cards and display permits. I don’t understand why. It’s not like someone could sneak into the Goodgrounds, start growing corn, and then show up to sell it here.
There’s no buying and selling in the Goodgrounds. The people work the jobs they’re told, and in return the Thinkers provide them with necessities. This market is trade only, and the Citizens are allowed to bring only whatever’s left over after the government has taken what they need to sustain their population.
No, the Greenies are here to make an example of someone. I’m determined that it not be me.
I slip down the rows of wares, pausing briefly at a teched-out stand displaying silver spheres and cubes and all manner of things I can’t even begin to imagine.
Pace could though, and he’d kill to get his hands on this technology. My hands twitch, desperate to pilfer some of this and bring it back to him in the Badlands. Of course I’d have to hold on to it for a while, since I don’t exactly know where he is at the moment. But he shows up from time to time, always looking well fed and happy to see me.
“Over here,” someone says, and I tear myself away from the tech booth. The familiar voice came from between two stalls, and I don’t even think before stepping into the space.
“Brother-man,” Irvine Blightingdale says, shaking my hand. His engulfs mine, and looks twice as dark as my heavily tanned one. I quickly pull my long sleeves down to hide my incriminating skin after he releases me.
“Irv,” I say, “how long have you been here?”
“Couple of minutes. I knew you’d get all trapped up in that tech.” His shoulders shake with laughter, but no sound comes out.
“Yeah, well.” I scan the area behind us, which is just the back of two more huts. “I was thinking that I could leave my wares in that stand,” I say. “No distribution required. But there are Greenies here.”
“Yeah, I seen ’em,” he says.
“Did you gather what you need?” I ask. I’ll be sending him to the Southern Region in another week or two. Irv is killer with tech, and the Resistance hopes he’ll be able to find a place in a city to set up a safe house.
He leans closer and catches me off guard with his newly enhanced green eyes. I’m still not used to them. “Got it.”
“Nice,” I say. “Stage two in effect. Did you meet with Bower?”
“Stage two,” Irv confirms. “And yes. Bower’s a go. He’ll join me down south in a few weeks.” He looks over my shoulder. I follow his gaze, and shrink back into the shadows. Two Greenies stand in the market path, looking at palm readers and shaking their heads.
“Better get rid of that tech,” Irv whispers. I scoot around the back of the stand after him and out of sight of the Greenies. My heart pounds, but I don’t feel scared. The adrenaline is a sign that I’m doing something besides looking at plans and blueprints. Something besides sitting in meetings and asking people questions.
Something.
I try to assign myself to field missions, but it’s been getting harder, what with bringing the Oceanic cities on board and increasing recruitment efforts across the Association. I can’t be everywhere, doing everything.
But I can come to the Goodgrounds. No one’s better at that than me. Not even Indy, though she likes to think so.
I smile at the thought of her, but it’s almost sad. She’d broken up with me last week when she saw Sloan dancing with me. “With” isn’t even the right word. More like “near.”
I tried to explain, but Indy didn’t want to hear it. She said my “killer voice” couldn’t save me this time.
I’d assigned her to management duty while I took this mission, just to get away. That, and Gavin had said I’d find something here. Something huge.
I don’t think she meant in the dregs of the trade marketplace behind an endless swath of booths. But I could be wrong.
In fact, behind these booths is the absolute safest place for me as the sirens start.
“Rendezvous one,” Irv calls, sprinting into the fray of bodies scrambling down the path.
I run in the opposite direction, but stop short at the sight of two board-reading Greenies. They see me, and I reach up to pull my hat lower.
My hat is gone.
One of them, a bald one, raises his reader, and I’m pretty sure the resulting flash signals that he’s just confirmed my identity.
I drop my backpack and kick it as far away as possible. They see every move. I spin and run in the same direction as Irv. His dark-haired head bobbing through the crowd is the last I see of him.
* * * After a half hour of running and many random turns, I’m bent over, gasping. In front of me lie the tech canyons created by the tall buildings in the Southern Rim. I can get lost there. Waste some time in one of my Insider hideouts. Get back to the Badlands in a few days.
I’ve lost my tech, but that hardly matters now. I duck into the cleanest alley I’ve ever seen and slide my fingers along the smooth surface of the building on my left. I wonder how many people it takes to keep the Southern Rim so sparkly silver, so clean, so orderly.
I know it takes twenty-one Thinkers sending out transmissions, laying down proclamations, getting inside people’s heads, to control the population.
A wave of disgust washes over me. I can’t believe people once believed their lives were so bad that they willingly gave up control over them. But I didn’t live during those wars; I didn’t survive those fires; I didn’t emerge from an underground bunker to complete nuclear devastation.
I could only strive to make things right now, centuries later.
I thought back to my time in Seaside with Gavin. She’d had a premonition about someone in the Goodgrounds. Whoever it is will tip the scale. Either for us or against us. You must find them. And soon.
I’d immediately thought of Zenn. But he was already against us. Sort of. Maybe.
I’d delayed my trip here last month, sending Indy and her team instead. They’d found nothing. No one. Our contacts hadn’t heard anything either.
Now, in the impeccably clean alley of the Goodgrounds, I think of Blaze again. He died in an alley like this in Freedom. My sadness suffocates me.
I try to shake away the thoughts of him. I shouldn’t be so emotionally attached. It makes running the Resistance too damn hard. Because people are going to die, most likely because of a decision I’ll make. I can’t afford to be emotionally attached.
So it’s probably a good thing Indy dumped me, I think.
Wrapped up in my thoughts about Gavin, and Blaze, and Indy, I get stupid. I’m not paying close enough attention.
I don’t even realize I’m surrounded until it’s too late.
* * * I wake up, feeling my mattress shift. Someone’s just gotten out of the bed in my holding cell. My bed. The bed I’m lying in.
Across from me sits a girl. The first thing I notice is her wicked-cool hair. It spikes all over, colored like the depths of night. I switch my gaze to her eyes.
