by Megan Lynch
Here it was. The energy. Suddenly she felt much bigger than her body, and she felt as if she were seeing her husband’s face, and only his face, for the first time. Her eyes took in his gentle features and the warmth behind them. She sat on the floor, shocked but absorbed in what he’d said and meant, until a water droplet fell from Stephen’s hair onto his cheek and fell like a tear. He wiped it away. “I don’t know how to get us out. I’m sorry.”
But Denver had already found her feet and was rummaging through the medicine cabinet. She found a pair of scissors and cut two long fibers from the broom.
“What’s that?”
“Castor oil.” She smiled and held out the two strands from the broom in her fist. “We’ll draw straws. One of us is about to be very sick.”
An hour later, at the time they were meant to be on their separate trains headed to their separate offices, they were together on the hospital express, whizzing past the traffic carrying men and women in suits to work. She’d never been inside one of these before, but of course she had seen it, the fast-moving red-and-white trains on the highest rail. Inside, the white-tiled walls looked in need of a good scrubbing, and the red, linen-covered seats were pilling and stained. Though she’d never really thought of it before, she realized she’d expected it to be better maintained.
And they really should have brought a bigger bucket, Denver thought as Stephen vomited into the plastic food container she held. When he’d drawn the short straw, she was tempted to take it from him, but upon seeing his excited smile, she could not.
“Sickness bags are located at the front of the car,” a cool voice announced over the intercom. Stephen belched.
“It’ll be okay. You’re doing great.” Denver moved her hand in a circular wave over his back before going to get a bag. Neither of them had known how much castor oil to use, so he’d drunk the entire vial. It seemed to be a mistake, though—Denver hadn’t expected him to be this sick. She remembered the difference between her and Bristol growing up when they were both sick at the same time. Whereas Denver would conserve her energy to get well, Bristol would whine and drag his feet and refuse to get out of bed no matter what degree of illness he was experiencing.
The train came to a halt, the doors opened, and hospital personnel silently and efficiently did their work. Stephen was wheeled to a small room and given fluids through an IV faster than Denver would have liked—as she still needed to work out their escape plan.
“Sorry, hon. Just need to get a blood sample,” the nurse said to Stephen, who at this point was making continuous moaning noises, varying his tone and volume occasionally.
“Ma’am? Your relationship to the patient?” a woman with a tablet asked.
Denver smiled, not taking her eyes off this brave man, this selfless man, her equal. “I’m his wife.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
There were only three chickens in the yard now, Lydia had explained. A coyote had gotten the other two last week, poor things. But all was well, as there were exactly the same number of runaways to feed. Samara set one egg aside and cracked the other two in the pan. She watched them sizzle in the heat and wondered why she’d never taken the time to do that before.
Jude was asleep, so he’d have his breakfast later. Lydia and Nan had left early that morning, presumably to their day jobs as a nurse and God-knows-what. Samara scrambled the eggs and pretended not to notice Bristol sneaking glances at her over his book.
“I’m glad you made it here,” she said over her shoulder.
He nearly threw down his book. “I am too—I’m glad you and Jude made it.”
Samara smiled instinctively as she plated the eggs. “He’s a special kid. I wouldn’t be here without him.”
“He’s lucky to have you. You were the one who got him out.”
“No, really. I was just moving without a plan, like Chicken Little. I think he would have gotten out by himself, probably in a tidier way if I hadn’t helped.”
Bristol took the plates and gently placed them on the table. “What happened to his hand isn’t your fault.”
Samara didn’t respond to this. She jabbed a tiny bit of egg and brought it to her mouth. Bristol began to eat too. A few feet away, Jude shifted under his blanket, but his snores remained rhythmic.
“It’s my fault,” Samara said, “and it isn’t. I’ve been sort of like an accomplice to this whole thing. My whole life, I’ve just done what I’ve been told without ever asking why. You’re just told ‘study for this test’ or ‘get your injections on time,’ but you never ask why. If I hadn’t seen with my own two eyes what happened over at the prison, I don’t think I’d have believed it. It’s just too…outrageous. People can do things in the name of the government that they’d never do as private citizens. And private citizens were who I’d always dealt with.”
“Must have been nice.”
“What?”
“To just do what you’re told. To just trust that someone is looking out for you.”
“Well…it was nice, to be honest. I gather you never had that?”
Bristol snorted and moved his elbows outward on the table, seeming to take over the entire side of it. “There were always people telling me what to do, but there was always some underlying subtext. This message, communicated in a thousand different ways, that it didn’t matter whether I lived or died. That I was messing things up for people. That maybe it would be better if I wasn’t there at all.”
“That sounds difficult to deal with.”
“Yeah, but I had my mom and my…” Bristol made a sound like a cough and took his elbows off the table again. “My family was the solid part of my life. Like a rock in the middle of the sea. I could always hold on to them.”
“Where’s your mom?”
“Back in Brookline, close to where you live. She’ll be okay. Probably her score will go up now I’m gone.”
“And your dad?”
Bristol shook his head and went back to his egg. So that’s why he’s unregistered.
“If I ever get to talk to my parents again, I can ask them to check in on your mom.”
“Better ask them to connect with the boy’s parents first.”
Samara glanced back at Jude, then leaned in and said in a low voice, “I’m not sure how much it would matter. I get the feeling Jude’s home wasn’t a solid place for him.”
“No?”
“When we were coming here, I kept thinking of myself when I was eleven—myself, even as I am today. When I dislocated my shoulder in that tree, I just thought, I want my mother. Even now! But Jude didn’t say a word about either of his parents. And just the way he talks, the reluctant way he asks for help…I just think he’s used to a harder type of love, if he’s known love at all.”
Bristol cleared his throat. “Maybe that’s good.”
“Excuse me? He’s eleven.”
“Sometimes,” Bristol began, “love is a burden. It makes us too comfortable. I’ve been thinking about that, the reason I didn’t come with you. See, my family, especially my…” Bristol stared intently into his plate.
Samara wondered, with a clinical fascination, if he was going to cry. She set down her fork. “I know you miss your mom. If you hadn’t come, though, she’d be going through a lot worse. She probably thinks you’re on your way west, but you know the truth. Maybe you can get back in touch with her one day. Isn’t this better?” She stood and took her plate. “I have a family too, you know. A mom and a dad. They have no false comforts. They think I’m dead, but I’m hanging on to the hope that I can see them again someday and explain everything. You're totally wrong about love. It doesn’t make you smaller, it makes you bigger. Braver. And real love is seeing who needs it the most, and giving it without hesitation.”
Bristol looked up at her, completely dumbfounded. “Me?”
If not now, when?
“Yes, you, brainless.” She smiled and shimmied her shoulders slightly, shaking off fear. “You’ve done more for me than you know. More
for everyone than you appreciate.”
“I just…I just threw away a napkin.”
“Yes, you helped me—and Jude—out of a rough spot. But more than that. You’ve shown me who you are and who I can be. I’ve seen the beauty inside your mind, and I fell in love with that beauty.”
Bristol appeared to have stopped breathing.
“If you don’t want to talk about the wall, we don’t have to,” Samara said. “But I just wanted to let you know the murals have helped. You’ve helped. It’s the reason I can do this now. They say girls shouldn’t think about love. That we have to work twice as hard, be twice as good, to be equal to a man, and that love is a distraction.”
Bristol chuckled. “Metrics tries so hard to make men and women equal, but some things are harder to stamp out than others. I know that even when women get married, their friends and family tell to let their husbands make the first moves.”
“It’s silly. It’s outdated. You’re the reason I can see that.”
Bristol stood up and crossed the kitchen in two steps to reach Samara, but she held her hands out to his chest, stopping him.
“No,” she said. “Me first.”
She put her hands on his waist, turned him around with his back against the bookshelf, lifted herself onto her toes, and kissed him.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
When no one immediately appeared by the lazercams, Denver and Stephen decided to camp for the night. There were supplies, Stephen explained, hidden high in one of the trees. They searched until they saw the sign they were looking for—an orange flag, no bigger than a postage stamp, flapping from a low branch. Denver climbed, discovering new muscle groups in her body as she pulled herself up. She found a pack with a small tent, two blankets, and, thankfully, three large bottles of water. She dropped them to the ground and let herself hang by her arms for a moment before letting go and falling into a pleasant crumple on the ground. She gathered the supplies in her arms and was pleased to find she could carry them all back to Stephen in one trip, if she made an effort. He was sitting on the ground a few feet away with his head in his hands. She picked up one of the bottles and extended it toward him.
“Drink this now.”
He followed orders without hesitation. When he had emptied the bottle, Denver handed him the second one.
“I shouldn’t,” he said. “What if there are more people coming?”
“You’re dehydrated. You need it now. Besides, I saw another supply tree on my way back.”
“Okay. Let me just catch my breath. I’m afraid I might puke it back up.”
“Just relax,” said Denver. “I’ll set up camp.”
Stephen lifted his head. “Do you know how?”
Denver paused, considered lying, then decided she’d had enough of that. “No. But I’m not going to let that stop me. Just focus on not puking, please.”
Denver took the tent and searched until she found a collection of brambles growing thickly. She went inside, rearranging the twisted vines until she’d fashioned a small clearing. She set up the tent with more patience than she expected of herself and then covered the top in vines. She went back for the blankets and laid them along the tent’s green vinyl floor. When she returned for Stephen, he was leaning against a tree trunk with the second bottle in his hand, now only half-full.
“Feeling better?” Denver asked.
“A little. Don’t go over there,” he said, pointing in the distance and lowering his head. “I…”
“Don’t worry, I know. It’s okay.”
“I didn’t think it would hit me like that.”
“I probably should have been the one to take it. I’m more used to it.”
Stephen’s eyes widened. “You’ve done this before? Made yourself sick on purpose?”
Denver nodded. “It’s an old trick to lose weight fast. It flushes everything out, gives you diarrhea, dehydrates you like crazy. They try to tell us that all that matters is hard work, but girls see pretty quickly that there are other things that can give you a leg up.”
“That’s insane. And dangerous.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “I’m beginning to see that.” The whole world was insane and dangerous.”
Stephen eyed her and took another drink. “It’ll be good to get to Nan’s. They must have just missed the six o’clock sweep, but someone will be here tomorrow morning to look for us.”
“Can you walk? The tent’s over there.” Denver ducked under Stephen’s shoulder to steady him. She led him toward the thicket.
“Nice disguise!” Stephen said when he saw it.
Denver smiled and felt a flush of pride. “So is this what you’ve been doing? Packing up camping supplies and hiding them in the woods?”
“Sometimes. Mostly I just work on wiping evidence from Metric’s surveillance systems.”
“Like the systems I monitor at the DA?”
“Monitered. And yes, sort of. I erase energy usage from the safe houses sometimes. I rewired my watch to project my own game history when I work so if anyone sees me—”
“—It’ll seem like you’re being a good citizen, working on a high score in his free time.” Denver laughed. “I wondered why it was taking you so long to get to level five on Bedazzled Battles!”
They laughed together and ducked into the tent. They looked at each other for a fraction of a second, then made identical motions toward their wrists. Denver jumped involuntarily when she felt bare skin under her fingers.
“That’s going to take some getting used to,” she said, gliding her fingertips over her wrist.
“I was thinking the same thing. Funny how we’re both so used to being around the unregistered. They don’t have watches and we just think that’s normal. Just expect them to function at the same level we do.”
“They’re probably better for it. My brother has never even seen an art program—you know the ones where you can draw pictures and then get it all to automatically correct itself? The lines get straighter and the shadows get more realistic and that kind of thing? But he can draw some amazing things just with his hands.”
“I know,” Stephen said. “I’ve been keeping the cameras off that kid for years. He’s very good. Very influential.”
“Influential?”
“I don’t think he knows it, but the Red Sea has gotten stronger since he’s been painting. We’ve gotten lots more members because of his work.”
“Like, unregistered people coming to you for help?”
“No, I mean registered people helping them. They see your brother’s paintings and it’s like some sort of a switch goes off. Like they’re not alone. Someone else is seeing just how absurd everything is and they have to do something about it.”
“Is that what happened to you? Why are you involved?”
“No, I’ve been at this for a long time. My mom was involved. One time she missed a meeting and they arrested everyone. She was home, sick with a cold. Two of the members, a husband and wife, were both taken and their five-year-old son was arrested too.”
Denver’s brow furrowed. “And charged with what?”
“Probably preventative detainment. They don’t need a good reason. Any reason at all will do.” Stephen curled onto his side. “So that’s when my mom told me what she’d been up to. She thought I needed to know, for my own safety. Once I had the chance to think about it, I decided I wasn’t just okay with it, I wanted in.” He smiled weakly. “I just heard about your brother a few years ago, when all our new recruits were asking who was doing the murals on their kid’s school building or their bus stop.”
“If you knew who he was…” Denver started to ask, “Did you know who I was too?”
His smile became broader. “I did.”
Denver moved her gaze around the tent, thinking rapidly. “Did you fix our marriage? Are we married so you could be close to my brother? Were you planning this the whole time?”
“No! No to all that. I just thought…well, I thought you were beautiful, an
d then I saw you applied for marriage and thought we might be good together so…”
“So you fixed it.”
He sat up. “No, but not for lack of trying. The New Race is way too important to Metrics to let a rookie hacker like me break into the pairing assignment system. In the end, all I could do was add myself to the list of your potential pairs. The list was over three hundred names long. It was an enormous long shot.”
Denver snorted. “And what? It just worked out?”
He took her hands. “After I put my name on your list, I promise I had nothing to do with it. Sometimes, things just work out.”
Denver looked down at his hands and drew a circle around his wrist. “What did you think when you got the assignment letter?”
He squeezed her hands tight. “Before today, it was the happiest day of my life.”
Chapter Thirty
Something inside Jude had been roused from its sleep. The first night in Nan’s expansive library, this thing—this rage, this darkness—had started to lift its quiet head. After only a few days on the sofa, fed by this pirate’s horde of knowledge, it had begun to pace, to snarl, to roar.
Always shy and sheepish in the face of criticism in the past, the old Jude may have been content to sit on Nan’s sofa, feeling sorry for himself when he happened to catch a glimpse of where his hand used to be. Now he saw it and his blood boiled. He deserved it, he told himself. He should have warned Kopecky about his suspicions of the warden, and he didn’t. He must have been too afraid, or too trusting. If he’d just thought a little quicker, he might have been able to ask Miss Shepherd to smuggle them both out. Surely she’d have been able to. They’d stuffed Kopecky into a bag like he didn’t matter at all, like he was a piece of trash to be removed. They’d pay for this, Jude thought for the hundredth time from his sofa in front of the hearth, if it was the last thing he did. In the meantime, he read hungrily, an involuntary growl turning into a bark when the book whipped shut from his awkward one-handed grip. He thought Nan might reprimand him for being loud, but she only sat next to him, picked up his book, and read to him in a slow, even meter. She stayed as long as she could before she left for the afternoon to check the lasercams once again.
