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  The names of the terrorists who breeched security at the Section Seven Alliance City Center have been released, along with exclusive video of their capture.

  I rolled my eyes. Since when had it ever not been exclusive? Their names scrolled up the screen and I caught my breath. I knew one of the terrorists, had talked with him in the park with my father.

  Security footage inside the building caught these four men as they took down armed guards at the Alliance City Center and proceeded to execute eight highly-trained professionals, she continued, pictures of the center fading to a symmetrically oval face with wide green eyes and long, black eyelashes. She enunciated each word perfectly, and I found myself leaning toward the screen to capture every word she said. I shook my head and pulled back.

  I should warn you that the footage you are about to see has not been edited and may be disturbing to some viewers.

  She spoke as though only adults viewed the news when, in fact, every child in One United received their own PCA when they entered elementary school and every PCA displayed the same videos and warnings despite the ages of the owners.

  The video that ensued had been taken from a drone, a quad-rotor, automatic machine gun that recorded everything in its path. I bit my lip and leaned away, wanting to shut my eyes but unable to look away from the horror I knew would follow.

  The drone whirred down the spiral stairs in a residence that looked just like mine. The woman quit speaking and the volume muted on the film. A man burst from the garden, his mouth open as if yelling. The drone zoomed in and his picture froze. The man looked like any other Citizen—his hair streaked with gray, his eyes dull and tired. The screen split, and his face from the surveillance tape popped up next to it to prove his guilt. The pictures faded back to video as the shots started, the man dropping from the frame almost as soon as it began. Smoke obscured most of the background, but the bright red drops of blood across the wall could not be blotted out.

  The sound returned to the news feed, an eerie buzz of silence until a child screamed in the background.

  I shut off the news feed and placed my palms over my eyes. I’d never be able to un-see that video or forget the sound of that child’s wail. For somehow, her wail had already become a part of me, a voice to the world that I had already suppressed.

  CHAPTER 3

  My hands shook when I took them from my eyes and the images replayed over and over, with the scream piercing right through my soul. There had to have been another way to apprehend the man without killing him in front of a child. So why had they executed him like that? I already knew the answer, for I’d been taught in school because terrorism had become such a part of our society, but in this video it had felt different.

  Drones save lives, we’d been told. The threat must be eliminated immediately without threat to our officers, the men who keep us safe. When an innocent is a witness, it’s a necessary casualty.

  There seemed to be a lot of ‘necessary casualties’ in One United. My stomach growled and I swallowed, knowing my own saliva would not satisfy my hunger, but not caring.

  I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. My father used to laugh at the dinner table every night. He used to tell about his day in joking that got both my mother and I giggling. He’d get serious later, while mother did the wash or tended her tiny flower bed in front of the entry hall. We’d talk about the academy and my schoolwork but never his views on the Alliance. He reserved his personal views for our hikes.

  I stretched my feet out in front of me, the concrete cool through my thin, still damp, slacks. I debated on getting into bed or not, but my mind felt muddled, my limbs tired to the core.

  My PCA beeped, a personal message indicator. I forced open my eyes and clicked on the message. I’d heard about the standard grieving allowance but had never had to see it until now.

  Brynn Aberdie is excused for three days from the Alliance Academy of Science 427 to allow grieving time for her father, Criton Aberdie, victim of terrorists. Upon return to school, she will have seven days to complete all missed work. Rations will remain the same for 24 days at which time they will be reduced according to family size.

  My mother’s renewed interest in crying proved she’d received a personal message on her PCA as well. It usually allowed the parent the same grieving time, but in some cases of terrorist activity, the Alliance actually compensated the surviving spouse with a small stipend.

  I’d never understood how money could make up for someone’s life, but the wages would be welcome.

  I’d just about turned off my PCA when another message beeped. Coming from an unknown source, I hesitated before clicking on it. People rarely sent messages because every word sent across the machines was monitored, every conversation catalogued and recorded.

  Just heard. Sorryt. My condolences.

  I hadn’t thought I’d receive any condolences, but dozens of messages flooded my PCA, the beeping making me flinch until I muted the tablet. Each offered sympathy, understanding, or hate for terrorists. Each came from an ID number associated with a Citizen. Some I knew, others I’d never met.

  Then another from the same unknown source as the first.

  Wish I could comfort you as the Alliance comforts the sorry Citizens.

  My finger hovered above the delete button. People in One United could be such fanatics, but I only recognized that because I was one of the few who’d actually traveled beyond its borders. Encompassing all of what used to be the United States, Canada and Mexico, One United stood strong and enormous. We had closed our borders, except for an elite few chosen each year through a series of testing done through the academies. These few were allowed tours of other continents. My tour took me through Europe, six months ago, with four other students, and that was the first time I’d ever heard the term “sorry Citizens.”

  We’d been on a beach in Greece. T’s identification papers had just been stolen and he’d been beaten. He’d laughed about it, claiming it would never happen in One United where the Alliance comforts its sorry Citizens.

  My finger darted from the delete key and scrolled to the first message instead. Could it really be that the T at the end of sorry was actually him trying to identify himself? It had looked like a standard typo but … I placed my fingers on the keyboard. The typo was possible but not likely.

  My heart fluttered and for a moment I forgot that I’d just lost my father. T was trying to contact me discreetly. I responded to several other messages before I responded to T. Comfort appreciated, I wrote. As always.

  I deleted my sent mail the way my father had taught me, the way that left no trace for the Alliance. Since all electronic data was immediately transmitted to Alliance processing, it might cause a small blip but they likely wouldn’t notice this small message had been sent, until they analyzed all the data when I died. What could they do about it then, me contacting a person I was never supposed to see again?

  Besides, I deserved some privacy, I was sure. That’s what my father told me. It’s something he’d actually been talking more and more about before the terrorists got him. Wanting more privacy came with the job, or so he claimed.

  Not that I completely understood his job. All I knew is that he’d spent years working in recovery; taking PCAs from people who’d passed away to record their data and send it to an Alliance processing center. That’s how they recorded your life, by who you contacted, what you said in messages, which news articles you read, your medical files … of course, it was all done electronically, so my father never saw the data himself, simply plugged in the machine, typed in the codes necessary to hack the system and released the content. Then he sent it to one of two offices—one refurbished the older or broken machines. The other simply reprogrammed it for the next assignee.

  I wondered if mine had been owned by anyone before me, but ultimately, it really didn’t matter as they were upgraded before they were reassigned, so they were basically the same as any other in the country.

  I rememb
ered asking my father if he’d ever recovered a child’s PCA. Once, he’d said. He’d never spoken of it again, and I’d never asked.

  My mother’s sobbing quieted to a steady sniff, quiet enough that I heard the clean-bot kick on. The little machine ran in the living area every night while we slept, replacing energy-sucking vacuum cleaners and time-consuming sweeping. During the days we alternated it between bedrooms and the bathroom, saving time for us to get more done at work or concentrate on our school work.

  I refreshed my message page, anxious for another word from T. If only my father could have shown me how to track where messages came from because waiting for T was killing me. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the risk of messaging too much, but I’d been craving T for months and now with my father gone—

  I pulled the pins from my bun and released my hair down my back. Long waves fell halfway to my waist and I scrubbed my fingers across my scalp to ease the tension my bun always caused.

  My PCA remained quiet and I only had another five minutes of messaging before the machine went offline, along with our power.

  “Come on, T,” I whispered, my feet twitching. “Give me something more to go on.”

  The charging light went out and a yellow bar crossed my screen stating I was now offline. They’d stolen my power three minutes early.

  I unplugged my PCA, slipped out of my school uniform and crawled into bed in my underwear, too tired to pull on pajamas.

  CHAPTER 4

  Because I could not resist my mother’s grief, nor tolerate the isolation, I spent the majority of my first two grieving days in the mountains, on the trails I’d hiked with my father. The permits were easy enough to obtain, a simple safety precaution form I accessed online so they’d know where to look for me if I didn’t return. The solitude comforted and disturbed me so much so that by noon on the second day I returned to town to sit by the fountains at the shopping center, mothers pushing babies in their carts and staring at me as they wondered why I wasn’t in school. I spoke to no one, avoided eye contact. I just stared at the gurgling water and wondered what had happened to my mother.

  She told me to hike, to get out of her way so she could sort my father’s belongings. She hardly looked at me, didn’t touch me … she never even said my father’s name anymore.

  The shopping center filled at seven and I left, avoiding more anxious stares to return to the isolation of my bedroom.

  The third day I endured the condolences offered by strangers as we stood over a small box of ashes that used to be my father’s body in a bland room above Section Seven’s crematorium.

  I’d only been to one mourning before—my grandmother’s—but she’d died while I’d been a child and all I remembered was the navy dress my mother had bought me to wear and the stares of the strangers when I fingered the delicate lace on the hem.

  I wore no lace to my father’s mourning. I left my hair down for the occasion and put in gentle curls, the way my father preferred it. My mother had pulled hers back into a tight bun, the gray streaks more pronounced than they’d seemed three days ago. I thought it made her look harsh and angry, feelings she’d freely emitted since learning of her husband’s death. I glanced into her tear-streaked face, hoping to see life but earned an immediate reprimand for not greeting the next mourner.

  Ice clenched my heart, and I excused myself again, squeezing past the dark clad businessmen who’d worked with my father, their wives clutching their hands in silent gratitude that they were not the ones in the little box, burned to a fine ash. Worse were the whispers about their colleagues who’d turned out to be terrorists.

  “Can you imagine working right beside a terrorist and not knowing for five years?” a spindly woman whispered to her bulging companion.

  The second smothered her reply when I passed the two, her body still but her eyes following me until she had to physically turn to watch me walk from the room. Neither of those women had any remorse for my father. They simply attended out of duty, like half the others in the room that mingled amid the scent of flowers and sweat.

  My head spun as I burst into the hallway, found the exit and darted outside. I leaned against the sun-warmed wall of the building and closed my eyes, my lids colored red from the sunlight. I had to count to twenty before the whispers faded from my mind. Summer noises—birds, insects and the occasional whirring of a city bus passing by—replaced the whispers. I pressed my fingertips to my temples and tried to stop the spinning too.

  Another twenty and I took my first deep breath.

  More videos had been released along with pictures of the weapons the terrorists had used to kill my father and the other men—compact black rifles that looked like those the officers carried. In the early hours before the mourning, those weapons had seemed surreal.

  I reached for my PCA, remembered I’d left my backpack in the mourning room near my mother and decided it didn’t matter anyway. All I wanted was a message from T and I knew it wouldn’t be there.

  The door opened and a couple walked down the steps, hands tightly clasped. The woman tilted her blonde hair and whispered something to the man that made his cheeks color. He chuckled and I balled my fists, wondering how to make them understand the pain when I was jerked from my thoughts by a boy about my age slipping through the doors behind them and sliding up next to the wall beside me.

  He had dark brown hair and eyes like chocolate. Black lashes framed his eyes and for a second I felt envy. “Hello,” he said.

  He had a shadow of hair above his upper lip as though he’d forgotten to shave and it drew my gaze to those lips, to the way they moved when he spoke.

  “Do you speak?” he asked.

  I licked my lips, course against my tongue and jerked my gaze away. “Of course I speak.” My face heated, and I concentrated on the couple who now swayed their hips in rhythm as they ambled down the sidewalk.

  “I couldn’t take any more either,” he said, leaning against the wall beside me, elbows nearly touching. “The long lines, the unfamiliar faces.”

  “My father’s mourning is that boring, huh?” I asked, not bothering to hide the sarcasm.

  He cleared his throat. “No, but my father’s is excruciating.”

  My heart thudded and I flinched. I pushed a stray curl behind my ear and apologized. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “You didn’t kill him.”

  “But I—” I stammered, unsure how to apologize for assuming. “I—”

  His hand touched my arm, briefly, enough to gain my attention and send a shiver through my fingertips. “Don’t even try to apologize. I know what you mean.”

  I nodded.

  Birds continued to chirp like we were out for a picnic not hiding from the dead. The trees in front of the crematorium swayed with the ceaseless wind, just as it toyed with my hair. I tucked my hair back and wondered how to start over with this boy.

  “Who was he?” I asked.

  “Brennen Carmichal.”

  I’d seen his picture in the news reports, had heard his name, but couldn’t remember what role he played at the Alliance City Center so I said simply, “I’m sorry about your father.”

  “I thought I made it clear about apologies.” His voice carried sadness, yes, but there was something more. I turned to face him, leaning my right arm against the building so close I could feel his shirtsleeve brush my flesh when the breeze caught it.

  “So no more apologies,” I consented.

  He nodded once, sternly, and I couldn’t decide whether I liked him or not. “He was the staff doctor at the Alliance Center.”

  I caught my bottom lip between my teeth and scrunched my eyebrows together. I remembered reading that, remembered my father saying something about the doctor just last week, but couldn’t remember what it had been. “Who are you?”

  “Cray Carmichal.” He extended his hand to shake mine, and I took it but we didn’t move our hands up and down as traditional handshakes go. We just stood there, holding one another’s hands aw
kwardly.

  My cheeks grew warm and sweat formed on my palm. I pulled my hand away and planted my back against the wall again. I cleared my throat. “How long do you think we can stay out here before someone comes looking for us?” I asked quietly.

  He pulled out his PCA, swiped his right hand over the screen and chuckled—a sound I hadn’t expected from so many today. “The longest I’ve made it is seven minutes, fourteen seconds. We’re at eight.”

  “And why is that funny?” I asked.

  Cray put his PCA in his back pocket and folded his arms. “It’s not.” For the first time I noticed how smooth his skin was, how bronzed and firm.

  “Were you close to your father?” he asked, fingertip barely touching his bottom lip as he swiped an imaginary pest from his cheek, a signal my father had used to imply silence.

  I nodded.

  His voice rose slightly as he said, “Neither was I. He was so involved in work all the time that we barely spoke. I wish I’d known him better.”

  I closed my eyes as my head thunked back against the wall. They were listening to us, that’s what he was trying to tell me. My father had warned me about listening devices in government buildings, but why did they think we needed monitoring at a mourning? Our fathers had just been killed by terrorists. They couldn’t think we had something to do with that.

  I decided to play along anyway. “I mean we talked, but it was just dinner conversation, you know? He told us funny stories about things he saw on his way to work or whatever.”

  “You’re lucky to have those memories,” he said, his hand touching my arm, just below the elbow, his fingertips light, moving toward my hand before stepping away just as the doors to the crematorium opened.