The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen, #1) by Shelly Crane Page B

mother scolding me in my head. When I felt someone grab my ankle, I gasped.
    I looked down at him. “If I die, you don’t get anything!”
    He sighed and let me go, but stayed right on my heels as he followed me up.
    The chatter around me was loud as people shouted and hollered at us. More men followed us up. I went all the way to the top floor. There was only one guy who made it as quickly as I had and I pulled out my can and sprayed him before he could grab me. I wondered how many sprays I had left. I stuck it back into its safe place and then hooked my hands over the low roof before climbing over it, swinging my knee over and rolling onto the still-hot surface, knowing that they would hesitate. On the tops of the buildings were energy boards and solar panels.
    Another myth that had long plagued our people was that being too close the sun and energy-inducing products would cause cancer. Cancer had been eradicated, but they claimed that if you got near or touched the solar panels you would get cancer, bring it back, and be the cause. Though most people knew that cancer couldn’t be spread like that, some people chose to believe everything Congress told them.
    I knew only a couple of the brave and desperate would follow.
    What I hadn’t expected were six brave and desperate.
    I swallowed as they began to take defensive positions around me, like I was a threat or something. It actually puffed me up a little. They saw me as a threat? Really?
    I let my eyes wander around them and then caught a glimpse of the new screen they were showing. WANTED FOR MURDER now blinked above my head. I almost lost my focus as I stared at it, before catching myself.
    “Murder?” I said out loud. I looked at the man in front of me. “You know that’s not true, right? They just put that on there. They’re just doing anything and everything to bring me in.”
    He ticked his head from side to side. “Someone wants you real bad.”
    “Apparently,” I grumbled.
    “Must’ve done something bad,” he muttered back.
    I laughed without humor, and it surprised me that it came out. “Yeah. I took a beating that wasn’t mine.”
    I saw a couple of them flinch a little, but that wasn’t enough to stop a five-hundred-thousand pieces paycheck.
    I sighed, crossing my arms strategically. “Fine. You want to fight the girl? Let’s go.” I tilted my chin toward him. “Go ahead. Hit me.”
    He huffed. “No.”
    “Chicken?”
    “No, sweetheart. I’m not chicken.” He smiled and shook his head. This was the stacks that I knew. “I’m just not going to hit a girl. I’ll take you in real easy-like, you can go to processing, and everything happens real smooth.”
    I stared at him. “You know what they do to women in confinement.” I stared harder. “You know .”
    His jaw jumped. One of the guys next to him wiped his hand down his face and left, jumping down from the roof and out of sight, obviously thinking all of this was no longer worth it.
    “I know no such thing. People talking is just that,” he finally said.
    I shook my head. “I hope you enjoy your reward. I hope it’s worth it.”
    He turned red. “I’ve got three kids. I can’t even—”
    “I know.” I felt bad for saying what I said. I understood why he was doing it. “I would have done anything to save my mom,” I looked down, “just like she did everything for me; even if paying our taxes couldn’t be one of them.”
    When I looked back up, he looked infinitely sad and angry and just…like we all do. Tired. Tired of being on the bottom.
    “Just do it.” He hesitated. “Just…do it.”
    With the cameras watching from the screens in the sky and whoever was watching us, he came for me. I hoped I had enough to do the job when they all came for me.
    When he got close enough, I uncrossed my arms and sprayed him with the incapacitation spray. He went down like a rock.
    “Sorry,” I muttered and turned for who was coming at me next. He hadn’t seen what happened