“I’ve also scanned images of the authentic Liberty Bell from every angle and compared them to ours using a computer program designed for cellular 3D modeling. It’s unconventional but does the trick.”
“What did you find?”
Dr. Dixon points in the direction of the train depot. “We have the real Liberty Bell here with us at Fort Liberty. I have no doubt.”
Everyone cheers. Dr. Dixon blushes and gives a slight bow. Meanwhile, Ozzy is all but jumping up and down. He looks so satisfied, I have to smile. “Tell them the rest, Doc. You know, the evidentiary stuff.”
Dr. Dixon bobs his head. “Well, yes. We can also consider the reaction to the heist as a measure of authenticity. By examining web chatter after the theft, the crackdown on artifact sales, chilling relations between the UDR and Japan, not to mention increased security along rail lines and warehouses—”
“And don’t forget those warehouse workers who mysteriously died,” Ozzy interrupted. “Oh, and they just happened to work in the exact same warehouse where the Bell was housed.”
“It’s a compelling argument,” Dr. Dixon said quietly. “You don’t go through all of that because of a worthless replica, do you?”
“Are you coming, Xoey?”
“Go without me. I’ll catch up soon.”
Mel disappears and I go back to my task, sweeping the room where I have spent the last week helping Sam modify the smart windows. They are open now and wind blows through, swirling the dust on the floor, making my efforts irrelevant. I keep sweeping anyway.
The last of the panels have been updated in the cafeteria, making it the safest space above ground to gather. Tonight, almost everyone is there, anxious to watch the fourth episode of my father’s new reality show, Life with Sean. Afterward, there is supposed to be yet another interview with Jez Rodriguez, and I just can’t.
“How did this happen?” I asked Bess yesterday, showing her a newsfeed on my tablet where my father and Portia were featured on the sidebar advertisement.
Bess shrugged. “There’s no accountin’ fer taste. Some people are off their trolleys, and that’s the truth.”
“Some people.” I snorted. “It’s the most popular show right now.”
“Summa that is interest in you.”
I shook my head. “Not the real me. Besides, it’s not the people in the Sand watching it who bother me. It’s the people here.”
“I don’t blame’ye for being upset, but dinnae take it to heart. Yer da’ and his new family are a novelty. There’s not much more to it than that.”
Bess is probably right, but I’m still anxious for everyone to lose interest. The show is ridiculous, focusing on what my father and Portia eat, wear, and watch. They argue about furniture and whether Electra and Nox are spending enough time studying, or too much time streaming shows. Every once in a while, my father will give a speech about the wonders of the UDR system of government, the horrors of the Resistance, or the squalor and lawlessness of the Red Zone. These monologues are so obviously prepared by UDR propaganda writers, they are painful to watch. Worse is my father’s fake grief when, once a week, he seeks “solitude” with nothing but the camera to cry over a video of me.
“His tears look pretty real, Xoey,” Mel told me last week. “Maybe he’s changed.”
I got up and walked away. That’s why I am here tonight, avoiding a repeat performance by sweeping dust that just swirls around my feet.
“Xoey?”
Adam stands in the doorway.
“I’ll be right there.” My voice is too bright. Adam doesn’t buy it.
He takes my broom. “You don’t have to watch. We could climb a Sentribot tower. Escape for a little while.”
I smile. “Sounds nice, but…”
“Part of you wants to watch.”
“What if my father brings up Kino again?”
I’ve shared my Oliver-is-near-Kino theory with Adam more than once. He never seems convinced. Tonight he frowns.
“You know that’s a long shot, right? Oliver could be anywhere.”
“No. Kino is keeping him close to her.”
“Even if that’s true, what are you going to do about it, Xoey? How does that help us rescue Oliver?”
I shake my head, afraid to say what I’m thinking.
“Watch the show with me?” I ask. “I just can’t do it alone.”
“Sure.” He smiles. “We’ll heckle your father together.”
We walk across the courtyard and slip into the back of the cafeteria. Before I even have a chance to figure out what my father and Portia are talking about on the pixel wall, the broadcast is interrupted with a swirling UDR State Press logo announcing a special report.
“We have breaking news out of the Red Zone tonight,” Chase Holder says. “Two fugitives have just been apprehended passing through a UDR security checkpoint with counterfeit identification. Though officials have not yet revealed their names, anonymous sources report that they are both wanted in connection with last month’s detention school breakout and Liberty Bell hoax.”
20
Reed
The train shudders to a stop, waking us both with a squeal of scraping metal. Riley is first to push off the floor and stand up. I shake off the cobwebs and struggle to my feet, gripping the undulated wall to keep myself upright. We have been traveling this way for six hours and every inch of me feels rattled and bruised. Riley must not feel the same sluggish achiness as me. She’s already sliding the rusty door open and peering out into the darkness.
“All clear,” she murmurs. “Ready?”
I nod without considering whether it’s true or not and go around her, jumping down to the gravel below, just to prove I’m not sore. A full moon shines above us, and the chill in the air nearly takes my breath away, making me feel like we’ve been traveling for months rather than days. I shove my hands in my pockets, wishing I had taken Claire up on her offer of a thicker jacket.
“It’s still summer, right?”
Riley nods absently as she scans the horizon. “Yep. Come on.”
I keep my head down and follow her along the side of the train, heading back toward the end, which is only about ten cars away. We pause when we reach it, taking in the lights of Slick City in the distance, which somehow seems close and far away at the same time. We cross the track and run down a slope through patchy scrub until a chain-link fence stops us. I pull out wire cutters we borrowed from Neil and get to work, creating a flap big enough to squeeze through.
I point. “That way.”
Riley nods and we head south through a bramble-filled ditch between the fence and an abandoned highway that has tall weeds growing through its cracks. Not much chance someone will see us out here tonight. Wind gusts through the ditch, making my teeth chatter. Riley seems impervious to the cold, which makes me wonder if this is still the effects of my illness.
Please don’t let me relapse, I pray.
Riley has asked me how I’m feeling several times since we left Claire’s, which drives me crazy. I still can’t get over the feeling of helplessness I got from being so sick. I swear, if I so much as cough, she’s got her hand on my forehead and her eyebrows are all scrunched up in concern. I just want to be past it. Past the point where she even remembers me being such a weakling.
After about ten minutes of fighting the wind, we turn into a concrete tunnel running under the highway. It’s too narrow for transports and has a trickle of water flowing through the center. The interior walls are covered in ancient graffiti—most of it incomprehensible.
“Give me a sec,” I say.
Riley nods and I lean against the wall, just relieved to be out of the wind. For a few minutes she fiddles with her pack, then she sighs and squats next to me, rubbing her arms.
So she is cold.
I almost reach out and push the hair off her forehead, just because it looks so wind-blown and appealing. I got used to her scrub of hair after Kino shaved us all bald at Windmill Bay, but it’s grown back in
to a messy dark tangle that I find completely distracting. Instead, I comb my fingers through my own short crop of hair and lower myself to sit next to her.
I try not to shiver, but the wind is pushing through the tunnel now, tugging at my sleeves. Riley tilts toward me, almost as if she can read my mind, but then leans away, careful. Always so careful.
Except the one time. The one time she kissed me.
I think about that more than I should, wondering if she thinks it was a mistake. Or if she thinks about it at all. I don’t press my luck, though. The memory of holding her hand during the fireworks will have to warm me up enough to resist temptation. There’s no need to complicate things.
Riley looks sideways at me, biting her lip, making my resolution harder. Sometimes I could swear she can read my thoughts. I clear my throat.
“We have to walk about two kilometers east from here, then look for the old bus depot,” she says. “The next transport into Slick City pulls out at 6 a.m.”
I nod, but that’s just a habit. Riley knows I’m not agreeing with her plan. We argued about it for more than an hour on the train—whether to trust a transport or just take an extra day to walk into the city by foot.
“We need to stay invisible as long as possible,” I argued. “By ourselves.”
Riley shook her head. “No, if we ride in on a transport, we’ll be lost in a crowd of workers, refugees, and migrants. If we’re on our own, we’ll attract attention.”
She might be right, but I’m not saying so out loud. I keep silent and follow her out of the tunnel, heading east. It still makes me uneasy, though. The thought of being around other people. People who could betray us.
“Things are different in the Red Zone,” Claire told us, echoing what Neil told us before we left Fort Unity. She has been going down to Slick City for decades, mostly to barter and trade—to stock up on what she can’t grow or hunt out in the wild. She told us where the markets are and gave us tips on avoiding the gangs that rule the streets, or, in a worst-case scenario, how to effectively bribe them. “The UDR patrols the perimeter, but they don’t go inside the city gates. They wouldn’t last five minutes if they did.”
“So why doesn’t the UDR just take over the RZ cities by force?” Riley asked.
It’s a fair question. I grew up thinking the UDR held airtight control over every citizen, Sand to Sand and all the Dirt in between. Of course, that was back when my education was limited, censored, and filled with lies—like how big the Dirt actually is. It actually makes sense that the UDR can’t monitor it all like they claim to, but still. Fearing the UDR was how I was raised. It’s hard to let go.
“Why would they?” Claire said. “It would be more work. More resources spent. Thousands of additional citizens to house, medicate, clothe, and employ. They’re already spending more than they siphon from their citizenry. People are starving, workers are hardly productive, and drug abuse and alcoholism is rampant. They can’t afford to add more to their burden. The best they can do is monitor the perimeter—make sure the RZ doesn’t spread, that the gangs stay focused on turf warfare inside instead of organizing and attacking the perimeter.”
“Has anyone ever tried that?”
“Sure. Not in Slick, that I know of, but it happened in a place called Shy, and another city now known as The Den—probably other places I never heard of.”
“What happened?”
“Drone attacks followed by boots on the ground. Where do you think all these frontline battles take place? Usually it’s Red Zone hotspots like that.”
The bus depot we need to find is outside the city walls, which is why we’re walking slowly toward it, through the shadows, keeping our eyes open for UDR patrols, transports, cameras, drones, and Sentribots. The closer we get to civilization, the more we see, the slower we go, the more often we stop and hide, holding our breath until danger passes.
Riley told me she read a book about migrant workers from hundreds of years ago crossing illegally into America from Mexico and Central America. It’s hard to imagine now—that America was the place they wanted to come to for opportunities, jobs, and safety. Now nobody would cross the borders coming north (though, I have heard of some who do the opposite, escaping UDR oppression to the south by “jumping Trump,” whatever that means). But I wonder if those ancient immigrants felt like we do, slinking through the darkness, hiding in shadows, cutting through fences. Risking everything for a chance at a better life, like the migrants we will join this morning who make their way into Slick, hoping that gangs, anarchy, and lawlessness are worth the risk, so long as they are free.
But locked inside, with UDR soldiers patrolling just outside the city fence, are the people in Slick City actually free?
We stop at the edge of an overgrown park and break into an abandoned hut, just to escape the wind for a few minutes before continuing along. The space is tiny, but it must have been a coffee shop at one time. A menu offering all kinds of brewed beverages is in a cracked plastic frame behind Riley’s elbow and I find myself salivating. The idea of drinking any of them is appealing, but especially hot cocoa since chocolate went all but extinct before we were born. When I can no longer stand the idea of reading about amazingly warm drinks I will never taste, I stand up.
“You ready?”
Riley jumps to her feet and tries to smooth her tussled hair. “Yes. You want to go through the park or around it?”
We decide to cut through, which we’re both regretting half an hour later. Kicking off brambles and vines with every step, we don’t find the end of the park like we expected. Instead a wide clearing gives us a view of something huge that I struggle to understand.
“What is it?” Riley asks.
I am speechless. It looks like another park, but this one is much bigger than the one we’re leaving, though just as overgrown with trees and vines. Weirder still, it’s filled with a variety of enormous man-made objects left to rust and decay. Behind the overgrown vegetation, I spot bits of bright colors that must have been paint that has chipped away. The whole place makes me think of a giant’s toy box, left to the elements for half a century.
Without comment, we trudge forward, trying to skirt it to the north, but too close now to see a way around it. If not for the moon, we might not see anything at all, but under its glow, the monstrous structures come into focus. The first one we pass is more than five stories tall and made of rotting wood that crisscrosses as it rises to the sky. It’s hard to tell with the trees and vines growing underneath and all around it, but it looks like it spreads across an area as large as a tackle field. Parts of it have collapsed, revealing metal rails that jut up into the sky or twist down toward the ground, swallowed in weeds and brambles. Up close, the rusted rails resemble train tracks, but smaller.
We keep walking, curving around another grove of overgrown trees to find a similar contraption, this one made entirely of rusting metal covered in peeling purple paint. Great rounded beams reach high up into the sky, then loop back toward the ground for no apparent reason.
“Careful.”
I grab Riley’s wrist, keeping her from tripping over an ankle-high barricade that must have been put in place to corral the small cars we find lined up on the other side. They are rusty too, but with large letters on the front. I only make out a G and a D, but it doesn’t matter. Even if I could read it, I doubt it would help any of this make sense.
“These cars must have fit on those train tracks,” Riley says. “But why? Why would you take a ride on a train that hurls you into the air then plummets you back to earth again?”
We crane our necks up toward the purple loop and sudden understanding lights up my dim brain. I begin to laugh.
“What?”
“I think I know what this is.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Let’s keep walking. I want to make sure instead of making an idiot of myself.”
Around the next cluster of trees, we find a long avenue with small buildings on either side, m
ost of them destroyed by decay, fire, or the lush vegetation that seems to grow on every surface. Without warning, I trip and fall, just catching myself before face planting on the ground.
“Reed!”
Riley offers me a hand, but I push it away. I had to say idiot out loud, didn’t I?
“I’m fine.”
I stumble to my feet. Riley is kneeling, examining the place where I fell. It wasn’t a vine that tripped me, but something heavy and made of wood—an ancient sign. She must be thinking the same thing, because she starts pulling vines off it, then leans to one side, letting the moonlight shine on one legible word.
“Amusement.” She straightens up with a puzzled expression.
I laugh again. “I was right. This was an amusement park.”
“A what?”
“A park where people used to come to ride rides.” I point back toward the looping structure we can’t see anymore. “That purple thing was a rollercoaster. So was the huge wooden thing we passed with the crisscrossed beams.”
Riley rolls her eyes at me. “You look ridiculously proud for someone who just fell on his face. It’s not like you just discovered a lost civilization or something.”
I just keep smiling. “You’re as fascinated as I am. Admit it.”
“Whatever you say. Anyway, what’s a roller coaster? And how do you know any of this?”
I shuffle my feet. “Uh…I rode one once, on a contraband virtual reality system.”
“Reed! You didn’t!”
“Only once! I swear.”
Riley shakes her head. Now I’m thinking I probably shouldn’t have admitted it. Everyone knows immersive virtual reality systems affect dopamine levels in the brain, tricking pleasure centers and causing all kinds of havoc. There’s scientific proof from…well, whenever they were popular back in the old days. Probably the same generation that had to ban self-driving vehicles, tobacco, and high-fructose corn syrup. A bunch of people lost their ability to function in the real world when they were in vogue and unchecked by regulation. Now the government strictly controls all VR, using them only in a limited framework for things like guild training. Some core academies supposedly provide them for students to study animal habitats and environments, but none of the academies I went to ever had anything so high tech. Other than the contraband system I messed with, I’ve never been inside one for long.
Weeping Justice Page 14
