Terra (13 page)

I pat Adam’s shoulder twice, urging him to speed up. After a few minutes, we putter to a stop right outside my apartment complex.

“Ooh,” I say, rubbing the inside of my thighs lightly as I stand. I guess I was holding on tighter than I thought. I cringe at the thought of how sore I will be tomorrow; today has been the most physically exhausting day of my life.

Adam parks the bike at the side of the building. “So this is home?” he asks as he returns.

“The one and only,” I say. “The good thing about having all the adults in your life either die or abandon you is that everyone feels too bad to kick you out of your apartment.” I run my fingers through my hair, and they get caught in its tangles immediately. As I work on retrieving my digits from my hair, my gaze shifts and a movement catches my eyes. I turn my head, squinting into the shadows the setting sun has cast onto the street, and see the unmistakable glint of a transport window being rolled up. The sight of the black vehicle immediately makes me uneasy. Why is a transport parked on our street?

“C’mon skyboy, let’s go inside,” I say, keeping my voice level but silently eager to get off the street. “I’ll draw you a map or something so you don’t get lost again. And maybe you can distract Mica while I attempt to make myself look like part of the human race.”

I open the door to the apartment building, and with slow steps, Adam and I climb the three sets of stairs to my floor. My thigh muscles pulse painfully with each step, making me wince. We finally reach my front door, and I take a long, deep breath before turning the doorknob.

“Mica?” I say tentatively as I swing the door open. I duck as a couch cushion comes flying towards me, moving out of the way just in time for it to hit Adam squarely in the chest.

I stand back up and find myself eye-to-eye with Mica, his arms crossed over his chest. His mouth is set in a hard line but his eyes are wide and alert. “Where the hell have you been?”

Chapter 11

“What was that for?” I ask Mica as Adam shuts the door behind him.

“Where have you been?” he repeats, his voice cracking as he scolds me. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

“Sorry, Mic. I got a little… caught up in something today,” I say vaguely.

“You didn’t even tell me you were going scavenging today! And when the guardsmen showed up—”

“Guardsmen came to talk to you?” I interrupt. “What did they say?” I shoot a cautious look at Adam. Mica follows my gaze and looks curiously at the boy standing behind me, but doesn’t say anything about him.

“They were asking about you. Where you were, when the last time I saw you was, stuff like that. I told them I didn’t know, that I hadn’t seen you all day and had looked for you, but you were probably out scavenging. I asked them why they were looking for you, and they said they just wanted to check up on the two of us, make sure we were doing all right.”

“How courteous of them,” I say wryly.

“But after they left, I kind of freaked. I thought you might’ve been nabbed by raiders, or gotten hurt, or the Black Traders got ahold of you, and I…” he trails off, his expression full of anxiety, and I feel a pang in my chest.

“Oh.” The sound exits my mouth more like a breath than a word. “I’m really sorry you were worried, Mic.”

“And you were
this
close to missing the Assembly.”

“What assembly?” I ask.

“You didn’t hear? Full Council,” Mica says.

“What?” Sixteen has its fair share of periodic meetings. There are monthly public forums and quarterly status addresses that deal with citizen-specific and settlement-wide issues respectively. Then there’s the Full Council Assembly. It occurs once a year and is the only one that’s mandatory, since the Tribunal sends down a high-ranking official to run it. We’re not due one for another six months, though.

“What’s the problem?” Adam asks, alarmed.

“Who’s he?” says Mica, finally acknowledging him.

“Um, there’s no problem, Adam,” I say, my mind whirring with new anxieties. Introducing Mica to the telekinetic skyboy who saved my life is not currently my top concern.

Mica cocks his head at me but doesn’t say anything.

“When does the meeting start?” I ask him.

“Sundown. We’ve probably got a little less than an hour. We should leave soon.”

“We can go in a minute, I just need to…” I gesture to my general state and Mica nods a little too enthusiastically.

“Uh, yeah you do. You look like you’ve been dragged through the muck, Terra. What happened?”

“It’s a long story,” I say, already halfway to my bedroom. I strip off Mica’s backpack and kick it under the bed—I’ll have to deal with the machine later—and cast a longing look at my pillow. I snatch a set of clean clothes from my dresser, not even bothering to see what they are.

I turn to Adam as I cross over to the bathroom. “They check all the residences during Full Counsels, and if you’re caught skipping we could be fined, or worse. So you’ll have to come with us. Just try not to catch anyone’s eye, okay? The fewer questions we get right now, the better.” I cast a pointed look at the white undershirt Adam is wearing. “Mic, can you help him? Just find him, y’know, something,” I call out before shutting the door.

Mica responds, but the door muffles his words. Judging from his tone, though, he’s still not happy.

One thing at a time,
I tell myself.

I peel off my clothes and thrust a washcloth under the running tap to wipe myself down. After washing just one of my arms, the sink turns brown with dirt.

“Oh, to hell with it,” I mutter. I close off the tap and jump into the shower instead. I squeal as the cold water hits me—there’s no time to allow it to warm—and quickly rinse off. As I adjust to the temperature, my muscles start to relax under the pressure of the stream, and the goose bumps on my skin wake me up.

I grab the thin sliver that remains of my white soap bar and lather the suds into my hair. My locks are still tangled, but the slick foam helps me unsnarl them. I wince as I work around the lump on my head and pull through the knots. As soon as the water runs clear in the bottom of the tub, I shut off the valve. I reach around the shower curtain for a towel, only to find nothing there.

“Mica!” I yell, annoyed. “What did you do with the towels?” I wring my hair out as I wait for a response. Several seconds later, there’s a knock on the door.

“Come in,” I say, pulling the shower curtain around me. A few moments pass. “Come in!” I repeat, louder. The door clicks open and I watch a sliver of Adam’s face as he peeks through the crack.

“Um, Mica is changing but there’s a pile of towels out here so…” he says, trailing off awkwardly.

I mutter Mica’s name under my breath, annoyed. “Well, bring me a towel, then,” I say.

“Are… are you sure?” Adam asks.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Just hurry up already!”

Adam slowly swings the rest of the door open to reveal his shirtless chest, a threadbare towel folded in his arms. I rip my eyes from his torso and meet his eyes—just for a second—before we both look away.

“Um, here you go,” he says, holding it at arm’s length with his eyes fixed on the ceiling. Heat rises in my cheeks as I tighten the shower curtain around me and yank the towel from his hand.

A beat passes.

“You can go now,” I say.

“Right. Sorry. Right.” He rushes out of the bathroom, but not before he clips his shin on the edge of the toilet.

Good
, I think. A half-naked guy standing in my bathroom is the last thing I need to deal with. Attraction, relationships… they’re just distractions, more ties that will eventually be severed. Lee proved that. I’ve been more than fine on my own. I’ve got the guys—Mal, Chrys, and the few other scavs that still like me—when I need a little male camaraderie from someone other than Mica. We all hang around after the occasional scav meeting. They tell their crude jokes, and I laugh, or I smack them, depending on exactly how offensive they are. It works. The idea of wanting more from a guy has been buried in the back of my mind for over a year, and I don’t plan on unearthing it anytime soon.

I pat my face with the towel and try not to dwell on it. Even if I did want to go down that road, it definitely wouldn’t be with Adam. At least Lee was like me. Terrestrial. Adam being a skydweller makes this a whole different matter. It’s not as if relationships between us and, well,
them
, never happen. It’s just that I’m of the firm belief that they should stay platonic. Even if a couple were able get past the disapproving looks from others, and the canyon of difference in their backgrounds, romance is rarely destined to succeed, anyway.

Just look at how well Dad turned out. There he was, the skyboy who’d sacrificed everything for the terrestrial he loved, only to have her die on him. How ungrateful of her. I guess to some, abandoning your kids is a perfectly understandable reaction, given the circumstances.

Ha. Right.

I towel off quickly and slip on my underwear. I gingerly comb through my hair and twist it back in a low bun before donning the rest of my outfit: a long blue tunic that ties at the waist and pair of dark leggings. It’s a little fancier than I would have picked, had I been paying attention, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to dress up a bit. Full Council Assembly and all.

When I emerge from the bathroom, Adam is respectably clothed, waiting at the kitchen table. He stands as I approach, and looks at me with a mix of appreciation and awkwardness. He wears a pair of slim-cut black pants, and a long-sleeved white button-down on top—nice and innocuous. The clothes fit Adam surprisingly well, especially considering Mica is a good six inches shorter than he is.

“Where did you find those clothes?” I ask Mica, who walks out of his own bedroom wearing a green collared t-shirt and a pair of khaki pants.

He shrugs, averting his gaze.

“Ah,” I say. I didn’t realize he had kept any of Dad’s things. My eyes linger on a missing button at the collar of Adam’s shirt. I shake my head, freeing my mind of the memories, and slip scuffed black flats onto my feet. “All right. Let’s go.”

* * *

The Assembly starts the way they always do. An enormous white screen descends from the ceiling just as Mica, Adam, and I enter the auditorium, ready to broadcast the opening video transmission from the Tribunal.

The Assembly Hall is one of the only buildings in Sixteen used for official Tribunal business, so it is also one of the nicest. Rows of seats on three separate levels face a broad stage, though the screen currently blocks it from view. The Town Council will be seated behind the screen, along with whatever patsy the Tribunal has sent down to address us. After the transmission is over, the screen will recede and the representative—almost always the same old man with thinning hair and a wavering voice who Mica has nicknamed Wompy—will begin his speech.

The lower levels of the hall are already filled, so the three of us climb up to the balcony level and make our way to the back. As we pass by, I recognize Emery sitting squarely in the front row. A little further back, a pretty, petite girl with wavy black hair waves to Mica. Juniper Coal. A redheaded girl I don’t recognize sits on Juniper’s left, and Juniper’s sister, Yttria, is on the other side with a sneer already fixed on her face. Yttria’s eyes widen briefly as she catches sight of us.

Mica shoots me an unapologetic look before hurrying over to Juniper, who shoos her friend over to free a seat for Mica. I think briefly about snatching him back, but I don’t have the energy to deal with the Coals today. I settle for making sure he hears my annoyed sigh as he scurries away.

I pull Adam to a pair of empty seats at the end of the second-to-last row just as the lights begin to flash, signaling the start of the Assembly.

On screen, Prime Whitlock takes front stage. Her auburn hair is styled in a sharp chin-length bob, and she wears a tailored, ice-blue pantsuit. The color reflects her white skin, making her look ghostly. Her pale blue eyes pop from behind sleek, rimless spectacles. Behind her stands Prime Donovan, his greasy black hair slicked back, and Prime Laraby, his checkered bowtie askew. They both look bored. The three Tribunal Primes form a triangle behind the podium.

“Good evening,” Whitlock begins, “I am sure you are all wondering why you have been called here tonight so unexpectedly. It has come to our attention that there have been an unprecedented number of quarantine violations in the vicinity of Genesis X-16.”

A low murmur echoes over the Assembly Hall and my cheeks flare with color. Am I really the reason for the Full Council Assembly?

“The Tribunal understands that there is a degree of curiosity surrounding quarantined areas. As Genesis X-16 is located in closer proximity to a quarantine site than other settlements, we cannot stress enough the importance of upholding and respecting the quarantine line. These boundaries exist for your protection, and to ensure the safety of not only you, but of the entire human race. Contamination is still a very real, though thankfully scarce, threat. Lest we forget the Skyfall.”

Prime Whitlock removes her glasses and folds them neatly before tucking them into her breast pocket, allowing a moment of threatened silence to settle over the audience.

“We recognize that, in most instances, quarantine line violations are relatively harmless. Perhaps one was scavenging and saw something valuable just across the border. The Tribunal understands this temptation. However, the number of recent violations has caused us much concern, and requires an investigation to commence. In order to limit further violations, accidental or not, we are imposing scavenging restrictions on areas surrounding Genesis X-16.”

There is a shout from the bottom level, and a chorus of grumbling grows from it.

“This is a temporary measure, we assure you. However, attempting to violate these restrictions would be most unwise. As a proceeding of the investigation, those who have recently been in violation of the quarantine, regardless of their intentions while doing so, should report themselves to the guardsmen immediately. This is for your own safety, of course, and will not reflect on you negatively. If you witness someone exhibiting strange behavior, or if you know anyone whose whereabouts cannot be accounted for, please notify an official without delay. I reiterate, these are temporary measures that serve to aid our investigation in its initial stages.”