Death Thieves (17 page)

Again the pause before the title, sir. Tag hadn’t been kidding when he said he might get executed if we waited any longer. He might get executed anyway from the looks of things. I wanted to say something that might help, to somehow take responsibility for the problems. Tag tried his best to get me here on time. It wasn’t his fault I didn’t come easily.

I opened my mouth, felt Tag’s tension, closed it again, and frowned at the standoff between Tag and this general. My own muscles had tensed as well, ready for flight or fight. Flight wouldn’t get me far, not with the circle of soldiers standing guard at the exit off the platform, and fight, well, that wouldn’t get me very far, either. These guys looked hard and capable, and there were too many of them.

And I couldn’t be sure Tag would be on my side if I tried to escape. Yes, he took the heat off me by not implicating me in the blame, but he’d changed so much in the last few moments. His eyes looked cold as they stared down at the ground, his jaw flexing as though he might be grinding his teeth. His eyes were the icy, hard blue I remembered from when I first saw him.

“The professor was concerned, as were we all, that you’d proven yourself to be an unacceptable risk. We’ll see if we weren’t right.” His eyes never left Tag’s bowed head. “Report to the professor, Taggert.”

Without lifting his eyes, Tag bowed, turned on his heel, and without another word to me or another glance in my direction, he strode off with great purpose. Off and away from me. The crowd of soldiers parted for him, and the door to the coliseum glowed green at his entrance.

My breathing shortened with the new panic. Tag was gone. He’d left me with these people I didn’t know, didn’t trust, and certainly didn’t like. The general watched Tag as he went. The general’s lips stretched in a thin, calculating line. That man was trouble from spiked red hair to steel-toed boot. He never once looked at me as he snapped his fingers and said, “Take the New Youth to her dormitory. Have her checked in.”

Another soldier stepped forward and bowed his head to the general. He took my arm, not roughly exactly, but mechanically. He started to lead me away. I shook off this new person’s hold and turned toward the general. “Wait! What’s going to happen to him?”

The general didn’t turn to me or acknowledge the question. He snapped his fingers again and this time a soldier flanked me on both sides, each of them having a firm grip on my arm as they led me away.

I started to struggle as they swept me along with them. I looked back to see the general still looking toward where Tag had gone. He said, “Unacceptable risk,” cleared his throat, and strode after Tag as my new captors pulled me to my future.

My new guards never spoke to me. I could have picked up my feet and they likely would’ve carried me across the platform to the sidewalk surrounding the glass coliseum. I didn’t lift my feet. Instead, my feet moved along with them. We didn’t walk far before entering an arched glass tube. The wide tube followed the curves of the building.

Inside the tube was a sidewalk framed on both sides by elaborate gardens. As we walked, I soon realized that the vegetation was all of the edible variety. They hadn’t just planted pretty flowers along their sidewalks; they’d planted tomatoes, strawberries, cucumbers and all sorts of other fruits and vegetables. The wide tubes weren’t simply a means of keeping the rain off your head and the wind from pushing you over the edge to fall through the clouds, they were long and well-planned greenhouses. Along the lower sides of the tubes flashed digital advertisements, scrolling, changing, always moving like a million small movies going on all at once. The people in the digital pictures looked like they were talking, but no noise came out of any piping anywhere. I wondered if the sound would play in the hard drives in people’s heads. That thought elicited a shudder from me.
Hard drives in people’s heads? Ew.

I had questions, but the men marching me to who knew where didn’t look like they’d give answers. Where had Tag gone? He had mentioned he could be executed for bringing me back late. And the spiky-haired guy called him an unacceptable risk. Would they execute him for real? Was he in trouble because of me? Would they punish me, too? Or even execute me?

With no other choice, I walked and waited to see what happened next. But my fists stayed in tight little balls at my side. If they messed with me, I fully planned on bashing their noses in. Many people passed us going the other way—teenagers hanging out together, a few people who looked like they were talking to themselves, couples, the elderly, people in a hurry, people who were just wasting time. But no matter who they were, young or old, alone or in a group, no one met the eyes of my guards. No one smiled or offered a casual, “Hey, what’s up?” They acted nervous once they realized the guards were in the tubes with them.

We wound through the path of glass and produce, passing by exits into buildings every twenty feet or so, every once in a while walking through the shadows of some of the buildings. At some point, we walked mainly in shadow due to the towering buildings over us. It was as I took note of the lack of light that the tube ended. An exit and several metal doors stood in front of us. The guards chose the central door. An elevator.

Going up
, a female mechanical voice said, sounding sultry and overly accommodating.

We went up, high enough my ears popped from the pressure.

The glass tube continued to wind through the city, only now it was doing so several hundred feet above the clouds. With the layer of cloud beneath my feet, I felt more secure. Now I truly felt like I was walking through the sky. Things were incredibly bright this high up. The gardens continued alongside the sidewalks.

The guards didn’t slow down at all. They kept ahold of my arms and dragged me along. I swiveled my head, taking in the ocean off in the distance and the buildings surrounding me. “Are we still in Washington?”

“Naw. We’re in the bay,” the guard on my right said.

“San Francisco?”

“Ain’t no other bay worth talking about.”

I looked around and had to admit the pride in the soldier’s voice seemed justified. The view of the city left me astounded and breathless. The clouds rolled slowly out farther over the ocean, leaving the city. I couldn’t see all the way to the ground even with the clouds moving away because that far down everything seemed to be hidden by the shadow of the buildings. “Oh!” I exclaimed. “It’s beautiful!” And it was. Beauty that slowed my progress, making the guards drag at me a little more to make me walk. Sun glittered against the buildings wet slicked from a recent rain.

San Francisco. It certainly hadn’t felt as though we’d traveled so far in the car.

In spite of the dizzying height, it was hard to turn away from the view, hard not to look out like some alien tourist. Green dotted the rooftops of buildings below the walkway—more vegetation. Each rooftop was like a miniature ecosystem unto itself. Amazing. And the sunlight gleamed along the sidewalks in the sky. Everything above the cloud level seemed bright, shiny, and new. And even the cloud level with its shifting wisps of white added a delicate beauty to the scenery.

With all the talk about crazies, wars, and disease, Tag had frightened me, but this world didn’t look all that much like the things he described. It had beauty and filled me with a sense of wonder I hadn’t expected.

But Aunt Theresa used to always say that there were a lot of ugly people walking around in beauty suits. She meant that sometimes crummy people hid behind their beauty. I wondered if San Francisco wore a beauty suit.

We walked through one of the side exits into a building and found another elevator.
Going down
, the sultry elevator said. It sounded like she was politely telling us we were heading to the fiery furnaces of what Aunt Theresa called the hot place. I suppressed a chuckle. And go down we did, fast enough I held the bar to steady myself. My ears plugged up, but didn’t pop until I deliberately yawned and forced them to.

We walked out onto another level of sidewalks in the sky. This one seemed to line a building that housed businesses and shops. People moved in and out of those shops rhythmically making the entire city appear to be breathing. Farther down the sidewalk tube, the soldiers stopped at a green building that seemed to be at the center of everything else. The sidewalks in the sky all circled around that one building then cut out into their different directions, but it appeared that the city revolved around this one central spot.

The main doors swished open as we approached, and the outer edges of the door glowed green. I noted someone else walking past and saw how his ring glowed red as he came into range of the door. He scowled at the door and ducked his powder blue head into his powder blue jacket as he made a sort of snorting noise as he sped up his pace and moved past the door.

This might be the place all roads lead to, but clearly some of the people living in the city didn’t approve of their centerpiece.

As we went inside, I looked over my shoulder to the outside.
Tag, where are you?

A pinched, stern-looking woman whose wrinkles might have been stretched off her face by her insanely tight bun met us at the front desk.

“Summer Dawn Rae. You’re late, dear.” Her sweet voice didn’t at all match her appearance. She looked like the kind of school librarian who ate little kids when they failed to return a book on time. And she’d called me
dear
? The only person who ever called me that had been the waitress at the Corner Café. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if that waitress had gone to my funeral since she’d been one of the last people to see me alive.

Stupid. I’m not dead.

“I’ll bet it’s been a rough few days from the looks of you.” The woman continued. “I’ll take you to your room where you can clean up and find something more appropriate to wear to your orientation.” She turned a cold gaze to the soldiers. “She isn’t a prisoner or a threat. You can go now.”

They both inclined their heads, murmuring, “Yes, Kathleen,” and bowing back out of the building.

“The soldiers are a little high-handed sometimes. I hope they didn’t frighten you.”

I didn’t tell her that she frightened me more than they had. I didn’t tell her that by the look of those soldiers, she’d frightened them, too. She waved her hand over the door after the soldiers had exited causing the edges of the doors to glow red.

I’m locked in
, I thought.
She said I wasn’t a prisoner, but she just locked me in
.

“It’s to keep people out while I’m gone from my post.” She explained.
Can she read my thoughts?
I wondered, hoping she hadn’t been able to eavesdrop on me. For all the things Tag had told me about the future, I cursed him for all the things he
hadn’t
said. If she was eavesdropping on my thoughts, I was in big trouble.

And who knew what testing they did for crazy people. Maybe they let some people who are borderline crazy pass the test and walk around free as menaces to society.

We left the small front entry hall, with its singular front desk, through a set of double doors made out of some dark wood. The paneling on the doors was carved to look like vines.

Through the doors, I felt like I’d entered another world all over again. Two spiral staircases wound around either side of the cavernous room. The room itself looked like an elegant sitting room. Plush lounge chairs, love seats, and sofas were scattered all around. The walls were a pearly blue color that seemed to swirl and shift depending on how you looked at it. Books lined the shelves in one nook under the left spiral staircase, and an incredible fireplace sat tucked under the other staircase.

“This is the casual room,” Kathleen said.

“Casual?” I let out a pshaw noise. She turned and tilted her head like a hawk might before it swallowed a mouse. I shrugged and tried to clear my mind.

“This is where social gatherings are held. Dances are held on the one hundred and thirteenth floor in the ballroom. The dining hall is on the fifty-sixth floor. Your room is on the seventy-second floor. I apologize your accommodations are on a lower level but the upper levels are already occupied.”

A lower level? I looked at the spiral staircase. It went up pretty high, but I didn’t think it went up seventy-two flights. And then I noticed the double-wide wooden doors. They sighed open to reveal a spacious elevator.
Going up
.

We stepped in and the elevator rocketed us up to the seventy-second floor. Not only did the front doors glow green
and
red for Kathleen, but every door Kathleen encountered glowed green. She was like some sort of traffic cop who figured out how to make all the lights do her bidding.

“You’ll find adequate clothing that is your precise size in your closet,” Kathleen instructed as we walked down the hall.

Tag must have given measurements or something.

“You’ll meet your classmates for orientation soon. And each of you will meet with Professor Raik privately to discuss your new lives here.”

Professor Raik. I felt a chill at the very idea of doing anything privately or publically with that guy. “What did they do with Tag?”

“Who, dear?” She walked in front of me, her severe bun bobbing with her every step.

“Tag. Taggert.” That was what the general had called him.

“I’m sure I don’t know—oh. You mean the soldier who brought you here. You really don’t have to worry over him. He’s not part of your class. The soldiers are their own class. They take care of themselves and don’t mingle in any other society.”

“Will they kill him? Because I’m late?”

She turned to face me, slight alarm in her eyes at my question. “I don’t know. And you shouldn’t care. What happens to soldiers is soldiers’ business. You’re a New Youth now. You need only worry about things that are New Youth business.”

“New Youth?”

“You’re the hope of the future.” She said the words
hope of the future
with the same sigh as Tag had. They really did hope for their future to be better. “Here’s your room, dear.” She waved her hand over my door and it glowed green at the edges then clicked open. She pushed it open farther.