The name echoed through my head, because it’s the only thing this guy could think about. I wanted to scream at him to stop already. I wanted to do a lot of things, including rip the tech sensors from my temples and grind them into Thane’s eyeballs.
I hated seeing what other people wanted most. I hated feeling their desperation, their desires, their absolute longing. And this guy only wanted one thing: his identity. His name carried power, and he was determined not to forget it.
My name is Cash, I am Cash; Cash, Cash, Cash.
I closed my eyes, hoping to speed the drain. The images still flashed through my head, and the bright lights from the vision-screen flickered on my eyelids. Watching inside my own mind was much worse, so I opened my eyes again.
Every second became agonizing. My skin felt like a prison, a fiery barrier I couldn’t escape.
A scream welled in my throat, but I didn’t let it take flight. It wouldn’t help, and I’d only come off looking weak. I ground my teeth together, praying the drain would end before I broke.
Finally, someone wearing filament-thin gloves ran their hands down my arms to my wrist restraints. I didn’t have the energy to raise my head, even though I knew I should. Because, above all, I had to pretend to be in love with my match.
Cannon applied the dissolvall to remove the perma-plaster, and my hand came free with a terrible squelching sound. Tears streamed down my face at the tender way he touched me, as if I were made of glass and might shatter at any moment. I was eternally grateful protocol said matches could touch each other; if I didn’t have Cannon to hold on to after a drain, I didn’t know how I’d survive.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered, wiping my tears. “They’ll think you’re weak.” He slipped a pair of gloves over my hands and smoothed my hair out of my face.
“Maybe I am.”
He smiled, and kindness and sympathy shone in his eyes. He shook his head, almost imperceptibly. I didn’t deserve a friend like him. More tears coated my cheeks now, mostly because I didn’t have to hide anything from him. Cannon has known about my touch-and-see talent for years. An overwhelming sense of gratitude filled me.
“Cannon—”
“Later, okay? Come on.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulders—something he always did after a drain—and led me toward the door.
Cash-my-name-is-Cash watched my every move. I tried to look away, but something in his gaze held me captive.
Pleading.
“You cannot help him,” Cannon said, his voice taking on that weird quality it did just before he spoke Seer. “No one can help Cash Allan Whiting.”
The full name of the diseased man rang in my ears. I stalled in the doorway, shock coating my other emotions.
“Trek’s brother.” I turned back in time to see a physician release his hands. He shot to a sitting position, turned toward the EOs raising their tasers, and held up one hand.
Even voiceless, he rendered them absolutely still. Without a verbal command, they sat, their faces blank, angular planes. No wonder he worked in the Evolutionary Rise. He probably labored to find that exact mutation that created such exceptional mind control.
Cash turned back to me, rubbing his throat along the silencers. He ripped them off with a gurgled yell.
I took a step back into the lab. I tried to remember if I’d heard an alarm recently signaling a breach in the tech barrier surrounding the city. Cash’s skin disfigurement could have only come from outside the wall. Wouldn’t I remember those screeching alarms? The warning to stay indoors? The long hours waiting to be notified it was safe to go outside again?
That’s what always happened after a barrier breach. Protocol dictated it.
Cash found my gaze and held it steady, as if we’d had this little staring contest before. I wanted to ask him what had gone wrong. Why he—Trek’s straight-laced older brother—had tried to leave the city. How long it had taken for the rash to form once he’d breached the wall.
I realized there hadn’t been an alarm. Which meant Cash knew how to get beyond the wall without setting it off. “Cash,” I said, desperate to say more but not sure how.
“Who?” Cannon asked, glancing at me as if he’d only just realized we weren’t alone.
“Don’t,” Cash rasped, looking at Cannon now. He wiped at the blood trickling down his neck. The rash disfiguring his skin came off.
Time slowed into thin ribbons. Both Cash and I stared at the redness now staining his hands, unable to speak or move. The scene split into an array of images, all competing for my attention. The crimson trickling down his neck; his skin the color of snow beneath the rash; his dark eyes blinking as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
I couldn’t believe it. Cannon pulled on my arm, bringing me back to the present. “Raine, let’s go.” He sounded terrified.
My legs wouldn’t move. Cash scraped his fingers down his face, leaving pure white tracks in the rash. Slow understanding registered in his eyes at the same time I realized the cold, hard fact: The rash wasn’t a rash at all.
Cash zeroed in on me again. “Don’t believe everything you hear, okay?”
The room unraveled, each piece spinning into splintered fibers and colors. Everything felt so cold, and all I could hear was “Don’t believe everything you hear, okay?” over and over again.
“Get her out of here.” Thane’s heated voice made the room refocus. I hadn’t seen him enter or materialize; he was suddenly just there. He stood over Cash, who was now crumpled down on the table. Blood oozed over the non-rash from a fresh wound on his forehead.
“Raine, please.” Cannon pulled on my arm again, and this time I let him lead me out of the lab.
Thane’s eyes—full of anger and … sorrow?—haunted me no matter how many steps I put between us.
The fury I could deal with. But seeing Thane exhibit anything that leaned toward human? It didn’t mesh.
* * *
Cannon squished onto the cot next to me, and I finally felt safe again. We were alone in the corner of the nocturnal lounge in the Medical Rise. Darkness covered my shame and kept Cannon from speaking.
That hot feeling eating at my insides—that guilt—was what kept me from telling anyone else about my ability. It’s why no one in genetics class knew what I could do. It’s why I could never touch Gunner skin-to-skin.
After a drain, Cannon always waited for me to start the conversation. This time wouldn’t be any different. That’s the best thing about Cannon. His steadiness. His unwavering friendship.
I inhaled deeply, finally calming the last tremor inside my belly. “Thank you.”
“Any time,” he murmured. He sounded half-asleep.
I nudged him with my shoulder. “Are you asleep?”
He flailed like I’d shoved him with all my strength. I laughed, and he laughed, and everything that had happened back in the lab didn’t matter.
“I was almost asleep,” he said in a playful voice. “Then you went and ruined it by speaking.”
“Oh, so sorry,” I said. “Go ahead and take your afternoon nap.”
He pushed himself up, sighing. “Can’t. Your physicians are wondering why you’re not home to take the post-drain meds.”
My smile faded as quickly as it had formed. I hated the post-drain haze. Sometimes it lasted a few hours, and sometimes a few days. But I let Cannon pull me off the cot. I clung to his hand with my gloved one as he wove through the nocturnal lounge.
He stopped short before exiting the Medical Rise. “It’s raining.”
“It’s pouring,” I responded automatically.
“Don’t melt,” he said, finishing our childhood game. He signaled to someone, and a clone came forward with a selection of rain slickers and umbrellas.
* * *
Back in our room, Vi slept with her back to me. Her shoulder gently rose and dipped with every breath. I wanted to kneel next to her bed and tell her everything, make her help me riddle out the pieces I couldn’t make sense of.
Of
course, I didn’t.
Instead, I sat on my bed with my back against the wall, every blanket I owned tucked up to my chin. Because of the two vials of icy meds the physicians had poured down my throat, I couldn’t get warm. My vision blurred along the edges. Every noise sounded amplified. All this combined into the typical post-drain haze.
Outside, the rain streamed down in sheets, separating my world into neat compartments of wet and dry. Right and wrong.
But nothing in my life could be so organized. The line went down the middle, with my dad (right) on one side and the Insiders (wrong) on the other. That much was true. But I crossed over the line every night, sometimes further than others. Sometimes I felt like I was walking on top of the line.
I wished I was strong enough to ignore the line completely. Never go back to the glass prison for dinner. Never let my dad tech me up and use me to suck wants from other people’s heads.
But the truth is, he protects me. Outside his small circle of physicians—and Thane, of course—he’s never told anyone, not even the General Director, about my ability. And that’s a direct violation of protocol. All talented Citizens have to register.
And I’m unregistered.
My mother begged my father to keep my talent a secret. At least that’s the story he tells. I like it. I like imagining my mom as my biggest champion. As the one to stand up to my dad—and win.
Because I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.
The rain pelting the glass reminded me of myself. Always beating against something, trying to find a different way to accomplish the goal. Dad believed in brainwashing to achieve peace and ensure survival. Centuries of success had proven him right.
Humanity emerged from the Great Episode as changed beings. Brainwashed beings, fighting against other brainwashed beings, with Thinkers at the helm. When the General Director—one step above my father in the hierarchy of union government—set up the Association to prevent the extinction of mankind, he began a whole new movement: the Darwinian Episode.
Darwin was an ancient scientist, but he taught a principle the General subscribed to: natural selection. No one could argue that some people who remained in the fragments of society possessed great talents.
The General Director believed those select people should lead the talentless. They had the means to do it. Mind control, voice power, adaptability to tech, even the ability to control the elements. Some people had evolved; others hadn’t. The General’s motto: “The strong lead the weak.”
The system worked. Under the leadership of the Thinkers, water supplies have been somewhat replenished. Forests are regrowing, leaving the charred remains from the fires beneath canopies of leaves. Air quality is on the rebound. People don’t travel anymore (and when they do, it’s with clean methods), instead remaining in the cities where they were born. They’re educated, classified, and expected to contribute to their society.
The Insiders’ main argument was that the human population had bounced back enough to take some control back from the Thinkers.
The Thinkers, naturally, disagreed. And therein lies the conflict of the Darwinian Episode. Regular people want some measure of power returned. The evolved Thinkers want to keep it all.
I wanted … I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted. Something different. Something less controlling.
A city without walls. Cannon told me once about his parents. He wasn’t supposed to tell, and he’d received a citation for it. But I’d just completed a particularly taxing drain. We’d gone to the Medical Rise, like always. Protected in the nocturnal lounge, he’d whispered secrets in my ear.
Words like, “My parents said the filters do nothing for our air. That if they went down, we’d be fine. That those suits the maintenance crews wear are just for show.”
Later, after he’d been cited, he’d told me that he’d made it up. That leaving Freedom was impossible. He didn’t quite go Seer, but almost.
I’d believed him. Leaving Freedom was impossible. It would kill me (if the drains didn’t do the job first). My mother had breached and died—providing all the proof I needed.
Yet Cash hadn’t died. He wasn’t even sick.
Which led to one question: Could I leave Freedom … and live?
Gunner
11.
Life seemed to move around me, independent of my body or my thoughts. I couldn’t remember telling myself to get up and shower, but I did it. Zenn and I ordered mountains of toast, as if bread and butter were the only items on our meal plans. Maybe on his, but by Monday morning I’d received three dietary notices. I’d have to file copious exception forms if I kept it up.
I forced my vanilla yogurt and granola with no nuts down a too-narrow throat so I wouldn’t get a citation. Zenn ate toast. And more toast. The guy probably went through two loaves of bread every day. I wondered what kind of clearance I needed to get a meal plan like his. When I asked, he said, “I’m a junior assistant.” He swallowed. “Informant status.”
Just like that. Like it meant nothing. Like he wasn’t turning in people left and right and up and down.
“It’s not what you think,” he said, reading my disgusted-yet-surprised expression. “It just means I have no privacy.”
“Big deal,” I said. “I have no privacy either. Do you know how many notices I got this weekend for eating thirty-two pieces of toast?”
Zenn licked butter from his fingers. “Thane’ll help you with your meal plan today.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Which was?”
“Oh, come on, Mr. Junior Assistant. Informant? No privacy?” I gestured between the two of us, as if we were exactly the same. But we weren’t. Not even close. Zenn had an easy charm about him, what with his sleeves rolled up and his hair all spiked. He’d been playing the protocol much longer than me—and winning.
“My voice wins me some points in the meal plan department too.”
“Your voice?”
Zenn stacked his plate in the recycler. “As I said, I don’t have any privacy. My friends don’t know that, but the big boys do.”
I opened my mouth to tell him he still hadn’t explained when sudden understanding bloomed in my mind. Zenn was a plant. By “friends” he meant “people They want me to monitor.”
“I’m sure you get it now.” Zenn checked something in his pocket and headed for the front door.
The yogurt wouldn’t slide down my throat, and I choked. “Are you—? I mean, am I—?”
He leaned against the doorframe. “Don’t worry, Gunn. We already know everything about you. And you’re right. You have no privacy either. The difference between you and other people is that you know it.” He pointed to my hoverboard, charging on the balcony. “Are you coming? School starts in ten.”
I stumbled after him, leaving the rest of my breakfast on the table. Privacy—I used to think average people had some measure of it. Of course, I hadn’t been average for a while, what with my genetics classes and winning the flight trials. It was only a matter of time before Director Hightower came calling. I guess I just didn’t realize that being nonaverage meant I had to live with a junior assistant, Informant status.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the message behind Zenn’s words. The guy never spoke without every word meaning something completely different from what he said, another talent he must’ve picked up from his years of playing both sides. Whoever was listening just heard idle chatter; I heard more. Much more.
When he told me not to worry, I worried.
When he told me They knew everything about me, he meant he was gathering intel for Them. On me.
When he said I had no privacy, I knew They wanted me to turn Informant in exchange for a few minutes of unmonitored time to myself.
The stigma of that bothered me. Part of me wanted a dietary plan of my own choosing. The other part wanted nothing to do with luring people into a false sense of friendship just to rat them out.
And there was the nasty question of who The
y could possibly want me to Inform on. Who did I know worth monitoring?
* * *
Thane’s office under the Monday noon light felt suffocating. I didn’t spend any time basking in the sun—a direct violation of protocol—but Thane had his curtains thrown open. This time the cabinet beside the door flickered with projections. Thane stood with his hands buckled behind his back, looking out the window at the city of Freedom. The gold ring glittered on the middle finger of his left hand.
The air here went down like dirty water—and smelled just as stagnant.
I paused just inside the door, not sure if I should speak or tiptoe back out. Interrupting Thane’s power trip didn’t seem like a good idea—especially after I tasted the blatant disdain emanating from him.
“Ah, Gunner,” Thane said, without turning. “Sit, and let’s go over your new schedule.”
I sat. Thane turned and slithered into his desk chair. “You’ll have two training sessions each weekday. One right here in my office, in which we’ll discuss voice practicalities and useful ethics, and one—”
My mind stalled on “useful ethics.” What did that mean?
“—in the field, where you’ll demonstrate what you’ve learned here.”
I immediately forgot about ethics as the word “demonstrate” filled my ears with a roar. I stared at Thane, who wore something between a frown and a smile.
“Let’s get started, shall we?”
Uh, hell no, I thought. But “sure” came out of my mouth.
“Your first task is very simple. I want you to compel me to hurt myself.”
I folded myself further into the ergonomic, fear/shock/denial working its way through my bloodstream. Okay, and maybe a little spark of excitement. Thane could use some bloodying up.
But compel him? That sounded so strong. So forceful. I’d always used my voice to get perks, like girls’ private cache codes and extra flying hours on the hoverboard track.
“I—I … can’t—”
Thane swept away my stammer with a jab of his hand. “You can. And you will. Just do it.”