Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(10)
“Thought she already skipped.” The girl had a Lower Eight accent, I realized. Maybe she was a charity case. Or maybe her family had clawed their way up to Paradise before being thrown back on the dumping ground, and she’d hung around.
“Never mind, just do what I told you.”
The girl disappeared, and the door into the other rooms shut, locking us in together.
We waited in silence two minutes or so, until sirens flared and enforcement bots scanned the situation. Then human agents from Camp Kuna arrived to take me into custody.
“Zara,” Mrs. Witham murmured as they fastened my restraints. “Take care of yourself.”
It was the nicest thing anybody who wasn’t Derry had said to me in a while.
BREAKING NEWS REPORT:
Dateline New Detroit
August 21, 2142
Honors Countdown week continues on our twenty-four-hour coverage, with hour-long special features on each of 2141’s Honors as we welcome them back home for their triumphant return. Each of these heroes will complete their assigned duties with the Selection Committee upon landing, which we’re told include rigorous debriefing, medical and mental health checkups, and of course, their assignments to welcome this year’s new Honors. We can’t wait for the dramatic reveals!
Today we’ve already noted the scheduled arrivals of twelve of last year’s Honors, including fan-fave Marko Dunajski and his flight partner, Zhang Chao-Xing. They’ll be restricted from interviews until after the new Honors are delivered back to the New York training facility, but we’re burning to ask: Are they going on the Journey?
Stay tuned to our nonstop coverage to discover the answers, and don’t forget to take our neural test. . . . Are you suited to be an Honor?
CHAPTER THREE
Breaking Free
PROCESSING WAS DONE in a ten-by-ten room with white-block walls and aluminum benches. Two prisoners sprawled there already, one on a bench and the other on the floor. I perched on the edge of one of the benches, ready to move as soon as I was called. This was Camp Kuna, designed for problems, for people in need of socialization and reconditioning. People who’d failed the system. I’d never been here, but I knew the type well.
It was safe. Safe, clean, secure, and boring. Exactly what I needed right now.
I watched my cellies closely for any sign that Deluca had infiltrated the place ahead of me, but they were dead to the world, and eventually tedium took over. My spine sagged. I relaxed and finally paid attention to the screen on the wall outside the bars. Honors Countdown frenzy was still in full swing, and now they were showing an agonizingly in-depth retrospective of each of the hundred people chosen last year. They were only in hour twelve.
Worst part of the year, Honors season. In Paradise, nobody watched, talked, or dreamed about anything else. At least back on the other side of the fence I could have avoided most of it. Here? The only escape came through sleep.
This particular hour was about one of the seventeen Honors picked out of China last year—Zhang Chao-Xing, a severe-looking woman who had a degree in something complicated. The show took us to her home, which had all the comforts, including a proud, smiling family. Just like me, minus the proud part.
Just like me, except I was sitting my ass on a cold aluminum bench, waiting to be given a boring uniform and boring job and boring classes. Again. Though the thought didn’t escape me that maybe I did deserve it. You stole the purse. You killed a guy.
I didn’t even feel that guilty, really. It wasn’t like I took anything from people who had less than me.
In hour fourteen of the retrospective, someone finally came, but she wasn’t there for me. The woman in uniform nudged the pasty guy on the floor in the ribs to wake him up.
“Let’s go. Your room is ready.”
The boy got to his feet without protest. He probably weighed fifty kilos max. His dead gaze met mine, and I shivered, wishing that look came from some kind of chemical numb. But I’d seen the expression before, hopelessness creeping in like mice behind the walls. He’d get treatment here from painfully sincere staffers; maybe he’d even get well. That was the goal, anyway.
The guard had woken up my other cellmate too, and she sat up on the other bench, yawned, and shoved the lank hair away from her face. I had no taste for conversation, but my fellow inmate looked chatty and it’d be dumb as shit to shut my eyes until I knew something about her. While there was a camera above us in the corner, nobody could come fast enough to save me if she turned out to be dangerous, not just antisocial.
“What’re you in for?” she asked, in the middle of a yawn.
I met her challenging stare with a half smile. “Jacked a mobster’s daughter and killed one of his guys.”
Laughter nearly doubled her over—loud, contagious bursts that made me almost join in. Almost. When she could breathe well enough to speak, she wheezed, “Sure, and I robbed the old coin exchange!”
“Where’d you hide the loot?”
“Look, don’t tell me and I won’t tell you. Fair deal.” She hesitated, then leaned over and extended an open hand. “Clarice.”
I shook it. “Zara.”
Evidently she took that as proof that I wouldn’t tear her throat out with my teeth, because she went back to sleep. I didn’t. Well, not until we’d covered another hour of an Honor who came from the Seychelles and liked to water-ski. I finally dropped off in sheer boredom.