Rebels (13 page)

There was too much to remember.

Sash horizontal to belly. Wrap counterclockwise in steady revolutions. Shift fabric to left, position at rear of body. Grasp edges between thumb and forefinger, measure for evenness. Left draped over right, right pulled under left; loop, pinch, and hold tightly. Wrap clockwise this time, revolutions still steady.

Hold ends firmly and do not forget to smile.

Pull.

And yet, I couldn't make it work. Not that Etiquette Tutor made the task any easier, spitting insults, the other girls forming a perfectly sashed, glaring circle around me.

“You look like an uncultivated fool, Livia. Again. Once again.”

The process went on for what seemed like hours.

I didn't succeed in tying my sash that day.

“Do not worry,” Mica told me later. She took me aside during Pleasant Interactions. That day, Etiquette Tutor had excused herself at the end of our session. She did this often, knowing we would continue our silly, vapid conversations with or without her presence. That is how well she'd trained us.

“Follow me,” Mica whispered, and we ran off, the other girls pretending not to notice us in the clearing behind the bushes.

“Tying the sash means nothing,” she told me. “We have maids to do that, after all. This will be your real test. Are we friends, Livia?”

“Yes.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” I lied again.

“Close your eyes,” she said. I did as I was told. I felt her reach for my hand and hold it in her own soft one. “Do not scream,” she said. There was a sharp pain, and I held back my shriek.

“Open your eyes now,” she said. I looked down to see blood on my thumb. She had cut me with something. “Look,” she said. “I am bleeding, too.” She held up her own thumb. While crimson fell down the length of my thumb, hers contained merely a droplet.

“Now I will put my thumbprint inside your sash, and you will do the same for me. In that way, we will be eternally bound. You will be my friend forever, do you understand?”

I nodded and did as I was told, believing her lie. When we were finished, she nodded in satisfaction.

When we returned to the end of Pleasant Interaction, Mica's smile was smugger than ever.

I didn't fully understand then, but I do now. She was proving her power. Mica was powerful enough to cut me. Powerful enough that I was afraid what would happen if I didn't let her.

I kept my thumb wrapped in the corner of my sash. It took a long time to stop bleeding, yet Mica's wound was so superficial it hadn't continued past that first drop. Somehow I was able to hold back my tears until I returned to Helix Island. Even in the transporter ride home, I kept my face impassable.

The instant I set foot on my home island, I took off. Ran fast enough that no one had a chance to see me. Tears streaking off the side of my face, no idea where I was headed, only sure I must keep running.

I decided there had to be a way to escape Mica and Etiquette Tutor. Their conniving eyes and judgmental voices I knew would never stop.

Then I passed the designated borders and came to a sudden stop.

I finally understood: I had known the whole time.

I stood at the end of Helix Island and stared out into the clouds.

There had been no stinger barriers, as I'd been warned. No grass-covered holes waiting to eat me. No need to fall into a dark hole. I had always been in one.

There was only the edge, where island met sky.

An entire universe that I would never know.

“Three more weeks,” says Kane, “and I won't have to hide my art anymore.”

We stare at the ceiling. It's crazy, hearing him say that. Especially the “three weeks” part.

Three weeks from now, Kane and I will receive our placements. He'll probably go to Upper Indra. Back to the air. I have no idea where I'll go. But it won't be aboveground, I'm pretty sure of that. I won't see Kane every day anymore. No more hiding away in his creation studio. No more painting with snorts and shouts and buzzes.

Just three weeks. If everything goes right.

I stare at the ceiling of the abandoned weapons armory, mellowed out from boosters. Kane calls it the COC: the Center of Creation. This is where he makes his sound paintings. Sometimes he even makes sculptures from wreckage I help him collect.

That first year we got to know the Academy inside out. The spaces no one used. The forgotten hallways and hidden corners, those places were ours. They belonged to Kane and me.

When we found this one, we didn't need the others.

This place is stacked with all the stuff Kane has swiped over the
years. Even with the strict intake and supply monitoring, instructors still misplace inventory. Only since Kane entered the Academy, though.

Kane can swipe as fast as he can rewire. Gone before you remembered it was there. No one suspects a thing. He just shoots them that innocent smile. It works on everyone. Other cadets, instructors, even the Middler ration distributor blushes, piling his tray with extra helpings.

That kid gets away with everything.

Cassina long stopped acknowledging him. “If he chooses to spend his time with a core-low smudger, then he is not worth mine. Spend time with a dirtgirl, you are bound to get filthy.”

Still, I catch her watching him. Her eyes follow him when he leaves a room. She loves him, I can tell. And it kills her that it only goes one way.

Instead, she attaches herself to a new guy every rotation. She giggles and blushes, clings to his arm on the way to classes. Stares at him in a way that makes me want to puke. “He will make a wonderful cohabitant!” she tells the others, then dumps him. The breakup is always dramatic, usually in a crowd. “You will never understand me!” she cries, then races from the Rations Hall, tears streaming. Her followers rush to support her.

It seems to me Cassina's relationships have little to do with understanding.

The only one who doesn't care about Kane? Little Vippy. She only has eyes for me. This has been going on since the Book of Indra show-off session.

Of course, it's me they suspect. Of everything.

My admittance to the Academy still can't be explained. Even after all these years, I hear their complaints about this outcast orphan with top performance marks, beating records on her air speeder. There has to be a reason, though no one can figure out what it might be. How does someone like Lex end up here? And what does Kane see in her?

“Maybe he has, like, this weird thing for orphans,” they say with smirks. “Likes to Rock Bottom it, you know? I've heard of guys like that. He'll never cohabitate with her, though. Those kinds of things you keep secret. What, he's going to move her to his estate? No way. He's engaging with her, no doubt.”

They're wrong, of course. We've never engaged. Not in the way they're thinking.

Not that I haven't thought about it. Everyone thinks it's happening anyway. It would be easy, I figure. We spend all our time together. One day, while he's talking, I could just lean over and . . .

But that's when my mind goes blank. Or I force it to.

This is Kane
, I remind myself. My only friend. I'd do nothing to mess with that.

Besides
, I tell myself,
I don't want to
.

Do I?

◊  ◊  ◊

I look over at Kane, still contemplating a creation studio he doesn't have to hide in an abandoned weapons armory.

I don't care about cohabitation like the other girls. It's not required of cadets. Some do it anyway, but they mainly end up with Academy grads. Like meets like. Nothing changes.

One girl from the Islands locked herself in her pod for two days, crying hysterically.

“Debut ball season,” I heard her podmate mutter. “She'd be having hers if the PCF hadn't recruited her.”

When Kane explained a debut ball, I just started laughing. I'd never heard of anything so crazy. Didn't that girl know how lucky she was? She was a cadet. She was chosen. He told me this girl's parents had lost their social standing, had lost their means to throw her a proper ball. She was chosen, sure, but it wasn't her choice. Still, she really wanted to prance around in a dress instead of blasting rebels?

“And what about you?” I asked Kane. “Would you have gone to those balls if you were still on your island?”

“Yes,” he said. “Not even negotiable.”

Being without him? That scared me. That was nonnegotiable, too.

In three weeks, I'll be right back where I started. Alone like in the Orphanage.

Kane sighs. I still refuse to mention his weird behavior. He's distracted a lot, disappearing for long stretches, showing up suddenly without an explanation. He doesn't smile as much.

I keep thinking he'll tell me on his own. Or maybe he's worried about the Final Simulation, just like me. Even though he pretends it doesn't matter. Besides, questions won't make anything better.

Boosters do, though. Boosters make everything better.

Like I never realized how fascinating the ceiling is.

“I can't believe you just walked in the medical unit and took them,” I say. My voice sounds faraway, like it belongs to another Lex entirely.

“No one ever notices.”

Of course, we'd scored boosters before. The first time we ever boosted, a cadet had smuggled them back from the City of Indra after midterm break. These ones—Kane found Sergeant's private stash in a storage unit. “How could you take that kind of risk?” I asked him, furious. “Why don't you just ask them to expel you!? You're crazy!”

“You might be right,” he said. “You want some?”

“Of course,” I said, palm already extended.

Sometimes we just need a release.

Boosters have all kinds of medical and tactical uses, but the bright pink ones made us laugh for hours about the stupidest thing. The yellows make me so relaxed I can melt into the steel floor like it's a feather sleeper.

But the ones he handed me now were different. Medical boosters, I realized, were far more powerful.

Kane's secret studio is a hollow room beneath the main building. I can hear cadets running the halls above us, their thuds like the steps of giants. Smell the sharp, bitter odor of formulas mixed in the student lab two quadrants over.

Heat emanates from Kane's skin, warming me from across the room.

“Wow,” I say. “What kind are these?”

“Sensory, I think,” he says. “What you think they use them for?”

“Maybe on missions,” I guess. “To hear enemies miles away? To smell out explosives?”

“Intense,” says Kane “Especially for you, I bet. I mean, you can already do that stuff. Like, how I feel right now . . . must be, like, how you feel
all the time
.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “Probably.”

“Is it too much?”

“Nah,” I say. “You'd be surprised what you can get used to.”

“Sometimes I wish I could do that stuff. Hear people whispering, see stuff through the dark.”

“No, you don't,” I say. “You'd be as big a freak as me. And you're already close.”

“True,” he says with a chuckle. A few seconds pass. “Hey!” he says, sitting up suddenly. “You'd tell me if I smelled bad, right? 'Cause you'd be the first to know, right?”

That makes me laugh, and then he laughs, too. I can't stop. He's the only one who does that to me. Then he snorts, or maybe I do. Either way, it starts a whole new round of laughing.

We finally settle down, and then for a while, we're quiet.

I can hear his heart beating in his chest, and my own syncs with the beat. Kane is staring at his newest sculpture hanging from the ceiling above him. The sculptures are so different from his sound paintings. Still beautiful, but in a way that makes me uncomfortable.

Horrifyingly beautiful
.

“Come look at this,” he says, motioning to his newest one. I already have, you can't exactly miss it. Still, I go over anyway and sprawl out next to him.

Together, we look up.

Bolts, wires, and empty rounds left over from Target Instruction, all fused together into the shape of a body. A face with spikes coming out of the eye sockets.

The sculpture glares down at us.

“Who's that supposed to be?” I ask him.

“You, me. Everyone, I guess.”

I give him a serious look. “Is it tough on you? I mean, being so genetically dysfunctional?”

“Liberating,” he says, grinning. “And it keeps me occupied. But maybe I should ask you the same question.”

I sigh. “Maybe you should.”

“I was just kidding,” he says. We're silent for a moment.

“It really is everyone. The instructors. The cadets. The whole core-low Academy.”

“Yeah, but not for much longer. Pretty soon we'll be running the Final Simulation. And then we'll be out there, doing something. For real. Taking out real enemies.” I feel the intensity rising inside me. “Finding real Rock Bottom scavs and . . .”

“And what?” he says.

“Punishing them. Decimating them.”

There's a long pause.

“Sure. Pretty soon the unreal will be real. And the real, well, I guess that never existed in the first place. Not here. But I want to ask you a question. Why? What's the point? Why take out anyone? I mean, it won't make a difference.”

“Wow, Kane. You sure are smart. Specially on boosters.” I sit up. “All those raiding parties rising up from the core? If the core-low rebels had their way, everyone above would be forced to join them.
They want to bring civilization back to the way it was before, before Indra gave us something to look up to, and they won't think twice about blasting first.”

I pull out my blaster and place the tip on his forehead. “Just like that. It's a real situation out there. Our people are getting killed.”