The Culling (The Culling Trilogy Book 1)

by Ramona Finn

  He immediately stiffened again, turning away from me and staring down at his food.

  “Trust me,” I continued. “I’ve seen what the real her is like. She’s a snake. You’re not, Dahn. You’re nothing like her.”

  “Yes, I am.” He’d spoken so quietly I had to lean in to hear him, and I didn’t miss that he immediately leaned away from me. “I’m exactly like Sullia. We all are. You’re the only damn Datapoint who isn’t like Sullia. She’s right that you’re different. And maybe that’s the reason that you were chosen for this. Or maybe that’s the reason that Kupier,” he sneered the name, “chose you for whatever the hell it was he chose you for.”

  My mouth fell flat open. “Excuse me?”? I snapped immediately.

  His mouth quirked to the side and he looked at me like I was insane. “What?”

  “Dahn, you need to apologize to me right now. I cannot believe you’d say that to me.”

  I was certain that, in the six years he’d been living in the Station, this was the first time he’d been asked to apologize for something. Niceties and politeness were not something that were valued in Datapoints. But I didn’t care. Maybe I was proving his point that I was different. I didn’t care about that, either.

  Dahn said nothing. He just looked forward.

  You just accused me of being a traitor to the Authority. Thinking that Kupier picked me for some sort of Ferryman mission. You need to apologize to me.

  His eyes narrowed, but he still didn’t look over at me. “No, that wasn’t what I was accusing you of.” He spoke with his voice, not his tech, and I didn’t miss the callousness of that.

  “Then what the hell did you mean? ‘What he chose me for.’”

  Dahn laughed humorlessly and steepled his hands over his face. “Christ, Glade, sometimes you’re as dense as Cast is. You wanna know what I meant? I meant that it couldn’t be clearer that the leader of the Ferrymen was trying to get close to you. Why? Because you’re pretty and honest and most people want to get close to you. That’s what I’m accusing you of. Not treason, alright?”

  I clapped my mouth closed and felt heat rise up from the collar of my shirt. Dahn was furiously staring at his bowl of food, his eyes anything but soft. When I didn’t say anything, he jammed a bite into his mouth, shaking his head.

  “Is it true?” Cast slammed his bowl down and I jumped an inch, my eyes still on Dahn. Cast sat in the seat where Sullia had just been sitting.

  “Is what true?” Dahn asked, tilting himself a little further away from me.

  “The whole simulator test you have to do tomorrow, Glade. Is it really the entire solar system? The Authority wants to find out if you can do it?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not going to guess what the Authority’s motives are.”

  Cast leaned forward, and he was almost trembling with excitement. “So, it is true. You’re doing the simulation.”

  I nodded stiffly. Dahn hadn’t moved an inch, and he still stared at the exact same spot ahead of him. His words from before tumbled in my head and made me nervous. He was acting this way because he didn’t like that I’d struck up a friendship with Kupier. Kupier, brother of Luce. The Ferryman who’d killed Dahn’s father. I understood now. God, I was so dumb. It probably made Dahn feel sick to his stomach to think of me as being friends with the enemy. Not just the enemy of our government, but Dahn’s personal enemy.

  Suddenly, I was just tired. So tired. There were too many things to juggle all at once. I couldn’t balance Dahn’s feelings at the same time. Maybe that made me a bad friend, but I was a Datapoint, after all. Nobody said we were good at friendship. I pushed away his sharp words from before. If I lived through the simulation, maybe we could talk about it then.

  Cast’s face went white. “But, Glade, it could kill you! Datapoints have died culling too much data at once! God. The whole solar system? Best case scenario, you lose your mind. No one can withstand that level of intensity. This is crazy! Why would they waste a good Datapoint like you on an impossible task?” He tossed his fork down. “And why would you accept?”

  I was surprised by his concern. No one else had been concerned for me so far. But that wasn’t what had my head cocking to the side. He had pretty much asked me the same question that Sullia just had. Why was I accepting this challenge?

  The answers tumbled down so fast that my head spun.

  Because I wanted the answers. I wanted to know if Kupier was lying or if Haven was. I wanted to know, for sure, why my father had been culled. Murderous or rogue? I wanted to know if the disjunct I felt between the simulation and the Culling was real. Was I sensing the virus? Did the virus exist? Had Haven planted it? Murderous or rogue?

  “He’s right.” Dahn had softened again. His forehead rested in his hand as he pushed his food away. “You could end up dead or braindead from this. That’s all that matters.” He’d said the last part as if he were saying it to just himself.

  “I have to do it.”

  They both looked up at me.

  “I’m going to do it.”

  The next day, it was those two who flanked me as I walked into the simulation room. I tried not to glare at every single other person who’d come to watch me do the simulation, but I failed. Miserably. I pretty much hated everyone at that moment. Or maybe that was my nerves talking.

  It seemed like every Datapoint in training had come to see me make my attempt. And the room wasn’t short of high-level Datapoints, either. I ignored Sullia skulking in the back corner, a frown on her beautiful face.

  The one person who was noticeably absent was Haven. I didn’t know why I’d expected him to watch in person when I knew he kept a remote screen in his office, but I had. It didn’t matter. I’d step into the simulator, do my best, and hopefully step out. And then we’d all know.

  “Alright,” Dahn said in my ear. “It’s just like any other simulation. You just walk in, hook your tech into the port—”

  “I know how to do a simulation, Dahn.”

  “Yeah.” His gray eyes searched mine and I felt the back of his knuckles against my hand. “I know.”

  “Don’t die,” Cast said from behind me, an unusual amount of worry in his tone.

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah. Goals.”

  I didn’t look at a single other person as I stepped into the simulator. Maybe Sullia was right. Maybe I didn’t have the survival instincts that all of the other Datapoints had. Stepping into this simulation wasn’t about greatness. And it sure wasn’t me looking out for number one. It was about answers.

  I blanked my mind as I hooked the tech on my arm into the port beside me. I felt the door of the simulator close, and I was plunged into blackness.

  I expected a series of lights to open up in front of me, one for each colony. But that wasn’t what happened. Instead, it was one solid line of light. I craned my head all the way around. It completely encircled me. I was surrounded by the colonies.

  There was the icy blue of the frozen colonies and the baked red of the volcanic ones. Somewhere in there was my colony on Io, but I let my mind skip right over that. Let’s start before we finish, Glade.

  I’d learned in all of my recent simulations not to look hard at what was going on in each colony. No more close inspections of a grandma sewing in her hut. No more trailing a dirty mutt on his search for scraps. No more watching kids jump rope or play tag. This was not a sightseeing expedition. This was Culling.

  Instead of searching out the individual brainwaves by using my own tech – the way I always used to – I instantly synced with the Authority Database.

  Lean hard. That’s what Dahn had said he always did. He leaned hard on the Database. I could do that.

  I felt endless streams of information swirl and twist into my integrated tech as I synced up. I didn’t understand how it worked, but the Database could organize insane amounts of data all at once. I watched in amazement as even a population of this size, the entire solar system’s, didn’t slow it down.

  There were
hundreds of thousands of people to sort and cull all at once, and the Database was careening through them. After the first ten thousand or so, each citizen’s brainwaves were not an individual cloud of red. No, they melted into one another. It was line after line of red, all bleeding together. They were surrounding me. A 360-degree view inside the simulator. I could observe it with my actual eyes, because the simulator showed me the projection. But I could also close my eyes and see it in my head, as well. My integrated tech could show it to me there.

  And that’s what I did. I jammed my eyes closed and my tech showed me the mass of people, every one’s living brain. An endless line of red.

  A line of sweat trailed down my back. It was so many people. A hundred times the most I’d ever culled at once.

  I could feel my tech scrambling to categorize all the information that the simulation was throwing our way. The image in my mind went completely black for a second as my tech skipped. It was overloading. I could feel the heat on my face and in my arm. This was too much data. It couldn’t handle it.

  Lean hard.

  I accessed the Authority Database from another angle. I’d never taken both angles, both access points, at once. I was asking the Database to categorize each person in the simulation, and now, I was also asking it to streamline the data that it was sending through my integrated tech.

  The program the Database was running shifted. And I actually felt it shift. Not just in my tech. But in my body. It shifted and my heart skipped; my hands tensed.

  For a second, I was back on the operating table getting my tech embedded that very first time. My body. My mind. Everything fought the intrusion. I was me. I was just me. There was no room for anything else to control me.

  The Database program struggled against me. I could feel it trying to complete what I’d asked it to do. In order to streamline the data to my integrated tech, it needed more access to that tech. It needed more access… to me.

  Sync, Glade. I commanded myself to do it. Screamed it at myself. Line up and sync. Allow it in.

  NO! My body screamed at me. My organic body. My fingers and toes and throat and eyes. I thought of the horse. I could not be tamed. I was wild. I was free. I would not let an intruder into my brain. My brain was mine. It was my thoughts, my life. I was the horse.

  But if I didn’t sync, I couldn’t handle the data. My arm tugged at the port and I realized that my knees were buckling. I wasn’t in pain, but my energy was dwindling. So much data. My tech burned in my skin. I could smell smoke. It was going to overload.

  A pain opened up behind my eye and I knew it was my own fault.

  Sync, Glade! Sync. Sync. … … Sink. Sink. And then I was sinking. Down. As if into a pool of deep, clear water. It wasn’t like syncing with my integrated tech. That had asked for my permission every step of the way. But with the Authority Database, I opened the tiniest bit and it shoved its own way in.

  I think I screamed. And I think my tech did, too. Suddenly my arms were flinging out to the sides. My eyes were open and unseeing. I couldn’t move, yet something was wiggling my fingers, opening my mouth. The Authority Database had my body. And it was controlling it like a computer program. From inside my brain, and there was nothing I could do. I’d invited it in.

  This was worse than hell. Worse than death. No. No.

  I struggled against the program for just a second, forcing my hand one way when the Database pushed it another. The movement scratched my own arm. A vicious swipe of a claw. The pain registered.

  I felt it register in my tech and in the Database.

  Oh, the Database seemed to say. Oh. That hurts. My hand fell. I jammed it to my side and the Database let me. My hand let me, and the Database let me.

  Blackness dissolved into the glowing red lines of just moments before. My integrated tech was digesting the data and showing it to me again. The sync with the Database had worked. It was organizing the citizens for me and chewing up the bites for my integrated tech.

  My brain could see it all now.

  I want to see them. I said it in my head, and I wasn’t sure if it was to my own tech or to the Database.

  But that was all it took for the citizens who needed to be culled to step forward in my mind’s eye. There were now two sets of red lines. The one in the back held every citizen who needed to be left alone. The line in front, surrounding me, closest to me – those were the citizens who needed to be culled.

  I tried to zoom in on the image, to check them. I wanted to see their brainwave readings myself. With my own eyes. I wanted to check and see who I was culling. I needed to see their patterns.

  But something didn’t let me. I felt the gears of the program grinding. My tech was trying to let me. But the Database wouldn’t allow it.

  I felt myself tighten against each and every brainwave that needed to be culled. I was about to do it. But I wasn’t sure if it was me tightening in on them, or the Database.

  I was about to cull without double-checking who was being culled. I was trusting the Database with the weight of the decision. I was trusting the Database to have done the sorting perfectly. I’d let the Database into my brain. And now it was going to use my brain to cull all these people.

  No.

  I tried again to zoom in, and felt a deep and striking pain in my head. Worse than my pain in the interrogation room. Instantly, I fell to one knee. I didn’t care. I had to do this. I had to check and make sure I was culling the right people. The pain instantly struck again. It wouldn’t let me.

  I gritted my teeth and felt my tech grinding against itself.

  Survive, Glade. Do what you have to and survive.

  It was Dahn’s voice. He was calling out to me. Survive. Don’t fight the Database. Let it in completely. Lean hard. Learn hard. The Database wants to cull. It won’t let you see who. Learn, Glade. Let it happen.

  And I did.

  I watched both red lines. My tech showed them to me in my mind. I watched that outside line shrink away, getting smaller. We left them alone, the Database and I. And then I watched that inside line get bigger and bigger.

  Cull them.

  My brain tightened against their brains. I used my mind like a hand on a plug.

  I yanked. And I watched their light fade to black.

  She was dead. Dahn knew she was dead. He’d never seen someone lay so still in his life. The simulator powered down, severing her connection to the Database, and Dahn carefully un-clicked her tech from the port.

  She remained completely still. Her body was warm. No… it was burning hot, and Dahn jumped back when the crystal-like tech on her cheek burned his palm as he grazed against it.

  “Get a health tech!” he screamed to the crowd of Datapoints that swarmed the doorway of the simulator. “Get Sir Haven!”

  “I’m here,” came that reedy voice, and the Datapoints immediately parted for him.

  Dahn swept Glade’s hair off of her face, but even his concern for her wasn’t enough to keep himself from doing a double-take when he saw Jan Ernst Haven. He’d never seen the man look like this. Wild and unkempt and with something akin to glee in his eye.

  “She did it,” Haven murmured as he stepped into the simulator.

  “Yeah, and it killed her,” Dahn bit out the words as he felt her neck for a pulse. He couldn’t find one. “Oh God. Get a health tech!”

  “She’s not dead.” Haven knelt, as well. He moved her head from one side to the other. “Though she may need to be resynced with her tech after this. It looks like she might have fried it.”

  When Haven’s fingers touched the tech on Glade’s cheek, her eyes sprang open.

  “Oh God.” Dahn fell forward onto his hands. “Glade, breathe. Can you hear me?”

  She nodded and did as he said, taking a huge gulp of air.

  Why wasn’t she talking? Did she have a brain injury?

  “Take your time, Datapoint.”

  With that, Glade’s eyes flickered to Haven, and Dahn started when he saw something in her expressi
on that looked almost like… fear.

  “She needs the infirmary.” Dahn’s tone brooked no argument, though he was very aware of Haven analyzing him.

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” Haven rose, and his voice sounded almost cheerful. “The rest can wait.”

  Dahn didn’t even address that comment. There was more? How much more was she expected to take?

  I wasn’t surprised to wake up in the infirmary. I was definitely surprised to see who was there with me.

  Sullia and Dahn. They hadn’t noticed me wake up, and their heads were bent down toward one another whispering.

  “It doesn’t matter, Dahn,” Sullia was saying to him. “The only thing we know is that she’s an unknown. She’s not like us. She can’t be predicted. It doesn’t matter if she’s Haven’s precious chosen one. She can’t be trusted. Not like you and I can. Haven will see that. He values the predictable. He’ll see it.”

  I couldn’t see Dahn’s face, but I did see Sullia’s hand on his arm. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that at all. I shifted slightly in bed, my face scrunched in anger, but I wasn’t the one who broke them apart. Cast was, as he came catapulting from the other side of the room to jounce my bed.

  “You’re awake!”

  I winced at both his volume and the amount he was shaking me around. “I guess.”

  “Glade, you did it! Do you remember? You passed out afterwards so we weren’t sure you’d remember. But you did it! You passed the simulation. You even culled sixty percent of the data. SIXTY percent. Can you believe it?”

  I recognized this as happiness; I knew it when I saw it. But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Dahn’s face. From his soft gray eyes.

  Something moved behind him and I realized it was Sullia slinking away. It couldn’t have been more obvious that she’d only come to my bedside to get to Dahn. My eyes went back to his and I tried to interpret what I saw there, but I couldn’t. There was only that soft look of his.

  “How are you feeling?” He sat on the other side of me and I resisted the urge to close my eyes and sleep forever. I knew that, as long as Dahn was there, I was safe.