Generation of Liars Read Free

before I
found you?” He began shuffling the cards.
    “I wasn’t sure where I was going,”
I told him. “I did something very bad. I just need to run away.” I was never
going to say what I did out loud. He seemed satisfied with my pert reply. So
far he hadn’t even asked me my name.
    “It must be fate that I found you.
Fate that we should both live at this moment in history.” It was then that I noticed
a sinister thunderbolt scar riding from his upper lip to his right nostril.
“Just like it was fate when I found him .”
    “Found who?”
    Motley pointed to a seat three rows
ahead of us in the train car, where a kid my age was sitting. The kid was
plugged into headphones and a laptop. He looked like a techno wunderkind.
“Him,” said Motley. The kid looked up just as Motley mentioned him, a
phenomenon of rung ears.
    “Is he the person you bought that
third ticket for?” I asked.
    Motley reached down and braceleted
my wrist with his fist. “Wave hello to your new partner.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “We call him Rabbit.”
    “That’s an unusual name.”
    “It’s not his name. It’s what we
call him.”
    “Do I have to change my name too?
Before I start working for you, I mean?”
    “I suppose we should call you
Alice, since you will be following him down the rabbit hole into a very dark
world.”
    I hugged the backpack in my lap. “A
dark world?”  I looked ahead the three rows at the kid to get a better
look, but his eyes were hidden by a Yale Bulldogs cap. I looked up at Motley,
my lashes fluttering over my racing eyes. “What do you mean by a dark world?”
    “When you work for me, you’re on a
mission. Your mission is to retrieve and destroy an item that is causing me a
headache. This item was never meant to exist in the first place, and securing
its ruin won’t be easy. It is directly related to the cyber attack.”
    “What kind of item is it?” I asked.
    Motley pivoted towards me; his lips
blew hot against my ear. “You said you were running because you needed
someplace faraway to hide, right?” His eyes were blue like crystal waters and
they seemed to penetrate my mind. I wondered if the almost-palpable scent of my
fear wasn’t some kind of perfume to him. Was I twenty minutes and a punched
train ticket into the worst mistake of my life?
    “Yes,” I answered, “I really need a
safe place to hide out for a little while.” I looked away from his intimidating
stare, down at my hands, and saw that the spaces under my cuticles were stained
red from the cheap hair dye.  
    “I am also running from something.
I haven’t been a free man in a long time, but the attack made it possible for
me to run.” His eyebrows pushed together, and he added the word, “ Except -.”
    “Except for what?”
    “Except,” he continued, “our
secrets aren’t entirely safe. Not just yet.”
    “What do you mean?” I was still too
shy to look directly into his eyes. “The cyber hit saw to it that our true
identities are gone for good, and as long as we resist the order to re-register
on paper we are anonymous forever. The lady on the television said so.”
    “There is a disk out there in the
world that contains a hard copy of all our Social Security numbers.”
    A sharp chill erupted on my neck
and surged through my body. It was like I could almost feel the confession
note, forceful as a lodestone, inside my shoe and burning a hole through my
skin. “How do you know that?” I asked him.
    He pressed his finger to my lips,
an aggressive reminder to speak softly inside a crowded train car. “Alice, I
hope you won’t think negative of me if I tell you that before the attack I was
in prison.”
    “Prison?” My eyes slowly crept up
to look at his eyes, but I could only go as far as the curvy lip scar.
    “Two weeks ago a new inmate arrived
in my quadrant at Rikers Island. His name was Enoch Sprites. He was a doctor
who was freshly busted for malpractice. Dull fellow, personality wise, but