Slip (The Slip Trilogy Book 1) (18 page)

The nightmare is persistent, even when she tries sleeping pills, sleeping in different positions, at different times. A nap during the day will result in the same terror-filled dream:

Her son ripped from his bed by harsh hands that think of him as something deadly, something dangerous, something evil. They throw him to the floor, kick at him. He’s screaming and calling for “Daddy!” but, according to Michael, he’d gone for a night swim when it happened. Sometimes she wishes her husband had been there, too, which she knows is a terrible thought.

When the boy struggles, the Hunters laugh. One of them raises a black weapon and the boy freezes, his eyes wide and beautiful and full of the fear that she’s tried to shield him from since he was born.

BOOM!

And that’s when she wakes up screaming. Whether it’s the nightmares themselves, or the lack of sleep that results, it eventually unhinges her. All she knows is that the days begin to blend together until they don’t exist anymore, until time is nothing but the space between bad dreams.

She doesn’t know how long it takes before the nightmares come during the day, too, when she’s not even sleeping. They’re so vivid and so terrifying that she screams and screams and screams, until her voice becomes a hoarse whisper. When screaming doesn’t work, she tries to climb the walls to escape the images. When Michael returns from work, he sees the claw marks, but doesn’t say anything. She pretends they don’t exist. When the strips of peeled paint don’t disappear like they should, she pretends she doesn’t exist. Sometimes that helps.

It isn’t until Harrison stops going near her that she realizes how bad things have gotten. But sometimes knowledge is an illusion, something written in books that cannot be recreated in real life. Janice can’t seem to veer from the path she’s on, even for her other son’s sake. The one who’s still alive.

Even when they lock her up. Even when he runs away from her.

And when she whispers the truth about his brother to him just before the padded door closes, the look he gives her breaks her heart into thousands of jagged irreparable pieces.

I don’t know you, his look says.

“NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!” she screams, clawing at her hair with one hand while pounding the bed with the other. “Leave. Me. ALONE!”

She sits, panting, her shirt drenched in sweat and sticking to her back, waiting for the memory—the bad, bad memory—to return. Instead, she hears a noise.

A click.

And then the door starts to open.

The face that fills the gap charges her with an emotion she hasn’t felt in many years:

Joy.

~~~

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(a series of images flash by: a uniformed soldier piloting a drone; an explosion; two Hispanic-looking guys with their hands above their heads.)

Speak “Strong borders” into your holo-screen to change your life.

Be Border Strong.

This advertisement paid for by the Department of Population Control.

E
veryone’s already up when Benson awakes the next morning. Subconsciously, he runs his fingers across each other, where Luce’s hands held his. His lips form a smile at the memory. Although it feels like a dream, because of the tingle on his skin he knows last night was as real as anything he’s ever experienced.

As if he’s been punched in the gut, however, the smile washes away with the memory of Luce’s story. She’s seen and experienced horrible, horrible things. But she survived and escaped. Even still, he knows she’ll never truly escape what she witnessed—what almost happened to her.

His next thought is: What’s Check going to say when he finds out they held hands twice now? Does he have to tell him? Benson knows the answer is yes, but his mind cycles through possible excuses not to, none of which are valid.

As if on cue, his friend says, “Hey Bense, you’re missing everything.” The holo-screen is on in the background, the volume unmuted, but still not loud enough to hear from across the room. He can, however, read the headline:

Pop Con Lieutenant Sacked

“Mars is out,” Check says.

Benson drags himself to his feet and staggers to the couch, slumping into the last available space, between Gonzo and Rod. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes. “Where are Luce and Geoffrey?” he asks, his eyes darting around the room and finding the two missing.

“Off on an early morning Pick,” Check says. “She was in such a hurry she barely looked at me.”

“That’s because she didn’t want to see your ugly face,” Rod says. “
Repugnante!
”

“And she was in a hurry because your morning breath is so foul,” Gonzo adds.

“
Repugnante!
” Rod reiterates.

“Jealousy is a sad thing,” Check says, which sends guilt thumping in Benson’s heart.
Luce held my hand
, he thinks, trying out the words in his head. They sound so good to him, but he knows they’ll be like poisonous darts to his best friend’s ears.

Putting off the inevitable conversation, Benson turns his attention to the holo-screen. A video of two security bots escorting Corrigan Mars from the Pop Con building runs repeatedly, as analysts speculate as to what sort of infraction he might have committed. The last shot is of him smiling back at the building, which is both weird and creepy. “Unbelievable,” Benson says, thinking of his father right away. His father’s been working with Mars for over a decade, why would he sack him now?

“Yeah, I’d suggest celebrating,” Check says, “but I’ve got a feeling his replacement will be just as awful.” Benson nods and the story flips over to a different angle of the same building. A guy dressed in Hunter gear approaches a door manned by a single security bot. There’s something strange about him, like he’s not symmetrical. A cyborg, he realizes, with a metal arm and leg and strips of metal on his face and skull. He walks with a confident stride. No, a swagger. Like he’s untouchable, unbreakable.

The camera zooms in to show the bot scanning the cyborg Hunter’s eyes. Stiffly, the machine steps across the door, blocking it. Benson leans in, trying to listen to the story over the noise from some argument that’s broken out between Gonzo and Rod about who can do more pushups.

A clear burst of audio comes through the speakers:

“What the hell?” the cyborg says.

“Domino Destovan, your employment with the Department of Population Control has been terminated. Please step away from the door and vacate the area immediately.” The bot’s voice is emotionless.

The cameraman is in the perfect position to get a side shot of the guy’s expression, which instantly changes from a smug grin to an angry glare. “I demand to speak to someone,” he growls. His muscles are tensed, his hands fisted. He looks like he’s ready to smash through the security bot.

“If you have a concern, please speak ‘Pop Con operator’ into your holo-screen.” The security bot remains in front of the door.

The cyborg’s chest fills with air and then he lets it out slowly, as if considering what to do. He nods, as if making a decision. His fists tighten so much that the camera operator is able to catch the whitening of the Hunter’s knuckles on his human hand. Clearly someone must’ve tipped the camera operator off about what was about to go down.

A long moment passes with the cyborg and bot motionless, so that it almost looks as if the video has frozen. But then the cyborg erupts into movement, his entire body working together. His stance widens, his left hand rears in front of him defensively, and his right arm—the metal one—pulls back, winding up, going for a haymaker punch.

You’d have to be crazy to take a swing at a security bot.

There’s a sudden squeal of tires and an aut-car slides to a stop next to the cyborg, who pauses in mid-punch, arching his eyebrows and staring at the car. Benson’s lips curl into a smile; this jerk’s about to get a beat down. The door opens and there’s a shout from the car. “Get in!” The Hunter hesitates for the barest of seconds, before striding to the vehicle and sliding in, the door slamming behind him. With the roar of an engine, the car zooms off.

Benson stares blankly at the screen. What the hell just happened? “Did you see that?” he says to no one in particular.

“I could do more pushups with one arm than you could do with two,” Rod says.

“That’s what your momma said to me last night,” Gonzo says, which doesn’t seem to make sense in the context of the argument. Check is laughing so loudly he’s snorting.

Hopeless, Benson thinks. “You’ve seen this story already, yeah?” Benson says. His friends are typical news junkies; even they would pause their fighting to watch a breaking news bite.

“Only about twelve times,” Check says. “Rod thinks the cyborg wasn’t really fired, and that the government has bigger plans for him. Gonzo thinks Rod’s an idiot, and that the cyborg will be broken down for parts, living out the rest of his life as a one-armed, one-legged street beggar.”

“What do you think?” Benson asks.

“I think this Domino Destovan character has some good friends who didn’t want to see him get hurt,” Check says.

His friend could’ve slapped him and it wouldn’t have stung any more.
Good friends
…slap!
Get hurt
…slap! For a split-second he wonders if Luce already came clean and told Check about what happened between them. But no, his friend is grinning at Rod and Gonzo, who have dropped onto all fours, doing pushups in tandem, counting together.

While they’re distracted, he should just tell Check what happened.
I held hands with Luce. Luce held hands with me. We…like each other. I’m sorry, Check. So sorry. It’s not like I planned it.

His mouth opens, he licks his lips, says, “I—”

The volume jumps sharply, booming from the speakers. “Although an official Pop Con statement released earlier this morning claims their analysts haven’t made further progress on identifying the Slip, we have just received contradicting information from an anonymous source.”

“Stupid malfunctioning holo-screen,” Check mutters. “Volume, ten percent.” Benson and Check are on the edge of their seats, waiting to hear what the anonymous source says about the Slip investigation. Even Rod and Gonzo stop their pushup battle to watch and listen.

The reporter, a silver-haired man with a bronze tan and artificially smooth skin, pauses for effect and then says, “Our source claims the Slip is a teenager.”

“Crap,” Check says.

“No way,” Rod says.

Gonzo drops, does another pushup, and says, “
Victoria!
”

Benson just gapes at the screen, wondering how this could’ve happened on his father’s watch. His heart skips a beat. A teenager? Wait, it couldn’t mean…could it?

“Although Pop Con analysts are still trying to determine the exact age of the Slip, they’re fairly certain it’s a male between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. Our source has promised us exclusive information as the investigation progresses.”

As the news returns to the unexpected firing of Corrigan Mars and Domino Destovan, Gonzo and Rod continue arguing, and Benson and Check look at each other. “Heads are gonna roll,” Check says.

“What do you mean?” Benson says. A grotesque image of his father holding his own head in his hands pops into his head. He cringes and blinks it away.

Check gawks at him like he’s the one holding his own head. “A
teenage
Slip? Letting an Unauthorized Being get this far is a disaster. Not only will it encourage others to risk unauthorized births with the hope that they’ll slip through the cracks in the system, but it undermines the authority of the government. It also proves that the delicate population balance isn’t so delicate after all. I mean, no one starved because of one lousy Slip. In fact, it’s more likely that the Slip has been struggling to feed himself all these years.”

Benson chews on his friend’s words. Does one illegal kid really mean that much? And how did his father manage to miss this one? Unless… The memory of the first time he saw his father get drunk rises to the surface of his mind. It was just after they caught the last Slip, the five-year-old girl. A burst of loneliness explodes in his chest. How could he have kept so many secrets from the five people he trusts more than anything? He has the desire to spill his guts, to tell them everything, including his suspicions about what he really is, starting with how he and Luce held hands.

The door opens and Luce walks in, trailed closely by Geoffrey. Their eyes meet and his lips quiver as he tries—and fails—to suppress his grin. She smiles, too, her eyes sparkling like blue diamonds.

“Hey, Luce,” Check says. She flinches, as if only just noticing that Benson’s not the only one in the room.

Benson understands exactly. The thrill of seeing her for the first time since the previous night fizzles in Benson’s chest, because he realizes that when she walked in, the entire room disappeared and it was just them. He made his friends disappear.

He looks at his hands, ashamed.

“Uh, hey,” she says.

“Any luck?” Check asks. There’s a thud as Rod and Gonzo’s argument transitions into a full-on wrestling match.

Benson feels her eyes boring into the side of his head, but he can’t bring himself to meet her gaze.

There’s an awkward silence, but then Geoffrey says, “Aw man, you should’ve seen it! We Picked one rich old woman when she was screaming at her valet, then a guy the second he stepped from his aut-car, and finished by pulling the old trip-’n-Pick on a businessman in a twenty-thousand-dollar suit. Total take was eight hundred.”

Gonzo manages to squeeze from the headlock Rod’s got him in for long enough to say, “Rock on,
pequeno amigo
.”

Check says, “Beautiful
and
talented.” Everyone in the room knows he’s not talking about Geoffrey. Benson’s cheeks feel like they’re about to spontaneously combust. He finds a hangnail that’s particularly interesting and tries to focus on that.

“Breaking news,” the reporter says, pulling everyone’s attention to the screen. His Picking conquests momentarily forgotten, Geoffrey sits cross-legged on the floor. Luce flops down between Benson and Check, the hand on Benson’s side so close, easily within touching distance. In a perfect world, he’d reach out and grab it. But then he sees that her other hand is in her lap, almost reaching across to her other side, as if purposely keeping it as far away from Check as possible.

Benson tries to focus on the screen, where the same silver-haired reporter is reading notes that a mechanical arm has only just placed in front of him.

“A credible anonymous source claims to know the identity of the Slip, or at least the false identity illegally created in the Pop Con system. As I’m sure all of our viewers know, UnBees and Slips do not legally have names or identities.” The reporter lets that sink in, still scanning his notes. Benson feels Luce’s fingers graze his thigh. He jerks his head to see if Check noticed, but his full attention is on the reporter.

His eyes meet Luce’s and a thousand words seem to pass between them, sending Benson’s thoughts swirling like a tornado.

The reporter continues, drawing Benson away from his muddled mind. “There’s no real photo in the system for the Slip, although there’s a doctored image that’s clearly a fake. That’s one of the warning flags that were raised during a random auto-scan that specifically seeks to identify potential Slips.” Clearly the reporter is trying to draw out the story, withholding the name until the moment of maximum suspense.

“Out with it,” Check mutters. He glances at Benson, who pretends not to notice, thankful that Luce’s hand is safely away from his thigh.

“Authorities believe the Slip is sixteen years old, the oldest Slip ever identified,” the reporter continues, building up the facts like he’s constructing a tower out of toy blocks.

“Bot-lickers,” Geoffrey says. “He’s as old as you guys.”

“Language, Geoff,” Lucy warns.

Benson doesn’t admit he was thinking the exact same thing.

“The name was created eight years ago and pinned to a retina ID. According to our source, the retina ID is assumed to be fake, as well as the name.”