Extraction

by Stephanie Diaz

  My hands can’t help trembling a little. Some of the others who tested didn’t run. Some of them obeyed the instructors—of course they did. But how many?

  No. Stop thinking about it. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.

  My eyes scan the workers in the distance, in the crop fields. I wonder how Grady did. He must’ve finished his test earlier than me, or maybe he’s still in one of the machines, because I haven’t seen him yet.

  A big part of me is glad I don’t have to see him yet, that I don’t have to find out how he thinks he did. He’s my friend, so of course I want him to be picked tomorrow. I want him to be safe.

  But if the Developers pick him, that’s one less chance for me.

  We reach the greenhouses at the edge of the field, which sit near the packaging warehouse and the animal corrals. I’m grateful for the distraction. In the nearest corral, brown-spotted couras chew on tufts of grass.

  Outside the warehouse, a warden shoves a plastic bucket into my arms and attaches a white tag to my wrist. The small dots along the tag flash green. If I tried to run, a warden would flip a switch and an electric current would pulse through my body, crippling me long enough for officials to capture me. The electric force field around the Surface settlement’s perimeter is only a secondary precaution.

  My eyes trail to where it sits in the distance, a green, shimmering wall beyond the crop fields. It stands at least thirty feet tall—tall enough that it’s impossible to get over without a flight pod. If I had access to a pod and knew how to fly it, or if I could break into the security hub in the city and disable the force field, running might actually be an option.

  But it’s too risky. And even if Logan and I did manage to escape on our own, we don’t know for sure what’s outside the settlement, what fills the rest of the Surface. Instructors say there are oceans and mountains and fields—places Core scientists visit sometimes on research trips for the Developers.

  But they could be lying. They tell us what’s out there so we’ll long for Extraction, which is the only future that might let us travel the rest of the Surface.

  What’s out there might be just as dangerous as life in the work camp, or worse.

  I near the force field as we walk to the food crops. Hundreds of others are already working beneath the hot sun, pulling weeds or spraying fertilizer chemicals. Cam-bots hover here and there, providing extra sets of eyes for the wardens.

  I slip away from the group to search for Logan. I squeeze between children and tall stalks of shir grain, cursing my short stature. Hoping the wardens and cam-bots don’t notice me.

  It doesn’t take me long to spot him. He moves along a row of nage greens with a bucket in his hands, his sweaty clothes clinging to his body.

  I watch him for a moment, not moving, not speaking. My heart thumps in my ears. I’m terrified to see him after what I said earlier, when I was in the testing room with that instructor.

  But I’m sure he would’ve said the same thing. I’m sure he’d give me up, if it meant he’d win an escape. Wouldn’t he?

  Maybe I’m lying to make myself feel better.

  I wipe dust and sweat out of my eyes, and join the row beside Logan’s. Bending, I sprinkle coarse, smelly manure around the golden roots of a hoava plant.

  He notices me, and his eyes search my face for some sign of how the test went. He wants me to say something first, but I don’t because it’s useless. What I think or feel, or want to say or do doesn’t matter. Not when it comes to this.

  “How’d it go?” he asks.

  Two rows to my right, a girl falls to her knees from exhaustion. “Get up,” a greasy-haired warden snaps. When she doesn’t, he hisses through his teeth and stomps over the plants to reach her.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Not too bad, I hope.”

  Logan’s forehead creases. He reaches out and laces our fingers. His hand is warm and steadying. I close my eyes and let it distract me from the girl’s whimpering as the warden wrenches her from the ground. From my worry about tomorrow.

  But only for a moment. Then Logan lets go and turns back to the nage greens, and I move to the next hoava root.

  A moment is all we can spare with the wardens watching.

  Beads of sweat gather on my face, neck, and under my armpits as we move down the rows. The sun overhead burns scorching red. Flies buzz around me. I swat at them, but they don’t go away.

  Logan works beside me, sometimes a few feet ahead, sometimes a few feet behind. I want to tell him about the test, even though we aren’t supposed to. Last year, all he told me was that his limp hadn’t helped him. He wouldn’t say it straight out, but I think he guessed that was the only reason he wasn’t picked for Extraction, since he’s always been intelligent and obedient. He came home after the names were announced and didn’t smile for days, even when I tried to comfort him.

  He’s mostly silent now. I wish I knew what he was thinking. But I’m mostly glad I don’t.

  My fingers tremble as I work. Every time I swallow, it feels like I’m swallowing rocks, my throat is so parched. My empty stomach makes me dizzy. I’m surrounded by food and it’s tempting to eat something, but I can’t be caught stealing. That’s a form of disobedience, and it could earn me transfer to the detention facility and cost me my shot at escape tomorrow.

  Of course, some kids, usually the older ones, manage to steal without getting caught. They hoard crops in secret places in their shacks and trade them to other kids. Sometimes I’ve joined in their market, but not often. It’s too dangerous.

  “Hey, Clementine,” Logan says softly.

  I glance at the warden to make sure he’s facing away from us. When I see he isn’t looking our way, I turn to Logan. He slips his free hand into his trouser pocket. “Yeah?” I say.

  “I found something special earlier. Thought you might like it.” He gives me a hopeful smile as he removes a small flower and twirls the green stem between his fingers. The petals glint silver like metal.

  My feet falter. The breaths collide in my throat.

  Of all the children in the camp, I like to think I’m one of the braver ones. Not all the time, of course. Some days the whippings and beatings make me want to curl up in a ball. When I dream of officials dragging Logan to quarantine, I wake drenched in sweat and trembling, but I calm down. I get over it. I have to be good at ignoring my fear, because how else will I prove I deserve to escape it?

  This flower is different.

  “Get that away from me,” I say, panicked. I jerk away from Logan, bumping into the worker girl behind me. She makes a sound or says something, but I don’t care.

  It’s been eight years since I’ve seen a flower with silver petals like this. But it seems like yesterday. I can still feel the ache slipping through my veins, the pinpoints of knives all over my body, the fever dragging me into a world of liquid fire.

  About a hundred years ago, silver aster flowers were created by a Core scientist who injected a special kind of protein into the gene code of a flower, as part of some experiment. The protein released hormones in the aster pollen that relieved stress and slowed brain activity. The result was a pollen with a high calming effect on humans, that could be used as a stress or pain reliever for sanitarium patients. But I’m allergic to it.

  “Wait, wait,” Logan says, staring at me like I’m out of my mind. “It’s just—it’s not—oh, jeez…” He runs his fingers through his hair, looking at the flower with widening eyes. Realizing why I’m freaked out.

  “Did you forget what happened last time?” I ask.

  “I did—I’m sorry. But this is different. This isn’t what you think.” With a callused hand, he tears the petals. Thin, silver wrappings fall away, leaving behind the midnight blue of a common aster—a flower that will definitely not hurt me.

  Nothing can stop the heat from spreading through my cheeks.

  “I forgot, I’m sorry,” Logan says, his eyes on the ground. “I was just trying to make it look prettier for you.”


  Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a curious cam-bot hovering over. I fix my bucket in my arms, swallow hard, and turn back to the hoava roots. I hope Logan will do the same. We have to keep working. We can’t attract any more attention.

  But I feel like such an idiot. That day eight years ago when we ran across real silver asters, they had spilled out of a hovercraft’s cargo due to a security mistake. They don’t grow on the Surface; they’re genetically engineered in labs in the Core, in petri dishes under LED lighting. Logan couldn’t have gotten hold of one.

  My hand shakes as I reach for a rotten root and wrench it up from the ground.

  “I’m sorry,” Logan says. He’s standing too close to me again—the cam-bot is sure to notice—but I can’t bring myself to push him away. “I swear I forgot about the…” He sighs. “I just thought it might make you smile.”

  “On a normal day, if I thought it was a joke, maybe it would have.”

  “Right.” The word comes out half caught between his lips. Almost as if he forgot today isn’t normal, or maybe he was only trying to put it out of his mind.

  Of course he remembers now. His lips press into a tight line.

  I rip up another rotten root from the ground. Of course he was trying to be sweet and I messed it up. I mess up lots of things when it comes to him and me.

  I realize he’s stopped working again.

  “What are you doing?” I hiss.

  His brows furrow, and he stares at something I’m too short to see. “Do you smell that?”

  I pause. I sniff the air. It smells like manure and musk and vegetation, but there’s also something else. Faint at first, then stronger.

  Fire smoke.

  “Get working!” the greasy-haired warden yells.

  But others notice the smell too. Muttering ripples among the laborers.

  “Can you see anything?” I ask Logan.

  He shakes his head. “The wind isn’t bad. Hopefully it won’t spread.”

  “Are you deaf?” the warden snarls.

  I turn, and he’s in my face, spewing saliva. The leather of his metallic whip rips the flesh of my arm, and I gasp, dropping my bucket.

  Logan shields me with his body. The whip smacks his side. He winces.

  The nearest cam-bots start beeping—a loud, obnoxious sound that makes my ears sting. In the distance, just before the electric force field, bright flames feed on crops and grass. Smoke blurs my view of the children who shout and stumble over each other to escape it.

  The warden shoves Logan aside and staggers past us, realizing what’s going on.

  “Get water!” he yells over the beeping bots. “We need water!”

  The emergency pods are already in the air. They come from somewhere near the greenhouses, and fly above the flames. Doors in their undersides slide open. Water spills out. I’ve never seen so much of it.

  Logan pulls me to my feet. I’m trembling. “You’re bleeding,” he says.

  I barely hear him, or notice the sting in my arm. Instead, I notice how officials are surrounding the workers nearest the force field and the fire. How they’re dragging the kids into a line and roping their legs together with thin pieces of electric wire. They only use wire like that to handcuff people before taking them to the detention facility, or to quarantine.

  Logan’s arms wrap around me.

  “Why are they doing that?” I ask.

  “They must think it wasn’t an accident.”

  My eyes flit again to the handcuffed children, to the smoke streaming across their faces. They’re all older than me, and taller. One or two might be crying. But most don’t look frightened. They hold their heads high and bite back their screams when the wardens snap whips at their ankles.

  Some of the chemicals we use out here are flammable, but it takes matches to start a fire, or lightning, and there isn’t lightning. The kids must’ve stolen matches. I bet they wanted to set fire to the whole field, just to cause trouble, or maybe to try to run in the commotion.

  But the force field is still up. There isn’t anywhere to run.

  The officials near me and Logan are shouting, telling everyone to move. I guess we’re quitting early.

  I force myself to turn away from the handcuffed workers. I lean into Logan as we move down the crop rows toward the greenhouses, where officials will pass out our daily meal rations—the leftover food that didn’t pass inspection.

  They’ll kill the rebels for what they did. They always replace people who don’t cooperate. Some of them might be sixteen; some of them might not have even tested yet, but that doesn’t matter. They’ve lost all their Promise now.

  Maybe that’s why they did this, though. Maybe they wanted to die.

  4

  Logan and I follow the old train tracks along the edge of the forest. The hov-pods and shuttles still run in the evenings, but officials don’t care if we walk back to the work camp instead, if we want to. Sometimes it’s nicer.

  The tracks haven’t been used since long before I was born, not since the days when everyone lived on the Surface and there were no lower sectors. The days before the Developers ruled and scientists had to build the acid deflector shield to cover the whole globe and protect our planet. The days before the upper class fled underground to survive.

  Logan limps beside me over the tangled weeds and strewn rocks. He and I are alone, except for the spare cam-bot that floats past every so often to monitor the area.

  “Are you still bleeding?” Logan asks.

  “No.” I quickly wipe the blood on my wrist onto my dress.

  Frowning, he takes my wrist gently and touches the cut with a light finger. I wince. “It hurts?” he asks.

  “A little.” I pull away from him. It actually hurts a lot now that I’m not distracted by the fire, but he doesn’t need to know that.

  “I’ll help you clean it when we get home.”

  Laughter echoes from somewhere not far ahead. The foreign sound makes my stomach twist. I squint to see who it came from, and so does Logan.

  His eyebrows draw together. “Is that Grady?”

  There are four figures in all, two standing and two on their knees between the tracks.

  Grady stands unevenly, one foot on a track and one on the ground. The girl beside him is talking to the two boys on the ground, who are laughing. I tense. They’re all in my classes at school, but they’re not my friends. These three used to bully me all the time, whenever I scored higher than everyone on an exam. Throwing rocks was their specialty. My specialty was evading them.

  Something about the way the boys, Larry and Carter, are kneeling now, clearly messing with something on the ground, makes my palms sweat. I check for cam-bots in the vicinity. There aren’t any, for the moment.

  “Grady!” Logan calls, and his head turns.

  Dirt and sweat streak across his face, clumping in his eyebrows. “Hey,” he says.

  Larry and Carter look up too. Their eyes narrow ever so slightly. Carter whispers something to Larry, and they both snicker.

  My eyes trail over them, from their arms to the rocks in their hands. They smash the rocks against the iron track, weakening the metal to mutilate it. It’s already splitting into pieces that look like perfect weapons.

  My heartbeat picks up, matching the rhythm of the clanks.

  “That’s dangerous. If a bot sees you—”

  “You can run if you’re frightened.” The girl, Nellie, cuts me off, crossing her arms and smirking. Her black hair is shorter than it was the last time I saw her, and spiked a little with mud.

  Logan glares at Larry and Carter, who are still smashing away and whispering. He turns to Grady. “Are you coming home with us?”

  Grady shakes his head. The color rises in his cheeks. “I’m gonna stay here awhile.”

  I don’t understand how he ended up here. I’ve never seen him with Nellie or these boys before. I’ve never seen him hanging out with anyone except Logan.

  “If you get caught messing with the t
racks, you won’t have any shot tomorrow,” I say. “You know that, right?”

  Grady laughs, a sad laugh. There’s red around his irises. “You really think I have a shot?”

  Uncertainty drums in my chest.

  Really, I don’t know if he has a shot. He’s always been obedient, willing to do just about anything without complaining. His scores and speeds in the genetics lab were excellent, but just average in his other subjects. The chances of him getting picked when competing against everyone else …

  “Of course,” I say.

  Pain flickers in Grady’s eyes, and my stomach drops to my toes. I took too long to answer.

  “Yes, you do,” Logan says firmly.

  “You don’t have to lie to me.” Grady drops onto the track.

  “Grady, we’re not lying—” I reach for his shoulder, but he knocks my hand away. I feel the sting beneath my ribs.

  “Maybe we’ll get picked and maybe we won’t.” Nellie shrugs.

  “We’re just making sure we’ve got a backup plan,” Carter says, smirking at me and holding up his rock.

  “Dismantling a train track is your plan?” I ask.

  “We’re making weapons so we can fight the adults,” Larry says, pausing to flex his almost nonexistent muscles. “Especially the officials.”

  Nellie gives me a hard look, challenging me. “I’d like to see you come up with a better plan.”

  I don’t know whether to be mad or laugh. Of course I could come up with a better plan—try to break into the security hub and disable the force field, and escape the settlement that way—but I wouldn’t be stupid enough to try. Getting caught would earn me an early trip straight to quarantine.

  Logan focuses on Grady again. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

  “Will you just give it up?” Nellie says with an eye roll.

  I ignore her. “Trust me, Grady, you’ve got a shot tomorrow. After all, you’re competing against people like Larry and Carter.”

  Carter hisses through his teeth.

  “Maybe,” Grady mumbles. He doesn’t look up.

  “Grady, please—”

  “He doesn’t care what you have to say,” Nellie snaps.