One night, not long after Niko’s encounter with Huston, Miriam happened to be at the newspaper office after hours when she first met Niko.
Once an investigative journalist, Miriam was now an elderly woman with a weak heart who’d been relegated to compiling old newspaper articles and rewriting them from the new slant. Which is to say, propagandizing them and changing history to reflect the Regime’s post-Collapse directives.
She hated doing this, so she secretly transcribed all the old stories onto a computer no one used. One day she planned to write an honest account of what it had been like before The Collapse. She intended to tell the truth of how the shift had been engineered. For now, safeguarding the history was all she could do.
That night Miriam had come back for her clandestine work and stumbled upon Niko crouched beside the desk next to hers. Every night the office lights went out automatically just before dark, so she nearly fell over him in the roomful of closely packed desks. The maintenance crew was supposed to be there much later when it was pitch dark outside, after all the streetlights had gone out with curfew. She’d sneaked in so quietly he hadn’t heard her as he riffled through a lower file drawer.
Watching her in the dim light, his young face was a mix of terror and bravado. Had he been sent by the Protectors to spy on her? They circled each other like a couple of cats. Miriam considered grabbing the sharp scissors from the cup on her desk. But before either of them made a move, they heard something, and she placed a finger to her lips.
He nodded, and they both knelt behind the desks like two supplicants. He held some papers, which rattled a little in his shaky hands. Realizing he was nervous and that she was in no position to question him right then, Miriam kept her distance. There were no other sounds except the blood thumping in her ears. After the noise ceased, she relaxed a bit.
“What are you doing in here?” she whispered.
He looked so young, while she was already old. Her gray hair wispy around her face, she wore thick glasses all the time now and relied on comfortable shoes with rubber soles. She should have quit the paper after The Collapse, but she felt an obligation to the truth of history. It may have seemed anemic by then, as if she alone could do anything to avert what had happened or change what had been like an avalanche: unstoppable and catastrophic, burying everything they’d known. But journalists’ tools were not powerful enough to hold it back.
Also, she still needed the salary. They had done away with old-age pensions. And Miriam was alone. The boy, who was a handsome, sinewy teen, stared at her intensely, his dark eyes still narrowed with mistrust and caution.
“Who are you?” he asked back.
She told him her name. “I was a reporter. Before The Collapse.”
She tried to calm herself, taking a deep breath, thinking how she must treat her heart with care. It was an anachronism, still thinking of herself as a reporter. They’d taken over all media long ago, relegating everyone to churning out the most despicable lies glorifying the Regime. That was what made her sick, she reasoned. Living day after day with dishonesty was as deadly as any virus.
“I know that name,” he whispered. “Are you the one who wrote that story ‘Horror of Life in The Hovels?’”
It was her turn to nod, and she thought he must have read that when he was very young. This interested her. Many children could barely read these days. The reporter in her wanted to ask him about it. Instead, she said, “But that was before. I can’t do that now. Too dangerous.”
His expression changed suddenly. He, too, relaxed a bit and glanced around, squinting at the semi-dark room. Some electric light from the streets outside filtered in vague shafts through the windows.
He came into focus now: a mop of dark, curly hair, piercing brown eyes under steady brows, thick dark lashes, and a muscular frame. It was hard to tell, from his crouched position, how tall he was. But one thing she noted . . . he was dressed in black down to his sneakers, the kind climbers used to wear back when people got out of the city on weekends and such.
“What do you have there?” she asked again, and pointed to the papers stuffed under his arm.
He stood up then. “I have to go,” he said, almost to himself.
Now she could see he was tall. Over six feet, she estimated. And graceful, moving in the tight space with the ease of a stalking cat.
“Be careful,” she whispered, feeling protective toward him. She pulled open the top drawer of her desk to retrieve the backup drive with her notes. Bags were inspected, and everyone who worked in the building was patted down every day coming into the building and leaving it. This was the only way she could take out what she needed.
“You go ahead,” she told him. “I’ll follow in a few minutes. No sense making a target of two people. How did you get in?”
He opened his jacket, revealing a coiled rope and a hook. It was climbing gear, Miriam realized, and she wondered how he had come to own such things these days. So he had come in from the roof or a drainpipe. Had he scaled the outside wall?
She’d managed, a few days earlier, to get a counterfeit keypad card and instructions on how to wipe out the memory it had used. It was more than she could afford. Everything on the black market was overpriced, but what choice did she have? It was rumored they would be installing eye readers soon. Rumors were like eddies in a stream, endlessly churning. She figured it was now or never to steal her own backup drive, although according to the Regime, it all belonged to them.
Niko crept toward an open window. Although neither of them knew it then, they would be spending considerable time together in the months before The Race. And it wasn’t until later that night that she realized he’d never told her what he was doing there.
Niko made the climb out of the window and down to the dark street. He walked with the papers still tucked into his belt. It was dangerous because of curfew. But he also had a pocketful of bribes in case he was stopped. Keeping to alleys, hiding in abandoned doorways and flattening himself against crumbling walls if he heard anything, he set off to find Gruen. Periodically a siren would wail as someone was nabbed and hauled away to a work camp. But Niko kept moving until he passed through The Prefabs and came to the outskirts of The Hovels.
In the daylight he recognized the maze of shacks and crumbling walls, dirt paths and trash-strewn walkways. But at night it was more difficult. And the Nabbers didn’t patrol out here unless they needed to fill a work camp quota; then they would appear with searchlights and chains.
Niko hadn’t told Gruen he’d look for him that particular night. He had no way to know exactly when he’d be able to get into the newspaper office. Gruen was the one who’d heard about the papers. But he couldn’t make a climb like that down from the roof and across the ledges. So Niko said he’d go. But now he had no place to hide them. Hoping Gruen had found somewhere, he fumbled on in the dark, feeling his way by instinct until he came to an open area he recognized. This was where there had once been a school with a playground, someone said, but the Overseers had it blasted away since the only schools they approved were now indoctrination centers. Yes, Gruen’s hut was nearby.
Niko crossed the lot and headed down a dirt pathway until he came to Gruen’s place. He was about to enter through the sheet of loose cardboard that subbed for a door but stopped when he heard muffled noises. A woman’s voice. And then gasping. Then the woman again and the sounds of moving around, thumping, and then a long groan from a man. Then nothing.