Donor 23 (13 page)

Looking at a drone above him, Nox tried to calm the man down, “I know who she is, sir. Don’t worry. I’m at Area Six right now, and I’ll get a dog team. We’ll pick her up soon.”

Nox motioned to an officer to get the dogs. He looked down the cliff. Duncan and another officer hiked around the bottom near the stream. They picked up an item from the water.

“Find something?” Nox shouted.

“It’s a wrist phone, sir,” the officer yelled.

Duncan hollered, “Did 23 own a wrist phone, sir?”

“Bring it up.”

Like Joan, Duncan climbed easily up the cliff.

He handed the device to Nox, “It’s all banged up and damaged from the water, sir.”

“The tech group may be able to get something from it.”

Nox looked down the cliff, where the other officer struggled to climb up. Shaking his head, he said, “Can you help him up? Get a rope or something.”

Just then, the truck with the dogs pulled up.

Joan detected the sound of dogs baying in the distance. Dogs. They tracked her with dogs. She started running again, picking up the pace. But no matter how fast she ran, the dogs kept getting louder.

All of a sudden, she was out in the open. Ahead of her dropped another cliff. It was unmistakably the gorge her father told her about. Standing at the precipice, she gasped at the deep, sheer drop. On the other side swelled a dense forest. The Outside. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, thinking about it. The gorge stretched wide across, too wide for her to jump.

She darted along the edge of it, hoping to find a narrow section. About a hundred yards ahead rose a small hill. The top of the hill offered her a better view of the gorge. She surveyed it all, as it wound its way through the countryside, like a river through a valley. She spied a location a mile farther, where it narrowed. Maybe there she could jump it. She took off, with dogs barking in the background. She couldn’t run near the precipice. It was too overgrown, so she cut inland, away from the gorge.

Governor Gates looked at the tele-screen. The single drone broadcast the snatchers running through the brush. They appeared almost comical, especially the thin, gangly Nox, hardly able to keep up with the swift girl, who had just recently filled the screen.

Speaking to his aides, Gates didn’t raise his voice. He never did, but the aides noticed a tension in his voice they rarely heard. “Get another drone there. Now.”

The violet-eyed girl stood mutely in her place at the back of the Governor’s office. She fiddled with the drinks and ice bucket. As Gates’s servant, she kept him visible from the corner of her eye, in case he wanted something. When possible, she glanced at the tele-screen, but the Governor’s anger worried her. As she’d agonizingly learned since Gates brought her here six weeks ago to be his personal servant, when the Governor was angry, as the closest and most available donor, she was the most convenient target for his wrath.

Joan raced through the brush. She hoped she kept the gorge close on her right and was not running too far inland. After sprinting what she estimated to be a mile, she emerged into a clearing. The gorge lay before her. She approached, but she had misjudged. It was narrower here, but still a little too wide to jump. The narrower part must be farther ahead. She would have to continue.

The dogs’ howls sounded much louder. Her ears rang from the deafening barking. She turned to run. The animals appeared, like ghosts or monsters from the forest—brown and black blurs, teeth glinting in the sun, saliva dripping, swinging from their mouths. They rushed out of the brush and dashed between her and the gorge, cutting her off. They came at her,
chasing her back and away from the gorge. She bolted fast, but she couldn’t outrun dogs.

A large, six-foot boulder rose before her in the clearing. She made her way for it and jumped up on it just as the dogs reached her. One of the animals got hold of her left foot. It pulled her, but she found a handhold on the top of the rock and held on. At this point she couldn’t pull herself up; it was all she could do to keep from being dragged down. But the tenacious dog kept his grip on her foot. She shook her left leg and kicked at the dog with her right foot. Her left shoe came off in the dog’s mouth. She clawed her way to the top of the rock and stood there on the boulder with the four dogs circling around her on the ground. Catching her breath, she heard the unmistakable sound of a drone in the distance—heading her way.

Nox and the others burst into the clearing, exhausted and breathing heavily. They ran up to her with their guns drawn. Nox promptly realized her predicament. There was no rush. Joan wasn’t going anywhere. He bent over at the waist, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

“Holster your guns everyone. This one’s mine,” Nox managed to sputter between breathes.

It was standard procedure of the snatchers to shoot an evader with only one dart. Multiple doses of the tranquilizer might kill the donor. Duncan stood beside Nox.

Nox said to the dog handler, “Quiet those dogs, will you?”

At a signal from the trainer, the dogs ceased barking and lay on the dirt.

Nox glanced overhead. “Let’s wait for the drones to get into position. We want everyone at home to get a good view of this,” he said.

Nox believed in the deterrent effect of the catch. He wanted all to see the results of breaking the law.

Joan glanced around in desperation, looking for help or a way out but finding nothing. She refused to look at Duncan.

Once the drones floated in place—both hovering at a safe distance high above—Nox said in a loud voice, for the viewing audience and for all the donors he knew were watching, “You gave us a nice run, 23, but it’s over now. This is the end. This is how it ends for all lawbreakers. For all evaders. You didn’t really believe you’d get away? It’s the third floor next, 23.”

He raised his gun. Joan looked into the sky. One lonely cloud drifted high above. The drones circled over her, cameras zooming in on her face, as they had done countless times with other evaders on the mega screens in the ghetto. She looked down at Nox as he aimed.

“My name is Joan Lion,” she roared.

He squeezed the trigger. The dart smacked hard into the left side of her chest.

12

S
he stumbled a step back but regained her balance. It felt as if she had been pushed hard in the chest, as if one of her kickboxing partners had punched her during a practice bout. A wave of sorrow brushed over her.
This was it.
She looked at the sky, never to see it again. A flock of birds flew overhead, heading west.

Nothing happened. She’d seen people tranquilized by the darts. They dropped at once. The officers also realized something was amiss.

“Shoot her again!” Nox hastily ordered.

The officers, including Duncan, began pulling out their holstered weapons. Joan reacted swiftly. She pulled the dart from her chest, and a small pool of blood began forming on her shirt, over her heart. She turned and jumped off the rock, heading for the gorge. She had no choice. She’d have to try
the jump here. The dogs watched her go with amusement in their eyes, as they waited for their handler’s commands.

She ran as fast as she could. Her shoeless left foot pained her as it hit small rocks and other debris on the ground. She ignored the twinges of pain and concentrated on the jump ahead of her, just as Jack had taught her. The officers followed, but she was ahead of them by twenty yards when she reached the gorge. Planting her right foot, she leaped.

Her body slammed against the other side of the cliff two feet short. She slid even further. A small bush grew out of the side of the cliff, and she clawed at the plant. It didn’t stop her, but it did slow her fall. She landed with a thud on a small rock outcropping and nearly rolled off, but she swiftly grabbed a root sticking out of the cliff. It halted her tumble. She sat up, maintaining hold of the root to keep from falling.

The jump and fall momentarily stunned her. As she regained her composure, Nox and Duncan reached the edge of the gorge and looked across at her. Duncan raised his gun.

Nox cautioned him, “Don’t shoot her there. She’ll fall—”

“I know,” Duncan interrupted him testily, “Sir,” he added. He lowered his gun. “But I want to be the one that shoots her.”

Joan knew the snatcher rules, knew she was safe from their tranquilizer darts there. But she was still trapped. Surveying for any possible route to the bottom, she realized there was no way she could descend the cliff. It was too steep, too far. She couldn’t even see the ground.

Craning her neck upward, she surveyed the cliff above her. Small bushes and rocks dotted the side, making for good hand-holds and footholds. She had to climb.

First, however, she reached into the backpack, pulled out a bottle of water, and drank slowly, taking her time. She’d probably end up tranquilized and wake up on the third floor, so she wasn’t going to rush this—her last moments of freedom.

As she replaced the bottle back in her pack, she took one more look—maybe the last look—at her parents’ photograph. As she stared at the photo, she held it inside the pack, where the drones couldn’t see it—one last intimate moment with her parents. After gazing at it for a minute or two, she zipped up the pack and took a deep breath. The air delighted her nose—fresher and crisper compared to the air in the grimy ghetto, even better than in the city. She rubbed her chest where the dart had hit. Her heart beat powerfully inside her—fueled by fear. It felt as if it would burst, and she mentally tried to slow it down.
Strange,
she thought,
these may be some of its last beats in her chest. Was that why it beat so fiercely?

She painstakingly began scratching and picking her way up the cliff face. The drones circled above, filming her.

Citizens lingered in the streets, watching her climb the cliff. Some observed on wrist phones. Some watched on giant mega screens on the tree-lined boulevards. In bars and restaurants, they paused in mid-drink, spellbound by the girl on the screen.

On the side of the screen, numbers flashed. Betting. The current odds. Most donor chases were short and over without delay. But if one lasted long enough, as in this case, since Joan had been running for hours, state-sponsored betting began. Citizens wagered on how long the chase would last and where it would end. As the chase progressed, the numbers—the donor’s odds—constantly changed, sometimes minute by minute. Citizens kept up with their wrist phones, betting as the chase continued.