Vagabond (12 page)

“Alas, there are those who fight these Terrorist. We are gathered here today to pay homage to those who lost their lives before us in order to secure the freedoms you so enjoy today. Any mocking of this freedom does nothing to honor the losses of your fellow patriots or the sacrifices of your fellow Citizens.” There were several generic speeches recorded for many different crimes, and I knew the rest of the speech like a memorized poem. I tuned out the rest of his words about honor and propriety and sacrifice. I stared at the stage and wished it would end sooner than later so we could get back to our packs and back to the Tracks. I went into my head and made plans— what line I’d have to catch to go west, how many times I’d need to stop, and what supplies I’d need.
 

I knew the Republic needed to do this. I understood the whys behind it all, but I disliked this part. Even when I was a legit Citizen, I had a distaste for this. Like always, there was a big fanfare of cheering as the executioner walked up the stage. This one was a redheaded female, and her doctor’s coat was as bright white as the soldier’s bright black. Two prisoners were led out on stage with heads covered in burlap sacks, like they were playing a game of ghost, but, instead of white sheets, they were given dirty-brown substitutes. Their heads were amplified by the videos playing on the two large screens flanking the stage. One dirty-sack face faded into the Chancellor’s polished one so that it was all I could see. The executioner stated the name. “Subject 21,432 refused to give his name.” She removed the hood, and I my breath stuttered at the sight of Roderigo’s bruised face. “He is charged with Terrorism, theft, destruction of Republic property (specifically blowing up a Republic Military Transport), public indecency (specifically having relations with an unsanctioned partner of inappropriate age), and trespassing. He is hereby sentenced to a merciful death for crimes against the Republic and crimes against Humanity. Any last approved words?”
 

Blowing up the train? Roderigo was getting accused of what Flea had done. I couldn’t swallow. The Republic had someone to blame, even if it was the wrong person. I knew it was the show that mattered most to them— that they needed Citizens to think they were being protected against Terrorism, but it was still hard to digest.
 

“My bared teeth are broken chains,” Roderigo said slowly. It was a sentence I’d heard before. A secret whisper. A cry of Revolution. I’d never pictured Roderigo as a Rebel, but perhaps he was one.
 

“Those words are not approved under the rights of Free Speech. Scribe, please scratch the slander from record.” The two guards holding Roderigo’s elbow’s guided him to the chair. He sat there with a set jaw. I stared at him, wondering if he could see me in the crowd, or if he even saw anyone in front of him. How does a person prepare to die? What kind of thoughts race through a person’s head?
 

The executioner turned to the next bag-face. “Subject 21,433 has given a name that is not on record with the Republic: Annabeth.” The bag came off and released blonde hair. It fell into her face, dirty and wild. I couldn’t hide the gasp, though I wished I could have. A few eyes glared my way at my soft outburst of emotion, but I knew this girl. She must have been traveling with Roderigo. She must have been the one who pushed me out of a moving train. Her green eyes were even bigger on the screen than they were up close. They were not nearly as frightened as mine would have been, but then again, she was the type that was unnervingly unemotional and tough.

It was a face I’d hoped to never see again.
 

It was the face of Legs.
   
 

Chapter Eight

“Niko. You are of the approved age to attend.” Daddy bent down and looked at me, eye-to-eye. He only did this when I needed to truly take in the gravity of a situation. “When you get there, you have to stay stoic. You remember what that means, right?”
 

Of course I did. It was a word the Republic taught us since before we learned to talk. Some parents joke that it’s even their child’s first word.
 

“Take the bitter medicine so that we can heal,” one instructor used as an analogy.
 

Another described it as, “Stomaching the unpleasant for the good of the whole. Sacrifice selfish needs for the good of all.”
 

At the age of 12, we were required to attend all Mandatory Gatherings. Until then, we were dropped off at the Institutes, where the Instructors watched over us. After my first execution, I even considered becoming an Instructor by trade so I’d never have to attend one again. Playing with lively children was easier to stomach than death.
 

The people of the 18
^th
met in the square, and I was sandwiched between Mama and Daddy. I held their hands, ready to squeeze. I couldn’t see well in the large crowd, but I still needed them to balance me and keep me brave. The squeeze was our secret signal and helped me face all the new things I had to learn to be stoic about.
 

When the bag was removed, I saw the teenage boy on the screens. He was dark haired and dark faced and beautiful. His overalls were sooty and his teeth were stained white. I knew this because he was actually smiling! I couldn’t believe it. He was grinning as if he knew I was in the crowd and needed to see all of his teeth so I wouldn’t feel bad for him.
 

The camera zoomed in on the metallic needle. It pierced until it disappeared into its own bump. It looked like a mountain erupted under his dark, dark skin. The liquid squeezed to empty as the plunger pushed it out. The camera refocused, and his face hovered like a giant while the eyes closed and the jaw grew slack. It was so quick— almost flippant. His smile was gone, and so was he.
 

I knew he’d broken sacred laws. I knew I wasn’t supposed to cry. I just couldn’t help it. The tears came, and Daddy was eye-to-eye with me again. “Look at me. Look at me.” The orders on repeat, like marching soldiers. I had no choice but to listen. “This is a merciful death compared to the one that he’d meet out there.” Daddy wiped the tiny tears with his big thumb, and the motion reminded me to be stoic. I nodded to show that I understood, and Daddy stood up, turned back to the stage, and saluted as the Chancellor reappeared on the screens.
 

“Knucs. Wait up.” Flea didn’t know enough not to be smiling. The only thing he knew was that we got out of the Colony without getting caught. He didn’t know enough to mourn, because Citizens were not supposed to mourn the death of Terrorists. He didn’t get that at any point, that could be us up there. He only knew that the people who’d tried to rob him had been punished, as if they deserved what they’d gotten.
 

I couldn’t respond to his shortened nickname that he threw out as if we were friends. I couldn’t stomach his adrenaline high, because I was feeling everything but euphoric.
 

Legs was on the stage. Legs was dead.
 

Xavi? Where was he? They weren’t together in the car. Roderigo even said he saw Xavi with “the blonde,” but he didn’t say “the blonde” was with him. Fear gripped at every fiber of every cell. As much as Xavi’d hurt me, I didn’t want him dead. I didn’t want him hurt. And it tore at me that I didn’t know if he was alive or dead, and I would probably never know if he was safe.
 

I walked quickly out of the Colony and turned my fast steps into a fast run once it was safe to do so. Flea remained his usual shadow-like self and followed.

We reached the packs. They were still there and intact, and I pulled mine on. The boy caught up and started to fish his pack out, but I didn’t wait for him to get situated. I still needed to walk past the yards. I’d have to catch another train on the move, and I didn’t know if it’d be a line I needed or a line that’d take me in the wrong direction. But there were only two reactions after an execution— extra security or celebrations. I had the feeling it’d be the latter with Roderigo’s Rebel cry.
 

Sometimes Vagabonds used the cry to prolong their lives. They wanted the Militia to think there was information to be gained, and they’d get a partial pardon. It was always a wasted effort. The prisoner always died in the end after weeks of torture. Xavi warned me that the quick death was better than a slow one, and that torture was it’s own painful death, over and over and over again. I never asked him how he knew that, and he made me promise that if I was ever caught, I’d plead ignorance from the start. He made me promise to choose the quick death if it had to happen.
 

I was thankful they did not take Roderigo seriously, and that it was quick and sweet. Even Roderigo didn’t deserve either death, but he got the more preferable one.
 

I tightened my pack’s strap with shaky hands. I grasped at breaths to calm down the hysteria I was on the verge of. What if Xavi was killed on the spot? That happens. If a person is too troublesome, they take care of them quickly. What if Xavi had been in the car with Roderigo and Legs, hiding from me? What if he was the one that pushed me out? No. He couldn’t have been, because Flea only saw Legs after I’d been pushed out of the boxcar. Or did he see someone else?
 

“Knucks. Chill! We got out. We’re safe.” Flea’s concern was misplaced. He thought I was worried we weren’t out of the proverbial woods yet. He read my fast breathing like a mistranslation, like some mislaid idiom of reaction.
 

“Was there another boy on the train? When you knocked Roderigo out, was there anyone else?”
 

“No. Just the girl and the man. You okay?”

Xavi wasn’t with Legs.
 

I shuddered in relief until the truth of even that hit me. His love was just like wind. Intangible. Slippery. He’d abandoned Legs within days of ditching me. Did he use her as an excuse to leave me— an excuse I’d be sure to understand? Why didn’t he just tell me instead? Why couldn’t he just say that two years meant nothing to him?
 

The answer came, like the clicking of one puzzle piece into another. I had lost my novelty. I’d grown my Track-legs, and depended on him less. He liked me better weak and corruptible.
 

My heart cracked in ways I never knew it could, but I wouldn’t let the tears plummeted out. Not in front of Flea.
 

Legs was dead. It’d be vindictive to be glad, so I promised I wasn’t. No matter how callous she was, she was murdered for existing. No trial. No attempt to help. No study of her genetics to see if they were viable. Just death to erase her blemish on the world. To watch her die was to watch all my fears manifest. I was her and she was me, because on any given day, it could be me with a needle in my arm.

I still couldn’t figure out how I’d react to my own death? What would my last words be? What would I say when it was time for all of it to end? And would I know that my death was for the benefit of Humanity, or would I think I was the exception?

Polo laughed at my expression. “It’s okay not to know. I’m not sure either. I’d like to say I’d say nothing. That no word could contain what it meant to be over. That if I was going to become nothing, I may as well say it to welcome it in.”

The fire crackled and embers shot up in the air like fireflies transforming into falling stars. He handed me the whiskey, and I held the flask in my hands, unable to bring it to my lips. Xavi always warned me about accepting the bottle from strangers, but Polo wasn’t exactly a stranger anymore. For the entire year I’d been out on the Tracks, I’d never tried whiskey.
 

Xavi tried it once since I’d known him. We were with Celeste, and we’d grown to trust her. Xavi drunk was like a loose tongue and an explosive laughter. For just one night, he took off all the burdens he carried and reached back into the crevices of his own innocence. The next morning, he returned to stone with chiseled tongues and restrained smiles.
 

I took a swig and embers shot down my throat. I coughed up fire, and Polo laughed again. “Atta girl!”

On the other side of the fire, Oldie nuzzled up next to a tree and was mid-snore. Mari and Goldie were in their own worlds as well, too busy kissing to pay any attention to us. I remember the first time I saw something like that. Two boys under a tree by the river. I’m sure my cheeks blushed fire in ways that burned different than the whiskey coursing down my throat. “Partners take on many shapes on the Tracks. No G.E.G., so we are free to love who we want,” Celeste had said. Now, while Mari and the blonde girl were lost in each other on the other side of the fire, the idea didn’t feel so shocking. In the weeks I’d known her, I’d never seen Mari so happy. When Xavi and I left the four of them, we were under the impression that Oldie and Goldie were also parting ways, but I guess Mari and Goldie didn’t want to.
 

Xavi had stalked off early. He pulled on his jacket and zipped himself up and in, like nothing had happened— like he hadn’t kissed me that morning. He’d even spoken sharply to me, like he was angry at me. Angry! He went to spend the night in the woods. Alone. He never did that. When he grabbed his pack, I was nervous he wouldn’t come back. I repeated the rule over and over again in my head, “Always take your pack if you leave camp. You never know what you’ll return to.” I said it to remind myself he’d come back. I pretended nothing was wrong in front of the others, but some sort of animal was climbing its way out of my stomach. The whiskey burned it down.
 

“Want to go for a walk?” Polo asked and nodded towards his sister. “Looks like they wouldn’t mind the privacy.”
 

“I don’t think they’d notice either way.” I stood up. Even the fire was getting too warm. We pulled on our packs out of habit. My very own knee-jerk reaction comforted me. It reiterated that my doubts about Xavi were stupid. He’d be back.