Prodigy (12 page)

“Day, this is Pascao,” she says to me. “Pascao’s the undisputed leader of our Runners—he’s
been eager to meet you, to put it lightly.”

Pascao holds out a hand to me, his pale eyes fixed intensely on mine. He gives me
a brilliant white smile. “A pleasure,” he says in an excited, breathless rush. His
cheeks flush red as I smile back at him. “Suffice it to say we’ve all heard a great
deal about you. I’m your biggest fan.
Biggest
fan.”

I don’t think anyone’s ever flirted with me so blatantly before, except maybe a boy
I remember from Blueridge sector. “Nice to meet another Runner,” I reply, shaking
his hand. “I’m sure I’ll pick up some new tricks from you.”

He gives me a devilish grin when he sees how flustered I look. “Oh, you’ll like what’s
coming. Believe me, you won’t be sorry for joining up with us—we’re gonna usher in
a whole new era for America. The Republic won’t know what hit it.” He goes into a
series of excited gestures, first spreading his arms wide and then pretending to untie
knots in the air. “Our Hackers spent the last few weeks quietly rewiring things in
Denver’s Capitol Tower. Now, all we have to do is twist a wire on any of the building’s
speakers—and
bam,
we’re broadcasting to the entire Republic.” He claps once and snaps his fingers.
“
Everyone
will hear you. Revolutionary, yeah?”

Sounds like a more elaborate version of what I did in the alley of the ten-second
place, back when I first confronted June in an attempt to get plague cures for Eden.
When I’d done a crude rewiring of the alley’s speakers. But to rewire a capital building’s
speakers to broadcast to the entire Republic? “Sounds like fun,” I say. “What are
we broadcasting?”

Pascao blinks at me in surprise. “The Elector’s assassination, of course.” His eyes
dart to Kaede, who nods, and then he pulls a small rectangular device from his pocket.
He flips it open. “We’re gonna need to record all the evidence, every last detail
as we drag him out of his car and put some bullets in him. Our Hackers will be ready
to go at the Capitol Tower, where they’ve set up the JumboTrons to broadcast the assassination.
We’ll declare our victory over the speakers to the entire Republic. Let’s see them
try and stop that.”

The savagery of the plan sends chills down my spine. It reminds me of the way they’d
taped and broadcasted John’s death—
my
death—to the whole country.

Pascao leans toward me, puts his hand against my ear, and whispers, “That’s not even
the best part, Day.” He pulls away long enough to give me another huge, toothy grin.
“Want to know what the
best part
is?”

I stiffen. “What?”

Pascao crosses his arms in satisfaction. “Razor thinks
you
should be the one to shoot the Elector.”

D
ENVER,
C
OLORADO.

1937
H
OURS.

24°
F.

I
ARRIVE IN THE CAPITAL BY TRAIN (
S
TATION 42
B
) IN THE
midst of a snowstorm, where a crowd has gathered on the train platform to see me.
I peer at them through my frosted window as we slow to a standstill. Even though it’s
freezing cold outside, these civilians are crowded behind a makeshift metal railing,
pushing and shoving one another as if Lincoln or some other celebrity singer had just
arrived. No less than two capital military patrols push back against them. Their muffled
shouts reach me.

“Get back! Everyone’s to move behind the barriers.
Behind
the barriers! Anyone with a camera will be arrested on sight.”

It’s odd. Most of the civilians here seem poor. Helping Day must have given me a good
reputation in the slum sectors. I rub at the thin wires of the paper clip ring on
my finger. A habit I’ve already developed.

Thomas walks over to my aisle and leans over the seats to talk to the soldiers sitting
alongside me. “Take her to the door,” he says. “Quickly.” His eyes flicker to me and
then over the outfit I’m wearing (yellow prison vest, thin white collar shirt). He
acts as though the conversation we had last night in the interrogation room never
happened. I just concentrate on my lap. His face makes me sick to my stomach. “She’ll
be cold out there,” he says to his men. “Make sure she has a coat.”

The soldiers point their guns at me (Model XM-2500, 700m range, smart rounds, can
shoot through two layers of cement), then haul me to my feet. During the train ride,
I’d watched these two soldiers with such intensity that their nerves must be completely
shot by now.

My hand shackles clank together. With guns like that, one hit and I’d likely die of
blood loss no matter where on my torso the bullet struck me. They probably think I’m
planning a way to grab a gun from them when they’re not paying attention. (A ridiculous
assumption, because with my shackles on I have no way of firing the rifle correctly.)

Now they lead me down the aisle and to the end of our train car, where four more soldiers
wait at the open door that leads down to the station platform. A gust of cold wind
hits us and I suck in my breath sharply. I’ve been near the warfront once, back when
Metias and I went on our only mission together, but that was West Texas in the summer.
I’ve never set foot in a city buried in snow like this. Thomas heads to the front
of our little procession and motions for one of the soldiers to drape a coat over
me. I take it gratefully.

The crowd (about ninety to a hundred people) goes completely silent when they see
my bright yellow vest, and as I make my way down the steps I can feel their attention
burning through me like a heat lamp. Most are shivering, thin and pale with threadbare
clothes that can’t possibly keep them warm in this weather, wearing shoes riddled
with holes. I can’t understand it. Despite the cold, they still came out here to see
me
get off a train
—and who knows how long they’ve been waiting. Suddenly I feel guilty for accepting
the coat.

We make it to the end of the platform and nearly into the station’s lobby when I hear
one of the onlookers shouting. I spin around before the soldiers can stop me.

“Is Day alive?” a boy calls out. He’s probably older than I am, barely out of his
teens, but so skinny and short that he could pass for my age if one didn’t pay attention
to his face.

I lift my head and smile. Then a guard hits him across the face with the butt of his
rifle, and my own soldiers grab my arms and force me back around. The crowd breaks
into an uproar; shouts instantly fill the air. In the midst of it all, I hear a few
call out,
“Day lives! Day lives!”

“Keep moving,” Thomas barks. We push into the lobby and I feel the cold air cut abruptly
off as the door shuts behind us.

I didn’t say anything, but my smile was enough.
Yes. Day is alive.
I’m sure the Patriots will appreciate my enforcing this rumor for them.

We make our way through the station and into a trio of waiting jeeps. As we leave
the station and head onto an arching freeway, I can’t help gaping at the city that’s
streaming past my window. You usually need a good reason to come to Denver. No one
but native civilians are allowed in without specific permission. The fact that I’m
here and getting a glimpse of the city’s interior is unusual. Everything’s smothered
under a blanket of white—but even through the snow I can see the faint outline of
a vast dark wall that traps Denver like giant levees against floodwaters. The Armor.
I read about it during grade school, of course, but to see it with my own eyes is
something different. The skyscrapers here are so tall that they disappear into the
fog of snow-laden clouds, each terraced level covered in thick sheets of snow, each
side secured with giant metal support beams. Between buildings, I catch glimpses of
the Capitol Tower. Now and then I see spotlights sweeping through the air and helicopters
circling the skyscrapers. At one point, four fighter jets streak by above us. I pause
to admire them for a moment (they’re X-92 Reapers, experimental aircrafts that haven’t
gone into production outside the capital yet; but they must have passed their test
runs if the engineers trust them to soar right over the center of downtown Denver).
The capital is every bit the military city Vegas is, and is even more intimidating
than I’d imagined.

Thomas’s voice snaps me back to reality. “We’re taking you to Colburn Hall,” he says
from the jeep’s front passenger seat. “It’s a dining hall in the Capital Plaza where
the Senators sometimes convene for banquets. The Elector dines there frequently.”

Colburn? From what I’ve heard, that’s a
very
fancy meeting spot, especially considering how I was originally meant to stay at
the Denver penitentiary. This must all be new info for Thomas, too. I don’t think
he’s ever been inside the capital, but like a good soldier, he doesn’t waste any time
gawking at the scenery. I find myself anxious to see what the Capital Plaza’s like—if
it’s as large as I’ve imagined. “From there my patrol will leave you behind, and you’ll
be passed along to one of Commander DeSoto’s patrols.”
Razor’s patrols,
I add to myself. “The Elector will meet you in the Hall’s royal chamber. I suggest
you behave appropriately.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I reply, smiling coldly at Thomas’s reflection in the rearview
mirror. “I’ll be sure to give him my best curtsy.” In reality, though, I’m starting
to feel nervous. The Elector is someone I’ve been taught to revere since birth, someone
I thought I’d never hesitate to give my life for. Even now, even after everything
I know about the Republic, I still feel that deep-rooted commitment trying to resurface,
a familiar blanket I want to wrap myself with. Strange. I didn’t feel this when I
heard about the Elector’s death, or when I saw Anden’s first televised speech. It’s
been hidden until now, when I’m only a few hours from seeing him in person.

I’m not the prized prodigy I was when we first met. What will he think of me?

*   *   *

C
OLBURN
H
ALL,
R
OYAL
D
INING
C
HAMBER.

It echoes in here. I sit alone at one end of a long table (twelve feet of dark cherrywood,
hand-carved legs, ornate gold trim probably painted on with a fine-detail millimeter
brush), my back straight against the chair’s red velvet cushioning. Far against the
opposite wall, a fireplace crackles and pops, with a giant portrait of the new Elector
hanging above it, and eight gold lamps light the sides of the chamber. Capital patrol
soldiers are
everywhere
—fifty-two line the walls, shoulder to shoulder, and six stand at attention to either
side of me. It’s still bitterly cold outside, but in here it’s warm enough for the
servants to have clothed me in a light dress and thin leather boots. My hair has been
washed, dried, and brushed, and it falls straight and shining down to the middle of
my back. It’s been adorned with strands of tiny cultivated pearls (easily worth two
thousand Notes apiece). At first I admire them with ginger touches—but then I recall
the poor people gathered at the train station in their threadbare clothes, and I pull
my fingers away from my hair, disgusted with myself. Another servant had dabbed translucent
powder across my eyelids so they gleam in the low firelight. My dress, a creamy white
accented by stormy grays, flows down to my feet in layers of chiffon. The inner corset
makes me short of breath. An expensive dress, no doubt; fifty thousand Notes? Sixty?

The only things that seem out of place in this picture are the heavy metal shackles
that bind my ankles and wrists, chaining me down to my chair.

A half hour passes before another soldier (wearing the distinctive black-and-red coat
of the capital’s patrols) enters the chamber. This one holds the door open, stands
at attention, and lifts his chin. “Our glorious Elector Primo is in the building,”
he announces. “Please rise.”

He tries to look like he’s talking to no one in particular, but I’m the only one sitting.
I push up from my chair and stand with a clink of my chains.

Five more minutes pass. Then, just as I’m starting to wonder whether anyone’s going
to come at all, a young man steps quietly through the door and nods to the soldiers
at the entrance. The guards snap to a salute. I can’t salute with these shackled hands,
and I can’t bow or curtsy properly either—so I just stay the way I am and face the
Elector.

Anden looks almost exactly like he did when I first met him at the celebratory ball—tall
and regal and sophisticated, his dark hair tidy, his evening coat a handsome charcoal
gray with gold pilot stripes on the sleeves and gold epaulettes on the shoulders.
His green eyes are solemn, though, and there’s a very slight slouch to his shoulders,
as if a new weight had settled there. It seems as though his father’s death has affected
him after all.

“Sit, please,” he says, holding a white gloved hand (condor flight gloves) out in
my direction. His voice is very soft, but still carries in the large room. “I hope
you’ve been comfortable, Ms. Iparis.”

I do as he says. “I have. Thank you.”

Once Anden has seated himself at the other end of the table and the soldiers have
all gone back to their regular stances, he speaks again. “I received word that you
requested to see me in person. I imagine you don’t mind wearing the clothes I’ve provided.”
He pauses here for a split second, just enough time for a coy smile to light up his
features. “I thought you might not want to spend dinner in a prison uniform.”

There’s something patronizing about his tone that grates on my nerves.
How dare he dress me like a doll?
an indignant part of me thinks. At the same time, I’m impressed by his air of command,
his ownership of his new status. He has suddenly come into power, a great deal of
it, and he wears it so confidently that my old feelings of loyalty press heavily against
my chest. The uncertainty he’d once had is quickly disappearing. This man was born
to rule.
Anden seems to have developed an attraction to you,
Razor had told me. So I tilt my face down and look up at him through my lashes. “Why
are you treating me so well? I thought I was an enemy of the state now.”

“I would be ashamed to treat our Republic’s most famous prodigy like a prisoner,”
he says as he carefully straightens his forks, knives, and champagne glass into perfect
alignment. “You don’t find this unpleasant, do you?”

“Not at all.” I glance around the chamber again, memorizing the positions of the lamps,
the wall décor, the location of each soldier, and the weapons they carry. The elaborate
elegance of this encounter makes me realize that Anden hasn’t arranged the dress and
the dinner just to be flirtatious.
He wants news about how well he’s treating me to leak to the public,
I think.
He wants people to know that the new Elector is taking good care of Day’s savior.
My initial distaste wavers—this new thought intrigues me. Anden must be very aware
of his poor public reputation. Perhaps he’s hoping for the people’s support. If that’s
the case, then he’s taking pains to do something that our last Elector cared little
about. It also makes me wonder: If Anden is actually looking for public approval,
what does he think of Day? He certainly won’t win people over by announcing a manhunt
for the Republic’s most celebrated criminal.

Two servants bring out trays of food (a salad with real strawberries, and exquisitely
roasted pork belly with hearts of palm), while two others place fresh white cloth
napkins across our laps and pour champagne into our glasses. These servants are from
the upper class (they walk with the signature precision of the elite), although probably
not of the rank that my family had.