Abandon (9 page)

I spoke first. “I love you.”

“I hate it when you say exactly the right thing.” Her
mouth lifted in that whimsical way that said,
I don’t hate it; I love you too; kiss me, please.

So I did. It felt exciting, like kissing her for the first time. I wanted to show her how much I loved her. I wanted her to know she was the reason I’d survived the past eight months, the endless hours/days/months in the burial capsule.

She broke the kiss, gasping. Her eyes widened with terror. “That was real? That—you being buried alive—that was real?”

I simply stared at her, confused that she knew about the capsule. I hadn’t told her. I hadn’t told anyone.

So how did Vi know?

12
.
I stood at the end of the hall, watching Vi kiss Jag.

Of course I knew she loved him. I knew they must’ve been kissing all that time they were together in the Badlands, in the desert, while I was out on watch.

I’d just never had a visual of it until now. Fine, I’d seen them kiss in the transport the night Vi and I had escaped from Freedom, but that was a reunion kiss. An I’m-so-glad-you’re-still-alive kiss.

This was so much more.

I turned away, half expecting to throw up and half expecting to throw a punch. I stormed past Saffediene with
a clipped, “Meet you outside,” and practically flew toward the exit.

She joined me a few minutes later, stuffing a sheaf of papers into her knapsack. “You ready?”

As ready as I was going to be without saying good-bye to Vi. “Ready,” I said.

We’d never gone on a mission of this magnitude before. I’d recruited Saffediene after spending just one class period with her. Her quiet strength had been a dead tip-off. She’d stopped clipping in of her own volition about four months before I found her.

She reminded me of Vi in a lot of ways. Except she was nicer. And she didn’t kiss other guys.

I swallowed the bitterness in my throat. Why would I care who Saffediene kissed? I didn’t.

“Let’s go,” I said. We kicked off together, climbing through the darkening sky until we achieved the optimum hoverboard cruising altitude.

“Fully charged, with a spare pack,” Saffediene said. “We should be there by dawn if we fly all night.”

I grunted in response. One great thing about these missions was that we couldn’t talk out loud because of the stealth required. Of course, the cache could always be used for mental conversation. But Saffediene somehow sensed
that I wasn’t in a talking mood, and she stayed silent.

After ten minutes, the silence was almost as damning as the darkness.

“Tell me something,” I blurted.

“What?” she asked.

“Anything,” I said, desperation clawing at each syllable.

“Okay, um,” she said. “My mother begged me not to join the Insiders.” Her voice drowned out the one in my head that could only moan
Vi
.

“She said there was only heartache here. No matter what argument I made, she insisted we’d never win.”

“Is that why you joined? To go against her?”

Saffediene paused. The rush of the wind filled my ears.

“No,” she said. “I have a good relationship with my mother. I just didn’t believe her. I think we can win.”

A scoff rose in my throat, but I muffled it before it could escape. Her words didn’t carry any trace of doubt. I settled onto my board, my mind churning with crazy-scattered thoughts.

In the end, I had to ask myself some questions: Did I believe we could win? Was I fighting on the right side? Was a free government better than a functioning one?

I honestly didn’t know.

And that unsettled me more than the hot wind. More than seeing Vi needfully kiss Jag, tangling her hands in his hair.

I used to know. I’d joined this Resistance four years ago to make a difference. Fight the Thinkers. Make my own decisions.

Part of me believed that could still happen. Another part felt so pessimistic, I wanted to turn around, then turn myself in. And a third part simply didn’t even know which way was up anymore.

“What do you think is better?” I asked. “Free or functioning?”

Saffediene cut me a quick look out of the corner of her eye. This was dangerous territory, but I honestly wanted to know what she thought.

“A government that allows for freedom is better.”

“But you don’t know that,” I argued. “You’ve never lived with that kind of government before. You’ve seen the vids.” We all had. War. Protests. Killing in the streets. Hunger. Mismanaged finances and resources, and an energy crisis had brought us to the brink of extinction.

That’s when the Thinkers had stepped in. The images from the vids marched through my mind’s eye the same way the Thinkers’ armies had torn through communities. Brainwashed against brainwashed, brainwashed against free-thinking, it didn’t matter. The free-thinking didn’t go down without a fight. The Resistance started the fires that spread across the earth—at least according to the Thinkers. The
memory of crackling flames mingled with the moaning wind as I flew; I was an active member in that Resistance.

On the vids the smoke had cleared much faster than it did in real life. And there’d been very little real life left. The Thinkers blamed the Resistance for the Association’s polluted state, and They took freedom away. The people thrived—fine, they lived—without their will to choose. But the water was clean, the air was pure, and people felt safe inside the city walls.

We’d watched vid after vid of the benefits of controlled life. I’d watched, but the sound of those raging fires always drowned out all other sound. To die like that . . . No wonder people had traded freedom for survival. And the Association had done a crazy-good job of making themselves out to be heroes.

“Yeah, I’ve seen the vids,” Saffediene was saying. “They don’t say the
only
way to function is without freedom. Who says things didn’t function before? I’m sure the lives They show on the vids weren’t always so chaotic.”

I appreciated that we could discuss this without emotion. Everything with Jag was so black-and-white. Right and wrong. Good and bad. With Saffediene, gray existed.

“Have you ever considered that They only show us what They want us to see?” she asked. “That not all of it was real?”

“The fires were real,” I said quietly. I’d trekked back and forth between the Goodgrounds and the Badlands plenty of times. Those buildings didn’t cripple themselves, and I’d taken enough science courses to know it took a crazy-hot fire to melt steel.

Saffediene touched my arm, drawing me out of the memory of the crackling flames. “Don’t you think everyone would want the ability to choose for themselves, the way you have for the last few years?” She peered at me, as if trying to see something under the surface. “I would. I do.”

“Yes, but at what cost?” I desperately wanted her to reassure me.

“We’ve already traded freedom for safety. We’ve given up everything. I think it’s time to take some of it back.” She hugged her knees to her chest and watched the horizon.

I let her words play in my head. It felt like I’d given up everything. I just didn’t know how far I was willing to go to get it back.

*   *   *

Dawn streaked the sky before we reached the outskirts of Harvest. Saffediene smiled at me as she stood on her board and stretched. Her hair was scattered over her shoulders where it had come loose from her braid.

We touched down a few miles outside the city, and I
positioned the hoverboards to soak up as much sunlight as possible. She rebraided her hair as she gave me the lowdown of what we needed to accomplish.

“Director Benes is sympathetic to the Insiders, having been one himself for years. He’s a lot like you, Zenn,” she said without looking at me. “He played both sides until he was promoted to Director.”

“Hmm.” I thought back over my years of service. I
had
played both sides incredibly well.

“You know, Zenn, if you’re worried about which path is right, you could always go back undercover. You could make the necessary changes we need—from within.”

My heart stuttered. “I can’t.” When she asked why, I didn’t answer. I was done playing both sides. It sucked more out of me than anyone knew, except maybe Starr Messenger.

Back in Freedom, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d fly to Rise Twelve. Starr was almost always there. We’d talked countless times about the energy and dedication it took to play both sides. People couldn’t understand it unless they lived it. Jag didn’t appreciate the sacrifices people like me and Starr made: friendships, relationships, grades, sleep.

“I haven’t been able to tell Gunner anything legit for years,” Starr had said one night. Gunn and I had just started sharing a flat. “I probably could’ve loved him.”

What she didn’t say was that she’d fallen in love with someone else—someone on the Inside, someone who knew her secrets, who knew where she went at night, someone who’d helped her out of sticky situations.

She didn’t say who it was, but she didn’t need to. Trek made sure everyone knew he and Starr were together. He devoted hours to the defensive tech at Rise Six, where she lived; he configured feeds for Starr first; he looked at her the same way Pace used to look at Ty. The way I look at Vi. The way she looks at Jag.

Thane had made the most sacrifices out of anyone on the Inside. He’d left his family years ago. His daughters. He’d given up his whole life to enact change from within.

I wasn’t willing to do that. “I can’t,” I told Saffediene again as I settled myself on the ground to catch a few minutes of rest. “I can’t go back undercover.”

She studied me before continuing. “Benes hasn’t sent out a transmission since his appointment almost six months ago. What we need from him is”—she rifled through her knapsack and pulled out a leather booklet that would fit in my back pocket—“to reprogram the tech generators with this code.” She sat next to me and tilted the book so I could see it. I saw a jumble of letters and numbers comprising some sort of password.

“We’ll shut them down on our way in, and then he’ll reprogram them—he’s the only one with clearance.”

“Sounds great,” I said, the usual thrill of doing something dangerous—something that would make life harder for the Thinkers—starting to seep into my system. “How long do we have?”

“Nine minutes from the time we deactivate the generator to when Benes needs to input the new code.”

“So we’ll need to comm him to explain everything first,” I said, gazing at the city like it was an old friend. I half-wondered if I could stay here instead of returning to the cave where Vi kissed Jag.

“He’s meeting us, actually.” She blinked rapidly, a sure sign that she was checking her cache. “Fifty-six minutes from now.”

“Even though we’re a day late?”

“He’s been expecting us,” she said. “He goes to the generators each day.”

“Wow.” I lay down and looked up into the brightening sky. “How long has he been doing that?”

“Every morning since he took over as Director, I think. That’s what Jag said.”

“What else did Jag say?” My voice came out an octave higher than normal. If he was telling anyone important information,
it should be me, his second-in-command. Or Indy. Now that she had returned, we shared the job. Plenty needed to be done, and Indy had an iron will as well as a way of sugar-talking people into doing what she wanted.

Except for Jag. He always did what
he
wanted, everyone else be damned. At least I knew Vi and I would be able to find common ground on that point.

Saffediene didn’t answer. The silence between us weighed heavily now. I listened to the breeze cut a path through the prairie grass so I wouldn’t have to think about anything Jag related.

After a while Saffediene’s fingers traced a line up my forearm, gently moving my arm away from my body so she could lay her head on my chest. “You’re wound too tight, Zenn.”

All my muscles tensed at the sound of my name. It was so . . . different from when Vi said it.

Saffediene’s body curled next to mine felt different too.

Different, but not bad.

I allowed myself to cup Saffediene’s shoulder in my hand. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Being wound so tight.”

She hummed in her throat. “It’s fine. You’ve got a lot going on right now.”

I wanted to laugh, but couldn’t. “I always have a lot going on.”

“More now than before,” she said. “What with Jag back and all.” She must’ve noticed the way my body spasmed in anger. “I’m so sorry, Zenn. I know you love her.”

I nodded, the back of my head sliding over the grit on the ground. She cleared her throat. “I’ll give you some time.” She started to get up.

“No,” I said, my hand tightening. “No, stay.”

She settled back down, and the silence surrounding us infused me with a peace I hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

*   *   *

Director Benes paced on the roof of a short building inside the city limits of Harvest. His dark, gel-coated hair stood stiffly on his head. I couldn’t decide if we could trust him or not. Which Benes were we seeing? The Insider? Or the Director?

I let Saffediene lead so I could catalog every detail. She spoke with the Director in professional tones. She explained everything. He asked questions; she provided all the answers.

“Mr. Bower will cut the power to the generators using the elements. That way you’ll be able to cite a natural disaster as the reason for the loss of control. Then you’ll need to input this code”—Saffediene tipped the journal toward the Director—“and we’ll be on our way.”

“And my city will . . .” Director Benes trailed off, his concern clear. He didn’t glance around, a sign that he was not worried about anyone overhearing—and he wasn’t hiding anything. I relaxed and stepped closer to Saffediene.

“The new code will allow you to cancel all recordings the Association normally collects. Essentially their data will be cut off.” Saffediene smiled a little, and I found myself staring at her mouth.

Director Benes drew my attention with a sharp scoff. “They’ll send someone to fix it.”

“Don’t worry,” Saffediene said. “Once you upload this code, we’ll send them a prerecorded feed from our headquarters. They’ll never know anything is wrong. All you might—
might
—have to explain is why the generator went down in the first place.”