I don’t move.
“NOW,” he says, and I do.
“Spread your legs.”
Q nods—his face is bright red—and picks up his mobile. “Get a medical here right away.”
L comes back with two more CSOs along with a medical who is wearing blue paper medical robes over his clothes. The CSOs are both carrying Tasers and the medical has an automatic snapped into his belt. One of the CSOs is holding the kind of black bag a medical might carry around. The other one is holding a kidney-shaped bowl containing a syringe and three vials. I’m still standing there naked, my whole body shaking with fear and rage. When I see the bowl and the bag, I get so terrified I start to piss myself. I can’t help it. At least I don’t cry.
The medical stares at my groin as piss runs down my legs and forms a hot puddle on the tiles. Then he turns to L and says, “Very good. You can assist me with the Investigation.”
L holds me still while the medical gives me an injection and one of the other CSOs opens the black bag and starts to take out a row of instruments, laying them out on the desk beside the computer.
“Lie down on the bed,” L tells me.
“Go fuck yourself!” I tell her. I’m crying now.
The medical walks over and smacks me across the face so hard something clicks in my neck and my nose gushes blood. I get on the bed and lie down. The medical uses the first instrument and I don’t tell them anything. At least, I think, I’ve been caught by security while using a fake ID. The fake information will slow them down; it will take them longer to connect me back to Ma, and by tonight, Ma will know something is wrong and will be on the move. But in my heart I know that’s not true—Ma would never leave without me. Then the medical gives me another injection and uses the next instrument and I sob with pain but I still don’t tell them anything. After the third instrument, I give them my real name and address. I give them Ma’s name. I tell them about Alex and her mother. I give them the name of the smuggler at the plant who used to supply my medication and I tell them everything I know about the Book Shadow, and everything I know about Rob, including his full name, which floats into my mind and out of my mouth when the pain gets so bad.
Afterward, I sit there shaking and sobbing, so ashamed I want to die, while L punches the details into the computer, her eyes glistening with happiness. Then she picks up her mobile. “This is Corporate Security Officer L8466, authorized by Superintendent 84.”
I fade in and out, woozy from the drugs. All I can hear is L’s voice. “I need three Teams, Code 667. First address is 43 Modden Place, Zone F, 7493. Suspect’s name is Michael Fuller. Suspected smuggler. Second address is 598 Kootingal Drive, also Zone F, 7493. Suspect’s name is Jessica Meadows. Suspected facilitator. Third address is in Zone A and needs to be unlocked, it belongs to Corporation member Robert A. Hunter. Yes, a full Corporation member.”
I drag myself off the bed and my legs buckle. The two support CSOs run forward and I push against their bodies. One of them shoves me and I fall back into a chair, red and black crackers going off in my eyes. L’s voice drones on. “Yeah, I’ve got the main suspect with me. Well, send a chopper, then. You’re looking for Jessica Meadows. Western appearance. Five foot ten inches.”
My stomach heaves and I lean over and vomit. I vomit again. I pass out.
I’m woken up by her voice. “Have you got her? A goat? You’re fucking kidding me! May as well get her on animal possession as well. Did you find the Crystal? Awesome.”
•
I’m cuffed and taken out the door. Around me the usual Zone F midday crowd throngs around the Transit, busy with errands and shopping and work, oblivious to the torture that has happened in the room behind me. Ten feet away, I see another clump of CSOs and Alex, all tiny, in the middle of them. She is still wearing her hat. Beneath it, her face is bleeding and there’s a massive purple egg on her forehead. She sees me and I open my mouth to tell her to say nothing, and to do nothing, when she starts fighting them. She’s yelling, “He hasn’t done anything! Leave him alone!” They’re telling her to shut the fuck up. She breaks away and screams, “Help us! Someone!”
The commuter crowd keeps moving. I see one man look at Alex and slow down; his eyes are kind as he sees her distress, but when he notices the CSOs chasing her, he starts walking quickly away and out of sight. Help is not coming.
Alex runs toward an escalator that leads up to the food court.
All the CSOs take out their Tasers and they’re yelling at her to stop but she keeps running. They shoot their Tasers and she dodges past a group of people who are screaming and throwing themselves to the ground, some getting hit by the Tasers. And now she’s halfway up the escalator and my heart is flying up there with her and I’m sure she’s going to make it. Then the medical steps in front of me and takes his pistol out of his belt and shoots Alex in the back, and Alex tumbles down the escalator and lies crumpled at the bottom.
I take off toward her and they’re on me and I kick and punch and fight them as hard as I can, trying to get to her, and I get hit in the face and feel hot blood flushing out and the pain is unreal, and I still fight to get to Alex, and then someone pushes me and I’m on the floor and someone kicks me and someone else comes over and they kick me too and I get kicked again and again and again and again and again.
•
When I come to, I’m bouncing along in the back of a truck. I can’t see out of my right eye, my nose feels like it’s hanging off my face, and every jolt of the truck makes me want to spew. My hands are shackled tight in front of me—a chain around my waist connecting me to the wall of the truck. I look up and a CSO I haven’t seen before is sitting opposite me, his eyes half shut with sleepiness, and Officer L is on his left. She sees I’m awake, leans over and looks me full in the eyes and says, “Alright?”
My legs are free so I kick at her and miss and my right leg just wobbles in place and she laughs and picks up another syringe and plunges it into my leg, and the truck’s going faster and faster as I pass out.
I come to and vomit and there’s only black bile now, and a stinging pain in my gut. L curls her lip at the stench and then moves to the partition that separates us from the driver and starts chatting. The sleepy CSO is still slumped sideways, his eyes closed. I look out the window and through the rain see we’re on an old stone road and up ahead, lit by flood lights, looms the sixty-foot figure of the Rator. Beyond that, there’s a circular sandstone building.
We approach the Rator first. I feel so heartsick that I hope we’re heading there, where I can just give in and be burnt up, and never have to feel anything else again.
But the truck keeps going, and we approach the Circle, where all the reeducation programs take place. It’s at least thirty stories high and along each level I can see the square dots of tiny, lit windows braced by prison bars.
L bangs on the partition. “No, not General! We want the south side of the Circle, the Incubator,” she yells. “She’s a Breeder.”
“I’m not!” I scream. “Take me to General. Or to the fucking Rator!”
Officer L grins at me, and prepares another syringe. The truck veers off the main road and we’re bumping along a rockier, steeper path. I feel the sting in my arm and then blankness.
•
I come back to consciousness and take a big breath and that hurts—there’s a wracking pain in my chest. I’m lying flat on a bed with a sheet over me and I go to push away the sheet, but my wrist and ankles are strapped to the bed. I pull against the straps as hard as I can. I make the bed shake, and the sheet slides off. Under the sheet I’m naked, and there are bandages stuck all over me. My body has a medical smell.
The bed is pushed against a concrete wall in a tiny square room. The room has three concrete walls, with a clear sliding door along the fourth side, facing the interior of the building. Through the sliding door, at the center of the Incubator, I can see the concrete su
rveillance tower. Behind the tower, opposite me, are more curved rows of transparent doors—in a semicircle around the central tower. I’m in the Circle. The northern semicircle is for reeducation, and the southern is for incubation. Some of the rooms are lit up and some are dark, and as I watch, I see the shadows of people moving around their box cells, identical to mine.
To the left of me there’s a toilet with no seat and no lid, and next to that there’s a basin with a dull mirror and next to that is a pipe, high on the wall, with a hose attached to it, which I guess is supposed to be the shower. Hanging from the ceiling are rows of metal nozzles that must be fire extinguishers. There’s one outward-facing window, about the size of my hand. Everything is gray concrete: the floor, the bed, the walls, the toilet, the window frame—everything except the shower head and sprinklers, which are made of steel. And there’s a plastic table and chair in front of the bed, and an intercom speaker, I notice, just above the sliding door. Next to the intercom is a camera, and both the camera and intercom are surrounded by a protective metal cage so I can’t knock them out with my shoe or my fists, which is the first thing I want to do.
Then I remember: Alex. Ma. Cranky. The pain comes pushing up inside me and there’s the sound of screaming and it’s me, and then there are two figures in orange suits standing outside the door and the door opens and they’re on me, and then there’s a sharp pain in my arm.
•
Crystal has a short half-life, and by the time I wake up again, I’m in withdrawal. I can’t tell whether it’s night or day, or how much time has passed, but I’m nauseated and have a shocking headache.
I look back through the sliding door at the surveillance tower in the center and the lit-up cells around the periphery. There are hundreds and hundreds of cells, silhouettes moving inside them. I can see nine levels above me, and I don’t know how much higher the Circle goes, or how many levels there are below. Could be twenty. Hours pass and the lights of individual cells go on and off, off and on, like a slow signaling system I don’t understand.
I’m no longer shackled. I sit up on a thin mattress that’s resting on a high, concrete bed and feel a spike of dizziness. My throat hurts. “Hello!” I croak, and my voice bounces off the walls and echoes back to me. I don’t know if the speaker above the door records my voice. I don’t know if anyone can hear me.
The camera pans to focus on me and there’s a click of the intercom: “You have no speaking privileges. Do that again and you’ll be disciplined.”
“But there’s been a mistake,” I say, trying to stay calm. I think about the other times I’ve tried to fight a Corp decision and how important it is to stay calm, to talk to the most senior person, and to work out what exactly they want, so you can give it to them. “I need to speak to whoever’s in charge.”
Another click and the voice. “You need to stop speaking now, or you’ll be disciplined.”
I know I have to stay calm. But I start shaking, and I shout: “There’s been a serious mistake! I’m not a Breeder! I need to speak to someone in person.” My voice is high and trembling.
A click and the voice. “You need to stop speaking now, or you’ll be disciplined.”
“Yes, but . . .”
I hear a hiss and look up and see there’s a sprinkler head right above the bed and it opens and showers me with water. It’s frigid cold. It’s all over me and soaking into the sheets. Bastards.
“Could you just . . .”
Water comes down harder. I’m shaking from the cold. I stop talking. I shut my mouth.
The water shuts off.
The intercom clicks. “I’m going to leave you in that cold water for a couple of hours,” the voice says. “Then I’ll send in some towels and a change of clothes. This is part of your discipline.”
•
I hear a click and the voice says, “If you don’t take the pills, we’re going to have to use the gas. It’s up to you.”
It’s the same metallic voice as before. Is it the same person or different people talking through a computer? I’m standing at the mirror in my room. Behind me, on the table, there are ten pills in bright candy colors laid out on a white plastic plate. Hormones, probably. Medication to quiet me down.
A lot of time has passed. A week or more, maybe. The nausea and headaches are still there and, worse than that, my body is changing. Though I’ve never had a five-o’clock shadow or even stubble on my face, since I turned eleven and started Crystal, I’ve had an angular, narrow face. Now when I look in the crappy, wavy mirror stuck to the wall, I can see my face already filling out—looking soft and rounded. Worse than that—much, much worse—is that my chest is filling out too. My nipples itch and the skin around them is starting to swell. It—my body—is so, so disgusting. I want to climb out of it.
The click again, and the voice says, “If you don’t take the pills, we’re going to have to use the gas.”
“I’m not a Breeder!” I shout up to the ceiling, trying to stay calm. “You have to understand! Can you please, please get whoever is in charge here to come speak to me? My units are in credit. I’m not a Breeder!”
The click again, and the voice says, “If you don’t take the pills, we’re going to have to use the gas.”
I turn back to my bed and to the little table next to it. I walk up and choose the pill closest to the edge, the prettiest—it’s purple and blue. I place my index finger behind it and flick it onto the ground. It makes a little tapping sound as it bounces over the concrete. I feel the first flicker of joy that I’ve felt since I regained consciousness in this hellscape.
Then I go down the row and flick each pill onto the floor. They rattle around like teeth. I feel more joy.
Then another click, and the voice says, “Do you think you’re a clever person? That was not a clever thing to do.”
I hear another click and a hissing sound, and clouds of gray gas start puffing through the sprinkler heads in the ceiling. Worth it. A cloud of gas fills my head. I thrash, knocking the plate off the table, overturning the table, kicking the chair to the wall. I start to wobble and grab the side of the bed to stay upright. The door slides open and two figures in orange suits float in and I try to punch them but my arms are porridge, and then there’s a sharp pain in my arm and more fucking black.
•
The first house I remember living in was literally built into the Wall. From the outside, it just looked like a run-down old shack, but once you entered, the crappy, wooden structure made way for extra rooms that had been carved and dug into the twenty-foot-deep stone. It meant we could hide people there, from time to time.
By the time I was five years old, I could put my own mask on and climb onto the roof of the shack and then scramble up to the top of the Wall and look out into the badlands. I could see the huge Corp exploration machines on their missions, in search of viable land and safe water, which it seems they never found. I wanted more than anything to lead one of those crews someday—to go far beyond the horizon into the badlands, into the unknown. I could see myself at the helm, navigating with a compass like Ma had taught me, taking us farther into the difficult terrain—maybe someday even finding another settlement. Together, me and my crew would find a new land and build a new world. One where the earth and water were safe. But it would never happen—Westies were forbidden from being on the crews. Up there, I could also see the Corporation Protection machines, digging and building layers of additional stone-and-wire security beyond the Wall, strengthening the boundaries to prevent the Westie masses getting in. I could only see about a quarter mile into the distance, and then the thick brown clouds of dust and pollution blocked my view—the people and the land disappeared.
I used to come inside for dinner, my head full of the huge machines and the thin, brown line of the horizon.
“What’s really out there?” I asked Ma.
“The whole burned-out world,” she said.
“What’s it like?”
“Nobody knows now. Nobody can say.”
“I’ll go there one day. I’ll find out.”
Ma hit me with her tea towel. “Don’t be so silly.”
•
I wake up, strapped to my bed, with an IV plugged into the top of my wrist. The entertainment plug has been dug out—I can no longer feel its little plastic rectangle under my skin. My chip is still there. I can feel drugs being pumped into my system, making me swollen and alien. The nausea is unreal. I wriggle as hard as I can and free my right arm. Then I reach over and tug on the IV.
The click, and the voice says, “Let go of the IV, or we will have to use the gas.”
I give the IV a good yank and there’s a throbbing ache, and then I tug again and the IV flies out of my arm. There’s a satisfying spurt of blood, which sprays the wall and soaks into the white sheets.
Another click and the sprinklers hiss and I smell gas. I free my other arm and start to pull on the straps around my legs when my mind starts to numb and cloud. The orange suits stomp in, and there’s a sharp pain in my arm. One of the orange suits has a mustache; the other is a Shadow. I clock the weapons around each belt around their waists—baton, Taser, semiautomatic pistol—before all goes black.
•
I wake up and I’m back in bed with the IV stuck in my wrist, and now there are shackles around my wrists and ankles, as well as thick, fabric bands binding my torso to the bed so I can’t lift my arms. I push and pull against the restraints as hard as I can, my wrists bleeding, tears of rage burning my eyes.
The click again, and the voice says, “We need to turn your body so you don’t get bed sores. We need you to lie there quietly while we do this, or we’ll have to use the gas.”
I don’t answer. The sliding door opens and two orange suits come in. One unlocks the shackles while the other stands there with a syringe ready. The first lifts the sheet around my body and unties the bands. She doesn’t look me in the eyes. I wonder how she feels, tying and untying helpless people like me all day. Maybe she has a black box in her head, like I did when I was a Breeder runner—a place to stash away all the awful things she does. I push her away and grab the IV and tug at it, trying to tear it out. She grabs my arms and pushes me back on the bed. She’s strong and still doesn’t look at me. The other suit comes at me with the syringe, there’s a pain in my arm, and my mind goes dark.
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