Requiem

“Why?” Raven says. Her face is alive again, alert. For a moment, when I look at her, I get a small chill. She lives for this—the fight, the battle for survival. She actually enjoysit.

Pippa shrugs. “It’s my best guess. That part of the city was mostly park anyway—they’ve probably just flooded it completely, rerouted the water flow. They’ll have shored up defenses there, of course, but if they had enough firepower to rout us, they’d have attacked already. We’re talking whatever forces they’ve gathered in a week or two.”

She looks up at us, to make sure we’re following. Then she draws a sweeping arrow around the base of the teardrop, pointing upward. “They’ll probably expect us to go north, toward the water flow. Or they think we’ll scatter.” She draws lines radiating in various directions from the base of the teardrop; now it looks like a deranged, bearded smiley face. “I think instead we should make a direct attack, send a small force into the city, bust open the dam.” She draws a line, sweepingly, through the teardrop, cutting it in half.

“I’m in,” Raven says. Tack spits. He doesn’t have to say he’s in too.

Summer folds her arms, looking down at Pippa’s diagram. “We’ll need three separate groups,” she says slowly. “Two diversionary, to create problems here and here”—she bends down and marks X’s at two distinct places along the periphery—“and one smaller force to get in, do the job, and get out.”

“I’m in,” Lu pipes up. “As long as I can be part of the main force. I don’t want any of this side-business shit.”

This surprises me. At the old homestead, Lu never expressed interest in joining the resistance. She never even got a fake procedural mark. She just wanted to stay as far as possible from the fighting; she wanted to pretend that the other side, the cured side, didn’t exist. Something must have changed in the months we’ve been apart.

“Lu can come with us.” Raven grins. “She’s a walking good-luck charm. That’s how she got her name. Isn’t it, Lucky?”

Lu doesn’t say anything.

“I want to be part of the main force too,” Julian speaks up suddenly.

“Julian,” I whisper. He ignores me.

“I’ll go wherever you need me,” Alex says. Julian glances at him, and for a second I feel the resentment between them, a blunt, hard-edged force.

“So will I,” Coral says.

“Count us in.” Hunter speaks for him and Bram.

“I want to be the one who lights the match,” Dani says.

Other people are chiming in now, volunteering for different tasks. Raven looks at me. “What about you, Lena?”

I can feel Alex’s eyes on me. My mouth is so dry; the sun is so blinding. I look away, toward the hundreds and hundreds of people who have been driven out of their homes, out of their lives, to this place of dust and dirtiness, all because they wanted the power to feel, to think, to choose for themselves. They couldn’t have known that even this was a lie—that we never really choose, not entirely. We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another. We have no choice but to step forward, and then step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven’t chosen at all.

But maybe happiness isn’t in the choosing. Maybe it’s in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.

Coral shifts, and moves her hand to Alex’s arm.

“I’m with Julian,” I say at last. This, after all, is what I have chosen.

Hana

Before going home, I spend some time zigzagging through the streets near Old Port, trying to clear my head of Lena, and the guilt; trying to clear it of Fred’s voice: Cassie asked too many questions.

I bump onto the curb and pedal as fast as I can, as though I can push out my thoughts through my feet. In just two short weeks, I won’t have even this freedom; I’ll be too known, too visible, too followed. Sweat trickles down my scalp. An old woman emerges from a store and I barely have time to swerve, jump the curb, and skate back into the street, before I hit her.

“Idiot!” she shouts.

“Sorry!” I call over my shoulder, but the word gets lost in the wind.

Then, out of nowhere—a barking dog, a huge blur of black fur, leaps for me. I jerk my handlebars to the right and lose my balance. I tumble off the bike, hitting the ground hard on my elbow, and skid several feet as pain rips up my right side. My bike thuds next to me, screeching across the concrete, and someone is yelling, and the dog is still barking. One of my feet is entangled in the spokes of my front wheel. The dog circles me, panting.

“Are you okay?” A man speed-walks across the street. “Bad dog,” he says, smacking the dog’s head roughly. The dog slinks several feet away, whimpering.

I sit up, extracting my foot carefully from my bike. My right arm and shin are cut up, but miraculously, I don’t think I’ve broken anything. “I’m all right.” I pull myself carefully to my feet, rolling my ankles and wrists slowly, checking for pain. Nothing.

“You should watch where you’re going,” the man says. He looks a

I pick up my bike and wheel it onto the sidewalk. The chain has come off the stay, and one handlebar is slightly crooked, but other than that, it looks okay. As I bend down to adjust the chain, I notice that I’ve landed directly in front of the Center for Organization, Research, and Education. I must have been circling it for the past hour.

The CORE keeps Portland’s public records: the incorporation documents for its businesses, but also the names, birth dates, and addresses of its citizens; copies of their birth, marriage, medical, and dental records; violations against them and report cards and a

An open society is a healthy society; transparency is necessary to trust.That’s what The Book of Shhhteaches. My mom used to phrase it differently: Only people who have something to hide make a fuss about privacy.

Without consciously making the decision, I lock my bike to a streetlamp and jog up the stairs. I push through the revolving doors and step into a large, plain lobby, decorated with gray linoleum floor tiles and buzzing overhead lights.

A woman sits behind a fake-wood desk, in front of an ancient-looking computer. Behind her a heavy chain is hung across an open doorway; from it, a large sign is dangling: PERSONNEL AND AUTHORIZED CORE EMPLOYEES ONLY.

The woman barely glances at me as I approach the desk. A small plastic name tag identifies her as TANYA BOURNE, SECURITY ASSISTANT.

“Can I help you?” she asks in a monotone. I can tell that she doesn’t recognize me.

“I hope so,” I say cheerfully, placing my hands on the desk and forcing her to meet my gaze. Lena used to call it my Buy a bridgelook. “See, my wedding’s coming up, and I completely flaked on Cassie, and now I have barely any time to track her down. . . .”

The woman sighs and resettles in her chair.

“And of course Cassie hasto be there. I mean, even if we haven’t spoken . . . well, she invited me to herwedding, and it just wouldn’t be nice, would it?” I let out a giggle.

“Miss?” she prompts tiredly.

I giggle again. “Oh, sorry. Babbling—it’s a bad habit. I guess I’m just nervous, you know, because of the wedding and everything.” I pause and suck in a deep breath. “So can you help me?”

She blinks. Her eyes are a dirty-bathwater color. “What?”

“Can you help me find Cassie?” I ask, squeezing my hands into fists, hoping she won’t notice. Please say yes.“Cassandra O’Do

I watch Tanya carefully, but she doesn’t appear to recognize the name. She heaves an exaggerated sigh, pushes up from her chair, and moves over to a tiered stack of papers. She waddles back to me and practically slaps it on the desk. It’s as thick as a medical intake form—at least twenty pages long. “Personal Information Requests may be sent to CORE, attention Census Department, and will be processed within ninety days—”