Hungry (28 page)

I pull a sky blue Cottynelle shirt over my head then hike up black Velvelore pants over my inflatable brace and cinch them with a belt so they won’t fall down. I slip on Yaz’s shoes and grab my pouch from the pile where I’ve discarded Yaz’s orange dress, the tattered silver leggings, and filthy green sweater. Inside the pouch I can feel my cloaked Gizmo. My family must be worried sick. If they know even a fraction of what goes on in the Outer Loop, they’re probably freaking out. I could head back to the clinic and call home. That way Basil and his mother wouldn’t be involved. No matter how disappointed I am, I don’t want him to go to prison because of me. It will probably take less than an hour for my parents to find me, which seems totally unfair compared to how far I’ve had to go to get here. Not just in miles since I left my house, but in how much I’ve learned about the tightly circumscribed life One World has created for privies like me.

I grab my crutches and head for the back door. Outside, in the bitter air, I round the corner of the house but stop and press myself against the wall when I see Basil sitting in the dead tree by the windmill pump. My heart pounds. Part of me wants to go to him and ask again if he really meant what he said, but then I think about his eyes, how he looked at me with such hatred. He made it very clear that getting involved with me was a mistake. What hurts the most is that in my heart I don’t feel the same.

I know I have to leave, but I don’t want him to see me on the road, so I turn and head toward the riverbed that leads to the town.
All this for nothing
, I think as I hobble past crumbling sculptures.
What a waste.

*   *   *

Even though the clinic isn’t that far away, it takes me nearly half an hour to get back on my stupid crutches. I’m so tired and pissed off that I’m almost happy to walk through the double doors and claim a small corner of the floor in the overcrowded waiting room, where hordes of people stare blankly at the screen playing thirty-second clips from the most popular PRCs. I turn to face the wall and uncloak my Gizmo so nobody will see it. From the way Garvy and Basil’s mom talked, you’d think everyone around here is waiting to rob me. I hesitate before I turn it on. I assume my dad will know the minute my locator connects to the network, so it’s no use trying to call Yaz or Grandma Apple first. Better that I call home and ask my parents to come get me so they don’t send security agents screaming my way. I rack my brain for any other alternative, but without money or someone to help me, I have no choice except to give in.

It takes several seconds for Astrid to wake up and orient herself. I turn her volume down as low as it will go, but the big screen is so loud that I doubt anyone would hear her anyway. “Ignore, ignore, ignore,” I command as she flashes through dozens of messages from the past day and a half, most of them unimportant—assignments from school, topix for my next ICM, a barrage of vids from my family after Basil and I disappeared, a text from Yaz with the subject line “Don’t Believe It!” then another text pops up that catches me by surprise.

It’s from AnonyGal directly to my Gizmo. I check the time and see it arrived late last night. I stare at the screen, puzzling through how this could be without really taking in the content of the message. How does she know who I am? I’ve always used private networks and have never revealed my true identity on the Dynasaur chats, but she has directly messaged Thalia Apple. My heart races. If she knows who I am, then who else knows HectorProtector is me? I concentrate on what she’s sent, and then I’m really flabbergasted.

Use this link to crack your Gizmo OS.

My shaking finger hovers over the link she’s sent, half fearing I’ll open malware, but I have little left to lose, so I take the chance and click. It only takes a few seconds for the program to install and open a back door to all my Gizmo settings. I gasp. She did it. AnonyGal, whoever she is, cracked the code. Quickly, I shut off my locator and press the Gizmo to my chest. Now I have options other than calling my parents.

Just as I’m getting ready to ping Yaz to ask if she could find a transport to come get me, I hear “Thalia Apple” and bolt upright, sucking in a deep breath. I turn slowly to see who’s recognized me, but no one is looking my way. Then I see my photo, pre-Fiyo, on the big screen. Relieved, I sigh. Just another newsfeed about the missing privy girl, I suppose. Out of curiosity, I pay attention, wondering if they’re saying anything new.

My photo is replaced by a reporter, standing in a sea of people outside the prison. “We go now to footage of Ahimsa DuBoise at a press conference earlier this afternoon,” the reporter says.

Ahimsa stands proudly behind a podium in front of One World headquarters. My parents are nowhere to be seen. “This morning,” Ahimsa says, “One World security was able to confirm the identity of the hacker HectorProtector, who has incited civil unrest over the detainment of resistance leader Ana Gignot.”

“Oh no,” I whisper, my voice gone. The room spins. My head feels as if it’s detaching from my body.

“Thalia Apple, the daughter of our most respected One World executives, who’ve worked tirelessly for the improvement of our society through foodless nutrition and network communication, is a leader in the underground hacking group calling for protests over the legal detainment of Ms. Gignon,” she says.

A leader? Hardly. I bend over and put my head between my knees, trying to stop myself from hyperventilating.

The reporter comes back. “Despite earlier assumptions that Ms. Apple had been kidnapped, it appears she willingly joined forces with the Analog resistance leader seen here.” I snap upright to see the same blurry photo of Basil they’ve been using since we went missing. “The two have brought together followers of Ana Gignot known as the Analogs with an underground anticorporate hacking group known as the Dynasaurs and have been terrorizing the area since she disappeared from a rehabilitation center in the Inner Loop two nights ago. We have obtained exclusive footage and spoken to victims of their crime spree.”

Crime spree?

They cut to security footage of Basil and me pushing through the chaos of the EA then to an enhanced shot of Basil releasing the blackberry branch into the bald guard’s chest. Then the guard, standing in front of the EA. The camera zooms in on his banged-up face as the reporter explains, “Mr. Lauder received multiple lacerations and a broken rib while pursuing the assailants.”

“They were violent,” he says. “These aren’t just a couple of innocent kids out for a joyride, but a couple anticorporate terrorists set on crumbling our social stability.”

Terrorists?
The word makes my mouth go dry.

Next, the reporter talks over footage of the girl I’ve never seen walking slowly around a smashed-up red car, shaking her head and crying. “The assailants impersonated Ali Sauconiss in order to steal her Smaurto and escape from the West Loop EntertainArena after assaulting Mr. Lauder.”

That’s not even true,
I think.
We didn’t steal it, just took a ride in it after it had already been wrecked.

The next time I look up, the reporter is saying, “Ms. Apple and her cohort kidnapped this student.” Yaz’s face fills the screen. She looks tired and scared. The reporter goes on to say, “They eluded captors by heading to an Outer Loop Spalon.”

“She was my best friend,” Yaz explains. “But she’s a hacker. She does it for fun. She can break into anything.” Her language is clipped and choppy. She moves erratically, twitching as if she can’t sit still in her chair. “She cracked my Gizmo’s operating system. And communicates secretly with other resisters. They used some kind of device to get through the tolls so they couldn’t be traced. It was terrifying. I never knew she was capable of this kind of thing. Who knows what they’ll do next.”

I sit, dumbfounded. What have they done to Yaz to make her turn on me like that?

Then the scene switches to footage of security agents milling outside Fiyo’s house. “It is believed the wayward youths forced this unlicensed Spalon worker to alter their appearance in order to evade authorities,” the reporter says.

Fiyo comes on, looking shaken, inside her treatment room. “They wanted me to make them look completely different so no one would recognize them.” Someone asks her a question from off camera that I can’t hear. She shakes her head and scoffs, “No, they didn’t pay me.”

Next, a scraggly, greasy couple fills the screen. “They drove it right out of here!” the woman says angrily, pointing to shed doors hanging off their hinges. “Stole our motorbike in the middle of the night.” The camera zooms in, and I see that the shed is oddly empty, not a trace of drug paraphernalia to be seen. “Now how are we going to get to work?” the man asks, shaking his head sadly.

The couple is replaced by Pico and Iris who stand in front of a fuel pump. “He came in looking for a black-market toll pass,” Iris explains. “But I don’t trade in those.”

Pico winces through a puffy black eye. “So they stole fuel, hijacked a transport, and drove off.”

They cut to three seconds of blurry footage of us running out the front door while Pico writhes on the floor. I scrunch down to hide my pink hair, but at least I’m no longer wearing the orange dress so visible in the video. I brace myself, wondering if Betta ratted on us too, but they make no mention of her.

Ahimsa comes back on-screen. “What’s particularly disturbing is that unlike the people she has hurt, Thalia Apple is a highly educated, privileged person with every advantage,” she says. “Rather than help create a better world, she defaces One World sites and encourages hardworking individuals to unlawfully protest the detainment of Ana Gignot and her followers, who were clearly in violation of the Universal Nutrition Protection Act. This type of reckless behavior puts all of us at risk as it jeopardizes our food supply.”

This last bit confuses me. I try to puzzle through what she’s implying, but then the screen returns to the reporter who stands next to a guy about my age, holding a
FREE ANA!
sign in the midst of the prison protesters. “Does knowing that the leader of this movement is actually the daughter of One World execs change your opinion of what’s going on here?” she asks him.

“Yes, of course!” he says into the mic. “If I had known she’s just some privy rebelling against Mommy and Daddy, I wouldn’t have come. She can afford to get arrested, but I can’t and she’s not even out here!” He rips his sign in half and tosses it to the ground.

A still frame of us running from the biofuel building fills the screen. “Anyone with information leading to the arrest of these two armed and dangerous individuals should contact proper authorities immediately,” the reporters says.

When did we become armed
?

Finally, Ahimsa comes back on-screen. “Naturally,” she says, “anyone who aids in their capture will be compensated for cooperation.”

Her words send a sickening chill down my spine. Now everyone will be looking for us, but only one person knows where we are. Slowly, I stand up and make my way shakily through the waiting room with my head down. Everyone discusses the sensational story about the privy causing trouble. I try to stay calm and focus by thinking logically and systematically about what needs to be done so I don’t panic.

First, I have to get out of here because by now someone in the Inner Loop has zeroed in on the locator signal I sent out into the world while my Gizmo was linked to the network signal. It’s no longer a matter of asking my parents to come get me. I’ve been accused of serious crimes. Soon, security agents and vigilantes will descend on this place, and no matter what anyone might think, once I’m arrested I doubt my parents will be able to buy my freedom—even if they wanted to. Next, I have to warn Basil. Despite how crappy he was to me, I owe him a chance to get out of here before his mother turns him in. After that, I have no idea what I’ll do since all the people that I thought were on my side, including Yaz and Fiyo, have turned their backs on me.

Once outside, I toss the crutches because they’ll only slow me down. I don’t know if it’s the brace or the adrenaline coursing through me or if the medication from the patch has kicked in, but I feel no pain as I limp down the road. Or maybe I can’t feel anything because the agony of being abandoned by so many people I love is too great.

*   *   *

I keep my head down on the way through town. Fearing Basil’s mom is nearby, I cross the road when I see the rusted-out blue car with mismatched wheels parked in front of the broken-down buildings. It’s not until I turn the corner and reach the anemic river and skeletal tree that I start to feel less conspicuous, but I still hurry because whoever’s living in the football field could be just as dangerous or more so than the people back in town. From the distance, I hear sirens, but I see no flashing lights on the dirt road. I imagine security agents are swarming the clinic by now, pulling patients off of gurneys, overturning beds, and smashing equipment while demanding that the startled doctors and nurses find me. On the road ahead, I see a figure running. Probably a thrill seeker wanting to know what the sirens are all about. I step aside to let him pass, but then he stops, turns around, and runs toward me.

Startled, I break left, heading away from the river, but my leg won’t move that fast. I look over my shoulder to see a man with a hat pulled low on his head gaining on me. I fear it might be Ribald sent by Basil’s mother to find me. I try to go fast but I trip and fall. Sprawled on the shoulder of the road, I scramble backward to find the man nearly on top of me. I start to scream and kick, but then Basil offers me his hand. He’s changed out of the jacket and pants Fiyo gave him into dirt-colored coveralls and a dark gray mechanic’s cap.

“Thank god I found you,” he yells and pulls me into his arms. He holds me so tight that I can barely breathe. “I thought I lost you. I thought you were gone,” he says into my hair then kisses the top of my head over and over.

“Basil,” I struggle to get free from his grip. “Let go. Let go of me.”

“I’m so sorry,” he says, his voice husky. “I didn’t mean what I said.”