“That’s it?”
“It’s not really necessary. But yes, that’s it.”
She waits for an explanation but I’m not sure which one she wants to know. I hate lying to her. Everyone has—for years. I don’t want to be like everyone else. I want to be so much more to her. “What do you want to know?” I ask.
“Is it really that hard to figure out? The truth. Your mother wasn’t having one of her bouts. You hurt yourself. Why did you make up a story? There’s no shame in taking a tumble—unless that’s not what really happened.” She scrutinizes my chest again. Glass, cats, and stairs? There’s suspicion in her eyes.
For her sake, I know I have to make this good, plus I’m not entirely sure Hap isn’t listening in. “I did take a tumble, Raine. That’s the truth. I was stupid and careless. I’m embarrassed about it. Don’t tell anyone. Please.” And then I go into a long explanation, pausing at all the right moments, looking away at all the right moments, using all the tricks I learned from Kara about being convincing, telling her how my father ridicules me for being careless, for not paying attention, if he got a whiff from the Collective about me missing meetings and why, well, I didn’t want him to know, and neither did my mother, because arguments between us don’t go well. They go very badly in fact. My father is strict and expects perfection—one reason my mother and I are both glad to be away from him for a while. I pile lie upon lie until I’ve painted a mirror image of her relationship with her own father, until her face goes from disturbed to sympathetic, and I hate myself when I’m done.
She reaches out and gently touches my cheek. Tears rim her lower lashes. Her fingers slide down to my lips, where one cut runs deeper than the rest. Her touch is velvet, barely there at all, but it’s all I can feel, all I can think about. I don’t deserve it, but I want more, more of Raine.
“Would it hurt too much if I sat close to you, Locke? Just for a few minutes?”
I lean back and pull her close, my arm around her so she’s tucked in close to my left side, the one with intact ribs. She molds to me, like we’ve done this a hundred times, no awkward movements, just her and me, staring ahead at nothing at all. She tells me what brought her here in the first place, why she dared to skip tonight’s meeting, something she’s never done before, knowing the consequences she will have to pay if her father finds out. But as she speaks, I begin to grasp exactly what those consequences are. He was still furious with her about her inappropriate dress at our first meeting, so today he had technicians come. They strapped her down and scanned her, searching for what was wrong with her, trying to find the reasons, the damage, the deficits, anything at all that might explain her unacceptable behavior. And when they were finished, they scanned her again.
He’s searching for numbers, Raine. Not damage. He’s desperate for the missing half of the bank account numbers. Consequences have nothing to do with it. That’s all your scans have ever been about. Nothing you’ve ever done.
She continues to tell me the details of the humiliating procedure. I wonder what the Secretary thinks, that she could be embedded with a time-sensitive biochip programmed to one day reveal itself? Would Karden have done that to his own baby daughter in the interest of safeguarding eighty billion duros? If he would, he’s not a man I want to save. It’s hard for me to listen. I want to react. I want to break something. Throw a chair against the wall. Do something.
“I cried,” she continues. “I said I was sorry. He told me crying was unacceptable. He never has allowed it. Usually, for him, I can become that person he wants me to be, the one detached from my circumstances. After Mother died I tried even harder to be his perfect daughter. Proper. Unaffected. Prepared. The only time I ever strayed from his ideal was when I was alone up on my rooftop, or on one of my nighttime escapades.” She lifts her eyes to look into mine. “I was good, Locke. For so long I was good for him. Somehow, it all worked, at least for a while. Now I feel like I’m walking a tightrope between two lives and I’m not sure exactly where I belong.…”
She looks at me, waiting, her last words more of a question than a statement.
She wants to know if my world is her world, but I don’t know if it can be or if it even should be. I want to tell her that my world is so far from hers. I want to confess that I’m not who or even what she thinks I am—and she isn’t who she thinks she is either. Xavier’s words tear through me: What would I be condemning her to? She’d be caught between two worlds, not fitting in anywhere anymore, not to mention what the Secretary might do with her. What the Secretary might do. It makes my blood run cold. Maybe if I had kept my distance in the first place like I should have …
I look at the nugget-head. “Hap, privacy. Close your eyes.”
He closes them. I knew he was still listening.
But now, being right is not as important as having a private moment with Raine. It’s all I can do to keep from pressing my lips to hers. I want to erase the questions I can’t answer, the worry, the doubt, but I know a kiss isn’t the way to do it. I bring my forehead to hers, my eyes closed, feeling the warmth of her skin, the warmth of her breath on my face. I can’t give her the answer she wants. “You have to go,” I whisper. “It’s not too late to make it to the meeting at Cece’s. You can’t risk it.”
She pulls back to look at me, searching my eyes. “Locke, what are you afraid of? Tell me the truth. I’ve trusted you. Why can’t you trust—”
“You should go, Raine. It’s getting late.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“That’s all.”
She stares at me, her jaw clenching. It’s not the answer she wanted. It’s an empty answer that holds no warmth, no future, and especially no trust. “You’re right. I should go. I’ve risked far too much already.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
“Of course. At the meeting.” Her voice is flat.
“Raine, don’t tell anyone about my accident. I don’t want it to get back to my father.”
“Right. The stairs and the cats.” She stands, suddenly in a hurry to leave. “I understand too well. I won’t say a word.”
I stand to walk her out. “No, don’t get up,” she says. “Don’t bother.”
“It’s no bother, Raine.” I grab her hand so she can’t leave without me walking her to the door.
Hap is already out and walking down the stairs ahead of her. She pulls her hand away from mine and pauses in the doorway. “It was nice of your mother to let me in. Tell her I said good-bye.”
My mother? “Oh. Sure.” I realize she means Jenna.
“She’s very young looking.”
My mind races, wondering how she could mistake Jenna for my mom, but I try to find a reasonable explanation for it. “Yeah, a lot of people say that. She’s had some work done.”
“I figured as much. But I can tell she’s a good mother. I always notice things like that. She has that air about her.”
Jenna? A motherly air? “You picked up a lot in just a few seconds.”
Her eyes narrow. “Yes. I did.”
I watch her walk down the stairway. Hap waits at the bottom watching both of us. When she’s halfway down I call to her, “Raine, one other thing—how did you figure out where I live? I never told you.”
She answers without looking back. “Hap told me.”
Facing Plan B
It’s already tomorrow. I watch the dim light that skirts the edges of my window shade grow brighter. I stared at my ceiling for half the night, trying to force my body to heal, trying to make it hurry. It seems like for the past year that’s all I’ve been doing. Trying to hurry.
It’s an irony that isn’t lost on me. I had too much time for so long, years, decades, even centuries when there was no hurrying, when time crept by so torturously slowly that I begged for an end to it all, and now it seems there’s never enough time. Hurry to get away from Gatsbro, hurry to warn Jenna, hurry to find Kara, hurry to live life, hurry to catch up. And now hurry because time is running out.
I roll to my side to get up and wince, my breath caught in my chest. I push up with my left arm, because my right is still too weak to use. I shuffle to the mirror. The outside is looking better, but the inside still feels like hell. Hurry. I hobble out to the kitchen, my bones and muscles feeling stiffer than the day before. Am I getting worse?
Jenna is surprised to see me up so early. She’s even more surprised when I pour myself a cup of coffee. “Lots of changes in just a short time,” she says.
I try to straighten out my right arm. “Too many changes.”
We ease into the morning slowly and once I’ve finished my first cup of coffee I begin telling her about Raine, explaining how I found out who she really is, and the kind of life she lives now with the Secretary.
“And she has no idea who her real parents are?”
“None. All she knows is that the Secretary saved her from some unknown Non-pacts who threw her in the trash.”
“And no idea who you are either.”
I shake my head.
Jenna sighs. “Poor girl. And I thought my life was a mess when I was her age.”
“She thought you were my mother. Can you believe that? She said you had a motherly ‘air’ about you.”
“Locke, I do have a motherly air. I’m a mother, after all.”
“I don’t see any air.”
“Maybe that’s because you’re not looking.”
She leaves to get the salves that Xavier brought during the night and begins preparing them at the kitchen counter. Whatever she used on me last time worked like a miracle, and I remember how Kara’s bloody blisters disappeared almost overnight. She dabs it on my lip and face and then changes the bandages, noting how much I’ve healed on the outside already. “Your BioPerfect is definitely more advanced than any Bio Gel I’ve ever seen. Some of the smaller cuts are already gone. But this might speed the others along.”
“What about the inside?”
“I can give you some pain meds, but your BioPerfect is on its own there as far as healing goes. Concentrate, Locke. It’s all connected, your thoughts, the biochips, and everything you want them to do. Put them on speed dial.”
I grin. Only Jenna would know that obsolete phrase. “Even the ribs?”
“Bioengineered with the blue goo?”
I nod.
“Then even the ribs.”
I spend the next couple of hours concentrating as Jenna suggested, and while I think I might be seeing some improvement, it’s still not fast enough. I promised everyone, including Raine, I’d be able to go to the meeting tonight.
By nine A.M. Livvy arrives, and a few minutes later, Carver and Xavier show up, both dressed in building maintenance uniforms. How many different kinds of uniforms do they have stashed away? They all acknowledge that I’m looking better, but when they watch me hobble from the kitchen into the other room like an old man, I see their faces drop.
“How are you possibly going to be able to go by tonight?” Livvy asks.
I have no idea, but I don’t see that I have any other choice. “I will,” I answer.
Carver lowers his shaking head into his hands. “This isn’t going to work.”
“We need to put it off another day,” Xavier says.
Carver looks up. “We can’t! We’re running out of time! We’ve got less than a week before the money’s gone forever and we still have no clue where Karden is!”
“Yes we do,” I say.
They stare at me, their attention focused. “On the old westbound track, about a hundred yards in, there’s another tunnel, one of those unofficial tunnels that doesn’t show up on any maps. There’s probably hundreds of them down there but I had a feeling about that one and I went down it. I had only gone another thirty yards or so when I sensed something.”
“Sensed what?” Livvy asks.
“Karden.”
“What? Did you see or hear him?”
I shake my head. “No, no, I just sensed him. I knew I was close. He was there, somewhere. I know it.”
Carver jumps up. “Sensed? Somewhere?” He throws his hands up in the air. “Is this what we brought you in for? So you could guess?”
Xavier stands too, shaking his head, rubbing his hand across his scarred cheek. “We need to rethink this.”
“You’re damn right we do. Maybe it’s time to go to Plan B. He still has an in with Raine. All he has to do is lure her away from that big ugly chunk of metal that’s always by her side, just long enough so we can grab her and then use her as a bargaining chip.”
Lure? No. We can’t go to Plan B. That one’s no longer an option for me. “Wait. You’re jumping to—”
“No. You wait.” Carver points his finger dangerously close to my face. “The clock is ticking. A minute after the money’s gone, Karden’s a dead man.”
Livvy nods in agreement.
“He’s right,” Xavier says. “We need to move on to—”
Jenna, who has remained quiet until now, steps forward. “You’re all assuming that Locke won’t be able to do what he says he’ll do. He knows the situation with Raine and the Secretary better than anyone right now. Would it really be wise to prematurely abandon one plan in favor of another that has no guarantee of working either?”
They still aren’t convinced. “Look at him,” Carver says. “He can barely walk.”
I stand. “I said I’d do it. I will. I get a little bit more information each day.” I tell them about reading LeGru’s lips and his going down there that night to prepare someone for scanning, and the faint red light that I saw in the distance, and the hum I heard.
“Why didn’t you tell us about that before?”
“I’m telling you now.”
Carver walks around the room rubbing the back of his neck like I’m directly causing a huge pain in it. He whirls to face me. “The end of the week. That’s it. Three days. If you don’t have a location by then, we go to Plan B.” He heads for the door and then turns. “And that’s assuming you pull it together by tonight and make it to the meeting. Those little bits you mentioned need to add up to something big soon.”
He leaves, his words bits and soon still hanging in the air. The room is quiet. Livvy sighs and goes to the kitchen looking for coffee. Like me, she didn’t sleep much last night. Is she lying awake at night seeing the likelihood of her children becoming sixth-generation Non-pacts?
Xavier clears his throat. “Do you mind?” he says to Jenna.
She pauses, studying Xavier for several uncomfortable seconds, and finally stands, turning to me. “We should change your bandages and reapply the salve in another hour. I’m going into the other room to call Allys and Kayla, and maybe get some rest.”
I nod and for the first time notice that Jenna’s probably as tired as any of us. I wonder if she’s slept at all in the past twenty-four hours.
She leaves but Xavier remains quiet.
“Go ahead,” I say. “Get it out. Everyone else has.”
He leans forward, his arms resting on his knees. “Just one question.”
One question. But not just. “Okay.”
“Why did you go? You were only supposed to get the location. You knew it was me who was supposed to go down into the tunnel.”
“Sometimes plans change. The unexpected happens.”
He stands and crosses the room, tilting the shutter blade to look out. “Yes, I suppose it does.” He looks back at me and finally smirks.
“And?”
“The first time I met you I thought would be my last. We get a lot of violators trying to Escape. You and that girl were no different. We give Escapees new IDs and send them on their way. Most I never see again. I like to think they make it somewhere but I never know for sure. I always tell them we don’t take repeats to scare them. I want them to try with everything they’ve got because this isn’t a place with a lot of second chances. Not even firsts.”
“Are you saying I’ve used up all my chances?”
“Not even close, kid. J
ust a simple statement. I never expected to see you again. I never expected that you’d be the one we’d ask to help us. I never expected that you and Raine—” He stops and snatches his maintenance hat from the table as he walks toward the door. “Let’s just say, the next time the unexpected happens, call me. We’re all running out of chances.”
Needing to Know
Jenna and Livvy work with me throughout the day, walking me, giving me time to rest, helping me practice going up and down the stairs, and of course, changing bandages. The oozing has mostly stopped thanks to Jenna’s skill, but more so than blood, there are still traces of the bright blue BioPerfect on the white bandage on my hip. Livvy tries not to act surprised but I see it in her eyes every time Jenna removes the bandage—blue evidence that I’m not one of them, but it doesn’t slow her down in helping me to move from one end of the apartment to the other.
As I try to walk without limping I remember how I was so cocky at Raine’s apartment that night—deftly slipping out of the room, sliding down the rope, learning the Secretary’s and LeGru’s secret plans, even heading off Hap with my smart-aleck cockroach excuse—and then heading down into the tunnels. Don’t let the enemy push you before you’re ready. But I’m not sure who was doing the pushing. I guess for that night at least, I did think I was immortal.
“Don’t hunch,” Livvy says. “Stand tall. It will help your ribs.”
I’m not feeling immortal now.
By afternoon Jenna has reapplied the salve four times. That and my BioPerfect are working. Clothing will cover most of my wounds and Jenna says she can cover the fainter ones on my face and hands with skin paint, which is like makeup, but a couple of deep gashes on my right hand and the gash on my lip and cheekbone will still show.
“You’ll have to make an excuse for those—or put off going for another day.”
I shake my head. “I’ll make an excuse.”
“A better one than cats and stairs, I hope,” she says, rolling her eyes.
Livvy raises her brows.
“Why don’t you go home, Livvy,” I say. “I’m doing better and I still have four hours before I have to go.” I lift my arms and smile, trying to convince myself as much as her. “Look at my progress. And Jenna’s here if anything comes up.”