inDIVISIBLE (20 page)

T
added the purification drops and capped off the first bottle. “It may be easier, but is it better?”

I remembered swiping my hand
across the sensors, being told what I’d do for my career, where I’d attend school and worst of all, being ripped from my friends each year as one or the other of us was transferred to adjoining schools to keep us from becoming too attached and exploring our own ideas, developing our own personalities. Sure, One United provided our employment, food, housing and healthcare, but what were we giving up to receive it all?

“I don’t want to take the easy way
anymore,” I agreed.

T uncapped the
second bottle and submerged it. He treated the water and stood, dropping both into his backpack.

“I think we’re about as ready as we can be,” he said.

I braced my shoulders and searched the flattened landscape surrounding us. “Okay,” I said, “but where do we go?”

T pointed into the distance—somewhere to the north—and we set out, walking slowly enough to be quiet,
yet quickly enough to put as many miles as possible behind us before night.

CHAPTER 23

“I’ve been thinking about my mother,” I blurted.

T stopped walking and took a seat on a mossy rock.
“Sofi?”

I nodded.

“She loved you.”

I sat across from him on a smaller rock, one that jabbed me hard in
to my left butt cheek, but my feet appreciated the break. “She’s the only mother I’ve ever known.”

“She’s your real mother in every sense of the word,” he said, unzipping the backpack and tossing me
a water bottle. I took two swallows to save some for later, my stomach rumbling from hunger.

“I want to find her.”

He studied my face, waited for more but when it didn’t come, he finally spoke. “We’ve got to find this other group first, Brynn. We can’t continue forever on our own.”

I pushed my heels into the soil before realizing the Alliance trackers would see them
. I moved my feet back, placed them on a rock and tried to cover my marks by smearing the soil with my palms. “I didn’t mean now. I meant later, when we can go prepared.”

“You want me to help you find Sofi?’

I nodded. “I’d like your help but I wouldn’t think less of you if you didn’t want to give it.”

He smiled a crooked g
rin. “You know we’ve got a ways to go yet.”

I cocked my head and waited.

“We’ve got to find that group first. They’ll help us, I’m sure of it, then we can go out on our own, but I honestly don’t see how we can find Sofi, even after we get their help.”

I knew he spoke
the truth but I didn’t want to hear it. Sofi had loved and protected my father and I needed to do the same for her. “I’d like to try.”

“Then I’ll be there to help.”

“Thank you.”

T dug into his pack again until he found the last of our fruit. He tossed me a bruised apple and took one for himself. He bit into the apple and sighed as he chewed. I rubbed mine absently on my filthy shirt.

“How many people do you think there are?” I asked.

“Hiding out in the mountains?” he asked.

I nodded, taking my first bite, but tasting little.

He shrugged and swallowed.
“Your father gave no indication in his writing.”

I leaned my elbows on
my knees and rolled the fruit in my hands. “Do you think they’ve been there a while or that they’ve recently defected?”

He shrugged and kicked his feet out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles.
“Could be either way. The settlements to the south, they sound big, real cities built up where old ones used to exist.”

I pried the silence for any disturbance and found nothing, not even the scurry of animals. It made me nervous and I bit a large chunk of the apple free, chewing loudly.

“I still wonder how we got here,” I mumbled when I swallowed. “I mean, there had to be a point when people said ‘
enough
.’”

“Most people didn’t even realize what was going on,” he ventured, repeating what he’d learned in my father’s journals. “Changes occurred gradually until one day people woke up without their own lives
—missing their own agency. Along the way they were pressured into accepting the new ways, feeling like bad parents if they didn’t implant their children with tracking devices that would keep them safe from kidnapping or guarantee them healthcare. They succumbed, each battle becoming easier and easier for the Alliance. And along the way, they brought the people into a world of dependency …”

“My father abhorred depende
ncy.”

“Like many others,” T said, tossing his apple core far into the brush.
“It’s common among the strong, the people born to be leaders.”

“The ones they label as
terrorists,” I said softly.

T stood to go again when I stopped him. “Wait.”

He lowered back down. “What?”

“Where are they?”

He pointed through the trees but I stopped him.

“I don’t mean the people. I mean the officers. They should have found us by now, killed us.”

He scrubbed his hands over his face, his fingernails black with dirt, his hair darker than it had been yesterday because of the filth. “I have a theory.”

When he didn’t continue, I offered mine, “They’re following us with satellites,
projecting our images on a big screen in a room with air conditioning and betting how long we’ll survive out here without food?”

“You forgot the popcorn.”

My stomach howled and T grimaced. “Sorry.”

“For being hungry? Really?”

“This would be a whole lot easier if I were immune to it.”

T
’s humor waned. “I think they realize we know where we’re going, that we’re meeting others like us.”

“So that should make them hurry to kills us faster, so we don’t make contact.”

He shook his head. “It makes them watch us, with satellites—heat goggles—whatever until we lead them to the others.”

Somehow
, starving by ourselves sounded better than killing an entire colony by stumbling into it. “I don’t like your theory.”

T played in the dirt with his foot, making a dent in the soil. “I don’t either.”

“Why don’t they just take our map?” I asked.

“They’re monitoring our location but they’re not listening to us, not seeing every little move we’re making, which means, they may not realize we have a map, but they do know we know where we’re going.”

“They could bring us in, torture it out of us …” the idea sent fear down my spine but I knew it could happen and even feared that’s how we’d end up.

“That’s why the Freemen don’t put their location on a map. Maybe the officers have tried
torture before and they’re using a new approach, realizing people like us are just going to a meeting point, not the actual settlement.”

I pushed my filthy hair behind an ear and asked. “What do we do?”

“Avoid any direct route to that first checkpoint. We also lead them away from the other settlements. We don’t want them to think those people are involved any more than we want to take them to the Freemen. There are families there—children.”

“Checkpoints?”

His mouth opened to speak and he closed it, swallowing before opening it again. “I’ll explain in a minute.”

My stomach felt like a vice already, clenching tighter each time we stopped. “How long?”

“However long it takes.”

“If we went right there,” I ventured. “How long would it take us?”

He scratched the back of his neck as he calculated. “A few days?”

A few days—did we have the food or water to last a few days?

T picked up a long, pointed stick and drew a rough map in the dirt between us. “Here’s the problem.” He added dots like the ones I’d seen on the paper map. “These are not colonies. They’re checkpoints, of a sort.”

“Checkpoints—
”

“So the guards can see who’s coming. You’ve got to go through each one the right way or they’ll dispatch men to kill you, then when you get close enough and you’ve passed their tests, they send someone to bring you in. That way their location is never mapped. They can move freely. They just put their guards where they can observe the checkpoints.
”

D
iscouragement warred with hope. Even if we went straight through all the checkpoints, the chances of arriving without starving were slim. Taking the officers on a cross country in the process would kill us. But did we even have a choice?

“Brynn,
this one,” he touched a rock in the soil and traced cliffs on two sides, then drew a tall mountain on the third, “is where we’re headed. It’s the final checkpoint for the settlement your father planned to join.” He filled in a few other blanks and pointed to a stick that sat only a few inches from his ‘river.’ “This is us. We can stay along the river, keep hydrated and look for berries …”

I arched my back, h
oping to displace the soreness but the rock only dug deeper into my rear. “If we’re sure they’re not going to swoop in and kill us, don’t you think we can slow our pace a bit?”

“This is where we’ll lead them.” T added a large X several miles upriver before he
swiped his foot over the drawing, obliterating the map. “We’re not sure about anything.”

“So they could still be out there, just a few feet away, waiting for the perfect opportunity?”

“They could,” he agreed.

“Then we’re no more free than we were before.”

“We’re making our own decisions,” T said. “We’re acting on our own.” The hint of a smile touched his mouth. “We didn’t even get permits for this hike. How do you think they like that?”

I smiled.
No hiking permits
. That was the least of our worries anymore.

“Do you think
my father had a personal contact in the group?”

T shrugged. “He me
ntions a man named Oliver, but doesn’t say if there’s been personal contact.”

“He could have just found the name in the downloads he was doing from the PCAs,” I said, hoping I was wrong.

Leaves rattled nearby and a large squirrel scurried through the brush. My shoulders relaxed though I hadn’t realized they’d been tensed.

“There’s one more thing,” I began.

T looked up. “What’s that?”

“Once we lead the officers off course, escape their scrutiny, find this colony, convince them we’re friendly and are taken in—I get the first shower.”

He tossed a pebble and it bounced off my shoe. “You’ll have to fight me for it.”

“You’re on.” I stood
and scrubbed my finger over my grimy teeth, the closest thing I owned to a toothbrush. “So we’ve got these checkpoints,” I said, following him near the base of the hillside, knowing we should be hiking higher but trying to look casual as we stayed in the foothills. “How do we get to them?”

He had slowed his pace, just enough
so I could talk while traveling. “We follow the landmarks,” he explained. “There are little dots along the way and corresponding descriptions in the notebook.”

“Different dots than the checkpoint dots.”

“Yes.”

“They must be small because I only remember seeing the checkpoint dots.”

“I’ll show you when I know it’s safe,” he said.

I bumped shoulders with him, trying to throw him off balance to lighten the mood. “Don’t hold your breath waiting
for the perfect moment.”

“Believe me,” he said, looking into the distance rather than at me. “I believe in taking advantage of every opportunity as soon as it rolls around, perfect timing or not.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

The familiar burn returned to my cheeks and I cleared my throat. “I’d like to hear another theory.”

“What?” he asked.

“Once we have these guys going the wrong direction, how do we get away to go the right direction?”

T swallowed hard. “I’m still working on that.”

“Fill me in when you get it worked out?” I asked lightly.

He shook his head. “Naw. I’ll fill you in when it’s over.”

CHAPTER
24

The tent flaps fluttered in the breeze, making a snap, snap, snap as the zipper slapped against a pole. Bleached white, the tent had originally been orange, the seams and the base still sporting the original color—or something close to it.