6
FOUR DOTS
I open my eyes. “Ro,” I hiss. But he’s let go of me before I can say it, and is grabbing the gun out of the water. The reality of where we are comes flooding back. The sandy rocks beneath us seem that much sharper, the shallow rush of empty tides that much colder. Our watery cave—just a small indentation in the grassy shoreline—offers no protection at all.
Not against the Embassies and their armies.
Not for long.
The Sympa’s eyes flutter open.
Beneath soggy strands of wet hair, they are the same color as the hills behind the Mission—green and gray—but also flecked with gold. Hope and sadness. That’s how he looks to me. Like a rare coin half buried in the ocean floor. A bit of warm metal that somehow catches the light, even from so far below the surface of the waves.
I’m staring. I can’t help it. My heart is pounding. I reach toward his face, marveling. His features are the opposite of Ro’s; where Ro is thick brushstrokes and harsh lines, everything about this boy is precise and fine. He’s muscled and compact, where Ro is strong and broad. His bones fit together like someone hammered them out of precious metals, blew them out of glass.
“Hey—” Ro shouts. He raises the gun high over his head, ready to strike. I pull my eyes away from the Sympa, my hand away from his face.
“Stop it. You don’t have to. He’s hurt enough.”
Ro lowers the gun. Then I realize he isn’t listening to me. He’s aiming.
“Please,” says the Sympa, though half his head is underwater, and his mouth bubbles, choking when he speaks. “Don’t kill me. I can help.”
“Why would you help? You’re the one hunting us.”
The Sympa has no answer for that.
I splash closer to him in the water, careful to stay between him and Ro’s gun.
“Dol, come on. Get out of the way and let me do this. He’s playing us. It’s a trick.”
“How do you know?”
He looks from me to the Sympa. “Can you get anything off him? Feel him out?”
I lean closer to the Sympa, picking up his cold hand from the water.
I close my eyes and try to feel what he is feeling.
For the first time, I feel something equal to Ro’s spark—equally strong.
I feel both of them, and it’s not hard to sort out the emotions.
Hatred and anger, from Ro.
Fear and confusion, from the boy.
And another thing.
Something I encounter very rarely.
It bubbles up and out, radiating from him, filling the cave. I can practically see it.
I recognize it for what it is, only because I have felt it for Ro, and felt it in Ro. Ro and the Padre. Sometimes in Bigger and Biggest.
Love.
My head is pounding. I drop the boy’s hand, pushing my palms against my temples, as hard as I can. I force myself to breathe until I can get the feelings back under control, just barely. Until the bright whiteness recedes.
Then I open my eyes, gasping.
“Ro—” I can barely speak.
“What is it? What did you get?” Ro moves next to me, but his eyes don’t leave the Sympa.
I don’t know what to tell him. I’ve never felt anything quite like this, and I don’t know how to put it into words, not in a way Ro will understand.
Not in a way he wants to hear.
I look more closely at the Sympa. I pull a button from his jacket, yanking it free of the threads that have bound it there. It’s stamped in brass with a logo even a Grass could recognize. A five-sided shape, a pentagon, surrounding Earth. Gold on a field of scarlet. Earth trapped by what looks like a birdcage.
The button changes everything.
“He’s not a Sympa.” A sick feeling roils my stomach—and even though I’m speaking to Ro, I can’t rip my eyes away from the button in my hand.
“What are you talking about? Of course he’s a Sympa. Look at him.” Ro sounds annoyed.
“He’s not just a Sympa. He’s from the Ambassador’s office.”
“What?”
I nod, twisting the button between my fingers. Shiny as a gold dig, and worth more than everything I own. The closest we’ve ever come to seeing Ambassador Amare is her face plastered on the side of a car rolling down the Tracks.
Until we met this boy.
The wounded Sympa opens and closes his eyes. They roll back in his head. He’s too beat up to speak, but I think he knows what we are saying.
Ro sits on his heels in the water next to me. He draws his short blade from his belt, the one he only uses to pelt rabbits and split melons at the Mission.
He wavers, looking at me. I kneel next to the boy—because that’s what he is. He may be a Sympa, but he’s also just a boy. Not much older than Ro and me, by the looks of it.
“So this thing—this thing matters to the Ambassador?” He holds the knife to the Sympa’s chin. The Sympa’s eyes open, now wide. “That’s funny, because anything that matters to the Ambassador is pretty much worthless garbage as far as we’re concerned.”
He traces a line along the Sympa’s throat.
“Right, Dol?”
I swallow and say nothing. I am finding it hard to breathe. I don’t know what I think.
Ro doesn’t have that problem. Ever.
He raises the blade and brings it slashing down, again and again.
I can’t look, until Ro turns to me, holding out the proof of his latest violence. A handful of brass Embassy buttons.
“What?”
“Evidence of what we’ve got. Now we decide. Do we kill him here, or take him back to La Purísima?” Ro isn’t talking about the Mission. He’s talking about the Grass rebels.
Spluttering, the boy tries to sit up out of the water. I pull his head forward and lean it against my knees.
“How could we get him back up the Tracks? Did you see how many Sympas were out there? It would be impossible to hop a car without them seeing us. If the Tracks are even running.”
Ro thinks, tracing his blade against his leg. “Yeah, and if you’re right about Brass Buttons here, it’s only going to get worse.”
“Grass and Brass. It’s not a good mix.” I try not to think about what will happen to the boy when we get back to the Mission. If we get back to the Mission. What Ro will do to him. What I will let Ro do to him.
I shake my head, pulling the boy closer up into my lap in the water. “No.”
“Get away from him, Dol.”
“Don’t.”
“Now.”
His voice is cracking. I can see the changing situation is overwhelming him. He loses control as we lose control.
Which we have.
We did when I saw that button.
“Please.” I’m talking to Ro, but I look at the boy.
His eyes fix on mine, just for a moment.
He moves his hand toward me, a desperate gesture, like a raccoon caught in one of Biggest’s traps, flopping against the metal door one last time before it surrenders.
I start, and Ro shoves the weapon closer.
A dot of red light—the targeting mechanism of the boy’s own Sympa gun—dances at the bridge of his nose.
The boy doesn’t react.
Maybe he doesn’t think that Ro will do it.
I know he will. He’s done it before. Sympas are a personal threat to his existence. And mine.
The hand stretches again, nearer to me. “I’m warning you. Don’t move.” Ro growls the words, and as usual, it’s his tone that tells you everything.
The boy’s fingers uncurl, slowly, touching my knees in the water.
“Sweet Blessed Lady.” It’s all I can think to say.
There, beneath the half-undone leather wrist cuff, beneath the ripped sleeve of a muddy Embassy military jacket, beneath the bloodstained uniform shirt soaked with ocean water—
Four blue dots, forming a perfect square.
In that second, the world of two people, of Ro and me, shatters into a world of three.
Now I understand what I was feeling.
Now I understand who this boy is. Or more to the point, what he is.
He’s an Icon Child, like Ro and me.
There are more of us.
My heart is pounding. I knew there were stories—rumors of other Icon Children—but I never really believed there could be more than me and Ro.
Had the Padre known?
If I had only read the book when I had the chance.
“What is it?”
Ro hasn’t seen.
My mind races.
He showed me his markings.
Why?
Had he seen mine, here in the water?
Could he have been conscious when Ro and I bound hands?
No.
I had been there when Ro smashed him in the face with his own weapon, knocking him out.
I was there when he fell.
I saw his eyes roll back in his head before anything happened.
No. He showed me because he knew about me. He knows about us. He knows.
“What’s wrong?” Ro tightens his grip on the gun.
“They’ve come for us, Ro.”
“Of course they have. What do you think that was all about back there, on the train? They send out their fat, lazy Sympas to drag us into their stupid Projects, just like the other Remnants. I told the Padre we needed to arm ourselves, we needed better defenses. He wouldn’t listen.”
I shake my head and try again. “They’ve found us, Ro.”
I hold up the boy’s wrist, and I unwrap mine.
The resemblance is undeniable. The distance of the dot from the palm, the size of the mark. Next to each other, we are perfect matches.
Just like Ro and me.
RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY
To: Ambassador Amare
From: Dr. Huxley-Clarke
Subject: Icon Children Mythology
Subtopic: Rager
Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during raid of Rebellion hideout
The following is a reprint of a recovered page, thick, homemade paper, thought to be torn from an anti-Embassy propaganda tract titled Icon Children Exist! Most likely hand-published by a fanatical cult or Grass Rebellion faction.
Text-scan translation follows.