by RS McCoy
“I’m not sure.”
Soon enough, the eight males were brought to a small auditorium to wait, though they were never told why. An hour later, the five females entered, each with uniform straight hair pulled back in a bun.
Theo would have expected to see fallen features, but none of them seemed all that affected by the change in appearance. Then again, they had all chosen this life.
Dr. Winters arrived behind them and took her position at the front of the room to begin the standard address. She was tall and slender, her nose pointed as was her chin. Behind her, the Scholar logo hovered via holographic projection.
“Today, you have all made the honorable decision to join the elite class of Scholars. In a few minutes, you will be escorted to your barracks where you will live until such time as you have secured a mentor.”
The holograph changed to show a spreadsheet of names. “Once in your barracks, you will be assigned a tablet. You will be given six months to identify an area of interest. Then you will be eligible to apply for a mentor. You have one year to secure a mentor or you will be released from the Scholar class.” The already quiet room fell silent, as if the entire group stopped breathing. They had all known what was at stake, but now that they were here, it felt more real.
“With the guidance of your mentor, you will complete five years of study before you can apply to the Scholar Committee to perform your own research. Once approved, you will be eligible to apply for grants to fund your research. If you fail to secure funding, you will be released.”
Theo swallowed hard. Was he capable of all that?
Oblivious to her intimidated audience, Dr. Winters continued. “Upon completion of your third year in the Scholar Academy, you will be invited to apply for marriage. The Scholar Committee will determine the likelihood of your success based on genetic compatibility. The state of your research and funding will dictate the timeline upon which you will be allowed to apply for Child Permits.”
Of all the rules and regulations of the Scholar class, Theo’s future children were the only facet that genuinely interested him. The marriage he knew would be dry, like his parents rather than Nate and Casey. But the children, they would be genetically perfect, they would be even better than him. Theo was excited to see his genes carried on to his children.
It would just be an eternal wait before that happened.
While lost in thought, Dr. Winters finished her presentation and motioned for Dr. Barron to escort them to the barracks.
“So what’s your field of interest?” Isaac asked one of the girls as they walked.
“Robotics,” she replied with a giggle.
“Yeah? I’m genetics. Theo here is nanotech.” Theo couldn’t imagine why he was being dragged into the conversation. He didn’t really care. There was no point in getting to know any of them. It would never be about personality.
“Genetics? Wow.” The girl he remembered as Beth from a class, looked up at Isaac with consideration. It wasn’t every day you met someone who would be so successful.
Then to Theo, she said, “You knew Nathaniel, right? I can’t believe he defected. Did you know he would?”
“No.” Theo rubbed his now-bare head. He should have known Nate’s decision would be the talk of the group. It wasn’t like Youths defected every day. Still, he didn’t want to talk about it.
Theo was grateful to arrive in the barracks a few minutes later. It was far down the corridor from the auditorium, but everything in the Academy was connected. They wouldn’t even leave the building until their research required them to do so.
Despite the reasonable accommodations, Theo felt trapped, an animal in a too-small cage. The males were given beds on the left side and females on the right. A wide indigo curtain separated the two. Dr. Barron pushed it to the far wall to create a large space and give their instructions.
“Your beds are assigned alphabetically starting here at the front. Washrooms are separated by gender. Your tablets are on your beds and have already been coded with your information. I suggest you complete set up and get yourselves entered in the database. The sooner you find a mentor, the sooner you can start your studies. Any questions?”
Isaac was the only one to answer. “Yeah, when can we go back to Lanc Central and get our stuff?”
“There’s nothing that you need that isn’t provided by the Academy.”
Isaac’s features fell. Clearly there was something on the tablet that he wanted. Or the keys to his pod.
Never in his life had Theo been so thankful to have converted to the wristlet. While the entire population was a slave to their tablets, Theo had rigged the wristlet to be a more portable extension. It had taken his development of a microscopic relay to get information to travel between the two devices.
That didn’t help him make contact with Nate. He sent a half dozen ecomms, both from his wristlet and his new tablet. There was so much he wanted to say. He was angry and hurt, but happy for them and in awe of Nate’s bravery. His head was a confusing mess.
Theo turned on his audio strips and listened to his mellowest playlist in hopes of staying calm as he waited.
Nate never responded.
AIDA
LRF-CENTRAL
AUGUST 7, 2232
“Are you all right?” Calvin Hill emerged from LRF Central only moments later, but Aida wasn’t all that surprised. Sal would never have bothered.
“I just—I don’t know. I need to think for a minute.” How could she explain it? Without evidentiary support and a well-developed hypothesis, her delusions were baseless. No one would give her any credibility if she went of spouting ideas about Dr. Parr.
She would lose her position.
“Would you like to be alone?”
“Not particularly.” Aida wanted to expel the idea that something had happened to her mentor, and that she had been oblivious to it until it was too late. “What did you want to talk about?”
“It can wait. We should probably go back inside.” His green eyes flashed kindly and he held out his hand to escort her.
“I don’t want to go in,” she admitted, her eyes cast down to avoid his gaze. There was no way she could watch the holograph of such an important person in her life, especially when it was so clearly not him. At least, not anymore.
“All right, then. Come on.” This time, Calvin extended a bent elbow and waited for the several seconds it took her to wrap her arm around his. Aida had seen the move before, but never actually touched anyone that way, even her husband. The close contact sent all thoughts fleeting from her mind.
“Did you present Dr. Parr with your report on 196?” he asked as they walked through the empty corridors. Made to hold thousands, the synthetic polyblend walls were absurdly empty, as if they were the only people within the moon.
“Of course, I gave it to him last night.” Aida couldn’t imagine what that had to do with anything.
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. He told me to signal the full work-up. That was the last—” Aida’s voice faded when she considered the idea that she would never speak to Jackson Parr again, that he would never offer her his classically sound advice or help her work through a particularly troublesome system. He was gone.
“I’m sorry, we don’t have to talk about this now.” Calvin covered her hand with his.
“It’s all right. Why are you asking me about 196? You said you thought it was the most desirable planet we’ve had this quarter. Even better than your 113.”
“Well, 113 showed a hostile native species and a flora that couldn’t sustain humans due to its high levels of bromine,” he explained, as if Aida hadn’t been in the meeting with Dr.s Parr, Niemeyer, and Hill, even Director Filmore, to disqualify 113 as their target exoplanet.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I found something on your report that I couldn’t figure out.”
Aida swelled defensively. How dare someone question her data? How dare he? “There’s nothing wrong w
ith my report,” she huffed and pulled her hand from his arm.
Dr. Hill smiled. “No, it’s perfectly accurate. Let me show you.”
The two walked in uncomfortable silence until they reached the Planetary Systems wing of the LRF. Identical to every other department, it featured a long central corridor with four branches and a conference room at the end.
Calvin led her to the second branch on the left where his office was housed. While it was a mirror image of her own office that branched to the right, Aida had never been in the space before. She felt like a guest in someone’s home.
“Here, sit down,” Calvin said as he pushed the chair toward her and began making a series of complex hand motions on the large screen that covered much of the wall. Within seconds, her report showed in massive size before them.
“This is the report you showed Dr. Parr?” he asked, his eyes locked on her features.
Convinced of an error, or some sort of fraud, Aida carefully examined her report, evaluating each section in turn. At last, she spotted it: Canis minor. “No, this one has been modified. The constellation section, not that that matters.”
“Right. So I admit, I had to look it up, but Canis minor is a small subsection of the constellation Monoceros, the one listed on your original report.” Calvin swiped at the screen and produced a celestial map with a dog inlayed across the top.
Aida searched the map with her eyes until she found her planet. “196 isn’t in Canis minor. It’s here.” She stood next to Calvin and pointed out the Earth-sized world in the southern hemisphere of the constellation.
“Why would Dr. Parr change it? He wasn’t interested in constellations any more than the rest of us, and he was prone to extremely accurate data.”
“He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t change something correct to incorrect. That doesn’t make sense.” Aida’s stomach flipped. It wasn’t her imagination. Something had been wrong with Dr. Parr. And she had failed to notice.
“When I spoke with Fobbs from Robotics, he verified they were sending a probe to 196—”
“So it makes no difference,” she replied, more than a little relieved. It would kill her to have Dr. Parr’s scientific reputation tarnished after his death.
“Not exactly. They sent the probe here.” Calvin touched the planet overlaid by the dog’s ear, more than fifty lightyears from 196. They were investigating the wrong planet.
MABLE
COLLECTOR PRECINCT 914, CHICAGO, NORTH AMERICA
AUGUST 8, 2232
Caught.
It wasn’t a word Mable had much experience with. Then again, she had become a friend to betrayal long ago.
No matter. She was a decent enough actress. She would be in and out with Hadley in a few hours. As long as they didn’t figure out who she was, she’d be free to return to the Root and get on with her life.
Then she would have to work through the resulting paranoia from Arturo’s deceit. How could she ever trust anyone?
A room too small to house cleaning supplies. An uncomfortable metal chair. A boring metal table. Even a pair of metal shackles to tie her to it. They’d really gone all out to keep her put.
A middle-aged Collector pushed open the door. His eyes never strayed from his tablet as he read aloud, “Margaret Elaine Wilkinson. Age 19. Undeclared. You’re a little old to be undeclared, aren’t you?”
At last, he looked up, though it wasn’t because he expected a real answer. To him, a law enforcement Craftsman, a Collector, she was lower than a germ. She was less than human. Mable was reminded why she hated society.
“I go by Mable,” she explained instead.
As the Collector sat, he rearranged his bulky belt decorated with a comms device, nerve-deadening spray and a dozen other tools. Mable caught sight of the name embroidered along his collar: Teveren. She smiled at the irony. Oh how Rowen would laugh when she told him.
“You’re unregistered, undeclared. What exactly are you doing in Chicago, Margaret?”
“Just passing through.” She hadn’t broken any laws. She hadn’t stolen anything—yet. They had nothing on her, and as long as she played nice, they’d let her go before they realized anything else.
“We have a nice city here, you know. This isn’t some Mecca for flea-ridden trash. I trust you’ll be on your way.”
Mable bit back her tongue. “We’ll be gone before daybreak.”
Collector Teveren stared at her features, evaluating her words before he stood and made a few motions on his tablet. “Very well. I’ll get your release squared away.” He was gone a moment later.
When the door opened again an hour later, Mable thought it would be to release her. She never expected the man that came instead.
Mable’s jaw fell as her eyes locked on the mid-forties man who entered her narrow holding cell. The thick metal shackles that encircled her wrists kept her pinned in place, unable to run from the man who had taken so much from her.
Silas Arrenstein. A silver-tongued fox with a penchant for lying smiles and sugar-sweet promises he didn’t intend to keep. Mable had never hated anyone the way she hated him.
“Well if it isn’t little Maggie. You’ve, uh, grown?” He cocked an eyebrow at the piercings in her cheeks, the tattoos that crawled up her neck, and the too-dark shade of her once blonde hair.
She curled her lips in disgust at him. “Fuck you. Get away from me.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve given it much more thought since our last conversation?” He smiled through his teeth as he closed the door behind him. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought him genuinely nice, a handsome, older man who wanted the best for her. His permanent day-old shave, sharp tan suit, and kind blue eyes were almost convincing.
Almost.
Mable tried to lean back in her chair and look as disinterested as possible. She didn’t want him to know he got under her skin so easily. Instead, she opted for an offensive approach. “In fact, I think about you a lot. I think about the day you came and ruined my family, and the smug look on your face that never quite seems to come off.”
But he only smiled again.
“I thought you’d be this way. It’s part of your charm, really. So predictable these days.”
“So I’m free to go?” Mable lifted her wrists as far from the table as the short chain would allow, her eyes expectant and her lips pursed with aggravation. It wasn’t fair he was allowed to live in the same lifetime as her.
Yet again, she was sure there was no justice in this world.
“Well, no. Not quite.” As if to prove it, Arrenstein stripped away the tan suit jacket that probably cost a year’s salary and laid it carefully across the tabletop. “You see, this time, I have something you want.”
Hadley.
Mable’s stomach flipped so hard she thought she might puke on his jacket, though in different circumstances, she might have enjoyed that part.
“No, you can’t,” was all she could squeak out. Of all the good, sweet people in the world, she wouldn’t let him have Hadley.
“It’s settled then. We’ll get you moved into the complex this afternoon.” Dr. Arrenstein held out his hand as if to shake hers, but she only sat frozen in shock.
“What? I’m not going with you. You make promises you can’t keep. You murder people.”
Arrenstein leaned back into the simplistic metal chair that matched hers, crossing his legs and even bouncing one of them. “Now, that’s not true, is it Maggie?”
How dare he call her that?
“You know it is. And, what’s worse, I know it.” Mable paused to bring her voice back under control. She wanted no part of what she said next to go misunderstood. “You’ll never get me. You’ll never get Hadley. There’s nothing you can do or say that will ever change that. Go find some other hapless victim to play your games.”
She tried her best to cross her arms indignantly but only met the full length of chain halfway. The failed motion left her with sore wrists and a bruised sense of pride, but still, she wou
ldn’t crack in front of him. Mable swallowed her pain and glared her disapproval.
“Ah, well, that’s a shame. Thing is, our next session is closing up this week, and we’re one recruit short. Seeing as how such viable options are so hard to come by, I’ve really got no choice. I need one more, and you two are too good to pass up. You were really my first choice, but since you’ve made it clear you’ll offer no cooperation, I guess I’ll have to go with Option B. Look at it this way, at least you’ll never see me again.”
Arrenstein smiled as if he’d confirmed her order for a birthday cake. He maintained his poisonous grin as he scooped up his jacket and turned toward the single door. His hand was on the knob and turning as Mable watched in horror.
She didn’t want to do it.
She knew she wouldn’t survive in Arrenstein’s program. She knew she couldn’t live with him day in and day out, knowing what he’d done.
But she couldn’t sentence Hadley to that same fate.
“Wait,” came the sound from her throat before she even realized what she’d done.
Basking in his victory, Arrenstein folded his hands under his jacket and waited, his smile never fading.
“You promise to let her go home?”
At last, Arrenstein cracked. He lifted a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat before answering, “Well, the vulgar underground is hardly a home, but yes, I’ll make sure she gets back there. You have my word—for all that it’s still worth to you.”
Already she felt trapped, as if she’d become claustrophobic in the tiny room. Breathing became hard and blinking couldn’t hold back her frustrated tears. Head bowed in shame, she finally said, “Then I’ll come with you.”
SILAS
CPI-AO-301, NEW YORK
AUGUST 8, 2232
The door to his office slammed shut a little too hard. No doubt Nick would notice. Still, Silas pressed his back to the cool metal door and cursed himself. How had he become such a horrible creature?
“Dr. Arrenstein?” came the quiet voice and trio of knocks.