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In this gripping sequel to All Rights Reserved, Speth Jime has freed her home of Portland from the oppressive system that forced everyone to pay for every word they spoke. Now she will discover the cost of that freedom, and the devastating secrets of the world beyond her dome.
On the day she went silent, Speth never meant for anyone to follow her lead—or to start a rebellion of Silents. But after taking down the tyrant Silas Rog and freeing the city from his grasp, everyone is looking to Speth for answers she doesn’t have. All she wants is to find her parents, who are shackled to a lifetime of servitude in exchange for a debt they can never repay. But how can Speth leave her friends to fend for themselves when she’s the reason their city is in chaos?
When the government threatens to restore the WiFi and take back the city, Speth is forced to flee with a ragtag group of friends by her side. Together, they embark on a dangerous journey outside the dome they’ve lived in their entire lives, in search of a better future. Along the way, Speth will discover the shattering truth about their world...and the role she’ll need to play to save it.
Praise for Gregory Scott Katsoulis and All Rights Reserved
“A really first-rate adventure story of plucky kids against evil grown-ups, poor versus rich, weak versus strong—the stuff of the most exciting YA novels.”
—Cory Doctorow, New York Times bestselling author of Little Brother
“A chilling, unnerving, and timely debut novel about what it means to speak out, even in silence.”
—Katharine McGee, New York Times bestselling author of The Thousandth Floor
“Deeply troubling and utterly captivating; a must read for fans of the dystopic, and more specifically of M. T. Anderson’s Feed.”
—Shelf Awareness
“A nightmarish future... Fast-paced action sequences... A fresh and detailed dystopian tale.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Readers will be thinking about every word they speak, knowing, as Speth does, that ‘words matter.’”
—Booklist
“Katsoulis’s work is timely and will appeal to fans of Dan Wells’s Bluescreen, M. T. Anderson’s Feed, Cecelia Ahern’s Flawed, or Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies [series].”
—School Library Journal
“Intense... A provocative setup.”
—Publishers Weekly
ACCESS RESTRICTED
Gregory Scott Katsoulis
www.harlequinbooks.com.au
For my mother, who taught me to read, and that words matter.
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Contents
Speaks: 99¢
Redacted: $1.99
Hug: $2.99
Nancee: $3.99
Healthspital™: $4.99
Cracked: $5.99
Incursion: $6.99
Corneal Overlays: $7.98
Out of the Dome: $8
.96
Into the Fire: $9.97
Keene: $10.99
A Geographic Raid: $11.98
Room for Henri: $12.97
Access Restricted: $13.98
Iridescence: $14.99
Dirt: $15.99
The World: $16.98
The Bridge: $17.98
Legalese: $18.99
A Small Kindness: $19.97
Coldwet™: $20.99
Cheaper than a Human: $21.96
OiO™: $22.99
Forests of Sylvania™: $23.97
Apology: $24.99
Archaeology: $25.99
Agree
Victoria: $27.99
Don't Worry: $28.98
Family Line: $29.98
Jump: $30.99
Proximity Exceeded: $31.99
The Blind Order: $32.97
PhotoCloud™: $33.99
Ancestry®: $34.99
Henri: $35.99
Regret: $36.99
Kel's Advice: $37.98
The Breaking Goodbye: $38.97
Crab Creek: $39.99
A Drawn Arrow: $40.97
Mexicans: $41.99
Bollards Between: $42.98
Border Control: $43.98
No One Flies: $44.97
Betrayed: $45.99
None Should Suffer: $46.97
What You Could Be Like®: $47.99
Deoxyribonucleic Acid: $48.98
Vs. Butchers & Rog: $49.98
Commander-in-Chief Justice: $50.99
Spider Jupiter: $51.98
The Family Reunion: $52.97
Santos359™: $53.99
The Route Revealed: $54.97
Cerulean: $55.99
Secrets of Data: $56.97
The Explorer's Heart: $57.97
The Dome of Delphi™: $58.96
Words & Silence: $59.97
Two of Us™: $60.99
Lucretia's Revenge: $61.98
Obsequious Applause: $62.98
The Persistence of Moonlight: $63.97
Another Carol Amanda Harving: $64.98
Restricted®: $1,000,000,000
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Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from All Rights Reserved by Gregory Scott Katsoulis
Speaks: 99¢
I sat with Margot and Henri on the rooftop of Thomkins Tower, looking toward the smoldering remains of the Butchers & Rog building at the center of our city. The symbol of Silas Rog’s power was half-melted, the glass exterior shattered by the hot fire of NanoLion™ batteries blazing within. Curved metal shards bent outward from the edifice like spiraling tendrils.
My brother, Sam, would have seen the beauty in it. But as I watched Rog’s tower burn, I wondered if I had destroyed this city instead of saving it.
The Ads that had once assaulted the city from every surface now flickered, silent in the dark, unable to find targets. The WiFi was gone. With it, I had defeated the system that had controlled our lives and demanded we pay for every word we spoke and every gesture we made.
We could speak freely now, but I still struggled to find the right words to say.
“I keep picturing my brother,” I said finally, palming away a tear. “Sam, when he was, like, two years old, tottering around our little apartment. Running and laughing while I chased him. My parents didn’t say much, but you could see this light in their eyes...”
The words spilled out of me, but not like I wanted. They had no eloquence. I wanted it known that Sam had been loved. I wanted him remembered. But Sam was dead. Every recording of him had been erased when I blew up the WiFi hub. Nothing was ever going to fix that. The best I could do was talk about him.
A hot pit of misery formed in my stomach. It wasn’t enough—it would never be enough.
“I miss him,” I sobbed, half in anger and half in despair.
Henri looked at the ground, his eyes welling up. Margot’s face softened. She moved closer to comfort me, but I didn’t want it. Not now. Margot was usually prickly and roguish. Seeing her like this unnerved me. I pushed her away and willed myself not to cry more.
“Rog warned me,” I whispered. “He said this would happen. But I destroyed it, anyway.”
“Silas Rog,” Henri muttered, like the Lawyer’s name was a curse.
“Now we have this,” I said, gesturing to the city around us, flickering in the gray night with faltering Ads. Far off, a triumphant shout echoed through the dome, followed by a terrified shriek. Glass shattered from someplace nearby. Countless people stalked the streets below, hungry and angry, waiting to pounce on any fleeing Affluent they could find.
Somewhere, someone let out a great whooping sound that bounced through the buildings to reach us. I hoped they’d found food, and not a victim, but the call was soon answered by several others, more bloodthirsty than joyous. A shiver ran up my back.
Our biggest problem was food. Without the WiFi, the printers wouldn’t print food. The cartridges, on their own, were toxic. They were intentionally engineered to keep us from eating if we hadn’t paid for the right to print specific foods. My split-second decision to take down the WiFi had come at a high cost, and I prayed we could find a way to work around it.
I looked up at the honeycombed dome over us. “We’re lucky it hasn’t fallen in.”
“It will not collapse,” Margot said. “Rog made his building too—”
“I know,” I interrupted. The thing couldn’t be entirely destroyed. The core was Altenium™. Only the plastic around it burned. At least, that was what Kel had told us before she rushed off. I’d barely seen her since I’d started talking again.
“And then there’s this,” I lamented. I flicked a printer ink cartridge onto the pebbled rooftop beside me. “It’s poison now, thanks to me,” I said, unable to keep the hopelessness from my voice.
Henri and Margot eyed me cautiously, like I might break. The distance between us felt vast and insurmountable.
“The printers will unscramble the toxins,” Henri offered. “We just need to—”
“I made sure that can’t happen,” I yelled, kicking the cartridge away. My voice echoed through the quiet streets, making me wince. I should be gentler with Henri. I owed him a lot, and I hadn’t treated him nearly as well as he deserved. Henri had brought me into the Placers. Without him, Saretha and I would have been Indentured months ago.
“But we have the book,” Henri said.
“A book,” I croaked. A book I’d taken from Silas Rog. A book of codes that told us how the inks were blended, and how the built-in system prevented “tampering.” But there was a DRM key, PrintLocks™, that made it all work. The book didn’t provide instructions about how to break it. In fact, the book warned against even attempting it, with pages and pages of dire legal consequences for anyone who tried.
“Your friend, Mandett—he promised they’d crack it,” Henri said. “He was practicing on those iChit players.”
Mandett said I’d know the problem was solved when I heard music. Knowing that made the quiet even harder to bear. Where was the music? Where were the people talking and taking advantage of the freedom to speak?
There were none of the usual cars racing around the outer ring, though occasionally one would speed past as an Affluent made a break for the western exit, hoping to escape. This city was no longer a safe place for them—teens from the Onzième and freed Indentureds were taking their revenge for a lifetime of suffering.
Some Affluents made it out. Most hadn’t.
Margot tugged on Henri’s arm with one hand, showing him the Pad with the other.
“Can we play our game?” she asked, desperate to lighten the mood. She pulled up the Word$ Market™.
“How are you getting the Word$ Marke
t™?” I asked.
“Pads are designed to work off-line,” Henri explained.
“I know that, Henri,” I said impatiently. “But the Word$ Market™? It’s constantly updating. How are you getting the new prices without WiFi?”
“It grabs a snapshot from the nearest Central Data node every fifteen minutes,” Henri said. “Unless you’re in a Squelch.”
“Portland is now a giant Squelch, if you think about it,” Margot said. “It still has the last update from before the WiFi went down. Anyway, the price of the word does not matter in this game.”
“You look for a word that’s unfamiliar and guess what it means,” Henri explained. “You’ve seen us play.”
“I don’t remember you guys ever playing a word game,” I said.
“We did not play when you were around. That would have been rude,” Margot said, looking over the green market screen. “We did not even know if you would like it.”
“We still don’t know if she will.” Henri grinned, bumping Margot with his shoulder.
I felt awkward. They had come to know me without words—at least as well as you can know someone without speaking. We were friends, but in many ways, I was still a stranger to them.
“I’m sure I’ll love it,” I said. They should at least be happy while they could. The city was crumbling around us, and we’d have to deal with it all too soon.
“‘Simulacrum,’” Margot said, reading from the Pad.
Henri shook his head.
“Some kind of crowbar?” I tried. Margot shook her head.
“A crumb of fake food?” Henri guessed.
“No,” Margot said. “I get a point. But that is a good guess, Henri. It means: ‘An insubstantial form or semblance of a thing.’”
She handed the Pad off to him for his turn. He frowned.
“Are you sure my definition is wrong? How do we know the definitions are accurate if the Pad can’t access Central Data?” Henri asked, thumbing the screen for more choices. “What if they changed since the WiFi went down?”
He suppressed a grin.
“Oh, Henri, do not be a bad sport. The definitions of words will not change,” Margot said. “Only the prices fluctuate. Occasionally the rights will be sold to a new Rights Holder—but the meaning cannot change.”
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