Now the ship doesn’t jostle me as much. My seat straps hold me steady. I clutch the armrests and glue my eyes to the backs of the seats in front of me, and take deep breaths so I won’t feel nauseated.
The Extractions in the other rows are chattering and laughing, talking about what the Core will be like. I’ve seen all of them in classes before, but they’re not my friends. I don’t usually talk to them.
The girl beside me is quiet, sifting through her long strands of blond hair with her fingers and running her teeth over her bottom lip. I don’t really know her, either, but I recognize her from the fields yesterday. She’s the girl who didn’t run or even scream during the test. Ariadne.
There’s a crackle, and Cadet Waller’s voice comes over the ship-com. She’s sitting with the pilots in the cockpit. “We’re entering Crust, Extractions,” she says. “We’ll slow so you can catch a glimpse of it.”
Holding my breath, I risk a glance out the window. Now there are lights on the metal walls outside: red, green, yellow, and purple. They’re a blur at first, but they become clearer as the pilot slows the hovercraft.
Abruptly, the metal walls fall away and are replaced by glass. There’s a dust-filled room beyond it with a rocky floor, though the way we’re traveling, the floor is sideways. An official stands with a pulse rifle in hand. Pathways beyond him lead into tunnels made of the same grimy, blackening rock as the floor.
We pass another window that shows us more rocky pathways, and then another. These must be the coal mines, or near them. The parentless children in the Crust work camp collect the coal, which is Kiel’s major energy source. They spend their days choking on dust and fire smoke in the mines. They spend their nights in cramped, rocky caves with no fresh air, while the adults of Crust live in the comfort and safety of steel walls in their underground city.
I don’t envy Crust kids. Their home is worse than the Surface, where at least we can see the stars and pretend there’s someplace better out there.
But I guess they’re lucky in one respect: They don’t have to fear the moon.
The Pipeline glass is replaced by metal walls with flashing lights again. “We’re now approaching Mantle,” Cadet Waller says over the ship-com. “Its biggest weapons manufacturing facility will be visible through the windows.”
I see it in seconds: a facility filled with massive machinery and steam. I glimpse the dirty, wearied faces of the child workers. I bet the machines make noise all night—constant, high-pitched squealing. The kids probably fall asleep to it. I wonder if they have bunk rooms, or just blankets on the floor. Or no blankets at all.
It’s hard to believe, but a thousand years ago, none of these sectors existed. Everyone lived on the Surface in three large settlements: one near the mountains, one near the desert, one near the ocean. When pollution weakened the ozone layer, and the moon’s acid began seeping through, the scientists proposed underground expansion. There was nowhere else to go. The research facilities in the Surface cities offered some protection, but they couldn’t hold all the citizens.
So the lower sectors were constructed, along with the acid shield. The planet became more like a spaceship underground. The scientists who led Project Rebuild were elected as the new government leaders, and they called themselves Developers.
“We’re now approaching Lower,” Cadet Waller says over the ship-com.
The textile factories appear through the window. This time, I avert my eyes. I don’t like seeing the workers. They remind me of Logan and Grady. Some of them took the test this year too. They fought for escape just like me.
But they didn’t win.
The windows disappear, and the Pipeline lights flash by. My heartbeat picks up with every passing second. My veins tangle. My lungs constrict.
Lower is the last sector before the Core, which means we’re almost there.
I dig my fingernails into my legs when the ship-com crackles on again. “We’ve just entered the Core sector,” Cadet Waller says, and an excited murmur slides down the rows of passenger seats. “We should reach the flight port in approximately five minutes.”
Sixteen years I’ve spent fighting for this. Sixteen years I’ve spent longing for it, and now I’m sitting here and I can’t breathe, and I wish I had more time to prepare myself.
I’m scared nothing is going to change. I’m scared everything is going to be different.
The hovercraft’s engine stutters. We slow and fly into a tunnel horizontal to the Pipeline, and I grip my seat’s armrests. Streaks of gray show through the windows. A blur of red lights comes into focus as the ship lowers onto a port dock.
The steel door at the back of the hovercraft slides open. Our seat belts unlatch automatically, while Cadet Waller emerges from the cockpit and rattles off commands, things like “Please walk carefully” and “Let’s make sure our behavior is appropriate.”
I’m half listening. I’m half shaking.
I tell myself, “It’s going to be fine here,” and, “You have to get up now; you have to walk; you have to be brave.”
The other Extractions giggle nervously, standing and making their way off the back ramp, touching the seats they pass to steady themselves. Beside me, Ariadne pushes out of her seat with each of her eyes the size of the moon. I have to follow her or I’ll be the only person left on the ship, besides the pilot.
So I do.
9
The night after Laila was taken to quarantine, Logan and I climbed to the roof of my shack. We lay up there watching the stars shimmer beyond the shield. Logan’s arms were around me, and my head was buried in his shoulder. I’d used up all my tears already.
“Maybe she’s the wind now,” Logan said. “Maybe she’s making us cold and laughing because we don’t know it.”
I almost smiled. I could see her doing that, if it were possible.
“She’s not, Logan.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“Well, maybe she’s not. But she is safer now.”
A hovercraft flew by overhead, heading somewhere beyond the force-field fence. “I guess so.”
“You’ll be safe someday too,” Logan said, pulling me closer.
“When I die?”
“No, someone will fly you away before then. Wait and see.”
“They’d better fly you away too.”
“If they don’t, you’d better come back and visit. You’d better tell me all about it so I can pretend I’m safer too.”
I shook my head. “They can’t take me without you.”
“You still have to promise,” he said.
“Fine. I promise.”
*
It’s harder to breathe underground. I know I’m sucking enough air into my lungs because I don’t feel faint, but I clench my fists with every rise and fall of my chest. I taste air that’s too sweet and smells like antiseptic.
I hope this will get easier.
“This is the flight port, as you already know,” Cadet Waller says, gesturing to the deck around us. Red and orange lights flash everywhere. Steam spouts from vents in the floor here and there, blocking much of the hangar from view, but it seems massive. There are ships bigger than the hovercraft to my left, and a row of smaller flight pods to my right.
I glimpse a man in an orange worker’s suit over by the flight pods. He holds a hand over his eyes. I think he might be staring at the group of us.
“Follow me,” Cadet Waller says. “The Extractions from the other sectors are in the Pavilion. Commander Charlie is waiting for us to begin the welcome ceremony.”
She leads us across the port—I glimpse two more workers along the way—and through a set of sliding doors into a hallway. Dim blue lights flicker on the curved ceiling, mixing with translucent colors. They’re like stars, but a strange, fake kind of stars.
Of course the stars are fake here. The real ones are a million miles away.
I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. It’s going to be okay;
it’s going to be okay.
We follow the same corridor for a long time, as it curves and bends in places. The other Extractions are talking around me. They talk about what our meals will be like, and our beds will be like, and our lives will be like. Cadet Waller explains that we’ll divide our days between the various divisions of the Core. There are five primary ones, each devoted to a different facet of daily life. Nourishment is home to the kitchens and cafeterias; Slumber contains the living apartments; Training is where people receive education and job training; Invention is where most job centers, especially the science-related ones, are located; and Recreation offers fun and relaxation.
We’re on one of the first floors of Invention Division right now, a few levels above Restricted Division, the sixth and final division. The core of the Core. It houses the Developers and their control rooms. It’s the one place we’re not allowed to go.
I learned most of this a long time ago in school, so I don’t really listen. I count the doorways and elevator landings and stairwells we pass. I count the lights dotting the walls. I count the number of tiles on the stark white ceiling—278 so far.
I can’t make sense of this place. It looks like just another building. It looks like just another skyscraper on the Surface with a hundred corridors and a hundred rooms, but it smells different and sounds different and feels different—not hot or cold, but somewhere in between. And it goes on forever.
I’m in a never-ending building with no exits.
Finally, we turn left. We take a different corridor, and walk up a flight of stairs, and then down another short corridor. I hear voices ahead—lots and lots of voices.
The doors zip open ahead of us, and we move through them into blinding spotlights. I have to blink and hold my hand over my eyes to make the glare go away.
When it does, I see the pods floating above us. At least, they look sort of like pods, and they would be floating if they weren’t attached to the ground by spiral staircases. There are at least a hundred of them filling this massive room. The ones closer to the wall are higher than the others, so the group of them slopes downward like stadium stands. Each pod has about ten seats inside, and each is filled with Core citizens.
I think I’ve forgotten how not to stare.
I’ve seen adults before, of course. I’ve even seen lots of adults together. And I’ve also seen lots of children together.
But I’ve never seen lots of adults and children together—not like this, with adults and children together in each pod, when the adults don’t look like officials. And the kids resemble some of the adults, and they’re smiling and laughing and don’t look skinny as sticks.
They’re sitting with their families.
Something deep inside me loses a couple stitches. Some part of me that I thought was sewn tight and strong and whole, but now I’m thinking it might not be.
I wonder what it feels like to sit up there in one of those pods and know the woman on your right is your mother, and the man beside her is your father, and the kid next to you is your little sister or your older brother.
I wonder what it feels like to know you belong without having to ask.
Cadet Waller leads us across the floor beneath the viewing pods. The Extractions from the other sectors—fourteen from each—are waiting on the floor beyond the last viewing pod, near the far end of the Pavilion, surrounded by several officials and instructors. Waiting for what sort of welcome, exactly, I don’t know.
To distract myself from the fluttery feeling in my stomach, I wonder how the Developers keep enough air in the Core for everyone. It gets recycled, I suppose. Or they grow plants in special laboratories that produce enough oxygen to replenish what people use.
When we reach the other Extractions, I’m pressed into their throng. The heat of their bodies makes me feel trapped. Boys and girls with torn clothes and sweaty palms press in from either side. They look as nervous as I am.
A flicker of light catches my eye on the far wall of the room, about twenty yards away from our group. There’s a single glass box over there, about the size of my shack on the Surface. I’m not sure what it’s for.
My eyes wander up from the glass box. A last, lone viewing pod juts out from the wall above the box. It’s smaller than the others. This one doesn’t have a staircase rising from the floor; instead, it’s attached to the wall by a short ramp. It looks empty right now.
Above the pod is a large screen on the wall. It shows a faint image, the symbol of the Core: a full moon embossed in bronze.
“There are ten thousand one hundred and ninety-two people here,” someone whispers.
I turn. Ariadne, the girl who sat next to me on the hovercraft, is standing beside me. She’s scanning each of the viewing pods, her eyes wide, the clearest green I’ve ever seen.
“Six thousand nine hundred and fifteen adults, and three thousand two hundred and seventy-seven children,” she says, her voice soft, as if she’s talking to herself instead of me. “Five thousand one hundred and twenty-seven females, and five thousand and sixty-five males. Two point seven percent are potentially Unstable.”
My brows furrow. Is she counting everyone?
“Please quiet down.” Cadet Waller hushes us with a hand.
Behind us, the families in the viewing pods quiet too. The lights in the room darken, casting everything in shadow except for the wall screen with the Core symbol. A solitary light comes on—a thin red beam pointed at the viewing pod beneath the wall screen.
A man in a slick navy uniform steps into view, followed by four other figures in white. These must be the five Developers, the descendents of the scientists who headed Project Rebuild. After the Developers quelled the people’s rebellion and established the work camps to secure their power, they passed their rule onto their offspring when they died, instead of letting new leaders be elected. They didn’t want new blood ruining their system.
The man in the navy uniform is the only one who stands beneath the light. His face and upper torso replace the symbol of the Core on the screen. He’s older than I expected, with many creases around his mouth and on his forehead. His hair is a light shade of gray, flowing in waves down to his neck. His cheeks are a bit pale. He wears white gloves, and clasps his hands against his stomach.
Something magnifies his hoarse, cracking voice when he speaks: “Extractions, welcome to the Core.”
His eyes are a dull shade, but they burn through the screen, and a stone settles in my stomach.
This must be Commander Charlie, the superior of the five Developers. The leader of the planet. He’s the man who decided my fate, who picked death for Logan.
“Some of you,” he says, “we picked for your intelligence—for your capacity to understand things the average person cannot, for your potential to become the scientists and physicians we need so desperately. Others we picked for your physical strength—for your stature and your build, for your potential to become the patrolmen we need to keep order and keep everyone safe. We’ve observed you your whole life, both in the classroom and in the work camps.”
I bite my lip, thinking of the cam-bots that monitored us all the time back on the Surface. I wonder how much Commander Charlie has seen of all that footage.
He continues: “Your reactions to the situation you experienced during your Extraction test, as well as the brain scans we collected, were a final checkpoint, an assurance of the qualities we already knew you possessed. We have high hopes that you will offer much to our society.”
His words draw applause from the people in the viewing pods, and mutters of relief and excitement from the people around me. But Commander Charlie’s lips stretch into a smile that sends an icy shiver down my spine.
When the clapping dies down, he continues, “Of course, you’ve all come from societies very different from this one. You have much to learn, and many skills that need to be strengthened. Over the next week, you will participate in training sessions that will help with this. They will elevate each area of your Pro
mise—intelligence, strength, and obedience—and raise you to a level of worth that will stay with you for the rest of your lives. We will mold you into perfect citizens. And you will reap the rewards: safety, nourishment, and the freedom to help us decide what your place will be in this society, based on your particular skills.
“Traditionally, Extraction training begins in this room.” He gestures below him. “Notice the glass box in front of you.”
I glance at the box against the wall. The glass lights up, a soft blue color, that helps me see inside better. It has a metal door at its back wall and a small square of red glass on its front.
“In a moment,” Commander Charlie says, “the box won’t be empty. Through its back door, two officials will lead in an Unstable, fresh from the Karum treatment facility on the Surface. This is your chance to help us cleanse our society of their dangerous presence. There will be one Unstable for each of you to shoot.”
I’m a statue made of steel. He doesn’t mean … he can’t mean …
“We strive to cure all Unstables,” he says. “We strive to make them better. We do everything within our power, but some people who were once useful to our society endanger us. Some we cannot cure. Hopeless cases … must be exterminated. I ask you, my dear Extractions, to assist me in sending them on their departure. It is for the safety of all, and it is an honor.”
The Core crowd hoots and hollers.
I don’t want to believe him.
“Each of you will receive a gun,” he says. “A small part of the box will open, allowing you to aim your gun inside. All you must do is pull the trigger. This will be your first contribution to Core society.”
The other Extractions mutter in worry, their faces pale again in the dark. Across the floor, more instructors and officials are descending from a pod stairwell, carrying crates with the guns they’ll pass out to us.
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