Dark Halo (An Angel Eyes Novel)
Page 25
I am an anomaly.
So was Asta. But I didn’t know it until that day. She always did what she was told, and nothing in her big black eyes made her appear to be having thoughts to the contrary. She was training to be our pod Historian, so she was always documenting what we were doing and what we were discovering. Her fingers could fly over her learning pad faster than any I’d ever seen. But that day, when we were running, she stopped. Right in the center of the track. I was so shocked that I ran right into her back, knocking her to the ground.
“I apologize.” I reached for her hand, but when she looked up at me, I saw a yellowish substance coming from her nose. I had never seen anything like it. Her eyes were red and she was laboring to breathe—all of this was quite unusual. I pulled my hand back and called for the Monitor to come over and help Asta.
But the Monitor didn’t help her. She looked down into Asta’s face and her eyes grew large. She pressed the panel on her wrist pad. “Please send a team to Pod C. We need a removal.”
The Monitor motioned for me to finish my laps. No one else had stopped to see what happened. The rest of my pod mates simply ran closer to the edge of the track, eyes forward, completing the circuit.
I stood and tried to run, but I did not want to run. I wanted to stay here, to help Asta. She looked . . . I do not know how to describe it. But whatever it was made my heart feel heavy.
Berk ran up beside me. “You will never beat me.” His grin shook me from my thoughts. I was determined to beat Berk. He always thought he was faster, but I knew I could outrun him. So I picked up my pace. Berk did the same.
We were on our fifth lap when I saw a floating white platform with four Medical Specialists land beside Asta on the grass inside the track. “Where will they take her?”
“I don’t know.ȁ
D; Berk slowed a little. He was watching the medics lift Asta onto the platform, then wrap her in some sort of covering. “Maybe take her to the Scientists. They will help her.”
Berk was going to be a Scientist. One of the Scientists State. That made him different—but in a good way. The Monitors never corrected him, and he was allowed to study any subject that interested him during the time the rest of us worked on improving knowledge in our specialty areas.
I didn’t say anything else, but the image of Asta being taken away—removed—stayed with me. And somehow I didn’t think she was going to be helped. The look on the Monitor’s face was not the look she gets when one of us falls and scrapes a knee on the track. It was the look she gets when we do something we shouldn’t. But Asta hadn’t done anything wrong. She just had something wrong next to Canaan’s.s 94? inside her.
Like mwho govern the