The Rebel Code

Chapter Two - Part Three

As far as Port Carina is concerned, we're the Young family. I've been reciting the details for as long as I can remember, so long I sometimes forget it's a lie, so long it's hard for me to remember that I'm actually Jennifer Bronson, and John is John Bekker, and Monique is Monique Mokoena. We've always been the Youngs.

Once upon a time, John Young was happily married and his wife wanted nothing more than to have children, but when she died in a tragic car accident, he chose to honor her wishes by adopting two beautiful girls.

Before I entered the picture, John Janssen lived in the Technology Province with Monique Janssen, his adopted daughter who he took in after her family's house was destroyed in a fire. Their last wish was for her to have a good education, or something like that.

But there's another story, a story John never ever tells me in one piece, so I have to assemble bits of it in my head like a puzzle. It's the story of Johnathan Bekker, a promising high school graduate who left his family to attend a prestigious university in the Business Province. He'd been selected for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn all about computers, to become one of only 5,000 lucky candidates. John completed his training, but there was an uprising, because 5,000 brand-new human computers started asking all the wrong questions with their new brainpower, questions that challenged the vision of Lysander Nkosi. And so 5,000 human computers were silenced and hunted down, because no one could know that the computer in charge had made a mistake.

John always says that knowledge and empathy are inseparable.

"They might get suspicious," I say, sniffling. "We don't look anything like each other."

"That's because you're my adopted daughter," he laughs.

The truth is, I don't look much like anyone around here, which makes me nervous. John looks enough like Mo to actually be her father, with his brown skin and dense mane of short, thin dreadlocks almost matching hers, but not me. Malina's ancestors came from North America in the Big Crash like mine did, but she's got dark hair and deep brown eyes, and can take sun as well as a local. My hair is sort of pale and sun-bleached, and my eyes are closer to the color of peanut butter. Where other kids are slender and fast, I'm stocky. Mo tells me not to obsess over how I look, but there's no denying that I stick out like a sore thumb in Port Carina.

John's studying me now, smiling, like he's trying to read my mind. He used to joke when Mo and I were kids that training at the Criterion school gave him superhero brainpower, and he could hear what we were thinking. I can tell fantasy from reality, but I'm sure there are all kinds of real things John can do with his brain that I can't yet. Does he see the world as numbers and figures? Geometrical shapes with calculated angles? He's always saying how his training changed the way he saw the world. I wonder what he sees.

"You've got dark circles around your eyes," he points out. Not exactly the calculated observation I expected.

"What?" I fake surprise, teasing him. "I can't think why. I slept like a baby last night."

"Yeah... sorry about that." John looks genuinely ashamed, as if it was somehow his fault that the cops came for Mr. Bosman.

"It's not your fault."

"The arrest wasn't my fault. But you shouldn't have to rush out of bed and panic every time a police car comes down the street. Believe me, this isn't the childhood... Well, young-adulthood I want for you. It's just the way things are right now."

"Then why even teach me?" I blurt out. "If it's so terrible to know, why'd you let me have it? All our secret homeschool stuff... What's the point if I can't be normal? Sometimes I wish I could just forget how to think the way you do."

I know it's terrible to say. John has worked so hard with Mo and me, teaching us everything he knows. I feel special, but I also feel scared. Yes, I'm smart, and I like being smart. It's a gift, but it's also a curse. He knows that.

"Because it's not a superpower," sighs John. "Once upon a time, believe it or not, everybody in the country could think like this. These skills were ours before we put them in computers, and we have to protect them. That means you have to keep it a secret, and so does Mo, and so do I. We keep them secret so no one can take them away from us again."

I flop backwards on the bed, staring up at the plain white ceiling. Staring at the tile I know comes loose, where John stashes even more of his gadgets.

"I just don't want to have to live afraid all the time," I whisper. "I feel like I can never be myself around anyone, not even my friends."

"It's hard, huh?"

"It's hard," I agree. "I just feel like I always have to worry. Mo's always at parties, and you're at meetings, and I never know if one of you isn't going to come home."

I hear him laugh a little. "Mo's been doing this since before you were born, Jenny. Her parents were good friends of mine, and they trained her well. She's built herself a solid reputation. An alibi, if you will. If you had to pick a freeboot out of all the teens in Port Carina, would you pick her?"

I frown. "You mean... she's pretending to be a slut so she's not suspicious?"

"I wouldn't say that." He twirls a pen in his fingers. "I'm just saying you don't need to worry about her. Mo can take care of herself. So can I, and we all look out for each other."

"I just don't want to have to go live with another family again." I close my eyes and try to remember anything besides Port Carina. "If they find us, I might have to go live with Shandi again."

"I thought you liked Shandi." John tilts his head, crinkling his brow into an amused expression.

"She's nice, but she's nice like Malina is nice," I say. "I'd love to have a sleepover with her, but I wouldn't trust her to be a parental figure. She's so... different, I guess."

I know I shouldn't feel this way about my biological mother. It feels disrespectful, somehow, to be calling her Shandi instead of "Mom," but I can't help it. She's nice. We've met before when I was six or maybe seven. She sends me gifts on my birthdays, like the frog backpack I've been using for school. But Shandi Bronson is not my mother. No matter how I try and think of her, I can never see her as more than a fun cousin, a goofy aunt, a woman who happens to share my DNA.

"Well," says John, "I wouldn't make you live with Shandi. It's not safe anyway. She's still hiding contraband at that book store. It's no place for a teenager to grow up. She sent you to me for a reason. Hey, eyes up."

He tosses me something he's fished out of the desk drawer. A puzzle cube, scrambled in a festive mess of colored squares. I roll it in my hands for a few seconds, memorizing the pattern. Reading the moves I could make.

"Take it," says John. "Just don't let anyone see you playing with that at school, okay?"

I smile and spin a couple of the sides. "Thanks. Sorry I got mad."

"Everybody needs to get mad sometimes. Don't you go worrying yourself, Jenny. We're going to be okay. All of us."

And I believe him. John's never made a promise he couldn't keep, and even though this seems like such a stretch, considering current events, I trust him.

My ProtoBand buzzes a message, telling me that I should be sleeping, and I silence it. I pat Atticus's smooth skull as I pass his charging port. I leave John's room and walk back up the stairs, into my room, where my bed is waiting. The ceiling stars glow soft as I lean back, unable to do anything except stare up at them. A breeze from outside rustles my curtains.

I shut my eyes and roll over, resting the solved puzzle cube on the nightstand.