Falling & Uprising Page 11

  “It needs to be something that looks innocent or beautiful but can kill or destroy,” she says. “There are several species of poisonous flowers I’ve considered.”

  Jase rolls his eyes. “We are not going to refer to ourselves as flowers.”

  “It’s a work in progress.”

  “Don’t worry about working too hard on it,” Dixon says. “We’ll probably survive without a name.” Shooting Vogue down in a kind, friendly way seems like his natural way of dealing with people. Positive vibes radiate from him. He has the sort of charisma that makes everyone want to be his friend. Relaxed and open, not appearing to measure his words like so many people do (myself included), but still effortlessly saying the right thing.

  “I’m surprised you don’t already carry a moniker of some dangerously addictive substance.” Frey aims a coy smile at Vogue like a net, which has probably never failed to catch its prey. I’m not surprised. The two of them are exceptionally matched in beauty. I knew of Frey Dempsey, but this is the first time I’m meeting him. No wonder he’s garnered his reputation—girls probably fall over themselves to get into his bed. How can a face look so masculine and so beautiful at the same time? His dark blond hair is tousled but perfect, and inviting eyes soften his angular features.

  Vogue smiles back before glancing away. I don’t suppose he’s been turned down many times. It’ll be interesting to see how he reacts to a girl who isn’t attracted to him.

  “The bigger issue will be our numbers,” Jase says. “Is it really six of us who are supposed to take down the Establishment?”

  “Almost. I met Tori Foster once. She’s a training captain in Security.” I don’t mention she’s also a little terrifying.

  “And there’s Sophos,” Krisalyn says.

  “And his scary bodyguard,” Dixon adds.

  I laugh at that one. “Bram isn’t scary.”

  Vogue chimes in. “He should be afraid of Serenity. She had an amnesia shot in hand when they got into a fight.”

  This is only new information to Dixon and Frey, who look surprised and impressed.

  “Regardless,” Jase says, “nine whole people. That should be simple enough.”

  Krisalyn shakes her head. “Your pessimism is showing.”

  “I’m realistic.”

  “Then why partake?” Vogue asks him.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do,” he says. “Whether it will work is a separate issue.”

  “To quote my mother,” I say, “‘Irrigated vines make bland wines.’ Struggling improves the result, so the world we get out of this struggle should be spectacular.”

  “You wouldn’t know,” Frey says. “You’ve never had to struggle for anything in your life.”

  “Well, none of us have.” I sip my wine, enjoying the irony of my mother’s saying. She thinks the grapes are grown in a greenhouse, not by people who are themselves struggling. “But we are now, so our goal should be the most important thing we’ve ever wanted.”

  Jase smiles and raises a glass toward me. “May the destination be worth the journey.”

  That phrase perks me up. “Sophos said something like that the other day. I like it.”

  “Me too,” he says.

  “How did you two get involved in all this?” Krisalyn asks our newest comrades.

  Frey and Dixon were both approached by Sophos once they started their programs in the Establishment Center. Frey graduated from his program at the end of last year, as did Krisalyn and Jase, so they’ve all known about everything for two years. Dixon is a year younger, and in the second year of his tech program, so he found out last year.

  “How awful was it to hear all of this from Sophos, by the way?” Dixon says.

  Frey nods. “The worst.”

  “He should really offer martinis instead of tea for those meetings,” I add.

  Krisalyn’s big eyes open wider as she nods. “Yes!”

  “Being drunk for that talk was helpful,” Vogue says with a laugh.

  As the night wears on, Frey keeps trying (and failing) to get Vogue’s attention while she and Krisalyn chat. Dixon and Jase notice too, and together we get a few laughs in at Frey’s expense.

  With or without a name, something about this group feels right.

  ***

  Late in the morning, Vogue comes into my bedroom in her fluffy bathrobe carrying Snowflake in her arms. “Someone still seems to be confused as to which room is her mommy’s,” she says, sitting on my bed and setting the dog onto it.

  “I think she likes you better.” I scratch my little fluff ball behind her ear.

  “No, I’m just new. She’ll be bored of me soon.”

  “I don’t think Frey will be bored with you anytime soon.”

  She rolls her eyes and sighs. “Fortunately, he’s more knowledgeable about computers than people. And speaking of which, I checked out the program you brought home for me. It looks like a duplicate of the one you use to manage the monorails. If it is indeed for training like it’s labeled, then it should be a dummy system, but its security is too robust.”

  Having Vogue on the team means I have my own personal IT department. “I wasn’t trained on a dummy system. I was shown everything on the live one.”

  “Right, so this is something worth looking into. I’ll find a backdoor into it.” Vogue’s confidence is so unassuming it inspires confidence in me. If she told me she could pluck a star from the sky, I know she would find a way. “Anything else new and exciting?” she asks.

  “Not much of interest. I did stumble across a proposal to demolish that old building at the corner of Wyandotte and Truman. A new architect wants to put up a building that would be the tallest in the city, but apparently, there is a restriction of two-hundred-fifty feet. It’s supposed to be something to do with the depth of the foundation or something.”

  “But you don’t believe that?”

  “I don’t believe anything anymore.” I sip the tea that has appeared on my nightstand. “I’ll ask Sophos about it on Friday.”

  “I should find a way to crash your meetings with him. I really do want to meet Bram. I’m dying to speak to a marshal.”

  “You could speak to any marshal. In my experience, Bram won’t chat with you much more than the others.”

  “Well, I thought of something else for our moniker. What’s lovely but consumed the whole planet?”

  She’s not going to give this up. “The ocean?”

  “Yes! We could be the seven seas.”

  “There are six of us.”

  “Precisely why we need Bram.”

  “Your persistence is… admirable.” I guess.

  Vogue taps her nose, a sure sign of scheming. “We should find a way to break him out for a night! He’s been incarcerated for five years. There has to be a way to sneak him into our apartment for a few hours.”

  “I don’t think his idea of a fun night out would include socializing with us.”

  “He has a limited circle of potential acquaintances, so I don’t think he should be too particular.”

  I roll my eyes, smiling. “I love being someone’s last resort!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  BRAM

  “If they built any higher, there could be a view of Gladstone from the top.” Sophos clears his desk as he answers the latest of Serenity’s never-ending questions. I don’t know what significance the height restriction on buildings could have, but she demands explanations for everything.

  “I didn’t realize the islands were that close.”

  “That’s the closest, about twenty miles away from our northern coastline. Lawson is the farthest at forty-five miles away.”

  Her eyes are wide with wonder. She looks fascinated whenever she learns something new. So long as the something new isn’t horrible.

  “Vogue was running a program to find the discrepancies in the energy usage data. She told me she found something and is bringing it home today. Would you like to send Bram home with me to retrieve it for you, or s
hould I wait until next Friday to give it to you?”

  “I have a council dinner tonight. There will be plenty of marshals there. I suppose I can send him on an errand. If that’s all right with you, Bram?”

  “Sure,” I reply.

  “Thank you. Well then, Serenity, have a good weekend. Bram, I will see you in the morning.”

  As we walk to her apartment, trying to pretend I don’t exist proves to be a challenge for her. I walk half a step behind her, staring blankly ahead, but out of the corner of my eye, I see her turn her head toward me and open her mouth to speak before she remembers herself. She does this a couple of times. It’s subtle, and most Kaycians don’t pay much attention to anything going on around them, but it’s funny for me.

  Her discomfort grows when I remain standing on the half-empty monorail car rather than sitting. She wouldn’t think twice about that for any other marshal, but she doesn’t see me as a marshal anymore. She shifts in her seat, reconciling her pristine manners against typical expectations.

  We enter her apartment, which is identical to every other apartment in Kaycie I’ve ever shadowed Sophos to. Polished stone floors, high ceilings, and thick moldings, all bright and open with floor to ceiling windows to greet us. This one has a ball of white fluff that’s jumping excitedly at my knees.

  “Bram! I’m so excited to meet you!” A girl, who I guess is Vogue Taylor, comes toward me and shakes my hand. She looks more like a ballerina or a model than a tech nerd.

  “Good to meet you too. Where is the report for Sophos?”

  “What’s the rush? You have a night off, please sit. Would you like something to drink?”

  I look back and forth at the two girls. This is an ambush. “What are you trying to pull here, Serenity?”

  Her eyes widen. “I think that’s the first time you’ve said my actual name.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “It was my idea,” Vogue says. “I wanted to meet you. Serenity has told me next to nothing about you, and I have so many questions.”

  “She doesn’t know much about me to tell.”

  “Don’t say that as if it’s my fault I don’t know you.” Serenity crosses her arms in mock offense. “You aren’t exactly big on sharing.”

  “Maybe a cocktail will help that?” Vogue’s offer tells me this is going to be a long night.

  “I don’t drink.” They look at each other as if they have never heard that phrase before. I sigh and explain myself. “I narrowly escaped having my mind wiped out by the Establishment. I don’t have any desire to voluntarily surrender my clarity.” That and my sole experience with alcohol was miserable, but they don’t need to know that.

  “Fair enough,” Vogue replies. “You should still stay a while. Please make yourself comfortable.”

  I narrow my eyes at Serenity with silent accusations.

  “It’s best to go along with her. She’s persistent.”

  I roll my eyes as I sit down in a living room chair. “What do you want to know?”

  “Which island are you from?” Vogue initiates her interrogation as she and Serenity sit on the couch.

  “I know that one.” Serenity sounds like a student, excited to answer a teacher’s question. “Lawson. The island that does all of our manufacturing.”

  “Ah, the place where my inventions are produced,” Vogue says. “I’d love to see it someday.”

  “I don’t think you’d enjoy it much. It’s just stark factories and dilapidated homes.”

  “What was it like to live there?” Serenity asks.

  “People are born, work, and die just like in Kaycie. Except here, there is considerably less work and infinitely more enjoyment in between.”

  “What do children do? They can’t be working in the factories, right?”

  My lips turn up a little. I could freak her out and say they start training at age four. She’d believe just about any horrible thing now, but I won’t bother. “No, they go to school and play. Sports are bigger there.”

  “Sports are big here,” Serenity says.

  “No, they aren’t.”

  “Of course they are!” Vogue keeps a perfect smile on while she speaks. “Getting into the ballet is incredibly competitive, and everyone golfs.”

  “Ballet isn’t a sport, and—”

  “Excuse me!” Her smile vanishes. “Do you have any idea the amount of physical skill required for ballet? What exactly do you consider a sport?”

  “Football, basketball.”

  “What are those?” Serenity asks.

  I sigh. How did I end up here explaining sports to these girls who think a virtual simulation of golf is one? “In basketball, you need to throw a ball through a metal hoop—”

  “Oh, that sounds difficult.”

  Vogue and I are starting out about as well as Serenity and I did.

  “There is an opposing team stopping you from doing that,” I explain. “And you have to stop the other team from scoring too.”

  “And what about football?” Serenity’s back to finding everything fascinating.

  “In football, the main goal is to throw the ball to a teammate or carry it down the field. If you get it to the end of the field, you score.”

  “Why is it called football,” Vogue asks, “if you throw, catch, and carry the ball?”

  “I have no idea. I think you’d like it though, it’s a physical game, lots of tackling.” Serenity smirks at me as I rile her friend.

  Vogue looks unimpressed. “That sounds barbaric.”

  “I’ve heard,” I say, “that back in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the upper classes loved the games.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I want to see this in action,” Serenity says. “It sounds interesting.”

  “I’ll teach you how to play when this is all over.”

  She smiles at me. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  The idea of Serenity playing football is hilarious. I don’t think she owns any clothing besides dresses and high heels.

  “Have you been to the other islands since you’ve been working for Sophos?” Vogue asks.

  “Yeah, I’ve been to most of the islands with him when he goes for selection.”

  “Are they all the same?” I guess she’s willing to set aside my savage idea of sports to continue interviewing me.

  “I don’t see enough on those trips to know what daily life is like, but I understand them to be similar.”

  “What are the underwater trains like?” Serenity has that fascinated look again. Her hunger for information reminds me of home when we got a decent meal after a day without eating.

  “The trains are impressive. You can’t feel how fast you’re going because the ride is smooth as silk, but the tunnel is transparent in some areas, so you can see the surroundings fly by.”

  “What does it look like under the water?” Serenity asks.

  “Just odd shapes covered in algae.”

  “I want to see under the water,” she sighs.

  “Do you miss it?” Vogue asks. “Not that it was an enjoyable place to be, but the people? Your family?”

  “I miss my brothers and my mom.” I wince the moment the words come out. Damn it. Freedom of speech is so rare for me that I’ve gotten bad at filtering myself. Not being able to talk is much safer.

  “Oh my gosh, are you a twin? Or do you have two moms?” Vogue’s excitement gives me some solid options for lying.

  Serenity’s eyes dart back and forth. “Wait, multiple brothers?”

  Omitting information is one thing, but I don’t want to lie. I’m such an idiot. “I shouldn’t be talking about this.”

  “What could be worse than what we already know?” Serenity asks.

  I lean my elbow on the armrest and press my hand onto my forehead. “You mostly know the bad things on the other islands.”

  They look at each other and back at me expectantly.

  “My mom had three boys from three pregnancies.”

  “
Women can’t get pregnant again after having a baby.” Vogue states the fact known to everyone in Kaycie.

  I take a deep breath. “Here. Because after the doctors deliver the babies, they sterilize the mothers.”

  “What?” they cry in unison. The horror on Serenity’s face isn’t like the polished acting when she claimed to be surprised about her boyfriend. This is real. Maybe her mask is slipping.

  “To keep the population from growing beyond sustainable numbers,” I say.

  Vogue trembles and presses her lips together, her eyes closed.

  Serenity opens and closes her mouth a couple of times before words come out. I haven’t seen her look this upset since she found out marshals are human. “But why… why would they only need to control the population on Kaycie?”

  “On the islands, more people means more laborers, and remember Kaycians consume more than islanders do.”

  “We’re just more mouths to feed, so they…” Vogue bites her lip. “I have to go. I’m sorry, Bram.” Tears trickle out of her eyes as she stands up. “Thank you for telling us, even if you didn’t mean to.” She disappears into a hallway, and a slamming door concludes my first time meeting her.

  Shit. I press my fingertips over my eyes and suck in a breath. “Serenity…”

  “It’s not your fault.” She sniffles. “She’ll be okay. She’s the strong one.”

  As a tear rolls down her face, I move to sit next to her. “You’re strong too.”

  “No, I’m not.” She shakes her head. “Sophos chose so poorly. I wasn’t even strong enough to keep what I know to myself. I needed help, and Adwin knew I wasn’t strong enough for any of this.” She lets out a shaky breath. “That’s why I left him. Not because he was selfish enough to want the system to keep going the way it does, but because he thought I was foolish to think I could possibly be enough to change anything. He was right, but it hurt to hear it.” She wipes her eyes, and I clasp her shoulders to turn her toward me. She tenses under my hands.

  “Listen.” Her gray eyes swim in pain as they stare into mine. “I’ve watched you get stronger every day since you got into this. You couldn’t have known if you were strong before. You never had anything to test your strength. And since you started this test, you’ve done nothing but rise up. You chose not only to be strong enough to handle it but to be brave enough to do something about it. Needing help doesn’t make you weak. Recognizing that need and getting help makes you stronger.” Not that I follow my own advice, but it’s true.