I paced my room for the next few hours, stopping periodically to check the photograph again, to make sure it hadn’t changed, that I’d actually seen what I’d seen.
My eyes were still green. And the guy was still there, leaning against that tree and watching the party as if he was part of it but not really.
Maybe he was someone’s older brother. That was it. That’s what it had to be.
Heath was the older brother of one of my classmates, dragged along to the kiddie party. I’d share the photo at school tomorrow and ask around to confirm it.
That still didn’t explain his odd reaction to me earlier today. Or the change in eye color.
My head was going to explode from trying to figure it all out. I couldn’t understand why it mattered so much to me.
But it did.
I felt like I was on the verge of some cataclysmic event—another Calamity—only my own personal version instead of one that had impacted the whole world. I needed answers.
I needed to study, but that wasn’t going to happen tonight. I was too worked up to focus.
At least the doctor’s appointment would get me out of BioHist tomorrow. I’d have to double up on studying tomorrow night. Maybe by then I would have this all figured out.
Or… maybe I could skip school Friday.
My pulse sped thinking about it. I’d tell Ketta, “yes,” and we’d leave the base together, leave school and tests and good old Dr. Rex in our dust and go out and see the world.
Maybe even see Heath.
No. I wouldn’t. Who did I think I was kidding? For one thing, there was no way we’d get off-base without being caught.
Even if we did manage it, navigating the metropolis of Atlanta would be a far cry from living in our insulated community here on the base. And we’d need money to do anything there—I had no idea how much.
We didn’t know a soul, and I’d seen true-vid reports about how dangerous the city could be. It would be the height of stupidity to go there on our own.
Not to mention we’d eventually have to come home. I hadn’t been exaggerating when I’d told Ketta my parents would ground me for months for a stunt like that.
No, I wouldn’t suggest ditching school, but I would show Ketta the photographic evidence of my eye color change. Maybe she’d know what to make of it.
My own theories were too frightening to dwell on. Had I suffered some strange illness? Had I somehow damaged my eyes during one of my blackouts and gotten iris replacements my parents had failed to mention and I’d somehow failed to notice?
Perhaps the scariest question of all… was that actually me in the picture?
I banished that one from my mind and tiptoed down the darkened staircase to hang the photo back in its place on the wall.
Ketta’s desk stayed empty beside mine all the way through fourth period the next day. I was beginning to worry she wouldn’t make it to school at all.
She’d said her appointment with the doctor was only a checkup, so it shouldn’t have taken longer than an hour. Maybe she’d decided to skip school and leave the base without me?
But then at lunchtime she strolled into the cafeteria, wearing her usual bright smile.
“Hey, what did I miss? Anything interesting?”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “Although if you consider me sinking to the bottom of class rankings interesting, yes. Lee continued his Body Snatchers act today in Calc. Thank God I’m missing BioHist today—I don’t think I can stand it if he gets a perfect score on the quiz.”
She continued smiling as she pulled a container of salad from her insulated lunch bag, but she didn’t respond with her usual pep talk.
“Hey, how was your doctor appointment? You were gone a long time.” With a raised brow, I added, “I started to think maybe you’d left the base without me.”
Her eyes went wide as she finished chewing and swallowing a forkful of lettuce. “Leave the base? That’s against the rules. It’s dangerous out there, you know.”
I laughed at her sarcasm, but Ketta’s horrified expression didn’t change. Maybe it wasn’t sarcasm? A nervous quiver began at the top of my stomach.
“You know, I was thinking about what you said… you’re probably right. It would probably be a good thing to see what’s out there, get some perspective,” I said. “And how dangerous can it be? Trucks come and go every day. Our parents leave the base sometimes, and they always come back just fine.”
Ketta’s face twisted into an expression I’d never seen her wear before. It looked a lot like… condemnation.
“I would never have said that.”
She picked up her fork again and speared a cherry tomato. “And you shouldn’t say things like that. You’ll get in trouble. And get me in trouble, too.”
What? She was not acting like herself. Ketta lived to say inappropriate things. She never worried about getting in trouble.
Part of me still wanted to believe she was pulling my leg, but the expression on her face was a hundred percent sincere. And she seemed to have no memory of the conversation we’d shared only yesterday.
It scared me.
“Are you okay? You feeling all right?”
“Of course.” She snapped the lid back on her salad container, stuffing it back into her bag. “I’m not very hungry. I think I’ll go on ahead to BioHist and study some more for the quiz. See you later.”
She stood and waited for my response. I gave her a weak, “okay” and watched the person who looked like my lifelong best friend walk away and leave the cafeteria.
What was with her today? What had happened between yesterday’s walk home, when she’d proposed ditching with a mischievous gleam in her eye, and lunchtime today?
The doctor visit.
The quiver in my stomach became a full rolling boil. I was overcome by a sudden certainty that something bad was going to happen. I thought back on the past week.
How many of my classmates had missed school for medical appointments?
Trying to remember was frustrating—I hadn’t really paid attention. I was also unsure how many memory lapses I might have had and what I might have missed during them.
A bunch of kids—that was the best answer I could come up with. There was Bianca, and Travis.
And then of course Lee, who was out a couple days last week and came back… changed. Acting like a different person almost.
Acting like Ketta.
Come to think of it, all of them had been acting a bit strange, like they’d been given a warning and were on their best behavior. Either that, or there really was a genius virus going around and it changed people’s personalities as well as their intellect.
I don’t want to be changed.
The thought surged from my brain so loud and strong it shocked me. I wasn’t normal. I’d always wished I was.
But when I thought of Lee’s class-clown-to-straightlaced-goody-goody transformation and the strange disconnected look in Ketta’s eyes, the flatness of her voice, it gave me the creeps.
And when I thought of the change in my eyes from green to brown…
I have to get out of here.
My parents would never do anything to hurt me. I knew that. But I also knew they hadn’t been telling me the truth about the birthday party picture.
What else had they lied about? This pediatrician appointment being on the calendar for months?
I needed time to figure out what was going on, why they’d lied.
At twenty minutes till one, I checked out at the school office for my appointment, but instead of walking across the base to the med clinic, I went the opposite direction, toward home.
Dingo was his usual ridiculously enthusiastic self when I opened the door. Thankfully, he was the only one home to greet me, as I’d known he would be. Mom had her book club today and wouldn’t be back for a few hours.
I went straight to my room and removed all my school things from my backpack, replacing them with several days’ worth of underwear, socks, a t-shirt to sleep in, and an extra pair of shoes, which I stuffed into the bottom of the pack.
I’d have to leave my tech clothes, like the uniform I’d worn to school, at home.
The tech garments were fun, allowing me to change the color and pattern with a verbal command or touch of my holoconnect as well as choose the thermal insulating level according to the weather.
But they also captured biometric information including my heart rate, breathing, and steps taken and reported them to my parents, teachers, and doctor, so they could make sure I was in optimal health.
And they were connected to the global Freenet. Which meant they’d alert my parents of my location and end my adventure as soon as it had begun.
Stripping off the uniform, I left it on the floor of my room and ran upstairs to the attic, where Mom kept a box of clothing once owned by her mother.
She’d saved it after my grandma’s passing, too sentimental to dispose of it in the fabric recycler/printer. She occasionally put the items on herself to wear around the house.
I selected a soft, no-tech shirt and some shorts, put them on, then grabbed a few more changes of clothes before jogging back downstairs to my room and stuffing them into the pack.
My pulse raced, whirring in my ears as I looked around for anything else I might need. I’d never done anything like this—never even considered it.
But leaving seemed like the only thing I could do.
I could not go see the doctor and take the chance I’d come back a robotic puritan like Lee, and Bianca, and Travis, and Ketta. I had to get out of here.
Before leaving my bedroom, I tapped the square on the wall that opened my personal safe. There wasn’t much inside, only a few things I considered valuable.
My grandmother Collantes’ diamond and sapphire earrings would stay, as would the investment certificates my mom’s parents had given to me for a first birthday present.
Some of the companies those represented didn’t even exist anymore, failing after their CEO’s and top executives died in the Calamity, but they had sentimental value to me.
They were proof of love and concern for my future and a tangible connection to the relatives I’d never meet.
The cash I would take. I’d saved up a decent amount—mainly because there hadn’t been anything I really needed and definitely nothing much worth buying at the base exchange.
While everyone I knew did most of their shopping online with electronic transactions, cash still worked as well—thankfully—it was anonymous and wouldn’t get me busted the second I bought something in the outside world.
Despite what some of our older textbooks predicted, cash hadn’t disappeared over the past few decades.
There were just more ways to pay than there had ever been before, and the people I knew used all of them from time to time.
My economics teacher Mr. Bergevine said the attachment to physical money probably stemmed from the weeks following the start of the Calamity when electronic transaction systems were down and people with no cash on hand literally couldn’t buy anything.
He’d been only a teenager himself back then but he’d told us he remembered his parents being terrified all their money was lost for good in a digital wasteland.
I shoved my own stash into the backpack’s inner pocket. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be gone or even how much things cost outside the gates of the base.
Hopefully there was enough here to get by on until I found the answers I needed and could come back home.
Feeling like a criminal, I moved through the empty house, taking protein packs and some water from the pantry and adding them to my pack. It was getting heavy now, but I wanted to be prepared.
Before leaving, I used my finger to write a note on the refrigerator’s front panel note pad for Mom and Dad to discover when they got home later this afternoon.
They might even come home early to search for me when the doctor’s office notified them I’d never showed up. That thought hastened my footsteps toward the door.
Regretfully, I slipped my holoconnect off my wrist. It would feel like leaving home naked, but I couldn’t take it with me—not unless I wanted to be tracked down within minutes.
Before laying it on the hall table, I considered sending a message to Ketta then decided against it.
Whatever was happening had affected her. The girl I’d sat with at the lunch table today was not the loyal friend who’d always had my back no matter what.
If I messaged her, it was very possible I’d reach the gate only to find those mythical truant officers waiting for me.
I bent down and hugged Dingo, giving him a nice rub behind the ears. “Goodbye little guy. I’ll be back soon. Be good.”
Then I stood and brushed my hand over the control panel inside the front door. It slid open, and I glanced back at the interior of the home where I’d lived since I could remember, lingering in the doorway.
A ripple of sadness passed through me, followed by a wake of guilt.
I can’t believe I’m doing this.
But I felt like I didn’t really have a choice. Hopefully Mom and Dad wouldn’t be too frantic.
Who was I kidding? Of course they would. I’d be back soon, though, probably by the end of the day.
Closing the door behind me, I crossed the backyard into the wooded copse that bordered it. The houses in this quadrant had small yards that backed up to the perimeter wall and were heavily planted with trees and shrubs to hide its ugly concrete surface.
That cover would hopefully allow me to make my way to the East gate without being seen.
I also hoped Ketta had been right yesterday about it being slow and relatively unguarded. There was no way I’d be able to climb the high fence, though, so slow or not, exiting through the gate was my only option.
My plan was to wait until a delivery truck or troop transport arrived or left. As soon as the truck drove past, I’d slip through the gate to the other side.
Either that, or I’d be spotted and immediately dragged to my dad’s office, which wouldn’t be nearly as terrifying as facing my mom later at home.
Arriving at the gate, I crouched behind the closest shrubbery, hands shaking, stomach swimming with anxiety. When I heard a truck approach from outside the gate, a sudden wave of nausea swept over me, and I lost the lunch I’d eaten a little while ago.
Great.
As Ketta had said, the gate slid open painfully slowly, and no one left the guard house.
Once inside the gate, the delivery truck driver swept his credentials over the scanner and then drove forward.
As soon as the back of the truck made it through the gate, I darted from my hiding place and slipped past its rear bumper and through the opening out into the world.
And I ran. Not sure why—no one was coming after me, and no one was around. I was surrounded by uninhabited woodland. But running felt like the right thing to do.
I ran until my lungs were on fire and my legs felt heavy. Then I stopped, leaning on my knees, breathing hard.
Giggles bubbled up before I could stop them.
There was nothing funny about the situation, but I felt… free. I could go anywhere, do anything I wanted to do.
Ketta was right. Leaving the base was good for me. I already felt more capable than I had in years.
And then I thought of her sitting in BioHist class, probably raising her hand to answer every question Mrs. McComb asked, no longer itching to leave the base.
Thinking of how strangely she’d acted today, I felt a shiver run down my spine.
It struck me again how weird it was that neither of us had ever left the base. Before she’d mentioned it yesterday, the possibility had never even occurred to me.
Why not? It was beautiful out here in the world. There were no flesh-eating zombies or mutant wolves or lung-disintegrating environmental toxins.
Of course, I hadn’t made it into the city yet.
Looking up at the treetops, I tilted my head side to side, listening to birdsong, admiring the pattern of sunlight on the leaves, appreciating the clear blue of the sky visible in small patches between them.
It made me think of the birthday party photo, the one in which my eyes had been as green as the leaves overhead, and my happiness faded a bit.
Right. I wasn’t here to enjoy nature or go sight-seeing. I was on a mission. I needed to find out how my eyes had changed color. And why.
I had to figure out why my classmates had been undergoing these sudden personality changes, maturing dramatically within a matter of days—overnight in Ketta’s case.
And why this new maturity happened to coincide with a visit to the pediatrician.
Talking to my parents about it was out of the question, and I couldn’t ask Dr. Rex, though I’d known the kindly older gentleman all my life. He’d either think I was nuts—or inject me with the goody-goody serum.
This was something I had to work out on my own.
The only way I could think to do that was find someone from the outside—someone who’d known me in the past, the way I was.
Heath.
On the road running through the forest, a van whirred by—it was blue, not white like the Gideon Corp vehicle Heath had been operating.
Gideon Corp. Heath worked there, so that’s where I’d go.
Gideon’s headquarters were located in downtown Atlanta. As it was one of the largest companies in the world, the place was probably hard to miss.
I’d find transport into the city, make my way to Gideon Corp, and then locate Heath.
How hard could it be?
