FREE SAMPLE (Ch.1)

(Note: This is an uncorrected proof. Details subject to change.)

Having a doctorate in astronomy came with a lot of privileges. At the moment, it gave me a plausible excuse for why I was walking around on the roof of the college library in the middle of the night.

It was early August, and the campus was a graveyard. A few lights flickered in one of the halls across the lawn as the janitors worked to prepare the building for the fall semester. A security guard strolled lazily along the fence, the bounce of his flashlight the only movement in the abandoned parking lot. Even the omnipresent hum of downtown Boston seemed muted, as if the sultry summer heat had blanketed the city in silence.

I leaned against the railing and took a deep breath of the humid air. Most of the other professors were still on summer vacation, but I never left—mostly because I wasn’t allowed to. “Unassimilated” staff did not get employee benefits like paid leave, a fact they reminded me of every May.

I didn’t care. I would rather work than sit at home and wonder what the world was coming to. Besides, being on campus during the summer gave me freedom from prying eyes. And since my business was the stars, nobody questioned why I was up on the roof, after dark, with a box of suspicious electronics.

I reached down and adjusted the radio I had balanced on the ledge, triple-checking to make sure it was tuned to the right channel. She would be calling any minute.

I looked up at the sky. It was almost midnight, and the constellation Pisces had swum above the horizon, dragging Mars in its wake. Even with the light pollution of the inner city, the red planet was clearly visible, its orange glow like a speck of fire amongst the sea of blue-white stars. I stared at the unflickering disc, imagining the alien landscape I loved so well. I pictured the gorged valleys, the untapped wilderness, the merciless dust storms—and my son, who was no doubt standing in his office on his science station, watching the distant sun rise above the hazy horizon.

I closed my eyes. Be safe, Nic.

Static on the radio interrupted my prayer. There was clipped chatter, and then a young woman’s voice came through, clear and sparkling. “This is Caesar. Von, do you copy? Over.”

I grinned. At least one of my children was still on this planet.

I picked up the handset and pressed down on the button. “This is Von, I copy. How’s my girl? Over.”

“Bored,” she moaned in that pitch only teenagers can master. She dragged the “o” out for a full three seconds.

I chuckled. That was what she usually said. Boarding school, with its rigid schedule and cookie cutter curriculum, was not a stimulating environment for my fiery daughter. “And how was school? Over.”

There was a pause before she replied. “It was… rough.”

I tensed. “Which class was giving you trouble?”

The line went silent. I waited patiently for her to gather her words. She knew I wasn’t really asking about schoolwork. Even though I would have loved to hear about every detail of her day, radio wasn’t private. Someone was always listening. But seeing as regulations only permitted me to visit Cea for thirty minutes twice a week, and all her phone calls and text messages were monitored by an antagonistic social worker, a smuggled radio was the only way I could stay involved with my daughter’s life. To compensate, we’d invented our own code, so she could keep me apprised without either of us ending up in jail.

“Well,” she said finally, filling the dead air with that elongated word. “I had detention.”

I gripped the receiver a little too hard, accidentally smashing a button and causing my device to squeal. “Detention” meant she’d gotten in trouble with the authorities. “I see,” I replied, struggling to keep the emotion out of my voice. “Was it your fault? Over.”

The answer was almost always “no.” “No” meant she’d been punished for something she couldn’t deny—like praying or reading her Bible, all things the government had arbitrarily decided were illegal. And while my every instinct was to protect her, to shield her so she’d never get hurt, I wouldn’t ask her to deny her identity.

I would have preferred if “detention” happened a little less often—this was the second time this week—but she was my child. And unlike her brother, this apple hadn’t yet fallen from the tree.

I realized she hadn’t answered my question. “Caesar? Do you copy?”

Static clogged the line. “Yeah, uh…” she finally replied, “it was kind of my fault.”

“Kind of?” I prompted.

More dead air. “I was… out after hours.”

I frowned, although my stern expression was wasted on the abandoned rooftop. The boarding school had a strict curfew, and students were forbidden from leaving the grounds—not unlike prison, really. And while I wasn’t opposed to my daughter sneaking out, our rule was that she was only allowed to leave when she was meeting up with me or someone I trusted. And I didn’t remember approving any outings last night.

“Caesar,” I threatened, “what were you doing?”

There was a burst of static, and then a new voice joined the conversation. “This is Andes. It’s okay, Von, she was with me.”

I bristled. Andes was, admittedly, someone I trusted; he’d help me forge files, alter fingerprints, and cover my tracks more than once. But that didn’t mean I approved of my fourteen-year-old daughter meeting him after dark.

Andes kept talking before I could express my concern. “She was with me the whole time, and I made sure she got home safely,” he explained in his careless Scottish accent. “They just caught her out in the yard after curfew—nothing to worry about.”

No, that gave me plenty to worry about. I wasn’t sure which bothered me more—the fact that my daughter had met with Andes without my permission, or the fact that he’d let her get caught.

Andes didn’t wait for me to get it together. “How’s that ink healing, Caesar? Over.”

“What ink?” I snapped, cutting in before she could respond.

The line abruptly went silent, which told me everything I needed to know.

There were several legitimate reasons why Cea may have gone to see Andes—downloading a copy of the Bible, hacking around the spyware on a device—but a tattoo was not one of them.

“Caesar,” I growled, wishing for all the world I could use her full name, “what did you do?”

“It’s nothing, Da—Von,” she whined. Her voice faded in and out, like she was fidgeting with her handset. “It’s just the thunderbird symbol.”

“Just the thunderbird symbol?” I lost control of my tone of voice as my anger was replaced by genuine fear. The thunderbird was the icon for Operation Blue Fire, the most infamous transmitting network in the nation. I’d gone to jail more than once for displaying that same symbol, and now my daughter had it permanently emblazoned who-knows-where on her body. If her teachers found out, she would go to juvenile—and I’d lose what few visiting rights I had.

“Caesar.” I took a deep breath to quell my emotions. “Do you understand what that symbol means?”

“You said I could join the network!” she complained.

“I said we would talk about it!” We had discussed it. I’d been involved with the network for over a decade, sharing Bibles and other censored media through my databases. Cea wanted to transmit from school so she could reach other teens in the system. I was going to help her get started—but I’d said nothing about a tattoo. Her mother was going to murder me.

Andes broke in. “I’m sorry, Von, I thought you knew. She had a signed permission slip.”

“I did not—” I ran the math and deduced there were more important questions I should be asking. “Caesar, did you forge my authorization?”

The telltale silence gave me my answer, but I had to hear it from her. That was our rule: There was no problem we could not solve, no sin that could not be forgiven, if she told me the truth.

“Caesar,” I repeated, and that was all I had to say.

“I… yes, I did.” Her voice warbled, and I would have given anything to be standing in front of her so I could look her in the eye. “I’m sorry. Don’t be mad.”

I was furious—but that wasn’t the side of me she needed to see. I sank down on the ledge and gave myself three beats to find my center. “I am upset,” I admitted, careful to keep my voice calm. “Do you understand why?”

“Because I should have asked you first,” she mumbled, barely loud enough for me to hear over the static.

“So, why didn’t you?”

Andes respectfully stayed silent while my daughter made her confession. “Because I was afraid you’d say no.”

“I would have said ‘no’ only because getting a tattoo is a very serious decision that requires careful thought—just like transmitting. And the fact that you didn’t ask for my permission tells me that maybe you’re not ready for either.”

I let off the button as pain gripped my chest. I knew the words were cutting her just as deeply as they were cutting me, but they had to be said. I wanted my daughter to break the rules. I wanted her to be different, to question society, to rebel against the government—but only if she was doing it for the right reasons.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered, obviously crying. It was almost enough to make me drive across town and jump the boarding school fence—regulations or no regulations.

“I forgive you,” I assured her, and I did. “But we will have to talk about this the next time I see you.”

She sniffed loudly, causing the line to fuzz. “Yessir.”

“I’m sorry, Von, it’s my fault,” Andes inserted.

It wasn’t really, but he certainly should have known better. “You should have called me. Why would you think I’d approve of such a thing?”

“I know, I know—but the permission slip looked legitimate, I swear. It had your ID and everything.”

I paused and gave that statement the respect it deserved. In this digital age, forging a permission slip wasn’t as easy as copying my signature on a piece of paper. To authorize the procedure, I would have had to fill out a form on Andes’s site and then prove my identity to put my electronic stamp on the document. Cea must have either hacked into one of my accounts or convinced the computer that it was me—a feat that was doable, but certainly not easy for a teenager with no coding experience.

“Care to explain, Caesar?” I prodded.

“I, uh, used a filter to trick facial recognition,” she confessed, still sniffling. “And I made a scan of your fingerprint when you visited me last. It was on the jewelry box you gave me, remember?”

Of course, I remembered. I’m sure my grubby prints were all over the cheap plastic case. I just never expected my daughter to be dusting my gifts for fingerprints.

Andes whistled into the line. “Looks like we underestimated our little initiate, Von,” he chuckled.

Apparently so, I thought to myself, and smiled. If Cea was capable of forging my ID, maybe she was ready to learn how to transmit without getting caught.

Cea started to respond, but an urgent voice cut in. “Break, break,” someone shouted over the line. “Emergency.”

I stiffened when I recognized the voice. Catalyst.

Catalyst was a callsign I knew well, although we’d never met in the flesh. He had been involved with the Boston underground even longer than I had. Operation Blue Fire had been his original idea, and I’d helped get it off the ground. We’d worked together to spread the network to China and Mars and beyond. For many years, he’d been my closest partner in crime.

That was until the officials busted my server on Mars—and traced the data to several of our most important associates.

We lost a lot of good people that day. Catalyst quit the operation soon after, claiming he had to take care of his family. He took his servers offline and wiped his data before any of us could talk him out of it.

The rash response had crippled the network. Andes and I had been working for years to restore it, but without Catalyst’s contacts, the operation would never be what it was.

I’d tried several times to make amends and convince Catalyst to come back. The situation had been an accident, a childish mistake by my then sixteen-year-old son. I took full responsibility, but if Catalyst had forgiven me, he certainly wasn’t acting like it.

Catalyst repeated his call several times until the line silenced. Andes took control of the situation. “This is Andes. We hear you loud and clear, Catalyst. Go ahead, over.”

Catalyst almost didn’t wait for him to finish the sentence. “Any agents in Allston? Please respond.”

I snapped out of my reverie. Allston was my neighborhood. “This is Von. I’m in Allston. What’s the situation? Over.”

There was silence. I gripped the receiver. He was always like this, signing off as soon as I joined the line. Let it go!

He finally responded. “Police just called for all units, Coolidge and Arden.”

My anger evaporated. That was the intersection my house was on—and my wife was home alone.

Andes knew it too. “Von? Do you have a visual?” he prodded, the fear evident in his voice.

“I’m on my way.” I stood and started shoveling my gear back into the box. I struggled to keep a level head even as the blood pounded in my ears. It wouldn’t be the first time the police had shown up at my house in the middle of the night; I wasn’t an unassimilated citizen with thirty-two felonies for no reason. It was probably just the usual pomp and circumstance.

Except, they didn’t normally call for backup.

Jesus, protect my wife!

“Dad?” Cea squeaked, forgetting her manners. “What’s going on?”

I didn’t correct her. “Caesar, you know the drill. Wipe your feet and put your clothes away. Don’t leave the grounds until I contact you.”

We had rehearsed this. If I was ever caught, she had a protocol for hiding her gear and erasing the history on her phone so it would look like we barely talked. She was still my daughter, but at least I could make it look like she wasn’t involved.

“But I—”

“No,” I ordered, and waited until the line silenced before continuing. “This is serious. Now is not the time to break the rules. I will contact you—same time, same channel—when it’s safe. Do you understand?”

I clenched my fist, waiting for her to respond. Trust me, Cea.

“Yessir,” she finally acknowledged. “Over and out.”

“Thank you. I love you.” I hesitated, realizing there was more I wanted to say—but there wasn’t time. There was never time. “Over and out.”

Then I turned off the radio and ran.