by Pintip Dunn
“The examiners have been interrogating both boys.” Master Somjing skims his finger over his handheld. “Running through a list of human desires and noting when their vital signs change.”
“And what have they found?” I ask.
“From Zelo? Nothing much. The boy’s blood is ice. We couldn’t get a rise out of him, no matter what we said.”
Good for him. Must’ve been all the time he spent meditating in the temple, tuning out the everyday noise.
“He seems too good to be true.” Master Somjing squints at the data on his screen. “I can’t get a good read on him. Neither can CORA.”
“Maybe he is that good. Maybe some people really are that noble.”
“Maybe,” he says doubtfully. “What’s next? Should we threaten to torture someone they love?”
“What? Oh Zeus, no. No.” He’s kidding, right? He’s got to be kidding.
But I can tell from his unsmiling mouth that he’s not. Especially because I know this strategy would work. Carr would step off the stone before we even finished the ultimatum. Zelo has no one he loves. He would stay on. Since this isn’t a reciprocal relationship like mine and Blanca’s, it wouldn’t be considered a trick. Zelo would be deemed worthier, as he has no other allegiances that can sully his obedience to the colony.
I wanted Zelo to win today. But not like this. “No torture.”
“We wouldn’t actually—”
“Not even the threat of it. We can’t condone torture in any shape or form. Not even in a game. Not even to find the Fittest.”
He tilts his head, considering me. “I guess I understand why you would feel that way. What do you suggest, then?”
I stare at the transmitter in his ear. It’s the size of a cherry pit and nearly undetectable. “Let’s talk to them.”
He snorts. “We’re not going to be able to talk them down. What do you think the examiners have been doing for the last eighteen hours? If you’re unwilling to go the torture route, I think we’re at a standstill.”
“The examiners are strangers. We aren’t. Carr and Zelo will respond to us. They may slip and tell us more than they intend.” Acid spurts into my mouth with each word. The boys don’t know they’re being recorded. They don’t have any idea that their vitals are being transferred instantaneously to their interrogator’s ear. What I’m suggesting is disingenuous…but no more manipulative than my previous actions. “The point of this challenge is to learn more about their true characters. So, if we can dig deeper into their motivations, then I’m satisfied with declaring this challenge a tie.”
A tie. That’s the best I can hope for. Dion knows, I don’t want this challenge to turn into a contest of physical stamina. We all know who has the advantage there.
“What do you say, Master Somjing? I’ll take Zelo, and you can talk to Carr.”
He nods, signaling for a bot to roll over with a tray of ear buds. “Fine, but let’s switch it around. You take Carr.”
“But—”
He holds up a hand, stopping me. “Zelo’s vitals never changed during the interrogation, but Carr’s did.” He selects a bud from the tray and offers it to me. “His heartbeat spiked every time we mentioned you.”
Chapter
Sixteen
Carr’s head snaps up the moment I open the door, his eyes watchful and wild. Prey. Hunter. Or a combination of both.
I ease into the room. The air is drenched with sweat, the temperature ten degrees warmer than the corridor. Cracks in the plaster snake through the ceiling, and the one-way window reflects Carr’s image, making him look like he’s drowning in shiny, black glass.
The ear bud vibrates. “Good. His heartbeat is racing already.”
The high, nasal voice belongs to a psychologist I’ve never met. I clamp my mouth to keep the words inside. Not your business. Get OUT!
“If you’re here to convince me to quit, you can leave right now.” Carr’s voice is low and raspy. His lips are cracked and bleeding. He needs water. He also needs lip balm and sleep and a shower, but a drink is the only thing I can offer at the moment.
I find a pitcher on the floor and pour some water into a cup. “I just want to talk. I didn’t see you at the party.” I approach him, not sure how much to reveal. “I was hoping you’d come.”
“Didn’t feel like partying after I found out my sister was in Blanca’s care. Sorry.”
He might’ve been sorry, once upon a time, but he’s not now. This challenge seems to have wrung every dispensable emotion out of him.
I move closer. His hair is plastered to his forehead, and his face looks ravaged. Slashed by an invisible claw from forehead to chin. Of course, the only demons who might rip him apart are the ones inside him.
Two years ago, in a room like this one, I faced my own monsters. Sometimes, I wonder how long I would have lasted if they were able to give me the one thing I really want: absolution for my mother’s death.
I offer him the water. “You and Zelo are the only two left. If we can learn enough about your motivations, we’ll declare a tie and this whole thing will be over. Would you like that?”
“No. I’d rather win.” He waves away the cup, rejecting the water. Rejecting me.
The voice chirps in my ear. “A spike in his pulse. Something’s getting him worked up.”
I ignore her. “Why are you standing here, Carr?”
“You know why. So I’ll be named the Fittest. So my sister can eat.”
“Is there anything—anything at all—that would make you step off?”
“No.”
A crackle of static from the earbud. “He’s telling the truth. Or at least, that’s what his body thinks. But don’t you believe it. We all have a price.”
I grit my teeth. My price, right now, is getting rid of this yammering in my ear. Try harder, I remind myself. Try. Harder.
“Can we talk about your parents, Carr?” I drink the water myself and set the cup on the floor. “Your father left when you were nine, is that right?”
According to Master Somjing, two topics agitated Carr. One was me. The other was his family.
The already hard lines of Carr’s face turn to granite. “I’ve already been over this with the examiners. I’m not going to rehash it again.”
“I remember him a little.” A memory comes to mind. A handsome man with a mustache, patting Carr’s mother on the behind as she fussed with the pots in the royal kitchen. Astana, Carr, and I sat like roaches in the corner, the most well-behaved insects you ever saw. Not once did the man glance in our direction.
“He called you ‘boy,’” I say. “I always wondered about that. Didn’t he know your name?”
Carr shuffles his feet a couple inches to the right, as if to get away from me, but the stone is only so big, and he can only go so far. “He remembered Astana’s name. She was so pretty he always fetched extra pills at the market if he brought her along. My mother was ‘Lima,’ but she did everything for him.
“Me?” His eyes close. “I wasn’t any use to him. So I guess I didn’t deserve a name.”
A few dots connect in my head. “The year he left was the year you started selling worms for peach-colored pills.”
He opens his eyes, and his steady, black glare squeezes the breath out of me.
The earbud comes alive. “Deadly Dion, you’ve done it. His vitals are going through the stratosphere.”
I yank out the bud and shove it in my pocket. I don’t need this useless analysis. Like I can’t guess how Carr’s feeling by looking at him. “Why were you trying to earn extra pills? Did you think you could bring him back?”
He winces. “Silly, wasn’t I? To think my father’s love could be bought with a few peachies. I should’ve aimed for the blue pills, at least.”
“You shouldn’t need to buy his love at all. Parents are supposed to love their children, no matter what.”
He snorts. “Who told you that? The bedtime stories from Earth? They’re called fiction for a reason, Vela. Because they
’re not true.”
“Nobody had to tell me. The King showed me every day of my life. If I fail at this task, he’ll be disappointed. But I know he’ll still love me.”
“That’s the King. Regular people can’t afford to be so free with their love. We have to reserve it for the people who will benefit us.”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” I whisper. “You do things for people because you love them. Not the other way around.”
“Yeah?” He pushes his hair off his forehead and teeters to the edge of the stone. “My mother never paid attention to me. My clothes could be in threads, I’d come home from work with bleeding palms, and she never said a word. It was up to Astana to clean those wounds. Never her.
“But one day a month, my mother saw me. Because that was payday and that was the day I brought home pills. No one in this colony was treated better. She’d hug me and dance with me around the living unit. ‘How did I ever get so lucky?’ she would say. ‘You’re the best son a woman could ask for.’ The next day, I would be invisible again. I didn’t exist until the next payday.”
“She was strung out on pellets.” My words are harsh, my voice harsher. But I have to get through to him. He has to understand that her behavior wasn’t right. “She can’t be your model for how to love.”
He moves his shoulders, not looking at me. And I get why he’s not hearing me. I do. We look to our parents first to learn how the world works. To determine our self-worth. And Carr’s parents taught him that he is only loved for what he can do for them.
My heart is a caged thing, beating against too narrow walls. Is this why he’s always worked so hard? I’ve never seen Carr do anything for himself. Now I understand why. In his mind, every pill was an opportunity to secure his family’s love.
“What about Astana? She loves you. I’ve never seen a sister so devoted to her brother.”
“Of course she loves me.” He jerks his chin, and my words flick away like specks of dust. “I’ve been buying her gifts all my life.”
“That’s not why she loves you.” I want to shake him. Hard. But then he might fall off the stone, and we’d have to disqualify the results due to my physical interference. “Sure, you gave her presents. All those bows and scents and things. She was probably the most spoiled girl in our colony. But don’t you think she’d trade all of that for your happiness?”
He lifts his face, uncertainty reflected in his features. He really doesn’t know. He has no clue how much his sister loves him.
The box around my heart tightens. “What about me?”
“What about you?”
His eyes land, not on me, but on the blinking amber light around my collar. I remember that there’s more than the two of us in this room. There’s a team of psychologists, and the nameless examiners, and every member of the council.
Not anymore.
My hands close around the loop. I switch it off and toss the metal necklace into the corner. And then I walk to the door, lock it, and flip a switch on the wall. A solid panel rolls from the window frame and slides over the one-way glass.
No one’s watching now. No one’s evaluating. I stand before him not as the Princess, but as Vela. The girl who’s always crushed on him. My actions now aren’t about the Trials. They’re not about the council finding their answers. And they’re certainly not about treating Carr like a data point.
“I care about you.” I step closer, so he can’t ignore me. “How do you explain that?”
“If you like me, it’s only because I saved your life.”
“Really, Carr?” I’m not a violent person, but I wish there was something in this room I could throw. A table, a chair. Something for me to wrap my hands around and hurl at the wall. “Is that why I like you? Because last I checked, I didn’t even find out you rescued me until last week. What about in the red cells? What about when we almost touched? When we should’ve touched, just like this?” I grab his hand and jam our fingers together. Electricity snaps between us. “Did I like you then?”
He stares at our fingers. “I don’t know.”
I take his other hand, and the electricity cycles in a closed circuit between us. “What about the worms?”
He shakes his head, as if my words are from an Earth language he doesn’t understand. “What worms?”
“When we were kids.” I weave my fingers through his, so he can’t pull away. “Do you remember coming to the pond one morning and finding a plate of worms waiting for you? That was me, Carr. I dug for hours before the sun lamps turned on, so you could have the day off.”
His eyes widen. “That was you? Vela, I…” He swallows hard. “That was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”
“Now do you believe me? Now do you believe you don’t need to buy someone’s love?”
He gnaws on his cheek, and I see the doubt in each quick bite of his teeth. He still doesn’t believe he’s worthy of love. And how can I blame him? The barter system is all he’s ever known.
I have one more argument up my sleeve. One last move. The final way I have of convincing him.
My entire body thrums, and my heart beats so fast it might break out of this cage yet. Quickly, before I change my mind, I close the gap between us. Stepping up onto the stone, I reach up and wind my arm around his neck.
“What about this?” I whisper.
And then I press my lips against his.
Chapter
Seventeen
My entire body tingles, every last nerve. My fingers twine in Carr’s hair, and his stubbled jaw rubs against my skin. And his lips. Oh, those warm lips contain the secrets of our world. They may be cracked, but they burn all the way through me, welcoming me back to a place I’ve never been.
If this is home, I never want to leave.
Blanca once dared me to dive to the bottom of one of Dion’s many ponds. This body of water isn’t manmade, she’d said, but a chasm in the ground caused by a striking meteor. If I dove deeply enough, I wouldn’t touch the rich, black dirt of our terraformed ground, but the hard, jagged rock of the original planet.
I believed her, of course. I always believed my sister, no matter what she said. But I dove anyway, and I knew I would never forget the bubbles fizzing all over my body, the breath that got pent up in my lungs. That deep, deep satisfaction when my hands finally touched rock.
Well, that’s how I feel now. As if I’ve discovered something that has always existed. I only had to dive deeply enough to find it.
His arms wind around me, and I press my body against his. Too much clothing between us. Too many layers. I want my skin sinking into his, I want to feel the hard angles of his torso. I want our hearts beating as one. I want, I want, I want.
But we’re in the middle of a challenge. And standing on a single square tile.
I pull back and lay my head on his chest, listening to his ragged breaths.
“Now do you believe me?” I ask.
His lips curve, and I can feel the shape of his smile against my scalp. “I don’t know. I think I may need a little more convincing.”
He moves his mouth back onto mine. His teeth scrape gently against my lips, and then his tongue tangles with mine. I’m drowning, drowning, drowning in this heat. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this feeling, and I’m about to be swept away, forever.
And then, I see the door flashing out of the corner of my eye.
“Princess Vela! Are you okay? There’s a malfunction in our monitoring equipment. Do you need us to break down the door?”
It’s Master Somjing. His words are concerned, but his tone is wry, as if he knows exactly how the malfunction occurred. And exactly who caused it.
“I’m fine.” I fight to keep my voice steady as Carr presses floating-lily-kisses along my collarbone. “I’ll be right out.”
“Is the candidate still on the stone?” Master Somjing asks.
Carr and I look down. An inch of tile surrounds our feet. It’s a wonder we haven’t lost our balance.
He plants his feet more squarely on the tile. “I’m not getting off this stone, not even for a few steamy kisses.”
I jerk like I’ve been slapped and stumble off the tile. The words don’t slash a new wound. They rip open an old one. It hurts all the more because this isn’t my pain—it’s his.
“Is that what you think? That I kissed you to get you to drop out of the challenge?”
He doesn’t respond, but his eyes say it all. Big, black pools of purpose and resolve. The characteristics our colony admires most. These qualities elevate Carr to the most noble of our candidates—but they also erase every trace of the boy whom I just kissed.
“How can you think that?” Oh, the rational part of me knows the answer. A single kiss—no matter how perfect—doesn’t change a lifetime of hurt. But the other part, the part that poured myself into our embrace, the part that I thought he saw, above anyone else—that part can’t understand. “My feelings for you have nothing to do with the Fittest Trials.”
“Don’t they? You told me you would make sure I didn’t win. Has that changed?”
“No. But I didn’t kiss you because of this challenge, either. If you don’t believe me, I don’t know what else to say.”
We stare at each other, the weight of the planet between us. Barren, craggy rock with too much carbon dioxide and not enough life.
“Vela?” Master Somjing calls again. “Has Carr stepped off the tile?”
I turn toward the door, as much to avoid Carr’s gaze as to pitch my voice in the right direction. “No. I don’t think he’ll ever step off.”
The door handle rattles. “Put on your ear piece.”
I fish the ear bud out of my pocket and fit it into place.
“Did you get the necessary information?” Master Somjing asks. “Can we declare a tie?”
I look back at Carr. At the firm set of his jaw, at the lips that will always seem gentle to me, no matter how hard he presses them together. In some ways, I’ve learned so much. I’ve learned that something can warm me from the inside out. I’ve learned why Carr works so hard. I’ve learned that he may never let himself have the only thing he really wants—love.