by Tarah Benner
“We should tell Sawyer,” I say. “She won’t believe this.”
“You can’t tell Sawyer,” snaps Celdon, clear panic in his voice. “She’s one of them now.”
I stare at him. The three of us spent all of higher ed together, and now Celdon’s acting as though she’s a completely different person.
“One of them?” I say incredulously. “One of you, you mean. You’re tier one.”
“That’s different. I’m in Systems.”
“How is that different?”
“Health and Rehab is supposed to put ethics above all else. If Sawyer knew, she’d have to say something.”
“And you don’t care about ethics?”
“It doesn’t matter what I care about. All that matters is what you’re willing to do. Systems is about pragmatism. If that means burying this deep just so the lights come on and people get fed, I’m willing to do that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What good would it do? If we told everyone the bidding was rigged? What if we told everyone that what they did didn’t make any difference — that they had no control over their lives?”
He lowers his voice. “This is how it works. This is how it has to work.”
I shake my head, but he keeps going. It sounds as though he’s trying to convince himself, not me.
“People have to do their jobs. If they knew, the compound would collapse.”
“It’s easy for you to say!” I snarl. “They aren’t sending you out there to die.”
“It’s not just about you, Riles,” he says in a strained voice. “It’s about everybody.”
I stare at him in disbelief. I’ve never seen this side of Celdon. All he’s done for the past year is resist recruitment, and now that Systems has their hooks in him, he’s willing to fall in line as though nothing is wrong.
He takes a deep breath. “If the compounds collapsed, we’d die out. Humans would die out. We’re the last survivors.”
I shake my head, looking up at the inky patch of sky visible through the ceiling. I know I shouldn’t tell him, but I can’t hold it in anymore. “No, we’re not.”
nine
Eli
The dream always starts the same, always just as vivid. You never forget the first time you’re pushed out of those airlock doors, but you especially don’t forget the first time you force someone else out.
It’s the heat that hits you first — a blistering, dry heat that makes you think the sun is exploding, that it’s cooking you alive on the dry, cracked earth. A lifetime, a decade, or even just three weeks between deployments will make you forget how hot it can get.
I’m sweating so much I think I’m going to die. That’s when the panic hits. You’re no longer protected by thick lead-coated glass walls, and you think you feel the radiation leeching into your system.
You don’t. At least not yet.
It might take days, weeks, or years of exposure for the radiation to kill you, and even then, half the cadets die before the radiation can make them sick.
Even behind their masks, I see my own fear reflected in their faces. The airlock doors have closed. The first time you’re shoved out there, the sheer size of the compound is staggering. It’s a smooth glass box stretching up as far as you can see.
You wonder if anyone is watching in the upper tunnels. You wonder if anyone even cares.
With nowhere else to go, you start the trek across the wide expanse of Utah desert. There is no air. It’s so dry your pores are sucking dust rather than moisture as your feet stir up the cracked dirt.
I hear two pairs of feet shuffling behind me. The girl, Kara, lets out a little whimper and sniffs. I might as well leave her here, because she’s not going to make it out there beyond the cleared zone.
There’s the soft, friendly note of an interface turning on. The other kid called Juan is consulting the interactive map of the area, but it will only be useful in the cleared zone.
Once we pass the solar fields and the two-mile radius of safe, drifter-free desert, all bets are off. It’s a war zone. You’re more likely to run into a drifter because you’re not paying attention than wander twenty miles off course into the nearest red zone.
When we reach the border, I finally turn on my interface to scan for land mines. They light up like angry red boils in front of my eyes, and we navigate around them in silence.
Once Juan and Kara clear the mines, I let out a breath of relief I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
They’ve had training, I tell myself. I trained them. They know what to do.
But they’ve only had three months of training. They were supposed to have a year.
I’m on high alert now. They are, too. It’s not as though anyone can sneak up on us in the huge expanse of nothing, but a good sniper could take us out from the dunes if he had the right weapon.
Still, there’s an itch on the back of my neck that has nothing to do with the two terrified kids trailing behind me. Their steady breathing tells me they’ve recovered from the initial shock of the Fringe and have begun to calm down, but that’s a mistake.
The danger only increases the farther you get from the compound.
We reach the first abandoned town after twenty minutes of unnerving silence. It was a shitty place before Death Storm — one of those pit-stop towns you think people can’t possibly live in — but now it looks like a ghost town.
I jerk my head over my shoulder to tell them to look alive. Towns are always the most dangerous, which is why I hate patrolling them. But we can’t allow settlements to take hold this close to the cleared zone.
When drifters gather, they get greedy. They get aggressive. The last surge into the cleared zone happened years ago, and Recon was cleaning up body parts around the perimeter for weeks.
We make our way in silence from one building to another. I secretly hope we don’t find any squatters, because I don’t want to traumatize these kids any more than I have to. As it is, they’ll probably need a few days of sedation and weeks of psychotherapy before they’re fit enough for active duty.
I can hear Kara’s ragged breathing again. I’m pretty sure she’s just dehydrated, but then she touches my arm, and I almost jump out of my skin.
I turn quickly enough to catch a flash of red near a scuzzy old restaurant with a faded yellow sign. That’s not good. I signal Juan to approach quietly, and his round face goes pale. He’s not checking his interface anymore.
We flatten ourselves against the nearest building — a Laundromat — and inch toward the restaurant. We haven’t even reached the corner when I hear the yell.
A bullet whizzes past my face.
They’re shooting at us. I can’t tell how many.
I don’t even bother to check if the coast is clear. I grab the two cadets and yank them around the corner out of the line of fire. They’re completely numb with shock.
I hunker down behind a rusted-out car and search desperately for the source of the shots. Now I know the other guy was just bait. They knew we were here all along.
Juan is shifting around behind me, trying to line up his shot, but he knocks over a trashcan, and a volley of gunshots follows the source of the noise.
I see two of them hiding behind another parked car and shoot at their feet. One of them yells out and stumbles to the side, and I get a clear shot at his head.
The other one is well hidden, but he’s too cowardly to pursue us knowing he’s outnumbered.
“Go!” I croak, and Juan and Kara take off between the buildings. Juan flies out first, and a shot echoes through the alley. He yelps and falls backward, and everything slows down.
I yank Kara behind me and aim at the man in the red shirt who shot Juan. He’s got a dusty black bandana wrapped around his head, and his brown skin is so filthy he practically blends in with the desert. I hit him in the head.
Juan has collapsed on the ground, and I take the chance of darting out into the road to get him.
As soon as I lo
ok down at him, I know it’s too late. There’s a gaping, bloody wound in his chest, and he’s sweating and whimpering as he bleeds out. I kneel down beside him and yank off his mask.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, trying to keep my voice steady as I apply pressure to the wound.
“It hurts,” he blubbers. “Can you take the bullet out?”
“It wouldn’t matter.”
I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t even know why I’m trying to stop the bleeding. It’s just causing him pain in his last few minutes on earth.
He nods a little, and I see tears in his soft brown eyes.
“It’s going to be quick,” I murmur.
“How quick?”
“I . . . don’t know. A couple minutes at most.”
I glance up the street, but the other man has disappeared. We don’t have much time.
“I’m s-sorry,” Juan whimpers.
I shake my head. “Don’t be.” I want to make a joke — tell him I got shot my first time out, too, but that doesn’t seem like the right thing to say.
“Tell my dad I’m sorry.”
I nod, though I don’t know Juan well enough to know what he’s apologizing for.
Then he dies. There’s no warning. I don’t even have time to think of what else I should tell him.
What a failure. I killed my first recruit, and I didn’t even have the decency to give him a proper sendoff.
I hear a gurgle behind me and turn. Kara’s hunkered down against a dented trashcan, hugging herself and sobbing like a moron. What is she thinking? We’re in a war zone.
I close Juan’s eyes with my fingers — something I’ve never had to do before — and jerk my head at her to tell her to follow me.
I don’t even bother to check the rest of the buildings. I’m pretty sure those men were the only squatters here, and even if there were more, I don’t think I’d be able to get us out alive with Kara the way she is. Her sobs have escalated to full-body spasms so violent I’m surprised she’s still walking.
“You’ll be okay,” I say to her. My voice sounds oddly distant coming through the mask. “You’re fine.”
I don’t know what I’m saying. I keep turning around to check on her, feeling really scared for some reason.
I get her out of the town, but she isn’t growing quiet. If anything, she’s getting worse. I turn to face her and see she’s covered in blood. But it isn’t Juan’s blood. She never touched him.
It’s her own blood — a slow leak from her abdomen.
“You’re hit,” I say. My voice sounds very far away.
Her glassy eyes focus on me, but they aren’t pale blue as Kara’s were. They’re stormy gray.
I don’t see dirty-blond hair rippling in the desert wind. It’s dark and shiny, and it’s Harper who’s shot — Harper who’s folding in on herself over the dry, cracked earth.
This can’t be happening. I can’t lose another one.
I stumble toward her, but I hit a wall. It’s six inches of lead-coated glass, and she’s dying on the other side.
She pulls her hands away from her uniform, and they’re wet and shiny with blood.
I gasp and then jerk awake, sitting bolt upright.
I’m covered in cold sweat, and the covers are twisted around my legs like a straightjacket. I rest my head in my hands, trying to catch my breath as my heart rate returns to normal.
Get a grip, I tell myself. That’s not what happened.
You’d think after having that dream a hundred times, it wouldn’t bother me as much, but you’d be wrong. It doesn’t even make sense. Kara wasn’t there the day Juan was killed. That happened weeks later. Back-to-back missions — back-to-back failures.
What’s worse, my brain has added another sick layer of torture: Kara turning into Harper.
I know it doesn’t mean anything because I don’t believe in premonitions, but I can’t shake the gnawing dread. These cadets aren’t as soft as Juan and Kara were, but it doesn’t matter. The Fringe will take them anyway.
When I lie back on my pillows, I don’t see their faces anymore. Harper’s face is superimposed against my eyelids, staring up at me in horror with those gray eyes. I pushed her too far today. She’ll never listen to me now.
Harper doesn’t fear me; she hates me, and she should. She just doesn’t know why.
ten
Harper
I wake up at oh-six hundred to the deafening rumble of the approaching train. A small earthquake rattles my flimsy compartment walls and nearly shakes me out of my bunk.
I squeeze my eyes shut. I have this horrible, sick feeling brewing in the pit of my stomach. It reminds me of mornings when I’ve woken up after getting completely wasted and wondered what I did the night before.
Unfortunately, I remember everything.
Part of me wishes Celdon would never have shown me what he had. The other part — egomaniac Harper — is relieved that I didn’t actually fail my VocAps test.
Then there’s the fact that I hit Eli in the face yesterday. He deserved it, but I have no idea how he’ll act today.
How did my life get so messed up in a matter of days?
As I examine the ugly bruise around my neck, I think about the fact that my window of opportunity to leave the compound has closed for good. I could have gone to another compound in hopes of a better bid, but leaving would have felt like the ultimate failure. And with a forty-six, I’d most likely end up in ExCon and spend the rest of my twenties repairing the compound and maintaining the solar fields.
A loud banging on my door shakes me out of my moment of self-pity.
“Harvard!” yells a familiar voice. “Get out here!”
I groan loudly enough for him to hear and take my time answering the door.
Eli is leaning against my doorframe, his crisp gray uniform straining against his well-muscled shoulders. When I meet his gaze, my jaw drops, and I take an automatic step back.
He’s sporting a huge bruise on his jaw and one hell of a black eye. I know he didn’t get that from me.
“What happened to you?” I blurt out.
He fixes me with a sharp gaze. “I walked into a door.”
I raise an eyebrow, wondering who in the compound could get the jump on Eli. I glance behind him and am surprised to see a very unhappy Bear. His shoulders are sagged in defeat, and there are dark purplish shadows rimming his eyes. He looks as though he hasn’t slept since Bid Day.
“You going to hit me again, Harvard?” asks Eli, a smirk cracking the sharp lines of his face.
“No, sir,” I groan.
His smile widens — a startling contrast to all the bruises — and I’m surprised how much it adds to his looks. “Good. There’s only so much my face can take.”
There’s a brief, awkward pause, and Bear lets out a sigh that seems to deflate his oversized body.
“I have to say . . . I thought you’d take the ticket out of here.”
I shake my head. I can’t bring myself to talk to him about it.
“Well . . . since you’re still here, training starts now.”
“You said it starts at oh-eight —”
“I changed my mind. We’re getting an early start. Now move it!”
I groan again and gather my hair into a ponytail. When I pull the dark strands off my neck, Eli’s eyes land on my bruise. His mouth hardens into a thin line, but he doesn’t say anything — just clears his throat and takes off at a jog.
He pounds on Lenny’s door next, and she takes several minutes to answer. When she finally stumbles out into the tunnel, her bright curls are tumbling out of a disheveled braid, and her face is pale under all those freckles.
She glares at Eli and falls in behind me, muttering under her breath about the odds of getting away with murdering your commanding officer.
Eli bangs on two more doors, and when the other cadets emerge, he takes off down the tunnel again. My feet scuff along behind him until I realize he’s taking us up the stairs.
Len
ny lets out a note of exasperation and stops dead. Eli bounds up the steps two at a time without looking back. I follow slowly, still in a haze of sleep, and I hear Bear whimper a little as he pulls his weight forward to regain momentum.
The spiky-haired kid is surprisingly fast, considering he just woke up. His long spidery legs clear the first set of stairs before Lenny is halfway up, and the petite blond girl huffs along behind her with a determined look on her face.
Eli leads us around the ground level and up several more flights of stairs.
There’s an angry stitch in my side, but I ignore it and focus on moving my feet. Spiky Hair is keeping a good pace drafting just behind Eli, and I manage to stay a few yards behind them, my eyes fixed on Eli’s shoulder blades. The other three quickly fall behind.
By the time we reach the mid-levels, the tunnels are bustling with EnComm merchants heading to their shops in the commissary. They avoid eye contact as we jog past. Tier-two workers don’t regard us with open distain the way Systems and Information do; they look at us as though they dodged a bullet.
Around the commissary, news bulletins snake along the walls in bright plasma ribbons, throwing flashes of neon light off the spotless store windows. The results of Bid Day are all over the news, along with the names of tier-three recruits who took the train to another compound.
Staring up into their enlarged digitized faces, I wonder how many of the recruits who left received poor bids because of some genetic deficiency. Two hundred miles away in the nearest compound, there’s talk of closing admission to outside recruits due to overcrowding.
We run a loop around the tunnels and up three levels. Eli has picked up speed, and I’m struggling to keep pace. My legs feel as though they’re made of lead, and I’m gasping for air. Lenny, Bear, and the blonde are nowhere in sight.
Eli leads us around the narrow tunnel skirting one of the glass-enclosed ag labs, where hundreds of plants stretch toward the artificial light in their hydroponic tanks — a scenic route by compound standards.