The Authority (The Culling Trilogy Book 2)

by Ramona Finn

  I stiffened. I knew what he was really saying. He was reminding me that, when he and I had been sent into a preliminary test culling on Europa a few months before, I’d been unable to cull even a single citizen. He’d had to do all of it for me. And then he’d pretended that nothing had gone wrong. Haven didn’t know that, outside of simulations, I’d never culled a single citizen.

  “What happened to my old tech?” My comm had been on there. I figured that they hadn’t found it, because if they had, I’d be dead, not outfitted with new weapons and chit-chatting with Haven. The memory of Sullia’s emerald green hair over my tech had me straightening.

  Had she taken it?

  “They junked it.” He shrugged. “It was completely destroyed, smashed to hell. She really got you, Glade.”

  I shot my eyes to his. He believed me. He fully believed I was telling the truth about Sullia. “Are you going to tell Haven that it was Sullia?”

  “Yes.” His body language changed. There was nothing soft about the way he looked down at me now. “Of course. He needs to know. Although the official story will probably say that it was a Ferryman attack. It has its benefits.”

  He sighed again, and his shoulders sagged. A warmth for him bubbled up inside of me. I knew, just knew, that he’d been by my side for most, if not all, of the week that I’d been down for the count. He was pulling away from me since I’d kissed him. I could feel that as easily as a drafty window in a warm room. But now that I realized that I loved him, I couldn’t ignore it. He was my family on this Station. Almost as precious to me as my sisters.

  I opened my mouth to say something, anything. But no words came to me.

  “I’m going.” Dahn’s voice was curt, as if he were at the end of his rope. “Feel better.”

  I didn’t want him to go, though. I wanted him to stay and sit on the edge of my bed. I wanted him to talk with me. God. I wanted to tell him everything. He was just as smart as I was, and I needed another brain to help me see this whole thing from a fresh angle. I wanted him to help me figure out what to do next. In a different world, Dahn would have been the perfect partner. He was an incredible warrior and an incredible Datapoint. I had no doubt that Dahn and I together could find my mother and get the hell off the Station in less than an hour. If Dahn and I were united, we could have the Authority on its knees in a matter of days. Haven, too.

  But, of course, Dahn didn’t stay. He left. The door swung closed beside him and I reminded myself that, beyond all the ways he might have been the perfect person to help me out of this, he was the exact wrong person because he wouldn’t help me. If he knew what I was doing, he might not turn me in, but he certainly wouldn’t align himself with me. And that right there made it a fool’s errand to daydream about Dahn and I being on the same team.

  We weren’t. We were on opposite sides of the spectrum. Of the war. Of the solar system.

  And the silence left behind by his departure was deafening. I took a deep breath and gathered my wits to study my newest addition again. This new tech felt strange and foreign on my body. But, surprisingly, it didn’t feel any different in my brain. Somehow, they must have synced my mind to this new tech while I’d been unconscious. I hadn’t even known that was possible. But here I was, utilizing my new tech to scan the specs of the room. My tech told me its exact dimensions. I knew what the temperature was. I knew my location within the Station. Within the asteroid belt.

  Wait. My tech was even telling me my location within the solar system. I blinded my eyes and looked inward. My brain was huffing and puffing to keep up with all that my tech was showing me. I could suddenly see the current positioning of all the planets like I was watching a live feed video.

  I pulled back into the room and breathed hard. Okay. So. My new tech had incredible mapping and GPS abilities. That was new. No big deal.

  On a whim, I pushed again. Wondering what else it could do. Immediately, I sensed four warm bodies passing one another in the hallway outside. There were no Datapoints in this wing, besides me. Just techs. But, two floors up, there were three Datapoints, all together. I could sense their tech and I could feel the electric impulses flying off of them like sparks from a welding gun. They were sparring with one another.

  Again, I brought myself back from my inner eye and to the here-and-now. It was just me on my hospital bed. My tech felt normal again, but I, on the other hand, felt exhausted. Apparently, my new tech could do a whole bunch of new tricks, but I couldn’t. I felt like I could sleep for a week as my eyes started to close and my head fell back onto my pillow. This wasn’t the right time to explore my new tech.

  But the damage was done. I was too tired to do anything but fall asleep.

  I thought of my comm. Of my mother. Of Dahn. Too many unsolvable problems. All I wanted was to be able to get a message off the Station and to the Ferrymen. The weight of Charon’s fate was pressing me down into the bed. Into sleep. I fought the fatigue. I needed to tell Kupier. No. I didn’t trust him. But…

  My last thought before sleep overwhelmed me was of his smile. A flash of blue.

  Chapter Nine

  They sedated me three separate times because I wouldn’t stop trying to get out of bed. When they finally let me go, it was a week after I’d found out about my new tech. My legs felt like jelly and my stomach was demanding that I find the nearest live animal and eat it in about three bites.

  I didn’t go to the dining hall, though. I went to my room. I immediately showered and changed into new clothes, and when I pulled the curtain on my bed, I saw that the clothes I’d been wearing when I was attacked were folded neatly on my bunk. And my tablet with all of Haven’s data was sitting benignly right next to it. I pulled on khakis and a black T-shirt, as usual, and then immediately opened the tablet. I ran a few diagnostic tests and saw that it hadn’t been breached or hacked. I supposed that most Datapoints carried tablets around for one thing or another. Whoever had brought my things back to my room must not have thought twice about me having one. There would have been no reason to suspect that there was illicit material stored on it.

  Either way, I didn’t care.

  I shoved the tablet into the back of my pants and tossed my hair back. Glossy and defiant. Like that wild horse. Today, my only mission was finding my mother. Giving her the information and getting off the Station together.

  Charon hadn’t been attacked in the two weeks that I’d been down for the count, but there was no telling when Haven would decide to drop the bomb. I wasn’t going to risk waiting any longer.

  But, my stomach growled, and I knew that I couldn’t put off eating any longer. I glanced around the dining hall when I got there, but neither Cast nor Dahn were there. I bolted down food. It was warm and fortifying, though my stomach couldn’t handle quite as much as I would have liked. I decided as I ate that I needed to be aggressive. There wasn’t going to be anymore passively wandering around, hoping to find my mother. No. I was finding her today if I had to tear the Station to pieces to do it.

  I was striding out of the dining hall when I heard someone call my name. Before I could even turn, I felt a hand gripping my arm and I was being shoved sideways into a stairwell. I wheeled on Dahn.

  “What the hell?!”

  “They didn’t tell me you’d left the infirmary.”

  “And that’s my fault, why?” I brushed his hand off of me and rubbed at the spot where he’d grabbed me.

  “Because I had things to tell you before… God!” Dahn threw his hands up in the air and paced away from me. A group of young Datapoints scattered away from where they’d been trying to pass us. We were left, just the two of us, in the stairwell.

  “Just tell me, Dahn!”

  Again, he grabbed me, and this time he tugged me into an empty classroom. He started looking around, making sure we were alone.

  My legs, tired from so much time on bedrest, shook just a little bit, so I slid myself up onto the table behind me. He strode forward and stood knee to knee with me. His voice was so low, I
could barely hear him.

  “Haven didn’t believe me about Sullia. He’s convinced it was a Ferryman attack. But… but I know it’s because she’s been doing so well in the new training. He doesn’t want to punish her because she’s pretty much the only Datapoint who’s nailing it.”

  “New training? You mean they’ve gone ahead with it?”

  “They? You mean me? Yes. Of course, I’ve followed Haven’s orders and gone ahead with training the Datapoints.”

  I stared at him. He was challenging me. Standing too close and glaring. He was daring me to ask him to defy Haven.

  “Alright,” I answered carefully. “And Sullia is doing well?”

  “Yes. She’s got insane accuracy and stamina. She can take out pretty much any challenge the simulations hand her. Yesterday, she individually culled three hundred leftover cullables.”

  My mind blanked. “You mean she culled three hundred times in a row?”

  The strain of that was unthinkable.

  “Over the course of five hours. She didn’t once stop for a break or anything. She was smiling when she came out.”

  “Gross.”

  “Glade, she’s even more dangerous than she used to be. She seems energized. Motivated. She wants your spot, and she’s rising through the ranks. I swear she’d kill you to get what she wants.”

  “Why wouldn’t she have killed me the other day when she attacked me, then?” It was something that had been bothering me for a long time. I knew that Sullia wanted me out of the picture. So why not just finish the job when she’d had the chance?

  “I don’t know. I can’t figure out what her angle is. But the point is this. Haven’s not going to put too much of a leash on her because she’s valuable to him. Chances are, he’s going to pair you two together for the Culling. Between the two of you, you could cull the entire solar system with one hundred percent accuracy.”

  I leaned forward from where I sat, elbows to my knees, and the top of my head brushed his shoulder. “You mean that Haven’s going to make us play nice.”

  Dahn shifted, but I could still feel the pressure of him where my head touched his shoulder. “I never thought he’d compromise your safety like that. You’re so precious to him that I thought he’d keep Sullia away at all costs. But now that she’s valuable… He’s gonna find a way to make it work.”

  “I can handle her, Dahn. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.” I didn’t tell him that it didn’t matter because I was going to be getting the hell off of the Station as soon as I found my mother, and then Haven could throw Sullia a coronation party for all I cared.

  Dahn was silent, though. Suddenly, I felt a hand at my hair. His touch was at first too light and then too heavy. His hot palm rested on the back of my neck before he whipped it away, taking some strands of my hair with it and making me wince. Datapoints were not the most skilled at touching.

  “It does matter,” he spat. “And I’m so goddamn angry that it does.”

  I looked up at him. I might be an emotionally dumb Datapoint, but I was pretty sure he was telling me that he cared about me.

  “My life would be better without you in it, Glade. Everything would be easier.”

  I pursed my lips and rolled my eyes. That sounded harsh. And if I’d been a normal human, it probably would have offended me to no end. Dahn was being a calloused jerk. But I knew what he really meant. What he was really saying.

  He cared about me and he wished he didn’t. He was saying that I confused him and made things harder because I was a human being and not a computer. I also knew that he had the choice to just leave me behind. To quit caring. And the fact that he continued to help me just about drove him nuts.

  “Life’s not a math equation, Dahn.”

  “I’m learning that.”

  I was close enough to see the green in his eyes, and they flicked down to the bottom half of my face. My stomach flipped, almost as if it were attached to his gaze on a very tight, pulsing string.

  A group of Datapoints clomped noisily past the doorway and Dahn immediately stepped back from me. That anger was back in his eyes, full force. Anger at me. Anger at himself.

  “I have to go. I need to make it to the infirmary before my next training protocol lesson.”

  “Why are you going back to the infirmary?” I asked. I slid to my feet and tried to shake off the tension of the moment before. It was easier now that Dahn wasn’t close enough to breathe my air.

  “Cast,” he replied, like it was obvious. He must have read the expression on my face because he continued on. “You haven’t heard. Right. He’s not doing well with the new training.”

  “It hospitalized him?”

  Dahn nodded slowly. “It’s hospitalized a lot of Datapoints, actually. The nature of one-to-one cullings… it requires something from a Datapoint that not all of them have. Cast had a total breakdown a few days ago. Physically and emotionally. He’s not doing well.”

  Dahn’s words were delivered in a sterile, clinical tone. It was the voice he used when talking to Haven, and I hated it.

  “I’m coming, too.” I strode toward the door.

  We didn’t speak as we made our way through the Station. The medical tech who was waiting outside of Cast’s door looked like she was about to stop us when she saw who we were and instead stepped away, letting Haven’s known favorites do whatever they wanted.

  Cast looked so stocky in his hospital bed. Like a little cube. But his face was pale and his eyes had huge purple marks underneath them. He’d cut his hair since I’d last seen him. It was short and yet still somehow in his eyes. Like always.

  His eyes cracked when he heard us, but he didn’t speak. His gaze followed our movement, but other than that, there was no acknowledgement that he had visitors.

  “He hasn’t been speaking,” Dahn said to me right before he picked up Cast’s medical chart from where it had hung on the bed. He leafed through the pages as if he’d done it before. He’d probably done the exact same thing with my chart, too. The thought gave me a wormy feeling in my gut.

  “Cast, you alright?”

  Nothing. Not even a blink.

  “Pretty bad, huh?” I tried again.

  His eyes fell. I barely recognized him. The boy who’d had so much life and vigor was basically a corpse on this bed. The depression kicked off of him as palpably as a scent.

  Dahn sighed and set Cast’s chart down. “Your vitals are good. Your brainwaves are fine. Your tech has started responding again. You should be fine within a day or two, it says here.”

  Dahn turned to me. “I have to go.”

  “That’s it?” But even as I’d asked the question, I knew the answer. Of course, this was it for Dahn. He wasn’t going to shed a tear over Cast’s still body. He wasn’t going to pass on words of encouragement or sing a song or do a dance. That wasn’t Dahn.

  He shrugged and left the room.

  I turned back to Cast and stared at him for a minute. “You look terrible,” I told him. It was the truth. “The new protocol is really that bad? I wonder if there’s a glitch in the simulator that’s short wiring your tech? Or maybe it is just really that hard to cull individually. Except for Sullia, the psychopath. Of course, it’s easy as pie for her. What a freak. Cast, you’re so much better than she is. And this whole mess only proves it further.”

  I tossed my hand toward his bed. The kid in front of me was a Datapoint, but he sure wasn’t a killer.

  I’d insisted, so many months ago, to Kupier, that there was a difference between culling and killing. He’d said that no, there wasn’t. Because the end result was the same. We culled and citizens died. That was that.

  Looking down at Cast, sheet white and still on the bed, I finally realized exactly where the line had been drawn during out training.

  We’d been trained to cull, not to murder. Murder was understood as emotional and vengeful. Culling was meant to be a matter of justice. It was calculated through our flawless tech. We were merely the vessels, the arm of the
law, and not the law itself. And although, perhaps, it all ended up amounting to the same thing—people dying—as trainees, we’d never had to really face the raw truth of what stopping the brainwaves of cullable citizens meant. But now, Cast lay here, grappling with the reality of it. He’d had to look into face after face of the citizens he’d had to cull. And it painted our jobs in a different light. A horrible light.

  I sighed, just as Dahn had, but probably for very different reasons. I was just turning to go when I heard it.

  “Glade.” Cast’s voice was so quiet I’d almost missed it.

  I whirled around.

  “Yeah?”

  “I won’t do it.”

  “What won’t you do? The new protocol? You won’t cull one-to-one?”

  He nodded, but he still looked like the same burned out shell of himself. There was no spark in his eyes. No light. No personhood. Cast was gone. Nobody home. “I’ll resist as long as I have to.”

  Resist? What exactly did he mean by resist?

  “Time for his meds,” a med technician said as he brushed past me. He pulled a curtain around Cast’s bed, cutting him off from my view.

  I took the opportunity and left. As much as it hurt to see Cast laid up and hurting, I had things to do. His words followed me, though. He was talking about defying direct orders from Haven. As much as I’d considered that exact same thing for myself, that had always been within the confines of my own thoughts. To hear another Datapoint say it out loud was startling. I wondered if maybe I didn’t have to leave this Station alone. I wondered if Cast would be willing to give up the life he knew for a life of danger. Of resistance.

  I took a left and another left upon leaving the med wing of the Station. A few steps later and I was in the back hallways. The ones that Datapoints never used. The ones where I’d stick out like a sore thumb among the techs. I didn’t care. I had to find her.

  But I couldn’t effing find her.

  I even went so far as to check in with one of the head techs to see if anyone had been transferred to someplace else. Or had fallen ill. Or had been reported missing.