The Bar Code Rebellion by Suzanne Weyn Read Free Book Online

reported, “They were in wire cuffs, so there wasn’t much they could do about it. Anyone who resisted too forcibly was given a shot of Propeace tranquilizer. After that, they didn’t mind at all. No one was injured while in custody, and we were completely within our rights.”
Former Senator Ambrose Young arrived in Washington with a team of lawyers. His son, Decode leader David Young, was among those forcibly bar-coded. “This is an outrage!” the senior Senator Young told reporters. “Up to this moment I have notseen eye to eye on this with my son. Now, however, I am seeing for the first time what he’s been up against.”
Ambrose Young was scheduled to meet with Global-1 lawyers this morning, but the latest sources report that the Global-1 lawyers did not arrive in time for the arranged meeting. The senior Senator Young was unable to have his son released on bail, though other families are having some success in getting their loved ones released if there is no prior warrant for that person’s arrest.
     

 
    With bar code fakes on their wrists, Dusa and Kayla entered the quickly erected building of corrugated metal and high-tech plastics set up outside the Smithsonian Institution. “Ironic, isn’t it?” Dusa said, taking off her helmet. “Hopefully, someday this jail will be inside the Smithsonian, just a freaky artifact of American history.”
    Their bar codes were scanned at the front door by a uniformed guard. Kayla held her breath nervously until he passed them through. Dusa answered her unasked question as they headed down a row of small, empty jail cells, explaining, “He was seeing a dead person’s file.”
    Ahead of them, at the spot where the last cell stood, was a large open room lined with cots. Hundreds of people milled around, some sitting or sleeping, others pacing like caged animals. Dusa broke into a jog. Kayla was about to follow when she heard her name.
    Turning quickly, she saw a tall Cherokee woman in jeans and a T-shirt. Long black hair framed a strong, weathered face with piercing dark eyes. “Eutonah!” Kayla gasped as she hurried to the cell. She’d thought her former teacher, her guide, wasstill in jail, but apparently Eutonah had come to the march only to be caught again.
    “Kayla, listen to me,” Eutonah began in her usual direct manner. “There is something you don’t know. Global-1 wants you. You are more important to them than you realize — and it’s not only because you’re a known bar code resister.”
    “Why?” Kayla asked.
    “I don’t know that yet,” Eutonah told her. “But our group intercepted an e-mail and your name was in it. Global-1 is desperate to find you. Don’t let them. In fact, you shouldn’t be here. Go!”
    “But, Mfumbe —” Kayla began to protest. At that moment Dusa called to her, waving for her to come. Kayla turned toward her and held out her finger to gain a last moment with Eutonah, but when she turned back, the woman was no longer in the cell.
    Eutonah, a shaman, could project herself through time and space. When she’d been arrested during last August’s raid, she’d projected herself to Kayla in the mountains, and now she’d appeared to her again.
    Global-1 was desperate to find her? Why?
    Dusa was still waiting for her, and she had no time to ponder Eutonah’s message. She had to find Mfumbe and get out of there. She looked for Dusa but could no longer see her. A commotion had arisen in the room as a well-dressed man of about sixty-five strode into the holding pen. It wasAmbrose Young, surrounded by a coterie of his staff and followed by reporters. The crowd of prisoners gathered around him.
    Using a handheld microphone, Ambrose Young told the prisoners that he’d come to get his son but that David Young refused to leave jail until everyone who had been taken into custody was out. “And he has told me about the outrage of forced bar code tattooing that went on last night,” he added. “We will get each and every one of