped, but it was pointless. She’d be a fool for Pacem—for a cure.

  “Ready?” Bode asked gently, not pushing her.

  “It’ll take more than smiles and kind words to win my trust,” Wren warned him.

  Nevertheless, he smiled at her. Wren smiled back, not because she felt inclined to give him a smile, but because she knew he traded in smiles like Mak traded in food rations at poker games. Smiling at him might win her the favor of a VidaCorp insider.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Bode helped her back inside the car. This time, she didn’t bother worrying about her dirty pants.

  “We’re ready,” Bode told the driver and buckled his seatbelt. The car rumbled to life. “Please let Hutton know we’re on our way.”

  “Who’s Hutton?” Wren asked as she mimicked the way Bode had fastened his seatbelt.

  The car pulled away from the police station, and Wren’s heart raced from the thrill of being inside a moving vehicle.

  “A handler from Glass House. She’ll talk to you today about all the details.”

  Wren’s eyes went to the window. Sunshine Heights slipped by like a deep, slow-moving river. She knew these roads, knew every pothole before the gas-powered car’s wheels bounced over them. This was her home. They passed through the market square she would’ve been at tonight to collect her assigned rations. A late morning tram whizzed by above the car, its long, slim shadow slinking past in a blink. They wove through the towering government housing identical to hers and to Mak’s.

  She lifted her eyes and stared out the front windshield. They were near the edge of Sunshine Heights. The only thing separating them from the outside was the main gates that were starting to open. They would’ve been loud and clanging as they traveled along their rusted tracks, but she heard nothing from inside the car.

  She’d never left Sunshine Heights. These fences and gates had formed the perimeters of her life.

  Her stomach stirred with excitement—or hunger. She couldn’t tell which.

  The car sped down the road. She eyed the distance to the gates’ slowly parting edges. She didn’t know if the gap was wide enough for them to drive through. As they barreled closer, she squeezed her eyes closed.

  When she reopened them, they were through. She swiveled in the seat and looked out the back window. The gates shuddered to a stop and retracted, sealing off her past with a lurching, disjointed kiss of metal.

  “I’ve imagined leaving this place so many times.” Just earlier this morning, she’d stood near the fence, picturing her great escape. She hadn’t guessed she’d feel so torn—so tempted to turn back while also wanting to keep going and never look over her shoulder again.

  Bode didn’t say anything, and Wren liked him a bit more for it.

  She sat back in her seat. “You’re military?”

  Bode hesitated, surprised. “How did you know?”

  She pulled her attention from the barren, dusty vista whooshing by and glanced at Bode’s hair. “Your haircut, but you also limped when you stepped off the curb into the car. It could be an old wound, but you winced, making me think it’s fresher. If you’re military like your haircut suggests, it means you were likely in the Non-Personnel Ground Unit. You didn’t use Links to fight. You fought yourself.”

  He ran a hand over his head self-consciously, and Wren relaxed. At least she wasn’t the only one feeling awkward.

  “Special operations with a six-man team,” he said. “Three tours. Last one ended with a medical discharge.”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  He shrugged but didn’t comment.

  “Your last name is Bafford. Are you related to the Baffords, by chance?”

  “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  Wren shrugged a shoulder, mimicking his earlier gesture.

  “My brother is Hazen. You could say VidaCorp is a family business.”

  Hazen. As in Hazen Bafford III, VidaCorp’s CEO and head gene therapy scientist. Even Wren, with her limited schooling, knew that. A person would have to be six feet in the ground to not know who Hazen Bafford was.

  “I guess that’s why VidaCorp trusts you to handle such sensitive business.”

  “You could say that,” Bode said, cocking a brow.

  Wren turned back to her window. The sun baked the stretch of nothing between the suburbs and Hollywood, cloaking the flat landscape in such absolute, startling brightness that she saw nothing but her face staring back. Bode’s brother was the head of the richest, most powerful company in the world.

  The car’s fan turned on, fighting to keep the machine cool in the oppressive heat.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  His eyes creased as though he was about to smile. “Of course.”

  “Why is Sloane so important to this show? Is it because Beau Montgomery is on it?”

  The creases faded, and Bode mulled over his words for so long Wren thought he might not answer her. Finally, he said, “Sloane Lux is loved. Worshiped, even. People obsess over her activities, what she’s wearing, and who she went out to dinner with. She’s part of every citizen’s life. Not just in Hollywood, but in the entire country. Nearly the entire world. But her addiction …” Bode’s throat seemed to tighten around the words, and he had to pause to compose himself. “Serking is an ugly part of our society and robs too many young lives, but it isn’t a good time to lose the top star on a VidaCorp-owned network show—”

  “VidaCorp owns the network?”

  “Well …” He drew out the word, and Wren wondered if that wasn’t supposed to be “public knowledge” either. “Yes, they do. But the executive producers are all separate entities from VidaCorp. It’s completely unbiased, I promise yo
u that.”

  Bode had said VidaCorp was a family business, but he surprised her by saying “they” owned the network instead of “we.” Additionally, his earnest tone told Wren he genuinely believed VidaCorp and the network operated separately. Wren might have believed him if she hadn’t heard enough of Mak’s conspiracy theories to know better—or at least doubt it until she had more facts. Glass House wasn’t a normal show, and there was nothing normal about the situation Wren was walking into. She needed to collect as much information as possible before they got to Hollywood.

  “If Sloane was so important to the show, why wasn’t she watched closer? How did she even have access to serk dealers?” she asked.

  Bode’s face shuttered, and he turned to his window, a tic traveling up his jaw. “You’ll learn soon enough that Sloane Lux was a cataclysmic force to be reckoned with. When she wanted something badly enough, she stopped at nothing to get it. She gave her bodyguard the slip that night. One mistake, and we’re all paying for it.”

  The words were tight, spoken from deep within the back of his throat. Wren sensed the lie, but it was wrapped so tightly in a sensitive truth that she couldn’t separate the strands enough to discern it.

  A concentration of light appeared on the horizon, and her thoughts scattered. The light glowed like a halo beneath the smog-filled sky, beckoning her toward it with a diamond smile. The twinkling luminance grew and expanded. As the car drew closer, Wren picked out the glittering shards of high-rises and cuts of bright flashing colors from within the hazy white aura.

  Shining even brighter than the city, a sign reigned high up on a hillside.

  Hollywood.

  From inside Sunshine Heights, Hollywood had been an idle daydream, something to lose herself in. She knew there were cities like Hollywood across the country, each with their own sprawling suburbs encircling them, but she hadn’t understood their existence until now—until she could see with her own eyes how powerful these vast city centers were for those who could afford the steep and ever-increasing environmental taxes.

  The buildings’ glass facades reflected the sunlight. Tram tracks wove around the skyscrapers like delicate silk threads. She gasped when she realized the lush green at the bottom of the buildings was grass. Real trees lined the road to the city entrance. The first one zoomed by her window, and Wren could just make out its gleaming white blooms. More and more zipped by, dizzying Wren until she had to look away.

  “It’s something, isn’t it?” Bode asked. “Like the Emerald City.”

  “The what?”

  “The Wizard of Oz?”

  His confused stare told her she should know what he meant. She creased her face into a smile and forced a small laugh. “Oh, right. Just like Oz.”

  He didn’t say anything else, and Wren hid her relief by craning her head back to see the city buildings through the topmost part of the front windshield. The car flashed between the entrance’s arched columns.

  She twisted in her seat and looked back. She saw nothing but rolling green hills. She could even spot a lake between the copse of trees. Wispy clouds filled the cerulean sky. It was so beautiful that, for a moment, she forgot where she’d come from.

  She frowned. The image of hills and lush grass beyond the city wasn’t right, the blue and green colors too vivid to be real. Beyond the city was a dusty void, flat as a board and just as dead until it met the tall electric fence of Sunshine Heights. “What was that? What did we pass through?”

  “A hologram.”

  The colors of the green and blue perfection were too bright and vivid to be real. The people inside the city didn’t want to see what lay beyond the hologram. And why should they? They paid for a longer, healthier life inside a beautiful city with filtered air and filtered water. Their perfectly filtered lives had evolved beyond ugly things.

  Wren’s stomach twisted as she settled back against her seat.

  Outside her window, the city was sleek concrete, sparkling glass storefronts full of clothes, and grass and blooming trees. Billboards covered every surface—even the buildings’ windows—and Wren’s eyes danced from one to another. Roman and Sloane Lux were featured on too many to count.

  Swarms of people filled the sidewalks and crossed the street beneath flashing signs. They ate outside restaurants and shopped in the countless stores. A girl jogged past the car, her long ponytail bouncing on her back, her leg muscles contracting beneath lime green leggings. They looked like better versions of the people Wren knew back home. Humans 2.0.

  And televisions. Countless televisions. They hung from every surface: doorways, archways, buildings, intersection stop signs, red lights, and even the sides of other cars. They were everywhere Wren looked, turning her vision to Technicolor with flashing images: beautiful people, beautiful clothes, beautiful cars, beautiful tech toys, beautiful watches, beautiful shoes, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

  Entire lives existed outside the car, either happening in person or on televisions, but Wren heard nothing but the purr of the car and the soft hiss of the air conditioning.

  They wended deeper into the city, passing more gas cars than Wren had anticipated, and buildings reached higher and higher. Glass and chrome made up the angular structures. The safe, grid-like street layout soothed Wren’s frazzled nerves.

  The car wasn’t going fast, but she caught a slash of color marring a passing storefront. The wild markings, like a sloppy drawing, was completely at odds with everything around it. Wren twisted around to catch another glance, but they were already past it.

  She turned to Bode and found him staring at her. “What was that?”

  “Gang activity,” he answered. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “There are gangs in the city?”

  “The underground reaches every part, the richest and the poorest.”

  Wren chewed on her lip as the window went black, covered in darkness. They’d gone into a parking garage. The car descended around a few spiraling turns and drove out onto a flat of asphalt before coming to a slow, smooth stop.

  “We’re here,” Bode said, too cheery for the dark underground garage. Their back doors sprang open automatically.

  She grappled her way out and stumbled as she straightened. Other dark sedans like the one beside her filled the garage in orderly lines. All one color and one model, they were perfect replicas of each other.

  But she didn’t pay much attention to the cars. She took her first deep breath. Even beneath the city, the air tasted better than the excruciatingly hot summer days back in Sunshine Heights when Air Reports called for nearly smog-free days. Her lungs shuddered from the breath, but she didn’t cough.

  “Ready?” Bode asked, waiting patiently by the car.

  “I, uh, I can’t move.”

  “Legs feel like jelly?” His laugh wasn’t cruel or mocking, but sympathetic.

  She offered him a slight smile. “Something like that.”

  Gently, he took Wren’s arm and guided her toward a bank of elevators. The doors sprang open before they even reached them, revealing a small man with an odd hat and lots of brass buttons on his uniform. He smiled widely enough to crease his face.

  “Morning, Micki,” Bode said with a nod.

  “Sir!” Micki shimmered with happiness. When he looked at Wren, she realized he really was shimmering, and as Bode stepped into the carriage, his arm passed through Micki. Another hologram. “Ma’am,” the holo-man greeted. Wren was too stunned to reply. She’d seen holos on television, but never in person. They crackled more than she’d expected.

  “Is Hutton here?” Bode asked the holo.

  “Yes, sir. She arrived moments ago.”

  “Good. Please see that the penthouse is closed off to all other visitors for a few hours.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Bode pressed his thumb against a sleek interface by the doors to close them. Wren was careful not to brush against the hologram, but even with a foot separating them, she felt the static electricity coming off him�
��or it. If she leaned back, he looked perfectly flat.

  “Going up!” Micki said, smiling miraculously wider.

  The carriage picked up speed as they rose. Bode put his hand against her lower back to steady her, but didn’t say anything. Even with his touch, her stomach was at her feet by the time they stopped, and she swayed from the sudden lack of movement. The doors whisked open, and Wren had to shield her eyes against the deluge of light.

  “Thanks, Micki.”

  “Anytime, sir.”

  A woman with the richest, deepest black skin Wren had ever seen swished into the main entry on the other side of the humming elevator doors, her eyes locked on her tablet. She wore tight white pants and a pink silk sleeveless top that billowed behind her. She looked up, and her automatic smile faltered as Bode eased Wren out of the elevator and into the light.

  “Holy hell,” the woman strangled out.

  “I know, right?” Bode said, and Wren didn’t need to look to know his grin was spreading. “It’s like Sloane never even died.”

  5:

  The woman gaped at Wren, eyes wide and fingertips trailing down her own cheek like she was tracing Wren’s similarities to Sloane on her own face.

  The elevator doors closed, and the carriage rumbled down, leaving the three of them standing in the entryway. The air conditioning ruffled the hairs on the back of Wren’s neck and circulated the rich scent of flower blossoms. She could only gawk at the luxury, too boggled to register anything but a few details. The crystal chandelier overhead. The marble tiles at her feet. A huge flat-screen television in the living area beyond a wide archway.

  “Hutton,” Bode said. “This is Wren Iver. Wren, this is Hutton Ramey.”

  “Right.” Hutton recovered. “It’s nice to meet you, Wren. I was Sloane’s assistant before she died. The show’s executives brought me on to be your handler for Glass House since I knew Sloane best.”

  The word “handler” was one Wren had only heard a few times, but she knew enough about reality television to know a handler was assigned to every cast member on the show. What they did, however, she didn’t know, but the fact this woman had been Sloane’s assistant meant she was important to VidaCorp and the show. Very important. “Nice to meet you, Mi-Miss Ramey.”