Ash (23 page)

I stepped away, the rag now hanging limply from my hand. Our early, easier silence was replaced with a kind of heaviness until Theron spoke. “I should have talked him out of it, Dax,” he said. “You don’t mess around with your destiny. Not with the whole world watching. It was supposed to be the ultimate prank. It was just so stupid.” He rubbed a hand through his hair. “I was going to come by your house today. Apologize to you and your family. I feel like,” he paused, “like I’m partially responsible.”

“Theron, no one blames you,” I replied, startled. “Really, I promise. If anything I feel like it’s my fault.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked. “Of course it’s not.”

“Half the time that Aldan argues politics it’s on my behalf, Theron. You really think if his kid sister wasn’t a Blank any of this would have happened?”

Theron shook his head. “Dax, it wasn’t because of you. Your situation may have opened his eyes further, but he always saw the world in a different way. He thought the system should be colorblind.” He let out a sigh. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but he’d been seeing this girl. I only met her a couple of times, but she was a Green.”

He was talking about Oena. I wondered how much he knew about her. “His mystery girl,” I said. “She was the one you were talking to at the race?”

“That’s her. They hadn’t known each other for long, but he really liked her. He kept saying how he didn’t care about the policies. That he’d found the girl for him and that was all that mattered.”

“Kind of like one of the stories my dad is always talking about. Romeo and Juliet.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Just like that.”

“But it would never have worked between them,” I said. I looked into Theron’s eyes, holding his gaze. Gold flecked the green of his irises. “You know how it would have been. They were from such different rings.”

“You’re probably right,” he said, looking away. “But Aldan didn’t care about that. He wanted to take a stand. He wanted to, I don’t know, do something dramatic. I just know I could have done more to stop him from doing what he did.”

“There wasn’t anything you could have done, Theron.”

“You don’t know that,” he said, his voice going tight.

“Yes, I do,” I said. “Aldan always does exactly—” I paused, realizing my brother was now in the past. “Aldan always did exactly what he thought was right. No one else figured into that. You could have argued with him as much as you wanted. If he wanted to mock the system, he was going to do it, one way or another. If it hadn’t been the race, it would have been something else. A week later. A month later. It would have happened.”

Theron chewed on that for a few minutes. I wasn’t sure if he believed me or not, and before he could say one way of the other, the clock tower began to chime. It was five o’clock. Theron glanced at his tracker with a groan.

“I’m late,” he said. “I told my parents I’d be home over an hour ago. Let me walk you home.”

I thought about the empty house that was waiting for me. Or worse, my mom already there.

“Thanks, but it’s okay,” I said. “You’re already late. And I want to stay here a little longer. It’s nice to just have some quiet, you know.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “See you at school?”

I nodded. As I looked at him I realized this was a real goodbye. When Theron left things would be different for us. They would have to be. There wasn’t an Aldan to connect us any longer.

I think he sensed it too. His eyes lingered on me, and he reached toward my face. “Hold still,” he said.

I froze, wondering if this was it, if he was about to finally kiss me.

He rubbed his thumb over my cheek. “A little bit of dirt,” he explained. “I got it.”

“Oh, uh, thanks.” I felt myself blushing, and I turned around to reach for my backpack, hoping he hadn’t seen my face go red. Stupid, idiotic crush.

“And thanks, Dax,” he said.

“For what?”

“When your destiny—your job—is to make someone laugh, the world expects you to be “on” all the time, lighten the mood, no matter what. Even when your best friend dies. That’s why I didn’t go to school today. It was bad enough pretending in front of my family and their friends. I’ve had to put on a fake smile around everyone. You’re the only one who actually got me to do it for real. You even got me to laugh.”

“Well I guess it’s a little easier when it’s not your job, when you just care about the person,” I said. I wanted to kick myself when the words were out of my mouth. I was certainly on a roll today.

“You may be right,” he said and kissed me on the cheek. “Though if that’s the case, I should have you cracking up all the time.”

Theron waved goodbye and left me standing there wondering what on earth had just happened.

T
he Records Room seemed to shrink around me. Everything felt like it was closing in. I looked away from the hologram documents in front of me, unsure of what to think. I stalled, studying my nails while I tried to remain calm. I’d left them unpolished, and the skin underneath was turning a dark purple from the cold of the room. It was somehow appropriate. I stared back at the documents again. On one document I had a time stamp. The rest—none.

“Madden?” Sol asked. “You look like John Crilas just showed up at your door and asked you out on a date. What’s wrong?”

I just stared at the hologram documents in front of me. There was something wrong with my destiny. Mistakes like this didn’t happen. Not on purpose. I didn’t answer Sol. I couldn’t. I needed answers before I could do anything, but I had no idea where to get them. I couldn’t very well talk to the ministers. It could put my destiny at risk, cause some sort of scandal, and the ministry did not look highly upon scandals. My reign as a leader of the country would be a joke. The other ministers would push me out days after I was appointed.

There was always my father, but I knew him too well. If I told him, he’d just say it was a mistake in my mother’s file. Then he’d tell me not to mention it again. Right after a lecture about snooping and subsequent grounding.

I looked up. Sol was still watching me. He understood the complexities of the records. He’d even modified the technology. But could I trust him with something this huge?

I studied his eyes. Brown, almost as dark as his pupils. They looked kind.

“Madden, what is it?”

Maybe it was because he didn’t call me princess this time, or because he actually sounded concerned, or just because he was there, but I decided to tell him the truth.

“I need you to swear you won’t tell a soul,” I said.

He nodded.

“On your family’s lives—on their destinies?” I questioned.

“Yes,” he said. For some reason, I trusted him.

“There’s a discrepancy with my time stamp,” I blurted out, shoving the documents toward him. “I have no idea what it means.” His eyes widened as he looked them over. “Can you figure out why? I’ll give you another three hundred ostows.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

“Fine, six hundred. Please, I have to know.” I was desperate enough to beg if that’s what he wanted. It didn’t matter that he was an Ash. He had answers I needed.

“I mean, no, you don’t have to pay me.” He held my gaze. “I’ll help you.”

For a flicker of a second I had the impulse to hug him, but I quickly composed myself. “Thank you.”

Sol held my gaze for long enough that I began to feel uncomfortable, and I finally looked away not knowing what to say. He’d surprised me today. If he had been a Purple, we might have even been friends. But he wasn’t, I reminded myself. Being a Purple was something you were born with. He was just a lower rung doing me a favor. And for that, I’d repay him one way or another. I couldn’t get myself into a position where I was indebted to anyone—especially an Ash. It would be a disaster when I took my place as a minister. No doubt he knew that too, and was smart enough to know that by helping me, he would help himself.

Sol went to work typing away at the keyboard. I fidgeted, adjusting my weight from one foot, back to the other, wrapping and rewrapping myself in my cashmere shawl. Each second felt like hours.

“Did you find anything?” I asked.

“Not yet.”

We played out different versions of the conversation about a dozen times over the next five minutes.

“Madden, you’ve got to give me a little time. This isn’t easy.”

I realized I was being overbearing. Stressing out Sol would just make it harder for him to get anything done. I knew that. Leadership training taught me that remaining calm and approaching problems with a sense of humor helped motivate people. Staring over Sol’s shoulders was only going to slow his productivity, so I changed tactics. “I’m sure it’s nothing for the tech king of New City,” I said with a smile. “You don’t get that title for nothing.”

He pushed his black hair out of his eyes and cocked his head. “Are you flirting with me?”

“You wish.”

Sol’s cheeks reddened a little, and I stifled a laugh. “Now come on, figure this out.”

“Anything you say, princess,” he said, his voice playful.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about him calling me a princess after I’d dubbed him a king, but I let it go. I didn’t need verbal sparring, I needed him to work. I lowered myself to the ground and put my back up against the wall. Sitting on the floor was not very Purple-like behavior, but neither was trying to decrypt old files. Fortunately, no one was around to see either.

For the next fifty-three minutes, I sat in silence watching Sol. Once I stopped bothering him, he entered some sort of trance. As if nothing existed but his work. He typed away at the keyboard, his eyes glued to the data popping up on the wall in front of him. None of it made sense to me. A lot of gibberish, random numbers, symbols, and commands. I’d received good marks in my comp sci classes, but this was way above my studies.

He finally stopped typing and turned to face me, rubbing his hands over his face. “I’ve never seen anything like this. The encryption was incredible. You’d never find it if you weren’t looking for it, and even then most wouldn’t spot it. It was thirteen layers deep. The first few algorithms were based on a symmetric key encryption model, but I had to get creative when I hit the fifth. They tried to trick me with a dummy multiplier, which also used an invertible affine transformation. Then—”

“Sol!” I yelled. “English. What does it all mean?”

“It means that someone worked very hard to hide the fact that they tampered with your information.”

I wanted to stand, but I couldn’t. “On which file? The data stamp on my mother’s? Or removing it from my father’s and mine?”

He got very quiet.

“Sol.”

He wouldn’t look at me, instead he studied a spot on the ceiling.

“Sol, answer me.”

He brought his eyes down to meet mine. “All of them, Madden. Someone changed your destiny.”