The Outerlands (Coalition 2)

by Aria J. Wolfe

  In her peripheral vision, she saw Raine kick her sheets to the end of the bed just as the daytime lights came on, drenching the small room in a bath of white light that made Miya’s eyes water for a moment.

  Raine’s face brightened with a broad smile as she sat up. “Today’s implant inspection day, Mi. Skip the shower and breakfast too so we can get to the lab and finish work early. I don’t want to get stuck waiting in a long lineup after work. If you’re hungry, I have a few protein pills in my drawer.”

  Miya let her feet dangle for a few seconds before touching her toes to the freezing, white-tiled floor. She nodded, swallowing the bitter anxiety that always twisted her stomach in knots after she’d spent a restless night. She wouldn’t be able to gag down a dry protein pill even if her life depended on it.

  “Raine?”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “Do you ever…” Miya licked her lips and picked at a hard, dry piece of cuticle around her nail.

  “Do I ever what, Mi?” Raine stood, mouth open in a huge yawn.

  “Do you ever dream anything other than the usual?” She watched Raine slide her white cotton nightshirt off and throw it on the floor before slipping on white drawstring pants paired with a white button-down shirt. Raine tucked the necklace she always wore inside the neck of her shirt and gave it a pat. It was a pretty silver key with a blood-red jewel that hung from a thin chain.

  “Nope. Just the same old regulated Leadership-prescribed stuff. Why?”

  Miya’s mouth went dry. “I’m trying to figure out what makes you and me different from everyone else.”

  Raine pulled on her white lab shoes, identical to Miya’s except for the smaller size. Miya dressed in the same color as Raine: white. A symbol of perfection. But Miya opted for a tighter-fitting pair of pants and a simple pullover.

  Raine stood with her shoulders straight back and looked Miya in the eye. “You’re different because of a lot of things, Mi. Things we shouldn’t be discussing.”

  Miya grabbed a small circular pin shaped like a small silver cap that could fit on the tip of her pinky finger off her side table and fastened it to the breast pocket of her shirt.

  “Why not? If I’m offline like you say, then I’m free to do as I want.”

  “Just because you’re offline doesn’t mean they aren’t watching you. It just means they aren’t regulating you in the same way as everyone else. And I told you before, different or not, I don’t count.”

  Miya tipped her head sideways. “Everyone counts, Raine. Numbers are a big thing to the Leadership.”

  Raine held her wrist up to the scanner on the wall near the door and waited for the door to open. She flashed Miya a dimpled grin over her shoulder.

  “Maybe, maybe not. All I know is you’re the special one.” She reached out and fuzzed the top of Miya’s head with her fingers just as the door slid open.

  Miya nodded and followed Raine out into the corridor.

  You’re not a defect, you’re special. Her mother always used to say that to her. The last time she’d said that had been the day she had given Miya the pin. The day of her execution because she’d gotten too old. Just like her father the year before.

  “Don’t worry about the inspection, Mi. I’ll be there with you like always. They won’t find out about…anything.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Jake

  He woke up with a heavy head and blurry vision. Everything hurt. Bad. Like he’d been buried under a ton of dirt and rock. He looked down at himself, surprised to see he was wearing white pants and a white shirt. His face was swollen so badly his eyes were mere slits. His nose felt like it had been broken in multiple places. He had to breathe through his mouth, and even that hurt.

  He looked around as fear squeezed his chest. Nothing looked familiar. He was in a cold room, lying on a hard bed that made his rear end numb. He shifted onto his elbow to get a better look, and his stomach dropped. He seemed to be in some kind of medical room. His left wrist was wrapped in a stark white bandage that hurt his eyes. Everything hurt his eyes. Everywhere he looked was steel: walls, ceiling…not the floor. It was tiled. Large white square tiles.

  He sat for quite a while, propped up on one elbow on the hard bed, looking at his surroundings. A bag of yellowish liquid, suspended from a metal hanger near his bed, was connected to his arm by a small tube. He pinched the tube between his fingers and watched the liquid pool behind the kink. Whatever was in the bag was going into his arm. He yanked it out and let the tube drip onto the floor.

  He stared at the puddle it made until eventually a name floated through the fog in his mind.

  Shai.

  He lay back down on the bed. Whispered the name a few times, but it meant nothing to him.

  A noise startled him. The wall slid open and someone entered the room. He closed his eyes, pretending to sleep, but watched through his eyelashes.

  He took shallow breaths and watched as a young man moved things around on the shelves as though looking for something. The man piled a few small boxes into his arms, then turned around to go the way he’d come in. He watched the man push the shirt sleeve up on his left arm and wave his wrist across a black square. The wall opened up again, and he realized his only way out was about to shut again.

  Just before the man stepped through the opening in the wall, he leaped at him. The full-bodied contact made both men groan with agony. He felt his own ribs crunch. The agony made bile rise in his throat. The man screamed beneath him.

  He pinned the man to the floor with his legs wrapped around the man’s slender ones, one arm around the man’s thin neck. The other hand gripped the man’s dark hair, pulling his head back. The boxes he’d been carrying were scattered around them. He felt the man’s windpipe in the crook of his arm. Felt the man try to scream again. Felt his own muscles tighten in response.

  The man’s spine was rigid. Rigid but brittle, like it could be snapped in a second. The man squirmed, his breath a throaty rattle beneath the forearm locked around his neck. He felt the final scream building in the man’s chest and he squeezed. Once. Hard. A pop. A crunch.

  He shut his eyes. The man jerked, then nothing. He scrambled to his knees in the darkness of the empty corridor and stared at the man. Something small and square glinted in the man’s wrist. That was what he’d used to open the door. A faint light came from…the floor? No, not the floor specifically, but the edge. A thin ribbon of light ran along the perimeter of the wall. Anyone passing by could see him here. He turned his upper body, still kneeling, and looked back. The wall had shut again.

  He touched the small square thing in the man’s wrist.

  Shai. This time the name came with a white-hot flash of pain in his chest. He couldn’t stay here, waiting to get caught. He stood and looked down at the man he’d just killed.

  The wall opened up again, revealing the medical room he’d woken up in. Next to the opening was another black square embedded in the wall. He walked over to it and waited until the wall closed again. He looked at his left wrist wrapped in the bandage and unwound it. He wasn’t surprised to see he also had one of those metal things in his wrist. He waved his hand in front of the black square in the wall the way he’d seen the man do. The wall reopened.

  For the rest of that day he hid in shadows. Watching. Waiting. Wondering where he was and who he was, but he never returned to the medical room. He slept in a dark corner of a corridor. A fitful sleep without dreams. Then the next day, when his stomach grumbled and woke him up, he decided to explore. All day he walked the darkened corridors and opened doors. He was careful not to enter any room until he was sure it was unoccupied. Instinct made him guarded. Aware. A few times he thought he heard snatches of conversation and he ducked into a shadowy recess, but it was only the voices in his mind.

  After several hours, or maybe it had been days?—he wasn’t sure—of lurking around he came across a tiny room. More like a man-sized box with buttons on the wall. The buttons were labled #1 to #7, and if you pushed o
ne, the box would move. After a moment the door opened, and he was on another level identical to the one he’d just explored, only occupied. When he stepped from the man-sized box, he heard voices again, but he quickly realized the voices weren’t coming from inside his head. He stood with one hand on the door frame of the box as uncertainty twisted his guts.

  A young kid with short dark hair and oval eyes called out to him.

  “Hey! Looks like the Grafter botched your fix! I’d get that looked at if I were you.”

  Grafter? He started after the kid and raised his hand to stop him, but the kid had disappeared into the crowd.

  Everyone seemed to be on a mission, moving quickly, with short little steps like they were afraid to touch anything. He stepped into the river of people and joined them as they walked single file down the corridor. Every now and then someone would break the flow and wave their wrist in front of a black box and step into the room beyond.

  He noticed everyone’s left wrists had the same shiny piece embedded just beneath their skin like the man had. Just like he had. Eventually everyone disappeared into their own rooms, leaving him alone in the corridor.

  He kept walking. Looped right around until he was back where he started. Or was he? The entrance to this corridor looked much darker than the others on this level. He looked up.

  The overhead sign read

  Quad One. Level One.

  He stepped into the dark corridor and walked a few more steps until he came to a door marked Observatory. He let himself in.

  CHAPTER 7

  Miya

  The lab was quiet except for the sounds of Raine’s stylus tapping on her palmpad as she entered data that had been collected from each of the seven floors in the Camp.

  “I turned the sound off on the wall screen so we could concentrate. We have a lot of work to catch up on since we’ve been away the last couple of days,” Raine said to Miya, but didn’t look up from the low stool that she’d pulled up to a lab table. She paused her tapping long enough to jab her stylus in the direction of the floor-to-ceiling screen on the opposite wall. Miya turned to the screen and watched the flashing images display the usual advertisements, posted rules, and daily reminders to get inspected and receive the weekly dose of vitamins.

  Miya scratched around the thin disk embedded in her wrist while she stared at the ads on the screen, reminding herself that none of it applied to her anymore. That it never really did.

  “Perfect,” she mumbled, pulling up a stool next to Raine.

  “What is?” Raine glanced at Miya with a frown that made her forehead crease in the middle.

  “The fact that the room’s so quiet I can hear my own bladder fill.” Miya hadn’t meant the comment to come out as sharp as it did.

  Raine put down her stylus and focused her silvery eyes on Miya, who quickly looked away from her friend’s glare. She curled her toes in her shoes to keep from squirming.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Miya waved a hand in dismissal and pushed down a knot of fear that squeezed her chest. Why did the Leadership keep her around knowing she wasn’t in the system? She’d never received the status of an Invalidate, even though that was technically what she was. A society reject. Invalidates bummed food off people and slept wherever they could since their implants no longer gave them access to anything. The Leadership usually put up with them until something happened that forced them to execute the rejects.

  For the next several minutes the only sounds were the dual tapping of the girls’ styluses and Raine’s tuneless humming. They’d come to work two hours ahead of schedule in order to leave early for the implant inspection. Two hours that Miya would have Raine to herself.

  She was just starting to get into the flow of entering her data into the palmpad when Raine thumped Miya’s elbow with her stylus.

  “Do you think Oren will come to the lab today?”

  Miya rubbed her elbow and thought hard. Most of the earlier brain fog had dissipated, but occasionally she still had trouble recalling names and faces. She probably should talk to a medtech about it, but the thought made her queasy. She pictured their boss, the senior biochemical engineer who was only a few years older than them. He had thick blond hair that hung persistently over one eye. She wiped her palms on her pants before answering.

  “Probably not. He always helps with the inspection. I hope he doesn’t show up here today at all. It’s easier to work when he’s not around.”

  She stole a quick glance at Raine, whose face remained expressionless as she tapped on her palmpad. Her own face burned. Oren unnerved her. He was sullen and angry most of the time, just like all the other Leadership were. They were soldiers, after all. Genetically crafted for one reason: to keep the Camp in order. Every workstation was assigned one.

  “Why do you ask?” Miya kept looking at Raine.

  “I just…um…never mind.”

  Miya turned on her stool to face Raine. “Are you thinking about him, um, you know…in that way?” Her heart kick-thumped in her chest, and she could feel her ears burning. “’Cuz if you are, maybe your implant is malfunctioning. Maybe you’re offline too. I can check.”

  Miya began to type Raine’s name into her palmpad, but Raine reached out and closed her hand over Miya’s in a ferocious grip.

  “No! Don’t, Mi.” Raine shook her head, her blond ponytail swishing across her shoulders.

  “Why not? You and Nathan obviously looked up my information.”

  Raine’s big eyes searched Miya’s. “It wasn’t like that, Miya…It…We shouldn’t even be talking about this. We could get executed. Oren could walk in here any minute and catch us.”

  “Why should I care? I’m not even part of society, remember?”

  Raine squeezed Miya’s fingers. “Look, Mi. Think for a second. Just because you’re offline and have never been punished with the Leadership’s usual methods doesn’t mean that they’ll keep you around indefinitely. Especially if you go messing around in the system looking at stuff you shouldn’t.”

  Miya said nothing. Raine was right. She could still be executed.

  Raine let go of Miya’s hand. Suddenly, the lab felt too small. The walls closed in until she couldn’t breathe. She hopped off her stool and started for the door. “Cover for me, Raine? I…I’m just going to step out for a minute. I need to pee.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, but walked past the bathroom to the exit, feeling Raine’s eyes on her back.

  Outside the lab she stood in the corridor, just breathing. She tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear and scratched the skin around her implant.

  The thought of the inspection later today had her stomach in knots, but not for the usual reasons. She’d always been afraid of the Leadership because they could read every spike in blood pressure and recorded every drop of sweat that accumulated in her armpits. But today was different. Today she was going to the inspection knowing she was offline.

  The sound of someone walking down the corridor towards the lab spiked Miya’s blood pressure. She turned and walked quickly the opposite way. The thought that it might be Oren made her pick up her pace until she found herself running. She ran until the entrance to Quad One loomed overhead. Up until a year ago she’d taken scholastic classes in this quad with Raine. But now, at seventeen, they were both too old for formal education. The Leadership had given them identical work assignments as biochemical technicians in the first-floor laboratory in Quad Four.

  Miya’s steps slowed as she entered Quad One. The corridors here were a darker steel, and the lighting was dimmer than in the fourth quad where she was from. The Leadership said darkness was conducive to learning, because darkness lessened the likelihood of distraction…or something like that.

  Miya ran her fingers over the smooth metal walls until she came to a door marked Observatory. Her heart fluttered. Lately she’d been spending her spare time here, watching the images on the screens of the earth that had been ravaged by fire and
war. Scarred earth, jagged boulders and blackened trees all covered in dull gray ash were all that remained of the world beyond the looming metal structure that formed the seven-story Camp.

  Instead of going in, she paused to watch the small corridor screen across from the Observatory door. She read the rules as each one scrolled across on the two-foot-wide screen and realized she knew them by heart.

  #1. Outside access is strictly prohibited

  #2. Report implant malfunction to Leadership immediately

  #3. Weekly implant inspections are mandatory

  #4. Touching is restricted to medical personnel and Leadership

  #5. All access to biofeed information is restricted to express Leadership permission

  Five rules were all it took to control the entire Camp.

  She let herself into the Observatory and waited until she was sure the door had shut securely behind her before crossing the large room. The room was actually a classroom for students to learn about the dangers beyond the Camp. She was forbidden to be there since the first quad was off-limits to anyone who no longer attended classes, but what would the Leadership do? It wasn’t on the list of rules worthy of getting killed over.

  The Observatory’s screen was unlike any other in the Camp. It stretched twenty feet wide by ten feet high and didn’t show advertisements or rules like the ones in the corridors or common rooms. Its screen displayed live footage of the outside world. The scene never changed, but she stood and watched it anyway. The tug and pull to go beyond the confines of the dull gray wall thirty feet in front of the Camp was at its peak as she stood there.

  She watched the wind move the stubby brown grass that surrounded the structure she called home. The camera didn’t catch the sky, but a vague memory surfaced. Something about the teacher saying the sky used to be blue.

  Nothing had changed except the color. Or the lack of color. Not that anything had ever remotely represented a more brilliant hue than the browns and tans of the world outside, but at least they were different than her world in here, where nothing deviated from stark white or shiny steel.