Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(9)

We gazed around at everyone. I didn’t have to ask to know that we were all thinking the same thing: we’d known that coming into the city would be dangerous. We just hadn’t thought about all the ways that we could be caught.

Standing around in the train station was making getting caught even more likely. Jace rushed back out into the light, my body clutched to his side as if he could shield me by his will alone. Jackie and Ant hurried out a few steps after us.

To my surprise, we almost immediately hit a massive crowd of people, and though I hated the press of them against me, I figured that they would help. The more people there were, the more difficult it would hopefully be for the Authority to pick out our faces.

Still, it was confusing. Jace and I had been out on the street not two minutes earlier, and it hadn’t been nearly this busy. Why was it suddenly so crowded?

I blinked, examining the mass of people. They were obviously factory workers, given their dress and lack of cleanliness, and they were shoving at each other, and us, as if their lives depended on it. As if they were in such a hurry to get someplace else that they couldn’t have cared less if they ran over other people while doing so. Everyone looked harried and stressed, and though I’d never known people to be overly polite when it came to getting through foot traffic, this group was unusually aggressive.

In fact, if I’d had to guess, I would have said that they were panicked.

“What the heck is going on here?” Jackie asked, shoving back against the crowd but making very little progress due to her short stature.

Ant moved to put an arm around her, trying to shield her a bit. It worked, up to a point, but the people were still attempting to shove right through her, and through him. It was as if they didn’t even see my friends, or didn’t care that they were there.

How was it that everyone was in such a rush to move away from the direction in which we were heading? Where were they going—or what were they running from?

I was starting to worry that we were heading right toward some kind of danger, when I realized that we were actually heading away from the factories that lay on the outside of town.

“They’re going back to the factories,” I sighed to Jace. “You don’t suppose—Ouch!”

I stumbled when I stepped off a curb, and Jace put out a hand to catch me.

“Just a little bit longer, Rob,” he whispered. “Once we get to Zion’s, we might think about getting you out of those pants to see whether your leg needs medical attention. Until then, try to use me for support.”

I shut my mouth on the obvious response there—something about him having ulterior motives—and glanced ahead to see that Jackie and Ant had managed to stop one of the people so they could ask questions.

“It’s the factories,” the woman was saying, her voice rushed. “They’ve given us a bunch of new rules. No tardiness is acceptable, particularly not when we’re returning from our lunch break. If we’re late, we’re terminated immediately. Some people are saying that the termination includes something being put on your permanent record. I saw a man being fired yesterday just for asking a question the manager didn’t like.” She gave Jackie a panicked look. “I’m sorry, I have to go. I can’t afford to lose this job. My husband lost his last week, and we’re barely able to afford food.”

Then she was gone, lost in the rest of the crowd as if she’d never stopped.

Jackie turned wide eyes toward me, but I shook my head. Sure, the factories had always been a hard way to make a living. The rules were strict and the punishments severe, but I’d never seen them being this specific or demanding before.

It sounded like the rules had just become a whole lot stricter, and the punishments a whole lot scarier.

I remembered the article I’d seen on Jackie’s phone earlier, when she had been searching the news sites for a public bulletin out on us. It had been about new rules in the factories. I hadn’t had a chance to read the article, but now that I really thought about it, I was wondering about the reasons behind such changes.

“Why would they suddenly alter the rules like that?” I asked. “Their system works. They have plenty of labor, and everyone did what they were told. Why would they start punishing their workers like this?”

“I don’t think they’re punishing them, per se,” Jace replied after a pause, pushing through the crowd with me shuffling along right behind him, using his body as a shield. “Seems like they’re exerting more control and getting rid of those who don’t succumb to that control. Putting it on their permanent records means that those people are going to be marked for life.”

“But why?” Jackie sidled up to Jace and used his large body as a shield as well. “They already control the poor class. Why become even stricter?”

“Don’t know,” Jace muttered. “But that’s not our problem at the moment. Right now we have other fish to fry. We’re only a block from Zion’s, but it’s going to take us forever if we have to keep fighting this crowd. Turn left here. We’ll take a longer route and hopefully avoid all these people. This many humans in one spot makes me nervous.”

He took a sharp left at the next street and picked up the pace, with Ant and Jackie jogging behind us to keep up. I clutched at Jace’s shirt, doing my best to maintain speed.

We were in the middle-class part of town, where the skilled professionals did business; shops and offices peppered the street, with the occasional dwelling shoved in between or above them. I could see a number of signs hanging overhead, indicating the businesses below, and remembered how I had been on track to become one of those business people inside them. I’d been in school, studying, and though I hadn’t yet decided on a specific field, I’d known that I had a future and that it would be safe, regardless of what I chose to do.