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Corina was waiting for me in the park, sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree. When she saw me she got up and walked towards me, the sun casting wonderful shadows of her legs through the thin cotton of her summer dress. Her hair was in a long ponytail, reaching to the small of her back, and today it looked as though she was wearing no makeup at all.
She threw her arms around me and held me, though for some reason I couldn’t feel her touch, then took my hand and drew me to the shelter of the tree. There was water, and ration to share, and we chatted as we ate, Corina looking up at me through long lashes, a wicked smile hovering around her lips like a butterfly.
The meal was gone. We lay side by side on the grass. I rolled towards her, propping myself on my elbow, leaning over her. My right hand ran a strand of her soft hair through my fingers, then brushed lightly down her cheek. She reached up, hand on the back of my neck, pulling my face closer to hers until I could feel her breath on my lips. Her eyes tightened, and flicked to the right.
‘We aren’t alone...’
My eyes flew open. The halo was already disengaged and had fallen from my head, and I scrabbled in the dark. Jenny was stirring, sitting up. She had already caught me twice sleeping with the halo on, and had raised a small storm. My argument that it was dark and I was asleep didn’t seem to count, and she was ready to tell Trude that my Rider was a peeping tom. I couldn’t afford for her to find me wearing it again.
The tips of my finger found the halo and tucked it out of sight under my pillow just as Jenny sat up. I could see the dim outline of her and could feel her eyes on me, trying to make out the white stripe in my hair. I breathed deeply, evenly, and eventually heard her humpf as she settled down again. I rolled quietly onto my back and tried to stop my heart battering its way out of my chest.
That morning the proctors came door to door. They marched through the commons and hammered on people’s doors, shoving a picture in their face and demanding if anybody knew who he was. I was already up, eating breakfast. Perhaps it was a mistake to ignore them, but my pulse pounded in my ears and I could barely breathe as they worked their way closer to me. I didn’t want to look guilty. A proctor pulled me around by my shoulder and thrust the picture into my face. I studied it. The picture was nothing like me and I wondered if it might be somebody I knew. There were words underneath, but the proctor snatched it away before I could read all of them. I did manage to see ‘reward’, and ‘stolen from the Dagashi’.
‘Do you know this boy?’ the proctor snarled, sounding bored and as though he was looking for an excuse to take it out on somebody.
‘Nossir,’ I said, not intending to give the proctor the chance to make that unfortunate person me. Corina was panicking in my head, which wasn’t helping.
‘This means they are breaking the cover story I built for you,’ she said. ‘If they put somebody good enough on it, they might find out who you really are.’
I wanted to tell her to be cool and that we would be fine, but with a proctor staring into my face, I couldn’t afford to look weird as I thought to her.
‘Seen him around?’ the proctor growled. I glanced at the paper again and shrugged before shaking my head.
The proctor shoved me as he let me go and moved on to the next person. I looked around, and my heart sank when I saw the speculative gaze that Calev had been boring into the back of my head. The time had come to move on.
When I finished eating, I looked for Trude and Jenny, wondering if I should say goodbye, or put a note in their room. Perhaps it would be best to quietly leave. There had been enough tension, and Jenny was sure that’s what I was making ready to do anyway. I couldn’t figure her out. She was taking it like a personal insult.
‘Time to go,’ I said. The lift disgorged me and I worked my magic with the keys, hurrying to get in and out as quickly as I could.
I eyed my secret stash of books and reluctantly decided I couldn’t take any of them. I stuffed every food ration I had into the bag, then put Corina’s sheath and power block next to it to figure how to squeeze them in. It was bulky, and uncomfortably heavy, but I knew I would never be coming back.
That hit me hard. It wasn’t just the books I was leaving behind, but Trude and Jenny too. It’s true they weren’t blood, but Trude had looked after me after my parents had died, and Jenny was a part of that. I squatted on my heels for a moment, letting that sink in. I didn’t want it distracting me later.
‘Oh, bastard sun above, it is you.’
I spun around and saw Jenny standing over Corina’s tech, face bright red with rage.
‘Look, Jenny—’
‘I knew it was wrong with you having a blasted halo on your head all day. How could you do this to us?’
‘Do what?’ Now I was confused. What had I done that would cause trouble for her or Aunt Trude?
‘I’m not a child, Jax. You’ve been stealing tech,’ and she pointed at Corina’s case and power unit. ‘When they find out it’s you, the proctors will take us too. Then what? And nobody will talk to us and everybody will hate us and if we ever get out we’ll have to move all because of this.’
She stooped down, picked something up and my blood ran cold as she threw a white shape towards the engines — and the 40 floor drop to the bottom. Ice froze around my heart as I looked back to see what she had thrown. Corina’s case was still on the ground next to the bag, but Jenny was reaching for her too, and she was too far away to stop.
So I yelled. Nothing meaningful, just a scream of rage as I ran towards her. Jenny had picked up Corina, but flinched back from my anger and froze, her face draining white before flushing with anger. I got to her as she was drawing her arm back to throw Corina in the same direction. I held her body to me with my right arm while my left grabbed her wrist.
‘You’re hurting me,’ she yelled as she squirmed in my arm and kicked at my shins. Her knee came up to cripple me, but I was ready for it and twisted to take it on my thigh. She turned her head and tried to sink her teeth into my arm. I yelled, but couldn’t let go.
‘Stop fighting me and I’ll stop hurting you.’
Jenny froze for a moment, then she went limp. I held her a few seconds longer, then tentatively eased the pressure of my right arm. My left hand kept a firm grip on Corina. Jenny suddenly twisted away, stamping hard on my foot, and trying to twist Corina out of my hand. I jerked my hand back and forward as hard as I could to break her grip, and Jenny fell backward, her cry of real pain rather than frustrated anger. I put Corina into the bag and moved it out of the way before I turned back to Jenny, and dealing with the guilt of hurting her. She was holding her wrist and looking up at me. She looked scared. I felt terrible. This was no way to treat your sister.
‘I don’t like who you are now,’ she said, eyes brimming with tears but mouth set in a line that dared them to fall down her cheeks. She held her right wrist in her lap.
‘I’m who I’ve always been,’ I said, squatting down next to her and trying to take her arm and check out her wrist. She twisted away from me.
‘You’re not. My Jax would never have done that.’
‘You were going to break something.’
‘Something that you shouldn’t have. Something to do with that sun-blasted halo.’
I let out a slow breath. ‘Jenny, I didn’t plan for any of this. You said yourself you were going to get an implant.’
‘Yes, but I never would.’
A bit late for confirmation of what I really already knew, and it didn’t change things. ‘I wanted a few extra rations, for all of us, in case times got difficult. Then stuff happened and now I’m caught up in things I have to do.’
‘Can’t you get un-caught?’ The hope on Jenny’s face made her look about six years old. I shook my head.
‘Sorry. And it’s not going to end any time soon.’
She was still holding her injured wrist away from me, and if she wasn’t going to let me touch her there was no point me crouching down beside her. I got up and stepped over to the engines, keeping one eye on her while I looked for the power cube. If I couldn’t find it we were in serious trouble. When she thought my eyes were off her, Jenny shifted towards the bag.
‘Don’t’, I barked. She settled back, and I caught a flash of white out of the corner of my eye. It was the power cube, sitting on the edge of a perforated steel gantry, between two of the engines. I walked to the back of the room. There had to be some way to get to the motors to fix them, so I figured if I couldn’t see it from where I was, then it must be on the other side. A tiny gate was set in the railing that surrounded the shafts, leading to a narrow walkway. I didn’t see a handrail.
I glanced back at Jenny. She was edging towards Corina’s bag again, but she stopped as soon as she saw me watching her. I couldn’t trust her, and went back for it. I didn’t want to worry about her sneaking around my back while I was trying to balance over the top of a bottomless pit.
I was right about the handrail, but there was a wire strung at shoulder height from the wall to a post on the engine platform. It looked strong enough to take a person’s weight, so I figured it was a safety line of sorts. I opened the gate and regarded the narrow bridge with horror. It was no more than a foot across, little more than enough for my feet side by side, and it looked like five or six steps to the platform.
‘Use the bag,’ said Corina.
‘How?’
‘Empty it, then loop the strap over the wire. Then you can put your hand through the strap. It should slide along.’
I did as she suggested, but kept her in my pocket. I figured her chances were better with me than if Jenny got hold of her, and if I fell Jenny would kill her anyway. I stood in the gate, hooked my hand through the loop of the strap, and froze. I knew I shouldn’t have, but it was impossible not to look down
‘Don’t think about it,’ said Corina. ‘Look at me.’ And she was standing next to the motors, at the end of the walkway. I grinned, barked a short laugh, and stepped out onto the narrow metal path, looking nowhere other than into Corina’s eyes.
When I reached the motor platform, I started to laugh, and my arms reached out to hug her, just for a second. The laughter died, and she looked away. The power brick was at my feet. As I reached out to pick it up I looked through the mesh of the floor and my head swam when I saw the top of the elevator car so far below me.
The cube was cracked. A dark fluid had seeped out and coagulated into a scab the consistency of a sticky bogey that smelt like hot roads. ‘Is that broken?’ I asked Corina.
‘What? How would I know and why would I care?’ Jenny snapped behind me, and I turned in time to see her half way to the pile of rations I had tipped from the bag. If she hadn’t seen me tuck Corina into my pocket, she might think there was something else she could sabotage. I stepped away from the engines and she shuffled back to where she had been sitting. I must have spoken aloud again. If I was in the habit of that then people would think I was touched, loopy.
‘I don’t know, Jax,’ said Corina. ‘The only way to know would be to test it, but I don’t think now is the best time.’
I muttered my agreement under my breath and turned back to the walkway. Corina waited for me on the other side, and as soon as I was back on solid ground I started stuffing everything back into the bag. ‘I’m sorry if you think any of this was directed at you, or Aunt Trude,’ I tried to explain to Jenny. ‘I’m leaving. You won’t see me around here anymore, so neither of you should get in any trouble with the proctors if you say nothing.’
Jenny’s eyes were full again, and this time she was biting her bottom lip to keep from crying.
‘I’m guessing Trude is on a scavenge, and you said you were sick so you could follow me?’
Jenny nodded. I took four rations out of my bag and put them on the floor next to her. ‘Not charity, not a bribe. Just don’t go straight downstairs and tell a proctor. Give me the day to lose myself, then do whatever Aunt Trude tells you. She knows best.’
Jenny said nothing, but eventually nodded. I didn’t like leaving her angry. I’m not sure what I had expected, maybe a hug or a kiss on the cheek. Certainly wasn’t going to get either of them now. I pasted on a fake smile, waved, and said: ‘You were a good sister. Be lucky.’
I saw one tear trickle down her cheek before I turned away and headed out of the engine room.