CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Clearance

I scanned my room, glancing over everything I owned. So little, and none of it felt like mine. I’d lost all my real belongings when I was frozen before. These items were just meager substitutes, and I didn’t mind leaving most of them behind.

Packing took my mind off Maxim. I focused my efforts on bringing only useful items for the mission. Warm clothes came first, followed by comfortable walking boots. I glanced at the videos as if my parents called my name through the shiny surface. Although they were the only link to my past, I doubted Paradise 15 would have a DVD player. I didn’t have time for Valex to transfer the data, and any request like that would alert him of my plan. Instead, I shoved in the album Valex and Len had given me. It took up a lot of space, and I couldn’t use it for anything practical, but it held pictures of everyone dear to me. Everyone except Maxim.

I ran my tongue over my lips, thinking about the feeling of his mouth on mine. My heart raced when I thought of lying on top of him, of how he reacted to my touch.

Maybe not having a picture of Maxim was a good thing.

I threw in my favorite hairbrush, a pack of soywafers, and my pocketknife. I dug through my drawer. Maxim’s card. The one he gave me that first day at lunch. I hovered over the recycling chute. It was the only thing I had to remind me of him. Just throw it away.

Instead, I slid it in the backpack under the cover of the album. I knew I couldn’t call him from deep space from my frozen cryotube,

but it didn’t weigh much or take up additional space. What harm would it cause to take it? I could always throw it away later…or keep it forever on a cord dangling from my neck. I was such a hopeless romantic.

Thursday night passed achingly slowly. The fluorescent numbers seemed to take forever to change on the wallscreen and I braided my hair into a thousand tiny braids and unbraided it, over and over again. My hair looked like I’d crimped it with a hot iron, but I had to keep my fingers busy while my mind ran in circles.

The next morning, I waited until everyone left before exiting my room. Len had knocked on the door twice, but I told her I needed more sleep. If any of them had seen my face, it would have given me away. Besides, it was easier if I didn’t have to say good-bye, if I pretended I was heading out for the day and would return after school.

I loaded the letter I’d already written to them on my wallscreen. By the time they found it, I’d be taking off on the ship, already frozen. Besides, they couldn’t stop me. I was eighteen, and it was my choice. I could only hope they’d come to accept my decision in time. What I was leaving behind for them would, hopefully, soften the burden.

C-7 dusted the shelves in the living room as I walked toward the door. “Good morning, Jennifer. If I must say, you are quite a bit late for school.”

“I’m not going to school today, C-7.”

He stopped dusting, his silver fingers hovering over the shelf. “Is it time?”

My eyes burned with unshed tears. “Yes. I’m going away with the Timesurfers. I’m going to follow my dreams.”

C-7 dropped the cloth on the floor and walked over. “May you find what you are looking for.”

Stick to business, Jenny, or you’ll lose it. “Listen, I don’t want to get you into trouble. I left a note for Valex, Len, and Pell on my wallscreen. They’ll know this is my decision alone.”

“Do not worry about me. Life will go on as planned.”

I stepped toward him and held out my hand. The very first day I hadn’t wanted to touch him, but now I needed to reach out. He’d done so much for me. “Thank you for helping me.”

His silver fingers closed over mine. “It was my pleasure. Thank you for being my friend.”

I smiled, feeling way more emotional than I should. To me, C-7 was like a person, not some household appliance. “Give it some time with Pell. I know she’ll come around.”

C-7’s mouth snapped shut as if he didn’t agree. He shook his head, gears buzzing. “It took bringing someone back from a lost generation to truly understand.”

I couldn’t stay with him forever and, as much as I wanted to take him with me, I couldn’t steal Valex and Len’s robot. “You do a fine job for this family. Take care of them for me.”

C-7 nodded, the plates bending in his slender neck. “I will.”

Not looking back, I left the apartment where I’d spent most of my time in this futuristic world. I jogged to the platform and waited for the hoverbus, checking my miniscreen every minute as the time grew closer to eleven-twenty-one. A black hovercraft pulled up right on the money, and the hatch opened like the gate to my destiny.

Maybe I was being overly dramatic.

My hair fanned out around me as I stepped on the ramp. The hovercraft hummed so loud it rumbled in my gut, but at least it had panels to block the rush of air buoying it up. Yara’s slender face poked out from the shadows. She wore a black jumpsuit, much like Jax’s. Would I get one, too? I’ll probably look more like a janitor than a ninja.

Yara gave me a sour curve of her lips and nodded her head in acknowledgment. “Jennifer.” “Nice to see you, too.”

Figured she’d be the one to pick me up. I settled into a seat in back where I couldn’t see out the sight panel, then folded my hands in my lap. Would I miss this high-rise world? Only time would tell. The adrenaline coursing through my veins burned away the melancholy, and all I could do was think about Paradise 15. The next time I woke up, I’d be on standing on a new planet, getting ready to bring animals back to life. I had been willing to travel to the ends of the earth to save creatures that couldn’t save themselves, and now I’d travel to the ends of the galaxy. The stakes were higher, and it only made me crave adventure even more.

We drove for so long that I unbelted myself to check the sight panel. The wall surrounding the city came up, patrolled by government troops with laser guns and hovercrafts.

“Where are we going?”

Yara sneered. “You didn’t think we’d take off from underground, did you?”

Actually, I hadn’t thought about it. A spaceship needed a launchpad and tons of room. Where would we find that in a land crammed with high-rises?

“Will they let us through?”

“They should. We have the correct codes. It’s easier to leave the city than to get back in.” Yara’s voice was steady, but her fingers tightened on the railing, knuckles turning white.

The wall rose up so high and so thick I couldn’t see past it. “What’s on the other side?”

“More high-rises for miles, then the barrens—land that’s been farmed to dust. It’s a wasteland. Nothing survives.”

As our hovercraft approached, the men raised their lasers in our direction.

The pilot must have handled the exchange, because Yara and I stood frozen, watching the hovercrafts buzz around us like giant wasps.

I whispered, as if they could hear me through the thick glass, “Do they know who we are?”

“No. We’re under the guise of civilians visiting family outside the city.”

“What’s the difference between being on this side or that?”

Yara sighed as if she had to explain the world to a two-year-old.

I was annoyed, but my curiosity won over and I waited for her to get over herself. “Well?”

“There are more greenhouses here, more food.”

“Those poor people.” Casting a glance at my backpack, I suddenly felt like I should have packed more soybean wafers. Why didn’t they teach me important survival stuff like this at Ridgewood? Instead, I spent all those hours recalculating Einstein’s equations and drawing light bursts on my miniscreen.

“Don’t worry. Our base is equipped with everything we will need. Besides, we won’t be there for very long.”

The guards brought their guns down, and the hovercraft sped forward. Yara’s face softened as we held on to the railing to avoid falling back. “We got clearance.”

Outside the wall, the high-rises stretched on for another thirty minutes, like too many pencils shoved in a jar, each one capped with a greenhouse. Most of those glass tops looked empty; the only plants I could see appeared to be shriveled brown or dead. As we drove farther from the city, the buildings shrank below us. At first I thought we flew higher in the sky, but the structures weren’t as tall. Some of them almost looked like skyscrapers from my time.

The buildings grew farther apart, too. Wide alleys stretched in between them, filled with garbage and heaps of sandy dirt. The spaces grew until only small shacks appeared on a dusty-brown landscape. It could have been the great Sahara. “Where are all the buildings?”

Yara raised her voice to be heard over the hum of the engines. “Since you’ve been frozen, Earth’s climate has grown violent and unpredictable. Terrible hurricanes down south, volcanos erupting on the Hawaiian Islands, tsunamis on the West Coast, dust storms in the nation’s interior.”

Now I saw why we needed a new planet. “The world’s gone to

hell.”

Yara snorted. “Leave it to people to ruin the world.”

Who’d run Paradise 15? The animals? Yara? Tightening my lips, I decided not to comment.

The hovercraft’s engines rumbled below my feet, and we descended to a patch of flat, dry dirt. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

Standing up, Yara laughed like I was an idiot. “That’s what we want you to think.”