June
I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT DAY.
When I lie down in my apartment for a brief rest later in the afternoon, I dream of him. I dream that Day has his arms wrapped around me and is kissing me again and again, his hands running up my arms and through my hair and around my waist, his chest pressed against mine, his breath against my cheeks and neck and ears. His long hair brushes against me, and his eyes drown me in their depths. When I wake up and find myself alone again, I can hardly breathe.
His words run through my mind until I can’t even understand them anymore. That someone else has killed Metias. That the Republic is intentionally spreading the plague in the poor sectors. I think back to how we were on the streets of Lake, when he would risk his safety because I needed to rest. Then today, wiping the tears from my cheek.
I can’t find the anger I used to have toward him. And if I discover proof that someone else killed Metias, for whatever reason, then I have no reason to hate him at all. I’d once been fascinated by his legend—all the stories I’d heard before I met him. Now I can feel that same sense of fascination returning. I picture his face, so beautiful even after pain and torture and grief, his blue eyes bright and sincere. I’m ashamed to admit that I enjoyed my brief time with him in his prison cell. His voice can make me forget about all the details running through my mind, bringing with it emotions of desire or fear instead, sometimes even anger, but always triggering something. Something that wasn’t there before.
1912 HOURS. TANAGASHI SECTOR.
78°F.
“I heard you had a private conversation with Day this afternoon,” Thomas says to me as we sit together, eating bowls of edame in a café. The café is the same one that we visited when Metias was alive. Thomas’s choice of location doesn’t ease my thoughts. I can’t forget the rifle grease smeared on the hilt of the knife that killed my brother.
Maybe he’s testing me. Maybe he knows what I suspect.
I take a bite of pork so I don’t have to answer. I’m glad that the two of us are sitting a good distance apart. Thomas had spent a great deal of effort convincing me to “forgive” him, to let him take me out to dinner. Why he did this, I can’t be sure. To draw me out? To get me to say something by accident? To see if I would refuse, and then take this information to Commander Jameson? It doesn’t take much evidence to start an investigation against someone. Maybe this whole evening is just bait.
But then again, maybe he’s really trying to make up with me.
I don’t know. So I tread carefully.
Thomas watches me eat. “What did you say to him?”
There’s jealousy in his voice. My words come out cool and detached. “Don’t bother, Thomas.” I reach out and touch his arm, to distract him. “If a boy killed someone you loved, wouldn’t you keep trying to figure out why he’d done it? I thought he might talk to me if the guards weren’t around. But I’ve given up on him. I’ll be happier when he’s dead.”
Thomas relaxes a little, but he still studies my face. “Maybe you should stop seeing him,” he suggests after another long silence. “It doesn’t seem to be helping you. I can ask Commander Jameson to send someone else to give Day his water rations. I hate to think of you having to interact so much with your brother’s murderer.”
I nod in agreement and take another bite of edame. To stay silent now would look bad. What if I’m eating dinner with my brother’s murderer? Logic. Caution and logic. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Thomas’s hands. What if those are the hands that stabbed Metias straight through the heart?
“You’re right,” I say without missing a beat. I make myself sound grateful, thoughtful. “I haven’t gotten anything useful out of him yet. He’ll be dead soon, anyway.”
Thomas shrugs. “I’m glad you think so.” He drops fifty Notes on our table as the waiter comes by. “Day is just a criminal on death row. His words shouldn’t matter to a girl of your standing.”
I take another bite before answering. “They don’t,” I reply. “I might as well be talking to a dog.” But to myself I think, Day’s words will matter if he’s telling the truth.
Long after Thomas has escorted me back to my apartment and left, and long after midnight has passed, I sit awake at my computer and study Metias’s crime report. I’ve looked at the photos enough times now to keep myself from turning away, but it still leaves a queasy feeling in my stomach. Every photo is taken from an angle facing away from his wounds. The longer I stare at the black smears on the knife hilt, the more convinced I am that they’re remnants of rifle grease.
When I can’t look at the photos any longer, I go back to the couch and sift through Metias’s journals again. If my brother had any other enemies, surely there’d be a clue somewhere in his writing. But he was no fool, either. He never would’ve written down anything that could be used as evidence. I read through pages and pages of his old entries, all of them about irrelevant, mundane things. Sometimes he talks about us. These I have more trouble reading.
One entry talks about the night of his induction ceremony into Commander Jameson’s squad, when I’d fallen ill. Another is about the celebration we had together when I scored a 1500 on my Trial. We placed an order for ice cream and two whole chickens, and at one point in the evening, I even experimented with making a chicken and ice cream sandwich, which maybe wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had. I can still hear us laughing, still smell the warm aromas of baked chicken and fresh bread.
I press my fists against my closed eyes and take a deep breath. “What am I doing?” I whisper to Ollie, who tilts his head at me from where he’s lying on the couch. “I’m befriending a criminal, and pushing away people I’ve known my entire life.”
Ollie looks back at me with that universal dog wisdom, then promptly goes back to sleep. I stare at him for a while. Not long ago, Metias would’ve dozed there with his arm draped around Ollie’s back. I wonder if Ollie’s imagining that now.
It takes me a moment to realize something. I open my eyes, then look back at the last page I’d read in Metias’s journal. I think I saw something … there. I narrow my eyes at the bottom of the page.
A misspelled word. I frown. “That’s odd,” I say out loud. The word is refrigerator, spelled with an extra d. Refridgerator. Never in my life have I known Metias to misspell anything. I study it for a second longer, shake my head, and decide to move on. I make a mental note of the page.
Ten minutes later, I find another one. This time the word is elevation, but Metias spells it elevatien.
Two misspelled words. My brother would never have done this by accident. I look around, as if there might be a surveillance camera in the room. Then I lean toward the coffee table and start sifting through all the pages of Metias’s journals. I store the misspelled words in my head. No reason to write them down for someone else to find.
I find a third word: bourgeoisie, spelled bowrgeoisie. Then a fourth one: emanating, spelled emamating.
My heart starts to pound.
By the time I finish going through all twelve of Metias’s journals, I’ve uncovered twenty-four misspelled words. All of them come from the journals written in the last few months.
I lean back on the couch, then close my eyes so I can picture the words in my mind. That many misspelled words from Metias can be nothing other than a message to me—the one person who was most likely to go through his writing. A secret code. This must be why he’d pulled all the boxes out of the closet that fateful afternoon … this might be the important thing he’d wanted to talk about. I shift the words around, trying to form a sentence that makes sense, and when that fails, I move the letters around to see if each one might be an anagram for something else.
No, nothing.
I rub my temples. Then I try something else—what if Metias wanted me to put together the individual letters that are either missing from each word or in the word when they aren’t supposed to be there? I quietly make a list of these letters in my head, starting with the d in refridgerator.
D L W G W U N O W M J W U T C E E L O F O O M B
I frown. It makes no sense. I scramble the letters over and over again in my head, trying to come up with various combinations of words. When I was little, Metias played word games with me—he’d throw a bunch of letter blocks onto the table and ask me what words I could form with them. Now I try playing this game again.
I play it for a while before I stumble across a combination that makes me open my eyes.
JUNE BUG. Metias’s nickname for me. I swallow hard and try to stay calm. Slowly, I line up the leftover letters and try to form words with them. Combinations fly through my mind until one of them makes me pause.
FOLLOW ME JUNE BUG.
The only letters left after that are three W’s, then CTOOMD. Which left one logical option.
WWW FOLLOW ME JUNE BUG DOT COM
A website. I run the letters through my mind several more times, to make sure my assumption is correct. Then I glance at my computer.
First I type in Metias’s hack that allows me to access the Internet. I put up the defenses and shells that my brother taught me—there are eyes everywhere online. Then I disable my browser’s history, and type in the URL with trembling fingers.
A white page pops up. Only one line of text appears at the top.
Let me take your hand, and I will give you mine.
I know exactly what Metias wants me to do. Without hesitating, I reach a hand out and press it flat against my monitor.
At first, nothing happens. Then I hear a click, see a faint light scan across my skin, and the white page disappears. In its place appears what looks like a blog. My breath catches in my throat. There are six brief entries here. I lean forward in my chair and start reading.
What I see makes me dizzy with horror.
July 12
This is for June’s eyes only. June, you can easily delete all traces of this blog at any time by pressing your right palm against the screen and typing: Ctrl+Shift+S+F. I have no other place to write this, so I’ll write it here. For you.
Yesterday was your fifteenth birthday. I wish you were older, though, because I can’t quite bring myself to tell a fifteen-year-old girl what I found—especially when you should be celebrating.
Today I found a photograph taken by our late father. It was the very last one in the very last photo album they owned, and I’d never noticed it before because Dad had hidden it behind a larger photo. You know I flip through our parents’ pictures all the time. I like reading their little notes, it feels like they can still talk to me. But this time I noticed that the last photo in that album felt unusually thick. When I fiddled with it, the secret photo fell out.
Dad had taken a photo of his workplace. The lab in Batalla Hall. Dad never talked to us about his work. Yet he’d taken this photo. It was blurry and oversaturated, but I could make out the shape of a young man on a gurney pleading for his life with a bright red biohazard sign imprinted on his hospital gown.
Do you know what Dad wrote at the bottom of that photo?
Resigning, April 6.
Our father had tried to resign the day before he and Mom were killed in a car wreck.
September 15
I’ve been trying to find clues for weeks. Still nothing. Who knew the deceased civilians database was so difficult to hack?
But I’m not giving up yet. There’s something behind our parents’ death, and I’m going to find out what it is.
November 17
You asked me why I seemed so out of it today. June, if you’re reading this, you probably remember this day, and now you’ll know why.
I’ve been hunting for clues ever since my last entry here. For the past few months I’ve tried asking subtle questions of other lab workers, and of Dad’s old friends, and searching online. Well, today I found something.
Today I finally managed to hack the Los Angeles deceased civilians database. Most complicated thing I’ve ever done. I was going about it the wrong way. There’s a security hole on their servers that I hadn’t noticed before because they’d buried it behind all sorts of—well, anyway, it resulted in me getting in. And much to my surprise, I actually found a report on our parents’ car accident.
Except it was not an accident. June, I’ll never be able to say this to you out loud, so I desperately hope that you’ll see it here.
Commander Baccarin, another former student of Chian (you remember Chian, right?), submitted the report. The report said that Dr. Michael Iparis had roused the suspicions of the Batalla Hall lab administrators when he first questioned the true purpose of his research. He’d always worked on understanding the plague viruses, of course, but he must have uncovered something that upset him enough to make him quietly file for a change in work assignment. Remember that, June? It was just a few weeks before the car crash.
The rest of the report didn’t go into the plagues, but it told me what I needed to know. June, the Batalla Hall lab administrators ordered Commander Baccarin to keep an eye on our father. When Dad tried to get reassigned, Baccarin knew that he’d figured out the reason for his research. As you can imagine, this didn’t go over very well. Commander Baccarin was ordered to “find a way to smooth the whole matter over.” The report ends by saying that the matter was resolved, without military casualties.
Dated a day after the car accident.
They killed them.
November 18
They fixed the security hole on the server. I’ll have to find another way around it.
November 22
It turns out the deceased civilians database has more information about the plagues than I guessed. Of course I should’ve known that, what with the plagues killing off hundreds of people every year. But I always thought the plagues were spontaneous. They’re not.
June bug, you need to know this. I don’t know when you’ll find these entries, but I know you’ll find them eventually. Listen to me carefully: when you are finished reading, don’t tell me you know about anything. I don’t want you doing something rash. Understand? Think about your safety first. You can find a way to help, I know you can. If anyone can, you can. But for my sake don’t do anything that’ll draw attention to you. I’ll kill myself if the Republic strikes you down for reacting to knowledge that I gave you.
If you want to rebel, rebel from inside the system. That’s much more powerful than rebelling outside the system. And if you choose to rebel, bring me with you.
Dad found out that the Republic engineers the annual plagues.
They start off in the most obvious place. Those high-rise terraces full of grazing animals isn’t where most of our meat comes from. Did you know that? I should’ve guessed it. The Republic has thousands of underground factories for the animals. They’re hundreds of feet deep. At first Congress didn’t know what to do with the crazy viruses that kept developing down there and killing off entire factories of animals. Inconvenient, right? But then they remembered the Colonies war. And so every time an interesting new virus appears in the meat factories, the scientists take samples and craft them into viruses that can infect humans. Then they develop an equivalent vaccine and cure for it. And then they hand out mandatory vaccinations to everyone but a few slum sectors. Rumor has it that there’s a new strain developing in Lake and Alta and Winter.
They pump that virus into the slum sectors through a system of underground pipes. Sometimes into the water supply, sometimes just directly into a few specific homes to see how it spreads. That starts off a new round of plague. When they think they’ve seen enough evidence for what that virus strain can do, they secretly prick everyone (everyone still alive, that is) in those sectors with the cure during a routine sweep, and the plague dies down until the next test strain. They also run individual plague experiments on some of the children who fail the Trial. They don’t go to labor camps, June.
None of them do.
They die.
Do you see where I’m going with this? They use the plagues to cull the population of weak genes, the same way the Trials pick out the strongest. But they’re also creating viruses to use against the Colonies. They’ve been using biological weapons against them for years. I don’t give a damn what happens to the Colonies or exactly what our Republic wants to inflict on them—but June, our own people are lab rats. Dad worked in those labs, and when he tried to quit, they killed him. And Mom. They thought they would tell everybody. Who wants a mass riot? Certainly not Congress.
We’re all going to die like this, June, if someone doesn’t step in. One of these days, a virus will get out of hand, and no vaccine or cure will be able to stop it.
November 26
Thomas knows. He knows what I suspect, that I think the government may have killed our parents intentionally.
I keep wondering how he knew that I’d hacked into the deceased civilians database, and all I can think of is that I left a trace, and the tech guys who fixed that security hole found it and mentioned it to him. So he approached me earlier today and asked me about it.
I told him I was still grieving over our parents’ deaths and got a little paranoid. Told him I didn’t find anything. I said you knew nothing about it, that he shouldn’t mention it to you. He said he’d keep it a secret. I think I can trust him. It’s just a little nerve-racking to have anyone know even the smallest bit about my suspicions. I mean, you know how he gets sometimes.
I’ve made up my mind. By the end of the week, I’ll tell Commander Jameson that I’m going to withdraw from her patrol. I’ll complain about the hours and say that I don’t see you enough. Something like that. I’ll update here when I’m reassigned.
I follow Metias’s instructions and delete every last trace of his blog.
Then I curl up on the couch and sleep until Thomas calls. I press a button on my phone and the voice of my brother’s murderer fills my living room. Thomas, the soldier who would happily carry out any order from Commander Jameson, even if it’s to kill a childhood friend. The soldier who used Day as a convenient scapegoat.
“June?” he says. “Are you all right? It’s almost ten hundred hours, and I haven’t seen you. Commander Jameson wants to know where you are.”
“I’m not feeling well,” I manage. “I’m going to sleep awhile longer.”
“Oh.” A pause. “What are your symptoms?”
“I’ll be fine,” I reply. “Just dehydrated and feverish. I think I ate something bad last night at the café. Tell Commander Jameson I should feel a little better by evening.”
“Okay, then. Sorry to hear it. Feel better soon.” Another pause. “If you’re still feeling sick by tonight, I’ll file a report and send the plague patrol over to check you. You know, protocol. And if you need me to come over, just call me.”
You’re the last person I want to see. “I’ll let you know. Thanks.” I hang up.
My head hurts. Too many memories, too many revelations. No wonder Commander Jameson had Metias’s body taken away so fast. I’d been stupid enough to think she did it out of sympathy. No wonder she organized his funeral. Even my test mission to track Day must’ve been a diversion to distract me while they tossed out any remaining evidence.
I think back to the evening when Metias decided to resign from shadowing Chian and joining the Trial enforcers. He’d been quiet and withdrawn when he picked me up from school. “Are you all right?” I remember asking him.
He didn’t answer. He just took my hand in his and headed for the train station. “Come on, June,” he said. “Let’s just go home.”
When I looked at his gloves, I saw tiny specks of blood staining them.
Metias didn’t touch his dinner, or ask me how my day went—which annoyed me until I realized just how upset he was. Finally, right before bedtime, I went over to where he was lying on the couch and snuggled under his arm. He kissed my forehead.
“I love you,” I whispered, hoping to get something out of him.
He turned to look at me. His eyes were so sad.
“June,” he said, “I think I’m going to appeal for a different mentor tomorrow.”
“You don’t like Chian?”
Metias stayed silent for a while. Then he lowered his eyes as if ashamed. “I shot someone at the Trial stadium today.”
This was what bothered him. I kept quiet and let him go on.
Metias ran a hand through his hair. “I shot a girl. She’d failed her Trial and tried to escape the stadium. Chian screamed at me to shoot her … and I listened.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know it back then, but now I can tell that Metias felt like he had shot me when he killed that little girl. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Metias stared off into the distance. “Few people ever kill for the right reasons, June,” he said after a long silence. “Most do it for the wrong reasons. I just hope you never have to be in either category.”
The memory fades, and I’m left hanging on to the ghosts of his words.
I don’t move for the next few hours. When the Republic’s pledge starts up outside, I can hear the people on the streets below chanting along, but I don’t bother to stand. I don’t salute when the Elector Primo’s name comes up. Ollie sits next to me, staring, whining every now and then. I look back at him. I’m thinking, calculating. I have to do something. I think of Metias, of my parents, then of Day’s mother, and his brothers. The plague has gotten its claws around all of us, in one way or another. The plague murdered my parents. The plague infected Day’s brother. It killed Metias for uncovering the truth of it all. It took from me the people I love. And behind the plague is the Republic itself. The country I used to be proud of. The country that experiments on and kills children who fail the Trial. Labor camps—we’d all been fooled. Had the Republic murdered relatives of my Drake classmates too, all those people who died in combat or in accidents or of illnesses? What else is secret?
I rise, walk over to my computer, and pick up my glass of water. I stare blankly into it. Somehow, the sight of my fingers’ disjointed reflections against the glass startles me—reminds me of Day’s bloody hands, of Metias’s broken body. This antique glass was a gift, supposedly imported from the Republic’s islands of South America. It’s worth 2,150 Notes. Someone could’ve bought a plague cure with the money spent on this glass that I use to drink water out of. Maybe the Republic doesn’t even own those islands. Maybe nothing I’ve been taught is true.
In a sudden fit of anger, I lift the glass and hurl it against the wall. It shatters into a thousand glittering pieces. I stand there unmoving, trembling.
If Metias and Day had met somewhere other than the hospital’s back streets, would they have become allies?
The sun changes position. Afternoon comes. I still don’t move from where I stand.
Finally, when the sunset bathes my apartment in orange and gold, I break out of my trance. I clean up the shining shards of broken glass. I dress in my full uniform. I make sure my hair is pulled back flawlessly, that my face is clean and calm and devoid of emotion. In the mirror, I look the same. But I am a different person inside. I’m a prodigy who knows the truth, and I know exactly what I’m going to do.
I’m going to help Day escape.