Viral Nation (10 page)

He closed the door, and Clover locked it behind him. She found a brown jumpsuit and a leather belt with a hip pocket attached to it hanging in the closet. A pair of heavy black boots sat on the floor beneath it.

West was never going to believe this, she thought as she pulled off her mother’s dress and stepped into her Messenger uniform. She barely believed it herself. Sure, she belonged in the Academy, and she was positive Adam Kingston would regret his decision someday, but in the mean time she was getting ready to dive in the
Veronica
. The
Veronica
!

Clover had to roll up the uniform’s arms and legs and cinch the belt so it wrapped nearly twice around her waist. The jumpsuit was marked size small but was still too big for her. The boots fit. She
had no idea what she would have done if they hadn’t, since her only other choice was her mother’s torture shoes, and even she knew that would look ridiculous.

Clover tied the boots on and her feet immediately felt as though she’d encased them in blocks of concrete. She would kill for her sneakers.

When she looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, Clover thought she looked like a child playing dress-up in her father’s uniform. Which reminded her of her mother’s dress. She started cold water running into the sink with the stopper in place and picked the yellow dress up off the bedroom floor. The stain seemed beyond removal, but Clover turned off the water and shoved the dress into the basin, making sure the stain was submerged.

Bennett stood across the hall from her door when she opened it. He looked her up and down when she and Mango came out.

“It doesn’t fit,” she said.

“We’ll find you a smaller uniform,” he said. “You’re fine for today.”

They took the elevator back down to the lobby. Another man waited for them. He wore a navy blue uniform that fit him perfectly.

“Officer Usher,” Bennett said. “This is Clover Donovan. She’s assigned to tonight’s mission as a Messenger Trainee. She’s only to observe. Officer Usher is a Static Mariner, Clover.”

The Company had Time Mariners, who traveled through the portal, and Static Mariners, who didn’t. They came through the guard track into military service. While every Time Mariner lived in Reno, every city in the country had Static Mariners.

Usher seemed to be in his early twenties, although Clover wasn’t great at judging age. His hair was nearly white-blond, with a reddish tint that made it look almost pink. His face was covered in virus scars that made her think about West.

“Are you sure I can’t talk to my brother first?” she asked.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Usher said, moving toward the door without waiting to see if she would follow. “We’re in a hurry.”

“My name is Clover.”

He turned back. “What?”

“My name is Clover, not
sweetheart
.”

Usher looked to Bennett with eyes so light blue they were almost colorless. “Really?”

“Clover, I’m sure Officer Usher didn’t mean any disrespect. And, like I’ve already told you, as soon as you’re gone, I’ll notify your brother of your whereabouts.”

She hesitated, but neither man did. They walked together down the hall without looking to see that she followed. Clover hurried to catch up, clomping in her heavy boots with Mango’s leash wrapped around her hand maybe a little tighter than was necessary. She didn’t want to be left behind.

“Does the dog have a name, too?” Usher asked as they walked into the elevator.

“He’s Mango.” Bennett told her they wouldn’t try to make her leave Mango behind, but she wanted to be sure. “He’s a service dog.”

“I know.” She looked up at him in surprise. He tilted his head toward Mango. “He’s wearing a vest.”

Right.

“Have a good mission,” Bennett said after they’d stepped off the elevator into the lobby. “I’ll debrief you myself when you return.”

For some reason, that promise didn’t fill Clover with happy thoughts as she followed Usher through the building to a large lot out back filled with Company cars, trucks, and vans.

She’d learned in primary school about the time before the Bad Times. Cars everywhere, causing noise, pollution, and accidents. The need for foreign oil to keep them running caused wars, and keeping them running changed the weather, if you believed the environmentalists. Clover thought she might.

Now there were only official vehicles. Ambulances and guard cars, big trucks that carried goods to the trains, and Company cars, like the one Clover was about to ride in.

With a hugely diminished population, there was plenty of domestic oil now. Enough to allow for the use of vehicles without looking to other countries. But when the walls were built, all personal vehicles were taken out of the cities. The blacktopped roads that were designed for cars and trucks were mostly traveled by bicycle now.

Every New Year’s Eve one person won a Whole New Life at the Bazaar. The winner received an electric cart, the kind old men used to drive around golf courses. They got a key to the charging station downtown, where they could replenish their cart’s battery once a week. There were so few of the vehicles around, though, that whenever a participant drove one they attracted a crowd. Like a one-person parade.

Usher brought her to a white van with the blue Company logo emblazoned on the side. She looked back toward the buildings. “Where is everyone else?”

“They’re already at the lake, preparing to launch,” Usher said as he opened the van’s door for her. “We need to hurry.”

She hadn’t been in a car since she was a baby. Maybe she should have been nervous, but she was fascinated. Her parents owned a huge orange Jeep before the city was walled and personal cars were banned. She had a picture of the four of them in front of it, taken the day she was brought home from the hospital. West’s toddler cheeks were smooth and plump. Her mother didn’t know yet that she’d been infected by the virus.

Clover watched movies at the library, and the recorded chaos of roads filled with cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles made Clover wonder how anyone survived the experience of being in the middle of it all.

The noise alone was more than Clover could imagine.

She let up on Mango’s leash so he could hop into the van first, then climbed into the seat.

“You’ll only observe this time,” Usher said once they were inside.

“Okay.”

Usher looked at her for a few seconds, then reached across her body and pulled a dark gray woven belt from near her ear across her lap and hooked it at her hip.

“Oh, a seat belt!”

“Yes, a seat belt. We buckle up for safety.” That last bit made him chuckle. She didn’t get the joke.

It took about ten seconds for the novelty of the belt to turn into irritation that felt like a thousand ants crawling across her skin. The belt’s rough texture hit her across the neck and tickled her ear; the sharp edge bit into her collarbone. Usher hadn’t even put the van into gear.

“Can I take this thing off? It’s trying to strangle me.”

“No.” Usher glanced at her, then reached over and pushed a button that lowered the shoulder belt four or five inches. “Better?”

The irritation lessened immediately. She still didn’t like it, but it was livable at least. “Yes. Much.”

“Good.” He pulled on a lever on the side of the steering wheel, and the van moved backward. “Now, this is an observation run for you. You’ll ride along with your trainer. The two of you will pick up the disc and bring it back.”

“That sounds easy enough.”

“It does, doesn’t it? Your number one rule is to avoid accidentally changing the future. You don’t talk to anyone except your trainer. Your uniform lets people know better than to talk to you.”

He stopped the van and looked at her until she nodded that she understood. Then he pulled up on the lever again, and they moved
forward. Clover had never actually seen a Time Mariner but had been taught from childhood that if she ever did, she was to pretend they weren’t there. They even practiced STI, Stop-Turn-Ignore.

“Messengers have a half-hour window to get in and get out. That’s an absolute, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Your trainer will have a van at the lake on the other side. You’ll drive it—”

“I don’t know how to drive.”

Usher blew out a breath. “Your trainer will drive you to the pickup box where you’ll find the info disc.”

He reached into one of his uniform pockets and pulled out something about the length of her thumb, pale and curled, wrapped in clear plastic, and handed it to her.

“What is that?” she asked, without reaching for it.

He shoved it into her hand. “A fortune cookie, in case your trainer doesn’t have an extra.”

“A fortune cookie?” Clover started to open the plastic, but Usher stopped her.

“It’s not for now. You open it on the other side. There’s a piece of paper inside, with a sentence printed on it. Read it out loud.”

“Out loud to who?”

“The trees, honey. It doesn’t matter.”

“My name is Clover. Why do I have to eat a cookie?”

“No. You don’t eat it. That thing is older than you. It’ll make you sick.”

She frowned and turned it over in her hand. It looked okay to her. “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to. It’s a ritual. Just do it. The most important thing is not to talk to anyone, other than your trainer. Even the Mariners. Do you understand?”

She didn’t need to be convinced. Changing the future, when her
whole job was to bring back reports about the way it stood without her influence, didn’t make sense.

The idea of talking to someone outside her own time line was upsetting, anyway. It was too strange to wrap her head around, so she didn’t even consider it.

“Don’t you wish you were a Time Mariner, so you could travel in the
Veronica
?” Clover asked.

Usher didn’t give any outward sign that he’d heard her question. She was going to ask again, but they came to a stop at the huge metal gate in the wall that she’d seen from Bennett’s window.

“We’re leaving the city?” she asked. Mango had laid down in the space between the van’s front seats, but something in her voice caught his attention and he sat up. Probably the panic. “I’ve never been outside the city.”

“Clover, you know the portal is in Lake Tahoe. And you know that Lake Tahoe is outside the city walls.”

Of course, she knew all that. Knowing didn’t help much. Clover jumped when she heard a crunch and saw that she’d cracked her cookie. A narrow slip of paper showed through the shell. She shoved the whole thing into her pocket. “What’s it like? Out there, I mean.”

“The road to the lake has been cleared. You won’t see anything too out of the ordinary. Some empty neighborhoods, then a lot of trees.”

Usher drove through the open gate, flicking his hand twice, once at each of two guards.

He was right. The outside was a lot like the inside, except even without people it was so crowded. There were houses, all squished up next to each other, on both sides of the street for the first few miles. Cars parked everywhere. But everything fell away as they drove farther from the city.

When the road changed from a wide, flat highway to a winding mountain road, Clover saw the trees. Nothing like the parks in
Reno. These pine trees looked a thousand feet high and were probably that many years old. She turned in her seat and tried to see to their tops.

That was when things went off the rails. Clover’s stomach flopped over as the landscape flew past. She groaned and squeezed her eyes closed.

“Look out the front window,” Usher said. “You’re just carsick.”

Clover cracked her eyelids and then covered them with her hands. She burped and moaned. “I’m really sick.”

“It’s the mountain road. No horizon.” Usher reached into another pocket in his uniform and pulled out something that he put in her palm. “Suck on this, it’ll help.”

He’d given her a peppermint candy. His jumpsuit was as good as the Bazaar. She unwrapped the candy and put it in her mouth, against her cheek. It did settle her stomach. The novelty of the sugar distracted her for a few minutes anyway. It did
not
let her watch out the car windows, though.

“There’s medicine,” Usher said. “Make sure you ask your trainer for some, or you’ll never make it through the trip.”

When Clover peeked again, the lake had opened on her side of the road. It was massive and brilliantly blue. Watching it gave her something stable to look at, and her stomach didn’t protest too much. Clover’s breath caught as she watched small waves crash against the rock cliffs.

She’d spent time at the Truckee River, of course. It ran just a half mile from her house. But this was something different.

Usher drove the van down a long, winding road to the water’s edge. More vans were already parked in the small lot. Clover barely noticed them and even forgot to worry about her stomach. She was too busy gaping at the gigantic structure at the end of the long dock.

“That’s the
Veronica
,” Clover said. It was magnificent. Usher
started toward the dock. Clover and Mango followed. “It’s a submarine. Named after Ned Waverly’s dead wife.”

“That’s right. A steam-powered submarine. Electronics don’t travel through the portal.”

Clover walked ahead of Usher. “Where is everyone?”

“Inside. They’re waiting on you.”