inDIVISIBLE (5 page)

He propped his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, his head downcast, his hair looking
almost golden in the shadows. The highlights from the beach had intensified, probably due to all the training he did on the track, the sun beating down on his bronzed skin, stealing away the pigment from his hair. It looked good on him though, making him seem healthy and vibrant. What I didn’t like, however, was the tension. The carelessness that used to play on his lips had vanished. The humor that had spilled forth had been dammed. I waited until I thought my heart would explode before I asked, “What’s going on, T?”

He cleared his throat. “
We didn’t know it, but we were spying on everyone around us, every one of us that went to Europe became a spy.”

I squatted beside him, tried to capture his gaze but he kep
t it focused on the pine needles below.

“What are you saying
?”

He scrubbed his fingers th
rough his hair and raised his head. “We were modified, Brynn. The sensors in our hands were removed and replaced with devices that allowed the Alliance to listen to everything we say, everything said to us.”

I fell back in the dirt and raised my hand to my mouth, motioning for silence.
If what he said was true, they could track our exact location while listening to us to see when we noticed their approach—

“The jammer stops the transmitting
.” He pointed to the object I held. “As long as you have that, they can’t hear us.”

“
I’ve been implanted with a listening device?” I felt violated and angry. They’d heard all my poetic ramblings, my complaints against my advisors, my conversations with my father … my chest felt heavy, and I dropped down to my butt in the dirt.

He nodded.
“We were all bugged.”

             
Bugged.
“Why?”

“
That’s what the Alliance does when they perceive a threat.”

“How am I a threat
?”

He shook his head.
“Not you.”

A fog descended on my thoughts, clouding everything I believed. I sorted and tossed informati
on around in my head until the truth stood clear—the truth I’d found moments earlier. My bottom lip twitched. “My father.” I stood, stomped, groaned. “Why my father? Did they think he was working with the terrorists who killed him?”

T pulled me to his side, sat me on the log and took his place in front of me, kneeling in the brush.
“I have to tell you something, Brynn, and it won’t be easy.”

“And it’s been easy to this point?”

He shrugged. “Considering …”

My fingertips whitened on the jammer and I licked my lips. “You’re scaring me.”

“I’m afraid there’s no other way to do it …” He scratched the back of his neck and said, “Terrorists did not kill your father.”

I reached for my PCA before I remembered
we’d left it hanging in my backpack. “The news reports—”

“Are lies,” he finished.

“I don’t understand.” I stood and eased around him so I could walk and think. “If it wasn’t terrorists, who was it?”

“The Alliance.”

I shook my head. “There were ten men killed.”

“
Fourteen,” he corrected.

“Four were terrorists—”

“Four took the fall so the Alliance could take out a bigger threat.”

“I saw their pictures, T. I saw those men in video surveillance as they shot my father.”

“It’s simple video editing,” he said.

I sat back on the log and stared into the trees, seeing nothing but the video over and over in my mind. The terrorists had broken in and commanded my dad to a kneeling position, hands on the back of his head. He’d complied without a word, his eyes darting once to his computer before the hole opened in his forehead.
The men had worn black masks, had been too slender, too ‘trained.’ But did that mean they worked for the Alliance? Maybe they’d just gotten the wrong men …

“The pictures they showed of the ‘terrorists’ were taken during everyday surveillance, not during the deaths at the Alliance building, but the videos of the drones taking out the ‘terrorists’ were untouched executions of innocent men,” T said.

              “But they worked
for
the Alliance.”

“Which made them more dangerous.”

“But—”

T placed his finger over my lips, stilling them. Slowly, he lowered his finger,
watching my lip flutter as his finger fell.

“
Don’t you think your father would have become suspicious if they’d planted something in him?”

I nodded.

“But you two were close. He told you things, mentioned names from the office.”

I recalled the n
ames of the men I’d heard mixed in our dinner conversations. All were dead, victims the same day as my father. Some from the “terrorists” while others were dead from the vengeance upon the “terrorists”. I tried to wrap my head around the information, but he didn’t give me time. He pushed ahead like he was afraid he wouldn’t get it all out, or didn’t have time to explain the details.

“Remember Kamp?”

I nodded. He was the blond kid who went to Europe with us, the one who couldn’t stop flirting long enough to learn any history.

“He’s dead. His father is dead and his mother has been sent to work in the factories in Section Twelve.”

“Why?”

T grimaced.
“Remember what he said that night on the beach?”

I remembered. It had nearly started a fight amidst our group until T had
diffused it. For someone who bragged up his party life, Kamp had turned out to be a mean and angry drunk. “He talked about a revolt, a group in Section Nine but we all know he was just talking.”

“Was he?” T asked.

“Of course—” but I didn’t know. How could I know when everything I knew came from the schools and the carefully worded codes my father had shared? Besides, why would anyone want to revolt? Unless what T said was true about the Alliance carrying out the murders at the City Center, making up terrorists to excuse more killing—

“Alcohol creates free speech,” T said. “Why do you think they offered
us so much?”

I tried to remember what I’d said that night, how we’d behaved, losing ourselves in drinks and our first real taste of freedom.
I’d said things to T I’d never want repeated, done things on that beach I wouldn’t want anyone listening to. I had a right to my privacy and I wanted it back. I dropped my head into my hands and shook my head as the truth dawned more dark and ugly than I could have ever imagined. “They wanted us to talk, to implicate ourselves—our families.”

He stood and walked
in a circle. “Exactly.”

“And we
did—we gave them everything they needed to put them on watch lists, to order hits to take them out of society.”

“They were on watch lists long before the trip or the Alliance wouldn’t have wasted their time on us.”

“But the things we said, they didn’t help.”

“
They didn’t help them and they won’t help us either.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying we need to remember what we gave them on us,” T said.

A shock tore through my spine
. I recalled bits of our conversation as we watched the waves beat the shore in Greece. The white sands had been so comforting, the ocean a buffer against the structure of One United. We’d said as much, mused aloud at how we could escape that life, live as my father wanted … as I wanted. “It’s my fault, T. I should have realized.”

He came back to me and clutched my hands
, his tanned skin couldn’t hide the rage that filled him, the anger he fought so hard to keep just below the surface. “You didn’t plant the bug. You didn’t shoot your father.”

My hands felt limp in his, lifeless.
“But I gave them the information they needed to carry it through.”

A bird chirped and T hesitated.
“You have to believe me when I tell you that they already had enough information or we wouldn’t have gone to Europe. All they wanted was to see how far that attitude had already spread, see how many they’d have to take out to do damage control.”

“Why not just take us out to begin with?”

“Because you have something they want too, a reason they want you alive.”

“What’s that?”

He shrugged. “That’s what we need to figure out.”

“Yours?” I asked.

“I was slated to compete in the World Olympics.”

             
“
Was
?”

H
e now offered the bandaged hand, unwrapped the white linen carefully until he revealed a gash in the webbing between his thumb and first finger. “I removed it, Brynn. They can’t track me anymore.”

I
caught my lip between my teeth and flipped the bandage back around the wound. “They’ll kill you for this, T.”

“I’m a
lready on their kill list.” His whispers grew urgent, his hands pressing harder into mine. “My best friend died in a car accident on the way to track practice, in the same vehicle I was supposed to be in. My room was ransacked at the training facility and a man with a gun chased me through the darkened streets near my home until I found a piece of broken glass and dug that tracker out, leaving it in the alley for him to find.”

My heart pounded relentlessly and a fine sheen of sweat covered my forehead. “Without your sensor, you can’t buy
food. You have nowhere to live; and what if that becomes infected? You know how bad infections can be.”

Again, he placed his fingertip on my lips. It quieted my words but did not remove the panic.

“I need you to stay calm when I tell you, Brynn, that
it’s time to remove your sensor too because you’re next. You’re on their kill list too.”

I backed away from his fingertip, shook my head. “I can’t be. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Your father spoke openly to you.”

“Not in the house, in th
e woods where nobody could hear—” my words faded as my eyes fell to the jammer in my hand. “They were listening, weren’t they?”

He nodded and came
closer, placing his hand lightly on my arm. “They’ve been listening to every word since we were outfitted for international travel.”

I took his hand again, flipped the bandage open. “Did it hurt?”

“Like the devil.”

“Then how?”

“Grit your teeth when you realize there’s no other way out.”

I pulled my hands away and T wrapped the bandage around the open wound. “It’s the only way they’ll let you go—not being able to find you.”

“And how did you get away?” I asked. “You live in Section Six. You couldn’t travel without that—thing.”

“Not on conventional roads,” he said. “But if you know the
countryside …”

“You could get picked up for being off the approved trails.”

“Only if they catch me.”

I folded my arms over my chest and asked, “How long have I got?”

He looked away, watched the leaves sway before he answered, “I don’t know. It could be tomorrow, could be a month from now, but they’ll come for you.”

“So what do I do?” I asked.

T rubbed my arms. “Run away with me.”

I laughed. “Right.”

He nearly smiled. “I’m serious. We’ll find a place to live where the Alliance won’t touch us. Out of their hands, we’ll be free.”

“What about my mother?”

“She’s a Citizen, isn’t she?” he asked.

I nodded. “She’s never broken a single rule, doesn’t complain …”

“Then she’ll be fine, but you have to realize that the longer you stay, the more you put her in jeopardy too.”

“Because they’ll assume we talk,” I said, “even if they don’t hear it.”

T nodded. “I want you to go with me, but I can’t wait too long before I attract attention here. I don’t want to rush you either, so take a few days … you know where to find me if you decide to leave.”

T led me back toward the trail, to my pack stashed in the bushes but before we reached it, I asked, “How do you know about the kill list?”

He hesitated. “I have a feeling.”

“A feeling?”

“It’s real, Brynn. Just think about it. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

CHAPTER 7

Sleeping became a chore. I lay in bed staring at the faint bit of moonlight streaming through the glass that marked the center of our home, and I wondered if T was warm enough, safe enough. Strange how I now wondered about safety
from
the Alliance when my whole life I’d been convinced I was safe only because of the Alliance.