In my head, my parents’ voices rattled off reasons I should hide and leave things to the proper authority. I was too young, I had no experience, I could have more memories siphoned away.
But Mr. Proper Authority himself was Detective Jackson. What better accomplice than the lead detective who could manipulate evidence? If I left this alone, the thief could steal more lives, including mine. The lives that had already been taken, like Cora’s, would never be returned. The sound of her sobs from this morning, the sound of her soul peeling away one memory at a time, rang in my ears.
Hours ago, I’d known the identity of the Link thief. I might be the only person in this town who could find her again.
My brain jumped into action, rifling through everything I’d learned today. It took only moments for the dominos in my head to fall, connecting a few important ideas.
There had been streetcam footage of Cora being chased into a non-monitored area.
Non-monitored areas around where Cora and I had been: an alcove way over on Walnut Street and a wooded area behind the Low-G.
The corner of Rowley and Tanner was a straight shot from the woods behind the club.
I had a location now. Something had happened as Cora and I took the shortcut from the Low-G, so the thief—a female, Mementi thief—had to have been nearby that night. My memory flicked through faces I’d seen at the club, but there were faces I hadn’t seen. The thief might not have been in the club itself.
I put Hades in his tank, then jumped on my bed and folded my legs under me. With a quick swipe of Share ports, I synced my Sidewinder phone with my wallscreen. The cops may not have checked the GPS locators of people at the club if they thought the thief was Populace. Only Mementi registered for the GPS locator program. The city map glowed on my wall, covered with GPS dots labeled with ID numbers. I frowned. I needed names for those numbers.
Kinley. She was the only one who could help. I just had to be careful what I said.
“Call Kinley,” I whispered, syncing my Link buds to the phone and putting them in. The buds were more comfortable than wearing the Sidewinder itself for a long conversation—and conversations with Kinley often went long.
A few seconds later, her voice sounded in my ear. “Genalee!” she cried. “Oh my holy cow, I can’t believe you’re psychologically capable of speech right now. How’s Cora? I tried to call her all day but her phone is off, and I heard you saw her and the cops took an evidence memory from you—”
“Kins,” I interrupted, irritated that her gossip chain already knew this. “You’re totally sweet for being concerned. I need a favor, actually.”
Kinley was always willing to help. Partly because, despite her motor mouth, she really did care. Partly because she wanted details, details, details, and helping was a good way to get them.
“Anything,” she said eagerly.
“You know that hack you wrote ages ago to find out people’s GPS ID numbers? I know you don’t like to give out a lot of your hack codes, but I need it.”
I’d been livid with Kinley when she rolled out that hack. Mostly because it involved sending me and Cora anonymous, stalker-ish texts that pinpointed our location. We’d had some fun with it, though.
“What do you need it for?” she asked.
“I, uh, want to keep an eye on Cora. See who comes around, make sure nobody’s bugging her too much.” I really needed to think up my lies ahead of time.
“Aren’t you a sweet little watch dog. I don’t think the hack will do you much good, though. Not since I gave out my GPS-location-changing hack to a couple guys at school. It sort of went viral. Nobody’s going to be where the system says they are.”
I groaned. That was the same hack I’d used on my Sidewinder so my parents wouldn’t know I was at the Low-G last night. If half the town had that, the GPS maps would be useless. The cops would find out and shut it down soon. Why had Kinley given that away? She usually guarded her hacks with triple-encrypted ferocity.
“I could give you my newest hack, though,” she said. “Since it’s an emergency and all. I got into the Sidewinder routing station for texts, and you can do all sorts of things with it that could help you watch out for Cora. Set up alerts when people text keywords, or intercept texts people are sending if you’re in Share port distance—”
“Sure,” I said to keep up the charade. “Send it over.”
My Sidewinder beeped that it had received a new download. It would be useless. Just like her other hack was now useless. I wanted to scream. Five minutes in, and my so-called investigation was at a standstill.
“Just sent the whole package,” she said. “So you sure you’re okay? You can talk to me about anything. Cora too.”
Kinley actually was a surprisingly good listener. She was also a surprisingly good talker. “You’re the best, Kins. Thanks.”
I hung up before she could dig for more.
There was no way to know who’d been at or near the Low-G last night. It might not have worked anyway, if the thief hadn’t brought their Sidewinder. Which was highly possible.
I threw my pillow across the room. I was going to need help, and someone had already offered his.
A Populace boy. I flopped down face-first and burrowed into my blankets. Even if he had more information and a posse of Link thief hunters, I didn’t know anything about him. But I couldn’t trust the police, not with Jackson in charge. I had nothing to go on. Kalan was my only other lead.
A Mementi was the Link thief. A Populace wanted to help me stop her. My world was a scrambled mess of spaghetti tossed with a heap of angry sauce. If Kalan was the only one who could help, I’d find out how. I turned on my Sidewinder.
Text from Genesis Lee to Kalan Daniel Fox, TDS 16:12:32/5-5-2084
When can we meet again?
7
. . . howsoe’er I know thee, [I]
Could hardly tell what name were thine.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam LIX
Funny, how some things stayed exactly the same when the whole world changed.
I raised the holoscreen of my school computer to hide from my classmates. I’d been fielding their condolences for Cora all morning, like she’d died. The four-hour school day had never felt so long.
I’d already absorbed the next informational memory in my personal curriculum from the school SLS. I should have been calculating star masses on my sim. Instead, I huddled in my favorite comfy armchair and peeked over the top of my holoscreen. Jef Normandy drooled onto his chest, slouched in his own armchair with his holoscreen on his lap. Mr. Soto didn’t notice; he was helping Kloe Carpenter. Her current focus was differential equations, which weren’t Mr. Soto’s forte. He’d probably absorbed her daily memory so he could help.
A chorus of dings rang out from the holoscreens around the room—the official end of the school day. The standard message popped up on my screen. You have completed the required school hours. Continue studying? Normally, I’d have tapped yes like everyone else, but not today. I shut down the holoscreens and rushed around the haphazard assortment of recliners and armchairs, out the door before anyone said a word. My body hummed with a desperate energy. Desperate for Kalan’s information. Desperate to get this over with.
I nibbled an apple on a tram that was mercifully almost empty, ignoring constant repetitions of “Passengers are reminded there is no eating or drinking on Havendale city trams. Thank you.” The other two passengers gave me mildly disapproving looks.
I felt rebellious, ignoring the rules. Then I felt stupid for thinking eating an apple on public transportation counted as rebellious.
My knees began bouncing nervously as the tram crossed the invisible boundary of Main Street, and familiar anxiety threaded through my body. I patted out a drum rhythm, a new song from Frankie and the Boy, on my thighs. Populace territory. Not nearly as far as Hong Kong or Tokyo, but the farthest from home I’d ever been. The tram pulled to a stop a few miles later. I lurched out of my seat, forcing myself forward. I’d a
lready crossed the line.
I counted the tramstop steps as I descended. My feet hit crumbly pavement and I blinked in surprise at the world that faced me. I might as well have been in Africa for all the similarities to my side of town.
Mementi neighborhoods were peppered with dramatic representations of our dreams. The Wilsons’ Neuschwanstein castle replica built for their little girls. The Garcias’ imitation of the Sydney Opera House that sounded of music every time the door opened. The Laytons’ half-treehouse that attracted all the kids in the neighborhood. Even the more “common” houses like mine featured unique designs. Dad had always thought our perfectly circular home with its perfectly circular garden lent an “elegant” air to the neighborhood.
Houses apparently weren’t the thing here. Apartment buildings lined the street, bicycles and barbecues chained to ugly black railings and toys littering cracked pavement. Windows stacked up the building sides like children’s blocks, some lined with foil or stuffed with flattened boxes. Maybe to keep the sun out? I mean, self-tinting windows might be pricey, but there had to be another option besides cardboard. How could you even enjoy your home, with cardboard and tinfoil blocking out the world?
Granted, they didn’t get much of a view. An empty street limped ahead of me. Instead of rolling away in welcome, it sported hazards. Potholes, crumbly gravel, oil stains—they actually used the roads for something more than footpaths. A half-empty parking lot replaced what could have been a little garden or courtyard for an apartment complex. A rusty white car, an actual manual drive, was parked across the street. Couldn’t they see the nice, public trams rumbling overhead?
I headed north to the meeting place Kalan had designated and double-checked my Sidewinder. My GPS told anybody checking—like my parents—that I was at Cora’s. Thank you, Kinley.
I touched my Links through my shirt. I’d worn them as necklaces today, looping the magnetic Links long enough to hang under my clothes. Moving Links around was nerve-wracking. I’d dropped one of my bracelets once, and the momentary loss was so disorienting I threw up. But they felt safer around my neck. Harder to get to.
Kalan worked in the tram garage, so I was meeting him at “the end of the line.” Irony at its finest. Enormous garage doors yawned in front of me as I approached. A single tram car lay on its side in the yard like it had crawled there to die. Sounds of screeching and clanging came from the building itself.
I couldn’t help but think this place was nothing more than a torture chamber—trams shrieking in metallic pain as sadistic mechanics cut into them with blowtorches and laser saws.
Turned out facing my fears made me morbid.
Forcing myself to at least pretend I knew what I was doing, I marched through the chain-linked gate to the door marked OFFICE. My soft knock went unanswered. I pushed the door open. Empty.
I backed away, eyeing the open gate to the tram yard and garages. Option A: enter the jaws of tram yard hell. Option B: wait for Kalan to find me.
Like I’d pick Option A. Standing under the shade of the overhanging roof, I stirred the red dirt with the toe of my tennis shoe. The circles and swirls wove a soothing pattern.
“Hey!” an angry voice called.
Blue coveralls. Angry march. That was all I got before the guy accosted me.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
Hostile eyes raked over me. They lingered on the scarf draped over my head and wound around my neck. I heard the unspoken antecedent of his “you”: Mementi.
“I’m waiting for someone.” I pressed my back to the wall.
He grabbed my arm, sending a shudder of shock down my spine. Please, please, please let go! He hauled me away from the building in painful jerks.
“Go stake out some other place to vandalize,” he said. “Or better yet, go join your friends at the protest.”
Get away, let go let go. I yanked, but his grip only tightened. My fingers tingled. “I’m not—I don’t want—he works here, I’m meeting someone who works here, Kalan!”
His fingers clenched tighter. “You’re the girl he’s meeting?”
I tugged my arm again. A gasp escaped when he released me. I squeezed my shaking hands so tight I could feel the raised embroidery of flowers on my gloves.
“Go find him, then.” He nodded toward the tram garage, glowering.
My eyes darted toward the enormous open doors that harbored more potentially unfriendly workers. “Could you, maybe, tell him I’m here, please?”
His laugh came out as a bark. “You want him, go find him.”
I darted away from him and into the yard. Potentially unfriendly beat confirmed scary any day. A wave of silence rolled behind me. Work equipment inside the garages went still. Heat waves rippled out from stilled blowtorches and bodies turned in haunting unison to follow my progress. I ran all the way to the garage on the end. So far, the Populace were living up to their reputation for unfriendliness. Finally, in the last garage, there he was. Cuter than a one-time stalker in blue coveralls had a right to be.
Get a grip, Gena. He was a stalker, I knew nothing about him, and he was Populace.
He looked up. The pounding of hammer on metal stopped. He held the hammer high, like he wasn’t sure what to do with it now that someone was watching him.
“Give me a few minutes,” he said. “I’ve got to finish this.”
He returned to work. The hammer clanged on sheet metal, a rhythm so tight I could almost dance to it. His long arms circled in smooth strokes. An image from the canyon flashed in my mind. Under those long-sleeved coveralls, his arms were toned and strong. Those arms could do some damage.
I pinched myself as punishment for stupid thoughts. He hadn’t lied or attempted to hurt me so far. I’d give him a chance to tell me what he knew about the Link thief and then I could scram.
The hammering stopped a minute later. He pulled off thick work gloves and riffled his light curls. “That’s as good as I’m going to get it with you watching every move I make.”
“Oh. Sorry. I was just waiting.” Why did I feel like I had to apologize for watching him?
“Nothing to be sorry for.” He gave me a lopsided grin, then hollered toward the back, “Jem, I’m taking lunch.”
A grunt indicated someone had heard him and approved.
I followed him to a row of lockers where he took off the coveralls, revealing a simple t-shirt and shorts—and those tanned, toned arms.
“So.” I focused on the ground. Grease stains dotted the concrete. “You, uh, work here full time? No school?”
He hung the coveralls on a hook inside a locker. “Nope. I traveled a lot growing up, so I homeschooled and graduated early.” He faced me. “And you? Ditching?”
I crossed my arms. “Of course not. We only have four-hour school days. We don’t exactly need tests or worksheets.”
“Guess not.” His lips twitched, like he found me amusing.
We turned to the door, and the man who’d grabbed me stalked past. He fixed me with a glare. I shrank back.
Kalan noticed. “You met Luke?”
I rubbed my sore arm.
His jaw set. “What did he do to you?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “He . . . uh . . . asked me to leave. He didn’t know I was meeting you.”
“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
He marched toward where Luke had disappeared. I hurried after him. “No, please, it’s okay, you don’t have to fight him or anything.”
“I’m not going to fight him. Just ask him to apologize.”
I didn’t have time for this. “I need to find out what’s going on. Please, Kalan, I have to talk to you about the Memo.”
He stopped at the sound of his name. “So you watched it.”
I squeezed the strap on my bag. The Memo was inside.
“Probably kinda trippy.”
I wanted to snap at him. “It was rather disturbing.”
Turning away, I saw that work around the tram yard had paused again
. Wary shifting was the only movement as half a dozen workers stared at me. Come one, come all, see the magical, terrifying Mementi! Only a quarter, but watch out or she’ll chomp your limbs off! I wanted to growl at every one of them to get back to their manual labor.
“Let’s go,” Kalan said. “Nobody here is really happy with the Mementi right now.”
“Right now?” I asked. “Since when are you ever happy with us?”
My feet hit the ground in a staccato rhythm as we hurried away from the tram garage. Once we reached the street, my joints eased and I felt a little less like a marionette on display.
“The protest has people spooked,” Kalan said as we walked. “And there was some vandalism last night, some store windows got smashed.”
“Was anybody hurt?”
“Not that I heard.” He kicked a rock and it clattered down the street. “But it’s only a matter of time. People on both sides need someone to talk some sense into them.”
He sounded like he wanted to be that someone.
“Where are we going?” I asked, nervous with him in the lead. Apartment buildings had given way to shoddy storefronts and hole-in-the-wall restaurants.
“I wasn’t lying when I said I was taking lunch.” He grinned. “My favorite place is up the road here, and there shouldn’t be a wait since it’s past regular lunch hour. You hungry?”
My apple on the tram hadn’t been much more than a snack, and I was starved. I bit my lip.
He paused on the sidewalk. “Or we could talk somewhere else. If you want.”
“Well . . . my parents watch my charge account.” I winced thinking of the fallout—the yells, the charge account taken away, and very possibly getting locked in my room with only bread and water to eat.
Okay. Maybe that last one was the anxiety talking.
“Ah,” Kalan said. “The folks wouldn’t be happy to see a charge on this side of town, would they?” He shrugged. “No worries, I’m paying.”
And that turned it into a date. Which was safer from the parent interference standpoint, but a little more risky on the what-to-do-with-this-cute-Populace-boy side.
The Unhappening of Genesis Lee Page 7
