As soon as the door opens, I can hear the click-flap of metallic wings. I duck into a public restroom, slapping the thin rectangle of black onto my wrist. I have to pay fifteen credits for the privilege of washing my hands and waiting for as long as I dare before peeking out the door again.
“Hurry up,” a woman waiting for the toilet says. I trade places with her. No pigeons in sight. The jumbler must have confused them. Worse: Now I know they were looking for me. It was no accident that so many pigeons were following me. Someone is watching me.
twenty-nine
I keep my eyes wide open and stick close to the walls as I creep around the alley to the door with peeling paint. To my left, luzzu boats meander down the waterway. I try to look casual until they pass, then I duck into the alleyway, my heart pounding as I round the corner to the building where I originally found Jack. Directly across from the stoop is a black-and-yellow auto-luzzu, a boat programmed to take tourists from address to address without needing a luzzolier to direct it. It’s empty, though, bobbing in the water, thudding softly against the stone and concrete foundations of the city.
This is it. I know it is. That is definitely Jack’s door—the same old burgundy paint, although far more scratched and beat up now, the same tarnished door knocker, set askew. I reach for it, kicking through the rubbish littering the stoop.
“I can take you where you need to be!” a cheerful voice says behind me. I jump, startled, and accidentally knock over an empty jar. The glass shatters on the stone step.
When I spin around, though, no one’s there. Just the auto-luzzu.
“I can take you where you need to be!” the electronic voice calls again. Just an advertisement. For fifty credits, the boat will automatically take me anywhere in the lower city.
I grab the silver ring of the doorknocker and let it fall against the wooden door. It echoes hollowly. No one answers. I twist the knob. Locked.
“I can take you where you need to beeeeee!”
The boat’s bobbing seems to mock me. I have no idea what I’m going to actually do—curse out a boat?—but when I reach it, I’m half ready to pay the boat to just go away.
And then I notice the eyes.
All luzzu boats are painted with giant eyes in the prow, a leftover tradition from the old days that the tourists like. But this one…this one has real eyes. Or, at least, mechanical ones. I lean closer, nearly lying on the warm concrete ledge by the water, peering at the electronic eye. Behind the glass, the lens dilates, staring at me.
“Identification: Ella Shepherd. Board now to be taken where you need to beeeee.”
I scramble back; I hadn’t realized the electronic eye was scanning me while I was looking at it. And it somehow knew me.
The luzzu boat repeats its message to me. I look around—there’s no one else here. Part of me wants to get in the boat—maybe it will take me to the answers I’m so desperate to find. But I can’t trust it. I glance back at the door that once led to Jack Tyler’s building. Jack Tyler, with his gold bumblebee pin. The jar of honey that was on the door the other day, the one that’s now empty and nothing more than broken glass on the steps. The black-and-yellow stripes of this luzzu boat, the way the electronic, programmed voice says beeee. Bee. Bee.
This boat is from Jack.
I stand on the edge of the walkway, one foot teetering over the black-and-yellow auto-boat. I have no idea where it will take me, if it’ll be safe, and it would be so stupid to just get inside and find out. But if I call PA Young now, she’d send cops. If Jack sees cops coming, he’ll never trust me again. This boat might not take me straight to Jack—it could be just the first step of a treasure map where he’s the buried gold.
Besides, I’m no longer sure I can really trust PA Young.
I let my weight shift, and step into the boat. As soon as I sit down, the propellers start churning the water. Immediately, I start to program my cuff. I don’t want whoever’s tracking me to find me, so I keep the jumbler on… but at the same time, I’m not quite sure of what I’m getting myself into. I set my cuff to program my nanobots to record everything, and then make an alarm system message—if I don’t turn it off in an hour, everything that’s been recorded will go straight to Mom’s cuff, and Ms. White’s, just in case.
The auto-boat takes me down waterways so tight that I can touch stone walls on either side of me. Garbage floats by, knocking against the wooden sides of the boats. The buildings around us don’t have the ornate façades; we’re seeing behind the pretty mask of the city.
I gasp, gripping the sides of the boat as it leaves the city’s main waterways and picks up speed. We cross the Grand Canal, the stretch of water separating the recreated Venetian city to Comino Island, the only part of the lower city that’s not manmade. But rather than veering west, where Comino Casino and the Blue Lagoon are, the boat goes east. We stay close to the coast, as if we’re just idly meandering around the island.
The auto-boat slows as we reach the southern tip of Comino Island. The engine jerks, and my heart leaps into my throat as the boat slides behind a natural formation of rock.
“Where are we—?” I start, but my voice fades to silent. There’s a cave cut into the limestone wall of the island, an arching, gaping opening. In a moment, we’re cloaked in darkness.
“Where are we?” I ask again, quietly, knowing the boat can’t answer. My voice sounds weird. So much of the lower city is garish, designed to be awe-inspiring and breath-taking, but it’s here, in the silent dark cave, that I feel reverent. This is real. This cave isn’t manufactured, it’s a part of the island that the beating waves spent centuries making.
I stare into the darkness. There’s a small wooden pier built against the wall of the cave, and a worn stone path creeps further into the darkness. The boat bumps up against the pier, and the engine dies.
“No,” I say aloud. This is way too creepy, and way too dangerous. There’s no way I’m just going to wander around a deserted cave in an uninhabited part of the island where no one can hear me scream.
The boat, obviously, does not respond.
It also doesn’t move. I try finding the controls, but there’s no way I could operate the boat even if I could figure out the system. The luzzu rocks as I stand, and I almost fall into the water as I scramble up to the salt-weathered planks of the pier, cursing loudly.
A set of uneven stairs is cut directly into the slick limestone beyond the wooden planks, leading up and up, further into the darkness. The steps aren’t even, and most of them are curved in the middle from years of wear. Metal rings are embedded along the side of the wall, and a scratchy, thick rope is strung between them as a makeshift handrail.
“Great,” I say, staring into the depths of the cave, where the stairs fade to darkness. “Now what?”
There’s only one answer.
Up.
thirty
I use the dim light from my cuff to light my path—making sure that the geo-locator and the recorder is still on. My thighs are screaming at me by the time I reach the top of the stairs. I push open an old, broken wooden door and enter an abandoned, crumbling ruin of a building. There’s the barest outline of walls made of stone. Sunlight pours in from a crack in the ceiling so large that a small tree is growing through it. And, sitting under the tree, with his back against the wall and his face half in the shadow, is Jack Tyler.
I cross the room before he opens his eyes and kick his foot. Jack jumps, startled, and it’s not until then that I realize he’d been napping.
Napping.
I hear movement behind me and turn, immediately wary. A large man with skin almost as black as his clothing emerges from the shadows. He’s well over six feet tall, and his biceps are roughly as big around as my head. A much smaller white girl, tiny in comparison, with laughing eyes and a smirk on her lips, stands next to him, snapping her gum. She wears a yellow sundress and strappy sandals, which show off her array of tattoos perfectly. Bright colors sweep down both her arms, and a single word
in calligraphic writing is scrawled across her chest in heavy ink: Infandous. I don’t know what it means, or even what language it is, but it’s oddly ominous on such a petite, pretty girl.
As I stare, the anaconda tattoo curling up the girl’s right arm moves, the head whipping around on her shoulder and snapping, exposing two long fangs. A nanobot tattoo.
Jack nods to the two, and they head toward the door on the far side of the room—the one leading outside—silently.
“So you brought a bodyguard with you?” I ask.
“You have been known to hit me,” Jack points out. “The kicking is new, though.”
“A bodyguard,” I say, shaking my head. “You must find me such a danger. He’s quite formidable.”
“Yes,” Jack says. “She is.”
I do a double take. The smaller girl turns, still walking toward the door and smirks at me before tripping after the giant. I have no idea where she’s keeping her weapons, nor do I know what her hulking companion is there for, and I don’t intend to find out. The two of them step outside the door but go no further. While looking back at them, I check my cuff, making sure that it’s still recording everything Jack and I are saying.
I turn to Jack. I’m tired. I’m so tired: of the stairs, of chasing him down, of trying to figure everything out.
“Yesterday, androids blew up,” I say, cutting directly to the chase.
Jack’s expression darkens. For the first time, I notice the dark circles under his eyes, the way he holds his body as if he’s even more exhausted than I am.
“Yes,” Jack says, confirming my statement.
“One of them was the android my mother uses as a nurse,” I say. I force Jack to look me in the eyes; I hardly even blink. The more I speak, the more the rage builds inside me. “My mother—she’s sick, did you know? Hebb’s Disease.”
“I know.” There is no smile in his voice now, not even a hint of one.
“She was just in the next room. When the android blew—if I had been just a few minutes later—” I cannot bring myself to say the words. “Even as it is, the stress from the bomb… she’s weak. She can’t handle things like androids blowing up in her apartment.” I cannot read Jack’s face. “It could have killed her,” I force myself to say. My right shoulder lifts, as if I’m shrugging off what happened as not a big deal. But it is.
“And you.” Jack’s voice is liquid, but dark. Like slow-pouring honey.
I shrug again. This time I mean it.
“Was it you?” I ask. I have to hear him say it. I need his confession. I need to record it.
Jack’s head tilts up and his eyes narrow.
“The bees,” I say. “That’s a symbol to you, isn’t it? The pin you wear, the honey by the door, the black-and-yellow auto-boat. And—” I just realize this, just now, in this moment. “And the sound the androids made. Just before they blew up. Zzn-zzn-zzzzn.” My voice quivers with the noise, and I taste bile as I recreate the sound. “Buzzing,” I say. “The androids buzzed like bees. And then they exploded. And anyone standing close enough to them exploded, too.”
When I look at Jack now, I know he feels the full force of my accusation. My eyes drift to his collar. To the tiny golden bee pin that rests there.
“We are called the Zunzana,” Jack says. He runs his fingers through his hair and starts pacing, his boots thudding against the dusty stone floor and echoing around the arching ceiling.
“Zunzana?” My mind races. “Isn’t that the old Maltese word for bumblebee?”
Jack nods.
“What a cute name for a terrorist organization.”
“We’re not terrorists!” Jack stops and spins around to stare at me. “Ella, we’re not—”
I cut him off. “Blowing up people is what terrorist do, Jack. It’s kind of their thing.”
“We didn’t do that!” he roars.
I cross my arms over my chest. “Prove it.”
“Could you really believe I’m a terrorist? Me?”
I snort. Yes. Imagining this is remarkably easy.
Jack pauses. “You really don’t remember me, do you?” he asks, searching my eyes. “Are you…?”
I jerk away from him when he reaches for me, putting a couple of meters between us.
“I never imagined that they could have gotten to you too,” Jack says softly.
I sneer at him. “No one’s ‘gotten’ to me,” I snap. I am not some brainwashed victim like Jack seems to think I am.
Jack shakes his head sadly. “I wish that were true.”
“It is true!” I shout. I take a deep breath, forcing myself to focus not on my rage, but on the answers I need.
“Someone’s made you forget me, Ella,” Jack says sadly. “Forget us.”
thirty-one
“Us?” I ask incredulously, waving my hands at him. “No. I do not have time for your mind games. You are going to answer my questions, and then I’m leaving, and we never have to see each other again.”
Jack eyes me warily, as if I am a deadly predator. “But—” he starts.
I cut him off. “Was your little terrorist organization responsible for the androids blowing up?” I ask. I angle my wrist subtly toward Jack. All I need is one confession, and I can go.
“We’re not terrorists,” Jack says, his voice heavy.
I dismiss this. “Were you?” I ask again.
“No,” he says emphatically.
I barely restrain from rolling my eyes. If he’d just confess already, we could be done. “Fine, you’re not confessing to the android attack. Then who do you think did it?”
“The government, obviously.”
“Oh, obviously,” I snap. “Why wouldn’t it be the government? It’s not like we have a perfectly operational terrorist group right here to do it.”
“The Zunzana isn’t a terrorist group!” Jack shouts. His face his red, his breathing heavy. I’ve touched a nerve.
“What is it then?” I sneer.
Jack runs his fingers through his hair. “We’re… we’re just…. Look, before—”
“Before what?”
“Before everything. My parents were against the UC since the Secessionary War, and they were trying to change things. Not through violence,” he adds when he sees my face. “Politically. Then…”
“Then?” I demand.
“Then they started to die. And so did anyone who agreed with them. We’re all that’s left. Me, Julie, Xavier.” He says the last name the French way, zah-vee-aye. “Our parents… all our friends… the Prime Administrator had them all killed. Maybe not directly, but it’s not that hard to piece together. An accident, a sudden transfer to a Secessionary State, a car accident…” His voice trails off, and I flash back to the obituary of Jack’s parents, two aides in the representative administration’s office. A car accident. I wonder what happened to Julie’s parents, and Xavier’s. Jack looks up, his eyes piercing mine. “A lab accident.”
I swallow, hard. Dad’s death was done by terrorists, not the government. He had nothing to do with politics.
But… Estella Belles had nothing to do with politics either.
“Is that what all this is about?” I ask. “Revenge?”
Jack shakes his head, frustrated. “No, no, of course not,” he says, but I’m not sure if I believe it. If I found out the government killed my parents, I’d want a revenge so bloody the sea would turn red.
Jack starts pacing again. “It’s not until recently that we started to figure out what happened. I joined the military last year.” He eyes me, as if this was a significant thing for him to say, but he continues when I don’t respond. “Then I saw what the government was doing. To people—soldiers—people who were from poor homes, who had no one to miss them. People like Akilah.”
“She’s not dead,” I whisper, hearing the doubt in my voice. I say it again, louder. “She’s not dead. And she has nothing to do with this.”
My mind’s reeling. I expected an entire underground movement, a system of spies and
rebels—not three teenagers against the entire Unified Countries. I almost scoff at them, but then I remember the gaping, burning hole in my apartment, and I realize just how much damage a handful of people can do.
“Just three of you. Trying to take down the government.”
Jack gapes at me. “That’s not what we’re doing.”
“Isn’t that what the ‘Zunzana’ is all about?” I ask, not bothering to hide my contempt.
“We didn’t do the android attack!” Jack says, his voice rising. “All we want to do is let people know what’s happening—that something’s wrong—that people are disappearing!”
“Akilah hasn’t disappeared,” I say. “But you know who has? The one hundred and four people who died in yesterday’s explosions.”
Jack paces like an animal in a cage, shooting me frustrated looks. There’s desperation in his movements, anger.
“Ella,” Jack says abruptly. “Why are you here? How much… how much of me do you remember?”
“Nothing,” I say immediately. “Because there’s nothing to remember.”
His face falls into an emotionless mask. I’ve noticed that he does that whenever he brings up this supposed past we share. It’s his poker face, his way of making sure I can’t see the way he’s trying to manipulate me.
Well, two can play that game. “Let’s make a deal,” I say. “I ask you something; you ask me something.” He won’t learn anything important about me—there is nothing important about me—but I might find more information with which to crucify him.
Jack collapses down under the tree again, his body sagging. He pats the stone beside him, but I don’t take his offer. I want to be standing. I want to be able to run.
“Is there anything about me you remember?” Jack asks.