Z 2134 (8 page)

She couldn’t hear their words or be
completely certain they were Underground Rebels, but the same father who had
murdered her mother had also sharpened Ana’s instincts. She imagined Watchers
bursting through the doors, arresting them all. If that happened, she was done
for. And her brother would have nobody to look after him.

She had to get out of the basement.

But she also had to find out why she’d
been summoned.

“You’re part of The Undergound?” she
said, half-statement and half-question.

“Yes, I am.” Duncan nodded. “And so was
your father.”

Ana was about as surprised to hear her
father was part of The Underground as she would have been to hear a City Watch
broadcast announcing early curfew. “Why did you ask me to come here?”

Duncan smiled, slowly rubbing his hands
across his knees. He looked like he was about to say one thing, but then drew
in his breath and said something else. “Before I start, Ana,” he narrowed his
eyes. “I want to thank you for coming here today. I know it wasn’t easy, and
that getting brought down into a basement by someone you don’t trust, well,
that’s scary, and I admire you for swallowing your fear and listening to your
gut long enough to get here and maybe listen. Your father would’ve been proud.”
Duncan smiled.

Ana didn’t want to admit it, not to
Duncan, Michael, Adam, or anyone else, not even to herself, but Duncan was
right. The layers of her last two months were horrible — every one — and
walking up the church steps and following the address on a paper shred slipped
to her in secret by someone who could be seen as an enemy of The State. It was
all a bit much.

“I want to know,” she said. “The truth.
What was my dad doing before…you know, before he got into trouble.”

“You deserve to know,” Duncan nodded.
“Would you like anything first? Sugar bread, or water?”

Ana shook her head, then Duncan started
his story.

“Your dad came in here one day, slipped
into a pew, and sat for a sermon — as if he’d been coming to church forever,
even though he’d never been here before, and I’d not seen him other than as a
wave across the street since I stopped working City Watch. Your daddy sat in
the back pew, two behind where you were sitting beside Iris tonight. He
listened to the entire sermon, then, when it was over, he didn’t want to leave.
He stayed in his pew for several minutes until I was finished shaking hands,
then when I approached him, he asked if we could speak, said he wanted to clear
his guilty conscience.”

“Why?” Ana raised her eyebrows. “What did
he do?”

“He said he couldn’t stand the horrible
things he’d been forced to do in the law’s name. Your daddy said he wasn’t sure
if there was a God, but respected that I did, then said it seemed hard to
swallow, seeing as how there was so much sickness in the world, both in and
outside The Wall. Your dad said that if there was a God, he didn’t want Him
thinking he enjoyed doing what he had to do, and wanted a pardon if possible,
at least until he could figure out a way not to do it any longer.”

Ana said, “And you gave him a way?”

“That I did.”
Duncan smiled, then gestured around the room. “These fine folks, and many more
who aren’t with us tonight, look to me. They trust I’ll guide them right, make
the right decisions. I’m a man of faith, acting on my instincts and His
guidance. I trusted your father the second I saw him, Anastasia, so I saw no
reason to wait.”

Ana leaned forward, starving for the
rest. “Wait for what?”

“I told him we were part of The
Underground, and I told him in less time than it takes me to get my water hot.
And your daddy never said a word. Not even when they tried to beat it out of
his broken body.”

Duncan paused, then tugged on his right
ear and stroked the bottom of his chin, like he had a full beard instead of
just two day’s worth of stubble, then he looked at Ana like he was about to say
something she’d never forget.

“Your daddy, Anastasia, he was a good man
who did great things, things you won’t know about yet and maybe never will.” He
shook his head without moving his eyes. “There are more City 6 citizens owing
their lives to your old man than you can count, not that he was ever counting
at all.”

Duncan grinned, probably happy Ana wasn’t
arguing her father’s merit, then continued. “Not only did your father never out
us, he acted as a sort of double agent, feeding us information we couldn’t get
otherwise. Jonah,” Duncan cleared his throat, “your daddy, kept the candle
burning, making sure we stayed alive and that the movement kept moving.”

Ana nodded her head, wanting to believe
the man who had taught her to think and love, and to never cross a line once
drawn, no matter how thick the mud at your ankles; the man who read her stories
from books that no longer existed, and promised to never tell her a lie — even
if it was the only thing that gave him breath, was the same man whose honor
Duncan was protecting. If what Duncan was saying was true, then of course The
State wanted him outside The Wall.

It didn’t matter. Even if Duncan’s
version of her father was the same man who had raised her, that man
had
murdered her mother. Ana still saw her father, standing over her dead mother,
every night she closed her eyes.

As an eyewitness, she had said almost
nothing in the trial until she sat in the box and answered every question, true
to her recollection, as the prosecution rattled them off, each a bullet tearing
into her body and leaving its shrapnel in the rest of her life.

“Why did he kill my mother?” Ana said,
chewing her lip to not lose a tear.

“He didn’t.” Duncan shook his head, his
eyes now larger and somehow sadder. “I told you that. You didn’t mean to tell a
lie, Anastasia, but you did. Your brain lied to you. Not your fault, since I’d
bet my Bible and every verse in it that The City implanted a false memory, or
several, inside that noggin of yours.” The pastor tapped the tip of his head as
Ana collected her breath from the lie that had stolen it.

“No,” she shook her head. “That’s not
possible. No one can do that.”

Duncan smiled, though there was no humor
in his lips. “Sorry, Sweetie, but The City does that sorta shit all the time.
Trust me.”

Ana would have found it impossible to see
herself skating the edge of a laugh a minute before, but something in the way
Duncan said the word shit split her serious face into a small smile. She shook
her head. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s the chips they put inside us when
we’re born,” Duncan said. “There’s two of ’em, at least two that we know of. I
personally think there’s three. The tracker and ID chip everyone knows about,
but then there’s a second chip for sure. Some folks seem to know about it and
some, maybe even most, don’t. And almost all those who do have no idea what
it’s for.”

“What does the second one do?”

“Sends a signal to your brain. That
signal can modify your perception of reality, and thus, your behavior.”

Ana wanted away from the horror. She
swallowed, then stood from the tattered chair, wanting to leave, thank Duncan
for his time, and get back to Adam and the atrocity of the truths she had
started to question.

The weight of her new world was too heavy
to hold, though. Ana collapsed back to the chair. “That can’t be true,” she
barely managed to whisper, shaking her head. “It would change everything.”

Duncan pulled her hands into his. “It’s
true, Anastasia, and everything’s been changed for a while.”

There was a boom from a door in the hall
behind them. Ana turned and saw Liam standing there.

“It’s all true,” he said. “Every fucking
word.”

Ana kept her eyes on Liam as he passed
their chairs, then crossed to the far side of the room, where he bent to his
knees and whispered something into Iris’s ear. She laughed, then threw her arms
around his shoulders. He hugged her, tousled her hair, then stood, grabbed a
piece of sweetened bread, and ambled back toward Ana and Duncan.

“What are you doing here?” Ana said,
though she was reasonably certain she knew.

“Making a difference,” he said, winking.
“Not that you care.” Liam crouched beside her, then put his hand on her chair
and said, “Your dad was a good man. They set him up, and you helped make sure
everything went according to plan.”

“Why would they want to do that?” Ana
asked. “Because they found out he was a double agent?”

Duncan and Liam opened their mouths in
unison, but neither managed to say a word before the deafening bray from City
Watch megaphones blared from upstairs, then drifted down into the basement with
an icy echo.

“No one move!” the voice repeated. “All
parishioners must be cleared for Appraisal.”

A few of the parishioners who had stayed
to pray after the service and a few of the church’s staff still upstairs began
to scream as heavy boots began to thunder on the hardwood floors above and
echoed through the basement.

Duncan leaped from his chair, a firm
order out of his mouth. “Everyone stay put!” he yelled. “We’re only having
coffee and cake, mingling with Jesus in the sunset of the sermon.”

He grabbed Ana by one arm and Liam by the
other, then led them both toward a door on the far side of the basement. The
sound of chaos settled upstairs. In its place was a slowly collapsing quiet,
like a cold blanket smothering hope above.

Duncan opened the door to a storage area,
then shoved Liam and Ana inside and loudly whispered. “Hide in the floor, and
stay in there no matter what; got it?”

Ana and Liam nodded as they retreated
into the dark room stacked with chairs, tables, and dusty boxes that looked as
if they hadn’t been touched in decades.

“What about you?” she said.

Duncan smiled. “I’ll be fine. I still
have a few friends on the force.”

The door closed, and Ana turned to Liam.
He moved a short stack of boxes to the side, then lifted a thick floorboard
beneath them. He turned from the crawl space to Ana, then gestured for her to
come closer. She swallowed, then stepped nervously toward the lifted board as
she heard the sound of Watchers storming the basement.

She stared into the crawl space; it would
hold them both, but only barely.

“It’s now or we’re both dead,” Liam
hissed, holding out his hand.

Ana took it, letting him help her down
into the crawl space. Liam slithered in, squirming behind her, fixing the floorboard
into place as hell melted the atmosphere on the other side of the door. A tiny,
involuntary shriek fell from Ana and Liam’s sweaty hand slapped her shivering
lips to make sure it didn’t happen again.

“Shhhhhh…” he soothed. “They’ll hear us.”

They huddled in icy terror as The
Watchers came downstairs and interrogated Duncan. Ana listened as The Watchers
told how Liam had escaped custody and was last seen entering the church.

“I know the boy,” Duncan said. Ana
imagined him shaking his head. “He’s a poor lost soul, for sure. But I’ve
certainly not seen him today.”

As one Watcher questioned Duncan, Ana and
Liam heard a second one walking toward the storage room. Liam’s hand tightened
on Ana’s mouth. The door to the storage room creaked open.

Light spilled into the darkness, giving
them a splintered picture view up through the floor.

“Find anything?” said The Watcher beside
Duncan.

The second Watcher was looking around the
storage room, footsteps clopping on the floor above them as he scanned the darkness.
He turned over his shoulder and called, “Not yet,” then added, “Get the ID
scans started. I’ll be out in a minute.”

The next three minutes rang with the
scanners’ light shrill as data chips were read and those still in the basement
were cleared to leave, one by one.

“Everyone is free to go but you three,”
The Watcher farthest from them said.

Ana listened to the footsteps climbing
the stairs. She wondered which three were held behind.

“No,” a woman said. “We didn’t do
anything.”

“Please, let them go,” Duncan said. “I’ll
stay and answer any questions you have.”

“Please, Mr.
Watcher,” the voice of the young girl, Iris, pleaded.

Oh God, they’re holding the little girl
behind! Why?

Ana felt Liam tighten his grip around her
mouth as the footsteps of the closest Watcher stopped right over the false
floorboard. Her heart stopped in her chest, waiting for the officer to
recognize the difference in sound from one part of the floor to the other
before ripping it open and flashing his helmet’s lights down on them.

They were about to be arrested. She’d
done nothing wrong, yet was now hiding under the floor with a known fugitive.

They would take her in for sure. Then
what? With a bigger
what
for Adam.

The silence was killing her as The
Watcher stood in place for an eternity.

He’s toying with us. He knows we’re here.
He’s got to. Why else is he just standing in a dark room?

Then The Watcher walked out of the
storage room, leaving the door wide open behind him.

Ana let out a deep breath, and her heart
seemed to start toward its normal beat.

The Watcher joined his partner in the
room for a moment and then went up the stairs.

Ana couldn’t see anyone from the angle
she was at. But she could hear every movement and word.

The first sound she heard was the
familiar sound of the shock stick charging with a loud hum. While the shock
sticks delivered a painful surge on contact, they could also fire a lethal
blast that could tear through a person’s body, killing in an instant.

Then she heard The Watcher’s voice
crackle through his helmet’s speaker, “I’ll ask you once,” he said. “Where’s
Liam?” After a moment’s pause, he added, “You’ll be sorry if you lie.”

Apparently
Thou Shalt Not Lie
didn’t
apply to protecting your flock.