Violet (13 page)

I shake my head. “No, this is my first time in
Summus,” I lie.

He raises his eyebrows. “Are you sure? I’d bet
money we’ve met.”

“No, I don’t think so. Like I said, I’ve never
been here before.”

“Well, if you’re new in town that means you’ve
never been to the market on Third. You’ll never taste a juicier
orange, I guarantee it. You should stop by sometime.”

I nod, and he gives me a knowing look. “Make
sure you go get some of those oranges. Tell them Gillis sent
you.”

As quickly as our interaction began, it’s over.
Gillis turns away from me and continues trying to sell pamphlets to
passersby. David and I continue walking. I hear the audio track
playing, but the cheerful voice is muffled until we walk a few more
blocks. “
Citizens of Cerno are lucky enough to be protected by
our men and women in uniform, The Vox, whose shielding presence
keeps us safe from harm around the clock… The crime rate on Cerno
is exceptionally low due to…”
We’ve passed out of range. David
and I turn onto Third only to be greeted by a giant screen
projecting images of Vox soldiers rescuing citizens, holding the
hands of injured civilians, and posing for pictures with their arms
around groups of children. The children cheer and look up at the
soldiers admiringly. The film, like the audio track, continues on a
loop after we pass.

Finally, we have come to the entrance to the
market. The market is very simply constructed. Tables and booths
have been erected in what was once an empty lot, so farmers and
peddlers can sell their wares to Summus’s city dwellers. As we pass
under a large banner that reads
Third Street Market
, David
turns to me and says, “Violet, I’m sorry, I’ve got to rest. We’ve
been walking all day and I feel like I’m about to collapse.”

As I take in his appearance, I feel guilty for
not having noticed his fatigue earlier. David is red-faced, sweaty,
and out of breath. I should have been paying more attention to him;
I just didn’t want to stop walking. The excitement about having
finally found a lead kept me trudging onward.

I notice a bench about halfway down the first
aisle of vendors. “Look, David. There’s a place to sit down. Do you
think you can make it that far?” He nods, and we walk the rest of
the way silently. When we sit down, David leans his head back and
breathes deeply. I’m sure my timing is not the best, but I want to
talk to David before we reach the next phase of our journey. I am
unsure how to begin, so I just look around at the market, thinking
of what I should say.

It is David who speaks first. He nudges me
playfully. “Hey, why do you do that?”

I look at him quizzically. “What do you
mean?”

He gestures to my hands in my lap. “That.”

I look down and realize that I am absentmindedly
tracing the veins on my left wrist using the fingers of my right
hand. I respond, “Oh, I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking about
it.”

He smiles. “I’ve seen you do it before. At
Nineteen. Sometimes when we were in the meadow. I think you do it
when you’re really deep in thought.”

I smile. It makes my pulse quicken to hear that
he notices little things about me, but I can’t clear my mind of
what I have to ask him.

He senses the tension, and leans toward me.
“Violet, what is it?”

“David, I’ve been meaning to ask you
something…”

He waits a beat. I don’t begin.

“What, Violet?”

Still, I don’t say anything.

“Violet, what is it? You’re worrying me.”

He’s growing impatient, and I’ve come to the
conclusion that there’s no easy way to say this, so I just say it.
“David, how did The Alter get my sketchbook?”

David looks perplexed. “What?”

“When The Alter questioned me at Vox
headquarters, he had my sketchbook.”

David is attempting to grasp what I’ve said.
Suddenly, he looks alarmed. He grabs my shoulders with both of his
hands and looks at me. “Violet, are you telling me that The Alter
has in his possession
the same sketchbook
that you gave me
in the meadow?”

I am confused by his reaction. I nod. He
continues. His voice has become a frantic whisper. “That means that
they’ve been to my house, Violet. What about my mother? What if
they’ve taken her, or worse, murdered her? Why did you wait until
now to tell me?”

Oh, no. What have I done? How could I have been
so selfish? I’ve been so busy questioning David’s motives that I
didn’t think about him at all.

I struggle to find words. There’s no good
explanation. “I—I—I don’t know, David. When I saw the sketchbook, I
thought you’d given it to him. I thought—I don’t know what I was
thinking but I thought you’d given me up or something.”

All of the anger that filled David’s face is now
replaced with misery. “Violet, you suspected me
again?
First
you thought I’d abandoned you in the apartment, and then you
thought I’d betrayed you to The Alter? We’ll never make it, Violet.
We’ll never survive if you don’t start trusting me.” David leans
over and puts his head in his hands. I’m at a loss for words. There
is nothing that I can say that might make this better. David is
right. I had not trusted him, and because of my distrust, his
mother might be dead. I can’t help but think of the way David
smiled when he thought of his mother. I have stolen that from him.
David turns to me and takes both of my hands in his. His cheeks are
streaked with tears. “Promise me, Violet. Promise me, or I can’t
take one more step with you. From this moment on, we’re in this
together.”

Now that everything is on the table, I know that
I can trust David. I can hardly bear the shame for having doubted
his loyalty. From this very second, I’ll give him everything that I
have. I nod my head. “David, I promise, but what can we do about
your mother?”

David sighs. “There’s really not much we can do.
I don’t want to risk her safety even more by attempting to
communicate with her. We’ve just got to continue doing what we’ve
got to do, and hope for the best.” Then he smiles sadly and adds,
“I know that she’d want me to stay.” I look at him questioningly.
He blushes, embarrassed, and says, “I’ve told her a lot about
you.”

Now I’m the one who’s blushing. “Like what?”

He brushes the hair from my eyes. “Well, I’ve
told her that you’re the smartest person I know.”

“Oh?”

He smiles. “Yep. I’ve told her that you’re the
most interesting person that I’ve ever met.”

I am
definitely
blushing. He holds my
face in both of his hands. “And I’ve told her that I wish you saw
me as more than just a friend.” I’m shocked when he says this, but
not quite as shocked as I am when he leans forward and presses his
lips to mine.

The kiss lasts for a long moment, and when he
finally pulls away, I feel lightheaded. David smiles and says, “I
hope that wasn’t presumptuous of me. I’ve just been dying to kiss
you since the day I met you.”

Before I can respond, one of the vendors in a
stall about twenty feet away catches my eye. The man is bald, but
has stubbly facial hair. From what I can see, he is very muscular.
He doesn’t look like someone who’d be selling produce. He says
something to one of the other vendors in his stall. She looks over
at me, then back at him. She nods her head. David sees me looking
over his shoulder and turns to follow my gaze. Quickly, I say,
“Don’t turn around. David, that man is coming over here.”

Before we have decided what to do, the man is
standing in front of me. For a few moments, we just look at each
other. Then, slowly, he puts his hand into a fabric bag attached to
his belt. He holds up an orange. His voice is gruff, but not
unfriendly when he says, “Did you come for the oranges?”

I nod once and say, “Gillis sent us.”

“Is your name Violet?” I can hardly keep my face
from registering the shock that I feel when this stranger says my
name. How does he know who I am? Again, I nod. He lowers the hand
that holds the orange so that he is offering it to me palm up. The
symbol of The Third Stone is clearly visible on his inner wrist.
“My name is Eli. I can take you where you need to go.”

Eli is not a man of many words. We followed him
silently from the bench at the Third Street Market to his vehicle
which was parked in the back of the lot. David and I are both
hesitant to be so trusting of The Third Stone, but there isn’t much
else we can do; we’re out of information, and the only connection
that we have found is this activist group. I can only hope that
this isn’t some kind of trap, but if it is, we’re finished.

Now, as Eli remains silent and the vehicle makes
its way to the outskirts of Summus, I realize how vulnerable we
truly are. If The Third Stone does have ulterior motives, perhaps
they will keep us alive based on the knowledge that they think we
have, and we can figure out a way to escape. Escape seems more and
more unlikely, however, when I realize how far out of town we are
being driven. Technically, we are still in Summus, but we have left
behind the bustling city. Here, the structures are much further
apart. Most of this area is consumed by buildings-in-progress.
Summus continues to expand.

After traveling a main road for a while, Eli
begins turning down side streets, so I assume that we will be
arriving soon. The vehicle creaks and groans in protest as Eli
swings around corners without much effort at slowing down. Finally,
Eli pulls into a private drive, and we know that we have arrived.
However, a glance out the window is not encouraging; we have been
driven to a demolition site. What was once a towering stone
structure has apparently been blown into several million pieces.
Both large and small chunks of rock litter the ground around us.
Eli opens his door and exits the vehicle. He then opens the door
near my seat and says, “Get out. Both of you.” This is not exactly
encouraging. This site would be the perfect place for an execution;
who knows how long it would be before anyone discovered our bodies,
if ever.

From what I can tell, the site has been like
this for some time. The air is clear, not polluted with the clouds
of dust that would indicate a recent explosion. If this had
happened in the main part of Summus, the government would have
rebuilt it immediately, but out here, it’s just another
construction project. The Sententia will probably have the rubble
removed or rebuilt when this area becomes more populated and the
surrounding buildings have been completed. For now, it remains the
ruins of what it once was.

Eli does not wait for us; he begins to walk
deeper into the crumbled structure. Some of the walls stand
waist-high; some lie in piles that we must climb over. David and I
look at one another and apparently make the same decision. We begin
to follow Eli into the rubble. As we enter what is left of this
building, a piece of rock that was once an outer wall catches my
eye. There are words printed on it. I make my way over to the slab
and use my palm to brush away the layers of dust, dirt, and sand so
I can read what is written. This place was once called
Tara
Labs.
I look up at David, who sees the excitement on my face,
but does not understand. “David, my mother’s name was Tara.” I see
recognition flood his eyes as he puts this information together. My
father was a scientist; he must have owned a private lab and named
it after my mother. David smiles and says, “I guess we’re in the
right place, then.”

Invigorated by the prospect of finally finding
some useful information, David and I scramble to catch up with Eli.
When we find him, he has reached the center of the building’s floor
plan. He slides down a rocky slab that probably used to be a wall,
or perhaps the ceiling of this level, and David and I do the same.
Two more pieces of slab lie at the bottom of the first, but these
two fell in such a way that they are holding each other up, and
there is a triangular space that we can squeeze through by turning
sideways. It’s easier for me because I’m small, but David and
especially Eli truly have to squeeze. When we come out the other
side of the tunnel, we have entered a small room where the
structure seems to have been spared by the otherwise unyielding
destructive force of the explosion. Perhaps this room was
reinforced for safety, like a bomb shelter of sorts. If something
had compromised the integrity of the structure, one only had to
make it to this room to be safe, rather than escape the entire
building.

Eli continues to the back of the room. David and
I follow, though we are somewhat confused. The only way out of this
room is the way we just came in. No one else is in here, and there
doesn’t seem to be any documents or other evidence to look at. What
does Eli have in mind? In the furthest corner, the stone closest to
where floor meets wall is slightly different than all of the
others. In the bottom right corner of this stone, the symbol of the
overlapping diamonds has been engraved. Eli turns to face us. He
puts his hand in his pocket and draws out a smooth rectangular
piece of stone. He presses a button on the black stone and a
retractable blade appears at the end of the handle.

So he has brought us here to kill us. Just as I
am deciding whether I should lunge at him to surprise him or try to
flee, Eli uses the blade to make a cut on his own thumb. He motions
for us to come closer. At this moment, my curiosity is stronger
than my fear. Cautiously, David and I approach to see what he is
doing. Eli takes a knee and squeezes three drops of blood onto the
chiseled symbol and bowing his head in reverence whispers, “E
pluribus unum.”

Interested, I say, “Eli, what does that
mean?”

“It is a phrase that was once used on Earth. It
means, ‘Out of many, one.’ This is what The Third Stone seeks to
accomplish. The people of Cerno should be united by our government,
not cowering in fear of it. Many small people can make a great
impact if they act as one. The people wait for us to free them. The
people wait for us to give them a voice. But if the people do not
join us, we will never defeat The Sententia.”