Death Thieves (23 page)

“That’s the best part. She’s one of us.”

It had to be true love; Jay Savage had just referred to himself using the
us
term.

Jay thought the pureblood and the disease blood issue was likely a farce brought on to make us feel superior for reasons he hadn’t quite figured out yet. He didn’t believe in crazies, either. I believed our teachers when they told us about the genetics and the diseases. I believed in crazies, too. I believed because I saw the fear on Tag’s face when he worried over being out after curfew due to crazy law. Tag hadn’t faked that fear. And he hadn’t been faking when he said he and I would never be together due to his disease.

Jay thought the whole situation we were in was one elaborate scam. But he kept these opinions to quiet whispers when it was just the two of us.

“And get this!” Jay tapped my arm. “She’s from the nineties. So she totally knows who I’m talking about when I say U2 is awesome! She knows who Tom Petty is. She’s seen the TV shows,
Moonlighting
and
Night Court
. I mean, yeah, she laughed at me when I told her those were my favorite TV shows ever and said that stuff was all out of style, but at least she knows what I’m talking about.”

“What are her favorite TV shows?” I felt absent in the conversation, my mind lost to the wondering of what Tag might be saying to Professor Raik at that very moment.

He scrunched up his face. “Something weird.
Friends
and
X-Files.
They can’t be all that good. I haven’t even heard of them.”

I laughed. “And that wouldn’t be because they hadn’t been made yet or anything like that, would it?”

“We’re going to be late for dinner.” Eddie tapped at his wrist, though he wore no watch. The IDR pulsed knowledge to our minds—things like time, weather, information. A little tickle as if an ant crawled inside your skull and boom, you suddenly knew something that hadn’t been there before.

I glanced around. “So where is your dream girl?”

Jay sighed dramatically. “She had to go meet her roommate. Ed’s right. We ought to get back before they send the police after us.” Jay turned and accidentally knocked into a guy wearing a black-and-white-striped pants and shirt set that looked like he had walked out of a 1930s prison. His black hat sat crooked on his dyed white head. An advertisement of a chess game glimmered on his forehead. With a flick of his finger, he straightened his hat and shoved at Jay’s shoulder with the heel of his palm.

“Watch it!” the guy said.

“Hey, sorry. It was an accident, right? No need to get crazy.”

And
that
was apparently the wrong thing to say. The guy cocked back his fist and aimed it for Jay’s nose.

And to my surprise, Eddie caught the fist, twisted the guy’s arm around and behind his back, and said through gritted teeth. “Hitting a New Youth might be the last thing you do, you punk.” He wrenched the guy around so he faced Jay’s bewildered face. “Now apologize, you diseased little mutant.”

He’d parroted Professor Raik’s ideology as though taking a verbal exam. “Yikes.” I rubbed my hand over my eyes in exasperation. “Let him go, Eddie.”

“
They
are supposed to respect
us
!”

“Hey, Ed. C’mon. It was just a mistake. Let him go.” Jay tried to gently ease Eddie’s hands off the guy’s arm, but Eddie maneuvered out of the way, taking the guy with him. A small crowd of people gathered around us, their various-colored heads bobbing close to one another as they whispered about the newcomers and the new violence.

They called us newcomers. Of course we had to stand out with our natural shades of hair and our way of gawking at everything around us. Did they know who we were or why we were in their world?

“He can go when he apologizes.” Eddie’s absurd insistence irritated me. A lot.

“Eddie Grayers! You let him go right now!” I crossed my arms, tilted my chin, and narrowed my eyes.

Eddie looked torn. “He was going to hit Jay.” He explained this as though I was too stupid to have noticed the exchange before Eddie came barreling in. He’d apparently been in a lot of fights in his life and wasn’t used to backing down. He reminded me of the bullies who might make a kid say
uncle
in order to get out of a beating. That and his cowardice when faced with going to war seemed at odds with each other. I wondered what his childhood had been like.

“Well?” I said, hoping he’d let the guy go before other people decided to join in the fight and kick Eddie’s butt. And there was the worry about crazies. Didn’t Eddie know how unstable these people could be? But when I looked at Eddie, I realized he wasn’t all that stable, either. Would he pass the future’s crazy test?

“Well?” I hated repeating myself.

Eddie released the guy with a great shove so that the black-and-white outfit flashed through my vision as he fell to the ground. “Next time, you act more civilly to
us
.” Eddie stretched his neck and sauntered off.

Jay had my arm as he whispered, “Time to go.”

Since the natives were now waking up to the fact that one of their own had been attacked, they seemed to be forming a mob. Time to go indeed. Jay and I hurried out, but not before Jay looked over at the guy sitting in a blob of black and white holding his arm. “Sorry about that, man,” Jay said, and hurried us out of the library.

The problem with a glass building after a fight is that everyone inside knows exactly what direction you went. Not too far into our trek down the sky garden path we’d chosen, the noise of a storm gathering behind us became loud enough to make it apparent we were in trouble.

“Nice going!” Jay shouted. “What did you think you were proving back there?”

“He was going to hit you!” Eddie looked surprised to have to be explaining this detail. “You! One of the New Youth!”

“He would have missed. I’ve got three older brothers. You think I can’t duck a punch?” Jay looked dangerously close to seeing if Eddie could duck a punch.

“Must walk faster.” I tried to coax them along, but they were too busy arguing to notice that we were about to be overcome by the angry mob behind us.

We’d come to a place where the sky garden connected to landing pads and rail tracks for cars. That was when several flying cars swooped down on us all at once with blue lights flashing from both the bottom and the top. The flying cars landed on the platform.

There were flashbulbs going off in our confused faces as people streamed out of the cars. The light flashes came from the IDRs. They were filming us and taking pictures using their rings. We tightened into our little circle of three, squinting in the glare of all the light suddenly shining on us. Though we were nearly to sunset, all the new light made the evening seem like noon. Soldiers in the silvery black pants and black coats streamed out of the cars as well. They formed a line between the mob and us.

“What have you done, Ed?” Jay whispered.

The door finally opened on the last car that landed. Professor Raik stepped out with Tag right behind him.

Professor Raik glided up to me, his jet-black suit crisp and perfect. His hands were clasped behind his back. Tag, walking along behind by several steps, also had his hands clasped behind his back.

“Miss Rae. You’ve had a busy afternoon, haven’t you? Breaking into the soldier’s barracks, creating a frenzy in the street . . . very busy.” He said all this quietly enough that with all the other noise around us, the only people who heard were Tag, Jay, and Eddie.

I didn’t respond.

Professor Raik swept a knowing gaze over the three of us and turned to face the crowds. All the cameras pivoted so they focused on him. “Friends!” Professor Raik started. He used the same tones he’d used with us when he first introduced himself to the New Youths—as though he were at a pep rally, as though he were a coach offering encouragement to his winning team. The people loved him.

“My friends, we had meant to introduce you to the New Youth at a different time. You all know of the peril our world faces with the declining birthrate . . .”

Jay leaned over to me. “You broke into the barracks?” he whispered.

“We’ll talk later.”

“But you did it without me?”

I tightened my jaw against the smile. “Later.”

Professor Raik announced to the public, with the press present, that a solution had been found to the dying world. He didn’t explain where we came from; he only said that we were an experimental part of the solution. He told them that we were under the protection of the state, and the regents. There would be a zero-tolerance policy for anyone interfering with our movements throughout the city or for anyone harming us in any way. The world was to defer to us because we were all the world had left to save it. Professor Raik finished his oration to much applause and whistles.

It was a moving speech. Had I been on the other side of it, I might have cheered along with the group watching. I might have clasped my hands to my chest and thanked the skies for this New Youth coming to save humanity.

But being on my side of things, I merely felt inadequate and stupid. I felt even worse when a movement in the crowd caught my eye. The man in black-and-white stripes had shuddered when he heard that we were under the state’s protection. His face paled to the color of his hair, and he edged himself back, disappearing into the crowd.

Scared. He didn’t respect or revere us, he was afraid. That was not how Tag had described my new status in the future at all. The people loved Professor Raik but feared the state and the power the state had over them. The New Youth was merely an extension of the state’s power—like the soldiers. When I’d first arrived, I saw the soldiers made the people nervous and uncomfortable. Now, I was no different from those soldiers.

And though the zebra-striped guy acted like a total creep to Jay and deserved to get knocked down a peg or two, Eddie’s reaction had been way over the top.

Professor Raik posed by the three of us standing lamely next to him so the press could take more pictures. He reminded us to stand straight and smile so we wouldn’t look nearly as lame as we might have without that reminder. Then he offered us a ride back to the New Youth dormitory.

The offer left no room for us to say no.

So we piled into the long black car Professor Raik had come in. It was set up so the two back seats faced each other, much like I imagined a limousine might look. Eddie’s head swelled with so much self-congratulation that I feared it might burst. To my surprise, Tag climbed into the car after us, positioning himself next to Professor Raik. Professor Raik waited until the car was in motion, rolling along the tracks before speaking.

“That went well,” Professor Raik said. “I hadn’t anticipated introducing the New Youth to the world quite so soon. It honestly hadn’t occurred to me that any of you would leave the dormitory without chaperones being that we filled the dormitories with every possible comfort.” His eyes looked accusingly at us as if we were all the worst sort of ungrateful teenagers the world had ever seen. “But the opportunity seemed as good as any, and I didn’t want to hear of any further altercation from New Youths fighting with the people. No. Best to handle it all now. It does seem, Miss Rae, that whenever I hear of trouble anymore, you’re at the center of it. You’ve only been here a few days, yet I hear of your dealings everywhere I turn.”

No one spoke. All eyes fixed on me.

Did he want me to apologize? Did he want me to explain? What did this man with the congressman smile and bird-of-prey eyes want from me?

I sat up straight, borrowed the arrogant, snippy voice I remembered from one of the cheerleaders on Winter’s team, and acted like the elite member of society he kept claiming me to be. “I want my sun quilt. I think it’s absurd that you brought us here without allowing us to gather a few things that have meaning to us. We should have been able to grab a photo or two, a piece of jewelry that meant something. A quilt that means something. If your little tribe of soldiers can collect our DNA, test us for disease, and learn enough about us that they can personalize our rings, then surely they can gather one or two mementos so we don’t feel like abductees.”

“I—I don’t feel like an abductee.” Eddie scooted away from me and cuddled closer to the door as if to prove that we were
not
together.

What a suck-up
.

Jay’s eyes looked like they might explode out of his sockets at my little request. “You broke into the barracks so you could get a security blanket?” He blushed at his own outburst and fell silent.

Tag’s lip quirked to the side—not exactly a smile, or even a half smile, but the gesture was one of approval. That approval gave me confidence. “It’s more than a security blanket. It’s a symbol of who I am. Why shouldn’t I have the things that make me comfortable? Why should I have to forget what my family and friends look like? If Taggert can make electrons jump orbits and change dimensions to pick me up, he can do it to pick up a few of my things as well.”

Tag straightened. Professor Raik’s eyebrows climbed his forehead. He leaned over to Tag. “Did you discuss how the Orbital worked with her?”

Tag shook his head. “No, sir.”

Professor Raik flashed his congressman smile at me. “It seems she should be taking some science classes. You did sign up for some, I assume.”

Confused by this turn of conversation, I shrugged. “A few.”

He sighed. “Well, it should be interesting to see how that develops. I’m afraid I cannot grant your request. I apologize and understand the things you feel entitled to have, however those items may carry an unforeseeable part to play in history. Many of the students have police searching for them. They would be deemed runaways if important artifacts turned up missing. If the police stopped looking for many of those youth, they would never have been discovered, and we would have had no way of going back and retrieving them. You speak of pictures, but you must remember that those pictures will still have some impact on the living left behind. They may affect decisions and fates we cannot comprehend. What would a soldier return home to find if he were to meddle in the affairs of time?”