Chapter Text
Zone 9 had always been a rough place. Well, as far back as “always” went for Jared May, at least. They were born and raised in zone 9, and had only ever left it once or twice during the first 18 years of their life. The majority of said years were spent in a cramped apartment complex — shared with their parents as well as their younger brother, Nicky — located next to a factory that their parents worked at. The majority of adults in zone 9 were factory workers.
Zone 9 was dirty and loud, but Jared didn’t have a problem with that. Grimy desks at school meant that no one would care if you drew on them. A loud cafeteria meant that you were likely to find someone blaring music. Jared didn’t have many friends — deemed too bright and too loud and too everything by most of the people that they met — but they had their little brother. He was quiet and pensive and stoic, everything that Jared was not. Jared thought that that’s what made them such a good team. Nicky did not enjoy the grime and noise of zone 9. It made his skin itch, he said, made his brain feel like it’d overheat. He preferred to spend his time cooped up in his part of the bunk bed with a comic, or at the nearly abandoned karate school-slash-Asian restaurant a few blocks from the apartment.
Zone 9 could be cruel to its residents. Jared had many times come home with a black eye, given to them for a reason they couldn’t decipher. As children, neither them or their brother were allowed to play outside without supervision. When they were 9 and 6 respectively, they’d both gotten a talk from their parents about not going outside after dark, and been promptly gifted Swiss Army knives to keep in their pockets. Nicky had actually been put in the karate classes for the same reasons. (Jared had been in them too, for a few months, although they’d soon left out of a general boredom. They’d asked their father if they could join the ballet classes being held across the street, but he quickly denied. He said that wasn’t what boys were supposed to do — a sentiment Jared didn’t understand at the time.)
Zone 9 was not a kind place, and it was not a pretty place, but it was Jareds home, so they loved it nonetheless. They were always able to find music in the noise: beauty in the ugly. If the ugliness wasn’t there, then the beauty wouldn’t mean as much. That was the most important part of zone 9. But one day, it changed.
******************
Jared is sitting on their balcony when it first starts. They’re trying to teach a confused Nicky how to play cards, listening to some CD they found at a thrift store intercut with the bustle of the street below them. The sun is blazing down on them, hot for spring — it’s been getting warmer and warmer in the desert the past few years. Jared’s just about to win the round with an ace, when a loud noise screeches below them.
The laughing and yelling of the street turns into confused murmuring. Jared stands up to get a better look at what’s happening, and Nicky peeks through the bars of the balcony. There’s a large, pristinely white van parked on the street, a harsh contrast against the grimy, cracked sidewalk. Painted on its side is a smiling face, tar black, and under it the words “Better Living Industries”. Jared recognizes the logo: their parents have been getting letters with the same symbol for months. Whenever Jared asks about the letters, their mother says it’s nothing and refuses to explain further, but they can tell that something is off.
Soon after the van stops, a group of people step out. There’s about half a dozen of them. They’re dressed in something like police riot gear, but black and white, like the van. Their faces are completely covered and they stand around the van defensively, as if daring the people on the street to come closer. They seem to be led by another man from the van: he’s tall and dressed in a white suit, holding a clipboard and frowning.
“Who are those guys?” Nicky asks his sibling, nervously.
“I don’t know,” Jared says, picking up the cards and CD player. “C’mon, let’s go inside.”
Both of them relocate to the kitchen table, slightly shaken.
Jared begins to reshuffle the deck. “The logo on the van, it’s the same as the one on the letters mom and dad’ve been getting.”
“Oh. You think they’re connected?”
“Probably, yeah. It’s that company in the city: BIL, or something.”
“I thought they weren’t allowed to touch the outer zones,” Nicky questions. He’s fidgeting with the zipper of his hoodie — a nervous habit of his.
“I thought so too.” Jared begins to deal them the cards. “They’re expanding though, I get that zine from zone 7. Says they’ve started going through the farms over there. Arresting people who don’t follow their regulations.”
Nicky looks scared at that. Jared, silently, curses their lack of a filter.
“Probably won’t happen here, though,” they say, in an effort to calm their brother down. “I mean, what could they regulate? The color of the smoke coming from the factories? We’ll be fine.”
That seems to calm Nicky, at least enough for him to crack a smile and accept his cards. They continue playing for hours, and the mood is lightened, but neither of them can shake their thoughts of the van.
******************
As it turns out, BLI can do a lot worse than changing the color of smoke.
Over the coming days, Nicky and Jared hear rumors around their school, worried whispers in corridors: people in white suits carrying clipboards, barging into people’s homes for interrogations. Apparently, they’d gotten control over zone 9 and 10, and were enacting their new “regulations”. No one was sure what these regulations actually were, but they didn’t seem good.
******************
A week or two after the first van arrives, the May household gets a knock on the door. Jared and Nicky get ushered towards their bedroom by their dad, worry written on his face, while their mom opens the door. Nicky either doesn’t care about the situation or is just hiding his emotions very well — it’s about 50/50 with him — opting to distract himself with a comic book. Jared, on the other hand, crawls up to the crack under the door, trying to catch a sliver of the conversation.
“-really won’t be that much of a change, in the end,” they hear an unfamiliar voice say. It sounds like a woman. Her infliction is bright and cheerful, but there’s something cold at the core of it.
“So you’re- you’re taking down the factories?” Jareds mom asks, sounding confused.
“Well, only for a short time,” the woman explains. “We’ll be changing some of the equipment, getting rid of a safety precaution or two. It’ll be much more effective, and it only takes a few months!”
“Months?” Jareds dad questions. “Where will we work, then? We’ve got two kids to feed, we can’t go without a job for that long.”
“With all due respect, Mr. May, that simply isn’t the concern of BLI.” There is the noise of a pen clicking, before she continues. “Your children, however, are something I’d like to talk to you about. Jared and Nicholas, correct?”
There’s a beat of silence, presumably a nod from either of the parents.
“How are they in school?”
“Good, for the most part,” Jareds mom says.
“For the most part?” the woman scrutinizes.
“Well, they get good grades, mainly. Do their homework in time. Jared’s gotten in a fight or two, but he never starts them. It’s really- why do you need to know this?”
The woman’s voice turns sickly sweet. “Now that BLI have agency over the area, we want to do all we can do to help it’s residents, and that includes your children. After all, do you really think a place like this is good for a child’s development?” She let out a short laugh, shrill and cutting.
Jared hears the noises of a chair scraping, presumably the woman getting up. “Well, this has been very helpful,” she says, before her heels click away on the apartment’s concrete floor, signifying her departure.
There comes a thud shortly after: the front door closing. Jared hears their parents continue talking, but their voices become quieter. They sound stressed. After a few minutes, Jared can just barely hear the muffled noises of their mother crying.
******************
Things get a lot worse after that.
The Mays are lucky: Jared’s mom got a job as a janitor at a pharmacy nearby, right before the factories closed, which was more than what most people got the chance to do. Their upstairs neighbor — a guy in his 50s with a thick beard, drinks a bit too much and works at the same factory as Jared’s parents — gets evicted a week later. There’s a man in a suit standing in the hallway when Jared gets home from school that day, and he says that the guy wasn’t paying his rent.
That neighbor is the first of many. Over the course of a few months, it gets more and more common to see people sleeping on park benches or asking for money in front of stores. That is, of course, until BLI start “cleaning up the neighborhood”, as they call it. More of the vans roam the streets at night, people in black and white armor walking around with weapons that look more appropriate for handling animals at slaughterhouses than actual people. If you’re not asleep by sundown, you’ll be kept awake by the screams and struggling of BLIs selected vermin.
Jared notices changes in school, too. Their class had been reading and analyzing Animal Farm for English, but that project gets cut off in the middle. The new teacher — a stern woman who dresses exclusively in beige — explains that the story was “supporting dangerous and disruptive ideas”, and hands out new textbooks, ones with little BLI logos at the corner of every page.
Other subjects get the same treatment. History becomes the same brand of story regurgitated over and over again, preaching about successes within the wondrous system. Art, Jared’s favorite subject, is cut out of the curriculum entirely.
******************
“What is it that they want?”
Jared and Nicky are having lunch together. Or, Nicky is having lunch — Jared finished their food quickly and is preoccupied with their sketchbook. They’ve been working on this really sick multimedia thing recently, it’s got a photo of a dead bird and a magazine cutout of an eye and a drawing of a lion and-
“Did you hear me?” they hear Nicky ask. He doesn’t sound annoyed, but he doesn’t really sound like anything else, either.
“What?” Jared replies. “No, sorry.” That happens to them a lot. They’ll get lost in something — a drawing, a comic, sometimes just their own thoughts — and forget what they’re doing, forget where they are entirely. It’s one of the reasons their grades are always kind of slacking despite their obvious intelligence, and why these new BLI assigned teachers all seem to have a distaste for them.
“I said, what is it that they want?” Nicky repeats, picking at his lunch.
“What do you mean, want?” Jared shuts their notebook.
“Well, they’ve shut down the factories. Changed everything in school. They’re kicking people out of their houses, shipping them off to- to the city-“ he halts himself in his ramblings, a lost look on his face. “What’s it all for, d’you think?”
Jared sighs, because they know why. Not exactly, but they have their theories, have had them ever since the first van arrived. BLI wants to control. To consume. To shove as many people and places and things into their machine, so that they could get what they thought was good and right at the other end, no matter what or who was lost on the way. They want they entire desert to look like Battery City: sleek and white and clean. They want people like Jared and Nicky gone.
It’s not like Jared can say that, though. It’s not what Nicky wants to hear. He wants reassuring words that everything will go back to normal, comfort and safety from his older sibling. Jared’s never been one for safety, though, especially not when it’s a lie. So they take a deep breath, and give Nicky something in the middle.
“I think… I think they want to make a shit ton of money, so that the rich assholes in the city can get even richer. And I think they’re fucking with us out here in order to get that. But do you know what else I think?”
“What?”
Jared leans in a little bit, like they’re letting Nicky in on a secret. “I think they can’t do much more than this. The factories are going to open again, and it’s not like they can make us forget what we’ve already learned. They might shut down the record store, and the karate school, but I’ve still got my CDs, and you still know how to do that- uh, the kick thing you do.”
“It’s called a yoko-keri kekomi,” Nicky corrects. There’s just a hint of a smile on his face, despite his annoyed tone, which is enough for Jared.
“Kekomi, schmekomi,” they say, startling a laugh out of him.
The amusement melts off of him quickly, though, and he’s back to paranoia. “I don’t know, though. I mean, BLI are huge, they could do whatever they want. It’s not like there’s anyone around to stop them.”
The thing is, Jared knows that’s true. What they also know, however, is that an attitude like that only helps BLIs cause. “Oh, fuck BLI!” they say, maybe a little too loudly, because-
“Excuse me, Mr. May?” they hear a voice say from behind them. They turn and see Mr. Miller, the new math teacher, with a look on his face like he just ate an unhealthy amount of lemons.
“Oh! Mr. Miller, uh, I was just joking,” they say. They hope that their tone gives off the feeling that they absolutely enjoy having every aspect of their life controlled and monitored by a mega corporation. He does not look convinced.
“Oh, were you?” he questions, scrutinizing them.
“Yeah. Of course. Wasn’t I, Nicky?” They poke Nicky with their elbow, and he seems to realize his role in the conversation.
“Uh- yeah. Joking. Totally joking,” he says, completely monotone, and Jared loves their brother, they really do, but sometimes they do wish he was a better liar.
Mr. Miller narrows his eyes in suspicion, and then says, “Detention, today after school,” before walking away.
Jared sighs. This is third time this week.
******************
Despite what they tell Nicky, Jared worries. They worry a lot. That’s all you can do, really, when the world you’ve lived your whole life in is changing, and you can’t change it.
(People did try to change it. A woman who lived across the street from the May’s tried to organize the factory workers to protest the shutdowns. The guy who owned the corner store below them slashed the tires of a BLI van. A girl in the grade below Jared tried to start a petition to bring back the old curriculum.)
(They all disappeared a few weeks later.)
Jared had always had this big dream, ever since they were a kid: after graduating high school, they’d start selling their art, and when they had enough money, they’d move out of zone 9 and “become something”, whatever that meant at the time. For a while, it meant moving to zone 13 and joining a band. Then it meant moving to zone 8 and finding that girl they met on a vacation there, who that they’d fallen in love with in the way that you do when you’re ten. Then, for a few years before the changes, it meant moving to any big city they could afford (except for Battery City, they knew that place was fucked even back then) and going to the first art school they found.
But now… well, graduation is only a few months away, and yet the plan seems more impossible than ever before. BLI have forbidden everyone from leaving the zone — unless they’re being shipped off to the city, of course. Most of the stores have been shut down, except for the ones deemed absolutely necessary, and even those could only stay if they followed BLIs orders. Art school seems to be completely out of the question: the only college that the new teachers ever even bring up is the one in the city, and they would almost certainly laugh at the idea that art had any value whatsoever, whether it was being sold or taught.
Truth be told, Jared has no clue what to do.
******************
The factories open again.
Jared had almost gotten used to their parents being home most of the time. Their dad would be sitting on the couch when they got home from school, and they wouldn’t have to make dinner by themself, and their mom wouldn’t look quite so tired anymore. Their parents are gone more when they start working again, though. BLI wants more productivity, which means longer workdays, which means Jared only gets to see their parents a few hours a week.
They can handle it, though — they handled it before BLI, and they can handle it now. They help Nicky with his homework, and keep leftovers in the fridge, and take under-the-table shifts at a grocery store after school. Their life gets harder, but not to the point where they actively want to escape it. They survive, and they’re happy, at least part of the time.
That doesn’t last very long, though.
******************
It’s about ten pm, and Jared is supposed to be in bed, but it’s not like there’s anyone at home to enforce that, so they’re still up. Nicky’s already asleep: he’s out like a light whenever he gets the chance to be. Jared is in the living room, watching some mind numbing sitcom — the TV’s gotten worse and worse ever since BLI banned any transmission not coming from the city, but it’s better than nothing — when they hear the front door open.
Odd, they think, as both of their parents are supposed to be on a night shift. When they turn, however, they see their dad standing in the doorway. Jared doesn’t think they’ve ever seen him look like this. His face is frozen in a horrid expression of shock and confusion, and his body trembles as he pulls off his work boots. He staggers through the hallway, not seeming to notice Jared.
“Dad?” they say, getting up from the couch. “Are you… are you good?” Their brow is furrowed in worry, as their dad looks up at them, lost.
“Jared…” he mumbles. “I don’t…” he looks down, seeming to search for words.
Jared walks towards him, increasingly concerned. “What happened?” they ask. “Where’s mom?”
That seems to trigger something in him. He looks up at Jared, eyes wide in horror, shiny with tears. This is the first time ever, ever, that Jared has then their dad cry.
“She just… they- they said it was safe… I don’t even know…” he mutters, aimlessly.
They have no idea what to do. They’ve hardly ever comforted someone crying before, certainly not their dad. He manages to pull himself up, though, and stagger towards the bedroom. “I need some sleep,” he says, and then he leaves Jared alone in the living room, confused and shaken.
******************
The next morning, they wake up by a knock on their door. This is strange because, for several weeks, they’ve been relying on an alarm clock to get up in time, vis a vis parents being gone for an hour before. It only gets stranger after that, when they hear: “Jared! Nicholas! Time to get up, darlings, I’ve made breakfast!”
They shoot up straight, almost knocking their head on Nicky’s bunk above them. At first, they don’t recognize the voice at all, but then they realize: it’s their mom. Or- well, it sounds like their mom doing an impression of someone else. It’s their mom’s voice, technically, but their mom doesn’t sound that happy at six in the morning. Their mom doesn’t make breakfast, not anymore. Their mom doesn’t call Nicky by his full name, not even when she’s mad, and she definitely doesn’t call either of them darlings.
This, combined with the situation the night before, puts Jared in a horribly anxious mood. Nonetheless, they get out of bed. Nicky follows, looking equally confused, and they walk out of their bedroom together.
Their mom is already in the kitchen, setting the table. The table at which their dad is sitting, looking just as shaken as the night before, wordlessly staring at his plate. Jareds mind is racing. Was last night just a bad dream? No, because then everything would be back to normal. They feel like their entire world has been twisted, like they’ve been playing a game and the rules have been changed halfway through.
They walk forward anyways, because what else can they do? Run out of the apartment? Ask their parents what’s happening? No. All they can do is sit down at the table, and poke at the rubbery-looking pancake in front of them. Nicky sits down, too, and so does their mom.
“You seem- uh, different today, mom,” they say, because it seems like a safe bet. Safe against what, they’re not sure, but they feel very acutely that there is something that they need to be afraid of.
“Different how, honey?” she asks, smiling widely. Her usual smiles don’t look like that. When she does smile, which is rare nowadays, it’s always small and close-mouthed. She once told Jared that she didn’t like smiling with her mouth open, as she didn’t want people to see the small gap in her teeth. Right now, though, she doesn’t have a gap. Her teeth are straight and white and shiny, almost like plastic.
“I don’t know,” they say, trying to sound calm despite their heart pounding out of their rib cage. “Like, happier, I guess. You don’t usually make us breakfast. And- I mean, aren’t you guys supposed to be at the factory?”
She laughs, and it’s a sound that Jared doesn’t ever want to hear again: hollow and tinny, like a distorted tape recording of a real laugh. “Better Living are letting us have the day off, silly! I’m sure I’ve told you.”
Jared is sure she hasn’t, but they don’t say anything. They glance over at Nicky, and see his brow furrowed, like he’s trying to decipher the situation. Their dad hasn’t said a word the whole conversation.
“Oh, of course,” Jared says, putting on a smile so fake it could rival this- this thing in front of them, wearing the face of their mother. Then, they get out of their chair, pulling Nicky with them. “We have to go, though. School’s soon.”
“You’ve hardly eaten anything,” the thing objects.
“Had a big dinner last night!” they yell, sprinting towards their room.
(They did not have a big dinner last night. They and Nicky had ramen, for the second time that week, because it’s not like anyone ever taught them how to cook.)
They sink down on the bed as soon as the door closes, breathing heavily. Nicky sits next to them.
“What’s wrong with mom?” he asks, voice unsteady, and Jared is reminded of how he’s just a child, how he shouldn’t have to go through all of this shit.
“I don’t know.”
“What do we do?”
“I don’t- I don’t know,” they hiss, and Nicky flinches away. They regret it almost immediately.
“I’m sorry, it’s just…” They pull Nicky into a hug, tight, like it’ll help anything at all. “I think you were right,” they whisper. “I think it really is going to get worse.”
“What do we do?” Nicky asks again, and it sounds more like a plea than a question.
Jared pulls away from the hug. “Right now, I just need to get out of here. Away from- from her.”
Nicky nods, and that’s what they do.
******************
Neither of them speak on the bus to school. They fall into that silent agreement of “everything is horrible and confusing, but let’s not talk about it”, which has gotten more and more common between them these past few months.
They get off the bus, and they go to their classes — listen to the teachers drone on and on about things Jared’s learned to tune out — and then they go home, to a mother that isn’t their mother and a father that hardly speaks, and then then they do the same thing the next day, and Jared contemplates how they ended up here.
******************
One day, they come home, and their father doesn’t. Jared’s up late again. They always are, nowadays, constantly on the edge, constantly worrying about someone in black and white barging into the apartment and putting a bullet in their brain, finishing what they began the first day those vans arrived. They usually go to sleep when their parents come home — or, their dad. They don’t consider that thing a parent.
But then, in a sort of twisted version of that night from a few weeks ago, their dad isn’t there. The new thing takes its shoes off silently, and walks up to the couch.
“Jared, sweetheart,” it says, startling them with a cold hand on their shoulder, “you’re supposed to be asleep.”
Jared turns around, and is about to respond with a mumbled yeah, yeah, I know, when they see the suspicious absence of their father. “Where’s dad?” they ask. Their heart is starting to beat faster; anxiety quickly rising inside of them.
The thing just smiles — plastic, god, does it have to smile so much? — and says: “Oh, I have wonderful news! Your father has been picked by BLI to start living at a camp by the factory!”
“Wh-what?” Jared stutters out.
“It’s a very exclusive treatment,” the thing says, still smiling. “Only for the top percentage of workers. It’ll make everything much more effective — he won’t have to waste those precious working hours commuting!”
“He- he wont… live here anymore?”
“Of course not, silly! Don’t worry, there’s visitation four times a year. I have to say, though: why anyone would want to spend their time doing anything else than working is beyond me…”
Jared tunes out the propaganda machine that has replaced their mother, not wanting to listen for longer than they have to. They just stagger into their bedroom and collapse on their bed, not even bothering to turn off the TV before leaving. They curl up by their pillow, feeling like a child, because they are, despite everything. They’d cry, but they find they don’t have enough tears left in them.
******************
Graduation comes, eventually. Jared walks the stage with only Nicky watching them: by that point, the haven’t seen either of their real parents for weeks. The machine with their mothers face denied coming, not wanting to miss a shift at the factory, but Jared wouldn’t want it there anyway: they want those horrid plastic eyes on them as little as possible. The cheering from the crowd is subdued. Most of the parents couldn’t afford taking time away from the factories, and those who are there know that this isn’t really something to cheer for. Nonetheless, Nicky sits in the crowd and claps politely, even though Jared knows loud noises freak him out.
By the time Jared is officially finished with high school, they’ve pretty much given up on the idea of a future. They do have some concerns, mainly regarding taking care of Nicky: they’re not sure where the money their dad makes at the factory is going, but it sure as hell isn’t towards his family. Most likely, BLI are taking it for themselves, but Jared has no real way of finding out. The thing constantly rants about its hopes of being in the next batch of “lucky few” — people sent to live in the camps by the factories — and judging by the steady disappearance of zone 9s adult population, it probably won’t have to wait long.
Jared would be happy about that, but they’re aware that it would bring forth a whole new issue — the issue of money. They might be able to convince that grocery store to bring them on full time, but the chance is slim. In reality, they know that the most likely future is the one they least want to accept: biting the bullet, and starting to work at one of the factories.
They won’t do it, though. Maybe it’s arbitrary at this point, maybe it’s completely useless, but they won’t do it. They make a silent pledge to themself, the day of graduation, that they won’t become just another cog in the machine. They won’t walk into one of those grey concrete boxes and become a worker bee for the black and white tyrants in the city. They’ll do anything it takes — running away, getting thrown in jail, starting an honest to god revolt against BLI — as long as they don’t end up serving the faceless monster that ruined their life.
As it turns out, they don’t have to do that much.
******************
It’s been two weeks since graduation, and almost a year after the first vans arrivals. Jared is sitting at the kitchen table, attempting to make a budget — the machine left a few days ago, and as much as Jared hated it, it did bring home the majority of the money — when the knock comes. They get up, preparing for the worst, and open the front door just a crack.
The man on the other side of the door is smiling and dressed in a white suit, a clipboard clutched against his chest like it’s a badge of honor. Over the past year, Jared’s gotten able to recognize a BLI worker from a mile away, and this guy is a shining example.
“Jared May?” the guy asks, clearly trying to get them to open the door.
“The one and only,” they say, making the crack just a bit smaller.
The guy’s smile fades for a second. “I have some questions for you,” he says, and Jared know that this is a battle they can’t win, so they open the door and lead him to the table.
As soon as they sit down, they’re hit with an immediate wave of deja vu — a BLI worker, threats with a thin veneer of friendliness, a life falling apart over a kitchen table — only, they’re now the one having the conversation, instead of just eavesdropping. They’re not sure which is worse.
The guy clicks his mechanical pencil, and begins talking. “According to my papers, you live here alone with your brother Nicholas. Is that correct?”
“Yeah.”
“And your parents, they live at the factory camps?”
Jared just sighs in response, and nods.
“You just graduated high school. Do you have a job?”
“Why are you here, man?” they ask, and the guy seems a bit shocked. Not used to defiance, Jared guesses.
“Well,” he says, adjusting his tie, “during these past few weeks, me and my colleagues have been sent by BLI to interview teachers in the zone. We’ve collected a list of students deemed, uh… not fitting for BLIs plans for the future.”
“And I’m on the list?”
The guy smiles again. “Hit the nail on the head, Mr. May.” Jared squirms a bit — they hate when people call them that. “You, as well as your brother.”
“And what’s that mean, exactly?”
“Oh, it means a lot of things. For some students — the one’s with, let’s say, milder issues — it means summer school and appointments with BLI approved counselors. For other students, with harsher issues, it means attending a Reformation Academy in Battery City.” He gets a wicked, stone cold grin on his face, then, before he says, “You and your brother are on the latter list.”
Jared freezes. For just a moment, their nonchalant mask slips, and they feel the urge to cry. They ignore it, though. They won’t let this suited asshole break them. “You’re sending us away?” they ask, trying to sound aloof and unaffected, like their life isn’t being wrecked in yet another way.
“Oh, that’s such a negative way of putting it,” the guy says. “The City is much safer than out here. You and your brother will receive an education, housing, and eventually, a good job for BLI! You’ll have a happy life, a safe life. Don’t you want that?”
Jared leans back in their chair, arms crossed, and says, for the first time in a year, “No.”
“What?” the guy scoffs out. He looks confused, and borderline offended.
“I won’t do it. You’ve fucked every other part of my life, I won’t let you take this one too. You might’ve turned this place into- into a part of your machine, but it’s my home, and I am not leaving.”
The guys grin returns, more venomously sweet than ever. “I’m afraid that just isn’t how this works, Mr. May.”
That’s when Jared lunges across the table, and grabs the guys tie. “Listen here, you piece of shit-“ they begin, getting ready to monologue, but they forget the reality of the situation. The reality being, this guy is pretty huge and Jared themself has the fighting skills of a very confident stick bug. He throws them back easily.
“Violent behavior against a BLI official,” the guy notes, sitting back in his chair like Jared’s not splayed across the kitchen floor and groaning in agony. “I’ll just have to add that to the list. What more do we have, let’s see…” He begins going down the list on his clipboard. “Aggressive attitude towards teachers, breaking the dress code, openly questioning BLI… you know, Mr. May, I’m not sure what the rules are out here in zone 9, but in Battery City, we take these issues very seriously. Now, I would hate to have to give you a harsher treatment, but if i have to-“
“No!” Jared yells, scrambling up from their spot on the floor and sitting down. They sigh. “I-I’m sorry, okay? I’ll go to your school.”
The guys smile grows even wider, as he gets out of his chair. “That’s the spirit, Mr. May! There’ll be a bus here for you and your brother in a few days.”
He walks out of the apartment. Jared is left in the kitchen, body and spirit both bruised. They pick up their notebook, and are about to succumb to that earlier crying urge, when they spot something from the corner of their eye. They turn, and see Nicky. He looks a bit scared, a bit confused, but his jaw is set in determination as he steps forward.
“How much did you hear?” they ask.
“Not much,” he says, making for the freezer. “I didn’t want him to see me. Heard the crash, though.”
Jared hums, and Nicky appears before them again, holding some frozen peas that probably went bad several months ago. “Where do you want me to-?“
“Left shoulder blade. Bastard got me good, there.“ They decide to crack their back, and then immediately regret it. “God, that hurts.”
“If it hurts, you shouldn’t do it,” Nicky scolds, pressing the peas against their back.
Jared scoots back a bit to lean on the wall behind them. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Their brother sighs and sits down in front of them. “What did he want?”
They laugh, and it’s a brittle sound. “Y’know, I keep thinking back to that day in the cafeteria. You said it was gonna get worse, and I said ‘no, no, that’s impossible’. It’d be funny, how wrong I was, if it wasn’t so terrible.”
The concern grows on Nickys face. “Jared, what did he say?”
“He said… well, apparently, the fuckers in the City aren’t happy ruining our lives long distance. They want us to get the whole package.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means they’re sending us off to some- some boarding school-plus-jail spot in the city. Buses come in a week.” They mutter it out, hoping it lessens the impact. It does not.
“What?!” Nicky yells, and Jared thinks this might be the first time they’ve ever heard him shout since he was a baby.
“They can’t just do that! They can’t, right?”
“They can, Nicky. Like you said. It’s not like anyone can stop them.”
He shakes his head in contemplation. Then, after a few seconds, his face lights up, although his brow is still furrowed. “We can- we can run away.”
Jared is hesitant, and they’re guessing it shows on their face, because Nicky only doubles down.
“No, we- we can go and find dad, and then we’ll go and live in the desert together, and we’ll be fine.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Nick.”
“Why not?”
“It just doesn’t, okay? I’m sorry. If I could change it, I would, but…” They sigh, gaze falling to their feet. They can’t look him in the eyes right now. “I don’t think this is something we can get out of.”
Nicky moves up to their side, against the wall, and pulls them into an awkward hug. “I love you,” he says.
“Love you too,” they mumble, and tighten the hug. His glasses dig into their collarbones, but they don’t care.
They want to say, we’ll be fine, want to say that everything will work out, but they can’t lie. They just sit there in silence, instead, holding each other and trying to forget what the world is doing to them.