Rebels (14 page)

“Just who are
your
people?” he says.

It's mean but I'm angrier because it's true. My people don't exist. But if I can't believe in progress, if I'm always going to just be an orphan, what's this life for? I want something better.

I look away from him and he knows he's gone too far. I can hear his heart pick up in his chest and he's pushing off more body heat than before, so much it makes me feel uncomfortable.

“If that wasn't a simulation blaster, maybe I'd take you a little more seriously,” he says.

“I always take you seriously.”

He laughs and it breaks the tension. I can't stay angry. I break, too. My body is suddenly pulsing with energy.
The boosters
, I think. The idea of real missions. Making those Rock Bottom scrubbers bow before the force of our superior firepower.

“You really hate them, don't you?” says Kane. Like he can hear my thoughts. Sometimes I wonder if he actually can. “I mean, I've never met anyone from Rock Bottom. It's hard to hate someone you've never met.”

“Not that hard,” I say. A memory plays in my head: an empty cot being sprayed with antisepticizer. All that's left is a number: 374.

They sent 374 back where they found her, back to Rock Bottom. I'll bet those core-low dirtmongers decimated her within seconds of her arrival.

I hate the Rock Bottom. I hate every monster in that place. I want to destroy them with every fiber of my being.

I've never told Kane about Samantha or the Orphanage and the kids left outside the gates for the mutants. He doesn't talk about his
home island, or clear up the gossip that his father's a recluse and his mother long dead.

There are some things you don't need to talk about. Somehow we both kind of know the truths already.

I know his face so well. In the first year, when I felt like a shadow person roaming the Academy halls, I'd see it and his crazy grin would pull me into existence.

That same face stares at me now, unsmiling and just a little less boyish. That face I know as well as my own, inches away, our eyes level.

“I'll never see you again,” he says softly. “I'll be doing security in the Hub. Maybe in the City of Indra. And you . . . they'll put you somewhere important, I know it. Doing something hidden. Secret. And I don't know when and if we'll ever see each other again.”

“No,” I say. “Not like that, just like we promised. We'll see each other, Kane.”

We've gone over this.

“I know,” he says. “I would never forget that. I just meant—”

“Two weeks after the Final Simulation,” I say, cutting him off.
I'll tell you again. I'll tell you until you can't think of anything else
. “We meet in the Archives in the memory of your eighth birthday. On your estate, behind your grand obelisk. You'll remember, right?”

“Of course. Eight years old. My birthday. Estate. But what if
you
forget?”

“How could I?”

“No,” he says, his face serious. “Me.”

His expression makes me feel strange. “Yeah,” I say. “I wish.”

He doesn't laugh and neither do I. Our eyes lock.

Then I want to do something crazy. Something I could've never imagined wanting.

I want Kane to kiss me. Or for me to lean over and kiss him. Either or both or whichever comes first.

Lex, don't be crazy
.

I turn away quickly, my pulse racing like a speeder. I pull myself to sitting, my face flushed and tingling. Boosters. It's got to be the boosters. “We'll be late for rations,” I say.

Kane has turned back to face the ceiling. He stares into the sculpture's spiked eyes.

“If you say so,” he says.

I don't look at him. I'm afraid I'll see it again. That flash across his face.

“Get up, Cadet!” I say, trying to sound normal. I give him a kick in the ribs. Not hard enough to really hurt.

“Okay, killer. I hear you.”

I immediately erase everything that just happened. I have to focus on what matters: the Final Simulation.

Still, I'm sure I saw it. That split second, his expression was unmistakable.

He wanted the same thing. He wanted to kiss me.

I give the ceiling a push and the fluorescent light irritates my boosted senses. I hoist myself up first. I look back at Kane, still in the Center of Creation below. I reach out my hand, and he takes it.

“Remember: eighth birthday. Behind the grand obelisk.”

“You know I'll be there,” he says, and I pull him into the real world.

I can barely walk. I limp a few steps, Marius watching pityingly.

“Ah, the cincher, I daresay,” she says. “Not the most appealing of lessons.”

My heavy sigh serves as answer enough. I long ago ceased my fibs of successful lesson completions and Etiquette Tutor's accolades. The day I stood on a platform sixty feet in the sky, to be precise.

“I don't understand the necessity,” I say.

“And you are not meant to, my love. Have all these years taught you nothing?”

What it feels like to be despised
, I think.
What it feels like to have an enemy
.

“Perhaps,” I say.

“Well, it will be of no concern where we are headed. Let us enjoy some time together.”

Marius and I are in the living quarters on Helix, surrounded by white walls. I wear my white evening gown, reclining vertically across the white reposer. The only pigment is the synth-dirt-stained soles of my feet. There was no time to groom before Etiquette, not that I would have. Etiquette Tutor cannot see through shoes, after all.

Marius pretends not to notice, though. Having also been trained by Etiquette Tutor, she is well versed in Portrayal of Obliviousness upon Encountering Unpleasantness.

I wonder if Etiquette Tutor will ever retire. I doubt it. She clearly relishes the power too much.

“Shall we?” she asks. I nod, tap my wrist, and press my thumb to my pulse. Then Marius reaches over, inserting the access chip into my wrist with a satisfying click.

“Take me anywhere that is very far from here,” I tell her. I lean back and gaze upward.

Within moments, the white ceiling has gone black.

The darkness is broken by a pinprick of light spreading outward, seeping brightness across my vision.

When I gather my bearings, I can see we're in an enormous domed room embellished with gold. There are fragments of melody, and I discover the source below, men with strange instruments plucking out uneven notes. “They are tuning them,” Marius says. I turn, and she's watching me, smiling at my wonderment. “We are at the theater.”

“But why?”

“For pure enjoyment. The viewers wish to be, I suppose, taken to a place they have never seen.”

This part I understand.

“Rather popular charade, this one,” she adds, gazing downward. Below us, the patrons are seated and waiting. The men wear strange uniforms and long coats; the women are an eternity of sparkling beads and plumed feathers. They whisper behind their hands, faces disappearing behind sleeves bloated to gigantic puffed orbs.

“This is Russia,” Marius says. “A place that is very cold and dark. So chilling, in fact, the citizens must ingest medicine to avoid freezing—vodka.”

We are seated high above the others in an area reserved for those worthy of notice. Box seats, Marius calls them. Part of me yearns to
be below with the others, close enough to smell their perfume, hear the silk of their dresses rustle.

Perhaps I am destined to always be in the air, even within an Archive; fated to eternal isolation on varying makes of island.

The theater lights fade around us. “Is it over?” I ask helplessly.

“It has just begun,” says Marius, the music rising.

◊  ◊  ◊

Despite my dislike of Waslo, for two things I am grateful: his extended Archive access and Marius herself. Marius need not be relegated to dusty archival ruins with tedious images scrawled on the ceiling. Because of Waslo's stature, she's allowed into historic re-creations unavailable to the average Indrithian citizen. Locations created for only the most high-level scholars and meant to entertain Indrithians of the Utmost Importance. And on occasion, she will take me with her.

Marius has shown me Archives I never imagined possible. Places deemed too provocative for the average citizen. A hub of flashing lights, the technology rudimentary. Yet the citizens find the site so overwhelming they are forced to halt midstep and stare upward. She pointed out the ancient form of holo-imaging spanning across the buildings of Times Square. A frenzy of distractions: food products and electric smiling faces and garish fashions. An early hololettering runs across the whole disconcerting collage. “This is where they exhibit and honor those societal artifacts they deem most meaningful.”

I have seen a jungle, where the growing things are more powerful than the people. I have slid across ice caps, seen a mountain explode and bleed fire. We have watched figures travel the desert upon strange, long-necked creatures.

I have seen things that startled me, images so odd I could hardly believe they existed. “Why can others not see them?” I asked.

“They are saved for those believed worthy,” Marius said, smiling as though I was one of them.

She's mistaken
, I thought, listing various failures in my head: the girls who abhorred me, failed etiquette lessons, stains and dirty soles and Mica.

I would never argue, of course. I needed these excursions, even if they were just simulations.

I had come to like these fabricated worlds better than my real one.

Yet never as much as this one. I want the ballet to last forever.

Onstage, the women prance like Veda. They stand on the very ends of their toes, their chins lifted high, and spin in dizzying circles. They are strong, their muscles lean and hard, yet they move weightlessly, unrestrained as the clouds around Helix.

“They are beautiful, are they not?” says Marius.

I nod, watching through the crude magnifying device. I can only imagine what their skill with a zinger could be. The music intensifies, the dancers moving faster, seeming to barely skim the ground. Marius, her voice low and gentle, tells me the story as I watch. “And now it is the princess's birthday. She is blissful, you see?”

The princess dances across the stage on her pointed toes, elated. A crowd gathers to observe, the king and queen and their many Middlers, all infected by her happiness and smiling.

“She's about your age. Young and beautiful and holding the world in her palm. And this is her special day, just as your Emergence Ball will be.”

Those two words suck the happy right out of me.

Marius must see the change, so she rests her soft, small hand over mine. “You have no idea, my love, of your own power.”

I have no power
.

“Just look at her, Livia. Beloved and worshipped by all.”

I watch as the princess dances on air, a skill not taught in the Islands. There are so many things I do not know and will never learn.

“The princess is sweet and gracious, just as you will be at your ball. And observe those watching. They are transfixed by her. See the faces of the men? They cannot look away. The Proper Young Men will do the same for you, my dear.”

“And she's not even wearing a cincher,” I state.

“Touché. But do not underestimate the power of having the right man beside you. Pick the right cohabitant, and you can have everything. Not just an island, my love, but power far beyond any you could ever imagine.”

Marius has never spoken in this manner, the urgency in her voice making me uneasy.

I do not wish for a man beside me
, I want to tell her,
be him the right or wrong one. And what use is power when it comes with designated borders?

Onstage, the princess spins in circles.

“It's not what you sacrifice,” Marius says, “but what you gain. And you, my love, can gain
everything
.”

Marius leans back, gazing toward the stage. The princess leaps, her body lithe and strong. For a moment, she appears to hover, body suspended in space.

I know she must come down. That kind of happiness cannot last.

A bit later, I find my assertion to be correct. A disfigured sorceress arrives to cast evil spells. The princess ends her birth celebration lifeless, sprawled prettily across the castle floor.

“She will remain in this state for a hundred years, until a cohabitant arrives to wake her with a kiss,” Marius whispers. “Rescuing her from the cage of eternal darkness.”

Reliance on Others to Affirm Our Femininity
, I think.
Etiquette Tutor would approve
.

The pantomime ends. The lights lift and the bodies rise from their seats. The men replace their hats, the women adjust their trains. They chat while exiting, the crowd growing thinner by the moment.

The ending has come far too soon.

“I wish to stay here forever,” I tell Marius.

“You silly thing. Eventually, you would be flung. And besides, who wishes to live in an Archive?”

“Perhaps they haven't seen this one,” I say. I turn to her, suddenly frantic. “One more place, Marius. Please. Take me anywhere, I don't care where. I can't return to Helix, not just yet.”

Marius raises her eyebrow. She sighs, smiles, and reaches for my access chip.

◊  ◊  ◊

Ocean is far grander than Life Guide had described. I don't fear the edge of the cliff, or the waves that break upon its rocky base hundreds of feet below. All I can do is stare and get lost and wonder where it begins and where it ends. “How does a mass of such vastness simply vanish?” I ask.

“The Great Catastrophe,” Marius says as I remove my slippers. She sees me do this, and with a girlish smile that signals a secret that must be kept between us, she does the same.