Read Viral Nation (Short Story): Broken Nation for Free Online Page B

thirty seconds while Frank shakes hands with the other men. “This is bad,” I say. “I can’t do this.”
    “You can,” Alex says “And we’ll be fine. They aren’t the police. Worst happens, they think we’re some kind of stowaways. I’ll be back for you in a few days.”
    “Promise me.”
    “I promise you.” Frank is coming around now and it takes every ounce of my self-control not to scream. “I love you, Leanne.”
    “I love you, too,” Maggie says.
    The door beside me opens before I can answer. Frank steps up and nods at me. He gets me on my feet, outside the truck. I feel hollow, which is maybe good because I don’t even feel like I have tears inside me. Frank keeps a hand on my back and I take one slow step. I focus on the next one, and then the next, while Watson gets inside the truck and Ellis goes to open his car.
    I’ve never walked more than a half dozen steps on my prosthetic without Alex there to help me, but somehow, I make it to the car. Frank puts me in the front seat and closes the door. Maybe it just looks like old-fashioned chivalry to Ellis, because he doesn’t seem fazed by how much help I need. I watch out the window as Watson waves at us, then drives past us, onto the interstate.
    “I didn’t tell them that I love them.” I can hear the hysteria in my own voice.
    Frank takes my hand again and squeezes it. “They know.”
     
    • • •
     
    I have a small stack of letters. Most are written by Alex, but there are pictures that Maggie drew. It’s been a year since Frank drove me away back to Reno. A year since I watched the eighteen-wheeler drive away with my family hidden in it.
    I finished the school year, studying geography and criminal justice, and spent the summer working at the Veronica ’s dock on Lake Tahoe. I’ve learned to use my leg, which is a good thing since I never got another wheelchair.
    It’s been a year and Alex wants to come for me. He’s wanted to come for me for six months.
    I know something that he doesn’t. I know that two years from now, I’m still in Reno. I’m still working for the Company, still in the Mariner program.
    I know because part of my internship included working with Travelers—people who ride the Veronica through a time portal deep in the lake. They pop up two years in the future, and I meet them there. Or an older version of me does.
    I can’t leave the city. I can’t leave the Company. If I do, I’ll be putting myself and everyone I love in danger.
    “Leanne?”
    I look up. Frank is waiting for me to hand him a letter to get to Alex and Maggie. I just shake my head. “I need you to promise me something.”
    “What is it?”
    “You won’t help him come here for me. Promise me, Frank.” Alex might come anyway. But he might not, if I hurt him enough. If I stop writing back. If I disappear.
    “Are you sure this is what you want?” Frank leans against the door of his truck. “I could get you to him. We could leave now.”
    I know already that I won’t leave. In a way it is a relief. This is what I am supposed to be doing. This is how I can do the most good. “I’m sure.”

 
    Sixteen years later, the Company finds a new, very special recruit in sixteen-year-old Clover Donovan. Brilliant but autistic, she’ll have help navigating her new role in the secretive organization from a true-hearted mentor named Leanne . . .
     
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    Prologue
     
    I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making.
    —Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio address on Brotherhood Day, February 23, 1936
     
     
    “Keep her away from me.”
    James walked toward his wife with their newborn daughter sleeping against his chest, her body a warm spot through a shirt he hadn’t changed in three days. He smelled rank, but didn’t care. “You don’t mean that, Janie.”
    “I don’t want her near me.” Jane’s features were swollen almost beyond