Children of the Uprising Collection

by Megan Lynch

  Common courtesy dictated that all sounds were either turned off or the music only played in individuals’ earchips. Jude wore an earchip for optics, but had turned off the sound, which was good because when he heard his first target’s feet move from across the room, he followed.

  It was a large event—a National Day dinner for all the interns who worked in the capital—and Jude fit right in. His target, a man in his late fifties, walked to the bathroom. His name was Devon Davidson, and he worked for the Office of Societal Efficiency—the office that made the blueprints for the mass murders when the Ones decided that there were too many people and not enough work to do. He wasn’t truly a decision maker, although he probably thought he was. Their research indicated that he was an arrogant man who had written about the removal of the lower classes since he was a student. Jude followed. All he needed to do was to get close enough to his watch to air-slip the code over to his watch. He should be able to do that with a urinal between them.

  While the thinking part of his brain was too busy shepherding brightly colored balls in a net to be afraid, Jude opened the bathroom door a few counts after the target had walked in, paused his game, and froze. Somehow, despite the largeness of the space, there were only three urinals along the bathroom wall.

  He wanted to give the whole plan up, but then he would have lost an entire evening, and they needed to leave this country as soon as possible. He selected the file, activated air-slip, and took the middle urinal. He did not acknowledge the other two men, nor did they acknowledge him. Davidson was on his left, still shooting a steady stream into the porcelain bowl, while the man on his right finished up, zipped and tucked, then walked out of the bathroom without washing his hands.

  For a moment, it seemed like it was going to go off without a hitch. The air-slip had worked, and though the code prevented Davidson’s watch from displaying it, the data was now being downloaded onto it. It was good that Jude didn’t have much in his bladder, because he needed to share proximity with Davidson just a few minutes more in order for the data to completely download. Mercifully, Davidson went to the sink to wash his hands, and Jude followed close behind, staying to his side so their watches would be close as possible.

  Davidson caught his eye and nodded in a friendly manner to Jude in the mirror. Jude mimicked him. Then, a dull buzz whispered to them both and Davidson looked down. When he looked up again, his face was all fury.

  “You son of a bitch!” Davidson stepped forward, tapping his wrist.

  “What? Oh, I’m sorry,” said Jude, eyeing his watch. “I had air-slip set up to share some family photos with a friend. It must have activated early.”

  He glowered. “You’d better hope that I see you and a couple of old slobs here,” he said and raised his wrist to his face, deep in concentration.

  Jude took his chance. With the heel of his hand, he thrust his robotic hand upward, breaking Davidson’s nose. He heard it crack and cringed. Even with all the adrenaline pumping, he didn’t like violence. At least he wasn’t able to feel it. He darted behind Davidson, felt his pulse with his forearm bone, and squeezed. Davidson stopped fighting immediately, which surprised Jude, but then again, when would he have had a need to fight in his life? He was a Two, probably with a perfect citizenship score. Jude dragged his unconscious body into a stall and locked the door. Hopefully, he wouldn’t remember this encounter, but just in case, Jude took his watch, changed his movement pattern to make it look like he’d never left the ballroom so as not to jar his memory. He deleted the precious software so it wouldn’t be found.

  “Call Denver,” he whispered into his watch as he glided out the door. The dinner was starting, and all the interns were moving to the banquet hall.

  She didn’t even bother to say hello.

  “What are you doing? We said no calls!”

  “The mission has been compromised. Davidson had an alarm system on his watch.”

  “Shit. Where is he now?”

  “Unconscious in a bathroom stall.”

  “Go wipe his watch so no one finds him.”

  “Already done. But I think I should get out of here.”

  “Are you kidding? There are two more targets in that room. They should be together. Get the recording software installed as fast as you can.”

  “They’re going to wonder where Davidson is eventually! And I can’t lock the bathroom door. Sooner or later someone’s going to go in there.”

  “Go find a janitor’s closet and put a ‘bathroom closed’ sign on the door. I’m switching the security camera footage to show an empty hallway now. Should hold for a few minutes. Go.”

  Why hadn’t he thought of that? Walking as fast as he could without running, he found a utility closet with a stand-up sign that read “closed for cleaning.” He placed it in front of the bathroom and joined the banquet. All of the other interns were already seated, and the speaker was already making remarks. Even if he could find a seat now, how would he get close enough to his next target? At least the technology allowed him into the room, thanks to Denver. There was an invitation code on his watch. Otherwise, the security guards at the front would have immediately thrown him out.

  He saw the waiters moving around the room in their black pants and pressed white shirts. This had to be, what, a five-course meal? Switching places with a server would give him just the proximity he needed to air-slip the codes to both watches and get out of here before the soup was served. He couldn’t abide any more fighting, though, and he knew that’s what Denver would suggest in order to get one of these uniforms.

  He followed the man who’d refilled the waters of the front table. Just before he disappeared into the kitchen, he spoke to him his lowest voice.

  “They’re going to kill the Fives like they did the Unregs.”

  The man, undoubtedly a Five himself, looked up with wide eyes. “Wh-what?”

  “They’re going to kill the Fives. I’m one who got out. It’s hard to explain, but I’m here to stop them. I need your uniform.”

  “My uniform?”

  Jude nodded. “Please.”

  The man looked around, and Jude could almost see a wish to trade places with anybody else. “What am I going to do?”

  Jude took him to the now-closed bathroom and traded clothes with him. “You can wait here. I’ll be back afterward to switch back. I promise.”

  The man, not much older than Jude, nodded. “My friends and I thought they’d killed the Unregs, but my parents still insist that they’re out west. How do you know for sure?”

  “It’s a long story. The rest of the world wants to stop a repeat, though. I’m getting proof right now so we can get some help.”

  “The rest of the world?”

  “It’s a long story,” Jude repeated. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t mind the man in the stall. I promise I’ll come back.”

  He went out, finishing out a shudder that started in his inner ear and shook him all the way out to his shoulders. He wasted no time setting up the slip—now he only needed to get close enough. The speaker was still up at the podium, and the water glasses were all full. Another Five server looked at him quizzically, perhaps wondering who this newcomer was and wondering where his friend went, but Jude could not risk letting another person in on his plan. He avoided eye contact. Another man came out of the kitchen with a basket full of bread. Jude inched closer to him.

  “I’ll do that,” he said.

  “Wait till she’s done,” said the server, indicating the woman speaking. He handed him the basket and walked away. Jude looked at his watch and gulped. The face read: air-slip complete! Want to do another?”

  He must have slipped the recording code to this random Five server. Damnit, damnit, damnit. He only had one copy of the code left. He went in with the mission of slipping spy software to three major players: the head of Societal Efficiency, the president of Inter-Tier Relations, and the director of the Purification Division. The best he could hope for now was getting out of here with just one of
those watches bugged.

  He summoned the courage he used when he jumped to what he thought would be his death on the bridge. Instead of overthinking it, he marched up to the director of the Purification Division—whom Samara thought was probably the most high-ranking—and slowly reached in the basket with the pair of tongs. He pinched a Kaiser roll with them, and then slowly lowered it onto the director’s plate. A quick eye on his watch confirmed that the software had been slipped. The director didn’t seem to have an alarm installed, and he seemed much more interested in his bread than he was in Jude. Relief swirled in Jude’s chest. He was finally out of codes.

  In order to avoid any more suspicion, he served Kaiser rolls to the rest of the table, rapid as a rush-hour barista, and then hustled back into the kitchen.

  “I give the go-ahead to serve,” said the kitchen manager. “Next time, you wait for me!”

  Jude nodded, remembering the rules back home: do not speak unless absolutely necessary.

  As promised, Jude went back into the bathroom. The server had dragged Davidson out of the stall and onto the bathroom floor.

  “I thought he was dead,” he said.

  “He’s not, is he?” asked Jude.

  “No, he’s breathing. But if he had been dead, I didn’t want him to be slumped over a toilet. I didn’t want his family to have to read that that’s how they found him.”

  “You thought I’d killed him?”

  “Yes.”

  Jude reached down to check for himself. He felt his pulse in his wrist and the side of his throat. He felt his chest come up and down. “Why do you trust me?”

  “I’m a Five. I’ve only been told what to do, where to go, and when. I wish it wasn’t this way, but trusting is as natural as breathing now. When the relocation happened and we all got knocked down to Unregistered status, most of us saw the writing on the wall and wondered when the higher tiers thought we were just leeches too. I guess I need someone to trust.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Denver’s stomach twisted as she sat cross-legged on the hotel bed and glared at the projected screens in front of her. She’d taken off her watch and set it on the nightstand beside the bed, which had dozens of old water rings scattered along the top. Her eyes darted from the actual footage of the bathroom, which showed a random waiter dragging the first target out of the bathroom stall (she was going to kill Jude for not just knocking him out, too) to the fake footage of the empty bathroom, to the banquet hall video, to the heat maps that more accurately showed Jude moving around the hotel. She saw that he’d gotten close enough to the Director of Societal Purification to air-slip, but if he’d found another opportunity to slip to the third target, she didn’t see it. Jude had turned this mission into another bona fide disaster, but at least they were both still in one piece. She was still going to let him have it when he got back. When he left, she practiced her speech in her head, as she wanted to properly drive home the point that he was a major disappointment.

  There was a knock at the door. It could be Jude, but she prepared for the possibility that it was not by closing all windows and activating a recording on her own watch that would broadcast back to Bristol and Samara back home. If she was about to have her final moments, she wanted them to have the option of knowing what happened. She opened the door without unlatching the chain-lock.

  It was not Jude.

  It was the Bird.

  He was an old man, the oldest man Denver had ever seen before. Metrics guided people through death starting at age sixty, starting with pamphlets and seminars about what would happen when they took that final trip to the City Courthouse on their seventy-fifth birthday, so most people had a good fifteen years to prepare for the end. But the end had never come for this man. She had no idea how old he was, but it had to be at least a decade beyond the usual death age. There was not a fraction of an inch on his face that was not creased, folded, or puckered. He had no hair on his head, but plenty growing out of his ears. She’d seen old people in the UK, ones wearing the same kind of navy raincoats and matching track pants, as he did now, but none who looked like her. Though they had coordinated on the last mission through the military and the intelligence agencies, they hadn’t the luxury of speaking beforehand about this one. She no longer had access to his contact information, and he had done a fantastic job at hiding it. Stephen probably could have reached out—he probably would have memorized his information, just in case—but Denver hadn’t been practiced at that level of foresight at the time.

  She wanted to smile, but her mouth would not obey. Her heart, beating fast, was too focused on what could still go wrong. Maybe his was too, because he did not smile either.

  In a fluid motion, she shut the door, unlocked the chain, and opened it again just wide enough for him to get inside. For an old man, he was not frail. He was built like her brother, short and stocky.

  He cleared his throat, a wet sound. “My condolences,” he said, his voice rumbling a bit. “I never met your husband face-to-face, but I had many discussions with him. He was bright and a good man.”

  “Thank you.”

  He brought a cloth handkerchief to his lips and coughed again. This time, even behind the handkerchief, he did smile. “You don’t seem pleased to see me.”

  “I am! I’m just wondering…”

  “How I knew you were here? Your friend Daniel told me. Don’t worry, the rest of the Red Sea doesn’t know. He seemed to be wise enough to memorize one of my ID numbers the one time he saw it. He’s with your brother right now in London. He wanted to be there in case—”

  “In case we don’t come back?” Denver flicked her hand out as if flicking a sheet, and her watch shot out projections of the screens she had just closed. “Definitely possible. I’m glad he thought of that.”

  “Your chances look pretty good to me,” said the Bird. “Which one is Jude?”

  Denver pointed to a little yellow dot on the screen.

  “Ah,” he said. “He’s almost here. May I wait here for him? There are things I’d like to tell the two of you together. But for you, I have some good news and some bad news.”

  Denver nodded. He pulled up a chair from the little desk. “Bad news first, I’m afraid.” He projected a picture from where he sat. She immediately recognized it as a mug shot—Metrics regularly projected these in public places with their ID numbers and citizenship scores below, which were always dismal, but this one was the only one she’d ever seen displayed in negative numbers. She didn’t immediately recognize the woman in the picture, but once she did, she couldn’t look away.

  “Mom!” She gasped and looked back down at the citizenship score. She never thought what would happen if the citizenship score got to zero. She never thought it was possible.

  “She’s still alive,” he said, “because Metrics’ plan did not work out. They underestimated the amount of menial labor that still needs to be done. Coders insisted that they’d be able to build upon their systems to compensate, but they haven’t been able to yet. They apprehended all the people connected to anyone with an escaped Unreg to help with labor needs.”

  Denver thought of Maureen, her friend who wasn’t quite a friend, in marriage class all those years ago. She’d been the only other previous Three there in the Four class, but she and her husband were downgraded based on their citizenship scores because they were connected to people who’d been revolutionaries. They hadn’t known. If what he was saying was true, Maureen and her husband were probably also in jail because of her.

  Denver closed her eyes lightly. “My mother is still alive. You know this for sure?”

  “I am still allowed a certain amount of privilege. I can tell you with almost certainty that she is. And if you and Jude and the rest of the world are successful at liberating this country, then she will be released.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “If the primary concern is human rights, they will be the first to be protected by the international community.”

>   Jude walked in the room, breathless. He froze when he saw the Bird.

  “Come in, young man. You’ve got the right room.”

  Jude walked in tentatively and took his place beside Denver. The old man smiled. “I’m not going to bite.”

  “We like standing,” said Jude.

  The Bird nodded. “I can understand why you wouldn’t trust me. Why would you? I was a part of the team who put this whole system together. They call me one of the new founding fathers! But I’m also called the Bird. Do you know why?”

  “Because during one of your speeches, you talked about how birds must be pushed out of the nest before they know they can fly.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “But that’s often misinterpreted. Metrics uses those words to tell the people that they have to be the ones to do the pushing. That if it weren’t for them and the data on our citizens they gather from the time they are born, no one would be able to unlock his or her potential. But that was never what I meant by the speech. And maybe that was my fault. When we’re not clear, our own words can be used against us easily, as mine were. Do you know what I meant to say?”

  Denver felt like a child in the middle of a lecture, but she shook her head anyway. Beside her, Jude shook his.

  “I meant that we are capable of more than we think we are. When we created Metrics, people were deeply unhappy with the status quo. People too busy to enjoy their lives. Many spent the whole of their young lives wasting their time wondering what the next ten years would bring them. People were divided, terribly divided, about race and religion. We thought the answer was as simple as taking away their problems. We were young ourselves and much too sure of ourselves. When I made that speech, I was talking to a group of future lawmakers who didn’t know if they had what it took to completely overhaul a country, from culture to policy to values. We did.”

  “And you made a mess of it,” said Denver.

  “Yes, we did that too. The way we underestimated ourselves was nothing compared to how we underestimated others, particularly the poor. Underestimating the poor is a mistake all classes make, but it’s a common trap. Social status is much easier and faster to see than character.