“Of course,” she replied. “A hidden elevator to a refuge that provides a hope he did not provide? Ha, no. Huck would not be pleased to discover this…I’m not sure if it’s tank worthy, but isn’t that part of the way this place works? Confusion over consequences. Loyalties run thin…or so he makes you feel…perhaps my father would suffer the greatest.”
Never a rule-breaker, Lucy began to feel nervous. Her heart pounded and she thought she heard the elevator clunk downward; she wondered where they were looking, where the landscape above them would be on a map—if she could pop her head up and look out, would she be able to see her car?
After a long pause, Lucy rolled her head over and looked at Cass, facing her. Cass continued to face upward, looking at the sky with longing. She couldn’t help but stare at Cass’s strange eyes; looking from one to the other and feeling uneasy—as if there were something about this new friend that was not quite human.
“Why are you showing me this?” Lucy asked.
“A perfect question,” Cass replied and she stretched herself out next to Lucy. She seemed confident and at ease—without any of the worry that Lucy felt. Either Cassandra was braver than Lucy or she lacked sense. Perhaps the former seemed more likely, but Lucy worried that it was the latter. “The walls, you see. I heard it all. And so I realized that we are not so different, you and I. Each of our fathers sold his soul for a future. And while they sit and cry and pray that we will understand the ramifications for failing to fall in line…we see that this doesn’t have to be our future. Our parents have fallen prey to a rule by terror. A pity really.” As her monologue went on, Cass’s accent grew heavier. Lucy still didn’t know anything about this girl. “Yet…they keep doing things to save us. Perhaps to ask for forgiveness? This sky,” she swept her hand out over the window, “is an apology in a way.”
“You put all that together from eavesdropping?” Lucy questioned with a small smile.
Something about that struck Cass as funny and she roared loudly, slapping her hand against the floor. When she was done laughing, she pointed to Lucy and reciprocated the smile. “I listened before you came. I know some things. Perhaps more than you do…about the pain of leaving people behind. Your father’s empty assurances of protection. They do not want to lose you…”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Lucy said flippantly.
“Your friend Grant is alive.”
Lucy sat up and looked down at Cass, who didn’t look at Lucy right away. “How do you know that?” she asked and instinctually she felt her pants to make sure his letter was still secure against her body. “My father told me—”
“What he needed to tell you. Yes. But he is not dead.”
“How do you know?” Lucy asked again, pressing closer, and staring at Cass.
Cass shifted her eyes to Lucy and she winked. “The kaleidoscope eye sees all.”
Lucy exhaled loudly and felt like crying, but she held it back. Grant was alive. It didn’t matter how Cass knew; knowing was only a piece. Now the hard part would start. How could Lucy get to him before her father’s hand was forced and something bad did happen? She felt silly. Grant had been dead and undead so many times, she had lost count.
“He’s my best friend,” Lucy said to Cass. “I feel like he’s the only one who would understand how strange this is—”
A shadow passed over them, a quick and fast-moving darkness, a blur, and Lucy’s heart began to quicken. She raised her head to the window and saw the flash of movement above them; Lucy screamed and scampered back to the wall, convinced that they had somehow been caught. But Cass’s giggle gave her pause. Lucy peered up to the window and then let out a long breath.
Relaxing against the cooling glass was Frank, Blair’s black lab. Panting heavily and then pausing to lick the window—seemingly unaware of the bodies below.
“Oh, poor puppy,” Lucy said and she shot to her feet and stared up at the dog. “Why didn’t Blair go back for him? He’s all alone out there?”
“Punishment,” Cass said and shrugged. She stood and stretched upward as if waking from a long nap. “Going out is against the rules. She broke the rules. She loses her companion.”
“But he’ll die,” Lucy said and she looked to Cass as if she held the keys to fix this.
“Yes,” Cass replied and nodded. “Why does Huck care? He is immune to death. A necessary cost. That is what he says…those we lost were a necessary cost for forging a new life, a better life, free of the path of our world’s blindness and evil. What is one dog?”
One dog meant everything in a dogless world, Lucy thought. Frank was not something to be tossed aside, but to be cherished. But she knew that arguing with Cass was pointless; this was not her new friend’s logic. Lucy had not heard the Huck rhetoric before spoken so plainly. Cass was educating her on what her parents had been afraid to say: Why, really, were they here, underground, as the lone survivors? What was the point?
“He thought he was doing a good thing?”
“Not a scholar of history, I see,” Cass replied with a wink.
Lucy shrugged. “Hey, I did my homework. Solid B student.”
“Huck felt death was a necessary action. Imperative to change. He’s not so difficult to understand…he follows in the footsteps of many powerful men who believed radical change was our only chance. The difference, I suppose, is he succeeded where they failed. And now the only history that matters is the one he is writing. He is the hero of a broken world.” Cass crossed her arms over her body and took a step forward.
“Sounds like you could write the history books if you wanted,” Lucy replied. Charming and smart. Brimming with sophisticated, canned replies. “Who are you?” Lucy asked in awe.
“Someone who has had more time to live in this world. We lived in Cambridge. Woke up in the middle of the night with my father standing over me with a suitcase. Pack what you need. Leave everything else. And say goodbye. Moved here…after Huck’s army annihilated the city…in a house built for my father, my mother, my brother, and me. Left my friends without a word and told that I was now part of the Elektos. The chosen ones. But Huck would call me a variable if he knew my heart. C’est la vie.”
The word caught her attention. “I thought that variables were people outside who could threaten the world inside,” Lucy clarified, thinking back to when her mother uttered that word in the Sky Room.
“Or people inside who want out.” Cass smiled.
“Then not everyone wants to stay here?” Finally someone was telling her the truth. The plastered smiles of the men and women in the Sky Room were a facade. They were people born from fear, from irrationality.
“Sadly, not enough. They will understand someday, but by then it will be too late.”
“I want out too.”
Cass smiled. Her lips caught a bit on her bright teeth. She nodded once—a commanding action. They had known each other for an hour, but they were united in rebellion.
Lucy rolled her eyes playfully, “I know you know that already…but…I wanted to say it. Out loud. This is not a life. I can’t stay like this and I don’t feel like I should have to.”
“Of course. Agreed. But if you think it’s easy to just walk out and leave, then you don’t understand the System or the man in charge of it.”
Her shoulders dropped and she closed her eyes. “I see. It was too good to be true.”
When she opened her eyes, Cass was standing closer to her face, her hands outstretched, and she placed her hands on Lucy’s shoulders. “An escape would involve conspiracy, espionage, detailed planning, an inside man, a cover-up, and an understanding that whatever you left here would be gone. Forever.” Her eyes pierced sharply into Lucy’s, as if she could impart the importance of her words through her stare. “And miracles. Many, many miracles.”