Kill School: Slice

by Karen Carr

  The waiting room is small, with no more than six or seven chairs. Two chairs are occupied, one by a girl with straight black hair and another by a woman who must be her mother. Another elderly woman sits behind a window. I hold up my number. She ushers me forward with a wave of her hand and slides the glass of the window open.

  “We don’t need numbers today.” She hands me a stack of paperwork attached to a clipboard along with a pen. “Fill out and return.”

  I take the paperwork and she slides the glass window closed. I feel a pang of embarrassment as I sit—parentless—across from the girl. I count the forms under my breath and mumble when I reach the end. Sixteen different forms. I’ll be here all day.

  “What’s your name?” the mother of the girl asks.

  “Aria,” the girl answers for me. “We have fifth period together. You sit next to Vanessa.”

  “Sorry, I don’t…” I don’t remember her. At all.

  “Jane,” the girl says. “I sit in the back behind Ezra and Max. You don’t know them either.”

  “Jane, let’s finish these,” the mother says. She puckers her mouth as if she wants to scold me, but changes her mind and lowers her head to the forms.

  I work on my own forms. They want to know everything about me, including my shoe size and favorite lunch. When I get to the section on skills, I pause. I’m really good at math and have a photographic memory. I’m a strong swimmer, thanks to the endless pool on our roof. The next section is kill skills. I have no idea what they consider a kill skill, so I say I am good at running and hiding. Stealth, I underline.

  It takes me half an hour to fill out the paperwork. I don’t notice when the girl in my fifth period class receives her token. After I finish the paperwork and look up, I see her holding a small black box.

  “Open it now, Jane.” Her mother taps the box.

  Why don’t they leave? I’m going to open my box in secrecy.

  Jane opens the box and takes out an emerald green token.

  “It’s green,” she says.

  That is supposed to be mine. I grit my teeth and hope for the same as the old woman calls my name. Aria Nova. The old woman instructs me to go through another two doors and down the hall to room six. Maybe my number meant something after all. When I enter room six, another old woman sits behind a desk.

  “Forms,” she says.

  I hand her my packet and sit in the chair across from her and the desk. She flips through the paperwork, stamping each form, and then places the packet in a folder with my name on it.

  “Don’t you need to look at them to decide which color I get?”

  The woman’s eyes open wide. “Decide? Me? The algorithm decides. You are the only one who will know what token you receive, until you show your friends, or until training camp. There, you will be sorted into the right cabin. Why on earth would the Regulators leave it up to a human to decide?” She shoves the small black box toward me.

  I touch the lid, but don’t open it. She files my folder in a drawer.

  “Can I go?” I ask.

  “That’s all,” the woman says.

  I can’t go. I can’t move. I am stuck in the chair. I fear it will be bad. Red. My hands shake.

  The woman stares at me and taps her pencil.

  “My advice to you is to tell no one until you are ready. People do strange things when they think they are your target.”

  I leave the post office with sweaty palms and a pang of guilt. I’m excited. How awful. It’s weird. The token is my permission to kill. The sickening feeling in my stomach is gone, replaced with exhilaration. A charge of energy rushes through my body. I am sixteen. I have been scared to death of this day forever. It is over.

  The little box doesn’t look like much. I could probably throw it away in one of the trash chutes. I stuff the box deep in my pocket, not wanting to open it in front of anyone, not even my parents.

  I feel lucky today. I’ve always been lucky. The right parents, the right school, the right side of town. I will not get a token that forces me to kill someone young. I will get one that lets me release someone old. Green, like the grass and the leaves on the trees.

  I hum and smile as a person passes me on the street. I run through the grassy green and pass the MagLev station. Today, I want to run all the way home.

  My journey takes me along the boardwalk that follows the river. Iron park benches line the sidewalk, people paddle in canoes and kayaks. Young children flow from the nearby school and onto the lawn. Dad will be home soon. High School lets out an hour after Elementary.

  I pick up my pace and trip over something on the ground, landing hard on my knees. My box falls from my pocket and in front of the lump of clothes and dirty flesh lying on a pile of cardboard.

  “Sorry,” I say as the lump sits up. “I tripped.”

  The lump is a man around the same age as my parents. A scar runs across his brow to the side of his head where his ear should be. He picks up my box with a hand that is missing three fingers.

  “This food?” he asks. He touches the ribbon and pulls at the bow with a sly grin.

  I shake my head and wipe the blood from my scraped knee. “Don’t open it. It’s not food.”

  “Oh.” He holds it out in the palm of his hand, and scoots backwards so that I cannot reach it. “Satan’s choice. Is it not?”

  The pieces of cardboard that he was using as a bed are actually hand painted signs attached to wooden sticks. The two I can read say, The End is Near and Repent or Parish.

  “You like my signs?” he asks. “You believe in the end of the world? It’s coming. I tell you.”

  “I’d like my box back.”

  I dust myself off and stand up, thinking of ways to grab my box and run.

  He shakes his head. “Don’t do it. You are too good to kill. The devil will get you. He will take your soul. He took mine and devoured it. You will never get it back. Everyone is going to die. Don’t you see it? Younger and younger and younger I see.”

  The man’s words become incoherent. He stands and holds my box high above his head. His tattered clothes feather out like a bird’s wings. I have to get my box.

  “Give that to me,” I say through gritted teeth. My vile tone stuns me. I am my father’s daughter. Act nice.

  The man lowers his hands and chants, “Kill to live. Kill to live. Kill to live.”

  I grab the box and run. The man’s voice echoes in my head with each step. Kill to live. Kill to live. The weight of the air crushes down on my head, my arms, and my legs. I am no longer happy. I want to melt into a pool of water and drown. Somebody has to die by my hands.

  Chapter Four

  I rush up the steps and into the townhome, unnerved by my experience. As I enter, I call out my brother’s name, but he does not answer. I wish I knew where he was. I want to open my box with him. Instead, I retreat to my room, and close the door. Just to be sure, I lock it.

  I sit on my bed holding the box with trembling hands. Before I open the box, I get my guide out and flip to the page with all of the tokens, their color, and kill age range. I memorized this page years ago. Before we learned read, our teachers would show it to us in school. I don’t need it, but I am afraid my brain will not work after I see my token. I review the list, speaking the words aloud.

  Birth to Five: Ruby Red

  Six to Fifteen: Garnet

  Sixteen to Eighteen: Turquoise

  Young Adult: Opal

  Adult: Pearl

  Senior: Sapphire

  Elder: Emerald Green

  Here it is. My sixteenth birthday present, all wrapped up with a neat little bow. I wonder why they even bother to present it in such a beautiful package. It’s times like these, when I want to be alone but not really alone, that I wish I had a cat or a dog. I imagine my pet would be sitting right next to me licking my face, encouraging me to go on. Open the box. I close my eyes, pull the ribbon, and open the box, hoping for Emerald Green.

  When I open my eyes, my heart stops. My token
is not ruby red, or emerald green. Knowing both these facts makes me feel relief and fear at the same time. I won’t have to kill a baby and don’t get to kill an elder. My token is not garnet or turquoise or opal. In fact, it’s not pearl or sapphire either.

  A translucent purple token rests in the velvet interior of the box. It doesn’t match any of the colors in my book. I pick it up and feel the weight of it in my hand. It’s the same size as my brother’s, but heavier and certainly not turquoise. I hold it up to the light and watch the rays refract violet light around the room.

  This object can’t be a token. It’s a fake or a mistake. It doesn’t look like any material I learned about anywhere in science or history class.

  I flip through the rest of the pages of my book, comparing more gemstones to my token. Quartz. Malachite. Aquamarine. Nope. Nope. Nope. I turn the token over and slide the back panel open to reveal the nine-digit security code. The only way to find out if the token is real is to enter the code into the terminal. The results will produce a list of people in my kill range.

  The security numbers reset every thirty seconds just like my brother’s does. At least that part of the token is functioning. I watch the numbers change three times before I go to my terminal.

  My hands shake as I enter the security code on the keyboard. I fumble the numbers and have to wait for the code to reset. I dare not use voice recognition in case my dad comes home and overhears me. This time, I type carefully and hit enter.

  Another screen pops up with over a dozen fields asking me for more identifying information, including security questions, which I filled out on one of the forms at the post office. My first pet. Fluffy. The street I live on. Brookhaven. After I double and triple check my work, I hit the enter key a final time.

  A picture of my token appears on the screen. Under it is the word amethyst. My token is an amethyst, a beautiful translucent purple amethyst.

  Four names appear on my list. There should be hundreds broken down by neighborhood. Maybe there is a glitch in the program. I recognize a few of the last names, Thorn, Halsted, but not their first. I switch the list to map view to see where they live.

  What I see makes me gasp audibly and then turn around quickly to make sure I haven’t been heard. The four people on my list are all from Clarkhaven House. Thorn. Halsted. Krish. Azarian. No wonder I recognize their last names. The four names on my list are the Regulators, the only people who are supposed to be out of the termination pool.

  It has to be a mistake. I can’t be assigned to terminate a Regulator. A Regulator?

  I click on the name of Regulator Thorn, the Regulator representing our city. She is a dark skinned woman with short brown hair. Like the profiles we examined in class, the form lists her every detail. Her address, her schedule, where she works, eats, and shops. If this is a mistake, why does the computer have a record on her? I can’t kill a Regulator. That would be the craziest, most impossible and dangerous thing to do.

  Dad will be home soon. I can’t let him see my token. I don’t want anyone to know, not even my brother, not until I figure out what to do. Dad will want to see it. I can’t hide it. I have to change its color.

  I jump off my bed and race into my bathroom. Rifling through nail polish colors, I look for one that matches another token. It’s too hard to match without the book, so I scoop up the lot of polish and drop them on my bed.

  The red nail polish is too red, the green not sufficiently translucent. Several other colors are close, but not close enough. The only color that is a match is turquoise. I sigh. The same color as my brother’s token. Everyone will think I have to kill a sixteen to eighteen year old.

  I paint the token with the turquoise nail polish and dry it with my hair dryer. I apply two more coats. Finally, when the job is complete, I admire my work. It will pass. For now. I grab my mom’s bracelet and carefully lay the token in the compartment. I close the clasp on the bracelet around my wrist and smile. The turquoise color glows through the gold bracelet. My secret is safe.

  A crash coming from the kitchen disturbs me. Someone is here, but it’s too early for my dad. I rush out of my room to find my brother sweeping up a broken bowl. He has a black eye and a gash across his chin. Twigs matt his unruly hair. Viviane, his girlfriend of three years, stands by his side—a perfect semblance of beauty.

  “Sebastian,” I say. “How bad are you hurt? Should I call Mom?”

  “No,” Sebastian says. “Don’t you dare?” He holds his ribs, as if it is painful to speak.

  I regard Viviane warily. We are not close. She thinks my brother spends too much time with me. I squeeze between her and my brother, which makes her fold her arms across her chest. I don’t care what she thinks. I need to make sure Sebastian is not hurt.

  “Mom is worried to death about you.” I tuck his hair behind his ear and look at the bruise on his face. By the purple-blue color, it must have happened last night. “She needs to know you are alright. So does Dad.”

  “We have to go, Sebastian.” Viviane pushes me aside. “I want to go home.”

  “Sebastian, did you use it?” I regard the chain around his neck. The end, where the token should hang, hides under his shirt.

  He shakes his head and brings Viviane into his arms. “Someone from South tried to kill Viviane. I couldn’t let him. Cowardly savage, going after her for no reason at all.” He presses his lips to Viviane’s head. “I wish I could have traded places with you. I would have killed the puny little runt if I weren’t saving...” Sebastian’s voice trails off.

  My eyes narrow at him. He’s hiding something. He glances at me with a look so hopeless and lost, that it clutches at my heart. Instead of asking him more, I turn my attention toward Viviane.

  Viviane looks unharmed, but shaken. I may not like her, but I feel sorry for her. I see Sebastian marrying Viviane and having a family. The way they hold each other, I know they will last. If no one uses a token against them. Instantly, I feel protective over both of them.

  “Why don’t you stay here awhile,” I say. “You’re safe as long as we keep the door closed. Maybe the puny, little runt will forget about her and choose a new target.” I smile as politely as I can at Viviane. It’s painful to watch my brother suffer, both physically and mentally.

  Sebastian splashes water on his face and regards Viviane. “What do you think?”

  “Please say yes.” I hand my brother a dishtowel to wipe his face, regarding Viviane hopefully. “It’s my birthday.” My heart skips a beat at the mention of my birthday. I touch Mom’s bracelet, now holding my nail polish covered token.

  “You’re sixteen?” Viviane asks.

  Viviane’s face flushes and her hand moves to her token, which she has captured in a silver mesh brooch pinned to her shirt. The sapphire color shines through. Senior. Someone too old to have children, but with a long and healthy life left ahead of them.

  I nod. A warm tear drops down my cheek.

  “Don’t cry.” Viviane wraps her arms around me, a gesture I’ve seen her do to her closest friends in school. Viviane. Popular. Cheerleader. “I mean, I cried too. Don’t feel bad about it. We all do.” She glances up at my brother.

  “Oh crap, Aria.” Sebastian hugs Viviane and me at the same time. He’s like a grizzly bear holding us in his arms. “I totally lost track of the day. We’ve been up all night.”

  “More reason for you to stay,” I say softly. “You need to rest.”

  My brother grabs my arm and examines the token hidden beneath the bracelet. He extends my arm to Viviane so that she can examine it as well.

  “Turquoise. You too?” Sebastian searches my eyes. My nail polish trick worked.

  I nod. “Me too.”

  “That’s crazy,” Viviane says. “A brother and sister both turquoise. More kids in my class were too, over a dozen.” She regards Sebastian with lowered eyes. “Why do you think that is?”

  “The algorithm adjusts automatically depending on how many babies are born,” Sebastian says.

>   “So what?” Viviane asks. She can’t read Sebastian’s mind as I can.

  “The algorithm was created to control the population.” I meet Sebastian’s eyes. “Kids like us grow up to be mothers and fathers.”

  Sebastian regards Viviane with an intensity felt only with lovers. I pull away from his arms. Viviane is wrong. He doesn’t love me more than her.

  “Right, Aria,” Sebastian says. “We’ll bring too many babies into this world. Aria, you have no idea what it’s like out there. People are starving. Out of the city, into the country. Farms are failing. Crops freezing. They keep so much from us, Aria. You have no idea.”

  Viviane glances at me and tilts her head, as if she’s trying to figure something out. I want to ask my brother more but Viviane stops me by touching my shoulder.

  “Aria,” Viviane says slowly. “What does Sebastian do all those nights at home? By the way he makes it sound; your parents never let him out.”

  Sebastian is rarely home. I assumed they were out together, running through the streets, searching for a target. This news surprises me, but after what Sebastian has just told us, it shouldn’t. Viviane and I both regard Sebastian suspiciously.

  “We play games,” Sebastian says with a shrug of his shoulders.

  Just then, the door opens and my father walks in, breaking the tension between us. Dad rushes over to me without acknowledging Sebastian, although I think he’s seen him.

  “Aria, how was your birthday? What did you get?” He hugs me and hands me a bouquet of daffodils and tulips.

  “Turquoise.” I hold out the bracelet for him to examine.

  “Oh, I was hoping for emerald.” Dad frowns. “I’m sorry.” He looks truly hurt. He then turns to Sebastian and registers his bruised eye and matted hair. “Are you staying for dinner?” Dad’s tone is more of a command than a question. In fact, it’s quite strong for my dad.

  “Sure,” Sebastian says.

  Dad insists that Sebastian and Viviane go upstairs and wash up while he cooks my birthday dinner. When I offer to help, he sends me upstairs as well. He picks up the phone and I hear him talking to mom as Sebastian, Viviane, and I ascend the stairs.