by S. K. Falls
Hope deflates, and I am suddenly angry. Why did I think for even a moment that she would’ve been arrested? Her mother is much too important for them to make such a move without thoroughly investigating first. And that could take weeks, even months. I glare at Mercury, bitter bile splashing the back of my throat. “What, then? Out with it already.”
Mercury flinches at my unkind tone, but I don’t apologize. “Vika Cannon is a Rad. She’s on the run.”
I stare at her, unable to believe what I’ve just heard.
In our society, every waking moment is a struggle for life against death. Every day of my life, I am faced with the harsh truth: There is a finite amount of time before our resources run out. The War of the Nations—an enormous nuclear war that changed the very topography of the earth—has left New Amana utterly depleted. The poisoned oxygen we breathe, the meager food we eat, all of it is running out, fast. Our only chance of survival is to board a ship to China. But there are a finite number of ships, and a finite number of seats on those ships. Not all of us will make it out.
It is my duty to weed out every single person who does not belong so those of us who escape can preserve our identity as New Amanian citizens. Once New Amana has been cleaned of nuclear toxins and we’re allowed to return, we will be tasked with an important job: rebuilding our great nation from the ground up.
From the beginning, since I first spoke to her, I knew Vika Cannon did not belong. She doesn’t personify New Amana’s virtues: loyalty and obedience. She is lazy. She is strange. The only reason she isn’t dead yet is because of her mother’s superior station. But I knew it was only a matter of time before that tenuous saving grace frayed completely away.
I glance at Vika’s empty chair. It is early in the day still, and I had expected that she would be here later. I try to calm my pulse. “What do you mean she’s ‘on the run’?”
Seeming mollified by my urgent tone, Mercury leans down to impart more information. “She joined a Rad group, pretended to be a guard, and was escorting children to the Toronto Asylum. I suppose they meant to subvert the operation somehow. But the government got advance information about it and stopped them—well, most of them. Vika apparently got free and ran into the desert.” She shakes her head. “And she’s pregnant. Can you believe it? What on earth could she have been thinking?”
I gaze past her toward Miss Adams’s, my boss’s, office. “I have no idea.” But I have a good idea of what I must do next.
The day passes in a hush, as if time is tiptoeing past. It feels as though all eyes are on me, though I know this must be solely in my imagination. Vika’s chair sits conspicuously empty, and yet no one mentions it. In fact, everyone acts as though there is nothing out of the ordinary about a vacant seat, as if it is not a voice over a loudspeaker screaming “Radical.” Perhaps they are afraid her disobedient state of mind will rub off on them.
I, for one, revel in the emptiness of her chair, in the evacuation of her space. It is the sight of my freedom. It is the physical manifestation of a year of waiting and watching and burning with the injustice of her being Matched simply because she has an important mother.
After work, I hurry out with the rest of the crowd. I hop on the bus, my mind teeming with what I will say, how I will approach this.
I let myself into Miss Adams’s apartment with the master key and wait in darkness for what seems like an eternity. Unsanctioned free time is not productive. I cannot stop my mind from reeling with unbridled optimism as I consider what Mercury has told me. After an entire year of waiting for one slip, one opportunity, could it really be that this is finally it? My chance?
Though I cannot be sure, I have an idea that the government chooses one person from each department to emigrate. It’s clear that everyone expects Vika to be the chosen one in ours. Her mother is powerful, she is Matched, and now she is pregnant. Pregnancy is a woman’s most coveted condition. Every healthy woman in New Amana is expected to produce healthy progeny in three tries. If they fail, they are gassed. If they succeed they receive, as a reward, a seat on a ship to China.
What could have happened to make Vika throw her only opportunity for freedom away? I shake my head, try to clear it. It doesn’t matter what caused her to act this way. What matters is that I act quickly to claim her seat on the ship. It must be me.
Finally, when every muscle is trembling with the need for action, when every nerve is screaming at me to do something, I hear Miss Adams’s key in the door and she steps in. Anxiety begins to churn deep inside me. Just the scent of her—a tinny, dark thing—is enough to make me perspire. But I force myself to stand and face her.
Miss Adams’s teeth gleam in the dark as she smiles. “Ah. I thought you’d hear the news. Not much stays secret from Mercury.” She comes forward and lights a candle on the table. Then she trails her gaze up and down my body.
Miss Adams is old enough to be my mother. Her chin-length black hair is threaded through with strands of gray, and her pale brown skin is like crepe paper. When she smiles, a dimple appears on her cheek like a punctuation mark. I do not love her. I do not even like her. When I think of her vast and almost insatiable needs, all I can conjure up is a deep sense of revulsion. But I need her in order to survive. I need her if I am to escape on a ship.
And so I do what I do. I’m not ashamed of it; I don’t know a single person in my boots, with intelligence as shrewd as mine, who wouldn’t indulge in any activity—bar none—to ensure their survival. So while my mouth is kissing and licking and tasting, while my body is doing what it must, my mind is elsewhere.
I dream of the future, of plentiful food, of air with healthy levels of oxygen. I will be leaving soon; my time has come. I must play my hand carefully now if Vika’s mistake is to be my step up and over the wall.
Once Miss Adams is sated for the moment, we get dressed in the near dark without speaking. Then she offers me a cup of tea and we sit on the sofa. She waits in silence; she knows why I am here.
“Vika Cannon is missing.” The words from my mouth sound like they are being spoken in a tunnel; just an echo and a far away meaning. I cannot believe they are the truth as it now stands.
But I watch in absolute wonder as Miss Adams nods, stirring her tea. Yes. Yes, she is missing. Vika really has run away.
“She was with a group of Rads.”
She nods again and sips, her dimple appearing like a magic trick.
My heart speeds up. I am so close. I can taste the salt of the sea; I can smell the tides. “Were they all captured?”
“No.”
“But you must want them. For information.”
Miss Adams cocks her head to one side, just slightly. “We do. Vika Cannon’s group has been under surveillance for a while. We have cause to believe a significant number of them have escaped to a refugee camp near the port.”
My hands tremble as I clutch the tin cup to me, hardly daring to hope. “Let me help. I know her. I worked with her for over a year, sat right beside her that entire time. I could be a great asset to your efforts.”
She looks me over, considering. Then she sets her tea cup down. A small, thin smile plays across her lips. “We are putting together a special team to find the camp...”
I stop breathing as I wait for her to finish.
“I do think you’d be a good fit, Moon.”
I exhale in a rush, smiling at her as she stands. When she walks to a small storage cupboard in the hallway, my smile begins to fade. I know what she keeps in there.
She returns, holding in her hand an electric prod. It is used to subdue children in the Asylums. But here, in her apartment, it is used for other purposes.
“I think you’d be a good fit for the new team...but I might need a little convincing,” she says, walking slowly forward. “Why don’t you undress for me?”
I do as she asks. I transpose Vika Cannon’s face with Miss Adams’s and take comfort in the knowledge that it’s only a matter of time before I exact my revenge. For everything I hav
e had to endure to ensure my safe passage, I vow: Vika Cannon will pay.
Afterward, I shiver as I make my way to the bus stop in the acid rain. Electrocution has that effect on me—my body tremors for hours afterward. But it’s worth it, absolutely. I’d do it over again, many, many times without pause for what Miss Adams has offered me tonight.
I have been assigned the lead position on the team that will track Vika Cannon’s, and the other Rads’, whereabouts; the team that will put an end to at least one refugee camp. All of those abhorrent relics of society—Nukeheads and Défectueux—who should’ve been killed a long time ago, saved by deluded ingénues: the Radicals and their helpers.
The Rads and their pathetic underlings don’t understand the basic concept of survival. Because of some twisted sense of righteousness, they doom hundreds of us, healthy citizens, to a death we should not have to face. The refugees eat food that could’ve gone to healthy citizens; they sneak on to the ships and escape to China, souring our relationship with the Chinese government, making life more difficult for the legitimate émigrés who go there. But now I can stop them.
And if—when—I am successful, when Vika Cannon is dead, I will be guaranteed a spot on a ship to China. This is everything my mother had wanted for herself and for me, her only faithful daughter.
I stand shivering in the bus shelter but inside, my blood sparks as if the prod has electrified it somehow. Before I travel to find Vika Cannon, there is one loose end I must tie up. It has been a long time coming.
I climb aboard a bus, letting its vibrations lull me as I ride into the gray heart of Ursa. The bus pulls up opposite my mother’s apartment building. Clusters of Nukehead children idle in the alleys, peeking out at me like crabs, only to scuttle away into the darkness when I glare at them.
I ascend the steep stone steps to Mother’s apartment and knock on her door. When she answers, her hair is wild, her eyes are mad. Her uniform is rumpled and stained; it’s clear she hasn’t washed it or changed in a few days. I wonder what she’s been telling the people at work. Surely she hasn’t been going in in this condition; she would’ve been reported by now.
She grasps my arm and pulls me in, locking the door after us. I do not know why she bothers; everyone has a master key they can use to gain access to any apartment at any time.
“Is there any more news? Do they have a spot on a ship for me?” Mother asks, her eyes darting around my face. There is no stillness about her anymore—every muscle twitches, even when it is supposed to be at rest. Her apartment has not been cleaned in some time; there is food spoiling somewhere. I can smell it. When I leave here, it will cling to me for days.
“Yes.” I peel her fingers off me, one by one, and step aside. “It’s why I’m here. You have to be ready. Wash up.”
Her face breaks into a smile, her small eyes almost disappearing into folds of sallow skin. Her hands ball into fists and she hurries off to the washroom.
My mother thinks that, because I work at BoTA, I will one day bring her a magic ticket to the ships. She does not realize that there are other considerations. Considerations she happens to be failing. It is apparent with a single glance at her that she is not fit to emigrate.
My throat constricts as I remember her eager face, her fevered eyes as she’d promised me that the day we spied on Neptune would be one I’d remember forever. I remember her shining pride the day I was accepted into BoTA. I push those thoughts away, imagining a box deep inside my chest into which I dump them and turn a key. These are thoughts that must never be revisited. Today is the day I bid goodbye to them all.
I wait a moment to make sure my mother is fully engaged, and then I stride to the telephone. It is the same one I’d used to call the information line about Neptune five years ago. My mother had stood eagerly beside me then, her hand clamped on my skin, infusing me with her strength and sureness.
I push the button and wait.
“Name of dissident.”
“This is Moon Stewart of BoTA requesting an emergency arrest for Venus Stewart.”
“Certainly, Miss Stewart. Her crime?”
“Insanity.”
“Noted. The Escorts are on their way. Thank you for your service to New Amana.”
I put the phone gently back in its cradle and sit on the sofa to wait.
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About the Author
A huge fan of spooky stuff and shoes, S.K. Falls enjoys alternately hitting up the outlet malls and historic graveyards in Charleston, SC where she lives and imbibes coffee. Her husband and two small children seem not to mind when she hastily scribbles novel lines on stray limbs in the absence of notepads.
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Also by S.K. Falls
World of Shell and Bone (Glimpsing Stars, book 1)
Possession (Fevered Souls, Episode 1)
Secret for a Song