The Aberration of Eden Pruitt, page 13
“So, people live here,” Eden said.
Cass nodded.
“How many?”
“Fifty, give or take a few. More in the winter. Less in the summer.” There was a stiffness to his words. The set of his shoulders, too. Like he was every bit as upset by the conditions as she was.
“Isn’t there somewhere better they could stay?” Somewhere above ground. Somewhere that didn’t smell like mold.
“Everybody here lives off the grid.”
“That doesn’t mean they deserve to live like this.”
The tense set of Cassian’s shoulders relaxed ever so subtly. So, too, did his grip on the desk’s ledge. A ghost of a smile played on his lips.
“What?” Eden said.
Cassian shrugged. “You care.”
Eden blinked, unsure how to respond to such a statement. Thanks to her superhuman ears, she could still hear the baby’s cry and the mother’s lullaby. Babies should sleep in warm cribs, surrounded by clean air.
“Most people don’t,” he added.
His words struck her with sadness. Perhaps because they were true. But only because most people didn’t know. If this place could be documented and shown to the public, she was sure that most people would feel the same anger she was feeling now.
It was, of course, a naïve idea. If Concordia kept protests and riots hidden from the public, they’d keep this hidden, too. She thought about the map in Cleo’s dorm room—marked with protests that had turned into riots over the past year. There’d been seven of them, when the year before there’d only been two. She thought about Dwight in Madison, missing. Where did he go? What did the government do with people like him? What would the government do with the people here? The whole thing made her feel untethered.
Cassian’s phone began buzzing again.
He pulled it free. “It’s Norton,” he said, showing her the screen. “Do you want me to block his number, too?
She nodded more resolutely than she felt, then chewed her bottom lip, trying hard not to think about her parents. Not to think about that mother and her baby or what would happen to that baby if the mother was arrested. She took a deep breath. “That thing you did with your foot. The arc. Was that some sort of secret greeting?”
“It’s a simple way to tell whether a visitor is friend or foe.”
She nodded, then peeked into one of the crates, which housed an assortment of books. She picked up a weathered copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. “Where does this stuff come from?”
“Mona is very organized. And Beverly isn’t the only influential person she knows.”
She thumbed through the pages, dust motes collecting in the air. “Does Mona ever worry about getting caught?”
“Always.”
Footsteps approached in the tunnel.
Eden returned the book to the crate as the sheet was swept aside, and a woman entered. The barefooted boy followed.
Eden recognized the former from the photograph she’d found in Cassian’s apartment. This version was a decade and a half older without the jaunty hat. Gray peppered her auburn hair, which was cut in a sharp line two inches short of her shoulders. She was squat and square with cheeks that had gone jowly. She had thin eyebrows and wore a wool overcoat that reached her ankles. She wasn’t smiling in the photograph and she wasn’t smiling in person.
“Cassian,” she said in a manner devoid of all warmth.
“Mona,” he replied in the same detached way.
The greeting was nothing like the one he’d shared with Beverly.
Mona glanced at Eden, then back at Cass. “It’s been a long time.”
“It has.”
“To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“I’m looking for a girl.”
Mona raised her sparse eyebrows. “And you need my help? I hear you’re quite adept at finding girls on your own these days.”
A muscle twitched in Cassian’s jaw. “You’ve been talking to Vick.”
“Unfortunately, we’ve had a few conversations.”
“Then you know Yukio is dead.”
“Men like him tend to end up that way.” She stepped behind her desk and shuffled through some loose papers. “Who is this girl you’re looking for?”
“She’s a few years older than me. White. Dark hair. Medium height. And a glass eye.”
Mona looked up from her desk, recognition sparking in her eyes.
With that final descriptor, she knew exactly who Cassian was talking about. Eden could tell. But she quickly extinguished the spark as she jotted something on a pad of paper, licked the tip of her middle finger, and tore the paper free. She handed it to the boy, who left the room. “What do you want with this girl?”
“Information.”
“About The Monarch,” Eden added, watching for another spark. For one fraction of a second, she could have sworn she saw one. But it vanished so quickly, Eden couldn’t capture its meaning.
“And this girl,” Mona said. “She has this information?”
“She might,” Eden replied.
Mona eased onto her desk chair and twiddled a pen between her fingers.
“You know Cleo,” Eden said.
Mona nodded.
“She remembers asking this girl about her glass eye. How she got it. The girl told Cleo the Monarch gave it to her.” When Eden finished, she cut a look at Cassian.
“Is she still here?” he asked.
Mona stared at him without blinking. He stared back—a silent face off like a pair of cardsharps at a poker table.
“I have a lot of mouths to feed,” Mona finally said, setting down the pen and steepling her fingers. “After recent events, getting the rations we need will be more difficult than usual. As you well know, hardship has a way of hitting those at the bottom the hardest.”
Cass removed a clip of money from his pocket. He pulled a bill free and set it on the desk.
Mona looked at it, then back up at him.
He removed another bill and set it on top of the first.
She pocketed them both, then clicked her pen and began scribbling on the pad of paper. “Technically, Beverly gave her the glass eye. But I suppose that’s not what Francesca meant by the statement.”
“Francesca?” Eden said.
“Burnoli. She was only here for a few months.”
“How’d she get the glass eye?” Cass asked.
“Her foster parents weren’t nice people.”
“Her foster parents?”
Mona gave Eden a singular nod.
Francesca Burnoli. They had a name. And a story. She was a foster kid who ended up with a glass eye because of her abusive foster parents. Was one of them The Monarch? “Do you remember their names—these foster parents?”
“Bryson.”
A weighted pause ensued. One Eden didn’t understand. Cass must have, though, for something significant passed between the two of them. Like the name meant something.
“I don’t remember their firsts,” Mona said.
“Do you remember if Francesca ever referred to either of them as The Monarch?” Eden asked.
“No. Nor do I know where she is now.” Mona jotted one last item on the paper. When she finished, she gave her finger another lick and tore the piece free. “This is everything I remember about Francesca. It’s not much, but it might help.”
She handed the slip to Cass.
Eden looked at it.
Mona had written three lines.
Francesca Burnoli
Bryson
The Orchard
“What’s The Orchard?” Cassian asked.
“The name of the girls’ home she lived in before she was placed with the Brysons. Maybe someone there can give you more information.”
Behind them, the sheet swept open again.
The boy was back.
He cut between Eden and Cass and handed Mona the same piece of paper, only this time someone had added to it in neat capital letters.
Mona made a humming noise in the back of her throat as she read the words. Then she pushed to her feet. “It’s late. Unless you have somewhere to be, you’re welcome to stay here for the night.” She unlocked the top drawer of her desk, searched through a stack of cards before pulling out two, then handed one to each of them. “We could use some extra hands with tomorrow’s load.”
21
Mona left.
Eden looked at the card the woman had handed her before leaving the room—blank except for two small squares. She peeked at Cassian’s. His was the same. “I thought you and Mona would have a warmer relationship.”
“Mona is too busy for warmth.”
One could argue that Dr. Beverly Randall-Ransom was, too.
“Does she normally make people pay for information?”
“What she said was true. There are a lot of mouths to feed. With money in short supply, information is her currency.” He pulled out his phone and called Cleo.
Eden was surprised he had a signal all the way down here in the dank bowels of these abandoned silos. Maybe they had some sort of cellular generator, like the battery-operated one on Mona’s desk. It made sense. What didn’t make sense was the virtual reality headset next to the computer. The metaverse was heavily monitored by the government. Users were required to hand over their identification in order to access it. What use would an off-the-grid person like Mona have with one?
Halfway through the third ring, Cleo answered. “What’d you find?”
“Her name was Francesca Burnoli.”
“Francesca! That was it.”
“She was a foster kid. The eye injury came from her foster parents. Last name is Bryson.”
Eden could hear Cleo’s scribbling pen.
“There’s also a girls’ home called The Orchard. I’m assuming it’s in Chicago. She stayed there for a while.”
“Anything else?” Cleo asked.
“That’s it.”
“Alrighty then. I’ll run these through the web and see what I can find.”
Cass thanked her. He hung up the phone, then held up the card Mona had given him. “Hungry?”
“I thought you said food was hard to come by.”
“It is. Which is why Mona gave us these.” He gave his card a flick and grabbed the kerosene lamp. They left Mona’s room and headed in the opposite direction from which they’d come, deeper into the labyrinth.
“What’s the story with Bryson?” Eden asked.
“What do you mean?”
“When Mona said the name, it felt like it meant something.”
Cass didn’t answer right away. They continued down the tunnel, Eden lengthening her stride to match his, then turned left before he finally said, “Mona had a son named Bryson.”
Had.
As in, past tense.
“It’s probably why the last name stuck with her all these years.”
“When did he die?”
“Twenty-one years ago.”
Eden nodded knowingly. When a loved one died twenty-one years ago, no more explanation was necessary. Mona lost her son the same way her parents lost theirs.
“Before The Attack,” Cassian added.
Her stride hitched. “Before?”
“He died in one of the uprisings, during a riot.”
Eden’s mouth dropped open as Cassian continued.
“Shortly after, The Attack happened. She was listed among the dead and too depressed to correct the mistake. When she finally came back to herself, it was too late.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s harder than you think to prove you’re living. And anyway, there were a lot of orphaned kids. Too many for the government to handle. She started taking them in. It made her feel like a mother again.”
“So that’s how this all began?”
Cassian nodded.
Ahead, a small group of adolescents and young adults congregated outside a room. As Eden and Cass approached, one of the group’s members broke away with an exclamation of disbelief. He wore a stained sweatshirt with the hood up, but even beneath its shadow, Eden could see the way his face lengthened in excited surprise. “Cass ‘The Wolf’ Gray!”
Cassian came to a sudden halt beside her.
The guy held out his hand like he wanted to slap Cassian’s.
Cass didn’t take the offer.
Undeterred, the kid pulled off his hood, revealing a head full of tight blonde curls. “It’s me, man. Hudson!” Then he turned to the group. “You guys, this is Cass Freaking Gray. Longest winning streak in the history of Underground Fighting. And an old pal from way back.”
If Cassian knew this pal from way back, he didn’t give any indication. Instead, he stared—stone-faced—as the rest of the group eyed him curiously.
Two guys. Three girls.
Hudson looked over one shoulder, then the other. Like a guilty kid in the throes of shoplifting. “Mona would kick me out if she knew, but bro, you won me some serious cash.” He rubbed his thumb over his index and middle finger, grinning stupidly.
The guy was terrible at reading a room.
Nothing about Cassian’s body language suggested he remembered Hudson or had any interest in reliving his glory days in the ring. With a terse, “Excuse us,” Cass put his hand on the small of Eden’s back and ushered her through the doorway into what could only be described as a cafeteria. An assortment of tables lit by more kerosene lamps—only one of which was occupied—and a serving counter on the far side. As Cassian walked toward it, Hudson called after them.
“Hey man, we gotta catch up! I’m dying to know when you’re getting back out there.”
Cass didn’t stop until they reached the counter.
He gave his card to the woman behind it. She punched one square and handed it back, along with a sandwich and a red apple with puckered skin.
Eden received the same.
At one table, a woman sat alone reading a well-worn paperback with a beefy, shirtless man on the cover. Except for an apple core, her plate was empty and sat atop something resembling a newspaper.
“Can I borrow this?” Cass asked as they passed.
“Go right ahead,” the woman replied, not even looking up as she turned a page.
Cassian took it, then led the way to the farthest table.
Eden sat across from him, twirling the hole-punched card between her fingers. “A ration card.”
“Don’t lose it,” he said.
“If I do?”
“No breakfast tomorrow.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Mona runs a tight ship. These will get us two meals. Dinner and breakfast. Her subtle way of saying we’re not welcome for more than a night. Long-term residents get weekly cards with twenty-one squares. Mona only keeps as many as there are rations. No cards, no room. There usually aren’t any extras in the winter.”
“What if someone misplaces their card on a Monday?”
“They don’t.” Cass unfolded the paper he’d snagged.
It wasn’t Concordia, but another illegal venture. Like Cleo’s The People’s Press. Only this was thicker and more professional looking.
At the top was today’s date.
Saturday, October 5th.
Underneath the date, a large title read America Underground.
“Is that—?”
“A newspaper that’s circulated amongst communities living off the grid?” Cass turned a page. “Yes.”
Highly intrigued, Eden scanned the front-page article above the fold. Like every article in the Concordia Times, it was about the attack in Chicago. Only this was from the perspective of a person living off the grid, discussing the ramifications for their particular communities, focusing most heavily on the retinal scan crackdown and a new hotline for whistleblowers. Below the fold was a list of safe houses and businesses. Not just in Chicago, but across the entire country.
“Does Cleo know about this?” Eden asked.
“Cleo subscribes,” Cassian said.
Eden took a bite from her apple—dry and slightly bitter—her mind turning to Concordia reporters, issuing statements about the danger of these communities, where Interitus was supposedly recruiting. Amassing numbers. Building in strength. Eden saw zero evidence to back up such claims. Was the government willingly misleading the people or did they believe the picture they were painting?
The old Eden would have given the benefit of the doubt. This new Eden no longer knew what was true. Interitus had to be gathering somewhere and America Underground made one thing abundantly clear: there were many more communities like this one. Surely not all of them were so innocuous. There were probably plenty with higher populations of Hudsons, gambling on Underground Fighting with men like Mordecai. Men who carried on Karik Volkova’s legacy.
Cass turned another page and stopped.
“What?” she asked, the word muffled by a mouthful of stale white bread and bologna.
Cass slid the paper across the table.
Eden blinked at a page full of faces. Ten, at least.
She scanned them, her attention coming to a screeching halt over the third girl in the right-hand column. “That’s …”
“Jane,” Cass finished.
Eden swallowed her bite.
The page Cassian had turned to was dedicated to missing people living off the grid.
And here was Subject 003.
The girl they’d been calling Jane.
Only her name wasn’t Jane. Her name was Violet Winter. She was reported missing since June. Of last year. Not this past summer, when Barrett Barr’s face found its way onto national news. But the summer before.
“That’s why we couldn’t find her,” Eden said.
“She lives off the grid.”
“Why has she been missing for over a year?”
Of course, Cass didn’t have an answer. Cass didn’t know.
“Do you think Mordecai had her that whole time?”
Cass narrowed his eyes as though considering and took a bite of his apple.
“Maybe that’s why she’s so …”
“Different?” Cass said, arching an eyebrow.
Eden shrugged. Maybe Jane—or Violet Winter—hadn’t just woken up two months later, like Barrett. Maybe she’d been asleep inside that luxury bomb shelter for over a year. Maybe during that long stretch of time, something had short-circuited. According to Jack, her signal was weaker than Eden’s and Barrett’s. Maybe this explained why.
