Weeping Justice

by Jennifer Froelich

  “Was it worth it?” Riley asks. “Letting two percent of your brain turn to ooze so you could ride a fake roller coaster?”

  “You know it doesn’t actually turn brains to ooze, right, Miss Medic?”

  She shrugs. “Might as well.”

  “Well the system I used was old and glitchy, so no. Otherwise, it would have been totally worth it.” I wink and Riley finally laughs, which feels like a victory.

  A short-lived victory.

  Riley suddenly stops, grabs my arm, and puts a finger to her lips. For several seconds we stand there in silence. Aside from birds in the trees, my heart pounding in my ears is all I hear. I look at her impatiently.

  What did you hear?

  She just shakes her head and tugs on my sleeve. We pick up the pace, walking toward what looks like an opening in the foliage ahead. As soon as we reach the clearing, Riley steers us toward the right and behind a huge tree, where we both crouch and wait. Five minutes later, I stand up.

  “Come on, Riley. No one’s here.”

  “Yeah, okay.” She stands up and follows me as we weave our way to the east. “But I could swear I heard someone.”

  21

  Xoey

  My stomach churns and I step back. Adam is there, his hand on my shoulder.

  “Steady, Xoey.”

  I nod and reach back to grip his hand.

  Lord, please don’t let it be Reed and Riley. Please!

  Chase Holder is still talking, mostly recapping the Liberty Bell heist on the night of the president’s visit to Windmill Bay. The story is similar to the one we’ve heard from the state press before: violent students used weapons to threaten the president, kidnap an innocent student (me), and escape with a fake Liberty Bell.

  Tonight, Chase Holder adds to the narrative, dragging Zak into it, and tying his bombing of the science lab and the death of one of our classmates to the story. The way he tells it, Adam, Oliver, Riley, Sam, and Reed were part of Zak’s bombing plot, all likely members of a dangerous terrorist group with no regard for human life.

  “As details come in from the Red Zone, we are learning more about two adults who were also part of this sinister plot,” Chase says. “For more, we go to Jez Rodriguez, who is in the field tonight. What can you tell us, Jez?”

  Jez stands in front of a barbed-wire fence. It’s too dark to know much about her location, and neither she nor Chase are sharing real details. The wind whips around her, tugging at her signature white trench coat. The gleam in her eyes tells me she is exactly where she wants to be.

  “I can confirm that two men were arrested here tonight, Chase. Sources within the Secret Service tell me they were both employed at the secured education facility where the Liberty Bell hoax unfolded, the same facility where Xoey Stone was kidnapped during the escape. Though my sources say it will be some days before the names of these men are released to the public, they confirm they were both hired as security agents at this facility designed for our nation’s most troubled youths.”

  Adam and I look at each other. “Haak,” Adam says.

  But who else?

  “Joining us tonight to discuss this latest development is former school director Wanda Kino, who is now special military liaison to the Joint Counsel on Core Education,” Chase says.

  Before I can prepare myself, Kino fills up the pixel wall, looking just as I remember her, all except for the military uniform she wears.

  Adam grips my hand. “Breathe, Xoey.”

  “What can you tell us about these men, Major Kino?” Chase asks.

  “They were hired by my predecessor, Director Mandel, and served under my leadership for less than a year,” Kino says.

  Chase leans forward. “Was there any indication, Major, that either one of them would be involved in such a desperate act?”

  Kino’s eyes glitter. “No. If there had been, I would have fired them immediately and turned them over to the Secret Service. Our correctional academy system is designed to rehabilitate the most morally injured youth in our society, but—of course—influence can go both ways. I can only imagine that these men were persuaded to act against our societal goals with some kind of appeal to their basest nature.”

  “How would a group of teenagers have such influence?”

  Kino’s painted lips twist. “Reed Paine was a particularly gifted, though misguided, student. I imagine he was the mastermind who manipulated them. Sadly he is still at large.”

  “Speaking of Reed Paine and the others, we are all anxious to learn anything we can about the fate of Xoey Stone. Can you shed any light on that sad story?”

  Kino shakes her head, allowing her auburn hair to sway gently over her shoulders. “I know nothing of Xoey’s fate, though I’ve spent many hours with her father, who you must know, is quite desperate for her safe return.”

  “As we all are.” Chase grips his jacket lapel to show off his “Free Xoey” pin.

  “If you’ll allow it, Chase,” Kino continues, “I would love to say something directly to Xoey.”

  “Of course!”

  Kino shifts her gaze, focusing directly on the camera, directly on me. My breath catches in my throat and Adam lets go of my hand, moving his to my shoulders.

  “Dearest Xoey,” Kino says, “I hope you are listening. Your kidnapping has broken the heart of this nation. Indeed, not knowing where you are has been absolute torture to those here who love you.”

  A buzzing noise spreads through my head. Kino’s face disappears and I hear Adam’s voice from far away, saying something I don’t understand. I shake my head, trying to clear it. Jez is back on the pixel wall, wrapping up her story.

  “I’m Jez Rodriguez, reporting from the Red Zone.”

  “She has him,” I say.

  Adam’s face comes into focus, his brow pinched with concern. “Get her a chair,” he says.

  I sit down and Adam sits next to me, still holding me upright.

  “Xoey, it wasn’t them. It wasn’t Riley and Reed.”

  “Do you know who it might be?” It’s Ozzy, strolling over with something in his mouth.

  “Probably Mr. Haak.” Adam says. “He was Kino’s chief of security. Xu told us Kino shot him the night of the heist, but he didn’t die. SS officers dragged him off.”

  “They’ve likely kept him in a hole while they came up with a plan,” Bess says, sitting on the other side of me.

  “It makes sense,” Adam says. “The public is always clamoring for someone to punish, never mind the truth.”

  “Especially since you have become so popular,” Ozzy adds, wiggling his eyebrows at me.

  “Can’ye guess anythin’ about the other man?” Bess asks.

  “There was a man who managed the train yard. Merri…Marisol…no. Mariscal.” Adam crosses his arms over his broad chest. “We stole the Bell while he was in charge. He’s the perfect scapegoat.”

  “Xoey?” Bess says. “You awrite, love?”

  I meet her eyes. “Did you hear what Kino said?”

  “You were right,” Bess says. “She’s been speaking to yer da.”

  “Not just that, Bess. The way she said ‘absolute torture’—she wasn’t using a metaphor; she was sending me a message.”

  “Xoey—”

  I brush impatiently at hot tears on my face. “No, I’m right about this too. She’s got Oliver, she’s torturing him, and—for some reason—she wants me to know it.”

  Sam works late the next night, fiddling with his tablet, muttering under his breath while he waits for his next opportunity to hear from Paisley. When he does, it’s brief, but wonderful to witness, the little bit of back and forth between them reminding me of the old days. I can almost hear her cheerful voice in the dots and dashes that pass through his speaker, even if I have to wait impatiently for the conversation to end so he can share the transcript with me.

  “This is her,” he says, pointing at his screen, “and this is me.”

  “What are the Qs?”

  “Question marks.�
��

  I nod and take his tablet.

  P: SAM Q

  S: YES U OK PAISLEY Q

  P: I AM ALIVE

  S: BUT OK Q

  P: OK COMM AGENT N UDR WAR EFFORT 38.8 N 116.42 W

  S: OLIVER Q

  P: IDK

  S: OTHER STUDENTS Q

  P: SOME HERE

  S: KINO Q

  P: NO MUST GO NEXT COMM 1420 2MORROW B SAFE PH

  I hand it to Adam, then let my thoughts return to Oliver.

  Where is Kino keeping him? Torturing him?

  Bess and Adam are not convinced Kino was sending me a direct message, which frustrates me to the point of anger.

  “Have either of you ever been tortured by her?” I asked. “No? Then maybe allow that I know what I am talking about. She has a long history of using words as weapons. She has done it with me, with Reed, with Riley and Sam—and now she’s doing it again.”

  “Maybe, Xoey,” Bess said. “But even if you’re right…”

  “I was right about her being near my father, wasn’t I?”

  Bess just nodded, but she did not look happy about it.

  I close my eyes, desperate for a few minutes of peace. Instead, I see Oliver being beaten, dripping blood, losing hope.

  Help him! I pray. Please!

  Adam hands Sam’s tablet back to him. “We need a better way to communicate.”

  Sam frowns. “I’m working on it.”

  In truth, he has been working on it for some time—a web-based communication solution that can be used by any of us when we are separated. He came up with the idea when Riley and Reed told us they were going after Lexie. At the bare minimum, they needed a way to drop scouting reports online for General Kelly. There was already a system in place for that, but Gwen told us it was old code written by a Resistance officer long dead.

  “It’s little more than a cloud app with insufficient security,” she said. “I’ve been working on an update but was swamped with other security issues.”

  “I can do it,” Sam said. “But I have something better in mind for two-way communication. It will just take some time to develop the apps we’ll need.”

  Gwen crossed her arms. “You? What makes you think I’ll let you do it?”

  Sam looked puzzled. “Why wouldn’t you? You said you’ve been too busy.”

  “You still need to run your ideas by me for approval. I was hoping we could work on it together.”

  “You’re not Paisley,” Sam said slowly. “So I don’t know if I’ll like working with you.”

  She looked at me. “Is he serious?”

  I smiled. “You’ll get used to Sam’s…bluntness.”

  She shook her head. “Okay, Sam. Tell me your plan and we’ll see if I can fill in as a poor substitute for your missing friend.”

  Sam smiled broadly. “Okay. So, first we need redundancy. That way if one app gets shut down, we have backup plans.”

  Adam frowned. “I don’t worry about getting shut down as much as surveillance. Using the Internet to communicate is risky. The UDR could spy on us through your apps, no matter how well you write them. They could find out where we are, what we’re doing.”

  Sam nodded. “Only if they can see what we’re saying…and I’m working on that. But one thing we can do is keep using the code.”

  “You mean the tackle code?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  We created the tackle code last year when we were all at Windmill Bay, being monitored all day, every day. Piggybacking off the tackle league that Oliver organized, we assigned certain times, dates, and locations to scores, positions, and players, then used them to set up meetings. Kino never caught on.

  “We’ll set up another tackle league online using the Fantasy Tackle app. Every league has their own smack-talk dialog box, so we can use those for setting new codes.”

  “Wait, how—”

  “Don’t worry, Adam,” I said. “If we figured it out before, we can do it again.”

  “And if we need to say something more than times, dates or locations?”

  “I’ve got that figured out too.”

  Sam has been working on it ever since—whenever he is not converting smart windows into cloaking panels, that is, which is still the general’s priority. First, he is setting up user accounts for all of us on Dally, the UDR’s most popular dating app. Sam said he chose it because Dally was written with privacy in mind.

  “They messed with the displays so you can only read it from straight on, see?” He twisted his tablet, showing how the words and images are indecipherable from any other angle. “That might not throw off web-based surveillance, but it cuts down on interference from people looking over your shoulder in public spaces.”

  I don’t understand all the details of his plan, but they must have been convincing. Gwen quickly got onboard and even talked General Kelly through the basics. He gave Sam the okay to set up user profiles for Reed and Riley the night before they left.

  “But not with our real names, right?” asked Reed.

  “Nope. Dally is okay with anonymity and avatars, so no one will know your true identity.” Sam’s eyes lit up. “And I have an idea about that…about where we can get aliases.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  Sam swiped his finger across the surface of his tablet before holding it up. “I made a list of all the characters in the Marvel Multiverse. We can choose some of their alter egos for our usernames.”

  Riley looked confused. “The Marvelous what?”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “Not Marvelous, Marvel. The Marvel Multiverse.”

  “What’s Marvel?” Reed asked.

  “A comic book series I found in the tunnels at Windmill Bay. It’s so cool! Way cooler than UDW comics. And the stories all fit together, making up an entire universe. Well, more than one, actually. It’s a multiverse, so it includes all the hypothetical parallel universes that come up in the different comics.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Actually, now that I think about it, there’s no need to go outside the continuity for our usernames,” Sam said. “Hang on a sec.”

  Reed shot me a questioning look while Sam bent over his tablet and began tapping and swiping. “Here,” he said, handing his tablet back to Reed. “Earth-616 should give us more than enough characters to choose from.” He laughed and shook his head. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  Reed scrolled through the list while Riley looked over his shoulder, but pretty soon, he handed the tablet back to Sam. “How is this better than random names?”

  “Well, it’s cooler than random names. And easier to remember.”

  “For you maybe, but not for us,” Riley said. “Can’t we just pick names with our initials? So maybe I could be….Rachel Peterson?”

  Reed nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. And I’ll be…Rick Preston.”

  I smiled at Reed and Riley. “I never noticed your names have the same initials.”

  For some reason, they both blushed. Meanwhile, Sam’s scowl was deepening.

  “Are you sure? I bet I can find Marvel names that match your initials. Just give me a few minutes.”

  “We don’t have a lot of time, Sam. Let’s just stick with these.”

  “Fine,” he muttered. “But I bet Paisley would have backed me up. Those Marvel comics were important commentaries on society, you know. Completely predictive!”

  I promised Sam I would start reading any he recommended, which pacified him while he set up user profiles for Reed and Riley. Ever since they left to look for Lexie, we have been checking to see if they posted anything. So far, they haven’t.

  Another reason Sam chose Dally is because it supports thousands of virtual clubs, online entertainment venues, private chat rooms, and fan groups, which made it easy for him to create some specifically for us.

  “But we have to assume that chat groups are monitored,” Adam said. “Even instant messaging. Our ancestors had to deal with invasions of their online privacy in a ‘free society,�
�� so there’s no way the UDR isn’t peering over our shoulders. You’ve read the history of Facebook, right? Their data farms and algorithms? Then the facial-recognition scandal?”

  “Of course!” Sam looked affronted. “They informed many of my programs. But we’ll make it work.”

  “How?”

  “Compartmentalization. We set up the code in the tackle-group chat, like before, right? So the what, when, and where will always be shared there, and only there.”

  “Okay.”

  “But then for instant messages and group chats, I devised a method that’s foolproof. I mean, it’s clunky, granted. But there’s no getting around that.”

  “How does it work?”

  “So, first you download this puzzle game called Tilted to your nanochip. It’s a simple app, like dozens of others—plays the same, has the same annoying pop-ups, etc. But if you double-tap the graphic sun in the corner of the main screen, a keyboard pops up. Then if you type in our password within five seconds, it will lead you to a dialog box.”

  “What if someone else double-taps the sun?” I asked.

  “That’s unlikely.” Sam shook his head. “The human eye naturally goes to the top right of a page or screen, so putting the sun on the top left corner means most users will ignore it completely—probably couldn’t even tell you it’s there if asked about it later.”

  “But still…”

  “Right. So, if they double-tap it accidentally or something, they won’t know the password, will they? If they type anything else, a pop-up message will tell them there’s a glitch in the app that will be fixed soon. There’s even this little tool-box graphic that spins and frowns at them, see? The program will push them back out to the game interface.”