Icons by Margaret Stohl Read Free Book Online Page A

you get?” Ro moves next to me, but his eyes don’t leave the Sympa.
    I don’t know what to tell him. I’ve never felt anything quite like this, and I don’t know how to put it into words, not in a way Ro will understand.
    Not in a way he wants to hear.
    I look more closely at the Sympa. I pull a button fromhis jacket, yanking it free of the threads that have bound it there. It’s stamped in brass with a logo even a Grass could recognize. A five-sided shape, a pentagon, surrounding Earth. Gold on a field of scarlet. Earth trapped by what looks like a birdcage.
    The button changes everything.
    “He’s not a Sympa.” A sick feeling roils my stomach—and even though I’m speaking to Ro, I can’t rip my eyes away from the button in my hand.
    “What are you talking about? Of course he’s a Sympa. Look at him.” Ro sounds annoyed.
    “He’s not just a Sympa. He’s from the Ambassador’s office.”
    “What?”
    I nod, twisting the button between my fingers. Shiny as a gold dig, and worth more than everything I own. The closest we’ve ever come to seeing Ambassador Amare is her face plastered on the side of a car rolling down the Tracks.
    Until we met this boy.
    The wounded Sympa opens and closes his eyes. They roll back in his head. He’s too beat up to speak, but I think he knows what we are saying.
    Ro sits on his heels in the water next to me. He draws his short blade from his belt, the one he only uses to pelt rabbits and split melons at the Mission.
    He wavers, looking at me. I kneel next to the boy—because that’s what he is. He may be a Sympa, but he’salso just a boy. Not much older than Ro and me, by the looks of it.
    “So this thing—this thing matters to the Ambassador?” He holds the knife to the Sympa’s chin. The Sympa’s eyes open, now wide. “That’s funny, because anything that matters to the Ambassador is pretty much worthless garbage as far as we’re concerned.”
    He traces a line along the Sympa’s throat.
    “Right, Dol?”
    I swallow and say nothing. I am finding it hard to breathe. I don’t know what I think.
    Ro doesn’t have that problem. Ever.
    He raises the blade and brings it slashing down, again and again.
    I can’t look, until Ro turns to me, holding out the proof of his latest violence. A handful of brass Embassy buttons.
    “What?”
    “Evidence of what we’ve got. Now we decide. Do we kill him here, or take him back to La Purísima?” Ro isn’t talking about the Mission. He’s talking about the Grass rebels.
    Spluttering, the boy tries to sit up out of the water. I pull his head forward and lean it against my knees.
    “How could we get him back up the Tracks? Did you see how many Sympas were out there? It would be impossible to hop a car without them seeing us. If the Tracks are even running.”
    Ro thinks, tracing his blade against his leg. “Yeah, andif you’re right about Brass Buttons here, it’s only going to get worse.”
    “Grass and Brass. It’s not a good mix.” I try not to think about what will happen to the boy when we get back to the Mission. If we get back to the Mission. What Ro will do to him. What I will let Ro do to him.
    I shake my head, pulling the boy closer up into my lap in the water. “No.”
    “Get away from him, Dol.”
    “Don’t.”
    “Now.”
    His voice is cracking. I can see the changing situation is overwhelming him. He loses control as we lose control.
    Which we have.
    We did when I saw that button.
    “Please.” I’m talking to Ro, but I look at the boy.
    His eyes fix on mine, just for a moment.
    He moves his hand toward me, a desperate gesture, like a raccoon caught in one of Biggest’s traps, flopping against the metal door one last time before it surrenders.
    I start, and Ro shoves the weapon closer.
    A dot of red light—the targeting mechanism of the boy’s own Sympa gun—dances at the bridge of his nose.
    The boy doesn’t react.
    Maybe he doesn’t think that Ro will do it.
    I know he will. He’s done