“Tunnels,” Adam says. “They run under the school.”
Bess leans past me and squints into the darkness. “Braw! And’ye found them after Xoey fell through the hole?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
I go first, ducking to climb through the opening, and rather proud of myself for not feeling the sick sense of panic that usually greets me whenever I am faced with a confined space. Instead, as I switch on my Readybeam, I am overwhelmed with nostalgia and the ghosts of those who used to travel these tunnels with me.
Not ghosts, of course. That is the wrong word and I instantly regret it.
“It’s a bit of a mess.” Bess wrinkles her nose. “Still…wait a second.” She shines her beam at the ceiling then steps back out of the tunnel and touches her ear. “Quyen? Yeah, point yer crafty blinker down here, would’ye? Now, how many heat signatures are you reading?”
She pauses, listening until a wide smile spreads over her face. “Truly? That’s dead brilliant! Thanks.”
Adam kicks a box out of her way as Bess steps back through the opening. “What was that about?”
“He can’t see ye. No heat signature down here. Ceiling must be concrete. Maybe lead. That’s huge. Truly.” She shines her Readybeam into the distance. “How far do they go?”
“We never traveled all of them, but pretty far.”
“Is this the only way in and out?”
“No,” Adam says. “There are three other entrances we know of. Sam has a map. Or he used to anyway.”
She nods. “Loads of space where we could move about, undetected, then.”
“We?”
She nods, still examining the shadowy corners. “Yeah, we. I think we should set up a base here.”
“Here? At Windmill Bay?” The thought makes me sick.
Bess just shrugs. “Well, it’s something to have a blather about with General Kelly, at least. Now show me more.”
We met Bess just a few days after arriving at Fort Unity—a small patch of forest in the northwestern Dirt currently housing seventy-five members of the Resistance, or Americans, as they call themselves. All except Bess, of course.
“What you did—getting the Liberty Bell back—that was pure brilliant,” she said when Jasmine first introduced us. “Not my hardware, of course, but the sentiment and the freedom it stands for—that I understand.”
Later, after Bess volunteered to lead our rescue op, Jasmine told us she had shown up with a handful of rebels from the Eastern Dirt about ten months earlier.
“She never says much about how she got here from Scotland,” she said. “But one of her traveling companions said it’s a sad story and not to ask. She certainly is driven. Your mission isn’t the first she’s volunteered to lead.”
“Just don’t call her princess,” Ozzy piped in, passing by with a piece of bread in his mouth.
“Princess?” Adam asked. “Why would I?”
“It’s a nickname I heard Jerry use right after they got here. She got so mad, she didn’t speak to him for a week.”
It did not take me long to figure out the nickname was probably meant to be ironic. I have seen Bess crawl under a transport, scale a tree, dig a trench, and set a trap. Bess is as tough as they come—anything but a princess. Right now, she is ducking under cobwebs and moving dusty boxes blocking the unexplored tunnel leading toward the old gym, which looks like it finally collapsed as we always suspected it would. I follow with my Readybeam, pretty much ignoring whatever Bess and Adam are talking about in front of me.
I keep feeling an urgent need to check my timekeeper and turn back. When we were students here, we always had to rush through the tunnels, trying to beat the Cit-Track program in and out, always afraid of being detected or—worse—having the books we found confiscated or destroyed.
The feeling is difficult to ignore, and I am quietly relieved when we leave the rest of the tunnel unexplored and head back to show Bess the original cache of books, music, and media we found down another dark corridor. I half fear we will find nothing but charred remains when we turn the last corner, but everything is still here—an entire library, hidden for decades from a government that would have ordered its destruction. I almost step on something and bend down to pick it up. It is a worn paperback copy of The Great Gatsby. I tuck it in my pocket before focusing my Readybeam farther down the tunnel.
“We took our favorites that way,” I tell Bess. “And created a Hidden Library we could reach from the dormitories.”
“Well, that’s something else I have to see.”
The laundry room is just as we left it—dusty, neglected, and smelling of mick detergent. Only now the common room above it is a burned ruin. I wait on a broken washing machine, not ready to visit the room beyond where I spent so much time with my friends—where they nursed me back to health when I had pneumonia. Where we planned our heist and our escape.
Instead, I wait, kicking the machine until it matches the cadence in my head. My thoughts are never far from Paisley and Oliver.
They are not here. They are not here.
So, where are they?
I hear Bess whistle on the other side of the wall, then her voice mixes with Adam’s. He is explaining the space, I think. I hear the rattle of metal, then a scraping noise. That would be the shelves covered in books. I imagine they are pulling them away from the doors they conceal, which surely lead to other tunnels yet to be discovered. By the time they emerge ten minutes later, they are deep in conversation about the logistics of setting up a base here.
“It might not be smart,” I say, “moving someplace the UDR has already been—a place they know so well.”
Bess nods. “It’s a risk to be sure. I wouldn’t suggest it if not for the tunnels—and the fact that they burned most of it to the ground. In a way, that makes it the perfect cover, don’t ye think? Not much chance they’ll come back anytime soon to occupy it, is there?”
Footsteps thunder down the stairs, interrupting my answer. Ozzy stops in the doorway, his face ashen.
“What is it?”
“We found some people locked up in the gym. They’re dead!”
I jump off the washing machine, my heart pounding in my throat. “Who?”
5
Oliver
I’ll tell you what happened, but it’s not a story.
Narrative. Narration. My mind doesn’t work that way.
It spits and starts. A leaf caught in the wind, a mine detonating.
Nothing linear.
Chaos. Especially hanging upside down by my ankles.
None of it will make sense, but I can try.
My world is a room. Four walls. Gray blocks, one window high above, frosted, barred, too little to matter. A door that opens for pain and less often for food. A toilet in the corner. No bed.
I think of Xoey. Then it’s just lashes across my back.
That’s twelve. Thirteen.
Is it thirteen?
How did thirteen get to be unlucky? I am lucky today. They stop at thirteen and leave me hanging.
Drip. Drip. I count the blood drops hitting the floor and push Xoey from my mind.
Twelve drops, thirteen.
Fourteen, fifteen.
Xoey was fifteen. Or sixteen?
She is okay. She must be.
I twist my body and scream. I’ve torn open a wound again. Or did they tear it open?
More drops of blood.
Eighteen, nineteen.
I’ll be nineteen next week. Is it next week? I have lost count.
I pretended to be younger for so many months, I forgot to be a man. Tears are falling over my eyebrows, crossing my forehead. They trickle into my hair, maddening me.
Maddened by tears more than blood?
I must be losing my mind.
Xoey.
She’s coming. She said so, many months ago. Or am I delusional?
No. Not about this. I picture her in silver armor, on a white horse. But I don’t know. I don’t know
if she survived.
I don’t know anything but gray walls.
One door, one toilet, one window.
Did she make it?
I am nineteen, she is sixteen. Yes, sixteen now. She told me her birthday is in July. I see candles on a cake she didn’t eat. We are sitting on a table with the cake between us, just like in an old movie we watched in the Hidden Library.
No, Xoey wasn’t there. She was sick. Sleeping. Missing the movie. I watched and wished for that ending like a lovesick boy.
I am nineteen and she is sixteen.
It’s good you didn’t kiss her.
More tears cross my eyebrows. Xoey made it. Somehow, she made it.
I hear footsteps. My stomach turns.
High heels click click. Click clack.
I hurl myself forward, bending, twisting. Grabbing for my ankles.
Desperate. Sick and desperate. More blood dripping.
She is coming.
Not Xoey. Kino.
She’s coming.
6
Riley
Lexie is wearing a nightgown and standing in the middle of a desert road. Wind whips her hem against her legs and the pavement undulates in fierce sunlight.
“Lexie!”
She turns around, but her long hair catches in the hot wind, whipping across her face so that I can’t see her expression. I try to run toward her, but my shoes stick to the asphalt. No matter how much I struggle, I make no headway, and now I am ankle deep in the road.
“Lexie, wait!” I shout, but she turns away while I fight to climb out of a hole that is swallowing me alive.
I wake with a gasp, still struggling against the soft earth, only slowly coming to realize I’m fighting a lofty quilt and pillow. Then it all comes back to me.
The forest, the rain. The woman, the fever, the house.
And this room, where I fell asleep next to Reed’s bunk. Claire must have covered me with the quilt.
I kick it off and struggle to my feet, gripping the edge of the bunkbed with white knuckles until the dream fades and my heart slows down. I squat next to Reed and put my hand on his forehead. He doesn’t stir but that’s a good thing. His fever has broken and what he needs most now is sleep.
I didn’t mean to fall asleep at all, but must have needed it, even if it did bring on another nightmare. Lately, they spring up every time I sleep. My guilty conscience is to blame, reminding me Lexie’s still out there, and I still haven’t saved her.
Daylight streams through the windows, so it must be morning, though I’m not sure what day it is. My disabled comm links can’t engage with Claire’s home AI system, so I look for a pixel wall, tap both windows for a clock display, and even try a variety of voice commands. Nothing works.
I walk down the hall, shut myself in the bathroom, and fill the copper tub. I am alone for the first time in…well, I can’t remember how long. I’ve gotten used to having Reed by my side as we trod up and down hills, across old highways and bridges, and through abandoned towns, talking the whole time, or sighing heavily when the talking gave way to arguing, then the silent treatment.
Mama always said I was the most stubborn person she knew, but I don’t think she ever actually met Reed Paine.
I cup water in my hands and drop it over my skin after scrubbing every inch of myself with a bar of scented soap. Lavender, maybe? I haven’t had a lot of experience with beautiful fragrances. It’s almost overwhelming. I would stay here all day if I wasn’t so tired, but I’m afraid of falling asleep and sinking beneath the water, never to emerge again.
But Lexie needs me. That thought has kept me going for weeks and I’m not about to surrender to bubbles and lavender when I didn’t surrender to mud and blisters. I use more soap on my hair, then hold my breath and dip below the water to rinse it clean. I probably smell better than I ever have, at least since I got to Windmill Bay and was forced to use their mick-smelling soap.
When the water begins to cool down, I unplug the drain. I hadn’t thought of a towel or clean clothes until this moment, but Claire must have anticipated my need because both are folded on top of the toilet seat. I dry off and pull on soft, gray pants that puddle at my ankles, a red plaid shirt, and a pair of gray socks. Then I gather my dirty clothes and carry them downstairs and out the back door. I’ll figure out where to wash them later.
From the front of Claire’s cabin, you can see for miles, but there’s not much of a view out back. I see a vegetable garden, a few sheds, a chicken coop, and a small pasture with some goats. The terrain slopes upward behind the cabin into a small orchard, then toward sky barely visible through dense pine trees.
Back inside, I search for a broom and dustpan, which I carry upstairs to sweep all the loose dirt we’ve left everywhere. Reed doesn’t even stir. I check his pulse, then tuck him back in and go downstairs and out the front door, where I lean against the railing and stare at the wide, blue sky. I can’t get over how peaceful it is here. No transports or drones, no machinery of any kind, just the distant cry of birds and wind whistling through the treetops. I’ve been in the forest for days, but never felt this sense of comfortable quiet until now.
Just more evidence that Reed talks too much.
I grin, imagining his laugh if he heard me say it out loud. I hope he gets well soon. I wouldn’t admit it, but his cocky personality has been a welcome distraction from my worries.
The back door creaks open, so I go back inside and find Claire carrying a satchel full of firewood. I follow her to the fireplace and help her unload it. When we’re done, she points to a stool by the kitchen counter.
“Sit. You look like you’re about to waste away. What have you kids been eating?”
“Not much.” I climb on the stool and tuck my feet under its rungs. “Is it morning?”
“Yes. You both slept all day and through the next night.”
“Oh.” I can’t remember when I last slept that long. Maybe never.
Claire pours me a cup of tea. It’s too hot to drink, but it feels good in my hands. I blow on it. “What day is it? My comm link is disabled, so I couldn’t ask your AI.”
“I don’t have one.”
I look up, surprised. I’ve never heard of a home without even a knowledge navigator. That’s like not having electricity or water, but I don’t say anything. I just watch her make breakfast, which consists of scrambled eggs and a dense breakfast cake filled with nuts and dried fruit. She’s right about one thing: I’m starving. When she sets a plate in front of me, my hand shakes as I pick up a fork.
“Thank you.”
She nods. “I’ve known hunger.”
I try not to inhale my food. Claire watches me eat while sipping her tea.
“So, what’s new in the world?” she finally asks.
I look up. “I’m sorry?”
“News—current events. I have no Internet out here. No feeds or streams. Just a few words from UDR patrols or traders. With them, it’s hard to separate truth from the gossip and propaganda.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t pay much attention to all that. All I know about is the food shortages.”
“There have always been food shortages.”
“But they’re getting worse and citizens are starting to grumble.”
“They’re finding out that our sacred Fairness Doctrine doesn’t actually mean goods and services will be distributed fairly, huh?”
“I guess so. Like I said, I don’t pay attention.”
“More than you think, I bet.”
She looks at me expectantly, so I wrack my brain. “There was an earthquake in the Western Sand about a month ago.”
“How many dead?”
“Like, thirty maybe?”
Claire snorts. “Probably closer to three hundred. That’s what comes of people living on top of each other.”
“Oh, and something happened a few weeks ago in the European Union—a riot, maybe? Or another bombing? Something to do with the Islamic court.”
Claire shakes her head
but says nothing. A few minutes pass, then she sets down her empty teacup. “What else? How about President Amaron? Any news since those kids stole the Liberty Bell from right under his nose?”
I almost choke on my tea. Claire doesn’t seem to notice.
“What I wouldn’t give to have seen that!” she muses.
I take a bite and chew slowly while I consider what to say. But she’s the one who said she didn’t want to know more than our names, so I don’t plan on telling her I’m one of those kids—or that the boy the press has labeled the “heist’s mastermind” is sleeping off a fever upstairs.
“The president’s embarrassed, I guess,” I finally say. “At least that’s what Reed read online. He’s more into political stuff than me.”
“Hmm. The last patrol that came through was led by a chatty officer. He kept talking about General Northcote, who’s some kind of hero to the troops. Have you heard of him?”
“Um, yeah. He’s been putting down insurgencies all over the Dirt. There was a big parade in the Eastern Sand after one of his victories.” What I don’t say is that everyone at Fort Unity worries about Northcote, who has been more of a threat to Resistance fighters than any other UDR commander they have faced in the last few years. I clear my throat. “It was one of those big productions. You know, lots of flags draped from buildings. Tanks, missile transports, and marching troops in the streets. Northcote stood with President Amaron on a balcony, overseeing the whole thing.”
She nods. “More breakfast?”
“No, thank you.” I pick up my plate and teacup and carry them to the sink. Claire watches me without comment while I wash my dishes and set them on the drainer.
“You have good manners. Were you raised by your own parents?”
Weeping Justice Page 4
