“Good job, ladies,” Coach Joyce said, at exactly 6:00 PM, “you’ve worked hard today. I’ll let you know who’s on the team in three days at most! For those of you who made it, I’ll see you at practice, and for everyone, thanks for coming.”

Iralyn and all the others jogged over, got their water bottles, took off their basketball shoes, and started to head home.

“Iralyn! Wait up!” Vera yelled, running over.

Iralyn spun around. “Oh, hi!”

“That was fun! Great job, by the way.”

“Thanks, you too.”

“Where are you going?”

Iralyn pointed down the first street she’d take to get back to her house. “Over there.”

Vera smiled. “Oh, same. C’mon, it’s getting late.”

She hurried down the sidewalk, and Iralyn followed her.

After a little bit, they were near Iralyn’s street, the roads quiet and deserted as they had been in the morning.

“Were you completely honest before tryouts today? About everything?” Vera asked, after at least two minutes. For those two minutes, they hadn’t seen a single soul.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Oh, nothing,” Vera said, trailing off, “but..”

“But?”

“Hang on, I have to take this call,” Vera said, pulling out her phone and stepping away.

“But yo—”

But Vera was already on her phone. Her phone hadn’t rang.

Oh. Oh no. She was calling the authorities to turn her in for being a traitor! She’d read about operations like this in the news: people pretend to want to question the system, and then they catch someone doing it sincerely, and then that person is arrested. Iralyn broke out into a run.

“Wait, where are you—” Vera shouted.

Iralyn didn’t respond.

“I’m not going to hurt you!” Vera yelled.

“I don’t believe you!” Iralyn shouted back, purposely taking a wrong turn. The police would be able to find her regardless, but she’d rather buy herself at least a little bit of time.

She ran for a long time and only stopped when she was sure Vera couldn’t have followed her. She paused, thinking back to tryouts. She and Vera had always been in different groups. They hadn’t had much contact. There wasn’t that much of a chance for Vera to have put a tracker or something on her. But anything was possible...she could never be too careful.

Then again...that would lose her Virtue points. Lying about her system malfunctioning to get a reset on the panel in her arm and disabling the maybe-not-even-there tracker is most definitely not a good thing to do.

She didn’t want to put Kyph in danger. Didn’t want to put her parents in danger. She had nowhere to go.

She didn’t have very many Virtue points, either. Not enough to spend some on food. And most definitely not enough to get a hotel.

Darcy’s words from earlier that morning floated back to her head: ‘If you want to see me, I’ll be at the Park every night at eleven! So long, losers!’

Every night at eleven. It was already nearly seven thirty. She had taken over an hour to pack up her stuff, leave, and get almost all the way back to her house. Then, she’d run for around fifteen minutes. Now it was seven thirty. 

If Darcy was still there, completely safe, maybe Darcy could teach her how to hide from the police after criticizing the Virtue system.

At eleven, after ‘missing’ far too many texts from her parents and ignoring far too much hunger, she entered the park. The park was the most beautiful space in the entire city, with a clear, sparkling blue river running straight down the middle, long dirt paths to hike, large hills to sled on in the winter, and a complete lack of poisonous plants. Iralyn had spent many days and nights here. She did her homework here. She read books here. Met up with her friends here. It was probably her favorite place in the world.

It was also big. Very, very big. So when Darcy said she’d be at the park, Iralyn suddenly realized exactly how hard it would be to find her.

Come on, Darcy, where are you? Iralyn thought, growing frustrated as she walked along yet another trail. And who knows! Maybe Darcy was constantly moving, maybe Darcy wasn’t even on the regular areas and chose to be deep in the woods instead! She realized how stupid it was to try and find her.

It had already been half an hour. Maybe Darcy had already left.

There was no way to tell.

“Darcy?” she shouted out, “Are you even here?”

Someone stepped out from behind a tree. “Oh, for the love of Virtue! Why are you here?”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Iralyn said, facing Ezzie and her friend from tryouts earlier. Iralyn had forgotten the other girl’s name.

“Go away.”

“Gladly,” Iralyn replied, hefting her bag higher over one shoulder and walking away.

“Why does she still have her backpack?” Ezzie’s friend asked.

“Don’t know, don’t particularly care. I know she’s got a house, so she’s just out here to be weird, probably.”

“People don’t just hang around the park at almost midnight with their backpacks. Wouldn’t she have her computer in there, too? And her textbooks? Why even risk it?”

“You heard her. She’s looking for Darcy. What do you even expect? Those girls risk everything for nothing,” Ezzie said, disdain audible in her voice.

“If you’re sure…”

“Well, I am. Now, let’s go find what we came here for.”

The voices of Ezzie and her friend faded out as Iralyn walked further and further away.

Iralyn continued walking through the quiet, peaceful night. She honestly enjoyed it.

“Ah, Iralyn,” a distorted voice said, “I’ve been looking for you.”

Iralyn spun around, raising her fists to defend herself. “Stay back!” she shouted.

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you…” the voice said.

“That’s what they all say!”

There was only one thought running through her head: I need to get out of here, I need to get out of here, I need to get out of here, I need to get out of here.

Iralyn took off running, but someone grabbed her and pulled her into the bushes, covering her mouth. She tried to scream, for some reason, but no sound came out.

She was dead. She was dead the moment she had come searching for Darcy in the park. The moment she had questioned the Virtue system in front of Vera. And she had been dead the moment she had defended Veltola from Ezzie.