Youngbloods, page 14
But when I checked the public databank for people called Sara, none of them were her. She’s also missing from the Remembrance Wall, listing everyone killed during the final battle for Shreve. Which means she’s using an alias.
Finding her might be tricky. But there’s one thing I’m certain about—Sara wouldn’t miss the biggest party of the new era.
By the time we reach the edge of the crater, our coats billowing like rainbow flags behind us, the bash is fully underway. Thousands of people have begun to fill the gently curving bowl of exposed bedrock. Music and light drones crowd the air.
‘Should’ve gotten here earlier,’ Shay says, looking down at the throng. ‘How do we find one person in this mess?’
‘Don’t worry, Boss. In the old days, the resistance was organized face-to-face. People like Sara were the network.’ I point at the center of the crater. ‘Those habits aren’t gone yet.’
Shay looks down at the cluster of temp structures at the party’s heart—water stations, bubbly bars, portable toilets, controller boards for the fleets of music and light drones. Not much dancing there, just dozens of little knots of people in furious communication.
Like a micro-government has formed within the party.
‘Okay,’ Shay says. ‘But be discreet. Don’t want to start any rumors about Youngbloods looking for Future.’
‘Then let’s split up,’ I say. ‘You’re famous, Shay-la. But I was on the feeds for, what, ten seconds?’
Shay smiles. ‘You mean, your forgettable face might come in handy?’
I nod slowly. Being anonymous keeps me safe from all the mistakes I’ve made, all the trouble I’ve caused. It helps me forget the people I’ve gotten killed or thrown in prison.
But it can also feel like being in free fall.
‘Don’t get serious,’ Shay says. ‘I was only kidding.’
‘It’s just weird, Boss. All that time pretending to be Rafi, I knew exactly who I was supposed to be. But now there’s nothing to fall back on, like I never had anything that was mine.’
Shay considers this, her silence made heavy by the clamor of music and voices below.
‘You had Col,’ she finally says. ‘Your sister stole a lot more than your name.’
32. BASH
Flying down into the crater is tricky.
Dazzle-drones the size of hummingbirds whir above the crowd in huge formations, each a pixel in giant moving images. The climaxes in the music are paired with shimmering Shreve flags overhead. Vast phoenixes unfold, one after another, a brood of flaming birds rising from the nest.
I suspect that Rafi wasn’t consulted by the party committee. This patriotism seems too incandescent for her taste.
Larger drones carry speakers, pulsing out the air-shuddering music. Shay and I dodge and weave through the aerial throng, like nervous flies buzzing a birthday cake covered with sparklers.
When we land in the crater’s crowded center, heads turn in our direction. Personal hoverboards are still unusual in Shreve. They weren’t allowed under my father’s rule and can’t be printed cheaply, like zoot suits or microdrones.
People recognize Shay and head toward us. Someone hands me bubbly.
The party accepts us but doesn’t lose its cool.
Some of them weren’t even born when Tally and her crew overturned the old regime. Or they were littlies still, years away from the operation. The Youngbloods are a historical curiosity; free Shreve is a new frontier.
I turn and stroll away, enjoying the bubbly and my boring face. It doesn’t take long to blend into the crowd.
I let the party wash over me, my Special senses alight, scanning for Sara’s face, listening for her name, her voice.
Here at the crowded center of the crater, everyone’s discussing politics. Which clique will occupy the vacuum left by Future? Will more secret prisons be discovered? Who should write the new history texts for schoolkids? Should personal hovercams be banned?
Lots of people are surrounded by cams, documenting their own lives now that the dust is gone. But others wear dazzle makeup, trying to disappear their faces.
Despite these debates and differences, everyone’s dressed the same way—a knee-length jacket and wide, ruffled trousers, swaddling the wearer in excess. The suits are set to self-recycle by lunch tomorrow, of course. But tonight they’re expressions of abundance, flamboyant rejections of the drab, sensible uniforms of my father’s era.
Rafi would never wear a zoot suit, any more than she’d approve of the garish drone show overhead. Or the surgery around me—manga eyes, elfin ears, skin tones in primary colors, prehensile tails. Backlash against the old rules, and maybe against my sister’s measured taste as well.
Then it hits me—with all this surge, what if Sara has a new face?
‘Nice outfit,’ someone says.
I turn to see a boy my age, his jacket printed from the exact same pattern as mine, down to the parrot lining. Obviously the fashion cliques couldn’t come up with thousands of different designs, but it still feels shaming.
‘Oops,’ I say.
His smile flashes in the lights from overhead. ‘Just like the old days—everyone in the same clothes.’
‘Except we picked them,’ I say, flouncing my coattails. ‘Not the government.’
‘We did?’ The boy looks down at his trousers—the printing is already frayed at the pegged cuffs. ‘I wasn’t on the zoot suit committee. Were you?’
I shake my head, wondering if the party planners started this craze.
Until my father’s death, every public event in Shreve was meticulously planned by his regime. So were the food people ate, the music they listened to, even the words they were allowed to say. Compared to back then, Shreve’s culture is in chaos—and yet here we are with identical jackets.
‘Maybe we don’t need committees anymore,’ I say. ‘Maybe trends just bubble up naturally, like life evolving in a tide pool.’
The boy’s eyes light up. ‘Shreve expressing its collective personality, like an AI city. And it’s thinking … zoot suits!’
I start to laugh.
‘Why not?’ he asks, serious now. ‘Zoots used to be a Rusty symbol of defiance—against poverty, fascist occupation, even skin-color bias!’
I look down at myself. ‘Baggy trousers can mean all that?’
He smiles, following my gaze. ‘Works for me.’
And a head-spinning realization hits—this boy is flirting with me.
No one’s flirted with me since I first met Col.
For a moment, what I’ve lost threatens to rise up through the blackened, blasted floor of the crater. But I shake the dizziness away.
If I’m going to find Sara, I need to talk to people at this party, and flirting means talking. Best of all, this boy doesn’t seem to know who I am, which means he doesn’t watch the newsfeeds.
But maybe he was part of the underground.
‘Shreve always had a personality,’ I say. ‘Remember the palimpsest?’
The boy nods happily. ‘Gossip and rebellion scrawled on the wall. I was too scared to write any myself, but a friend of mine had a pair of glasses. I liked reading all those secrets.’
Perfect. ‘Were you in any cliques?’
‘Maybe,’ he says, offering his hand. ‘I’m Veracity. That’s my clean name, of course.’
‘Your clean name?’
He frowns. ‘You haven’t heard? Lots of us are ditching our dust names. To escape our old lives, all those compromises.’
‘Right. It’s just …’
‘You like your old name?’
‘Not much.’ I let out a tired sigh. Frey is just Rafi spelled wrong, and now my sister’s turned it upside down. ‘But I haven’t figured out a new one.’
He nods sagely. ‘Take your time.’
Maybe that’s why Sara is missing from the databanks—she’s erased her old identity for a clean start.
‘Veracity means “truthfulness,”’ the boy is saying. ‘Which doesn’t suit me. Without the dust watching, I lie all the time.’
I laugh.
‘I’m serious!’ he cries. ‘It was easy to be honest, back when the dust was watching. But now it’s soooo tempting to make stuff up. Especially to strangers, who believe whatever you say!’
‘Hang on. Have you been lying to me?’
‘No. But that could also be a lie, and you’d never know! I’m really good at lying, for someone with no practice.’
I wipe the smile off my face, spotting a way to find out if he knows Sara.
‘Let me test your honesty. How about a few personal questions?’
‘My favorite kind,’ he says.
‘Is there anything you miss about the old days?’
Veracity takes a moment, then glances at the control tower for the light drones. A couple of wardens are up there with the staff, looking out over the crowd.
‘I miss being left alone,’ he says. ‘We never needed wardens at a bash before.’
‘Sure.’ The dust didn’t just enforce honesty—it handed out demerits for drinking too much or shouting too loud. Getting into a fight was out of the question. ‘But that’s not freedom. The wardens were just invisible.’
‘Which meant you could go anywhere,’ Veracity says wistfully. ‘Rooftops, the old train tunnels, empty factories—no door was ever locked. The whole city was open to explore.’
‘There was a clique for that … Secret Hookups?’
Veracity gives me an enigmatic smile. ‘That was the old me. Different name, different person.’
So he’s not going to tell me about his dusty past. If everyone in Shreve feels this way, finding Sara’s going to be impossible.
I keep moving. ‘Anything else you miss?’
‘The small stuff. Like taking what you want from a store and letting the dust charge your account. Now you have to stop and pay. And half the stores are locked at night, like I’d just walk in and steal things! Isn’t it shaming?’
‘I guess.’
‘And restaurants were much less stress-making when the dust calculated the bill. My friend Lilac eats nine-tenths of the guac, then only pays half!’
‘Dreadful,’ I say.
‘Yeah, I know. It’s nothing compared to before. Littlies in prison! Dictators are so ethics-missing.’ Veracity looks at the ground, as if suddenly exhausted. ‘That’s the thing I really miss—not knowing. Every day now there’s something awful on the feeds, something that we did, our city. Everyone says there’s another secret prison out there. People are still missing. What are we celebrating?’
His shift of mood hits me too, deflating the glitter and pulse of the party around us. My printed suit doesn’t feel defiant anymore, just cheap.
I wonder if everyone in Shreve has these swings—elation that the dictator is gone, horror at what the aftermath reveals.
‘And there’s that attempted-murder case,’ Veracity says. ‘Wild, right?’
I only know my sister’s version of that story, not what’s on the public feeds, so I just nod.
His impish smile returns. ‘Still, look at this party! Can you imagine anything like this in the old days?’
I sweep my eyes across the crater. All this joyous noise and chaos, all these people dancing on my father’s grave.
‘Maybe a party can celebrate itself,’ I say.
‘Guess it takes work, getting used to being happy,’ Veracity says, then groans. ‘Especially for that bunch.’
I follow his gaze.
A new clique is making its way into the party, hundreds of them strolling down together from the crater’s edge. The sight of them makes my breath catch.
Instead of zoot suits, they’re wearing uniforms in robin’s-egg blue. The military cut is familiar, but my mind refuses to place what I’m seeing.
‘Who … what is this?’
‘You haven’t seen them yet?’ Veracity asks. ‘Fastest-growing clique in Shreve. Had to happen, someone paying tribute. But I didn’t think it would be so taste-missing.’
I watch dumbstruck as the group swarms us. Along with the matching tunics, they’ve all been surged the same way. Dark hair, broad shoulders, brown eyes.
Hundreds of them.
‘They’re called the Saviors.’ Veracity shakes his head. ‘Fans of poor Col Palafox, the Savior of Shreve.’
33. SAVIORS
My body wants to run, but my mind is frozen solid.
The throng of Saviors flows around me and Veracity, a light blue tide. Col’s face is uncanny in its multitude—not perfect clones, a hundred versions, the work of makeup, printed masks, and cos-surge.
Tall Cols, short Cols. Loud Cols, quiet Cols.
Young, old. Party-drunk, serious. Female, enby, male.
None of them really him.
All these details overwhelm my brain, like the first time I saw the night sky with my new Special senses, all those smudged galaxies and razor-sharp planets, too much to take in.
My eyes slam shut, bringing relief—no one’s surged their vocal cords; no one’s speaking Spanish, or even with a Victorian accent. It’s like a normal Shreve crowd passing around me, not these simulations.
Not these impostors.
But it’s too late. The world is already spinning on its spire of grief, the poisoned, buried tower. I can barely stand.
Their chatter swirls around me, dizzy-making and trivial. How big the party is. Who has the most Palafox costume tonight. Maybe instead of Victorian uniforms, we should’ve worn zoot suits in robin’s-egg blue.
Veracity’s voice is in my ear. ‘Are you okay? Did something happen?’
Yes, something happened. My sister killed him to save me—to save us all. Everyone in this crater owes their existence to the buzzing blade of her knife in Col’s heart.
Ending him.
‘Maybe some water,’ I say.
‘Back in a flash. Hang in there!’
I feel Veracity leave my side.
Now I’m alone in this tide of Palafox. Even with my eyes closed, Col’s face fills my head, remixed into endless variations.
I breathe deep and slow, trying to steady myself, swallowing the pain along with salt tears. Eventually the throng will pass.
But then, amid all the chatter, a voice tugs on my ears.
‘… a crossover with Breakage. Make them go big-time, arson in one of the ruined neighborhoods. Force people to see what Shreve would look like if we’d got nuked. We play dead in the aftermath, a thousand Cols with radiation poisoning. How historic would that be?’
The voice is familiar, along with the way the words jumble and tangle, piling on top of each other. And I remember what Veracity said.
Fastest-growing clique in Shreve.
Where else would Sara be?
I force my eyes open to the light blue sea.
His face overwhelms me again. This crush, this roiling mass, this explosion of Cols. Even in my nightmares, full of pulse knives and chest wounds, nothing has ever been so dreadful.
My eyes shut themselves again, before I suffocate.
I have to track her by sound.
Sara’s voice is fading now, behind me and to my right. I spin around and move swiftly after her, hands outstretched to feel my way through the crowd.
My fingertips brush shoulders and arms, a stray yelp of surprise as I step on someone’s foot. Conversations drop off as I pass—who’s this weirdo pushing through the crowd with her eyes shut?
Ahead of me, Sara keeps talking, nonstop plans for what the Saviors should do to match the grandeur of this party.
Something big, to reflect the sacrifice of the House Palafox’s first son.
‘Sara!’ I hiss.
Her voice cuts off.
I come to a halt. Opening my eyes again, I find myself face-to-face with a small group of Saviors.
They’re looking straight at me, a little confused. Five Cols, almost impossible to focus on. But then I see something pinned to one of their uniform lapels.
A small badge with a schematic of a tree.
It’s one of the dust detectors that we brought to Shreve three months ago so we’d know when to speak freely. We paid Sara for her help with four of them.
She looks me up and down, a glimmer of recognition crossing her stolen features. ‘You’re that Youngblood. The anonymous one.’
I nod. Unlike Veracity, Sara watches the newsfeeds and saw me shake my sister’s hand.
But her friends are hearing this too, which is exactly what Shay didn’t want.
‘We need to talk,’ I say. ‘Alone.’
Sara looks around the crowd. ‘You picked a funny place.’
It’s hard to answer her, hard to think at all, with that tide of Palafox blue washing around us. I focus my senses on the specifics of Sara behind her costume surge.
She’s skinnier than the real Col, her hair frizzier. Her costume surge hasn’t changed how young she looks.
I gesture up the slope, in the direction the Saviors came from. The line of darkness at the edge of the crater.
‘That way.’
She considers this for a moment. I manage to keep my eyes open, somehow not seeing the other Cols swarming past us. The ground is unsteady.
Then a smile crosses her face. Like she’s already figured out what I want. Like she’s ready to do business.
Sara nods toward the darkness.
‘Anything for one of Tally’s crew.’
34. BUSINESS
We climb out of the crater, until the lights of Shreve rise up on the horizon. They match the glare and dazzle of the party, as if Sara and I are a dark fulcrum balancing two bright and fragile chandeliers.
‘So the rumors are true,’ she says.
I face her. ‘Which rumors?’
‘That your crew was part of that mess the other night.’ Her smile drops away. ‘Chulhee, breaking into the Sarcophagus. Everyone knows the Youngbloods found that crashed hovercar. But not by chance, right?’
I hesitate. Tally and Shay would want me to admit nothing. But Sara’s too smart, and her trust is more important than the Youngbloods’ rep.
