The idea of turning everything around on Rog or whoever was behind it made me feel giddy. I just needed to figure out what to do about her Cuff.
Cuffs and Ads ping wirelessly, back and forth, everywhere you go, verifying the identity, bank account, credit and history of the consumer wearing it. This all happens so fast that the system can pull up a tailored Ad before you can blink. If Saretha stepped outside, the first Ad that pinged her Cuff would flag Butchers & Rog’s DESIST notice and send an alert right to their legal team. Police would descend like flies. Saretha would be arrested within minutes.
As if it did not want to be forgotten, my own Cuff lit up with an Ad for Ambiex?. Little Zs floated silently over the screen, telling me I could be asleep in minutes. Below, the Ad listed the thousand things that could go wrong.
I flicked it away. It floated back from the edge, like it was trying to soothe me, reminding me I was eligible for a free Cuff ring that would inject Ambiex? whenever sleep’s outside your reach, the words around the shape of moonlit clouds.
I turned over, closed my eyes and buried my face in my pillow so I couldn’t see the glow. I wished I had taken Henri up on the offer to remove it long ago. What did I need a Cuff for?
My eyes popped open. The room was lit by the scant, unyielding glow of the Ambiex? Ad.
Henri! I thought. I said his name in my mind. Henri could remove my Cuff. He could remove Saretha’s Cuff. She could walk through the city undetected by the system, straight to Malvika Place. All she had to do was follow my lead and not speak.
Beside me, Saretha stirred in the light, and I turned the Cuff away.
I gently put my head down and closed my eyes again. I pictured the outline of Henri’s apartment on Kel’s Pad. He’d shown me exactly where to find him. My breathing slowed. My muscles relaxed. I would go the next day, after sundown and before Placements. I fell asleep, thinking of the small metallic-blue device he kept in a small pocket in his pack.
HENRI: $34.99
I dreamed of rain. Blue teardrop shapes falling. I’d never felt rain in real life. My father says it has a cool sting. He says we are better off in the dome, away from assaults on the skin.
I’ve seen rain in movies thousands of times. I’ve taken showers. But the rain in my dream was different. It was cool and landed in a light, chaotic rhythm on my skin.
I woke, swallowed the day’s words and tried to hold on to the calm of my dream and the hope of my plan. But someone was buzzing our door, forcing it all away.
“Speth!” I heard a voice cry out, muffled from the hall. The hairs on my neck raised.
“What the hell?” Sam croaked, turning over. “Who is that?”
Saretha slept on, undisturbed.
Sam turned on the screen. Mandett Kresh was pounding on the door.
“Speth!” he called again. A note of miserable panic sounded in his voice. I stood and hesitated. What did he want?
Sam staggered past me and opened the door.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Sam said, yawning, glancing back at Saretha.
“They took her,” he whispered, shaking his head.
I blinked at him. Sam closed the door behind him.
“Who?” Sam asked. Saretha stirred and pulled the covers over her head. Mandett was briefly distracted.
“Mrs. Stokes,” he said. “Beecher’s grandmother.”
“Beecher,” Sam muttered. I didn’t understand why Mandett had come to tell us—to tell me.
Mandett’s head kept shaking. His face contorted, struggling through a thought he couldn’t finish. I wondered if he even knew why he’d come.
He finally spoke. “She said you were special. A perfect secret keeper. A fly in their ointment.”
He stared at me with hope, like I could do something, but what? What had she meant?
Sam shook him off. “Dude, what are you telling us?” he asked, moving back to the door.
I wished I could tell all of them I was on the cusp of doing something. If I could prove what they had done with Saretha’s image...
“Aren’t you going to do something?” Mandett demanded.
My thought trailed away. What could I do? My best plan might save our family, but no one else. I couldn’t help Mrs. Stokes. I wasn’t going to change how things were.
I closed my eyes slowly, to show I was grateful to him, even if I was helpless. I don’t know if he understood. A knot lay under my heart, but I couldn’t worry about the entire city, or the system that controlled us. I had to do what I could for my family. It was all that I had, and it was very little.
Mandett peered at me, trying to comprehend. His face crumpled, and something in him seemed to break. He put his fingers to his lips, almost as if he was asking if what he was doing was right. I realized that Mandett’s Last Day wasn’t far off. He zipped his lips unsteadily and waited just a moment, as if it might work like a magic spell. When nothing more happened, he left, his face contorted in scorn and despair.
*
When evening came, I didn’t travel far. I knew what I had to do. As the dome turned a grayish indigo, I swung down to a mid-ring building with a few small embellishments to set it apart from the stark buildings in the poorer neighborhoods. It looked well printed and had slim balconies that would have made Placement easy, which was probably the intent.
I dropped onto the roof and considered whether it was better to enter from there, or rappel down the windows to the twelfth floor. The city stretched out around me for miles. I wondered if Mrs. Stokes was still in it. You have to agree to ToS when you enter the city and when you leave. She wouldn’t, but that wouldn’t save her. Once she was Indentured, the company or Brand would agree on her behalf.
I took off my gloves and wiped my hands across my knees. I was sweating. My mask felt hot. I felt gross and self-conscious. It was just Henri I was going to see, but my nerves were jangling.
I looked over the edge. The windows were thin, and there was plenty of room for me to slip between them without being seen. I worked out which way was north and which side Henri’s apartment would be on. I took a breath and rappelled down quick, before I thought too much about what I was doing. My plan wasn’t fair to Henri, and part of me really didn’t want to face that.
I found him sitting in a wide, comfortable-looking chair inside. He had a book in his hands. The sight of it surprised me. Henri had a book?
It was bigger than the books I had seen in movies and shows. The cover had the number Nineteen Eighty-Four spelled out in silver foil. Under that was a scrawl of swirly letters I could not read. My heart beat a little faster. What should I do now? Knock on the glass?