by Jason Tesar
walking home. She was ready to commit to this different approach. If she started voting regularly again and got her rating up, she might be able to help Marshall and Clarine instead of hurting them. With her friend association to Dal, her efforts would also impact his rating. And he needed all the help he could get. Instead of trusting her instincts, perhaps she needed to put her trust in the people who loved her.
o o o
The crosshairs followed Rena as she turned to leave the commons, but they weren’t positioned for a shot. They were centered on the ground at her feet in case of an unintentional discharge, although that was impossible. There was no round in the chamber, the safety was engaged, and Barrett’s finger would never touch the trigger unless he intended to shoot, which he didn’t. He was only using his rifle’s scope to surveil the young woman who’d defended herself and her friends against muggers a few days ago.
After that incident, Barrett and his team had returned to headquarters to report their findings. Commander Ryce was impressed with Rena’s instincts, but he was also the sort of man who looked beyond the obvious. That vigilance was what had kept him alive for this long. He wondered if Rena had been trained by OCON and was being used to attract Outlier attention. Could this be a new strategy to infiltrate the Outliers by getting an operative inside?
More surveillance was needed. And that’s why Barrett watched Rena from an office in a two-story building across the street from the commons. He and his team had come up through a sewer pipe into the building’s mechanical room. The business didn’t open until 10:00 a.m., which meant that employees wouldn’t arrive until shortly beforehand. That vacancy allowed Barrett’s team members to spread out and establish sentry positions at each of the building’s access points.
While they kept watch for anyone approaching the building, Barrett panned his scope across the commons, over the pond at its center, to an alley across the street from Rena’s location. His crosshairs came to rest on a young man in the shadows. He was dressed in lightweight exercise clothing, like so many others in the area. But he hadn’t come to exercise. He was also surveilling Rena.
This was the first time Barrett had seen one of OCON’s young operatives, though he’d heard plenty about them. They were typically orphans who’d unknowingly participated in aptitude testing during their stay at an adoption agency. All their conversations and actions were monitored for specific criteria. If OCON liked what they saw, the child was recruited into a life unlike any other they would experience as a normal citizen.
And if this young man was any indication, OCON’s training program was excellent. He was just close enough to observe Rena’s movements and the citizens she came into contact with. But at that distance, dressed as he was, with the shadows to conceal him, he was invisible to Rena. And that was the primary goal of any operative—to be invisible.
If Barrett had been a citizen, he would have been fooled. But he was neither. He knew what to look for. He could spot an operative by what they paid attention to. They were alert to their surroundings, which was different from the casual distractedness of your typical citizen. That’s how Barrett also knew there were a handful of other operatives in the commons, playing their parts as normal citizens. These others weren’t watching Rena closely, which meant they were only present as support for the young operative in case something went wrong.
Barrett picked out a few of them with his scope. A middle-aged man sitting under a tree by the pond. An older woman walking along the path. OCON’s surveillance of Rena seemed legitimate, but it could also be staged. To complete the illusion that she wasn’t one of them.
Who are you? Barrett wondered, as he swung the crosshairs near Rena’s feet once again.
Perhaps OCON placed so many operatives in the area to find confirmation that the Outliers were taking the bait. It was impossible to know for sure, but Barrett and his team would never give them any such confirmation. Recon members were even better than operatives at hiding.
“We have a woman approaching along the sidewalk at the front of the building,” said a team member through the communication device in Barrett’s ear.
It was too early for an employee, but there was no reason to linger. Barrett had seen what he came for. “Let’s move out,” he replied, standing up and lifting his rifle from the desk.
“She’s stopping at the front doors!”
Barret used his shirt sleeve to wipe down the surface of the desk. “Quick and quiet. No traces,” he told them.
Fortunately, he and his team had removed their outerwear before exiting the mechanical room, per standard procedure, to reduce their chances of leaving evidence. When the desk was clean, he left the room and pulled the door shut as he’d found it.
“She’s in the lobby,” came another warning. “It must be the owner.”
But Barret was already down the hall and entering the stairwell that would take him back to the mechanical room and the safety of the sewers.
010
After a full night’s sleep, Rena got up early, showered, and put on the dress that she only wore on special occasions. Birthday parties. After-school events. There weren’t many opportunities for her to dress up, and even fewer that she actually participated in.
But I’m trying a new approach, she reminded herself.
When she walked down the hall and into the kitchen, the rest of her family was already at the table eating breakfast. They too were dressed up. It was Sunday morning, and Rena hadn’t gone to Consensus with her family in over a year. She’d argued that weekends were her only opportunity to sleep in, and her parents decided not to force the issue. It defeated the whole point of agreement. Since then, their normal routine was to eat a quick breakfast and leave quietly. Rena usually woke up to an empty house.
“Rena?” Marshall set down his spoon, eyes wide with concern.
Everyone turned to stare.
“You look nice,” Clarine said. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
Rena nodded. “Together … right?”
Clarine smiled.
“We have to leave in a few minutes,” Marshall said. “Why don’t you grab something to eat before we go?”
“OK.” Rena already liked the feel of this new approach.
After breakfast, the family walked two blocks to the nearest transit station. Rena carried Suzanne the whole way so her mom could hold Gareth’s hand, something Clarine didn’t get to do as often as she liked. They passed dozens of other families along the way, all dressed up and heading to consensus like the Waites. It was strange and comforting at the same time to feel part of a larger movement. To Rena, it felt like walking to school in the morning, and in a way, that’s what it was.
A school for all ages.
They had to wait ten minutes before the correct transit pod arrived at the station. Others came and went during that time, but they were the ones spiraling inward to the Center or outward from it. Rena’s family could have taken one of these and ridden it for one revolution, getting off at a station about ten blocks inward, but it was faster to wait for one that ran through the radial tubes across the city.
Like the majority of the transit network, the switching station tubes were transparent. When the pod arrived, the sound of compressed air transitioned to a hum of electricity. One form of propulsion took over for the other as the pod diverted from the main tube and came alongside a moving walkway. The doors opened and only a few people stepped off. Then the waiting crowd moved quickly to fill up the pod before it reached the end of the loading/unloading zone. Fortunately, they all made it into the first pod.
Or else the Waites would’ve had to wait, Rena thought with a grin. Dal would have made fun of her for such a lame joke.
Fifteen minutes later, Rena and her family stepped off the transit system and walked another block to the community hall, a one-story, concrete building. Their pace slowed as they merged with dozens of other families moving up the front walkway and into the building through numerous metal doors that were propp
ed open.
The lobby was even more chaotic, as citizens spotted others they hadn’t seen in a week. Whereas everyone had been walking in the same general direction outside, they scattered in a hundred different directions now, crossing each other’s paths and bringing the flow to a standstill.
“There’s Kirti,” Clarine said, still holding tight to Gareth’s hand.
“You should go say hello,” Marshall suggested.
The two of them had come to a complete stop, and Rena almost tripped over them. The family behind her was forced to split into two groups to get around the Waites. Rena apologized to them before looking back to her parents. “That’s OK. Let’s keep moving.”
“Are you sure?” Clarine asked.
“Yeah. I can always talk to her at school. Let’s go.”
Marshall looked disappointed. But he turned around without commenting. Clarine followed. Rena hiked Suzanne further up on her hip and sidestepped another family before catching up to her own just inside the doors to the main auditorium.
The room was large and circular, with a floor that sloped gently downward so each seat had an unobstructed view of the stage in the center. Marshall headed down one of the aisles, looking for five empty seats in a row. He found them halfway to the stage and motioned for his family to slide in and sit down.
Rena went first and took her seat. She tried to set Suzanne down in the
