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“We’re doing a pickup,” Kel said. She bit her lower lip. Her posture seemed stiff and tense, and she kept a careful eye on me. I worried that she had discovered my search, but she had sworn that the Pad wasn’t traceable.
“Another one?” Henri asked. He had just walked in. His voice was full of surprise and disappointment.
Kel held up her Pad. “Margot, will you run the Pad tonight?”
Margot nodded and took it without comment. It was unlike Margot not to have a quip. She looked at me for just a second, then down to the Pad.
“We’re taking the Elk Champagne™, the Tiffany™ rings, the Squire-Lace™ Chips, the ant kits and any associated fixtures.”
“That isn’t our stuff,” Henri complained. “We didn’t place it.”
“I know,” Kel said flatly.
“But shouldn’t the Placement team who placed it—”
“Henri, just do as you are told!” Kel cut him off and threw three large, empty bags at his feet. “I want to be in and out before 4:00 a.m.”
It was already 2:00 a.m. Henri shook his head, picking up the bags and whispering to me, “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
“Henri.” Margot shushed him with a swift shake of her head. They all knew more than I did. Henri watched me carefully. It wasn’t just concern I saw in his expression.
“Speth,” Kel said, taking me by the shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
I started to feel deeply unsettled. Kel looked rattled. I didn’t understand. I felt that claustrophobic feeling of not being able to ask, and I was only vaguely aware of what I was supposed to do.
“You can stay here if you want. We can come back for you.”
I looked around. I did not want to seal myself in a stark white room, alone in utter silence. Something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t comprehend what it was.
“You know about the Pell girl?” Kel asked.
The hairs on my neck stood on end. What did Bridgette Pell have to do with a pickup?
My stomach sunk as Kel stated what I’d suddenly put together: “We are taking back Bridgette Pell’s Placements from her ceremony.”
I felt suddenly disgusted. I closed my eyes. Three months in, I still was not used to the corneal implants. I hated the way they rubbed against my lids. Kel closed her arms around me. I know she wanted to comfort me, but I felt apprehensive. This wasn’t like her. This wasn’t her place. Her embrace was stiff, and she wasn’t my mother. She wasn’t even a friend. I pushed her away, though gently, and forced myself to smile. What did I care about Bridgette Pell? I was fine. I put my bag on my shoulder to show I was ready to go.
* * *
On the roof, Kel shot a line to the dome’s scaffold for what she called a long swing. I usually found these exhilarating, but inside I was dreading what was coming. I followed Kel’s lead, sticking close like she asked. I swung wide across four blocks, feeling the air press on me as I sliced through it. My biceps burned from the effort, and slacked in relief as I landed roughly on a rooftop corner. Kel crossed to the roof’s opposite side as lightly as a cat and gestured to a building across the way.
Looming behind, in the distance, several rings away, Malvika Place rose up and out of the dome. For all I knew, above it, Carol Amanda Harving slept soundly, in real moonlight, unconcerned with the devastation her suit had brought on my family. I wondered if Silas Rog had asked her to do it. I thought of my dream about killing her and my hands felt weak and shaky. There had to be some other way.
Kel, Margot and Henri watched me carefully, like I might explode. I focused closer and looked at the Pells’ building. It was like any other posh penthouse, tall and gleaming with a wide, lush rooftop garden.
I stepped to the edge and looked down, across the wide boulevard of the Ninety-Second Radian. At the foot of the building, far below, was an outline and yellow tape. There were candles lit on the edges to mark the spot where Bridgette Pell had died. In the middle a black scorch mark and a melted hollow marked where her NanoLion™ battery had ruptured. I shivered just looking at it. A pair of news dropters hovered on either side, like sentinels, keeping watch for any misery they could film. Kel hacked them from her Pad and locked them into sleep mode to keep them from noticing us.
Beecher’s body had been unceremoniously cleared away, but Bridgette had the honor of a memorial. She would be remembered. We would be blamed. I felt revolted at how unjust it was. Everyone had forgotten Beecher, except his grandmother and me. That poor boy had no choices, and yet I could not completely forgive what he had done. My head churned with the knowledge that Bridgette Pell had options, and she just threw them away.
Kel shot a line over the street, and Henri and Margot did the same. I hesitated. I needed a second to collect my thoughts. My hands were shaking. I felt sick and furious. The assignment to take back Bridgette Pell’s Placements was a petty, needless cruelty. But the companies would not allow themselves the tarnish of a negative association. They had to make a show of taking back what they had given.
Was it a coincidence that my team had been assigned this pickup, or was it a punishment, too? Whoever contracted Kel and the team—the Agency I knew nothing about—had to know who I was. My cheeks felt hot. Had Kel fought against this job? Or had she just quietly followed their orders?
The others swept across the distance to the other rooftop. I followed, zipping over the road forty stories below. This was the height that had killed Bridgette.
Across the garden was a series of floor-to-ceiling windows, black and glossy in the darkness. Were Bridgette’s parents inside? Did they hate me? Had the family been happy before, free of work camps and worry? I couldn’t imagine it. I could never understand anything about Bridgette Pell’s life. What possible reason could she have for zipping her lips? How could an Affulent be unhappy? She had everything.
Margot and Henri were on the far side of the courtyard, already packing up. Kel took the personalized Squire-Lace™ Chips, laser etched with 15s and Bridgette Pell’s face, and crushed them into a powder. I’d thought I hated Bridgette, but watching her special chips reduced to dust made me realize the feeling was something else—a feeling I didn’t have a word for. Somewhere, if it existed, someone owned that word. I wondered what it cost to say. An uneasy spark of pity sizzled in its wake.
However twisted her logic, Bridgette Pell felt sorry for us. I had so often thought of Affluents as heartless and cruel that I never took time to consider some of them might be different—sympathetic, even.
Only hours before, I had been dreaming of murdering Carol Amanda Harving. What if she wasn’t to blame? For all I knew, she was a pawn or a puppet, controlled by the movie studios, or Silas Rog or some corporate sponsor. For all I knew, the Lawyers hadn’t even told her what they were doing. She might not even know we existed.
Henri had two bags packed. Margot was watching the Pad for signs of movement from inside.
The garden itself was covered in pictures of Bridgette. I couldn’t tell if this was meant to memorialize her after her suicide, or if these pictures had been part of her celebration. She was pretty and pale and too thin for her own good. Did she think her death would be romantic? If she really had wanted to do something, she could have used her words to speak out. She had a voice. She would have been heard.
Her suicide was selfish and meaningless. The flicker of pity I’d felt for her resolved into disgust. How dare she? How dare she waste all this? All over the city, the Silents had zipped their lips and made the protest mean something by going on, even though it meant suffering. Bridgette had chosen not to suffer. She wasn’t a Silent. She was only silent on the way down.
I laughed coldly inside, then felt horrible for it. I pressed my lips hard—shut my mouth tight. What was I doing?
Kel caught my eye and gently guided me to a series of light fixtures, which I dutifully removed with a thin magnetic screwdriver. She acted as if I might crack open at any moment, and I hated it.
On the table beside me was a fanned array of iChits™, tiny music players the size of a fingernail that held a playlist of popular songs, interspersed with Ads. These were good for ten plays. I had wanted some at my celebration, but Mrs. Harris explained that iChit™ never sponsored kids in the Onzième. They didn’t want to be associated with us. The thought irritated me.
The iChits™ weren’t on our list to take. I didn’t know if that meant they were left for the family, or if another team of Placers would come to claim what we did not. I didn’t care. None of them deserved it. None of them needed it. None of them cared that Bridgette Pell’s idiotic decision had made my life more miserable, and yet it was legal and right for her family and others to sue me.
I put my finger on the closest iChit™ and slid it quickly across the table. The thin metal was cool under my finger. Why couldn’t they have sponsored a few for my party? Would it have been such a big deal to give us that? Sam and Saretha loved music. Not that it would have mattered—Placers swept down after my celebration, too. They took back all my Placements and crushed my Squire-Lace™ Chips to dust, just like Kel. For all I knew, it might have been Kel and Henri and Margot who did it. If iChit™ had sponsored me, they would have gotten their players back, anyway.
I slipped the one under my finger into my pocket. Who would know? Who would care? I told myself Sam and Saretha would love it, though I didn’t do it completely for them. I wanted iChit™, or the Pells, or someone to suffer, just a little. I wanted to put another crack in the shapeless system that seemed to be crushing me. It was stupid and childish, and the little player seemed to burn in my pocket, but part of me was satisfied that I had done something, and part of me was exhilarated when I got away with it.