Attachment brings complications. Regular citizens may blind themselves with relational ties and the concomitant storms. But for Elite Watchers, attachments are only ever a liability. Therefore, it is imperative that we remove ourselves from the pollution of human contact. The emotional bonds wrought by attachment to another human can cloud our vision, reducing our ability to identify suspicious activity. We must not build relationships that would only hamper our ability to see Hate when it is under our noses.
(Elite Watcher Training Manual, 51st edition, page 67)
Memory date: Unknown
Memory location: Home
Dadda isn’t in his normal place on his couch. So I toddle to Mumma and Dadda’s bedroom. He isn’t there, either. When I get to the kitchen, I see Mumma leaning over the bench, her back to me and her shoulders shaking.
“Where’s Dadda?”
Mumma wipes her face and turns back to me. Her face looks wrong. She’s smiling, but her eyes are red and puffy.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Mumma says and her voice sounds croaky. “Dadda has gone away for a while.”
“When is he getting home?” I want to know. It’s getting late. Nearly story time.
Mumma’s mouth twists. “He’s . . . he’s not coming back, sweetie. Some people came and—” Her mouth twists again, and she stops talking.
Puzzled, I think hard about this news. It doesn’t seem to make sense. “But when he gets back, Dadda said he’s going to read me a Lyric story.”
Mumma swallows. “How about I tell you a story instead?” she asks, her cheeks dripping wet.
Two weeks pass for me in a weary fog. I try everything I can, but I never get through the VR Triumph party test. After a few days I can control myself enough to stand at the back of the concert for a few minutes. But no matter how hard I work, I’m always overtaken by the hypnotic sound.
Failure means long hours in the Watcher room, where Crucible sets me more and more impossible tasks to find increasing numbers of Haters. I am sure I can get some relief if I can just survive the Triumph simulation first. But that seems an impossible fantasy.
“Why don’t you ask Wil? He’s ahead of you in training, so he must have passed it somehow,” Cam says one night at dinner, and I immediately wonder why I hadn’t thought of it before.
I finally work up the courage one evening after I hear him return from a late errand. I wait for a few minutes after he’s gone into his room before I pad across the living space. I hesitate, trying to drum up the courage to knock.
My bare toes dig into the plush carpet outside his door. I hover, feeling my heart thudding wildly in my chest. I take a deep breath and knock against the glossy grey surface with timid raps.
“Yeah?” Wil’s voice sets my pulse racing even more.
I rehearse my question one last time in my head, then cough to clear my throat. “Uh, can I ask you something?”
A few seconds later, the door swings open, and all the words evaporate from my mind as Wil’s face appears, surrounded by a halo of tousled hair.
“How you doing?” He looks at me, smile dimpling.
I struggle for coherent thought. “I . . . uh . . . I . . .”
Seeing my struggle, Wil’s smile deepens. “Do you need help with the Watcher assignment?”
My eyes widen in surprise. “You knew about that?”
Wil’s eye roll says it all. “Of course.” He ducks back into his room and emerges seconds later with his VR visor and gloves.
“You been having a lot of trouble?” He returns to where I’m standing, wringing my hands together anxiously.
“I’ve been stuck for weeks.”
“You took weeks to ask?” The disbelieving look on Wil’s face makes me feel like a Lover has just sprung me disobeying the rules. I rush to explain.
“It’s just that I didn’t want to bother you, and you’ve been away so much, and . . . well . . .”
“Dorm Leader knows how to keep a Watcher Apprentice busy.” Fitting the gloves onto his hands, Wil guides me toward the VR rigs. “If you ask me, I think she’s afraid we might”—he lowers his voice and leans in so close I can smell the intoxicating scent of his skin—“fraternize.”
I jolt backward, and Wil’s grin widens. With a playful spring in his step, he leaps away to his VR station, twirling his visor in his fingers. I follow, slightly dazed. My hand wanders up to my ear. There is a lingering tingling sensation where his breath brushed my skin.
Oblivious, Wil climbs into his VR chair. “I told her she should know by now that we’re faithful Elites. We would never break Elite rules, would we?” He winks at me. “Come on, show me what you’ve got.”
I stand there frozen for a few seconds. Wil thinks we could. . . fraternize? “But Elites don’t . . . do that,” I stay on the subject. “And Watchers . . .”
“Watchers see everything.” Wil’s visor is perched on his head. He gives me a look that is suddenly stern and serious. “So we shouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
Muddled by his words, I fumble with my gloves and fit the visor on my head. I’m not sure why I’m apologizing, since he brought the subject up, but I do it anyway. “Sorry.”
When the visor drops over my eyes, the Watcher Dorm disappears, and the sea of people fades back into view. This time, Wil stands beside me, his Watcher uniform transformed into a virtual party suit. The thumping wall of music assaults our ears.
“So where are you having problems?” he asks, surveying the crowd at the Triumph stage. “The Haterman giving you the slip?”
“The music is the worst.” I grit my teeth against the onslaught of hypnotic vibes. “I am having trouble trying to find him before I lose it.”
“Easy fix.” He waves his hands together, and the scene whirls, leaving me lightheaded. We land on the stage, looking out toward a million faces.
“Wait, what—?” I throw myself behind Wil’s back to hide from the crowd. Wil laughs.
“This is VR, idiot. Nobody can actually see you.”
“Oh.” I feel foolish. “I knew that.” I step out from behind him.
Wil points at the mass in front of us. “You are the Watcher, so you are in charge of what you see. So what do you see?”
I scan the crowd. In their Triumph costumes, everyone is a riot of color. Everyone’s eyes are turned toward the DJ on the stage, who waves one hand in the air while the other clasps a set of headphones against his ear. The crowd moves in time, creating waves of undulating bodies. The beat pounds along with hypnotic force. I’m surrounded and enveloped in the pulsating rhythm, carried away by the sound like a leaf floating down a river. I begin to sway along, my body obeying the hypnotic tune.
“Snap out of it.” Wil taps me on the arm. “Watchers don’t fall for that.”
I give myself a little shake. “Sorry. It’s just so . . .”
“Yeah. That’s what the Collective designs it to do. But in this assignment, you need to show you’re not affected the same way normal people are.”
“But I am normal.” The pull to lose myself in the nothingness of beat and bass is almost impossible to resist. “I’m just like them.”
“No, you’re not.”
I feel pressure on my suit where Wil grasps my arms. He turns me to face him gently. “You’re the most outstanding person I’ve ever met, Apprentice Flick.”
Mesmerized, it takes a few seconds for his words to sink in.
Accented by VR, Wil’s green eyes shine vividly into mine, and for the first time I notice how realistic Watcher graphics are. “Stay with me,” he pleads. His words force the music out of my mind, replacing the electronic beats with the heady thumps of my racing heartbeat.
“Okay,” I say, determination loud and clear in my words. Wil’s gentle pressure on my arms remains like an anchor, holding me fast to the real world while everyone in the crowd loses their minds. I go back to scanning the heads of the multitude.
“There!” I exclaim, pointing at a place near a side aisle and within a few rows of the stage. A hunched figure in a black cap stands alone, unmoved by the beats. Wil lets go of my arms.
“You know what to do,” he says tersely. “And I know you can do it.”
Using the VR controls, I reach out and zoom in on the figure to get a better look. Hidden from the people nearby by the visor of his plain black baseball cap, the figure’s face turns toward the stage. He’s wearing a black surgical mask, but around his eyes I catch a hint of the twisted scowl that marks the Haterman in all of our exercises.
With a quick flick of my fingers, I mark him and step back. In less than a minute the Love Squad have surrounded the hooded person. The VR sim sends me a congratulations message, and I whip my VR glasses off my head in triumph.
“We did it!” I do a little victory dance at my VR station. “Finally! Thank you!”
I turn to smile at Wil, but he’s walking without a word to the kitchen. He pulls a bottle of water out of the fridge, opens it, and drinks, all with his back to me. All my happy feelings deflate.
“What’s wrong?” I say, following him into the kitchen area.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and shrugs, looking aloof. “Nothing. What’s wrong with you?” His eyes go everywhere around the room, but avoid looking at me.
“Back there, you said—”
Wil’s expression darkens. “What?”
“You said . . . you said that—”
“Oh that. I said what I needed to say to get you out of that trance,” he says, face blank. “Don’t get any ideas.”
“Oh.” My elation shatters into a million tiny pieces. “I thought . . .”
He waves his water bottle in the air dismissively. “You think too much. I needed to get the job done. It worked. Job done.”
Embarrassed, I shrink back.
Wil saunters toward the lounge, throwing himself across the broad cushions. “Watchers can’t let their emotions get in the way of their work, Flick. If you want to survive, you need to learn how to switch them off.”
“So you were p-pretending?”
An infinitesimal shake of his head. “You’re a smart girl.” His gaze flicks up at the surveillance cameras, but he won’t look me in the eye.
I stand, rooted to the spot by indecision and confusion. Is he playing me or not? He takes another sip of his water bottle, face shut down.
“But you said—”
A wave of his hand cuts off my protest. “You must have some infotab work to do,” he remarks. “Messages or something.”
“Whatever.” Swiveling on my heels, I turn away and stomp toward the lift. The sudden urge to get out of this stifling room overwhelms me. I stab at the lift button like a madwoman.
“Don’t stay out too late!” Wil calls as the lift doors open.
“Like you’d care,” I shout at him in my mind, refusing to glance back.
The memory of Wil’s mood change follows me all the way out into the cool evening air. A cold breeze frosts my cheeks, and I wrap my arms around my shoulders. My uniform is designed for the climate-controlled interior, not the cool of a turning season.
Lit into flame, my feelings rage against Wil. But not for long. The further I walk, the more my thoughts become self-accusatory. I didn’t see it coming. But then, why would a guy like him even bother with someone like me? I should have expected it.
I squeeze my eyes shut as if that could somehow stop the memories. Guilt weighs me down, razor sharp and suffocating, and I can’t run to a mental simulation of Wil to save me anymore. All I get from him is confusion.
Picking up pace, I walk briskly through the entrance to the obstacle course. The night sky is hidden from view by the tree canopy, leaving me in deep shadow. I don’t know where I’m going, and I don’t even know if I’m allowed to be out here at this time of night, but I don’t care.
“I’m not naive,” I complain loudly to no one in particular. Above me, the leaves rustle in the breeze, as if to quieten me down.
“Shush,” they seem to say. “Shush shush shush.”
I turn onto the little dirt path that runs alongside the obstacle course and feel the soft earth spring back beneath my feet. The air smells of mud and grass and wet foliage. I breathe it in deeply, feeling my shoulders relax just a little bit. A fragment of an old memory trickles into my mind, prodded into existence by the smell.
Memory date: Unknown
Memory time: Late
In the dark, I grab hold of Dadda’s hand. We’re walking faster than my legs can handle, but night sky cools my hot face. The leafy smell tickles my nose.
“I can’t see. It’s scary,” I say, voice quivering.
“Shh, my darling,” whispers Mumma.
“Not far now, dear heart.” Dadda’s voice is deep and calming. “Nighttime is like daytime to the Composer, so don’t be afraid. He is with us. Always.”
The cold wet slap of a branch on my face snaps me out of my reverie. Slightly dazed, I look around. I’m not on the obstacle course anymore. The thicket closes in, hemming me in on all sides. The pungent nighttime scent of woodland and earth brings the old memories into clearer definition.
“Where are we going, Dadda?”
“To safety, love. We need to move quietly so that only Lyric can hear us. Can you do that?”
I nod, feeling solemn. My weary little feet shuffle along beside Dadda. I want him to pick me up and carry me on his shoulders, but he is carrying a large pack on his back, so there is no room.
When I come to my senses, the door to the underground bunker lies open like a yawning mouth. My fitness tracker must have come within range of the automatic door system while my mind was miles away.
I give myself a little shake. What am I doing?
A cool, stale breath of air wafts up from the stairwell, smelling of rusted metal and dust. Before I know what I’m doing, my feet have stepped through the opening, guiding me onto the spiral staircase. I tread softly on the metal steps, heading down the yellow-lit tube.
When I reach the landing where Hodge took me all those weeks ago, I bypass the door that leads to Akela’s underground office. The guilt is too much. Behind that door I learned I was a murderer, and Wil? Well, I have no idea what’s going on with him right now either.
The off-key, discordant melody gets louder in my head.
Grasping the handrail for support, I descend deeper and deeper into the bunker. The air gets hotter and stuffier the lower I go. Eventually, feeling too dizzy to go on, I pause to let it subside. An unexpected sound makes the breath catch in my throat and fear clasp a cold grip on my heart.
Somewhere down below are voices. Lots of them.
For a second I think about fleeing back up the stairwell to safety, but the thought of running back into Wil stops me. Then another sound joins the first, and my heart starts racing with panic. Another set of footsteps has joined the stairwell and is descending toward me.
I curse silently and look up into the darkness as if I can magically see through solid steel. All that happens is the footsteps get nearer.
Taking a deep breath, I tiptoe down, heading for Love knows what. When I run out of staircase, I curse silently again. Ahead, a long concrete hall stretches away, lit by dim red pools of emergency lights. A series of doorways lines the corridor, and they’re all closed except one. Tentatively, I test the door handle closest to the stairs. It refuses to budge.
The footsteps grow louder. As quickly as I can, I test the door handles along the hall, hoping that somehow I can find a broom closet or abandoned storeroom to use as a hiding place. All I manage to do is pincer myself between two disasters. Ahead, the muffled sounds of conversation grow clearer, emanating from the single open doorway. Behind me, the footsteps clunk nearer and nearer. I shrink down the hall, reluctantly allowing myself to be squeezed between the two sources of noise.
A bark of laughter makes me jump. In my alarm, I back so far away from the stairwell that I am now staring directly into the open room. A circle of Elite Apprentices turn in my direction, faces aghast. At the same moment on the staircase, Hodge’s face swings into view.
He gasps. “What are you doing here?”
“I was . . . uh . . . I was . . .”
“Harper? Who is this?” A willowy Apprentice emerges from the room. Her hair is a fine, silky black, and her brown eyes glisten in the dim light.
“Harper? Who . . . What?” I stammer, looking from Hodge to this strange girl and back again.
“Sorry, Viola,” Hodge apologizes. “This is Cadence.”
Understanding dawns in her eyes.
“The one—”
Hodge gives an abrupt nod.
“Cadence. You’re welcome here,” the girl called Viola smiles with such warm welcome that my fear subsides a little. “Do you want to come in?”
Struck dumb, and with Hodge blocking my only way out, I nod and allow myself to be drawn into the small underground room.