inDIVISIBLE (6 page)

I cringed and rolled to my side, trying to block the light
but too lazy to get out of bed and pull my curtain. Could it be true? Could my conversations with my father have really marked me as a target? If not, my actions with T over the last few days surely would. Because of that jammer, I kept disappearing off of Alliance radar and they’d either begin to suspect I was dodging them or they’d think the sensor was having issues. Either way I’d earn a visit soon, and I had to decide what to do before that happened.

If I removed my sensor, I could either save my life or lose it. They’d kill me if they caught me but if T was right, they’d kill me anyway.
If something happened to me, what about my mother? I tossed on the mattress, the fabric crinkling, the bed creaking. Would they kill her too? They’d have no reason if I weren’t around. She never once participated in anti-Alliance talk. She’d never accompanied us to the woods, and my father had strictly told me not to discuss any of our private conversations with her. He had protected her from the Alliance’s anger, so why had he not done the same for me? I wished I could ask him, demand answers, but I supposed I already knew. My mother wanted peace. She’d have refused to speak with him about the Alliance and if he’d known there was something to fear, he’d want to tell the person who’d already expressed similar sentiments. Me.

I buried my face in
to my pillow, stifling the urge to scream. Dinner conversation with my mother replayed in my mind, the looks of disapproval she shot at me over who knows what, the one word answers, and the nervous flittering around the kitchen like she didn’t know how to live without my father. Would she be okay without me there to take care of her? I rolled to my back again, the anxious fluttering of my heartbeat returning. I didn’t have a choice that I could see. If I wanted out of here without dying, I had to do it now. T only had another twenty-four hours before he had to move on. Any longer and they’d track him down for sure.

             
It was time
.

I moaned loudly and tossed atop the hard mattress once again
, feigning sickness. Kicking off the covers, I opened yesterday’s water bottle and splashed a bit of cool water on my face as I waited for my mother’s alarm to sound. I’d have to be quick and convincing when it actually went off as she always headed straight to the bathroom to get ready for work.

I
sat on the edge of my bed, stared at the dull display on my PCA and began counting down. At 6 a.m. her alarm beeped three times. I bolted out of my room before it hushed and slammed the bathroom door behind me. I turned the lock and knelt over the toilet before shoving my first two fingers into my throat.

I gagged immediately. I pushed my fingers in again and choked, tears springing to my eyes.

Her footsteps tapped across the concrete just outside the door, pausing in the hallway. She knocked on the door and I stuck my fingers in my throat a third time, vomiting what was left of my late supper.

“Brynn?”

I pushed away from the toilet and ran water in the sink, rinsing my mouth and face with water as cold as I could manage. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

I blotted my face and opened the door. My mother’s graying hair frizzed around her face and the wrinkles she usually covered with makeup made her look old and vulnerable. What stopped me from speaking, however, was the genuine concern in her eyes. My mouth worked but I had to concentrate to make it speak. “Fine,” I said.

Guilt bubbled its way
in my chest and colored my cheeks. I pushed past her to hide in my room before I gave into the feeling and stayed. I couldn’t put her in danger. She’d already lost too much.

She stopped me before I could return to my room and placed a hand on my forehead, sticky and clammy, she pulled her hand away almost immediately. “You’re
not fine. You’re sick.”

“I’ve got an exam
today,” I countered. “It’s important. I’ve been studying for it all week.”

She turned me toward my bedroom. “Go back to bed. Log your symptoms and wait for the doctor to call. You’re not going to school today.”

“But finals are coming up,” I half-argued, speaking in a breezy tone to suggest exhaustion.

“All you need
to do today is rest, and maybe a little later, get some fresh air.” Her eyes caught mine and held them. Tears appeared in the corners of her eyes, and I worried she’d have another breakdown over my father. I couldn’t hear her sobs again. I was leaving her today and that was hard enough without the tears.

“I think both will be good for me,” I said, throat tight. I wanted to explain so she wouldn’t worry. I wanted to tell her goodbye
but I couldn’t.

She pressed her lips together tightly
and pulled me in for an embrace where she rocked me several minutes before she released me.

When she let go,
she sniffed and said, “School can wait, Brynn. Take care of yourself first.” Could she be that worried or had she already suspected I’d leave? I kissed her on the cheek, something I hadn’t done since I’d been tiny and shuffled through the garden back to my bedroom. Once inside, I crawled into bed and curled into a ball, with my face away from the glass—and waited.

She didn’t come in to check on me before she left, but I felt her outside my doorway, stari
ng through the glass while I lay unmoving, forcing my emotions deep inside where I could ignore their nagging. She stood there at least five minutes and when she left and I finally rolled over. It was then that I saw the handprint on the glass, the spot where she’d rested her forehead and on the ground outside, a teardrop.

I
would likely never see my mother again, but I would pay that price to save her life. And that knowledge is all it took to spur me into action.

Re
membering the bug, I went back to the bathroom and made gagging noises before getting another drink of water. It had been bad enough to have them know where I was but to realize they listened to everything I said and did was nauseating in and of itself.

My heart thudded. They knew I was home alone and if they were intent on taking me out, they could easily make me disappear today. I bolted for my mother’s room and pulled my father’s chest from beneath his bed. The corners of his personal papers were creased, the edges of the stacks not lining perfectly as
I’d seen them last. Had my mother gone through them or someone else?

I closed the lid and shoved it back before going to the closet.
Below his black suits were his black dress shoes, all neatly arranged on a shoe rack that had been built into the wall behind it.

I had seen him fiddling in his closet before, through a crack in the curtains between our rooms, and I knew there was something else in there.

I ran my fingers along the rack but nothing felt out of place. I stood, paced the room and opened his top drawer. His clothes all sat neatly folded, the second and third drawers the same. When I got to the bottom drawer, however, his sleeping clothes were askew. I felt along the bottom of the drawer and found nothing. I pulled the drawer out and would have missed the subtle clue if I hadn’t seen something similar before. A paperclip lay at the bottom of the dresser in the corner as if it had fallen off the dresser or from a pocket. A tiny hole beside it made its use obvious and I unwound the paperclip and pressed it into the hole. Whatever waited inside the hole gave and the tension fell away, but nothing else changed. I searched the dresser before returning to the closet. Perhaps I’d been wrong about the closet, the dresser, all of it—but I couldn’t give up without trying one more time.

I felt along the shoe rack again and it moved slightly. My breathing came in gasps now, my hands frantic as I checked the clock to see that an entire hour had passed since I last gagged into the toilet.

I moaned the sickest sound I could manage and pulled on the rack. It slid to the side and I found my father’s stash. Notebooks piled atop one another, a pen clipped on one cover. I grabbed them, pushed the shoe rack back into place and wondered how to reset the lock only briefly before realizing I didn’t have time.

My PCA beeped, indicating the call from the doctor I’d been waiting on. I took a calming
breath and returned to my room. I dropped the books on my bed out of view of the monitor and swiped my hand to sign in. I didn’t need to force myself to look flushed. The search had done that by itself. The screen came to life and a thick woman in a lab coat greeted me.

“Brynn Aberdie,” she said, her face too smooth, eyes too wide.

I nodded.

“You don’t look well.”
The words were clipped, automatic.

I coughed, a result of the dust from the search I was sure, but it worked for the doctor too. “I don’t feel well either.”

She cleared her throat and moved back from her camera, a subconscious reaction meant to avoid my germs. “I read over your symptoms. There is no need to come to the office but you do need an immune booster. I’m sending one over in the next half hour. You must drink the entire bottle, rinse the remaining medication down the drain and use the recycling bin to return the empty bottle.”

It was a script I’m sure she’d
read at least a dozen times that morning, and I simply nodded.

“Be sure to get plenty of rest.
” Her face moved closer to the camera, her nose growing as the lens distorted her image. “This bug that’s going around can get pretty nasty.”

             
Bug
. I forced myself not to look at my hand, clutching my stomach instead. “I can tell.”

             
“And
don’t
leave the house. We’re containing everyone who’s caught it so it doesn’t spread.”

Icy eyes stared through me
and the hair on my arms rose.

The screen went black and I pressed the power button on my PCA to shut it off. I only had a few more minutes before someone arrive
d with the booster and they’d want to watch me drink it so they could check it off my chart. I knew how this worked too well, and it annoyed me that they could control even the medication I took. The problem now was that I didn’t need the booster and something inside me demanded I avoid it.

I opened my father’
s first notebook and scanned a page, the next, then the next. My mouth gaped and my breathing became shallow.

He was far deeper entrenched than I’d ever realized, had more anger toward the Alliance than I could ever have guessed. I closed the book and opened the second
to discover similar writings, cryptic like he enjoyed speaking at times.

The third focused on me and his concerns about my welfare. A bulleted list caught my attention, the first being to remove the sensor.

It was settled. I shoved the books into a backpack and took it into the kitchen with me, grabbed a butcher knife and set my right hand on a cutting board.

My stomach squirmed and I gagged for real.

I took a deep breath and gripped the knife tighter, my knuckles whitening on the handle.

My PCA beeped,
my five minute indicator to be waiting at the entry. I had to get away instead but I couldn’t leave with this tracking device still in my body. That would alert them and give them a reason to take me in or take me out sooner than I could afford. Besides, five minutes always meant thirty where medical concerns were involved.

I p
lunged the knife downward, through the skin near my thumb, just below the sensor. Blood spurted across the cutting board, leaving droplets fanned over the counter. Then the pain hit. I clenched my teeth together and vomited in the sink.

My skin flopped
.

I yanked the knife from the cutting board, knowing I had to either dig into my flesh to get the sensor or make another cut.

Blood gushed onto the cutting board when I pressed on my skin, pushing at the sensor to slide it from the now gaping hole, but it didn’t move, it stayed in my skin as if anchored there, pain searing hot when I tried to push it free.

             
My PCA beeped again, a warning they waited at the door.
Any other day I’d have to wait in line for hours for treatment—and today they decided to be prompt?
I couldn’t stop now. I plunged the knife a second time and groaned. The vomit hurled from my throat and I barely made it into the sink as my hand was now pinned to the board.

The entry door
opened and footsteps descended the spiral staircase just ten feet away.

The doctor’s office had used the override feature? Really?
I wasn’t sick enough to warrant that type of treatment.

My hand trembled, the knife wedged so deeply in the board I couldn’t pry it loose, my skin stuck between the metal blade and plastic board.
Feet on the steps turned into legs in white scrubs, hand on the railing.

“Brynn Aberdie,” the nurse called, her voice low and hypnotic, trained to put people at ease.
I picked up the cutting board and held it against my thigh behind the counter, blood running down my bare leg and pooling on the floor.

She made her descent with a plastic smile, one hand clutching a PCA, the other holding a bottle of medicine. At the bottom of the steps, she reached down, grabbed a medical mask and pulled it over her nose and mouth, the smile disappearing, even from her eyes.