Black Marion

25

Late '83 became a delicate balancing game between the Sky and the Ground. To prepare a resistance was no small feat, and to prepare a bloodless one, even larger. Haneul, the doctor graced by the miracle of his return from the Sky, became the face of this resistance, bearing the weight of new hopes and fearful doubts with the necessarily infallible mask of a leader. His people began to recruit a network, and the thieving from the Sky expanded beyond just medical supplies; weapons, vehicles, and machinery all slowly made their way onto the target list. By winter, they had established contact with a few Tagged Grounders with work license above midground. By winter, rumors of the resistance's existence had spread across the sectors of the Ground.

The Sky, on alert since the first Tag went black, cycled out half of its SA21 team and renamed the project SA22 with a countervirus priority. Between the dead-end decoding work, the team used its program on System activity analysis to arrest dozens of Grounders. None of these were affiliated with Haneul's people, but it tore at Alex's conscience to leave them to their fates. She had no choice: even if no one else suspected her, if she made a move, Vaughn would know the truth.

Vaughn, since that pivotal September, had been a delicate case. A little more distant. A little more stilted. Their monthly meetings went on, and sometimes they still laughed together. But there was a new wariness, because despite the man's caring intentions, he was still on the ruling board of the State. He still had obligations, overbearing power, and he seemed to understand that Alex hadn't quite relapsed into a good Sky citizen. The Regent was particularly deliberate about keeping tabs on Alex whenever a new Grounder was brought up for interrogation, and though Alex believed Vaughn wouldn't actually turn her in, she couldn't stake everything on her faith in their friendship. More importantly, she couldn't expect Vaughn to jeopardize his own life by covering for Alex—so she resolved to need no covering at all.

Come 2584 though, they took a young man from the Ground. A boy no older than twenty. But the Sky, in its usual way, saw him as lesser than human, a piece in a game against untamed livestock. As if to make a statement, they interrogated him in the Imperial, and then they cut his Tag. That boy had nothing to do with any of this, and because he was as young as Alex had been when the Ground took her, it felt as if he had taken the executioner's blade in her place.

So she went to the Ground. For hours she deliberated with Haneul and the others. Two weeks later, she called up Demari and said she had something to show the director.

They met in the network display room, Alex urging him over as if there was something truly startling to be rushed about. Once together, she opened up the miniature projection of the System and enlarged a cluster of familiar leaves. She ran a detection program she had built some days ago, and two Tags ran black.

"What is this?" said Demari.

"They've been voided," said Alex. "I double-checked. The System is no longer receiving or transmitting signal through these Tags."

"When did this happen?"

"It must have been over the course of this past year. There are about a hundred of them."

"Christ," whispered the director. "How did we miss this?"

Because, thought Alex, the five-dimensional structure of Astrid's code was perfect camouflage for the false afterimages of the severed Tags. Because the program she had developed with Bennie to make these alterations undetectable had been near flawless. But to Demari, she said, "Whoever has been doing this wrote the cover code in the same language as the System. There was a small irregularity in a segment I had used before for SEA103. I don't know if I would have caught it otherwise."

Demari brought a hand up to his perfect stubble, rubbing it with a deep draw in his brow.

"This changes everything," he murmured.