Sneak (25 page)

It was a clear morning. Bright. The sun shone cheerfully

through the all-glass walls of the room, and Michael Cheswick

spent his first few minutes in that delicious indulgence he so rarely afforded himself: admiring the view.

He had high hopes for Johnson, Michael did. He looked for-

ward to the work Johnson would do, picking up where Charles

Arbitor left off, picking up the pieces, tying all those loose ends.

Logan and Peck and the Dust couldn’t have gone far, and surely today marked the end of the troubles involving this case. The

G.U. treaty would soon be signed, and Michael could look for-

ward to a promotion once it was. He’d overseen the raids of every major Markless community in the city, had driven the misers out of every last one of their former strongholds, and he had done so with an impressive amount of control over the public’s perception of the events. Surely all Michael needed now was to wrap up this one last pesky investigation, close the book on this one last file—

Peck
and
the
Markless
Threat
of
Spokie
—and he would be golden.

He could practically see it now: A transfer to the E.U. head-

quarters, perhaps. Holding court with General Lamson. A seat at the table with Cylis . . .

A man could dream. And Michael did dream.

Mr. Cheswick took another sip of nanotea and opened the

day’s briefing. He’d dealt swiftly with the setbacks of the past week, and with Charles Arbitor gone and Johnson in, it was sure to be a relaxing day.

And then the little blinking light caught his eye at the corner
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of his tablescreen. A message was waiting. He double-tapped the light, and a file expanded to fill the desktop.

It was an automated alert sent by the DOME computer net-

work’s security system. Yesterday a virus had been detected, after its introduction to the system one day prior. It was a harmless virus mostly, except that it compromised the encryption of some files here and there.

No
big
deal
, Mr. Cheswick thought. Such alerts were routine enough, and they were nothing the mainframe immune system

couldn’t handle after a few days’ time.

Michael scrolled through the full report, checking for dam-

age or alterations made to any of the DOME system’s documents.

None detected. That was good.

But a handful of files had been viewed, it seemed, by an

unidentified, external party. By an actual person.

Odd
.

Disconcerting
.

But still . . . no big deal. With the virus found already, the damage would be contained, and no further snooping would be

possible, at least not without the introduction of an entirely new virus. So Mr. Cheswick simply needed to double-check which files had been viewed, and then he could get back to more important

matters, like his daydream of sitting with Cylis at the head table over in the capital of the new G.U. . . .

But that’s when he saw it. The last file named in the security log’s report.

The memo. Four lines long. The memo that read:
Project

Trumpet
contained. Acheron IMPS successful. Targets eliminated. Details
to follow on page
.

And Michael Cheswick dropped his nanotea onto the

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tablescreen, shattering the mug and not even noticing as its dark liquid seeped into the cracks in the glass.

7

The day passed slowly for Logan and his friends. On the grass

above, Hans and Tabitha and many of the village’s neighbors were working on the canoe. Logan wanted to help, but after he and

Hailey and Dane spent the morning gathering wood and tree sap

and other natural materials for the construction, Hans and Tabitha both simply insisted that “the kids rest while the grown-ups work.”

“Your journey will be long enough,” Tabby had said. “And it

can be dangerous on the Potomac. If you’re going to make it to Beacon alive, you need to rest first.”

So “the kids” had spent the last few hours underground, exploring the strange Markless house.

“Reminds me of Spokie Middle,” Hailey said. “The way it

hides underground.”

“Yeah, but this place is bizarre,” Logan said, brushing a spider from his back.

“Why is it any different?” Dane asked. Underground buildings

were relatively common these days, given the space constraints in the suburbs and the unpredictable bouts of harsh weather throughout the country.

“Because Spokie Middle was high-tech,” Logan said. “This

kinda looks like some people just dug a hole in the ground with their hands.”

The steps from the hatchway above were carved right into the

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rock and dirt, as were the walls and floors. Here and there a few planks of wood had been used to level the ground, but for the most part, it was a house made of earth. Roots stuck out of the walls and through the ceiling. Moss grew on the rocks of the floors.

The main room of the first floor was the kitchen area, with a

table, two chairs, and an alcove for a fire, the chimney of which led straight up to a camouflaged hole in the valley ground above.

Two side rooms branched off from this main space: a “library,”

where Hailey slept last night in a chair with a single shelf of paper books by her side, and a “guest room,” where Logan and Dane had slept under spare blankets on the hard dirt floor.

This guest room was funny though. The ground was slanted

due to the formation of the rock bed beneath it, meaning the room itself also acted as a sort of long, slanted hallway; the lower level of the house began where it ended, and that was where Hans and Tabitha slept.

To Logan, there wasn’t much of interest in the house beyond

the strange architecture itself, so he’d spent the last few hours in the library, reading the tattered Bible Bridget had given him back at the underpass and trying to understand what made the book so dangerous.

Dane, meanwhile, sat in the guest room, happy to be alone,

playing an old pre-Unity acoustic guitar that he’d found in the master bedroom, and filling the air with the sounds of his strumming and his griptone singing.

Hailey, for her part, was enthralled by something she’d found

in the main kitchen area, on a shelf carved into the wall. She was sitting at the table, examining it, when Logan entered, antsy from the waiting and the reading.

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“Whatcha looking at?” Logan asked.

Just then, Hans and Tabitha opened the hatchway from above,

letting bright sunlight in, and they descended the steps.

“I see you found our radio,” Hans said, sitting at the table

beside Hailey.

“Hans,” Hailey said. “Is this thing tuned to thirty-nine hun-

dred kilohertz?”

Hans laughed. “’Course! Every Markless radio’s tuned to that.”

Hailey looked stunned.

“Well, how else do you expect us to communicate with each

other? The villages around these mountains have been at this for years.”

“Back up,” Hailey said. “‘Communicate’? What do you mean,

‘communicate’? Radio’s a one-way stream.”

Hans looked at her like she must have been the densest girl in the world. “Well, certainly. That’s why each village has a transmitter.”

Hailey smacked her forehead and laughed. “Of
course
. It’s brilliant! If
everyone
broadcasts on the same frequency, then that channel becomes one big nationwide conversation.”

“Exactly.” Hans nodded.

“Can I broadcast?” Dane yelled from the guest room, more

excited than he’d been in weeks. “Can I have my own radio pro-

gram? Please?
Please?
”

Tabitha laughed. “Well, I don’t see why not,” she said. “If you can find a time when the airwaves aren’t too busy. But you kids’ll be ready to head out of here in another couple of days . . .”

Already, Dane had run into the kitchen, holding the acoustic

guitar and smiling eagerly.

“Hey, you guys didn’t ever happen to listen to a radio broadcast
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sent out by a couple of people named Hayes, did you?” Hailey

asked.

“Mama and Papa?” Tabitha asked. “Sure! They’re on the air

pretty regularly, in fact. Signal’s always weak from them, coming in and out depending on the weather, but yeah, we like those two.”

“Actually . . . ,” Hailey said.

But before she could break the sad news, Hans had turned the

radio on. Immediately, soft chatter filled the airwaves from nearby villages—overlapping conversations about remaining food stores, requests for clothing, announcements of village fairs, or Markless births, or Markless deaths. It reminded Hailey a little bit of being in the cafeteria hall at her old school: lots of voices here and there, but still easy enough to listen to any specific conversation over the din of the rest.

“Neat,” Hailey said, smiling at Hans politely. But just as she was about to lose interest, one particular voice on the airwaves caught her ears.

“Testing,” it said. “Testing, one, two. Is it on? The light’s not blinking.”

“It’s on, it’s on—go ahead!” said another, fainter voice.

“Uh . . . well . . .” The first speaker cleared her throat nervously. “Hello there, New Chicago. Uh . . . if you’re Markless . . .

then, um . . . well . . . then I guess this broadcast goes out to you . . .”

The fainter voice in the background said, “That’s good, that’s good. Go on—you’re doing great.”

“Um. Okay. Well. This is day two. Of our . . . experiment.

For any of you listening, welcome to . . . well, your new favorite radio program! It’s . . . a news show . . . New Chicago news . . .

weather today is . . . cold, I guess . . .”

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“Keep talking!”

“And . . . listen . . . Hailey . . . if you’re out there . . .”

The woman on the radio broke into a terrible coughing fit.

“Anyway, you get the idea,” Hans said, moving to turn the

radio off.

“
Don’t touch it!
” Hailey yelled. And that’s when Hans and Tabby noticed the expression on their guests’ faces. Slack-jawed, all three of them.

8

For dinner that night the Dust ate roasted duck with orange sauce.

“So who wants to go for a drive after we eat?” Winston asked.

“A
drive
?” Eddie said.

“Yeah. I do it all the time out on these old roads. I can teach you if you’d like.”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie asked. “A drive in
what
?”

Winston laughed. “A car, obviously.”

The Dust were all speechless.

“We have a car,” Mrs. Rathbone said finally, a little shy about it. Even in the context of a house like this, everyone was perfectly aware of what a rare luxury that was.

“Wait a second. You’re kidding, right?” Blake asked.

“Not at all. See for yourself. Go on. Take a look,” Mr. Rathbone said.

Blake stood up from the table, walking tentatively to the

window.

“He’s right,” Blake said. “They really do have a car.”

“Runs off oil,” Mr. Rathbone said. “Early pre-Unity model.

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Can’t buy anything like it. Not for a century. And even if you did, where would you get the fuel?” He laughed. “It’s not like those modern models. Nothing electric about it. That’s a combustion

engine, through and through.”

“Where’d you get it?” Eddie asked. “
How’d
you get it?”

But again this question was met with shuffling feet and averted eyes.

“After dinner,” Winston said, “I’ll take you for a spin.”

Eddie fidgeted nervously in the passenger seat while Winston

revved the engine and put the car into gear. “See how that works?”

he said. “It’s very easy.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Thanks for, uh, thanks for taking me out

in this. I’ve never been in a car before.”

“You must be wondering about my parents,” Winston said,

getting right to the point.

Eddie cleared his throat, unsure of what to say.

“Have you ever heard of diplomatic immunity?” Winston

asked.

“Not really . . .”

Winston nodded. “And what do you know about the European

Union?”

Eddie shrugged. “I know Cylis is the chancellor. I know the

merger happened just after the Total War . . .”

“Indeed,” Winston said. “And have you ever learned about the

politics of that merger?”

Winston was driving now, weaving slowly down the mansion’s

long driveway.

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“No,” Eddie said. “Or if I did, I don’t remember much . . .”

“Notice how the pedals work on this. See how I only use one

foot for both the gas and the brakes?” Winston was driving faster now, having turned onto the highway. He zigzagged between the

potholes and the wide cracks in the pavement.

“I, uh . . . yeah. Neat.”

“Well, anyway, most countries, they fell in line right away.

Everyone was bloody miserable after the war, and Cylis’s promise of peace and Unity was more than enough to start the coalition.”

Winston smiled. “But not the British, though. The United Kingdom wanted nothing to do with Cylis’s new deal at first.
Whoops!
Sorry,”