by Lisa Jade
“You look terrible.”
“You’re not much better,” I point out. She pokes out her tongue and laughs again. The sound echoes strangely through the Atrium, and I notice for the first time that it’s silent.
“Where is everyone?” I ask.
“Oh, right. We asked them to head into the tunnels for a bit. Figured this might be kind of a private thing.”
Jensen’s sitting nearby, tapping away at the nearest console. There’s a look of grim determination on his face as he types, his fingers moving too quickly for me to decipher what he’s doing. He raises his head as I approach.
“Are you ready?”
I gulp.
“What do I have to do?”
“It’s a three-fold test. Eye scan, blood test, fingerprints. Come here, I’ll show you.”
I sit obediently as he carries out the tests. The blood test is fine, no different from before. He sighs when taking my fingerprints, questioning if they’ll work. I suppose I can understand that. My fingers are so calloused and worn that I’m surprised there’s much print left. The eye is the hardest bit, but even that;s easy enough.
“It’ll take a few minutes,” he tells me, “so relax.”
I nod, but I’m anything but relaxed. Nerves are flitting through me, absolute panic barely held back by reason and logic. Either way, things will be fine. It’s fine.
“Hey.”
Pan steps up beside me, leaning against the same railing, trying to seem nonchalant on her injured leg. She casts a curious eye across the Atrium, as though expecting something extraordinary to appear. I swallow hard. I know how that feels.
“Hi.”
“Are you ready for this?”
Her voice is low and friendly, but there’s a strain of concern in there. She’s not just making small talk; she wants to know if I can do this. I run a hand through my hair, tugging at the root as though the sliver of pain might somehow ease my nerves.
“I guess so.”
“Scared?”
“Yeah. I mean, I want this to turn out well. I do. But if it does, then that means my entire life has been a lie. It means I know absolutely nothing.”
She watches me for a moment, then rests a comforting hand on my shoulder. I find myself leaning into it, towards her warmth, as though her soft voice and clear eyes might fix everything.
“You don’t have to do this,” she coos, “just put off the results for a little while.”
“It’s okay. I’m ready.”
“Are you sure?”
I fix her in my gaze. Pan. Sweet, bleeding heart Pan with her endless kindness and gentle touch. Behind us, Jensen, intelligent and oddly charming. Nate, with his big smile and agile hands. And Jay, of course – his patience, his confidence. What I wouldn’t give to be his family. To be a part of this.
“I’m sure.”
“Noah?”
Jensen’s voice rings out across the Atrium, sending shudders through me.
“Yeah?”
“It’s done.”
My stomach swirls. This is it. A week after arriving, I’m going to find out the truth. As I turn back, Jay’s eyes lock onto mine. He stands across the platform from me, his face uncertain. There are beads of sweat forming on his head. He’s just as terrified as I am. I clear my throat.
“Okay. Here’s the question, then. Who am I?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“You’re Ada.”
I can’t breathe. Shock and joy and delight fill me, sending shivers of electricity through my limbs. Around me, the others gasp. Their eyes light up – for them, this is the beginning of the end. Their war is finally nearing its conclusion.
My hands are shaking. I stare down at them, clenching and unclenching my fingers. It’s true. I’m Ada. I’m from the city. I’m…
I look up, meeting Jay’s eyes - my brother’s eyes. The joy threatens to burst from my throat and suddenly I’m running, throwing my weight into him. To my surprise he expects it, locking his arms around my shoulders and spinning on the spot. Our combined laughter fills the space between us.
Eventually he stops spinning, and I bury my face in his shoulder. My brother. The last relic of a life I once lived but can no longer remember. My grip on his back tightens. A moment later, he hugs back. The laughter dies.
“I’m so happy for you guys,” I hear Nate say. Jensen grunts.
“Yep. This is a game changer.”
“This changes everything,” Pan adds, “absolutely everything.”
Suddenly, it falls silent – and I quickly realise why. Jay’s head is buried in my shoulder, his arms fastened tight around me; and his shoulders are shaking. Is he crying?
What do I do? I shoot an alarmed look at Pan, but she’s just smiling. What can I possibly say? Something sweet? Something charming? Do I tease him for crying so easily? Suddenly, I don’t know what to do with myself. So I just draw my brother closer.
“I’m… sorry I was away for so long.”
He simply tightens his grip.
That evening, Nate pulls a strange crate out from under his bunk. As he drags it into the Atrium and calls for me to help, I ask him what’s inside.
“I’ve been keeping this stockpiled for a special occasion,” he says, winking. I unlatch the crate and as I throw the lid open, the stench of dust and alcohol meets my nose. I must seem disgusted, because he laughs.
“Not much of a drinker?”
I grimace. I’m not entirely unfamiliar with alcohol; the Guards at the Mill often knocked back snifters of cheap whiskey while entertaining some particularly exotic ‘company’ in their bunkers. I’d woken to the stink of booze and throw-up more times than I’d like to admit – and the experience hasn’t exactly endeared me to alcohol.
“Never tried it,” I admit, “don’t really want to.”
“Oh, boo. You’re an adult now, right? Nearly twenty. You can try a sip or two.”
I really don’t want to; but I suppose I should give it a try. I have to try to let go of the past a little, right? So I heave a sigh and promise to try some later.
The rest of the Atrium is dark now. As I glance up, I notice some strange black canopy near the ceiling. It blocks out the glass overhead, making it even darker.
“What’s that for?” I ask, pointing. Nate just smirks.
“It was up the other day. You didn’t notice it then?”
“No. What does it do?”
“You’ll see.”
The Atrium buzzes. With this new revelation, there’s a new lease of life amongst the Clover. It’s only been an hour since Jay addressed them, told them what had happened. He’d sworn them to absolute secrecy and promised that he would find a way to recover everyone who’d been lost. He’d promised that as long as their hearts were still beating, he’d bring them home someday. And to my surprise, everyone accepted it. While I’d half-expected them to run off and try to save their own loved ones from the Mill, they haven’t. They’ve placed their faith entirely in Jay’s hands. They trust him to see them through.
Still, they’re excited. Many have lost people to the Cull, I’m sure – but now, there’s an element of hope in everything they do. If one person was kept alive, who’s to say that others weren’t, too? Maybe I’m just the first of many.
Still, it’s a leap. As Jensen warned us soon after the reveal, there’s no guarantee that it happened again. The leaders could have kept me alive for the sake of leverage against our parents. They could have just forgotten about me. I could easily have slipped away from the Guards on the way to my execution and stumbled across the Mill.
Just because I’m alive, that doesn’t mean the others are.
Still, it’s something. Nobody’s ever been recovered after being taken in the Cull. It’s a death sentence – literally and figuratively. This could be a discovery of epic proportions. It could also be a one-off that has the chance to disappoint millions.
I’ve been thinking about the Mill since we found out. Thinking about Nel and Kane. If t
hey really were born there and raised in Homestead. Or if they’re like me, infants with stolen memories and a warped sense of their own existence. I never bothered to ask Nel if she could remember anything. I’d assumed that she was like me. That nothing in her life mattered except the Mill, and working as hard as possible every day for the entirety of her life.
Thinking back, though, that’s not true. I recall the night she cried about the cows. How much it pained her to separate the calves from their mothers. At the time I’d dismissed it as foolish over-sensitivity, but what if it wasn’t? What if she had some trace of memory from the times before that she didn’t quite understand, and the parting of a family was enough to bring those memories rushing back? I called her a friend, and yet I never bothered to ask.
And now I’m staying here, I’ll probably never get to ask.
My quiet self-reflection is broken by a heavy hand on my back. Nate grins toothily at me.
“Hey, cheer up. This is a good day, you know!”
“I know. But I have a lot of questions now.”
“I know you do,” he says warmly, “but let go of them for now. Just for tonight. The biggest question’s been answered.”
“But what happens next? There’s so much more we need to do.”
“Right now, we don’t need to do anything except enjoy tonight. Tomorrow, I promise, you can worry all you like. But just for now, let it be. Try to have fun, alright?”
I watch him closely. I had assumed from the start that Nate was in his thirties, and only a little older than Jay. But Pan’s story has me thinking. If Jay was eight when his – our – parents were killed, and Nate took care of him, how much older is he? It can’t be by much, ten years at most. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for a teenager to take over the care of a kid that young. I feel a rush of respect for him.
At the Mill, I’d scowled and snarled at the workers who dared to have children. I’d considered it a cheap way of backing out of their obligations, or avoiding the work by taking the easiest way out. I’d felt betrayed by those who chose to do it, like they had made things worse for those of us who didn’t run away. But that wasn’t fair. Nate decided to raise a kid, and instead of anger, all I feel is respect. There’s no difference – but then again, I’m finally starting to question everything I believed in before coming here.
As the blackness of night finally falls overhead, the lights come on. They’re small, round, glowing things – and as we sit amongst them, bathed in their gentle light, I finally understand the point of the black canopy overhead. It must be to block out the light, so those above us can’t see down into the Atrium. That would be a pretty stupid way of revealing ourselves.
We sit in small groups across the platforms, dozens of forms huddled around the little lights. Even from here on the bridge, I can see dozens of warm smiles illuminated softly by the lamps.
Jensen presses something cold against my arm and I jump; but it’s just that bottle of alcohol, the same one they’ve been passing around for ten minutes now.
I open my mouth to refuse, but then catch Nate’s eye. I did promise him I’d try. This is an evening of new experiences, right? I don’t know exactly what Jay and the others have planned with this setup – they’ve refused to tell me – but I should jump in feet first. I take a swig from the bottle and gag.
“That’s disgusting.”
Jensen takes the bottle back, amusement playing on his features.
“It takes a little getting used to, I suppose.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Just tastes bitter to me.”
Pan’s leaning on Jensen’s shoulder, one hand clutching her leg. As I quickly found out, it’s a clean break. The helicopter had crash-landed behind us, throwing her off and into Jensen, who was driving in front of us. The two had woken together and looked for the rest of us in the carnage, but by that point Jensen’s bike had already snapped her femur in half. The fact that she carried on searching is rather heart-warming.
From the sounds of it, everyone was up and about before me. They’d been darting through the flames, recovering the bikes, digging one another from the twisted metal before the fire reached them. Jay had run off to find me – only stumbling across me at the last possible moment. Gratitude wells in my chest. If I were them, I wouldn’t have gone out of my way. It still scares me, the memory of being frozen against the burning ground and waiting for the bullet to hit me. At the time, I’d wondered why I couldn’t fight back. Now I know. I was scared.
I was so terrified to die that I hadn’t been able to move, or cry out, or do much of anything really. And though Jay brushes it off like it was nothing, we both know I’d be dead if he hadn’t been there.
I’ve never thought I would die before. Sure, at times I’ve been scared or pained – running through the streets with Jensen on my back, or that time in the Mines when I nearly got caught in a cave-in – but before, there had been a rush of adrenaline to drive me forward. I’d been able to do something to fight the oncoming danger. This time, I couldn’t. I’d been retired to the fact I was going to die.
Not the others, though. They were far braver than me. Even with a busted leg, Pan still busied herself digging the others out of the wreckage. Jay had cuts coating his body, and he still ran off to find me. I had a scratch on my forehead and was too scared to move, much less do anything of value.
Pan sees me staring and winks.
“You alright?”
“Yeah. I, er… I was just trying to figure out what’s going on.”
“Ah, I can’t tell you that. Not yet. It’s a surprise.”
“I don’t get it.”
Jay sits down next to me, cross-legged on the ground, and shoots me a reassuring smile.
“You will.”
A few minutes later, something shifts across the Atrium. It’s the same screen they used to air the leaders’ speeches before – but this time, there are no stern, angry faces on it. There’s just static. Jay glances at Jensen.
“You got it working?”
“Yeah. Hacked the airwaves. This is going to be airing on every channel for the next ten minutes. No overlay, no nothing. Is that about right?”
He smirks.
“Perfect.”
Those dusty eyes turn to me now, reminding me for the hundredth time why he seemed so familiar the first time we met.
“What’s all this about, anyway?” I ask.
“You were taken when you were three,” he explains, “the Cull only takes kids up to and including three years old, and the Cull took place just before your fourth birthday. It was the last possible time they could have taken you, and they did it. Just before it would have become illegal.”
My chest tightens.
“Okay. So?”
“So… you never got to celebrate your fourth birthday. Let alone the fifteen that have come around since. You’re not far off twenty either, are you?”
“Birthdays aren’t really a thing at the Mill,” I point out, “I didn’t even know they were a common thing to celebrate.”
“Well, they are. Now you’re a little too old for a four-year old’s birthday party, but I still wanted to give you a present.”
I don’t quite understand the words he’s using, but I still feel a catch of excitement in my throat as he waves towards the screen, which is now crackling into life.
“You missed out on a lot because of what happened,” he says softly, “and I can’t ever give it back to you – but I can show you a bit of it.”
The screen crackles again, and when the video finally forms, I gasp.
A young woman beams at the camera, laughing a high-pitched laugh. There’s a man behind her – and as he leans forward to adjust the camera, I spot dusty blue eyes peeking out from behind his glasses. Someone wriggles to get into frame; a little boy, no older than seven, with a shock of dirty blonde hair and scraped up knees.
“James, come on. Sit still.”
James? I open my mouth to ask the question, the
n stop. Oh. Jay must be short for James.
Young Jay shoots Mom a sheepish grin and pushes his head against her shoulder, eager to get more of his face in frame. She laughs.
“Okay, okay. James, do you want to say hello to Auntie Kath?”
“Hello, Auntie Kath!”
“I’m so sorry you couldn’t be around for Ada’s second birthday,” the woman says, turning back to the camera, “but I understand you’re… busy with things.”
Her face falls suddenly, a hint of sorrow breaking the kindness in her eyes.
“After last year’s Cull, I don’t blame you for cutting us out. I know it’s not our fault they took Toby. But I get it. It can be hard spending time around people who remind you of things you used to have. We won’t try and force our way into your life, Kath. I understand that you need time. Nathaniel, too. It must be so hard for him to have lost his brother. But just so you know, we’re always here if you need us.”
I’m standing now, taking slow, measured steps towards the railing that stands between us and the screen. Her – Mom’s – voice is soft and gentle, her eyes reproachful as she speaks to the person on the other side of the camera. Auntie Kath, she said. Her sister? Did she have a sister? How don’t I know any of this? These are basic questions. I glance back at the others; Nate in particular seems oddly wistful. Could Nate be short for Nathaniel? Could this be how we’re related?
There’s something deeply frightening about Mom’s voice. It’s probably the first sound I ever heard, and yet it sounds as unfamiliar to me as Jay’s did when we first met. Something that should have screamed home to me now echoes strangely, like an alien sound heard for a split second decades ago.
“Anyway, I know it’s been over a year now, so we arranged for some flowers to be sent to you. Budded roses, your favourite.”
“Tell her about the car!” demands James.
“Oh, yes. James has – very helpfully – put a toy car inside one of the flowers. Unfortunately he did this just before they went out, and I didn’t get chance to stop him.”
“It’s lucky,” the boy adds, “guess which one it’s in!”
Mom loops a playful arm around James’ neck and pulls him close, but there’s hesitation in the movement. She’s trying not to rub it in Kath’s face. Trying her utmost to be considerate. Dad finishes playing with the camera and settles down on the back of the sofa. The two exchange small glances before Mom starts talking again.