18

W riting the letter was a simple accomplishment. Getting it delivered to Axel proved more problematic. After an exhausting round of apoplectic arguments with Daniel, I reluctantly conceded that I couldn’t just waltz up to the rehab center and lie in wait for him to come off his shift. That was the kind of brazen attitude that would fry Roman’s brain and the last ounce of his tolerance for this plan.

I did agree with Daniel. The thing was, would it be any safer to send Jessie? Daniel insisted it would be, that no one would be suspecting her of bad behavior.

That’s not why I eventually gave in.

Have you finally decided I’m good enough to help your causes? Jessie’s throwaway comment had stuck.

I wasn’t stronger than Jessie, I wasn’t smarter, I certainly wasn’t a better person and I wasn’t pretentious enough to think I should or could be her protector. That was never the reason I kept her in the dark.

With both envelopes crammed into the pocket of my coat, I cycled along the bumpy dirt lanes that cut through the dense pine forest. The sun was out and the day had warmed up, and the furious pedaling finally burned the chill from my bones. Despite my initial worries, I didn’t end up lost in the woods. For every left fork Roman had taken last night, I went right, and twenty minutes later I was at the Parklands entry point.

I hid my bicycle behind a bush and proceeded by foot. My hair was knotted into a tight bun beneath the hood of my sweater. The collar of my coat was turned up to my chin. Unless someone actually stopped to scrutinize me up close, I was incognita, just a girl walking along the road to town.

Still, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would the streets be barricaded? Guards at every corner? I kept within the tree line wherever possible. Instead of walking through the Parklands barrier, I hopped the wall.

As I drew closer to the town, I was surprised to find no extra Guard presence at all. There was no obvious manhunt in progress. No chaos.

Walking with my chin tucked in, I skirted the square, sticking to the back alleys that wound around to Jessie’s street. It was lunchtime, so there wasn’t a lot of pedestrian traffic.

When I rounded the last corner, my mouth went dry with nerves. A guard was patrolling down the far end of Jessie’s street. Was he stalking her home? Capra was a small town, it wouldn’t take much asking around to discover she was my best friend.

I dipped back around the white-washed terrace house on the corner, thinking. What was I doing here? This had to be Jessie’s choice, but it wouldn’t be if I put her in danger before she had a chance to make that choice.

A woman pushing a baby stroller approached and I spun about, giving her my back, my heart pounding blood to my head. I bent down on one knee, fiddling with the ties of my sneaker.

“Afternoon,” she greeted as she maneuvered the stroller around me.

“Hi,” I mumbled, my head down. When I peered up, she’d passed without any undue scrutiny.

I breathed, waited, and then strode forward to cross the intersection, casting a casual glance down the street. The guard was out of sight. Where was he? But I couldn’t stand here, loitering on street corners. That was bound to draw attention.

I turned onto the street, fully exposed to the pretty double-story terraces that lined both sides. A silhouette moved behind a window, a curtain twitched, raised voices came from behind a closed door. My pulse quickened, a hundred warnings chasing at my heels, but I forced myself to walk slowly, my hands tucked into my pockets, my head dipped, my eyes scanning through lowered lashes, my ears pricked.

The guard entered my line of vision, two blocks down. My heart jumped into my throat, but he didn’t glance this way. He unclipped his iComm from his belt and leaned against a lamppost.

I reached a footpath that dissected the endless row of terraces and slipped into the shadows cast by mostly windowless walls, my kneecaps trembling in their sockets. What a laugh. I’d thought I wasn’t scared. I’d thought I was cut out for this. But I haven’t changed. I’ve always gone ahead anyway, forged headfirst into danger despite the fear, not because I have no fear. It wasn’t bravery. This was something else, a different kind of fear, a sickening in my stomach at the thought of doing nothing.

What was wrong with me?

Why couldn’t I be normal like everyone else?

Why couldn’t I just disappear into The Smoke, live my life with Roman? It would be a good life. I knew that. A happy life. Roman was all my heart wanted, all I desired…so why wasn’t that enough?

As I stood there in the dank alley, gulping breaths of panic through the tightening in my chest, I thought of Axel and how his face lit up when he spoke about how his pod language had come about, or when he was exclaiming over my so-called triumphs.

Maybe it wasn’t just me. Maybe there were more of us than I’d ever dreamed. Maybe there were so many of us that, when put together, we could be the new normal?

That’s what pushed me, what drove me forward.

I took a tentative step out of the shadows to peer down the street. The guard had moved on again. I didn’t know where he’d gone. I didn’t trust him.

This was a mistake.

I should have waited for nightfall. I was deciding whether to stay or come back later, when a sound snapped my gaze up the street, and I realized Jessie wasn’t even home. She came cycling around the corner, her long curls streaming out from the bright yellow woolen cap that adorned her head.

Her eyes were on the road, she wasn’t looking left or right.

“Jessie,” I called as loud as I dared.

Her gaze veered to me. She kept on pedaling, then she stamped the brake so sharply, she nearly went toppling over the hand bars. “Georga?”

I put a finger to my mouth and stepped back into the shadows as she dismounted and steered her bicycle to join me.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “I need to talk to you.”

“I need to talk to you,” I said at the same time. “Not here, though. I think there’s a guard keeping an eye on this street.”

Her nose wrinkled. “What on earth is going on? Your mother came to see me this morning. She’s worried to death about you for some reason. And I’ve just come from Parklands. Do you know the lock on your front door has been busted? Your door is standing wide open.”

Geneva found my letter.

“Keep your voice down.” The guard was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. “Look, we can’t talk here. Do you know the service road that leads from Parklands into the nature reserve?”

“Of course I don’t.” She frowned, following my gaze down the road, not seeing anything. “I’ve never been farther than your house.”

She wanted answers right now, I saw that in her eyes. She didn’t understand the danger we were in. Or maybe that was just my paranoia, but I wasn’t willing to take that gamble.

I gave her directions and said firmly, “I’m on foot, so it’ll take me about an hour to get there. I think…I think you should go home, then cycle out to meet me in a bit. And be careful. Make sure you’re not followed.”

Her eyes widened into saucers. Finally, she lowered her voice. “What is going on, Georga? You’re acting like a fugitive.”

“Because I am,” I said simply.

She gawked at me like I’d lost my mind.

The word wasn’t out yet, then, not to the general public.

“I’ll explain everything,” I promised and abruptly turned from her, cutting through the footpath to the next street over.

I didn’t look back.

I didn’t know if Jessie would meet me, but I thought she would. And if she didn’t, then that was its own answer. I’d wait a few days and then deliver the letters myself.

Once I was a fair distance from Jessie’s home, my nerves settled. I was anonymous again, just a face bundled against the cold, scurrying along with my head burrowed against the icy breeze.

I hopped the wall into Parklands and made my way to where I’d stashed my bicycle with fifteen minutes to spare. Or so I thought. Jessie was already there, pacing a short path up and down on the intersection of the service road, her bicycle discarded on the patchy grass curb.

She stopped pacing when she saw me and folded her arms, standing with feet apart in the middle of the road. “Are you in trouble?”

Parklands was a quiet neighborhood, more so now that the council families had been relocated. I hadn’t seen a soul since I’d hopped the wall, but that wasn’t any reason to be careless.

“Come out of the middle of the road.” I collected her bicycle and pushed it around the back of the same bush where mine was hidden, and then we stood there, staring at each other, and my bottom lip wobbled. “Is my mother okay? What did she say?”

“Nothing,” Jessie said. “She was looking for you and she assumed I’d know where you were.”

The accusation in her voice stung. We’d always told each other everything, or so she’d once believed.

“I broke Daniel and the heirs out of the rehab center last night,” I said, not implicating Roman out of habit although she’d figure that out for herself.

“You did it?” she gasped, her eyes bulging. “You actually went ahead and did it?”

I nodded. “That’s why they busted into my house. They’re searching for me. We sent the other heirs to The Smoke, but Daniel and I stayed behind.”

Her indignation deflated, the stiffness in her face dissolving into a slack jaw and open mouth. She wanted to know everything, of course, why I hadn’t fled to The Smoke like I’d originally mentioned, where was I staying, was I out of my mind crazy?

I told her everything, the words rushing out of me about how we’d staged the breakout and got away, how Daniel and I were camped out in a cabin in the nature reserve, and finally why I believed the people of Capra deserved better than the old council, better than the Sisterhood.

“You haven’t seen or heard anything about the breakout?” I asked. “I thought they’d be handing out flyers with my face or barricading streets, or have a general alert out for the heirs, but there’s nothing?”

She shook her head. “Your mother must know something about it, that’s why she came to see me this morning.”

I brought out the letters and slapped one into her hands. “That’s for my mother. Do you mind delivering it?”

“You seriously have to ask?” she said, eyeing the other letter.

“This is for a friend of mine, a nurse at the rehab center.” I didn’t hesitate to give Axel’s name away. My trust in Jessie was intrinsic, as much a part of my existence as the air I breathed to live. “He might be under observation, though. You’ll have to be careful, sneaky about getting it to him. If you’re prepared to help, that is.”

“You really do trust me,” she breathed out.

“I’m sorry you ever doubted that.”

“It’s just…” A tear rolled from one of her wide, brown eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve been so hard on you. I felt like you’d outgrown me, outgrown our friendship, that you were growing up to be this amazing, strong woman and that you’d left me behind.”

“Whatever I am, has been shaped by our friendship.” Tears welled in my throat and I swallowed, throwing my arms around her. “I’m not amazing or strong, Jessie, I’m just me, and you’re you. I’ll tell you what is strong and amazing, though. Us. Our friendship. I’m halved without you.”

We hugged for long minutes, and I meant what I’d said. Jessie wasn’t just my friend. She was my sister. My family.

When we pulled apart, I made one thing very clear. “Don’t feel like you have to do this. It’s risky, and I can find another way to get this letter delivered to Axel.”

She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Just tell me what he looks like and where I can find him.”

“The rehab center at 6pm,” I told her. “He’ll either be coming off or starting a shift. But don’t go all the way to the center, there’s a bus stop that everyone uses. You can take cover in the bushes and wait until it looks okay for you to approach him. There’s no hurry. Take your time, however many days you need, until you feel the coast is clear.”

I gave her a detailed description of Axel, then slid the letter out of the envelope. I’d specifically not yet sealed it. “Before you agree to anything, read this. You should know what you’re getting involved in.”

Jessie read slowly, then her eyes traveled to the top of the page and she read again. Then she looked at me, her expression dead serious. “This is big.”

“It is.” I nodded. “Are you sure you want to be part of it?”

“I’m sure,” she said in a small voice, cleared her throat, and spoke with more confidence. “Absolutely. Where does Roman stand with all of this?”

I grimaced. “He’s not thrilled, but he’s on board.”

“Of course he is! That man is…”

“Wonderful?” I supplied.

“I was going to say he’s an enigma.” She gave a dry laugh, shaking her head. “But sure, let’s go with wonderful.”

She folded the letter and inserted it into the envelope. “I’ll get this delivered. I’ll let you know once it’s done, but you shouldn’t be walking around town, especially after this letter gets out. I’ll come to you. Cabin 39, right? Is that near the lake?”

“We could be so lucky,” I groaned. At least it was easy enough to get there. I directed her about all the left forks. “When you get to a rundown shack that looks totally uninhabitable, that’s us.”