Remember Yesterday

9

“What if Dresden’s daughter sent you that message?” Ryder whispers the next day as we’re waiting for our turn through TechRA security. “She’s got sick abilities, and no one’s seen her in ages. I’d bet my hoverboard she hasn’t been at some boarding school for the last decade.”

My eyes widen. “You mean Olivia? You think she’s been held captive all these years?”

“Shhh, keep your voice down.” He looks around the glass walls, but there’s no one else in the waiting vestibule. The guy in front of us has already stepped through the security arches.

“It must be because of the vision of genocide,” I say, warming to the theory. “Dresden’s hiding Olivia because she doesn’t want anyone to know about the vision. Maybe Olivia sent me the message as a cry for help.”

“If that’s the case…we should abort,” Ryder says darkly.

“What? No.” My voice rises. “If it is Olivia, she needs our help. We can’t just abandon her.”

“Why not? I thought you said she was a brat.”

“She was six. Think who her mother was. You’d be a pain, too.” I reach into the past. Most of my pre-wilderness memories are a blur, and most of them center on my mom and Callie. But I remember Olivia. “She was my friend.”

“You didn’t even like her!”

“That’s not true. She talked to me, Ryder. She sought me out when all the other girls shunned me. Because of her, I know how it feels to ride on the seesaw pods.” I blink, my eyes suddenly wet, which doesn’t make sense. “Maybe that sounds stupid, but it meant something to me.”

“It doesn’t,” he says, softening. “But that was ten years ago. People change in ten years.”

He’s right. But I can’t shake the image of the little girl I used to know—the big brown eyes and the straight-cut bangs. I keep hearing Dresden’s cold, cruel voice: No daughter of mine is Mediocre.

I know all too well how it feels to be forsaken by your own mother.

“You and I, we know how it feels to lose a parent or two,” I say. “But we had each other, and we formed a new family. If Olivia’s been imprisoned—or worse—then she doesn’t have anybody. How can we ignore her cry for help?”

He sighs, and I know I’ve got him. This is the guy who collected acorns for a squirrel’s afterlife, for Fate’s sake.

We walk through the security arches, and the guard runs a scanner over the chip embedded under my wrist. My identification pops onto the screen, along with a list of locations I’m cleared to visit.

“Bots along the wall. Find one to escort you,” he says in a monotone.

We select the first bot, a squat one with a copper spiral at its belly, and are keying in Mikey’s office when the guard calls us back. “Forget the bot. It says here you have a human escort.”

I exchange a nervous look with Ryder. A human escort? But how? Nobody even knows we’re here.

Wrong.

A few minutes later, a man approaches the guard. He’s broad and good-looking, with eyes that notice everything and a mouth that can either be stern or smiling. His hair is tied back with a piece of rawhide—a leftover habit from our days in the wilderness. Mikey.

We are so busted. Fike, fike, fike.

He gives us a quick, cutting glance and slaps the guard on the back. “I’ll take it from here, Rinaldo.”

Mikey turns and wraps an arm around each of us. The loving father, the trusted friend. How many times can I say screwed?

“I programmed the system to send me an alert when one of your IDs was scanned.” His voice is even and pleasant, as mild as a clear blue sky—that’s about to split wide open. “According to the logs, it seems you’ve visited me dozens of times in the last two months. Too bad I’ve been away at a meeting each of those times.”

I know better than to respond—not out here in the main corridor. In fact, none of us says another word until we walk into Mikey’s office.

Every surface area is covered with artificial limbs. A hand here, a foot there. So realistic it looks like a dozen bodies got blown apart. Mikey is the foremost expert on the connection of neural pathways to prosthetic limbs. One of his fake arms responds nearly as well as a real arm to orders from the brain.

“Well? What do you have to say for yourselves?” He moves a hand from his chair and sits down. “It’s bad enough you’ve been breaking into labs behind my back. But then Jessa gets herself bitten, and you’re back here for more?”

“You were the one who showed us how to access the air vents,” I burst out. “You gave us the holographic spiders. What did you think we were going to do with them?”

“I wanted you more involved with the Underground. To see that there was more to life than your crazy stunts.” His eyes flit first to Ryder, then to me. Not being officially adopted has never saved me from his lectures or his expectations. “You’re sixteen now. Old enough to understand why we accepted the treaty with ComA. Sure, the comforts of modern living are convenient, but that’s not why we came back to civilization. There’s work to be done. A future of genocide to prevent. It’s about time you two joined the fight.”

It’s not the first time Mikey’s lectured us about our civic duty. And not the first time I tune him out. Truth is, I couldn’t care less about his political agenda. I have no interest in joining his fight. Callie took it upon herself to save the world—and look what happened to her. I’ll stick with helping my mice, and maybe a childhood friend or two, thank you very much.

Even if it means I inadvertently delay someone’s entrance into uni for a year. I flush guiltily. Tanner glossed over his ruined experiment with a few careless words, but how does he really feel? Is he sad that he won’t go to uni next year? Is he…devastated?

My stomach clenches. I don’t want him devastated. He might be my enemy, but the thought of his lips trembling rips and tears at my heart.

“You have to think.” Mikey’s voice gets louder. “In order for a resistance movement to be successful, it has to be carefully orchestrated, precisely planned. You can’t just go on your own unsanctioned raids because you feel like it. You were almost caught; Jessa was infected. This kind of action shines an unnecessary spotlight on us, attention that could jeopardize the entire mission. From now on, neither of you acts unless I say so. Got it?”

We both nod. We have no choice, really.

Mikey sweeps his arm through the air, indicating the jumbled-up piles of body parts. “As punishment, you two will clean my office. I can’t find a damn thing in here, and you might as well make yourselves useful.”

Ryder groans, poking a leg as if it might grow teeth and bite him. “That’ll take weeks! You can’t walk in here without a limb clobbering you.”

“Then you’d better get started.” Mikey’s com unit beeps. “I have a meeting. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“You mean you’re going to leave us here alone?” Ryder asks incredulously.

His dad lifts his eyebrows. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t?”

“Not at all.” I step forward and give him my best you-can-trust-us smile. “We’ll have your office all cleaned up by the time you get back.”

With one last scuff against Ryder’s shoulder, Mikey leaves.

The door bangs shut behind him, and I jab Ryder in the chest. “That was really smooth. You might as well have told him we were going straight into the air vents as soon as he left.”

“Are we?” my best friend asks, looking troubled. “He let us off easy this time. But he won’t be nearly as forgiving if he catches us again.”

“Of course we’re still going! Olivia needs us.”

He huffs out a breath. “Right.”

We look at the smooth expanse of the south wall—that’s not really a wall. Rather, it’s the holographic projection of a solid surface created by a “spider,” and it leads to air vents that wind all over the TechRA building.

I reach inside the wall and flip a switch. The hologram disappears.

I gasp. As expected, the plaster ends abruptly. But instead of a gaping hole, metal slats seal off the opening into the air vents.

“That’s why he left us,” I moan. “He wanted us to snoop and find out that he closed our access to the vents. He’s telling us he’ll always be one step ahead of us.”

Ryder slips on his goggles and peers at the black box sitting next to the spider. “They’re not closed permanently. The slats are retractable—and they’re keyed to a set of biometrics. Probably Mikey’s. So if we want to get into the vents, all we have to do is ask.”

“What are the chances he’ll approve this mission?” I ask faintly.

“Oh, I don’t know.” He picks up a prosthetic hand and scratches his back. “Probably about as likely as you joining forces with Dresden.”