Fic: A Paper-Thin Revolution, Part Two
Part One
“Okay, Adam - we’re here. Texas Ave. and Lower D Street. Time for the map.”
Joe pulls out the phone, flips it, turns it on. The battery is, as usual, low; they’ve finally reached the last point to consult the map, though. It was texted to them back in mid-November, the week before Thanksgiving.
Joe knows that the neighborhood they’re walking through might be dangerous, that it’s one of the poorer areas in the District, but the fact they’re walking through it in the early dusk is still somehow a comfort.
They learned long ago that darkness was their friend, that everyone from the runaway slaves to the Nazis had been right; travel is much easier under cover of night. The enforcers of the Grid slowed and went home and slept, and they could move more freely, less covertly, with less vigilance.
“Okay. Where do we turn next?”
Nick’s comment jars his brother, and Joe looks down again hastily. “Turn left in 20 meters; there should be a public park. It’s right after that.”
They turn left, going around the public park. It looks half like a relic from the 1980s and half futuristic. An abandoned macadam tennis court scarred with graffiti and gang signs sits next to an angular metal structure with solar panels across the top, definitely made in the style of the 2020s. There are no little kids around; but then, they probably wouldn’t be allowed out here after dark.
Joe presses the map another screen up. “Just a few more blocks,” he says, leaning in close and ruffling his brother’s hair. “Blocks, Nicky.” A pause. “Then we’ll be there.” Nick smiles.
As they get farther away from the park, the area shifts from drab residential blocks of houses to a more commercial area. They pass a neon-glowing Subway, a small clothing store that’s closed already, and a large boarded-up building that could’ve been anything.
Joe and Nick glimpse over all this but hardly take it in. They’re waiting for the part where they can turn left off into a small parking lot. They do that, slowly, carefully. This is the part they’ve been waiting for, not just since this morning or the day or the month before. They’ve been building up to this moment for ages, through the fall that has come to feel like their entire lives recently.
“End of map, Nick,” Joe breathes, grabbing his brother’s shoulder and squeezing.
Nick makes him hand over the phone, so he can confirm it himself. Yep. They’re at the tiny star marking the end of their route to the Gathering. Last item is to enter the parking lot. Now they just have to talk to the contact for the Movement.
A tall black man is standing at the edge of the lot, talking on his phone and holding a cigarette. It’s unlit, a prop. Nick elbows Joe and points him out, Joe nods and rubs his side. The black man looks uncannily like a bodyguard; he’s got to be the contact.
They sidle up to him cautiously, though, and speak to him in code.
Nick says, “Hello. My friend and I are looking for the paths that will take us there.”
The man shuts his phone and puts it away, then stares at them for a moment, like an actor trying to remember a line for a performance he was in years ago. “You’re not trying to cause trouble, are you?”
Joe answers this time. “Only as much trouble as we’re worth.”
The huge man nods. He unzips the leather jacket he’s wearing, and pulls out a small, bright metal key from an inside pocket. He holds it out. Nick takes the key, and is about to ask the guy what it’s for, when the security man moves his arm out in a sweeping gesture that Joe and Nick take to mean, ‘Follow me,’ then begins to walk away.
The lot actually continues, past a concrete divider and a few median strips. At one edge of this lot, there’s a truck very badly parallel parked. It splays out length-wise across three different spots, leaning up against the red brick wall behind it.
“Stand back,” the man says smoothly. In a wink, he’s in the truck, backing it out and as Joe and Nick watch, there’s suddenly this hole.
The truck has concealed a gap, about as wide as two people standing abreast and just a little shorter. It’s subtle enough that it could be suitably hidden with just a truck, or perhaps with a lot of newspaper, or a few garbage cans and some tape.
It’s this lacuna, Joe and Nick instantly know, that holds the DC Gathering, one of the largest and most successful outposts of the Family Re-Unification Movement. They’ve been making their way towards this hole in the wall for more than three months, without knowing it exactly. It looks a little mystical, in the darkening atmosphere, almost gleaming at the edges.
“C’mon, Nicky J. Last one there is a rotten egg,” Joe says, running towards it.
Nick is taken aback momentarily by this use of his name, in public, with someone else definitely watching. He looks back to the man in the driver’s seat of the truck, who flashes a thumb’s up without making any facial expression, and gestures him to go on. Nick does, crawling into the space after Joe. He has to duck his head to fit. Behind them, the truck rumbles back into place; once again they’re hidden, safe in the dark.
A couple of feet into the cramped gap in the wall, there’s another wall - a dead end - and a door. The bright little key fits into the keyhole.
The door set into the gap in the wall swings open easily. Joe walks through, Nick following a couple of feet behind. Joe stops, and Nick steps forward, in front of his brother.
At the other side of the door is a boy. He’s tall, and looks thin, though he’s wearing a large grey sweatshirt and what looks like several miscellaneous layers beneath that, the bottom edges of shirts sticking out from underneath.
When he talks, his voice is hoarse. “It’s good to see you here.”
Nick nods; this is one of the Movement’s passwords - it was texted to them along with the map. “It’s good to live free.” His voice trembles a little at how loud his voice sounds, and the way it echoes.
The thin boy smiles and gestures to them, raising a hand and weakly motioning them on. “Follow me,” he says.
Nick and Joe proceed down a long tunnel. It looks quite nondescript, like it could’ve been from an old office or apartment building, or some industrial complex. Occasionally there’s a fork in the tunnel and the boy turns left or right. Nick carefully notes the first few turns - to the left, right, second right, third left, left- but even he loses track. They’d never be able to make it out of there without the boy, he figures. Clever tactic.
At some point, Joe says, “I have a bad feeling about this.” This, too, is a sign, to show they mean no harm and aren’t government infiltrators.
“That’s what he always says,” Nick says to the air, giving the counter-sign.
The boy in front of them turns around, and speaks again. “Okay guys, just a few minutes away now.” His voice sounds familiar, like someone calling from underwater. The boy leads them past a series of heavy doors. Most are closed with dust windows; one is open, and in the room behind it Joe can see a couple of overturned chairs, and an empty refrigerator. There are burn marks on a few of the doors.
“This used to be an office building, a nice upscale place, part of a gentrification project. The area got bombed in the war and half of it collapsed. It didn’t burn, though, so parts of it were still inhabitable. The lot was purchased by a friend of the family, for safekeeping. We salvaged this basement later…”
They come to a short staircase, leading down. They descend, and at the bottom are double doors. The boy raises a hand to knock, then pauses. “You know what to say.”
“We play this revolution to win.”
“Mr. Jonas sent us.” The third passwords.
The boy turns and stares a little. “Joe?” he asks.
At first it’s like a slap in the face for Joe hearing his own name in this context. Then he realizes where he knows the voice from. It’s then that the boy falls into place and Joe recognizes him. “David?” He gives a small nod. “Dave? Dude!”
Joe steps forward, and David pulls him into an extended manly hug, slapping him on the back and grinning. Then he pulls back, and unlocks the doors. Behind them, there’s a small dark room. The hallways had been dimly lit, at least, and when David lets the double doors close behind them, the light diminishes to a crack. Nick gropes in the dark, and Joe feels his hand brush against his waist. Joe takes his hand and squeezes it, and they don’t let go until a wide strip of bright light opens in the darkness.
There’s an elevator in the wall, they can see as their eyes adjust. David gestures, and they step in, and the box slides down into the shadows. The walls of the elevator are mirrored, and Nick can see they all look terrible, the whole messed-up resistance trio they make up. The doors slide open again; the space outside is well-lit . As they open, David calls out, “Hey, guys, I brought you the Jonas brothers!”
The place David has brought them to is large; the walls and floor are made of stony grey concrete. Joe can see a variety of tarps and what look like large yoga mats laid down. A row of thick, dark grey columns dominates the wall opposite the elevator, but there are no limits on the room as far as Nick can see, and no other architectural features, or much in the way of furniture.
Three people sitting on a pale purple mat turn at David’s words and stand up. David slaps Joe on the shoulder, then he’s greeted and swallowed up by a shout of “Joe!” and a huge hug.
Demi Lovato is black-haired, nearly as tall as Joe - and incredible; she’s had the opposite situation from Joe and Nick, where she convinced her parents of the tyranny and injustice towards immigrants lurking behind the Agetro administration and ended up bringing the whole damn family into the Reunification Movement. She used to be really close to Joe, and they dated for a few months, but they broke up without too many hard feelings; they stayed very close as friends afterwards.
“How’s Selena?” Demi asks him as she holds him. Selena is Demi’s girlfriend, and a covert agent of the Reunification Movement. She’s still on the Grid, living in Pennsylvania. She texts Demi occasionally, but only every now and then so Demi doesn’t get found out and Selena doesn’t get implicated with the resistance.
“Gorgeous as ever,” Joe says to her, winking. They spent a couple days in Pennsylvania with Selena, took some files from her.
Nick also gets a giant hug once Demi’s done greeting Joe, and Joe sidles over to the other two guys in the room. “You look familiar,” he tells them, although he has no idea why.
“Zac Efron,” one of them says. He has swooshy brown hair and bright eyes. He shakes Joe’s hand. “So you’re the Jonas’s sons?” Joe nods. “Good to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you, man.”
Joe grins and says, “I’m kind of a big deal.” They laugh.
“And… Zac, where do I know your name from?”
Zac smiles. “I was the main guy behind the Medusa Island raid. That’s the time when I had to go underground, off the Grid.” He holds up his wrist as if it’s a Medal of Honor, something he’s fiercely proud of. On the side, there’s a stripe of angry red tissue and a thin white band of raised flesh. “Cut it out myself,” he said nonchalantly, “with a switchblade I borrowed off a Russian immigrant. Let the damn chip fall into the Chesapeake Bay, watched that fucker sink.”
Joe nods. “That’s pretty badass.”
“And this is Cole,” Zac says, gesturing.
A thin blonde boy beside Zac waves weakly, hardly moving. “Hi Joe,” he says, “I’m one of the Sprouse twins.”
Joe nods and suddenly knows where he’d seen the fair-haired boy before - prior to the smudges on his cheeks and lines under his eyes. Cole and Dylan Sprouse were the playboy sons of a hotel tycoon millionaire. They’d worked extensively as actors and were consistently cited by various tabloids as people who had to be hiding something. After their father came out strong against the Grid, he ended up fleeing to Italy - and all the tabloids suggested Dylan and Cole had fled with him. Apparently not. He looks much the worse for wear after his months of homelessness, and the green polo shirt and tattered pants he wears have clearly seen better days.
“Then there’s Justin,” says Zac, “he’s around somewhere too, lower down; I’m sure he’d love to see you. And I’m gonna guess you already met Big Rob.”
Joe looks sideways at him, then figures it out and asks, “The security guy, out in the parking lot?”
Zac nods. “Our first line of defense.”
“And we’re damn lucky to have him,” David says. “If you two hadn’t known the right things to say, you’d be limping right now.” He grins.
“Where’s everyone else?” Nick asks. There’s no response; Demi, David, Zac, and Cole are all looking away, uncomfortable.
“Not many left,” Cole says. “It’s a hard life, hard life out here.”
Demi explains, “We’ve lost a few people since you guys set out.”
Nick just gapes. “You lost a few? There’s six of you. They told us this was one of the hearts of the resistance, one of the biggest centers of the Movement. This is pathetic…”
“You know it’s hard,” Demi says, evenly, “living like this, keeping underground. People sometimes just disappear, out making fake IDs, delivering papers, picking up food. And we know that they can’t have betrayed us, because the authorities found They leave here and just don’t come back. We lost Chelsea and Nicole that way. And you know my older sister Dallas?” Joe nods. “Gone. She showed up later in the news, three years in prison for Grid evasion holding a fake ID. They couldn’t get her on anything else, though.”
Demi sucks in her breath. “And last month, there was a raid. We used to be split between here and another base, a place up on 11th, in the basement of a club. Then police swooped in, just a few days after Halloween. Brought some soldiers with ‘em, I guess in case there was a fight.”
“And was there?” Joe asks when she hesitates.
“Not really,” she replies, looking at the floor. “They hardly had a chance.”
Zac nods. “We lost a lot. Vanessa and Corbin died resisting; the official report said it was self-defense, they had weapons, but that’s bullshit. Drew managed to get a gun and killed himself, so they couldn’t arrest him and pump him for info. Ashley managed to get away out the back, with maybe one or two others. I’m sure she’s in hiding now. And everyone else - dead. It was only sheer dumb luck all of us weren’t there.”
“Jesus,” Joe says. “You know how to give a welcome here, really cheery.”
“So, want me to give you the grand tour of what we’ve got left?” Zac asks, changing the subject
“Sure,” Joe says before Nick can reply.
“There’s not much,” Zac says, “but we get by. You’ve seen the entryway already -” he gestures back at the elevators - “and this is the living room.” The area he indicates is maybe a hundred square feet, all covered with tarps and yoga mats. “We have a refrigerator, a camping stove, and a hot plate, and that’s pretty much it. Sleeping arrangements are over there,” he says, pointing to a cluster of six sleeping bags near the center of the space.
Nick raises two fingers, like he’s in first grade again, which, honestly, would be a pleasant place to have returned to right now. “Where’s the restroom?”
“Oh, right,” Zac says. “Toilet’s right this way.”
Zac leads them around a corner, to a place that had been concealed by a tight row of columns. Here the floor slopes downward, and Nick notices faded white and yellow lines on the floor and then realizes where they are: It’s an old parking garage. He wasn’t expecting the DC Gathering to have much - maybe just a dusty apartment or two - but what’s left here is far below what he was looking forward to since August… He really feels homeless now. They can’t consider a place like this home, can they?
They walk a little bit downwards, on the natural decline, and come to a place where, up against the wall, rest two metal buckets, and a larger metal washbasin. All three have lids of some sort on them, but there’s still a faint smell of decay in the air. “Gentleman, our toilets,” Zac says. “Kind of gross, I know, but we make do. Nicer than going on the walls or in the woods. We empty them twice a month into the bathroom of a gas-station or fast-food place. So far, no one’s caught on. And if you need privacy - there’s shadows.”
A couple of rolls of toilet paper stand forlornly next to the buckets, making a small tower. Joe wonders where they were able to steal all these supplies from. Off to the right a few feet is a large plastic tub, big enough for a fully-grown person to fit inside, with a jury-rigged system of pipes protruding from the wall above it. There’s a faucet and a showerhead branching off the weird tangled cluster of pipes. A battered wooden chest stands next to it, with a basin, a few bars of soap, and a couple bottles of hand sanitizer on it.
“And what’s down there?” Nick asks, pointing to a place where the garage curves again and there’s more out of sight.
“A place you go when you want to be by yourself, for whatever reason. Somewhere quiet. Think Justin’s down there now. Hang on. Justin!” Zac calls. After a minute, a short boy wearing a flannel shirt and baseball cap walks out from around the bend and runs up to them.
“Hey, JB,” Zac says. “These are Nick and Joe Jonas.”
The boy looks at them blankly, then sudden recognition dawns on his face. “Jonas? Are you the ones they’ve told me so much about?” Zac nods. “This is so cool!” the boy says. His voice is awkward and high, like someone halfway through starting puberty. “I’ve waited so long to meet you, they told me you were coming eventually. Really, I feel honored to meet you guys.” Justin’s smile is magnetic. He shakes first Joe and then Nick’s hands, and they both notice to different degrees the smooth, pale skin on his wrist.
“So how long are you staying?” Justin asks, like some kid asking approval for a sleepover. “You’re staying for a while, right?”
Nick nods authoritatively, though both of them realize they’ve never thought about this before. Their goal was always defined by getting to the DC Gathering, and now they’ve made it Nick has no idea how long they can stay.
They certainly can’t move on right away; they still have some of the documents entrusted to them in Operation JONAS. He hasn’t even seen all of them yet, and that’ll take at least a week to square away. On the other hand, the last four months of their lives - which have been probably the most important months of their lives - they’ve transitioned entirely into wanderers, rarely stopping, never settling. They couldn’t stop fighting (well, “resisting” - their parents, staunch pacifists, hated hearing his sons classify their nonviolent struggle in warlike terms), but maybe they could stop moving?
When they get back to the main room, Demi, Cole, and David are gathered around the little stove. The hot plate is set up next to it; and both are plugged into a long tangle of extension cords that ultimately led into a point in the wall which is ripped open; bare wires show through. They’re stealing electricity in order to live.
A little folding card table has been set up in the center of the mats, with eight bowls resting on it.
“Soup,” Cole declares listlessly.
“Yum,” Joe says. No one else seems at all enthusiastic. They eat slowly, mechanically, trying to savor every bite not just because it’s good soup but because it’s all they’ve gotten to eat since breakfast and it’s all they’ll get for another several hours.
There’s an energetic but never terribly passionate conversation floating around the space, as if they’re trying to fill up the air with sound but not waste too much of the air, too much of their energy, talking.
“It helps remind us we’re alive,” Zac says when Nick tells him this.
They breeze through a few dry topics - the weather, upcoming missions, minor news from outside the Movement. Then Justin asks Joe and Nick about their trip, and suddenly within a minute the conversation has shifted, become all about them. Demi and Zac and David and Cole and Big Rob all turn to listen, and they become the main interest, like the dinner entertainment.
Joe recounts the long nights running through fields so they could find a safe house to sleep, and the time they arrived at a house just outside Philadelphia right after a raid, and the whole place was eerie and cold; he talks about the police officer who took them for kids ditching high school, and the days they spent in Whitehaven over Thanksgiving (a cold and lonesome celebration of being alive still) and the steady fall of winter, the absurd number of coats and shirts they bought just to keep warm.
Nick occasionally interjects when Joe can’t remember something or neglects something really important. Mostly, though, he stays quiet. He studies the lentil soup with great concentration, like it might be poisoned, or like it’s his calculus homework. Joe lets him eat in peace. Eventually the others seem like they’d heard enough travelogue - after nearly an hour, Joe realizes - he hasn’t thought before about just how much the journey had dominated their lives, how much it has given them to mull over and sit around and reflect on - no time to talk then, had to keep running. Demi still wants to know everything about Selena, of course (no, she hasn’t cut her hair short; yes, she talks about Demi all the time), and Justin just wants to hear about everything. Justin seems to hang on Joe’s every word, like he can’t get enough.
The conversation shifts and wanes until at last dinner has ended. “To bed now?” Demi asks.
“Unless you want to start looking over the Jonas papers now,” Zac says.
“Nah,” David says. “Long day, they’ve had. Sleep’s good. It’s a nice thing. We can talk in the morning.”
Joe says, “Sure. I’d be up for sleeping in now, talking later.”
“Yeah,” Nick says after a pause. “Not now.”
They walk over to the motley scramble of sleeping bags, travel mattresses, blankets, and pillows that make up their sleeping area. After a minute of the others slipping into sleeping bags, Joe asks, “So, do you guys know where we’re gonna sleep?”
“Oh…” Zac says.
“Damn,” Justin echoes. “Do we?”
“I don’t need my sleeping bag,” Demi says, stepping out of it.
“And Joe can have mine,” Justin says.
“Thanks guys, but that’s really okay,” Nick says. “I mean, I’m fine on my own, if-”
Joe cuts him off. “Come on, they’re doing something nice for us.”
Nick shoots him a look, but then nods and says, “Yeah. Thank you.” And it’s settled. They climb into the bags, Nick scrunching up a little to fit into Demi’s.
They exchange good-nights around the circle, as their energy fades. The full realization of just how tired they are suddenly hits Joe and he’s out like a light. Within a few minutes, the circle has faded off to sleep.
Nick dreams that night of being in a desert. It’s a huge desert, and he’s all alone for as far as he can see. There’s a huge ridge up ahead, jutting sharply into the air, and he gets this sudden feeling that if he just went over the peak, he’d find people, he’d be where he wanted to go, he’d fulfill his purpose - whatever vague, unknown purpose he has in this dream. He runs at the ridge, takes it fast, only stumbling a little. He dodges around a few cacti and leaps, and then he’s at the top. And on the other side, he sees nothing.
Nick stumbles down the ridge, looks around. The desert is vast, and flat. There’s some scrubs, some aloe vera, a few short trees. And ahead of him, a small hill. He rushes at this, again feeling that there must be someone waiting for him on the other side. Again - disappointment. Finally, there’s a small mountain waiting ahead of him. Nick wonders how he didn’t see it before, for how it stretches up, dominating the landscape. It casts a giant shadow. Nick climbs a winding, narrow path, up and up and up, and because he’s in a dream, he makes it to the top. Then he’s alone at the top of the mountain. There’s a vague sense buzzing in his head, like a soft voice asking, “Now what?” Then he jumps off the mountain.
Nick jolts awake around midnight, looks around, and everything is dark and he’s in a little dark corner of a parking garage, sandwiched between David Henrie and his brother. The weight Joe at his side, the quiet sound of his brother’s breathing, is familiar at least. Trying to be quiet, Nick edges closer, curling towards his brother’s sleeping bag, settling into Joe’s side. He crawls as close to Joe as he thinks he can get away with, just as he used to do when he was little and he had nightmares and Joe’s bed was right across the room, as he remembered when they found themselves sleeping against walls and in tiny alleys and on trains here and there all across the country.
Demi, sitting up on a mat, in the middle of drifting in and out of sleep herself, notices him, and smiles. Nick and Joe have always just fit together, even when they were kids back in New Jersey, back when nothing mattered. After all their months of traveling, it’s like they’re one person - JoeNick Jonas, or something. Demi thinks about her family, safely back in New Jersey, and her sister, doesn’t know if Joe and Nick are unlucky for losing so much, or lucky for still having each other despite all that. She pulls out her phone and scrolls through saved texts from Selena as she watches the two brothers rest.
Nick doesn’t remember dreaming at all after he goes back to sleep, but just minutes after his eyes shut, he’s back in the desert. Bare and dry and hot. Nicholas Jonas, sitting out in the middle of nowhere. Then all at once, he realizes, it’s another canyon, with another ridge to climb up and over, and he’s running again.
Joe’s dreams are simpler. He is falling, down, down, in some limitless darkness, down miles and miles. He can hear voices sometimes - Demi’s, for one; David’s, quieter - but mostly he’s just going down. Falling into nowhere and nothing.
~
Lieutenant Sterling Knight stands alert, at attention in the doorframe of his superior’s office. “Sir, you requested to meet with me?”
Corporal Lewis clears his throat, casts an eye over him. “I did. You indicated that you had information about potentially dangerous Family Resistance Movement members Nicholas Jonas and Joseph Jonas?”
Sterling smiles, and then quickly hides it with a more military expression, closer to a scowl or a frown. “Yes, sir. Indeed I do, sir.”
“Explain, lieutenant.”
“Well, this morning we had a report of two young males at a DC establishment called Caesar’s. Lieutenant Swift was there as well, and she wasn’t sure but she thought she recognized them from a newspaper, so she thought intelligence would be interested. They looked a little shifty, wore heavy coats and several layers, and one of them had a guitar case. The other had a backpack - a sign they might’ve been traveling a long time. They asked to pay with cash. Not Grid credit, or even an electronic credit card or cash stamp. Some flimsy story about letting their account get a little low - it didn’t hold water. After the manager denied them, they left quickly and without causing a fuss. Clearly they were off the Grid.”
The corporal crosses his legs and sits back in his chair. “Tell me more.”
“They’d be around the ages of 17 and 20, wouldn’t they?”
“And that’s how young these guys looked. So she sent out an orange-level alert.”
“Go on.”
Sterling clears his throat before going on; this next part is super-important. “Then, just a few hours after she sent out a low-level alert, Private Ariens saw them on the street.” He’s looking straight ahead, eyes on the boat, but he can hear Corporal Lewis’s reaction, the soft gasp. “He got a photograph, sir.”
Sterling clears his throat before going on; this next part is super-important. “Then, just a few hours after she sent out a low-level alert, Private Ariens saw them on the street.” He’s looking straight ahead, eyes on the boat, but he can hear Corporal Lewis’s reaction, the soft gasp. “He got a photograph, sir.”
“He did,” the Corporal breathed, “did he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you have it with you, lieutenant?”
Sterling hesitates. “On my cell phone, sir.”
“And you have your phone?” the Corporal asks. Sterling nods. “Well then, hand it over.”
Sterling pulls out his smartphone and places it on the Corporal’s desk. Lewis picks it up, presses a button to activate the display, and stares at the picture Sterling left up. “Can you zoom in on this?” he asks after a moment poring over the picture. Admittedly, the brothers take up only about a third of the picture; it was hard to take one any closer without arousing suspicion from them, risking them noticing. Sterling nods, strides over to the desk, and enlarges the picture just enough to emphasize the boys’ faces without losing too many of the details.
The Corporal, meanwhile, turns to the thin computer tablet lying on his desk, and scrolls through some things. When he’s done, that screen is also filled with an image of the Jonas boys; Nick and Joe’s last school pictures, merged together; in this context they look like mug shots. He gazes from one picture to the other, finally nodding his approval. “They’ve altered their appearances slightly, of course, but the basic facial structures are identical. And they are dressed like illegals.”
The Corporal takes a cable off his desk and connects the phone to a USB port, and presses a few buttons. There is a click, then a hum, and the Corporal says, “Very well. I’ve transferred your phone’s contents; I’ll have them run a scan to determine if we’re right.”
“Excellent, sir. Glad to be of assistance.”
“General Jacobsen is very interested in cracking that whole resistance force, you know, and we think that if he got the sons of Paul Jonas, he could break them.” Then he grins. “And we can pull them out of whatever little nest they’ve found, if they have one here. I’m sure they do.”
Sterling knows it’s out of place but the words slip out his mouth before he can think about them, and he says, “How, sir?”
“Do you care about your family, Lieutenant Knight? Would you sacrifice everything if you know they were in danger?”
Sterling gapes. “Yes, sir. I mean. Sir?”
“Dismissed, lieutenant. I approve of your service. You’ve done some good work.”
~
Nick and Joe sleep in late. So late that it’s nearly 10:30 in the morning when Joe finally stirs himself out of his half-asleep state and into reality. The log they’ve been keeping - well, that Nick has been keeping - reveals they haven’t slept so late since the fall, since early October. Nick, his sleeping bag still pressed up against Joe’s, is still sleeping fast. Joe lets him rest; kid needs it.
All the other sleeping bags are empty; a couple are neatly folded and put off to the side. Demi is sitting by the small stove and hot plate. She’s the first to notice he’s awake.
“Good morning, starshine!” she calls, stirring a pot full of something.
Joe smiles at her. “The earth says hello,” he mumbles, standing up out of the sleeping bag. His back is a little sore. Even after weeks of sleeping on park benches and in bushes, cold concrete can still get to him. He feels so naked without the buttload of layers he used to travel with on his back. Sure, he’s still wearing underwear, mesh shorts, an undershirt and a T-shirt - more than the average American teenager sleeps in, he’s guessing.
Demi turns a knob on the hot plate. “I hard-boiled the last of the eggs, in honor of the triumphant return of the Jonas brothers. We wanted a proper breakfast, or whatever passes for “proper” around here. Wasn’t sure when you and Nick were getting up, so I saved some for the two of you. They’ll just be a minute more.” Zac is sitting next to her, cross-legged, paging through some files. Justin is sitting cross-legged on his sleeping bag, munching on an egg. The edges of his mouth are dotted with yellow flecks. The others are out.
“Big Rob’s out guarding the entrance already,” Demi says briskly. “And Cole is going to get us some fruit, if he’s lucky - little underground farmer’s market on Oregon Ave. that’s never asked about legality or questioned paying in cash.”
Joe nods. “Where’s David?”
Demi and Zac exchange an uncomfortable look. “Maybe off doing his business?” she suggests, shrugging and turning back to the eggs.
“People never do go very far here,” Zac says. “They really can’t.”
Joe shrugs, joins them for breakfast. “So, guys, what’s the plan for today?” They outline what they need. They’re planning to start going over some of the papers and case documents Joe and Nick have been carrying with them all these months.
Joe suddenly realizes he feels nothing on his back, and his eyes dart around the room; he’s momentarily panicked that he’s lost the backpack. Then his eyes land on it, leaning listlessly up against Nicky’s guitar case, both of them lying atop a bright red yoga mat just a few feet away. It’s not so important here to keep a constant eye on it, he reminds himself, this place is safe and stable and they aren’t going to need to be moving out any time soon. The backpack can just stay there.
A minute later, the eggs are done - Demi hands one to Joe, and spoons the other four into a bowl for later. and for Nick to eat. “For the heroes of the revolution,” Demi says, grinning wistfully
“Thanks,” Joe says, biting into it with relish, for the egg and for so much more. He loves that she’s putting up with all of them, with another two mouths to feed. He watches her stir the other eggs, idly, before setting the spoon down. She turns the hot plate off, turns, and goes over to sit next to Joe.
“Does Nick have to eat?” she asks, concerned.
“Let him sleep,” Joe mutters. “He deserves it.”
“I meant the diabetes.”
Justin turns his head at that. “Nick is diabetic?”
“Yep. Fucking inconvenient,” Joe says. “He doesn’t let it bother him; he tries not to let it define him. Doesn’t ever tell anyone unless he has to. The silent revolutionary, stoic.”
Justin nods, looking somewhat in awe.
“Anyway, yeah, Nick’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Demi says, smiling. “And how was your sleep?”
They talk, easy and empty conversation, and for a while Joe can pretend he’s a kid again, having breakfast at the Lovatos’ the morning after a sleepover. This is more normal than he’s gotten in months.
A few minutes later, Zac pulls out his phone, presses a button, and begins scrolling his finger over the screen. Out of habit, Joe asks, “Aren’t those too dangerous to use? I mean, satellite frequencies can be tracked and shit, right? Nick never wanted us to even turn the phone on, much less use it.”
Zac shrugs, “I don’t know. It’s new, stolen, and Justin hacked it so it can’t latch on to a Grid signal - at least not for now. I only use it every couple of days, so there won’t be much of a frequency to track. I just like to keep checking the major news sites - you know, MSNBCNN, Fox, TwitCen, HuffPost - just to make sure if anything major happens, at least we’ll have some notice.”
“But what if it gets caught?”
“Sucks for me. That doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily track it back to the Gathering, though. And they’ve gotten more lax about the phone monitoring around here recently. We’re hoping they’ll just drop it altogether, with the budget crisis and everything. It’s worth hoping for.”
“Sure,” Joe says, standing up. He’s almost done with his second egg anyway. “I’m going to go look for David.”
Behind him, the others exchange a look, but they let him go. Joe crosses the mats and ducks into the elevator room first, figures he might as well check there, just in case. It’s where he first saw David, first laid eyes on him in this new world. David’s enough of a different person that the dude Joe knew growing up is still recognizable but hardly. War changes people, Joe knows, and they are waging a kind of a war.
He presses the button that he didn’t notice the first time they were there, waits for the doors to open, gets in, waits for the slow rise to street level. But the doors slide open again, to no sign of David Henrie. He looks around the area behind the double doors again, finds nothing but the drab tunnel.
After taking the elevator down to the garage again, Joe heads off to the toilet area right away, and finds it’s also empty. Joe turns his head to the incline and the sloping away floor of the garage and he starts walking. Justin was there before. “A place you go when you want to be by yourself,” Zac had said…
There’s nothing terribly different in this last part of the building; around the bend, the sloping floor flattens out to the very bottom of the garage. It’s a little darker down here. There are various doors around warning “Maintenance, do not enter” and the like.
David’s sitting right on the oil-spotted concrete, legs crossed, and he’s hunched over something. When Joe gets closer, he can see that David’s nose and mouth are in a brown paper bag, and he can hear David’s breathing going a little too fast. He’s inhaling deeply, and Joe makes a conscious effort to stamp his feet down a little too loud as he gets closer, to make sure David hears.
David turns his head in Joe’s direction. “Oh, hey,” he says sleepily, as if in a progressively stronger and stronger daze. His eyes look bloodshot, and under the thin blue tank he’s wearing Joe thinks he can make out the hard outlines of his friend’s ribs.
He lowers the bag and asks, “Want some?” and Joe realizes at once there’s a sharp, acrid smell in the air. It’s metallic and bitter but still somehow intriguing. Paint. David Henrie is sitting at the bottom of a parking garage, huffing paint. Joe can suddenly see all too clearly how he didn’t quite recognize David before.
“The others do it too,” he says in a shaky voice, as if he can hear Joe’s thoughts. “Not all but some,” he laughs, turning it all into one word on his tongue. “Some - some get hooked. Some of us can stop at any time, but some of us get hooked.”
Joe’s still repulsed. Sure, he experimented with drugs once or twice back home, before the world turned upside down, drank a few beers and the occasional shot, passed around a joint with a few friends at a party, but he’d never pictured himself giving in so fully to a drug. David looks so mutely content,letting the silver f?
“You learn quick not to judge, Jonas,” David says. “I learned, you learn, we learn.” His head spins. “Anything to help you make it through.” He sniffs again. “Helps with the hunger.”
“Maybe later,” Joe says, answering David’s unasked question.
“How’s Selena?” David asks after another minute.
“Feisty, as always. Pretty. Bored as hell,” Joe says. “She said she kind of envied us, Nick and I. We were running, but it meant we were free in a fucked-up way. She hates being on the Grid. And of course, she misses Demi.”
“Demi,” David says, like that one syllable sums up everything he could say on the subject. Everything that ever needs to be said, really.
“Yeah,” Joe says, agreeing.
“And how’s Lorenzo?” he asks after a while, to make some sound besides David huffing paint. “You miss him?”
David looks up, his eyes suddenly less vacant. “I miss Enzo, yeah. Saw him back in November - like a week ago, a Thanksgiving thing, little family reunion. Saw him but didn’t see him, We Skyped till 4 in the morning,” he says. “We text every now and then weekly - we do - not much, just he’s still alive and I’m still alive, and. Yeah, that’s enough. Dunno what I’d do without him, without... Being away from him so long, this long, it’s like the big empty sucking when I’m off the glue for too long, this hole full of empty things and it’s weird and I don’t like it. It helps me forget.”
He looks away. Joe looks away.
Joe never does take the paint. But he sits for a while in silence with David, one of them occasionally making a bad joke or saying something that seems profound to stoners, like how politics is bad for the fishies and why almonds don’t sound like they taste. Joe wonders if, by the time he gets back, Nick will be awake.
~
They look over the immigration papers a couple of hours later, when everyone’s up and gathered back around the folding table.
There’s a hidden space sewn into the lining of Nick’s guitar case. They carefully remove the guitar, then open up the hidden pocket without tearing the material too much, extracting an envelope full of a few hundred dollars in emergency money, and, below that, a thin manila folder full of papers and files.
There are a few pages of introductory letters, in the format Nick and Joe have seen printed off from their family printer several times before. Below is the important part - completely official-looking passports and immigration paperwork, done up for questionably legal families, full of Grid stamps and proper signatures and everything, an iron-clad proof document to show to any police floater.
They pass them around for a few minutes, in silence.
Zac, who’s been reading the first letter, says, “So, guys. Twenty-five sets of paperwork, lots of people getting screwed over by the government, lots of people to help. I’m sure some of them might already have been deported, or arrested, but we’ll find out. Looks like we’ve got our mission for the next few weeks.”
~
“What was it like, in the beginning?” Justin asks, two nights later when he and Joe get dinner duty together. “When you started out off the Grid?”
Joe shrugs, pulling out a knife and beginning to chop up a carrot. “I guess it didn’t feel like much - for a while. We were off the Grid months before we were homeless,” he says, to clarify.
“Really?” Justin asks.
“Yeah,” Joe says. “I got the chip out in March and only left home in -”
“August,” Justin finishes for him. “I think that’s amazing - all that running. Almost four months, four fuckin’ months. I mean, I haven’t even been here that long.”
“Really?” Joe asks. “What were you doing before then?”
Justin says, “I lived in Canada, Socialist Canada. No Grid there. Not yet.” He hands Joe the pot, and Joe drops the carrots in before he gets started peeling an onion.
Stone soup is Demi’s name for what they’re making, the meal they brew up five nights a week to feed the meager troops of the DC Gathering. It’s a nice name, Joe thinks, if kind of symbolic.
“So you came here to do political work?” Joe asks. “Wow, man, that’s brave.”
“I came here on a field trip,” Justin says, shaking his head. “My current events class was visiting the Archer Battlefield and the White House, and the Smithsonian. Then we got caught in Hurricane Melissa.”
Joe stops peeling, leans in to listen. “We were going over a bridge, a bridge over the Potomac,” Justin says. He takes a deep breath. “It just split off, the right lane crumbled in the winds and the water and it went down - I blocked out.”
Joe sucks in a breath, picturing the boy tossed like a rag doll by the winds. “Then I woke up. I’ve always been a good swimmer, really. I just sped towards the shore, climbed up, ran, ran, ran towards shelter. I found an escalator down into the ground and I followed it. I found a Metro station, Farragut North. I just sat there for, like, hours, I’d never felt so lost or alone or scared. I knew about the Grid, of course - but like something from a book and from newspaper articles, not like something so real, something people around here actually live on.” Justin sighs. “Now I know better, of course.” Joe nods.
“So I couldn’t scan my wrist, but I had like fifty bucks in cash for dinner, so I went over to a Farecard machine and started trying my luck - when out of the blue, this woman comes up to me and gives me this all day pass, ‘cause she said she was done with it, and I looked like I could use it. And I took it all over that night, I was so scared, man. I went all over DC and Maryland; finally ended up at Smithsonian after all. I spent that night on the streets, and the night after that too. By then I’d started wandering. Then I met Demi, and we talked some. She said it wasn’t safe out for people like me, asked if I needed help. When she figured out why I didn’t have the chip, she asked if I wanted to come with her, and help other people that the government didn’t think were really people.”
“Sounds just like Demi,” Joe says. “Good old Demi.”
Justin nods. “Is there...something going on between you two?”
“What do you mean?” Joe asks cautiously.
“You’re always so close, and you have so much in common. You practically finish each other’s sentences, like you do with Nick. I was just wondering if you’re just friends or anything more than that.” Joe starts to reply; Justin cuts him off, “And I know about Selena. She talks about her all the time. But I know that sometimes people get desperate, and it’s hard maintaining a long-distance relationship when you can hardly even talk and, well, I know some people have another girl or boy here, shut up inside the Gathering.”
Joe shakes his head. “We used to date. It lasted five months then we broke up. Not a big deal, really - we just decided it wasn’t really working and stopped going out.”
“Oh. Okay. And you haven’t gotten back together?” Justin asks.
“Nah.”
“What about David?”
Joe thinks it’s a weird question, but he gets it and he’s got nothing to hide, certainly not from this Bieber kid. “What about him? He’s hot, sure, but he’s straight. Really straight, like a ruler’s got nothing on Henrie.”
“Would it be okay if I kissed you?” Justin asks abruptly, and he gazes at Joe from under that stupid fringe of brown hair, and he looks very fifteen.
Joe blinks at him. “Damn.”
When he kisses Justin, it feels like a subtle betrayal.
~
Sterling has been to the basement levels of Arcon Base twice before; he still gets lost in its immense gray corridors, full of identical-looking security gates and ominous chain-mesh gates. It’s not a very hospitable place, and that’s the intention, he supposes.
He’s down here as a reward for several months of distinguished service, and most importantly, the locating of Nick and Joe Jonas, the mythical sons of the movement.
He keeps turning over the Special Access Top Security pass in his hands. On ordinary days, Corporal Lewis would’ve just uploaded the security clearance into his Grid ID, with a variable code that would limit its use to December 19, 2029. But there’s a power shortage going on, and so even the military has to be careful about what they leave running. Most of the lesser-level security machines have been turned off.
However, the basement cells require a substantially higher security clearance and checking. One can never be quite too careful.
He scans his wrist chip on the elevator panel, then the Special Access Top Security pass. A moment later, the door slides open, and Sterling steps in. He holds his breath as he descends through the bowels of Arcon Base, three hundred yards below the ground.
There’s just one woman stationed by the door to the No Secrets screening room. She’s wearing a headset, and appears to be listening to something, her hand pressed up to her left ear to hear better. “Lieutenant, you may enter the screening room,” she says, gesturing.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Sterling turns the knob, opens the door, hears it shut and automatically lock behind him. It’s dark in there, as always. He steps to the center of the tiny room, standing on a grey rectangle before the machine has even prompted him to. Then he hears the cameras working, click-click-click. A few seconds later, the three screens on the back wall, the one he’s facing, light up. On the center screen is a digital image of his clothes and the backpack on his back, showing the various contents of his pack and pockets to be completely safe and ordinary. On the screens to the left and right are the pictures of Sterling’s body, displayed just as they are to the anonymous screeners in some remote location, possibly in DC or possibly out somewhere in Ohio; starting from the neck down, and detailing every freckle and inch of skin he has, showing he hasn’t got a bomb strapped to his chest or anything. A very logical precaution; But the moral guardians required the screens be displayed to those passing through security to protect their civil rights. Any remaining civil rights are important and should be protected to the highest extent.
Once the mechanical click comes that means he’s clear and the door on the other side of the room’s open, he hurries forward, and scans his chip on the door before leaving. He brushes his hands over his clothes, as if to make sure they’re still there. He usually feels like he’s walking around naked for a while after the No Secrets clearance scans.
Outside the screening room, there’s a long dark grey paneled linoleum hallway, which veers to one side (the right) and opens into a room full of holding cells. That’s where he’s headed.
He finds the cell he wants quickly, the digital display on the wall reading, “Prisoner 10642: Jonas.” Sterling nods, presents his pass to the guard, who presses a button to release the electronic lock on the door, then walks over to address the physical lock - a heavy, solid padlock - takes out a key, and undoes it. Within the cell a long, low grey plastic table is set up; behind that is a metal folding chair, a small bed and a few square feet of living space. The prisoner is already sitting at the table, wearing a forced, grim smile.
“So, Jonas,” he says, setting up a polygraph machine, “It’s good to finally see you. I’m here for interrogation, of course. Lieutenant Sterling Knight. It’s an honor and a privilege to speak to such a distinguished enemy of the government.”
The reply is calm, patient. “Good morning. You look so young…”
He flinches. “I’m twenty years old, plenty old enough to die for my country. Of course, you would know all about that.”
“I hate everything you stand for,” the prisoner replies. “Now ask me your questions and leave me alone here, please, I don’t ask anything else of you.”
“Very well. What do you know of your son Kevin?” Sterling asks.
“Practically nothing. He and Danielle are smart, they know it’s too dangerous to talk to us now. They’re married, they’re hiding, and they’re helping the resistance movement. All I know.”
“You do know, Jonas, that any additional information you give us on the activities of the rebel Family Re-Unification Movement could lead to a severe decrease or commutation of your sentence.” Sterling says. No reply. “Alright then. What about little Franklin Jonas?”
“He’s in safe hands, with someone I trust. That’s right, you haven’t caught all of them yet. For all you or I know, he - they - could’ve made it to Canada by now. Easily.”
“And the last two, Nicholas and Joseph?” Sterling asks.
“They left New Jersey headed somewhere. That’s all I know.”
Sterling nods. “I see. We could be merciful with them, you know. We spared you, we could spare them, bump off a couple of charges, hit ‘em with evading the chipping system and destroying federal property only - leaving off any of the nastier stuff. It’d be so easy. Do you know anything else - where they were headed, what they were doing for the movement?”
“Nothing I would hand over to you. That’d be exactly what you want.” He waits a minute or two. No further response.
Now comes the last question, the most important. Lieutenant Knight pulls out his phone, and lays it down on the table, in its pre-set display mode. On the screen is the picture of Joe and Nick, amplified and digitally enhanced. “Do you recognize these two boys?”
The short, sharp gasp is unmistakable, as is the guilt that washes over the face. “There, you’ve gotten what you wanted,” the prisoner says. When Sterling remains sitting, an instinctive curse follows. “Go to hell. You and all the rest of them.”
Sterling grins, the police have their boys identified, and they have a map of the entire district. There’s only so far the kids could’ve walked. Soon, they will find the Jonas brothers and crush the spine of the movement. He grins. Justice is sweet.
Part Three