Outcasts Read Free Page A

walking. It’s why I task for the messenger office.”
    “Okay.” He pocketed his hands again. “Well, good night, Kendall. Be careful.” He flashed one last wide smile and walked off down the sidewalk.
    What a weird man. Boy. Guy. She forced herself to stop watching him and waved a cab. Sure, she preferred to walk, but Omar had made a good point. No need to tempt a murderer.
    Not until she was safe in her apartment with the door locked did she remove the messages from the waistband of her shorts. She carried them to her kitchen table and spread them on the glass surface.
    There were four white envelopes addressed to Dane Skott, Ruston Neil, Domini Bentz, and Charlz Sims. None had a grid code or return address. Three were private residences, and the fourth was an MO Box from her own branch.
    She didn’t recognize any of the names. But Kendall had lived in the Safe Lands only a few months before she’d gotten pregnant and been sent to the harem, so she’d never met many people outside the messenger office. Chord had always been kind, had never tried to pair up with her. He’d been a real friend. Kind and authentic. And if delivering these messages was his dying wish, Kendall would make it happen, murderer or not.

CHAPTER
1
    D efying any government was a dangerous game. And while Safe Lands enforcers considered rebellion an X-able offense, the acts that inspired rebellion were far greater crimes, in Mason’s opinion. Crimes against humanity and liberty. Crimes of manipulation and terror.
    Ciddah would likely disagree.
    Mason pushed the beautiful woman from his thoughts and entered the train station. Zane had told him to find locker 127. The lockers were located outside the gate, and he found number 127 easily and tapped onto the pad the code Zane had given him.
    The locker clicked open. Inside, Mason found a small metal box. He opened the lid and removed a pair of black gloves that supposedly held a generic SimTag in the right hand. The metal box had somehow concealed the SimTag’s location, which would now appear on the grid.
    Ever since rebels had cut the official SimTag from Mason’s hand, he had to choose whether or not to carry it with him. Today he’d left it in his apartment, hoping those monitoring him might think he was watching the ColorCast or sleeping. But he couldn’t pass through thegate from the Highlands to the Midlands without a SimTag of some kind, hence these gloves.
    He pulled them on and shut the locker, then walked to the Midlands turnstile and tapped his right fist — his right
glove
— on the SimPad. The turnstile light turned green, and Mason walked through.
    Of all the remnant of Glenrock, only he, Mia, and Mia’s mother, Jennifer, still resided in the Highlands. The others were now in hiding in the Midlands under the protection of the Black Army rebels. Except Omar, who had a Midlands apartment.
    Mason took the train to the Belleview station and got off. He found locker 127 in that train station and deposited the gloves into the metal box inside. Now, without a SimTag on his person, he should be invisible to enforcers monitoring the grid. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t being followed.
    He thought back to his trial before the Safe Lands Guild, and their accusations. Though they hadn’t been able to prove he’d been involved in the harem escape, Lawten Renzor, the task director general of the Safe Lands, had warned him they were watching him.
    So as Mason made his way down Belleview Drive, he scanned the street and sidewalks for suspicious persons. This was his first time in the Midlands, and its dullness surprised him. The structures and fake vegetation were the same strange colors — he passed a building of turquoise bricks with pale pink shrubs out front — but the place lacked the cleanliness and polished luxuriousness of the Highlands.
    There were plenty of Wyndo screens flashing the latest mimic styles and product expositions to the public, but they were caked with dust