It had never occurred to me I might be offered my spot back.
Henri waited, and when I did not respond, he stepped closer, shrugged and held out his arms, as if to say, Are you coming? I looked at his bag. I wanted to go back to the group. Would they really have me? Henri wasn’t exactly reliable at reading Kel’s mood.
If she did let me come back, Kel would watch me like a hawk. If I wanted to get that little blue device, I would have to wait. I would have to be patient. My chest felt tight, thinking about it, unsure what was best. I didn’t know if I could let Saretha wait. Yet, if I was a Placer, I would have far more options. Could I have my family back, and this, too?
I felt awful closing the Cuff back over my wrist. It seemed to squeeze tighter. I hated the idea that I would eventually betray poor Henri, even if I got away with it. The thoughts in my head grew louder as I tried to defend what I was doing. I told myself I could work it out so that no one ever knew. Weren’t my reasons justified? If I was back with the Placers, I would at least stand a fighting chance of slipping it away, unnoticed, and I could return it before it was missed. I really wanted to hug Henri now, but I couldn’t. Instead, I followed him out into the night.
REMORSE: $35.99
I was a mess when we arrived on the roof of the Rock™ Cola Bottling Company. Kel and Margot were waiting, laser-focused on my approach. I felt sick, but tried my best to look somehow less sweaty and shaky. A thick, sweet smell hung in the air.
Kel led us down to a spacious Squelch, rage blazing in her eyes. I wondered if maybe I had made a mistake. The expression behind her mask was harsher and more distant than when I’d first met her. That made sense; I hadn’t disappointed her that first night. She immediately began pacing.
“You willfully, and with forethought, risked the employment and good standing of each member of this team,” she rasped. Her use of chilly Legalese, combined with the fact she still had her mask on, made me shrink away. She stopped moving.
“You know that though, don’t you? That’s why you chose not to show up. You realized the gravity of what you’d done.”
My lip was trembling. I put my hand there to stop it. I felt like I was five years old.
Margot and Henri hung by the door, motionless, watching.
“Speth,” Kel said, jerking her mask off, “I’ve lost team members before to the temptation to steal, but it was always something of real value, or meaning, like a book. What you did makes no sense!”
I couldn’t explain it. I hated feeling like my actions were beyond my control.
“If you are ever going to speak, let it be now, because I need you to explain yourself.”
Her eyes fixed on me, cool and dark. She waited. I swallowed from habit—and from fear. I had so much I wished I could say, so many questions I wanted to ask. But how could I waste my breath on something so petty? I didn’t understand it myself. I wanted to know where Beecher’s grandmother had been taken, and how Kel could live every day in a world she knew was so completely wrong. I wanted to explain about Saretha, and Carol Amanda Harving, and how the Cuff stood between my family and freedom.
I searched for some gesture I could make that would at least tell Kel I was sorry. My shame burned twice as hot knowing I still had to take Henri’s device, no matter what came next.
The room was perfectly still, perfectly silent. Kel waited, unmoving as stone.
“My Lord, this is uncomfortable,” Margot said. Henri looked at her, horrified. Kel still did not move.
What if I explained it all? What if I begged for their help? I wanted to so badly, it felt like I might burst. Kel could find a way. She could get Saretha to Carol Amanda Harving’s apartment. Maybe Henri could carry her. Margot could take Sam. It wouldn’t all be left up to me. But despite everything I wanted, I was not going to explain. No. I was sorry for it, but I would not speak. If I could control nothing else, I could control this.
Kel took out her Pad. She began furiously tapping at it. “I’m not going to make you promise this time. Vague gestures could mean anything. Instead, I’m going to make you a promise—if you steal from our sponsors or our targets, I won’t just end your employment. I will sue so badly you’ll wish Silas Rog was prosecuting.”
“Damn,” Henri said, breathless. Margot shushed him with a finger to her lips.
“If you can’t handle that, fine—when the door opens, leave and never come back. Don’t look for us, don’t contact us, together or individually.” She ran her hand over her head, like it would cool her down. “I’m not asking if you understand.”
She opened up her bag and started laying out bottles of moisturizing cream. Her lecture was over. Without looking at her Pad, she waved it and said, “I’ll clear you when we’re tethered again.”
I wiped my eyes. Some ugly part of myself picked her logic apart like a Lawyer, so I could promise to do as she asked. Did she choose her words carefully, or not carefully enough? I would never steal from a sponsor or a target again. That was exactly what she had asked. I would not repeat my mistake. Henri’s little blue device wouldn’t be plucked from a target’s home. It didn’t belong to a sponsor. It sat in a loophole between her words. I didn’t know if that would matter to her in the end, or if she would care to work out the difference. In my mute protest, I would not be able to explain, nor did it matter. Though she didn’t know it, she’d left me no choice but to stay. Whether I wanted to be part of the group or not, I needed Henri’s device to free Saretha.
I knelt down and began to help Kel plan our Placement. I felt her body ease its tension by a hair, and I felt rotten for it. But I was back in the group for as long as I could last.
SCORN: $36.99
Penepoli Graethe showed up at our door the next morning. Her eyes were wet with tears.
“You can’t come in,” Sam said, opening the door a crack. I couldn’t hear her response. She wasn’t speaking, but she was still making noise. I pulled a jacket on over my nightclothes and went out to her. Sam crossed his arms and followed me into the hall.
Penepoli looked from Sam to me and back again with wild eyes. Her face was twisted with confusion, lips mashed tight. She made a wide gesture, a ring with her hands, traced in the air, and then walked her fingers into the space it had defined.
Sam and I looked at each other. “I don’t know what that means,” he said with a sigh. “Do you want to just tell us?”
Penepoli bit her lip, then zippered it and looked pitifully sorrowful. It was hard to believe that not very long ago, Penepoli, Nancee and I would talk, carefree, about nothing at all. It felt stupid, and beautiful, and sad to think of it. My hand reached out for hers, but I had to stop myself and pull it back. I couldn’t get charged for a gesture now. I had no way to reach her.
“Mmmmhhm, mhhmm, mhmmm?” Penepoli tried, humming out what she wanted to say. Her brows wrenched up and she hunched down to my height, her lank hair falling forward.
“The fruit stripe garden?” Sam guessed, shaking his head.
Anguished, Penepoli spoke, but not fully. She whispered through clenched teeth, like a panicked ventriloquist.
“Mandett is rounding us up.”
“Who is us?” Sam asked.
“The Silents!” Penepoli squeaked.
Sam looked at me. I didn’t know anything about it. Had Mandett really gone silent? If he had, how was he getting people rounded up? Then I remembered that Mandett hadn’t had his Last Day yet.
“He says we have to do more than not speak,” Penepoli said, her lips straining to form all the words while keeping her mouth shut. “He wants us to show ourselves, prove we’re here. He is asking—”
The sound of the elevator arriving stopped Penepoli. Her hand clamped to her mouth.
“I’ve said too much!” she mumbled under her fingers.
Sam rolled his eyes. The elevator
doors opened, and Mrs. Harris stepped out, looking both irritated and pleased.
Penepoli dropped her hands, like she had been caught doing something illegal, and said, “Good morning, Mrs. Harris.”
Mrs. Harris squinted at Penepoli, as if trying to recall her name. Then she addressed me, as if Penepoli were unimportant.
“Speth,” she said coolly, “I need to speak with you. I have news.”
Sam’s gaze burned at her. He hated her unannounced visits. We all did.
“Mrs. Harris,” Penepoli said with a nervous swallow. Mrs. Harris raised an eyebrow. “Do you know what happened to Nancee? You were her guardian, right?”
Mrs. Harris chewed on this question and sneered a little. “I was.”
“Do you know what happened to her?” Penepoli asked again, sort of through her teeth.
“I do,” she said, and then returned her gaze to me. “Does your friend understand I am not budgeted to speak with children who are not my charges?”
In lieu of answering, I glared at her and tried to match her coldness. Her sour face twisted with an ugly glee I had seen her wear only a few times before. She kept her eyes trained on me and answered Penepoli’s question.
“Nancee has been Indentured within the city to a woman who can put up with the girl’s insolent silence. It was challenging to place her. When someone selfishly refuses to speak, that puts all burden of speaking on the opposite party. My understanding is that Nancee is being trained to follow commands like you might teach a dog, which should solve most of the problem.”
My mouth tightened.
“And appropriately punished if she fails to obey.”
Pins and needles surged over me in a stomach-turning wave. I wanted to ask, Where? Who with? My lips longed to form the W, so I could have some answers, but I could not. I closed my eyes and imagined Kel’s Pad. Could I type Nancee’s name into it? Could I find her that way? I ached thinking of what she was enduring.
“I’m glad it upsets you,” Mrs. Harris said. “I know it is difficult to hear, but this is what comes from insolence. Perhaps this will help you better decide on your future.”
When she talked about my future, it felt like a place very far from where I stood. But I was beginning to think the future was where I stood. My decision had been made.
“Your friend can stop eavesdropping now.” Mrs. Harris sniffed and ran her key card over our door. “I’d rather not spend my entire visit in this hallway.”
“Should I find her?” Penepoli asked, wild-eyed. “Should I look for Nancee?”
Mrs. Harris narrowed her brows at Penepoli and pushed Sam and me inside. The door closed with Penepoli still gaping out in the hall.
“Your boyfriend’s grandmother’s been found out,” she said to me, stalking inside and rubbing at her fingers like she was sharpening claws. “She had been keeping a rather disgusting secret.”
Saretha didn’t turn from the couch. She faced the screen and kept her attention fixed on a game show that let contestants vie for new Branding.
Mrs. Harris looked at my Cuff and then back at me.
“She sabotaged her Cuff,” Mrs. Harris said.
I gritted my teeth against this twisting of the truth. I didn’t suppose it would make any difference to Mrs. Harris that she hadn’t actually sabotaged it.
“Belunda Stokes has been speaking for years without paying the Rights Holders. Apparently many of the neighborhood children knew about it—including that girl, I imagine.” She jerked a thumb at the door and Penepoli beyond. “They have been using her as a source of unregulated information.” She glared at Sam. Sam glared back.
“Speth,” Mrs. Harris said, trying to imitate a reasonable person. “It occurs to me that you may have fallen in with the wrong element with her. Were you going to see her before your celebration? Perhaps she is the source of all of this nonsense? Perhaps the Silents were her idea?”
She made an odd maneuver that I think was meant to imply the zippered lips without paying the full service fee that was now charged for it. She was still charged something. Her Cuff buzzed, and Sam laughed at her. Her lips twitched in a frown. I couldn’t stand to look at her, and then I realized I didn’t have to. I had somewhere I had to be. I moved to walk out, but she blocked me.
“You were looking forward to your Branding,” Mrs. Harris said more softly. “I remember. I should really like to know what Mrs. Stokes said to you, and to Beecher, and, apparently, to Mandett, that could turn you all into such...”
She let her look of disdain stand in for whatever word she could not find or would not pay for.
“You’re not supposed to imply words,” Sam warned. Mrs. Harris’s brow furrowed. “It’s stealing from the Rights Holders.”
“Sam,” Mrs. Harris said, her voice dripping like Huny®, “I am gratified to know you have been paying attention. I shouldn’t be upset—people like Mrs. Stokes are no better than animals. Do you know what her words did to her son? The poor man drank a molecular ink and died almost instantly.”
“No, he didn’t,” Sam barked. I felt a little unsteady, wondering if that was actually true, but surely Mrs. Stokes would have told me if it was.
“It was covered up,” Mrs. Harris insisted with a flip of her hand. That made no sense. Who would cover it up? What would the point be?
“Belunda Stokes felt entitled to all those words she spoke, like a pig at a trough. How could she be expected to have any control? She simply expected everything to be handed to her for free.”
I couldn’t listen to her anymore, and I would not be late to my rendezvous with the Placers on her account. I pushed past her.
She breathed in sharply. “This is why the Onzième cannot keep a parent—they are too desperate to speak to and hug these children, even when it is far beyond their financial ability.”
I opened the door. Her words hit me like an arrow. She made it sound like our parents didn’t deserve to be with us.
“I am trying to help you,” Mrs. Harris said. But she wasn’t. Her guardianship wasn’t an accident. Our parents, all of them, had been taken away, and I’d never really considered why.
“I love you, Speth,” Mrs. Harris lied with a revolting lack of emotion. I grew dizzy and had to steady myself in the doorway.
“See what comes of it?” Mrs. Harris said, clicking across our floor in her heels to our screen. She tapped a few times, entered an address and stood back to let me see.
A feed appeared. I twisted to see it, one foot still in the hall. Elderly, trembling hands brushed the inside of a beautiful, graceful, spotted blushing flower with a yellowy powder. This was a direct feed from someone’s corneal implants, being broadcast for everyone to see on a micro-channel. My heart seized, thinking it might be my mother, but I realized my mistake almost immediately. The hands were too old. The owner of the feed was in a hothouse, lined as far as the eye could see with thin trees. Other bent, beaten workers hurried from flower to flower with delicate brushes, their faces covered with The Blocks. Mrs. Stokes glanced at herself for the briefest of seconds in the hothouse glass and then returned to work. Her image was allowed through without any blurring.
A sour lump formed in my throat as the feed cut away. Not only had they taken Mrs. Stokes and put her to work at her age, they’d forced implants into her eyes, despite her objections all those years ago. My own eyes burned just thinking of it.
Saretha tapped at her Cuff and turned back on her game show.
“That’s how your beloved Mrs. Stokes will finish out what days are left to her,” Mrs. Harris said quickly, with a flick of her eyes to the screen. “I thought you would like to know.”
Her voice held a note of amusement, and I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to lunge at her and wipe the smug expression off her face. But I did neither. Instead, I caught my breath and turned away. I didn’t wa
nt to leave Sam and Saretha with this woman, but I had to go. I pushed off the doorframe, passing Penepoli still standing baffled in the hall, and I fled.
SEASONS: $37.99
Outside the dome, they say there are seasons. We never see them from inside. Some parts of the year, the dome is gray more often, and every once in a while, the dome goes dark with snow. Until I became a Placer, I never knew you could feel the cold of it through the metal bracing between the honeycombs.
Henri demonstrated when we were out on a high-profile Placement near the center of the city. Hanging from a clip like an acrobat, Henri ungloved his hand and pressed it to the metal. When he took his hand away, a perfect handprint remained, melted in the thin frost. I followed his lead, pressing my palm to the cold.
The handprints only lasted a few seconds before the frost replaced them. Margot hurried over and put one of her hands in the spot where Henri’s had been. She could not keep from giggling. Kel allowed us a few minutes of this diversion, then waved and herded us away.
Watching Henri’s backpack made me feel like a traitor. Letting Saretha languish at home made me feel like a traitor. Every day that passed pulled at me in a hundred directions.
I looked out across the city from the top of the dome. Nancee was here somewhere, lost to servitude. Mrs. Stokes was gone, lost to hard labor. I feared the work would kill her. I longed to help them, but how could I? Even if I could find them, how could I help them? I had to focus on the one small piece of knowledge I had that might be of use.
I laughed bitterly to myself, thinking about how the information I had was almost like owning a word. It had value. I wished I could see Silas Rog’s face when he realized he would lose his first case. Could Arkansas Holt handle taking him down? I knew he could use the medal, but we hadn’t heard from him in some time, which was actually kind of him. He was trying not to deplete our resources if he didn’t have anything positive to pass on.
All Rights Reserved Page 21
