Lovers of Babel (31 page)

             
I started looking for Chad to see if he was out. Elliot was tending to the townspeople to keep them calm. Finally, I saw Chad standing near a family looking up at the chaos in the air.

             
“Sage! I was beginning to worry when I didn’t see you out here. Where were you?”

             
“I’ll explain in a minute. First, take a look at this.”

             
I handed the firefly to Chad to see what he thought it was.

             
“What kind of firefly is this? It doesn’t look real at all,” Chad said.

             
Then, after looking closer, his mouth dropped open and a grave look crept into his eyes.

             
“What is it!?”

             
“This isn’t a real lightning bug. It looks like a lightning bug drone from the Equinox!”

             
I paused to collect my jumbled thoughts.

             
“Well even if it is, there shouldn’t be anything wrong, right? I mean they use firefly drones back home just to light certain areas.”

             
Chad shook his head.

             
“I can’t believe you’ve never heard about the fly drone conspiracy. They aren’t just used as a light source; they’re used to spy!”

             
My mind was going a million miles a minute. How could I have not thought about this sooner? I knew that lightning bugs had gone extinct after the apocalypse, but it never dawned on me that the ones in Providencia were mechanical.

             
I looked up at the flies that were now buzzing around the village. One firefly flew down and hovered in front of my face. I could tell that it was trying to scan my eye, because there was a faint red beam coming from it.

             
“Sage, close your eyes!”

             
I immediately closed them, but the fly was using its teeth to pry my eye open. I grabbed the bug with my fingers, pulled it off of my eye, threw on the grass and stomped on it.

             
“What do we do? I’m sure the Authorities already know that we’re here,” Chad said.

             
I put my hand on his shoulder and led him aside into an alley where no one could see us.

             
“I have the antivirus. It’s our blood. There’s no time to explain.”

             
I pulled Chad’s vial and the needle from my pocket and opened it.

             
“Here. This needs to be injected back into your bloodstream,” I said.

             
While I was preparing the needle, Chad began asking me questions about how I came across the antivirus.

“It was him wasn’t it? He helped you find it.”

“I told you there’s no time to explain.”

I aggressively stabbed him in the arm with the needle.

“Ouch, Sage!”

“Sorry.”

“You were with him all night weren’t you? I can’t believe you would do that. I know they started being nicer to us after a while, but he’s still the enemy!”

“
Look, we don’t have time to argue about this. We need to get out of here before the Authorities find us and put us in jail!”

As I turned to walk away I bumped right into somebody and jumped back in fright. It was Elliot.

Chad’s face turned deadly.

             
“I think we’ve been trapped. The Authorities are spying on us and God only knows for how long. You can hide out in the basement of my glass blowing shop until we find out what to do next,” Elliot suggested.

             
“Thanks for the offer, but there’s no hiding from the grid Authorities. Once we’ve been tracked, all they have to do is teleport to where we are. Our only option is to run,” I said gravely.

             
Elliott looked at me helplessly. I could tell that he wanted to protect me, but had no idea how. At that moment I wondered what his power was. It was a shame that he was forbidden from using it, because we could’ve used an outsider’s help; especially since he didn’t have a chip. I felt like convincing him to get his antivirus and come with us, but I knew he wouldn’t. I thought maybe I’d return someday, because I might not have anywhere else to go.

             
Then I thought about what was happening back at home. Mia. Oh no, Mia. If they knew where I was, then they would’ve realized that Mia was an imposture.

Chapter 10: Escaping the Grid

             
Back in the Equinox, the nation was in an uproar. The Authorities used giant holograms in the streets to address the city about two escaped fugitives that had gone missing. They commanded that if any citizen were approached by someone who asked to be sequestered in their home, to not let them in or else they would be imprisoned. The entire grid was on lockdown. The Authorities were known to police the streets often, but since Sage and Chad were missing, they increased their surveillance. Every citizen was subject to being searched in public no matter where they were. Mothers picking up their children from daycare had to be full body scanned and finger printed.  Drivers of hover cars had to stop at laser checkpoints in the sky and have their cars searched. The Authorities were using all of their manpower to hunt us down.

             
Mia was panicked. Just a day before Sage and Chad discovered the firefly drones, Amias walked into Sage’s room.

             
“Oh, hi dad,” Mia said startled. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

             
He sat down next to Mia.

             
“Hello, Sage. I just wanted to spend some time with you. I know it’s rare that I have free time, but I wanted to spend it with you, if that’s okay.”

             
“Sure. What do you want to talk about?” Mia said as she scooted over on the bed.

             
“I was just thinking about how we used to take you to the zoo when you were little. Remember that?”

             
“Of course. I loved the zoo.”

             
“And do you remember those monkeys that you liked to watch? You had a name for one of them, the albino, what was it?”

             
Mia shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

             
“Well, geeze dad that was a long time ago. I forgot.”

             
“That’s weird, because I remember you named your pet parrot after it.”

             
She was caught.

             
“Oh, well that was a while ago too. I guess I’m having a hard time remembering,” Mia said nervously.

             
“Oh! I almost forgot, can you give me the spare key that I gave you for the hover car? I seemed to have misplaced mine.”

             
“Um, okay.”

             
Mia walked around my room aimlessly searching for the key. Amias sat on the bed watching her as she fumbled through drawers trying to find the spare key.

             
“I seemed to have lost my mind. I can’t remember what I did with that thing.”

             
Mia turned around to face him and he was standing right behind her. She jumped back in shock.

             
“I know you aren’t Sage. At first you had me fooled, but lately I’ve been watching you. Your demeanor is different than Sage’s. You’ve been staying to yourself a lot lately. Avoiding your mother. Sage usually helps her mom cook, but you haven’t helped in weeks.  So, I went to the grid authority office to do some investigating. I scanned for Sage’s chip and it was nowhere to be found on the grid. Then, I scanned for Sage’s friend’s chips. I know Chad is off the grid by my permission, but then I scanned for you, Mia, only to find you in Sage’s bedroom.”

             
“Mr. Riley, I – please let me explain.”

             
“What you have done is treason. Do you know that?” Amias’s voice was beginning to rise.

             
“Y-yes, b-b-ut,”

             
“Punishable by imprisonment!”

             
He grabbed Mia by her shoulders and shook her.

             
“Now, change back!”

             
Mia immediately transformed back into herself.

             
“Mr. Riley, I’m sorry I did this to help her.”

             
“Where is she?”

             
Mia paused.

             
“TELL ME WHERE SHE IS!”

             
“She went with Chad to find the Book of Wisdom.”

             
Amias’s face turned fire red.

             
“Come with me.”

             
Once Amias discovered that Sage left the grid, he ordered the Authorities to put on a full search for her and Chad. He ordered that close to a million firefly surveillance drones be sent out into the world in search of them.

             
Chad, Elliott, Job and I sat in our living room in silence trying to devise a plan. The only thing that I could think to do was use our powers to escape. At that point, the Authorities already knew we were off the grid, so using our powers wouldn’t do anything but alert them to our position in the world; if they hadn’t already found us.

             
Elliot leaned over toward me and whispered in my ear.

             
“I told my father that you got your powers back. Don’t worry; he’s more concerned about saving our village than us breaking into the barn.”

             
I breathed a sigh of relief. That was one less thing that we had to hide.

             
While Elliot and Job were conversing, I glanced over at Chad who was in deep thought.

             
“We need to teleport away from here. We’re putting these people in danger,” I whispered to him.

             
“We can’t Sage. As soon as we use our powers they’ll come for us and we’ll be goners.”

             
“Well what other choice do we have, sit here and wait for them to find us or try to escape before they can?”

             
We started speaking louder. Job and Elliot got quiet.

             
“Even if we do leave, where will we go? If we go back home, we’ll be right there in the lion’s din,” Chad said.

             
“That’s the place they least expect us to be.”

             
“Still, using our powers will show them exactly where we are. We could try to travel by foot, but who knows how long we’ll last out there.”