Barcode: Cavern of Youth by Kashif Ross

to him. But,” she tears up again, “I did not mean to cause you any trouble, brother. I will report this, I promise. I am responsible.”
    “Whoa. Calm down.”
    Carmen adds, “Then explain why you keep calling him brother.”
    Nevaeh wipes her face again. The two women I’m paired with are emotional wrecks. Even Carmen’s starting to tear up.
    “It’s not my place to say.”
    “You’re going to tell me that part or I won’t let go.” I accidentally tighten my grip a bit and she fights for air.
    She rubs her nose and mournfully says, “Everyone with the blood of ink are brothers and sisters. Master predicts that he’ll return within this year or the next to deliver the information himself.”
    None of us speak a word for some time. Carmen’s the first to echo, “Blood of ink?”
    I’m too afraid to ask what that means. Not to mention, Nevaeh probably can’t answer.
    Her rabbit ears dart up and her body warms lightly in my hands. With her eyes glued to the door and her fingers tightly wrapped around my thumb, she pleads, “Brother, please release me. Father doesn’t know about my escape, and if he finds me, our family will be killed. Please.”
    “Father?”
    “He’s different. He doesn’t have our blood, but he created several of us. I cannot be responsible for their deaths. Please, brother. Please!”
    Nevaeh’s pleading is frantic. As she pushes against my grip, I get a sense for how strong she really is. It’s quite amazing for her size.
    At the last second, I release her. She dashes behind a bookshelf and into the wall. Seconds later, Seth opens the door out of breath.
    He searches the room with his headphones buzzing loudly. As Nevaeh travels through the walls, the buzzing weakens. He seems crushed. To add fuel to the fire, I take the fur from Carmen’s hand and hold it up for him to witness.

Eight
    After torturing Seth, Carmen and I head back to my apartment. I crash into my bed and don’t wake up until nightfall. Carmen curled at the foot of my bed. While sleeping, I watched as she had maids bring her food directly to my room. Whenever someone would enter, she sat next to me with her knees buried in her chest and one hand on my shoulder.
    During her dinner, Dennis drags me out of bed. He practically has to carry me to the car.
    The dark garage looks more like a parking lot. Though almost all of the trucks are military vehicles that can park anywhere, there are a few normal cars. They’re probably Hayley’s. I don’t imagine Dennis driving anything that’s not black and bulky.
    We load into a military humvee and drive to the smoggy area of downtown Los Angeles, where the clouds are so low you can nearly touch them. City officials invested a lot of money to make sure this part of the town wasn’t abandoned because of the weather and pollution. There are so many fancy-smancy buildings in this location that you must be nearly as rich as Griffith Park residents to stay here.
    Of course, there are local areas where lower class citizens live, but those parts are ignored by tour guides.
    Dennis gives Carmen and me an unsolicited tour of the city. We pass the Department of Water and Green Energy. The entire building floats on top of a body of water. Scientist spent so much to make the building physically possible, they nearly bankrupted the city.
    We bypass several dusty courthouses, an underground library, and the original city hall that managed to survive the Great American War. I don’t know where we’re going, but there has to be an easier way to get there.
    Dennis looks back at us through his rear-view mirror. Then, he presses his foot firmly against the gas and zooms directly to the red-stoned Federal Building. It was renovated after the war, and now towers as a fifty-story structure. There are three helicopter landings on top of this monster, which makes me wonder why we couldn’t simply fly here.
    We park in the red zone, directly in front of the structure. Carmen and I exit the