Exodia (2 page)

She nods at the kid. Some secret
knowledge passes between them. I glance away from her and focus for
a second on the kid. I’m surprised to see he’s the thief I meant to
track down. I concentrate on her again and wait for her to
speak.

“
So you’re a Blue. What are
you doing in a Red neighborhood? Looking for trouble? All by
yourself?” Her eyes, the kind that change colors in different
light, flame brighter with each question. I’m mesmerized, but not
so much that I don’t catch a certain little inconsistency. Why
should being sixteen automatically mean I’m a Blue?

I reach in my belt bag and offer up the
oranges to the thief. I realize now that he’s not as young as I had
thought, maybe thirteen or fourteen, but scrawny. “Just returning
these,” I say and he grabs them faster than a hungry
monkey.

Out of the corner of my eye I catch a
movement. Two other kids are creeping closer, but they’re small,
not a threat.

“
Who’s he?” one asks and the
second one echoes the question.

“
Shh, go back inside Lydia’s
house,” the thief says and passes the oranges to them.

I catch the strange words that one of
them whispers to the other: “Maybe he’s the one the Mourners want
dead.” They scurry off to the house and I dismiss their words as
part of a fantasy game. My attention narrows back to the girl.
Darkly beautiful. And tall. I only have maybe two or three inches
on her and I’m six feet one.

“
Well?” She tilts her head
and rests one hand on her hip.

I don’t know which question to answer
first; it’s suddenly hard to breathe. “Dalton. My name is Dalton
and yeah, I’m a Blue.” I let the rest of my breath escape. I’m well
aware of the prohibitions, but it’s not like I’m here to marry her.
I wonder if she’s ever had any Blue friends. It can’t be that
uncommon. I suck in a humid lungful of air and nerve. “And your
name is …?”

She doesn’t answer right away. She
drops her hand from her hip as if she’s going to turn and
disappear, but instead she gives the thief a signal of some kind
and steps toward me. “I’m Lydia Sroka,” she says, her lower jaw
jutting out, “and this is Barrett, Bear for short. And you are just
who we’ve been waiting for, Dalton Battista.” She hooks her arm in
mine and because she used my last name, which I’m pretty sure I
didn’t say, I let her steer me back up the street. My throat
constricts and I gulp a dozen shallow breaths.

I’m aware that there are people
everywhere now. The abandoned cars that line the street are
converted into huts. The garages and houses are multi-family
dwellings. Men, women, children resume their lives and I hear the
sounds I should have noticed were missing before. It’s as if the
Red slum woke up when Lydia said my name.

“
Where are you taking me?”
We turn the wrong way on Brookhouse and the thief runs ahead of us,
tapping his elbow and pointing at me whenever we pass
someone.

“
You’ll see. It’s not much
farther,” Lydia says. She tosses her head and her jet black hair
feathers over one eye like a dark curtain. She smiles at me and I
know that I will follow her anywhere, anywhere at all.

* * *

I must have been six or seven when my
mother left on a political trip with my grandfather. She acts as
his first lady. I never understood why he dotes on her but mostly
ignores me. Maybe because of my father. We never speak of
him.

My nanny, my Red nanny, was delighted
to have complete and total charge of me for the two months they
were gone. One time she took me out of the capitol compound and
through the dirty streets, maybe these same streets. We passed
crumbling buildings that she named for me–library, courthouse,
museum–words that meant nothing to me then. Words that are losing
their place in our world. She wanted me to know about them so I
could someday rebuild them. I was just a child, but I told her I
would do it. Nanny Jacky smiled at me and I wished mother would
love me like she did.

Only vaguely do I remember where we
ended up that day. We visited a dark house. She sat in a small room
on a wooden chair and cried. A man with a badly scarred face wept
along with her while two older kids, a boy and a girl whose names
I’ve forgotten, tried to teach me a game. The man never took his
eyes off me. I had never seen a man cry, before or
since.

By the time we left darkness had fallen
and I complained that I was hungry. I asked her where our supper
bag went. I knew she packed it; I remembered that she had carried
it on her back because it was so heavy. She left it with the
children, she said. Not to worry–we’d be back at the capitol
soon.

Guards descended on us as soon as we
got near the gate, scolding nanny, swooping me up into hard arms,
swearing.

I’m remembering this now because Lydia
is guiding me up broken steps toward a gate and several men are
coming toward us like those guards, hard and cold and
mean.

* * *

“
Do you know where you are?”
Lydia asks as we flow through the pseudo-guards and they close
ranks behind us. The thief, Barrett, pushes open a set of doors,
holds them as we pass, then leans against them.

“
No.” I have no idea if this
is an abandoned museum or library or church. It is dark and cold
inside and smells musty. The people have begun to sing outside. The
song is in English, but I don’t recognize a few of the
words.

“
What are they singing?” I
ask, running one of the words over and over in my head: mo-shay,
mo-shay. I think it means help or comfort.

“
It’s … just a song,” Lydia
says. “Do you know where you are?”

I guess: “Courthouse?”

She smiles. If I could make her smile
like that all the time I would give up all I have and stay in the
Red slum forever.

“
Hardly. This was a birthing
clinic. After the Culling Mandate of 2077 this was a pretty busy
place. I was born here, but my twin brother was not allowed to
live.”

I stand very still. That smile that
captured my heart a moment ago now quivers at the corners, falls. I
don’t want her to cry. I’ve never heard of the Culling Mandate. I’m
afraid to ask.

She reads my mind and says, “You don’t
know, do you? The mandate required the death of all boy children
born to Red women in the year preceding the mandate and for twelve
months after … by abortion or infanticide.”

Her words hit me like crisp slaps. How
could I not know this most important and fairly recent bit of
history? I realize that my head has dropped and I’m staring at my
own feet, my mind swirling. The singing outside fades. I want to
think that this is some kind of joke, but I know my grandfather is
cruel. I know he murders whole towns.

It makes sense now how Lydia knew I was
a Blue simply by asking my age. There are no fifteen, sixteen,
seventeen year old boys here.

“
But why?” I ask. A fear is
creeping up my spine. I think I know.

“
The prophecy,” Barrett
says. He puffs the p in prophecy then grinds his teeth a bit as he
repeats the word. Despite his attempt to look tough he seems
happy-go-lucky and somewhat tragic at the same time.

“
Right,” Lydia looks from
Barrett to me. “The Executive President believed his
government-trained psychic when she told him that a boy born in
2077 would grow up to assassinate the intended leader. A boy born
of Red parents.” She takes a step closer to me. “He wasn’t taking
any chances. He had all the boys from the year before to a year
after killed.”

“
Show him the carving,”
Barrett says, pointing to my right.

I turn and Lydia brushes
past me, grabs my hand and pulls me down the hallway. I like her
forward manner; there’s an affinity I can’t explain. I follow
easily until we turn a corner and it’s too dark to see. We stop.
She presses my fingers against deep ruts in the wall. We trace the
letters together. The heat of her hand on mine makes my blood leave
my head. My thoughts are confused.
I strain
to see and make out tinges of gold on the wall.

Dalton

I’m very aware of her long black hair
tickling my ear. Our heads are close together and I want to turn my
face to hers. And even though our fingers are working out the
letters I don’t care what they say.

Dalton Battista

I don’t care at all until she pulls me
farther right, her fingers lightly pressing mine into the gaps that
spell:

Dalton Battista is
not

Is not what? Why is my name carved into
the wall of an old birthing center in the middle of the Red
slum?

Lydia presses my whole palm against the
last two words and steps back. I trace the indentations twice to be
sure I understand. I know what the letters spell, but I cannot
fathom the implications.

I’m sweating. In spite of the coolness
of the dark building a prickly heat squeezes my breath. The musty
smell invades my nostrils, driving out the sweet scent of Lydia.
Lydia Sroka. I feel weak-kneed and stupid.

Dalton Battista is not Lucas
Sroka.

Why would anyone think I was? Why would
anyone carve such an obvious fact into the wall of the place where
Lucas, her twin brother, was murdered at birth.

Was I born here? Surely mother would
have had specialists at the capitol. Grandfather keeps a staff of
doctors even though he denies health care to the Reds. Of course I
couldn’t have been born here.

But my fading tattoo …

I compose myself, stifle my thoughts,
and look at the dark shadow that hides Lydia. I say, “Your brother?
What does he have to do with me? Who carved this?”

She whispers something. The last part
sounds like “Mo-shay,” and I shiver. In a normal tone she says,
“You have to set things right. It’s your destiny.”

She pivots and the click of her shoes
on the floor leads me out. Barrett holds the door as we pass.
Anger, fear, and grief follow me out into the gray
district.

“
Can you find your way home
or should Barrett take you?”

I search her eyes for answers, but I
only see a challenge reflected back. I stand mute. The men who sang
and guarded us are gone, but many people are walking up and down
the street. Exodia’s slums are well integrated, not just Red and
Blue, but black and brown and white. I’m getting strange looks;
they’re not friendly like before. My anxiety wells up and I want to
leave before I say something stupid.

I feel awkward. Embarrassed.
My world has suddenly taken a hard left and darkened. What does she
know of
my
destiny?
Without another word I leave.

I go from hurried walk to pressured
trot. I pass Bancroft Street and search for Burnell. I slow down,
pick my way around some garbage in the street, and listen as a
truck motors my way. It could be guards searching for me if Jamie
didn’t do what I asked. A ride back would be nice, but I’d rather
not get a lecture, so I cut between two identical houses and find
myself in the middle of someone else’s problem.

I spot the blue tattoo on the kid’s
elbow immediately, before he turns to see why I’m interrupting him.
He is beating up on a smaller kid who is on his knees, feet toward
me. The victim’s elbow, too, is quite visible, but it’s red. It’s
odd that the bully would risk death. If he breaks a
bone…

My tutor’s words float back
to me:
…post-apocalyptic immigration …
breaking the bones of someone of the opposite tattoo … punishable
by death.

I have things to set right, Lydia said.
It’s my destiny. There was heat in her words. Outrage. My breaths
come in sudden gasps like hiccups.

I grab the larger one, the
Blue, and pull him off the kid. I take a swing. I’m big and strong
and well-trained and for a second I wonder why I’ve been trained if
the laws are such that what I’m doing is a crime. And yet my
grandfather has an army
–
there are still wars within the Ninety states.

The Red kid scrambles to his feet and
trips a few feet away to watch me hit his Blue assailant again. And
again. I suck in air, blow out fury, punch at him a fourth and
fifth time.

The Blue one staggers back and fixes me
with a stare that shakes me to my core. His face is tracked with
broken blood vessels. He is not a kid as I had thought. He is a
man, a very angry, brutal man.

And lightning fast. He is in my face
instantly, too close to punch. I draw back my arm as he locks both
of his around me, pinning my left arm tight, crushing my chest in a
death squeeze. His face burrows close to mine and he pours filth
and vile into my ear. And threats. I pound his kidney with my right
fist, but my hampered strikes are useless.

I bite his ear. Tear and rip and
grind.

He drops his hold and lets forth a
low-pitched scream. Like an animal. He rages. Then stops. He fixes
me in his stare with a stillness that has more threat to it than if
he had a weapon pointed my way.

I see the boy, off to the side, pick up
two fat sticks. He should be running away, as I want to do. His
bravery moves me. I spit then growl back at the man, at this Blue
who probably has had more years of training, more practice than I.
I lower my head and ram him. We fall together. I knock his breath
away and roll off him as he flutters like a beetle on its
back.