Unique

by Starr Z Davies

  Dr. Lydia meets my gaze as we pass her at a bed, and she nods.

  Dr. Cass will suffer for everything she’s done. I don’t know how yet, but I will stop her.

  5

  Miller and I step into the hallway and nearly collide with a girl our age I definitely don’t recognize. Sho stops at her side, and a smile splits his round face.

  “Man am I relieved to see you,” Sho says. “I tried Locating you a couple times but didn’t have much luck. Worried me a little, if I’m being honest. But Lily reassured me that you were fine.”

  He doesn’t need to explain for me to understand what he means by Locate. Sho can use his Echolocation to find people who are close to him. He did it in the first Survival test at Paragon.

  “Lily?” I ask.

  “Sorry.” Sho nudges almost playfully at the girl beside him. “This is Lily. She’s been here for a couple months now.”

  Lily’s smile splits her round, alabaster face, making the corners of her eyes scrunch up. She holds out her hand. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you from Sho. It’s great to finally meet the man behind the legend.”

  I scoff, “Legend. Clearly, he’s been telling lies.”

  Lily’s pretty, in a simple way. Her dark eyes have the same almond shape as Sho’s, and her black hair is thin, straight, and shiny. “Maybe,” she teases.

  I shake her hand, and the moment our hands touch her eyes adopt a half-glazed look. Suddenly, she jerks her hand out of mine and wipes it against her shirt. What just happened? It reminds me a little of when Michael first touched me at Paragon, and it nearly sent him into shock. But now Michael is gone. Forrest took him away and I can only assume Michael was injected with an experimental serum. More than likely, he didn’t survive.

  “Sorry,” she mutters, wiping tears from her eyes before they have a chance to fall. “Willow asked me to see you to your quarters.”

  “And I couldn’t resist tagging along,” Sho adds.

  Miller grumbles something I can’t quite decipher.

  Lily leads the way through The Shield.

  “Have you seen any of the others?” I ask as Miller and I follow the two of them.

  “Sure. Boyd has taken a liking to the greenhouse. He spends most of his time there. Enid pops in for meals but not much else.” Sho scrubs a hand through his spikey black hair. “Leo…well, he mostly keeps to himself.”

  I frown. Leo and Mo were best friends since year two of school, but Mo died during our escape. It can’t have been easy for Leo to deal with losing his best friend. I know it isn’t for me. Bianca and Celeste’s deaths weigh heavy on me.

  A group of children races past on their way out of the structure back into the main tunnels, laughing and squealing in delight.

  “There was a girl from Rosie’s group,” Sho says. “She was out before me. We talked briefly, but she said something about being recruited for some top-secret mission. I haven’t seen her since.”

  “When was that?” I ask, but it isn’t the question my mind is stuck on. Top-secret missions… What is the Protectorate doing? Are they using us as fodder for their purposes?

  Sho scratches at his week-old stubble. “Um, two days ago, I think?”

  “The security process seems worse than it really is,” Lily says. Her voice is just as small as she is. “I went through it. We all did.”

  The glare I shoot at her must be something bad because she shifts a little closer to Sho.

  “It’s really not bad here, Ugene,” Sho says.

  I can’t help but wonder: Is he the spy? Making friends with someone in the Protectorate so quickly does make him appear suspicious.

  “The people are nice,” Sho says. “The food is better than I would have expected, and they don’t make us throw ourselves into tests every day.”

  “No, instead they lock us in cells without any contact for days,” I say tersely. “And then recruit us for top-secret missions that are who-knows how dangerous. It feels like a different sort of prison.”

  “This isn’t a prison.” Sho waves a hand around. “You’re free to go wherever you want. Our rooms don’t lock us in every night. No one is out to get anyone else. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want.”

  “Sounds peachy,” Miller says, his tone weaker but reflecting my own feelings.

  “When’s the last time any of you were outside?” I ask.

  Sho falls silent. Lily’s lips compress as we enter a new tunnel.

  I just nod. As I expected. No one has been outside.

  Rectangular doorways appear in perfect symmetry along the new tunnel, each door roughly every ten feet. I peer through an open doorway as we pass, where a table and chairs wait with personal items, plates, and food.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  “Willow says before Atmos destroyed the world, this was an old military base, abandoned even then,” Lily says. “We transformed the space into living quarters. Or, at least, the founders of The Shield did.”

  The tunnel opens into a massive underground silo. Steel bridges crisscross from one side to the other; some lead to ascending and descending staircases. All along the walls, I see level after level of living quarters. People walk across the bridges much like anyone else would walk the streets in the city. This is just…life.

  “And this place is safe?” I ask. “I mean, I thought these old places were bursting with radioactive contamination.”

  Lily smirks. “And where did you hear that?”

  School history lessons sanctioned by the Directorate. Another lie. Just how dangerous is the world outside Elpis? Is it dangerous at all?

  And moreover, if a place like The Shield can exist, are there others out there as well, somewhere beyond the Deadlands in the world we all assumed was beyond repair?

  Lily strides along the bridge lining the outer rim of the silo as she shows me to my new living quarters. We stop outside my new door.

  “Get yourself cleaned up and settled,” Lily says. “We left a map so you can find your way to the common room for food. The bag you had on you when we brought you in should be in your quarters.”

  Miller pulls away and lumbers into the quarters, but I linger outside the doorway.

  “Wait. Lily, right? How long have you been here?”

  “Two months.” Lily stands taller, as if proud of this accomplishment.

  “Yeah, get this,” Sho interrupts, stuffing his hands into his denim pockets, “the Directorate isn’t putting people who can’t pay the Consumption Tax in prison like they claimed they would. Lily’s parents paid her back tax, but when she started to fall behind again, the Directorate sent her out of Elpis with a pack of supplies and said, ‘Good luck.’”

  My back stiffens. “What?”

  “Too many people in jail for back tax, they told me,” Lily says. She glances around the silo. “A lot of people here were either hunted by the Directorate for Paragon’s new research initiative or turned out of the city altogether. It’s all very hush-hush. The public has no knowledge that any of this is happening. Best guess is that the Directorate made a promise to stop regression before Elpis buckles, but when they couldn’t get a solution fast enough, they just started kicking people out. Mostly repeat offenders.”

  “So, what happens to the people they kick out?” I ask, but I already know the answer.

  Lily leans forward like she’s sharing juicy gossip. “The Protectorate scoops up people who are sent out of the city and brings them here for protection. They found me in a dried-up ravine in the Deadlands. My supplies were gone, and I was in really rough shape. I would have died if the Protectorate hadn’t saved me.”

  I find it hard to believe, hard to accept after the way we were treated upon arrival, but so many people here seem happy. Maybe this is just false hope that this place really could offer a solution.

  “If you ask around, everyone will share their story. Most of us had a similar experience. Either the Directorate gave us a pack and said good luck or Paragon targeted us for resea
rch, and we were lucky enough to end up here instead. I’ve heard about what happens there. I know you’ve all had it far worse.” Lily’s voice takes on reverence as she meets my gaze. “Sho told me what happened in Paragon.”

  Who wouldn’t be eager to work for the people who saved them from certain death? Me. If it makes me ungrateful, I don’t care. I’m hardly ready to throw my faith at another group before I know what’s really going on.

  “What do they do on their missions?” I ask.

  Lily shakes her head. “I really can’t say. I assume some of the missions are rescue operations like when they found me. Other than that, I don’t know anything more than you. Anyway, it’s late. You should get rest. We will see you in the morning.”

  But the Protectorate has a purpose. Why are they recruiting our people for these missions? Just how dangerous are they? And what is this group up to? They can’t just be happy living in a hole in the ground. Something more must be going on here.

  6

  The first thing I do in my new living quarters is inspect the door. A thick steel frame encases the wide rectangular space. The door is currently open, and, as I examine it closer, I can see the steel door within it, which means there are controls somewhere.

  Outside the door, a scanner pad is embedded in the wall. It’s bigger than my hand, so I press my palm flat against it. The door slides out of the wall and closes. It’s straight-up like something out of those old sci-fi movies, something I would expect to see on an old-school spaceship. A window on one of the doors lets me see into the living quarters.

  I put my hand to the pad again and the door slides back open. If it’s connected to my handprint or biosignature somehow, that means the Protectorate scanned me while I was unconscious, because it didn’t happen when I was awake. The very idea makes me uneasy.

  The quarters themselves are basic but functional. I step through to inspect them. Just inside the main doorway is another hand scanner with buttons above it. On closer examination, I notice the buttons lock the door and filter the window so no one can see inside. Everything in here is ancient tech that’s been upgraded to suit the Protectorate’s purposes, but how did they find this place?

  To one side of the door, a bed is built into the steel frame of the wall with a couple of small shelves in the crevice and drawers under the bed. Miller dumped my dad’s military bag on the floor beside the bed, where he currently lies with his back to me. Did the Protectorate inspect the contents of the bag? Did they take something? I have hardly had a chance to look through it myself, so I wouldn’t know if something was missing.

  The only furnishings besides the bed are shelves built into the walls, as well as built-in drawers for clothing storage, and a rusting metal table with two mismatched chairs. On the table, a couple of composition notebooks, just like the ones I used at Paragon. I step closer and see a pen and a map of The Shield on top of the notebooks. I only give the map a cursory glance before continuing my assessment of the room.

  A door in the back wall has me curious, and I pull it open to find a toilet, sink, and narrow shower within the cramped space.

  In the small mirror over the sink, a reflection of a young man with dark skin and angry eyes stares back at me. I hardly recognize myself. Scrubbing a hand over my mess of thickening hair and along the week-long growth of facial hair, I search for a razor or something else that will help me take care of the problem. A basic shaving kit with a Never-Cut blade and shaving cream sits on the shelf of the medicine cabinet hidden in the mirror. I set to work, starting with the facial hair, then moving on to my hair, using the scissors in the kit to trim the black curls on the top and the razor to smooth out the sides and back.

  My reflection feels more like me, but the stench of my dirty clothes and unwashed body suddenly becomes overwhelming. I peel everything off and slide into the narrow shower.

  Once I’m cleaned and dried, I go to the bag Mom packed me—Dad’s old military bag that he used to pack when he had overnight duty on the other side of the city—and fish out clean clothes. But the bag has more than just clothes. Inside are new black running sneakers, protein bars, and a black lightweight jacket with flannel lining and a ribbed collar. My hand falls on something more solid than the clothes and other materials near the bottom of the bag, and I wrestle the contents aside to pull it out.

  Celeste’s book. The Fabric of the Cosmos. I remember it from her backpack when she handed it over to me in the final Survival test. What happened to the rest of her pack?

  After dressing, I sit on the bed beside Miller and press my back against the cool, metal wall, opening the hardcover book. I’m not sure what I hope to get out of reading this, if anything. Maybe a chance to find some answers to our current problem. Maybe just a way to reconnect with Celeste. I miss her patient innocence so much it makes my chest hurt.

  In the margins of page fifty-four, Celeste squeezed in her small messy handwriting. Removing a single time slice changes the outcome of those slices to follow. The pages explain the relativity of simultaneity, and how two different observers don’t see a single event at the same time because of perspective. I’m not sure what Celeste’s comment means.

  I never had a brother or sister, and Celeste certainly felt like the closest thing to a sister I could ever imagine. I still have no idea what happened to her in that Paragon lobby. One moment she emitted a brilliant, devastating blast of cosmic power. The next moment she was just gone. No trace of her existence remained aside from the backpack I carried out of the building. Celeste gave us all the chance to escape as Paragon recovered from her cosmic ray.

  Celeste had a way of speaking in riddles that I found fascinating. Once I got used to it, her words made sense to me, even if not to anyone else. The memory of those swirling colors in the night sky as she showed me what she saw in the stars slams against my chest. One thing Celeste told me again and again was that she could see Andromeda breaking free and that Cassiopeia would fall from her throne soon.

  My understanding of ancient mythology is a little sketchy, but if memory serves me, Andromeda was the daughter of Cassiopeia and Cepheus. But Cassiopeia was vain and boasted of her own beauty. As punishment, Andromeda was chained up for a sea monster to abuse, but Perseus rescued her. Knowing Celeste, Cassiopeia is Dr. Cass, full of her own vain brilliance. But if that’s the case, does that make me the chained-up Andromeda or Perseus?

  Celeste also fell into a state of fear, repeating the words, The chains have broken. He has risen. He comes. But does that mean Andromeda has broken free and the monster is coming for her? Was she talking about me at all? I can’t ignore the coincidence. Celeste was too prophetic for me to ignore her warning. But I still don’t fully understand what it means.

  I read her words in the book again. Removing a single time slice changes the outcome of those slices to follow.

  The prophetic words make that ache in my chest even more pronounced, so I snap the book shut and set it on a shelf by the bed.

  The metal wall leaves a chill in my skin through my t-shirt, and I pull on the jacket. One of the large pockets on the front is stiff, and I unzip it, pulling an envelope from within. My name stands out on the envelope in Dad’s sharp handwriting. Tears blur my vision.

  Miller snores softly, then grunts and shifts.

  I don’t have the strength to open the note right now, so I stuff the envelope back into the pocket and zip it shut.

  The pain of remembering both Celeste and Dad exhausts me, so I lay as best I can in the small space beside Miller in my clothes and jacket.

  I’ve wanted human contact for days. Now I’ve had it, and I’m still not happy.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and try to sleep. Despite being utterly exhausted, I can’t seem to fall asleep. But much like every other night when I try to fall asleep, memories haunt me. The way Enid stuck close to me the days following our escape as we waited for Harvey to arrange safe passage. The warmth of her presence makes me crave seeing her again, in turn overwhelming me with gui
lt for another girl who was never mine. Bianca.

  Just thinking her name conjures an image of her on Career Day in her skirt and red shirt. The smile on her face when she moved for the woman on the tram. The way her heels accentuated her legs. The way she pulled me close and kissed me as she died. All the warmth and comfort of Enid dissolves replaced by the weight of Bianca’s dying body in my arms. The memory of her weight grows heavier and heavier, pulling me down into sleep.

  Then the nightmares come.

  7

  The cafeteria is more like a common room. It’s huge, with alcoves containing comfortable pillows on stone benches carved into the wall. Wooden tables matching the planks on the walls along entries rest in each alcove. It reminds me of a massive wine cellar with tables and chairs. Some tables with wicker chairs fill the center of the room, and along the longest wall, another stone bench covered in one long cushion and dozens of mismatched pillows. In another corner, a chess and checkers table. The light is much the same as any other room, but this is much more comfortable. More like home.

  There are people here, too. Dozens of them. I can’t identify most, though I do spot my friends sitting in one of the alcoves, along with Lily. Miller and I shuffle toward them with our trays.

  “Ugene!” Enid cries out, rushing toward me. Her shining eyes lock onto mine.

  Seeing Enid releases an unknown tension, and my steps feel lighter as I close the distance. All the fear and pain balled up in my stomach dissolves as she throws her arms around me the moment I set my food on the table. Enid collapses against me as I hug her back.

  Warmth radiates from her small body, and the contact with another person I know and trust fills me with comfort. Maybe this will be okay. I pause to revel in the moment, but we don’t have the luxury of standing around, comforting each other. These people may have released us, but I don’t doubt someone is watching. Especially if they think one of us is a spy.

  “I thought we were back at Paragon…that we didn’t even…” Fear creases her smooth face, reminding me of the skittish way she reacted in that first test we had together in the dead rainforest. I completely understand her apprehension. “They said we’re safe here.”