Regret

  Raine pushed her ice-colored hair over her shoulder, focused her eyes on me. I didn’t know what she saw there, but her expression softened. “What did you find out?”

  I shook my head in a universal gesture of it doesn’t matter. Like I wanted Raine to know I’d fallen apart over a memory.

  “You’re on the list, aren’t you?” She leaned closer. So close, I smelled something warm and sweet coming off her skin.

  I cleared my throat and moved away. “Just tell me what to do.” Maybe if I joined the Insiders, I’d be able to breathe without this band of tension constricting my chest.

  “The Director has his new recruits coming in on Saturday morning,” Raine whispered. “Friday night, one a.m. I’ll forward you the coordinates later.”

  Then she turned away.

  On Friday night I unplugged from the mandatory nightly transmissions so I could sneak downstairs. In four minutes an alarm loud enough to wake the dead would fill the Block. I couldn’t have that, and since I wasn’t planning on coming back, I clipped my transmission feed into the e-board I’d configured to simulate my sleep patterns.

  Then I slipped down the stairs, knelt in front of the safe. I took a deep breath, not sure I could handle the contents of this thing again—not after that creepfest recording of the Director.

  An invisible weight lifted as I replaced the sleeve of chips I’d “borrowed” and pressed my thumb against the scanner to close the door.

  That’s when I saw the single chip at the back of the safe. Jabbing my hand into the gap to stop the door from latching, I could only stare. That chip hadn’t been there on Monday night. My mom had told me about the approaching appointment with Director Hightower on Wednesday afternoon. She’d been leaning against the safe during the conversation, and no tears were shed, though I’d felt her profound sadness.

  Quickly, I eased the chip from the slot, slipped it into my jacket pocket. When the safe closed, the beep echoed so loud I squeezed my eyes shut. But no one stirred upstairs. My mom’s transmissions would block the sound; she never slept without plugging in.

  It’d be so easy to simply go back to bed, plug in, show up for my appointment tomorrow morning at six thirty.

  But I couldn’t go back. What I’d learned had changed me, and the old me was gone for good. I felt like I should mourn him, and in a way I did. Sure, he’d known his world wasn’t perfect, but he’d been happy. Or at least willing to go with the flow.

  With my backpack shouldered and that one new chip resting in my pocket, I had a feeling any semblance of contentment lay solidly in my past. I stepped toward the front door. My mother had locked it down last night at ten, just like she always did. Beams of light swept from one side of the entryway to the other. Nothing I couldn’t handle.

  Step-step-shuffle. Pause. Step-back-pause-leap. I stood at the door, wishing I could say good-bye to Mom the right way. I’d tried last night, but it pretty much went like this: “Night, Mom.”

  “Good night, Gunn.”

  And then I’d stood in her doorway while she’d linked into her transmissions and closed her eyes. I didn’t get to hug her or tell her I loved her or anything. I buried the troubling good-bye; I couldn’t go back and change it.

  With one click and one scanner sweep, the front door hissed open. I’d barely melted into the shadows when someone spoke over the cache and straight into my head. Nice to see you.

  Trek Whiting = Raine’s tech genius. Every muscle in my body tensed. I was really doing this. Whatever this was. But I’d finally made my own choice. And it felt wild, dangerous. Perfect.

  First rule out here, Trek said over my cache, which echoed inside my mind because he’d used my personal cache code. I’d given it to Raine after school, secretly hoping she’d be the one to contact me. My dreams crashed and burned, even though Trek’s reverberating voice over the cache meant the code had worked. He’d insisted that a coded cache wouldn’t be as detectable, and I had no experience to argue.

  No names. Do you know your location?

  Yes, I chatted over the cache to him, completely ticked at his condescending tone. Are we secure?

  Yeah, but there are always seeker-spiders lurking somewhere.

  And he spoke the truth, even if he wasn’t my favorite person on earth. I shivered at the thought of meeting a seeker-spider in the dead of night. Truth be told, I didn’t want to get in the way of a seeker at any time. Programmed by the higher-ups in the Tech Rise, seeker-spiders had a fourfold mission: find, detain, record, report.

  If I was found, well, I didn’t want to think about the “detain” part. I’d seen a few too many projections detailing exactly what the fist-sized spiders could do to a human body.

  As if the seeker-spiders weren’t bad enough, I could meet Enforcement Officers or trip some silent alarm or throw too many thoughts into the air. Any of those could bust me before I’d even begun. I couldn’t afford that. Director Hightower wanted me—but he wanted me clean.

  His daughter wanted me too.

  I wish she wanted me in more ways than one, I thought. But Raine just wanted me to join the Insiders. Earlier today she’d sent her instructions. She’d take me to the Insiders and make sure I got hooked up in an Insider-monitored flat.

  And I’d get a few hours to enjoy my life before it belonged to someone else. I seriously hoped Raine had something amazing planned for the night.

  Just then I picked up on her emotions. Wisps of feeling flitted across my awareness, telling me of her confidence and calmness. I shivered, but it had nothing to do with the freezing temps.

  I allowed Raine to fully form in my imagination. She rarely smiled, but when she did, my heart pulsed in my throat. She could wait, though. I had one more thing to do before I joined her rebels.

  I extracted the chip I hadn’t watched. With the tiniest of clicks, I slid it into the port on my wrist. My mom’s face filled my vision-screen, brightening it with her pale skin, dark blue eyes, and strawberry-blonde hair. Something like a sob gathered in my throat.

  I should’ve said good-bye the right way, whatever way that was.

  She looked at the camera for a few seconds without speaking. She swallowed. Then she said, “Gunner, I’ve loaded a letter onto this chip. It’s from your father. He instructed me to give it to you when you were ready.”

  While she paused, my mind raced. Letter? My father = a man I’d never met. A man who’d been dead since before my birth.

  Mom jerked her head toward a sound only she could hear. She leaned forward; her voice hushed. “Compare it with the journal. I love you, son.”

  Then the memory went black. A second later a scan of the letter filled my v-screen. The writing looked faded, but I could still read all the words, decipher all the numbers. It made no sense, but since it’d come from my father, I longed to feel it in my hands.

  I watched my mom’s recording again. And again. Every time, part of my being leeched out when she said “son.” At some point during the viewing, I’d slid to the ground. Cement-cold crept into my legs, my lungs.

  What journal? I wondered. The only answer came from the glow of crimson seeker-spider eyes. An intense fear pounded in my veins. I leapt to my feet and turned quickly down an alley, only to see additional pinpricks of red. More recordings being made.

  In six short hours the Director would own me.

  I wanted to own my last six hours, dammit.

  I knelt, reached down to my ankle, lifted the cuff of my jeans. Four sets of lasery eyes moved closer. I kept my chin pressed to my chest so they couldn’t capture my face and beam it back to whoever would dispatch the Enforcement Officers. The wide-brimmed hat helped conceal my identity. For once I was glad protocol dictated hat-wearing at all times.

  I extracted a small canister—a scrambler—from my shoe and set it on the asphalt. Just a little closer . . .

  I felt the eyes behind me, above, below, on all sides. Claustrophobia pressed in unexpectedly. After all, I felt like this everywhere. In school. At home. On t
he hoverboard track.

  So many cameras watching. Always watching.

  The scrambler vibrated under my fingers. I traced over the two looping figure eights on the top to control the shaking in my hands, waiting one—more—second.

  When the metallic legs of a spider touched my elbow, I smashed the scrambler with my fist.

  An electromagnetic pulse sent the seeker-spiders flying backward, their eyes winking into oblivion as they—and everything they’d managed to record—shorted out.

  Then I ran.

  Raine

  2.

  My new flatmate has nightmares every stinkin’ night, which creates a mountain of work for me. Not that she knows that, but still. I sorta wished her dreams would dry up already.

  The first couple of nights I’d jerked awake to her anguished cries and muttered words about someone she’d forgotten.

  I’d knelt next to her bed, careful not to touch her while I tried to wake her up.

  Fact 1: Violet Schoenfeld is a very deep dreamer.

  My brief-sheet hadn’t said anything about her violent midnight behavior. Instead, the b-sheet provided a detailed analysis of Vi’s personality—uh, quirks—and included more than I should ever know about someone else’s match.

  Zenn (the aforementioned match) came and collected Vi every morning, and most days I didn’t see her again until lights out. Because of their identical rings, I knew Zenn had a checklist of responsibilities regarding Vi too. Jewelry is forbidden in Freedom, but rings like Vi’s and Zenn’s screamed of monitoring. They meant my dad was simply waiting for either of them to slip up. Then the ring would record everything he needed to know.

  My responsibilies re: Vi included filing a report if she had a nightmare. Now I prepared the form every night before bed. When she started thrashing and calling out, I recorded the time. Sent it off to Thane Myers, the man who loved to make my life more difficult if he didn’t wake up with his precious report.

  Fact 2: Violet can’t remember anything of substance. I made sure that detail made it into all my reports. Whether it was true or not remains to be seen.

  I tried not to dwell on Vi. She wasn’t my problem, even though my conscience nagged me in my quiet moments. The way Thane kept her brainwashed for so long (over eight months now) just didn’t sit right with me.

  Of course, that was one of my responsibilities too: Keep Violet close. Close and under the influence. Thane said it’d be better that way. I was still trying to figure out what it was.

  Fact 3: Violet did not attend genetics classes—at least not in the Education Rise—though it was clear she had talent. And all Citizens with talent were required to enroll in genetics classes. In fact, anyone suspected of maybe-possibly having talent was required to take genetics.

  I’d been in the class for ten years, yet I hadn’t formally registered any talents. Several of my classmates had. I’d watched them go from suspected to confirmed to registered. Then my father put them on his list and moved their afternoon classes to Rise One.

  They still attended genetics in the morning. We endured lectures and projections about the superiority of talented Citizens. We took field trips to the premier Rises—the Evolution Rise, the Technology Rise, and the Medical Rise—to see which jobs our talents could benefit the most. We learned to control those Citizens without talents.

  I’d seen people go from hunched over in desks to avoid eye contact, to waving their hands to control the wind (or detecting passcodes, or commanding the Educator in powerful voices), to looking everyone straight in the face and flying to Rise One after lunch.

  I’d seen people go from the Education Rise, to Rise One, to a job in one of the premier Rises, where they continued to brainwash the general population.

  I didn’t want to be one of those people. I didn’t want Gunner to be one of those people. I was thrilled he’d agreed to meet, agreed to learn more about the Insiders.

  I watched Violet’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall. Lines of exhaustion marred the (once sunburnt) pale skin around her eyes. I should do something, I thought. But I didn’t know what, and even if I did, I’d never get away with it. So I filled in the time on the form—12:13 a.m.—and blitzed it off to Thane.

  Then I slipped out the door into the darkness.

  Gunn had agreed to meet me at oh-one-hundred, which worked out perfectly with Vi’s nightmare schedule. Convincing him to join the Insiders took for-freakin’-ever. Even for me, and that’s saying something. And not something good.

  Now, outside in the dead of night, I leaned against a medical kiosk across the street from our agreed-upon location. I thought of him, of the careful way he’d avoided me at school today. He’d been hiding something. Something more than his voice talent. I mean, I’d heard him use that many times on his victims admirers.

  Other girls are such suckers for a nice voice and a sexy smile.

  But not me. I’d known Gunn for practically ever, and while he had all the right stuff in all the right places, he wasn’t really my type. I mean, who likes the dark, silent type anyway?

  Not me, I told myself, even though Gunner’s face came to mind every time I thought about my match. That boy—Cannon Lichen—had these freaky eyes that saw way too much.

  Cannon was perfect for me—as a best friend—because I had a freaky habit of wearing gloves all day, every day, no matter the season. Cannon and I have never held hands in a romantic way. I don’t allow people to touch me, and besides, it’s Cannon.

  Neither one of us dreams about kissing the other. It’d be way too weird. No one knows me better, though. Not my father, not anyone. Cannon knew I went out after hours, but he’d never tell. Our loyalty to each other bordered on insane.

  “Raine,” someone hissed, out loud, not over my cache. I hated all the talking in my head, but I couldn’t very well have this convo out in the open street—especially after hours.

  “No names,” I whispered through clenched teeth. I straightened, embarrassed (and irked) that I’d been caught with my guard down.

  Encode the cache, I chatted to Trek Whiting, one of the best technicians on the Inside. I peered into the darkness, unsure of which direction Gunn’s voice had come from.

  “There’re spiders. It’s me, Gunn—”

  “No names,” I repeated, annoyed. Gunner was already screwing things up, and had he seriously brought spiders with him? “Come on.” I slipped into the darkness, sure he’d follow. I pulled my coat closed at my throat, protecting myself against the bitter wind blowing in from the ocean. My gloves hid my talent, and while I never went anywhere without them, they didn’t provide much in the warmth department.

  Gunn fell silently into step beside me. He never says much. People with voice power are sorta like that.

  I’d joined the Insiders almost a year ago in a (possibly lame) attempt to make my own choices. Because in Freedom, no one makes choices. My dad—the Director—does that for them.

  I played his game. I let him think he owned me—and in many ways he did. He didn’t know about my midnight activities, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  Where are we going? Gunner chatted over my cache.

  I tugged at my gloves, trying to keep the chill out. Problems leaving? I asked, ignoring his question. Last good-byes and all that?

  He cast me a sidelong glance and shifted the hoverboard he carried. Leaving his mom behind wasn’t my fault. He’d have been shipped off in the morning anyway, and that was the real problem.

  Instead of living in a student flat, Gunn still lived at home. I didn’t really get that (okay, I didn’t get it at all), but he’d told me once that his mom didn’t have anyone else, and hey, he liked living off-site.

  If she knew you joined the Insiders, she’d have to report it, I chatted him. Protocol dictated it, and everyone living in Freedom follows protocol.

  Everyone except the Insiders.

  I did what you said to do, he messaged, his thought-voice tense, angry. There were still a dozen spiders at my place.
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  Did you pulse them? I asked as we turned down another alley.

  Had to. Gunner grabbed my arm when a particularly nasty gust of wind threatened to unseat our hats. I yanked my arm away, even though I wore a thick coat. He didn’t touch me again, and he didn’t speak.

  Disabling the spiders would buy us a few hours at most. My dad employed technicians round the clock. Sooner or later, they’d know their seekers had been destroyed and send Enforcement Officers to investigate.

  Definitely not good.

  I ran through the hideout possibilities. We needed to go off-grid for the next six hours, and we only had about three before the city would be swarming with EOs.

  I led him through the Blocks, turning whenever I felt like it and striding through random alleys in case we had a spider tail. Trek would’ve warned me, but Gunn didn’t know that. He didn’t know anything—as per the rules of the Insiders. No information is given until commitment is confirmed.

  Gunner trailed behind me, his body heat a slow, familiar burn. At least he knew how to move silently.

  Unbidden, I thought of the two of us, matched and assigned to a town house in the outer Blocks. I stopped short, and Gunner stumbled into me. He caught me across the shoulders to keep both of us from falling. When he didn’t let go, I turned and looked up at him.

  The moonlight shone on his pale face. His eyes held the same secret I’d seen at school today. My feelings spiraled up, down, and around. First from the intimate way he touched me (against protocol), then to how I’d fantasized about him being my match (totally against protocol).

  He ducked his head, concealing his face in murky hat-shadows. But I held his features in my mind. I knew the way his lips curved. The slant of his shoulders. The way his pulse bounced in his throat. How he chewed on his fingernails when he didn’t know an answer in calculations, how he lingered near the back of the class on field trials. And, seriously, the guy can fly a hoverboard.

  Why did I know all that? I thought of Trek, my technician for the last year. I knew just as much about him. More, maybe. Cannon flitted across my mind. I could definitely name everything about him too, right down to the ridiculous boots he wore. All. Winter. Long.