Cameron stares at him, as if he cannot believe the request. I can’t either. The car must be worth a lot of money, and it belongs to someone else. But after a prolonged look, Cameron disappears into the woods. He comes back out with a thick branch, which he wedges inside the driver’s side, against the gas pedal. He releases the parking brake as he jumps away from the car.
The red car drives straight into the lake, churning and angry, and the water bubbles as it goes deeper. It sinks slowly, sputtering, and we all watch it go. We watch from the dirt road until the surface of the lake is still again. And then Dominic swings a bag onto his shoulder and starts walking. “Let’s move,” he says. I don’t ask. I am so far beyond asking.
I just move.
These shoes they’ve given me are slowing me down because they don’t fit, blisters already forming against my ankle, so I stop to take them off even though the path is rocky. The callouses should help.
Cameron is behind me, and he looks at my feet as I step out of my shoes and bend to pick them up, and for a second I think he’s going to say something. To offer something. “Bad idea,” he says, but I ignore him. He waits for me to move again, and I hear his steps behind me.
Ten more minutes of walking and I’m beyond irritated because Cameron was right and I’m trying not to show it. Walking in socks through the woods where there’s no path was a really bad idea. Obviously. I try to distract myself by watching my surroundings, and I try not to let him see me wince when I misstep.
I attempt to memorize our route, looking for markers along the way. A tree with a knot that overtook its trunk. A rock extending over our path, like a cliff. But this place is enormous, and most everything looks the same. Stumbling upon this mangled trunk or that sharpened rock again would be a miracle in and of itself. The world has never seemed so vast. I’m not sure I can find my way back out.
I need to find my way back out.
I sit on a rock when Dominic and Casey stop for a rest, and I use the opportunity to put the shoes on again. I don’t look at Cameron, but I’m sure he sees. They’re all watching me.
We keep moving. I wonder what will happen if I just … stop. If someone will throw me over a shoulder and bring me anyway. I wonder what will happen if I run. If I could survive out here, at latitude 34.88 and longitude –83.17. If maybe I could find a way out, find a friendly face, a safe place. I think of my mother, who is the only person I can imagine helping me, even though she has all but disappeared—at least, from the news, from the Internet, from the world I have access to. There’s a small article about her violating parole, but I don’t know if anything ever came of it. But she’s not in jail, and her death was never reported, so I believe she’s out there. Alive.
I don’t suppose I have anyone else. June didn’t have any allies left, at the end. Maybe from before she got tangled up with Liam White, but not any longer. Like her family, I’m sure they don’t want to be associated with her any longer.
She and Liam were famous once. They were the kids who broke into the unbreakable system—a challenge originally set up to test the security of the Alonzo-Carter Cybersecurity Data Center. I’ve seen the original report, watched the interview with the creators. Two men, Mason Alonzo and Paul Carter, arrogantly declaring it unhackable and issuing the challenge as the final test. I mean, come on. That’s just asking for it.
Nobody knows how they did it exactly. But June and Liam got in. They released a screenshot as proof. That should’ve been the end of it.
But they didn’t stop once they were in. All that knowledge, just there waiting for them. I want to believe it was just curiosity at first that made them look. But then it turned into something they couldn’t unsee.
All that information.
All that truth.
She had to warn people. It was the right thing to do.
They searched out the names of dead criminals from the generation before, and they found the record of their current lives. It was a public service, they claimed, much like warning residents of a local ex-con, but there were reasons the privacy laws were in place. Scientists had studied the correlation between generations, and they did find a high linkage of violent crimes committed by past criminals in their next life when all other factors were stripped out. Not 100 percent. But a correlation. The famous study, the one that started all the debates, showed a violent crime correlation of 0.8, with 1.0 being complete.
Part of the debate over using this information is that the studies were flawed by the very nature of the data used—criminal records. It didn’t take into account anything else. And the law says you can’t punish someone for something he or she might do. The very idea of it threatened the foundation of justice. Thinking bad things does not equate guilt. Words mean nothing. Action, everything.
Still, 0.8 is high. Higher than the genetics of IQ and the heredity of height.
A dangerous soul is dangerous.
It wasn’t a conviction, June claimed. It was a warning. We had a right to know who we lived with, who our neighbors were, who our leaders were. It was for our own safety. We had a right to the information.
And at first, the world loved them for it. For allowing them to be on guard. For putting the information into their hands.
I’ve watched that speech that June delivered over the airwaves from an undisclosed location more times than I can count. I am the bell, tolling out its warning. She was very convincing.
People supported them. People hid them, sheltered them, provided them with money. Meanwhile, the people whose names they released became unemployable, the targets of numerous threats. And still the public supported June and Liam. Until they released names of children, of people’s children. When slowly the vigilante groups began to form against the names on her list.
When people stopped just listening to the warning and started acting on the information instead, hurting people who had done no wrong in this life, seeking revenge from the crimes of the past, the tide began to shift in public opinion, turning on Liam and June.
That part, that’s her own fault. June was too impulsive. Too proud. Too self-righteous. Too selfish. Watch one of the many documentaries and take your pick of flaws.
She was an idealist, believing that information belonged to everyone. That people should be free to draw their own conclusions from it. That knowledge should never be hidden behind closed doors and firewalls and passwords. Personally, I think she just had too much faith in humanity, releasing that information to begin with.
As if knowledge would be used only for good.
And when that tide began to shift with public opinion, it shifted in them as well. People claimed that June and Liam started to use the information for blackmail instead. They stopped releasing the names at all, instead allegedly blackmailing the wealthy or powerful with that information and taking their money to disappear. June’s name appeared on accounts the few times the crime was reported, the few times people tried to call their bluff. I have to believe that was Liam. I have to.
They didn’t bluff. They released the names, like a hit list, to the vigilante groups.
And then how the people turned. Oh, how they turned.
No more protection. No more public support. No, it was a witch hunt. Liam was dead within two months, when they were caught on a security camera of a computer warehouse and surrounded on Christmas Day. June escaped but was killed when she resurfaced a year and a half later, run down in the street as she raced for the woods. A generation later, and countless threats to any foster parents who dared to care for me, and I am a prisoner on an island for my own safety.
This is what a belief can do to you. It can drive you, without reason, without cause. It drives you more than law, more than love. It drives you until you are the belief. Until your very soul becomes imprisoned by it.