The Sorting Room

by Angelina Singer

  “Your mother…” Zephyr continues to explain Onyx’s unique situation. “She was young, Onyx. She was rendered unable to properly take care of you… and so she terminated your being while you were inside of her…” “What? What does that even mean?” Zephyr pauses for a moment, and exchanges a knowing glance with Jade.

  “You would have been dead, Onyx.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “Okay, I suppose we can share…” Luna does not want to appear rude, since it is Garth’s home and everything. “If you say so…” With one smooth motion, Garth pins her shoulder down to his mattress, her small, innocent body at his mercy, and he knows it. Before she can properly process what is happening, his lips are pressed onto hers, biting her sweet mouth until the tender skin begins to bleed. It was kind of like what Onyx had done to her right before she was sent to Earth, but so much more violent, and painful. And her body was not responding the same way. She is filled with inherent terror, even though she had never been taught the dangers of a strange boy. The metallic taste of her own blood fills her mouth, and the rest of her delicate body tenses.

  Behind a closed door, Luna’s being is compromised forever, the silence of the outside world and the faraway Upperworld appearing blissfully unaware of her agony. Miranda and Anthony are still out there, unattached from each other, sending everything out of control. And Luna is beginning to worry that she can’t do anything about it.

  Meanwhile a new receptor tube in the Sorting Room appears, and… it… is… glowing.

  ✷✷✷

  Delphine awakes in the psychiatric ward, confused as to where she is. The pristine white walls around her and the spotless bed that she was sleeping on signals some sort of medicinal department. She spies a button on her bed next to her and promptly presses it. A moment later, a nurse appears. “Yes, Delphine. What can I do for you?” Her sparkling brown eyes and pristine nurse’s uniform instantly make Delphine feel safe and secure, but many questions still remain. “Uh, I was just wondering what I am doing here? I just woke up.” The nurse walks over to look at the medical charts stored in a folder at the foot of Delphine’s bed. “Oh my, it appears that you have had a bit of a psychiatric episode as of late. You’ve been brought here for evaluation and treatment. We can’t have you alone if you are at risk of self-harm. Even if you are immortal, these things are best looked into.”

  Oh so they know… Delphine begins to realize that even her innermost thoughts are no longer safe from the prying eyes of the Upperworld and those that control it. That gives her an odd sense of both peace and horror. I suppose they know what is best for me… I’ll just let them do whatever they think is best to treat me. Delphine nods her head, feeling even a bit better after her internal pep talk. “Is there something I should be doing while I’m here?” The nurse smiles, but shakes her head. “Besides resting and getting stronger, nothing at all. Let me know if there is anything else you think you might need, I’m only a click away.” Delphine reads the name tag on the collar of the perky nurse - it reads ‘Rosie’. “Okay, thank you… Rosie.” She smiles and exits Delphine’s infirmary room.

  “Haven’t you heard? She’s the one that caused the fiasco in the Sorting Room!” Rosie turns around to another nurse in the psychiatric infirmary. “Oh really? Delphine?” The other nurse nods. “That’s what I heard. She’s a troublemaker, that one. She let another new recruit cover for her - Luna.” Her outstretched finger in Delphine’s general direction fills Rosie with remorse for her patient. “Well, we don’t know the whole story. There must have been a good reason…” The other nurse shakes her head. “Well, I think anyone who allows another to take their place in that awful place we know as ‘Earth’ is a fearful coward. I couldn’t live with myself if I allowed that to happen to someone else. That poor girl is suffering now for no reason!”

  CHAPTER 20

  Onyx’s blue eyes widen. “Then… how, why am I here now then? What?”

  “You, Onyx, as well as Luna, and many other sorters, unbeknownst to them, are considered to be Retracted Humanoids. That means that you were originally a sorted orb, just like the billions and trillions of orbs that we sort every minute here. You were retracted because it wouldn’t be fair to simply send you to the Underworld before you’ve had a chance to live. So, we take the remains, and refurbish them in our utero chambers. Just like that, no one can tell the difference. The leftover remains are then held here for our records, under the floorboards of the Upperworld, where they are supposed to be hidden from sight. Clearly, we need to find better places to hide things, since it seems they glow upon impact…”

  Zephyr’s icy cold glare at Evander chills his very core, but then softens when Zephyr continues to say, “But apparently, the truth ended up coming out on its own. That tends to happen more often than I’d care to admit, regardless of my efforts to keep things under wraps.”

  Onyx is paralyzed on the white, stone cold bench. The new information flooding his system is enough to make his warm blood run cold, his limbs disobeying the signals sent from his brain. His own body is failing him, just the way it seems his own mother did.

  “Onyx? Are you okay?” Jade’s well-meaning questioning falls on deaf ears, but he manages to slowly nod, at which point Zephyr continues to explain his origin story.

  “So… so what about Luna, now? She’s down on Earth, and she didn’t even do anything wrong!” Zephyr’s hair blazes again, and his eyes dart immediately to Jade. “Jade, what does he mean she didn’t do anything wrong?” Jade shifts in her seat uncomfortably, avoiding eye contact with the Most High Being. “Ugh, well…” “I don’t have time for this, Jade. Tell me now unless you want to join her!” Jade exhales briskly. “Well, it appears that she had covered for another new recruit… according to security footage, Luna was an innocent bystander by the fault of… Delphine.” “DELPHINE! That recruit ruined the timeline of Miranda and Anthony! We had to stop time for a whole 7 MINUTES! We almost broke the space time continuum that day… Jade, how could you have let this happen?”

  Jade sinks down onto the marble bench, and her breathing intensifies, just as Onyx’s did. But now she, unlike him, has reason to be frightened. “I don’t know! It just kind of happened. I’ve never, not in my six hundred years of existence, seen a sorter cover for another. I think maybe it was her human tendencies showing through. As you’ve said before, the retracted humanoids are not exactly common, but definitely not rare…”

  Zephyr’s hair is ablaze again, but he slowly softens his gaze after the customary few minutes it takes him to calm down. His forefinger and thumb massage the bridge of his angular nose, the very precipice of his blatant façade. “It’s true, that retracted humanoids are fairly common. But not as common as you may expect. Rather, it’s rare that anyone knows about them. Usually, they blend right into society here without a second glance. It works out quite well, the majority of the time. That is, in your case, unless there’s…”

  Onyx returns back to the present, his whirring mind slowed down enough to ask - “unless what? Is that about Luna? I still don’t know how she is involved with this…”

  Zephyr takes a deep breath and then begins to parcel out the information as if it physically hurt him to explain it. “Onyx, when a humanoid is retracted by its maternal humanoid, it is without the validation of the Sorting Room. Without the validation of the Sorting Room, we are unable to work it into the grand scheme of humanoid existence, and there are suddenly consequences. You see, had you not been aborted, you were to be assigned a partner in life, potentially someone to start a family with and love forever. Onyx nods. “That’s logical, I’ve seen it many times with orbs we have sorted. So, what does this mean for Luna?” Zephyr’s characteristic deep grin oozes across his face like a sickly, slimy slug.

  “Luna, was the one meant for you.” Onyx sits limply on the bench. “Oh, so… that explains…” “Why you have human-like feelings for her? Yes, I suppose that would be sound logic. When humanoids are retracted, the human understanding and pro
cessing of emotions is so deeply written into the DNA that it is impossible to break it completely in the utero lab. Therefore, you are stuck loving her, no matter what state you are both in. Partially erased, but not completely. Thus, you were rendered stuck in that perpetual mentality, but you must understand that we can’t tolerate such carnal distractions in the Sorting Room… our jobs are much too important for frivolous affairs like that - which is why I won’t allow you to contact her on Earth. You are much too important here, Onyx, to allow your job to fall to the wayside merely because of a genetic flaw in your chemical composition…” Onyx’s face began to turn red. “You mean to tell me that this was all… everything about me… was a mistake?” Zephyr strokes his cold, nearly transparent chin. “I wouldn’t say… completely. Partially, perhaps. But don’t allow that to upset you, it’s fairly common, just not widely known. And I’ve never seen a case as deep-seeded as your own. Usually, our utero workers can erase at least most of the humanity out of the remains. In your case, it appeared to be much too powerful. Yes, that would be considered a flaw. But the good news is, you can be trained to work past it. In fact, I think it may be helpful to get you into shock treatment until you forget all about Luna.”

  Onyx stands up from the bench now. “Shock treatment! Absolutely not! There’s no way I’m going through with that! She needs me now more than ever, I can’t, I won’t forget about her. How will I be able to save her if I forget about her?”

  “Oh Onyx…” Zephyr feigned compassion while a few of his orderlies wheel a large screen into the grand hall in front of Onyx and Jade. “I thought you already knew! Luna is as good as gone. She won’t be able to come back to the Upperworld. Ever.” “What? Why?”

  “Take a look at what’s happening to her…”

  ✷✷✷

  Delphine awakens from a fitful sleep in the infirmary. She’s hurting internally from the harsh realization that everyone knows that she’s the one to blame for the incident. It’s hard enough to have to live with the guilt that Luna naively sacrificed herself for someone she barely knew, but now even her martyrdom is all for naught. Delphine has to live with the embarrassment and shame, and Luna will likely die a pitiful death for a seemingly heroic act that failed to go as planned (if there was even any plan at all).

  With a deep breath, she forces herself to get up from the bone-white sheets of the infirmary bed, even while it’s becoming harder to avoid the all-knowing glances of the orderlies who know all about her guilty conscience.

  It’s probably time I go try to find Evander. Hopefully he’ll know what to do. And with that, Delphine heads out to find him.

  “Dear, you can’t just leave without filling out the appropriate forms and allowing time for a final check up. You had quite an episode there -”

  “Look, I know I messed up, okay? It wasn’t my fault, I didn’t ask her to -”

  “No, your sleep aid. You employed the use of your self-injecting sleep aid without needing to sleep, which could potentially signal an imbalance in your mental faculties, and thus render you a danger to the critical processes carried out in the Sorting Room. Beyond your obvious fumble, that is…”

  Delphine rolled her eyes and bit her tongue to avoid firing back at the rude orderly. She didn’t deserve this kind of treatment. Or worse, maybe she did.

  CHAPTER 21

  Onyx watches the large screen with horror as Luna’s image appears in a real-time broadcast. Then, his whole body begins shivering with horror as he watched Luna be taken over by Garth, her small body being attacked under his bigger, stronger one while she screams out in pain. Onyx knows all too well from his Guide training what this could mean for Luna’s fate. This was a moment that would not go unnoticed by Zephyr, as well as any other sorter watching the live feed on the screen in the Sorting Room.

  “Wait, so does this mean…” Zephyr solemnly nods. “Luna has been naturally inseminated by that humanoid there.” Onyx’s head drops to his knees, his whole body crumbling from the pain of losing her. “There, there has to be a way…” “There is none.” “There is no way that is really true…” “If you don’t believe me, then take a look at the Sorting Room tube receptor sect. There is a new one, for Luna, that has appeared in row 20895736483, column 974639397.”

  Onyx sobs for a few minutes, while Jade awkwardly pats his back. “Does, does she know?” Onyx’s desperate query is quickly answered by Zephyr. “She is temporarily unaware of it, but she soon will be. Her internal transmitter has been shut off and will be dispelled from her body very shortly.” Onyx continues to sob heavily, his strong back shaking under the weight of his biggest fear coming true.

  “I was… I was supposed to protect her. I… I failed…” Zephyr exchanges concerned glances with Jade and clears his throat with a mighty growl. “Onyx, what’s done is done. Now, please follow procedure as expected and begin work with your next protégé -”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me? What do you mean by ‘No’?”

  “I mean I can’t just move on to the next one. Not with what I know now. I wasn’t… meant to be here. I wasn’t born here -”

  “Onyx, you weren’t born at all. Didn't you hear? Without our intervention, you would have been banished to the Underworld without even so much as a chance at life. You can’t be telling me that’s what you would have wanted…”

  Onyx’s cobalt eyes are tinged with a red rim from crying, his nostrils flaring with rage. “You… I never asked for this. Maybe that is all true, but you’ve let an innocent, unborn girl go down to Earth without any help or training. Why didn’t you just banish her to the Underworld immediately? That’s where she’ll end up anyway, but you chose to let her suffer…”

  Zephyr’s flaming tendrils begin to burn a bright white while his eyes glow with intense anger. “Well, we did what we did. There is no use discussing it now. Since you know everything now, Onyx, I suggest you choose one of two courses of action.”

  “And what might those be, Zephyr?” The name oozes from his lips with such pain and agony under the extreme circumstances of such a disaster.

  “Option one: you continue being a Primary Guide for the new recruits as you were, under the condition that you breathe not a word to anyone about what has been revealed to you.”

  “You mean the fact that Luna and I were both retracted human spirits?”

  “Yes, exactly. Only a select few know about that and I intend to maintain that level of security going forward. So if you promise not to breathe a word of what you know to anyone, then, I can reinstate you and continue business as usual.

  “And if I don’t?”

  Zephyr’s eyes begin to glow again with utter rage. “Then that unfortunately brings us to Option two: You would undergo shock treatment to make you forget all about Luna -”

  “No! Never!”

  “Don’t be so quick to say no, Onyx. You could forget about your unfortunate human defect and believe that she never even existed. It would allow you to move forward without the emotional pain and baggage that she caused.”

  “Absolutely not. She needs me. I have to help her… I’m the only one who can.”

  Zephyr shakes his head. “No, I need you to stay focused on your work. Basically it boils down to this: either keep your memory of her but continue to move forward and work hard, or fail to do that, and or try to interfere with her, and you tie my hands.”

  “Meaning?” Onyx leans in a bit closer to Zephyr with all the resolve he could muster.

  “Mandatory shock treatment. And believe me, I really don’t want to have to do that to you, Onyx. You are one of the best I have. I need you to cooperate, for the good of mankind.”

  Onyx recoils with the resentment of a wild animal shot. “I see.”

  “So have you decided?”

  Onyx grits his teeth and fights the urge to mutter one of the hundred different colloquial terms he learned in his decades of human life studies.

  “Option one.”

  “Glad to hear that.”


  CHAPTER 22

  The sun breaks through the window of a disheveled room. The curtains are a drab shade of mahogany red, and the carpet is gray with mysterious wall-to-wall stains (at least, the portions of it left uncovered by rotting clothing strewn about). The smell is a mix of unwashed laundry and desperation.

  Luna awakens in a disheveled mess, her attacker asleep next to her. Any ordinary girl would have exacted revenge on the one who had taken advantage of them in their own moment of vulnerability. But Luna is no ordinary girl. Luna carefully arose from the bed, found her clothing amidst the bedsheets and the debris, and cleaned herself up the best she could with the running water source she found in an adjacent room. Not wanting to wake up the monster, she crept out of that forsaken house, shaking with post traumatic fear. She is bruised, but not broken. She has been harmed, but not destroyed. There is something in her that is simultaneously so close to breaking, but also stronger than even she knew.

  Once out of that house, Luna’s legs take her far away from there as fast as she could. It doesn’t matter where. She just has to get far, far away from the horrific ordeal she had just been through.

  Find Miranda. Find Anthony. Get them back together as soon as possible. Get home.

  She repeated those four steps in her mind, over and over again, until they filled her subconscious, distracting her from reliving her traumatic night. The lurching in her stomach is either nerves, or anything, really. She’s been through so much. And there was so much more she had yet to do. But she is utterly clueless, awaiting any lead, somehow, somewhere.

  And when she realizes that she has nothing to guide her, and that even the steps in her head were substantially out of reach, panic sets in. And then she breaks down and cries.