She shook her head. “Gunner is going to tell me about the flight trials,” she said. “He says I’m a good flier.”
“You are,” I assured her. Gunn’s fingers moved up her arm, and I took that as my cue to leave. I’d have to corner Gunn later for what he knew about the Evolutionary Rise.
I’d never ventured into Saffediene’s room before, but my feet took me there now. She had a curtain hanging on the wall. I stared at it, marveling at its normalcy, wondering if a window really lurked behind it.
“It’s just for decoration,” she said through the darkness. She pressed a button and a dim lamp flared to life. Shadows chased each other across her bed and concealed half her face.
“Hey,” I said. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”
She shifted on her cot and gestured to the small space at the end.
I sat, suddenly nervous to be there. I didn’t know why, but I thought the way Saffediene and I had been holding hands and lying in each other’s arms may have had something to do with it.
“About what we saw in Harvest . . .”
“That riot,” she said. Saffediene didn’t like to sugarcoat things. She called it how she saw it. I remembered when she did that during engineering class. I’d taken it as another sign that she was thinking for herself.
“Yeah, the riot,” I said. “I don’t think we should detail that in our report.”
Silence stretched so long that I squinted at her to determine what she was thinking. She twirled the ties on her quilt, her eyebrows furrowed.
“What’s the purpose of keeping it a secret?” she asked.
“Maybe it’s an isolated incident,” I said. “Also, it has nothing to do with our mission. Director Benes is still solidly on board. I don’t think Jag needs the complication of some stupid transportation dispute in a city hundreds of miles away.” I shrugged in an attempt to look nonchalant. “I just don’t think it’s necessary. What do you think?”
Insider Tip #5: Always ask for another’s opinion. That way, you’ll never come off as the one making all the decisions.
She kept her eyes on the blanket for another few moments, then raised her gaze to mine. Her fingers went still. “I think Jag needs to know everything.”
I wasn’t sure, but I thought that statement held a double meaning. “Yes, eventually,” I said. “But right now?”
“If Benes can’t even solve his labor disputes, how is he going to send people when we need them?” she asked.
“Who directs the transportation department is a far cry from sending Insiders to help take down Freedom,” I said.
She nodded, her attention back on the blanket. She seemed so forlorn.
“What else is bothering you?” Saffediene had been so in tune with my troubles with Vi, but I was surprised that I’d noticed she wasn’t her normal self.
She exhaled, and seemed to further deflate. “You’re going to Lakehead,” she said, her voice hesitant.
“Yeah, so?” I asked. “It’s a day trip. Though I’m sure I’ll have some crazy-late watch assignment after that.”
She smiled, but it came and went before it could truly settle on her mouth. I caught myself staring and glanced away.
“Yeah, so, I’ll miss you.” She met my gaze with a challenge. For the first time since I recruited her, I did a little bit of investigating inside her mind.
And oh, man. She—
“I like you, Zenn,” she said. She shifted on the bed, and I shot to my feet.
“I should go.”
Saffediene’s eyes pinched as hurt crossed her face.
“Maybe when I get back we can . . . talk some more.”
“Yeah, talk,” she said, dipping her chin so I couldn’t see her eyes.
“Uh, what about Harvest?” I asked.
“I won’t say anything in the report,” she said. “I’ll file it tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I said, releasing a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
I stood in the doorway, wanting to make this right before I flew away. No matter who stood in front of me, I’d always spoken the right words and known just the right thing to do to maintain their trust.
But this was outside my scope of Insider training. They didn’t offer a course on how to deal with free-thinking girls who liked you.
Finally I said, “Saffediene?”
She looked up.
“I’ll miss you too.”
And that was the truth.
Jag
17.
I cross the border at a run, like I usually do. Entering the Goodgrounds has become easier over the years. A surge of satisfaction blankets me as I leap a small ditch and set my sights on the forest. I’d rather enter the city from the south, where there are bigger crowds to get lost in, but my reports say an armed contingency of authorities have been hovering in the Southern Rim.
Coming this way means I have to sneak through the Centrals—which have very little cover in mid-April. But whatever. I’ve snuck through the Centrals many times, and hey, this way I can distribute my tech along the way.
I steer clear of the Fire Region, because the heat there compromises my tech. Instead I loop around the lake and head to the market square, where people gather to receive their daily supplies.
When I arrive in the hundred acres of cleared fields, my head spins. Farmers display their goods—mostly the last of the winter potatoes and squash. Craftsmen exhibit their leftover cloth, leather, shoes, and hats.
A flash of green cloth causes me to dart behind an empty stall. The Greenies are here, checking cards and display permits. I don’t understand why. It’s not like someone could sneak into the Goodgrounds, start growing corn, and then show up to sell it here.
There’s no buying and selling in the Goodgrounds. The people work the jobs they’re told, and in return the Thinkers provide them with necessities. This market is trade only, and the Citizens are allowed to bring only whatever’s left over after the government has taken what they need to sustain their population.
No, the Greenies are here to make an example of someone. I’m determined that it not be me.
I slip down the rows of wares, pausing briefly at a teched-out stand displaying silver spheres and cubes and all manner of things I can’t even begin to imagine.
Pace could though, and he’d kill to get his hands on this technology. My hands twitch, desperate to pilfer some of this and bring it back to him in the Badlands. Of course I’d have to hold on to it for a while, since I don’t exactly know where he is at the moment. But he shows up from time to time, always looking well fed and happy to see me.
“Over here,” someone says, and I tear myself away from the tech booth. The familiar voice came from between two stalls, and I don’t even think before stepping into the space.
“Brother-man,” Irvine Blightingdale says, shaking my hand. His engulfs mine, and looks twice as dark as my heavily tanned one. I quickly pull my long sleeves down to hide my incriminating skin after he releases me.
“Irv,” I say, “how long have you been here?”
“Couple of minutes. I knew you’d get all trapped up in that tech.” His shoulders shake with laughter, but no sound comes out.
“Yeah, well.” I scan the area behind us, which is just the back of two more huts. “I was thinking that I could leave my wares in that stand,” I say. “No distribution required. But there are Greenies here.”
“Yeah, I seen ’em,” he says.
“Did you gather what you need?” I ask. I’ll be sending him to the Southern Region in another week or two. Irv is killer with tech, and the Resistance hopes he’ll be able to find a place in a city to set up a safe house.
He leans closer and catches me off guard with his newly enhanced green eyes. I’m still not used to them. “Got it.”
“Nice,” I say. “Stage two in effect. Did you meet with Bower?”
“Stage two,” Irv confirms. “And yes. Bower’s a go. He’ll join me down south in a few weeks.” He looks over my should
er. I follow his gaze, and shrink back into the shadows. Two Greenies stand in the market path, looking at palm readers and shaking their heads.
“Better get rid of that tech,” Irv whispers. I scoot around the back of the stand after him and out of sight of the Greenies. My heart pounds, but I don’t feel scared. The adrenaline is a sign that I’m doing something besides looking at plans and blueprints. Something besides sitting in meetings and asking people questions.
Something.
I try to assign myself to field missions, but it’s been getting harder, what with bringing the Oceanic cities on board and increasing recruitment efforts across the Association. I can’t be everywhere, doing everything.
But I can come to the Goodgrounds. No one’s better at that than me. Not even Indy, though she likes to think so.
I smile at the thought of her, but it’s almost sad. She’d broken up with me last week when she saw Sloan dancing with me. “With” isn’t even the right word. More like “near.”
I tried to explain, but Indy didn’t want to hear it. She said my “killer voice” couldn’t save me this time.
I’d assigned her to management duty while I took this mission, just to get away. That, and Gavin had said I’d find something here. Something huge.
I don’t think she meant in the dregs of the trade marketplace behind an endless swath of booths. But I could be wrong.
In fact, behind these booths is the absolute safest place for me as the sirens start.
“Rendezvous one,” Irv calls, sprinting into the fray of bodies scrambling down the path.
I run in the opposite direction, but stop short at the sight of two board-reading Greenies. They see me, and I reach up to pull my hat lower.
My hat is gone.
One of them, a bald one, raises his reader, and I’m pretty sure the resulting flash signals that he’s just confirmed my identity.
I drop my backpack and kick it as far away as possible. They see every move. I spin and run in the same direction as Irv. His dark-haired head bobbing through the crowd is the last I see of him.
* * *
After a half hour of running and many random turns, I’m bent over, gasping. In front of me lie the tech canyons created by the tall buildings in the Southern Rim. I can get lost there. Waste some time in one of my Insider hideouts. Get back to the Badlands in a few days.
I’ve lost my tech, but that hardly matters now. I duck into the cleanest alley I’ve ever seen and slide my fingers along the smooth surface of the building on my left. I wonder how many people it takes to keep the Southern Rim so sparkly silver, so clean, so orderly.
I know it takes twenty-one Thinkers sending out transmissions, laying down proclamations, getting inside people’s heads, to control the population.
A wave of disgust washes over me. I can’t believe people once believed their lives were so bad that they willingly gave up control over them. But I didn’t live during those wars; I didn’t survive those fires; I didn’t emerge from an underground bunker to complete nuclear devastation.
I could only strive to make things right now, centuries later.
I thought back to my time in Seaside with Gavin. She’d had a premonition about someone in the Goodgrounds. Whoever it is will tip the scale. Either for us or against us. You must find them. And soon.
I’d immediately thought of Zenn. But he was already against us. Sort of. Maybe.
I’d delayed my trip here last month, sending Indy and her team instead. They’d found nothing. No one. Our contacts hadn’t heard anything either.
Now, in the impeccably clean alley of the Goodgrounds, I think of Blaze again. He died in an alley like this in Freedom. My sadness suffocates me.
I try to shake away the thoughts of him. I shouldn’t be so emotionally attached. It makes running the Resistance too damn hard. Because people are going to die, most likely because of a decision I’ll make. I can’t afford to be emotionally attached.
So it’s probably a good thing Indy dumped me, I think.
Wrapped up in my thoughts about Gavin, and Blaze, and Indy, I get stupid. I’m not paying close enough attention.
I don’t even realize I’m surrounded until it’s too late.
* * *
I wake up, feeling my mattress shift. Someone’s just gotten out of the bed in my holding cell. My bed. The bed I’m lying in.
Across from me sits a girl. The first thing I notice is her wicked-cool hair. It spikes all over, colored like the depths of night. I switch my gaze to her eyes.
Thinker eyes. Part blue, part green, and as sharp as my father’s before he died.
But something isn’t right. This girl doesn’t seem . . . real. I can almost see through her.
“Who are you?” I ask, reaching for her to see if I can touch her or not. “What’s going on?”
A mask of panic covers her face, and suddenly I know who she is and exactly what’s going on.
* * *
I woke up coughing, the jerky movement sending pain rippling through my sliced-up back. My mind reeled with a different kind of disturbance, though. A whole Vi-was-just-in-my-head-witnessing-how-I-got-caught-in-the-Goodgrounds kind of disturbance.
The faintest of lights splintered the darkness covering my room. I blinked, trying to make my eyes see more.
“Vi?” I knew she was there, even if I couldn’t see her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help it.” Her voice pitched higher, and she started crying. I followed the sound to the chair near the doorway and pulled her back to the bed with me.
She snuggled against my chest. Like we fit, the pieces floating in my head suddenly clicked together.
She’d woken up and gotten out of bed—in real life.
The same disturbance woke me in my dream. And then I saw her—in my dream.
“Shh,” I said, smoothing her hair. “So. Did you see it all?”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded like a child’s. Tiny/afraid/far away. “I can’t help it,” she repeated.
“I’m not mad.” I held her until she fell asleep again, her breathing deep and even against my collarbone. I felt weary, but I didn’t allow myself to sleep.
If I didn’t, then Vi wouldn’t have to witness my nightmares.
Zenn
18.
The buildings of Lakehead shimmered against the horizon, blocking the sun like a partial eclipse. My back hurt. My head too. My heart also sang with pain. Strangely, because I’d spent most of the last seven hours thinking about Saffediene instead of Vi.
Which hurt in a new, weird way.
Gunner made a great companion in that he didn’t ask questions. He didn’t feel the need for useless chatter either. But his silence had made the last several hours almost unbearable in comparison to the flight with Saffediene, her cool hands holding mine, and her perky voice telling stories about her life.
Half of me preferred Gunn’s steady, sure approach to our missions. The other half longed to watch Saffediene rebraid her hair as she went over the finer points of our assignment.
“Hey,” Gunn said. “Are you alive?”
“Huh? Yeah.” I took in his disbelieving expression.
“Look, you’ve got to stop pining over Vi.”
I glared. “I am not pining over Vi.” But the way he just came out with it reminded me of Saffediene. Could I be pining over her?
He rolled his eyes. “I can feel stuff, Zenn.” He wasn’t like Saffediene in his specificity. Right now, I appreciated his “stuff” more.
“What do you know about the Evolutionary Rise?” I asked. He regarded me for a moment in surprise. “I can figure stuff out too.”
“Ask Jag,” Gunn said. I didn’t want to ask Jag—and it annoyed me that Gunn knew something I didn’t. I looked away.
Lakehead was a blip on the radar, a tiny city surrounded by lakes. Mostly a water filtration city, the people lived packed on top of one another in a narrow neck of land between two large bodies of water.
“The Di
rector sent an e-comm several weeks ago, claiming to have stopped all transmissions.” Gunn flipped through his dad’s journal, any apprehension about my question gone. “But I don’t see how that’s possible. For one, Indy said she never sent the software. For another, the Association would need to be fed a fake feed, and there’s no record of that, either.”
I slowed to a stop as we approached the border. “What does the journal say we need to do here? What’s the mission?”
“Install the software, send the live feed,” Gunner said. “Then we’ve got to find the . . .” He checked the book. “The West End Lakehead Treatment Facility and locate a man named Phillip Hernandez.”
“At least we have a direction. There’s got to be a million treatment facilities here.” One loomed just below me, white curls of smoke painted into the ebony metallic surfaces of the one-story building.
“You’re right. Super,” Gunn muttered. “Well, let’s get this done already.”
No wasted words, no wasted time. Gotta love Gunn.
* * *
Half an hour later, we hadn’t succeeded in even one of our objectives. The city was closed.
That’s right. Closed.
The fences had been activated, creating a dome of techenergy over the main group of buildings. Guards stood at every ground entrance. Gunn and I had retreated to a small stand of trees near one of the smaller lakes, about ten miles away.
Gunn pulled a cube from his pack. “What do you want to eat?”
I smiled, but didn’t answer. The best part of being on the traveling team was the food-generating cube. We only had two in our possession as a Resistance, and we used them while traveling.
But it meant I didn’t have to eat out of a can.
A moment later Gunn handed me a stack of toast as high as my head.
The wind rippled through my hair, whispering a word of greeting. The sun beat down on my bare arms, charging our boards with its rays. I took a bite of buttery toast.
Ah, this was the life.
“Can you do something about the dome?” I whispered to the breeze. It scampered away, leaving me too warm and wanting.
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