Jag still sat on the closed toilet seat, the notebook gripped in his hands. “Hey,” I hissed. “How do I get out of here?” I wiggled my fingers through the bars to show him I was free.
His eyes widened as he dropped the notebook. “How did you . . . ?”
I growled. In Vi-talk, that means, Really? I don’t have time to explain.
Good thing Jag understood Vi-talk. He glanced at the guard, still talking to Baldie. “Go down those stairs at the end of the hall. There’re no prisoners in Ward C. No guards.” His eyes sparkled the same way they did in the pictures, like he was thrilled. For a brief moment, his fingers lingered on mine. Then I ran.
I flew down the stairs like they were already moving, my soft sneakers hardly making a sound. Ward C loomed dark and empty. Halfway down the first corridor, footsteps boomed behind me on the stairs. I made it to the end of the row, stopped, leaned against the wall, and tried to quiet my rising panic.
Which was pretty much impossible.
I could hide from the human guards. Mechs would cause more of a problem as they can sense body heat.
When the guards had run further downstairs, I took several deep breaths and found the showers. They were in a circular room with twenty faucets, just like Ward D. I turned the water on cold on every showerhead. The icy spray made my breath catch, and I shivered at the thought of cold-water torture. But Mechs had to be able to detect a distinct difference in temperature to locate a human, so it was self-inflicted freezing or getting caught. Plus, I had no idea where to go next, and I needed a minute to collect my thoughts.
I chose a spot in the middle of the chamber where the least amount of water sprayed. The air around me frosted my throat and lungs. After only a minute, my body shook and my teeth chattered.
Minutes passed. Or maybe hours; I wasn’t counting. All I knew was that my skin was clammy and my insides felt like they’d been sucked into a glacier.
Yeah, the Mechs found me as I was still trying to figure out the next step of my lame escape plan. With frozen fingers, I managed to switch off the first four. Their shrieking alarms screamed, echoed, ratted me out to the whole world.
I couldn’t believe I’d tortured myself for no reason.
6.
Tyson disappeared a week before my twelfth birthday. Despite being barely fourteen, she’d been offered a job working with the water rangers, near the border of the Goodgrounds. My mother had been so happy, like everyone should be thrilled to have an early job with the wonderful water rangers.
Which is true, I guess. Rangers are the highest-ranking people in our society. There are different types of rangers, all at the top of their class, all supersmart, all well liked. I could never be a ranger. They’re the kind destined for greatness, you know? The kids who always get straight A’s without even trying. Popular, with parents who adore them. No, the rangers were not for me. But Ty? Yeah, Ty was born to be a water ranger.
And she loved it.
In the few months before her disappearance, she improved the tech purifying the water so much that a man came from the Institute. His skin was naturally dark, but he still wore the covering clothes and wide-brimmed hat. He spoke with an accent, yet every word burned in my ears.
In his lilting voice, the man told my mother what a wonderful daughter Ty was, and how proud she should be, and hey, maybe the Greenies would take her from school a few years early. My mother followed along, nodding and agreeing—until the taking-her-away part.
“I need my daughter,” she said, her expression suddenly stony. “My husband is gone, and I don’t have anyone else.”
I happened to be sitting in the room when she said it. The black-hearted man glanced at me. “You have another daughter right there.”
I hadn’t done anything wrong at that point in my life. I went to school, hung out with Zenn, skipped rocks in the lake—okay, that is against the rules, but everyone does it.
“I need both my daughters,” my mom said. The man spoke into old tech, something that recorded his voice so he could hear it later, and pressed a letter into my mom’s hand. Even at eleven years old, I knew that paper held something huge. Our communications are usually sent through e-comms.
She read it after he left, tears pouring down her cheeks. They came for Ty the next day.
Human guards—six of them—escorted me to the cell without allowing me to dry off. The thin prison garb clung to my body, and I was terrified it would be see-through. I wondered how I could cover myself in case Jag took a peek, which he surely would. He is a bad boy, after all. My mother told me all they want is sex. I didn’t know if that was true, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.
Before pushing me back in the cell, one of the taller guards tech-cuffed me—twice. The techtricity caused spots to appear in my vision.
“Hey!” I said. “How am I supposed to do anything with these things on?”
“I don’t know, girlie. Figure it out.” He glared down at me before turning to his buddies.
“My head rings for hours when those blasted Mechs go off,” another guard said as the group shuffled away.
“Me too. How long did it take to catch her? Thane will want an exact—”
Jag pressed his face against the bars, but the door had closed behind the guards, silencing the rest of the words.
“What’s up with you?” I asked.
Jag didn’t respond as he bent over to pick up the book he’d dropped.
My stomach growled, and I looked for the two trays of food that had been there before my pathetic escape attempt. They were gone.
“Great,” I mumbled as I sloshed over to the toilet and sat down on the lid. I checked to see if the wet uniform was transparent. It wasn’t, thankfully.
“Vi, I’ve never met anyone who can get out of tech-cuffs. That was wicked awesome.” He smiled—one of his Jag-winners.
“I got caught, didn’t I?” And I didn’t know how I’d gotten those tech-cuffs to break. Soap and water shouldn’t have been enough. A cold prickle crept over my skin, like someone was watching me. I glanced around, through the bars, up to the ceiling. But there was only Jag.
“Yeah, but tech-cuffs!” He took a step closer, eager to hear the story. “And you’ve been gone for, like, two hours.”
I shook the creepy feeling away, focusing on Jag’s face instead. “Yeah, and I’m soaking wet. And freezing cold. How long until dinner?”
“Coupla hours.”
I groaned with disappointment. “I’m starving.”
“Sorry. They took your food without asking my permission.”
“I’m sure they did.” His chill attitude bugged me. Didn’t he wonder at all about why we were in here together? “Why are we still here? What do they need a week to plan for?”
He shrugged, not alarmed by my snarl that followed. He settled on his bed with that infernal book.
After I dried out, I joined him on the bed, resting my back against the smooth wall. He put his book down and looked at me, which I took as an open invitation to ask more questions.
“So how’d you know about Ward C?”
“I don’t read and nap every day. I’ve . . . done some exploring.”
“Meaning you’ve tried to escape,” I said.
“A few times.” He watched me, like I should do something with this information. But I didn’t know what.
“They brought me the books so I’d quit making life so difficult for them,” he said.
“Ah, so that’s all it takes to keep you in line. A pencil and a paper. Noted.”
He looked like he wanted to laugh, but he didn’t. “I make my own decisions,” he said, as if I didn’t know.
“I do too,” I shot back.
He leaned very close, his eyes flitting back and forth between mine. “That’s why they need a week to figure out what to do with us.” His voice carried an urgency I’d only heard from Zenn. And thinking of Zenn made my heart crack a little, made me realize Jag wasn’t my match and I shouldn’t get too attache
d to him.
I shifted away from Jag and wrestled with myself to find a new topic of conversation. “So tell me about your family,” I said, my voice only slightly strained.
His mouth tightened for a second before he told me about his older brother. Everything Jag knew, he’d learned from Pace. Every entrance to the Goodgrounds, every exit, every change in guard, every piece of tech the raiders used. The calming sound of his voice made my eyelids heavy.
When I woke up, Jag’s arm was coiled around me and my head rested against his chest. It rose and fell in an even pattern as he slept. I liked how his hand felt on my upper arm. Without moving, I closed my eyes again and tried to silence the screaming (You’re matched with Zenn!) in my brain.
Like that worked.
The smell of dinner preceded the food cart. I jumped up and pressed my forehead against the bars. The guard was moving so slow he could’ve been walking backward. I twisted my aching wrists in the tech-cuffs, willing him to hurry.
Jag let out a loud yawn and joined me.
“What is it?” I said, salivating. I would have eaten anything at that point, even though this meal smelled like the boiled cabbage my mother made.
“Must be ham tonight.”
“Ham?”
“Yeah, it’s meat.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t quite sure what meat was, but I didn’t want to admit it. I’d grown up on potatoes, carrots, beans, and anything else that grew in our garden. We supplemented our vegetable diet with vitamin and protein packets mixed in water.
The guard uncuffed me with a nasty glare. The release brought instant relief to my swollen wrists. I lightly traced the ugly rash that had formed while he pushed a tray through the slot.
Whatever ham is, it was delicious. The potatoes and carrots felt heavy and fibrous in my mouth, like they’d been grown in hydro-soil. The fizzy drink had already been mixed. Definitely vitamins, but they tasted stronger than the ones I’d had at home. Maybe because the water added its own flavor. And by flavor, I don’t mean something tasty. More like metal.
I ate everything in about three minutes. Jag stared at my empty tray and laughed. The sound made me happy. He created a calm inside I hadn’t experienced before. Not even with Zenn.
A pang of loneliness—and guilt—accompanied the thought of Zenn. For a minute I imagined how he’d looked in the park. His playful smile, his lifeless eyes. I pushed the memories away as I watched Jag eat. His tan hands and long, slender fingers moved methodically. Every bit of his brown skin glowed. The sun is supposed to drain a person of life, allow for more sicknesses, yet Jag appeared perfectly healthy. He radiated life like no one I’d ever met.
“Did you grow up bad?” I asked as he wrapped his bread in a napkin.
“Yeah. But I’m not really bad, you know. That’s what you guys call us. We’re really just like you.”
I thought about his comment for a long time. After he stashed his leftovers on the bookshelf and showed me how to play word games in his notebook, I still thought about it. Long after he fell asleep on the floor—very gracious to let me have the bed again—the thought of him not really being bad bounced around in my brain.
What if I had been born in the Badlands? Would I be a different person? Would I be bad instead of good? Who am I really? A Goodie or a Baddie? Can a person be both? Does it matter?
Of course it matters, the voice whispered. It matters very much.
I ignored the words, even though they rang true. The intrusive voice ignited a fire in my stomach. I hated having someone in my head. Hated the lack of privacy. Even worse, I hated that sometimes I agreed with the Thinker.
I never talked back to the voices, as that only seemed to encourage them to keep invading my head. But, hey, I break rules, even ones I make for myself. What do you want with me? I asked, thinking he surely wanted something. Something that took a week to plan.
Of course no one answered.
I’ll go to the Badlands, I thought. No problems, no fights. Promise.
But the thought of living in the Badlands terrified me, because I’d never see Zenn again. My heart thrummed faster, squeezing up into my throat until I couldn’t breathe. And not just because of Zenn, but because I didn’t think They’d really let me go to the Badlands. Not after my fine display of disobedience.
To calm myself, I rolled onto my side and watched Jag sleep. My pulse slowed, and the air became lighter. He was right—he wasn’t bad.
He was perfect.
Sometime later, Jag nudged me. I moaned and rolled over, right onto the cement floor. “Ow,” I groaned, wishing I could rub my shoulder, but I’d been recuffed before bed. They didn’t want me to “try anything bad” during the night. My shoulders burned, and stabbing pains arced up my arms from the techtricity.
“We’ve got another hearing,” he said, running the water in the sink and pulling his wet fingers through his hair to reform his spikes.
My throat turned dry. I was used to getting myself in trouble. But Jag? I didn’t want to be responsible for causing more problems for him.
“Do mine,” I said. He re-wet his hands and reached up, pausing when he saw my wrists.
His cool fingers traced along the cuffs. “Tech rash.” His voice held a knowing tone, like he wasn’t surprised the tech burned me. He finished my hair and I turned around.
“Nice.” He brushed his hand across my cheek. “You have such great hair.”
“You’re a freak about hair,” I said, turning away from him to examine my spikes in the mirror. I almost expected to see a trail on my cheek where he’d touched me. “Most people don’t even notice it, because of our hats and all.” That’s how I’d kept my new short do from my mom for almost two weeks. Zenn hadn’t said anything, he’d just raked his fingers through the short locks when I told him why I cut it.
“No hats in the Badlands,” Jag said. “Hair is like status there.”
“What does that mean?”
“Everyone will love yours. It means you’re like, the bad guy, you know? Except you’ll be the bad girl.” He stepped close enough for me to feel his body heat through the thin prison clothes. The charge of energy pulsed through me, a feeling of familiarity so strong, so overpowering, I almost asked him if we’d met somewhere before. But that was ridiculous. I’d never met a bad boy before.
“I don’t want to be bad,” I argued.
“Too late, Vi. You’re worse than me.”
I spun around, ramming into him with my shoulder. “Take that back.”
Face flushing, he stepped away.
“I am not bad,” I said.
“Okay, fine. You’re not bad.” He studied the cement floor. “But you really are,” he added under his breath. I might have taken a swing at his pretty-boy nose if I wasn’t double-cuffed. But three Mechs and no less than twelve heavily armed guards appeared, and I thought the timing was a little off.
The Mechs swiveled around me, one in front and one on each side. They were the switchless kind, way high-class, so I couldn’t turn them off without a decoder.
Jag walked ahead of me, uncuffed, with two guards next to him. The other guards clustered around me, their tasers activated, ready to fire if I so much as sneezed. Like a fifteen-year-old water girl could take down ten fully grown men with muscles and weapons.
We marched through the abandoned halls. We didn’t wait for the Greenies to call our names before entering the shiny courtroom, which was likewise empty.
Jag and I stood together, without Mech-reps. I’m sure this was a violation of my rights—oh wait, Goodies don’t have rights. We link to the transmissions, work the jobs we’re told, marry who They match us with. In return, we’re provided with a good life. Or so the Thinkers wanted us to believe.
The Thinkers had also brainwashed me to believe the Badlands were just that—bad. After talking with Jag, I wasn’t so sure. Again, I wondered if my dad had been banished. The Badlands couldn’t be awful if he was there.
A doctor hovered nearby, his eyes trai
ned on my wrists. He didn’t look surprised as he typed on an e-board and left.
Moments later, the Greenies swarmed through the door like vitamins fizzing in water. They buzzed among themselves, pointing at their p-screens. The middle Greenie entered last and sat in his previous spot. Even with bloodshot eyes and a stubbly chin, he radiated coldness.
“Remove her cuffs,” he said. The guard who moved to comply didn’t look happy about it. I sighed in relief at the release.
“Violet,” the middle Greenie said. “What are we going to do with you?’
“Do, sir?” I asked innocently.
Several Greenies exchanged looks and raised their eyebrows as if to say, Toldja about her heinous attitude.
The middle Greenie took a deep breath. “By order of Thane Myers, you must appear before the Association of Directors.”
I didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Didn’t understand.
“Who?” I asked at the same time the middle Greenie said, “You will both be implanted with tags.”
Tagged. Marked for life. In the Goodgrounds, that’s really, really bad. Every scanner, every reader, will pick up the tag. Alarms will wail. Everyone will know what you are. A loser. A criminal.
My future with Zenn faded into a white horizon, where I could hardly see it.
Jag stiffened next to me. “No way. You will not touch me with your Goodie tech crap.”
“You do not have a choice, Mr. Barque. You came here illegally, distributed contraband tech from the Badlands, and attempted to steal our technology.”
“I wanted to leave six weeks ago.”
“Six weeks?” I whispered. Jag ignored me, his cold blue eyes really frosty now. He and the middle Greenie seemed locked in a silent battle of wills.
“Perhaps. But you would have come back, with more of your Badlands hype. Now that you two are together, we have no other choice.”
My mind lingered on together, and what the middle Greenie meant by that. He’d put us together—did that mean we hadn’t done what he wanted? Or that we had?