Prodigy

Lincoln or some other celebrity singer had just arrived. No less than two capital military patrols push back against them. Their muffled shouts reach me.
    “Get back! Everyone’s to move behind the barriers.
Behind
the barriers! Anyone with a camera will be arrested on sight.”
    It’s odd. Most of the civilians here seem poor. Helping Day must have given me a good reputation in the slum sectors. I rub at the thin wires of the paper clip ring on my finger. A habit I’ve already developed.
    Thomas walks over to my aisle and leans over the seats to talk to the soldiers sitting alongside me. “Take her to the door,” he says. “Quickly.” His eyes flicker to me and then over the outfit I’m wearing (yellow prison vest, thin white collar shirt). He acts as though the conversation we had last night in the interrogation room never happened. I just concentrate on my lap. His face makes me sick to my stomach. “She’ll be cold out there,” he says to his men. “Make sure she has a coat.”
    The soldiers point their guns at me (Model XM-2500, 700m range, smart rounds, can shoot through two layers of cement), then haul me to my feet. During the train ride, I’d watched these two soldiers with such intensity that their nerves must be completely shot by now.
    My hand shackles clank together. With guns like that, one hit and I’d likely die of blood loss no matter where on my torso the bullet struck me. They probably think I’m planning a way to grab a gun from them when they’re not paying attention. (A ridiculous assumption, because with my shackles on I have no way of firing the rifle correctly.)
    Now they lead me down the aisle and to the end of our train car, where four more soldiers wait at the open door that leads down to the station platform. A gust of cold wind hits us and I suck in my breath sharply. I’ve been near the warfront once, back when Metias and I went on our only mission together, but that was West Texas in the summer. I’ve never set foot in a city buried in snow like this. Thomas heads to the front of our little procession and motions for one of the soldiers to drape a coat over me. I take it gratefully.
    The crowd (about ninety to a hundred people) goes completely silent when they see my bright yellow vest, and as I make my way down the steps I can feel their attention burning through me like a heat lamp. Most are shivering, thin and pale with threadbare clothes that can’t possibly keep them warm in this weather, wearing shoes riddled with holes. I can’t understand it. Despite the cold, they still came out here to see me
get off a train
—and who knows how long they’ve been waiting. Suddenly I feel guilty for accepting the coat.
    We make it to the end of the platform and nearly into the station’s lobby when I hear one of the onlookers shouting. I spin around before the soldiers can stop me.
    “Is Day alive?” a boy calls out. He’s probably older than I am, barely out of his teens, but so skinny and short that he could pass for my age if one didn’t pay attention to his face.
    I lift my head and smile. Then a guard hits him across the face with the butt of his rifle, and my own soldiers grab my arms and force me back around. The crowd breaks into an uproar; shouts instantly fill the air. In the midst of it all, I hear a few call out,
“Day lives! Day lives!”
    “Keep moving,” Thomas barks. We push into the lobby and I feel the cold air cut abruptly off as the door shuts behind us.
    I didn’t say anything, but my smile was enough.
Yes. Day is alive.
I’m sure the Patriots will appreciate my enforcing this rumor for them.
    We make our way through the station and into a trio of waiting jeeps. As we leave the station and head onto an arching freeway, I can’t help gaping at the city that’s streaming past my window. You usually need a good reason to come to Denver. No one but native civilians are allowed in without specific permission. The fact that I’m here and getting a glimpse of the city’s interior is unusual. Everything’s smothered under a blanket of white—but even through the snow I can see the faint outline of a vast dark wall that traps Denver like giant levees against floodwaters. The Armor. I read about it during grade school, of course, but to see it with my own eyes is something different. The skyscrapers here are so tall that they disappear into the fog of snow-laden clouds, each terraced level covered in thick sheets of snow, each side secured with