Regret (9 page)

Rise One loomed before me, making late-afternoon shadows drip across the green area. “I didn’t know you lived in Rise One,” I said. “I thought you had a student flat.”

Raine’s mouth tightened at my blatant change in topic. “There’s a student section on the second and third floors.”

“You have a flatmate?” I asked.

“Yes. You want her picture?” Raine adopted her power stance: left hip out, arms crossed, eyes challenging me to say something.

I held up my hands in surrender. “No, no picture.”

Pictures could also be sent over the cache, attached to an e-comm. Everyone in Freedom was fitted with corneal implants, which allowed us to view things on an individual basis on our vision-screens. It wasn’t really a screen, more of a movie or picture displayed before our own eyes. Of course, you could forward images through the cache, or you could load them onto microchips and pass them around physically.

See, every Citizen of Freedom also had a wrist-port. This was a simple, inch-wide band of black around the left wrist. On the top, just below the back of your hand, was a slot for microchips, and then you could watch memories on your vision-screen.

We’d eliminated almost all handheld devices in Freedom. It’s something Assistant Director Myers was forever bragging about. “We’re down to just the electro-board!” he boasted from the roof of the Technology Rise—his beloved home just beyond the taller central Rises.

The e-board was cool; I’d give AD Myers that. It was this
tiny little thing, about four inches long and two inches wide. A screen could be brought up to hover above the device if you wanted to show your buddies a particularly entertaining memory. Other than that, we used the e-boards in school to store class notes. Simply compose a message in your cache and send it to your e-board. Notes: taken.

Educators could send items to their class lists, providing students with an endless supply of study materials. Free-time hours: gone.

“Anyway, she’s not a student,” Raine was saying. She took a few steps backward, committing fully to crossing the green area to Rise One. “Well, I should go.” She didn’t seem too enthused about leaving, but that could’ve been wishful thinking on my part.

“Wait,” I called. “What’s your flatmate’s name?”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Just some chick named Vi.”

I watched Raine walk away, wondering why Vi, a non-student, was living on a student floor, with a student. I needed to learn more about the real Raine Hightower, stat.

I glided through the remaining Rises, covering mile after mile easily on my hoverboard. Each Rise—and there were twelve situated in the center of Freedom—took up an entire square
mile and created silver canyons, even with all the green areas. On the outskirts of those Rises, more buildings reached for the sky.

My mom worked in the Transportation Rise, and there were others: technology, energy, water purification, protocol enforcement, medicine, and evolutionary development, just to name a few. Each Rise had a Thinker who ran the affairs in that particular area, but only one of them was Assistant to Director Hightower: Thane Myers.

As I drifted through the Rise-canyons toward the Blocks, I forced the Directors from my mind, focusing instead on something more important: my snack selection. On Mondays, my two options included crackers and cheese or raisins. I chose the crackers every Monday.

By the time I made it to Block Three, I’d moved on from snacks and spent a more than healthy amount of time fantasizing about Raine. I swept my palm across the panel on my front door and pushed into the living room, where my mom knelt in front of our safe, a slip of microchips in her hand.

Everything froze, as if the Director had pressed the pause button on my life. Mom stalled with her hand halfway inside the safe. Her face held shock and fear and guilt, all of which I actually felt as my own emotions.

I stared, my mouth still watering over the promise of
crackers and cheese.

Just as fast as we’d paused, life rushed forward again. The safe slammed shut, and Mom stood in front of it. Like that would erase the secret she’d just put inside. Like I wouldn’t be able to see the hulking black box behind her. It’s always been there, and I’d always been involved in the decisions about what we hid inside. Until now.

“Gunner, you’re home early.”

“Not really.” I dropped my backpack and hoverboard and headed into the kitchen for that snack. The safe screamed at me to
look at it!
but I kept my eyes on the floor. “Why are you home?” I called to Mom.

I pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge and ordered up the crackers from the food-dispenser. Mom didn’t answer and she stayed in the living room, her frustration about my slobbish behavior a thin veil of normalcy over my heavy curtain of anxiety.

“No reason,” she said when she came into the kitchen. “You’re going flying?”

“Yeah, be back for dinner.” I ate on the way to the hoverboard track, but the crackers held no taste. The icy air I sliced through at the track felt just as restrictive as the rest of the city. As the rest of my life.

All I could think about was that blasted sleeve of microchips,
what they were, why my mom had hidden them without telling me.

I flew my regulated hours, returned home at the appointed time. Just like always.

Bedtime couldn’t come fast enough. At exactly ten o’clock, I plugged my cache into the mandatory transmissions, closed my eyes.

Like I slept.

After an hour that felt like forever, I unclipped my transmissions and crept downstairs to the safe. I had four minutes to plug back in, but it shouldn’t be a problem. Like I said, my mom and I didn’t used to keep secrets, so I knew the combination to the safe.

Three minutes later the sleeve of microchips lay under my pillow and the transmissions reblared in my head.

I needed time to think. So I lay awake, trying to imagine what I might see.

I couldn’t.

I popped the first chip into my wrist-port. My vision-screen filled with my mom’s remembrances. My past birthdays and, as I got older, my performances at the hoverboard flight trials. The second to last one held my victory last year. Mom was hiding her fondest memories of me, almost like she couldn’t hold them in her head anymore. Why would she
secure these without telling me?

I slid the last chip into the port and nearly choked. Director Hightower sat at his desk; the surface glittered with clouded glass.

He leaned forward to speak, and while he looked kind and fatherly, his voice came out full of steel and sternness.

“Hello, Ms. Jameson. Our records indicate that the child we entrusted you with, Gunner, has considerable talent. The Association needs to begin his training as soon as possible. He will be summoned next Saturday, at six thirty a.m., for a personal appointment with me. His afternoon classes will be moved to Rise One to aid in this new academic direction.”

Director Hightower paused as he sipped clear liquid from a tall glass. I couldn’t work up enough saliva to swallow. He’d called me “the child we entrusted you with.” What the hell did that mean?

When he looked into the camera again, I felt like his eyes burned through the lens, the microchip, my vision-screen, and right into my soul. Like he could see and hear and feel everything and I was utterly exposed.

“You will not be able to see him again, Ms. Jameson. But know that he will be of great service to the Association of Directors, not only here in Freedom, but throughout the
entire union.”

I dug my fingers into the pillow in an attempt to escape from his penetrating eyes. Numbness spread from my fingers into my arms, but the Director wasn’t finished yet.

“You’ve done a superior job with his upbringing.” He bowed his head for a moment, then raised his chin again. “You will be notified of his new address no later than Sunday evening. Until Saturday at six thirty. Good day.”

The image went black, but I still felt the Director’s eyes lingering on me.

My hands shook, and my head buzzed. The Director’s words raced through my mind.
You will not be able to see him again.

The last person who’d left her was my father. I didn’t want to put her through that again. I knew what had happened, even though we’d only spoken about my dad once.

She’d forgotten him.

Once I moved out, would she forget about me too?

“Tell me everything,” I whispered to Raine Hightower the next day before genetics class began. Briefly, I thought about my mom. We’d always protected each other, and I was more determined than ever to keep her safe, even after my forced relocation on Saturday.

Raine pushed her ice-colored hair over her shoulder, focused her eyes on me. I didn’t know what she saw there, but her expression softened. “What did you find out?”

I shook my head in a universal gesture of
it doesn’t matter
. Like I wanted Raine to know I’d fallen apart over a memory.

“You’re on the list, aren’t you?” She leaned closer. So close, I smelled something warm and sweet coming off her skin.

I cleared my throat and moved away. “Just tell me what to do.” Maybe if I joined the Insiders, I’d be able to breathe without this band of tension constricting my chest.

“The Director has his new recruits coming in on Saturday morning,” Raine whispered. “Friday night, one a.m. I’ll forward you the coordinates later.”

Then she turned away.

On Friday night I unplugged from the mandatory nightly transmissions so I could sneak downstairs. In four minutes an alarm loud enough to wake the dead would fill the Block. I couldn’t have that, and since I wasn’t planning on coming back, I clipped my transmission feed into the e-board I’d configured to simulate my sleep patterns.

Then I slipped down the stairs, knelt in front of the safe. I took a deep breath, not sure I could handle the contents of this thing again—not after that creepfest recording of the
Director.

An invisible weight lifted as I replaced the sleeve of chips I’d “borrowed” and pressed my thumb against the scanner to close the door.

That’s when I saw the single chip at the back of the safe. Jabbing my hand into the gap to stop the door from latching, I could only stare. That chip hadn’t been there on Monday night. My mom had told me about the approaching appointment with Director Hightower on Wednesday afternoon. She’d been leaning against the safe during the conversation, and no tears were shed, though I’d felt her profound sadness.

Quickly, I eased the chip from the slot, slipped it into my jacket pocket. When the safe closed, the beep echoed so loud I squeezed my eyes shut. But no one stirred upstairs. My mom’s transmissions would block the sound; she never slept without plugging in.

It’d be so easy to simply go back to bed, plug in, show up for my appointment tomorrow morning at six thirty.

But I couldn’t go back. What I’d learned had changed me, and the old me was gone for good. I felt like I should mourn him, and in a way I did. Sure, he’d known his world wasn’t perfect, but he’d been happy. Or at least willing to go with the flow.

With my backpack shouldered and that one new chip
resting in my pocket, I had a feeling any semblance of contentment lay solidly in my past. I stepped toward the front door. My mother had locked it down last night at ten, just like she always did. Beams of light swept from one side of the entryway to the other. Nothing I couldn’t handle.

Step-step-shuffle. Pause. Step-back-pause-leap. I stood at the door, wishing I could say good-bye to Mom the right way. I’d tried last night, but it pretty much went like this: “Night, Mom.”

“Good night, Gunn.”

And then I’d stood in her doorway while she’d linked into her transmissions and closed her eyes. I didn’t get to hug her or tell her I loved her or anything. I buried the troubling good-bye; I couldn’t go back and change it.

With one click and one scanner sweep, the front door hissed open. I’d barely melted into the shadows when someone spoke over the cache and straight into my head.
Nice to see you.

Trek Whiting = Raine’s tech genius. Every muscle in my body tensed. I was really doing this. Whatever
this
was. But I’d finally made my own choice. And it felt wild, dangerous. Perfect.

First rule out here,
Trek said over my cache, which echoed inside my mind because he’d used my personal cache code. I’d given it to Raine after school, secretly hoping she’d be
the one to contact me. My dreams crashed and burned, even though Trek’s reverberating voice over the cache meant the code had worked. He’d insisted that a coded cache wouldn’t be as detectable, and I had no experience to argue.

No names. Do you know your location?

Yes,
I chatted over the cache to him, completely ticked at his condescending tone.
Are we secure?

Yeah, but there are always seeker-spiders lurking somewhere.

And he spoke the truth, even if he wasn’t my favorite person on earth. I shivered at the thought of meeting a seeker-spider in the dead of night. Truth be told, I didn’t want to get in the way of a seeker at any time. Programmed by the higher-ups in the Tech Rise, seeker-spiders had a fourfold mission: find, detain, record, report.