“Have a seat, Gracelyn.” Her voice is chirpy and slow, like a robin just waking up. As a child I found it soothing. Today, it makes my shoulders tense. But I settle into the plush chair facing her across the table. Her eyes watch me, shaped into the hollow expression of sympathy.
“Hello, Dr Little.”
“You are practically an adult now. Why don’t you call me Joyce.”
“Okay.”
I prop myself up on the chair’s arms, my hands squishing into the soft padding.
“Your first loved one’s departure.”
Joyce pauses, gazing at me with a vacant smile.
I shift, feeling as though I am expected to say something. “Yes.”
“How have you been sleeping?” Joyce asks.
“Fine.”
I realize as the lie leaves my lips that I do not want to tell her anything.
She narrows her eyes, studying me. My stomach knots – I said it too fast. I straighten up and try to project more positive energy.
“How much sleep did you get last night?” she prompts.
Oh no. Anything specific I say she can compare to my digipad readings.
“Last night?”
None. I got no sleep at all last night. I spent the time poring over my LQM files, and as soon as she checks my digipad’s data, she will know it. I pause, hoping it looks like I am trying to remember, like I had not given it any thought. “I tossed and turned, I guess. I’m not sure exactly.”
Joyce nods. “Have you experienced any dreams?”
I don’t know what the right answer is to this one. I shrug. “Sometimes.”
She nods, her stiff smile never budging. Her eyes look hungry.
“What do you dream about?”
I look down and smooth out my skirt, try to act as natural as I can.
“Placements. End of year rankings.”
The hunger in her eyes dims, and I am sure I got it right – nothing for her to read into there about Evie’s departure. Yes, get the conversation away from Evie.
“There is so much to learn. I don’t want anyone to be disappointed in me. I keep dreaming I rank too low to go on, and get reassigned to a Depart – ” I choke on it mid-sentence, realizing my mistake.
Joyce straightens up.
I started saying it because it always seemed like the worst career to be assigned. But now we’re back to Evie again.
“A…?” Joyce prompts.
My mind races for a substitute, but I can’t think of anything fast enough.
“A Departure Crew.”
The idle music fills the dead air and we study each other. I press my lips together, determined not to say anything more.
Joyce sighs.
“Gracelyn. We already established you’re not a kid anymore. So I’m going to level with you.” Her eyes swim in disengaged sympathy. “I’ve helped a lot of people through their first departures. And I have to tell you, after reviewing your metrics, I’m concerned. You do not appear to be coping with the situation.”
She leans forward. I fight the urge to back away.
“Want to know a secret, Gracelyn? Despite everything the Directorate does to keep us happy and optimized, it’s human nature to feel sad after a departure. It’s called ‘grieving.’”
She pauses, letting it sink in. Grieving. What an ugly word. An ugly word for an ugly thing.
“I can help you stop feeling it. I can even help you forget your sister altogether, if that’s what you need.”
She means she can give me pills.
“But only if you acknowledge what you are feeling. You’re a good girl, Gracelyn. You always follow Directorate guidelines, and you have thrived because of it. So understand, feeling these things will not make you bad. You need to feel them, and you need to tell me about them, so we can move you past them, together. Otherwise…” She shakes her head. “I’ve seen some truly tragic situations. And I don’t only mean sadness and pain. I mean dropped grades, skipped lectures, sullen attitudes. Things that could put your career in jeopardy. If you don’t let me help you, you may begin to sabotage this bright future you have worked so hard for.”
I try to listen with a blank, slightly concerned expression – and to hide the prick of alarm spreading through me as I realize her warning fits all too well with what I have been feeling.
“I’m not – ”
“Maybe not yet, Gracelyn,” she says. “But you will. Unless you start talking to me, so we can address it.”
She sits, waits another moment. I say nothing.
She sighs. “You’ve always been compliant with me in the past, Gracelyn. So here is what we are going to do. I’m going to write this up as a successful visit – a free pass. But I want to see you again in two weeks. That’s a little time for you to think about what we’ve talked about today. Then we’ll try again.”
She pushes a button on the desk, and the door slides open.
I have to do this again? I nod and slowly stand up. I have never had trouble doing what was expected of me before.
When I get to work, I let Hanna’s gossip from a meeting I missed dominate my attention, because my fingers long to dig deeper into the DMD folders, and that would be sure to get me into even more trouble. Now that I am flagged as a problem, it is no time to be reckless. Now I am going to have to be even more careful.
Compliant. I can’t seem to manage it anymore. I’ve got to find out what happened to Evie. I’ll just have to be smart about it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Evie
Every day is so busy and different, the time is starting to blur. The routines here are hardly a routine at all, the weather changes every few days – sometimes a few times in one day – and a few days ago I left Med duty for my new rotation. But despite it all, the Alliance camp is starting to feel like a place I could belong. Maybe.
“Pssst. Come on.”
The voice whispers from the dark a few feet away. It’s Connor. And it’s too damn early.
From Medical, they moved me to farm duty. Which means getting up before the sun. Which means this is how I wake up now, at least for a few weeks, until I change rotation again.
Waking up is some kind of superpower Connor has. He says he’s been on farm duty long enough that it’s second nature. But no one should be this energetic, this early.
“Nnnmmm.” I roll over to my stomach and stretch.
I’ve never done real physical labor before. I know this now, because my body has never felt like this. My muscles are tight and achy, including several I didn’t even know I had.
The first day it happened, I panicked – I thought this was it, this was my departure starting. But when Connor finally got me to confess what was wrong, he laughed so hard he doubled over. This is normal, apparently, when your muscles are adjusting to something new and hard.
Even if it was a false alarm, the panic made it harder to ignore that nagging feeling that I should have listened to Sue about departure testing. But the idea is still too big, too terrifying. I shove it away into the back of my mind.
I stumble out of bed and follow Connor, out of the cabin, trying not to wake up Kinlee or Raina. I’ve started sleeping in my clothes for the next morning. It saves me some stumbling around in the dark. I can hardly put one foot in front of the other this early, so forget finding a sweatshirt in a drawer in total darkness.
It doesn’t matter if I’m kind of grungy. There’s no point in getting clean before doing all this physical labor. We’re outside all morning. In the real, unpredictable weather. And the real, UV-laced sun. I’ve been rained on twice so far this week, and even with the cream Connor swears protects my skin from the sun’s rays, my skin is darkening with the exposure. I can practically feel the cancer seeping into me. I told Connor so, and he laughed.
“You’re fine,” he said. As if saying it made it true.
After my first day, my face turned bright as a strawberry and hurt to touch. It was only after that Connor remembered to share his sunscree
n with me. It’s getting better now, but the skin is peeling away in thin layers. Another thing he had insisted was normal. I hadn’t realized before how pale I was compared to the others in the camp.
Connor hands me a canteen of coffee and a thick slice of bread with cheese. I munch on it gratefully, its rich flavors filling my mouth. He learned pretty fast not to start prattling away at me until I had something in my stomach.
And then there’s the animals. In the Quads, a cow was about as mythical as a unicorn. But now I’m milking them every day. And feeding the chickens, pigs, and sheep.
This is why the food tastes so good here. It’s coming from real plants and real animals, not the genetically-engineered compounds the Directorate creates for the printing dispensers. I try not to think about that part. It’s only been a few days but I already love these little guys, especially the cows. Working here makes enjoying the food harder. Connor told me to stop naming them.
I’m done eating by the time we get to the barn. I take a long sip of the coffee before grabbing a pail. As we start milking the cows, Connor talks. I don’t know how he has so much to say all the time. What does he do when he’s working alone? Does he talk to himself? The guy’s got about ten different thoughts bouncing through his head at any given time, and it propels out of him with such momentum I’m not sure how much control he has over it.
I take hold of Maybelle’s udders and get to work.
As the sun rises, we move on to feed the chickens and pigs, and then round up the sheep and take them out to a nearby clearing to graze. Each day they graze here for hours, and they have to be watched. Which means that for hours, Connor and I are sprawled on the grass, keeping an eye on them.
This job really isn’t bad, other than the befriending-your-food problem.
Connor drove me nuts the first couple of days, with all the nonstop chatter. But, well, I got used to it. And the thing about Connor is, he’s as eager to hear what you have to say as he is to share his own thoughts. And to please and amuse whoever’s around him.
Besides, I learned how to tune him out when I need a break from all the talking.
Growing up here in the camp, books have taken him all the places he couldn’t go yet. I don’t know how he’s managed to learn so much – he’s an encyclopedia of random facts about almost anything, and it’s amazing all the details he can hold in his head. I’ve had far more formal schooling, but outside of the Quads, the things I was taught don’t hold much value. Things like Directorate Rules and Directorate History – or, as I’m learning more and more, Directorate lies.
Today we lie in the grass on our stomachs, and he talks about the weather. Not the typical pleasantries you exchange with other people on the Quad shuttlebus. Like for real, how weather is made in nature, and how it came to change too quickly. Warm and cool fronts. Wind patterns. Condensation. Nuclear wars and global warming. Today, the heat is blistering, the sun so intense it shimmers in waves at the edges.
“In the Quads we made our own weather,” I shrug.
“What?” He twists and stares at me incredulously. “But how?”
“I don’t know exactly. But the Quads are giant domes. Everything is controlled in there. Everything.”
His head tilts, and I can see the wheels turning in his mind behind his eyes. “That is… I have to give it to them. That’s pretty impressive.”
“It’s how we do things. On the inside.”
On the inside. It’s a joke Connor made on my first day about being from the Quads. Something about old jail lingo. It made sense when he explained it.
He leans in until our bodies are touching, nudging me with his shoulder. His touch sends a burst of flutters through me.
“Whatchya doing there?” he asks.
“Oh, um, nothing, really.” I try to lean forward to hide the sketch of the sheep I’ve been scribbling out while he talked. “I doodle sometimes. I know it looks like I wasn’t listening, but I was, I swear. It kind of helps, actually.”
Helps me listen, helps me process, helps me keep my mind off the departure that’s still looming vaguely in my future.
Connor leans in so close his cheek is resting against my shoulder. I hold my breath, scared to move because it might make him pull away.
“That is not doodling,” he says. “That’s pretty good.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.”
I duck my head down, hoping the hair that falls over my face will hide my blushing.
His stomach rumbles. Mine echoes the sound a moment later. We laugh. That’s our cue to head back for lunch – the schedule for the farming crew is pretty loose. Besides, the sun is already high in the violet sky (a result of smog particles and thinning ozone, Connor says – I knew it was supposed to be blue). We herd up the sheep and get them back to their pen, and then head towards camp.
Usually we’re early for lunch – because we start the day so early – but today everyone seems to be showing up around the same time. The adults all seem tense, taking seats without much discussion. The table where we usually pick up our sandwiches is empty.
“Umm,” I start.
Connor is already nodding in agreement. “Looks like an emergency all hands,” he says.
Emergency? I don’t like the sound of that.
Connor and I head to the teens’ usual table and wait for the others to get there. We sit together so that we’re shoulder to shoulder, until I look around the empty table and realize how weird it probably is that we’re squished right next to each other when the whole table is open. I scoot an inch away.
“Oh good, they got word to you up in the seventeenth century,” Kinlee says as she approaches.
“No, they didn’t,” I reply. “What is all this?”
“Oh, oops. They’ll start soon,” she says.
We wait for her to go on, but she doesn’t. She’s usually eager to share, but when it comes to things related to her work with Intel & Recon, she’s more tight-lipped.
My chest tightens, and I look to Connor. The crease between his eyebrows deepens.
“Anyone say anything to you?” I ask him.
“Are you kidding? I’ve been with you all day.” He nudges against me as he says it.
I don’t realize, until I turn to Kinlee and see the dumbfounded look on her face, that I’m grinning like an idiot. I hadn’t realized how much things were changing between Connor and me, now that we’re together on our own all day. Kinlee’s still staring at me, her head tilted. I try to fight the flush spreading over my face, but it’s no use.
So I stare back at Kinlee pointedly until she stops staring at us, silently begging her for once to not say exactly what’s on her mind. She’s got that mischievous look in her eyes and I’m sure she’s going to ignore my plea, but thankfully, Raina calls us to order. Meredith, Dave and Joel rush over and join us as everyone settles down.
“Okay, okay,” Raina calls out, raising her arms to get everyone’s attention. “I’m sure all kinds of rumors have been flying since we called this meeting this morning, so let’s get on with it and set the record straight.”
A rise of murmurs waves over the crowd, until Raina starts talking over it and everyone goes still, except for some fanning themselves against the heat with folded papers or their hands.
“Unfortunately I do not have good news to share today. We all accept a certain degree of risk living here, and, despite our best efforts, sometimes those risks are realized.”
Any remaining murmurs from the crowd is sucked right out. Tension seeps into the silence as we wait for the rest of it. I realize suddenly the strain behind Raina’s eyes, and the stringy way her hair falls – she’s exhausted.
“Today is one of those days. We’ve lost contact with Tad Martin, one of our brave pointpeople undercover in the Directorate, based in Quadrant Thirty-Four.”
I straighten up. Thirty-Four? That’s my Quad.
What was that name? Martin. Tad Martin. Front-desk Tad. Oh no.
I lean
in to Connor. “I met him.”
Connor whispers, “Shit.”
I remember Tad’s face as he handed me the coffee with that dumb note. Nervous and timid. Even without knowing why, I could see that he stood out among the others there. Not like Mara. She knew how to blend in.
Still. Tad was the first one to warn me. He tried to help. I might not be here without him.
Up at the front, Raina continues. “Our last contact with Tad was eight days ago. Tad was supposed to report back yesterday and never made check-in. Early this morning, we sent another of our points in the Quad to check on his personal quarters – which she took on at great personal risk. His things had been cleared out. She was able to remove some notebooks and our communication device from under the floorboards, but then she had to get out. I’ll be honest, it does not look good.”
My mind takes me back to the Med tent, to how awful and bloody it was when they dragged Benjamin in after the bomb. That same ruthless government probably has Tad, too?
No, this looks terrible.
Murmurs fill the crowd, and my mind starts spinning. I suddenly understand what it means for these people to be out there, to break in and out of the Quads. They routinely risk their lives to save people like me. I want to wrap my arms around Kinlee, around everyone in Intel & Recon, and squeeze them as hard as I can. I look over to her. While everyone else is murmuring anxiously to each other, Kinlee remains quiet and calm. She leans forward onto the table, her chin cradled in her hand, and glances back at me, eyebrows raised.
The crowd is getting louder. One voice raises, “It was the Licentia. We’ve got to end this.”
What? I tug at Connor’s sleeve. “Licentia isn’t real.”
“Well, actually – ” Connor starts, shaking his head. But he doesn’t get the chance to finish. Another voice from the crowd responds to the first:
“No, this has the Directorate written all over it. Those damn bomb-dismantling units are meddling too much, and now they’re onto us.”
Is the Licentia real? My chest tightened at the thought of real terrorists residing within the Quad domes. But if they’re the only ones in the Directorate willing to fight back, should an unchallenged Directorate frighten me more? I hardly know.
Departures Page 13