Sketches

by Teyla Branton

  Except the numbers didn’t add up. As Eagle had reminded them, they had ten thousand people missing from the database, and some of those were people Jaxon had known. He needed to learn what had happened, and if there was any connection with his missing persons cases and the death at the Fountain.

  If there were answers to be found, maybe they’d begin to uncover them inside the walls of the Coop. Like it or not, it was time to face his past.

  Chapter 16

  FLAT, EMPTY LAND stretched out as far as Reese could see, broken only by the occasional group of trees and the steady line of the sky train with its massive supporting columns. The road they traveled was paved and in excellent condition, which had surprised her this far away from the main cities of Dallastar. She’d thought that most of the travel to and from the colony would have been by the sky train.

  All at once the walls of the colony rose up in the distance, quickly growing as the shuttle sped toward them. The walls continued to rise to an impossible height that captured Reese’s attention. In her memory, they had been tall, but her adult imagination had downplayed exactly how enormous they really were. Obviously meant to keep people out.

  Or to keep people in.

  Cameras stood on short poles at intervals along the wall, facing both inward and outward.

  She glanced over at Jaxon, who, like her, had swiveled his seat around to face the front. His face was impassive, a sure sign he dreaded being here. Eagle, on the other hand, was grinning with anticipation. “Two meters thick,” he announced, “and twenty meters tall. With horizontal and vertical steel beams every meter. Nice.”

  “You can tell all that from here?” Reese squinted ahead.

  “The measurements, yes. It’s what I do. But I remember about the steel reinforcement from that hole we found on the northwest side. You think it’s still there?” When no one answered, he went on, “I’d almost talked myself into thinking they couldn’t be this . . . looming.”

  The shuttle rolled smoothly over the narrow road, coming to a stop next to a small building situated to the left of two large metal gates that had the words COLONY 6 stamped across them in huge letters. A young enforcer with smooth skin and a pointed chin poked his head out of the building as Jaxon glided the window down so the guard could better scan their embedded CivIDs with the additional encoding of enforcer credentials. Without those credentials, they’d need a special permit to enter any colony.

  “Already got you,” the man said, gesturing to a holo display they only glimpsed through the glass. “You here on official division business?”

  “Naw,” Jaxon said, the casualness of his voice belying the clenched fists in his lap. “We grew up here. Just taking a trip down memory lane.”

  The guy laughed, “Yeah, right. Like anyone would ever want to relive anything that happened in the Coop. I get it. Your business is your own. Lockdown is at dusk, so make sure you’re out by curfew. Enforcer or no, there is no way out after dark, not even by sky train, which only has outbound traffic three times a day. Good luck.” His hand waved in front of the holo, and one of the massive doors began to open, creaking as if it hadn’t budged since the day it was built.

  Reese had never actually seen or heard the doors open before. The two times she’d visited her great-aunt with her father, they had used the sky train, showing the permit Theena had arranged for them to the enforcer guarding the entrance. The section of the train had been empty except for several businessmen and a woman with a stern face and an impossibly large chest. All outsiders. Two other Coop residents were in the next section, both with toolboxes that told her they were headed out for business.

  The last and final time she’d left had been through the hole in the wall that Eagle had mentioned. She’d followed the road for days until she found a grove of trees near a river, and it had taken her a whole day to make herself leave its safety. Only the growling of her stomach, and repeated throwing up of the leaves she’d tried to eat, had forced her back to the road. If a bearded man in a huge transport truck hadn’t given her a ride to the next city, she might have died before reaching her aunt.

  That was all behind her now. She stared out the front window as they moved slowly through the gates. Inside, on their right, sat an official-looking building with a wide staircase and columns on either side of the double doors. A sign over the building simply read CORE Offices.

  Opposite the building, on their left, was a park Reese hadn’t known existed but where she guessed no children were welcome. There were too many flowers and elaborate cobblestone paths, only sparse grass, and no playground. She guessed it was for the CORE workers who were stationed in the grand building, a reward to those who kept the peace and made sure the colony had everything it needed.

  Near the CORE building were other community buildings: an enforcer division, Teev service, water, gas, and power. The shopping district followed, relatively small for a community of fifty thousand. Only forty thousand now, she reminded herself. Reese had never stepped inside any of the stores, but she remembered visiting the second-hand market held each weekend in the schoolyard. Then, the items had seemed magical, but now she knew there wasn’t a lot of variety, and only the lowest quality merchandise was brought in from Dallastar and Estlantic.

  Next came the factories, dozens of them flanking both sides of the street, each edifice large, dark, and emitting huge columns of black smoke. Reese’s father had worked in one of these. He’d hated it, and she’d always secretly blamed the overseers there for her father’s drunkenness and perpetual bad mood. The factory walls were dingy on the outside, and only a few grease-covered windows let in any light. The feeling was so different from the normal CORE standard outside the colonies that the buildings were almost painful to look at.

  Each colony member worked ten-hour shifts for six days, followed by a day off before repeating the cycle. In seven days, workers logged at least sixty hours, which was double the hours people outside of the colonies worked in a week. The reasoning behind this escaped Reese now, but she vaguely recalled something in training about the laziness of colony workers, which resulted in increased hours to ensure they learned productivity.

  Colony workers with children younger than five worked the day shift from nine-to-seven Monday through Saturday, while the schools kept their children. Parents with no children or older children had rotating schedules on the swing, night, and weekend shifts. That meant older children, who attended school from nine to three each day of the week, were left to their own devices the rest of the day and on weekends while their parents worked.

  Reese hadn’t minded too much being left alone as a child, mostly because she’d had Jaxon and her father was so unpleasant, but having lived outside in the regular CORE Territories for the past twenty years, where the few children were handled with great care, it seemed unbelievable.

  Halfway down the factory street, a deep horn sounded. Seconds later, the doors to the building opened and a steady stream of people began to emerge—the nine o’clock shift getting out.

  A few of the younger adults walked briskly, but most of the people slogged down the sidewalks, and even into the narrow road. Dull eyes drifted to their shuttle and stayed, narrowed and resentful.

  Reese sighed. “I get the feeling we’re not welcome.”

  “Must be the enforcer logo on the shuttle,” Eagle said. “You remember how we felt about clippers when we were here, right?”

  “Yeah, with good reason,” Reese answered. “They were always beating people up.”

  The perimeter alarms went off inside the shuttle until Jaxon silenced them. “Mostly because people deserved the beatings,” he said. “Yeah, there were a few enforcers who were bad apples, but the guy who sponsored me to the academy said working here was one of the worst jobs he ever had. Practically every day he had several violent arrests. When I was stationed at Colony 1 in Estlantic, the arrest rates were nowhere near as high. Maybe that was because they spent more time outdoors—the industry there is mostly farm
ing. But the housing and everything else is exactly like here, so there shouldn’t have been that much disparity.”

  Before entering the academy, Reese hadn’t known that for the purposes of career training, each of the colonies were assigned to different industries. But Colony 6 was different from the other five colonies, who dealt with primary industries like farming, livestock, or mining. The Coop created textiles, metals, or plastics from the raw materials produced by the other colonies. There wasn’t much difference between any of the jobs in these factories, Reese had also learned. No wonder her father had hated it. But he’d had food, a roof over his head, and a child to support, so he should have tried harder instead of drinking himself into madness.

  “Maybe it’s these dark buildings,” Eagle said.

  Jaxon shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “And you thought our uniforms would be a tipoff,” Reese said to Jaxon. “We aren’t going to get any answers to our questions while we’re attached to this shuttle either.”

  Jaxon nodded without taking his eyes from the crowd they were slowly but surely passing. “We’ll dump it when we get closer to our old stomping grounds.”

  Next came the hospital, the pristine white exterior sparkling in the morning sun and looking entirely different from the smoke-stained factories despite its proximity. Reese’s nose tingled with a smell she couldn’t possibly detect, and she suspected it came from a childhood memory. The school nurse had driven her to the hospital once when she’d been discovered taking her math test on a Teev while using only her right hand because her left arm hurt too much. She didn’t remember what had broken her arm, but it had been two days before any adult noticed. She’d been considered left-handed at the time, but switching hadn’t been all that difficult, and Reese made sure from then on to trade hands every day so she’d never fail a test if she happened to break another bone. Nothing was going to prevent her from leaving the Coop.

  Rumor had it that deep inside the hospital was a floor dedicated to medical enhancement, where colony troublemakers were dealt with accordingly. She didn’t know if it was true, but those picked up for murder or other crimes inside the colony often weren’t seen again. She’d always thought they’d been relocated after serving their time, but all at once she wasn’t sure. Looking at the colony from adult eyes, the place seemed more like a prison than a refuge for those unable to care for themselves.

  The main sky train station sat adjacent to the hospital, its lines spidering out to each of the ten housing communities and to the entertainment district. Most of the crowd would be heading to the train, except for those who lived in the closest housing community or who needed to visit the business district.

  Reese and the others remained quiet until Jaxon made several turns, leaving all the people behind. They were in the first housing district now, according to the cheerful but very faded sign they passed. As far as they could see, rows and rows of houses stretched out before them, all the same except for slight shifts in the color of the exterior laminate. Each house was about the size of the living room at Reese’s new apartment. She couldn’t help staring. The houses had seemed small even when she was young, but now the word small took on a new meaning.

  The first housing district gave way to the second, and then a third, different only by a new set of colors and another faded sign. They passed a school before entering the fourth district, where Reese broke the silence.

  “I don’t remember the houses being so small. Guess I’ve grown a little since then.”

  “Seven by six meters each,” Eagle said. “Living room with kitchenette and two bedrooms—one large enough for a couple bed and the smaller one with a half-width single bed and a slab above that to be lowered in the case of two children. And let’s not forget the bathroom and the one square meter dedicated to the shower.” He made a face.

  “It beats sleeping in the rain.” Jaxon brought the shuttle to a stop outside the second school, which marked the beginning of housing district seven, their old district.

  A mass of children had crowded into the schoolyard. A large group played with a single ball, and a long line of kids stood near the swings, with one student timing those lucky enough to have a turn. Some of the students seemed to be aimlessly chasing each other around the packed dirt lot, swerving around other children. Not a blade of grass was in sight.

  Reese recognized it, of course. No way could she have spent ten years of her life here without knowing every nook and cranny.

  Jaxon stared out over the schoolyard. “Doesn’t that seem like more kids out playing than there should be at one time? They all look to be in the same nursery level too. Maybe four or five years old.”

  “Five hundred and six kids, to be exact,” Eagle said. When Reese stared at him, he shrugged. “They’re nothing more than space, and it’s a simple matter of calculation involving—”

  “We’ll take your word for it,” Reese said, punching the release on the shuttle door. “Where to now?”

  Jaxon joined her outside, lifting his chin toward the south. “I figure we walk the old neighborhood. You know, see if we recognize anyone.” He made a face, as if the idea pained him.

  “You didn’t have to come,” she said, lowering her voice so only he’d hear.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  If she was honest with herself, she’d have to admit that all her curiosity about coming here had vanished. The tiny houses and the packed schoolyard added to the prison feel of the place, casting a pall over everything. She could barely look at the innocent faces of the children on the playground.

  Jaxon started to move away, but her hand shot out touch his arm. “Why would the CORE allow so many kids to be born here? If all these kids come from one level . . . they’d have fifty percent more students than when we were here. And that’s not counting those whose parents aren’t working today.”

  He followed her gaze. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “How many of these children are going home to an empty house and popping in a readymeal—if they even have anything to eat outside school.”

  “Probably all of them, unless they have younger siblings.”

  How many of these children were alone only until their drunken fathers dragged themselves home to yell at or beat them? “It’s wrong.” She turned and started walking, mad at Jaxon, at his mother, and at her father.

  At the CORE.

  She bit her lower lip until the fury subsided, leaving her feeling weak and sad. She should have known that coming here would only raise more questions. There was no magic bullet that would explain away her guilt.

  The men caught up to her and were thankfully silent. Her feet led them in and out of the tiny houses, paths that should have been long forgotten but were seared in her memory. Her wounded side started to ache, but she ignored—and even welcomed—the pain.

  “You set the perimeter alarms on the shuttle?” Eagle asked Jaxon after a moment.

  “Yeah, and the cameras are rolling. It’ll be okay.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Eagle’s tone was doubtful, but he was smiling. Reese wished she could see his eyes behind the glasses, so she could better guess at what he was thinking.

  Before she realized it, they stood outside a house that was now familiar to her only because of its position in the row of tightly packed dwellings. Formerly a nondescript shade of blue like the rest of those on this street, the exterior laminate was newly painted a pale orange that reminded her of puke. Next door, Jaxon’s old house was now a bright green that was peeling off in large chunks to show the permanent blue beneath.

  “Maybe we should try the neighbors first,” Jaxon suggested. “Could be someone we know.”

  Eagle gave an exaggerated one-shoulder shrug. “Might be a challenge finding anyone home since it’s shift change. I doubt any of those using the sky train beat us here.”

  “There could be some swing shift workers,” Reese said. “But I want to see who’s living here, if you don’t mind.” She marched up her old
walkway, now cracked and crumbling, past the three feet of dying lawn, and arrived at the door. It seemed like a child’s house. “They could have at least made the doors taller,” she muttered. Her head would barely clear the doorway; Jaxon and Eagle would have to slouch. Her father had been a large man, and how it must have pained him to come home to this each night, especially after having visited Theena’s large place.

  Reese rang the bell, which peeled out with an annoyingly cheerful jingle that someone in CORE planning must have thought was inspiring. She could envision them playing different sounds in a pristine committee room in front of other CORE Elite who had never visited a colony.

  After a few moments, shuffling steps came toward the door, and Reese could hear faint crying that grew steadily louder. A woman pulled open the door with one hand, her other arm cradling a squalling, red-faced baby. She jiggled it absently while piercing them with her eyes. “What’s he done now?”

  “Who?” Reese asked. “We came to—” She broke off as a new set of eyes appeared behind the woman’s knee. Another child, with large eyes and uncombed hair, young enough to cling to her mother’s dingy nightgown for balance.

  “You ain’t here about Oscar? Because if you are, I can’t help what he does. Never seen a four-year-old so bent on destroying stuff. It’s the devil in him, I guess. Or his father, CORE rest his soul. But I can’t go with you to get him. I got these two to take care of.”

  That was when the full strangeness of the situation hit Reese. Here was a woman with not one but three small children. “We’re not here about Oscar,” she said over the crying. “We want to see how the baby’s doing.”

  “Fine, fine.” The woman pushed a length of brown hair behind her ear. “You guys said I’d get three months off and extra rations. It’s the only reason I did this. If you’re going back on that, you’ll just have to take her.” She extended the baby to Reese, who backed up a step. As if sensing danger, the baby’s squalls abruptly cut off.