The Society (A Broken World Book 1) (23 page)

I hid a wince at the reminder that I wasn't who he thought I was.

"In that case, I accept your compliment. How are you feeling?"

"Like I was hit by a truck—don't worry though, that's an upgrade from earlier when I felt like I'd been hit by a plane. I'm just glad you're okay."

Now it's my turn to smile. "Isn't that my line? I still can't believe you pushed me out of the way of that belt. I thought it was the bodyguard's obligation to take a bullet for the principal, not the other way around."

Tyrell stepped forward with a syringe full of clear liquid and injected it into Brennan's arm. Brennan winced slightly and then turned his head back towards me.

"Yeah, well, I'm just trying to keep up the act. If I really wanted everyone to believe that I'm head over heels for you then I really had no choice but to step in front of the belt."

I shook my head at him. "The whole point of the act was to keep you safe. If you get yourself killed protecting me then the exercise was pointless."

"That's where you're wrong, Skye. It's only pointless to get myself killed protecting you if it's really just an act."

I opened my mouth and then closed it again, unsure what to say, but Tyrell stepped over and patted me on the arm.

"That's the morphine talking. He was about to come down from the last dose, so I gave him another. Given the state of his ribs and lungs, we can't afford to let him get to the point where his breathing gets ragged or he'll do even more damage to himself."

Tyrell sighed, and I suddenly realized that he looked terrible. He had dark circles under his eyes and was moving like someone twice his age.

"Are you okay?"

"Jax and I were up all night trying to put Brennan back together. I think I've got all of the major rib fragments stabilized, but it's going to be a little while before we know for sure."

I tried to do some quick math in my head, but gave up when I got past twenty-four hours. "You should go get some sleep. I'll keep an eye on Brennan."

Tyrell looked at me for several seconds before nodding. "I'd argue with you, but at this point if I tried to open him back up I'd probably do more harm than good. If you can watch him for the next twelve hours or so, then I'll have Alan come by and spell you. I wouldn't ask you to run such long shifts, but if Jax and I can't get the foundry back up and running, we're going to have even worse problems than we already have."

I waved away his concern. "I owe Brennan my life; I'm hardly going to complain about playing nurse for a few hours. If you can just make sure that there is a guard or two around so that I can yell for help if he takes a turn for the worse, I'll be fine. What do I need to watch out for?"

"Changes to his breathing mostly. If he starts struggling have someone come get me. If he stops breathing altogether, then start mouth-to-mouth. Beyond that give him morphine whenever he needs it, and check his pulse every twenty minutes or so and let me know if it seems like it's getting weaker. That's our best way of telling if he's got internal bleeding."

"Okay, I can do that."

Tyrell turned to go, and then stopped. "You're an odd one, Skye. Where did you learn mouth-to-mouth? There can't be more than a handful of people in the entire city who would have known what to do in a situation like that. Most of the gang leaders are being cared for by people who've regressed back to believing that leeching someone is good for them."

I reached for an explanation that would make him less suspicious rather than more.

"There was a man in my building growing up who took me under his wing. He…well, he was unlike anyone I've ever met before or since. I guess he was kind of like a warrior monk. He taught me how to fight, and he taught me a very little bit about stopping bleeding and keeping someone breathing."

Tyrell cocked his head to the side. "I can't think of very many warlords who would be comfortable with the idea of a fighting man inside their territory who didn't have any kind of allegiance to them."

I reached for a feeling of sadness, and let it crash over me. It made my lip quiver and tears start to pool in my eyes.

"He—he tried to keep a low profile. We trained early in the morning at the very top of our building so that nobody would see us. A couple of years ago one of the enforcers noticed me and started hanging around. I told him no—that I wasn't interested—but that only seemed to make it a game for him. I would try to make sure that I was never off by myself and he would try to catch me alone so that he could force his attentions on me."

Tyrell held a hand up. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry. You don't have to share anything you're not comfortable sharing."

I nodded, relieved that he wasn't going to make me spell out the gory details. It wasn't until Tyrell had left and closed the door behind him that I finally allowed myself to admit where the sadness had come from.

The sadness, the story, it had all come from the same place, from an experience I'd walled away for years now.

Chapter 17

Four years ago

"The Destroyer take you, Skye. Aren't you ever going to have any fun?"

"Don't curse, Styles. It has a low social desirability index."

Styles shook his head at me, wavy red hair flopping from side to side. "That's kind of the point, Skye. We aren't children now. One more year of school and we can drop out and start working toward earning our franchise full-time. Now that we don't have crèche nannies following us around everywhere we go, there isn't any reason to worry about social desirability. Live a little."

I opened my mouth to tell him that he was being short-sighted, that service would lead to a bigger payout than just a franchise, but then the voice of one of my nannies ran through my head again reminding me to keep my desires secret.

"Rules are rules for a reason, Styles. If they aren't important then they would have been changed ages ago."

Sammy rolled her eyes. "That or they are just there to separate out the children from the adults. Didn't you ever consider the possibility that the rules are meant to be broken, that we're meant to outgrow them as we get older?"

I didn't have an answer to that—not really. I'd spent too many years with the same voice in the back of my head, the endless parade of nannies telling me that it was vital I never break any of the rules.

Styles waited for a second to see if I would manage a comeback and then smiled. "Does that mean you're ready to venture out of the Destroyer-taken green zones finally, Skye?"

I shook my head. My crèche mates and I had only been living in the juvenile dorms for a few weeks, but most of them had already ventured as far away from the green zones as it was possible to get without a franchise. A few of them had even snuck into restricted areas and been caught.

They'd been fined and confined back in the detention area of the children's dorms. Of the two punishments, the fine was by far the worst. They were going to have to spend dozens of extra hours working to earn their franchises.

It didn't make much sense to me. Everything was still so new and exciting right now. When we'd been in the children's dorms we'd been lucky to make it outside for field trips once or twice a year. Now we could go out to parks and the tamer eating establishments whenever our studies were done. It was exactly the kind of stuff that we'd all spent the last few years talking about, but as soon as it had stopped being forbidden, everyone had stopped wanting it.

Styles frowned. "Just by being around me you're being exposed to socially undesirable influences, Skye. It's not like you're going to get hauled off in chains for stepping across the street."

"Give it up, Styles. She's not going to come and we're wasting time. I want to get into that new reality simulator before the lines start forming up and we have to waste half our night waiting for a turn."

Sammy pulled on Styles' arm, but he stubbornly refused to move. "What about if I stop swearing for the night? Then everything will even out."

"I think you're overlooking the fact that once you leave I won't have to listen to you glorify the man who nearly destroyed civilization as we know it."

"Swearing by the Destroyer isn't glorifying him, Skye. Besides, we're supposed to remember what he did so that we're never tempted to repeat his mistakes."

Sammy blew a bubble with her gum. "I hardly think that any of us are going to sabotage the development of a new technology that could have granted mankind immortality."

Styles puffed his chest out. "It could happen. I'm getting really high marks in our technology courses. If that turns out to be my life's purpose, then there isn't any reason to believe that I couldn't help create a new strain of nanites that could stop the aging process."

"Nobody really believes the precepts, Styles. They are just there to convince us to buckle down and work on something after we earn our franchise. Anyone with brains knows that there's no real reason to work after you earn your franchise. An hour a week is more than enough to keep you in all the games and stimulants you could want."

I shook my head again as Sammy let go of Styles' arm. For whatever reason Styles finally decided I was serious about not going. He watched Sammy take several steps toward the arcade and then finally shrugged and headed after her.

I watched the two of them until they'd disappeared, and then headed toward one of the nearby parks. I had my running shoes on—remaining physically healthy had a high social desirability index—but once I arrived I found that I wasn't in the mood for a run. Instead, I walked over to a bench and sat down.

In theory the high social desirability index of the park served as a deterrent for any of the behaviors that were considered unsuitable for someone my age. In reality, franchised adults were very nearly a law unto themselves. Particularly egregious behaviors could result in a fine, but even then it was rare for someone not to be able to work their way out of the obligation within a few weeks.

By and large, the fact that there weren't any of the more exotic entertainments available at the park meant that there was nothing to draw franchised adults there, but as with any rule there were plenty of exceptions. As I watched, a trio of women wearing little more than body paint walked by with the unsteady gait of people who'd had several doses of one of the designer drugs that all of my dorm mates were so eager to try out.

The three of them stopped at the bench a few dozen yards away from me, giggling as they tried to catch their breath. I thought the giggling was a side effect of the drug until I saw two guys stroll into view. Both of them wore little more than a complex array of straps that covered up only slightly more than the body paint the women were wearing. One of the guys had the soft, overweight build of a sim junkie while the other guy had the aggressive muscles of someone taking steroids supplements.

Neither of the new arrivals were as far gone as the three women, but they both had the bright eyes and jerky movements of people who'd had a dose or two of something to take the edge off.

This was the first time that I'd seen such a large group of franchised adults in the park at one time and I slid forward to the edge of my bench, uneasy at the prospect of being exposed to something that properly belonged in another area with a much lower social desirability index. Unfortunately, my movement caught the attention of the bigger, more muscular guy and he turned and started walking toward me.

I stood, planning on hurrying back to my dorm room, but he called out to me. "Hey, what's your name?"

Before I could decide whether to answer him, another woman came walking quickly around the corner of the path. Unlike the other five franchised adults, she walked with the sure steps of someone who was completely sober, and it took only seconds to interpose herself between the muscular guy and me.

He tried to move around her, but she easily maintained her position in front of him. "Go home now, and don't come back to this park."

It was obvious that she was talking to me, and I did exactly as instructed, running the entire way back, relieved that I'd managed to avoid interacting with any of the other franchised adults.

I foolishly thought that was going to be the end of things, but over the following weeks it seemed like any time I left the dormitories the same muscular guy was waiting for me. I tried staying in the dormitories, but unlike the children's dorms, our new housing was designed with the intent of nudging us outside. There were no games or books or movies, and I quickly became bored.

It seemed as though he was less willing to approach me when I was with friends, so I did what I could to convince some of my other dorm mates to spend time with me in one or more of the green zones, but that too was a losing battle. At first Styles or one of the others were willing to walk me back to the dorms when they decided they wanted to go somewhere with a lower social desirability index, but after a few days where the muscular guy failed to appear, the other kids my age became more and more reluctant to take time away from what they really wanted to be doing.

I told myself it would be okay, that I was in much better shape than someone who maintained his physique by way of steroids. I figured as long as I could see him coming I wouldn't have any problem outrunning him and therefore it was okay for me to go to the green zones with my friends and then turn around and run home when they were ready to move on.

Another week went by before I'd used up all of the favors I could call in from helping my dorm mates with their studies, at which point I was once again faced with the prospect of staying in my room by myself or venturing back outside without the protection of a crowd. I debated for nearly half an hour before finally deciding to go out on a short run.

I was less than ten minutes from home when it happened. As I ran past a tree, the muscular guy stepped out from behind it and grabbed me by the arm.

"Why have you been playing hard to get? I just wanted to know your name."

My heart was hammering away in my chest and my mouth was dry. I didn't know what to do other than answer him.