The Authority (The Culling Trilogy Book 2)

by Ramona Finn

  This was a very different skill than the one we’d all been originally taught as Datapoints. We’d been taught to identify citizens in groups, almost at a benign distance. This was a one-to-one hunt. And, it meant pulling the plug over and over and over again. In some ways, it was easier to cull twelve or twenty people at once because you just had to make the decision to cull once, and they all went down in unison. Hunting and culling individuals was emotionally draining, time consuming, and, just as I’d expected…. It was personal.

  Suddenly, the kid burst out of the simulator, his eyes bright and harried. His name was Rix Europa, and I knew he was a friend of Cast’s.

  “Their eyes!” Rix shouted. “I hate their eyes!” He clutched his face and fell to his knees as a few of the Datapoints in his age group rushed forward and pulled him from the door of the simulator.

  I could guess very well what he meant. He’d had to look into the eyes of each person he’d culled. And, suddenly, it hadn’t felt all that different from murder.

  The Authority was very careful not to classify Culling as murder. No. They taught us, very distinctly, that it was a consequence for people with murderous and violent tendencies. It wasn’t killing; it was justice. A necessary precaution for the greater good.

  It had been Kupier who’d helped me see what it really was. Government sanctioned genocide.

  Seeing Rix’s reaction, I blinked back a pricking in my eyes as I shoved thoughts of Kupier from my head. Between that and Rix’s plaintive voice as he was dragged away, I was really close to needing a breather.

  Haven, on the other hand, looked blandly after Rix and waved his graceful hand toward the line of waiting Datapoints. “Next.”

  I couldn’t help but stare at him for a second. And they called Datapoints emotionless… He wore all white today, as if he’d dressed up for the occasion. His silver hair and pale eyes made him look like he could just fade right away into nothing if he wanted to.

  “I need the bathroom,” I whispered to Dahn, taking a step backwards.

  “Now?” he asked in utter astonishment. Dahn would probably re-absorb his pee before cutting off a session with Haven.

  “Yeah. Be right back.”

  I disappeared backwards, into the crowd of Datapoints, and Haven didn’t look after me. He was already staring at the read-out screen with unwavering intensity. For once, there was something more interesting than me.

  I was gone in a flash, moving as quickly as I could. I was tempted to take a circuitous route, but I didn’t. If Sullia was following me, then she could just go ahead and confront me. I had so much nervous energy spoiling through my system that I wouldn’t have minded a fight right about then anyways.

  I was at Haven’s door and through to his office in less than two minutes, my breath loud in my ears and my hand steady as I closed the door behind me.

  He’d left it unlocked.

  Imagine such arrogance, such surety. Well, I wasn’t going to complain, because it had gotten me in the room without my having to pick a lock. Not wanting to waste a second, I strode past the great wooden desk up against the near wall and over to the screen on Haven’s far wall. The two red armchairs sat behind me, tilted accusingly toward where I stood as I slid the hacking keyboard from the back of my pants. It was digital, so I linked it seamlessly to the screen and woke everything up.

  Haven’s interface was a delight to use. Intuitive and well-guarded all at once. I broke through his first two firewalls without breaking a sweat. He’d updated his system recently, and I realized that it would have sunk my mother, the computer illiterate. She definitely would have gotten caught. Left traces. Set off alarms. But me?

  Hell no.

  My fingers moved across the keyboard like lightning as I combed his cloud for the files we were looking for. I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t hide information in one place, in one neat little file. I scanned the system for certain kinds of alarm bells. Like the word ‘Ferrymen’ or ‘Charon’. I searched for Kupier’s name, ignoring the pang it brought up in my chest, and, on a whim, I searched for my own name.

  All sorts of data was getting dumped onto my comm now, which I’d plugged into the side of the screen. I watched it all flash across the screen. Correspondence, schematics, blueprints, and even what looked like notes to himself. Perfect.

  I couldn’t stop the grin that stole across my face. It felt really freaking good to steal from the man who’d stolen so much from me.

  Just as the last few bits of data were copying to my comm, though, I froze. There were voices in the hallway. One of them was too low for me to make out, and one of them was definitely, definitely Dahn’s.

  Eff. Me.

  I grabbed the comm out of the side of the screen and covered my tracks like a maniac. I knew the only chance I had was to manually restart the whole system. It was a suspicious move, because Haven had just updated and there was no way that a piece of technology this high-grade would restart without asking, but still, it was better than them coming in and finding me in the middle of hacking his system.

  So, I did just that, restarting the computer and blacking the screen. At the very last second, I shoved my hacking keyboard back into my pants and started scanning frantically for a hiding spot. I could perch behind one of the armchairs, but my feet would be visible. The only thing that was big enough to really hide me was the huge desk. But what if Haven sat down there? The edge of the desk sat about a foot from the wall, and it seemed my only option was to push it out another few inches and slam myself into the crack. And so I did just that. At least the angle was good. You’d have to come looking for me to find me.

  The door swung open, and Haven and Dahn strode in. Haven went immediately toward the small counter where he kept his drinks and I heard him clinking around there. Dahn, on the other hand, had frozen solid upon entrance. I knew that his integrated tech had just warned him that there was another Datapoint in this room. Just as mine had warned me when he entered.

  “It was all to be expected, really,” Haven said, his back to us and him completely oblivious. “That no one was able to do it without guidance. But we had to start somewhere, and now we have some idea on where to start the training. That is, if we ever find out where Glade disappeared off to again.”

  It was that second when Dahn’s head popped around the side of the desk, and I knew that look on his face. That I-will-tear-your-lungs-out look that he got right before he kicked the crap out of someone. But his silver eyes went bright with surprise when he saw it was me. It didn’t last long before molten fury and suspicion came next.

  Don’t! I hissed at him through our tech. Don’t tell him I’m here.

  Dahn turned stiffly toward Haven, leaving my sight. “She’s hard to pin down.”

  Haven chuckled in that reedy way of his. “That’s putting it lightly. I’ve always felt that dealing with Glade Io was like trying to hold water. I don’t know how you’ve managed to keep your patience with her all these years, Dahn.”

  “I haven’t,” he answered immediately.

  Haven chuckled again. “Is that right? Maybe I’ll have to try that tactic myself.”

  “Sir, I was hoping to go over something with you in the simulation room.”

  Haven paused. “Dahn, we were just there.”

  “I know, but I wanted everyone to clear out before we used it and… it was silly of me not to ask when we were there. But it’s important, now that I think of it. I think it might help with Glade’s acclimation to her new role in the Culling.”

  I could barely believe my ears. Dahn Enceladus was lying out of his ass for me. To Jan Ernst Haven. His hero. The one man he wanted to impress above all others.

  He was clearing the room for me so I could get the hell out of dodge.

  I felt frozen myself, now. This was… totally crazy. I’d known that Dahn was my ally, but this was so out of character for him. He was making himself look dumb in front of Haven, and for me. And now he had to take him to the simulation room a
nd make something up so that he didn’t seem even more dumb? This was a real show of, of, of… My mind could barely clasp on to the word. But there it was, floating up out of the ether.

  Loyalty.

  Dahn Enceladus was showing me loyalty, above Haven.

  A different memory floated up to me. A recent one. That first night on Io. When Cyril had beckoned me over to her house to drop the whole your-mother-is-a-Ferryman bomb. Dahn had wanted to come with me. I’d thought at the time that he’d been under orders not to let me out of his sight. That he’d wanted to come with me for babysitting reasons.

  But now? I wondered if maybe Dahn just hadn’t wanted me to be alone, to face whatever was coming.

  Maybe Dahn truly cared about me.

  I jammed a knuckle into my mouth as the two men left the office, clicking the door shut behind them. I waited for their footsteps to recede, and then just barely let myself have a new thought.

  Maybe Dahn loved me.

  Half an hour later, when I knew that Cast was at dinner and would be heading into a few hours of pilot simulations, I closed the curtain on my bed and plugged my comm into a tablet I’d swiped from the tech room. I took care to disconnect the tablet from any of the mainframes, wanting it to be completely isolated. When I was satisfied that it was, I started opening up files here and there.

  It took a long time. I prayed that my solace would hold. I knew that Dahn would be coming for me soon. Probably the second he got done with Haven. There was no way that he was going to let this particular sleeping dog lie. But I wasn’t going to go looking for him, either. Not when I had this smoking gun in my hands.

  Haven had hidden things in his cloud as thoroughly as I’d suspected he might. And honestly, there were so many files pertaining to the Ferrymen that I knew I wasn’t going to have time to go through them all right now.

  But there was one, one in particular, that had really caught my eye – that was the one I wanted to examine now.

  There was no correspondence around this set of blueprints I’d found, but I didn’t need any context to understand what I was looking at.

  I was looking at plans to build a bomb that would fit perfectly inside of the one-man ship that I’d commandeered from the Ferrymen all those weeks ago. A bomb that, if I was reading these schematics correctly, could decimate an entire planet with the click of a button.

  I had no doubt what the intended target was.

  Charon.

  Chapter Seven

  I was still staring blindly at the screen of my tablet when I heard footsteps in my room. Crap. Cast was back early. I quickly wiped my tablet of all evidence of the data I’d stolen from Haven and tried to compose my face. I was still hidden by the curtain around my bed, but I’d have to come out. It was too early to be going to bed. He’d think I was sick, or suspicious, or—

  The curtain on my bed was ripped back so hard and so fast that it tore half off its track and hung lamely toward the floor.

  And there Dahn stood, leaning into my bed and breathing hard, his face the color of the sand on Io.

  “Dahn—”

  “What the HELL are you thinking?”

  It wasn’t a question. It was a furious, outraged demand.

  I glanced back at my bedroom door and saw that he’d closed it. “Look, I know that looked bad.”

  “Looked bad? Glade, you were hiding in Haven’s office like a criminal while his system restarted. That doesn’t look bad. That looks treasonous.”

  His voice had been quiet, but rage had vibrated through every word. His teeth hadn’t unclenched as he spoke, and his lips were white and tense where he’d curled them back. His handsome face was transformed into a mask of fury and, if I really looked closely, fear.

  “Do you trust me?” I asked, going with the only tactic I could think to use.

  “No. Not in the least.”

  I attempted not to roll my eyes at his answer. “Yeah, right. Dahn, you might not want to trust me, but you do.”

  He glared at me. “I don’t trust someone who’s been acting strangely for months, who just barely treats Haven with respect, who slouches around the Station like she’s got about nine different agendas.” He was ticking things off on tense, white-knuckled fingers now. “Who didn’t disavow the Ferrymen to me, who was hiding in Haven’s office. And who never, ever, tells me anything.” His expression cracked on that last note and he pulled the leather tie from his hair, like it was giving him a headache to have it pulled back. His dark hair fell around his chin and he shoved his fingers into it. I’d never seen him look so upset in my life.

  Dahn fell into a crouch, his hands tugging at his hair, and I looked down at him from the bed.

  “Glade, every single piece of information I know about you, I know because I clawed and fought to learn it. You have given me nothing willingly. Nothing. And now you’re asking me to trust you.”

  So far, he was right on target, and guilt sliced through me at realizing it. “I’m not asking, Dahn. I’m reminding you of what’s true. I know I’m not an easy person to… be friends with. But I’m reminding you that that’s what we are. We’re friends. Two friends who trust each other.”

  “Don’t you realize what you’ve done, Glade? You asked me not to tell Haven that you were in there. You told me ‘don’t’ and I listened. That’s treasonous, Glade. You made me a traitor to everything I believe in.”

  I reeled back as if he’d slapped me. God. Was that true?

  “Not to mention the fact,” he continued, “that if we were ever found out, we’d be executed. So, thanks for that, friend.” He stood up from his crouch and pulled his hair back neatly and elegantly. Then he stood above me, his knees almost touching mine where I sat on the bed. I looked up into his silvery eyes, his handsome face lined with some complicated mixture of emotion I couldn’t begin to interpret. “You made me choose, Glade. You made me choose between you and my own self-preservation. And, great. Isn’t it just great that I chose you. I chose the person I barely trust. The one who gives me nothing in return. I’m such a goddamned idiot, I chose to align myself with someone who doesn’t even care if she implicates me in her treasonous actions.”

  “That’s not true, Dahn.” And I desperately wanted to be right about that. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I don’t tell you stuff because I’m trying to protect you? Because I’m attempting not to drag you into the dangerous mess that my life has become?”

  He eyed me, distrust tight in the lines next to his eyes, the tech at his temples glinting in the light. “Don’t try to talk your way out of this; you’ve been secretive and withholding since the day you came on board the Station.”

  “Fine. Yes. You’re right. Part of that is just who I am. And…” I weighed my options as fast as I could, my brain attempting to create some sort of tactical roadmap that didn’t end up in me or Dahn being executed. “You’re right that I have an agenda that I haven’t revealed to you.”

  He looked surprised that I had given that much up. Shocked, actually. His face went sheet white as he stared at me, and he looked like he was trying to see me through a storm cloud. His voice was strained and quiet when he spoke again. “You’re admitting—”

  “I’m admitting only that I have an agenda that… differs from yours. But, Dahn, other than that, you don’t know what’s going on with me, alright? And you have less than no idea about what could really happen if you turn me in.” The look on his face said that not only did he not know who I was, but he didn't want to know. I tried to think of the truth in the broadest terms possible. “You think I’m a traitor, Dahn. But I’m on your side.”

  That was true in a way. I wasn’t on the Authority’s side, sure, and those words implied that I was. But more than anything, I considered myself to be on Dahn’s side because he was my friend, and there was no way that I was going to let him become collateral damage in all this.

  The truth of that thought slammed into me at 100 mph, though. I was sure that I looked as if my own words had stunned
me, too. They had. This whole time, I’d been wholly convinced that the only people who really mattered were Daw and Treb and my mother. My entire allegiance had been to them, far as I was concerned. But here I was, all riled up and telling the truth. Dahn mattered, too.

  The weight of it settled over my shoulders leadenly. God. So did that mean I was going to have to convince Dahn to leave the Station with my mother and I? Impossible. Did it mean I was just going to have to figure out how to protect him from afar after I defected? That was most likely impossible.

  I took a deep breath. Now wasn’t the time for these questions with no answers. My head spun as I looked at his familiar face. Silvery and handsome and so ungodly angry at me. First things first, I had to convince Dahn not to tell everyone I was an Authority traitor. And implicate himself in the process. “You have no idea what you saw. But if you go around telling people, then very bad things will happen to both of us.”

  His lips were white where he smashed them together. A muscle tick-tocked in his cheek. “Then tell me. Tell me what it was that I saw. And I’ll decide for myself.”

  “I can’t tell you.” I watched his eyes go flat and I knew I’d said the wrong thing. Obviously, my reserved nature was a sore spot for Dahn. But I’d never realized that all this time he’d been trying to get to know me! God, two Datapoints trying to become friends was like two people with blindfolds attempting to do a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle together. I said the only thing I felt safe saying. “It’s information that isn’t safe for you to know. And like I said. I refuse to drag you into this.”

  “You’ve already dragged me into it, Glade. And you know what? You’re dragging me into it again just by having this conversation. This is ridiculous. I shouldn’t have come to your bunk. I should have gone straight to Haven. Explained everything. Which—you know what?—is exactly what I’m going to do right now.”

  He turned and my hand lightninged out to grab at his wrist. My fingers closed around the tech on his arm and he automatically shivered at the sensation. I knew what it felt like to have someone accidentally touch your integrated tech. It was foreign and live-wire and vulnerable. But to have someone intentionally do it? It would be a strange intrusion, an electric open window of feeling.