by J D Jacobs
“Gerard, Keaton, wait for me in the lobby. The crowd needs to die down some more if we’re going to take her to the courthouse across town,” Jenkins tells them. The two escort Grant and Abbi away. Grant knows that it won’t be permanent, but I can tell the two are inseparable. The punishment is going to be tough on both.
Jenkins then turns to me on the balls of his feet. “How about you, Jaden?” he begins. “Are you feeling okay? I know anxiety attacks can be incredibly frightening. I know we’ve thrown a lot at you recently, but we want you to be safe no matter what.”
Wow, Jenkins is actually being nice to me with nobody else in sight to give him a reason to fake this sincerity. I then think back to what Grant said, that Jenkins only fights back when I initiate it. Maybe if I stay neutral around him, somehow find a way to conceal my apathy for him, he won’t be as bitter toward me, either.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “I just needed some space. Needed to get off that stage, especially.” Hopefully my last statement can spare Grant any more punishment for whisking me away.
“I completely understand.” He slowly backs away to literally give me space. “The citizens, they all understand that you had an anxiety attack. Anxiety is definitely a reasonable reaction to being released in front of millions, so we will take it very slow from here on out. Sound good?”
I would ask him how we are exactly going to take it slow, but asking him a question would also call for the man to be in my presence for at least a few more seconds, so I shake my head. “Sounds good.”
“Good,” he says with a smile. “Take your time up here. Your father and I will talk to you later.” He then turns around and heads off the roof.
Great, now I’m left on a roof alone again. Where have I read this chapter before? And of course, just like the last time I was alone on a roof, I’m not exactly as alone as I think. I hear playful whistling coming from my left, and balancing on the three-foot barrier on the edge of the roof is the same talking Grim I saw earlier.
All the apathy I’ve been holding in is now directed at the Grim who made me look like a fool in front of everyone. “What the hell is your problem!?”
“Woah, settle down,” he shakes his head from sarcastic shock and turns to me. “I would’ve accepted any other greeting, but the one you just gave me was a little aggressive.”
“Why did you switch those papers?” I persistently ask.
He sits down on the barrier and looks at me with his imaginary eyes. “Did you not read the poem? Jesus, I knew you wouldn’t read it. I worked so hard on it.”
“I read the freaking poem,” I impatiently tell him. “Why tell me that right then? Grant whisked me away and told me five minutes ago, so why did you need to swap my speech out and tell me at that exact moment?”
He shrugs. “I dunno. Thought it’d be funny. Which it was! Oh man, you should’ve seen your face! Classic.”
I rub my forehead to try and shake away the headache this Grim is giving me. “Can you quit tormenting me for one second and at least tell me who the other person that is immune is? I know Grant and I are, but you said there’s three. Who’s the other one?”
“Well, that wouldn’t be any fun, now would it? We’re only in the first act, and you want the entire spoiler already? A little patience never hurt anybody.”
I long for the day when this Grim quits giving me vague answers, but I’m sure that day is nowhere close. I take a deep breath to calm myself. “Is there anything I could possibly ask you that you would give me a clear-cut answer on?” I ask him in a tolerable and calm voice, hoping that would convince him to spill some form–any form–of beans.
“Depends. Toss one my way and we’ll see what I can do.” He stands back up and goes back to balancing on the edge, looking at his feet as he listens in.
I search for a question, then come up with one. “Is there somebody else that is immune to the Cozmin disease?”
“Yes.”
Wow, he actually answered me. “Can you tell me who?”
“Ekkk.” He gives the sound of a buzzer indicating a wrong answer, like on a game show. “I’m not telling you that now. There’s strike one.”
My brain then thinks of another question, one that came up while Grant was up here a moment ago. “What makes Grant and I so similar? We have purple, we share the flashbacks, we’re immune. Why?”
“And there’s strike two,” he casually tells me.
“Seriously? Are you going to answer any of my questions?”
“Yes,” he says, then pauses. “There. I just answered one of your questions. Next.”
My God, this Grim is hard to put up with. I think hard for another question, and one pops into my head. “Okay, I have one more strike, right?”
“Sure.”
“Can you tell me about this other surviving city that Grant and Jenkins have been talking to?”
The Grim rubs his chin as he considers whether or not he wants to answer my question. “You know, kid, I easily could. And I really want to, but I’m technically not allowed to. So with that said, there’s STRIKE THREE! You’re outta here!” The Grim twists his torso around and aggressively pumps his fist to strike me out. No lie, I could have seen him as an MLB umpire before the Cozmin ripped his face off.
“Don’t worry, my little Starfoxx, you’ll get another at-bat. You’ll have to wait a few innings, however.” Before I have time to say anything else to him, he swipes his index finger over where his eyebrows would be and disappears.
6.
It turns out that Jenkins’s plan to “take it very slow” was actually beneficial to me. Yes, shocking, I know: Jenkins actually being good for something. Ever since I started taking the neutral approach around Jenkins, he’s been relatively nice to me. Wish I could say the same for Cody. I told Cody that Jenkins wouldn’t be such an ass if he would show the smallest shred of courtesy, but Cody is stubborn. His and Jenkins’s rivalry is one that is actually enjoyable to watch because even though I’m putting on a fake smile for the fat man, I can’t ever forget what he did to Scarlett and Ryan. I’ll never forget that. Every second that I pretend to be nice to the man, I have the image of him beating Ryan and Scarlett carved in the back of my mind.
I remind myself several times a day that I’m doing this for them. I’m only being nice now so I can work my way in getting my revenge. Jenkins’s due is coming. Just not now.
Anyway, the slow process has been a pretty slow one. The day after the introduction ceremony, I told Dad I just wanted to walk through the city and meet people face-to-face. Dad couldn’t find a good reason to say no, and he convinced Jenkins to release me, this time much more casually.
Dad gave me a tour guide to assist me. His name is Koji; a tall, slender Asian teenager who speaks fluently in both Japanese and English. Of course, when Dad introduced me to Koji, the first thing that popped in my mind was this guy might be the third one immune. I threw in subtle hints when talking with Koji, such as how my favorite color was sepia or how I absolutely loved the lavender purple shirts I saw other people wearing or how the light purple lilacs were the best freaking flowers to ever exist.
Koji didn’t catch on to any of my hints. He probably thought I’m some weirdo who oddly loves colors. Understandable.
I probably shook a million hands on the tour and signed just as many autographs. I thought Koji would get tired of stopping every five steps for me to shake a guy’s hand or listen to how my story inspired some lady’s faith, but he didn’t. I’m glad, too, because I really enjoyed having short, one-to-two minute conversations with strangers. Hearing their stories of how they made it to Tryton, how their lives have changed, and how they’re living their lives now. It’s good to hear a few success stories coming from people instead of the common depressing ones.
But still, I couldn’t help but envision purple somewhere on every person I talked to, wondering where it’s located and how they’re hiding it.
I think I simply liked talking to people in general. In Westwood,
all I had was myself and my rats. I told Dad I wanted to go back to Westwood and get them, but he said the rescue mission for Scar and Scat would have to wait. I was okay with that; I’m certain they’re safe on the Stevenson’s roof from those ravenous dogs. At the same time, I don’t want to leave them alone and hungry on that roof for too long. I’m sure they’re tired of eating that nasty, molding block of cheese by now.
Koji showed me every part of Tryton, which was a very daunting task considering Tryton is ginormous. First off, there’s seven restaurants in Tryton; these seven as a group have a nickname, the Seven Heavens of Armageddon, or the Shoa. However, none of them specify in a particular food because the food is always limited to what the team of scavengers find on their missions. The food may not be the tastiest, but it’s diverse, to say the least.
The weird thing about scavenging for food is that meat is, according to Koji, perhaps the easiest thing to find, even though nearly all of it has been lying dead in the sun for over six months. Animals, just like humans, don’t decompose when they die from the Cozmin. The talking Grim told me why it is that people who have egotoned from the Cozmin don’t decompose: because when the Grims touch the egotoned people, it leaves the body in a frozen state of fear. The Grims call this process Delighting. I can only assume that the same reason is given for the animals. If that is the case, does that mean that there are faceless animals, as well? I swear, the day I see a faceless cow will be the day I’ve seen all there is to see.
Paying for goods in Tryton is similar to paying for goods before the Cozmin. Everybody is awarded a form of credits called trytes for working in their predetermined field of expertise that’s either chosen by the citizen or assigned to them by the city. The trytes are literally playing cards that have been laminated, sprayed with an orange substance to make the card heavier, and sealed with a stamp of authenticity to look official. Grant told me that a group of scavengers found the motherload of cards in a Bicycle Playing Cards warehouse in Ohio, and that Tryton has enough playing cards to make trytes for the next ten years.
Anyway, Koji told me that trytes have been the biggest step Tryton has made in returning back into the functioning government of America’s glory days. It has made people “more civilized and a lot more determined to reach their goals.” Koji also says that the Tevoc Shop is the main root for all that determination.
The Tevoc Shop is a giant warehouse that’s filled with booths that sell everything from basic essentials to the rarest and most prized commodities that people used to love before the Cozmin broke out. The Tevoc customers write a list of goods that they particularly want and leave a down payment for the item until it’s found. When one of the eight teams of scavengers–who are officially called the Scavs–go out on a supply run, they keep in mind what is wanted at the Tevoc Shop and bring it back for a profit. Liquor, bicycles, Starbursts, guitars, Playstations, basketballs, novels; you name it. Anything with specific value that either could take people’s mind off the Cozmin, give them the slightest feeling like life is as it was before, or isn’t already found in Tryton are counted as extremely valuable and sold in the Tevoc Shop. The number one item requested in the Tevoc Shop is bicycles, but it used to be guns. Grant has mentioned to me before that he and all the other Scavs refuse to bring any guns back from scavenge missions due to the fact that there is no need for them anymore.
People want guns mainly for protection, even though any form of law-breaking is strictly prohibited in Tryton. Koji led me to the large door on the metal wall that surrounds the city. The same door that I saw Jenkins enter and kill my friends in during one of my flashbacks. Koji told me that if anyone is caught stealing property, raping or abusing anyone, or anything else deemed severe, then they are sent through the door and out into the real world to fight the Cozmin on their own, which results in certain death within a few minutes. Being exiled into a long and painful death may seem inhumane, but it’s the rules of the city. Raping and stealing is a thing of the past. With only a limited amount of humans left, anything that hurts another human is seen as taboo. Even though the human race is dwindling, banishment from Tryton is the simplest way to weed out those who still bear uncivilized traits.
A little contradictory, yes I know, but it’s nothing I’ll have to worry about. Banishing me won’t exactly bring the outcome that it does to others. But it gives me the slightest thought: what if those people who were directly outside the wall back in Westwood, which would include Terra, had been exiled?
Koji took me along the wall of the city, explaining the structure of it. I knew most of what he told me already: a large metal wall that is used as a filtration lung to trap the Cozmin disease in the hull of the wall and release safe, breathable air in return. Stopping the Cozmin was apparently a lot harder than it sounds, and many other filtration ways were tested to try and keep the Cozmin out before this version of the wall seemed to work. It’s very similar to the concept that Dad helped devise in Westwood, but a few others in the city contributed a lot of knowledge into creating this impenetrable, towering wall. The wall idea was already constructed when Dad arrived, but he still contributed heavily in improving it. I can’t help but be proud of my dad for helping in whatever way he did.
Next stop on the grand tour of Tryton was definitely my least favorite stop: the graveyard. A decent sized section of what was once a park is now strictly a graveyard, with tombstones lined up as close to the next one as can be. Koji told me that graves were a very unusual priority for Tryton once the wall was built, and thinking back to the dirt mound of bodies I saw in Roaksville, I could understand why.
“So do people still die from the Cozmin while they’re in Tryton? Like, do people still egotone?” I asked Koji.
“Seldomly,” he said. “The wall is 99.92% effective at filtering the Cozmin virus, so a microscopic amount of the Cozmin sneaks through the wall. And besides, the Cozmin is made up of low-temperature molecules that causes the disease to sink to the ground, so the tiny amount doesn’t affect our breathing and is almost undetectable.”
“If the Cozmin sinks, what about above us?” I asked as I pointed to the exposed sky. “There’s no wall on top to protect us there.”
“Good point, but not necessarily,” said Koji. “The wall is able to form a perfectly horizontal protection line at the top of the wall from one side to the others. In other words, the wall isn’t so much a protection square, but a protection cube.”
“Sounds like you know what you’re talking about when it comes to this stuff,” I complimented Koji.
“Thanks, Jaden. Ever since I decided to focus on becoming a Cozmin researcher, I’ve learned that there is never too much you can learn about the disease.” Koji gave a broad smile, and I returned the favor.
“So, what’s next on the Tour de Tryton?” I asked him.
“There really isn’t much left,” he assured me. “I could show you around some of the neighborhoods toward the back of the city, or we could visit the Tryton School we have. The school is very underpopulated because of the scarcity of surviving kids, but it’s still worth a visit, if you want. Oh! Or I could show you the garden where we’re able to grow our very own fruits and vegetables. We even have a few greenhouses, too.”
I turned my head to the wall that surrounds the city and admired it for a moment. “You know what? Maybe some other time. We’ve been touring for a while and I’m getting a little exhausted.”
“You sure?” he asked me, sounding a little disappointed to end our tour.
“Yeah, we can finish it another day.” I continued to admire the large wall that simultaneously protects and limits this entire city. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere anyway.”
7.
“You are absolutely stupid if you believe that!” Cody drops his gyro in disbelief and locks eyes with me to make sure I’m not out of my mind. “I want you to look me in the eye sockets and repeat what you just said with a straight face.”
I huff and do as he says, keeping my opinion as
bold as my face. “Guardians of the Galaxy is 100x better than The Avengers.”
Cody throws his hands back over his head and looks off in the distance, looking for somebody to grab me and throw me in a straitjacket for saying what I did. “You are stupid. The Avengers is an absolute masterpiece; it is the unification of an entire universe. Multiple movie franchises are all connected into one film.”
“We’re not arguing the films; we’re arguing the characters. And in that category, the Guardians are superior to the Avengers.”
“Are you insane!? What are you talking about?”
“Come on, look at the Avengers: you have an old man with a shield, a guy with a hammer, a green dude with anger problems, and a rich guy covered in metal. Sounds like a bunch of middle-school rejects.” I take a huge bite out of my gyro to let Cody digest what I just said. Nobody takes a bite that huge if they don’t mean business.
“I know you don’t want me to get started on the Guardians!” Cody says, getting heated the more he hears me talk. “One, you have Chris Pratt. Literally a normal guy with nothing special. The green alien chick may be hot, but she is very forgettable. Then there’s Batista, who hasn’t been relevant since John Cena destroyed him half a decade ago. But worst of all, there’s the all-star tag-team duo of a TALKING RACCOON AND A TREE.”
“See, you hate on Rocket and Groot, but they guard the galaxy. Your Avengers are stuck to only protecting Earth like the peasants they are.”
Cody opens his mouth to argue back but doesn’t know where to start. He pulls his thumbs in between his eyebrows and gives a low groan in response to my complete buffoonery. As his eyes are shut, I reach over and grab the bag of chips on his plate. He catches my hand last minute and swats it. “Boy, you must be wanting to fight me today.”
