Dewey squints at me. “Why are you still here? Do you need me to speak slower so you can understand? It is time for you to go.”
I smile. He frowns.
“You said, if we asked anyone running around the Lyceum, they would say my mom and Atlas’s dad would want us to do what is best for the Stewards.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with your hearing.”
“But you aren’t running around the Lyceum. What do you think they’d say to us?”
He leans back again and studies me. “Maybe you’re more like your mom than you look. She was good with details.”
“An artist has to see the little things.” I say the words I recall from years ago. “Because that’s what makes up the bigger things.”
Just like her paintings captured a smaller piece of a larger picture.
Something an artist would notice. Something she trusted me to see.
“There’s something my mother started that I plan on finishing. And you can help me do it.”
Dewey removes his hat, flips it onto the desk, and leans toward me. “And how do you suppose I can do that?”
“By showing me . . .” I ignore Atlas’s confused look and punch up the image of my mother’s final, incomplete painting. Then I turn the tablet to face Dewey. “Where to find this.”
“That painting’s not finished,” he says.
“No. My mother never had the chance to complete it. That’s what I intend to do.”
Atlas shifts to study the image on the screen while Dewey stares at me. He clicks his tongue three times. Then he takes his hat off the desk, turns it over in his hand, and jams it on with a sigh. “It’s too noisy for me to read with all these people underfoot.” He jumps to his feet and disappears around the corner of the bookshelf next to his desk. A moment later, he appears again. “I’m assuming your feet work. Or did you plan on me carrying you?”
“I still have no idea what’s happening,” Atlas admits as we scurry after Dewey, who darts around Stewards preparing for lockdown and weaves through shelves. “Why didn’t you tell me about your mother’s paintings?”
“I’ll explain everything later,” I say as I rush to keep up. Finally, Dewey leads us into a small area in a dimly lit back corner of the Lyceum tucked away under scaffolding used to reach the upper bookshelves.
Dewey glances around the edge of shelves to make sure no one is nearby. Then he asks, “Do you recognize anything?”
I’m about to say no, when something catches my eye. A book shelved near the bottom, placed so that the image on the front is facing out. The cover is torn and faded, but even in the dim light I recognize the red stars at the edge of a black background and the faded pale lines that point to an image in the center. An image my mother never got the chance to paint. Not a door, as I drew so many times while trying to re-create my mother’s vision, but an eye—wide-open—determined to see.
“What are you waiting for?” Dewey asks. “Take it.”
I lean down, pull the book off the shelf, and brush my hand over the front.
I found it, Mom, I think. I know what you wanted me to see now. And I’m here.
Dewey’s voice pulls me back. “There’s a switch. You might have to feel around a bit. No good having a secret room if anyone who pulls a book off a shelf can find it.”
My fingers find a cool metal inset in the wood and I pull. Something clicks, and a section of the shelves shifts.
“Now stand back.” Dewey helps haul me to my feet, and I scramble out of the way as he carefully pivots the shelf.
“Atlas’s grandfather created this when he and his friends built the Lyceum.” He waves us inside the darkness. I reach for Atlas’s hand and step over the threshold. Dewey follows. “Atticus decided it should be used for this.” Dewey hangs a battery-operated lantern on the wall and pulls the door shut behind us as I blink at the contents of the small, hidden space.
In a movie a room like this would contain treasure or some kind of alien device that could destroy the world. Instead, there are stacks of red books and neat piles of paper and dozens and dozens of bags on slightly rusted metal industrial shelves.
“Not what you expected?” Dewey asks as I take a page from the top of the stack.
Do you know this word?
VERIFY—(v.) To ascertain or prove the truth or correctness of.
You don’t know it because the government does not want you to. They took this word away from you. Do you wonder what else they might have taken?
The paper goes on to list other words—many are ones Atlas made me look up when he told me about the Stewards. The final word, however, is one I discovered myself in the history book.
REVOLUTION—(n.) An overthrow or repudiation and the replacement of an established government or political system by the people governed.
“I’m not sure what I expected,” I admit. Weapons, maybe? Or the names of soldiers in a secret army they had amassed?
Atlas picks up one of the red books. It’s a copy of the Merriam-Webster collegiate dictionary. And there are stacks and stacks of them. “What did you plan to do with all of this?”
“What do you think we planned to do?” Dewey asks, leaning against the edge of the door.
“You were going to spread the truth,” I say, unzipping one of the bags. Inside are more papers. More books. “But how? Are there others helping you?”
He dashes my hopes with the shake of his head. “It was just the three of us. The other Engineers made it clear they valued safety above the truth. So the three of us decided to create a method of spreading the truth on our own. I was in charge of siphoning off inventory and printing those sheets. Atticus and your mom were going to get the materials out onto the streets. We hoped to have more damning information to add as we waged our campaign.”
Which is what my mother was attempting to do when she was killed.
Atlas shakes his head. “How did you plan to change anything when there were only three of you?”
Dewey adjusts his hat and straightens his shoulders. “Ovid and his industrious medieval collaborators gave us the idea that ‘dripping water hollows out stone, not through force, but through persistence.’ We decided to put that theory to the test.”
“I don’t understand,” Atlas says.
Maybe he doesn’t, but I do. Drip by drip. Little by little. A painting doesn’t just happen. It comes to life stroke by stroke—seemingly without shape or purpose at first until suddenly it bursts into view. “You were going to do what the government did. Change things a little at a time. If a dozen people do searches on those words, they’ll set off alarms. Then a dozen more. The more alarms that go off, the more people will notice and ask questions.” Which will lead to more questions and demands for answers. “Every question they ask will teach them, by degrees, that the life they have been living is a lie. And once they know this, they won’t be able to go back. They’ll question everything and tell others to do the same.”
Dewey nods. “Only now Atticus and Folio are gone and the Lyceum is going into lockdown for months . . . maybe years.”
“Which means we have to put this plan into motion now,” I say.
“How?” Atlas asks. “My father and Isaac will be long gone by the time Dewey’s dripping truth has any chance of making a hole in the government’s lies.”
“There are faster ways of putting holes in a stone,” I say. “We get all of this out, into the hands of people all at once. The government can’t pull that many people off the street or out of their houses without everyone in the city taking notice.” And the upheaval might just provide enough cover for Rose to search her father’s offices for information about where they are holding Isaac and Atticus.
“Sounds great—but there are only two of us.”
“Three,” Dewey corrects. “I’d rather be working up there than stuck with all these people down here.”
Atlas scoffs. “Fine. Three. The Marshals will figure out what we’re doing before we have a chance to hand out a fraction of this stuff.”
He’s right. As soon as we start putting paper on the street, people will notice and someone will report it. The only way this will work is if we can deliver all of these books and papers into people’s hands in a short period of time.
“There have to be other Stewards who would be willing to help,” I say, picking up one of the red-and-white hard-covered dictionaries. “You said a lot of Stewards trained to defend themselves against the Marshals. Would any of them be willing to make a stand?”
“A lot would never think to go against the Engineers or the Stewards’ preservation mission. But there are some who might.”
Atlas turns to Dewey. “What do you think?”
Dewey adjusts his hat again and smiles. “Couldn’t hurt to ask. But whatever you’re going to do, you’re going to have to do it now. The clock counting down to the lockdown is ticking.”
“Our best shot is talking to the Stokers in the hopper.”
When I give him a confused look, Atlas explains, “Stokers are what we call the Stewards on the streets who are trained to fight. There’s a separate area in the Lyceum where we practice. A bunch of us call it the hopper.”
“The coast is clear,” Dewey says, peering through a small hole. “Atlas, take her to the hopper. I’ll gather up whoever I think might be open to making a stand and meet the two of you there.” He flips a latch, opens the door, and turns toward me. “I hope you’re good with words, my dear. To convince that crowd to put their lives on the line for you—well, let’s just say you’re going to need all the words you can get.”
The gravel on the floor of the hopper crunches under my feet. The cave-like space is lit by spotlights of white and pale blue positioned near the dirt-packed walls. In the center of the room are sections of wrought-iron and chain-link fences—many taller than me. At least three dozen people weave around the fences. Some carry boxes. Others have bags slung over their shoulders. An older woman with long brown hair and a diamond stud twinkling from her left eyebrow is perched at the top of a rusted section of fence, shouting orders about sleeping arrangements.
“That’s Spine,” Atlas says. “She’s head trainer, one of the most fearless people I’ve ever met, and unofficial leader of the Stokers. If we can convince her, the majority of the others will follow.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Be glad you know how to run.”
“Lockdown doesn’t mean we slow down! And you don’t need to talk to each other right now,” Spine yells. “You’ll have a whole lot of time down here to talk once the doors are closed.”
Dewey appears behind us with the long-nailed Renu and a half dozen others in tow. He nods and Atlas whispers, “Let’s do this.”
The floor slants slightly downward as we walk deeper into the hopper toward the center, where Spine is shouting about final assignments for taking books to the vaults and people to out-of-town stations. While a lot of Stokers are paying attention to her, a number have turned to watch Atlas and me striding across the gravel floor.
“Anyone who doesn’t think they need to pay attention to what I’m saying will have to run extra drills when we resume our training sessions tomorrow. Do you hear me?” Spine yells to a group of Stokers to her right.
“We hear you, Spine.” A bulky guy in a white T-shirt with a mop of brown hair with almost glowing white-blond streaks points toward us. “But I don’t think those two are listening.”
Spine looks down at us. “Atlas, I thought you told me you had to deal with something important before the lockdown.”
“I am dealing with something important. That’s why I’m here now. We have something we have to ask you.” He turns and looks around the room. “To ask all of you.”
“‘We?’” Spine asks. “Whoever this is, she’s not even old enough to be in the Stewards.”
“I know you don’t like the idea of a lockdown,” Atlas says over the whispers from those looking on. “I know you hate the idea of hiding down here while my father needs our help. You train every day. You push yourself to be able to take on the Marshals, yet you are told to run from them even when you see someone who isn’t a Steward in danger. And you wonder about those people and whether you could have made a difference if only you had broken the rules and tried.”
Several Stokers nod their heads. I hold my breath.
“My father wanted to do more than just hide down here in the Lyceum. It’s the reason he’s not here with us now, and why I’m asking for your help to tell the people in this city what we know.”
“Yes, we train.” Spine leaps off her perch on the fence, lands gracefully, and strides across the gravel toward us. “Yes, we prepare to fight. But our mission is to keep the truth alive until people are ready to listen. We have to wait until the time is right. I’m sorry about Atticus.” She pats Atlas’s shoulder then starts to walk away.
The rest in the room begin to go back to their business. Panic bubbles. That can’t be it. They can’t just leave.
“And when will that be?” The words burst out of me. “Do you really think there will be a magical day when people are ready to hear the truth?” I hold up the dictionary as Spine turns back toward me—anger hot in her eyes.
“There’s a reason the Engineers don’t want people your age to be part of this.” She takes slow steps toward me. “Young is easy to influence. Young makes impulsive choices. And they speak about things they don’t understand.”
“I understand that hiding out waiting for the right moment to spread the truth hasn’t worked all that well. People have forgotten the words that were taken. Every day that passes takes them farther away from the ideas those words would give them and makes it harder for them to believe. There will never be a good time to tell the truth. It is never going to be easy. We have a plan, but we need more people for it to have a chance of working, and if it is going to help Atticus, we need to do it now. If we wait . . .”
“‘We?’” Spine barks a mocking laugh, and my stomach curls as she stares down at me. “You just got here. Now you’re telling us we should abandon the mission we’ve been following for years?”
“No.” My heart pounds hard and loud in my ears. “I want you to ask yourself what you’re waiting for. I want you to stop hiding and fight for the truth you claim to believe in. I want the Steward mission to be fulfilled.”
“And you think you’re ready to lead that fight?” she asks quietly. When Atlas starts to speak, Spine cuts him off. “Not you. I know what you can do. If this child thinks she can lead people who have risked their lives for years, I want her to make me believe it.”
The room goes still.
I look at Spine, who is tall and muscular and confident. She is what a leader is supposed to look like. But I’ve faced Marshals. I was scared, but I didn’t freeze, and I survived. “Yes,” I say in a clear voice. “I am.”
“Then prove it,” she says. Spine kicks her leg out and hooks mine. My feet slide out from underneath me and I land flat on my back on the gravel. The dictionary drops with a thud beside me as laughter echoes.
I gasp for breath as Spine looms above. Her lips spread into a thin, satisfied smile. “Do you really think we should follow your lead?”
“This isn’t necessary,” Atlas says, holding out his hand to help me up.
But I ignore his offer of help, and my eyes never leave Spine’s as I pick up the dictionary and climb to my feet. “Yes,” I say. “I do.”
This time I’m ready when she launches at me. I dodge the punch she throws and swing the dictionary down on her arm with both hands. She stumbles. Pride flares for a split second before her leg once again sweeps mine out from under me. Breath kicks out of my lungs. My head cracks against the gravel. My heart thunders as I roll to my side, get to my knees, and shove slowly upright. The dictionary is still clutched in my hands when I set my feet under me and face Spine again.
She shakes her head and puts a hand on her hip. “We don’t have time for this.”
I straighten my shoulders and grip the book so that its edge is facing toward her.
She arches her eyebrow as if to ask, Really? And this time when she punches I step to the side and with as much force as possible slam the edge of the dictionary into her stomach. She gasps and turns. I block her kick with the book. The second one lands. Shock and pain bloom in my hip as Spine shoves me to the ground. The dictionary skitters over the gravel and Spine puts her boot on top of it and says, “Get out of here, kid.”
Kid.
I stopped being a kid when my mother was killed, I think as I push myself up and look around the room. The lights scattered around the edges seem to make the dozen or so Stokers’ eyes shimmer as they stare at me. Are they waiting for me to cry? To back down?
If so, they are going to be waiting a long time.
I climb to my feet, lift my eyes to meet Spine’s, and say, “That book belongs to me.”
Spine kicks the book across the gravel. As I reach to pick it up, she says, “I’m stronger than you are. I’ve trained for years. Why keep fighting if you are going to just end up on the ground?”
“Because I have to,” I gasp. Pain and fear and anger war inside me, but that is the truth that I know. “They killed my mother for searching for the facts. They’ve taken Atlas’s father and one of my friends. People deserve to hear the truth. If we aren’t willing to risk everything to share it with them, I don’t see how we are any better than the ones who took it away.”