Abandon (11 page)

My older brother had no such talents, beyond thinking for himself. My mother favored him, but my father doted on me. He counseled me on how to use my talent without detection; he introduced me to the physics educator at school; he took me to work with him and let me experiment in the wind machines.

My father also covered up the infraction with Vi. The house
had
alerted him, and the report would’ve gone on my official record since I was already thirteen.

He knew about the Resistance—because he was involved. He’d recruited me; he’d taught me the subtle art of playing both sides; he’d introduced me to Jag.

I adored my father.

He didn’t understand my sudden withdrawal from the Resistance, but I blamed the failed mission during which Blaze Barque had died. I’d never confessed the deal I’d made with Thane Myers—he’d matched me with Vi in exchange for information about Jag. My first true test of living the Insider life.

I’d “left” the Resistance, but I’d never revealed anything of importance to Thane.

Insider Tip #4: Give information that is either already known, or that won’t damage the other side
.

Jag hated me because I’d quit, but I’d had no choice. Thane held more power than Jag knew—power to make my life difficult. He’d threatened my father; he’d threatened Vi.

I’d do anything to keep the two of them safe. The decision was easy: I defected. Jag could deal.

*   *   *

As I pressed into the alley wall in Harvest, I remembered that mission to Freedom when Blaze had disappeared. The fear felt the same, but the stakes were much higher now. I flattened myself against the wall as the battle cry became a
roar. The taser-happy crowd surged forward, joined by more people from the alley behind me.

Saffediene cried out, and I turned to find her on her hands and knees. Anger boiled through me as I grabbed her hand and pulled her to a standing position next to me. I stepped partially in front of her to shield her from further danger.

“Our boards,” she moaned, looking down the alley roiling with a steady stream of people. “No way they survived that horde.”

I had to agree, but we had to focus on our most pressing problem: getting out of here alive.

“Who’d you vote for?” a man asked a mere half foot away, his taser sparking with blue techtricity.

I swatted it out of my face. “Get that away from me,” I growled.

For a moment he looked like he might leave. Then he saw Saffediene. “Oh, I get it.
She
voted for Duarte.”

“
She’s
not even from here,” I said. “Leave us alone.”

His eyes glazed at my voice control, and he joined the fray of anti-Duarte supporters.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” I said quietly. “Come on.” Saffediene’s hand trembled as we ran down the alley together, away from the square.

I didn’t look back, despite the screams that pierced the
air. Saffediene stumbled, but I kept her upright. As we hurried away, I realized that the scene in that square could’ve been one of the vids the Association showed students.
See what happens when Citizens are allowed freedoms?
I heard the slogans in my mind with little effort.

I didn’t look back, even when the hovercopters arrived, blaring with instructions and popping with taser fire.

Free vs. functioning?
looped through my mind.

Next to me, Saffediene wept openly, but I didn’t feel the slightest bit like crying.

I didn’t look back, because I couldn’t stand to see the proof that humanity couldn’t manage themselves. That they’d always need a Thinker.

That I’d been fighting for chaos these past four years.

*   *   *

At the end of the alley, our hoverboards were indeed gone. I mourned their loss for only a moment before I snapped my fingers, and a current of air stalled in front of me. Its edges shimmered in my vision, gray and then purple and then blue.

Saffediene wouldn’t be able to see it, so I pulled her closer and said, “Hold on to me, okay?”

“Are you going to do that freaky wind thing again?”

“Yes,” I said. “Hold on to me tighter.”

She complied, facing me and wrapping both arms around
my waist, then burying her face in my chest. I lifted her onto the air cushion and whispered, “Up, please.”

The wind obeyed, taking us straight up until we’d escaped the mayhem below.

“Wait,” I said, and we paused to watch the scene below. It mirrored the vids I’d seen in the past. People were running here, there, everywhere. Hovercopters crowded the rooflines; officers shouted instructions through the amplifiers. The spark of tasers looked like lightning in the morning sunlight.

I couldn’t believe it. This was what I’d been in favor of? Citizens killing other Citizens? Violence as a means to achieve a desired outcome?

No
. I did not advocate those things.

My peripheral vision caught a movement in the sky. Director Benes floated on a hoverboard a hundred feet away, also surveying the chaos below. He met my gaze with raised eyebrows. His message was clear:
Tell Jag.

Half of me wanted to stay and see if or when he might intervene. The other half couldn’t wait to get away from the upheaval. Far away.

That half won.

*   *   *

Saffediene and I didn’t speak about what we’d witnessed on the way back to the cavern. I expanded the cushion of air
once we left Harvest so we could both sit comfortably. She could’ve chosen a spot far from me and passed the ride with only her own thoughts.

She didn’t.

She sat right next to me, both her hands holding one of mine, talking about her life before the Insiders, her mom, her two younger brothers, her assigned educational track. She asked me about school, and how I met Vi, and if I had any siblings.

I told her everything. Everything about my older brother, and meeting Vi, and joining Jag, and when I defected, and how sometimes I ached to see my parents again.

She felt safe to me. Saffediene had become someone I could tell anything to, and she wouldn’t judge or question me. She accepted who I was at that moment, and empathized with who I’d been in the past.

I’d never met anyone like her. When the night swallowed the last of the day, I realized why I felt so secure with Saffediene.

She had no agenda. She simply
was
.

I envied her. I lived my entire life according to an agenda, mine or someone else’s. I couldn’t tell them apart anymore.

And maybe that was my real problem.

15
.
Vi and I stayed in her room for a few heartbeats, both of us staring at one another.

Thane, awake.

The rocks seemed to shout the question running through my head:
What will happen now?

“Only one way to find out,” Vi said. She laced her fingers through mine, pressing our palms together. Every muscle in my body protested as she helped me stand.

“I need meds,” I complained, limping into the hall. Gunn had gone ahead, too agitated to wait. I should’ve asked him if Raine had woken up yet.

“She’s with Gunner,” Vi said. “And we can stop by the hospital alcove for meds on the way to Thane’s room.”

“Perfect,” I said.

*   *   *

“Pace,” Vi said, leaning into the hospital alcove. “Jag needs meds.” She turned away as Pace fed the drugs into my system. Immediately, the ache in my head receded; the throbbing in my leg slowed.

“Thanks,” I said. “How often can I have that?” The cuts along my back still pulled, radiating pain through my body.

“Come back before bed,” Pace said, smiling. It was his big-brother smile. The one that told me he was in control, that I could confide in him.

“Where’s Raine?” I asked, noting two empty beds in the hospital alcove. I’d need to get a report from her too.

“Everyone is in Thane’s room,” Pace answered. “Same hall as my room. Better hurry, or you won’t get front-row seats.” His words were filled with bitterness. I understood how he felt. All this time, Thane had been working against us.

For us too, but definitely against us. He’d killed Ty. He’d taken Vi and brainwashed her. Forced her to live in Freedom for eight months without any memory of her real life.

Who does that to their daughter? To anyone?

Zenn.

The thought came unbidden, but it rang with truth. Zenn had done the same thing. Could I trust him?

I didn’t know.

Could I trust Thane?

Maybe, with time.

I could only wish/hope/pray that Zenn and Thane were on my side. I needed them badly.

Vi and I moved slowly down the hall. A nervous energy buzzed from Vi, but she stepped patiently with me as I dragged my hurt leg. We passed through the empty war room and continued down another narrow hallway.

A crowd had gathered at the end of it, and excited voices filtered back to us. My nerves felt spent. The thought of facing Thane exhausted me.

But I pasted on my leader-of-the-Resistance face and said, “Excuse me.” The people in front of me stepped to the side, leaving me and Vi a path to the room ahead.

Indy grabbed and held my gaze. I couldn’t feel her message with the whole team gathered around. Whatever it was, her look didn’t broadcast anything good. Maybe she was still angry about the not-kissing we’d done earlier. I had left her without an explanation—again—when I’d hobbled after Vi.

A pretty girl with long white hair stood next to Gunn. The last time I’d properly seen Raine Hightower, she’d had
her hand suctioned to mine. Gunn held her hand and whispered in her ear. Besides sporting skin whiter than the snow I used to shovel, she looked healthy. “Hey,” she said when I stepped next to her. “I’m Arena—I mean, Raine.”

She shot a fast look at Gunner, and his face said it all. Raine would need rehabilitation to recover the memories she’d lost.

“Hey,” Vi and I answered at the same time, in the same sad/surprised voice. I wanted to kiss Vi again. I settled for squeezing her hand.

In the bedroom Thane sat on a cot, staring at me. His bare chest revealed the wounds Gunn had given him in the Centrals. The skin surrounding the mostly healed holes shone new and pink.

He definitely could’ve looked worse. His eyes flickered with fire, just as they always had.

“Thane,” I said, trying to school my voice into friendliness. It didn’t quite work.

“Jag,” he replied in the same almost-neutral manner.

We were nothing if not committed to maintaining our we-don’t-like-each-other vibe.

“Well?” he asked.

Oh, hell no. If he was here to try to make me look like a fool, that so wasn’t going to work.

“Report. Tell me everything.” And without taking my eyes off Thane, I said, “Gunn, be sure to record this.”

I sensed his nod of understanding and waved my free hand at Thane to start.

His gaze lingered on my fingers entwined with Vi’s, and I felt a ping of satisfaction at the anger twitching in his jaw.

“Report,” I said again, just because I could.

*   *   *

Thane’s report wasn’t anything I didn’t already know—at least the information he was willing to share in front of twenty people. I knew there was more; I could sense it. I briefly wondered if it had anything to do with the cloning experiment Gunn, Pace, and I had witnessed on Starr’s microchip. I’d need to ask him as soon as possible.

Five minutes into his report, I wanted to sit down with a tall glass of water. I actually did just that, citing my injuries as the reason I couldn’t stand.

Thane didn’t stand either, and his report was bogus. When he finished, Pace grounded him from all Resistance activity for the next several days and ordered him back to bed.

“You too,” Pace said as we shuffled down the hall to my room. “No flying, nothing physically stressing for at least three days, okay?” He stopped outside the infirmary and selected a needle from our very limited supplies.

“Not okay,” I said. “There’re five million things that need to be done.” We had secured Thane, but he had no new information. We needed to proceed. Get more traveling teams out to the cities, get more Directors on board, plan the attack on Freedom. Maybe there were five million and one things to do. All I knew was I couldn’t take a three-day break.

Pace administered the meds with a disapproving frown. “Gunn and Indy can take over for a few days. Zenn will be back tonight too.”

My head felt fuzzy. “Where’d he go? Wasn’t Gunn supposed to go with him?”

“Harvest. And Gunn asked Saffediene to go in his place so he could stay with Raine.”

I nodded, and I swear my neck didn’t have bones. What was in that needle?

“You have to rest,” Pace said.

“I don’t trust Zenn,” I blurted. “Or Thane.” I leaned in closer, as if we could share secrets in this tiny compound where we all slept on top of each other and every hallway echoed with conversations. “What about the clones?”

Pace slid my arm over his shoulders. “Come on, bro, time for bed.”

I was beyond tired. I thought I might actually be able to sleep tonight too, because I’d told Vi all about the capsule
and I didn’t have to live with that alone and Thane wasn’t going anywhere and—

My knees hit stone as my legs buckled. I heard Pace’s voice, but it ricocheted from far away. I felt Vi’s lips against mine, but that might’ve been my imagination.

I moved like I was in water up to my chest. Someone held on to me. Someone who smelled like meds and flowers. I heard a girl say, “Clones? What’s he talking about, Pace?”

I tried to hold on to consciousness, but it slipped through my fingers like smoke.

Images drifted through my mind. Neat rows of flowers and white picket fences. Green lawns and laughing children. Families playing in the park and friends ordering coffee on Saturday mornings.

Freedom: what life would be like without Thinkers.

I finally submitted to sleep with a smile on my face.

16
.
Jag lay in his bedroom, his mouth hanging half open, snoring. I knew the guy wasn’t perfect, and now I had proof.

I stood watching him longer than necessary, imagining his mouth against Vi’s. Gunner drew me out of that crazy-bad place.