We’ve just wrapped up with Frank, and I can’t believe how far he’s come since I first came here. He is getting so strong our only struggle is getting him to rest again when we leave. His physical therapy is almost done, and it feels good knowing I played a part in his recovery.
As we make our way to our next patient, Sue slows her pace.
“Hold up a moment, Ev,” Sue says. “I have to talk to you about something.”
Sue’s got that grim, unreadable expression on her face, lips pursed. This can’t be good. I replay the session we just had with Frank. Was it something I said? Did I handle him wrong? I wasn’t particularly patient today.
I brace myself. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Not at all. Actually, you’re great with Frank,” she says. “This is about you. We don’t have the Directorate’s tech here – heck, we don’t even have the tech most other countries have – but there’s still a lot we can do. In fact we’re particularly well outfitted for departure diagnosis.”
“Departure…” The word sets my heart racing.
“Evie, the Directorate assigned your departure date for a reason. If you have something life-threatening, we can fight it. But we need to know what it is.”
I step back, shaking my head. My insides are tangling up in knots.
Sue pushes again. “I know you’re touchy about the whole dying thing, but you’ve got to get over it. What if it’s something we can treat? We need to know as soon as we can. Or what if it’s something trivial you don’t need to worry about at all?”
I flinch at the word dying – touchy, yes, that’s one way to put it. Why is she bringing up this ugliness? This isn't how things are done. In the Quads, we politely keep conversation to pleasant, easy matters.
I know she's right. I may have escaped my departure date, but whatever the Directorate saw coming when they set those numbers on my wrist, it's still there, in my body, maybe already developing. Thinking about it makes my skin buzz like a thousand pins are scrawling over it. Which is why I haven't thought about it, not since my panic with Sue on my first day.
And I don’t want to think about it now. It’s too much. Like the walls are closing in – no, like they’re falling out, leaving me unprotected and exposed. Anger flares through me. How can she ask me to go through such pain? What is wrong with these people?
I wrap my arms around my body and clutch my elbows.
“I thought the whole point of this place was that I don’t have to do anything.”
I’m not talking about this with Sue. I’m not. I’d rather sprain my ankle again.
She looks me over carefully, and I try to look tough.
“You don’t have to,” she says. “It’s your choice. That’s why we’re talking about it and not just doing it to you. But you do need to do this. Without a diagnosis, we might not be able to help you.”
“No!” My hands ball into fists and throw to my sides. “Nothing is happening to me!”
“Evie, calm down – ”
“Calm down, Sue?” I say her name like it’s a dirty word. I’m so angry at her right now it feels like one. “What the hell do you know, Sue? Who put you in charge of my life choices? My death choices?”
I realize too late that the d-word doesn't hold the same impact with Sue as it did in the Quad. She doesn't react to the h-word, either. But she sure cares that I am refusing her advice.
“Now one minute,” she snaps. “This is sound and experienced medical advice, and you've learned enough by now to recognize that. You’ve got to be brave, Evie. I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to. You’re wasting critical time – time that could be the difference between life and death. How are you going to handle it if you start showing symptoms? How will you even know they’re symptoms?”
She pauses and stares at me, her brows pulled together tight. Anger burns through me and my cheeks grow hot. But I can’t think of anything to argue back to her.
She pushes again. “Evie, this is nuts. You gotta know. It could be something you can easily live with and will never actually cause you harm. Something we can help you live with better. I’ve seen all sorts of things from the Directorate. They dispense of people like they’re yesterday’s used napkins. And Evie, if it’s something like that, don’t you want to know? So you can stop being afraid of it?”
She closes the gap between us, and lays a hand on my shoulder.
“And what if it’s not? What if it's – ” For the first time she hesitates, clearing her throat and averting her eyes. “What if it’s something like Rosie? We could fight it with everything we’ve got. Even something like that doesn’t have to be the end. Not out here.”
She pauses, and her quiet forces me to think. It all knots together in my stomach, too big and impossible to untangle, and something in me bursts. I can’t. I can’t think about this.
“What do you know?” I yell. “You just want a new pet project.”
“Evie!” she calls.
But I’m already running away into the woods, my hands trembling and my face twisting with tears I know I can’t hold back for long. When I’m far enough away to be hidden, I slump to the ground and let it out.
I miss my room. I miss my home. I miss my Quad. The rules were tight, but they were clear and simple, and everything moved together in predictable sync. I miss Gracelyn, the only person I can stand to talk to when I feel like this.
What would my life be like there right now, if it weren’t for my departure date? I try to imagine it. Last year, I would have been assessed and assigned a career. I would have spent all of last year and this one learning and observing. Next year I’d be working full-time. Contributing to the Quad in some way. I’d have been assigned my own housing dorm for the next two years in the Young Adults Building, and finally be away from my parents.
I wonder what my career would have been. I’m not a genius like Gracelyn, but I think I’m smart enough to avoid the more menial jobs, like cleanup or maintenance. I got good grades, before I understood my departure date and stopped caring.
Who would they have paired me with for a marital partner? Would it have been like my parents’ mechanical life? Would we have filed a request for children? Who knows. It’s a bottomless well of possibilities that will never be tapped. I sit and dream about what my life should have been, until the sun begins to set and I’m sure the splotchiness of tears is completely gone from my face.
***
The next morning I’m almost too afraid of Sue to go to Med.
I left my assigned position in the middle of shift. I shouted at her. I swore – and at an adult.
“What’s up with you?” Kinlee nudges me in the side with her elbow. “You’re hardly eating.”
I can’t bring myself to tell her. Just thinking about it makes my hands shake with fear again. I pull them into fists.
“Sue. She’s…” I don’t know what to say. Instead, I sigh.
“Don’t let Sue get to you. She’s all bluster. What could she really do to you?”
I shrug. That’s part of the problem, I have no idea. I’m still shocked that I’ve gotten away with yesterday’s outburst for so long. In the Quad, there would have been a penalty notification on my digipad in minutes, along with an order for a mental health management appointment. Maybe mood-stabilizing medication. Whatever it took to keep the peace. Waiting to know how it works out here in the camp is almost worse.
“Eat!” Kinlee insists, her own mouth half-stuffed with eggs.
I sigh and press my forehead into the table. “Ugh.”
Soon everyone else is leaving and I can’t put it off any longer. I head to the Med cabin and brace myself as I open the door.
Sure enough, Sue is standing on the other side, waiting. Her forehead is crinkled with a frown and her eyes are sharp – I shrink back as I meet them, disintegrating into a ball of nerves.
“You’re late. Let’s go.” She nods to the supply cart and walks out of the door.
That’s it? I stare after her
as she heads off towards Frank’s, and then grab the cart and follow.
Sue doesn’t bring up the testing again – in fact, it’s as if yesterday never happened at all. Eventually, I relax into it and we do our work.
The only hard part is a follow-up visit to Benjamin, the soldier who was bloody and unconscious on Noah’s operating table. When we enter, a crew of soldiers is standing around his bed. They step back to let us work. I try not to look too carefully at the wound as I supply Sue with the tools she needs, and listen to the other soldiers.
“It’s gotten worse out there, Sue,” the first one says. “They must have an idea of what we’re up to, because we go out and assess a site one day, then the next we go back to give defusing a try, and it’s gone.”
“It’s not just that they’re gone, though,” the woman next to him adds. “They’re moving the bombs to other places. They’re changing how they place them. They’re usually right up against the border walls, but yesterday, there was one out in the woods. We never saw it coming. Sheer luck no one was seriously injured.”
Sue’s mouth tightens into a grim line. “You fools are going to lead them right to us,” she says.
“They aren’t gonna find the camp, not as long as we stay on transit freeze. But there probably will be a lot more of this coming,” the first one says, nodding to Benjamin’s wound.
So that’s why they’re on a freeze. They’re expecting more of these injuries? And they’re still going out there? My stomach twists. How can they do it?
When we get back to the cabin, Noah is unpacking a series of heavy-duty storage containers.
“Rations day,” he says. “They let me into storage to pull what we need for the next month. We’ll have to update the inventory tomorrow.”
“Sure.” I edge past the boxes to place my clipboard on the desk before leaving, and find something resting on the desk already: a small tin of pencils and a bound pad of paper. I frown and pull back the cover, curious.
“Had a talk with Raina. Now you have something to draw on that’s not my charts,” Sue says, hovering behind me.
“This is for me?” I can hardly believe it. I run my hand over the page and take in the paper’s pulpy texture. “Thank you.”
Sue has already turned back to the business of unpacking, but Noah smiles and gives me a wink. Maybe Sue’s not so bad.
After work, I take my new supplies and run off to my cabin. I splay out on the floor, open to the first page – a full page to draw on, and no one to scold me for it – and test out my new pencils.
My fingers tingle as they work across the page. The pencils smell like ash and freshly-cut wood, and the graphite smudges across the side of my hand. Hours slip away as I dissolve into the faint sound of the pencil against the page, and my focus narrows down to the lines and shadows forming under my hand.
The Directorate would never allow it. It’s heaven.
Chapter Twenty-One
Gracelyn
It’s like Gunders and Johnston don’t even exist.
I haven’t seen them again, and they aren’t in the LQM Directory. There isn’t even a subdivision listed in DMD that uses the dark blue stripe.
After the Directory, I turned to the DMD section of my guidebook. But upon closer review, the section reveals shockingly little about what they do. Jargon. A few lines about order, integrity, managing the dignity of life. How did I fail to notice before how empty this content is? I glanced through the rest of the division descriptions, and they’re all like this.
When that didn’t get me anywhere, I pored over every word of the introductory materials we’re able to access from home and don’t need the on-site servers for, in the late hours in my room at night after everyone else was asleep.
Still nothing.
I should have stopped there. That was all the information at LQM that I have been given permission to access. No one has told me not to access other LQM’s files, but no one says no in the Directorate. It’s just understood.
I tried to let it go. I went about my life, focused on my work, minded my own business.
But Evie is my business. My mind kept replaying that haunting shuffle that came from her room that morning. The morning of oh-eight-oh-three.
If she didn’t depart the way she was supposed to, if anything ‘anomalous’ took place that day…
I consider asking Father about it. But every time, a deep shame spills into my veins, and I remember the expression on his face when he caught my tear in the hall.
***
I know I should let it go and forget all about it, but the idea of Evie keeps nagging at me, the guilt pinching within my chest: She would do it, if it were the other way around. Evie wasn’t afraid of anything, as far as I could tell. How could I let fear stop me from doing the same for her? Don’t I owe her that much?
So one morning, I slip into the office early. Five minutes. Enough to give me a little space to see if there is anything worth looking into, without anyone else around to see what is on my syncscreen, but hopefully not enough to raise suspicions. The Quads run like clockwork – no one is ever late, and no one is early.
But I have to know, I have to understand.
I take a breath, my heart already pounding, and open up the DMD folder. Then I pause.
For what, I don’t know exactly – an alarm to sound? My screen to crash? But nothing happens. Everything is fine. A wave of relief washes over me. Part of me can’t believe I’ve gotten this far, and I realize I didn’t truly expect to, because now that I’m in folders, I have absolutely no plan for what to do. What exactly am I looking for?
But my pulse throbs in my neck, and I need to do something to take advantage of this chance. So I click on anything that looks like it might be connected.
All it does is lead to more folders, and more, and more. I click through them like turns through a maze, hardly knowing where I’m going or how to turn back. My hands turn clammy with anxiety, leaving smudges on the screen as I tap through the options.
“What are you doing?”
I jump at the unexpected voice, a bolt of panic shooting through me.
It’s Hanna.
Her brow crinkles, but she looks more defensive than suspicious.
“Nothing. Reviewing yesterday’s lecture.”
I tap to close the screen before she can get a good look, my fingers shaking. Last thing I need is Hanna turning me in so she can get ahead.
What a waste of effort.
Let it go, an anxious voice in my head urges. This is too much. Too far.
And I know the voice is right.
But another piece of me feels the burden of what I owe Evie, especially now that I know I can access the files. I hate the way she is slipping away. Already the new routines are replacing the old, filling up the space where Evie used to fit into my life. It’s not right. She can’t evaporate into thin air.
I still do not know if this Code Twenty-Seven has anything to do with Evie, but I have to find out.
***
I am in the office early again the very next morning.
I’m setting myself up to get caught, an inner voice warns.
It would be safer, less likely to attract attention, if I left it alone for a few days. Or, at least, it would look less like an obvious trend and more like an isolated incident if someone were to catch me – something I might be able to pretend was an innocent mistake.
But I am afraid that if I do not do it now, I will never do it at all. It’s not like I am truly losing my way, like the terrible stories that spread when someone disappears from the Quad, or the warning tales of Licentia – people who start rejecting Directorate guidance and turn against the Quad. Not that anyone really gets as bad as that, but they are warnings for a reason. I am not straying like that. I just need to understand. I just need to know what happened to Evie. Then everything will go back to normal.
This time I know to expect the thudding rise of my pulse as I open up the DMD division and start exploring the
subfolders. This time I look through them systematically, reviewing each folder and subfolder in order.
Most of it is dead ends, lacking in context and too filled with jargon to understand.
Finally, buried several layers deep into the folders, I find one labeled only with a color – dark blue, like Gunder and Johnston’s tags. One of the documents inside the folder is labeled Directory.
My fingertip tingles as it hovers over it on the screen. A separate, hidden directory? No wonder I couldn’t find them in the main listings. I tap to open it, and my breath catches in my throat. But instead of opening, a box pops up, prompting me for a password I do not have.
No.
A password? For a list of names and contacts?
No, no, no.
Helpless frustration flares through my chest. What are they doing in this top-secret dark blue division, and why do they have to hide who’s doing it?
The rustle of employees trickling in brings me back to myself. My time is up. I have no choice but to close out before Hanna sneaks up behind me again.
Is it possible that I have stumbled onto something much bigger than how much I miss Evie? If anyone finds out what I’ve uncovered, what will happen to me?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gracelyn
The next day, when I step off the shuttlebus into the Quad center, I pass the LQM buildings and enter the Citizen Care campus, then head all the way up to the mental health facilities. It’s my first appointment without Mother and Evie.
The waiting room is empty except for the rows of cream chairs and the deep earth-toned walls. I sit. In the normal checkups, Dr Little asks me a few questions about my thoughts and stress level, and then I’m on my way. But I have no idea what a post-departure check-in is like. I hate this feeling of not knowing what to expect, how to prepare. These are the safe, clear boundaries of the Directorate that guide just about everything else I do and show me how to succeed.
My digipad vibrates with an alert: Your appointment begins in ten seconds. Please enter.
I stare at it a moment as the seconds count down and then head through the doors. On the other side, Dr Little waits for me.
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