Taken (A Dystopian Novel) (The Taken Trilogy), page 23
“Dealt with how?” Sasha asks more sternly.
“Nothing you need to worry about right now, Natasha,” Richards says. Through clench teeth, the forcefulness in his voice equals hers.
“I think you should disclose your plans for our community.” She braces her hands on the table as if to stand.
“Won’t be your community much longer, my dear,” he counters. They are in a silent standoff for a few seconds, but she lowers her gaze.
“Implementation will begin soon. I will keep you posted as to the dates. Stop worrying about such minor details. Tresling has so much to offer, so be excited about the role you will play when this becomes part of history.”
When Richards concludes, his officials talk to us more about progress in Tresling. Then, we break for lunch, and Marco, Sasha and I go to a small café nearby even though lunch is provided for us. I think we just needed to get out of that room. We sit at a small booth, Sasha and I sit on one side across from Marco.
“You’re not going to believe what I just realized,” Marco says excitedly, but he grows apprehensive when he looks at Sasha. I swing her arm around her shoulders.
“She knows everything,” I say. A waitress brings menus. It only has three items on it, and they’re all sandwiches. We each order a different one.
“Okay, look at this,” Marco says after the waitress leaves. He spreads the map of new Wicker Farm from the folder out on the table. With a pen he marks an “x” over The Institute and Richards’ house. “Here’s where the two machines are, and I think I know where the third is.”
He marks another “x” over the field where Community Day is held. Then he connects the three x’s so that they form a triangle. Sasha pulls the map toward her and gasps.
“How do you know?”
“Look what’s in the middle,” he instructs. I gasp. It’s the exact place where I always thought we crossed dimensions.
“You’re right. This is it.” I take the map from Sasha. “Megan didn’t know anything about the third one. Maybe only a select number of people know about it because it’s in such a public place.”
“You met Megan?” Sasha asks. “You sure are lucky. She’s a talkative one. No one else would have been so forthcoming.”
“Do you know anything about the machines, Sasha?” Marco asks.
“Nothing. I’ve always wondered, but I never asked.” A flush of red covers her face. “Blissful in my denial, I guess.”
“Now Richards springs Tresling on us as if we’re really supposed to be okay with this again…no offense,” Marco says. Sasha shrugs, but I can tell she is only pretending that there is no sting. She slouches. The waitress brings our food.
“At least we know where everything is. Wish I could get close enough to really see how they work,” I say before taking a bite. As if they were waiting for my cue, Sasha and Marco dive into their sandwiches.
“We also need to figure out who will---”
“I can do it. I have access to both the one in my dad’s house and The Institute,” Sasha interrupts. She’s looking for a moment of redemption.
“…Stay behind and destroy the machines,” Marco continues.
“I can do that, really,” she says with conviction. “If the first one controls all of them. Then, once it’s destroyed, the other ones won’t work anyway. But I’ll get to all of them just to be sure, including the Community Day field one, somehow.” She looks to me. Not for approval, but for acceptance. My heart sinks. She is serious about staying here and after the machines are gone, I will never see her again.
After we eat, we walk back to the office building to meet with the rest of the group. We’ll be heading back to Wicker Farm soon.
“What do you guys think he’s going to do with the people in The Clave?” Marco asks as we walk. I exhale loudly. I don’t even want to think about it. Sasha turns to him.
“I don’t know, but my dad is really good at making people disappear. Really good.”
*****
Two weeks after we get back to Wicker Farm, a few days before my eighteenth birthday, I move in with Marco. Nora cast a series of condemning looks at me when I leave with the last of my things, but she does give me a hug. She thinks that another child will be moved into my old room soon. After much convincing on my part, Aubrey decides to stay with Nora. She has been doing really well. I don’t want her to have to adjust to another change just yet. I promise to visit everyday. Plus Nora is a much better cook than me and my new roommate.
There is a larger security officer presence all around the city. Most of them are in training, but they’re everywhere. Richards’ has already begun carrying out part of his plan.
One day after work, Sasha is waiting for us in front of the building. She’s pacing.
“You guys have to come with me now. We have…” she says breathily as she looks at her watch. “Maybe ten minutes to get in and out of my father’s office if we go now.” The three of us hurry to her house.
“Do you happen to know where they placed my friend Chad?” I ask.
“I don’t. No. I never saw any placement papers for him,” Sasha says.
Sounds echo from the kitchen when we walk in, but otherwise the house looks empty. She gestures for us to head up.
“If you guys hear me say talking to anyone, just duck into my room.”
“Aren’t you coming up?” I ask. She shakes her head impatiently and waves her hands for us to go.
“I’m the decoy,” she whispers. She watches us until we’re at the landing then she starts to pace.
“I’ll stay out here so we can hear her,” Marco says. I nod and approach the door. After a deep breath, I punch Sasha’s birthday into the key code. A red light buzzes, denying me entry.
“Dammit. Not it,” I whisper. Marco creeps back to the landing and peers over the banister.
“She’s not down there and we’ve got eight minutes…” Marco responds. His eyes shift around thoughtfully. “Try twelve, two, three, nine, two.”
I scrunch my brow and shrug, but I type in number after repeating it to myself because it seems familiar. A green light flashes and the lock clicks. I press the handle and push the door open.
“How did you know that?” I turn and ask. A confident expression crosses his face.
“Remember all those files we organized? I noticed a pattern in the dates. It’s when Richards took over.”
After a quiet laugh, I walk into Richards’ office. I flip the light switch. The place is exceptionally tidy and grandiose. The carpet is emerald green. Art hangs on the walls. Sculptures sit in corners of the room. On the wall to my left, a large wooden bookshelf covers the wall. Richards is quite the collector. The shelves are packed with books and most of them are from my world. I walk past a black marble desk and notice another door, and it is without a keypad. I dash to it as a vague thought of Brian or Richards catching us crosses my mind. I bury it. Too late to get scared.
I press my ear to the door and turn the knob. I gasp. Right in front of me waits the Dimension Machine on a desk. It resembles the one at The Institute. It has a screen and a keyboard, and right below them are two smaller devices that monitor the other two machines. I touch the keyboard to wake the machine.
The screen transitions to a simple map with the three locations of the machines. “Bridging” the dimensions requires several steps, according to a set of reminder instructions. I click another button, which brings up a schedule of all the upcoming dates. I curse quietly. There are so many of them. I step back into the main office for pen and paper to write down as many as I can. With the down arrow key, I select an upcoming date and press “Enter.” After the screen changes, the machine shows me the statuses of the one at The Institute and the one at the Community Day field. My elbow bumps a phone. I lift it.
“Please hold,” a monotone voice says.
“Jackson,” Marco’s frantic whisper calls from the other room. “We have to go now. Jackson, where are you?”
“Back here,” I say, covering the phone with my hand. After a few seconds of silence, a voice comes. “Is everything okay, Governor?” a man says. I hang up.
“We really have to go…she’s talking to someone down there.”
“Okay, here I come,” I say and we hurry into Sasha’s room. Other than my sister’s, I have never been in a girl’s bedroom. Not even Ashlan’s. It’s a normal room, but being in there feels oddly intrusive, even if she is…my girlfriend. The two of us stand in the middle staring at everything at a distance, like the contents of her room are too precious to touch. She walks in behind us.
“Brian’s here,” she announces, flatly. “My dad will be here shortly.” She slides past us and sits on her desk. We take it as permission to sit too. Marco chooses the floor, and I sit in the desk chair next to her.
“How’d it go?” she asks. I look up and give her an apologetic glance when I hear the solemn quality in her tone.
“Your dad is really revving things up in the coming months so I guess we’re going to get the word to head to Tresling soon,” I say and give her what I wrote down. She hands it to Marco.
“We need a plan if we’re going to do this,” he says.
“This is an odd question, but do you guys want to stay for dinner? I don’t want Brian to suspect that you’re here for any other reason.”
“Yeah…a nice dinner would help calm my nerves,” Marco says with a light chuckle. “Jackson, you in?”
“Yeah, sure,” I sigh. As we walk out of Sasha’s room, I pull her back and tell Marco we’ll meet him downstairs. Looking past me, she sweeps her hair into a ponytail with one of the rubber bands on her wrists.
“I don’t want to talk about any of this right now,” she says in a low voice. “I have chosen you over dad. That should be enough.”
*****
Even though it starts to rain later that night, Marco and I decide to go to The Clave. The rain would probably work in our favor and conceal us. We wait until it slams the entire city in a torrential downpour, drowning out all other sound. I show Marco where all the safe houses are, just in case. Though, our house is basically the same distance away from The Clave. We have gotten rations since returning from Tresling, more than usual, and we pack a bag with cans and take turns carrying it as we make the long walk to The Clave. We pass rows and rows of the carcasses of houses, burned courtesy of The Resistance, and currently being battered by the curtain of rain. We don’t talk during the trek, but Marco takes in all of it. Even with our rain gear, my socks are soaked and they squish around in my sneakers. As if timing us, the rain starts to let up as we near The Clave.
“Wow, this place…” Marco says.
“It’s pretty bad,” I say.
“I wonder what he’s going to do with all of them…” he says. I shrug, but my thought is that he will burn down The Clave in some kind of act of poetic justice. Destroy their community the way they’ve been destroying his.
We walk through the entrance, and this time, we’re immediately greeted by Resistance members armed with metal pipes and other makeshift weapons. Marco and I hold our hands up.
“Just looking for Russell. Tell him Mississippi is here,” I say.
“Yeah, but who is he?” Bullseye says referring to Marco as he walks out of the shadows. I still can’t see him, but I recognize his voice. “Can’t just stroll people in here. This isn’t a nightclub.”
“I know, but he’s one of us,” I say.
“One of ‘us’?” Bullseye says with disgust as he inspects Marco. “You two hardly look like us.”
After they strip us of the book bag, which eases the tension when they see its contents, we’re escorted to Russell’s house.
“Mississippi?” Marco asks, raising his eyebrows.
“Because of ‘Jackson’.”
“Do I get a code name?” he asks.
When we arrive at the house Russell uses, he’s standing outside talking to other Clave residents. A hooded one among them hurriedly walks away after Russell dismisses him. I don’t catch a glimpse of his face, which I think he is actively trying to conceal from me. One of the Resistance members who walked us tosses Russell the backpack. Russell catches it and looks genuinely surprised to see me. He hands several cans out, but keeps most for himself.
“I suppose I owe you an apology,” he says. His gaze freezes on Marco. He isn’t pleased by his presence, but Marco is too awestruck to notice.
“I think the others should hear this too,” I say.
“Get Charlie and Jefferson,” Russell tells one of our escorts before he beckons us inside of the house he uses. I scrunch my nose in response to the stench of damp carpet as we strip out of our plastic rain gear. The place is completely soaked.
“If I knew company was coming over, I would’ve straightened up a bit,” he says sarcastically as he forages through the book bag, removing the cans that interest him the most. “Who is this fellow?”
“My friend, Marco…he’s been helping me out,” I explain. I make a face because I can taste the putrid moisture.
“Ventilation system should be kicking in soon,” Russell says with a snicker as he points to the glassless windows. Charlie and Jefferson trail Bullseye when he returns. We all stand in then center of the room, in a circle. The sliver of moonlight spilling through Russell’s cracked roof is the only light source. Both Charlie and Jefferson look concerned.
“Hey guys, this is Marco, and we brought food,” I say. It fails to lighten the mood. Maybe it’s my presence or Marco or the weather. I don’t know.
“Richards is planning something big. He’s about to completely change the city, and he plans to bring a lot of people over. Wicker Farm is going to be all transitional and--”
“The whole city?” Jefferson interjects. I nod three times.
“Everyone is going to Tresling. Well everyone who has ‘adjusted’. We were there. It’s headed back to where it was before The Epidemic. People live there, free of all the restrictions---”
“Well then what’s going to happen to The Clave?” Charlie interrupts.
“Can’t lead with the good news, Jackson?” Marco says, stepping into the middle of the circle. “We know where all the machines are. We even saw the one in Richards’ office. Well, Jackson did. We know passwords and everything.”
I lower my head and wince. There’s no way for me to nudge him without everyone seeing. I don’t like revealing all of my cards to Russell. I should have cued Marco in about our relationship.
“You were in Richards’ office.” Russell says. “And The Institute…so you took my advice?” A smile appears on his face. “Where’s the third?”
“What’s going to happen to The Clave?” Jefferson asks, echoing Charlie. Churning clouds temporarily block out the moonlight and further darkening the room.
“Community Day field somewhere. My guess is that they built the stage over it.” Marco makes the shape of a triangle with his forefingers and thumbs. “When all three are connected, they form a---”
“There is no Clave,” I say just above a whisper. “It’s gone.”
When the patch of clouds finally sails by, I realize Russell isn’t standing with us anymore.
“Richards always walked a fine line with us. He had to be careful with how he dealt with us. Even his supporters would have a problem with him marching security officers in here because of all the non-Resistance people, but I guess if no one’s here to see him haul us off to wherever they take people who don’t like his rules, it won’t really matter,” he says. His voice comes from behind me. We all turn to the sound.
“He’s going to be busy in the coming months. I copied down the schedule and there are a few days open. We need to pick a date and get as many people as we can, get word to Marcus and the others with enough time for them to get out of The Institute. He is increasing the number of security officers, making things harder for us…” I trail off as a rumble of thunder threatens in the distance. “We should go. I don’t want to walk in the rain again. As soon as I get the word at work---”
“We’ll definitely let you know,” Marco says.
“You two work together?” Russell asks. He walks back to the group. He is rolling something with his hands. When he unrolls it, I get a quick glance. It’s a book, the poem The Aeneid.
“Yes, recent roomies too,” Marco says. I catch a piece of his Russell’s smile before he turns away. A weird feeling hits my stomach.
“We really should go,” I say. “I’ll be in touch. By the way, I don’t think I’ll be able to get what you need me to get,” I say.
“You’re the boss,” Russell says with humor in his tone.
“Thanks, man,” Jefferson says.
“Yeah, thanks for everything, Jackson,” Russell holds his hand out to me. “Things got strange between us last time, but you really came through for us.”
My last visit with Russell still doesn’t sit well with me, and his words don’t match the expression on his face. It’s like he is forcing himself to be nice to me. I divide my gaze between his eyes and his hand. With everyone stand there, there is too much pressure not to shake, so I do it. He nods at Marco.
As we leave, Jefferson and Charlie walk us to the entrance of The Clave. There are footsteps behind us, and when I turn, I see that Bullseye is trailing us too, his face holding a grimace. A strange darkness uncoils inside me. I never quite got to know him, but he seems to have completely turned cold toward me all of a sudden. Marco starts grilling Jefferson about himself, but Charlie pulls me back, tugging on my upper arm.
“I never considered Wicker Farm my home, but this place means something to me. It’s like Richards wants us completely at his mercy,” she says. Her grip tightens.
“I promised you that you would go home. I mean to see that through.” I say. “But…”
“But what?” she says. The sound of thunder, a little strong than the last time, rolls overhead. Jefferson and Marco halt at the entrance and look back at us.
