Falling & Uprising Read online

  Among other things, purple has symbolized transformation, cruelty, and mourning. Cut across the blue of marshal uniforms, I thought it could be a good reminder that you know what they were. You’re allowed to be sad about it. Be sad, angry, be all of it. Use it. Forgetting our humanity is what lead our world to become what it is. Remembering makes you stronger than them. —S

  My chest tightens as I roll up my sleeve and strap the band around my forearm. It covers part of the ID number tattooed onto me. I’m more than that number. So are the others, even if they don’t know it themselves. I can’t wear this often, but having a physical symbol of resistance releases some tension. I pull my sleeve back down over it and focus on the feeling of the leather against my skin.

  I’ll need to stop being an asshole and talk to her. For now, I tap my cuff and send her a message: It’s perfect.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  SERENITY

  “I can’t believe it’s tonight!” My pacing is primarily due to excitement, but I also need to break in these boots.

  “You are going to need to calm down,” Vogue says, styling her hair as if this were any other night, “or Bram won’t let you go.”

  “I promise I’ll stop acting this excited once we’re with everyone.”

  Vogue raises an eyebrow at me in doubt. “This is an odd way to want to celebrate your birthday. When did you become such a thrill seeker?”

  “What’s another birthday? My mother was the one who wanted to have a party—I don’t care. This is more exciting!” I shift back and forth on the balls of my feet. “I’m so sick of being perfect. I met all of the expectations set for me and exceeded them. Honestly, I’m seventeen now. Do you know anyone who’s still a virgin at seventeen?” I don’t wait for an answer. It’s no. “And for what? How would that have affected my reputation anyway? No one cares.”

  “Not sleeping with Adwin was clearly the right choice.”

  “I know—that’s not the point.”

  “And I told you Parisa was a spider.” She also took too great a pleasure in throwing out all of my Parisa Otto dresses after we found out.

  “I know! The point is, I bought into the limited scope of what the Establishment said I could be, and now I want to do anything that tests those limits to see if I can be more.”

  “You’ve always been more.”

  “Not really. You’ve always been more, looking like a model, and always being the smartest person in any room has always made you fascinating. I’m not that smart, but maybe I can be daring and adventurous.” I don’t think I’m the action hero type, but I’m willing to try it on.

  She shakes her head at me. “You don’t need to put yourself in a category. That’s what the Establishment did. You are smart, you are also courageous, and you’ve always been kind, thoughtful, and compassionate. This new opportunity doesn’t mean you have to pick from anything you want to be. It means you can be everything you want to be.”

  “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

  When I walk out of her room, the mailbox light is on. “Mail,” I say. A small box wrapped in light blue paper emerges from the wall’s hidden door and lays on the console table. I pick it up and see a tag that reads, ‘Happy Birthday.’ I open it to find the phrase ‘May the destination be worth the journey’ woven out of silver to make a bracelet. I clasp it around my wrist and hold my hand out to admire it. The fluid metal letters wrap around my wrist delicately. It’s beautiful.

  “What’s that?” Vogue asks when she comes out.

  “A birthday present.” I hold out my wrist for her to see.

  “Oh, that’s pretty. Who is it from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hmm, that’s odd.” She finds no sign of the sender on the box. “Maybe it’s from Krisalyn.”

  “I’ll ask her when we get there.”

  “Well, it’s time to go. I don’t think you want to wear it tonight.”

  As I place the bracelet back in its box, I look again for a tag, but there isn’t one.

  ***

  From the outside, the train station still looks grand, albeit antiquated. Compared to the glossy modern buildings, this looks like a mausoleum, but I think of the pictures of what it used to look like inside and feel a new appreciation for it.

  Two months after we broke into the train system, the islands are finally ready with the supplies we need to move around, and Tori has gotten us enough passkeys to get in and out of the secured doors at all of the train stations. The underwater trains go down Friday nights at seven o’clock. Between eight and nine o’clock, we’re all scheduled to trickle into the train station through a side door at the end of Kessler Road. Vogue and I are the last ones to arrive.

  Our key opens the door, and we slip into the dark building. We descend two flights of stairs in the eerie red glow of the emergency lights and tap through another secured door to reach the train platform. I frown when I see the train. It looks rather similar to the monorails. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I hoped for it to be shockingly different.

  Everyone has made it in. Bram and Tori are tucked into a corner talking in hushed tones. She glances up at us and appraises me with her eyes. I guess she’s still angry about me going off script and telling Vogue everything.

  Bram has been acting strangely since we started planning these distribution operations. He thanked me for the armband, but otherwise, we haven’t spoken about anything unrelated to business since… when? Was it when he took me to see the pictures of the station? I want to talk to him, but I haven’t had good opportunities.

  Vogue and I walk toward our friends as Krisalyn quietly cheers, “Happy Birthday!” The guys all wish me a happy birthday, too, following her lead.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Kris, did you—”

  Bram interrupts before I can ask about the bracelet. “If all of the Kaycians are done with the pleasantries…”

  “You realize you are outnumbered.” I smile over my shoulder at him.

  “I’m used to it,” he says flatly. “Serenity, fire up the train, and we’ll review the plan on the way to Lawson.”

  I open the system from my cuff. Vogue leans in to run the bug that will trick the system into believing the train is still right where the Establishment left it, and I open the doors. Once we’re all aboard, I send us on our way.

  Unlike the monorail’s long bench seats that line the cars’ sides, this train car has rows of two seats on each side of the center aisle. Vogue sits with me to monitor the system, and Frey sits behind us to supervise or flirt with Vogue. Everyone else spreads out around the car.

  “We have about twenty minutes until we get to Lawson,” Bram says. “There we’ll be picking up weapons they’ve hidden away from the Establishment to arm the islands. The storage location is near the platform, but we have to get past some marshals on guard. Krisalyn and Jase have amnesia shots and sedation gas pellets to get us past them.”

  “These are all one-hour doses,” Krisalyn explains as Jase passes out supplies. “The pellets can be thrown at the floor or wall or stepped on to release the gas. The victims will remain upright, so don’t be alarmed. Their heads will fall to their chests, and their eyes will close. Make sure you are wearing a mask before using the pellets. Once you breathe it in, you’ll be catatonic for an hour.” She demonstrates putting on a mask that looks like a suction cup. It appears to melt as it conforms to her face, sealing around her nose and mouth.

  “We don’t want to have to drag anyone back to the train,” Jase adds. “The amnesia shot will wipe out the last hour of someone’s memory, so use it if a marshal sees something we didn’t want him to. You press here,” he demonstrates, “to extend the needle and inject it anywhere.”

  It’s bizarre to be the one familiar with doing that. The memory sends a chill down my spine. Today would have been Adwin’s and my anniversary. This isn’t where I expected us to be a year in.

  “Bram and I should be the only ones using these.” Tori stands in the aisl
e, looking every bit the action hero that I am not. Even without the uniform and the gun holsters, she’d look formidable. “We’ll be going ahead to clear the way, but everyone should be prepared.”

  Bram continues. “The crates will be color-coded for where they need to go, so let’s keep it organized. The schedule allows us one hour to load and then be on our way. We need to keep a quick pace.”

  “After our pickup at Lawson,” Tori says, “we have a forty-minute ride to Eudora to drop off their portion of the load and pick up their contributions. We have an hour there, then a fifteen-minute ride to Gardner where we drop everything off to be stored until tomorrow night when we will pick it back up to deliver the weapons and food stores to Greenwood, Blue Springs, and Gladstone.”

  “We should be back around two o’clock,” Bram says. “Any questions?”

  There are none. Everyone sits in relative silence for the duration of the trip to Lawson, examining the items or looking out of the windows. I am already farther than I’ve ever been, and we’ve just begun. I left Kaycie. It’s staggering.

  Now that this is actually happening, it’s less exciting and more terrifying. I don’t feel the strength Vogue and Bram say they see in me. I feel like a girl finding myself in the most reckless way possible. Is that what this is about? The goal is to change society. I shouldn’t be worried about finding myself.

  But I am.

  Chapter Thirty

  BRAM

  Nothing on this trip could surprise me more than seeing my mom did when I last arrived in Lawson, but I’m alert and looking for something to happen this time. The train comes to a stop, and it’s time to go.

  Tori and I leave the group on the train and proceed out of the platform. The guns we carry are loaded with gas pellets, but we have our real guns too. If we have to shoot someone, tomorrow’s mission is over before it starts, so those are the last resort.

  Our sole light source is the red glow of emergency lights. We take the stairs up one level, still below the office where I saw my mom, and advance down a hallway. We slip through the first set of secured doors and glimpse around the corner to see a marshal standing guard near the door we’re heading to.

  We put our masks on, and Tori fires her gun around the corner. After a faint pop, the marshal’s chin rests on his chest. I note the time, 21:22. He’ll be awake in an hour.

  We pass by him and open the door to the storage warehouse. Our supplies are supposed to be three rows down, all the way to the right, and… here. Behind cases of products made for Kaycie are crates with red, green, brown, and white dots for Eudora, Gardner, Greenwood, and Gladstone, respectively.

  “I’ll pull these out. You go bring the others and then stand guard at that last corner.”

  “Will do,” Tori says as she lifts a crate to bring with her.

  I pull our crates off the shelves, keep them sorted, and replace the cases in front of them as our troops come in.

  “All of the red ones first, so they’re kept together,” I say as everyone grabs a crate. “Keep them by the door. Those are the ones we drop off first. It looks like we’ll each have eight or nine trips, so let’s keep it quick.” Then I see Tori. “What are you doing here?”

  Tori picks up a crate. “I left Krisalyn to guard the hallway. I move faster than she can.”

  I take two crates, and we head out. As we pass Krisalyn, Tori asks her if she’s all right.

  Krisalyn sighs. “Shoot a pellet toward anyone who wasn’t on the train with me. I think I can handle that.”

  We continue back and forth between the train and the warehouse. I notice the girls are switching off on sentry duty. Vogue was leaning against the corner of the wall holding the gun the last few times I went by, and now it’s Serenity.

  She is holding the gun like it might bite her. I should have some witty remark to throw at her, but I’m not in the mood. I continue past her without a word on my way into the warehouse, feeling her eyes follow me.

  We divide up the last of the crates and clear out. After securing the door, I tell Serenity it’s time to go.

  “Let me take one of those then,” she says, tucking the gun into the waistband of her gray leather pants and relieving me of my top crate. Without high heels, she really is short.

  We close the hallway door behind us and head down the stairs behind the rest of the pack.

  “Glad you volunteered for this?” I ask.

  “Not much to see for my first time out of the city, but at least I got out.”

  “Next time, you’ll get to see more of Lawson.”

  “When will I be coming back?”

  “We’re going to be camped out here for the uprising.”

  “Oh.” Her pitch pops up in mild surprise. “So, this is where you’ll teach me to play football?”

  I chuckle to myself. “Sure.”

  We get on the train and set our crates in with the others. Serenity opens the holoScreen and sends us to Eudora. One down. Clean and simple. Two more stops tonight, and we’ll be halfway through this.

  Everyone else sits in the empty car we came in, but Serenity remains in this train car with me and the crates, ensuring they’re organized, and all of the ones with red labels for Eudora are by the door.

  “This wasn’t much of a trip home for you, was it?” Her tone is casual enough, but I think she’s trying to look busy as an excuse to drum up conversation.

  “Not as dull as most of my trips to Lawson, but not the most exciting either.”

  “When are they ever exciting?”

  “The last selection trip here was… different.”

  Serenity’s raised eyebrow says, ‘I’m waiting,’ with all the clarity that words would.

  I guess I can include part of the story without telling her everything. “Last time Sophos and I came, I saw my mom.”

  She gasps. “That’s wonderful! Is that the only time you’ve seen her since you left?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyebrows scrunch together in an annoyed look. “I know joy doesn’t agree with you, but why aren’t you happy about this?”

  I smirk despite myself as I sit down on a crate. This is going to be a whole talk now. “It was a big shock, so I was extremely awkward, and then it was really uncomfortable finding out Sophos knows her.” And that she’s the one orchestrating this whole thing. God, this is weird.

  “Your mother?”

  “Mmhmm.”

  “And he never mentioned that to you?” Disbelief shades her voice.

  “Correct.”

  “Oh, I would have been furious!”

  “But anger is more becoming on you, so…”

  “Don’t you call me an angry puppy!” Her smile softens the command.

  I laugh to myself. “I wouldn’t dare.”

  “I’m sorry Sophos kept that from you.”

  I wait for an ‘I told you so,’ that never comes. She was right about being careful about Sophos, but she graciously doesn’t point that out.

  “What about your father?” she asks.

  “He died when I was a kid.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  I shrug. “We were lucky to have had any time with a dad around. Plenty of families don’t ever include a father.”

  “How is that?”

  “When half the boys disappear at age fourteen, the population is left uneven. A lot of women choose to have babies on their own.” She looks baffled. “That is one advancement Kaycie is happy to share. They take away the men, so they give women another way to have babies. And the moms get benefits for having babies since the islands need people.”

  “Wow.” She bites her bottom lip and shakes her head. “On Kaycie, they force us to stop having babies, and everywhere else, they encourage it and find ways to help make it happen. You’d think they could find a better way to balance it all.”

  “They don’t want balance. They want control.”

  She puffs out a breath. “So, seeing your mom, finding out Sophos has been hiding that from you
… Is that why you’ve been… even more, you lately?”

  “How could I be even more me?”

  “Sullen, grumpy, brooding—”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  “I have more.”

  This is what she cornered me for. Now that she has a crew, I’m surprised she cares if I’m talking to her or not. “Yes, that’s why I’ve been more me. Sorry if I offended you.” My sham of an apology is returned with equal sarcasm.

  “Well, I was a little worried you hated my new haircut.”

  I shake my head, laughing. “Even with all of this, you are still so Kaycian.”

  “You can, apparently, take the girl out of Kaycie, but you can’t completely take Kaycie out of the girl.” She shrugs, twirling her hair playfully.

  “You’re getting close. First your hair, then you held a gun, and you aren’t even wearing high heels.”

  “Heels hardly seemed appropriate for this.”

  “Obviously, but I didn’t think you had any other options.”

  “I do now,” she says, tossing her hair out of her face.

  “Ah, of course. You got new shoes for the occasion. I’m glad you aren’t changing too much.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  SERENITY

  Our stop at Eudora is about the same as Lawson, except we carry crates both ways. We drop off their portion of Lawson’s weapons and pick up frozen and dried meats. It must have been easier or more efficient to design these buildings to be the same on each island, which also makes it easier for us.

  When the excitement of the whole thing wears off, Vogue uses the train ride to recap the list of dangerous animals she compiled from her stroll through the zoo last weekend with Krisalyn. She admits that hippos are not a flattering image, even if they can be cute. Foxes and ‘foxy’ have too many mixed meanings, but she insists that one is still on the table. The lovely but aggressive mute swan sets Jase up to ask if that moniker would mean she’d stop speaking.