Viral Nation (27 page)

When she finally stopped to catch her breath, Jude stood up without saying a word. He went to the parcel of syringes and came back with one.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I don’t think you want to dose yourself.” He tilted the big needle and peered at it. “This thing is a monster.”

“Those are for West and Bridget.”

“Here’s the thing. I’m not doing this without you.”

Clover sat on the other bed, without looking away from the needle.

“I’m serious, Clover,” Jude said. “You can’t go back to the bar. And I’m not going to let you get sick.”

He
looked
serious. His dark eyes didn’t move from her face, and his scarred jaw was set in a hard line. For the first time, Clover saw a hint of the older Jude who had started all of this.

Clover’s nerves were a frayed mess. West had regained
some color after she dosed him and made him eat a few bites of eggs and beans. Bridget was resting more comfortably, although she still didn’t look like herself.

Clover’s arm stung from where Jude had injected her with one of the stolen syringes of suppressant. That was what made her stomach turn now. For the first time since she was just a few weeks old, Clover had not shown up for her dose when she was supposed to. Because of her job, because Bennett had West on his radar, her subversiveness would be noticed. Until tonight, Clover had felt like she would be able to just slip back into her normal life when all this was over. Not anymore.

Waverly had better have a plan for them. And a good one.

“Where is he?” Clover’s legs shook with impatience, and Mango pressed against her shins. She waited with Jude, Christopher, and Marta in front of the computer for Waverly to show up. Geena stood watch, and Clover had no idea were Phire and Emmy were.

“It isn’t six yet,” Jude told her.

“Are you sure?”

That was some risk you took, Clover. Especially considering you didn’t really need to do it.

Clover stared at the screen until she’d absorbed the words that popped up in a communication box in the center of it. It took two or three readings. Whether or not they were actually talking to Waverly, the person on the other side of the nets knew things he shouldn’t. That she and Jude had stolen the suppressant. That she’d gone on one last mission to get it.

So, how is our girl?

Bridget’s sleeping
, Clover typed.

Good. She’ll need her rest for the trip. And your brother, he’s managing?

“This guy is freaking me out,” Jude whispered.

Marta inched in a little closer. “What’s it say?”

What trip?
she asked Waverly, ignoring Marta. Jude read out loud what had been said so far.

To visit me, of course.

“He’s in the city?” Clover said.

“What if it’s not Waverly? What if whoever it is, he’s some kind of creeper?” Marta asked. “Some of us have been through enough already.”

“All of us—”

I’m not a creeper. What an odd word. And I do not live in the city.

So, what are you then?
Jude reached over Clover to type.

A scientist. A revolutionary.

“A walking ego,” Jude muttered.

Clover shushed him and typed:
Where are you?

At my ranch, outside the walls.

Jude peered over her shoulder. “He may or may not be a creeper, but he’s definitely plain crazy.”

Be nice, Jude. I’m not crazy.

“Oh, my God! Stop that!” He backed away from the screen. This time Clover read out loud.

“
I’ve been careful to make sure that what I’ve told myself about the future is enough to convince, but isn’t enough to put us all into a loop. Well, not a devastating one anyway. I don’t know how you’ll get here. But I know you make it safely.
”

“The only way he can know this stuff is that at some point, we tell him,” Clover pointed out. “He must be traveling through the portal somehow.”

“Still?” Christopher asked from the doorway.

If it makes you feel better, I don’t know much more than the parlor tricks I’ve already shown you.

How are we supposed to get out of the city?
Clover typed, before Jude could say again that Waverly was freaking him out. As far as she could tell, freaking them out was Waverly’s whole point.

By the power of your own ingenuity.

Jude made a sound behind Clover that sounded like a half laugh, half sob. He fell back into the slang the other Foster City kids used. “I got the Academy in two weeks. Two weeks! I ain’t slipping on that. Not for anything or anybody.”

“Maybe West and Bridget and I will be safer out of the city.”

“Yeah, well, they’re never going to go for it,” Jude said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the adjoining room where they both slept.

They’ll follow you, if you lead them, Jude
, Waverly typed.
And you want to lead them, don’t you?

Jude nudged Clover out of her chair in front of the computer and sat there himself.
What is that supposed to mean?

I know what Foster City was like for you. What it’s like for the kids who are still there. It’s what you were born for, isn’t it? To change things.

Christopher and Marta peered at the screen, and Clover whispered the words.

How can I change anything?

You can’t by yourself. But all of you. All of you are going to change more than Foster City.

“I’m the only one who has to go,” West said when everyone
but Bridget, who still slept in the other room, had gathered in the boiler room and been brought up to date. “But Bridget should come with me, at least until she’s safe back in the city. Everyone else can decide for themselves.”

Jude stood up. “I say we stick together. That’s what Waverly said, and he was right.”

“Well, I ain’t going, and Emmy, too.” Phire hovered over his sister as if they might try to force her outside the walls. “I don’t care what the rest of you do.”

“I’ll go,” Christopher said. When Phire glared at him, he added, “What I’m gonna stay for? A cantaloupe farm?”

West sat in the chair, a little heavily, and Jude passed a glass of water down the table to him. He drained the glass, then looked at Clover. “It might be hard to bring Mango. If you go.”

“If? You don’t think you’re leaving me here? And Mango’s coming, too.”

“Any ideas for actually getting over the wall?” Jude asked.

The wall was twenty feet high, the surface smooth, slick concrete that curved steeply, so that on the inside it was shaped like a letter
C
and on the outside it bulged like a pregnant woman’s belly. “No one is going over that wall,” Clover said.

“How will we get outside, then?” Christopher asked. “We gonna just walk out past the guard, like nobody’s business?”

Clover took a bite from a carrot, turning the idea of leaving the
city in her mind so she could see the problem from every angle. Christopher had a point, even if it wasn’t the one he thought he had. “We actually could just walk through the gate.”

The idea didn’t excite her, but she knew instantly that it would work. Outside the wall was the Bad Times. Inside the city, order and safety ruled. The city’s citizens had the rebellion scared out of them sixteen years ago. Their suppressant was in the city. The guard was in the city.

If anyone ever thought about leaving, she’d never heard talk of it. Never daydreamed about it herself, either. Sometimes she wondered what other cities might be like, but never the space between. That was no-man’s-land, and no one wanted to be in it. The whole city was indoctrinated to stay. Their lives depended on obeying the rules and being near a suppressant bar.

In other words, no one ever tried to leave and there was no one left outside to try to break in.

Clover had been through the gate three times. Every time, it was wide open and watched by only two young guards. Isaiah was one of them. They sat in chairs with rifles nearby but not at the ready. The rifles were more for bears than people.

“We can’t just walk right through,” Christopher said. “Can we?”

“Well, not as easy as that.” It was possible the gates were opened during the time the Messengers and Mariners went through, and kept closed and locked the rest of the time. But she didn’t think so. The Company was cocky. Men like Bennett believed that no one would want to leave the city. “All we need is a distraction. Just five minutes to get through and hide. The gate opens right into a stand of trees. If we can get through, we can hide there.”

“And how do we make that kind of distraction without getting arrested?” Jude asked.

The answer came in a flash of inspiration. Fully formed. “We don’t. Waverly does. He’ll drive up to the gate and cause a scene.”

The inexperienced guards weren’t about to arrest him. Sane or otherwise, he was
Ned Waverly
. It was foolproof. Waverly had saved the lives of everyone left living. The two guards would try to calm him and turn their attention away from the gate, which no one in fifteen years had tried to slip through.

“And if you’re wrong?” Phire was paying attention now, even if he still had a scowl on his face.

“I’m not.”

“Everyone is sometimes.”

“But I’m not this time. They won’t let him in. He’s from outside. As far as they know he hasn’t been dosed in years, and it’s only dumb luck that he’s still alive. The virus doesn’t get into Reno. That’s their only job. They’ll fall back on it when they don’t know what to do.”

“So he distracts them, and we sneak out,” Jude said.

“Pretty much.”

West shook his head. “We won’t be able to use this plan twice. Any ideas for getting back in?”

“Not yet,” Clover said. “But we’ll think of something.”

“To get back in, I just need to tell the guards who I am. While they find my father, you all can slip back in.”

The room went quiet as everyone turned to where Bridget stood in the boiler room doorway. She looked a little better, but Clover still thought a strong breeze might blow her over. She was obviously well enough to come up with an idea. A good one, too.

“It might work,” Clover said. “But it’s dangerous.”

“Not if we wait until after my…my death date.”

“It’s dangerous, because we’ve already changed the future,” West said. “Too dangerous.”

Clover sat back in her chair. “You can’t keep trying to save everyone from taking risks, West.”

“Maybe Bennett—” West stopped talking. “Damn it.”

Bridget blanched, but to her credit, she didn’t give in. “I can do this.”

“Okay, so let’s vote,” Jude said. “Who’s in?”

Christopher, West, Clover, and Bridget put their hands in the air. The twins hesitated a little longer, but then did as well. Everyone looked at Phire, who was holding Emmy’s hands down on the table.

“This is so stupid,” Phire said.

But his hand went up and he let go of Emmy so she could put one up, too.

“What about our doses?” Geena asked.

Clover looked at Jude, not sure whether this was the time to reveal that they had nine more stolen syringes.

“We have a plan,” Jude said. “Let’s have some faith that the details will work themselves out, okay?”

Phire banged his fist on the table, making his plate jump. “Don’t act like we can’t question them, Jude. Three days ago, we didn’t even know them. Now we’re putting our lives at risk on their say-so?”

“Three days before we came here, I didn’t know you or Emmy. We’re
supposed
to be together. That’s what the zine’s about.
Freaks for Freedom.
” Jude thumped his open hand on his chest, then opened it wide at them. “
We
are the freaks.”

Geena shook her head when Phire started to argue again. “I want to write that article.”

“When do you talk to Waverly again?” West asked.

“Tomorrow night at six o’clock,” Jude told him.

West rubbed a hand over his face, then through his hair. “Okay. So we’re going to be here at least tonight and tomorrow. We aren’t going anywhere right now. Not until we let Waverly know about our plan.”

Clover closed her eyes and pictured herself typing their plan to
Waverly the next night. He would tell himself. Somehow. It hurt her head to think too hard about it, but he knew. Just like he knew all the other things about them. “Actually, Waverly has known for the past two years.”

“He said he didn’t know how we get out,” Jude said. “And we haven’t told him yet.”

“Not in this time line. He’s caught in so many loops, we probably don’t need to talk to him at all now. We needed to think of it on our own for it to work. It’s our plan; he wouldn’t know all the intricacies. But he knows his part. I guarantee it.”