by Ramona Finn
“Glade.”
Slowly, I gave him my eyes. I’d never seen this look on his face before. He spoke low, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear. “I’ve got you down there.” His eyes flicked to the window, where Europa had just come into view. I heard our skip’s landing gears start to engage.
“I’ve got you,” he repeated.
Every Culling in every place was different. There were cols that were so primitive that they didn’t have power sources for Datapoints to plug into. We had to cull those cols remotely, which was significantly harder on us. That process could zap you of energy for months. Some Datapoints had even died in the last Culling.
I was very relieved that we weren’t facing that on Europa. As soon as we’d landed, we’d been brought to the main hall of the small Europian colony. It was a little offshoot of the main city. A village almost, with just a few thousand people.
From the main hall, we’d have a view of the village and of its people. We didn’t actually have to have each person in physical sight, but it helped us if we did. We could cull either way. Our integrated tech could see through walls, even distinguishing between two people standing in front of one another. It was very precise.
Dahn was extremely calm as he stood next to me and plugged his tech into the power source. We could cull without it, but we’d be fools to pass up the extra power. If our tech wasn’t getting the power from an external source, it pulled it straight from us.
I looked around the tower where we were setting up. It was a small room with a 360 view of the village around us. Europa had a synthetic atmosphere that turned the sky a pale gray. And parts of the colony had white sand while other parts had swirls of red sand. I looked out at the people standing somberly outside of their homes. They were dressed modestly. In thick, neutral-colored cloth to protect themselves from the cold nights and the hot sun in the day.
We were here to make their lives better.
“Glade.” He nodded me back to my place beside him, where I, too, could plug in.
The role of a mentor and his pupil during a Culling was simple. We sorted and culled in waves. Our tech would talk between us and we’d work in tandem, sorting and Culling. When one of us was fatigued, the other would step in. We’d literally done it a hundred times in simulations over the last two months.
I cracked my knuckles before I plugged in and felt that familiar surge of energy race through my tech. Dahn cleared his throat beside me and I felt him there, standing, the heat coming off of his shoulder, almost pressed to mine. But I also felt his tech, as well, reaching out to mine. I could see with my eyes, with my own tech, and with Dahn’s.
“Ready?” he asked. And I heard him with my ears and also through my tech.
“Yes.”
I felt Dahn cast out his radar, searching for the heartbeats of each citizen. There were a few thousand to find, but between the two of us, it couldn’t have been easier. I opened my mind’s eye and there they were. Between Dahn and I, we had each pulsing heartbeat tracked in less than a minute.
I felt good. This felt good. It felt natural. Like I’d been born to do this. To stand with Dahn and help our society survive. Thrive.
I saw each citizen in my mind. And I arranged them. A long line. Now for the sorting. My tech zoomed in on each and every brain reading that I was getting. Mentally, the ones needing to be culled stepped forward. Not as many as I’d thought there might be. My mind pushed me into a bird’s eye view. A thousand little red dots. The brain of each person. And in front, maybe a hundred people – standing forward, waiting to be culled.
“Not at once.” He didn’t bother with words. Dahn’s tech spoke directly to mine. It startled me for a second. We’d never done that before. Spoken exclusively through our tech. His knuckles brushed the backs of mine and I stiffened. This was different from the simulations. “No hurry.”
My eyes fluttered, but whether they were opened or closed I couldn’t tell.
It didn’t matter. He was right. I was arranging them to be culled with too many at once. It would fatigue us. We needed to do this in smaller groups.
I pulled forward just a smaller group of people. Twenty or so. When there were this few, I could see each of their brain patterns much clearer. And there was no question in my mind that they were all violently inclined. I thought, suddenly, with a vicious clarity, how wrong Kupier had been. This was not like he’d said it would be. This was not murder. This was Culling. I studied each of their brain patterns. There was no question that these were people who needed to be culled.
But the virus changes the images. It was a small voice in the back of my head, and I pushed it down.
I re-centered myself with that feeling of rightness. That feeling I’d had before. That Dahn and I were supposed to be here, together. Doing this. Together.
I pushed Kupier from my mind and concentrated on the group of twenty in my mind’s eye. This was a dance, between the two of us. And I knew our next steps. I held those twenty in my mind. Held their brain patterns in place with such a tight hold, such rigorous precision, that there was no risk of making a mistake.
I held them. And Dahn culled them.
Their brainwaves simply blinked out of existence. There was just black where they’d glowed red.
Suddenly, something shook loose inside of me. If my heart had been a mountain made of stones, I would have felt a few of them shake free, tumbling down the side of the hill.
My eyes, my real ones, fluttered open, and I looked at the side of Dahn’s face. His eyes were half open and I knew he wasn’t seeing what was in front of him. He was watching exactly what his tech was showing him.
I felt a nudge at my tech and I realized he was focusing me. Damn. I was going off-track. He was already organizing the next group, and I nudged him away. I pulled forward thirty from the group this time. This way, we’d be halfway there. The thousand stood back in the line. Thirty stood forward. My mind circled each and every brain pattern, double-checking and holding them still.
Perfect. They were all perfect examples of citizens who needed to be culled. Perfect.
I held them still. Even while something inside of me trembled. Dahn culled. Their lights blinked out and I felt more stones stumble free, sliding down the mountain of my heart.
My palms started sweating and my vision tried to focus on the world around me. My feet in my shoes. The gray sky. Red dirt. The 360 view of the village.
“Glade.”
I wasn’t sure if he’d spoken out loud or through my tech. But he was calling me back. It wasn’t unusual for a Datapoint to have to take a break during a Culling. But suddenly this didn’t feel normal.
I felt like a dog on a leash. Dahn held the other end.
And he dragged me back in.
He’d lined up the next group. Just twenty of them. He’d already verified that they needed to be culled and my mind circled them again, just to check. He’d identified them. So it was up to me to cull them. I felt my tech tighten around each of their brain patterns. I held their lives in my hands as surely as if I’d held the string to a guillotine.
I imagined those red lights blinking into blackness. But they were still red. They were still red.
One stone tumbled down my heart.
And then another.
I held them in my mind.
Cull them, Glade. Cull them. This is natural. This is what you’re here for. You and Dahn. This is what you’ve been training for. Cull them.
I pulled tight against their brain patterns. All I had to do was yank.
I released them from my hold. Their lights were still red. There was no blackness for them. All at once. And the relief of it had that mountain inside me tumbling all at once. My heart wasn’t one thing inside of me. It was a thousand tiny stones, rolling out to every edge of me. Lost forever. My heart would never be put together again.
Dahn cursed beside me and I watched in detached horror as the citizens I’d released were culled.
I fell to my knees
and tasted something. Blood in my mouth. Blood in the water. I wondered, insanely, if Dahn was coming for me like a shark after blood. He wasn’t. He was still Culling. I knew, without having to confirm it, that he was sorting and Culling all of the rest of those we’d been assigned to at once. Doing all the jobs by himself. Because I couldn’t.
It had been so natural, and I still couldn’t do it. I thought of the horse. That black and glossy mane. The hooves pounding across the ground. There was no air in my lungs. I hadn’t thought of that horse a single time since I’d come back to the Station.
Their lights were gone. I didn’t let my tech sync back in to the Culling. To Dahn. But I knew it was over. I knew he’d done the whole thing by himself.
I’ve got you down there. I’ve got you.
Had he known?
I felt cold hands against my arm and I realized that I was still plugged into the power source. My arm was pulled up against the port and the rest of me was lying on the ground.
“It’s over.” That was Dahn’s voice in my ears. Not through my tech. “But you have to get up. If you don’t, they’ll know something happened, Glade. Get up. Please.”
It was the please that did it. In all my time knowing him, I’d never heard him say anything like that. Breathing deeply, still feeling like my heart had scattered to every edge of the solar system, I came up to my knees.
Dahn’s hands were ice cold, but I let him drag me to my feet.
“It’s over,” he repeated. As if that made it better.
The next hour came in snapshots for me. I spoke to no one. And no one spoke to me. We’d been warned that although Datapoints were treated with reverence upon arrival for a Culling, they were often treated with fear, even hatred, during departure. Our case was no exception. Still, we had to exit the main hall and make our way back toward the landing dock where we could board our skip and head back out into space.
Dahn started to jog, and even though my teeth rattled with the movement, I followed suit. None of the citizens were outdoors. They’d all rushed back inside, the second the Culling had been over. Though, there was someone over there.... I craned my head to look back down one of the dusty streets and realized what I was looking at.
A pair of boots. Toes up. And arms spread-eagle. A mop of brown hair. Messy. Eyes open and unseeing. A body. One of the culled.
Black clicked over my eyes and I looked forward. I saw Dahn’s back. And then a click of black. Dahn. Black. A home with a child peeking out the window. Black. Another body. This one with a scarf over her hair and one hand over her heart. Black. Dahn.
“Dahn,” I gasped.
He turned, and over his shoulder was another of the culled. A man who was sitting where he’d fallen, his body propped up by the wall behind him. His eyes were closed as if he were sleeping. But his legs were folded strangely beneath him.
Black.
Dahn’s cold hands on my elbows. Dahn picking me up and tossing me over his shoulder.
Black.
Glade.
Dahn sat in his quarters on the skip that was currently skipping from one artificial blackhole to the next. As far as he knew, no one on the skip knew that anything had gone awry. Anyone who’d been overseeing the Culling from the Station would have seen Dahn take control, but they wouldn’t necessarily have seen Glade’s freak-out.
He wanted to go over to her room and check on her. Ask her what the hell had happened. But he knew that would draw attention from the crew. So, he sat on his tiny cot with his head back on the wall and called her through their tech again.
Glade.
They weren’t trained to use their tech as intercoms to one another, except in battle situations. And he’d never intentionally invaded someone’s personal space like this before. But sitting here, wondering and wondering, with no answers in sight? No. He couldn’t take it.
Glade.
…What?
If Dahn had been someone who smiled, he might have smiled at the annoyed tone of her tech. It was just so her. And it sent a wave of relief through him. It meant that she hadn’t been broken.
“Are you alright?” he wanted to ask her. But he didn’t.
What happened?
…I don’t know. It didn’t feel like the simulations.
He paused. What the hell did that mean? The Culling had felt exactly the same as the simulations for him. In a way, it had been even easier. There’d been adrenaline. And not a hint of boredom.
They won’t know. … And I don’t think we should tell them. He hadn’t said the second part.
She was quiet for a long time. And then, finally: …Don’t worry. We’ll keep your perfect record intact. I won’t tell.
He pulled back as if she’d slapped him. She thought that was why he didn’t want to tell anyone about this?
Dahn sat and sat and didn’t sleep. Sometime around the second day, when they were halfway home, he asked himself a question, finally. Would he still have stepped in for her if he’d known he would get caught?
He knew the answer immediately.
And he had absolutely no idea how to tell her.
Chapter Fifteen
We were back on the Station by the time Dahn and I spoke again. But to my surprise, it was through our tech.
Meet me in the simulation room in an hour. That was all he said before I watched him walk away toward his quarters.
Was this our new normal? Silent communication through our tech? I’d never heard of two Datapoints communicating this way. It was so… intimate. Strange and foreign and oddly sweet.
I stared after him, even after he’d disappeared down a hallway.
It had taken pretty much the full trip home for me to feel like myself again. At least physically. Emotionally, I had no idea what was going on. My heart still felt scattered to the winds. But it didn’t make sense. Because I believed in the Culling. I truly did. I wasn’t having second thoughts.
Even after seeing the bodies.
They’d been the bodies of violent, murderous people. And their communities were better off without them.
Kupier and the Ferrymen were wrong. I’d never been more certain of anything in my life. I was certain I’d have been able to sense a virus in my own tech.
So, why had it felt like murder?
I clamped down on the question like it was a snake I was trying to behead under a shovel. It had been sneaking into my brain every few minutes since the Culling and it was going to drive me insane. I had no answer for it. And I wanted to stop torturing myself. But I didn’t know how. I didn’t know the answer. I didn’t know why the simulations felt so different from the actual Culling. I didn’t know why Dahn was able to do it and I wasn’t. I didn’t know why I’d sensed something so, so different between the simulations and the Culling.
Unless the virus didn’t affect the simulations, and it only affected the Culling... And what I sensed was the truth of things.
This thought was as snaky as the last. They’d chased one another’s heads the entire way back from Europa. I hadn’t had answers for either of them. I’d merely buried my head under my thin pillow and watched the stars lurch by out my port window.
Something wasn’t right. And I didn’t know what it was.
The only reason I thought that Kupier was right was because it was the only alternative explanation that I’d heard. There were probably tons of explanations for why I’d freaked out like that. The virus was just one of many. And I needed to stop torturing myself with it. I believed in the Culling. I believed in Din Io’s teachings.
I cleared my throat as I watched Dahn walk off.
I believed in the Authority.
Dahn was right. I needed more training. The simulation room was exactly where I needed to be.
I jogged back to my bunk, ignoring the looks of the crew and the other Datapoints. Either they were still looking at me this way because of my time with the Ferrymen, or because I’d just gotten back from a Culling. Either way, I didn’t care. I slammed into my bunk and t
ossed my bag down, quickly changing into a clean set of training clothes.
If I hurried, I’d have a chance to get something to eat in the dining hall before I had to meet Dahn.
I skidded into the dining hall, tossing food into the metal bowls everyone used, and scanned the area. Ignoring yet more looks, I spotted Cast sitting on his own and jogged over.
“Hey,” I muttered as I sat down, already jamming some food into my mouth.
He jumped when he realized who I was and coughed around something in his mouth. “Oh. Hey. I didn’t realize you were back.”
“Just a few minutes ago.”
Cast nodded, but I noticed the back of his neck going red, his eyes scanning around the room.
“You looking for someone?” I studied him.
“No.” He immediately dropped his eyes to his food.
“Cast.”
He didn’t look up.
“Cast, what’s going on?”
He cleared his throat. “She’s just jealous that you and Dahn got selected for a Culling.”
“Who?” My brows knit together in confusion.
He waited a beat, as if he didn’t even want to speak the name. “Sullia.”
My stomach dropped. Because Sullia and I hadn’t so much as spoken to one another since we’d made it back to the Station two months ago. Which was fine by me. But that also meant that I had no idea what she’d told the tactical team. Our stories must have jibed enough, I’d figured, or else we wouldn’t have both been alive. But I didn’t like someone like Sullia with so much potential power over me.
I hardened my expression and Cast flinched away from me. “What did she do?”
“She’s… just talking.”
“Cast.”
Finally, he looked up at me.
“Tell me what she’s saying.”
Cast dropped his head back and studied the ceiling for a second before throwing down his fork and turning to face me on the bench seat. “Fine. But don’t kill the messenger.”
“Duh.”
“She says that you weren’t loyal to the Authority while you two were with the Ferrymen. That they got to you. And that you’re here as a spy.”