[English] ICONS (Biểu Tượng)

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The main plexi-door to the library slides open. Tima gestures. “The Hall of Records is this way.” We all look where she points.

“If something happened, Doc knows. If Doc knows, it’s in his database. If it’s in his database, it’s backed up.” Lucas sounds resigned.

“And the backup drives are in the Hall of Records?” Ro is unusually somber.

Lucas approaches the dull metal door with a wave of his ID card.

“Let’s hope so.” He stands in front of it, but nothing happens. He waves his card again. “That’s strange.”

He looks up. “Doc?”

“Yes, Lucas.”

“Can you tell me why the doors to the Hall of Records, South Wing, won’t open?”

“Yes, Lucas.”

We stand there and wait. Lucas looks annoyed. “Any minute now, Doc.”

“I am sorry. Would you like me to tell you? It is a slightly different query. Not to quibble.”

“Please.”

“Your plastic is no longer cleared for Classified access. According to the Wik, the restriction was added when you returned from the Tracks.”

With me. The day he found me.

I remember Ro, with a slight blush.

Us.

“Are you serious?” Lucas leans his head against the door in disbelief.

“This is not a joke. Would you like to hear a joke? I have downloaded approximately two million seven hundred forty-two thousand jokes to the Wik.”

“Another time, Doc.”

Lucas looks at Tima. “You want to try your plastic?”

She shakes her head. “I wasn’t cleared even when you were.”

Ro shrugs and pulls a sharpened piece of shale out of his pocket. One of his boyhood Grass weapons, a rock honed so razor-thin it could slit a man’s throat. Before anyone can say anything, he’s wedged it into the doors, trying the bottom, then the top. “If I can just find where the sensors are.”

“A rock? You’re going to circumvent the Embassy Security system with a rock?” Lucas snorts.

Ro glares at him, over his shoulder. “A sharp rock.”

Just then, it breaks off in his hands, and he is left holding a crumbled bit of stone.

“Not anymore,” says Lucas, looking at it.

Tima sighs. “There’s no point. There’s no successful scenario here. We can’t short the doors, we need power to open them. We can’t override the restriction, or they’ll know. We can’t do anything. We might as well give up.”

She’s getting hysterical.

“We can’t give up.” I look at them. “It’s not an option. We have to find out what’s going on.” I hear the Ambassador’s voice echoing inside my head.

You lived so you could pay the debt.

The Ambassador was right about something. I can’t walk away. I owe too many things to too many people.

“If you have a better idea, let me know. Because as far as I can tell, nobody’s opening this door without a Classified plastic.” Lucas stands with his back to the door. He’s giving up, I feel it.

The librarian walks by, poking her head down our aisle. We flatten ourselves against the doors.

Caught. I brace myself for the inevitable questions.

But she’s not suspicious. She’s too busy smiling at Lucas. They’re always smiling at him, everyone.

That’s when it comes to me. Lucas doesn’t need an access pass. Lucas is an access pass.

“I’ve got a better idea,” I say.

He didn’t want to do it. But there he is.

Lucas stands, casually, at the front desk of the main library. The librarian, the Director of Archive Services, actually, according to her nameplate, is still smiling at him. Lilias Green.

She inclines her head into the space between them. Her hands begin to slide across the smooth wood of the counter.

“Lilias. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.” He drapes his long, lean form across the edge of the wood.

“Of course, Mr. Amare.”

“Lucas, please. Call me Lucas.”

She smiles again, nodding.

“You see, there’s something wrong with my plastic. You know I’m cleared for Classified, I mean, the Ambassador is the most Classified thing in this whole place, and she’s my mom.”

Mom. I’ve never heard Lucas use the word. It makes him sound soft and young, which is I guess the point.

Her neck arches, stretching closer.

“Of course. It must be an oversight. How unfortunate.” Her smile wobbles, and I can tell she is waiting for him to ask.

Her eyes grow thick-lidded. Her pupils dilate.

“I can’t bear to watch,” mutters Tima, next to me.

“Shh.” I scroll through a digi-text, a few tables away, but I’m not reading. I can feel it, every beat, while they speak.

Ro stands at the terminal next to Tima. “You think he’s got it? Dol?”

I close my eyes, reaching toward them. The warmth coming from Lucas is blazing and bright. The girl curls around it; she can’t help herself. She leans toward him, pulling closer into the heady buzz of intoxicating brain waves that are uniquely, distinctly Lucas.

“Oh yeah.” That poor girl, I think. It’s a jarring thought. Is there ever a girl who isn’t like that, to Lucas?

Is any of it real at all?

My cheeks flush pink. I’m embarrassed to admit I am thinking about it. Him.

It’s only a matter of seconds before they walk by us. Lucas doesn’t so much as look our way as they go.

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“Man, you’re a piece of work.” Ro shakes his head but even he can’t deny it. The doors to the Hall of Records are open in front of us.

“She really didn’t want to do it, either.” Lucas looks sad. Pale, and exhausted. Utterly drained—I know the feeling all too well. He’s sorry for Lilias, I think. Using her like that.

Tima nods. “Which means she must know she’s not supposed to help you. Which means, in turn, they must have sent out some kind of departmental notice. That’s the reasonable assumption.”

Lucas nods. “We’re screwed.”

Ro and I look at each other as the doors slide shut behind us. In every direction, all I see now are walls of metal shelving, digi-files labeled with numbers. It’s like staring at a **** full of sleeping silver bats; they hang in rows like small boxed creatures.

“The Embassy stores the most confidential records here, and keeps all this sensitive information isolated from the rest of the network.” Tima sounds proud. “The only way to access the data is to get inside and use a direct connection. Cumbersome, but also very secure.”

“Cumbersome?” Ro laughs.

Tima looks confused. “That’s what I said.”

“Who talks like that?” Ro shakes his head.

Tima smiles, though I don’t know why. Cumbersome connections only make her job harder.

Like jokes. And friends.

I look closer and see that each file is a day, a week, a month, a year. It’s strange to imagine the monumental events and birthdays and weddings and disasters, all boiled down into rows of numbered metal boxes.

My birthday.

My parents. My brothers. The—the opposite of their birthday.

I am drawn to one box in particular.

My hand lingers on one of the digi-files for The Day. There are whole rows of them, because there were so many people who died on The Day. You couldn’t possibly put that much information into one drive. It’s too big, even if it was just the four of them.

My family. My world.

The Silent Cities.

You can’t fit that into anything.

I feel the others behind me now, staring at the impossible wall of metal. My vision blurs; my heart starts to rattle against my ribs. I am overwhelmed by a sadness so powerful I could explode, or erupt into the kind of tears that never stop coming.

Ro takes my hand in his, bringing me back from the brink. Back into my own body, this room. His hand burns but I don’t let go. His anger is staggering.

I feel Tima receding, overpowered by terror, wanting to disappear. Only the presence of Lucas steadies her, just as somehow, I steady him.

The four of us stand together and for the first time I feel as though we are united, connected to each other whether we like it or not.

And so we stare at the tragedy in front of us.

Until Ro breaks the spell.

“This isn’t just cumbersome. It’s mental. There’s too much here. If we don’t know what we’re looking for, how do we know where to look?” Ro slams his hand against the nearest row of metal digis.

“We’re not looking for everything that’s happened. We’re looking for one thing that’s happened.”

It’s Tima who speaks, and in the feel of the words I sense she is recovering. “Or four things.” I follow her gaze through the years. Seventeen years.

We spend the better part of an hour trying to turn back the clock. One digi after another, all full of secrets. Records of thousands of hours, of days—of births and deaths and all the more ordinary transmissions that lie in between.

I return to the files and detach the last metal digi from the tracking. The final digi from the day I was born. The day three of us were born, if Tima and Lucas are right about our shared birthday. Maybe four, since Ro doesn’t know or couldn’t remember enough to tell us, either way.

“That has to be it.” Ro sounds excited. Tima shrugs, and I carry the digi over to the research table in the center of the room. I let it bang to the surface.

“Open it,” says Lucas. I just stand there looking at it. I don’t know what I’m thinking—if I’m afraid I’ll find something, or afraid I won’t.

Tima loses her patience, and snaps open the magnetized file. It unfolds like a flower, five screens surrounding a row of drives.

At least, that’s what’s supposed to be there, judging from the others we’ve opened in the past hour. But this one is different.

It’s empty.

“That can’t be right,” she says, looking at Lucas, stricken. “There has to be some kind of mistake.”

“No, there doesn’t.” I feel how painful this is for Lucas to admit. “The Embassy doesn’t make mistakes. It just means we’re on to something.”

Ro is exultant. “It means Fortis is right. There’s something they don’t want us to know. Something that’s supposed to be in that digi.”

The implications fill me with unease. Am I really just a bullet? A secret weapon?

“Something so important she’d kill my plastic to keep us away, and then destroy the file.” Lucas is bleak. The pronoun cuts right to the point.

“Who?” Ro asks, though he heard it, just like I did.

“Who else,” Lucas says, glumly.

I slide myself between them before Ro can start. “We need to find out. What did you do with Doc?”

“He’s tracking Colonel Catallus. I told him it was a game. Hide-and-seek.”

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“Bring him back.”

Lucas looks up at the nearest ceiling grating. “Hey Doc. Where are you? Are you winning?”

There is a pause, and then the familiar voice reappears. “I believe I am, Lucas. As I am everywhere, and Colonel Catallus seems to be unaware that we are playing. It is in fact more challenging to not follow you, Lucas. Is your hiding complete yet?”

“Just about, Doc. But this is kind of a time-out.”

“Orwell,” interrupts Tima, looking up at the ceiling. “We’re in the Hall of Records. Are you getting this?”

“Yes, Tima,” Doc says. “Would you like to play, too?”

“What do you make of a day missing from the year and the month we were born, seventeen years ago?” Tima stares toward the grating, as if she were studying Doc’s own face.

“It would appear that the Embassy is suffering from some organizational or clerical error.” Doc’s tone remains uninflected.

“Do you find it typical, Orwell, for the Embassy *****ffer from either an organizational or a clerical error?”

“No, Timora.”

“Me, neither.”

“Doc,” says Lucas. “What do you really think is happening?”

There is a pause, and I hear the comforting whir of machine life. “I think, Lucas, that certain pieces of information relating to that date have been removed from the Hall of Records.”

“I think so too, Doc.”

Doc takes another moment to respond. “Is it, possibly, a joke? Jokes can be surprising.”

“No, Doc. It’s not a joke.”

More silence. Then Doc tries again. “And it is not a game.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Then it’s very serious, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Doc, I imagine it is. Do you know who would do something like this? Delete information from the Hall of Records?”

“Yes, Lucas.”

“Who?”

“Someone of high stature. Someone with clear access. Someone with a detailed understanding of the situation pertaining to those dates.”

“Who, Doc?”

He waits as Doc resets his thinking.

“Your mother, the Ambassador, Lucas.”

The warmth that came from him when he was talking to Lilias seems impossible, now. I wonder if he is going to argue with the Ambassador.

If they ever argue.

If she ever acts like his mother, rather than the one point of contact between the Hole and the House of Lords.

He may not have a mother any more than I do, I think.

Maybe less.

At least I had one, once. I try to hold on to that.

It’s more than Lucas has.

I watch as his mouth slides into a tight line. “Do you know if she did?”

Another machine pause.

“I do not. I am, however, checking the feed now. Please give me a moment.”

“Of course.”

“Lucas?”

“Yes, Doc?”

“That feed has been re-Classified with a Private Digi designation, and moved to the Ambassador’s own office. And Colonel Catallus has asked me to contact you from the classroom. Apparently he is not in the mood for gaming. You are sixty-seven minutes and twenty-nine seconds late to class. Thirty. Thirty-one.”

“Orwell!” Tima snaps.

Time to go.

RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY

To: Ambassador Amare

Subject: Rebellion Recruitment and Indoctrination Materials

Subtopic: Banned Children’s Rhymes

Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during raid of Rebellion hideout

17

DISAPPEARING

“What now?” I’m the one who says it, though we’re all thinking it as we find our way back through the closed doors and leave the far recesses of the library, moving toward our glass prison classroom.

Colonel Catallus is standing there waiting. We can see him from the other side of the room.

“We could ask the Ambassador nicely? Say ‘pretty please’?” Ro trails his hands against the wall as he walks. The archivists look at him as he passes. Ro is good at irritating people; he’ll find the one thing you don’t want him to do, and do it every time. It’s one of his many gifts.

“Shut up, Ro.” Lucas doesn’t even need Ro to try. Everything Ro does irritates him naturally.

Ro doesn’t stop. “Come on, Junior. There has to be a way around a PP Ass-ified designation.”

“Classified PD designation.” Lucas rolls his eyes. “And there isn’t.”

“Or maybe you just don’t want to know.”

Lucas turns to Ro, so slowly that I have time to move out of the way, backing against the library wall.

“Lucas,” Tima warns.

I say nothing. I only look at Ro, begging him to let it go.

“What are you saying, Grass?” Lucas is seething.

“I’m saying you’ve got a pretty good deal here, don’t you, Buttons? The rest of us might get sent to the Projects, but not you.”

Now Ro takes a step toward Lucas.

“You see, our families might get killed—oh wait, they did—but not yours. You don’t want things to change. In fact, you need them not to. Because if the Rebellion succeeds, Mom’s out of a job, and you might just end up back in the Projects, hauling dirt for a living, right along with the rest of us.”

Lucas leans toward Ro and I no longer see the two of them, only a cloud of white and a streak of red.

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“You don’t know me,” I hear Lucas say. “You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know what I know or what I can do.”

I close my eyes and feel the two currents clashing so strongly that I stumble.

I open my eyes—to see Lucas disappearing down the aisle that leads to the library exit.

I don’t know why or what I am doing, but before I know it I am running down the aisle after him. Ro doesn’t follow me.

“Dol! If you—”

If you take his side.

If you leave me for him.

If it—this—we change—

He doesn’t have to say the words. I feel the reddening fury, directed at Lucas, me, the universe, but he doesn’t move.

Ro knows this isn’t about him. He knows it and it hurts him and he probably also knows I’m sorry. And it doesn’t make anything better.

Life will burn you off like that, as Ro would say.

“Dol! Wait!” This time, it’s Tima.

I wish I could.

“Where are you going?” She asks again, because Ro doesn’t. Because he won’t.

I don’t answer because I can’t.

I run all the way until I catch up to Lucas as he walks out the front of the Embassy complex. I am breathless, tumbling through the door after him, before the guards he’s talked his way past can change their minds.

Lucas ignores me but he holds the door. If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. I can’t get a feel for him, either. There’s too much going on, too much static in my brain.

My wrist begins to hurt, beneath my binding, the moment I set foot out the door.

Strange.

It’s like the building knows I’m leaving. Of course it does. The Embassy knows everything.

Except where we’re going—they can’t know.

Even I don’t know that.

The blades of the Chopper are already rotating, carving a circle in the sky above our heads. Lucas climbs into the seat behind the pilot. He picks up a set of massive earphones and slides them over his head.

“Porthole, Freeley,” he shouts at the pilot.

He’s headed into the Hole.

My heart skips, and I grip the sides of my seat. I’ve never actually been in the city. Not farther than the Tracks.

The pilot looks over his shoulder, grins. I recognize the dilated pupils immediately. In the world of Lucas, everyone is sedated and pliable.

But this Freeley isn’t giving up so easily as Lilias. His mouth is struggling to form the words. He’s putting up a fight.

“You’ve filed papers, Lucas? You’re not going to get me in trouble this time?”

Lucas nods, though I know it is a lie.

“You know, I had my wings grounded for a fortnight after your last little stunt.” Freeley looks amused, but he isn’t about to go anywhere. His hands aren’t anywhere near the controls, they’re twitching in his lap.

“I’m on business for the Ambassador. In and out, won’t take long.” The pilot doesn’t respond, but I notice he slips his hands under his legs, the whole weight of his body keeping them down. Clearly he’s been with Lucas long enough to know a trick or two.

“Come on, Freeley.” Lucas is impatient.

“Right. And if I check the Wik, I’ll see all the proper paperwork, filed just as it should be?”

“Go ahead, if you don’t believe me. It’s all there.”

The pilot raises an eyebrow. “Right.”

“It’s there, Freeley.”

Freeley moves his hand slowly to the control panel, as if he was underwater—or pulling away from a magnetic force, a hundred times the strength of his own will, as the case may be. He flicks a dial with his gloved finger, and there it is.

AMARE, LUCAS. The time. The date. The approvals.

I can’t believe it.

Freeley looks at me skeptically. I shove the earphones on, sliding into the seat next to Lucas.

“I don’t know what you did, but I give. Tell your girlfriend to buckle up.” Freeley turns back around.

Lucas doesn’t say anything. I fasten my seat belt and look out my own window.

Lucas taps on my shoulder.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Why not?”

“I have business in the Hole—I’m going to see someone.”

“Who?”

“Someone who might have the answers we need. It’s going to be dangerous. The Hole always is. You should go back inside.”

I nod, as if I can’t understand what he is saying. Lucas only has to look at me, and my hand automatically goes to the door. The familiar warm current pushes me against it, away from him. If I let it, if I let go, I will do what he wants before I know why I’m doing it.

No.

I force my hand back down and, like Freeley, shove it under my legs.

Lucas looks away. “Fine.”

The noise grows. I feel my body jerk away from the ground and weave into the air. Santa Catalina and the Embassy and the Presidio disappear beneath me, a square of stone walls behind more walls. Ro and Tima and Colonel Catallus and Doc and the Ambassador disappear along with it.

Or maybe I am the one disappearing.

Either way, I am ready to go.

EMBASSY CITY TRIBUNAL VIRTUAL AUTOPSY: DECEASED PERSONAL POSSESSIONS TRANSCRIPT (DPPT)

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET

Performed by Dr. O. Brad Huxley-Clarke, VPHD

Note: Conducted at the private request of Amb. Amare

Santa Catalina Examination Facility #9B

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See adjoining Tribunal Autopsy, attached.

DPPT (CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE)

Catalogue at Time of Death includes:

20. A gold necklace found on the body of the deceased. The cruciform charm is

Filed under Miscellany.

18

THE PORTHOLE

The Porthole docks are teeming with life. Small skiffs, battered dinghies, homemade fishing rafts—left over from when there were fish—line the shore. Beyond them, only the Sympa ferries move into the deeper, darker waters. They’re so much bigger and sleeker and more serious than everything else it almost looks comical, like sharks in a goldfish pond.

We land, and I jump from the Chopper as it’s powering down. Lucas stays behind and says something to Freeley, who smiles and leans back in the ****pit, getting comfortable.

“I told him we’d be here in a couple of hours. Hopefully he doesn’t get a call before that and come looking for us.” Lucas takes a gray bundle from beneath the seat of the Chopper. “Speaking of people looking for us, remember, we have to keep a low profile.” Lucas pulls an old hooded sweatshirt over his uniform, hood up. “It’s not safe for us here, and I don’t want to take any chances.” He tosses another one to me. “Put it on.”

I roll my eyes. “I get it. If you’re not careful you’ll have a flock of Remnant girls attacking and tearing off your clothes. I don’t have that problem.”

“Dol. Have you ever been to the Hole?”

I shake my head.

“Trust me. You’ll want it.”

I pull the shapeless gray thing on.

I follow Lucas from the landing strip to the highway. Remnant beggars and vendors line the docks. On the other end, I see a pair of Sympa guards walk slowly through the area. One of them casually points a gun at a vendor who drops to the ground, cowering. The other laughs and picks through the man’s food, taking what he wants. The guards let the Blackhole Market happen, looking the other way, as long as they eat well. I pull my hood further down.

The scene is overwhelming, especially to a Grass like me. We could buy anything within the first few minutes of walking toward the Hole, anything on earth. Clothing. Shoes. Bottles of herb-steeped water. Dried animal meats.

My stomach turns.

“Look.” Lucas points. “The Projects.” It’s true. Down in Porthole Bay, I can spot the massive construction site. High walls topped with barbed wire surround the enormous complex, where Remnant workers live. Smokestacks protrude from a billowing cloud of dirty gray-black ash. A jerking crane swings an unseen load of cargo.

They say the smoke never stops blowing, the cranes never stop moving. Whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it night and day. Whatever they’re building, they’re building it on the backs of Remnants like Ro and me. That’s about all anyone knows. Nobody leaves the Projects once they go in. The Embassy runs the Projects, but they’re under direct orders from the House of Lords. According to the rumors, there are Projects going up near all the Icons, on different coastlines all around the world.

“It’s a lot bigger than I thought,” I say. I almost can’t take it in. The steel arms reach all the way out past the breakers, like a military base built over the water. “I wonder what it’s for.” People say a lot of things about the Projects. They’re building homes for the Lords. Slave quarters for the survivors, after the Lords turned most of the world into a string of Silent Cities. Massive pumps to leech the earth dry. Processing plants to turn people into food. The list is long and always growing longer.

Lucas says nothing, which only makes me wonder more. He’s the Ambassador’s son. It’s possible that he knows the purpose of the Projects, or that at least he could find out. But I don’t ask again, and he doesn’t tell me.

I wonder what that says about both of us.

We keep walking.

Out here, on the very edge of the Hole, the cars on the Porthole Coast Highway are empty husks of scrap, abandoned long ago. What do you need a car for if you don’t have power to make it go? Without electricity, they’re merely reminders of freedom that people no longer enjoy. Especially not these people.

A scrap s****nger stares when we walk by. Her clothes are ragged, her hair a matted mess. Her eyes narrow and she leans forward, looking straight at Lucas. He only sees her as she turns to run, looking back over her shoulder one more time. “Did she just recognize you?”

Lucas shrugs. “I doubt it. Probably just ran to tell her girlfriends she believes in love at first sight.” He grins, and I shake my head. But I notice how quickly the smile fades.

He’s the Ambassador’s son. We need to be more careful.

“Dol.” Lucas stops in his tracks, holding up his hand. “Listen.” He closes his eyes. I look at him like he’s insane, which is how he seems.

“What is it?” I can’t hear anything.

“It’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. Silence. The best sound in the world.” He begins to move down the road again, with a sharp laugh.

He’s right, of course.

I’ve forgotten.

Inside the Embassy, the hum of white noise is always there. There are screens, lights that buzz, and tech that talks. There is Doc—even when he chooses not to speak, there is the knowledge that he is there. It’s unsettling how quickly I’ve gotten used to it. Machine life has a sound, like a heartbeat, or breathing. A pulse of its own.

The silence changes when it belongs only to living things. Your ear changes. You pick out the threads of human voices, a child yelling, footsteps echoing in the ransacked houses below us. Animal noises, earth noises. The air is so quiet you can hear the breeze. The sun beats down, prickling the back of my neck. My feet are hot in my thick boots as we walk.

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“Stop—” Lucas pulls me down. “I think I hear Choppers.”

As he says it, I hear them, too.

I look to see three Choppers flying in formation, straight toward us.

“What do we do?” I’m trying not to panic.

“Stay still.” Lucas watches the sky, squinting. Before long, they roar overhead, flying straight along the road and deeper into the Hole.

“Not Embassy Choppers. We’re okay.”

He pulls me up next to him, and we stand, watching, until they disappear.

He speeds up, keeping his head down. I follow him as he picks a path down the highway. He manages to stay ahead, as if he can’t bear to walk next to me. Maybe he can’t.

“Where are we going?” I call toward him, but the wind carries my voice in the other direction, and the only words that emerge are so small I almost can’t hear them myself.

“You’ll see.”

“Lucas. Slow down.”

“Hurry up. You didn’t have to come, you know.”

I pull his arm and he stops.

We stand there, alone in the sunshine. I look back toward the water and Santa Catalina, back toward the way we came. The breeze has grown, and my hair whips in my face from the wind near the shore, beating against my eardrums like waves.

“What’s your problem? Why don’t you like me?” I say the words before I realize what I am saying. “I mean, us.”

He studies me. His face looks somehow different, harsh in the bright midday sun, and I wonder if mine looks the same to him.

“I like you.” My heart pounds just a little more quickly.

Lucas looks away. “I mean, I don’t not like you. I like everybody. You guys know that, better than anyone.”

Oh. I see.

“That’s not true. You hate Ro and you don’t like me.”

He looks at me for a long moment before answering.

“You hate the Ambassador and you hate me. You hate what she did to the Padre and you hate what I didn’t do.”

“What was that?”

“Stop her.”

“Why didn’t you?”

We look at each other, there in the grim, bleached light. My instinct is to run from it, but my feet won’t move.

“Forget it. It doesn’t matter.” I blush. Again. As always, when I’m around Lucas.

Why does he do that to me?

He looks stricken. “It matters, Dol.” He reaches for my hand. “I hate that I have to stand by and watch innocent people get hurt. It kills me.”

I pull my hand away. “Yet here you are. Perfectly alive.”

He reaches farther, grabbing for my wrist. “You don’t understand. The House of Lords—even the Ambassador is afraid. GAP Miyazawa is. We all are, and if anyone says they’re not, it’s a lie.”

I don’t know. “When I think of the Ambassador, Lucas, afraid isn’t really the first word that comes to mind.”

“I know. It’s hard to explain. She’s terrified—and she’s terrifying. It’s not like I can go running to my parents, whenever something’s wrong. My mother isn’t exactly a mother, not like I think yours would have been.”

“If I’d known her,” I say, sadly.

“If you’d known her,” he agrees.

I didn’t, I think. But he didn’t either. There are lots of ways to lose your family, I guess. I am just beginning to realize how many.

So I let him take my hand.

It’s the truth, what he’s trying to tell me. I feel it, in every word.

Lucas stares at my hand, silent for a moment. Then he looks at me strangely, like he’s trying to figure out how to tell me something.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. I mean, something, I guess. I need to tell you. To show you.” He carefully reaches toward me, taking my other hand. “I was thirteen, I think.”

He closes his eyes and I let the feelings find me, until I can see what he is thinking. I close my eyes and out of the darkness, the Embassy testing room comes into focus.

I rip my eyes open. “Lucas, no. I don’t want to see this. Not again.”

He holds my hands tight. “Please. I haven’t told anybody about this. I know you don’t trust me, but I trust you.”

There’s nothing more I can say. I shake my head, but close my eyes again.

I’m back in the room, and I see a frightened young girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, in dirty, worn clothing. She sits in a metal chair with her hands under her legs. Her face is streaked with tears, her hair cut short. She looks almost like me at that age, I think.

A younger Ambassador Amare is in the room, with a nervous Lucas hiding behind her. He is skinny, almost gangly, with short hair. He looks so innocent.

The Ambassador sits Lucas down opposite the girl and stands between them, arms folded. For a long time, she says nothing.

Lucas looks up at her. “Why am I here, Mom?”

The Ambassador cuts him off with a stern look. “In this room, I am your Ambassador, not your mother.” She turns to the girl, who wipes more tears from her eyes. She’s obviously terrified to see the Ambassador.

“Sorry, Mo—” Lucas swallows. “Madame Ambassador.” His voice cracks.

His mother’s lips press tightly, into her best imitation of a smile. “We believe this girl is a collaborator, a part of the Grass Rebellion. Her father is widely held to be a traitor and a terrorist. But we need proof.”

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The girl’s eyes go wide. “No, please, it isn’t true! My father is a farmer, not a criminal!” She strains to stand but I see the chains around her waist and legs, holding her down. The Ambassador glares at her and she sits down, sobbing.

“Lucas, I need you to get a confession out of her. We have her father in custody, and we would like to have proof of his guilt before we prosecute him.” A look of panic crosses Lucas’s face. The Ambassador locks her eyes on him. “I know you want to do the right thing. Now I just need you to prove it to me.” The Ambassador gives Lucas a short nod before she turns and leaves.

Lucas doesn’t say a word.

The girl looks at him with pleading eyes. “You have to believe me. I don’t know why we’re here. My father grows strawberries. He works hard and takes care of us. He would never hurt anyone. Please.”

I feel Lucas’s heart tearing. He knows the girl is telling the truth. But his mother’s grip on him is so tight, he can hardly breathe. I feel it overwhelm him—the desire for her approval slowly smothering his guilt.

After a moment, he speaks. “What’s your name?”

She pauses and looks at him, warily. “Elena.”

“Elena. I like that name.” Lucas pushes his conscience into a dark corner and looks at her.

My heart begins to pound. I can’t believe he’s doing this. I can’t bear to watch.

But he is. His pupils dilate as he draws her in. The girl is confused at first, then starts to look slightly embarrassed.

“Elena, are you sure your father hasn’t been working with the Grass Rebels? I mean, how do you know he’s not? I can’t blame you for wanting to protect him.” Lucas stands and pulls his chair closer to Elena, who shivers from the proximity.

He knows what he’s doing. He sits down right next to her.

“I, I—” Elena is clearly confused, almost dizzy with the rush of his influence.

“You know the Grass Rebels hurt a lot of innocent people. People who are trying to do good and keep humanity safe from the Lords.” Elena looks wide-eyed, then nods her head.

“I guess so.”

“You would be doing yourself and the rest of us a favor if you just tell us the truth. That your father is working against humanity. That he is part of the Rebellion.”

I can feel Lucas heating up with the immense effort. Elena is fighting, as hard as she can, but it’s a losing battle. Lucas looks away for a moment, only to gain strength. If he hesitates now, he won’t be able to do it.

He turns back and speaks slowly. “Your father is a Grass Rebel.” Lucas looks Elena again in the eye, and puts his hand on hers.

Her resistance falters—and her eyes change, glassing over. Shifting from tearful to calm. “My father is a Rebel.”

“He hurt innocent people.”

She nods, no longer resisting. “Innocent people.”

Lucas pulls back from the girl and puts his hands to his temples, shaking his head.

“No. Elena, wait.”

But it’s too late. At that moment, the Ambassador marches in. A younger Catallus and a posse of Sympa soldiers follow closely behind her. Catallus smirks and nods at Lucas.

“Don’t,” Lucas starts to plead.

The Ambassador holds up her hand, and the Sympas hold Lucas by either arm.

Elena smiles innocently, never taking her eyes off Lucas. Pleased that she’s done what he asked.

Lucas looks like death.

“Take her,” the Ambassador barks, and two more Sympas pull Elena from the room, chains and all.

The girl never stops smiling.

“Take her and her father and execute them for treason.”

I drop Lucas’s hands and open my eyes. “Lucas!”

He won’t look at me. Tears catch in his eyelashes, but he doesn’t let them fall. His guilt and sorrow are so strong, I feel like I’m struck with the force of a rock-slide.

“I didn’t know she would do that.” He’s telling the truth, I think.

“I just wanted her to love me. Look at me as a son, not some pawn in whatever game she’s playing. Everybody deserves a mother, Dol. Even me.”

I try to feel something other than shock. I am overwhelmed with disgust at a woman—a mother—who would do something like that to a child.

To her son.

I shudder. “I—I don’t know what to say.”

He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “Don’t. I just needed you to know.” I know more than Lucas could imagine.

“I understand, Lucas. I do.”

Our conversation is over. We should probably go. But I don’t move a muscle. Instead, I stare at him, willing him to lean closer to me.

Miraculously, magically, he does.

“Please, Dol.”

Let me.

I feel the touch of his skin against mine, light as a breeze. He slips his finger beneath my bindings, and without his eyes leaving mine, yanks at the muslin. I catch my breath.

“I’m not one of them. I’m not like her,” he says.

He pushes up his own sleeve, slipping off the leather cuff and exposing his wrist. “I’m like you, Dol.”

Four blue dots, the color of the sky.

“I like you, Dol. You make me feel better.”

I like you too, Lucas. But I don’t say it.

“I can make you feel better, too.”

The bright daylight grows brighter. I can’t hear anything except the buzz of wind and water in my ears.

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I let my binding come loose in his hand. My naked wrist is a pale white stripe against the rest of my arm, but it feels warm in the sun.

I shiver anyway.

Lucas looks at me. It is a question—again, that question.

Let me.

Slowly, he takes my hand, slipping his fingers between mine. He begins to wind and wrap the cloth. It is exactly like my dream. Our elbows touch, then our forearms. Our wrists. I close my eyes and feel his warmth—it’s different from the rush of raw heat I felt from Ro. This is dizzying—my heart starts pounding, and I can’t breathe.

He presses his fingers through mine even more tightly. His fingers push into the back of my hand, inching closer…

Only this time the hands are real, and I’m not dreaming. Nothing about my life is remotely like a dream, not anymore.

From this safe place, out of the peaceful bliss, I feel a surge of sadness. Pressure behind my eyes—tears pushing, trying to escape. I feel like I am about to lose control, like my tears will drown me. I see my home, I see Ro—everything I’ve lost and might still lose, if I let go—

I can’t let go.

I’m not ready for this.

I ball up my hand. Again.

“Lucas—” I jerk my arm away. “I can’t.”

“What? Why?” He’s startled. Confused.

“I don’t know.” But it’s a lie. I do know. It’s a lie with a name and that name is Ro.

A shadow passes over Lucas’s face.

“Fine.”

“Don’t say that, Lucas. It’s not fine. I can feel it, remember?”

“I felt close to you. I wanted to make you feel better. If you don’t want to feel better, that’s your choice.” Lucas tosses my binding at me. He’s angry. “We should go. I told Freeley we’d meet him before dark.”

He turns to the road and begins to walk. I’m reeling, and I catch up, closing the distance between us. I try to change the subject.

“How’d you do that? The thing with Freeley and the papers? Did you know you were going? Did you really file papers?”

He pauses. “I don’t know. I was as surprised as you were. I was getting ready to shove him out of the Chopper and take it myself.” He’s lying, at least about the last part.

I stop walking. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“I’m a lucky bastard?”

“No, you idiot. Someone knows we’re here.”

“News flash. I’m Ambassador Amare’s only child. Someone knows where I am practically every second of every day.”

“Oh. Right. I forgot.”

“Yeah, well. I never do.”

We walk on in silence.

I used to think about how alike we all are. The human race, those of us who survived. Then I thought, if the stories were true and there were other Icon Children—if I met any—we would understand each other perfectly, the way Ro and I so often do.

But now, standing here in the middle of the desolate highway, I can see how different we are. How little Lucas actually has in common with me, the girl who is never known and never remembered and never looked after.

Not usually.

I try to sound reassuring. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s nothing.”

“I didn’t say that. It’s always something.” He looks at me, with a hint of a smile on his face. “It’s just never what you want it to be.”

RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY

To: Ambassador Amare

Subject: Amare Bounty Letter

Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during raid of Rebellion hideout

19

THE HOLE

We’ve reached the road to the Avenues that lead into town. Las Ramblas. I stop following Lucas when the road flattens out in front of us, at the top of the hill. “Do you have any idea where you’re going?”

He points. “All the major roads run west to east in the Hole. Las Ramblas will take us there.” I nod, but I’m impressed. I only know the basics—that Las Ramblas is known for its massive crowds, and that today is no different.

The crush of people is dizzying, particularly for me. I can’t think—at least, I can’t separate out what I think from what the world is thinking. “You said you’re here to meet someone?” I fumble to string together the words.

He nods, but doesn’t answer.

“Who, Lucas?”

“You’ll see when we get there. This way.” Lucas motions, and we begin to move eastward into the Hole.

We walk beneath the giant banners that flutter in the air over the city streets. Here’s what I learn in the span of a few short blocks: The Lords Are Generous. The Embassy Is Kind. The People Are Lucky. The Future Is Bright. A stern-faced painting of the Ambassador in her scarlet jacket rises to the height of an abandoned building. I can count the golden birdcage buttons on it, each one the size of my head, while the breeze blows through the broken-out windows that puncture the paint.

Are all cities like ours?

I don’t actually know, seeing as I’ve never seen another, except for those few moments of the Silent Cities that the Ambassador showed me. The Embassy media is so tightly controlled, it’s impossible to know for certain. Sometimes, Ro would come to dinner at La Purísima, his eyes crazy and full of fire, and tell us bits of stolen Grass news. How the Lords have wronged us. How the Embassy lets them.

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Right and wrong. The whole world divides into two columns, for Ro. He sees things differently than I do. I’m overwhelmed by a million perspectives, all at once. There’s no one right answer, not when everyone is shouting at the same time. That’s why the feelings are so hard for me to sort out. So draining. Half the time I agree with everything they feel and everyone I meet.

Weaving my way through the crowded street with Lucas at my side, I realize Lucas isn’t afraid of how he feels. He wants to feel it—it, me, everything. Everyone. He takes it all in, deep inside him.

Not Ro.

For Ro there is only black and white, right and wrong—and he is right. He doesn’t care if you agree with him or not. In fact, it’s better for him if you don’t.

Ro just wants to fight.

The famed Avenues food vendors line the curb. Handmade tortillas fry on the top of the nearest overturned trash can. Potatoes sizzle together with onions on the next. Ropes of cheese or bread dough twist around sticks. Ropes of snake meat, too, but I look away before my eyes can rest on the place where the sticks push out of the blackened, impaled mouths.

“Why are you making that face?” Lucas looks at me, laughing.

I shudder, shaking my head, and he relaxes against me, letting our shoulders touch.

You’d almost think we were regular seventeen-year-olds, on a regular walk, through a regular city. But none of those things are true. I’ve escaped a military complex for an illicit rendezvous with an unknown source in a dangerous city.

With the Ambassador’s son.

Part of me is glad the Padre isn’t here to see it. He’d worry, I think—like I’m worrying now.

We reach the end of the Avenues, Las Ramblas, and though Lucas hasn’t said anything, I see the rails and realize we are going to ride the City Tracks—my first time. Unlike the Californias Tracks, which run along the coast, the City Tracks only operate within the Hole.

Ten minutes later, we’re heading east. At least, so says the sign on the door of our boxcar, which is nearly empty; only Embassy Brass can ride the City Tracks. Though Lucas’s plastic couldn’t get us into the Hall of Records, a quick flash at the bored Sympa guards still got us onto the Tracks. Thankfully, they didn’t look too closely at the last name.

At Union Station, I hop down from the edge of the car, after Lucas, and follow him as we make our way through the crowds in the vast, spacious lobby. A row of Sympas watch us. I try not to look in their direction, as if not watching them will keep them from watching me.

The lobby is endless. My heart pounds, and the doors to the street seem a mile away. Thickly cracking leather chairs sit in groups like a brown herd. Beneath them, the floor is beautiful, a mosaic tile pattern that builds into the center of the room as if it were a long, ornate rug.

The windows are tall. I think of the pictures of the cathedrals I have seen in the Padre’s study. The light filters through them, and most of what I can see in the light is dust.

We push open the doors to the visible world.

In the broad whiteness of daylight, I have to blink to make out the dark shape I am looking at. It’s a tree, growing in the center of the plaza across from the train station. People peek out from the roots, hiding and sitting and even sleeping inside them. Sympas stand idly by, ignoring them, as if this mess of humanity was something invisible, something that never could be considered part of the city plan.

“So many people.” I can barely choke out the words, because I feel them all. Everyone in the plaza, the streets—needing, grasping, wanting. Fear seeps into every other emotion, every interaction. I clutch Lucas’s sleeve while I struggle to get my bearings.

He slips his hand down to my wrist and pulls me gently through the crowd. His touch is reassuring, and I let him calm me.

Lucas points. “That’s the Pueblo. The oldest building in the Hole.” I can’t see where he is pointing through the crowd.

I pause, and focus on breathing. I focus on not feeling. I focus on the wall between my feelings and theirs, willing it to hold. Willing the Hole outside to not absorb me.

“Come on.” Lucas disappears in front of me. Our fingers pull apart, and I try to follow, but within three steps I have lost him.

“Miss lady. Miss lady. Miss lady.” I move carefully past the extended hands. A hammer drops rhythmically in the distance. I hear drums. No. Firecrackers—and drums. Stomping feet beat to the rhythm. The twanging of strings, maybe a kind of guitar? I crane my head to find the music, but it is easier to hear than to see in the mash of people. Three competing groups of street musicians perform in three plazas nearby. A fringe of feathers bobs, appearing and disappearing in a splash of bright color above the clustered heads of the crowd.

Another hand appears in front of me. I shake my head: “Sorry. No digs.” It’s true.

The hand grabs my arm and pulls. I turn to see Lucas, looking exasperated. “There you are. Stay with me.”

Stay with me.

I take his hand. It is warm and his sleeve is once again down over his wrist. I squeeze it, without realizing what I am doing. He stops walking.

“What?” I look at him, embarrassed. I try not to act surprised to find myself holding his hand.

“Nothing.” He smiles and looks away.

But it isn’t nothing. I can feel him. Lucas on the inside is as sprawling and chaotic as the Hole itself. He’s warm and pounding and hopeful and scared. Terrified. He’s overwhelmed and intimidated and alive. He feels like the Hole, only better. He feels like the only hopeful thing in the Hole. Because I can feel that too, the hope. It’s only a tiny spark, a flutter. But it’s there.

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I’m lucky to feel it, even once in my life, I think. I don’t feel it often. So I don’t say a word when he laces his fingers through mine as we walk.

We push past the stalls, and I catch a glimpse of the inside of a shop, through a doorway. A woman is selling Mexicali dresses, long swaths of cotton that hang off the shoulders in brilliant colors, embroidered with rainbows of thread. Feasting-day dresses, I think. I should steal one for Biggest, back on the Mission. She would like the green one, with the rainbow woven belt. But that isn’t what catches my eye. It’s a painting, on hammered tin that looks like silver, of the Lady. Stripes come from her head like the rays of the sun itself.

“Miss lady? You like?” The shopkeeper is a woman with black hair and brown skin. Her eyes are brilliantly blue. “Tres. Three hundred digs. It’s a good price, para la madre de todos.”

Lucas tugs on my hand. I keep walking.

“Miss lady! Miss lady!”

Lucas turns back to her, and I can feel the moment she recognizes his face. “El hijo! El hijo!” For a minute I think she is talking about the son of the Lady—but she means the son of the Ambassador.

Her own face freezes as she takes it in. That’s right, the son. She must have access to a vid-screen. Now she disappears inside the shop, slamming the blue-painted doors behind her.

“I have that effect on people, sometimes. Or, more to the point, my mother does.” Lucas looks at me. “Sorry. You weren’t really going to buy that, were you?”

“With what digs?”

“It’s just as well. If you like that, I can show you a better one.”

“A better painting?”

“No. Not a painting. A better Lady. You’ll see. Come on, it’s on the way.”

We weave through the alleyways of stalls, passing pepper candies and peanut candies. Old candy from old Mexicali. Pulpa de tamarindo in waxy packets, as sweet and as sour as the Hole itself. Mangos rolled and dried in chili powder. Miniature accordions and blue toy guitars and yellow maracas and pink harmonicas and red trompos. The colors and faces appear in layers, drifting in and out like the breeze and the sky.

We turn up a broad boulevard, where a man walks a donkey carrying bundles of what look like T-shirts past a giant wall of graffiti.

“You can’t possibly know where you’re going.” I pull on Lucas’s hand.

“But I do.” He looks at me with a sideways smile.

“But I don’t.” I smile back.

“Have a little faith, will you?”

“I wish I could.” My smile fades. “I wish I did.”

“Are you always this cheerful?” He laughs, and I shake my head, looking up in time to see an archway as we pass beneath it. Two dragons, hammered together out of some sort of red metal, are fighting overhead, from one side of the street to the other. Their bodies are long and twisted like snakes, but their clawed arms and legs are short and sharp.

“Laowai. Laowai.” I can hear the crowd murmuring as we pass. I don’t know what the term means, except that it is me. Someone who does not belong in this part of the Hole.

Neither Lucas nor I do.

The heat overwhelms us. I motion to the side of the road, where the edges of market stalls lean haphazardly together. Small square signs tell their names. Bok choy, yu choy, gai lan pile against each other in as many different greens as there are colors. Purple yams sit together between faded orange satsumas and pale green oroblancos, bigger and sweeter than grapefruits. The yuzu lemons, bright little balls of sunlight, only make the day seem hotter.

Between the stands, a wrinkled old woman sells bags of something unfamiliar that I think is a drink, from a red wagon. “Paomo hongcha? Paomo hongcha.” Another woman sits next to her on a folding stool, wearing a T-shirt that says ***y Mama. Together they are probably seven hundred years old.

“What is that?” I look at Lucas.

“I’ve gotten it before. Not here, not from her. I don’t know what she’s saying, but I think it translates to something like sea foam.”

Fizzing water, part of a lime, and a kind of sugary powder are all dumped into what looks like a paper cup.

Lucas looks at her. “Sea foam?” She nods and the woman next to her, the ***y Mama, starts to laugh. Her smile is almost entirely gold, or something that looks like it.

He fishes a coin out of his pocket and hands it to the woman.

The woman howls at me in a language I do not understand. Her face has a thousand wrinkles.

An older man stops next to me. “She told her friend she is going to rip you off because you come from Grass.”

“How did she know?”

“Your friend calls the drink the wrong name. You say sea foam. We call it Sympa pisswater.”

The woman holds out the drink. Now she is angry, and shouting at me.

“Take it,” the old man says. “She says to take it and go.” He leans closer to me. That much farther away from the Sympas who idle on the side of the street, behind the cart.

“She says to hurry. She says the Merk is waiting for you.”

“What?”

I back away from him, confused. I find myself in the middle of the street, in a seemingly never-ending stream of Remnants, students, laborers, jugglers, street musicians.

“Dol! Wait—”

An old man pushing a massive wooden drum on wheels slams into me. Now I’m trapped in the middle of some kind of processional. I whirl around to see a second drum, just before it hits me.