The vintage clock’s numbers seem to measure the height of my five-six frame. Like a giant airplane propeller, the second hand goes round and round, making time fly. I watch the minute hand tick forward, then look down at the cracked glass of my wristwatch. The last thing my father gave to me: time. Yet it turns out there wasn’t enough of it to save him.
“Ciro said everyone must check in, no exceptions,” Ava reminds Emery.
“And I say you are both the exception,” Emery states firmly. “Now, if you will excuse me.” She moves to greet and instruct the incoming arrivals, leaving us with Pawel, Ellie, and a gaggle of strangers who pretend not to stare. Ava pulls her oversized hood low over her restless green eyes.
“We will check in for you,” Pawel offers.
“Marley Townsend and Aeron Rowe,” Ellie says with a cheerful wink.
I touch the smooth skin of my inner right wrist, inked with a watchful eye, the counterfeit microchip my grandmother gifted me still embedded underneath. I wonder if Rayla has heard the news. If she knows our father’s dead.
“The elevators are to the left, down the hall,” Pawel informs us as I adjust my rucksack and Ava nods in thanks.
We start to push our way through the spectators when suddenly Pawel adds, “Emery tells us to humor Ciro, to make him feel . . . useful. He’s very important, you see.”
Ava and I exchange quick glances. The man himself is important, or his money?
We stand before the wall of elevators, stuck behind a long line of chatty guests. Emery hasn’t arrived yet.
Ava pulls her hood even lower, popping her thumbs as I avoid all eye contact, focusing on my feet. I really don’t feel like being a part of a crowd right now. Not that I ever do.
Suddenly a tall man in a serious suit steps out from nowhere, cutting us off from the line. An agent, my mind fires wildly.
Before I can even blink, my hand is in my pocket, my fingers curled around the familiar grip of my knife, its handle wrapped in the steel rings of a knuckle duster. But as I move to attack, Ava stops me.
“He’s with the Common,” she whispers.
The man pulls up his tailored sleeve, exposing the cursive ink of a woman’s name on his wrist. The letters are inverted and so wobbly it’s like he marked himself. “Olivia,” it reads. He looks me squarely in the eyes. “‘Courage, for till all ceases, neither must you cease.’”
Emery appears behind me. She places a light hand on the man’s arm. “Walt Whitman. A wise man.”
The poet whose words inspired the Common. “Resist much. Obey little.”
Straightening his sleeve and squaring his shoulders, the man turns and strides down the expansive hall. As swiftly as he came, he’s gone, but his words are lasting. I pocket my blade. Ava pulls off her hood. Courage. Neither must you cease.
“Others find strength in your courage,” Emery tells us. I find strength in hers. She motions Ava and me toward the elevators.
Seeing Emery, the line parts, allowing us to cut to the front. A glossy door lights up and opens, and our party of three files into the spacious elevator car.
I move to the corner in anticipation of the other guests, but no one follows us in. The door shuts, and an electronic voice pleasantly asks, “Tower and Level, please?”
A glowing panel illuminates the options: Towers One through Three, Levels One through Twenty. Instead of giving a voice command, Emery plucks a set of keys from her pocket with a metallic jingle. She slides one into a tiny keyhole I did not detect before, twists, and off we go.
“Tower Two, Level Twenty,” the elevator announces. “Estimated travel time, ten seconds.”
I realize we’re not moving up like normal elevators do. Our elevator car is speeding us left.
“The elevator system uses electromagnetics,” Emery explains. “Without the limitations of cables, the linear motors allow us to travel any direction.”
Vertical, horizontal. Diagonal. I can’t help but lament not having such technology inside the immense buildings of my old university.
“What’s inside each level?” Ava asks, tossing back her unruly bangs. They’ve grown out since we’ve been in hiding. “Can we see them?”
“There will be time enough for tours later,” Emery answers as the elevator door opens at Level Twenty onto a long, thin room that must be Ciro’s private quarters. “I will see you both in the Council Room afterward. Pawel will retrieve you. There is much to discuss.”
She waves us out, and Ava and I step into the heavily decorated room that seems to house everything except our host.
Releasing a drawn-out sigh, Ava moves toward a wall lined with portraits of faces I don’t recognize, dragging her rucksack after her. She tosses it to the floor and collapses onto a bench. I drop my own rucksack, lightly packed with the few items I still own, and join her. With no one to watch us, analyze us, or size us up, we both allow our shoulders to slump and take a moment to breathe.
It’s hard keeping up the facade. To always look like we know what we’re doing, to be worth the sacrifices, the efforts, the great risks others are taking because we came out of hiding and lit the match that spread the flames of disobedience.
Always, we must look like we’re strong, like Roth hasn’t made us crack.
“Their numbers are overwhelming,” Ava says beside me, breaking the relaxed silence. I don’t have to ask who. They, them, all those who want us found and gone. She must have seen something in Calgary when she disappeared last night. “We can’t stay here much longer,” she continues softly. “I want to go back.”
It’s strange being homesick over a country, a home, that never wanted us. Never wanted me. The illegal second twin.
“I want to go back too,” I say. We know we can’t, of course, but it feels nice saying it out loud, a comfort of sorts. A kind of admission. Because we both know there’s nothing to go back to.
The elevator door glides open, and we spring to our feet, making ourselves presentable.
“Before either of you say a thing, the party this afternoon is not for you,” Ciro declares before even crossing the threshold. “I mean . . . it is, but it isn’t,” he adds with a sly smile.
His legs are so long he eats up the wood floor that separates us in three swift steps. He looks down at Ava and me expectantly with an extra-large smile, and I realize he seems to want our approval. He wants us to like him.
“We’d love to hear more of your plans,” Ava responds politely. Let’s hope they’re good.
His smile stretches. “Please, follow me,” he says, leading us into a formal sitting room. I take a seat on the L-shaped couch, Ava beside me. Encased in ornamental glass, a fire burns in the center of the room. The flames glint off Ciro’s silver suit like tiny fireflies as he perches on the chair across from us.
“If I may ask,” I say carefully, “why are we not in the Council Room, meeting with the others?” I can’t help but feel they are leaving us out. We had hoped to be in on the discussion, key players in planning the Common’s next move. But from the look on Ciro’s face, he’s already made his own plans.
“The real meeting is tonight,” he answers. “I wanted you both to be the first to hear the good news.”
Ava slides forward to the edge of her seat. How good? Our father is still alive? Roth is dead? Rayla has returned to us?