Possession (3 page)

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.

My sister, Tyson, is the talented one, but she’s been gone for years. So my mother never expected me to make it to sixteen, the age when I could really help her with the bills. I’d almost made it. A few more weeks and I could’ve landed a lame job with the loser algae department in the City of Water.

My only consolation for living that life had been Zenn. My mother allowed our friendship because Zenn’s dad—a government official in the teleportation department—had called us a “smart match.”

Which meant she thought he could keep me in line. Too bad she didn’t know that Zenn planned most of our rule-breaking expeditions. Or that he was more than who the Thinkers had matched me with.

“I’d choose you anyway, Vi,” he’d said that day as we lounged next to the lake. “So it’s perfect that we’ll be . . . that They matched us.” He trailed his fingers through my hair. It was still long back then.

“I’d choose you,” he repeated.

I smiled and kept my eyes closed, memorizing his words. Because in that moment, it felt like Zenn and I had the world in our hands.

Then he was chosen for the Special Forces. Everything changed. But not how I felt about him. And not how he felt about me.

*   *   *

After the painful removal of the silencer and the tech-cuffs, I fingered my already-raw wrists.

They’d stripped me of my ID card and taken my purse, so all I had were the clothes I wore—a beige long-sleeved shirt, standard blue jeans, my soft sneakers, and . . . yeah, that’s it.

I kicked the Mech escorting me, but the silver casings made damage impossible. In fact, my right foot felt like I’d cracked a couple of bones.

The stupid robot babbled in its monotone voice about how empty the place was. “Apparently there aren’t too many Baddies in trouble right now,” it said, followed by a weird hacking sound. Mech laughter.
Creepy robot-people,
I thought.

Mechs have unlimited power. They can talk and talk and talk. They can run and run and run. Which is why no one ever escapes. How do you beat a robot?

They don’t need to eat. They don’t need to sleep. And they can sense body heat and bar codes and who knows what else.

I hate Mechs—more than I hate Thinkers. More than the idiotic rules.

I wished this stupid tin can would shut up already. And, miraculously, it did.

The Mech remained silent as we stepped out of the ascender ring and into Ward D. It led me down a row of cells with bars along the front—no privacy up here. It stopped in front of the only occupied cell.

“Oh, hell no. No way!” I yelled, fumbling under the Mech’s silver casing for the power button that was surely there.

My fingers found the switch, clicking it off. An alarm wailed. I clapped my hands over my ears just as Jag Barque rolled off the bed, pulling his pillow over his head.

Four human guards appeared. One of them turned on the Mech while another slid the bars open. Several hands shoved me into the cell. Human and Mech laughter mingled together in a horrific medley. At least I wasn’t cuffed, and the redness on my wrists had started to fade.

Jag settled back on the bed, stretching out and putting his hands behind his head. “Nice try.”

I ignored him as I sized up his cell. A shelf above the bed held a few rare printed books, and his tray from breakfast still lay on the floor where he’d chucked it. This cell had a toilet in the corner. I’d finally made it to the big time. Next to the toilet, a metal sink held a bottle of teeth-cleaning tablets and a tube of green gel.

In an ungentlemanly way, Jag stayed on the bed, leaving the concrete floor as my only option for places to sit. I paced for a minute, but that merely increased my tension as I could only take two steps before turning around.

I stared through the bars, fighting down a stream of profanity and wishing I could fly somewhere far away and never come back. When I turned around, Jag was sitting up.

“What?” I asked.

He grinned. “Nothing.”

Didn’t look like nothing to me. “Why are we in here together?”

“You have wicked hair.”

“Shut up,” I said, folding my arms. “I got arrested for walking in the park with a boy. Now they have me living with one. This makes absolutely no sense.”

He lay back down, his eyes dancing with amusement.

“You gonna hog the bed?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine.” I sat with my back against the metal bed frame and flinched when he tousled my hair.

“Don’t,” I growled.

“I like it. It’s just like mine. Very posh.”

“Sure, posh.”

“Bad,” he said, and I twisted to look at him. He managed to shrug with his arms behind his head. “I like it.”

I ignored his comment. I’d always longed to be bad, maybe then my mother would have a real reason to hate me, and I wouldn’t feel so
bad
about myself all the time. But now the thought of really becoming bad scared me more than I wanted to admit.

“How are we gonna get out of here?” I asked.

“I think you already know the answer to that.”

Umm, no, I don’t. That’s why I asked.
He didn’t seem troubled by my glare. A superior glint reflected in his eyes.

“I’m not living here with you for a week,” I said.

“You can have the bed. I don’t sleep much anyway.”

The sleeping arrangements were not my main concern. I glanced at the toilet and he laughed. “You can go when they take me to shower.”

“How often is that?”

“Every morning.”

“Great,” I said, turning around and admiring the blank wall three feet in front of me, wondering how long it would take to train my body to use the toilet only once a day.

*   *   *

The night stretched into eternity. Jag let me have the bed, but he paced back and forth, and the constant squeak of his boots kept me awake. Finally I sat up, and he told me about life in the Badlands. People didn’t have teleporters in every room because they actually walked to their destinations.

“Really?” I asked. “They walk?”

“Yes, Vi,” he said. My nickname sounded natural in his voice, like we were old friends or something. “The Baddies don’t have access to your superior tech crap.”

“I thought that’s why you were here,” I said.

“Yeah, but—”

“Yeah, but nothing, jerk. You like our superior tech crap.”

Jag did his annoying shrug. He reached above me to the shelf and pulled down a book. He lifted my legs and slid his underneath, leaned his back against the wall, and trained his eyes on the pages.

“What’s with the books?” I eyed the two remaining on the shelf.

“It’s called reading.” He didn’t look up. “Surely you know how to read.”

“Of course I do. It’s just that we don’t publish books anymore.”

Jag finally lowered the book, his gaze sharp enough to make me flinch. “But you used to. I requested something to read. This is what they brought me.”

Maybe they didn’t want him to have access to our tech, didn’t want to give him an e-board. Whatever. He went back to reading while I thought about what he’d said about the Badlands. Such freedom. I envisioned my dad walking wherever he wanted. Without fear. Without that pinched look he got around his eyes when he went out to develop our “superior tech crap.”

He’d hug me good night—yeah, that broke a rule—wearing his jacket. The shiny black leather made my nose tingle with the smell of polish.

And I knew.

He was going into the forest. At night. Two more broken rules.

Rule-breaking must run in the family,
said that voice again, the same voice as in the courtroom. I wished I’d been able to turn and see who it belonged to.

I hadn’t heard any voices before this. Maybe it was my
proximity to the Thinkers. Or maybe my offenses had finally landed me on someone’s to-be-monitored list.

Maybe the Baddies didn’t abduct Dad after all. Maybe the Greenies . . .
This time, the voice was all mine. I shoved the thought aside and told myself to go to sleep. My dad had worked in the tech department, level ten, top secret. He’d developed the highest-class tech in the Goodgrounds.

He’d had clearance to enter the forest. Anytime he wanted. That’s what he’d told my mother when she asked. That he’d gotten the proper approval, that many of his inventions needed power he could only get when the rest of us were asleep.

And I’d believed him.

As I drifted to sleep, I could almost smell the leather of his jacket. Almost feel the gentle press of his embrace.

Almost, almost.
But after seven years, everything about my dad was harder to imagine.

*   *   *

Waterfalls and rivers and streamlets and the sound of waves on the shore . . .

I couldn’t keep the images of water out of my head, and I seriously needed to
go
. Morning had arrived and Jag still hadn’t left to shower.

The luxuriously warm water of a hot spring called to me.

“I gotta go!” I sprang up and took the two steps to the toilet. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t go in front of him. He would hear!

I felt his eyes on my back. Didn’t he need to go? Turning, I saw his playful smile before he wiped it away.

He closed the book and started banging on the bars with it. “Hey! Get me outta here!”