Freelancer (10 page)

The enforcement officers formed a square around her, with the officer who had come into the classroom at the front-left corner.
Well, at least they take me seriously.
The guards led her down the hallway toward the principal’s office at a steady march. The sound of their boots stepping down the abandoned hall made Kari feel desperate.
This isn’t going to end well.

Once they reached the principal’s office, they opened the door for her to enter without a word. Kari took a long look outside before stepping in, hoping it wasn’t her last meaningful look at the outside free world.

“Please, have a seat, Miss Tahe,” a man dressed in a suit said invitingly while gesturing to the chair across the desk from him. Kari studied him for a moment before taking the seat. His skin was darker than that of the enforcement officer who had summoned her from class, but it wasn’t as dark as her own. His hair was graying, but his face didn’t seem old enough to match his hair. If he hadn’t had her arrested, Kari supposed she would have thought of him as a nice man at first glance.

“I believe you know why I asked you here,” he said, his voice calm and reassuring, as if this were all simply a formality.

Kari wanted to act innocent but couldn’t find the heart for it. Instead, she just nodded, keeping a high amount of emotion contained inside herself.

“Well, good,” he said with a smile. “Then let me introduce myself. I am Marshal Henderson of the US government.”
Hardly united anymore, though.
“I’m not here to arrest you, Kari.” He smiled. Kari tried not to show a visible reaction but instantly felt a rush of relief. His smile widened a little.

“However, given the events of last night and the unstable nature of the times, I need to ask you to be smart. Please don’t involve yourself in matters in which you do not belong.” Henderson’s voice was amiable as his mouth curled at the edges as if he were talking about something slightly unpleasant.

Why escort me down the hall with four enforcement officers for this?
Something didn’t add up in Kari’s mind.

“Perhaps if enforcement were able to respond in a timely fashion to events, then citizens might not be inclined to become involved,” Kari said.
What are you doing? You practically admitted to everything from last night.

“Enforcement can’t be everywhere at once. Given the current situation, we have found it difficult to respond to all requests.”

Kari wanted to trust him. “Given your resources, you should have been able to stop anything that might have happened last night before it even occurred. I didn’t see any news about other problems here locally on the networks.” Her confidence was rising despite the objections in her mind.

Henderson raised an eyebrow and studied her for a moment. Kari would have been more comfortable if enforcement mechs had locked on to her position with their arm cannons.

“Kari, you are a very talented person.” Henderson was still jolly in appearance, but his voice had a dangerous edge to it now. “I would be lying if I were to tell you that I haven’t been watching you closely over the past year. Since we both seem aware of my resources and of your unique abilities, let us speak frankly to each other.”

Kari nodded her approval.
He’s been watching me for a year? What does he know?
The thought gave her chills.

“We have made a decision to allocate our resources where they best serve the loyal citizens of this country. We do not feel justified in spending time or money on those who would not be thankful for our service or who would likely reject it.”

So that’s it. It’s because they’re Middle Staters.
Kari felt a surge of anger, and this time she wasn’t able to control it.

“So they don’t matter? You were going to let a mob burn their house to the ground because they vote differently from you?”

“Miss Tahe—may I call you such?”

Kari growled her approval.

“In the times that are coming, you may do well to think about which side you invest your energy in. We responded to the call for help when it became apparent that citizens of the United States were being attacked, as is our duty. However, lines are being drawn in the sand. Whether you like it or not, you need to think about which side you are on.”

Was it David’s family being attacked that he responded to or the mob members being attacked by my drones?

“Right now, I’m on the side that keeps houses from being burned down,” Kari said flatly.

“I’m afraid there are only two sides,” Henderson said. “One side is full people who would vote to start a war that will cost innocent lives. One side is willing to break this great Union that so many have died to preserve. One side is selfish enough to believe that trillions of dollars would be better spent on fighting each other than helping the poor. Are you on that side, Kari?”

“No,” Kari said.
I don’t like David’s politics, but what does that have to do with protecting him from injustice?

“Good. I believe in you, Kari. Believe it or not, I want what is best for you. As a sign of my belief in you, I am going to disregard the events of last night. I am also going to withhold any investigation into how or where certain drones came from. I hope you remember this act of trust and friendship in the future.”

Kari nodded again. Nodding acknowledgement was safe; the things she wanted to say to him were not.

“Now that we have that taken care of, I would like to extend you a job opportunity. The US government believes that you would be able to contribute to the safety and privacy of our citizens in a meaningful way. You’d have full autonomy to work on whatever you’d like and the compensation would be unparalleled.”

“I’m not interested.”

“You don’t even want to consider it? Why don’t you take the night to think about it? Talk it over with your mom whenever she is able to come home, and call your dad.”

How closely have you been watching my family, Henderson?

“Sorry. I do only freelance work. I don’t do well with having a boss.”

“I see. Well, I’m glad to have finally have met you in person, Kari. And if you ever change your mind about my offer, be sure to let me know.”

“Is that all, Marshal?” Kari said as she stood to leave.

“Yes. And Kari, think about who’s friend you would like to be,” Henderson said as she left the room.

Kari stepped quickly past the guards who had escorted her. They no longer acknowledged her. Kari headed straight for the exit, but then she realized she had left her bag in the classroom. She changed course while figuring out a way to get her bag from the classroom without the other students noticing her. It was like one of her puzzle simulations.

Before Kari could start to think about what devices she could create to allow her to pull off the impossible task, the bell rang for lunch.
Well, that’ll work.
She hid in the closest bathroom and waited for the classroom to clear. She then walked briskly to retrieve her bag; to her relief, it had not been touched.

Kari walked outside the classroom and straight toward the road. She wouldn’t be able to order an auto-auto to pick her up from school while it was still in session, so she would have to walk to the closest store down the street to order one.

“They let you go, huh?” It was Sarah’s voice.

Kari kept walking.

“Come on, now, we have a right to know what kind of criminal we have in our class.”

Kari started to walk a little faster. Sarah hadn’t harassed her like this for years. Kari remembered from experience that the best way to handle this situation was to just ignore it.

“If they let you go, how come they still have David locked up?”

Kari stopped walking and turned around. Sarah was there with three of her lackeys. She looked extremely pleased to have finally gotten into Kari’s head.

“Why don’t you leave David alone?” Kari asked. “You think this is some kind of joke? This is real life, and we’re not kids anymore, Sarah, so how about you grow up?”

“The thing that I find to be a joke around here is you, Kari,” Sarah said.

“What is this about? Are you having a bad hair day and looking for someone to take it out on?”

“What this is about is you being arrested in the middle of class by armed enforcement officers. You can pretend you’re normal, but we all know the truth. You’re dangerous, and we want to know how dangerous so we can ask to have you removed from our class.”

“Please, do me the favor!” Kari’s heart was pounding, and her fists were clenched. Sarah and her friends had continued to approach her slowly during the argument and were now barely out of her arm’s reach.

“I’m certainly trying to!”

“Hey, Kari!” said Aubrey. Kari and Sarah turned to see her running up along with some of her friends and a few boys. “I heard you got called to the principal’s office. Is everything OK?”

“Called to the office? She was arrested,” Sarah said.

“Oh, hi, Sarah. You look nice today,” Aubrey said, slightly out of breath. “You OK, Kari?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about me, Aubrey,” Kari said, letting her fingers relax out of her fists.

“OK, good,” Aubrey said. “Guess what? Steve asked me to homecoming!” Aubrey pointed at a boy in the group behind her, who waved enthusiastically. Sarah and her friends whispered to each other and then turned and walked away. Kari watched them leave before responding to Aubrey.

“Thanks, Aubrey,” Kari said.

“Call me tonight, OK?”

Early Monday morning, the Middle States announced that they considered the recent sanctions from the United States as acts of war and that they were considering the appropriate response. Kari wasn’t surprised, but she was tired. Lately, sleeping had been a problem she felt was justified. Not everyone was threatened directly by a US marshal when they were only seventeen years old.

The past three days had been long. Kari had checked the clock, news, and drone feeds every five minutes. She wasn’t sure if Henderson would change his mind and come to arrest her or if there would be another attack on David’s house. She hadn’t dared go back to her factory in person, so she had spent her days holed up in her bedroom, waiting for something to happen.

Aubrey called every night to talk and check up on her. Kari appreciated her protective friendship even though Kari wasn’t willing to tell her what was really going on. She didn’t want to risk Aubrey getting dragged into the situation as well. In fact, talking every night was probably enough to get her added to Henderson’s watch list. But Kari had enjoyed hearing about Aubrey’s recent romance with Steve. Aubrey’s excitement about going to the dance was almost contagious. Almost.

Kari hadn’t seen her mom much since the crisis began. Her dad had been scheduled to return a few days ago but hadn’t been able to make it home because of the chaos. As anxious as Kari had been before, she was twice as anxious now, for the fighting was poised to start at any minute. She sensed people were waiting for the official declaration of war to do something stupid.

People are always looking for reasons to be stupid. A civil war would be more than enough for the mob to try another run at David’s house.

Kari monitored the networks closely, waiting for the news that would help her understand how bad the violence would be now that war was all but official. If things were bad for coastal staters in the Middle States, then there would be retaliation against Middle Staters here on the coast. It was a chemical composition waiting for an impetus to get started.

Spending the past few days in lockdown only made her worry about what the past year of being monitored had revealed about her. Was she under constant surveillance, or was Henderson looking only at the typical metadata information? The bigger question was, why was she being watched in the first place? She wasn’t sure who had tipped them off about her talents or how much they knew about her. She was convinced that if they had been watching her for that long, they had to know about her factory. And if they knew about the factory, they already had all the evidence they needed to arrest her.
So why haven’t they?

Despite Henderson’s threats, Kari hadn’t removed the drones from outside David’s house. She had constantly kept a small view of his house in the corner of her vision. David’s family had been remarkably talented at not leaving their home; at times, Kari doubted they were still in there.

Why am I even watching over them? Henderson made it clear that if I were to be involved in any way, he would come for me, and my parents would kill me if Henderson didn’t.

It was the same internal struggle that she had been fighting for three days. It was a battle in which there was no clear winner. David didn’t deserve her help—she knew that much for sure—but he also didn’t deserve to be attacked. She was pretty confident she wouldn’t let a mob burn their house to the ground, but she wasn’t sure what level of threat it would have to be for her to get involved or to what level her involvement would entail. Would it be worth going to jail to keep some sad excuse of a mob from causing significant, non-life-threatening damage?

Kari didn’t usually leave her house during the weekdays, but feeling like she couldn’t leave because she was being watched made the situation different. Aside from watching David’s house and checking the news, she had spent a good amount of time plotting her revenge against Sarah. To Kari’s amazement, Sarah actually appeared to be responsible about securing her network accounts and information. Kari had taken the better part of two and a half days to crack into most of Sarah’s accounts.

Kari had exercised extreme discipline by not going into Sarah’s accounts and posting comments about Sarah’s diarrhea problems or something. That seemed fairly petty and not worth her time. Kari’s time was valuable, and she had spent a lot of it to break into Sarah’s accounts. Kari eventually decided that holding the power over Sarah’s accounts and choosing not to use it was good enough. Given the separation of the states and trying to decide how far she was willing to go to save David’s family, worrying about Sarah was insignificant. Sarah was insignificant.
That’s really the best thing I can possibly do to get back at her. People like her want you to think about them, to care about them, because it’s their motivation. Indifference is the best response.