Another breath.
“Someone you care about will wish you’d come out to greet me.” I look at the time on my goggles. “It’s five past midnight. I’ll give you two minutes. Then I leave.”
The alley falls silent again. Every now and then, I hear another faint breath from the loudspeakers. My eyes shift from the time on my visor to the shadows of the roofs. He’s clever. I can’t tell where he’s broadcasting from. It could be on this street—it could be several blocks down, from a higher floor. But I know he’s close enough to see me himself.
The time on my visor shows 0007 HOURS. I turn, tuck the vial back onto my belt, and start to walk away.
“What do you want for the cure, cousin?”
The voice is barely a whisper, but through the speakers it sounds broken and startling, so crackly that I have trouble understanding him. Details race instantly through my mind. (Male. He has a light accent—he’s not from Oregon or Nevada or Arizona or New Mexico or West Texas or any other Republic state. Native Southern Californian. He uses the familiar term cousin, something Lake sector civilians often use. He’s close enough to have seen me put the vial away. He’s not so close that the speakers can catch his voice clearly. He must be on an adjacent block with a good vantage point—a high floor.)
Behind the details flashing through my mind emerges a black, rising hatred. This is the voice of my brother’s murderer. This may have been the last voice my brother heard.
I wait two seconds before speaking again. When I do, my voice is smooth and calm and shows no sign of my rage. “What do I want?” I ask him. “It depends. Do you have money?”
“Twelve hundred Notes.”
(Notes, not Republic gold. He robs the upper class but doesn’t have the ability to rob the extremely wealthy. He’s probably a one-man operation.) I laugh. “Twelve hundred Notes can’t buy you this vial. What else do you have? Valuables? Jewelry?”
Silence.
“Or do you have skills to offer, as I’m sure you do—”
“I don’t work for the government.”
His weak point. Naturally. “No offense. Just thought I’d ask. And how do you know I don’t work for someone else? Don’t you think you’re giving the government too much credit?”
A slight pause. Then the voice comes back. “Your cloak knot. Don’t know what it is, but it sure doesn’t look civilian.”
This surprises me a little. My cloak knot is indeed a Canto knot, a sturdy knot that military officials like to use. Apparently Day has some detailed knowledge of how government uniforms look. Impressive eye. I’m quick to cover up my hesitation. “Good to find another person who knows what a Canto knot is. But I travel a lot, my friend. I see and know a lot of people, people who I might not be affiliated with.”
Silence.
I wait, listening for another breath over the speakers. Nothing. Not even a click. I didn’t act fast enough, and the brief hesitation in my voice was enough to convince him that he couldn’t trust me. I tighten the cloak around me and realize that I’ve started to sweat in the warmth of the night. My heart hammers against my chest.
Another voice sounds in my head. This time it comes from my tiny earpiece. “Are you there, Iparis?” It’s Commander Jameson. I can hear the buzz of other people in her office in the background.
“He left,” I whisper. “But he gave me clues.”
“Tipped him off about whom you work for, didn’t you? Well, it’s your first time on your own. I have the recordings at any rate. See you back at Batalla Hall.” Her rebuke stings a little. Before I can answer, the static cuts off.
I wait for another minute, just to be sure I hadn’t misread Day’s exit. Silence. I turn and start back down the alley. I’d wanted to tell Commander Jameson what the easiest solution would be—to simply round up everyone in the Lake sector whose doors are marked. That would draw Day out of hiding. But I can already hear Commander Jameson’s retort. Absolutely not, Iparis. It’s far too expensive, and headquarters won’t approve. You’ll have to think of something else. I glance back once, half expecting to see a black-clad figure following me. But the alley is empty.
I won’t be allowed to force Day to come to me—which leaves me only one option. I’ll have to go to him.
“EAT SOMETHING, YEAH?”
Tess’s voice shakes me out of my vigil. I look away from the lake to see her holding out a piece of bread and cheese, gesturing for me to take it. I should be hungry. I’ve only eaten half an apple since my encounter with the strange government agent last night. But somehow the bread and cheese—still fresh from the shop where Tess had traded a few precious Notes for it—doesn’t seem tempting.
I take it anyway. Far be it from me to waste perfectly good food, especially when we should be saving everything we have for plague meds.
Tess and I are sitting in the sand underneath a pier, at the part of the lake that crosses into our sector. We keep ourselves pressed as closely against the side of the bank as we can so idle soldiers and drunk workers above can’t see us past all the grass and rocks. We blend into the shadows. From where we sit, we can taste the salt in the air and see the lights of downtown Los Angeles reflected on the water. Ruins of older buildings dot the lake, buildings abandoned by business owners and residents when the floodwaters rose. Giant waterwheels and turbines churn along the water’s edge behind veils of smoke. This is probably my favorite view from our shabby, beautiful little Lake sector.
I take that back. It’s my favorite and least-favorite view. Because while the electric lights of downtown make for some nice sightseeing, I can also see the Trial stadium looming off in the east.
“You still have time,” Tess says to me. She scoots close enough for me to feel her bare arm against mine. Her hair smells like bread and cinnamon from the shop. “Probably a month or more. We’ll find plague medicine before then, I’m sure of it.”
For a girl with no family and no home, Tess is surprisingly optimistic. I try to smile for her sake. “Maybe,” I say. “Maybe the hospital will let down its guard after a couple weeks.” But in my heart I know better.
Earlier in the day, I risked a peek at my mother’s house. The strange X still marked the door. My mother and John seemed okay, at least strong enough to stand and walk around. But Eden . . . this time Eden was lying in bed with a cloth on his forehead. Even from a distance, I could tell that he’d already lost some weight. His skin looked wan, and his voice sounded weak and hoarse. When I met John later behind our house, he told me that Eden hadn’t eaten since the last time I came by. I reminded John to stay out of Eden’s room when he could. Who knows how this cracked plague is spreading. John warned me not to pull any more stunts, in case I get myself killed. I had to laugh at that. John won’t ever say it to my face, but I know that I am Eden’s only chance.
The plague might end Eden’s life before he even gets to take the Trial.
Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. Eden would never have to stand outside our door on his tenth birthday, waiting for a bus to take him to the Trial stadium. He’d never have to follow dozens of other children up the stadium stairs and into the inner circle, or run laps while Trial admins study his breathing and posture, or answer pages and pages of stupid multiple-choice questions, or survive an interview in front of a half circle of impatient officials. He’d never have to wait in one of several groups afterward, unsure which groups would return home and which group would be sent off to the so-called “labor camps.”
I don’t know. If worse came to worst, maybe the plague would be a more merciful way to go.
“Eden always gets sick, you know,” I say after a while. I take a large bite out of the bread and cheese. “He almost died once when he was a baby. He caught some kind of pox, and had fevers and rashes and cried nonstop for a week. The soldiers came close to marking our door. But it obviously wasn’t the plague, and no one else seemed to have it.” I shake my head. “John and I never got sick.”
Tess doesn’t smile this time. “Poor E
den.” After a pause, she continues. “I was pretty sick when you first met me. Remember how grimy I looked?”
Suddenly I feel guilty for talking about my problems so much over the last few days. At least I have a family to worry about. I put an arm around her shoulder. “Yeah, you looked pretty awful.”
Tess laughs, but her eyes stay focused on the downtown lights. She leans her head on my shoulder. It’s the way she’s leaned against me since the very first week I knew her, when I’d spotted her in an alley in Nima sector.
I still don’t know what made me stop and talk to her that afternoon. Maybe the heat had made me soft, or maybe I was just in a good mood because I’d found a restaurant that had thrown out an entire day’s worth of old sandwiches.
“Hey,” I called out to her.
Two more heads popped up out of the garbage bin. I flinched in surprise. Two of them, an older woman and a teenage boy, immediately scrambled out of the mess and ran down the alley. The third, a girl who couldn’t have been more than ten years old, stayed where she was, trembling when she saw me. She was skinny as a rail, with a tattered shirt and trousers. Her hair was short and blunt, cut off abruptly right below her chin, and red in the sunlight.
I waited for a moment, not wanting to scare her like I had the others. “Hey,” I said again, “mind if I join you?”
She stared back at me without a word. I could barely make out her face because of all the soot on it.
When she didn’t reply, I shrugged and started walking toward her. Maybe I could salvage something useful from the bin.
The instant I got within ten feet of the girl, she let out a strangled cry and darted away. She ran so fast that she tripped, falling onto the asphalt on her hands and knees. I limped over to her. My old knee injury was worse back then—and I can remember stumbling in my rush. “Hey!” I said. “Are you all right?”
She jerked away and held up her scratched hands to shield her face. “Please,” she said. “Please, please.”
“Please what?” Then I sighed, embarrassed by my irritation. Already I could see tears welling up in her eyes. “Stop crying. I’m not going to hurt you.” I knelt down beside her. At first she whimpered and started to crawl away, but when I didn’t move, she paused to stare at me. Both of her knees had the skin ripped right off them, and the flesh underneath was scarlet and raw.
“You live close by?” I asked her.
She nodded. Then, as if she had remembered something, she shook her head. “No,” she said.
“Can I help you get home?”
“I don’t have a home.”
“You don’t? Where are your parents?”
She shook her head again. I sighed and dropped my canvas bag to the ground, then held out a hand to her. “Come on,” I said. “You don’t want two infected knees. I’ll help you clean them up and then you can be on your way again. You can have some of my food too. Pretty good deal, right?”
It took her a long time to put her hand in mine. “Okay,” she whispered, so softly that I could barely hear her.
That night, we camped out behind a pawn shop that had a pair of old chairs and a ripped-up couch lying in its alley. I cleaned the girl’s knees with alcohol stolen from a bar, letting her bite down on a rag so she wouldn’t shriek and draw attention to us. Other than when I was tending to her scrapes, she never let me get near her. Whenever my hand accidentally brushed her hair or bumped her arm, she would flinch as if burned by steam from a kettle. Finally I just gave up trying to talk to her. I let her have the couch, while I laid out my shirt as a pillow and tried to get comfortable on the pavement.
“If you want to leave in the morning, just go,” I said to her. “You don’t have to wake me up or say good-bye or anything.” My eyelids were growing heavy, but she stayed wide awake, staring unblinkingly at me, even as I fell asleep.
She was still there in the morning. She followed me around as I scavenged in garbage bins, picking out old clothes and edible bits of leftover food. I tried asking her to leave. I even tried shouting at her. An orphan would be a huge inconvenience. But although I made her cry a few times, when I looked over my shoulder she’d still be there, trailing me a short distance away.
Two nights later, as we sat together by a crude fire, she finally spoke to me. “My name is Tess,” she whispered. Then she studied my face, like she wanted to guess my reaction.
I only shrugged. “Good to know,” I said.
And that was that.
Tess bolts out of her sleep. Her arm whacks my head.
“Ouch,” I mutter as I rub my forehead. Pain runs through my healing arm, and I hear the silver bullets Tess took from my clothes clink together in my pocket. “If you wanted me to wake up, you could’ve just tapped me.”
She holds a finger up to her lips. Now I’m on the alert. We’re still sitting underneath the pier, but it’s probably a couple hours before dawn, and the skyline has already gone dark. The only light comes from several antique streetlamps lining the edge of the lake. I glance at Tess. Her eyes glint in the darkness.
“Did you hear something?” she whispers.
I frown. Usually I can hear something suspicious before Tess does, but this time I hear nothing at all. We both stay still for a long moment. I hear the occasional lap of waves. The churning sound of metal pushing water. Now and then, a passing car.
I look at Tess again. “What did you hear the first time?”
“It sounded like . . . something gurgling,” she whispers.
Before I can think much about it, I hear footsteps and then a voice approaching the pier above us. We both shrink farther into the shadows. It’s a man’s voice, and his footsteps sound oddly heavy. I realize a second later that the man is walking in step with someone else. A pair of street police.
I push myself farther back against the bank, and some of the loose dirt and rocks give way. They roll silently down into the sand. I keep pushing until my back hits a surface that’s hard and smooth. Tess does the same.
“There’s something brewing,” one of the police says. “Plague’s popped up in the Zein sector this time.”
Their footsteps clomp overhead and I see their figures walk along the beginning of the pier. Off in the distance, the first signs of light are turning the horizon a murky gray.
“I’ve never heard of the plague showing up there.”
“Must be a stronger strain.”
“What are they going to do?”
I try to hear what the other policeman has to say, but by now the two have walked far enough that their voices have turned to murmurs. I take a deep breath. The Zein sector is a good thirty miles away from here—but what if the strange red mark on my mother’s door means that they’re infected with this new strain? And what will the Elector do about it?
“Day,” Tess whispers.
I look at her. She turns against the bank so that her back now faces out toward the lake. She points at the deep indent we’ve made in the bank. When I turn around, I see what she’s pointing to.
The hard surface I’d had my back against is actually a sheet of metal. When I brush away more of the rocks and dirt, I see that the metal is lodged deep in the bank, so that it’s probably what’s holding the bank up in the first place. I squint at the surface.
Tess looks at me. “It’s hollow.”
“Hollow?” I put my ear against the ice-cold metal. A wave of noise hits me—the gurgling and hissing sound that Tess heard earlier. This isn’t just a metal structure to hold up the lake’s shores. When I pull away from it and look closer at the metal, I notice symbols carved on its surface.
One of these is the Republic’s flag, imprinted faintly against the metal. Another is a small red number:
318
“I SHOULD BE THE ONE GOING OUT THERE. NOT YOU.”
I grit my teeth and try not to look at Thomas. His words could have come right out of Metias’s mouth. “I’ll look less suspicious than you,” I reply. “People may find it easier to trust me.” We’re stan
ding in front of a window in Batalla Hall’s north wing, watching Commander Jameson at work on the other side of the glass. Today they caught a spy from the Colonies who was secretly spreading propaganda about “how the Republic is lying to you!” Spies are usually shipped out to Denver, but if they’re caught in a big city like Los Angeles, we take them before the capital does. He’s dangling upside down in the interrogation room right now. Commander Jameson has a pair of scissors in her hand.
I tilt my head a little as I look at the spy. I already hate him as much as I hate anything about the Colonies—he’s not affiliated with the Patriots, that’s for sure, but that just makes him more of a coward. (So far, every Patriot we’ve hunted down has killed himself before getting taken in.) This spy’s young, probably in his late twenties. About the same age my brother was. I’m slowly growing used to talking about Metias in past tense.
From the corner of my eye, I can see that Thomas is still looking at me. Commander Jameson officially promoted him to fill my brother’s position, but Thomas has little power over what I choose to do on this test mission, and it drives him crazy. He would have balked at letting me go undercover in the Lake sector for days on end, without a pair of strong backups and a team to follow me.
But it’s going to happen anyway, starting tomorrow morning.
“Look. Don’t worry about me.” Through the glass, I see the spy arch his back in agony. “I can take care of myself. Day isn’t a fool—if I have a team following me through the city, he’ll notice it in no time.”
Thomas turns back to the interrogation. “I know you’re good at what you do,” he replies. I wait for the but . . . in his sentence. It doesn’t come. “Just keep your microphone on. I’ll take care of things back here.”
I smile at him. “Thanks.” He doesn’t look back at me, but I can see his lips tilt up at the edges. Maybe he’s remembering when I used to tag along after him and Metias, asking them inane questions about how the military worked.