The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen, #1) (11 page)

I stood to retrieve my items and turned to go. The man’s eyes locked onto the doll and widened. He tried to speak. “Wait,” he ground out. “You’re…Wendy’s…daughter.”

My entire body covered with goosebumps. “Yes,” I whispered. “How did you—”

He smiled in spite of everything, letting his head fall to the floor, tired from holding it up. “Fly, little…Sophelia. Fly.” I gaped along with his daughter. He picked his head back up and said steadily. “You have it. It begins.”

“What—”

“Go. Everything you need…you have.” I did need to go. I had to find a place for the night, but this was too much. “But you are not alone. Not anymore. Look to the stars…and you will find us.”

“But—”

“You have it, now go. Before they come. Go.”

I nodded, not understanding the peace on his face as he sat up. I thought I was going to have to fight my way out and here I was, leaving like I was a guest.

“Wait.” He stood slowly. “Here.” He walked over to a cabinet and grabbed a small shoulder bag and handed it to me. “Wish I could give you more.”
              “No. This is great.” I knew people in the stacks were on rations. I had more than they did at this point. “Thanks.”

I stuffed my items inside and turned to go.

“Fly, Sophelia.”

I looked at him once more and wanted to ask him how he knew what my mom used to always say to me, but somehow knew he wouldn’t give me the answer.

**

With my bag across my chest, the treasures securely at my back, I wove my way through the dark buildings. Curfew would be soon and I would have nowhere to hide. I’d have to find somewhere to stay soon, just until morning.

I felt just like that little girl I used to be as I walked along. The stacks were just like I remembered them. Everyone was so loud and boisterous, yelling out and talking animatedly about their day. Well…actually, I didn’t remember that. People were pretty laid back. They laughed, but it was playing around. I didn’t remember it ever being this loud before. What was going on? I looked around and found everyone…

Looking at me…

I didn’t stop. I kept moving, acting as if I hadn’t noticed. My eyes flicked to the big holographic screens above my head and saw my face. Plastered on every one of them. But it wasn’t just my face, it was a video. It was me, walking through stacks alley.

Right this second.

My lips parted as the number flashed under my face.

Five hundred thousand pieces of silver.

People in the stacks helped each other. They would hide each other if the Militia was looking sometimes, they would tell them to go one way, when someone had gone another, but that number…was a game-changer. And I didn’t blame a single one of them. This was what our government had done, just like Maxton had said: They asked the question
What would you do for your family?

And right now that answer was betray one of their own. Gosh, with that money, they could feed an entire building in the stacks for months. I didn’t blame them one bit. But it didn’t mean I was going to give up or let them have it easy either.

              It wasn’t until then that I heard the music playing—it had been playing for a bit and I was too wrapped up to notice. Their stupid classical music they blasted over the speakers when the Militia was coming or when they thought something was about to go down with the citizens in a public place. They said it calmed us, kept us from becoming too violent. They said it was scientifically proven to interact with our brains just like a drug could and help in situations of crisis or turmoil.

What a load of dung.

I gave one more look to the girl in the sky. Her face turned as the billboard spun. She looked up to the sky, too, as if looking into the unknown, looking for something
even I
didn’t know. I took a deep breath, so deep it hurt, not caring what it cost me in oxygen, and said goodbye to that girl.

She belonged to her father. She was a sweet, timid girl who dreamed and wished for things to be good and for people to come back who never would. She belonged to her mother. She wished to fly away to faraway places and for people to rescue her who would never come. That girl was gone and all that was left was
this
girl, a girl who had a purpose she knew nothing about but was determined to find it.

“I’m going to fly, Mom. I promise,” I whispered and prayed to her God that she heard me. “Please help me.”

The lips of the girl in the sky moved, too, praying to a God she wasn’t sure she believed in, but was willing to give it a shot right then.

I looked back at everyone in the wide alley between the buildings. And when I say wide alley, I mean, it had to be fifty yards. There were a few men coming toward me from that way, but so many people looking to the sky, pointing and then pointing at me. I looked back the way I needed to go, out of the stacks, and there were considerably less men that way. It was a no-brainer.

I ran straight toward the building I was walking next to. Without hooking on, because I was in a hurry, I started to go up the ladder. I heard my mother scolding me in my head. When I felt someone grab my ankle, I gasped.

I looked down at him. “If I die, you don’t get anything!”

He sighed and let me go, but stayed right on my heels as he followed me up.

The chatter around me was loud as people shouted and hollered at us. More men followed us up. I went all the way to the top floor. There was only one guy who made it as quickly as I had and I pulled out my can and sprayed him before he could grab me. I wondered how many sprays I had left. I stuck it back into its safe place and then hooked my hands over the low roof before climbing over it, swinging my knee over and rolling onto the still-hot surface, knowing that they would hesitate. On the tops of the buildings were energy boards and solar panels.

Another myth that had long plagued our people was that being too close the sun and energy-inducing products would cause cancer. Cancer had been eradicated, but they claimed that if you got near or touched the solar panels you would get cancer, bring it back, and be the cause. Though most people knew that cancer couldn’t be spread like that, some people chose to believe everything Congress told them.

I knew only a couple of the brave and desperate would follow.

What I hadn’t expected were six brave and desperate.

I swallowed as they began to take defensive positions around me, like I was a threat or something. It actually puffed me up a little. They saw me as a threat? Really?

I let my eyes wander around them and then caught a glimpse of the new screen they were showing. WANTED FOR MURDER now blinked above my head. I almost lost my focus as I stared at it, before catching myself.

“Murder?” I said out loud. I looked at the man in front of me. “You know that’s not true, right? They
just
put that on there. They’re just doing anything and everything to bring me in.”

He ticked his head from side to side. “Someone wants you real bad.”

“Apparently,” I grumbled.

“Must’ve done
something
bad,” he muttered back.

I laughed without humor, and it surprised me that it came out. “Yeah. I took a beating that wasn’t mine.”

I saw a couple of them flinch a little, but that wasn’t enough to stop a five-hundred-thousand pieces paycheck.

I sighed, crossing my arms strategically. “Fine. You want to fight the girl? Let’s go.” I tilted my chin toward him. “Go ahead. Hit me.”

He huffed. “No.”

“Chicken?”

“No, sweetheart. I’m not chicken.” He smiled and shook his head. This was the stacks that I knew. “I’m just not going to hit a girl. I’ll take you in real easy-like, you can go to processing, and everything happens real smooth.”

I stared at him. “You know what they do to women in confinement.” I stared harder. “You
know
.”

His jaw jumped. One of the guys next to him wiped his hand down his face and left, jumping down from the roof and out of sight, obviously thinking all of this was no longer worth it.

“I know no such thing. People talking is just that,” he finally said.

I shook my head. “I hope you enjoy your reward. I hope it’s worth it.”

He turned red. “I’ve got three kids. I can’t even—”

“I know.” I felt bad for saying what I said. I understood why he was doing it. “I would have done anything to save my mom,” I looked down, “just like she did everything for me; even if paying our taxes couldn’t be one of them.”

When I looked back up, he looked infinitely sad and angry and just…like we all do. Tired. Tired of being on the bottom.

“Just do it.” He hesitated. “Just…do it.”

With the cameras watching from the screens in the sky and whoever was watching us, he came for me. I hoped I had enough to do the job when they all came for me.

When he got close enough, I uncrossed my arms and sprayed him with the incapacitation spray. He went down like a rock.

“Sorry,” I muttered and turned for who was coming at me next. He hadn’t seen what happened because he was behind me, so he went down, too. The next guy was wiser and held his breath. The mist went everywhere and he walked through it, coming to me and grabbing my arms.

“Nice try,” he said and raised his eyebrow at me. “Did you really think that was going to work on all of us?”

I kneed him in the groin.

“Ahhh,” he groaned as he went down.

“I hoped, so I wouldn’t have to hurt you. It was your choice, big fella.”

“Ah, you b—”

“I wouldn’t say that if I were you,” I told him as I faced the two who were left. “It’s not worth the fee.” They were debating how to go about it. “Come on, guys. Just scoot on and we can all end this peacefully.”

They looked up and saw the screens. One of them said, “And have the whole planet see that you took out six of us by yourself? Sorry, sweetheart. Not gonna happen.”

They both came at once. I sprayed the spray, but it fizzled out with a sputter. I threw the can at one of them and he batted it away easily right before he grabbed me around the throat and pushed me into one of the hot panels. I screamed from the pain in my back.

When I tried to knee him, he quickly, moved his leg away.

He leaned close. “I’ve gotta give it to you for effort, but the key is to come up with a new lineup. You can’t have the same plays for every game or your opponent knows what’s coming next.”

“I guess you should have seen this coming then.”

We both whipped our heads around to see Maxton standing on the roof’s edge behind him. His eyes were furious.

The man with his hands around my neck said, “The deal we all made was that we’d split it amongst us.” He pointed at them all. “Sorry, buddy, but I think you’re a little too late to be coming and trying to get in on the—”

“Let her go.”

“Did you not hear me?”

“Did you not hear
me
?”

“Wait…” He looked at me and back at Maxton. “You’re not here for the reward money, are you.” It wasn’t a question.

Maxton walked over to the man who was trying to get up from the spray and pulled something from his bag. He sprayed him again, and then the other guy on the ground as well.

              “I said, let her go.” Maxton got closer, spraying the man trying to crawl away from where I kneed him as well.
              I couldn’t help but breathe fast, ragged, frantic breaths. Maxton had not only come back for me like he said he would, but he had seen me on the screens and came to get me? To save me? To…what?

              I just watched him in wonder as he moved closer, taking his bag off from his back, setting it off to the side on one of the hooks so it wouldn’t fly away, getting ready to fight, obviously, and facing the men who were still holding me.

              The one who wasn’t holding me went for Maxton and I held my breath, but Maxton put him down quickly. One sweep of his leg and the guy was down on his back, knocked out cold on the roof as his head hit with force. Maxton looked up in anticipation to the other one and I could feel the tension. Was he giving up, or going to fight Maxton and then come for me again?

I had to do something. I reached down and wrapped my hand in the strap of my bag. I swung it up with all my might and hit the man in the back of the head, the heavy book and awkward doll inside made for an awful thud when it struck him. But he just groaned and then squeezed a little more on my throat before he pushed me back onto the solar panel again, releasing me. All I could do was whimper as I slid to the roof, trying not to scrape my back all the way down. I was aching and burning, and tried not to squirm, but ultimately had to just put my palms on the rooftop under me and try to slow my breathing. I knew he’d be coming for me again if Maxton couldn’t fend him off and I wanted to be ready.              

              He took large steps toward Maxton, who took steps toward him in equal measure. It was strange to see people who seemed so eager to fight. When they reached each other, the other guy was the first to swing. Maxton ducked under it easily and then laid a punch into the man’s gut. He cried out in a shout of pain, buckling over. Then he rose and rammed his shoulder into Maxton’s stomach.

I hissed in sympathy, but could do nothing but watch.

When Maxton’s back hit the rooftop, the man reared back to punch him, but Maxton swerved his head left to miss it, making him punch the roof instead. He howled in pain before, with a grunt of frustration, he sent another quick, fast punch into Maxton’s jaw, actually making contact this time. Maxton took the hit like someone who had taken a few in his lifetime and came back with knock to the man’s temple, making him groan loudly. Then Maxton grabbed his collar and rolled over, taking the man with him, before jumping up on his feet. He looked over to check on me for two seconds before his eyes settled back on the man who was trying to hand him his butt on the roof, in front of the entire planet.

To save me.

When I saw the guy go for Maxton again, I wondered what in the world this man could need the money so badly for…