INFLUENT™: $19.99
Slowly, I learned. After that first trial, Kel had me watch how the team worked. She showed me how to survey a space, step quietly and climb without sound. The Pad, however, she kept to herself.
Henri helped me with acrobatics, showing me moves my gymnastics teacher never could. Mrs. Micharnd could not afford to clear the rights. Margot taught me the intricacies of arranging products and lighting them to the specifications of the Advertisers, all the while keeping an eye on me for trouble.
Each night at half past midnight, I had to sneak up to our roof and wait for the team to get me. I made the mistake of thinking that, because I didn’t speak, it would be easy to keep my plans secret. But Kel had been right—our home was too small for me to easily sneak away unnoticed.
Every time I moved to leave, Saretha shrank a little more. She was often up late, playing her futile Free-to-Plays. Her posture betrayed a jealousy of my freedom to go out into the world. She didn’t ask where I was going or what I was doing. She acted as if she didn’t care.
Sam, on the other hand, reacted very differently. Saretha woke him with a loud sigh one night—too loud for it to have been an accident.
“Where are you going?” he asked, blinking through the soft light of the wall-screen. I made to leave, shrugging the tiniest amount so he would know I had at least heard him. Sam’s feet hit the floor.
“It isn’t safe out there.” He put a hand under his chin to remind me of the injury that had left its scar.
He wanted answers, but more than that, he wanted me to know he was concerned. He followed me up to the roof in his bare feet, like he was going to protect me from whatever danger he thought might be out there.
“It sure is nice out,” Sam said, looking around. This was his roof joke. The weather in the city never changed, only the color of the light that filtered through the thick, frosted hexagons of the city’s dome. That night they were a dark gray. I wondered what the sky looked like beyond. Were there clouds or stars? Was the moon in the sky? I wanted to see it with my own eyes. They say the sky is safe to look at once night falls.
“I said, it sure is nice out,” Sam repeated, elbowing me this time. I didn’t laugh. I always at least smiled when Sam joked, even if his joke was terrible, but that night I sat rigid and expressionless. I was worried what Kel might do if she found I wasn’t alone.
Sam scanned the rooftops. “Nothing,” he said, looking for Placers. My insides squirmed, knowing they would arrive soon.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said.
My stomach dropped away. I struggled not to respond.
“You’re hoping Placers will find us. But if you sit up here every night, you’re just going to scare them away.”
Now, despite myself, I laughed—from relief that he hadn’t found me out, and fear that he was the one scaring my team away.
Sam looked toward the outer ring. There were fewer cars out, but those few went faster, buzzing through the night with a sound like a distant saw. Were they just going in circles for the thrill of the speed, or were some of them rushing off out of the city? Affluents could do that. They could leave. They probably knew where to go; they could afford to pay for geographical information. Were other places better than this? Was this the worst dome, the best...or were they all the same?
“I wonder how you get to be a Placer,” Sam whispered.
I still didn’t know how Placers recruited. Obviously not the way they found me. Henri and Margot didn’t seem much older than me. Had they been Placers long? Had they applied somehow?
Up the block, a door opened. Sam looked over the roof’s edge to see and, despite myself, I did the same. Two people exited Beecher’s grandmother’s building. Above them, the light in Mrs. Stokes’s lone window on the third floor winked out. The two figures scanned the street, then each went their separate ways. I recognized the one coming toward us as Mandett Kresh. What was he doing?
He walked briskly along, passing our building and rushing to his own. A pair of Ads halfheartedly lit in his path, then quickly faded away. Mandett didn’t have a Cuff yet, but the system knew someone was there.
“What’s he doing?” Sam asked.
I couldn’t shake the impression Mandett had just been to see Mrs. Stokes. Go down and see, I thought. Leave me alone up here. Maybe Sam could find his way to Mrs. Stokes.
It occurred to me there were scarcely any true adults left in the Onzième. I tried to think of which families were still intact. A few families with younger children were still around, peppered through the buildings on the North end. Weber Spood’s mother was still in our building, though I had no idea where Weber had gone after graduation. Sooner or later, it seemed, one parent would go, and then the other. Debts were collected or violations were found. A few grandparents remained, too, like Mrs. Stokes, but they hardly went outside.
Who had arranged things this way? It couldn’t be an accident. Was there a plan? The very thought of it made me sick. I had always believed the illegal download Butchers & Rog found was our stroke of rotten luck. The Inherited Debt Act and its Historical Reparations Agency were created by the government, not Butchers & Rog. Yet, somehow, it felt like it was them—and, worse, like it was personal.
I scanned the rooftops of our neighborhood. My brow knit. That had to be a paranoid thought.
“Are you mad about something?” Sam asked.
I shook myself. I gave him the best smile I could. I couldn’t hold his hand to tell him it was okay, but I risked putting my hand down just a few inches from his.
Sam’s expression softened. He seemed to understand. I was mad about plenty, but not at him. I longed to tussle his hair. Instead, I looked at the door, to him, to the door again. I waited for him to make the connection. I needed him to go. My stomach felt like a rock, trying to get rid of him this way, but he got it.
He stood, dusting off his hands, and he smiled bitterly, his cheeks flushed bright red. “This is no fun anyway. I have to do all the talking,” he said, a little sharply.
He left. The roof door clanged shut. Within a minute, the team arrived. No one looked happy.