Free Aerie by Maria Dahvana Headley Page A

deep details are concerned, is unknown to all of us, no matter how much I’ve tried to find out. They talk silently, and she’s never really told me.
    I shared her secrets with the enemies I could most easily imagine, in exchange for what I could buy of her safety from the ones I couldn’t.
    Aza’s secrets should belong only to her and to people she’s chosen to tell them to. Instead, I’m technically, no matter how I shake it, one of her betrayers.
    I watch on my screen as three guys in black climb the wallof Aza’s house, the same way she climbed the wall of my house last night.
    I switch over to the monitor in her room as they climb in her window.
    She fights hard, but they get her gagged quickly enough that she can’t sing any trouble into the air. I watch them tie her, and take her straight back out and into the trunk of the car.
    If anyone sees it, they’re kidnappers, not SWAB.
    This is what I did to keep her safe. There was no way she wasn’t going out looking for Heyward. I don’t care what she promised.
    I know who she is. I’ve known her since we were five. So I took it out of her hands. The thought of Heyward getting to her? I couldn’t.
    My phone buzzes. “There’s a car waiting for you.”
    I walk out of my house and get in.
    â€œKerwin,” says the agent behind the wheel.
    â€œLet’s go,” I say.
    Headquarters is an hour later, in a garage deep underneath a shopping mall. Above us, people are going about their T-shirt buying and shoe attempts. In a bunker below America, we’re watching the sky.
    I scan my thumbprint, and then I scan my eyeball—thumbprints aren’t enough in a world where Magonians might be wearing skins to disguise themselves as human.
    If you want to discuss how someone seventeen years old has ended up here, discuss it with the top, not me. For all I know, they’re watching me every moment of every day, andI’m merely a tool. For all they know, I’m just their informant, and not someone who’s been spending his own every moment at headquarters learning anything he can about how SWAB is working. All that pi committed to memory? I have more than just pi in there. The whole time I’ve been working here, I’ve been stuffing the contents of SWAB’s archives into my skull.
    When I first learned about Magonia I thought it was impossible that no one else knew anything about it. Turns out, I was right.
    Yeah, I know how this sounds. This isn’t me in a tinfoil hat, though.
    Governments know the secrets. They’re in charge of making sure normal people don’t find out about them and—and this is a scientific term—freak the fuck out.
    But come on. There are always leaks. Aliens and conspiracy theories. There are always suspicions in the public. Things get seen. Secrets slip.
    I pass the portrait of Amelia Earhart up on the wall. Speaking of secrets. When she disappeared, she was on a mission for SWAB. Official version is that she was captured by Magonia. There are photos of her plane, pictures of talon marks in it. SWAB buried it at sea.
    Mystery of brave American hero? Solved.
    I look at the picture and know I’ve done the right thing. If Magonia got to Aza, what would they do to her ?
    They’d use her. Or kill her. I had to keep her safe. I repeat that to myself. I had to. I had to.
    I’m right, aren’t I?
    This isn’t how I normally feel about things. Usually, I feellike everything I’m doing, I’m doing for definite reasons. Justifiable reasons.
    This time . . .
    This time I’m worried. There’s something about it—everything about it, seeing Aza grabbed, taken from her house—that feels like I’ve just done something totally wrong.
    But I had to.
    She accused me of trying to run her life, and I—we’ve never fought like that before.
    Since Aza came back down, though, Magonia’s gotten steadily more