“It wasn’t hard,” I said, trying to rip my arms away. “I just watched the door for ten seconds.”
Someone punched me in the stomach. My knees gave out. I gasped. The two men holding my arms didn’t loosen their grip. I hung there, trying to breathe, anger flowing through me like techtricity.
“Release me,” I managed, my voice weak. Still, the grip on my right arm slipped.
I regained my feet. I straightened. “Let me go.” This time my voice came out properly. They let me go.
“Where’s Saffediene?” I asked. I wished this place had some lights.
A moment of silence was punctuated only by the shuffling of feet. I blinked, and a flicker of a match brightened the room. I thought I’d imagined it, but on the next strike, the fire caught. It illuminated someone’s hand and cast orange patterns on their soil-crusted T-shirt.
They held the flame to a candle and passed it around the room until two dozen candles were lit and the space came to life. I glanced from face to face. There were twenty-four men and women in the room, all of them glaring at me. Saffediene wasn’t among them.
“Fire?” I asked. “Really?”
“Fire requires neither tech nor ability,” someone said. The words reminded me of Greene. So did the way they all stood perfectly still, not so much as a blink or twitch.
They obviously knew
“Where’s Saffediene?” I asked, trying a different tactic. “She and I are from Freedom, and we were told Eighty was on the inside track.”
The woman across from me blinked, which I took as a sign that something I’d said held power. “We just received a return shipment from Freedom,” she said. “Last week, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” the man next to her said. “Two trees that didn’t take to the weather.”
“We need to examine those trees,” I said. “Where are they?”
“What’s your name?” the woman asked.
“Zenn Bower. Yours?”
“Min Holyoak.” She flicked her eyes to the man next to her. “And Shade Rodriguez.” They took their candles and turned to leave.
I followed them into a long corridor that had so many potted plants and trees and shrubs that I hardly had room to walk. The candle cast flickering light onto leaves and branches, which transformed into clawing fingers and shadowy hands.
“Your friend has already examined the trees,” Shade said. “She found nothing.”
“Impossible,” I said. “The Insiders in Freedom wouldn’t have returned the trees without sending a message with them.” I’d seen Trek at work with his gadgets. He could code a portlet to malfunction at exactly the right moment. He could falsify any type of communication. He could change what his voice sounded like, could replicate intonation and personality.
He had a piece of tech for everything, and what he didn’t have, he invented. He’d have done something with the trees. He must have.
We turned a corner, and the corridor opened up into a larger room. Long, silver counters ran in rows with spilled dirt and rusted gardening tools. The black plastic only covered the windows; natural light streamed down from skylights. But the plants here all looked to be in various stages of dying.
Saffediene sat on a counter in the middle of the room, her legs swinging, staring up through the glass ceiling.
“Saffediene.” I pushed past Min and hurried toward her. She looked at me, moving in what seemed like slow motion. Dried tears crusted her face. I gathered her into my arms, automatically stroking her unbraided hair and soothing her with my voice.
She gripped my shirt, her body tense tense tense. She didn’t cry. The embrace only lasted a few seconds before she pulled back.
“What happened?” I asked. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, taking both my hands in hers. “I’m sorry I left you. I—” She stopped. “I felt something weird.”
“Felt something weird?” This statement from Saffediene didn’t fit with her
She shook her head. “I know it doesn’t make sense. I woke up to voices, and the city was glowing with light.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“The two men talking? They said your name, and I knew if they found you, it would be bad. So I let them find me instead.”
“So the e-comms,” I said. “The first was from you. The second—”
“They forced me to send it. I knew you’d figure out it was a fake. The Insiders sent Greene Leavitt to find you, and Min and Shade sent a body double to act for me at the jury.”
“She searched the trees,” Shade said. “And found nothing.”
“Show me, Saffediene,” I said, without power or control but with a gentleness that surprised me. She released my hands, hopped off the table, and lifted two potted trees onto the counter. They had very few leaves and bark the color of slate. The soil lay in uneven mounds, as if she had sifted through it meticulously. That was the Saffediene I knew.
I ran my hands from the soil up the tree trunk. It felt cool and smooth. When I met the first branch, my fingers followed it, trying to feel something invisible. A leaf snapped off with a spark.
I jerked my eyes to Saffediene’s. “Did you see that?”
Saffediene picked up the leaf. A wisp of smoke trailed out of the stem. She turned it over, examining the back of it.
“It’s nothing,” she said, handing it to me.
I ran my finger over the delicate veins, desperate to find something. Nothing, despite the spark I’d seen. It really was a leaf.
What? What? What?
Only a handful of leaves remained on the tree. Impulsively I pinched them all off, sparks flying with each one.
As the last one fluttered to the countertop, a p-screen fizzled to life, the tech leaping and arcing from the detached leaves to form a viewing area the size of my palm. Trek’s face flickered on it. “Message from Freedom: All feeds are being checked and double-checked by Director Hightower himself. Please update to the following frequency. Alpha kappa one five gamma row three.”
The transmission ended; the screen dissipated.
“I don’t believe it,” Min whispered.
“When did you get this?” I asked.
“Five, maybe six days ago,” Shade said.
“Code all outgoing plants,” I told Min. “Employ all your runners and have the message out by tonight so everyone will know in the next two days.” She nodded, waving at Shade.
“Saffediene and I will leave messages in the cities from here to the Southern Region.”
“I’ll inform Greene,” Shade added, already retreating back down the corridor. Min hurried after him.
I looked at Saffediene, who was watching me with wide eyes. “What?”
“You reminded me of Jag right then. So authoritative.”
“Let’s fly,” I said, ignoring her comment. “We’ve got loads of work to do.”
Saffediene and I separated, and I flew east while she went west. We would cover the corridor from Cedar Hills down to the Southern Region.
I left a message in the correspondence tube outside Cave Pointe, and then flew south to Freedom. Just after noon I touched down on the northern border and opened my cache to Trek.
