My anxiety is heightened more than it has been since last night’s exhausting run to the station. I was so sure we were running to our deaths, but when Crewe, Cy, Galvesten, Della, and I met up with the others and didn’t face any hostility, I began to feel relatively safe in the hands of the Sheridan militia. After that point, I also considered my sister and me not so sought after.
Although a fire of nervousness is spreading through me now as I sit in the hospital waiting room, it is not on account of a matter of safety. I have decided to tell Cy the truth about my last name, and I’m loathing his reaction. I can’t get further tangled into a web of lies that will be impossible to undo later. He needs to know the truth. If I want him to have any chance of discovering why Evvie and I had such advanced chips, he needs to know who we really are.
An old man a few chairs away erupts into another fit of coughing. Each cough makes me more and more uncomfortable. Maybe I’m nervous he’ll choke, because there’s a definite correlation between his coughs and my anxiety level. Added to my other worries, it’s enough to put me over the edge.
What are Galv and Della so busy with that this man can’t get some help? He’s older than anyone I’ve ever seen in person. Forget choking, he may simply break from the strain the upheaval is putting on his frail frame. I don’t want him to die in front of me. Just as I stand to urge the receptionist to do something about this old man’s agony, Cy enters the building.
“Follow me, pretty lady,” he flirts as he struts past where I am standing. Cy doesn’t wait to see the solemnity that characterizes me now, as I’ve resolved to tell him that I’ve been lying about who I am, possibly further endangering his people.
I take one step toward the receptionist to say something but she beats me to a cold ‘We know’.
Walking through the expanse of the hallway, I realize this building doesn’t serve just as a hospital. It makes better sense to me now why this place was considered a decent location to become mixed in with Sheridan’s people.
Galvesten and Della double as care providers in the general-health clinic, which is located in the western wing of the hospital. Additionally, this building is home to a dentist’s office and a childcare center for non-school-aged children.
Lastly, it is apparently the technological hub of Sheridan, as I’m shown when Cy politely gestures for me to enter the room before him. There are antennas, wires, and screens clustered in a few different stations. There is also a large dish and what appears to be a tablet before they were designed to fold open.
“Rico, this is Sydney,” Cy tells someone who is hidden behind a monitor. “It was her little sister that you were unable to discover anywhere in Miles’ network.” Finally the man unglues himself from his work and slides his chairs out our direction.
“Evelette, right,” he says. “I’m Rico—”
“Aves,” I finish abruptly. Though I had only seen it once, I still clearly remember his broad smile. I would recognize Rico’s face anywhere. Under his smiling picture, this Mexican-American was captioned: Rico Aves, a Man for True Freedom. He was the escapee who I had mistakenly read an article about years ago.
“Oh, you know,” he states without the puzzlement that I see in Cy’s eyes. Rico must assume that Cy has already informed me about him, but he didn’t. Truth is, I’m astonished to know he really does exist.
“I read an article about you a couple of years back.” I wait for Rico to acknowledge the article that I stumbled upon online.
“You did?” he asks, his face changing as he realizes that this is how I knew his name.
“Yeah,” I answer to the man who is now equally as astonished as I am. “I didn’t think you were actually real, or still alive if you once were. I read the article, but an hour later when I tried to find it again, it was gone.”
“An hour?” he laughs. “No. My propaganda only last seconds before they’re wiped out. It’s miraculous you ever saw one. I’ve only theorized that county drones, no offense, have had the opportunity to view them.” I don’t take any offense. Who but me would be chancy enough to look for what I was searching that night, only a few nights before I jumped for the first time. “Wow! This is great news,” Rico continues. “But I suppose it has nothing to do with why you and your sister had the chips that you did.”
“I’m afraid not,” I confirm. I want to know more about Rico Aves. I want to know how long he’s lived in Sheridan, how he escaped, how long he’s been posting the propaganda he creates, and whether they have ever had any repercussions. I want to know all of this, but like Crewe said, the priority is discovering the meaning behind the microphones.
“As far as we know, Evvie had her microphone from birth. Sydney’s was craftily exchanged when she was fourteen,” Cy tells Rico. Rico switches to a different station and gets to firing up the machines connected to it. Cy also powers on a hulking system and begins wiggling a few of the wires around. I can’t put off telling Cy about lying to him for another second. If I allow him to sit down in his chair, I won’t go through with it.
“Cy?” I interrupt a bit impulsively. “I need to talk to you for a second.”
“Okay,” he answers with a growing concern. He and Rico both stare at me for an awkward moment. “Here, let’s go for a walk.” Cy motions for us to step into the hallway. Rico’s brow remains furrowed as he continues to work and I lead Cy outside of the room.
The Davids brothers and I seem to be going back and forth with these serious, private talks. Momentarily, all will be out on the table and hopefully very soon, my sister will be safe enough to where we don’t have to put so much weight on our interactions.
“What’s up?” Cy asks nervously in the hallway. When we get a short distance from the doorway, I stop. I don’t especially feel like walking back through the buzz and chatter of the hospital complex while I confess my deception to Cy.
I come right out with it. “I lied to you.” I turn and face Cy, looking him right in his wide, grey-green eyes and waiting for him to speak.
“What about, Sydney?” he asks deliberately, showing that he has a renewed apprehension regarding the well-being of all of us.
“Our last name isn’t Layton,” I tell him. This time Cy does not drop his head or even pull his gaze away from mine. His expression twists from concern into indignation.
“Why would you do that, Sydney?” he asks briskly. I have an answer for him, but not a blameless one. I know that by the warmth in my cheeks and the hairs that bristle on the back of my neck. I have drawn this out far too long, especially when I was given good reason to trust these men. They risked their lives to save me. This should be more of an apology than just a confession if I could only say what I’m thinking, but I’m not good at apologizing.
“I didn’t know if I could trust you. I thought I was keeping my sister and me safe until I saw this place for myself,” I say, though it’s a lousy excuse.
“Well, it’s here. It’s real. The people are real,” he ridicules. “And you jeopardized all of their safety by lying to us.” I try to agree with him, but he’s not through. “You don’t even make sense, Sydney. I mean, how could you lie to us when we were trying to trace Evvie? You would have bettered her chances of being safe if you had told us the truth, and you knew that by then,” he escalates. “You put your sister and all the rest of us in more danger by lying!”
He’s right, but with how quickly everything was happening then, I had forgotten about the misinformation I fed them. It wasn’t until afterward, when someone welcomed my sister as Evvie Layton, that I remembered.
That excuse doesn’t make it better. In fact, it makes my misstep much worse that I was that careless in it, so I decide not to try to defend myself to Cy. I really did put my sister in more danger than she would have been in if I had trusted them, but that’s simply not something that comes easily to me.
“I know. I did. I’m sorry,” I apologize.
“Well, you better start acting smarter! There are two-hundred fifty peopl
e subject to your next move so I hope you are ready to trust me,” he states. My feeble nod sends Cy briskly back to his workstation in the room at the end of the hallway.
Rico is panicking as he fusses with the plug-ins and antennae of an ancient modem box. Cy immediately knows that something is wrong. He joins Rico in the frantic wire swapping and gentle banging of the equipment.
“What’s wrong?” I find the courage to ask.
“They cut the system,” Rico answers when Cy doesn’t. “This always happens. It takes them a while to trace our intricate web of bounced signals, but they always do. And when they do, they cut us down.”
“Can you fix it?” I ask.
“The old one? No,” Rico answers, discouraged. “But we’ll get right to work on building a new one. Say Cy,” he begins, “is she safe to go look for Crewe?”
“I don’t know what she’s safe to do,” Cy looks at me begrudgingly while answering Rico. It stings deeply that I’ve betrayed Cy’s trust by lying to him. He is the one person in this town that I can count on to back me up in advocating for my sister. That has been an extremely important characteristic, alongside his cheerful charisma, in our promising friendship. I’m sad to see it whither so soon. I need him. I need the closest thing I have to a friend.
“I’ll be fine,” I answer Rico since Cy provided him with a rather muddled and coded response to his important question. I notice Cy’s regretful exhale as he considers whether he really wants to be at odds with me. “What can I do?” I ask.
“Just find Crewe,” Cy answers without making eye contact. “I don’t think he’ll be back toward Main Street since we agreed to have lunch here. Check the school and then go door to door through the houses to see if you can find him. When you do, tell him we think the network has been broken. Have him try to make a few calls to verify that it’s down.”
“Okay. Then come back here?” I ask, content to have even this stale, flat conversation with him.
“We’ll be here,” Rico answers. “We’re going to try to patch the old system until we know for sure that it’s been cut,” he tells me.
“Sydney,” Cy calls before I get to the doorway. “Just be careful,” he says without looking up from his work. With this I add forgives quickly and doesn’t hold a grudge to my mental list of good qualities about Cy Davids. I exit the room with a deep breath and an appreciation for a task to keep me busy.
Thankfully, I’m ignored as I pop my head into classroom after classroom looking for Crewe and my sister. The administration of the school said that they didn’t think Crewe and the new girl were here, but that I could go ahead and look.
The brief peeks into each of the rooms give me a good idea of what schooling is like in Sheridan. The lessons appear rich with history, current affairs, and other things with practical applications, even in the lower grade levels. The small classes all seem engaged in their lesson, practice, or project. I don’t see what was so wrong with children being taught this way rather than online. I suppose it was a matter of money and cold convenience.
Many of the inquiries into the homes surrounding the school bring no answer, and those that do frequently produce a nosey neighbor wanting to know all about my sister and me, what it was like back in Miles, and why I am looking for Crewe. As is customary for me, I’m not too pleasant in my brevity with each of them. They should excuse it, understanding that I have something important to do.
It takes me over a half an hour to locate Crewe and Evvie. Crewe goes outside the little white house with his phone to better his chance of receiving a signal.
“Do you like it?” Evvie asks me.
“Sheridan?” I ask, seeking clarification.
“I meant the house.”
“It’s nothing special, but it’s fine. Why?” I ask. Before she opens her mouth to answer, I understand why she asked the question.
“It’s going to be ours,” she says remorsefully.
“Then it’s perfect,” I smile. Correcting my statement comforts her, but only because she knows I mean it. It’s not the dwelling, but the people and the feeling that make a home what it is.
“There’s only one bedroom with a big bed, but Crewe thinks we could swap it out for two smaller ones,” Evvie tells me.
I lived in cramped quarters in the orphanage, at Trista’s, and in the transitions building. Truthfully, I would have hoped for something more spacious like some of the other homes I had partial views of this morning. I suppose those home belong to larger families than mine. In Sheridan there is little waste and no evidence of showboating.
Had coming to Sheridan been a choice for us, and a secure transition, I know she would have coveted a better living space, like Merideth’s. After believing our mother was alive, thinking I may have been hurt or captured for breaching, and experiencing all the precautions under the guidance of the Davids brothers, I’m not surprised Evvie’s preferences have changed to love something so quaint. I’ll always be close by in this house, and there’s no saying we can’t change to something else once we’ve grown more confident being here.
“Do you like it here?” I ask Evvie after a bit. “Sheridan, I mean.”
“Honestly, I can’t believe the things they live without,” Evvie laughs in her way. “I’m going to miss my friends,” she adds seriously, “and Merideth too, but I think I’d rather live here and understand what’s really going on in the world than live inside and be oblivious to it.” I can tell those are Crewe’s words replaying themselves through Evvie lips after she’s spent the morning with him, but I don’t let on. I just nod and agree with her wisdom and effort to accept this major change in her life.
“What have you and Cy been doing?” my sister asks me.
“Trying to crack the code on us,” I elbow her. “But I guess their system is down. That’s why I had to find you guys to have Crewe test it on his phone.”
“No one else has a phone?” Evvie exclaims. I only laugh and revel in her agony. I expect her to laugh along with me, or tell me to knock it off, but instead she beams mischievously.
“He likes you, you know,” she says unexpectedly.
“What? Who?” I ask unintentionally. My cheeks grow hot and tingle with embarrassment in being caught off guard by this subject.
“Cy. Crewe told me that he likes you,” she reveals, now bursting with giggles.
“Oh,” I answer apathetically. I’m pretty sure that feeling has since faded, now that I’ve crossed him by coming clean. Regardless, contrary to my girlishly excited sister, I’m disappointed to learn any feelings for me exist. I wouldn’t know what to do with that kind of thing, other than awkwardly pretend that I don’t know. I wish I really didn’t. I wish that Crewe hadn’t said anything, because a secret of that kind never lasts with Evvie. I enjoy Cy’s sociability, humor, and loyalty, but I only hope to regain his friendship, nothing more.
“Let’s go eat,” Crewe invites from the homey porch where the sun shines brightly. He walks through the front door across from the couch that we sit on, probably so he can marshal us out, in a gentlemanly manner.
“What’s our news for Cy?” I ask him, inquiring about the signal and trying to gain a read on whether Cy has told him about my lying.
“That he’s got a lot of work to do,” Crewe answers simply. Well, at least it seems that Crewe hasn’t heard about my blunder and decided to hate me, but he probably will join his brother in that soon enough.
Concealed in the Shadows Page 24
