It was hard to sleep that night. It was not the bed, because despite it being different from the one I had slept in my whole life, it was the exact same construction. It was not the house, either. Not my childhood home, but identical to it.
I supposed I had had too much excitement for the day. Perhaps it would take longer to wind down.
I shifted in my blanket to look around at my new house, the one for Kyran and I. I did not know why, as there was nothing to look at. Even the furniture set up was the same as my old house. I laid down again and closed my eyes. I opened them a moment later.
Married! I was married now! I was an adult! I was at the age where I ought to be mature, and compliant, yet here I was....
"Celeste!"
It took a moment for me to remember that that was my name. I sat up again, and looked at the bed across the room.
"Yeah?"
He was not in his bed. He was putting on a jacket, standing up by the door.
"Grab a coat if you want one. We might be outside a bit."
"Grab a coat?" I repeated, hesitant to leave my bed. "Where are we going?"
"HQ."
"Again?"
"Oh yeah." He grinned. "Don't worry, we'll be alright. No daylight, right?"
"Right..."
He took out something from his pocket, which looked like a piece of brown tile. He bit off a chunk and ate it.
"Want some?" He tossed me a chunk of the stuff, which I caught and looked over. It smelled sweet.
"What is this?"
"It's called 'chocolate.'" He grinned. "It was a treat, used to be really common before the Schedule Food System. It's good! Try it!"
I took a bite, and it hit my mouth like explosives. I was having trouble adjusting to this much sugar.
"Mm--it's--wow. That's...mm..really sweet."
He laughed at my expression. "Do you like it?"
"I think so."
"You will," he assured me. "Now c'mon! You're gonna love HQ once you get used to it. There's all these things you've never seen before. It's amazing."
"What kind of things?"
"Well, come on and see!"
I grabbed a coat, and followed him as he glanced out the windows and opened the door. It was cold outside, but it somehow added to the excitement. And I wasn't used to it, being outside at this time of night. It felt nice.
Kyran led me through some alleyways, confident and quick like he had done it a million times before. "Make sure you're quiet."
"I am quiet. You're the one splashing in the puddles," I remarked.
"What? No, I'm not doing anything."
He walked through another puddle.
"Kyran--"
He turned, a finger pressed to his lips. He nodded subtly as he could to indicate the dark figure that had darted in front of us. We both froze.
"Hey." The figure pushed aside the trash can.
"Zara!" Kyran mumbled. "You scared me!"
I could see her grin from the sparse light that came from where the trash can had been before she disappeared down the ladder.
Kyran followed. I stepped down and pulled the trash back over the hole, then proceeded down the ladder, which was a lot better the second time going down.
"You're getting the hang of it," Kyran told me.
I rolled my eyes. "I had the hang of it the first time."
"Sure you did. Now you just have to get used to the crawlspace."
As I went through it, I was positive I never would be.
"Kyran?" Zara's tone suggested urgency as she looked at something on a tablet. "Kyran, there's something you need to see."
I was not sure what I was supposed to be doing, so I followed Kyran.
"We have people working on those files—the King's—and we have some of them hacked," she told her brother. "It's not good."
She gestured to a screen with blueprints on it. Blueprints that looked odd yet familiar, a bit like-
"The town," Kyran breathed. "But that's not right...that's...that's...blueprints for a bigger town."
Zara grimaced "Bingo."
"That's got to be, like, ten times bigger than our town now," I murmured, looking over the blueprints in awe.
"Five times, actually, if what I've calculated is correct," Zara replied. "Meaning these are the blueprints of this town, but extended to hold 5000 people."
Kyran was a bit slack jawed.
I was sure I was not better. "5000?"
"We thought he might just be letting the population grow, but I think the King wants to take the fast route to a bigger empire," Zara said grimly.
I looked at Kyran. "The fast route?"
"Conquering," Kyran murmured. "Conquering another town."
I would not have been surprised if my eyes had fallen out of my head. "There are other towns?!"
"There must be!" Zara said, her eyes lighting up like I had really got her going now. "Kyran, you remember all the weird readings we picked up on outside the wall? And why the hell would we have a wall if there was nothing out there? There's got to be, there just got to!"
"What does that mean, then?" Kyran asked quietly, "that there's another town?"
"It means that town is just more cattle for the King," Zara replied, her tone spitting and disgusted. "But we can't let more people fall into this hell."
"Another town," I murmured, dizzy at the prospects of it. I had never once thought, in my whole life, that there was existence outside of our town. I looked at the blueprints, then turned my gaze to Zara's calculating eyes, fixated on the screen.
"What if we took the blueprints?" I asked. "It would slow down the construction, wouldn't it? And the extension of the city has to be done before more people are brought to it."
Kyran looked at his sister. "Can we do that?"
Zara frowned. "I don't know....hacking and accessing files is one thing, deleting them completely is totally different."
"But it would slow the king down," Kyran clarified.
"I would assume."
"We can't try anything direct, so we might as well just go for that," Kyran reasoned.
Zara looked at me, as if trying to decide whether or not to give me the satisfaction of taking my idea into account. "I can't guarantee anything will come of it. I don't even know if it's possible, but..." she smiled tersely. "I'll get some people looking into it."
She nodded to Kyran, and walked off.
"Not bad for your first day here," Kyran told me.
"It wasn't genius," I said, "but thanks, I guess."
"I think that's where people get stuck," Kyran said, "thinking they're not geniuses, or special, so they don't think they can do much. But often, common sense is just about as useful as a genius. You know?"
"Yeah," I said, mulling his words over in my mind. "Yeah, I think so."
"Zara ?" Kyran called.
She looked up from giving orders to some fellow Mafia members, which she did not look pleased about.
"Where'd you put the cans? I was going to show Celeste."
Zara rolled her eyes. "In the back, with all the other storage."
"Oh, wow," I said, "cans. That's pretty exciting."
Kyran laughed. "Shut up, Celeste! The cans aren't exciting, but rather, what's inside them."
I nodded solemnly. "Oh, yes. More cans."
We both burst out laughing. We walked to the back, where here was a stack of cans. They were large, like paint cans—the perfect size for holding more cans—and unlabelled.
"Like I was saying, sometimes you don't need something groundbreaking and special to get your point across," Kyran said. "Sometimes, you just need something little."
"Okay, so...what part do the paint cans play in this?"
Zara walked over, clearly not wanting Kyran to do the talking for her. "They're not paint cans."
"It was a—"
There was a smaller stack of cans a few feet away. Zara held one up. "This is the stuff the King and his officials put in the water that makes everyone's hair this color and texture." She held a piece of her washed out brown hair, coarse and straight, in her hand with disdain before tossing the can to Kyran.
He opened it, and showed me the the dark brownish liquid that was being dumped into the water system by the gallon.
"Gross," I remarked.
"And this," Zara took a can from the first pile, "is my finest work, as of late—the stuff that dissolves it."
My eyes widened. "Wait! So that would mean—"
"If we could get a couple cans of this into the water supply," Zara said, her eyes lighting up, "everyone's hair goes back to normal."
"Normal," I repeated. "Normal, what would that mean?"
"All kinda of colors," Zara told me. "Yellow, black, blue, red!"
I stared.
"Zara, I don't think hair can be blue," Kyran said, cracking a grin.
"Well, how would you know?" she brushed off his comment. "It would be perfect. Not a full scale rebellion, but a small ploy, relatively easy to carry out with a relatively lengthy time of recovery, to encourage individuality!"
Kyran turned to me. "Like I said, doesn't have to be some huge, genius idea. Simple ones do just fine, too."
Zara slapped him. "This is a genius idea."
"I think it's plenty genius, Zara," I told her, and she smiled a little.
"It's only genius if we can get someone to carry it out." She looked at Kyran for too long. He sighed.
"You want me to do that? To go dump anti-dye in the water supply for the whole town?"
"I don't see who else. I'd do it, but I don't do well with field work. I prefer being in charge, being behind a screen."
"You could get someone else," he suggested wryly.
"You're young, healthy, fast. If you get hurt you'd be quick to recover."
He scoffed. "Love you too, Zara."
"Look." She stared him down. "We don't have room for cowards here. You're in, or you're not."
I cleared my throat. "Uh, Zara?" I looked at Kyran for a split second. "I'm in."
Her eyes went wide. "You're not serious."
"Deadly."
She burst into a grin and shook my hand. It was a good feeling, to make someone so strict and calculating smile. "Welcome to the Mafia, Celeste." She turned to Kyran expectantly. "I don't suppose you expect her to carry all those cans alone?"
Kyran looked at me and smiled. "Only for my beloved wife."
I laughed. "Alright, then. So we're doing this."
"If I die, it's your fault," Kyran told me.
I nodded, trying not to smile. "Understood."
Zara practically bounced around the room. "Oh, this is so exciting. A little rebellion! I have plans all set up, written and digital, I'll go get them..."