Donor 23 (15 page)

But where to go?
This was the Outside. The very word caused her to take a breath. She was to go west, but other than that, where?
What did the song talk about?
A white river, dead trees… Was she staking her life on a nursery rhyme? She started jogging at a slow pace. It was afternoon, and she kept the sun in view ahead of her—west.

The ghettos had erupted in minor turmoil. The donors watched as Joan defiantly yelled her name at the snatchers. They watched as the dart didn’t tranquilize—a miracle. They watched her climb painstakingly up the side of the gorge. At that point cheering broke out—at first a few isolated voices,
then a cacophony, all calling her name, “Joan Lion.” Snatchers tried to keep order.

All of a sudden, as if on cue—as if an unseen conductor waved his stick, the crowd changed from an anonymous collective to individuals. Each of them shouted his or her own name—to the snatchers, to the drones, to the entire Alliance.

After Joan threw the rock at Duncan, a huge ovation filled the ghetto. The crowd turned on snatchers, beating them. They ran and tried to hide. For a moment, at least, the donors hunted the snatchers. But just for a short time. Soon vans and large numbers of reinforcements arrived to quell the would-be revolt.

But the rage remained. The determination, like a smoldering piece of coal buried under the sand, hidden and unknown, waited for a breath of oxygen to ignite a conflagration.

The tele-screen in Gates’s office broadcast a gang of donors pushing over a TEO van in the ghetto.

Gates stared at it, “What’s that they’re yelling? I can’t make it out.”

“It’s her name.”

“Huh? Whose name?” Gates asked with frustration.

“The donor’s name. Number 23,” one aide replied.

“Oh, right,” Gates murmured.

It angered him when the girl yelled her name earlier, but at the time he didn’t think it was important enough to remember the actual name. It certainly wasn’t significant enough to put into memory. “What was it? Her name?”

“Joan Lion,” an aide recounted.

Gates shook his head. This girl
, this donor
, he thought derisively, escaped the ghetto, escaped the Alliance borders. And she attacked an officer of the Alliance—his daughter’s boyfriend, no less. To attack an officer of the Alliance is to attack the Alliance itself—to attack the Governor himself. Order must be maintained.

“Never speak that name again. That name will never be mentioned in any government reports or on any news programs.” He paused. “Make it so.”

Joan arrived at a river at dusk, limping and favoring her left foot. Famished, she ate three energy bars and allowed herself to relax a little. Quiet. No drones. No dogs. Even the birds were still. The only sound was the river bubbling by.

A large tree near the bank of the river had roots extending a few feet out of the ground, and she found a cozy space in between the roots to bed down for the night. She pulled out the blanket. It was very thin, made of a metallic, reflective material, similar to aluminum foil. She hoped it was warm. By the time she snuggled into the space and under the metallic cover, darkness had fallen. The sun set rapidly in the mountains—not worried to leave the earth, not worried if it would rise the next day. The same couldn’t be said for Joan. As she curled up under the imagined protection of the blanket, she tried to sleep.

In the dark, she observed that the river glowed, sparkling in an electric, white light. Unknown to Joan, it was bioluminescence—a phenomenon where tiny organisms living below the water’s surface emit a blue light. The sight spellbound her. As the water moved with the current, spilling to and fro on the bank, the glowing light stuck on the ground, glimmering white and foamy.

Unexpectedly, it hit her. The song—the nursery rhyme—the very first line said, “The white riverbank makes a very good road …”
White riverbank
.
Could it refer to this river?
It gave Joan a sliver of hope, but she grasped it. She would follow the river tomorrow. At least she had a way to go. She wasn’t traveling blindly.

Nestling her head back and feeling somewhat optimistic, she spied the moon through the branches. A full moon. She thought of Duncan. He wouldn’t look at the moon tonight or ever again. She turned away and cried herself to sleep.

In Duncan’s hospital room, Nox stood, honoring him as a hero. Duncan’s parents were there, too. When the loudspeaker in the medical center announced that visiting hours had ended, his parents and Nox left.

Duncan sat in a wheelchair. With a bandage over his left eye and a cast on his left hand, he stared at the full moon out of the large picture window of his luxury hospital room.

Out in the medical center stairwell, Jack peered through a crack in the door, watching Nox and the Starrs leave Duncan’s room. He waited until the hall emptied—no nurses, no doctors, and no witnesses. Slowly, Jack walked out of the stairwell and strolled swiftly through the hall. He paused before Duncan’s door and looked around again. He brushed quietly into Duncan’s room.

Duncan was staring out the window at the moon and didn’t hear Jack enter. His thoughts existed elsewhere. Jack walked up behind the wheelchair-bound figure. At that moment, the reflection in the window revealed Jack’s presence. Duncan turned, and their eyes met.

“Why…?” Duncan sputtered, his anger evident.

“OK, just relax for a minute,” Jack calmed him. “What happened?”

“It was so fast. We got the order to pick her up, so I scripted her to warn her. But she was still there, at the apartment…”

“I know the rest,” Jack said. “I saw it. Everyone saw it.” He shook his head. “I was certain they’d tell me when they decided about whether or not to do the transplant. I thought
we’d have enough time to get her out. Thank goodness you were there. Good call to switch to the TEO instead of the army.”

“For all the good it did her—now she’s out there alone. In the wilderness.” After a minute his frustration came out again. “Jack, I didn’t push her father. I never touched him. I—”

“It’s OK, Duncan, calm down.”

Silence for a few minutes.

Jack commented, “That was close, the dart you shot at her. Very close.”

“Had to make it look good.”

“You did. It unnerved me.” And then, to lighten the mood a little, “I guess you had a good trainer.”

The joke worked, and a smile cracked Duncan’s face.

“What’s the story with the dart? Nox’s dart?”

Duncan smiled, “Oh, I had his gun earlier for a minute, and I tampered with the dart.”

“Smart.”

More silence.

Duncan broke the silence, “Nox was just here.”

“Yeah, I know. I saw him and your parents leave. I think it’s best if you and I lay low for while. Limit our contact. Don’t want to raise suspicions.”

Shaking his head, “He’s here, honoring me as a hero, all in front of my parents, trying to make brownie points. He doesn’t know the real agenda of my parents.”

     
“Does your father regret getting you into Nox’s unit?”

     
“Nah, he knows how I feel about Joan—I mean, about the System. You know how they feel about the System, too.” Changing the subject, “Jack, I think my clothes are there in the closet in a bag. Can you get them?”

Jack walked to the closet and retrieved a bag suspended on a hanger. Inside was the uniform Duncan had worn that day.

Duncan said, “Can you look in one of my socks?”

Jack rummaged through the bag, pulled out a sock, and touched it. Nothing. He looked at Duncan, who motioned him to check the other sock. He felt the other sock and came across something. He reached into the toes and pulled out a computer chip. Jack gazed at it questioningly.

“It’s from her wrist phone,” Duncan explained. “She left it outside the sewer. It has the record of my scripts to her on it.”

Understanding, Jack nodded, “I’ll destroy it.”

“No, I want it. Want to download what’s on it to my phone first.”

Jack handed the chip to him, and Duncan inserted it into his own wrist phone.

“Nox’s heading out after her first thing tomorrow morning. He has some sort of grudge against her. Something personal. He’s smart, very smart.”

Silence again.

“I can get you out, Duncan. We can still follow the plan we had for Joan—for you and Joan.”

Duncan rolled his head back, “Who knows where she is?” he paused, then spit the words out, “She tried to kill me. If I hadn’t had my hand near my head, I’d be dead.” He held up his hand in the cast. “She can throw and aim. She was aiming at me. Nox thinks she was aiming at him, but she was aiming at me. To kill me.”

“She doesn’t know the truth, that you—”

“She tried to kill me,” he almost yelled.

The rock did not just smash his hand and slice his forehead, but it also carved into his heart. The knowledge that the girl he loved tried to kill him wrenched at him.

From the first he met her, her simplicity, guileless, and humility, struck him, like the rock she threw at him. He had been walking across the Center grass as she practiced her long jump. He approached her, intending simply to talk for a minute or two. Aware of her donor status, he winced when she fumbled with a wrist brace, obviously trying to cover her tattoo.
He wanted to assure her it didn’t matter to him, but he said nothing. She exuded a unique courage, tempered by a long-suffering melancholy.

After that first meeting, he sought her out often, making it appear as if their meetings were by chance. He remained careful not to intrude on her apparent anxiety over their difference in status, but he wanted to tell her it didn’t matter to him, mean anything to him.

He and Jack had been working on a plan to get money to Joan—to help her buy a citizenship. The System forbade such financial help, but Duncan hoped his father could pull some strings. There was no rush, he had thought at the time.

But then came the heart transplant.

Reck and Kaleb crawled out of a sewer in the darkness of the ghetto.

“Yuck,” Kaleb exclaimed, as he kicked something next to him on the ground.

“Sh—” Reck warned him.

They had to be careful. Since the riot snatchers patrolled the streets, enforcing a curfew.

“Rats,” Kaleb explained in a whisper.