Something else caught her attention, and her mouth dropped open as she glanced to the right. Three clear walls had been set up in the corner of the room, one with a door, and inside were two more taps. Excitement filled her heart; for a moment, she wondered if she was dreaming.
Amber ran back out into the room and grabbed the sleep clothes out of the drawer, then she quickly shed her filthy clothing. Shivering, she stepped towards the shower and reached inside, fumbling with the taps for a moment before finally managing to turn them on. Steam rushed out of the ceiling above her as a cascade of water began pouring down, and she gasped with shock as it made contact with her skin. A loud beep sounded and a ticking noise began—the timer Brian had told her about—but she barely noticed, too overwhelmed by the feeling of the beads of water that stripped away the years of dirt layered on her skin.
A brown bar was sitting in an alcove in one of the walls, and she reached for it, giggling to herself as bubbles formed on its surface. She ran it over her skin, watching as the puddle beneath her feet bloomed with the color of red dirt before disappearing down the drain in the floor.
The beep sounded again, signaling that her time was almost up, and she quickly rinsed her hair before resting her hands on the wall and closing her eyes under the water. It couldn’t be a dream, she had never once imagined anything like this.
Her heart sank as Ayn’s words echoed in her mind.
“Everything that’s happened to me since I met you has been impossible, I never would have dared to dream that I would be talking to a keeper right now…”
The water slowed and turned off a moment later; Amber climbed out, her spirit heavy as she began to get dressed. A knock sounded at the door as she dried her hair, and she stepped out of the bathroom to answer it.
“Good morning!” a woman greeted her, a small tray in her hands. “I have your breakfast. Leave the dishes outside your door when you’re finished.”
“Thank you,” Amber said, taking the tray and closing the door.
She pulled the chair out from the desk and sat down, eyeing the two covered plates on the tray. They smelled strange, and she lifted the first cover, peeking underneath it.
A flat, dark green cake was in the center of the plate, a shade of color Amber had never seen before. She poked it with her finger; it was spongey and smelled like salt, but not quite like the salt from the mine. She picked it up and cautiously took a bite. It was bittersweet but good, and she quickly finished the whole thing before moving on to the second plate.
Her stomach turned the moment she lifted the cover, instantly recognizing what it was. This meat looked different than what she was used to eating―these pieces were soft and a bit bigger than the leathery, sun-dried strips from the settlement. She grimaced; she hadn’t eaten meat since before Ayn’s death, and now, she found herself contemplating whether or not she could get away with leaving it on the tray. She was unfamiliar with the rules of this place, though, and she didn’t know what would happen if she broke them.
Holding her breath, she quickly choked down what she had been given. Her stomach convulsed with disgust the moment she swallowed, and she bolted for the bathroom, turning the water on in the sink and putting her head under the tap. It made her sick to think that her parents were eating Ayn’s harvest back home, and she felt like screaming as she set the tray outside her door.
Shuddering, Amber lay down on her bed and pulled the covers up over her. Despite how tired she was, it took a long time for her to fall asleep.
†‡†
CHAPTER TWO
Ayn focused on his heartbeat, trying to ignore everything except each steady, rhythmic pulse as yet another biopsy needle was jabbed deep between his toes. This was the eighth one that had been taken in as many hours, and he knew the researcher, Dr. Monica Andreas, didn’t need any more samples. She was testing him, intentionally targeting sites that would inflict the most pain just so she could read the neural scan of his brain’s response.
She had been pumping him full of supplements since the moment he had been brought to the special project lab two weeks ago, but what she still hadn’t realized was that the compounds she was administering were skewing the data. It should have been obvious: with each dose he was given, the more grainy and distorted the scan images became. Andreas seemed too flustered to notice, though, which would have been amusing to watch if not for how agonizing each stab of her needle was.
“Dammit!” Andreas breathed, squinting as she studied the screen in front of her. She withdrew the needle and tossed it on a tray, then she stepped over to her desk. She bent down to scribble a quick note, and out of the corner of his eye, Ayn saw Noah Myers’ curious face appear around the edge of the doorway of the lab’s side office.
“Any progress?” the lab assistant called as Andreas returned to Ayn’s side. She grabbed his hand and drew a small mark on the tip of his finger, and a flash of nervousness shot through him. This one was definitely going to hurt.
“Doctor?”
Noah stepped into the main lab and walked over to join Andreas, watching as she picked up another needle. Her eyes flashed as she glanced up at him.
“What do you think?” she snapped. “Do you think I’d still be doing this if I was making any progress?”
He pursed his lips.
“Trying a new location, I see.”
Andreas scoffed mockingly.
“Thank you, Noah. I can always count on you to state the obvious.”
White-hot fire surged through Ayn’s hand as the needle pierced his skin, and his stomach turned as he felt the sharp tip scrape against bone.
Andreas gasped.
“There! That flash of color, right in the parietal lobe!”
She left the needle in place, reaching forward to tap the playback option on her monitor.
“I didn’t see anything,” Noah told her. “Are you sure?”
She ignored him, pausing the replay and zooming in, but when she tapped the command to restart the playback, an error message appeared.
No data to display.
“Dammit! It’s just not working!”
Noah frowned.
“What exactly are you looking at?”
“There was a reading!” Andreas answered, pointing at the screen. “Just for a second, but it was right there!”
“It was nothing,” he shrugged. “Probably just the machine.”
“It was the initial contact! It happened the exact moment I stabbed the ration with the damn needle!”
Noah reached out and tried selecting the readout just as she had, only to be greeted by the same error message.
“It’s not working.”
“Really?” Andreas gasped sarcastically, lifting her hand to her mouth in mock surprise. “You think?”
“It has to be a problem with the machine, doctor. Perhaps one of the display lights is malfunctioning.”
She clenched her fists.
“Or this worthless equipment is too outdated to isolate anything less than a second, Mr. Meyers.”
Noah gave her a long look.
“You really think the ration’s pain response is lasting less than a second? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s registering something that only lasts that long! I saw it!”
“This machine isn’t designed for measuring pain, Dr. Andreas, you know that. Besides, I didn’t see anything―”
“You may be blind, but I’m not! I saw a reaction!”
He raised a brow.
“Well, whatever you saw, I still think it’s just the machine. You said it yourself, it’s outdated―”
“I’m telling you, Noah, the supplements aren’t working. The ration is feeling pain despite the dose―”
“Or everything is working perfectly and you’re just too exhausted to see it,” he countered, his voice tinged with pity. “This ration has been five units over the normal supplement dose for almost three days now, it can�
��t feel a thing. We should call someone to check the equipment display―”
“Call who?” Andreas demanded, ripping the needle out of Ayn’s finger. “No one here has any clue how these things work! They can’t even figure out how to reconnect the damn intercoms, Noah, what makes you think they would know the first thing about my equipment?”
Ayn’s hand throbbed with each beat of his heart, and he could feel blood slowly dripping from his fingertip as he listened to the conversation. He knew all about the problems with the lab equipment, he had learned it during his time in the development lab prior to being assigned to Amber.
For all of the resource center’s medical and scientific advancements, they were still limited by the functional life of the equipment they used. The researchers, though brilliant when it came to the application of science, were practically clueless in regards to the actual design behind it. Once a piece of equipment died, it was lost forever, forged by technology that had been abandoned when the world shifted its focus from innovation to the food and water crisis so many years before. Some things were within the realm of possibility to fix, but others, like the complex lab equipment, required an impossible level of advanced engineering to repair once broken.
“It could be something simple,” Noah said. “We should at least ask someone from manufacturing to come―”
“For the last goddamn time, there’s nothing wrong with the machine!” Andreas shouted, snapping her gloves as she pulled them off. “It’s not a glitch!”
He sighed heavily.
“I know you want to see David’s work proven, doctor, but it’s impossible. The theories he presented in Project Nine were baseless…”
The lab assistant’s voice abruptly trailed off, and Ayn stole a glance at the two of them. Andreas was glaring at Noah with a dangerous gleam in her eyes, almost as if daring him to continue, and Noah’s face went white as he quickly looked away.
“Would you like me to set out another biopsy tray, doctor?” he managed to ask, gulping nervously.
Ayn concentrated on the screen to his right, trying to read the time. It was getting late in the day, surely Andreas would be giving up soon. Relief filled his heart when she shook her head.
“I’m done,” she huffed. “Just put it back in ration storage, I’ll pick things up tomorrow. I need to talk to Executive Smith before I go any further, I’m going to need him to approve more time on the power net.”
Ayn stared straight ahead, trying to keep from shivering as Noah lowered the platform he was strapped to and began unhooking the neural probes from his shaved head. The dose of supplements he had been given was supposed to be strong enough to numb his naked body to the cold, and he forced his muscles to relax as a gust of air began blowing from a vent on the ceiling.
Noah’s face was grim as he wrapped the wire leads around a plastic card and tucked them away.
“Are you sure it’s wise to talk to Smith?” he asked slowly, his voice tinged with caution. “The board is already suspicious of how often you speak with him, perhaps it would be better to keep a low profile―”
“I’m fully aware of my standing with the board,” Andreas snapped, narrowing her eyes as she clicked to print the test results. “I haven’t forgotten, believe me.”
Ayn could hear Noah scoff under his breath, but the man’s expression remained calm.
“I just think it’s a risk you may not want to take. Smith is going to want to know what you’re working on, and you’re not supposed to discuss those details with him.”
“I’ve been dealing with Smith since before you left incubation, Noah, I know exactly what I can and cannot say. I won’t make any progress if I can’t have the entire equipment array running at the same time.”
Noah rolled his eyes.
“He’s never going to agree to the amount of power you need for that! The full array draws almost as much as four incubation chambers!”
“He doesn’t have a choice. I have to get to the bottom of this.”
“The bottom of what, exactly?” Noah asked, eyeing her as he kicked the wheels down from underneath the platform. “There’s no mystery to solve, doctor. Everyone knows that the supplements don’t render the rations completely brain dead, how else would they function? Your scans prove nothing.”
“This much brain activity―”
“Proves nothing,” he repeated. “Every ration has some level of activity.”
“Not to this extent,” Andreas shot back, reaching for the printouts, and Ayn could see her out of the corner of his eye as she began studying the images on the narrow, plastic sheet. “The expected limits are obviously exceeded.”
“The expected limits vary depending on each specimen, but the ration’s current behavior is typical. It isn’t responding to stimuli despite your efforts, and the imaging shows very little out of the ordinary aside from a single odd response when the ration saw the Ordell girl earlier.”
“And that’s why I need extra power for my lab,” she replied. “I’ll have enough evidence once I can prove that the ration is registering pain despite the dose.”
“Again, you can’t tell Smith anything about that,” Noah said. “You could go to the board, but even if you were in good standing with them, they aren’t going to agree, either―you have absolutely no evidence to support your theory or to justify the amount of power you’re asking for. You’re grasping at straws, you’ve focused on the one neural reaction that might prove your hypothesis but you have no reason to actually suspect that the ration is feeling pain.”
Andreas glared over the top of the page she was holding.
“I’m not grasping at straws, Mr. Meyers. The pain control compound is supposed to inhibit brain function, and logic dictates that if the compound isn’t working to inhibit that function, it likely isn’t working to prevent pain, either. Pain response happens to be the easiest function to measure―I believe the ration is also capable of reasoning and basic problem-solving, but there isn’t exactly a machine to test for those, now, is there?”
Noah’s eyes bulged incredulously.
“Are you crazy? It’s a ration!”
“And it was aware enough to seek help for its keeper, was it not?” Andreas retorted. She waved the printouts in his face. “This proves that there was a definite emotional response when Ordell was brought in this morning. Even a simple lab assistant should know that a reaction this strong should have been impossible at these levels.”
“I agree that it’s an anomaly,” Noah conceded. “But nothing more.
She scowled at him.
“Why does it seem like you’re trying to undermine everything I’m saying?”
“I’m not, doctor, believe me,” he quickly reassured her. “I’m just trying to present you with the same arguments the board would give if you brought your request to them.”
“That’s why I’m going to Smith instead, or have you not been paying attention?”
Noah began pushing the platform on its cart towards the door.
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be seen talking to Smith, especially with everything that happened with David—um, Project Nine. You should do a little more research first and go to the board, not Smith.”
Andreas rolled her eyes.
“Let me explain this in terms that someone of your intelligence level can understand—I need evidence to show the board, right? I can’t get that evidence without running the full system, and I can’t run the full system without extra time on the power net. Smith is my only option, if I go to the board before I have that evidence, they’re going to order resolution of the damn project!”
Ayn’s heart cringed. Resolution―the lab’s term for shutting down open projects―also meant ending the lives of the test subjects involved. He was all too familiar with facing that risk; he had been the primary test subject for Project Nine prior to his assignment to Amber, which had almost ended with the exact same outcome. He had been luc
ky that his assignment had been ordered instead, but that was before. There was no chance of being assigned a second time, not after what had happened back at the settlement.
“Whatever you say, doctor,” Noah answered. “That’s just my opinion, but you’re the researcher.”
“Yes, I am,” Andreas called angrily as he stepped out into the hallway. “If I wanted the opinion of some idiot lab assistant, I would ask for it!”
Noah didn’t answer, rolling his eyes as the doors closed behind him. He began grumbling under his breath, but Ayn ignored him, counting the lights that flashed by above him as he was pushed down the corridor that led away from the main labs. He had memorized them so long ago―fourteen, then a left turn, then eight more until the ramp that led down to lab ration storage. Bitterness rose up in his stomach. He had thought he would never have to count them again, yet here he was.
He clenched his teeth as he replayed the exchange between Andreas and Noah in his mind. He had first encountered Andreas during Project Nine; she had been in a relationship with the lead researcher, Dr. David Sipp, and she had made frequent appearances in the development lab throughout the course of the project. The theories she was now pursuing were almost identical to those presented during Project Nine, and Ayn knew that she wasn’t going to give up. She was too emotionally invested in the outcome.
David had started the project almost a year and a half ago, and Ayn had been the primary test subject. David had begun to suspect the supplement resistance defect only weeks into the study, and about six months ago, he had actually proven the defect’s existence and cause. He was convinced that the ration program couldn’t continue as a result, but before he could present his findings to the board, his data had been intentionally destroyed.
Without proof of the defect, David had been accused of manufacturing evidence to put an end to the ration program, and Andreas had been named as a co-conspirator. The board of scientists within the facility had complete oversight of the researchers, and they had brought both David and Andreas up on charges. She had found some way to circumvent policy in an attempt to save her own life, which had led to her betraying David.
CENTER 82 (RATION) Page 3