47.
I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t see. But I could hear. People whispered and moved around me. Flickers of techtricity licked my senses every few seconds, and when my sight returned, I saw a line of people in front of me.
A man—Baldie—stood at the head of the line, handing out rings. People slipped them on, spoke, and teleported away. The crowd snaked around a cramped, square courtyard and then out through an archway.
Jag loitered in the shadows next to the entrance, his arms folded and his gaze trained on every person’s face as they came into the courtyard.
I dodged through the line until I melted into the darkness beside him. “Jag,” I whispered.
“Violet.” Jag’s voice healed the hurt in my soul. His touch sent a shiver through my mind. I wanted him to hold me, kiss me, tell me he loved me.
But I also wanted to live.
“I asked you to go with Pace,” he said.
“Yeah, well, I asked you not to leave.”
He went back to scrutinizing the crowd. “This is going to be much harder now.”
“What is?”
His jaw clenched, and he didn’t answer. The people shuffled forward, continued to teleport away. My plan: stay with Jag, no matter what. When he went to White Cliffs, so would I.
Jag straightened at the same time I saw Zenn’s bleached hair, alabaster skin, and cloudy, controlled eyes. The crowd began scrambling away, but I stayed, pinned to the spot by desperation.
Through the pandemonium, Dad’s emotions engulfed me: hatred and triumph, sadness and hope. You have the power to change people, his voice boomed in my head as if it had been amplified and broadcast into the courtyard.
I didn’t ask for this power, I replied. I don’t want it. You don’t control me—and I won’t control others.
Duty or death, he threatened.
I reached for Jag’s hand. “Let’s go,” I whispered. “Please.”
He gripped my hand, twisted the ring on my finger, and murmured something unexpected. “Badlands.”
Dad’s bellow of frustration rang in my ears as I dissipated into a thousand particles.
An evening breeze kissed my skin. Darkness stretched into forever. My lungs cried for air, my mind filled with fog. The teleportation symptoms had never lasted this long. The darkness turned white.
Air rushed at me. I took deep breaths, as if I could store the oxygen for the next time I teleported.
I opened my eyes to the soft glow of Jag’s necklace. The colored gems radiated life the same way he did. In a swift motion, he removed his necklace and placed it in my hand.
I shook my head and pushed the necklace away.
“No, I want you to have it,” he said, closing my fingers around it. “Please, babe, take it.”
“I only want it if you’re wearing it.”
“I’ll wear it again, I promise.”
He was lying, but I put the necklace in my pocket anyway. The stones felt warm, even through the denim.
“Where are we?” I peered around the corner of a building. Lights illuminated the street, but it lay silent.
“Main Street.” Jag hugged me. “Hey, this is where I first kissed you. Guess that made a lasting impression.”
I laughed at the same time I suppressed a sob. It seemed like yesterday that we’d walked down this street. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment I fell in love with him, but those overwhelming feelings filled me now.
I remained silent, still clutching Jag’s hand. The air hissed with the beating of insect wings and the chirp of crickets. But that’s it. No loud laughter. No lounging in the park. Nobody sat at the outdoor cafés, eating and living free.
Now the bad teens shuffling in the street wore long sleeves in one color—beige—and wide-brimmed hats. The little skin I glimpsed was still sun stained, but that would fade over time as the brainwashing continued.
Those who spoke did so in whispers. Girls walked with girls; boys with boys. No stolen glances. No shy smiles. No hand-holding.
The Baddies had been turned good.
“Jag—what’s going on? Why are we here? What—?”
The fire in his eyes boiled into rage hot enough to scare me into silence. A muscle in his jaw twitched.
“This,” he swept his hand toward the controlled masses, “This is what he expects us to do,” he said, biting out each word.
A strong swell of nausea clenched in my gut. “I can’t do that.”
“Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do,” he said.
I saw inside his mind. He didn’t have the option of asylum in Seaside. For him, it was all or nothing. It always had been.
Duty or death.
I opened my mouth to say something when a path of tech blurred in my mind.
“I love you, Vi,” Jag said. “Don’t forget that. Ever. I will always love you.”
“Touching.” Dad stepped out from behind a group of downcast Baddies. He wasn’t wearing an I-love-you-my-darling-daughter expression. More like, I-could-kill-you-without-even-blinking.
But he was wearing his leather jacket. I remembered feeling it against my cheek, inhaling its polished scent. That jacket reminded me not of Thane, but of my dad. The alias of a man who hugged me and broke rules.
My heart pounded with a mix of fear and desperation. Another spark of tech and Zenn appeared a few feet away. He stood like a Mech, stiff and unnatural. His eyes held no life.
My sweet, wonderful Zenn.
Jag squeezed my hand, and I released my tension and hopelessness.
“Chokers.” Dad sneered the word like it was dirty. “An unexpected inconvenience. You have a choice here, Violet.” He smiled, but the expression held no fatherly emotion. “Zenn or Jag.”
I’d already made that choice. A quiet corner of my mind wondered why neither Zenn nor Jag had told me anything.
“It’s always the Voices who don’t want to say too much,” Dad said. “If Jag would’ve been honest, we wouldn’t be here right now. Zenn too. But Voices are always worried about influencing people with what they say. Your dad went through the same thing, Jag. That’s why I had to get rid of him.”
A cruel smile marred Dad’s face. “Stefan Barque made the transmissions you listened to for most of your life, Violet. He felt so bad about it, he actually became bad. He was dangerous, but at least he imparted his gift to his son.”
Dad spread his arms and gazed around the city. “Look what we can do. We’ve turned this uncontrolled city into a haven of prosperity within a few weeks. Violet, you have amazing abilities. You could run a city this size—you could run ten cities! The world could be yours. There are precious few with your power. We could work together, be a family again. Please, V, choose wisely.”
The word V stabbed through my heart. I was being torn in a million different directions. I could do what Dad wanted and serve the Association. I’d envisioned it a hundred different times on the trek to Seaside. But it had never ended well. Not for me, not for Jag, not for Zenn.
Maybe I could return to the oceanic region, where I could do something useful and respected with my control. And Jag and Zenn could come with me. We could all live a free life.
Choices, choices, I thought. I hate making choices.
“The Association has authorized the dictatorships here,” Dad said. “We’ve moved our breeding and recruiting program to the southern region, an area that has produced great Thinkers in the past.” He paused, pinning me with a dangerous look. “This is your last chance to join without consequences.”
I stared right back at him. “Why do you care?” I asked. “Just go back to Freedom and leave me alone.”
Dad took a step forward, anger painting his face with dark shadows. “I care because it’s my job to find mind rangers and bring them to the Association.”
I wanted to retreat, the rawness of discovering he was simply “doing his job” slicing into my heart. For a moment I convinced myself this man wasn’t my father.
Jag’s grip tightened and reality crashed down.
This man—Thane—was my father, my horrible, rule-following, brainwashing father.
But I didn’t have to be like him.
“I have to return to Freedom with at least one of you,” Thane said. “Violet, you can make this so much easier for everyone if you’ll just come with me to Freedom. Zenn and Jag can both go free.” He took another step forward. “Please.”
“Did you even love Mom?” I blurted out, desperate to know that my entire life hadn’t been a plan.
“I chose the most susceptible Goodie so that my genes would completely overpower hers. I got two mind rangers out of the deal.” His smile sickened me.
Suddenly my mother became the victim. She must have known her husband didn’t love her. And her daughters reminded her of that fact every day.
I sagged into Jag, who laced his arm around my waist and whispered, “Doesn’t matter, Vi. I love you. Ty does too. Zenn always has. Even Pace adores you. You don’t need Thane.” I didn’t care that he used his voice, didn’t care if what he said was true or not, didn’t care that both my parents hated me.
Jag loved me.
“I need you too, Violet,” Thane said. “I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. I’ve worked my whole life to establish cities as places of refuge for the people, somewhere they could have food and water and a job. Somewhere they wouldn’t die in the wild. We all need the guidance of the Association or our planet will die.
“Soon enough, Seaside will fall too,” he continued. “The Association is waiting for my report before reclaiming the oceanic region. You could rule that region, Violet. Any way you want.”
“He’s lying,” Jag whispered. “We have tech. Our methods of travel are clean. Nobody’s going to die.” Jag’s eyes burned from within, the same way the jewels on his necklace did. He was right. Our world wasn’t as bad as Thane made it sound. Do we have to control people? Can’t they understand reason?
“No, Violet. They can’t,” Thane said, answering my thoughts. “They’ve always served themselves instead of thinking about their duty to others. They need someone like you to tell them what to think about, who to help, how to care about something besides their own selfish needs. The human race has always ignored those less fortunate than themselves, thinking that by ignoring the problems, they’ll just go away.” He laughed, the sound cruel. “But just look around. The problems don’t go away. They just get worse until you’ve got people blowing up buildings, without consequences. That’s what happens without a Thinker. Without someone like you telling those selfish people how to behave.”
He took another step forward and gestured lazily to the statue next to him. “I have to return with one of you. So will it be Zenn?”
His laser-gaze bored into Jag. “Or Jag?”
When he looked at me, his features softened into the face of my father. “But I really need you, V,” he whispered.