Regret (8 page)

“I plug in,” I lied. Another projection screen jumped to life. Not sure what all the red lines meant, I tried to calm my heart and breathe normally.

He smiled like an indulgent parent does when they catch their child eating a chocolate TravelTreat. “Not for a year, I believe.”

“Check the records,” I challenged. “My comm is linked in every night. Mandatory eight hours.”

All twenty-one Greenies touched their p-screens and clicks echoed through the ridiculously huge hall.

“She’s right,” a woman said. Her voice was low and her eyebrows high. “Still, such a Free Thinker …” She made a face like she’d tasted something sour and typed into her notes.

“What happened to your hair?” Another woman fixed her tiny black eyes on me. Her long silver hair lay like a frozen waterfall of tech filaments against her dark skin. She had a large nose with high cheekbones. She looked like a hawk.

“My mother made me cut it,” I lied again.

“Why?”

“She didn’t think I was plugging in either, even when I showed her the printouts.” A projection of the evidence in question replaced my picture on the wall behind the Greenies.

As if. Like I listened to the transmissions. I quit maybe a year ago, maybe longer. I’d figured out how to disconnect my communicator. So technically, I did plug my comm into the transmissions every night. I just wasn’t listening.

After that, I wasn’t in Their control—but I was tired. I
didn’t sleep well, living in constant fear that somehow They’d find out. Brainwashed before I could speak, I was terrified of Them. Even now.

“Miss Schoenfeld?” the Hawk prompted.

I glanced at my Mech-rep. “Pay attention. She asked why you had to cut your hair.” The robotic voice did nothing to settle my nerves.

“Umm, my mother used perma-plaster to secure the link in place. It got all caught in my hair.”

That brought a belly laugh from Jag, and the middle Greenie threw him a furious look. The sound died instantly, but the echo remained.

“So I had to cut it.”

“Then you had to dye it?” the Hawk asked.

“Yeah.” I stared back at her, daring her to ask another stupid question.

They all started typing like crazy. Whatever. It’s my hair. At least that’s what I told my mother. As much as I didn’t want to, I wished she had come. As much as I wished it wouldn’t, my throat burned with unshed tears.

“Mech-749? Do you maintain your recommendation?” the middle Greenie asked.

“Yes. Badlands.”

Several of the Greenies nodded, and I wondered what
that meant. Would I have to go there to serve my sentence? I didn’t even know the Badlands had prisons.

“Jag Barque?”

“Yeah,” he said lazily. I looked over, but our Mechs stood in the way, so I couldn’t see his face.

“Your opinion has not changed, I presume?”

“Nope.” Jag acted like he’d been here countless times before. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his hands hanging loosely in their tech cuffs. I wished for his calmness; my heart kept trying to bust through my chest.

“You are required to appear before the Association of Directors,” the Greenie said. “In Freedom.”

A moment of silence passed, a definite threat hanging in the air. Then Jag said, “I will not,” and I imagined the glare he carried in his voice.

“It is your duty, Mr. Barque. You will leave next week,” the Greenie said. “The council has some matters to discuss before your release. Violet, I have no alternative but to banish you to the Badlands.”

Banished? For walking in the park with Zenn?
“What?” I blurted out.

“Permanently.”

Everything moved too fast. The walls shifted inward. “What does that mean?” I shouted. “I have to live there?
Forever?” I took several steps forward. Two security guards emerged from the woodwork, and I realized I’d crossed a line. The one too close to the Greenies.

“Sir, I think the girl would be more dangerous in the Badlands.” The bald guy who’d asked about the transmissions leaned forward. “She is a Free Thinker. Imagine the problems.”

“What the hell is a Free Thinker?” I asked.

Mech-749 slapped a patch on my neck. A silencer. Cursing is always silenced.

“Nonsense,” the middle Greenie said. “She is more dangerous here, amidst the tech, and given her family history—”

“My family history? You mean my dad? Where is he?” Only silence echoed off the walls. I took another step forward, very aware of their eyes on me. “I’ll do whatever you want! Don’t send me there!” My words flickered on the projection screens, scrolling across the bottom from one to the next.

The middle Greenie smiled without sympathy. His eyes flashed as he shook his head. I stepped forward anyway.

Don’t do it,
a voice warned. Hearing voices isn’t all that abnormal. But the same voice—and this
was
the same voice as before—meant someone was monitoring me.

The middle Greenie’s eyes narrowed, almost like he
could hear the voice too. For just a moment, I thought he must be the one infiltrating my thoughts. But his voice had been distinctly higher than the one still echoing in my head.
Don’t do it, don’t do it.

I took another step forward.

The middle Greenie raised his hand, causing security guards to swoop in and pull me back toward the Mech. I thrashed and kicked, and even with my soft-soled sneakers, one of them fell. I clobbered another one in the face with my tech-cuffed hands. I desperately wanted to rip the silencer off, but I couldn’t get my fingers up high enough. It would’ve hurt—a lot—but I didn’t care.

“I won’t go!” I shouted so loud, my throat ripped. “You can’t!”

Someone must have pushed a button or raised the alarm, because the courtroom swarmed with guards. Four of them tackled me before I went down. I finally stopped struggling when a taser sparked in my peripheral vision and someone kneeled on my spine. The guard cuffed me a second time, and I winced as the tech burned my wrists. Two pairs of advanced tech cuffs would cause blisters and a severe rash if I wore them for very long. My flesh was already tingling with techtricity.

“There’s your evidence,” the middle Greenie said. “We’ll
give you one week.” He snapped his projection screen closed and stood. The other Greenies mimicked him, and as one, they marched out of the room.

One week for what?
I glanced at Jag, my chest heaving in anger. He held my eyes, studying me like I was a difficult projection puzzle he couldn’t figure out. Refusing to look away, I stared at him until the guards yanked me backward.

Just as they pulled me through a door, a man asked, “What are we going to do with you, Mr. Barque?” The voice dripped with disdain, but somehow it sounded … familiar.

As I was escorted down the hall, I made the connection: The real-life voice speaking to Jag matched the one that had been talking in my head.

Gunner

1.

Someone is always watching. Always listening. Freedom doesn’t exist in the city of Freedom, what with the glinting silver surfaces recording thoughts everywhere and the surrounding walls keeping everyone and everything in—or out.

On the east, the ocean hugs Freedom, but no one knows how to swim. That’s against protocol, and all Citizens follow protocol.

Identity also doesn’t flourish in Freedom. Which was why, on this crap Monday, I escaped the confines of the Education Rise amidst a stream of other students, hopefully unnoticed by Raine
she’d be easier to ignore if she wasn’t so gorgeous
Hightower.

Up next: snacking and flying.

Or so I thought.

Raine materialized out of nowhere, her stark-as-snow hair falling over one shoulder. She adjusted her hat as I cast my eyes around to see if anyone was watching us. We seemed to be as alone as two people could be in a city where Thinkers monitored everything, from what job I’d do for the rest of my life to who I’d marry.

I wished They’d chosen Raine for me.

“Hey, flyboy,” she said. Her voice made my insides flip. She stepped off her hoverboard and fell into stride beside me.

I fought the urge to look behind me, see if any of my buddies saw me talking with this amazing girl. I managed to stall the smile before it gave my feelings away.

“Hey.” I pocketed my hands against the February afternoon chill. I could’ve mouthed Raine’s next words.

“We really need you, Gunner.”

I didn’t respond. Not a sigh, not a shrug, nothing. Now, if she’d say “
I
really need you,” I’d probably reconsider everything. But she never did.

I’d heard her recruitment speech before. Raine belonged to a group called the Insiders, and apparently they were working to enact some “governmental change.”

I was pretty sure that meant she snuck out after hours to drink contraband coffee with either her match/best friend
Cannon Lichen or her tech guru Trek Whiting.

She wouldn’t tell me anything about the Insiders until I joined, and I wasn’t joining until she told me something.

The conversation felt stale, but this was the first time she’d approached me in person. The other petitions had happened over my cache. I’ll admit, I liked this way better.

I snuck a glance at Raine and admired her sea-foam-green eyes. Immediately afterward I heard her voice over my cache.
Are you even listening to me?

Every Citizen in Freedom is implanted with a cache when they’re born. In childhood, they were more of a nuisance, as they took special concentration to use. I couldn’t hear every thought someone had—I’m not a Thinker or a mind ranger. Those people can hear thoughts and read minds—and so much more.

No, a cache was a mental communication implant. After I learned to focus my thoughts, thanks to the introductory course we all took as first-year primary students, caching was dead useful.

I could talk to my buddies on the hoverboard track without yelling. I could send a friend a message without my mom knowing. Over time—and a few more caching lessons—sending and receiving messages became as easy as thinking.

My friends and I exchanged conversations mentally while together. After we went home, messages were easily transcribed just by thinking and could then be sent as electro-communications. E-comms could be kept in the cache’s memory and accessed later.

The Thinkers could monitor a cache stream, but They maintained a very exclusive Watched list. And trust me, you knew if you were on it. Saved e-comms, however, could cause problems if they fell into the wrong hands.

I’d deleted all of Raine’s, some of the most recent ones without even reading them.

Of course I’m listening,
I chatted back to Raine, trying not to let her proximity derail my annoyance at her for asking—again. This issue was nonnegotiable.
It’s just that I can’t join.

Raine fidgeted with the fingers on her gloves, her agitation thinly disguised under a layer of frustration. I could feel it coming from her, though she didn’t know that, and I didn’t want her to find out.

Not everyone appreciated an empath.

“Your mom,” she said out loud.

“My mom,” I repeated. I couldn’t leave her. She and I, we’d always been there for each other. I didn’t want to get her in trouble. She had a good job in the Transportation Rise. Sure, she worked until five, but no one needed to be
home to monitor my afternoon snacking and flying sessions.

Besides, Director Hightower—that’s right, Raine’s father—did all the monitoring in Freedom.

Raine paused, one foot on the grass of the green area across from Rise One and one foot still on the sidewalk next to me. I looked at her properly, almost flinching with the beauty I found in her face.

“So,” I said, working hard to keep my voice from breaking.

“So, I’m worried about you, Gunn,” she said. A secret flashed in her eyes; her words held more than concern. I realized how little I really knew about this girl, despite my crush on her.

I frowned. “Worried?”

“My dad …”

Now, her dad I knew all about. Technically he was a Regional Director, presiding over many cities in the nearby area. Not that I’d been to any of them. I didn’t know how close they were or what they were called. I just knew that Van Hightower owned a lot more than Freedom.