Resist Read Online Free Page B

times.
    Goodies are walking paper dolls,
devoid of personality—and brains.
    Yeah, that doesn’t work for me. I
don’t want to be a paper doll. That’s why I broke the rules and
stopped plugging in to the transmissions.
    The pilot swerved and twisted
around the tall buildings. I’d never seen the city up close. My
eyes couldn’t move fast enough from one shiny structure to the
next.
    The pilot steered toward the last
and tallest building on the border of our
land. The one with the symbol that can be seen anywhere in the
Goodgrounds.
    The olive branch is the symbol of
good. It signals our allegiance to the Association of Directors.
More like Association of Dictators, if you want my honest opinion.
But no one does.
    “ So now you’ve seen the Southern
Rim,” the pilot said. “Was it everything you expected?”
    I didn’t know how to answer, so I
kept my mouth shut—a first for me. That was the Southern Rim? No
magic, no golden pathways, no perfect escape from my sucky life.
The wall now towered in front of me, closing off any thought of
freedom.
    The hovercopter hung in midair as
a door slid open in the wall. Darkness concealed whatever waited
inside. And what would I find on the other side? Could I come back?
Maybe I would never see Zenn again. My mouth felt too
dry.
    “ We’re going in there?” I
asked.
    “ After I process your file,” the
pilot said. He made a note on a small screen. A long list popped
up.
    “ I’ve cited you
before,” he said, smiling slowly. I remem bered the last time: I’d left the
City of Water after dark, crossed through the crops growing in the
Centrals, and tried to enter the Southern Rim. I’d dressed up real
nice in a fancy white dress and old platform shoes—which were the reason I’d been caught. No one can run
in shoes like that.
    I endured six rounds of
questioning until I admitted I’d stolen the shoes from the basement
of a house in the Abandoned Area—another off-limits place—another
violation of the rules. Wearing contraband (which I didn’t know
about at the time) from an illegal area, trying to enter another
forbidden district, and then there was all that nasty business
about lying. Like it’s the worst thing on the planet or
something.
    You see, Goodies don’t lie. Ever.
Honesty is sort of bred into us, but somehow mine got out-bred.
Maybe when I stopped listening to the transmissions. Or maybe
because I just don’t give a damn.
    And I’m a good liar, but that’s
all been properly documented in my file, which the pilot was now
reading with interest. “Mm-hmm,” he said. “A liar, a thief, and now
the Green wants you. It’s no small wonder, Vi.”
    I absolutely hate it when
strangers use my nickname like we’re old friends. I ignored him as
he eased the hovercopter closer to the wall. A red beam scanned the
rose on the bottom and a signal flashed. The pilot steered into a
long tunnel with black walls, hardly a wall and more like a
building. As we careened through it, panic spread through
me—something I hadn’t felt since learning Zenn would be leaving me
behind to join the Special Forces. I
wished he’d given me my birthday present before the stupid pilot
arrested me.
    When we finally cleared the
tunnel, I gasped at the view below me.
    A second city loomed behind that
wall—an entire city .
    People swarmed in the streets.
Silver instruments and shiny gadgets winked up at me from the vast
expanse below. My stomach clenched painfully, and I forced myself
to keep breathing so I wouldn’t faint.
    The fierceness of the advanced
tech burned in my brain. I can feel technology, I’ve always been able to. And this
whole new part of the Goodgrounds produced some serious tech buzz.
My head felt like it was in a particle accelerator set on
high.
    “ So here we are,” the pilot said.
“The Institute—the birthplace of tech.”
    No wonder I felt like throwing
up.

 
    Elana Johnson is the author of the Possession series, which includes
the full-length