The Rift Uprising (14 page)

My heart starts to hammer. I wonder what the punishment for something like that is when he gets caught. Because the thing is: He will get caught. Maybe he thinks because I am being so nice that all the other Citadels and the brass at ARC are as understanding as me. Oh, God. If something happens to him, it will be my fault.

“You took it out? By yourself?”

“I did. All I needed was a paring knife, tweezers, and a copy of
Gray's Anatomy
. It was easy.” I raise my eyebrows at him. “Okay, no—that's a lie. It hurt like hell, and the stitches were crazy painful. But I did it.”

I press my hands into the back of my neck and rest my elbows on my knees. I'm impressed and yet horrified. How am I going to get him to stop this? “That is gross and hardcore—kudos. But, Ezra,
come on
.” I lift up my head and look at him. He's so handsome and brave. Stupid but brave. But mostly stupid at this moment. “Even if they can't track you,
they'll find you. That is, if something doesn't eat you in The Menagerie before you can get out, on your way to being electrocuted to death.”

Ezra takes out a couple mugs from the cupboard and sets them on the counter. I hear him pour the coffee and the little hiss of the liquid as it continues to percolate out. I wonder if he's even listening to me. He's clearly an impatient guy, and I get it. But there is no escape from this place. He
has
to see that.

“Listen, don't let my extraordinary good looks fool you into thinking I'm some sort of a bimbo,” he says with a laugh. He's joking, playful. I stare him down. I don't think any part of this is funny. “Ryn, okay, honestly. I can do this. I already got my hands on a blank swipe card. I can program it to get me through the main gate of The Menagerie. I can also disable the electrified fence from there. Citadels are posted at those entrances, but they do patrol the area every hour on the hour for ten minutes. That gives me ten whole minutes to get to the alcove, turn it off, and run to the closest pen with the least terrifying creature and the shortest fence. That's obviously where you come in.” Ezra returns to the couch and sets down the coffee cups, into which he has put cream. The last thing I need right now is caffeine. I will bounce off the walls. I'm already close to bouncing on his skull.

“And then what?” I ask. “I draw you a map that you are able to follow in the dark? You
are
planning to do this in the dark, I hope. So, you wander for miles in the forest, in the dark, with no GPS, and emerge in Battle Ground somehow, where there is a full battalion of Citadels, and probably regular troops as well, to hunt you down?” I shake my head, getting madder.

He is eating a cookie.

I don't smack sense into him right then and there, but I'm
sorely tempted to. And after he finishes chewing, he says, “No. I leave my tracking device here and go on a night when I have a solid two days off. They won't know I'm gone for two whole days. Do you know what I can do in two days? You might be able to kick ass from here to kingdom come, but get me on a computer and I am a very dangerous man.” The smile is off his face. Finally. Ezra angles his body so that he's fully facing me. “With the right equipment—and by equipment, I mean a computer, a Wi-Fi network, and a printer—I can create an entire new identity for myself. I can access money that isn't mine and make it mine. I can book a plane ticket. I can book
two
tickets, Ryn. We can both get out of here.”

My breath catches, and I pause to let the words he said sink in. He wants to rescue me.
Me
. I have never thought about running away. As much as I hate my job and the overall suckage of my life, I have a duty. I have to protect the world. It sounds so melodramatic in my head, yet I truly believe it. I just don't think I can say this to Ezra out loud without sounding like I have an ego the size of the entire country. I try anyway.

“Ezra, I can't leave. It's sweet that you want to help me.” I reach my hand out, then snatch it back again. He's so close. Too close. “I hate what they did to me. It's wrong and messed up on a hundred different levels, but that doesn't change the fact that I need to be here—to protect this town, my family, my friends. I can't just go. This isn't a job, it's who I am. You just don't get it. I'm dangerous . . . I'm . . . I hurt people,” I blurt out. Immediately I want to suck the words back in. I'm so unused to this level of honesty, I almost feel sick. My God, what must he think of me? I search his face, but instead of shock, he looks baffled.

“You're right. I don't get it. I'm sorry. You hurt people, I get
that
, but you don't seem to understand, or you're in complete
denial about, how much you can actually control and how much power you actually have.” Ezra shifts in his seat and runs his fingers through his hair. “You're absolutely right—you are dangerous, but I don't think you're dangerous in the way you think you are. Your implant? Your chip? You don't know anything about it. You don't even know the basic truth about how they managed to pull off implanting the little fuckers in all your tiny second-grade brains. What if it does something else that you don't know about? You've gotten the majority of your education downloaded through that thing. What if went in the other direction? Wiped out your memories? Your personality? Made you do things that they wanted but that you would never agree to. Can you honestly say that ARC would never go that far? Please, you know they would, so we should both get out now.”

If Ezra's words had been weights, they would have landed at my feet with a thud. What he said is not only reasonable but obvious. So why don't I—Miss Contingency for Everything That Could Ever Go Bad Ever—know that already? Why don't I think about what else the implants could do or make us do?

My head starts to buzz. My body feels suddenly wrong, like my skin's been put on too tight. All I can think is that it must be the job. I spend so much time fighting and worried about the next fight that I don't think about who's actually sending us in there because the truth is right here in this room. He is absolutely right. Still, no matter how much validity there is to his argument, he still isn't grasping the scope of ARC. He seems to understand all the bad they do (
while completely ignoring the good, thank you very much
), but it's clearly not clicking that however we got here, here we are. That there is no beating this system. “Look, this is not about me,” I try to explain. “This is about you. Dying. Badly. Or worse, and yes, there are
worse things than dying. The people in charge here think they are being benevolent and good and progressive, but one look around this place tells you that they have one agenda for all of you: Be human. Accept the program. I think it would be far less scary if they just treated you like actual prisoners, right? It's . . .” I search for the right word and look around Ezra's cute little apartment, which is as fake as everything else. “It's sinister. And if they can make this fake Utopia feel shitty, you can bet they know how to make things ugly, too. If you try to get out, there is a good chance you won't make it, even with my help.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Ezra concedes. Then he leans in closer to me. I can smell the sugar on his hands from the baking. His skin looks golden in this light. I close my eyes and open them, hoping to shake myself loose from the pull he has on me. It doesn't work, and I realize he's going to get us both hurt—one way or another. “I swear, though,” Ezra says, “I would rather die than live my life in this gilded cage.”

“A gilded cage is better than a pine box!”

“But it's more than that, and I think you know what I mean. It's not just my life, Ryn. There is something going on here. Something I don't understand yet, but it is major.”

“Really? More major than a portal to the Multiverse opening in my hometown or me being turned into a super soldier or you being in a prison camp that looks like a Thomas Kincaid painting?
Please
—we are literally living inside a show on the SyFy network.”

Ezra laughs that same easy laugh that disarms me and I work to pull myself together. I sit up straighter. I focus, trying to find something unappealing about him that I can concentrate on. There is nothing. Even his hands are beautiful.

“But what kind of show is being produced?” Ezra asks. “Do you ever think about that?”

“I was just saying . . .”

“Yes, but keep going with it. Consider: Did you know there are over fifteen thousand Immigrants here? Of those fifteen thousand, almost five hundred are physicists, cosmologists, chemists, biochemical engineers. People—or, you know, beings or whatever—who are highly specialized scientists. It's a statistical impossibility. It's like they're using The Rift as a STEM casting call. There is something much bigger going on. And I want to know what it is.”

“Why?” My voice is rising. I rub my hands on my pants out of frustration. “Who cares? Maybe The Rift just attracts people who are working with subatomic energy. Maybe it's a coincidence. It doesn't change anything.”

“It changes everything.”

“It's not worth risking your life over!” I sound shrill. I hate the pitch of my voice. I am not the cool, calm, collected Ryn who can handle a life-or-death situation. I am suddenly a nag.

And I'm not sure I even agree with myself anymore.

“Ryn,” Ezra says. His voice is low, almost a purr. His eyes lock on to mine, and I start to tremble. With so many emotions flying around the room, my resolve is crumbling. I dig my nails into my palms as he says, “Listen to me. This is important. I'm not just saying this to be dramatic. I am telling you that this is
huge
. They let me work on individual algorithms, so obviously I'm only allowed a peek at one tiny piece of the big picture. But from what I can suss out, and based on what I've heard from the other people I'm working with, I am troubled.” Ezra's face is serious now. I think about what I sacrifice, the risks I take to make everyone safe. It occurs to
me that it's condescending of me to dismiss Ezra for wanting to do the same. It also makes me like him even more.

Damn it.

“Okay, well, you must have some kind of a working theory, some kind of an idea if what's going on is enough to disturb you so much. So tell me,” I coax, relaxing my posture.

“I do. But let me start by asking you a question: What do you think the number one priority of all the research we are doing is?”

“Closing The Rift,” I answer.

“Right.
Exactly
. And yet . . . that isn't in the data. It doesn't tell that story. It seems like more of a . . .”

“More of a what?”

“I don't know. Like I said, this is just a theory based on the programs they asked me to code. We were in a meeting yesterday, and from what I put together from my job and what they asked of others, I'm pretty sure they want me to start on a quantum key distribution to
hide
something. I mean, you only use a QKD to hide something with infinite variables. Add that to the algorithms I've already looked at, and if I had to guess, I would say they are working on some sort of a map. Do you know what that means?”

“A map . . .” I whisper. “A map of the
Multiverse?
” I shake my head. “That's not possible. That's like drawing an atlas of the world using only a single grain of sand as a reference.”

“But what if it isn't?” Ezra counters. “What if instead of wanting to close The Rift, ARC wants to use it? Pull out people like me or more species like the Roones? They could gain control over not just this Earth, but any Earth they wanted. What if navigating The Rift was possible? Tell me, who do you think they would send through it to do all the dirty work?” he asks, giving me a significant look.

I can't help myself. I practically leap off the couch.
Who is this guy?
This guy who has been in my life for, like, five minutes, is now sitting here trying to tell me what's going on? I don't like his version of the truth. It's cutting me up from the inside out. It's too much. He presses on anyway.

“Ryn, I have a photographic memory, but I physically don't have the time to look at every piece of data coming out of all the labs here. I need time and space and—most of all—data above my pay grade to get some kind of proof. That I can get. I can hack in and steal it from here. But once I do, the clock is ticking, and I can no longer stay here. Given a few months, I might be able to make sense of what's happening, but not if I'm in the Village. That
would
be suicide.” Ezra stands up and walks over to me. After the heart-racing pace of the information he's thrown at me, suddenly I feel like everything is shifting to slow motion. I see his hands raise. I see them reach out and land gently on my shoulders. I feel his thumb stroking my clavicle. We are inches apart. “Ryn—I don't want to die. And I certainly don't want you to get hurt. I . . . I care too much about you to ask you to risk everything without having thought this through. I was being an ass before—I really can't do this without you. I don't
want
to do this without you.” His voice is almost a whisper, and I worry the pounding in my heart is going to drown out his words. His head moves forward.

Oh, God, I think he's going to kiss me . . .

The fury sweeps through me like a lightning strike. I begin to pant. Without being able to stop myself, I push him back with the palm of my hand. Ezra lifts into the air and lands on his right arm, skittering past the kitchen.

“What the hell, Ryn!” There's an edge to his voice. I've hurt him already. At the moment, though, I'm not really sorry. I literally don't have it in me to be sorry. Quite the opposite.

He said he understood. He has no idea.

“Get into your bathroom and lock the door,” I say through clenched teeth. It's taking everything I have to keep myself still. I feel my foot step forward, but I did not make the choice to start moving toward him. My body is no longer mine. “Now!” I scream.