Reached

else knows?
Is anyone here part of the Rising? Have they seen the information I’ve seen about how the rebellion will proceed?
    Though the incubation period may vary, once the disease is manifest, the patient deteriorates quickly. Slurred speech is followed by a descent into an almost comatose state. The most telltale sign of the live Plague virus is one or more small red marks on the back of the patient. Once the Plague has made significant inroads into the general populace, and can no longer be concealed by the Society, the Rising will begin.
    “What is it?” the mother asks. “Is he ill?”
    Again, the three of us move at the same time. Official Lei reaches for the boy’s wrist to take his pulse. Official Brewer turns to the woman. I try to block her view of her child lying still on the bed. Until I
know
the Rising is on the move, I have to proceed as usual.
    “He’s breathing,” Official Brewer says.
    “His pulse is fine,” Official Lei says.
    “The medics will be here soon,” I tell the mother.
    “Can’t
you
do something for him?” she asks. “Medicine, treatment . . .”
    “I’m sorry,” Official Brewer says. “We need to get to the medical center before we can do anything more.”
    “But he’s stable,” I tell her.
Don’t worry,
I want to add.
The Rising has a cure.
I hope she can hear the sound of hope in my voice since I can’t tell her outright
how
I know it’s all going to work out.
    This is it. The beginning of the Rising.
    Once the Rising comes to power, we’ll all be able to choose. Who knows what might happen then? When I kissed Cassia back in the Borough she caught her breath in what I think was surprise. Not at the kiss: she knew that was coming. I think she was surprised by how it felt.
    As soon as I can, I want to tell her again, in person:
Cassia, I’m in love with you and I want you. So, what will it take for you to feel the same? A whole new world?
    Because that’s what we’re going to have.
    The mother edges a tiny bit closer to her child. “It’s just,” she says, and her voice catches, “that he’s so
still.
”

CHAPTER 2
    CASSIA
    K y said he’d meet me tonight, by the lake.
    When I see him next, I’ll kiss him first.
    He’ll pull me so close that the poems I keep underneath my shirt, near my heart, will rustle, a sound so soft that only the two of us will hear. And the music of his heartbeat, his breathing, the cadence and timbre of his voice, will set me to singing.
    He will tell me where he has been.
    I will tell him where I want to go.
    I stretch out my arms to make sure that nothing shows underneath the cuffs of my shirt. The red silk of the dress I’m wearing slips neatly under the unflattering lines of my plainclothes. It’s one of the Hundred Dresses, possibly stolen, that came up in a trade. It was worth the price I paid—a poem—to have such a piece of color to hold up to the light and pull over my head, to feel so bright.
    I sort for the Society here in their capital of Central, but I have a job to do for the Rising, and I trade with the Archivists. On the outside, I’m a Society girl wearing plainclothes. But underneath, I have silk and paper against my skin.
    I have found that this is the easiest way to carry the poems; wrap them around my wrists, place them against my heart. Of course, I don’t keep all of the pages with me. I’ve found a place to hide most of them. But there are a few pieces I don’t ever like to be without.
    I open my tablet container. All the tablets are there: blue, green, red. And something else besides. A tiny scrap of paper, on which I’ve written the word
remember.
If the Society ever makes me take the red tablet, I’ll slip this up into my sleeve, and then I’ll know that they’ve made me forget.
    I can’t be the first to have done something like this. How many people out there know something they shouldn’t—not
what
they have lost, but that they
have
lost?
    And there’s a chance I won’t forget anything—that I’m immune like Indie, and Xander, and Ky.
    The Society thinks the red tablet
does
work on me. But they don’t know everything. According to the Society, I’ve never been in the Outer Provinces at all. I’ve never crossed through canyons or run down a river in the night with stars sprinkled overhead and a silver spray of water all around. As far as they know, I never left.

    “This is your story,” the Rising officer said to me before they sent me on into Central. “This is what