“Throw it!” he shouted over the other voices in the room, all issuing locations to their ascender rings. “Catcha later!” He launched his ball straight at the floor, where a blue ring grew. He stepped inside and said, “Camp A, tent seven fourteen.”
And then he winked away in a shower of royal-blue light. Around me, people disappeared in red and orange sparks.
I pinched the disc between my fingers, then chucked it at my feet. A vibrant green circle appeared. Once inside, I tucked my board under my arm and simply said, “Roof.”
I hated traveling in any way besides flying and walking. But now only green existed in my world. Blinding, dizzying, puke-inducing green, as my particles disassembled and reassembled on the roof.
Finally the cold winter air pierced my lungs. I dropped my board, saying, “Unfold. Power level ten.” I used my most authoritative voice. Before I could draw another breath, the hoverboard grew to its full length, vibrating with the best tech complete obedience will buy.
The alley below burned with the brightest tech-lights I’d ever seen. Raine bathed in them, clearly in need of help.
Fear almost forced me onto my waiting hovercraft. I couldn’t fly away, but I couldn’t afford to get caught out after curfew five hours before reporting to “fulfill my duty” either.
Raine shifted, taking one tiny step backward, while I seriously considered leaving her.
The barely contained worry filtering from the alley told me that Raine wasn’t as calm as she looked. One more step backward…
I couldn’t just turn tail and leave. I swallowed hard against the memory of the Director’s words on that blasted memory—you won’t be able to see him again—wishing I’d never watched it.
Raine took another step backward. “I think I left my board in the alley.”
She needed a hoverboard, and I had one.
“Slow descent,” I whispered, urging my board over the shallow lip of the roof and down into the alley. “Hover, six inches.”
Raine had mad skills on a hoverboard, so she’d be able to fly mine, even with its tricked-out features. Below me, her sheet of blond hair spilled over her shoulders. She hadn’t put her hat back on, another black mark on her record. When my board sliced the tension between her and the Director, I ducked, using the shallow wall on the roof to conceal myself.
Raine’s almost maniacal laughter interrupted the hysteria gathering in the back of my throat. “Here it is. So, can I go practice?”
I didn’t hear Director Hightower’s response, but the lights below me dimmed as he packed up his goonies and left.
Raine leapt onto my board and became a smudge against the winter sky. I ran along the roof and jumped the narrow gap between buildings, following her. She couldn’t have my board, no matter how beautiful she was.
I almost took a header into a flight of stairs watching her navigate, though she did seem to be having a bit of trouble steadying my board. In order to keep from maiming myself, I focused on the obstacles on each rooftop.
At least until Raine slipped from the board.
Gravity. Super.
My board hovered there, as if she’d given it a command to remain unresponsive. She raked her hands across it, shedding her gloves in an attempt to stay airborne. I launched myself over the rooftop wall, groping for her hands as she slid off the board completely.
She actually pulled her hands away. Our eyes met before the distance between us widened as she dropped.
“Rescue!” I shouted to her retreating form. My hoverboard zoomed down, obeying my command, and managed to catch Raine, slow her fall. But she still crashed into the ground with enough force to render her unconscious.
“Rise, half power.” I stepped onto my board and descended to Raine’s still form. She wouldn’t wake up. She looked peaceful, the lines around her eyes smoothed with the release of her cares. Her mouth hung open a little, and I imagined—not for the first time—what she might taste like.
Listen, voice-wonder, reign yourself in when you’re on the cache, all right? Trek said in my head. Raine’s like, my sister or something.
Raine’s no one’s sister, I chatted back, my fingers itching to touch her hair. But I kept my hands to myself.
Aren’t you matched to Starr? Trek didn’t wait for me to answer before he continued. You have maybe five minutes before spider surveillance arrives at your location. Wake her up.
I shook her shoulder, said, “Raine, wake up.” Nothing.
I’ve located a spare board. You guys pretty much have one choice—the sky. Wake her up!
Where’s the board?
En route now, flyboy. Trek didn’t even try to hide his annoyance.
Shut the hell up.
Trek laughed and chatted, Use your voice.
But I didn’t want to. I absolutely hated using my voice to get what I wanted. Even when what I wanted was right, needed, essential.
I nudged Raine again. She didn’t wake up. Calling her name repeatedly just filled the sky with words, creating a deliberate target for the spiders Trek had said were coming in, what? Five minutes? My pulse bounced in my throat; my hands shook as I all but slapped Raine, trying to get her to wake up.
Incoming spiders, ninety seconds. Trek’s laughter had disappeared. Use the damn voice, Gunner.
Ninety seconds. Super. Sighing, and with no other choice, I employed my voice. “Wake up immediately.”
Raine
4.
Vi’s hair had grown in the past few months. It almost brushed her shoulders now and fell in filament-straight layers of plain brown. I’d never told her about hair enhancements and how she could have blue or green or so-black-it’s-blue (like she used to) with a simple word and the right technology. In this case, a hair enhancement wand. Mine currently sat mostly unused under my bathroom sink. Because of this, my choice points were multiplying.
In Freedom, students earned points for hard work and good performance, compliance, and respectful behavior in school. We used our points to get coffee on the way to class, change our hair color, or sometimes, if points were saved long enough, students could skip a class period, no questions asked.
I almost had enough points to get out of calculations for one day, and that was only because I hadn’t changed my hair color in eight months.
But I didn’t tell Vi about choice points, let alone the enhancement wand. Not because I didn’t want her to have freakishly cool hair. I remembered marveling at hers when she’d been brought in. No, I didn’t tell her because my brief-sheet said not to.
And I follow all protocol concerning Vi, even the items that would’ve been easy to break. Following protocol gave me power. And the Insiders needed as much power as possible when it came to Vi.
My dad wanted her. Even without any empath genes, I could see the hunger in his eyes when he looked at her. Which meant one thing: She could help him get what he wanted. Dad didn’t like anyone. He only liked what they could do for him.
Since my dad wanted her, the Insiders monitored her closely. My reports had been nothing but “still brainwashed” for months. Whatever Dad wanted Vi for, I wasn’t any closer to finding out.
Another problem with the inability to share hair enhancements with Vi was that I was stuck with the enhancement I’d had the day she became my flatmate. So I’ve had hair the color of snow, cascading down my back like some stupid frozen waterfall, for the past eight months. It could’ve been worse—the day before she came I’d set my hair on lime green, and it clashed horribly with my normal not-neon-green eyes.
I also didn’t tell Vi about advanced meal planning. She ate the same thing—limp veggies and protein packets—every single day. Sure, Zenn brought toast and hot chocolate in the morning, but my reports said he had authorization to deviate from the meal plan.
I did not.
So I didn’t say anything.
She caught me eating once, about a month ago. I’d usually eaten and had moved on to schoolwork before she returned from her session with Thane. But
that night I’d been running late. I’d just shoveled a forkful of food into my mouth when she said, “Raine?”
After swallowing, I looked up. “Yeah?”
An invisible layer peeled away from her face. She stared at my plate. “What are you eating?”
“Mashed potatoes and ham.”
“Ham?” The word sat in her throat the right way, like she’d said it before. Vi screwed up her mouth, like she’d tasted ham in the past.
But she hadn’t.
According to my brief-sheet, Vi was a vegetarian. Had been her whole life.
She didn’t say anything else, but that layer, that thin film of control, had been erased. It never did come back.
* * *
The voice commanding me to wake up filled my soul, my limbs, my very existence with sound. I had no choice but to comply. Even though I wanted to stay in the endless darkness, I simply couldn’t disobey a direct order when it was spoken with that kind of control.
And so I opened my eyes.
To the stunning beauty of Gunner Jameson’s face. Worry clung to his eyes, and he held me with his piercing gaze for three agonizing heartbeats.
“You okay, Hightower?” he asked, his voice back to normal. “We’ve gotta jet.”
I reached up to touch a stinging spot on my head. My fingers came away sticky, but that wasn’t the real reason for the balloon of panic swelling inside. “Where are my gloves?”
“You lost them,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if he was more upset about my injuries or his hovercraft. Probably the latter, especially the way he was now examining it.
He cast a glance over his shoulder and his mouth moved, but all I heard was, You lost them.
No gloves. No, no, no. “I—need—” I sat up, trying to reason through the rush of sound in my head.
Gunn put his hand on my shoulder as if to push me back down. I recoiled violently. He couldn’t touch me. I didn’t want to see the consequences of that.
“She’s all freaky,” Gunn said out loud, though it was clear he had a cache-convo going on. “She said she needs something.”
“Gloves,” I blurted.
“Gloves,” Gunn repeated, skimming his gaze down my covered arms to my very bare hands. Then he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pair of black gloves. He held them out to me, and I snatched them by the dangling fingers so my skin wouldn’t touch his.
He watched me put them on with this ultrashady glint in his eye. “Looks like you’ve got something to tell me too,” he said, standing up and offering me his hand.
I let him help me. “Thanks for the board. That thing is tight.”
Gunn glanced at it hovering next to him. “I’ll spill first, if you want. But we only have about thirty seconds before spider arrival.”
“Did you trick that thing out?” I asked, eyeing his hoverboard. “Because I don’t think it knew what to do with me. I don’t usually fall.”
“Once we’re in the air, we can talk.” He handed me a hemal-recycler from his backpack.
I pressed the recycler to my forehead and felt the soothing coolness of advanced medical tech as it absorbed the blood. “Are you going to ignore everything I say?” This time his smile was easy to overlook.
“When you start listening to me, I’ll start listening to you.”
“I listen to you.”
“Sure you do.” Gunner watched me with an emotion I couldn’t quite place. Wonder? Frustration? Something. “You’re welcome, by the way. I’m glad you could use my board to pacify your dad. And yes, I tricked it out myself. What else did you ask? Am I going to ignore what you say?” He took a step toward me. “I hear every word.”
Looking into his eyes, I lost myself a little. I told myself it was because of his voice control, but he hadn’t used it—at least, I didn’t think he had.
“Hearing is different from listening,” I finally said, my voice hardly more than a gasp.
“Not to me,” he said. “So we each have some secrets. But our hideout—”
Get in the sky! Trek ordered, finally coming over the cache. And you two need to go mental. Incoming Officers down the alley behind you in, like, ten seconds. Gunn, the hoverboard is waiting at the corner.
Gunner was already sprinting toward the streetlight on the corner. I fell into stride beside him, thankful we’d met in the Blocks and not the tech canyons of the Rises.
Nice fall, he chatted, doing that sideways lookie-thing. Really graceful.
I smiled as wide as I could under the circumstances. I’ve been practicing that move for months.
He returned my grin, and the sight of that rare smile sent a strange warm tingle through me.
That’s when Cannon’s face bled behind my eyes. Even though he didn’t want to be my boyfriend, he wouldn’t be happy about Gunner’s involvement in my life. A forbidden relationship with a non-match meant trouble—for me and Cannon both. I’d send him a message tomorrow; he could help me construct my cover story. I’d helped him half a dozen times so he could sneak off and kiss other girls. He’d help me this one time with Gunner.
Before tonight Gunner was a prize the Insiders needed desperately, if only to keep him from doing too much damage once my dad got his hooks in him. But something new and weird had flowed between us back in that alley. And he’d saved me by sending his hoverboard. Another thing he probably shouldn’t have done.
He already belonged to Starr. So I casually stepped away from Gunner, just so he’d have to reach for me if he wanted to touch me. Which, of course, he didn’t. He always did the right thing. Well, until tonight.
The white beam of a surveillance scanner swept the street in front of us. We both stopped short. I held my breath, hoping against hope.
Then, “Citizens must surrender to search after curfew!” screamed through the empty streets. Footsteps pounded and spider legs scuttled on the pavement behind us.
Gunner
5.
“You look so much like your father,” Mom had said from the kitchen doorway a couple of months ago—our first and only convo about my dad. I hadn’t even turned around, since I’d felt her loitering behind me for the past ten seconds. She was feeling all nostalgic. Super.
I scanned my meager meal plan. An apple or an orange. I’d rather eat my dirty socks than a piece of fruit. But I ordered the orange. While it generated, I decided to push Mom a bit. “Tell me more about him.”
A large skylight in the ceiling let in plenty of natural light. She gazed up, as if my dad would somehow materialize there. Not that I would recognize him; I’d never met the man.
“He had hair the color of midnight,” she said, a dreamy tone in her voice. “And eyes like a sandstorm, filled with browns and golds.” She focused on me. “Just like you, Gunn.”
I peeled the orange, waiting for her to continue. When she didn’t, I said, “And?”
“And because of his brilliance, he was needed elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?” I tossed the peels in the recycler, hoping.
“The Director sent him to the Western Territories.” Her gaze rested on my hair. “Your hair is too long.” The light in her eyes was fading fast. She took a step away.
“Have you seen him since?”
She gazed at the skylight again. “You have his voice too.”
“What’s his name?” I asked, something I’ve never dared to bring up.
“His name …” Mom’s voice trailed off. She shook her head as if the name lingered there, but she couldn’t quite make it come out. Her sad smile confirmed that she didn’t know. Or had been made to forget.
When Raine had approached me about joining her Insiders, I’d declined because I didn’t want to leave my mom the way my dad had.
I didn’t want to be erased.
* * *
As Raine and I ran, the warning echoed around us, ricocheting against the pavement, the teched walls, my brain. The scratching of spider legs didn’t erase the words Don’t get caught, don’t get caught streaming through
my head.
At the corner, Raine leapt onto the waiting hoverboard just as I dropped mine. She disappeared into the night before I could holler, “I’ll catch up!”
“Activate, level ten,” I said. I cinched my pack as the hoverboard grew to its full length, vibrating and ready. Trek’s instructions were to get in the air and stay there. Any ground hideouts were out of the question—too easy to track.
We’d be spending the next five hours on ten-inch-wide hoverboards. I didn’t care. Those five hours belonged to me, and that’s all that mattered.
“Fly,” I commanded, jumping onto the board before it shot upward. I climbed to maximum height, needing to get the smell of coffee out of my nose, the color of Raine’s fingernails out of my eyes, the severity of my situation out of my mind.
Behind me, a perimeter of light marked the area the Enforcement Officers would search. Raine and I had already crossed the line. We wouldn’t be found. Not in the next five hours, anyway.
I aimed my board toward the camps, as per Trek’s coordinates. Four winter camps blanketed the western side of Freedom. Orange flags in the center of each camp marked the inner oval of the hoverboard track.
It held a streak of white-blond hair. Blurred green lights crested the northern curve and headed south—fast. I kept my board high in the air, unwilling to intrude on her late-night/early-morning practice session.
“Half power,” I whispered to my board, and the fans quieted. “Stay at this altitude. Don’t drop me.”
I settled into the most comfortable position possible on the unforgiving hoverboard, deactivated my cache to fully disconnect. As a technopath, I could go dark periodically without penalty. With everything finally silent, I watched Raine’s green lights go around and around.
My thoughts wandered to the flight trials, which were held every September. The girls had flown first. When Raine had won, I couldn’t stop applauding.
My hands itched to start clapping again. I smiled just thinking about flying next to her. “I can’t believe she watches my memory,” I said. “What does she see on it that she likes? The flying? Or me?”