Regret by Elana Johnson Page A

gathered in my throat.
    I should’ve said good-bye the right way, whatever way that was.
    She looked at the camera for a few seconds without speaking. She swallowed. Then she said, “Gunner, I’ve loadeda letter onto this chip. It’s from your father. He instructed me to give it to you when you were ready.”
    While she paused, my mind raced. Letter? My father = a man I’d never met. A man who’d been dead since before my birth.
    Mom jerked her head toward a sound only she could hear. She leaned forward; her voice hushed. “Compare it with the journal. I love you, son.”
    Then the memory went black. A second later a scan of the letter filled my v-screen. The writing looked faded, but I could still read all the words, decipher all the numbers. It made no sense, but since it’d come from my father, I longed to feel it in my hands.
    I watched my mom’s recording again. And again. Every time, part of my being leeched out when she said “son.” At some point during the viewing, I’d slid to the ground. Cement-cold crept into my legs, my lungs.
    What journal? I wondered. The only answer came from the glow of crimson seeker-spider eyes. An intense fear pounded in my veins. I leapt to my feet and turned quickly down an alley, only to see additional pinpricks of red. More recordings being made.
    In six short hours the Director would own me.
    I wanted to own my last six hours, dammit.
    I knelt, reached down to my ankle, lifted the cuff of my jeans. Four sets of lasery eyes moved closer. I kept my chin pressed to my chest so they couldn’t capture my face and beam it back to whoever would dispatch the Enforcement Officers. The wide-brimmed hat helped conceal my identity. For once I was glad protocol dictated hat-wearing at all times.
    I extracted a small canister—a scrambler—from my shoe and set it on the asphalt. Just a little closer …
    I felt the eyes behind me, above, below, on all sides. Claustrophobia pressed in unexpectedly. After all, I felt like this everywhere. In school. At home. On the hoverboard track.
    So many cameras watching. Always watching.
    The scrambler vibrated under my fingers. I traced over the two looping figure eights on the top to control the shaking in my hands, waiting one—more—second.
    When the metallic legs of a spider touched my elbow, I smashed the scrambler with my fist.
    An electromagnetic pulse sent the seeker-spiders flying backward, their eyes winking into oblivion as they—and everything they’d managed to record—shorted out.
    Then I ran.

Raine
    2.
    My new flatmate has nightmares every stinkin’ night, which creates a mountain of work for me. Not that she knows that, but still. I sorta wished her dreams would dry up already.
    The first couple of nights I’d jerked awake to her anguished cries and muttered words about someone she’d forgotten.
    I’d knelt next to her bed, careful not to touch her while I tried to wake her up.
    Fact 1: Violet Schoenfeld is a very deep dreamer.
    My brief-sheet hadn’t said anything about her violent midnight behavior. Instead, the b-sheet provided a detailed analysis of Vi’s personality—uh, quirks—and included more than I should ever know about someone else’s match.
    Zenn (the aforementioned match) came and collected Vievery morning, and most days I didn’t see her again until lights out. Because of their identical rings, I knew Zenn had a checklist of responsibilities regarding Vi too. Jewelry is forbidden in Freedom, but rings like Vi’s and Zenn’s screamed of monitoring. They meant my dad was simply waiting for either of them to slip up. Then the ring would record everything he needed to know.
    My responsibilies re: Vi included filing a report if she had a nightmare. Now I prepared the form every night before bed. When she started thrashing and calling out, I recorded the time. Sent it off to Thane Myers, the man who loved to make my life more difficult if he didn’t wake up with his precious report.
    Fact 2: Violet