ELEVEN

Wednesday

The doctor dropped this off for you while you were sleeping,’ Abe said. Mason was in Abe’s small kitchen, pouring himself a cup of coffee. His back still to Abe, Mason finished pouring coffee as if he owned the tiny apartment suite and Abe was the guest. Mason’s second cup already. In the cave, he’d missed coffee. Badly. The aroma. The taste. The small, satisfying jolt of caffeine. Missing coffee, more than rats crawling over his face, would have been enough to drive a man crazy. Mason thought with some satisfaction that it was a good thing he was mentally strong enough to have survived all of it without slipping into insanity.

He’d heard the padding of Abe’s feet on the floor but had not turned. The old man wasn’t a threat in any sense, except that Abe talked and talked and talked, irritating enough that Mason wasn’t against killing the old man just to make the world a quieter place.

Not yet though. Mason needed access to the old man’s knowledge. When Mason had taken a sip of the second cup, he finally leaned on the counter and faced the old man, as if giving Abe permission to speak again.

Abe was dangling an eye patch, holding it out to him by the string. “Your visit to the medical center is this afternoon. They’ll x-ray the arm you said was busted, just to make sure the bone healed straight. Maybe today they’ll stitch the eyelid over the socket, but it will be temporary, until you get a glass eye. Might be best for now to cover your eye with this.”

“Don’t need it,” Mason said. He’d been vain in Appalachia, doting on his appearance in a place where appearance mattered more than inner self. Keeping his hair long and curly and his mustache neatly waxed. But that was his old self. Time in the cave had been like time in a kiln, burning away the outer self to reveal what was pure inside. He’d learned what was important. Making it through one minute and then the next. He’d gone to the edge and back. Was supreme now. Didn’t matter how the world looked at him anymore. He was his own man. Had earned that by finding a way out of Appalachia. On his own terms.

Abe glanced at Mason’s face. Then away. “Might help other people though.”

“Meaning?”

“Until they got to know you, they’d be nervous. Just looking at you, I mean.”

Abe was right about that. Mason had looked in the mirror earlier and noted with satisfaction how monstrous he appeared. That would help him. When he needed to force people to talk—and he could anticipate this happening more than once over the next few days—the more he scared people, the more they talked. He’d wear the patch and pull it off when convenient. Flash them the shriveled eye and stare at them with his milky left one.

Mason finally reached for the eye patch, feeling a twinge of pain in his right arm. Weeks in the cave, with a diet of rat meat, high in protein, low in fat, had knitted the bone. The arm was skinny, needed exercise. But it was serviceable.

He decided he didn’t need the medical center. His arm was fine, and he didn’t care about stitching the eyelid over his blind eye, or even having the remnants of the eyeball removed. Going to the medical center would just waste time.

Mason first wanted the girl. Then the agent, Pierce—the one who had broken Mason’s arm.

“Where’d they end up?” Mason asked. Again, too cagey to reveal he wanted Caitlyn.

Abe was confused at the switch in conversation.

“My friends,” Mason said. “Remember? The big slow one. Billy. And his friend.”

“You want to get settled first, don’t you?”

“I feel fine,” Mason said. “Be nice to see familiar faces.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Abe said. “You’d be better off cutting your hair first. Put on some good clothes. Use the eye patch.”

“I feel fine,” Mason said.

“You grew up your entire life inside Appalachia. There’s things you need to know about Outside, now that you’re in it.”

Mason savored another cup of coffee. The old man was a useless windbag, but he could at least make good coffee.

“What it comes down to,” Abe said, “is that society here has what I call strata. Separate layers. Easy to tell apart.”

“I’m listening.”

“At the top, you have the Influentials. At the bottom, the Industrials and Illegals. Between, well—as an Invisible, you get ranked according to a lot of things. Not like Appalachia, where everyone pretty well lives the same kind of life. Here people judge you by how you look. If you want to be part of this world and move in it without interference, you need to look like you fit in. Invisible.”

Mason grew still. He was, first and foremost, a hunter. He knew there were times when blending in was paramount.

“A person needs papers to move around? Identification?”

“You’ll want to keep your papers on you. Just to prove you’re not an Illegal in case Enforcers ever ask. Other than that, you have rights that the Illegals and Industrials don’t. Go wherever you want. Inside the city walls though. Out in the shantytowns or soovies, it’s a different story. Mostly, outside the walls they’ll have to leave you alone. But if anything ever happens, they’ll make your body disappear. ’Cause they know if you’re in a position to report being robbed or assaulted, Influentials will take down their entire neighborhood.”

Mason frowned. “GPS doesn’t track everyone? A person doesn’t have to carry a registered vidpod?”

Abe laughed. “See? Appalachia was your whole life. No, the government doesn’t watch your every move. We have vidpods, but they aren’t registered to keep track of your movements by GPS.”

“A person can move anywhere. Anytime.” This thought was intoxicating for Mason. To be a predator with no fences.

“Not quite,” Abe said. “There are times I miss Appalachia for how it protected a person. Sure, you lost some freedom. But what you got in return was safety. Here, it’s the law of the jungle.”

Mason smiled at the thought.

“In the jungle,” Abe said. “Might is right. And might comes in your right hand.”

“People go around fighting?” Mason’s heartbeat rose a little.

“Nope. That would be too uncivilized.”

“But you said the law of the—”

“Jungle. You establish your power around here with money. That’s why all the strata. Money is power. Power establishes where you fit, which layer is yours. The government doesn’t follow your every move. But the banks do.”

Mason swished some coffee in his mouth before swallowing. “I don’t understand.”

Abe held up the fingers of his right hand. Spread them apart. “These put me in a position as far above the Industrials and Illegals as I am below the Influentials.”

Mason didn’t like it when people made him feel stupid. “Do me a favor. Spell out what you mean.”

“Once an Invisible establishes good credit with a bank,” Abe said, “you’re eligible for implants. Doesn’t hurt. They’re tiny computer chips injected into your fingertips with a syringe. When you buy something, you wave your fingers over a register, and the computers debit your bank account. You get cash from money machines the same way.”

Looking at Abe, he felt the hunter’s adrenaline. Like a big cat. Discovering wounded prey.

“Nice to know,” Mason said. “Doesn’t sound safe to me. Anyone could chop off a person’s hand.”

Abe laughed again. “You’re sharp. That’s what Illegals used to do if they managed to get you alone somewhere. Until we put in security measures. For starters, you need a password too.”

“Good thing,” Mason said, wondering how long it would take to learn Abe’s password.

Mason drained his coffee and set the cup on the counter.

“Thanks for explaining things,” Mason said. “Maybe you can help me get cleaned up right away for the trip to DC. I’d sure like to find Billy and Theo.”