Resist (4 page)

Zenn watched me with a wary eye.
“Vi. Don’t give them a real reason to lock you up.” He stepped
close enough for his
body heat to permeate
my senses. Touching was against the rules, but he’d broken that one
lots of times.

I smiled, even though he was
right. Lock Up is not a fun place. The stench alone is enough to
set rule-breakers straight. Still, I almost threw my activity card
into the brambles where no one would ever find it.

Zenn’s face stopped me, his mouth
drawn into a fine line. My bar code would be attached to his—we
were in the park after dark (
gasp!
)—and if I got into serious
trouble, he might not be able to advance in the Special Forces. And
I couldn’t have that weighing on my conscience.

I rolled my eyes at Zenn,
something he didn’t see because of my oversize straw hat—another
rule, one I actually followed. The scanner beeped, and a horrible
squeal erupted from the hovercopter.

“
What have you done now?” Zenn’s
voice carried a hint of laughter amidst the
exasperation.

“
Nothing,” I answered. “I’ve done
nothing this time.” I’d been good for two months.

“
This
time?” he asked.

“
Violet Schoenfeld, stay where you
are!” the mechanical voice boomed. “The Green demands a
hearing.”

“
Vi! The Green? Seriously, what
have you done?”

“
Can I have my present
now?”

* * *

Everyone knows the Green is just a
fancy name for the Thinkers. They’re the ones who broadcast the
transmissions and categorize the people. The ones who do the
thinking so regular people won’t have to.

Zenn would join Them when he
finished training with the Special Forces. He’d wanted to be a
Greenie for as long as I’d known him, but that didn’t stop our
friendship. This arrest might—SF agents didn’t hang out with
criminals.

Inside the hovercopter, large
panels with multicolored buttons and complicated instruments
covered the dashboard. Glass encased the entire bulb of the body,
allowing the pilot to spot rule-breakers from any angle. A window
in the floor beneath the single—and occupied—metal chair provided a
good view of the ground below. Since I had nowhere to sit, I stood
next to the tiny doorway.

I felt trapped in a bubble, with
the charcoal sky pressing down around me. My throat tightened with
each passing second.

After cuffing me, the pilot
scowled. “This return trip will take twice as long. We usually send
transports for arrests.”

I made a face at the back of his
head. Like I didn’t know that. Almost as bad as Lock Up, transports
are twice as uncomfortable as the cramped hovercopter. And the
filth and stink? Nasty.

With my extra weight on board, the
pilot maneuvered the craft awkwardly and zoomed back toward the
towers on the south end of the Goodgrounds. “I have a break in
twenty minutes. I don’t have time for this.”

Then let me out.
I watched Zenn fade to a distant dot, hoping it
wouldn’t be the last time I saw him.

The hovercopter slowed and the
pilot turned to glare at me. “Don’t try your tricks on me,
girlie.”

I had no idea what he meant. I
gripped the handle above the doorway as he swung the hovercopter to
the left. Toward the towers.

The Southern Rim is only
accessible to Goodies with special clearance or important
business. I’d never been there, not that I hadn’t tried. No one I
knew had ever been—water folk didn’t make trouble.

True fear flowed in my veins as we
approached. Maybe sneaking to see Zenn had been a bad idea. The
thought felt strange, almost like it didn’t belong to me. It grew,
pressing me down with guilt.
You shouldn’t
have risked your freedom to see Zenn.

The voice in my head definitely
wasn’t my own. Damn Thinkers. I shook the brainwashing message
away. Zenn had risked his freedom for me last summer.

Below me, fields wove together in
little squares, some
brown, some green,
some gold. Crops grown in the Centrals provided food for those in
the Southern Rim and the rest of the Goodgrounds.

The fields gave way to structures
standing two or three stories high. Constructed like the other
buildings in the Goodgrounds—gray or brown bricks, flashing tech
lights, and red iris readers in every doorway.

Windows were blinded off from the
outside world. We certainly don’t want any sunlight getting in. No,
that would be bad. According to the Thinkers anyway. Sunlight
damages skin, no matter what color. Our clothes cover us from
wrist to chin, ankle to hip, and everywhere in between. Suits for
the business class. Jeans and oatmeal-colored shirts for everyone
else. Wide-brimmed hats must be worn at all times.

Goodies are walking paper dolls,
devoid of personality—and brains.

Yeah, that doesn’t work for me. I
don’t want to be a paper doll. That’s why I broke the rules and
stopped plugging in to the transmissions.

The pilot swerved and twisted
around the tall buildings. I’d never seen the city up close. My
eyes couldn’t move fast enough from one shiny structure to the
next.

The pilot steered toward the last
and tallest building on
the border of our
land. The one with the symbol that can be seen anywhere in the
Goodgrounds.

The olive branch is the symbol of
good. It signals our allegiance to the Association of Directors.
More like Association of Dictators, if you want my honest opinion.
But no one does.

“
So now you’ve seen the Southern
Rim,” the pilot said. “Was it everything you expected?”

I didn’t know how to answer, so I
kept my mouth shut—a first for me. That was the Southern Rim? No
magic, no golden pathways, no perfect escape from my sucky life.
The wall now towered in front of me, closing off any thought of
freedom.

The hovercopter hung in midair as
a door slid open in the wall. Darkness concealed whatever waited
inside. And what would I find on the other side? Could I come back?
Maybe I would never see Zenn again. My mouth felt too
dry.

“
We’re going in there?” I
asked.

“
After I process your file,” the
pilot said. He made a note on a small screen. A long list popped
up.

“
I’ve cited you
before,” he said, smiling slowly. I remem
bered the last time: I’d left the
City of Water after dark, crossed through the crops growing in the
Centrals, and tried to enter the Southern Rim. I’d dressed up real
nice in a fancy white dress and old platform shoes—which
were the reason I’d been caught. No one can run
in shoes like that.

I endured six rounds of
questioning until I admitted I’d stolen the shoes from the basement
of a house in the Abandoned Area—another off-limits place—another
violation of the rules. Wearing contraband (which I didn’t know
about at the time) from an illegal area, trying to enter another
forbidden district, and then there was all that nasty business
about lying. Like it’s the worst thing on the planet or
something.

You see, Goodies don’t lie. Ever.
Honesty is sort of bred into us, but somehow mine got out-bred.
Maybe when I stopped listening to the transmissions. Or maybe
because I just don’t give a damn.

And I’m a good liar, but that’s
all been properly documented in my file, which the pilot was now
reading with interest. “Mm-hmm,” he said. “A liar, a thief, and now
the Green wants you. It’s no small wonder, Vi.”

I absolutely hate it when
strangers use my nickname like we’re old friends. I ignored him as
he eased the hovercopter closer to the wall. A red beam scanned the
rose on the bottom and a signal flashed. The pilot steered into a
long tunnel with black walls, hardly a wall and more like a
building. As we careened through it, panic spread through
me—something I hadn’t felt since learning Zenn would be leaving me
behind
to join the Special Forces. I
wished he’d given me my birthday present before the stupid pilot
arrested me.

When we finally cleared the
tunnel, I gasped at the view below me.

A second city loomed behind that
wall—an entire city
.

People swarmed in the streets.
Silver instruments and shiny gadgets winked up at me from the vast
expanse below. My stomach clenched painfully, and I forced myself
to keep breathing so I wouldn’t faint.

The fierceness of the advanced
tech burned in my brain. I can
feel
technology, I’ve always been able to. And this
whole new part of the Goodgrounds produced some serious tech buzz.
My head felt like it was in a particle accelerator set on
high.

“
So here we are,” the pilot said.
“The Institute—the birthplace of tech.”

No wonder I felt like throwing
up.

Elana Johnson
is the author of the
Possession
series, which includes
the full-length novels of POSSESSION and SURRENDER, and the short
stories RESIST and REGRET. The third and final full-length novel in
the series, ABANDON, releases in June 2013.

She wishes she could
experience her first kiss again, tell the mean girl where to go,
and have cool superpowers. To fulfill her desires, she writes young
adult science fiction and fantasy. She lives in Utah, where she
spends her time with many students, one husband, and two kids. Find
out more at
elanajohnson.blogspot.com

Friend her on
Facebook:

www.facebook.com/possessionthebook

Or follow her on
twitter:

www.twitter.com/#!/ElanaJ

She wishes to say thanks
to Dustin Hansen for the gorgeous cover for this short. And mucho
gracias to Christine Fonseca, Beth Revis, Dustin Hansen, and Lisa
Roecker for reading the zero draft of RESIST.