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  Chapter 9 – The Runaway

  Vincent watched, bewildered, as Jack struggled against the man holding him. He watched with equal confusion as Bill readjusted his grip on the thing he was holding – a gun, Jack had called it – so his knuckles went white from effort.

  “He’s wearing Lenses,” said Bill. His voice was shaking. “You can see them.”

  “The girl has them too,” said the man holding Jack. He was close enough to see Jessica’s eyes. In a flash, two other men from the circle had drawn objects identical to Bill’s from their jackets. They pointed them at Jessica.

  “You led them right to us,” said Bill. He tightened his hold around the crescent. “They’ll see everything.”

  “They’re disabled,” said Abigail, trying to calm the man down. “I checked. Twice over.”

  “You can’t turn them off, Abby,” said Bill. His eyes were still on Vincent. “You know that.”

  “They were already off!” said Jack. The words were rushing out now. “They’re from the Seclusion to the east. They must know how to turn them off there.”

  Bill glanced at Jack. “I thought you said they were family.”

  “I didn’t want to cause any trouble,” said Jack.

  Bill laughed, a desperate, unrestrained sound. “Too late for that. But maybe not too late to stop all this from getting back to them.”

  Bill breathed in deep as he took a step back, still with the gun pointed at Vincent’s head. He curled his finger a millimeter tighter toward the crescent.

  “Bill he’s just a boy,” pleaded Jack, still struggling against the mountain of a man holding him. “The Lenses are off. Please. Please…”

  The rest of his words were drowned out by the deafening grind of the machine. Vincent could only watch, staring at the small hole at the end of the gun, at Bill’s fingertip as it grew closer and closer to his palm, pulling the thin crescent along with it…

  “Stop!”

  Vincent followed the voice up the main ramp. A short, round-faced woman was scuttling down toward them as quickly as her undersized legs would allow.

  “Put that thing down, Bill,” the woman said. “And turn off that damn drill.”

  Almost instantly, the grinding came to a halt. The sound continued to echo in Vincent’s skull for a few seconds before it faded completely.

  “They’re wearing Lenses!” said Bill.

  “Is that true, Jack?” said the woman. She had come to a stop a few meters from the bottom of the ramp. Her hand had begun to stray toward her waistband much like Bill’s had.

  “Abigail says they’re disabled,” said Jack.

  The woman relaxed slightly. She continued down the ramp. “Then they’re disabled.” She looked at Bill, whose gun was still pointed at Vincent. “What did I say?”

  Bill turned to her, then back to Vincent and Jessica. Scowling at them, he lowered his arm.

  The woman came to a stop next to Vincent. She took a second to catch her breath. “Abigail knows better than most,” she said. “Jack, bring them up.” She gave Vincent a scrutinizing glare before turning around. When she started back up the ramp, Jack and Abigail’s captors allowed them to follow. Jessica hurried after them, and Vincent followed as well, but his eyes remained on the “L” of black metal hanging from Bill’s white-knuckled hand.

  They retraced the woman’s footsteps back up the ramp. As they walked, men and women pushed through the hanging sheet doors of their cubed structures to watch. They wore the same, earth-toned, dust-covered attire as the men by the drill, and their eyes showed similar traces of fear.

  “Don’t mind them,” whispered the woman. “They won’t try anything with me here.”

  Vincent looked away, but he continued to feel the heat of a dozen stares on his back. He couldn’t breathe normally again until they reached the top of the ramp.

  “You should have known better than to bring kids with Lenses here, Jack.”

  They had stopped in a little nook just out of sight of the ramp. There was a double set of what looked like homemade doors to their left

  “I didn’t think the lights would be on during the day,” said Jack. “No one would have noticed without them.” He glanced around the corner back down the ramp. “I’m sorry for the trouble.”

  The woman glowered at him for a moment, but she softened almost immediately. “Bygones,” she said. Then she turned to Vincent and Jessica. “And what of these two? Your niece and nephew, you said?”

  Vincent could tell by the woman’s tone she could smell the lie. Abigail seemed to sense the same.

  “We needed to make sure they got past the door,” she said. She paused here, glancing behind them as Jack had. “They’re from a Seclusion, Kendra.”

  Kendra lifted her brow. “The same one as before?”

  Abigail hesitated, casting Vincent and Jessica a worried glance, then nodded. “They need help,” she said.

  “Have you told them?” pressed Kendra. “Do they know about him?”

  “Know about who?” cut in Vincent. He was tired of being talked about as if they weren’t there. Kendra ignored him.

  “It might help them,” she said. She seemed to be prompting Abigail, asking for permission of some sort. “I could tell them,” she suggested.

  Abigail held her gaze for a beat, her face unreadable, then turned to Vincent and Jessica. Vincent saw a sadness in her eyes he didn’t understand.

  “It’s ok, Abby,” said Jack. “Kendra’s right.”

  Abigail stared at them for another second, then looked up at Jack. He nodded encouragingly.

  “Ok,” she said.

  Kendra nodded. She placed an arm on Abigail’s shoulder. “I can send them down when I’m done,” she said. “You don’t have to stay.”

  Abigail smiled in thanks. She cast Vincent and Jessica one last glance, then turned and started for the ramp. Nodding to them, Jack followed close behind.

  “Come on,” said Kendra, watching them go. “This way.” She started for the doors. With a confused look at one another, Vincent and Jessica did the same.

  Kendra removed a ring of the same jagged, metal strips Vincent had seen Jack use in the truck. She inserted the largest one into a hole beneath the door’s knob, then twisted. Vincent heard the heavy, rusted locks click free in the mechanism’s interior. Kendra opened the doors and beckoned them inside.

  “Sorry for that,” she said, when the doors had closed behind them. She didn’t bother explaining. “And sorry for the mess.”

  Holding back the parade of questions in his mind, Vincent looked around. The floor was the same gray stone as everywhere else, only here it was littered with supplies, some Vincent recognized, some he didn’t. A pile of books was strewn across what, somewhere underneath, must be the dining room table. Small, framed pictures dominated the rest of the space, hung with no real order from the sheet metal walls or scattered amidst the supplies on the floor.

  “It’s been hectic the last few days,” said Kendra. “With the drilling.”

  “I like it,” said Jessica.

  “Thank you, dear.” Kendra motioned to the mound of books on the table. “Why don’t you two have a seat?”

  Careful not to disturb the precarious looking mound, they lowered themselves into two hard-backed chairs at the table’s edge. Kendra took a seat next to them.

  “You ran away from the Seclusion,” she said. She didn’t pose it as a question, as Jack had. “Why? Where are you going?”

  “It wasn’t a choice,” said Vincent, a little defensively. “We had to leave. They took our parents.”

  Kendra didn’t seem to need clarification on the they Vincent was talking about. “And you want help saving them?” Vincent nodded. Kendra strummed her fingers on the table, appraising them. “Well you’re doing better than he was,” she said. “He didn’t even know what he was looking for.”

  “Who’s he?” said Jessica. “Who do you keep talking about?”

  “The only other Seclusion runaway we’ve
gotten,” said Kendra. “His name was John. Is John, I hope.”

  Vincent and Jessica exchanged a look. They had heard that name before, in Brian’s dome: the older brother who was never in school, who Brian knew nothing about.

  “He knew he was looking for the Order,” continued Kendra. “The original Order, I mean – the protestors. But he had no clue how to find them. He may still be here looking had they not come for him.”

  “The Order came?” asked Vincent. “They found him?”

  Kendra shook her head. “Not they,” she said. “He. Just one man. He was very old. And tall. Just skin and bones. And his eyes…it looked like they had been gouged out and burnt on the insides.” She gave an involuntary shiver, as if to shake the memory from her mind. “John should have been terrified of him. But he was from the Order, and that was enough.”

  Vincent thought back to their conversation with Brian, to the man without eyes Brian had said to be at the helm of the Order.

  “Goodwin,” whispered Jessica.

  Kendra didn’t hear her. Her eyes were still misted over. “Abigail was distraught when they left. She can hardly stand to talk about the Order now.”

  “Do you know anything about them?” asked Vincent. “Do you know if they can rescue our parents?”

  Kendra shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you for sure,” she said. “But if anyone can help, it’s them.”

  “How long ago did John leave with them?” asked Jessica.

  Kendra thought for a second. “Around five years ago,” she said. “For Hux. It’s the nearest standard city.”

  “What happened to him?” said Vincent.

  Kendra shrugged. “I don’t know. Up until about two years ago, I thought he had been caught. We hadn’t heard from him since he left.”

  Jessica scooted forward in her seat. “What happened two years ago?” she asked.

  “That’s when the packages started,” said Kendra. “Hux is protected by Newsight, so I don’t know how he got them out, but packages from him started dropping on top of the garage. Some were injections, some were food. And recently, they’ve been useless, only for people with Lenses. I don’t know why he would send them.”

  Vincent and Jessica looked at one another again. “What did he send?” asked Vincent.

  Kendra shook her head, pursing her lips as she thought. “You’re probably too young to remember,” she said, “but when Newsight first came out with Lenses, there were these devices that came with them called hard sims.”

  “We’ve heard of them,” said Jessica. The slight weight in Vincent’s front pocket seemed to grow a bit heavier.

  “Good,” said Kendra. “Well anyway, hard sims became obsolete decades ago. But recently, John has been sending them to us. Since he left, we haven’t had anyone with Lenses, so we haven’t been able to test them.” She squinted at Vincent, then at Jessica, sizing them up one last time. “Do you think you could take a look?”

  “Definitely,” they said at once.

  Kendra nodded, grinning. “Then wait here.” She stood from the table and pushed through a curtain into the next room. Several seconds later, she returned with a stack of round white cases the size of Vincent’s palm. “They come in these,” said Kendra. “Look.” She handed the top case to Vincent. Cautiously, Vincent unlatched it and looked inside. For a moment, he thought they were looking at dozens of copies of THE SIM, but the tiny black discs inside were much thinner. They were labeled, too, on the outside. A letter, M or F, and a number, usually a range of numbers, 12-15, 30-40, etc.

  Kendra rustled around in the other cases she had sat down, and pulled out a sheet of paper. “The first one came with a note. Here’s what it says.” She cleared her throat to read. Vincent listened as he tried to open one of the discs. Jessica reached into the case to do the same, her ears perked.

  “For anyone with Lenses who wishes to enter the city. Without these, people with Lenses will be taken away.”

  Vincent kept listening, waiting for her to keep going, but she didn’t. She was looking up at them.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said, seeing Vincent’s confusion. “Here.” She handed him the note. “See for yourself.”

  Abandoning his attempts at the disc, Vincent took the note. The paper was brittle, and the writing on it was barely legible. There were smudges on the edges, and the end of each word slurred into the beginning of the next, rushed.

  “Look,” said Jessica

  Vincent turned to his left. Jessica had opened one of the discs. She emptied the contents into her left palm: miniscule, hair-width slips of film in the shapes of Lenses – they looked almost identical to the contents of THE SIM. The main difference, however, were the barely visible markings on their surface. Tilted at just the right angle, the curved part of the things glinted in complex, intricate patterns.

  “Eye prints,” said Vincent, in awe. He looked up to Kendra to explain. “Every pair of Lenses has them. It’s where Newsight stores personal information. They started out with iris and facial recognition, but it wasn’t accurate enough. They’ve been using prints for the past three or four models.”

  Jessica nodded in confirmation. “My dad talked about them. He says they’re impossible to replicate. These must have come off of real Lenses.” She stared down at the things in distaste at the thought. Kendra didn’t seem bothered.

  “So they’re fake IDs,” she said. “You must need them to get through the city checkpoints. If you have Lenses and aren’t a citizen, you must be reported.”

  “Does no one travel between cities?” asked Vincent.

  Kendra laughed. “Travel hasn’t been allowed for years,” she said. “Once a city goes standard, it’s on lockdown. Newsight says it’s for safety. I say it’s for control.”

  Vincent looked down at the thin slips of film in Jessica’s hand. “When did you say these got here?” he asked.

  “Actually just this morning,” said Kendra. “First package in weeks.”

  Vincent turned to Jessica. He was almost positive she was thinking the same thing he was: Brian’s brother, if it were him, seemed to have known they would be coming, and the only way he could have known was through Lynn. It was an electrifying feeling – they weren’t as alone as they thought.

  “Is there any way we can get to the city?” asked Vincent.

  Kendra raised her brow, taken aback. “To the city?” she repeated. “Have you not heard what I’ve been saying?”

  “I have,” said Vincent. “But if the city is where the Order is, that’s where we need to be.” He looked at Jessica, and she nodded in agreement. Kendra peered back at them, eyes misted in memory.

  “You’re stubborn like he was,” she said. A hint of a smile played across her lips, but it faded quickly. “Jack is driving a group to Hux tonight before the attack,” she said. “People have been getting cold feet about staying. If you’re sure you want to go, there are still a few seats left.”

  “We’ll go,” said Jessica without hesitation. She looked down at the eye prints in her hand. “Would you mind if we use these?”

  Kendra chuckled. “Take them all,” she said, then looked around at her cluttered apartment. “You’d be doing me a favor.” She smiled at them, a bit unconvincingly, then stood up. “Jack and Abby will be waiting for you,” she said. “They’re in spot 14. You’d best not mention any of this to them, though, especially not to Abigail. She doesn’t like talking about it.”

  Nodding, and gathering their cases, Vincent and Jessica stood from their seats. “Thank you,” said Vincent. Jessica echoed him close after, and Kendra nodded back. They started for the door.

  “Children?” Kendra called out to them. They turned around. “If the Order is real,” she said, “and John is a part of it, can you give him a message for me?”

  “Of course,” said Vincent. “What is it?”

  Kendra took a breath, hesitating, as if deciding whether or not to speak. After a pause, she seemed unable to hold the words back any longer. “T
ell him to come back for us,” she said.

  Vincent nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Kendra dipped her head graciously. She smiled at them, the same afraid-looking grin as before, and watched them leave.