Cheating Time (4 page)

"What the hell is a MicroPharm separatist?"
I'd asked.

Jayden rolled his eyes, acting as if he
thought I were an irritating child whose one question and one
answer was sure to lead to many, many more.

He'd been
right!

"All you need to know, Carlie, is they are
people who dislike you. They equate you with the MicroPharm, and
they hate everything that has anything to do with the device.
You. Your parents. Your whole
family
," he'd blurted before turning me toward the door
of his room, ushering me out to the hall, and leaving me speechless
after he closed the door in my face.

Hearing the Coxes talk about the DOA,
suspecting through eavesdropping I'd find out more about the
organization than anyone else had ever willingly shared, I'd kept
listening. I stood up on the bed and craned my ear until I was as
close to the vent as I could get, assuming the closer I got to the
echoed conversation, the less I'd miss of it.

Soon, I'd found that standing up or sitting
down made little difference when it came to what I heard. Dad's and
Mom's responses as they talked to the Coxes had been whispered,
meaning it hadn't been nearly as easy for me to hear what
they'd
been asking and saying as it
had been for me to hear the Coxes' comments. It was as if Mom and
Dad knew the house's weakness and suspected I'd been up and
listening.

In response to one of my parents' many
whispers that night, Mac had said, "If these people make it through
the mile-high laser fence separating Aspect Nation from the Shadow
World, they're no longer Aspect residents. They instantly become
Citizens of Shadow
."

The mere mention of the Shadow World, one
despised by Dad and completely opposite of that we lived in, had
caused a slew of vulgar words to fly from my father's mouth. I
jumped because my father rarely got angry and almost never
cursed.

One of the last times I'd seen Dad remotely
like that was when he threatened to ban a thirteen-year-old Jayden
from the training room. The two of them had been in the middle of
combat training when Dad swiped his hands low and near Jayden's
feet. The move had been unexpected by Jayden, and before any of us
knew what happened, Jayden had landed on his back and had Dad's
foot sitting on his chest.

"
Dammit!
"
Jayden had sworn, slamming his head back on the mat.

Dad's triumphant smile had instantly faded.
"I won't have foul language in my training room or in front of my
daughter. Do you understand me, son?" he'd yelled.

I still remembered the way Jayden had popped
up and dropped his chin to his chest.

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir," he'd
mumbled.

Jayden adored Dad. The last thing he'd ever
wanted was to disappoint the only man who ever cared enough to
spend time with him and mentor him. I'd felt as sorry for him in
those few minutes as I ever had.

Dad's anger while speaking with Mac on the
night I'd been eavesdropping had been ten times worse than the day
he was irritated with Jayden. For me, the difference was I hadn't
cared nearly enough about the Coxes to feel sorry for them like I
had for Jayden.

"Calm down, Sam. Let's hear them out. We
only know what Barone has told us about the Shadow World. The two
of you have been best friends your entire life. We've always
trusted him… believed every last word he's said. It's time to take
off our rose-colored glasses and listen to what others have to
say," Mom had suggested.

With Mom's permission, Mac and Elle had been
off and running. They'd talked about SNP with the love, adoration,
and reverence of founders who were extremely passionate about what
they did.

"You have to realize, Sam, these people are
willing to become Citizens of Shadow because at least Shadow's
leaders don't mandate by law that they put their newborn babies
through a high-risk surgery in order to implant the MicroPharm, and
they don't make those same parents expose their children to the
constant flow of chemicals and hormones administered by the
MicroPharm."

"You know… I-I never meant for the
MicroPharm to be mandatory. It was simply supposed to be an option.
I wanted parents to be able to make the choice themselves, just
like Sam and I did before we had it implanted into Carlie… just
like Ron and Christi before they implanted it into Tawney. We knew
every potential problem and side effect and felt the benefits were
worth it. Just because we made that choice doesn't mean every
Aspect citizen should be forced to make the same. I wish Barone
hadn't made it a law," Mom had said loud enough for me to hear. As
the inventor of MicroPharm, she'd defended the device, but I could
tell her argument had been half-hearted at best.

"That's just the thing. In the Shadow, the
only chemicals floating through the babies' and children's bodies
are naturally occurring. Treatments are isolated to the sick and
immunizations are given to everyone the old-fashioned way. Through
shots and nasal sprays. The MicroPharm separatists assume the act
of helping the body before it needs help makes it weak and
susceptible, exposing MicroPharm children to diseases that have yet
to be named," Mac had claimed.

On the heels of Mac's speech, Elle had said,
"Selma, you're powerful. You offer more to the world than a choice
that's not ours to make. Help us. The two of you have knowledge
about the
ins
and
outs
of the Aspect government as well as
technicalities associated with the device that might help us prove
it's not as safe as Barone has led everyone to believe.

"The way it stands today, we'll never be
anything more than people who coordinate safe passages. We all know
that getting these people to safety is nothing more than a Band-Aid
because the Shadow World comes with its own problems. Famine and
civil war being the worst.

"It's our obligation to have the law
repelled. That can't happen as long as Barone is president. You
know that as well as we do. No one should have to live in fear that
if they refuse to have this device inserted into their baby's
heart, they will lose everything: home, job, freedom, and, if
caught…
their life
."

As much as I hated to admit it, the Coxes
had been right. Mom and Dad were the perfect informants because
neither would ever be suspected of being MicroPharm separatist
sympathizers given the facts that Mom had invented the device
herself and I represented everything they despised.

I'd also known that Mom and Dad wouldn't
have even been considering anything Mac and Elle were suggesting if
President Barone hadn't released Mom from her job as the chair of
the National Genealogists Committee without giving her the option
of stepping down. Barone had said publically that
it was for her own good
right before he'd
suggested
she had some mental health issues
she needed to sort out.

In a solid show of support for Mom and
against Barone's direct orders, Dad had resigned as Secretary of
the Department of Defense. The entire incident had happened so fast
that I'd learned about Mom losing her position on the committee and
Dad's resignation while flipping through channels on my
MicroGlasses, computerized glasses, while riding the lightrail home
after school.

The instant I'd made it home, Mom waved off
my questions of concern and announced her and Dad's plans to take
us on a family road trip, one that required them to pull Tawney and
me from school just so we could join them in touring Aspect
Nation.

The next morning, my parents had lived up to
their words. Dad had claimed freedom and victory the entire time he
packed our car, and right before we embarked upon
a life away from the spotlight of the president and his
remaining minions
, Mom had shouted—within the confines
of our car—wishes of ill will to anyone who'd been part of the
professional sabotage against her.

The first hundred miles, Mom had ranted,
raved, and made it known that she'd been angry with everything
she'd been forced to endure after the other scientists, ones she'd
considered friends and colleagues, had convinced Barone that she
was longer fit to hold any place on the committee. She complained
that none of them cared that she'd been the one who'd envisioned
the committee and that she'd been the one to insist it would be
necessary in order to make sure the Aspect Nation's massive genetic
database be used ethically… to make sure the information was never
accidently accessed, sold, or shared.

Right after that incident, Mom and Dad had
been disgruntled and disillusioned, making them easily swayed.
Realizing there was only one person Barone looked out for had been
especially difficult on Dad because Barone had been his best friend
since kindergarten. It had been hard on Mom because she assumed
Barone's loyalty to Dad and our family would have been
reciprocated.

She'd been
wrong.

Without saying it aloud, I'd understood that
the late-night conversation, the way my parents were even
entertaining it, meant they'd made the conscious decision to follow
Barone's lead and look out for themselves and our family. If that
meant taking a stand against Barone, as had been suggested by the
Coxes, they'd been prepared to do just that.

As unbelievable and preordained as it
seemed, we'd met the Coxes purely by accident. We'd been traveling
for less than a day when Dad's military grade vehicle broke down a
few miles from their farm. After Elle, a trained homeopathic
healer, had realized Mom had been in no state for travel, they'd
taken us in and offered us a place to stay overnight. Elle and Mom
and Mac and Dad had become good friends almost immediately. One
night turned into two nights, and two nights turned into six
months.

If Jayden had been with us the whole time
and I didn't know the SNP was headquartered below the barn, I could
honestly say the Coxes' influence along with the restful and
relaxing atmosphere of the farm had turned us back into the family
we should have been all along.

The problem is I know what
I know, and I need to tell Jayden. He's the only person who can
help me get my parents away from the Coxes' brainwashing and back
to the capital where we all belong.

I cursed myself for not asking Mom the
questions that had shot to mind as soon as she'd told me Jayden was
at the farm.

Where did he come from?
Why was he here?

If I weren't being pumped full of drugs to
normalize my emotions, my head would be aching with anxiety. Rather
than think much more about what was going on, I decided to put on
my clothes, go downstairs, and ask my questions.

See Jayden.

Dressed and still in the dark, I was sitting
on my bed and tying my shoes when my door creaked open again. I
thought it was Mom and mumbled, "I'm coming, Mom. I'm almost
finished."

"Take your time, princess. We only have an
entire army of soldiers coming for you. I wouldn't want to
inconvenience you."

JAYDEN!

Squealing quietly, I jumped off the bed, ran
in the direction of his voice, and flung my arms over the exact
spot where I suspected his shoulders to be.

"Oh my God, Jayden!" I whispered. "Oh my
God! I can't believe you're here."

At first, Jayden's entire body tensed. When
he realized I wasn't letting go, not without a real hug, he wrapped
his arms around my waist and hugged me back. When he did that, I
squeezed him even tighter.

Relaxing the tiniest bit, he laughed and
gave me a bear hug to end all bear hugs and kissed me on the head.
Thankful to finally be back together, we basked in each other's
presence for several minutes. Long before I was ready, he pulled
back.

"Damn, Carlie, if I'd have known this was
the welcome I was going to get, I'd have come for you long ago,"
Jayden said quietly.

I laughed. All I could think was how comical
it was that his first word to me was a swear word when I'd just
been remembering how angry Dad had been when he'd cursed in front
of me the first time.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

I shook my head. "You. You're funny."

"We've been apart for six months, and all
you can say to me is you think I'm funny?"

"It's not that… though you are funny," I
insisted. "It's that I've been so worried about you. Seeing you
now… i-it's made me delirious. That's all."

"
You've
been
worried about
me
. That's classic."
He chuckled.

"And now here you are making fun of me," I
pointed out.