“I mean, who can break tech?” he continued. “It’s wicked amazing. And I bet you used your gifts to get across the border too. I came back . . . I felt so bad . . . anyway. You know your abilities, so—”
“Actually, I don’t,” I said, disappointed that he hadn’t spilled any secrets. “I don’t have any abilities.” To cross the border, I’d fallen down a rocky hill and clawed my way up the other side. No special talents there.
“Sure you do. You can feel tech, for one. I’m sure you have others. I can sense them in you.”
“I don’t know what they are,” I said, wondering if those same things Jag could sense were written in my file. Was feeling and breaking tech a good enough reason for Thane to chase me to the ends of the earth?
“Pace has been gone for four years,” Jag said, the sound barely carrying across the small space between us. His breath shuddered through his chest. “I miss him.”
I understood his emotions for his brother. Because I felt the exact same way about Ty. It’s crushing, desperate, unwelcome—the loneliness that comes from losing a sibling. And even though Jag hadn’t said so, I knew he’d lost two brothers.
“He’s gone, and I’m all alone,” Jag whispered as tears coated his cheeks.
17.
Everything was screwed up. If my dad were here, he could fix it. Dad knew how to turn regret into something positive. He was smart, inventive, able to reason through problems like no one else. I ached for his advice, the same way Jag ached for his parents, for Pace.
When Jag’s sobs subsided, he turned away from me and folded the blanket.
This silence sucked. “So, what now?”
“I’m tired,” Jag said.
“And I’m still starving.”
He rummaged in the pack and tossed me a black-wrapped bar. A TravelTreat—a really old one. Before peeling back the wrapper, I wondered when he’d last replenished his hideout food supply. As soon as I bit into fruit and nut bar (disgusting), I knew it had been a very long time. But it tasted better than emptiness. Jag lay down while I crunched my way through the bar. He didn’t seem to be in a rush to go anywhere.
But I was. “We’re getting the hell out of here. I’m not living in the forest in a microscopic tree house.”
Jag smiled, but it didn’t carry its usual winning quality. “It’s better than prison.”
I snorted. “Marginally.”
Jag closed his eyes.
A lurch of panic hit my stomach. Was he seriously taking a nap? “We’re not safe here.”
“Probably not.”
“And that’s okay with you?” Where was the leader of the Resistance? I couldn’t make the Dream Jag who’d seemed so in charge mesh with this Melancholy Jag in front of me.
He opened his eyes. They had a spark back. Finally. “Of course not. What do you suggest?”
“Anything! Anything would be better than sitting here in the forest waiting to be caught.”
“You said that tag wasn’t activated.”
“That’s what Baldie said. But I don’t trust him, just like I don’t trust anyone.”
Jag’s mouth twitched with a tiny smile. “Not even me?”
I hesitated. Did I trust him? Could I? Jag opened his mouth, but I spoke first. “I trust you.”
“Took you long enough.”
“Sometimes you’re an—”
“We can control people,” Jag interrupted before I could get the insult out. “Whole cities of people. So yeah, we’re not safe. We’re wanted now—by Thane and his Association of Directors.”
I could control other people? I tried to work up enough saliva to swallow. I put my hand on my face, and it felt too hot. I sputtered when I realized I hadn’t been breathing.
Jag put his hand on my back. “You okay?”
Unable to speak, I nodded. The TravelTreat waged war with my insides. I didn’t want to run a city. I didn’t want to be in control of anyone.
“It’s duty or death,” Jag said, leaning back and closing his eyes. “Controlling people, I mean. That’s the world we live in. Duty or death.”
“So . . . you’re saying they want us dead or on their side.”
Jag shrugged, which I interpreted as a yes. He was right—both of those weren’t stellar options. No wonder Thane kept whispering in my head. At least I knew he didn’t want to kill me.
“So, uh, do you hear voices?” I asked.
His eyes snapped open. “No. Do you?”
I might have told him, if he didn’t look and sound like hearing voices was the absolute worst thing that could happen to a person. “No, no,” I said, maybe a little too quick. “I mean, I did in the Goodgrounds—sometimes—with all the transmissions floating in the air.” I hated lying to him, but I’d just spilled about the tag. I could tell him about the voice later. Much later.
“Well, let’s get out of here,” I said. “How far is Seaside?”
“Night is the safest time to travel. We should rest while we can. It’s a long walk to the oceanic region. Probably a couple of weeks.”
When I fell asleep that afternoon, I was thinking of Zenn trapped in the Special Forces compound. He should be coming with us. Smoke clouded my head, but not the kind from the Fire Region. This smoke swirled and turned blue, forming into people.
Zenn and I were walking. Little things weren’t right. The Abandoned Area loomed in front of us, which meant we were out of bounds. He wasn’t wearing his hat. Deep shadows bordered his eyes.
“You look tired,” I said as we walked through the premorning light.
He caught my hand in his on the next step. “I don’t sleep anymore.”
I glanced behind me, afraid that someone would see us touching. “Ever?”
He shook his head sadly. “If I sleep, I have to plug in. If I don’t . . .”
I nodded, a silent confession that I didn’t plug in anymore either. He’d stopped listening to the transmissions way before me. He’d still been chosen for the Special Forces. The way he glanced at me, the careful way he touched me, told me he still wanted to be with me.
Another memory awakened, but someone elbowed me before it could play out.
“Vi! Wake up,” Jag said.
Opening my eyes, I could only see white. “Holy tech overload.”
“Zenn’s here,” Jag whispered.
Silence pressed into my ears. The techtricity advanced slowly, causing bolts of lightning to ignite in my brain. I couldn’t see anything.
“Shoes,” Jag whispered, handing me my sneakers.
Blind, I pulled them on. “How do you know about Zenn?” I wondered if he’d tell me the truth—that he’s known Zenn for years.
“You were talking about him just now,” he said. “Something about the transmissions and the Forces.”
“How do you know he’s here?” Thankfully, my vision started to clear.
“Someone called his name.”
My heart leapt. “I’ll talk to him. He won’t hurt me.” I crawled toward the exit.
Jag seized my arm. “Yes, he will. He’s one of Them now.” His words carried a hint of bitterness. Obviously Zenn wasn’t a spy anymore, and part of me felt relief. At least he wouldn’t be in danger from playing both sides.
But if he was all good now, he’d do what he’d been trained to do—take out the Baddies. It didn’t matter that it was me—the first girl he’d kissed and his best friend for five years. After all, he hadn’t told me about working for Jag’s Resistance.
And the Special Forces trained the humanity out of a person. Even though he’d only been there a few months, the Zenn I’d walked with in the park had been different. A brainwashed different.
I needed to see him, talk to him. He could come west with us, be free from the Forces, become my Zenn again. “Is Zenn alone?” I asked Jag.
“No.” Jag helped me put the backpack on. He took both my hands in his. “We have to stay together. We have a better chance of surviving if we stay together.”
“What does tha
t—?” I began.
“Later. We’ve got to climb higher.”
“Higher?”
“Yeah.” He helped me with the backpack as it jammed against a limb. “All the way.”
So much of me wanted to go down, go to Zenn, especially since heights aren’t my thing. But up I went.
“That’s good,” Jag said after what felt like an hour of climbing.
“Where am I supposed to sit?” I gripped the branches so tightly the bark pierced my fingertips. If I fell, I’d kill the stupid bad boy for making me climb up here.
Jag scooted around the trunk of the tree. He sat on a branch and leaned back like he’d done this many times. I chose the limb slightly higher than his and nearly fell as I tried to shrug out of the backpack. Jag took it and looped a strap over a broken branch.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now we wait.”
Yeah, waiting isn’t my thing either.
“I think you better tell me everything,” he said. Even though I sat above him, his gaze penetrated the navy darkness. We’d been living in the dark so much, my eyes had grown used to seeing without light.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Come on.” He sighed. “Who Ty is, and Zenn, and just about you. I’ve told you everything—”
“Not true,” I interrupted.
“Everything about me,” Jag said, covering my protest, “and, well, bawled my eyes out, and you’ve only told me two sentences about your dad.”
Yeah, he hadn’t told me everything—at least not while awake. “I don’t like talking about myself.”
“Too damn bad.”
18.
Knowing where to start in my family history was tough. Everyone has memories they’d rather forget. I’d been screwed up for as long as I could remember, so I started at the beginning.
“My birthday is in three days—”
“Shut up,” Jag said.
“O-kay.”
“June sixteenth?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Mine too.” His voice carried a smile. “That’s so interesting,” he continued. “We have the same birthday.”
“Yeah, interesting,” I said, trying to figure out what he meant by “interesting.”
“Maybe that’s why They don’t want us together.”
I frowned. “But we were sentenced to go to the Association together. They had us living in the same cell.”
“Not together, together. I mean, together, like, um, dating.”
“Oh.” Together. Several minutes passed while I wrestled with the togetherness I wanted. And who I wanted it with.
“So you were born,” Jag prompted, bringing me out of the memory where he kissed me with the red light flashing behind us.
“Yeah. Ty is my older sister Tyson. She was like my dad. They knew tech, could invent it, improve it.” I told him about Ty’s talents with water and working with the rangers. About the man with the black hair. About how my mother hated me for not being Ty, and how we both hated the man for taking her away.
He remained quiet, even when my voice cracked. Even when I had to stop and wipe the silent tears away.
“And you got put in Ward D because you were . . . ?”
I cleared my throat. “Walking in the park with Zenn. After dark.”
“Ah, there’s the infamous Zenn.” Jag was asking how I felt about Zenn and making fun of the Goodie rules at the same time. He waited patiently for the answers. I tried to decide how many he’d need. Probably all of them.
So I started again. I told him about Zenn and our friendship. About my birthday presents, and the kiss last year. About the Special Forces, and not listening to the transmissions, and finally the walk in the park. I tried to keep how much I adored Zenn from infusing my voice.
Yeah, I failed, because Jag said, “So he’s your boyfriend.”
He definitely was. We’d been matched. Part of me still longed for that, so I shrugged, which Jag couldn’t see. A growl tore through his throat, which I interpreted as Jag-speak for, Damn, I’m in love with you.
Gathering my courage, I slid down to him. “Jag,” I said, facing him. “Zenn’s not my boyfriend.” The words hurt, but they were true. Whatever life I could’ve had with Zenn wasn’t available anymore. I found Jag’s hands in the dark and squeezed them. “I’m with someone else.”
“Anyone I know?”
“Just this guy with wicked cool hair.” I felt his smile permeate the distance between us.
“Still doesn’t explain why you got put in prison. Walking in the park after dark doesn’t sound like that big of a deal—even in the Goodgrounds.”
“You don’t know much, then.” I liked the way his hands felt in mine. His touch brought warmth and comfort, and all my secrets poured out of me.
Except for an occasional low chuckle, he didn’t interrupt as I spilled the details about my eight rule-breaking episodes.
“You’ve been bad for a very long time,” he said when I finished.
If that’s what he wanted to believe, why should I correct him?
Zenn floated nearer. In this dream, the smoke was nearly black. It shifted into a moving sidewalk that had been stilled. Zenn walked next to me, his hands clasped behind his back. The silence in the twilight came easy.
“Well, now that you’re here, I’ve got something for you,” he said, smiling.
I angled my body toward him. Zenn’s e-comm had said he had a surprise for me—surely something he’d tinkered with until it was absolutely perfect. Like he was.
“The Forces have kept me busy.” Zenn didn’t seem concerned about the circling hovercopters. “But we might not get to see each other again for a while.”
He reached out and wrapped his hand around mine. His touch sent fear pounding in my veins. What if someone saw us?
But he smiled, and on the next step our shoulders touched. The fear in my heart changed to anticipation. Zenn was my best friend, my match. I missed him like crazy, and I imagined the feel of his lips before they came.
“Nice,” he said after he pulled away, and it struck a familiar chord with me. The memory swam in my mind. I pushed away the blurred edges, trying to fight off the rising awareness.
“I made you something special for your birthday.” Zenn reached into his pocket. He grinned and held out his hand. A package half the size of my hand lay in his palm.
I took the gift. He’d wrapped it in green paper and written For my perfect match in his elegant scrawl. Those four words meant everything. He cupped my face in his palm as I stared at the paper. “Vi, I love—”
“You down there!” An electronic voice cut through Zenn’s throaty tone. I flinched and took a half step behind Zenn. A one-manned tech-craft, the hovercopter was invented especially for ruining lives. No one ever escapes from one.
Not even me.
“Hide that,” Zenn murmured.
As I knelt, something feathery touched my mind. A whispered word I couldn’t quite hear stole through my ears. I disregarded the transmission as I crammed something into the tiny pocket on the side of my shoe. Zenn had a hidden slot like this in his old shoes too. We’d sewn them in when we’d realized only our eyes, fingerprints, and IDs were scanned and no one ever paid attention to our feet.
I stood up and studied the hovercopter. On the bottom rudder, a red rose winked through the twilight. My breath shuddered through my throat—I’d been caught by this hovercopter before. Maybe since Zenn was a Forces recruit and had invited me here, I wouldn’t get in trouble.
Yeah, right.
Because he slowly took two steps away.
19.
“Come on, Vi, you’re safe now,” a smooth voice said in my ear. “Wake up, beautiful.”
“Jag?”
“No. We got him. He won’t bother you anymore.”
“Zenn!” I threw my arms around him and cried into his neck, just like I had the day he left. His hands pressed on my back, but he didn’t rub the way Jag did.
“Where
’s Jag?” I asked.
“Don’t worry. You’re safe.”
I wasn’t worried about myself. Jag’s words rushed through my mind. “We have to stay together. We have a better chance of surviving if we stay together.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
Zenn didn’t answer as he tied a rope around my waist. We shimmied down the tree in half the time it took to climb it.
When we landed, an entire squad of Special Forces waited with tasers—pointed at me. I glanced at Zenn.
He wore a black suit, to go with his Forces-issued haircut and stern frown.
“Vi!” Jag struggled against a pair of tech-cuffs.
Two SF agents were rummaging through our backpack, tossing the medical supplies onto the forest floor. “It’s not here,” one said.
“Then she’s still got it,” Zenn said.
“Got what?” I sidestepped, but Zenn’s hand shot out and gripped my left wrist. Fear hit my heart. He would feel the tag. SF agents are trained to feel and see and hear everything.
Sure enough, his fingers stalled on the miniscule bump. A smile formed on his face. “Tagged.”
“It’s not activated,” I said, yanking my hand out of his. I looked at Jag, and for the first time he looked truly scared. He shook his head, trying to tell me something. Sure, I knew Jag-speak, but I hadn’t graduated into the body language department yet.
“Where is it, Vi?” Zenn asked.
“Where is what, traitor?” My voice cracked.
“Don’t make me use my tech against you.”
“Like you used your mouth?”
He shifted uncomfortably. Zenn was one of Them—the ones who took Ty away. A government spy. I couldn’t believe it. He’d kissed me in the park! His e-comm had said how much he missed me, how he was trying to get me out of prison. He’d sent his love.
Disbelief blossomed into anger. Anger spiraled into full-fledged fury.
“Vi, please.”
“Please what?”
“Give me the tracker.”
My mouth dropped open and, “Tracker?” came out. No way was I carrying the tech that would broadcast my position to the world—something that would lead Thane right to me. No. Way.