She gave it in a single word. “Jag.”
I wanted her to say my name again and again in that throaty, pleasure-filled voice. I didn’t expect what came next.
“Stop.”
I didn’t. I couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. They were the same.
“Stop.” This time her throatiness was replaced with urgency.
I stopped.
“We’re not alone,” she whispered, hastily adjusting her shirt with one hand as she clung to me, looking over my shoulder into utter blackness.
Zenn
22.
“I am alone,” I said out loud, to myself, and the words disappeared into the endless sky, confirming their reality.
Jag
23.
We’re not alone. Vi’s voice sounded in my head this time, spiking the panic already welling in my gut.
Zenn
24.
I took three steps toward Cedar Hills and called Saffediene’s name. I changed direction and repeated this procedure until I’d gone in a complete circle. I reached out with my mind, desperate to find her lurking just over the hill.
She wasn’t. The closest person I could find was collecting water from a well outside the border.
A squeal pierced my ears and my left hand flew to my left ear to deactivate the cache. While it shut down and restarted, I recalled the basics of the mission to Cedar Hills.
Enter through the friendly northern border and proceed to Greenhouse Eighty. Cedar Hills was in the business of preserving and classifying species of flowers, trees, shrubs, and herbs.
The flora was then transported to other cities for the repopulation of the country’s greenery. Greenhouses covered the entire northern half of the city and nearly every Citizen of Cedar Hills worked in them.
According to Gunn’s dad, Greenhouse Eighty was run by Insiders. Meetings were held there, beneath vines and aspens. The foliage and soil of the outgoing plants contained coded messages.
The sun beat down on me, but I clung to my thin blanket, the only thing I had to my name at this point. As my cache came online, a red band flickered across my vision-screen, indicating I had unread messages.
I blinked, pulling up my comms. I had two from Saffediene, both flagged as urgent.
The first read, Zenn, I couldn’t sleep and heard people talking. I went to investigate and got caught.
Heard people talking? I thought. Out here?
The second message read, Zenn, I’m inside Cedar Hills. The Greenhouse is secure. Make your way here as soon as you can. Sorry they took your hoverboard. You’ll have to walk.
I knew immediately that the second e-comm wasn’t from Saffediene. Number one, she would never mention the Greenhouse in something as traceable as an e-comm. Number two, she knew I didn’t need a hoverboard to fly.
I dropped to a crouch, taking refuge in the tall grass while I thought. If the second message wasn’t from Saffediene, maybe the first wasn’t either. Sneaking off in the dead of night to eavesdrop sort of sounded like her, but at the same time it didn’t. Why wouldn’t she wake me to go with her?
On the other hand, if someone had taken her while we were asleep, why did they leave me? With a blanket and nothing else?
Nothing made sense. I stood up and walked straight toward the border—and the person still loitering at the well. As far as I was concerned, the plan had changed.
The boy lingered near the well, his job already done. A wet patch of dirt to his left showed where the well had been leaking. He’d likely been sent to repair the couplings or adjust the connections.
I couldn’t tell his height, crouched as he was, drawing in the dirt with a stick—a behavior that alerted me to his heightened thinking skills. The brainwashed don’t dawdle in their tasks, and they certainly don’t create art.
He wore the traditional clothing for a Cedar Hills Citizen: white long-sleeved shirt, brown cotton pants, a pair of rubber shoes, and a hat that blocked the morning sun.
His milky-colored fingers snuck out of the pool of shade created by his hat as he directed the stick this way and that. The boy seemed unconcerned that the gate lay a mere hundred yards away, and anyone could observe him breaking the rules.
I searched his mind and found his worries were few. That, or he’d learned to hide thoughts he didn’t want anyone to read.
“Hello,” I said in my most placating voice.
Instead of startling to a stand as I expected, the boy simply looked over his shoulder. “Hello.” He continued to draw.
“I’m Zenn Bower,” I said, advancing with deliberate steps. “I need to get inside your city.” I quickly catalogued all sensitive information and filed it away in the furthermost parts of my mind. Half of me thought he could probably read my every thought, and the other half wondered if he was mentally slow.
The boy stood up, dropping the stick on the ground. He brushed his hands on his pants, obliterating the picture in the dirt as he shuffled his feet. At his full height, I could see he was no boy. In fact he was probably a fair bit older than me.
“Can I get through the gate with you?” I asked, willing him to say yes.
“Yes,” he said in a hauntingly low tone. A brainwashed tone.
“Perfect,” I said. “Tell me your name.”
“Greene Leavitt.”
My pulse jumped. Greene’s name was listed in the journal. “How old are you?”
“Twenty.” His answers came quick and sure. He stared at me—no, almost through me. I couldn’t tell the color of his eyes because of the shade of his hat.
“Why are you out here alone?”
“I was waiting.”
“For what?”
His shadowed eyes shifted, then found mine and held them. “For you.”
I took an extra breath before continuing. “Well, you found me. Let’s go.”
Entering Cedar Hills turned out to be crazy-easy. With Greene by my side, I simply walked through the gate and into a world of glass houses. The very air seemed to be holding its breath. The streets were paved with packed dirt, barely wide enough for Greene and me to walk side by side between the Greenhouses.
Freedom had maintenance crews to clean every surface to a silver gleam, but here, a white film clung to the metal frames. A metallic square with a number hung from the top of each door. The Greenhouse in front of me bore the number thirty-nine. The soft sound of sprinkling water added to the peacefulness of the city.
“Are you ready, Zenn Bower?” Greene asked, tearing my attention from the decor. The way he spoke my name sent tremors down my spine.
“Yes,” I said. “But first I need to find another friend of mine. Maybe you’ve seen her? Saffediene Brown?”
Greene suddenly turned down another narrow path between two Greenhouses. I followed him just as plodding footsteps approached from a direction I couldn’t place. The sounds echoed between the metal and glass, making it impossible to pinpoint.
Greene strode away, his narrow shoulders brushing the glass of the flanking Greenhouses.
He ducked into Greenhouse Sixty-Four (how had we gone from Thirty-Nine to Sixty-Four?), casting a cursory glance at me as he did. Inside, the smell of soft roots and wet dirt hit me like a punch. I’d never seen so much disorder. Little shovels lay in a metal tray by the door. Muddy boots and coils of hose festered in heaps under the metal tables holding flower after bush after tree.
I’d only been in two Greenhouses, both of them on the roof of Rise Twelve. Neither of them looked like this. There, plants were laid in neat rows, organized by height. This seemed like someone had held a giant handful of seeds and simply dropped them. Wherever they landed, they grew.